Bertha then led the way up a very narrow flight of steps, which were scarcely to be called a staircase. They creaked under her feet, and even Joy's light tread made them squeak and shake.
"Here's where I sleep;" and Joy found herself in a little room with a sloping roof and a beam. The room was in fact only a loft for storage, but it was thought good enough for Bertha.
"I wanted to show you this," Bertha said; "it's the only keepsake I've got. It was once my poor Aunt Maggie's, and she gave it to me. I can just remember her kissing me one night, and saying, 'God bless you—you poor orphan.' I must have been a little thing, perhaps four years old, for it's such a long time ago, and I am nearly fifteen."
Bertha had dived into the depths of a trunk covered with spotted lilac paper, and which contained most of her worldly goods.
From the very bottom she pulled out a square leather frame, and as she rubbed the glass, which was thick with dust, with her sleeve, she said—
"Isn't she pretty?"
It was an old faded photograph of what must have been a pretty girl, in a white dress with a band of ribbon, which a photographic artist had painted blue, and had touched the eyes with the same colour.
"I think she is beautiful," Bertha said. "I never saw any one so pretty till I saw you, and I think you are like poor Aunt Maggie."
Joy looked doubtfully at the portrait, and said—
"Yes, it's very nice. She looks so good and so sweet, as if she could never have been cross or naughty."