The room was such a one as his work made only too familiar to him—close, dark, bare of comforts, yet not without a certain lingering air of neatness and self-respect. The linen of the bed was clean, and the woman that lay there had marks of something refined and decent in her worn face. She was burning with fever; evidently, hard work and trouble had driven her to the breaking point.
"Well, my good woman, what can I do for you?" said Mr. St. John.
The woman roused from a feverish sleep and looked at him.
"Oh, sir, please send her here. She said she would come any time I needed her, and I want her now."
"Who is she? Who do you mean?"
"Please, sir, she means my teacher," said the child, with a bright, wise look in her thin little face. "It's Miss Angie. Mother wants her to come and talk to father; father's getting bad again."
"He isn't a bad man," put in the woman, "except they get him to drink; it's the liquor. God knows there never was a kinder man than John used to be."
"Where is he? I will try to see him," said Mr. St. John.
"Oh, don't; it won't do any good. He hates ministers; he wouldn't hear you; but Miss Angie he will hear; he promised her he wouldn't drink any more, but Ben Jones and Jim Price have been at him and got him off on a spree. O dear!"