They got rid of her with Savor's connivance for the moment, and Annie
hastened to escape.
"We had to tell her she was going a journey, or we never could have got her
into the carriage," she explained, feeling like a thief.
"Yes, yes. It's all right," said Mrs. Savor. "I see you'd be'n putting up
some kind of job on her the minute she mentioned the cars. Don't you fret
any, Miss Kilburn. Rebecca and me'll get along with her, you needn't be
afraid."
Annie could not look at the empty crib where it stood in its alcove when
she went to bed; and she cried upon her own pillow with heart-sickness for
the child, and with a humiliating doubt of her own part in hurrying to
give it up without thought of Mrs. Savor's convenience. What had seemed so
noble, so exemplary, began to wear another colour; and she drowsed, worn
out at last by the swarming fears, shames, and despairs, which resolved
themselves into a fantastic medley of dream images. There was a cat
trying to get at the pigeons in the coop which Mr. Savor had carried
Idella to see. It clawed and miauled at the lattice-work of lath, and its
caterwauling became like the cry of a child, so like that it woke Annie
from her sleep, and still kept on. She lay shuddering a moment; it seemed
as if the dead minister's ghost flitted from the room, while the crying
defined and located itself more and more, till she knew it a child's wail
at the door of her house. Then she heard, "Aunt Annie! Aunt Annie!" and
soft, faint thumps as of a little fist upon the door panels.
She had no experience of more than one motion from her bed to the door,
which the same impulse flung open and let her crush to her breast the
little tumult of sobs and moans from the threshold.
"Oh, wicked, selfish, heartless wretch!" she stormed out over the child.
"But now I will never, never, never give you up! Oh, my poor little baby!
my darling! God has sent you back to me, and I will keep you, I don't care
what happens! What a cruel wretch I have been--oh, what a cruel wretch, my
pretty!--to tear you from your home! But now you shall never leave it; no
one shall take you away." She gripped it in a succession of fierce hugs,
and mumbled it--face and neck, and little cold wet hands and feet--with her
kisses; and all the time she did not know the child was in its night-dress
like herself, or that her own feet were bare, and her drapery as scanty as
Idella's.