MRS FLANAGAN.
As Pollie reached her mother's door at last, after all this amount of shopping had been accomplished, she heard a well-known voice inside, and knew that Mrs. Flanagan had returned from work, and was now having her usual little chat with Mrs. Turner.
Good Mrs. Flanagan, who had been so kind to the widow and her child from the first moment they came to lodge in the room opposite to hers—good old woman, with a heart as noble and true as the finest lady's in the land—a gentlewoman in every sense, though not of the form or manner in which we are accustomed to associate that word. Years ago she had been a servant in a farmhouse, where she was valued and esteemed by all as a sincere though humble friend; but Mike Flanagan won her heart, and she joined her fate to his, leaving the sweet, fresh country in which she had always lived, and cheerfully giving up all the old familiar ties of home and kindred for his dear sake.
Mike had constant work in London, with good wages too, as a carpenter, so though at first London and London ways sadly puzzled her, yet she soon became used to the change, and they were so happy—he in his clean, tidy wife, she in her honest, sober husband.
But one day, through the carelessness of a drunken fellow-workman, some heavy timber fell upon poor Mike, crushing him beneath its weight, and when next Martha Flanagan looked on her husband's face, she know he was past all suffering, and that she was destitute, and her sweet baby Nora fatherless.
But time soothed her anguish; she must be up and doing, and for many years she struggled on, working to keep a home for herself and child; and proud she was of her darling, her beautiful Nora, who grew up a sweet flower of loveliness from a rugged parent stem, with all the beauty of her father's nation and something of the sweetness of English grace.
Well might the poor mother be proud of her only treasure. What delight it was to see this rare beauty brightening the lowly home! But the mother's idol was of clay; in worshipping the creature with such fond idolatry, she almost forgot the merciful Creator.
One sad night, on returning home from Covent Garden, where she was constantly employed by a fruiterer and florist, she found the place empty, no one to greet her now. Nora was gone, lost in that turbid stream which flows through our city.
Oftentimes, as the lonely mother wended her way at night through the streets on her return from work, would she look with a shudder into the faces of those poor wretches who flaunted by fearing yet hoping to see her lost child. But the name of Nora never passed her lips. No one who knew Mrs. Flanagan imagined of this canker at her heart; that page of her life was folded down, and closed to prying eyes; it was only when alone with God that on bended knees she prayed Him to bring the poor wanderer home.
"Ah, my bird!" she cried, as Pollie came joyfully dancing into the room. "Here you are, then; I thought from what your mother said that such a lot of money had turned you a bit crazed."