“Thank you; this is very kind, after our intrusion; but your father must think it strange. We did not intend to come so near the house,” said the lady, glancing at the window, at which a venerable head appeared, while Elsie was seen fluttering like an unquiet spirit in the dusk of the room beyond.
“He is not my father,” said Catharine, simply, “only the person I live with. His daughter is ill; I am her friend, that is all.”
“The companion of a sick woman, and so young, so—”
The lady was about to have said “so beautiful,” but checked herself, blushing.
“It is a pleasant life,” said Catharine, “and I am happy in it—merely to have a home is so much of itself.”
“Yes, it must be a great blessing to those who have ever been homeless,” answered the lady, with a look of interest. “It makes me shudder to think how desolate a poor young creature must be, cast upon the wide world. I have known beautiful, helpless women driven to the very almshouse from the want of a roof to shelter them.”
A shudder passed over the lady as she spoke, and her eyes filled with trouble.
“Yes,” said Catharine, with a degree of composure that had the dignity of experience in it, “I have seen these things—they do happen, but there are troubles that make even the almshouse as nothing. While we have one true heart to love us, it is shelter enough. To be unloved is perfect desolation.”
A faint blush stole over the lady’s face, the flush of suppressed tears. She looked down at the child, and clasped his hand closer.
“We have lost our shelter,” she said.