A little bare foot came stealing down the twisted oak stair at the far end of the room, which leads straight up to Lizarann's eyrie where Jarge got the sunflower through the window for her not three months ago. The little white figure in a nightgown is taller than the Lizarann whom we saw, also in her nightgown, rushing out into the snow last winter to summon the police to Uncle Bob. But the robust look of childhood has given place to what is at least an entire unfitness to be out of bed in the cold. If Mrs. Fox had not been lemon-hunting in the shop, she would have sent the delinquent back in double-quick time. Jim's sharp ears caught the patter of the shoeless feet.
"That's the lassie, I lay," said he. And Lizarann, who didn't care, was on his knee before he had got a proper reproach ready. All he could say was, "A little lass out of her bed in the middle of the night! Where's the police, hay?" He affected inability to deal with the case in the absence of the civil authority.
"I come down because it wasn't cold," said Lizarann. "I come down because the stackace is mide of wood. I come down for to kiss my daddy very often." She did so.
Jim called to Mrs. Fox, without. "Mother! Ahoy! Here's a young charackter come out of her bed in the cold."
Mrs. Fox testified to her horror and surprise, saying substantially that, even in the most depraved circles she had mixed with, such a thing as a little girl coming out of bed in the middle of the night was quite outside her experience. Jim suggested that a blanket would be useful as protection, inside which Lizarann could watch him through his toddy, after assisting in its preparation. Mrs. Fox went for the blanket.
"'Tin't cold," said Lizarann. "And there hin't any cold wind outside in the road. Only in the chimbley.... I'm thicker than I was, Daddy." This last was in response to Jim's explorations about her small limbs in search of flesh. Dr. Sidrophel had been a little hopeful about the possible effect of the ones and ites, if persevered in.
"Where's the flesh you was going to put on, the doctor said? Hey, lassie? Sure you haven't put it on some other little lass?"
Lizarann seemed very uncertain—perhaps didn't understand the question. "Old Mrs. Willoughby, lives near the Spost-Office," she says, "medgers eighteen inches round, and her son Gabriel does the horse-shoes." This is not irrelevance; its object is to show that fat is not always an advantage. Jim misunderstands its drift, and conceives that Mrs. Willoughby is brought forward as an example of slimness and its robust consequences.
"That's no great shakes, anyhow," says he; "for round an old lady's waist...."
But Lizarann interrupts. "I didn't sye wyste," she says. "Round her arms with string above the elber. She hin't got a wyste. She's all one piece. Yass!" Then Mrs. Fox returns, and throws a light on old Mrs. Willoughby. She is her cousin Catharine, and is dropsical. What set the child off on her, she asks?