Princess Sarah And Other Stories Part 22

"I should think you was cold," returned Private Flinders sympathetically. "I'm none too warm myself; and the fog seems to fair eat into one's bones. Well, little 'un, I can't carry you back to where you came from, that's very certain. I can't even take you round to the guard-room. Now, what the deuce am I to do with you? And I shan't be relieved for over a hour."

Private Flinders being one of the most good-natured men in creation, it ended by his gathering the child in his arms, and carrying her up and down on his beat until the relief came.

"Why, what's the meaning of this?" demanded the corporal of the guard, when he perceived the unusual enc.u.mbrance to the private's movements.

"Ah! Corporal, that's more than I can tell you," responded the other promptly. "This here kid toddled along over a hour ago; and as she don't seem to know what her name is, or where she come from, I just walked about with her, that she mightn't be froze to death. I suppose we'd best carry her to the guard-room fire, and keep her warm till morning."

"And then?" asked the corporal, with a twinkle in his eye, which the dark night effectually hid.

"Gord knows," was the private's quick reply.

Eventually, the mite who rejoiced in the name of Susy, and did not know whence she had come or whither she was going, was carried off to the guard-room and made as comfortable as circ.u.mstances would permit--that being the only course, indeed, at that hour of the night, or, to be quite correct, of the morning--which could with reason be followed.

She slept, as healthy children do, like a top or dog, and when she awoke in the morning she expressed no fear or very much surprise, and, having enquired in a casual kind of way for her mammy, she partook of a very good breakfast of bread and milk, followed by a drink of coffee and a taste or two of such other provisions as were going round. Later on Private Flinders was sent for to the orderly-room, and told to give the commanding officer such information as he was in possession of concerning the stray mite, who was still in the warm guard-room.

Now it happened that the commanding officer of the 9th Hussars was a gentleman to whom routine was a religion and discipline a salvation, and he expressed himself sharply enough as to the only course which could possibly be pursued under the present circ.u.mstances.

"We had better send down to the workhouse people to come and remove the child at once. Otherwise, we may have endless trouble with the mother; and, moreover, if it once got about that these barracks were open to that kind of thing, the regiment would soon be turned into a regular foundling hospital. Let the workhouse people be sent for at once. What did you say, Mr. Jervis? That the child might be quartered for a few hours among the married people. Yes, I daresay, but if the mother is on the look-out, which is very doubtful, she is more likely to go to the police-station than she is to come here. As to any stigma, the mother should have borne that in mind when she lost the child. On second thoughts, I think it is to the police-station that we should send; yes, that will be quite the best thing to do."

A few hours later the child Susy was transferred from the guard-room to the police-station, and there she made herself equally at home, only asking occasionally, in a perfunctory kind of way, for "Mammy," and being quite easily satisfied when she was told that she would be coming along by-and-by.

During the few hours that she was at the police-station she became quite a favourite, and made friends with all the stalwart constables, just as she had done with one and all of the strapping Hussars at the cavalry barracks. She was not shy, for she answered the magistrate in quite a friendly way, though she gave no information as to her belongings, simply because she had no information to give. And the end was that she was condemned to the workhouse, and was carried off to that undesirable haven as soon as the interview with the magistrate was over.

"A blooming shame, I call it, poor little kid," said Private Flinders that evening to a group of his friends, in the comfortable safety of the troop-room. "She was a jolly little la.s.s; and if I'd been a married man, I'd have kept her myself, dashed if I wouldn't!"

"Perhaps your missis might 'ave 'ad a word or two to say to that, Flinders," cried a natty fellow, just up to the standard in height, and no more.

"Oh, I'd have made it all right with her," returned Flinders, with that easy a.s.surance of everything good that want of experience gives. "But to send it to the workhouse--it's a blooming shame! They treat kids anyhow in them places. Now then, Thomson, what are you a-grinning at?

Perhaps you know as much about workhouses as I can tell you."

"Perhaps I do, and perhaps I don't," replied Thomson, with provoking good temper. "I wasn't a-laughing at the workhouse; cussing them is more like what one feels. But to think of you, old chap, tramping up and down with the blessed kid asleep--well, it beats everything I ever heard tell of, blame me if it don't."

