The woman--or man--who hesitates in the middle of a busy London street
is lost: the cart was upon her before she had moved, the shaft struck
her on the shoulder and down she went into the muddy road!
The driver jerked the horse aside, and leapt from his seat, the usual
crowd, which seems to spring instantaneously from the very stones,
collected and surged round, the usual policeman forced his way through,
and Ida was picked up and carried to the pavement.
There was a patch of blood on the side of her head--the dear, small
head which had rested on Stafford's breast so often!--and she was
unconscious.
"'Orse struck 'er with 'is 'oof," said the policeman, sententiously.
"'Ere, boy, call a keb. I'll have your name and address, young man."
A cab was brought, and Ida, still unconscious, was carried to the
London Hospital.
And lay there, in the white, painfully clean, carbolic-smelling ward,
attended by the most skillful doctors in England and by the grave and
silent nurses, who, notwithstanding their lives of stress and toil, had
not lost the capacity for pity and sympathy. Indeed, no one with a
heart in her bosom could stand up unmoved and hear the girl moaning and
crying in a whisper for "Stafford."
Day and night the white lips framed the same name--Stafford,
Stafford!--as if her soul were in the cry.