Still pure and fair.”
Early in the morning Eudora arose from her sleepless bed. With the aid of the rude basin and jug of water and coarse towel that had been placed on the rough deal stand by Mrs. Barton the night previous, Eudora made her simple toilet.
And next, with the love of order and neatness which characterizes every true woman under all the circumstances of life, she made up the little bed and arranged the narrow cell. But oh! with what a heavy, aching heart, and what an ever present sense of the awful danger before her!
Finally, she knelt and offered up her usual morning prayers, and then sat down, in forced idleness, to endure the dull pain of merely living on.
She had not sat long thus, before the little square opening at the top of her door was darkened by the face of the female warder, and the next instant Mrs. Barton unlocked the door and entered the cell, saying:
“I peeped in first to see if you were asleep, for if you had been, Miss, it isn’t I as would ha’ disturbed you; seeing as sleep is such a blessing to them as is in trouble, it is a’most a sin to wake ’em. But laws, Miss, you needn’t ha’ took the pains to do the cell yourself, ’cause I could ha’ done it.”
“I thank you, it cost me little pains; besides, occupation is almost as great a blessing as sleep to persons in my unhappy circumstances,” replied Eudora.
“And that’s true, too; I know by myself! for well I remember when my two poor sailor-lads were lost in the Great Western steamship as went down with all on board—and I a lone widder-woman—I should ha’ just gone raving mad, if so be I hadn’t been obliged to work so hard all day that I slept sound all night. And so, between hard work and sound sleep, I lived through it.”
“Is your post such a hard one?” inquired the poor young prisoner, taking an immediate interest in the kind-hearted, childless widow.
“Laws, no, Miss, but I wasn’t here then, no, nor for a year afterwards. Bless you, Miss, I was in the laundry line o’ business; but being of one of your grandfather, the old Lord Leaton’s tenants, your father, Mr. Charles, took pity on me, and spoke to Mr. Anderson, as was under obligations to him, to give me this place. It isn’t no ways hard on me, whatsoever it may be to them as I have to ’tend to. But it’s been a teaching to me, Miss, for since here I’ve been, I’ve seen other people in so much deeper sorrow than any that mere death can cause, that I ha’ been ashamed to grieve out of reason for my own troubles, and I ha’ thought, i’ the name o’ the Lord, it wer’ perhaps all for the best, for if my poor fatherless lads had lived, they might ha’ been led wrong and brought here, and that would ha’ killed me outright!—I beg your pardon, Miss!” said the woman, suddenly stopping and reddening at the thought of the unkindness of speech into which her thoughts had hurried her, “I beg your pardon, for I know that some come here without deserving it.”