"Did you bring the children?" I breathed, incredulous.
"Yes, sir."
I was awestruck. Her eyes, were the eyes of a child yet they were filled with sorrow and a searching fear old as the world.
"How old are you?" I could not help asking, with an irrelevance foolish enough in the circumstances.
"Going on fourteen, sir."
"And you—you are the nurse?"
"I helped Mrs. Pendleton with the children before school and after school," she answered with more assurance now, but still uneasy. "I am a mother's helper, sir." There was no mirth in my soul, but the muscles contorted my features into a sickly grin.
"I see," I murmured mendaciously. But I saw only my own confused turpitude at my blindness and neglect in face of the shifts and needs poor Laura had been compelled to suffer.
"Where do you come from?" I inquired with a dry throat, ashamed to ask anything of importance.
"From—the Home for—Dependent Children—in Sullivan County," she murmured hesitatingly, with a tinge of color in her cheeks. On a sudden I saw her pale lips tremble and guiltily I realized that, thoughtless, after my wont, I was subjecting her to an ordeal merely because I was in torment.