“If I had not done it at once, I never could have done it,” Annie explained.
“Well, I presume it's a cross,” said Mrs. Savor, “and I don't feel right to take her. If it wa'n't for what her father—”
“'Sh!” Annie said, with a significant glance.
“It's an ugly house!” screamed the child. “I want to go back to my Aunt Annie's house. I want to go on the cars.”
“Yes, yes,” answered Mrs. Savor, blindly groping to share in whatever cheat had been practised on the child, “just as soon as the cars starts. Here, William, you take her out and show her the pretty coop you be'n makin' the pigeons, to keep the cats out.”
They got rid of her with Savor's connivance for the moment, and Annie hastened to escape.
“We had to tell her she was going a journey, or we never could have got her into the carriage,” she explained, feeling like a thief.
“Yes, yes. It's all right,” said Mrs. Savor. “I see you'd be'n putting up some kind of job on her the minute she mentioned the cars. Don't you fret any, Miss Kilburn. Rebecca and me'll get along with her, you needn't be afraid.”
Annie could not look at the empty crib where it stood in its alcove when she went to bed; and she cried upon her own pillow with heart-sickness for the child, and with a humiliating doubt of her own part in hurrying to give it up without thought of Mrs. Savor's convenience. What had seemed so noble, so exemplary, began to wear another colour; and she drowsed, worn out at last by the swarming fears, shames, and despairs, which resolved themselves into a fantastic medley of dream images. There was a cat trying to get at the pigeons in the coop which Mr. Savor had carried Idella to see. It clawed and miauled at the lattice-work of lath, and its caterwauling became like the cry of a child, so like that it woke Annie from her sleep, and still kept on. She lay shuddering a moment; it seemed as if the dead minister's ghost flitted from the room, while the crying defined and located itself more and more, till she knew it a child's wail at the door of her house. Then she heard, “Aunt Annie! Aunt Annie!” and soft, faint thumps as of a little fist upon the door panels.
She had no experience of more than one motion from her bed to the door, which the same impulse flung open and let her crush to her breast the little tumult of sobs and moans from the threshold.