a description of whose points and trappings had on the last occasion conciliated the then worldly-minded orphan, and also a Noah’s ark, and also a yellow bird with an artificial voice in him, and also a military doll so well dressed that if he had only been of life-size his brother-officers in the Guards might never have found him out. Bearing these gifts, they raised the latch of Betty Higden’s door, and saw her sitting in the dimmest and furthest corner with poor Johnny in her lap.
‘And how’s my boy, Betty?’ asked Mrs Boffin, sitting down beside her.
‘He’s bad! He’s bad!’ said Betty. ‘I begin to be afeerd he’ll not be yours any more than mine. All others belonging to him have gone to the Power and the Glory, and I have a mind that they’re drawing him to them—leading him away.’
‘No, no, no,’ said Mrs Boffin.
‘I don’t know why else he clenches his little hand as if it had hold of a finger that I can’t see. Look at it,’ said Betty, opening the wrappers in which the flushed child lay, and showing his small right hand lying closed upon his breast. ‘It’s always so. It don’t mind me.’
‘Is he asleep?’
‘No, I think not. You’re not asleep, my Johnny?’
‘No,’ said Johnny, with a quiet air of pity for himself; and without opening his eyes.
‘Here’s the lady, Johnny. And the horse.’
Johnny could bear the lady, with complete indifference, but not the horse. Opening his heavy eyes, he slowly broke into a smile on beholding that splendid phenomenon, and wanted to take it in his arms. As it was much too big, it was put upon a chair where he could hold it by the mane and contemplate it. Which he soon forgot to do.
But, Johnny murmuring something with his eyes closed, and Mrs Boffin not knowing what, old Betty bent her ear to listen and took pains to understand. Being asked by her to repeat what he had said, he did so two or three times, and then it came out that he must have seen more than they supposed when he looked up to see the horse, for the murmur was, ‘Who is the boofer lady?’ Now, the boofer, or beautiful, lady was Bella; and whereas this notice from the poor baby would have touched her of itself; it was rendered more pathetic by the late melting of her heart to her poor little father, and their joke about the lovely woman. So, Bella’s behaviour was very tender and very natural when she kneeled on the brick floor to clasp the child, and when the child, with a child’s admiration of what is young and pretty, fondled the boofer lady.
‘Now, my good dear Betty,’ said Mrs Boffin, hoping that she saw her opportunity, and laying her hand persuasively on her arm; ‘we have come to remove Johnny from this cottage to where he can be taken better care of.’
Instantly, and before another word could be spoken, the old woman started up with blazing eyes, and rushed at the door with the sick child.
‘Stand away from me every one of ye!’ she cried out wildly. ‘I see what ye mean now. Let me go my way, all of ye. I’d sooner kill the Pretty, and kill myself!’
‘Stay, stay!’ said Rokesmith, soothing her. ‘You don’t understand.’
‘I understand too well. I know too much about it, sir. I’ve run from it too many a year. No! Never for me, nor for the child, while there’s water enough in England to cover us!’
The terror, the shame, the passion of horror and repugnance, firing the worn face and perfectly maddening it, would have been a quite terrible sight, if embodied in one old fellow-creature alone. Yet it ‘crops up’—as our slang goes—my lords and gentlemen and honourable boards, in other fellow-creatures, rather frequently!
‘It’s been chasing me all my life, but it shall never take me nor mine alive!’ cried old Betty. ‘I’ve done with ye. I’d have fastened door and window and starved out, afore I’d ever have let ye in, if I had known what ye came for!’
But, catching sight of Mrs Boffin’s wholesome face, she relented, and crouching down by the door and bending over her burden to hush it, said humbly: ‘Maybe my fears has put me wrong. If they have so, tell me, and the good Lord forgive me! I’m quick to take this fright, I know, and my head is summ’at light with wearying and watching.’
‘There, there, there!’ returned Mrs Boffin. ‘Come, come! Say no more of it, Betty. It was a mistake, a mistake. Any one of us might have made it in your place, and felt just as you do.’
‘The Lord bless ye!’ said the old woman, stretching out her hand.
‘Now, see, Betty,’ pursued the sweet compassionate soul, holding the hand kindly, ‘what I really did mean, and what I should have begun by saying out, if I had only been a little wiser and handier. We want to move Johnny to a place where there are none but children; a place set up on purpose for sick children; where the good doctors and nurses pass their lives with children, talk to none but children, touch none but children, comfort and cure none but children.’
‘Is there really such a place?’ asked the old woman, with a gaze of wonder.
‘Yes, Betty, on my word, and you shall see it. If my home was a better place for the dear boy, I’d take him to it; but indeed indeed it’s not.’
‘You shall take him,’ returned Betty, fervently kissing the comforting hand, ‘where you will, my deary. I am not so hard, but that I believe your face and voice, and I will, as long as I can see and hear.’
This victory gained, Rokesmith made haste to profit by it, for he saw how woefully time had been lost. He despatched Sloppy to bring the carriage to the door; caused the child to be carefully wrapped up; bade old Betty get her bonnet on; collected the toys, enabling the little fellow to comprehend that his treasures were to be transported with him; and had all things prepared so easily that they were ready for the carriage as soon as it appeared, and in a minute afterwards were on their way. Sloppy they left behind, relieving his overcharged breast with a paroxysm of mangling.
At the Children’s Hospital, the gallant steed, the Noah’s ark, yellow bird, and the officer in the Guards, were made as welcome as their child-owner. But the doctor said aside to Rokesmith, ‘This should have been days ago. Too late!’
However, they were all carried up into a fresh airy room, and there Johnny came to himself, out of a sleep or a swoon or whatever it was, to find himself lying in a little quiet bed, with a little platform over his breast, on which were already arranged, to give him heart and urge him to cheer up, the Noah’s ark, the noble steed, and the yellow bird; with the officer in the Guards doing duty over the whole, quite as much to the satisfaction of his country as if he had been upon Parade. And at the bed’s head was a coloured picture beautiful to see, representing as it were another Johnny seated on the knee of some Angel surely who loved little children. And, marvellous fact, to lie and stare at: Johnny had become one of a little family, all in little quiet beds (except two playing dominoes in little arm-chairs at a little table on the hearth): and on all the little beds were little platforms whereon were to be seen dolls’ houses, woolly dogs with mechanical barks in them not very dissimilar from the artificial voice pervading the bowels of the yellow bird, tin armies, Moorish tumblers, wooden tea things, and the riches of the earth.
As Johnny murmured something in his placid admiration, the ministering women at his bed’s head asked him what he said. It seemed that he wanted to know whether all these were brothers and sisters of his? So they told him yes. It seemed
