"Oh, cheese it!" said Tilda. "Oo's a-kiddin' now? An' see 'ere, Arthur Miles--it don't matter with me, a lie up or down; I'm on'y Tilda. But don't you pick up the 'abit, or else you'll annoy me. I can't tell why ezactly, but it don't _sit_ on you." "Tilda?" The boy caught up her name like an echo. "Tilda what?" "The Lord knows. Tilda _nothin'_--Tilda o' Maggs's, if you like, an' nobody's child, anyway." "But that isn't _possible_," he said, after thinking a moment. "They called me that sometimes, back--back--" "At the Orph'nige, eh? 'Oo called you that? The Doctor? No," said Tilda hurriedly, as he halted with a shiver, "don't look be'ind; 'e's not anywhere near. An' as for the Good Samaritan, you're wrong about that, too; for _'ere's_ the Good Samaritan!" She pointed at the building, and he stared. He could not comprehend at all, but she had switched him off the current of his deadly fear. "Now you just wait 'ere by the steps," she commanded, "an' 'Dolph'll wait by you an' see you come to no 'arm. Understand, 'Dolph? I'm goin' inside for a minute--only a minute, mind; but if anybody touches Arthur Miles, you _pin_ 'im!" 'Dolph looked up at his mistress, then at the boy. He wagged his tail, not enthusiastically. He would fain have followed her, but he understood, and would obey. Tilda went up the steps, and up the stairs. On the landing, as chance would have it, she met the Second Nurse coming out from the ward, with a sheet in one hand and a tray of medicines in the other. "You extremely naughty child!" began the Second Nurse, but not in the shrill tone nor with quite the stern disapproval the child had expected. "When the doctor told you half an hour exactly, and you have been _hours!_ What _have_ you been doing?" "Lookin' up the old folks," she answered, and took note first that the medicine bottles were those that had stood on the sick woman's table, and next that the Second Nurse, as she came out, transferred the sheet to her arm and closed the door behind her. "You must wait here for a moment, now you have come so late. I have had to give you another bed; and now I've to fetch some hot water, but I'll be back in a minute." "Folks don't make beds up with hot water," thought Tilda. She watched the nurse down the passage, stepped to the door, and turned the handle softly. There was no change in the ward except that a tall screen stood by the sick woman's bed. Tilda crept to the screen on tip-toe, and peered around it. Ten seconds--twenty seconds--passed, and then she drew back and stole out to the landing, closing the door as softly as she had opened it. In the light of the great staircase window her face was pale and serious. She went down the stairs slowly. "Seems I made a mistake," she said, speaking as carelessly as she could, but avoiding the boy's eyes. "You wasn' wanted up there, after all." But he gazed at her, and flung out both arms with a strangling sob.