Fathers and daughters -- Fiction; Social classes -- England -- Fiction
There is time for all this, as a case of this sort must be carried
gently, apart from the fact that the slippery road makes caution
necessary. And by the time the ambulance reaches the corner Lizarann
is sticking to loyally, mindful to the last of her promise never to go
beyond where it was wrote up "Old Vatted Rum," her first tendency to
break into panic-stricken sobs, on hearing that her daddy has had an
accident, is already well under control; the policeman Clancy, whom
she knows by sight, and has even spoken with, and who therefore is
trustworthy, having told her that her daddy will soon come round, and
never be a penny the worse.
"Now _you're_ going to be a good little girl, ain't you, and not make
a shine?" Thus the policeman, on vernacular lines, supposed to be
soothing to the excitable. And Mother Groves, partly in deference to
a uniform, adds: "You do like the gentleman tells you, my dear, and
go along where he says!" This suggests to Clancy, who had at first
intended to limit himself to negative injunctions, to say: "Yes, you
run along home, little miss, and tell 'em your daddy's being took
proper care of."
But the terrified scrap, blue with the cold, half-choked with the
hysterical gasps she is fighting against so bravely, as bidden, sees a
deadlier possibility still before her in her arrival at home without
her daddy. It was the dread of having to tell, more than the fear of
being accounted the responsible culprit, that kept her glued to the
spot. She was docility itself towards constituted authorities of all
sorts, but now her feet simply would not move. Oh, what a huge relief
it was when the other policeman, him along of the hospital-barrer,
said: "Ketch that kid, some of you, and bring her along this way! Can't
wait here all day!" He slammed his hands one across the other very
hard, not only to procure circulation, but to express promptitude.
The kid didn't want any bringing. She was across the road and beside
the ambulance before the instruction to catch her could be obeyed.
"You'll do your daddy more harm than good, that way!" said the
hand-slapper, stopping short. Lizarann's first instinct, to scramble
up the hospital-barrer--to get at her daddy on any terms--had to be
combated on his behalf. "Peck the child up, and 'old her acrost the
edge," suggests the potboy from "The Man." The constable remarks, "Some
o' the public'll be feeling dry by now, and nobody to serve 'em! You
best carry that empty glass back, Thomas." But he accepts Thomas's
suggestion, and Lizarann is grateful to the strong hands that pick
her up to kiss her daddy's face. Was it really his?--she thinks to
herself, as they put her down again out of her father's sight, below
the couch-rim of the ambulance. She can't speak; he can.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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