“No, honey. And I expect I shall feel right down well satisfied, once I get settled. But I was that whirled around before I started that I hardly knowed what I was doing of, or even who I was. Now what do you think? When I opened my trunk to get out a change of clothes, what do you think I found out!”
“I do not know,” said Lilith, smiling.
“Well, I found that I had left behind my Sunday gown—that black silk gown as I have worn to church more years than I remember.”
“That was unlucky; but never mind; you must have a new one. Silk is cheap in Paris.”
“Yes, honey, but that is not the worst of it. Instead of my own Sunday gown, what do you think I had packed away in my trunk?”
“A common gown?”
“No, child! But poor, dear, young Brother Burney’s best black trousers, as I had taken out’n his room that very morning to clean for him, with benzine. And what he’ll do for a decent pair to wear to church, I don’t know; for he’s only got one more pair, and they are patched awful, so as when the wind blows—well, I have to pin the flaps of his coat together. ’Deed I am mons’ous sorry I took his trousers. I hope he will never s’picion as I pawned ’em or anything.”
“Of course he won’t. But who is Brother Burney?” inquired Lilith.
“Oh, a hopeful young brother as is studying for the ministry. He has got the little teenty room at the end of the passage in the third story. And I reckon he’s very poor. Ah me! I am sorry about them there trousers.”
Here Lilith bent and whispered to Aunt Sophie: “We could send him, anonymously, a letter of credit for fifty or a hundred dollars, to get him a complete outfit.”