''Oh, my girl,'' she says.
I don''t know what they do after that. Dainty screams, I think. I go by them, not looking. I go up the stairs to Mrs Sucksby''s room— my room, our room, I suppose I must call it now—and I sit upon the bed, my face to the window. I sit with my hands in my lap, my head bowed. My fingers are marked with dirt. My feet have begun, again, to bleed.
She gives me a minute, before she comes. She comes quietly. She closes the door and locks it at her back—turning the key gently in the lock, as if she thinks me sleeping and fears to wake me. Then she stands at my side. She does not try to touch me. I know, however, that she is trembling.
''Dear girl,'' she says. ''We supposed you lost. We supposed you drowned, or murdered—''