"I would not ask you to," he said, with simple dignity, as he opened the door.
"Please, ma'am, is this Miss Olcott's?" asked a trembling voice on the piazza. A shabby woman stood looking at them with wild eyes; her gray hair had escaped from the torn shawl that was pinned over her head, and stray locks blew across her face.
Lucy did not recognize her. "I will speak to you in a moment," she said.
An awkward pause followed, each waiting for the other to speak.
"I will come when you send for me," said Redding, without looking at her, and, turning abruptly, he strode down the steps and out into the dusk.
Lucy caught her breath and started forward, then she remembered the woman.
"What is it?" she asked listlessly.
The woman stepped forward, and put out a hand to steady herself against the door; her face was distorted, and her voice came in gasps.
"You said I was to come if I needed you. It's Jimmy, ma'am—he's dead!"
IT may be experience of suffering makes one especially tender to the heart-aches of others; at any rate, the article that Lucy Olcott wrote for the paper that night held the one touch of nature that makes the whole world kin. She had taken Aunt Chloe, the old colored servant, and gone home with Mrs. Wiggs, relieving as far as possible the immediate need of the family. Then she had come home and written their story, telling it simply, but with the passionate earnestness of one who, for the first time, has come into contact with poverty and starvation. She told of the plucky struggle made by the boy, of his indomitable courage, of his final defeat, and she ended by asking help of any kind for the destitute family.