“I will bring your clothes to-morrow, my dear grand-daughter,” said Armstrong, as he rose slowly from his chair, and, resuming his cane, walked feebly from the house.
As soon, however, as he was fully out of sight, he straightened his bowed form, and walked rapidly onward till overtaken by a passing omnibus, which he entered, and was soon carried back to the city.
III.
Helen was not long in making the acquaintance of Ellen and Frank Gregory, the children of her employer, over whom she was expected thenceforth to have oversight.
Those who have always lived in the country, or to whom frequent visits have made it familiar, can hardly appreciate the depth of enjoyment which it brought to a child, who, like Helen, had been confined for years in the most noisome portion of a great city. To her, the most common objects seemed invested with an interest altogether new; and she plucked with as much eagerness the dandelions and buttercups which covered the greensward in profusion as if they had been the rarest exotics. There is a freemasonry in children which does away with formal introductions and the barriers of etiquette. When, two hours after her companion’s departure, Helen and the children came bounding in, flushed with exercise, Mrs. Gregory had an opportunity to observe—what before had escaped her notice—that Helen was more than ordinarily pretty. Something there was in her expression that seemed to strike the chords of memory; but Mrs. Gregory dismissed it as only a chance resemblance.
“Helen,” said she, calling the child to her side, “have you always lived in the city?”
“For a long time, madam. I cannot remember ever to have lived anywhere else.”
“And do you like it as well as the country?”
“I do not like it at all,—it is so dark and dirty and close. The sun does not shine there as it does here; and I could not run out into the fields, but all day long I had to sit alone.”