“Yes.”
“She is dead. She sent for me one night in July. She was dying without a friend, and without a cent. I did what I could. I did what there was no one else to do, I tried to pray with her, and to tell her about a pitiful God and Christ.”
“You!”
“Me. For I am the child of parents who loved God, and I have two little sisters whom I have sinned for, lest they should become sinners. I know I ought to have trusted God, but I thought He was never coming to help me—and so I took the devil’s help. No one knows what the devil’s wages are until they have earned them. Mary has taken his last coin, which is—death.”
“Poor little girl! She was a merry sprite.”
“Mirth was part of her bargain. She was dying while she was laughing”—and the face of the speaker was so instinct with grief that Harry suddenly found that all his suspicions were vanishing, and an irrepressible interest was taking their place.
“Well, Cora?”
“My name is Hannah—Hannah Young. My father and mother gave me that name, in the old meeting-house at Newburyport. It was the name registered in God’s Book, and I would not see it on a play-bill; so I called myself—the other one. As I was telling you, I tried to talk to poor Mary, as I knew my mother would have talked to me. Alas! alas! it was too late!”
Harry looked up startled and uneasy.