[CHAPTER XIX.]
"SHE WAS SENT ME BY GOD."
"PUT away that work, child," said a clean-looking elderly woman, who was carrying a saucepan across a bright little kitchen.
She placed it on a very small fire, and turning round, faced a young woman in black, who was bending over some fine needlework in the window.
"Not till you are ready for me, mother," she returned, without raising her eyes.
"Take a run down the garden, child," still persisted the older woman; "you will not lose any time for it in the end."
Yielding to this second injunction, the young woman folded up her work quickly and carefully, and placing it in a little covered basket in the windowsill, she turned to the door which led straight from the kitchen into the garden.
Just in the doorway, looking very sweet and clean, but rather thin, sat a little girl of four years old.