And yet this is the man of whom some one said to me, only a day or two since, “Why do you speak to that worthless fellow?”
One day, in my next week at the hospital, Richards came to me, and with the usual salute, which he never forgets, said, “Miss ——, you used to care for poor Tom, would you let me tell you about him? The world seems so lonely to me, now he’s gone.”
I gladly assented, and seated on an old packing-box, in the corner of the hospital entry, I listened to his story. He gave me every detail of his illness, most of them already familiar to me; told, with evident pride, how the poor fellow thought nobody but himself could do anything for him.
“You mind, miss, don’t you, how the first day you saw him, I told you he didn’t mean to be cross, though the boys thought him so? Well, he told me before he died, how sorry he was they had thought so, but they could never know what agony it was to him to see them come near him; but now he felt that he ought to have tried to bear it all more patiently. Poor Tom! there’s not been many like him here, and there’ll never be any like him to me,” and hard, heavy sobs shook his whole frame.
I spoke to him of the comfort he had been to him; of the kind way in which he had watched him, and how we had all noticed it; and won a promise from him, in his softened state, that henceforward he would try so to live as to meet him hereafter; and I really believe that at the time he was sincere; but habit is a fearful thing, and the struggle against a sin so confirmed more fearful still.
Some days afterwards, he came to me, when there were others present, and said:
“I had a letter from her to-day.”
My thoughts were far enough from Darlington at the moment, and I answered,