“True,” said the peddler, in a low voice, still gazing at Fanny.
“The child sleeps,” said Lucy. “It was of her I was thinking when you came in; it would be very bitter to die and leave her alone, sir;” and Lucy’s tears flowed again.
“Have you no relatives—no friends, to whom you could intrust her?” asked the peddler, with his eyes bent on the ground.
“None, God help us,” replied Lucy.
“Sir,” and Lucy drew her chair nearer to the peddler, “a great sorrow may sometimes be in the heart, when smiles are on the face.”
The peddler nodded, without trusting himself to speak.
“This poor heart has borne up until now, with what strength it might; but now”—and she glanced at little Fanny—“O, sir—if I could but take her with me.”
“God will care for her,” said the peddler, stooping to remove his hat, that Lucy might not see his emotion.
“Sometimes I feel that,” replied Lucy; “and then again—O, sir, trouble makes the heart so fearful. My poor daughter—she was our idol, sir—the sunbeam in our home; so good—so beautiful—so light-hearted, till the trouble came. It was like a lightning bolt, sir—it scathed and withered in one moment what was before so fresh and fair; it blighted all our hopes, it blackened our hearth-stone, it killed my husband—poor Jacob. Pardon me, sir, I talk as if you had known our history. It was Mary’s lover, sir; he was taken up for swindling, at our very door;—and yet I loved the lad—for the ground she walked on he loved—for Mary’s sake.”