Faithful Margaret Part 20

Perhaps she would fall in some lime-pit, or ditch, or into the slimy lock of some ca.n.a.l, and die miserably.

Who would weep for her if she died? Who cared for Margaret Walsingham?

And the thought of her utter desolation overcome her, as weariness, hunger, and storm had failed to do.

She crouched down beneath a furze-bush, and, resting her hot and beating head upon her hands, wept, poor soul!

And then came unconsciousness and utter oblivion.

"I declare, John, she knows me! Here, take a sup o' this barley-water, my lamb. Dear heart! she's sensible once more. Ain't there another drop than this, John? Mayhap it's plenty." Margaret looked with languid eyes upon the rugged figure of a man, clad in dingy red-dust habiliments, who was standing between her and a small window, with his head sunk in a curious way between his hands.

His brawny shoulders were heaving, and his rough shock of hair trembled like sea-gra.s.s in a hurricane, while a gurgling sort of noise issued from him.

Had a fit of laughter seized him, or was the man crying?

Whose bed was she lying in, hung with red calico curtains?

Where had she seen that figure in the clay-colored smock before?

And then Margaret saw a sallow-faced woman of spare figure bending over her, with a tin cup in her hand, and a glistening channel down each cheek.

"Mrs. Doane!" she breathed, in wonder.

"There I knowed it! Hark to that, John!" cried the woman, with an exultant chuckle, which threatened to be strangled by a sob.

"Didn't she call me by name, the blessed lamb?"

She raised the blessed lamb in her arms, who, truth to say, scarcely recognized herself by such an unwonted t.i.tle, and held the tin cup to her lips.

Sweeter to Margaret than Lusitanian nectar such as Chianti yields was her drink of barley water.

Margaret without working out the queer problem of how she came there, fell into a deep and quiet sleep.

And between sleeping profoundly, eating morsels of food with ravenous enjoyment, lying placidly wakeful and watching without curiosity the movements of her two nurses, Margaret saw the young moon grow into a full, round orb, which glimmered in a halo through the bottle-green gla.s.s of the cracked window, and silvered her from head to foot, each long, still night; and at last strength came to her, and with it recollection.

"Did I come to you, Mr. Doane?" she asked, one evening, when that person was sitting by her bedside peacefully smoking his pipe, and listening with pride to the voice of Johnnie in the kitchen chanting his spelling lesson.

"Come to us? No, miss, you didn't but we come to you," replied the bricklayer, stuffing down the ashes further into his pipe.

"I want to know about it, please; I do not understand at all how I am at Lynthorpe."

"Where was you when you was took bad?"

Margaret pondered a long time.

"The last I distinctly remember is of being a mile and a half from Rotherhithe."

"Lor-a-musy! and didn't n.o.body give ye a seat in their wagon down here?

Did you walk all the way, and so light of head like?" She put her thin hand to her forehead again.

"I remember of being lost on a common outside of Rotherhithe," she answered, "and I do not know what became of me after that. I sat down to rest, and I suppose I must have been there all night. Is it long ago?"

"What date was it, dear miss, that you was lost on the moor? Can ye mind that?"

"It was the seventh of October."

"Just think o' that now! It was two days after that when I found you sitting at the foot of a hay-rick in Farmer Bracon's land, a mile from here. You was a sorry sight, but I know'd yer again, and came close to yer. You was neither sleeping nor not sleeping, but whispering to yourself; so I brought you home to the wife, and she and me we've nursed ye through, thank heaven! And here's the papers as was found on ye, miss, by the wife," rising and producing them from a carefully-locked little box in the cupboard; "and here's the purse with a shilling in it, which was all that we saw with ye, and you a sending me a guinea reg'lar every quarter for Johnnie's schooling, for a kind miss, as ye are."

Margaret lay quiet for a while; her deep gray eyes were full of tears, her bleached face tremulous with smiles.

"Heaven is taking great care of me, and I have much to be thankful for.

Kind John Doane and his wife, for instance."

The bricklayer puffed hard, and slowly spelled out her meaning, and arrived at it with a snort of surprised pleasure.

"Is it Betsy and me that you want to be thankful for? You as is our guarding angel, what made a man of Johnnie as can read most as well as the curate himself. And haven't every one of the nine of us, down to the babby, felt as if we had a angel under the roof for the last three weeks?"

"Have I been three weeks ill?"

"Three weeks, dear miss; seven days of 'em you wasn't in your head at all, and Dr. Ramsey weren't easy about you--weren't easy at all. It were inflammation of the brain."

"And you out of your pittance--you have nursed me through all this?"

"And proud to do it, miss."

"But if I had died, who would make up to you the doctor's bill, or your own ease?"

"Dear miss, don't!" His hard hand went up to wipe the starting tears.

"If you had died, it's not us as would stop our mourning to think of the mite you cost us. You ain't like the rest of the Peerage--you comes down to we; you had a heart, so you had, and felt for we, and we never forgets that."

"Kind John Doane, how shall I repay you?"

She buried her face and wept.

The cheerful crackle of a f.a.got fire came from the kitchen grate, long spurts of yellow light outlined upon the wall Mrs. Doane's figure as she danced the youngest toddler on her knee, and Margaret fell asleep to the words:

"Dance to your daddy, My bonny babby; Dance to your daddy, Do, dear, do-o!

You'll get a wee bit fishie, In a wee bit dishie, And a whirligigie, And a b.u.t.tered scone!"

CHAPTER XII.

ST. UDO BRAND NOT DEAD.