"Lettie, it's time ye should be off to bed," said Esther. "Don't ye want any more, Ailie?"
Ailie looked from the two remaining inches of hard dry crust to Esther Forsyth's face, and then back again.
"I just do," she said expressively. "But there's father."
A momentary look of softening came over Esther's lined hard features—hard only outwardly, for there lay a tender woman's heart beneath. Only, so much of its tenderness had been frozen by long years of pressure, that it was not readily melted into expression. The growth of dull reserve and impassive endurance, which had gathered closely over her once open-hearted nature, was not easily broken through. Still, for an instant her eyes wore a look of softness, as she said—
"Ailie's a good girl to think of her father, isn't she now, John?"
"Aye," responded John, shortly. "What be you a-going to do with her?"
Esther looked at Ailie, and Ailie cowered in renewed fear.
"Oh, don't ye—don't ye send me back," she entreated. "I'll let him have my bread. I won't be in nobody's way. I'll sleep on the stairs, ever so quiet. Oh, don't ye send me back."
"'Twould be cruel to send her alone," said Esther. "A bit of a child like that—and he dyin'."
John's assent was a monosyllable. Poor, hopeless, weary, they might be themselves; nevertheless, that they should help a neighbour in his sorer trouble was but a thing of course.