Lucy made no reply, but turned her face toward the wall, as mourners did ages before the birth of King Hezekiah. Grannie had learned a little wisdom in her long life, and left her. She would get a cup of tea ready, for she had great faith in bodily cures for mental aches. But before the tea was well in the tea-pot Lucy came down in her bonnet and shawl.
She could not rest. She tossed and turned. What could Thomas be about with that man? What mischief might he not take him into? Good women, in their supposed ignorance of men's wickedness, are not unfrequently like the angels, in that they understand it perfectly, without the knowledge soiling one feather of their wings. They see it clearly—even from afar. Now, although Lucy could not know so much of it as many are compelled to know, she had some acquaintance with the lowest castes of humanity, and the vice of the highest is much the same as the vice of the lowest, only in general worse—more refined, and more detestable. So, by a natural process, without knowing how, she understood something of the kind of gulf into which a man like Molken might lead Thomas, and she could not bear the thoughts that sprung out of this understanding. Hardly knowing what she did, she got up and put on her bonnet and shawl, and went down stairs.
"Where on earth are you going, Lucy?" asked her grandmother, in some alarm.
Lucy did not know in the least what she meant to do. She had had a vague notion of setting out to find Thomas somewhere, and rescue him from the grasp of Moloch, but, save for the restlessness with which her misery filled her, she could never have entertained the fancy. The moment her grandmother asked her the question, she saw how absurd it would be. Still she could not rest. So she invented an answer, and ordered her way according to her word.
"I'm going to see little Mattie," she said. "The child is lonely, and so am I. I will take her out for a walk."
"Do then, my dear. It will do you both good," said the grandmother. "Only you must have a cup of tea first."
Lucy drank her cup of tea, then rose, and went to the book-shop. Mr. Kitely was there alone.
"How's Mattie to-night, Mr. Kitely? Is she any better, do you think?" she asked.
"She's in the back room there. I'll call her," said the bookseller, without answering either of Lucy's questions.
"Oh! I'll just go in to her. You wouldn't mind me taking her out for a little walk, would you?"