"Would you mind doing it? I am very hungry, for the dinner mother left for me, I had to give to Letty, and so I have had nothing since breakfast time."
Nothing could have been better to set Lizzie at ease, and very soon the girls were chatting away about the school they used to attend together, trying to revive old memories of that time when they were neighbours and friends. Rutter had done his utmost to break off all this, and succeeded to a great extent. But the memory of what his wife and daughter regarded as their happier days still clung to them. And now that he was torn from them, it was to these old friends they turned for comfort and cheer.
Almost before they knew it, the girls were mingling their tears for the man who had been the best hated in the neighbourhood. Winny because of this held Lizzie close in her arms, while the girl sobbed and cried, for to her the saddest thing was this, that she had never had a kind father, and the manner of his death made it all the more painful.
All she could whisper by way of comfort was: "God knows all about it, dear." And there she stopped, and they mingled their tears and kissed each other, promising that they would be friends for the future.
Lizzie was comforted by the sympathy that could understand such grief as hers, for though no further word was said about the cause of her trouble, she felt that Winny's heart was full of pity for her.
Lizzie stayed until Letty came home and then cut some meat and bread for her tea. But Winny could not rest content with such luxuries being kept to themselves, and so when Letty had finished her tea she said: "I should like you to take Mr. Brown a piece of that meat, Letty. You will not mind his having it, will you?" she asked, turning to her new friend.
"Of course not. Would you like me to cut it for him?" she asked.
She would have done anything that Winny suggested, for she already loved the girl "who was at leisure from herself" to take up the cares or pleasures of her friends and neighbours, and in them forget her own pain and weakness.
Lizzie was in no hurry to go home. The evenings were light, and so when the tea things were washed up, she sat down to talk to Winny again, for in this home she could feel she was wrapped round in the atmosphere of homeliness, and this had long since departed from her own more comfortably furnished abode. They had front rooms and back rooms each crowded with more furniture than was needed, for it had been one of her father's whims to buy furniture when he saw it to be sold cheap whether it was needed or not; but Lizzie had learned by sad experience that a well filled cupboard and a handsomely furnished house does not make a home, and that here in this one room, where there was seldom a full meal for all, they had greater wealth than money could buy.
She went home pondering over these things, and resolving to ask her mother to move back to the old house where they would be among friends, and where they might be able to help them sometimes.