Grubb was dead. There! she hadn't
looked in the perambulator. No, there wasn't any perambulator. That
was dead, too, and gone away with Mr. Grubb. There used to be
babies, two babies, in the perambulator. What had become of them?
Were they lost, too? And the umbrella that she used to hold until
her arm ached, and the poor, pale, weeping mother always lying on a
bed,--were they all gone together? Her head buzzed with worrying,
unrelated thoughts, so that she put up her hands and held it in place
on her shoulders as she shuffled wearily along. A heavy, dripping
mist began to gather and fall, and she shivered in the dampness,
huddling herself together and leaning against the houses for a
shelter. She sat down on the curb-stone and tried to think, staring
haggardly at the sign on the corner fruit-shop. In that moment she
suddenly forgot the reason of her search. She had lost--what? She
could not go home to Eden Place, but why? Oh yes! It came to her
now: there was something about a perambulator, but it all seemed
vague to her. Suddenly a lamplighter put his ladder against a post
in front of her, and, climbing up nimbly, lighted the gas-jet inside
of the glass frame. It shone full on a flight of broad steps, a
picture so much a part of her life-dream that she would go up to the
very gate of heaven with its lines burned into her heart and brain.
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