A Girl of the People | Page 2

saw her, climbed up her like little cats, and half strangled her with their thin half-naked arms.
"Bet, Bet, I say, mother's awful bad. Bet, speak to Nat; he stole my marble, he did. Fie on you, Cap'n; you shouldn't have done it."
"I like that!" shouted the ragged boy addressed as "Cap'n." "You took it from me first, you know you did, Gen'ral."
"If mother's bad, you shouldn't make a noise," said Bet, flinging the two little boys away, with no particular gentleness. "There, of course I'll kiss you, Gen'ral--poor little lad. Go down now and play on the next landing, and keep quiet for the next ten minutes if it's in you."
"Bet," whispered the youngest boy, who was known as "Cap'n," "shall I tell yer what mother did this morning?"
"No, no; I don't want to hear--go downstairs and keep quiet, _do._"
"Oh, yer'll be in such a steaming rage! She burnt yer book, yer Jane Eyre as yer wor reading--lor, it were fine--the bit as you read to the Gen'ral and me, but she said as it wor a hell-fire book, and she burnt it--I seed her, and so did the Gen'ral--she pushed it between the bars with the poker. She got up in her night-things to do it, and then she got back to bed again, and she panted for nearly an hour after--didn't she, Gen'ral?"
"Yes--yes--come along, come along. Look at Bet! she's going to strike some 'un--look at her; didn't we say as she'd be in a steaming rage. Come, Cap'n."
The little boys scuttled downstairs, shouting and tumbling over one another in their flight. Bet stood perfectly still on the landing. The boys were right when they said she would be in a rage; her heart beat heavily, her face was white, and for an instant she pressed her forehead against the door of her mother's room and clenched her teeth.
The book burnt! the poor book which had given her pleasure, and which she had saved up her pence to buy--the book which had drawn her out of herself, and made her forget her wretched surroundings, committed to the flames--ignominiously destroyed, and called bad names, too. How dared her mother do it? how dared she? The girls were right when they said she was tied to apron-strings--she was, she was! But she would bear it no longer. She would show her mother that she would submit to no leading--that she, Elizabeth Granger, the handsomest newspaper girl in Liverpool, was a woman, and her own mistress.
"She oughtn't to have done it," half-groaned Bet "The poor book! And I'll never know now what's come to Jane and Rochester--I'll never know. It cuts me to the quick. Mother oughtn't to take pleasure from one like that, but it's all of a piece. Well, I'll go in and say 'good night' to her, and then I'll go back to the girls. I'm sorry I've lost my evening's spree, but I can hear Hester Wright sing, leastways; and mebbe she'll let me walk home with her."
With one hand Bet brushed something like moisture from her eyes; with the other she opened the door of her mother's room, and went in. Her entrance was noisy, and as she stood on the threshold her expression was defiant. Then all in a second the girl's face changed; a soft, troubled, hungry look filled her eyes; she glided forward without even making the boards creak. In Bet's absence the room had undergone a transformation. A bright fire burned in a carefully polished grate; in front of the hearth a thick knitted rug was placed; the floor was tidy, the two or three rickety chairs were in order, the wooden mantel-piece was free of dust. Over her mother's bed a soft crimson counterpane was thrown, and her mother, half sitting up, rested her white face against the snowy pillows. A little table stood near the bedside, which contained some cordial in a glass. The sick woman's long thin hands lay outside the crimson counterpane, and her eyes, dark and wistful, were turned in the direction of the door. Bet went straight up to the bed: the transformation in the room was nothing to her; she saw it, and guessed quickly that Sister Mary had done it; but the look, the changed look on her mother's face, was everything. She forgot her own wrongs and the burnt book; her heart was filled with a wild fear, a dreary sense of coming desolation seized her, and clasping her mother's long thin fingers in her own brown strong hands, she bent down and whispered in a husky voice,
"Mother--oh, mother!"
The woman looked up and smiled.
"You've come back, Bet?" she said. "Give me a drop of the cordial. I'm glad you've come back. I thought it might have been the will of Him who knows