"Oh, Yorick, how can you? Playing with the child! I shouldn't have thought you could be so wicked. No, Lizarann dear, don't you believe him! Daddy's out of the Hospital, and you're to go and see him. There!... I'm telling the truth, child!" For Lizarann, bewildered, still glances from one to the other.
"That's it, Lizarann. Not Daddy in the Sospital, but Daddy out of the Sospital. Now wrap up warm, and we'll go at once." A wild shriek of delight, an "undue subordination" of limbs, as in pictures of a debased period, and a rush for wraps, is followed, we are sorry to say, by some coughing. There is no such thing as flawless event anywhere.
"Oh no!—it won't do her any harm to go out," says Teacher. "Dr. Ferris said it might do her good if it got mild. Now, Lizarann!—Mr. Yorick's ready." For this Monday, known to the Rev. Gus as "Annunciation," and to most of his flock as Lady Day—a dreadful day when your rent isn't ready—had come as a herald of early spring, and a belief in violets was in the air.
"How far mustn't we go to the Sospital?" Lizarann speaks obscurely, but the meaning is clear to her conductor. How long is the road we are not going to the Hospital on?—surely that's clear.
"How far is it to Daddy? Daddy's at home." And, surely enough, when Mr. Yorick comes to Tallack Street he turns the corner. This bewilders Lizarann.
"But Aunt Stingy, she's took a place," she says. She is not certain of the exact sense of her words. The place might be Badajoz; or a Chancellorship of something, with a portfolio. But it doesn't matter! In either case, Aunt Stingy has left her home desolate—cookless! Again Lizarann is sympathetically understood.
"Your Daddy's being seen to, Miss Coupland. So he won't starve. Here we are!" And it is actually true! Lizarann is back in the home she has been eight weeks away from. For although of late the child had been allowed out, cautiously, no expedition had covered the half-mile between the school and Tallack Street. It is actually true that she is back there now, and wild with delight on the knee her Daddy still has left for her—in a rapture of tears and laughter that can just allow—but only just—the moderation of deportment called for when knees but lately the subjects of comminuted fractures are sat upon, even by very light weights.
Jim was garrulous about the Hospital, and the kindness and attention he had received there. "Yes, master, I was main sorry to come away, one side o' lookin' at it. I'll carry the doctor-gentleman and Nurse Lucy in my mind a long day on. Many's the time I said to myself what I'd be tellin' of 'em to the little lass, home again. There was a bit o' sameness, as might be, when you think of it, and I got fixed uneasy-like about the lass. But, dear Lard bless you!—there was a many there worse off than me. Why, there was that pore chap you see, next bed off on the right! How might you suppose he come there?"
"Don't know, Jim; give it up! How was it?" Mr. Yorick does all the conversation. Lizarann will find her tongue presently, when she and Daddy are alone. At present she merely nestles to him, speechless, but blissful. Jim pursues his topic: