It Never Can Happen Again. William De Morgan
railway-arch; drawing morals about and referring to their own foresight about. Then she had heard the voice of the doctor-gentleman:
"Which of you youngsters is his little girl?... Hadn't got a little girl, hadn't he?... Oh ah!—of course he hadn't.... I should say—which is the little girl whose dad's hurt his leg and gone to the Hospital?... Ah, to be sure!—Lizarann. Now, Lizarann, suppose you get your bonnet and wrop yourself up as warm as you can and come along o' me to Teacher at the School, just till Mr. Taylor comes to go to see Daddy with you. The big gentleman?... just him, and nobody else. Come along!" Which Lizarann did, with alacrity. Daddy was in view again.
Then had come a very pleasant phase of what had really seemed more a dream than a reality, all along, to Lizarann. She had found herself being fed and washed and dressed and generally succoured by Miss Fossett, otherwise Teacher, at her private residence next door to the School, after the departure of the doctor-gentleman who left her there. She couldn't for the life of her make out whether it was good news or bad news he had been telling Teacher under his breath. All she knew was that she was somehow appointed to go to Daddy in the Hospital, and that nothing else mattered. Even had she known the tragedy of the morning, it would only have been the fact of Death that would have appalled her—not the loss of the man who died. Practically, the grave was already closing over the remains of Uncle Bob, or the chief part of them. Decision on that point scarcely rests with ignorance though; who shall say that even Alcoholism can efface a soul? Nips won't, however frequently took; a germ always remains. At least, that is our experience, or an inference from it.
It is always pleasant to feel at liberty to over-indulge a child, and Miss Fossett, a good-natured woman that might have married—that describes her—interpreted something the doctor had told her about Daddy as a licence to do so in this case. So Lizarann enjoyed herself thoroughly—may almost be said to have been pampered—in the interval between the doctor's departure and the arrival of the Rev. Athelstan. When the latter came, as promised, Miss Fossett had said something to him with concern, under her breath, and he had replied in a strain as of reassurance, to judge from his tone: "Never you mind the doctor, Addie. Like enough he was mistaken. Besides, he said he thought they might save it." Which, half-heard by Lizarann, only left an impression on her mind of the hospital staff on its knees hunting in the gutter for poor Jim's takings in coppers, spilt from his pocket last night when he met with this accident. Also at the moment Lizarann was doing some arithmetic by herself, hors de concours, and honestly believed she was conferring a real kindness on Teacher by adding up rows of figures for her. She would have done them quicker, only she had to stop to lick and rub out each carried cipher after writing in the next one. Also, when she got the values wrong in an eight, which is difficult, she had to rub it out and do it all over again.
"Lizarann says two and two make four, but fifteen and twelve don't make twenty-seven." Lizarann thought Teacher said this rather maliciously. But she was prompt in self-justification.
"Not of theirselves. Not till you do them in a sum. Like this...." And she did it.
"Quite right, Lizarann! Of course they don't. But two and two will make four if you leave 'em alone ever so. Isn't that it?" Thus the gentleman—a sympathetic soul!
"Yass!" And the little woman felt that justice had been done. But she didn't know why maturity should laugh, as it did.
"They may save it, of course," Miss Fossett continued. "I don't see what's to be gained by taking the child to the Hospital, myself. Only make her miserable! It won't be half as bad if it's a wooden leg and he's up and well, as seeing him in a hospital ward. Besides, Dr. Ferris said he couldn't be certain they'd let you see him."
"I fancy they would. I know a man there who would manage it, regular hours or no!"
"I don't mean that. I mean it might not be safe for the man himself. Just think!—suppose they have had to amputate both." Of course Lizarann heard none of this. They were in the next room, having left her engaged in arithmetic.
"Yes—he may be betwixt life and death. After all, we know nothing. When did Dr. Ferris say he would be at the Hospital? Is that the child coughing?"
"Is that you coughing, Lizarann?" Teacher raised her voice to ask, and Lizarann replied that she had "a stiss" in her side whenever she licked the slite. She licked it to try, and the experiment was crowned with success. She then tried to readjust something out of gear inside her by short coughs and wriggles. This did not seem so successful. Teacher lowered her voice again: "Mucous membrane," said she, "or muscular."
"Very likely. She's had a deal of exposure though, snow and all. Let's keep our eyes on her." But Lizarann didn't cough again, that time.
Nevertheless Miss Fossett seemed not quite easy in her mind about that cough, and when Mr. Taylor remarked that he ought to be thinking about starting, if we were to get to the Hospital by four o'clock, she said—only she pretended it was quite a sudden idea of hers—that if she spoke the truth she would really be much happier to have the child not go out of doors in all this terrible cold and slush. For it was a thaw, and an enthusiastic one; and, you see, Miss Fossett had come by her knowledge of mucous membranes and so forth in a sad curriculum of two courses; one of nursing a sister through phthisis to death; and the other, which was incomplete, of doing the like at intervals for a brother, with only a poor hope that it would end otherwise. So she knew all about it.
"I really should feel easier, Yorick," she repeated. And Lizarann looked up from the slate to see who else was in the room, that Teacher could be speaking to. But seeing no one, and being a sharp little girl, she perceived that it was her friend the gentleman that was addressed. Only, of course, she couldn't guess that it was a sort of nickname, given, years ago, to her brother's schoolfellow by her friend the lady.
"I should, a good deal. It's not the right sort of day at all for little girls with coughs. How shall we console her?"
"You must."
"I suppose I shall have to, Addie. I always have to do all the dirty work." This metaphor distracted Lizarann's attention from two uneven numbers, one of which had to be took off the other and wouldn't come out right. Did the New Police scrub underneath the beds, clear the flues of sut, scour out the sink, and so on? Impossible! He went on: "Look here, Lizarann! You're a good little girl, aren't you?"
"Yass!"
"And you're not going to cry—that's about it, isn't it?"
"Ye-e-e—yass!" She is not quite so confident about this, but will conciliate public opinion to the best of her ability.
"Well, Lizarann, the doctor says we mustn't see Daddy till—till a day or two." The small face clouds over pitifully. The disappointment is bitter. But Lizarann won't cry—well!—not yet, anyhow. Yorick continues: "I shall go to the Sospital to hear about Daddy, and come back and tell. But you mustn't go yet, because it would hurt Daddy." He conceals his consciousness of the background of tears to the child's Spartan resolution.
"You'll see it will come, though," says Miss Fossett, saying good-bye at the street-door. "She'll have a good cry about it when you're gone.... But oh dear!—what a lot of stories you have told that child, Yorick."
"Of course I did. You put it on me, Addie, and then you sneak out! I call it mean. But oh dear!—what a lot of stories one does have to tell children!"
"You never tell them stories about anything you think serious. I know you don't."
"Yes, I do. I tell them as matter of knowledge what I know to be only matter of belief. They wouldn't believe it if I didn't say I knew it."
"But you believe it?"
"I do. But I don't know it. Good-bye, Addie! I shall keep my promise about the Hospital, though, and bring the news back. Cosset over the little woman and console her." Which Teacher really did to the best of her ability, but the fact is that though Lizarann was brave, she was inconsolable. And—what was bitterest of all—she felt that faith had been broken with her; which, coming home too late to Miss Fossett, made her think that it might have been better to tell a child of Lizarann's character the real reason why she wasn't