"You are cruel; you will have your revenge, or you would not have brought me here, Meess." The woman's coarse, brutal nature was absolutely cowed by the spectacle of suffering innocence.
The child lay upon her pillow smiling icily, and waving her emaciated arms to and fro upon the coverlid; the fair hair was closely shaven, the eyes dilated and brilliant.
"I have always longed for a cowslip ball; ask that lady to make me one, mamma; and strings and strings of daisy chains."
"Why did you bring me here, Meess? I will not stay, I will not look! Ach das arme Engelein; ach guädidge Himmel." The woman was trembling and all but hysterical. Queenie's detaining hand dropped from her wrist; her revenge was satisfied.
"I wish you to know how we suffered. Sometime, if Emmie gets well, I shall try to bring myself to forgive you; but not till then. There go, she is calling to me; she always calls me mamma."
It would not be too much to say that that sick room became Queenie's world; she knew literally nothing of what passed outside it. Cathy wrote long letters to her, but she seldom answered them. One day she enclosed a note from Langley.
"My dear Miss Marriott," it began, "Cathy's glowing description of her friend makes us long to know you; and my brother and I trust, that you and your dear little sister will be able to pay us a visit in the early summer. We know all your troubles, and wish that it were in our power to lighten them—" but here a restless movement from Emmie disturbed her, and she laid the letter aside.
Emmie's wanderings were rarely painful to the listener. A merciful oblivion had stamped out the memory of that terrible night; generally her talk was of the country. She imagined herself wandering in beautiful places with her mother and Queenie; gathering flowers, or else picking up shells and sea-weed on the shore. Now and then there would be a troubled break—the waves were threatening to engulph her—or a serpent, or strange-headed beast lurked among the flowers; at such times she would grow restless, and it required all Queenie's efforts to tranquillize her, while the constant cry of "Mamma, mamma," was pitiful to hear from the lips of the motherless child.
"Mamma is here," Queenie would answer with loving falsehood, laying the burning face on her breast; and something of the intense mother-love, seemed really to pass into the girl's heart.
She was growing haggard and hollow-eyed under the strain of the long nursing. The doctor shook his head and remonstrated in vain, and Caleb's entreaties were equally unavailing. "You will be ill, Miss Queenie; every one says so. You are up every night unless Molly is here, and barely snatch an hour's sleep in the twenty-four; you are over-taxing your strength, and a breakdown will be the consequence."