"Poor both of them! But can't you see how much greater the tragedy must have been for the woman, who knew—who was to blame? Imagine how she must have dreamed of that pitiful little boy with his nose pressed against the window-pane watching for her—and she not able to come for him! Ellen—That's what he's doing here now! Waiting for his mother to come back!"
"If he is, I hope it's with a club in his hand," muttered the other angrily. "Why wasn't she 'able to come,' I'd like to know?"
"Perhaps she died. Or, she couldn't get enough money, or oh—oh, Ellen, don't you see? She didn't dare to come for him! He was getting too big, noticing things. For his own sake she had to give him up!" There were tears in Joan's eyes, ready to spill over.
Ellen paused and stared at her. "Well!" she said at last. "If I had your imagination, Joan Darcy, I'd go to a hospital and get it cut out. It ain't safe! Here you are blubbering over the troubles of a woman who maybe never lived, and probably was a bad lot if she did—and a'most making me blubber over her myself!"
Joan laughed and jumped up. "Here, let me help with the dishes. You wash and I'll wipe. But what a funny, pitiful little boy he must have been with those stick-out ears and those big, innocent-looking front teeth of his! I wonder why it is that big front teeth always do make a person look so innocent, Ellen?"
"Seems to me you noticed a lot to have seen Mr. Blair only once."
Joan did not think it necessary to mention that she had seen him more than once.
"I always notice things—I can't help it. Anyway, I'm glad you keep the poor thing darned and comfy! It's only charity."
"Charity nothing. He pays me good, and prompter than I ever got paid before in all my life," disclaimed the other rather tactlessly.
While she washed and put away her dishes, the girl made a tour of inspection about the rooms that were so full of associations to her. She smiled and nodded at the two familiar Landseer dogs on the wall, which had been a familiar part of every dining-room she remembered. She patted the worn chairs affectionately, and went in to pay her respects to the shorn four-post bed, which looked more at ease in its present surroundings than in others where she had seen it. The panelled walls, as nearly white as scrubbing could make them, the wide-silled windows with arched casements, the tall mantel-shelf, the finely molded ceiling which years of coal soot and cobwebs and general neglect had not sufficed to rob of dignity, all made a more suitable setting than Ellen guessed for her mistress's household goods; and to Joan these two bare and shabby rooms had become a haven of refuge. Tenement though it was, there was more of genuine beauty in the place where Ellen did plain dressmaking for very humble customers than in all the elaborate establishment with which Richard Darcy had managed to provide his daughter. Joan was very dependent upon beauty.