“She could not find those places,” said I.
“No!” cried the girl, shaking her head. “No! Couldn’t find them. And she was so faint, and lame, and miserable, Oh so wretched, that if you had seen her, Mr. Snagsby, you’d have given her half a crown, I know!”
“Well, Guster, my girl,” said he, at first not knowing what to say. “I hope I should.”
“And yet she was so well spoken,” said the girl, looking at me with wide open eyes, “that it made a person’s heart bleed. And so she said to me, did I know the way to the burying ground? And I asked her which burying ground. And she said, the poor burying ground. And so I told her I had been a poor child myself, and it was according to parishes. But she said she meant a poor burying ground not very far from here, where there was an archway, and a step, and an iron gate.”
As I watched her face and soothed her to go on, I saw that Mr. Bucket received this with a look which I could not separate from one of alarm.
“Oh, dear, dear!” cried the girl, pressing her hair back with her hands. “What shall I do, what shall I do! She meant the burying ground where the man was buried that took the sleeping-stuff—that you came home and told us of, Mr. Snagsby—that frightened me so, Mrs. Snagsby. Oh, I am frightened again. Hold me!”
“You are so much better now,” sald I. “Pray, pray tell me more.”
“Yes I will, yes I will! But don’t be angry with me, that’s a dear lady, because I have been so ill.”
Angry with her, poor soul!
“There! Now I will, now I will. So she said, could I tell her how to find it, and I said yes, and I told her; and she looked at me with eyes like almost as if she was blind, and herself all waving back. And so she took out the letter, and showed it me, and said if she was to put that in the post-office, it would be rubbed out and not minded and never sent; and would I take it from her, and send it, and the messenger would be paid at the house. And so I said yes, if it was no harm, and she said no—no harm. And so I took it from her, and she said she had nothing to give me, and I said I was poor myself and consequently wanted nothing. And so she said God bless you, and went.”