Emmeline opened her eyes again to find herself half sitting, half lying across the seat of a cab. A strange lady with a grave, kind face was kneeling by her side, holding her arm.

‘Where—’ began Emmeline faintly, breaking off with a groan as the cab gave a jolt and she felt a sudden shoot of pain rather like having a tooth out, only it was much worse, and in her arm, not her mouth.

‘We are going to the Infirmary,’ said the lady gently; ‘they’ll soon make you well.’

‘Can’t we go to Mary?’ said Emmeline, so feebly that the lady could not quite catch the words.

‘You shall go home as soon as ever the doctor has put your arm right,’ she promised.

After that the pain grew so bad that there was nothing for it but just to lie back on the seat and squeeze her lips tightly together so as to keep from screaming. At that moment she did not care where she was going if only she got there[216] soon, and this dreadful jolting drive came to an end.

After a few minutes that seemed almost like as many hours the cab stopped, and then somebody came and lifted her out with strong, careful arms. She must have fainted again after that, for the next thing she knew was that she was lying on a bed in a strange room, and that a doctor was leaning over her, hurting her horribly by feeling her arm.

‘Only a simple fracture,’ he remarked cheerfully. ‘We shall soon set that to rights.’

It was all very well for the doctor to speak cheerfully, but the process of having her arm set gave Emmeline the sharpest pain she had ever known. One agonised ‘Oh!’ did burst from her, but except for that she lay quite still and quiet, only breathing harder than usual.

‘Well, you’re one of the pluckiest little things I’ve ever had to do with,’ said the doctor warmly, when he had finished his work.

‘Yes, indeed she is,’ agreed the Nurse who had helped to bind up the arm.

Emmeline gave a wan little smile. ‘One must be—game,’ she remarked. ‘Game’ was one of Micky’s words which she would never have used if she had been quite herself.

‘Well, you have been very game!’ said the doctor smiling as he left her.

[217]

Afterwards the Nurse began to undress her. Emmeline had a dreamy impression that the proceeding was a strange one, and that there was something very important she ought to have been doing, but she could not remember what it was, and she felt so tired and so much disinclined to argue that she just submitted without a word.

‘Now, dear, can you tell me your name and where you live?’ asked the Nurse, as she put Emmeline into the narrow spring-bed on which she had lain to have her arm set.

‘My name’s Emmeline Bolton,’ was the prompt answer, ‘and I live——’ She hesitated, frowned with perplexity, and then broke into a weak little laugh. ‘Why, how funny! I can’t remember the name of the place.’

‘Don’t you live in Eastwich, then?’ asked the Nurse.

‘No, I don’t think we live there now,’ said Emmeline in a puzzled way. ‘Mary does, though,’ she added as an afterthought.

‘Do you remember Mary’s address and what her surname is?’

Emmeline frowned again.

‘It’s very odd,’ she said after a moment. ‘I don’t seem able to remember anything to-day.’

‘Never mind,’ said the Nurse, ‘it’ll all come back to you soon enough.’ She went out of the[218] room and returned presently with a glass of warm milk. ‘Drink this,’ she said, ‘and then go to sleep like a good child.’

Emmeline drained the glass obediently, after which she dropped her head back on to the pillow, and in another minute she had fallen sound asleep.

‘Poor little thing!’ said the Nurse to herself as she went away. ‘She’s still dazed with the blow on her head. Well, it can’t have been a very bad one, or she wouldn’t have remembered as much as she did, so I dare say she’ll be pretty well all right by to-morrow. For to-night all we can do is to give notice at the police-station that she is here.’

Emmeline awoke the next morning to find the sunlight pouring full into the room where she was lying—a strange room with three empty beds in it instead of Kitty’s, and none of the familiar pictures nor furniture. Her first feeling was one of bewilderment as to where she was, and why one of her arms felt so funny. Then she remembered that this was Eastwich Infirmary, and that she had been brought there in a cab to have her arm put to rights.

What had she been doing in Eastwich? For a moment she could not think. Then suddenly all the events of the last few days flashed back upon her, up to the time when she had been[219] standing talking to the stranger boy outside the tall grim house, into which the policeman had just led Micky and Diamond Jubilee!

When the Nurse came in to attend to her a few minutes later, there was nothing to be seen of Emmeline but a restless lump, heaving about stormily underneath the bedclothes.

‘It’s very bad for the child to lie with her head covered up like that,’ thought the Nurse, and, going up to the bed, she tried gently to pull down the clothes. For a moment Emmeline held on fiercely, and when she did let her face be uncovered it was tear-stained and flushed.

‘Well, how are you feeling this morning?’ asked the Nurse kindly, ignoring the marks of tears. She was quite used to patients being miserably shy and homesick just at first.

‘Better, thank you—I mean quite well,’ said Emmeline. ‘Please, I can’t stay here,’ she went on. ‘There’s something dreadfully important I must tell my friends. I can’t think how I came to forget it last night. I must dress and go to them now, at once. You don’t know how frightfully it matters!’

‘Don’t be so unhappy,’ said Nurse. ‘We’ll send for your friend, and I daresay she’ll be here almost as soon as you’ve finished your breakfast.’

‘Oh, thank you!’ said Emmeline, as much relieved as she could be just then. ‘It’s Miss[220] Mary Bell I want to see, and her address is 14, East Parade.’

