TEN YEARS LATER.
With these thoughts I confidently knocked at the door. “Is Miss —— at home?” I inquired of the—servant, I supposed, who opened the door. Just then three or four dirty-looking little children ran screaming after the woman, calling out, “Marm, marm!”
“Hush, children, hush!” said the female, and, turning again to me, said,—
“Whom did you inquire for?” pushing back one of the red-headed urchins.
“Miss Mary ——, ma’am,” I answered. “She once lived at Blue Hill.”
She gave a sickly-looking smile. She looked sick before; her cheeks all fallen in; her skimmed-milk colored eyes had a weary, anxious expression; and her thin, bony hands, resting on the door-latch, looked like a consumptive’s, as she said,—
“When did you know her?”
“O, but a few years ago, ma’am. Is she here? Does she live in this house?” I eagerly inquired.
“Well,” she replied, with another more sepulchral smile,
“I was once Miss Mary ——. I married Mr. —— ——, over ten years ago. My baby, here,”—presenting the second in size of the children to my view, a reddish-brown haired girl, quite unlike any one I had ever seen before, and wiping its nose with her calico apron,—“she is named for me, Mary ——. Won’t you come in, sir?”