“Yes.”
“Well, one can’t do a great deal in this way, but you know it is such a sad case, and the child can’t do any work about a house, and my wife is so interested in her she thinks she’ll take the little girl—What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
“I beg your pardon, I thought you spoke. My wife is so interested in her she thinks she’ll take the little girl and send her for a year to the industrial school in the city, where she can learn to do fine sewing and embroidery. That will give her a chance to earn her living, and we can take up a collection in church to defray the expense.”
“‘Fine sewing and embroidery’—fine suffering and death!” said Franz, suddenly letting loose his pent-up wrath. “Mr. Cory, would you kill the child? She is frailer than a flower, a sickly little thing, and crippled. One month’s stooping over a needle would put her in the grave. I thought for a moment, but an hour ago, that she was dead.” As he spoke the last word he left his seat, and, taking up the lamp, said,—“Come with me, and step lightly.”
Utterly taken aback at the sudden outburst of the music-master, Mr. Cory followed him across the hall, saw him open the door of the opposite room, and motion him to enter. Then he said, in a quiet voice, while he shaded the lamp carefully with his hand, so that its rays did not fall directly upon the face of the child,—
“Look at her.”
The man stepped forward, but almost immediately drew back, with a shiver, from the sleeper, whose repose so strangely resembled death. She lay upon the sofa, with her hands folded across her breast, as when she had at first fallen into slumber.
Franz stood intently regarding her, when suddenly his guest, coming up close to him, said, with his rough voice dropped into a frightened whisper, and his eyes looking quickly about the room,—
“Where does it come from?”