What she saw there was the red back of the chair, and a pair of pretty, sloping shoulders, in a gray coat and a little, graceful, bowed head in a gray hat and vail, and—the reflection from the mirror.
It was this last that attracted and fixed the attention of the lady. She could not withdraw her eyes from the picture reflected there—a pale, lovely child face, with soft brown eyes, suffused with tears, and budding red lips, quivering with grief.
The lady watched this picture with growing interest and sympathy. Then she turned her head around to look at the passengers to see if by any sign she could judge whether any one of them could perhaps be the father, or grandfather, or uncle, or other male protector of this lonely and grieving child.
But no; she felt sure that they were all strangers to the little one. Besides, two chairs behind hers were vacant.
Still she watched the weeping girl, but hesitated to address her; it was such an unusual, such an unwarrantable thing to do, and the little lady might not like to have a stranger intrude on her distress when to hide it she had turned her back on the world—of the Pullman car—reasoned the good woman, as she watched the woful picture, and sighed, and sighed and watched, until she could scarcely sit still in her seat.
“Suppose it were my own dear Edith or Clara left alone in the world, with no one to care for her, traveling alone, with no one to speak to her? Oh, dear!”
She looked and saw pretty shoulders rising and falling with half-suppressed sobs, and she could stand it no longer.
“I must go to her! I must, indeed! I can’t be like the swimmer who would not rescue the drowning boy because he had never been introduced to his father. I must go to that child even if she should take me for no better than I ought to be and repulse me!”
So saying to herself, the good woman arose and left her chair and went and took the chair next behind Lilith.
Laying her hand gently on the girl’s arm and speaking very tenderly and deprecatingly, she said: