“I’ll give her something to eat,” said the woman, without a smile at his joke.  “I dare say she’ll feel better then.  She looks to me dead beat,” and she laid Jessie gently back, and went behind the counter and poured her out a basin of soup from some that was being kept hot there.  To Jessie, who had had no food since breakfast-time, the soup brought new life.  She took it all, and a large slice of bread with it, to the great satisfaction of her new friend, who watched delightedly the colour coming back to the poor little white face.

“Where do you want to get to, to-night?” she asked, turning to Harry Lang.

“London.”

“Um!  The next train that stops here doesn’t come in till 10.15.  It is a long time for her to wait, and late for her to get home.”

“’Tisn’t going to kill her,” answered Jessie’s father shortly.  “Everybody has got something to put up with sometimes.  She is lucky not to have to walk all the way.”  He hated to be asked questions, and grew cross at being obliged to answer them.

“It’s my opinion she’d never reach the other end if she had to do that,” said the woman curtly.  Then, turning to Jessie, she said gently, “If you lie back again, dear, maybe you’ll be able to sleep, and that will rest you, and help to pass the time too.”

Jessie, only too glad to obey, and not to have to move her aching body again, nestled back on the hard cushions, and turning her face away from the light, shut her eyes, and soon was miles away from her present surroundings and her miseries, in a deep dreamless sleep, and she knew nothing more until she was wakened suddenly by a tremendous rumbling and shaking, puffing and roaring, close at hand, which made her start up in a terrible panic of alarm.

For a moment she did not realize where she was or what had happened; her brain was dazed, her eyes full of sleep.  Then her father came in, and seizing her by the arm hurried her out of the room and across the platform to the brightly-lighted train drawn up there.  He gave her no time for farewells to the kind-hearted woman who had helped her so much, nor did he thank her himself.  Poor Jessie could only look back over her shoulder and try to thank her with her eyes and smiles.

“Thank you very much,” she called out, her voice sounding very weak and small in the midst of all the uproar; but the gratitude on her face and in her eyes spoke more than words.

“I’ve thought dozens of times of that poor little child,” the woman remarked next day to one of the porters; “the man looked so cruel and horrid, and the child so frightened.  I should like to know the truth about them.  I am sure he was unkind to her.”

Once inside the railway carriage, Jessie’s father put her to sit in the corner by the window, and seated himself next to her.  He was so anxious that no one should speak to her that he even gave up the comfortable corner seat himself, and sat bolt upright beside her, a bit of self-denial which did not improve his temper, which was at no time a sweet one; and when at last Waterloo was reached, it was with no gentle hand that he shook and roused her from the kindly sleep which had fallen on her again, and blotted for the time all her woes from her memory.