"To see Pollie?" asked the widow in surprise; "who is she?"
"I don't know," was the reply, "but she's coming; she told me so, and soon too."
"Who can it be?" they all questioned of each other, pausing in their work to look at the excited girl.
"I'll tell you all about it," exclaimed Sally, who felt herself to be of some importance as the bearer of such wonderful news; "only just let me get my breath a bit."
"Well," she continued, when sufficiently recovered to proceed with her story, but which, like all narrators of startling intelligence, she seemed to wish to spin out, so as to excite the curiosity of her hearers to the utmost; "well, I was standing at the top of Threadneedle Street, with my back to the Mansion House, looking to see if any customers were coming from Moorgate Street way, when some one touched me on my shoulder. I turned sharp round, as I thought maybe it was a gent wanting a bunch of flowers for his coat. But instead of a gent it was, oh, such a pretty lady! Not a young lady; p'raps as old as you, Mrs. Turner, p'raps older. She was dressed all in black, with, oh my! such crape, and jet beads; and though she smiled when she spoke, yet she seemed sad-like."
"Are you the little girl I saw here about a year ago?" says she.
"May be I am, marm," says I; "cos I'm pretty well allers here, leastway in the mornings."
She looked at me a bit, and then she says—
"'I should not have thought to find you such a big girl in so short a time. Do you remember me? I bought some violets, and you told me your name, and where you lived; indeed I should have come to see you long ago as I promised, but was obliged to go abroad suddenly with my own little girl.'
"And then I thought she was going to cry, she looked so sad," added Sally, "and she said"——