"Hungry? I'm starved. But—see the difference. It goes even into our victuals. Oh dear, there isn't any use!" and, with a bitter sob, the mill girl tossed aside her own rude parcel of food and dropped her face in her hands.
Girlhood is swiftly intuitive. The boarding-house lunch which the hunchback had brought was quite sufficient in quantity, but it was coarse in extreme, and meats had been wrapped in one bit of newspaper along with the sweets, so that the flavor of each article spoiled the flavor of all. Yet it was the first time that Mary had rebelled against such an arrangement.
Now it was different. Amy's speech, Amy's manner and belongings, opened before the slumbering ambition of the mill girl a picture of better things, which she recognized as unattainable for herself.
Then she felt again the clasp of firm, young arms about her own neck, and a face that was both smiling and tearful pressed close to her own.
"You dear little girl. I see, I understand. But you've never had a chance to try how I've lived and I've never tried how you do. Let's change. Yes; I insist, for this once. You eat my lunch, and I'll eat yours. It will do Goodsoul's great heart no end of good when I tell her about it, and it will make me comprehend just how life looks from your side. Remember, we're both poor girls together now, and I—insist."
Amy had a will, as has been remarked. So, in a few seconds, the two lunches were exchanged, and for almost the first time in her life Mary Reese knew what it was to feed daintily and correctly.
"It makes me feel as if I was straighter, somehow. And you're a dear, dear girl."
"Thank you, of course it does. I wouldn't like to do anything that hurt my own self-respect, even in such a little thing as eating. But, you see, I had my darling mother. Now I've had to let her go; yet if you'll let me, I'll be so glad to teach you all she taught me. It will be keeping her memory green in just the very way she'd like."
"Teaching isn't all. The difference is born in us."
"Nonsense. Think of Mr. Metcalf. They say he was a foundling baby, and yet he's a gentleman."