“I think I should like to know all about them, if I were you,” replied Margaret quietly.
“Fanny!” said her mother, as they drove away, “we will be civil to these Hales: but don’t form one of your hasty friendships with the daughter. She will do you no good, I see. The mother looks very ill, and seems a nice, quiet kind of person.”
“I don’t want to form any friendship with Miss Hale, mamma,” said Fanny, pouting. “I thought I was doing my duty by talking to her, and trying to amuse her.”
“Well! at any rate John must be satisfied now.”
CHAPTER XIII.
SOFT BREEZE IN A SULTRY PLACE.
“That doubt and trouble, fear and pain,
And anguish, all, are shadows vain,
That death itself shall not remain;
That weary deserts we may tread,
A dreary labyrinth may thread.
Thro’ dark ways underground be led;
Yet, if we will one Guide obey,
The dreariest path, the darkest way
Shall issue out in heavenly day;
And we, on divers shores now cast,
Shall meet, our perilous voyage past,
All in our Father’s house at last!”
R. C. Trench.
Margaret flew up stairs as soon as their visitors were gone, and put on her bonnet and shawl, to run and inquire how Betsy Higgins was, and sit with her as long as she could before dinner. As she went along the crowded narrow streets, she felt how much of interest they had gained by the simple fact of her having learnt to care for a dweller in them.