"Very well," Mrs. Brown agreed, "I shall be very pleased to see her, poor little girl."
Mother and daughter were together in the comfortable parlour of their home, which was a small house in a side street of the town, a street called Gladstone Street. The Brown family comprised father, mother, and three children, the eldest of whom was Agnes, the other two being boys. Mr. Brown was a junior clerk employed in the booking-office at the railway station; and his wife before her marriage had been a dressmaker, so that she was able to make all her own and Agnes' clothing, which allowed them to be better dressed than they could otherwise have been. The Browns had only been living in Hawstock since the previous autumn, when Mr. Brown had been shifted from a town some distance away to his present post; consequently they had few acquaintances in the place. Mrs. Brown had never yet seen Melina, but she had heard from her little daughter that she lived with an old grandmother who was anything but kind to her.
"Thank you, mother," Agnes said. She hesitated, then proceeded: "I wonder what you will think of Melina and if you will like her. You will say she is very shabby, I know. She's grown out of her winter jacket, and it's so tight for her that she can hardly fasten it; and she wears such a dreadful old hat."
"No doubt her grandmother is very poor and cannot afford her good clothes," remarked Mrs. Brown; "you have never been to her home, have you?"
Agnes shook her head. "No," she replied, "and I'm sure I don't want to, because they say at school that Mrs. Berryman is a wicked old woman."
"Wicked!" Mrs. Brown looked rather startled. "What do you mean, Agnes?" she inquired.
"I hardly know," the little girl admitted, "but I believe she drinks—"
"Oh dear, dear!" broke in Mrs. Brown.
"Melina can't help it if she does, mother," Agnes cried hastily.
"No, poor child, of course not. If this is true I am very, very sorry for her, but, on second thoughts, perhaps before you ask her here to tea I had better make some inquiries about her grandmother. I'll speak to your father, and ask him to find out what is known about her."