“A person on business, Eva. I believe I am going out; tell your sister so, and bring my bonnet.”
Eva detected nothing in the cold, steady voice of her mother to occasion alarm, and went into the next room for the bonnet and shawl, which she usually wore to market.
Mrs. Laurence took these things from her hand, and put them on. There was no tremor of the fingers when she tied her bonnet-strings; no heave or flutter of the bosom, when the faded shawl was folded over it. This poor woman had been so used to bearing her own burdens in silence, that even this fearful shock was endured with speechless heroism.
“Girls,” she said, looking in at the parlor-door, and speaking rather more cheerfully than usual, “don’t wait for me, but eat your breakfast; Eva must not be late.”
Ruth looked up, and answered, smiling, in her meek, sweet way, “that she would rather wait. Eva, of course, must go.”
There was no answer to this, and a minute after Ruth saw her mother go through the gate, followed by that strange man.
“I wonder if it’s anything about the mortgage?” she thought, anxiously. “Only a few months more, and I should have the money. No, Eva, dear,” she said, in answer to something her sister had suggested. “I have no appetite just now, and will wait for mother.”
Wait for mother! Poor girl!
CHAPTER LIII.
THE WOMAN IN THE LAUNDRY.
That morning, a woman, rather young but meanly clad, and appearing miserably over-worked, came into Mrs. Lambert’s kitchen. She was conducted to the laundry by the cook, whose department had fallen so woefully behind hand in the way of table-linen, that she considered a little outside help necessary. The woman who was usually called upon, when such occasions arose, happened to be ill, and had sent this haggard young person, who lived in the same tenement house, as a substitute. The laundry in which her work lay was a little dark, and for that reason the door leading into the kitchen was left partly open.