"She told me she did, Aunt Caroline."
"Did she?" There was gratification in the old lady's voice. "But—how strange of her to say so to you! She must have been very confidential."
"She was telling me about her brother, and how she values her situation with you because you pay her such good wages that she is able to send home more than half she earns. Oh, Aunt Caroline, when she told me about her brother, I thought how thankful I ought to be that God has only made me blind! Suppose I was like poor Barnes's brother: how much worse that would be!"
"What about Barnes's brother?" inquired Miss Leighton, in utter bewilderment. "I have never heard anything about my maid's relations; she has a week's holiday every summer; I suppose she goes to see them then. Stay—I think I remember hearing her once mention a mother, who, by the way, must be a very old woman, for Barnes herself is quite middle-aged."
"Barnes's mother is more than eighty years old, and she lives in a little village near Plymouth with her son. Oh, Aunt Caroline, he is only two years younger than Barnes, and he has been an idiot all his life!"
"Dear me!" exclaimed Miss Leighton, feeling really shocked. "I never heard that before. Barnes never told me."
Peggy looked intensely surprised for a minute, then an expression of comprehension crossed her face. "I expect she did not like to tell you," she said. "Perhaps she thought you would not be interested, you know."
"Why should she think that?" Miss Leighton questioned sharply.
The little girl was silent. She had heard Mrs. Tiddy say that Barnes looked a broken-spirited woman; and Mrs. Ford, when she had called at Lower Brimley a few days previously, had declared her to be a perfect slave to her mistress's whims, and wondered why she did not seek another situation with some one who, at any rate, would be less inconsiderate and exacting. In the conversation the little girl had had with Barnes, she had discovered the reason which induced her to keep her post. It was because it enabled her to do so much for her poor mother and her imbecile brother in their cottage home.
"Why should you think that?" Miss Leighton persisted. "Come, speak out, child! Don't be afraid of me!"