One timid rap brought Willie Danforth to the door. The poor boy looked quite embarrassed to behold pretty, neat Ellen Williams standing there on the miserable, dirty threshold. "Good day, Willie," said she, pleasantly; "is your mother at home?"
"No, miss, she is scrubbing floors at Mr. Pimble's," said Willie, awkwardly enough.
"O, I am sorry she is gone, for I wanted to see her very much. Will you let me come in and leave this basket for her?"
"O, yes!" answered the poor lad, "or I will carry it in for you."
"I can carry it very well," said Ellen, "if you will only let me go in."
"I would let you come in, Miss Ellen," returned Willie, "only I am afraid it would frighten you to see such a sad, dirty place;" and the ragged little fellow blushed crimson, as he thus revealed his poverty and destitution.
Ellen pitied his embarrassment, and said, "I should like to go in, Willie, because, if I saw what you needed, I could tell mother, and she would make you more comfortable, I know."
The boy lifted the wooden latch of the inner room. The door opened with a dismal creak, and Ellen entered. There was one old, broken-backed chair, which he offered her, and sat down himself on a rough bench, with a sorrowful, embarrassed expression on his pale, interesting features. Ellen, still noticing Willie's painful confusion, knew not what to do after placing her basket on the rude, wooden table, and began to regret that she so strongly pressed an entrance.
"I told you you would be frightened," said the boy at length, in a choking tone.
"O, I am not frightened!" returned Ellen, glad to speak now that he had opened the way for her; "I am only sorry to find people living so forlornly in our pretty, happy village. I thought you had a good nice house to live in, for Mrs. Pimble said so, and that her husband rented it to you for almost nothing, and that your mother—but I won't say any more," said Ellen, stopping short in her discourse.