Lottie hurriedly snatched up her bonnet and shawl. “I mustn’t keep him; but oh! mother, if I could only think of any way to help father—” a loud summons shouted from below cut her short in the middle of her sentence, and quickened her movements.
“Pray, child, pray; God Almighty will show us some way:” there was scarcely time for the parting kiss and blessing; Lottie hurried down into the street barely soon enough to prevent her impatient escort from driving away without her.
Very different were the feelings of the young servant girl on her drive from Axe, from those with which, two days before, she had entered the quaint little town. She replied at random to the jesting observations of the baker’s boy, she seemed unable to understand the meaning of the words that fell on her ear, for her mind was so full of conflicting emotions that outer things could make no impression upon it. Lottie scarcely knew whether she was happy or unhappy, whether her inclination was to laugh or to cry. Her prayers had been answered—her lost father was found; here indeed was joy and cause for thanksgiving: but he was ill, in debt, needed money, and where was that money to be procured?
“I would work my fingers to the bone!” muttered Lottie to herself, as the cart rolled lightly along the dusty high road, “but no working would bring more than the one pound due in June;” and thoughts of the new boots which would then be absolutely needed would intrude on the little maid’s mind. “I can’t go about Mr. Gritton’s house barefoot; and then he says that I am to pay for all that I break, and, oh! the things will slip out of my hands! Would my dear young lady help me? but I must not tell even her that I want money for my poor sick father. Shall I say that mother’s in trouble for rent?” The honest soul of Lottie recoiled from the artful suggestion of the Tempter, and she shook her head so emphatically in reply to it, that the baker’s boy, who had been watching with amusement her earnest look of thought and her moving lips, burst out into a laugh which startled her into a consciousness that she was not alone.
“I say, Lottie Stone, what did you see in that thorn bush to make you shake your head at it so fiercely?” cried the lad.
“I was only a-thinking,” replied Lottie.
“A penny for your thoughts,” said her companion.
But the answer was such a heavy sigh, that the good-humoured lad saw that the little maiden was in no mood for jesting, and as she turned her head sorrowfully away, he left her in peace to pursue her reflections.
It was perhaps well for Lottie that she had not much time for meditation after her arrival at the Lodge. Hard work has served to relieve many an anxious heart, and Hannah took care that her little assistant should have her share, and much more than her share, of the labour of the house. Lottie Stone had to pay by double work for her two days’ holiday at Axe. Yet while she washed, and scrubbed, and tidied the rooms, the thoughts of the poor young girl were constantly recurring to her father, and she was revolving the difficult problem how it would be possible to procure five pounds to send to her father before Thursday.
While Lottie was laying the cloth for dinner, she could not help hearing the conversation going on between her master and his sister, relative to one of the children of Isa’s Sunday class.