The clergyman patted his shoulder kindly, and said, "Do you not feel it is better as it is?"
"Well, yes. I think of that a good deal. 'Supposing I had got to be a real, genuine bloody hero?' I say to myself. 'What would it all have come to, in the end?' I expect it was the best thing the devil could have done for me, when he knocked me off my pins. Ah! here comes mother, with Maggie."
Mrs. Bowen entered, accompanied by a plain, good-natured, wholesome-looking girl, modest, but not awkward, coarsely but quite neatly attired. She advanced to shake hands with Mr. Royden, and inquired about Mrs. Royden and the children.
"They will all be glad to see you," he replied. "What do you say to coming and helping us, next week?"
"I don't know how I can come, any way in the world," said Maggie. "Ma's health is so poor now, I ought to be at home."
"I s'pose I shall have to spare you, if you think you would like to go," added Mrs. Bowen, in her sepulchral tone of voice.
Maggie colored very red. She seemed to know hardly what to say. Fortunately, the grandmother in the corner attracted observation from her, by crying out, with a shrill, childish laugh,
"So she did! he, he, he! Eggs ten cents a dozen, and all the hens a settin'! That beat all the jokes I ever heard on! Eggs ten cents a dozen, and five hens a—'s—'s—'s—"
The words died away in the old woman's toothless jaws; but her lips continued to move, and her mind seemed to float lightly upon the waves of an inaudible laugh. Mrs. Bowen broke the silence which followed.
"The truth is,"—what a ghostly tone!—"Maggie didn't like to work for Mrs. Royden any too well, when she was there before."