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I looked, and saw that the reflectors were pointing, motionless, toward me resting there for a full minute; then they swept around slowly in their accustomed course, and again paused for a minute. Thereby I deciphered the letter M, and started into full and instant animation. I had, of course, overslept myself, and thereby, probably, lost a portion of Jessie's dear message. How much of it, indeed?
Just then Miss Matty burst into the room. "Oh, Deborah," she said, "there's a gentleman sitting in the drawing- room with his arm round Miss Jessie's waist!" "The most proper place for his arm to be in. Go, Matilda, and mind your own business." Poor Miss Matty! This was a shock, coming from her decorous sister.
In there there was not so much smoke, and he had no trouble at all in pulling Jessie's coat down from the hook where it hung, and he found her rubbers on the floor. He stuffed one in each pocket. Then he started back. His eyes hurt so badly that, brave little boy as he was, he began to cry. "I can't breathe!" he sobbed. "I wish I had a drink of water."
The desire of Jessie's heart was to earn eneugh money to enable them to spend a month or two at the seashore when summer came, as that was the surest cure for Laura's weak nerves and muscles. She had cherished the wild idea of being a ballet-girl, as dancing was her delight; but every one frowned upon that plan, and her own refined nature told her that it was not the life for a young girl. Mr.
Jessie was delighted, she liked Tom Salter, for though he spoke but little, he had often done her a kindness, helping her carry a heavy scuttle of coal up the stairs, or a pail of water; and many a time, of a Saturday night, he cleaned several pairs of the lodgers' boots for her in readiness for Sunday; and many other kindly acts he had done, that meant much to the little over-burthened worker, for Jessie's life was a hard one in those days.
Those were Jessie's last words to Dorothy as they parted an hour later, and they rang in Dorothy's brain for many and many a long day afterward; and these two girls, who had been such steadfast friends parted from each other in coldness and in anger for the first time in their lives.
"Is that right?" she asked. "Oh yes, that's lovely," said Charlie, with a sigh of pleasure. Mrs. Lang brought forward the tray. Jessie's eye fell on it with dismay. Trained by Miss Barley in dainty neatness, and by her grandmother in cleanness and care and thoughtfulness, the sight of it shocked her.
Jessie's nervous system, no longer played upon, ceased to spend its pain in sound, and a London silence fell round the little room. Then, at length, Cuckoo shifted in her chair, stretched her hands in her lap, and sat up slowly. The inward expression had not faded from her eyes yet, for, leaning forward, she still stared blankly before her, looking, as it seemed, straight at Marr's photograph.
"There are one or two things that I am not up to yet," he answered, with a laugh in the corner of his eye, as he waxed his thread with a flourish. "I should like to know what?" "Bread and button-holes, ma'am." It was a rainy Sunday afternoon, and four boys were trying to spend it quietly in the "liberry," as Jamie called the room devoted to books and boys, at Aunt Jessie's.
"You can't prove a thing. Allan was murdered by the neches. I was at the Fort with the rest. You know that. Others can prove it." The fierce anger which the mention of Jessie's name had set leaping in Kars' brain subsided as swiftly as it had risen. He sat silent for some moments regarding the storm-swept features of the man whose crimes had devastated the life of the girl he loved.
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