There are some who may recognize this old lady, but to Hannah she was an utter stranger, and she gazed upon her in surprise. She was generally very offish and reserved with strangers, but now a common misery made her have a fellow-feeling for the little oddity, and she responded graciously.
Seizing the hand of the woman, whom she could almost have put into her pocket, she drew it through her arm, and said:
"Ye may well say it; what a place hindeed! But hover I must go some ow, so come on, ma'am. If so be we're sent to heternity, we'll go together, an' I'll see you safe through it."
But, apparently, the prospect of going to eternity at such short notice and under such doubtful protection was not pleasing to Miss Trevor, and she shrank back from the thronging dangers before her.
But now came the policeman and escorted the two women, both large and small, through the terrors which had beset them, landing them safely on the other side of the street.
Hannah's eye had recognized the lady even beneath Miss Trevor's shabby black dress and strange manner, and she now turned to her with a respectful:
"Which way are you bound, ma'am? If so be your way's mine, we might 'old on together. There seems to be pretty much men around 'ere, an' I never did take much stock in men. Leastway honly in one or two," with an appreciative remembrance of Colonel Rush and her young master, Russell Neville.
"I'm going to the banker's—yes—banker's—banker's—yes, going," answered Miss Trevor, still flustered and nervous, and forgetting, in the distractions of the crowd, her usually besetting terror that every one who addressed her or looked at her in the street was actuated by purposes of robbery, and speaking as if there were but one banker in the great city.
But Hannah was wiser.
"There be a lot of 'em I 'ear," she said, "an' I don't know which is the best of 'em. What do you say, ma'am? Who be you goin' to, by your leave?"