“What!” the woman almost shrieked.
“The little lamb—the cunning little marble lamb on Ella May’s grave with its little legs tucked under it like a baby kitten,—it’s all black and—slimy!”
Mrs. Langley fell back among the cushions.
“My baby! My baby!” she cried, and the genuine pain in the harsh voice awaked the girl’s pity. “Has no one looked after it? O, I might have known! I might have known!”
As she looked beseechingly at Anna, she seemed to see her for the first time.
“Sit down, little girl,” she said, and her voice though not pleasant was less harsh.
Pity contending with shrinking, Anna fetched a chair and seated herself beside the table bearing the bottles and the photograph. As she fixed her eyes on the latter, the woman in the chair gazed at her. She had had no glimpse of youth, of young life, for more than twenty years, and it might not have been strange if this slip of a girl with her long-lashed demure blue eyes, her charming, peaked little face and her riotous yellow hair that almost seemed to light up the dark chamber, had appeared a supernatural visitant. She made an apparent effort to collect herself, to marshal forces that had been dormant for so many years as almost to have become non-existent.
“It was—good of you to tell me,” she croaked. “Is it—ruined?”
“O no, indeed, one side of it is as good as ever, or nearly. A marble man could mend it up slick, I’m sure. But Mrs. Phelps’ cousin Alfred isn’t Charley-on-the-spot any longer because he cashed in right after he made it.”
The invalid grasped only the first sentence. “I should hate to have it—scraped,” she said in a low voice.