"Oh, lovely!" cried Amethyst excitedly, as she jumped up with alacrity. "I like going to see your dear little old women, mumsie. I don't think I know Mrs. Robbins."
"I hardly think you do, dear. But come, let us get ready, and go at once."
Although St. Paul's Vicarage was situated in a by no means grand locality, a very few minutes brisk walking brought Mrs. Drury and Amethyst into widely different surroundings. Long rows of tenement houses looking on to the ugly brick buildings which comprised the iron foundry where most of the husbands and sons earned their daily bread, were traversed before they paused at an almost paintless door, bearing the number 75, but guiltless of a knocker.
Applying the handle of her umbrella briskly, Mrs. Drury waited for some one to admit her. But instead of the door being opened, a feeble voice was heard saying: "Please come in." And bidding Amethyst follow her, she turned the rickety handle and entered the squalid-looking house. For a moment it was so dark after the bright sunlight outside, that she could scarcely see her way, but she soon descried another door on her left, and pushing that open, a certain amount of light illumined the dark passage.
"Come in, ma'am, do 'ee come in," cried a quavering old voice from the interior of the room, and Mrs. Drury led Amethyst, who was somewhat shy of strangers, into the tidy but comfortless apartment, and shut the door.
"Well, Mrs. Robbins, how are you to-day?" she enquired sympathetically, as she gently shook the poor old hand, badly crippled with rheumatism.
"Only very middlin', ma'am, very middlin'," said the poor old soul, as she begged her visitors to be seated. Mrs. Drury drew the only available chair up to the side of the poor miserable bed, and Amethyst found a little wooden footstool, upon which she perched herself as best she could. The old woman's dim eyes lit up as she saw the bright face and hair of her little visitor.
"La, bless me, ma'am, she's just for all the world like a fairy," she said, and she struggled to raise her poor old body the better to feast her eyes on the pretty picture, but a low moan of pain escaped her lips. "'Tis these screwmatics," she explained, as Mrs. Drury bent over her tenderly, "my back and legs is awful to-day."
"Have you had any medicine lately, and who looks after you, Mrs. Robbins?" said the lady, sympathetically.
"My darter-in-law looks in most days, and her little gal runs of arrants for me; they live at No. 68, just below. No, ma'am, I haven't had any medicine for a good bit now, it don't seem much use like. But there, ma'am, the Almighty is wonderful good to me. I have never been without a bite or a sup yet, and there's a many can't say as much as that, poor things of 'em."