"Well, maybe you shall read me a bit of it some day," said Sally; "it won't be the first time I've listened to it. I used to go to church and Sunday school reg'lar once; but I've no time to attend to religion now. You'd best let me 'ave it, anyhow."
Gus said no more, feeling that it was useless to oppose Sally's wish. She carried the Bible into her room, and there opened it once more, to admire the beautiful style of the binding. Then she noticed that the reading was not broken up into verses, as in the Bibles with which she had been familiar. Glancing over a page, as this fact struck her, the words met her eyes, "The wages of sin is death."
Sally closed the book, and put it from her hastily. The words had stung her. The wages of sin! Was she earning those wages? She knew she was a sinner, but the thought had never troubled her. She loved sin, but she hated to think of death. She could enjoy the excitement of a funeral, but it was awful to think of the time when she would lie cold, and stiff, and dumb, as she had seen her lodger lie.
"Well, well," she muttered to herself; "it is what we must all come to, good or bad."
Yet she knew there was a vast difference between the sinner's death and the death of the righteous. But she hastily wrapped the Bible in brown paper, and put it far from reach at the back of a high shelf; then feeling "all of a tremble," betook herself for comfort to a certain black bottle.
Sally found a corner for Gus in the cold, draughty attic in which her two little boys slept. The old black trunk, the few worthless possessions left in it, and his father's clothes, she sold, retaining the money, to which she considered she had the best right. So Gus was left with nothing to call his own save his very ragged clothes.
Sally had announced her intention of mending his rags, and, if possible, setting him up with a few fresh garments; but her indolence was such that her purposes were ever "halting" ones, and it was best not to count upon the fulfilment of her good intentions.
Though Gus had now been several weeks at Lavender Terrace, he knew little of the boys of Glensford. His father had discouraged his making acquaintance with them, and had kept him as much as possible within the house. But Sally had no notion of a boy's "hanging round" at all hours. Gus was thrust into the society of the boys who disported themselves in the lane.
On the day following his father's funeral, he was observed by them with some curiosity.
"What's your name?" asked one of the boys.