‘I know,’ said the Nurse. ‘Her brother was round late last night inquiring after you. They had found out at the police-station where you were, and were very anxious about you, so mind you eat a good breakfast and look as well as possible when your friend comes, so as to set her mind at rest,’ and Nurse went away with a merry smile which poor Emmeline felt quite incapable of returning.

Events turned out even better than Nurse’s word. Emmeline was still struggling with her basin of arrowroot, when the sound of a voice in the passage outside made her flush and tremble all over. Then the door opened, and Nurse entered, followed by Mary, who hobbled in looking anxious and worried, but otherwise so much her motherly self that there would have been comfort in the very sight of her if Emmeline had been less taken up with the thought of the terrible news she must tell.

‘Well, my poor darling, you have been through a lot!’ said Mary, coming close to the bed and bending down to kiss Emmeline’s quivering face.

The kindly tone was too much for Emmeline, and she burst into tears.

‘You won’t want to k-kiss me when you’ve[221] heard what dreadful things have happened all through m-me!’ she sobbed.

‘There, there, my darling. Don’t take on so!’ said Mary, kissing her again. ‘Things aren’t so bad as what you think. Master Micky have been found.’

‘But, Mary,’ she broke out desperately, ‘he’s in prison. I saw a policeman take him there yesterday afternoon.’

‘Oh no, dear,’ Mary hastened to explain, ‘not to prison, only to the police-station. People can’t be sent to prison till they have been tried in court, you know. Micky didn’t stay long even at the police-station, for as soon as he gave his name and address they knew he must be the boy who was missing, and sent for me to take him away.’

‘And is that really all that will happen,’ cried Emmeline.

‘Well, he’s had to go to the police-court this morning to be questioned by the magistrate,’ Mary was forced to admit. ‘But I quite hope he will get on all right. Nobody could talk to him without seeing what an honest little boy he is really, and that he didn’t a bit understand what that Diamond Jubilee was up to. That Diamond Jubilee is a real bad boy, if ever there was one!’

‘I’m afraid he is,’ said Emmeline sorrowfully. ‘It’s a dreadful pity Micky ever got mixed up with him. And oh, Mary, it’s all my fault that he[222] ever did! That’s what I was going to tell you about.’

‘I think Master Micky has told me,’ said Mary. ‘You mean about adopting that boy unbeknown to Miss Bolton. I must say I was surprised to hear it of you, Miss Emmeline. I should never have thought you would have done anything so silly—to say nothing of its being very naughty to do such a thing without leave.’

‘You see,’ faltered Emmeline, ‘I knew Aunt Grace wouldn’t understand or sympathise with us trying to do a good work.’

‘And I don’t blame her either,’ said Mary. ‘Not good works of that kind. They’re not suitable to children.’

Poor Emmeline felt as though her one friend had gone over to the enemy. Mary’s remark was almost exactly what Aunt Grace had said last Sunday, when Emmeline had been so indignant with her for not appreciating that charitable little Kathleen.

‘But, Mary,’ she said piteously. ‘You did say yourself that guileless children could do more good to sinners than anybody else, and I’m sure Diamond Jubilee is a sinner!’

Mary looked as much taken aback as people usually do when their own theories are put by others into inconvenient practice.

‘I wasn’t thinking of adoption when I said[223] that,’ she explained rather lamely. ‘Specially not a nasty, dirty little boy like that, who isn’t at all fit company for little ladies and gentlemen. But there, my darling, I don’t want to scold you, for I’m sure you meant well, and anyhow, you’ve been punished more than enough already, both for adopting the boy, and also for running away to find Micky, which is another thing you would never have done if you had stopped to think how dreadfully anxious and unhappy it would make everybody.’

‘Did it?’ and Emmeline looked self-reproachful; ‘but there wasn’t anyone at home who would mind much. It isn’t as if Jane and Cook cared for us as you do, Mary.’

‘It isn’t likely they should, but for all that they were nearly frightened out of their wits, poor things,’ said Mary, ‘specially after Miss Miller had got out of Kitty that you’d gone to Green Ginger Land to look for Master Micky.’

‘How do you know all this?’ asked Emmeline.

‘I had a letter from Jane this morning, and a telegram from Miss Miller yesterday evening,’ answered Mary.

There was a moment’s silence.

‘Yes, I see now that I oughtn’t to have gone off like that,’ said Emmeline sadly. ‘But I was so dreadfully unhappy about Micky that nothing seemed to matter except finding him.’

[224]

Mary was too kind to point out to Emmeline that Micky would have been found just as soon if she had never made her expedition.

‘Yes, poor darling, I can just fancy what you must have been feeling!’ she said, ‘George would have left a message for you last night about Master Micky, only while he’s in this trouble it seems best not to make any more talk than can be helped, so I thought I’d come round and tell you first thing this morning instead, and see how you were at the same time. How did you come to get run over?’

‘I can’t remember anything about it, it seems just wiped out of my mind,’ said Emmeline; ‘it’s very funny, for I remember the early part of the afternoon so well. Oh, Mary, it was just like a dreadful dream!’

Then she went on to tell of her adventures in Green Ginger Land.

Mary shuddered as she listened, for she knew far better than Emmeline herself what a risk the child had run.

‘Thank God nothing worse happened than your watch being stolen!’ she exclaimed from the bottom of her heart when she had heard the whole story. ‘That’s very grieving, though. But maybe the police will be able to get it back for you.’

‘Do you really think the police will get me back my watch?’ cried Emmeli............