Private Flinders, however, was not to be laughed out of his interest in the little child Susy; and regularly every week he walked down to the workhouse, and asked to see her taking always a few sweeties, bought out of his scanty pay, the cost of which meant his going without some small luxury for himself. And Susy, who was miserably unhappy in that abode of sorrow which we provide in this country for the dest.i.tute, grew to look eagerly for his visits, and sobbed out all her little troubles and trials to his sympathetic ears.

"Susy don't like her," she confided to him one day when the matron had left them alone together. "She slaps me. Susy don't love her."

"But Susy will learn to be a good girl, and not get slapped," the soldier said, with something suspiciously like a lump in his throat.

"See, I've brought you some lollipops--you'll like them, won't you?"

He happened to run up against the matron as he walked away toward the door. "She's a tender little thing, missis," he remarked, with a vague kind of notion that even workhouse matrons have hearts sometimes. And so some of them have, though not many. This particular one was among the many.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "She's a tender little thing, missis," he remarked.]

"A very self-willed child," she remarked sharply, "considering that she's so young. We have a great deal of trouble with her. She does not seem to know the meaning of the word obedience."

"She is but a baby," ventured the soldier apologetically.

"Baby, or no baby, she'll have to learn it here," snapped the matron viciously; and then Flinders went on his way, feeling sadder than ever, and yet more and more regretful that he was not married, or had at least a mother in a position to adopt a little child.

The next time he went they had cut the child's lovely long, curling locks, indeed, she had been shorn like a sheep in spring-time.

Flinders' soft heart gave a great throb, and he cuddled the mite to his broad breast, as if by so doing he could undo the indignity that had been put upon her.

"Susy," he said, when he had handed over his sweets and she was busily munching them up, "I want you to try and remember something."

Susy looked at him doubtfully, but nodded her cropped head with an air of wise acquiescence. Flinders went on talking quietly.

"You remember before you came here--you had a home and a mammy, don't you?"

"Yes," said Susy promptly.

"What sort of a house was it?"

"Where my mammy was?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Big," replied Susy briefly, selecting another sweetie with care.

"And what was it called?"

"The house," said the child, in a matter-of-fact tone.

Flinders gave a sigh. "Yes, I dare say it was. Don't you remember, though, what your mammy was called?"

"Why mammy, of course," said Susy, as if the question was too utterly foolish for serious consideration.

"Yes, but other people didn't call her mammy--it was only you did that,"

said Flinders desperately. "What did other people call her? Can't you remember that?"

It happened that Susy not only remembered, but immediately gave utterance to her recollections in such a way as fairly made the soldier jump. "They called my mammy 'my lady,'" she said simply.

Private Flinders gave the child a great hug, and put her down off his knee. "Gord bless you, little 'un," he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "And see if I don't ferret that mammy of yours out before I'm many days older--see if I don't."

He met the matron as he went towards the entrance. "Missis," he said, stopping, "I've got a clue to that little 'un's belongings. I'm off to the police station now about it. I'd advise you to treat her as tender as you can. It'll come home to you, mark my words."

"Dear me," snapped the matron; "is she going to turn out a princess in disguise, then?"

"It'll perhaps turn out a pity you was in such a hurry to crop her hair," said Private Flinders, with dignity.

In the face of that sudden recollection of the child's, he felt that he could afford to be, to a certain extent, stand-offish to the cold-eyed, unloving woman before him.

"Oh, rules are rules," said the matron, with an air of fine disdain; "and, in an inst.i.tution like ours, all must be served alike. It would be a pretty thing if we had to spend half of every day curling the children's hair. Good-day to you."

He felt that he had got the worst of it, and that it was more than possible that little Susy would pay the penalty of his indiscretion.

Fool that he had been not to hold his tongue until he had something more tangible to say. Well, it was done now, and could not be undone, and it behoved him to lose no time, but to find out the truth as soon as possible.

The inspector whom he found in charge of the police-station listened to his tale with a strictly professional demeanour.

"Yes, I remember the little girl coming in and being taken to the workhouse. I remember the case right enough. You'd better leave it to us, and we will find out whether such a child is missing anywhere in the country."