"Land's sake, child, dead folks can't hear."
"Can't they?" asked Rose, with a quivering lip. "Didn't my mamma hear what I said to her?"
"In course not," answered Timmins. "Why, what a chick you are. If you weren't so bright, I should think you was an idiot."
"What are you crying for?"
Rose kept on sobbing.
"Come now, don't take on so," said the uneasy Timmins, "you are not the only person who has had a hard time of it. I was a little girl once."
"Were you?" asked Rose, wiping her eyes, and surveying Timmins's Meg Merrilees proportions.
"Yes, of course," said Timmins, laughing; "just as if you didn't know that every grown-up woman must have been a little girl once. Do you say those things a purpose, or do they come by accident, like?"
"Did your mother die?" asked Rose, not appearing to hear Timmins's last question.
"Yes—and father, and brother, and sister, and the hull on 'em."