"Have you ever studied French?" asked Rosalie. "I am reading 'Corinne' already, and Hattie Mann, who is two years older than I, has but just commenced the language."
"I read 'Corinne' with dear mamma just before she died," said Jennie, "but I should like very much to read it with you again if Madame La Blanche pleases."
"Is your mother dead, Jennie? and is not that lady she whom you call mamma?"
"God took my own dear mother and father from me, Rosalie; but before they left, He sent the kind lady to them who made me her child, and they were quite willing to go, when they knew I should not be alone in the world."
"Did you live in a beautiful house when your father and mother were alive, Jennie, and were there birds and flowers all around it, and had you a nice little pony that you could call your own, and a dear little sister with golden curls? That is the way my home is," continued she without waiting for an answer, "and some vacation I am to invite any one of the girls that I please to go with me to my mother's, and I know who it will be, too, don't you, darling Jennie?" and she jumped up, and putting her needle in her work, she kissed the astonished child again, and went singing down the stairs as merry as a lark. Jennie sat quietly in the window, thinking of the contrast between her sometime home in the city and the one described by her happy school-mate, and she would have grown very sad over her solitary musings; but a gay laugh in the garden below diverted her from them, and looking out, she saw Rosalie, with a garland of leaves around her head, and in her hand a bouquet of fall flowers, which she was vainly endeavoring to throw up to her new sister. Her merriment attracted the other girls, and soon Jennie stood among them, with no trace of sorrow upon her brow, and the memory of the bitter past wholly swallowed up in the enjoyment of the bright and blessed present.
CHAPTER XI.
Saturday morning was a busy time at Madame La Blanche's school. Little fingers stitched with untiring industry upon the coarse raiment that was to give warmth to many an otherwise shivering body, and by the hour appointed for the visits, the teacher was surprised at the great results of such tiny efforts. She smiled approvingly on her pupils, and summoning a servant to take charge of the weighty bundle, she took Jennie by the hand and left the house.
Out through the pleasant garden, past the magnificent mansions of the rich they went—on, and on, amid throngs of the gay and fashionable, till the streets grew dingy with a motley crowd of the miserable and ragged, who seemed to herd together, as if thus to hide their degradation and shame. Some looked upon them, as they walked along, with a bold and impudent stare; but others shrunk from their observation, and drew their tattered shawls more closely around them as they moved hastily away. There were some bargaining at the markets for withered or decaying vegetables, and others purchasing, at a diminished price, stale bread from dirty bakeries, and many a one loitering along in his filth and squalor, with no object nor aim save to dawdle away the time that hung too wearily upon him. It was a sad and loathsome sight, so near the gorgeous thoroughfare of this mighty city, to see the pitiable objects of unmitigated want; but there they were, and in all that teeming mass but two ministering spirits were visible, gliding on with their offerings of kindness and mercy.
Down through a dark alley, whose fetid odors were quite sufficient to deter the dainty from penetrating beyond—they went, and into a miserable room where was scarcely space for them to stand, so huddled was it with broken furniture and ragged children. A fire was burning in a shattered grate, and an untidy woman stood ironing by a table whereon was the remnant of their meager dinner. Her husband crouched over the coals as if the day was not warm and sunny. His clothes hung about his limbs in large folds, and his sunken eyes told that disease was making fearful ravages upon him. Madame La Blanche opened her bundle, and, handing him a comfortable dressing-gown nicely quilted, said, "I am sorry to find you so low, Michael, but God's will be done, perchance He means to deliver you from the pinchings of a bitter season. It is but little I can do for you," she continued, as the grateful man smoothed down the warm garment, and thanked her with tremulous lips; "my children made it for you, and this little one I have taken with me that she may learn to be the more thoughtful of those who have a scanty supply of the good things of this life, and the more thankful for the blessings of abundance and health bestowed upon her."