"Oh, Sophy, my poor, poor Sophy! You who were so lightsome and gay, so full of frolic and fun, to think of your coming to this!" And as Norah's tears dropped on the note, whose contents she could hardly believe, her mind recurred to the first day of her meeting with the milliner's girl, and a hundred little circumstances connected with their acquaintance. Norah could not help remembering how the society of Sophy Puller had been her own greatest temptation; how her companion had tried to make her think lightly of sin, had fostered the love of fine dress, had laughed at her scruples, had lent her bad books, had almost persuaded her to go out at night without the knowledge of her mistress! Norah tried to forget all this; she would gladly have felt nothing but pity and love for the afflicted Sophy, but such painful recollections would force themselves on her mind. Norah could not help thinking, "Oh! how doubly dreadful sickness and blindness must be to one who has such things to look back on! When all that Sophy once delighted in is shut out from her thus, what can she have to comfort her, and keep her poor heart from breaking?"
But young general servants have little time to give to reading letters or crying over them. The step must be cleaned, the breakfast prepared, before the clock should strike nine. Norah thrust her letter into her pocket, dried her eyes, and went on with her work. But while she was scrubbing the stone with her red little hands, she was painfully turning over in her mind the contents of the note.
"I must go and see my poor Sophy, but oh how shall I ever manage to get to the workhouse! Mistress is so much put about to let me pay my visits to my mother, who lives only three miles off while the workhouse must be full ten; and even if I get leave—how could I ever dare to go alone to that great gloomy place?"
Norah had led a very quiet life; she had never ventured by herself farther than Colme, her native village, and her longest journey had been a twenty miles' drive in a stage-coach with her mistress. Besides the difficulty of travelling so far, Norah Peele had formed a terrible idea of a workhouse. Instead of looking on it as a refuge mercifully provided for the homeless and helpless, she fancied it to be a huge prison, where miserable creatures were shut up, the doors guarded by terrible porters, whom the timid young girl felt that she would never have courage to face by herself. Norah scrubbed her step very hard indeed, clenching her teeth as she did so, as if she were trying to rub down the many difficulties which had suddenly risen in her path. The reader may smile at the fears and perplexities of the poor little maid; but let it be remembered that Norah was still little more than a child, was of a tender, timid nature, and utterly ignorant of the world. To go ten miles to visit an inmate of a workhouse seemed to her as formidable a task, as it would appear to some to push their way into the Queen's own presence, through her surrounding guards.
"Sophy can never have told the matron that I am nothing but a poor little servant; Mrs. Cupper takes me for some grand lady who will drive to the door in her carriage, or else she would never have called me 'Madam.'" So said Norah to herself as she rose from her knees and went into the house, more chilled by her fears than by the weather. "And yet I must go—oh, I will go—if I have to walk the whole way there and back! I cannot desert poor Sophy now that she is in such terrible trouble. It is a dreadful difficulty to me, but God will help me through it. I will tell all to my dear kind mistress, who is always ready to give me advice and help."
[CHAPTER II.]
CONSULTATION.
ON the evening of that day, Ned Franks, the one-armed sailor, came, as he often did after his work of teaching was over at the school, to take tea with his sister, Bessy Peele, and her son.
A blazing fire threw its red glow round the cottage kitchen, and the kettle sang merrily on the hob.
"Any news, Bessy?" asked the sailor in a cheerful tone, as he hung up his straw hat on a peg on the wall.