"Those poor girls!" Miss Blanchard remarked, as soon as they were out of hearing. "How little real interest or pleasure there must be in their lives! How it makes one wish that we, who have so many pleasant things in ours, could do something to brighten theirs!"
"Yes, indeed," replied Roland. "I've often thought about that, and people do try more than they did—in that way. But so long as the work hours are so protracted and so exhausting, you can't make life much brighter for them, do what you will. It's one of my ambitions to do something toward securing shorter hours all round. I believe every one would gain by it in the end."
"Yes, I suppose it is pretty hard to have such a long day of steady work at one thing—especially for girls. I am afraid I shouldn't like to have to do it," said Miss Blanchard, with a sigh.
"But, then, it doesn't do to judge altogether by the outside," rejoined her companion, in a more cheery tone. "I suppose, after all, 'Ilka blade o' grass has its ain drap o' dew.' The greater wickedness is," he added, "when heartless fools try to squeeze the one 'drap o' dew' out of it! But here's our destination."
They found Mr. Alden seated on the one broken chair, near the miserable pallet. The child lay curled up beside her mother, fast asleep. The invalid seemed somewhat revived, and able to talk a little. She fixed her eyes on Miss Blanchard, as she entered, with a strange, wild, almost hunted expression, which rather startled her visitor. Miss Blanchard's gentle, kindly greeting, with Mr. Alden's introduction, seemed to reassure her a little, however, and she swallowed a portion of the soothing medicine that Miss Blanchard had brought for relieving her harassing cough. Then the young lady produced a tiny spirit-lamp from her basket, and soon had prepared a little cup of hot beef-tea, doing it all with a quick and ready lightness that showed her to be quite at home in work of this kind. Mr. Alden and Roland felt themselves to be supernumeraries at once. The latter, indeed, after offering the young lady some scarcely needed assistance in her arrangements, began to think that it was time for him to retire, when a step was heard on the stairs, and a young girl entered, carrying a cup of tea. She hesitated a moment in surprise at the unexpected sight of the strangers, dimly seen by the light of the one poor lamp. Miss Blanchard thought she recognized the pale, eager face of the girl who had begged "Nelly" "not to go," as they had passed the two standing under the lamp-post. She was sure of it, when the girl approached the invalid, scarcely looking at the visitors, and said, in the same deaf penetrating tone:
"Well, Mrs. Travers, how do you feel yourself to-night?"
"A little better now, thank you, Lizzie, but I have been so ill to-day! I thought I was dying a while ago, and Cissy went out and brought back this gentleman, and he has been so kind!"
She spoke in a soft musical English voice, decidedly the voice of a lady, Mr. Alden thought. Then turning to him, she said, with some energy:
"This is my best friend! She has been so good to me—sat up with me at night after working all day! I'd have been dead before now, if it hadn't been for her."
Miss Blanchard, as she bent over the patient, with a cup of beef-tea which she was administering by teaspoonfuls, looked up at the new-comer, with a light of softened admiration in her expressive eyes, which recalled to Roland Graeme, as he chanced to catch it, the memory of his enjoyment of the Sistine Madonna, at Dresden, on a brief visit he had made to Europe. He had not thought of calling Miss Blanchard beautiful, nor did he now; still there was something, either in feature, or expression, or both, that reminded him of the most beautiful and spiritual of Raffaelle's Madonnas. He looked at the poor working-girl, however, with scarcely less of admiration in his honest eyes—little as there was of beauty in the pale, thin face, without any advantage of dress to make up for the defects of contour and coloring.