The next moment Leveson stood in an ill-furnished room, where two infants sat on the floor, and a woman was busy at a loom. No one else was present. She rose and placed a rickety chair for the gentleman,—then waited, with no lightening up of her tired look.
"May I have a few words with you?" said Leveson, and his gentle manner won her confidence at once. He entered without delay upon the subject in his mind, for suspense was becoming unbearable. "I am anxious to hear something about the little girl under your charge."
"Under our charge—Lettie, ye'd say," returned Esther, as his meaning dawned on her.
"Yes. I believe she is not your own child."
"Seems like as if she was," said Esther. "It don't make no difference. John and I loves her as if she was our own."
"May I ask who were her parents?"
Esther shook her head. "I don't know nothin' about 'em, sir. She were a poor little starvelin' a-wanderin' alone, an' like to drop. An' we took her in out o' pity, an' she were that pretty an' clinging in her ways, we couldn't part with her. John, he did talk o' the work'us, but we couldn't send her,—we couldn't. We wasn't so poor then as we be now."
"How long ago was this?"
"Five years agone, sir,—over that."
"Five—" repeated Leveson.