a kind of wild look in them, as if seeking for what
they never more might find. “Yes!
Six children died off, like little buds nipped untimely,
in that cruel India. I thought, as each died,
I never could—I never would—love
a child again; and when the next came, it had not
only its own love, but the deeper love that came from
the thoughts of its little dead brothers and sisters.
And when Phoebe was coming, I said to my husband,
’Sam, when the child is born, and I am strong,
I shall leave you; it will cut my heart cruel; but
if this baby dies too, I shall go mad; the madness
is in me now; but if you let me go down to Calcutta,
carrying my baby step by step, it will, maybe, work
itself off; and I will save, and I will hoard, and
I will beg—and I will die, to get a passage
home to England, where our baby may live?’ God
bless him! he said I might go; and he saved up his
pay, and I saved every pice I could get for washing
or any way; and when Phoebe came, and I grew strong
again, I set off. It was very lonely; through
the thick forests, dark again with their heavy trees—along
by the river’s side (but I had been brought
up near the Avon in Warwickshire, so that flowing
noise sounded like home)—from station to
station, from Indian village to village, I went along,
carrying my child. I had seen one of the officer’s
ladies with a little picture, ma’am—done
by a Catholic foreigner, ma’am—of
the Virgin and the little Saviour, ma’am.
She had him on her arm, and her form was softly curled
round him, and their cheeks touched. Well, when
I went to bid good-bye to this lady, for whom I had
washed, she cried sadly; for she, too, had lost her
children, but she had not another to save, like me;
and I was bold enough to ask her would she give me
that print. And she cried the more, and said
her children were with that little blessed Jesus; and
gave it me, and told me that she had heard it had
been painted on the bottom of a cask, which made it
have that round shape. And when my body was
very weary, and my heart was sick (for there were times
when I misdoubted if I could ever reach my home, and
there were times when I thought of my husband, and
one time when I thought my baby was dying), I took
out that picture and looked at it, till I could have
thought the mother spoke to me, and comforted me.
And the natives were very kind. We could not
understand one another; but they saw my baby on my
breast, and they came out to me, and brought me rice
and milk, and sometimes flowers—I have got
some of the flowers dried. Then, the next morning,
I was so tired; and they wanted me to stay with them—I
could tell that—and tried to frighten me
from going into the deep woods, which, indeed, looked
very strange and dark; but it seemed to me as if Death
was following me to take my baby away from me; and
as if I must go on, and on—and I thought
how God had cared for mothers ever since the world
was made, and would care for me; so I bade them good-bye,
and set off afresh. And once when my baby was
ill, and both she and I needed rest, He led me to
a place where I found a kind Englishman lived, right
in the midst of the natives.”