It was a good and happy day.
She lay on the big bed. Her head rested on Mamma's arm. Mamma's face
was close to her. Water trickled into her eyes out of the wet pad of
pocket-handkerchief. Under the cold pad a hot, grinding pain came from
the hole in her forehead. Jenny stood beside the bed. Her face had
waked up and she was busy squeezing something out of a red sponge into
a basin of pink water.
When Mamma pressed the pocket-handkerchief tight the pain ground
harder, when she loosened it blood ran out of the hole and the
pocket-handkerchief was warm again. Then Jenny put on the sponge.
She could hear Jenny say, "It was the Master's fault. She didn't ought
to have been left in the room with him."
She remembered. The dining-room and the sharp spike on the fender and
Papa's legs stretched out. He had told her not to run so fast and she
had run faster and faster. It wasn't Papa's fault.
She remembered tripping over Papa's legs. Then falling on the spike.
Then nothing.
Then waking in Mamma's room.
She wasn't crying. The pain made her feel good and happy; and Mamma was
calling her her darling and her little lamb. Mamma loved her. Jenny
loved her.
Mark and Dank and Roddy came in. Mark carried Sarah in his arms. They
stood by the bed and looked at her; their faces pressed close. Roddy
had been crying; but Mark and Dank were excited. They climbed on to the
bed and kissed her. They made Sarah crouch down close beside her and
held her there. They spoke very fast, one after the other.
"We've brought you Sarah."
"We've given you Sarah."
"She's your cat."
"To keep for ever."
She was glad that she had tripped over Papa's legs. It was a good and
happy day.