Bess tried to sit up, and the woman helped her; she helped her with her arm, but word of comfort for the young and sore spirit there was none.
“Whatever ye must needs go and take up with that young Chiswick for I’m sure I don’t know,” whimpered she. “Ain’t there trouble enough a’ready? You did ought to ha’ knowed better—your father so set on agin them Chiswicks as ’e is! One’d think there weren’t no other chaps about! But, Lor’, ye can’t count on girls!”
She had her arm round the slender waist and helped the drooping figure up the path. And in the kitchen she set her in a chair and wiped the blood from her forehead, and then took her up and put her to bed. It was done deftly enough, but all the time the same moan went on till the child was glad when the candle was taken away and she was left to her thoughts.
For in her thoughts she could live over again the happy moments that were so near in the past ... and of the future she would not think. That was grim enough, for she guessed pretty surely that her home would give her nothing but what it had given her to-night, and Charley was gone: gone to some unknown spot in that vast and unknown London, that to Bess was as the wilderness itself.
She had not put it too strongly when she had said that her fight would be a worse fight than another’s.
It _was_ a bad fight, but it was a brave one. For a while there was a lull in the persecution; either sobriety brought shame for the brutal assault on his daughter, or the departure of young Chiswick from the village removed his excuse, but anyhow Farmer Benson quieted down to sullen moroseness within-doors, and to bitter attacks upon his neighbour without.
Christmas came and went, and on Christmas Day Bess wore a face so bright that her mother looked at her wondering, and her father swore beneath his breath in sheer perplexity.
The night before a red-haired little maid had run into the kitchen with eager eyes, and the girl’s heart had leapt into her mouth. Luckily there had been no one by, but Bess had snatched the child in her arms and carried her into the orchard, kicking and screaming at the indignity, ere she had dared to ask her for what she carried. It was a letter, addressed A. B., and was supposed to be for some person unknown.