"Why, I wanted to know if you do?" replied Ralph.
"Not much, sir; she and the boy, Ollie she calls him, came here more than a month ago. I had been to Derby on business, and they came in the same train, and came on by the omnibus from the Forest station, and Ruth began to talk to me. She asked me if I knew people of the name of Garland in Fairford; and I said there never was a Garland in the place since I could remember, and that is sixty years and more. It isn't a Fairford name at all, as I told her. She looked so frightened and downcast, that I began to ask questions; then she told me that her father, who had brought the two children from France to Southampton, had died there, sudden-like; and that he had told her his father lived in Fairford, and she was to come here to him; he'd been coming here himself, poor man. I took the children in for the night, and made inquiry next day; but it was as I thought, no Garland was ever known here."
"It would be some other Fairford, perhaps—there are places of the same name in other counties," suggested Ralph, much interested.
"No, sir; Fairford, —shire was written on the box the children brought with them, in the poor man's own writing."
"But have they no means of living, ma'am, except by what they can earn?"
"None; there's a box with good, comfortable clothes for both of them, and the same belonging to the poor father; and Ruth has a little money laid by, but only a few pounds. And that's all. I advised Ruth to save it up and work hard, and she's a wise little creature, used to manage things and to be busy. She pays me nothing for the little room they sleep in, and I am glad to help them so far; but I'm too poor to do more. My business is not what it used to be, nor what it ought to be," she added with a sigh, and a look round the dingy little shop, into which indeed no one had come since Ralph's own arrival. "I got her work from Price's; she's a handy worker."
"Will you give the child this, ma'am, and tell her it is from the old man to whom she was talking?" said Ralph, giving her half a crown.
"Indeed I will, sir, gladly, and very kind it is of you sir. Good evening."
Ralph walked home. The child's face haunted him. That likeness was so perplexing. Annie had fair straight hair and grey eyes; this girl had brown eyes and dark curly hair, yet her smile was like Annie's, and her quiet voice was like Annie's too, in spite of the accent.
Ralph longed to see the child again, he could not help thinking of her. He determined to offer to make further and more efficient inquiries than had as yet been made about the relatives the poor father had evidently expected to find at Fairford. In other ways, too, he thought he could be of use; and the fancy he had taken to the girl made it easier for him to determine to keep his half-formed resolution by helping her.