'Mysie was in trouble, ye ken,' the woman said, with a kind of weary dispassionateness. 'I thought that mebbe—' She paused, lifting her lustreless eyes to the fresh, unworn face of the girl before her, as though wondering how far she would be understood.
But ah! Alison understood. She remembered the walk with Mysie only too well—the scene before the house in St. James's Square—the poor creature's then mysterious words. What had, even so short a while ago, been hidden to Alison's innocence, was plain to her now. Knowledge of the wrong, and the passion, and the sin of the world was breaking over her heart like the dawn of a grey day. But it was a true woman's heart—full of pity and of strength to meet the sorrowful enlightenment.
'He—he has sent money,' she said, crimsoning with shame, and she slipped the coins into the other's hand. The woman weighed them in her palm an instant, with a bitter smile.
'He's sent it, has he?' she said. 'Mebbe a wee thing late! Weel, he didna grudge it likely. They're tellin' me he was never the lad to grudge, and Mysie had but tae speir and he wad help her. But na, she wudna! She was a queer body, Mysie. She had a place, and she lost it (anent her trouble, ye see); and then she got the cauld trailin' the streets to get a sicht o' her jo, and she dwined and dwined.... Ay, it's a queer warld: and as you cam' chappin' at the door yonder, wi' his money in yer hand, the last breath had just but newly left her mooth.'
Alison, as she listened, was pale; her pulses fluttered to her deeply-moved, indignant sympathy. Inexperienced in sorrow, she knew not what to say, but her eyes filled, and the woman saw them, and drew her hand across her own eyes, dim with long watching.
'Ye will excuse us,' she said, with unconscious dignity. 'It wasna decent that ye sud see what ye saw. But I wasna mysel', and I thocht it was a neebor that chappit—a skilly woman we were waitin' on. I wudna have ye think,' she went on, wistfully, 'that we didna do the best we could for poor Mysie.'
'I know, I know,' whispered Alison, eagerly. 'And, oh! will you take this from me?' She pressed into the woman's hand her own little hoard.
'I thank ye, mem; I canna refuse it,' the poor creature said simply. 'For we'll be sair put to it for a decent burial.'
Alison turned to go, her eyes burning, her heart hot within her.
CHAPTER XXXIV.