"LORD BETTERSON."
At her right hand was an empty cradle; and she held a puny infant in her arms, trying to still its cries. At her left was a lounge, on which lay the helpless form of an invalid child, a girl about eleven years old. The room was comfortless. An old, high-colored piece of carpeting half covered the rough floor; its originally gaudy pattern, out of which all but the red had faded, bearing witness to some past stage of family gentility, and serving to set off the surrounding wretchedness.
Tipped back in a chair against the rough and broken laths, his knees as high as his chin, was a big slovenly boy of about seventeen, looking lazily out from under an old ragged hat-rim, pushed over his eyes. Another big, slovenly boy, a year or two younger, sat on the doorstep, whittling quite as much for his own amusement as for that of a little five-year-old ragamuffin outside.
Not much comfort for the poor woman and the sick girl shone from these two indifferent faces. Indeed, the only ray of good cheer visible in that disorderly room gleamed from the bright eyes of a little girl not more than nine or ten years old,—so small, in truth, that she had to stand on a stool by the table, where she was washing a pan of dishes.
"O boys!" said the woman in a feeble, complaining tone, "do, one of you, go to the spring and bring some fresh water for your poor, sick sister."
"It's Rufe's turn to go for water," said the boy on the doorstep.
"'T ain't my turn, either," muttered the boy tipped back against the laths. "Besides, I've got to milk the cow soon as Link brings the cattle home. Hear the bell yet, Wad?"
"Never mind, Cecie!" cried the little dish-washer, cheerily. "I'll bring you some water as soon as I have done these dishes." And, holding her wet hands behind her, she ran to give the young invalid a kiss in the mean while.