"It was a very generous thing for you to burden yourself with the care of her," said General Forster.
"Burden is it, sir? Niver a burden was she, the swate lamb, not even when the sense had left her. An' that was what the neighbors was always a sayin', and why didn't I put her in the hospital. An' why would I do that after the mother of her savin' me from a buryin' in the say, which I niver could abide. For sure if it hadn't been for the lady I'd 'a died on the ould ship, and they'd 'a chucked me overboard widout sayin' by your lave; and sure I'd niver have got over such a buryin' as that all the days of me life. And would I be turnin' out her child afther that? An' isn't she payin' me for it now, an' 'arnin' her livin,' an' mine too? She an' Jack tends the bit of a garden, an' arternoons she comes down an' sells her flowers, an' where'd be the heart to refuse her wid her pretty ways and nice manners; a lady every inch of her, like her mother before her."
And thrusting her head out from her stall, Betty gazed down the street with admiring affection on her young protégée.
"Och! but she's the jewel of a child," she went on; "and it is surprisin' how me and Jack is improved and become ginteel all along of her. Ye see, sir, I did use to say a hape of words that maybe wer'n't jist so; not that I meant 'em for swearin', but it was jist a way of spakin'. But after Margaret began to mend and get about, ye would have thought she was kilt intirely if I let one out of me mouth. So seein' how it hurted her, I jist minded what I was about, an' Jack the same, for he was a boy that swore awful, poor fellow; he'd been left to himself, and how was he to know better? At first him and me minded our tongues, for that the child shouldn't be hurted; but by and by didn't she make it plain to us that it was the great Lord himself what we was offendin', and knowin' she'd been tached better nor me, I jist heeded her. And now, sir, them words that I never thought no harm of and used to come so aisy, I jist leave them out of me spache widout troublin'; and a deal better it sounds, and widout doubt more plasin' to Him that's above. And Jack the same mostly, though he does let one slip now and agin. So ye see, sir, it's not a burden she is at all, at all, but jist a little bit of light and comfort to the house that houlds her."
Glad to find a listener in a "gintleman the likes of him," Betty had talked away to the gentlemen, so taken up with her story, that she paid little heed to the business of her stall. She made wrong change more than once, gave quarts instead of pints, oranges in place of apples, and peanuts for sugar-plums, and provoked some impatient customers not a little; while one wicked boy, seeing her attention was taken up with something else, ran off without paying for the pop-corn he asked for, and was not called back.
But Betty lost nothing by the time and thought she had given to the gentleman, or the interest she had shown in her young charge, as she found when she looked at the number upon the note he slipped into her hand when he left her: a note which the warm-hearted Irishwoman laid by "to buy that new gown and pair of shoes Margaret needed so bad."
