II.
A few miles distant from the city was a tasteful brown cottage, having a piazza on all sides, and surrounded by a carefully trained hedge. This was the summer retreat of P. H. Gregory, a New York merchant.
It was a warm day in June. Two children, a boy and girl, respectively of six and eight years, were playing in the yard, when they espied through the hedge an old man, with hair and whiskers white as the driven snow, accompanied by a young girl, toiling, apparently with great difficulty, towards the house, notwithstanding the assistance he derived from a stout cane, on which he leaned heavily.
Attracted by the sight, they ran into the house, calling on their mother to look out and see. She had scarcely done so, when, to her surprise, she found that the pair had entered the gate, and were coming towards the house.
“Is Mrs. Gregory within?” asked the old man of the servant who answered the bell.
Mrs. Gregory anticipated the reply by coming forward.
“Poor old man!” said she, compassionately (for the attire which Armstrong had donned for the occasion was singularly threadbare, and evinced the lowest depth of destitution),—“poor old man! what can I do for you?”
“I have brought my grand-daughter with me, good lady,” said the old man, feebly, “in answer to your advertisement. She’s a good girl, and I wish I could keep her with me; but the times are hard, and it costs a sight to live; and so I’ve been thinking the best thing I could do is to get her a good place, and a good mistress, as I am sure you would be to her, madam.”
Mrs. Gregory’s sympathies were enlisted in the child’s favor by this artful address, as well as by her own modest and downcast look. She was not aware, however, that not a little of her confusion arose from the dissimulation in which she was compelled to take a part.
“What is your grand-daughter’s name?” asked Mrs. Gregory. “She seems young.”
“She is only twelve; but she’s capable,—very capable. When her poor grandmother was sick for nearly a year before she died,”—and Armstrong wiped his eyes with his ragged sleeve at the sorrowful thought,—“Helen took the whole care of her and of me; and no one could find a better nurse.”
“It must have been a great care to you, Helen,” said Mrs. Gregory, kindly.
Helen had been so much taken aback by the last fabrication respecting a grandmother of whom she had never heard, that she was barely able to say, in a low voice,—
“Yes, ma’am.”
“But you will never regret it, my child,” said the lady. “God will not fail to reward good children. So your name is Helen?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I like the name. I had a child of that name once. Were she living, she would be about your age. But”—and the lady sighed deeply—“she disappeared one day, and we never could find any trace of her.”
Had Mrs. Gregory been an attentive observer, she would have seen a gleam of intelligence pass over the old man’s face at this moment; but she was too much absorbed by her sad thoughts.
“I think,” said she, after a pause, “that I will engage you, Helen, although you are rather young for my purpose. When can you come?”
“She is ready now,” said her grandfather. “I can send her the rest of her clothes.”
“Very well. Then you may come in, and take off your things.”
“Come, Helen, and give a parting kiss to your poor old grandfather. He will be very lonely without you, my dear child; but he knows that he has left you with a kind lady, who will care for you.”
Helen advanced to her grandfather’s embrace with very little alacrity. As he pressed his lips lightly to her cheek, he whispered, so that she only could hear,—
“Keep your eyes open;” and then added aloud, “Be a good girl, Helen, and mind the kind lady who has engaged you, in all respects. Remember all the lessons I have taught you; and do not forget,” he continued, with a meaning look, “what I told you before I came away.”
Helen replied faintly in the affirmative. Mrs. Gregory attributed her evident embarrassment to the fact that she was about to leave her only relative to go among strangers; and she resolved in her heart to lighten, as well as she might, the sorrow of the child.
“I will bring your clothes to-morrow, my dear grand-daughter,” said Armstrong, as he rose slowly from his chair, and, resuming his cane, walked feebly from the house.
As soon, however, as he was fully out of sight, he straightened his bowed form, and walked rapidly onward till overtaken by a passing omnibus, which he entered, and was soon carried back to the city.