“I thank you, dear, dear Aunt Sophie. I should like to go anywhere with you,” said Lilith, as she kissed her friend, and arose to her feet.
No more was said about the board bill, the subject of which had been introduced by Lilith herself.
But the next morning, as Mrs. Downie was putting on her bonnet to go to market, she spied an envelope directed as follows:
“To Aunt Sophie, from Lilith.”
She took it from the toilet cushion upon which it was pinned, and found three ten-dollar greenbacks inclosed in a short letter, which she read:
“Dear Aunt Sophie: If I were in need, there is no one in this whole world to whom I should be so entirely willing to be indebted as to yourself. And if I were in want, it would be to you, first of all, to whom I should come for help, feeling sure of obtaining it. But, dear friend, I am not so poor in funds as I am supposed to be. I have enough to keep me for a year at least, even if I should get no work to do. So, please take the inclosed without any qualms to your benevolent heart. I shall still be infinitely indebted to you for love, sympathy and protection. Lilith.”
Mrs. Downie read the note, looked at the money, and communed with herself:
“Now what did the child go and do that sort of thing in that way for? Trapping me into taking the money in that manner. She knew very well that if she had handed it to me I wouldn’t have touched it. She a gallant soldier’s orphan, too. And now I s’pose if I hand it to her she won’t take it back, no way! Now I wonder if she has got a plenty of money, sure enough? Sufficient to keep her for a whole year, as she says? If she has, this would be a convenience, and a real godsend, just at this time, too, when I am trying to make up the rent. Yet I don’t like to take it offen that poor child, nyther, and she only occupying a cot in my bed-room. Well, I’ll go and try to make her take it back, and if she won’t, why, she won’t, and I’ll put it to the rent money, and get that off my mind to-day.”
So saying, the landlady went in search of Lilith, whom she found in the parlor, ready and waiting to go to market with her friend.
“Well, Aunt Sophie, we have a fine day for our walk,” began Lilith.