“Now or never,” thought Bill, who would have liked, deeply respectful as he was to the fair sex, to have taken that old hag by the throat. With one hand he got a good grasp of the sill, while he passed the other through the wire grating, and raised the sash a little higher, to attract attention. But the fair prisoner was too far gone in distress and despair to heed any light sound, or even a creak and rattle.
“Miss, Miss, if you please, young Miss!” Bill put his mouth, which would open as wide as almost any cottage window, as far in as ever it would go (for the wire was much in his way) and blew his voice in. But whether it was from the “wealth of her hair”—as all our best writers express it—or the action of the throat upon the ears (which may have been sobbed into deafness), there she lay like a log, and as if no Bill Tompkins had his heart throbbing only for the benefit of hers.
“Rat they women!” thought Bill to himself. “If you want ’em to hear, can’t make ’em do it. If you wants to keep a trifle from ’em, cut both your feet off, and walk upon your fanny-jowls. Here goes, neck or nort!”
He had pulled out a big wall-nail with a heavy shred attached, and choosing a wide space of the wire-netting, he flung it so cleverly at the head oppressed with sorrow, that the owner jumped up, and looked about, and rubbed the eyes thereof.
“Hush, miss, hush, for the Lord’s sake hush!” whispered Bill, as if the first effect of feminine revival must be the liberation of the tongue; “it’s only me, miss,—Bill Tompkins from Sunbury. Please to come nigher, miss, till I tell you.”
“I don’t understand. I seem lost altogether. They have locked me up here, and they may kill me, before I will do a single thing they want of me. What are you come for? And what makes you look at me? There is nobody to help me—not a person in the world.”
“Lor’ bless me, if this don’t beat cock-fightin’!” As she tottered towards the window, with both hands upon her head, the light of the candle shone into her dazzled eyes, weak and weary as they were with floods of tears; and she waved her fingers over them with a strange turn of the palm (which was deeply cupped), a turn quite indescribable, a bit of native gesture which was most attractive, and certain to be known again, though it might have seemed to pass unnoticed. “Miss, if I ever see two ladies in my life, you be Miss Kitty, our Kit’s sweetheart!”
“What is the good of a sweetheart to him? Don’t tell me anything, I can’t bear it. I was going to his funeral—his funeral, yesterday; and they put me in a carriage for the purpose; and they lost their way, so they said, and they brought me here. And instead of going to his funeral, I am to marry some one else. But I won’t do it. I’ll never marry any one but Kit; and Kit is dead, and gone to heaven.”
“The d——d liars! Did they tell you that?” cried Tompkins, as if that would never be my destination. “Our Kit, miss, is as alive as you be; though he have had a bad time of it, and be gone to Ludred now. We expects him home next week, we does. And proud he would be, Miss, to see you there afore him. There never were such a chap to carry on about a gal, leastways beg pardon, Miss, I means a fine young lady.”