Cast Adrift

Pinky looked at the child, and grew faint at heart. She had large hazel eyes, that gleamed with a singular lustre out of the suffering, grimed and wasted little face, so pale and sad and pitiful that the sight of it was enough to draw tears from any but the brutal and hardened.

“Are you sick?” asked Norah.

“No, she’s not sick; she’s only shamming,” growled Flanagan.

“You shut up!” retorted Norah. “I wasn’t speaking to you.” Then she repeated her question:

“Are you sick, Nell?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know.”

Norah laid her hand on the child’s head:

“Does it hurt here?”

“Oh yes! It hurts so I can’t see good,” answered Nell.

“It’s all a lie! I know her; she’s shamming.”

“Oh no, Norah!” cried the child, a sudden hope blending with the fear in her voice. “I ain’t shamming at all. I fell down ever so many times in the street, and ‘most got run over. Oh dear! oh dear!” and she clung to the woman with a gesture of despair piteous to see.

“I don’t believe you are, Nell,” said Norah, kindly. Then, to the woman, “Now mind, Flanagan, Nell’s sick; d’ye hear?”

The woman only uttered a defiant growl.

“She’s not to be licked again to-night.” Norah spoke as one having authority.

“I wish ye’d be mindin’ y’r own business, and not come interfarin’ wid me. She’s my gal, and I’ve a right to lick her if I plaze.”

“Maybe she is and maybe she isn’t,” retorted Norah.

“Who says she isn’t my gal?” screamed the woman, firing up at this and reaching out for Nell, who shrunk closer to Norah.

“Maybe she is and maybe she isn’t,” said the queen, quietly repeating her last sentence; “and I think maybe she isn’t. So take care and mind what I say. Nell isn’t to be licked any more to-night.”

“Oh, Norah,” sobbed the child, in a husky, choking voice, “take me, won’t you? She’ll pinch me, and she’ll hit my head on the wall, and she’ll choke me and knock me. Oh, Norah, Norah!”

Pinky could stand this no longer. Catching up the bundle of rags in her arms, she sprang out of the cellar and ran across the street to the queen’s house, Norah and Flanagan coming quickly after her. At the door, through which Pinky had passed, Norah paused, and turning to the infuriated Irish woman, said, sternly,

“Go back! I won’t have you in here; and if you make a row, I’ll tell John to lock you up.”

“I want my Nell,” said the woman, her manner changing. There was a shade of alarm in her voice.

“You can’t have her to-night; so that’s settled. And if there’s any row, you’ll be locked up.” Saying which, Norah went in and shut the door, leaving Flanagan on the outside.

The bundle of dirty rags with the wasted body of a child inside, the body scarcely heavier than the rags, was laid by Pinky in the corner of a settee, and the unsightly mass shrunk together like something inanimate.

“I thought you’d had enough with old Sal,” said Norah, in a tone of reproof, as she came in.

“Couldn’t help it,” replied Pinky. “I’m bad enough, but I can’t stand to see a child abused like that—no, not if I die for it.”

Norah crossed to the settee and spoke to Nell. But there was no answer, nor did the bundle of rags stir.

“Nell! Nell!” She called to deaf ears. Then she put her hand on the child and raised one of the arms. It dropped away limp as a withered stalk, showing the ashen white face across which it had lain.

The two women manifested no excitement. The child had fainted or was dead—which, they did not know. Norah straightened out the wasted little form and turned up the face. The eyes were shut, the mouth closed, the pinched features rigid, as if still giving expression to pain, but there was no mistaking the sign that life had gone out of them. It might be for a brief season, it might be for ever.

A little water was thrown into the child’s face. Its only effect was to streak the grimy skin.

“Poor little thing!” said Pinky. “I hope she’s dead.”

“They’re tough. They don’t die easy,” returned Norah.

“She isn’t one of the tough kind.”

“Maybe not. They say Flanagan stole her when she was a little thing, just toddling.”

“Don’t let’s do anything to try to bring her to,” said Pinky.

Norah stood for some moment’s with an irresolute air, then bent over the child and examined her more carefully. She could feel no pulse beat, nor any motion of the heart,

“I don’t want the coroner here,” she said, in a tone of annoyance. “Take her back to Flanagan; it’s her work, and she must stand by it.”

“Is she really dead?” asked Pinky.

“Looks like it, and serves Flanagan right. I’ve told her over and over that Nell wouldn’t stand it long if she didn’t ease up a little. Flesh isn’t iron.”

Again she examined the child carefully, but without the slightest sign of feeling.

“It’s all the same now who has her,” she said, turning off from the settee. “Take her back to Flanagan.”

But Pinky would not touch the child, nor could threat or persuasion lead her to do so. While they were contending, Flanagan, who had fired herself up with half a pint of whisky, came storming through the door in a blind rage and screaming out,

“Where’s my Nell? I want my Nell!”

Catching sight of the child’s inanimate form lying on the settee, she pounced down upon it like some foul bird and bore it off, cursing and striking the senseless clay in her insane fury.

Pinky, horrified at the dreadful sight, and not sure that the child was really dead, and so insensible to pain, made a movement to follow, but Norah caught her arm with a tight grip and held her back.

“Are you a fool?” said the queen, sternly. “Let Flanagan alone. Nell’s out of her reach, and I’m glad of it.”

“If I was only sure!” exclaimed Pinky.

“You may be. I know death—I’ve seen it often enough. They’ll have the coroner over there in the morning. It’s Flanagan’s concern, not yours or mine, so keep out of it if you know when you’re well off.”