“Never mind my things to-day,” said Annie; “you’re not fit, and that is the simple truth. You ought to go downstairs, Susan, and get your mother to take you into the park; that is what you want.”
“I may want it, miss,” said Susan, “but I won’t get it, for mother have her hands full with the parlour lodger and the drawing-room lodger. Much time she do have for walking out with me as though I were a fine lady.”
“Poor Susie!” said Annie; “and you so clever, too.”
“Ah, miss, nothing frets mother like me thinking myself clever. She says that all I want is to know the three R’s—reading, writing, and ’rithmetic—that’s how she calls ’em. She hates my books, miss; and as to my thoughts—oh, dear Miss Brooke! you are the only one in all the world as knows about them.”
“And I want to help you,” said Annie. “I have come here all the way this morning to ask you to lend me that manuscript book of yours. I mean to show your lovely poems to a great, clever, and learned man, and if by chance he should publish any of them, you would be famous, Susan, and you need never do this horrible grinding work any more.”
“Oh, miss,” said the poor girl, “you don’t say so!”
“I do say so, Susie; and I suppose I ought to know. Give me the book, dear, at once; don’t keep me, for I haven’t a minute. These are school hours, and I had to pretend I had a headache in order to get away to see you. You must let me manage about your poetry, Susie; and of course you will never tell.”
“Why, miss, is it likely?”
“Well, fetch the book, then.”
Susie crossed the room, went on her knees before an old chest of drawers, and with the colour now high in her wasted cheeks and her light eyes darker with emotion, she presented the treasured book to Annie.