"Your grandmother, so she calls herself—and——"
Julia waited for no more, but darted forward.
"There—there. You will never get on alone!" cried the matron, laughing, while she turned a heavy key bright with constant use in its lock, and opened the grated door. "Come, now, I and Georgie will lead the way."
Julia stood in the outer passage while the heavy door was secured again, her cheeks all in a glow of joy, her limbs trembling with impatience. Little George, too, seemed to partake of her eagerness; he ran up and down in the bright atmosphere like a bird revelling in the first gleams of morning. He seized the matron by her dress as she locked the door, and shaking his soft curls gleefully, attempted to draw her away. His sympathy was so graceful and cheering that it made both Julia and the matron smile, and though they mounted the stairs rapidly, he ran up and down a dozen steps while they ascended half the number.
Neither Julia nor her grandmother spoke when they met, but there was joy upon their faces, and the most touching affection in the eyes that constantly turned upon each other.
"And now," said old Mrs. Gray, coming forward with her usual bland kindness, "as neither of you seem to have much to say just now, what if Robert and I come in for a little notice?"
Julia looked up as the kind voice reached her, and there, half hidden by the portly figure of his aunt, she saw Robert Otis looking upon her with the very expression that had haunted her dream that night, in the prison. Their eyes met, the white lids fell over hers as if weighed down by the lashes, through which the lustrous eyes, kindling beneath, gleamed like diamond flashes. She forgot Mrs. Gray, everything but the glory of her dream, the power of those eloquent eyes.
"And so you will not speak to me—you will not look at me!" said the huckster woman, a little surprised by this reception, but speaking with great cordiality, for she was not one of those very troublesome persons who fancy affronts in everything.
"Not speak to you!" cried the young girl, starting from her pleasant reverie to the scarcely less pleasant reality. "Oh! Mrs. Gray, you knew better!"