"Good-night, Hetty Wright, and may the Virgin bless you!" she called out.
"Good-night, Mrs. Flannigan—why, how white and starved you look! Here's twopence; go in and get a drop of gin."
Hester dropped the coins into the old dame's hand, and hurried quickly through the damp streets.
The wretched woman gazed at them in a kind of petrifaction. Twopence from a girl as poor as herself, and she was to buy gin with the money? Gin! Never before had she been told to go and buy gin. Why, the missionaries, and all the good folks round, said it was the curse of the land. And so it was: had it not brought her to what she was? had it not sent her only son to an untimely grave? Oh, yes—none knew better than mother Flannigan what gin meant—what cursing and what tears, and what misery it had caused; and yet the girl with the white face and the great dark earnest wistful eyes had given her twopence to buy it, and told her to get warm and comforted. Oh, yes, gin was bad, but it was very comforting; she would have her two-pennyworth, and she would go home, and forget her hunger, and sleep comfortably all night. It was really good of that decent, pale-faced girl to give her twopence to spend in gin. She knew her: she was the girl with the voice, the girl about whom some of the neighbors, even in the Irish quarter, raved.
With the memory of Hester's face firmly fixed on her dazed old brain, Mother Flannigan entered the public-house. Then a queer thing happened. By the side of Hester's pure, highly-wrought face arose the picture of another—of a very suffering, thirsty little grandchild, who lay waiting for her on a bed of straw at home. Instantly the desire for gin departed—the old woman purchased instead two-pennyworth of very blue and watery milk, and hurried away to give her grandson a drink.
When Hester reached her lodgings the overwrought mood was still upon her. She lit her fire, however, and put the kettle on to boil. Then, throwing aside her hat and thin black cashmere shawl, she sat down beside her little deal table, placed her elbows on it, and stared hard before her. Just at that moment she was suffering acutely—a tumult of mingled feelings possessed her; she was unsatisfied, and longing for she knew not what. A weaker woman in such a mood would have relieved her overcharged brain with a flood of tears. Instead of crying, Hester sang. For a woman with no religion, and no belief in religion, the queerest words arose to her lips. She had sometimes listened outside the churches to the swelling organs and the music of the choirs; once, when an anthem was being very exquisitely rendered, she had stolen fascinated inside the church porch. Now the words of this anthem came to her lips, and floated on her splendid voice through the dreary little attic room:
"Oh, rest in the Lord; wait patiently for him—patiently for him; and he will give thee thy heart's—thy heart's desire."
There came a knock at the door, and Hester sprang to her feet.
"Come in," she said. And Will Scarlet stepped into the room.
"Why, Hetty, how lovely you are making the night with that voice of yourn. I didn't rightly catch the words nor the air—what were they?"