"I only wish I'd been taught useful things," sighed Meg, "besides reading and writing. I was only taught to sing."
"Aye, it's a pity," answered Mrs. Webb. "I don't hold with all that they teach in the schools neither. The piano I believe, and drawing and such like; what have we got to do with them things. What the children want to learn is to scrub and dust and sew. I don't hold with the edication now-a-days."
"Anyhow I can read," said Meg. "I could teach Willie his letters if you like."
"That would be real kind of you. But my dear you mustn't sit at home all day. Willie can go along with you and show you the shops in Oxford Street and Regent Street. He knows the way well enough. And this evening I mean to go to our Rector and tell him about your voice."
But though Mrs. Webb managed to get the Rector's sympathy for Meg without any difficulty, and he arranged for her to sing at the next parish meeting, Meg could not fulfil her engagement.
The confinement, close air, and poor food had upset her, and she lay sick for many a day greatly to the poor little widow's concern.
Meg had moved into her own room, having bought a few bits of furniture, and had made it as bright as she could with a pot or two of flowers in the window and a clean curtain, and she kept her window wide open day and night; but the summer was an unusually hot one and the girl drooped before she had been a week in London. One morning as Mrs. Webb came back from her work expecting to find Meg with Willie, she found he had seen nothing of her, and on knocking and getting no answer she opened the door to find the girl in bed in a state of high fever. Mrs. Webb was not aware that Meg, fearing that her money would come to an end before she had earned any with which to replace it, had been living on next to nothing; so that when she was attacked by fever she had no strength to resist it.
The girl was moaning and tossing from side to side.
"You ain't well, my dear," said Mrs. Webb.
"It's my head," groaned Meg. "It's so terrible hot. Can you give me a drink of water?"