Mrs. Legrange smiled a little at the satisfaction with which the
Irish woman contemplated a superfluity, even when not belonging to
herself; and led the way to her own chamber, where sat Dora, as she
had sat many a time within those four walls, holding Sunshine upon
her lap, and, while loosening her clothes for the night, telling her
one of the stories of which the child was never weary.
"See here, Mrs. Ginniss!" said the mother hastily, as she stripped
the frock from the child's white shoulders, and showed a little
linen bag hung about her neck by a silken cord. "Did you ever see
that before?"
"Sure an' what would ail me owld eyes not to seen it, whin me own
fingers sewed it, an' me own han's hoong it aboot the little
crather's nick?"
"You are quite sure it is the very same?"
"Quite an' intirely; for more by token the clot' is a bit uv the
linen gownd that my mother give me whin I wor married to Michael,
an' the sthring wor to a locket that my b'y give me one Christmas
Day."
"And what is in it?" asked Mrs. Legrange eagerly.
"The bracelet, uv coorse. Whin Teddy brought her to me the black
night he foun' her sinseless in the strate, she had it clinched in
the little hand uv her; an', whin she got betther, there wor nought
she loved so well to have by her, an' tooch, an' look at. So when
she roomed about, an' I wor thinkin' it might be laid asthray, or
she might lave it out the windy, or some place, an' not find it, I
sewed it in the bit bag, an' placed it round her nick, and bid her
niver, niver, niver let it be took off till she coom to her own
agin.
"'That manes hivin, mammy, don't it?' axed the darlint in her own
purty way; an' so I says, 'Yis, that manes hivin; an' don't ye niver
be lettin' man, woman, nor child, be knowin' to it, till ye git to
hivin'.' For sure I knowed she must be some person's child that 'ud
one day give their hearts out uv their buzzums to know for sure that
she wor their own."
"And that is the reason she never would let me look at it, or open
it," said Dora. "She always said, when I asked about it, that it was
to go to heaven with her; and, when she got there, she'd open it. So
I supposed it was a charm or relic, such as some of our soldiers
used to carry about their necks; and I never meddled with it."
"And I, although I knew what it must be, wanted to hear Mrs. Ginniss
say that it was the very same bag and all, that she put about the
darling's neck soon after she went to her. But now"--
The quick snip of the scissors finished the sentence, and the bag
lay in Mrs. Legrange's palm. Sunshine's little hand went up rather
forlornly to her bosom, robbed of what it so long had cherished; and
Dora clasped her tighter, and kissed her tenderly: but neither
spoke, until Mrs. Legrange drew from the bag, and held before them,
the coral bracelet, with its linked cameos, broken at one point by
the force with which Mother Winch had torn it from the child's
shoulder, and with the clasp still closed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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