Guided by the painted name of Mr. Grewgious, she went up-stairs and softly tapped and tapped several times. But no one answering, and Mr. Grewgious’s door-handle yielding to her touch, she went in, and saw her guardian sitting on a window-seat at an open window, with a shaded lamp placed far from him on a table in a corner.
Rosa drew nearer to him in the twilight of the room. He saw her, and he said, in an undertone: “Good Heaven!”
Rosa fell upon his neck, with tears, and then he said, returning her embrace:
“My child, my child! I thought you were your mother!—But what, what, what,” he added, soothingly, “has happened? My dear, what has brought you here? Who has brought you here?”
“No one. I came alone.”
“Lord bless me!” ejaculated Mr. Grewgious. “Came alone! Why didn’t you write to me to come and fetch you?”
“I had no time. I took a sudden resolution. Poor, poor Eddy!”
“Ah, poor fellow, poor fellow!”
“His uncle has made love to me. I cannot bear it,” said Rosa, at once with a burst of tears, and a stamp of her little foot; “I shudder with horror of him, and I have come to you to protect me and all of us from him, if you will?”
“I will,” cried Mr. Grewgious, with a sudden rush of amazing energy. “Damn him!