Mrs. Downie, watching her with motherly tenderness, ventured one day to say:
“Honey, you must be awful lonesome here days, when everybody has gone about their business and left you by yourself.”
“It does not matter, Mrs. Downie. Don’t trouble yourself about me, dear heart,” said Lilith.
“But I must! I can’t help it! Emmy Ponsonby has never been to see you since that night she fetched you here, nyther, has she?”
“No, Mrs. Downie!”
“Well, I reckon she’s still with the weddingers in Boston, or else there’s another baby coming around somewheres. ’Mong so many married daughters there’s always a baby coming ’round in Emmy’s family, sometimes two or three of ’em in a year, and I reckon that is what’s the matter now. ’Cause Emmy Ponsonby never forgets her friends or her promises.”
“She was very, very good to me, and I had no claim on her,” sighed Lilith.
“Oh, yes, but you had a claim on her, honey; as you have on me and on every grown-up woman as is able to help a motherless child like you,” said Mrs. Downie, so tenderly that Lilith’s eyes filled with tears.
“Mrs. Downie,” she said, “I want to ask you something.”
“Ask away, then, honey.”