CHAPTER XXIII.
A SISTER’S VOICE.
Lottie had not been alarmed by not hearing from her mother, well knowing that, though Mrs. Stone was able to read, she had never penned a letter in the course of her life. Lottie talked cheerfully and hopefully to Steady on the evening following that on which the last meeting had been held, as they sat together by the little window after the work of the day was over.
“Now that Mr. Arthur has come back, it do seem as if everything were a-brightening,” said she. “He’s getting over his sickness wonderful, and I don’t believe as father’s was ever half so bad. Father will be a-coming home too; and Mr. Arthur will speak a word for him—I’m sure that he will—and get him work at the factory again, or maybe at the Castle. Mother won’t need to work so hard, and we’ll have a nice little cottage of our own, and not have to live in a lodging over a shop.”
Brightly glowed the reflection of the setting sun on the windows of the opposite side of the street; and Lottie’s black eyes, as she gazed on it, seemed to have caught the cheerful gleam. But even as she looked, the sun sank below the western horizon, the ruddy light gradually faded away, and the gray hue of twilight succeeded.
“There be mother!” suddenly exclaimed young Stone, rising quickly from his seat, as with weary step a lonely woman turned the corner of the street, bending as if under a heavy burden of years or sorrow, and never once lifting her drooping eyes towards her home as she approached it.