"I know that," she returned. "But I did not and it is too late. Everything is over for her and it is too late. For a long time I was glad, but now—I suppose I am repenting. She did not repent. She suffered, but she did not repent. I think I am repenting."
When he returned to his room he found he could not settle down to work again. He walked up and down restlessly for some time, and at last threw himself upon the bed and lay wide awake thinking in the darkness.
It always cost him a struggle to shut out the world and life and concentrate himself upon his labor in those days. A year before it would have been different, now there was always a battle to be fought. There were dreams to be held at bay and memories which his youth and passion made overwhelming forces.
But to-night, somehow, it was Christian Murdoch who disturbed him. There had been a terrible wistfulness in her voice—a wistfulness mingled with long-repressed fear, which had touched him more than all. And so, when sleep came to him, it happened that her figure stood out alone from all others before him, and was his last thought.
Among those whom Christian Murdoch learned to know was Janey Briarley. She saw her first in the streets, and again in Mrs. Murdoch's kitchen, where she occasionally presented herself, attired in the huge apron, to assist in a professional capacity upon "cleanin' days." The baby having learned to walk, and Mr. Briarley being still an inactive member of the household, it fell upon Janey and her mother to endeavor to add, by such efforts as lay in their power, to their means for providing for the eleven. With the assistance of the apron, Janey was enabled to make herself generally useful upon all active occasions.
"Hoo's a little thing, but hoo's a sharp un," Mrs. Briarley was wont to say. "Hoo can work like a woman. I dunnot know what I'd ha' done wi'out her. Yo' try her, Missus, an' see."
She spent each Saturday afternoon in Mrs. Murdoch's kitchen, and it was not long before Christian drifted into an acquaintance with her. The first time she saw her on her knees before the fire-place, surrounded by black-lead brushes, bath-brick, and "pipe-clay" and vigorously polishing the fender, she stopped short to look at her.
"How old are you?" she asked, after a little while.
"I'm twelve, goin' on thirteen," was the reply, without any cessation of the rubbing.