She knew if she were to become quite penniless, and should be stricken with a long and tedious illness, that Aunt Sophie would never permit her to be sent to a public hospital, but would nurse her tenderly and skillfully at home.
And this was the dear woman at whom some people—not many, to the credit of human nature, be it said—had sneered, as too plain, homely and ignorant in looks, speech and manner, ever to have been fit for a minister’s wife, though she was a minister’s widow.
These people little know that all the spare money of the two widows—William Downie’s mother and Sophie Wood’s mother—had gone by mutual agreement to educate Willy, leaving Sophie to get what benefit she could out of the village school, which could never cure her of the quaint, old-fashioned, ungrammatical talk she had learned at her mother’s knee and used all her life.
As for Lilith, she loved this homely speech, for it reminded her of her own country neighborhood, and she loved every peculiarity of the dear unselfish creature—even the carelessness of her dress, whose only redeeming quality was its perfect cleanliness, and the disorder of her fine, thin gray hair, which was as well disheveled as if it had been attended to by a fashionable hairdresser—because all these revealed in the active, industrious woman, not laziness or idleness, but utter self-forgetfulness in the constant service of others.
But she was growing old, and Lilith wondered if in the failure of all her efforts to obtain employment, and in the possible necessity of her having to remain with Aunt Sophie, whether she might not help her in some substantial manner; as to learn to keep the house, do the marketing, cast up the accounts and pay the bills.
It was Lilith’s inspiration always to be useful.
It was late on Saturday evening that Lilith was sitting alone in the front parlor, all her fellow-lodgers being absent from the house or at work in their rooms, when the postman, on his last round for the night—and the week—rang the door bell.
It happened that Aunt Sophie answered the summons. There was a little parley at the door, and finally the old lady came in with a letter in her hand, which she held out to Lilith, saying:
“Here, my dear, see if this is for you. The carrier is waiting to know. You see it is directed to the house all right, and the number and street all right, but the name is all wrong, if it is for you; though it is so like your name that it must be for you.”
Lilith took the letter and looked at the superscription: