"He married my young sister," she answered, speaking slowly and with apparent difficulty, "and I hated him and her too; but afterward I was glad, for he treated her bad. She died of a broken heart, they say. I never went nigh her, though she sent to beg me hard. That's three years agone next Whitsuntide. They had three or four children; all died but one, a boy two years old when sister died. The father, he went off, no one knows where, and Willie—that's his name, they say—was put in the workhouse. I seen him once"—her voice grew broken again—"a fine little chap, like his father, and for a bit I felt inclined to bring him home, but that look of his made me hard and I came away."
Margaret smiled a brooding, motherly smile: "God is good to you, Jane. He has not left you, as you said. He has given you little Willie. You must find him, and I think he will soon teach you to love."
Jane had almost forgotten, in the new sweetness of speaking about her own feelings, to whom she had been addressing herself. Margaret's words reminded her, and she was struck with a sudden sense of wonder, almost of awe.
"Why do you care for me?" she said in a low tone. "I've insulted you, I've acted wrong by you, I've tried to do you a mischief, and you listen to me, you take an interest that nobody ever did before, and you're not afraid of me, either," she continued confusedly. "There's them, I believe, as won't allow a hair of your head to fall. There must be a reason for it."
"Only the reason that I told you, Jane. I want to save you from yourself; but Mrs. Foster is moving, and I don't wish our conversation to be overheard. I must hear more about little Willie at another time." She held out her hand: "We are friends, are we not?"
Jane took it in an awkward, bewildered kind of way. Then, as she looked into her mistress's face and read nothing but forgiveness there, her feelings became quite too much for her. Throwing her apron over her head, she rushed out of the room crying like a little child. For the spirit of a little child had come into the hard heart.
Her night had been dark as pitch, but already the fair dawning had gleamed out of the east.