The woman laughed loudly and shrilly, and flung her shriveled arms about Jessica, fondling her with a maudlin fondness; Jessica drew back sorrowfully, and lifted herself on tip-toe to whisper into Daniel’s ear:
“She’s a little drunk, you know,” she said, “but she isn’t very bad yet. She isn’t furious. What shall we do?”
It was precisely the question Daniel was asking of himself, for he could not bear the idea of taking a drunken woman into his respectable and orderly house; and yet, could he turn out Jessica’s mother before Jessica’s eyes? He paused for some minutes before unlocking the door, while the woman continued to talk in a foolish strain to her child, but at last he felt compelled to open it, and she was the first to push her way in. She took possession again of his arm-chair, and tossed her old, tattered hat into a corner of the room, while he looked on in helpless and deep dismay.
“Mother,” said Jessica, speaking to her in gentle but steady tones, “this isn’t your house at all, and you can’t stay here. It’s Mr. Daniel’s house: but I dare say he’ll let me give you some supper, and then you’d better go away, and come to see me again when you’re quite yourself.”
The woman fastened her red and sunken eyes upon Jessica, and then burst into a fit of passionate lamenting, while she drew the child closer to her.
“Oh! I wish I was a better woman!” she cried. “I’ve been driven to it, Jessica. But I’m coming to live here with you now, and be decent like the rest of you. I’m going to turn over a new leaf, and you’ll see how steady I’ll be. I’ll be no disgrace to any of you.”
“But, mother,” said Jessica, “you can’t live here, because it’s Mr. Daniel’s house, and he only took me out of charity, when I was ill and you left me. We can’t look for him to take you.”
“If you stay, I stay,” said her mother, in a tone of obstinacy, setting her elbows firmly upon the arms of the chair, and planting her feet on the floor; “or, if I go, you go. I’d like to know who’d have the heart to separate a mother from her own child!”
Jessica stood for a minute or two looking at her mother with eyes full of sadness and pity, and then she crept to Daniel’s side, and whispered to him with an air of pleading:
“I don’t think she ever knew that God is our Father,” she said.