"I should like to, very much," said Miss Patch, "but I have rheumatism in my knee to-day, and I can't get up and down stairs very well. Perhaps, though," she added, with sudden thought, "you will help me?"
"Oh yes," said Jessie, advancing further into the room, "I would like to if I can. What shall I do?"
"I will ask you to let me lean on your shoulder a little, that is all, dear. But will you wait just a moment while I finish preparing the potatoes for my dinner?"
"Oh yes. I will wait, and—and—I'd like to help you," said Jessie, half eager, half shy. "Thank you, dear, but I've nearly done, and it isn't worth while for you to wet your hands. Sit down instead and talk to me. I heard that Mrs. Lang was having a little daughter to help her, and I have been hoping I should see you—but I haven't even heard your name yet!"
"It is Jessie."
"Oh, is it. I am very glad, for I had a dear little pupil once called by that name, and I have been fond of it ever since. She was really, though, christened 'Jessica.'"
"I am only called Jessie. I was christened Jessamine May," explained Jessie seriously. "Grandfather has got a jessamine growing all over the front of his house, and he has ever such beautiful red may-trees in the garden. They were there when mother was a little girl, and she loved them so dearly she called me after them, to keep her in mind of home."
"What a pretty name," said Miss Patch gently, "and what a beautiful thought. You are a little bit of a sweet garden transplanted into the midst of a dingy street to brighten us up, and bring beautiful and fragrant things to our minds. Jessamine and may blossom," she repeated softly; "oh, the picture it calls up, and the sweet fragrance! I seem to see them and to smell them, even here! I am ready now, little Jessamine May; shall we go to Charlie?"
Jessie sprang to her feet. "I think yours is such a pretty room," she said half timidly; and then her eye falling on a rose-bush in Miss Patch's window, all her timidity vanished, and she sprang towards it with a cry of mingled pleasure and pain.
"Oh, you have a rose-bush, too!" she cried eagerly. "I had one at granp's, and I loved it so." The quivering of her lips prevented her saying more, and the tears in her eyes made the rose-bush look all misty and dim.