"Will you please give the kind lady this?" she asked, in a pleading tone. "When I was down with fever, she brought me a beautiful bush all covered with flowers, and she told me how to water it, and put it in the sun. This flower came out last night. There are no more, or I would have brought them. She's been ever so good to mammy and me."
There were tears in her voice as she spoke, and the listener, grumbling under his breath at his own folly, put up his finger to prevent a tear from falling from his own eye.
"What's your name?" asked the woman at the door.
"Nanny Morse,—she'll know."
"Well, I'll see that she has it,—if it's only to hold in her poor, unconscious fingers," she added, as the child, after an earnest "Thank you, ma'am," turned away.
Mr. Lambert afterwards confessed that he felt like throwing his costly flowers into the street. He did not, however; he rang the bell, delivered them to James, the servant in waiting, received the sadly spoken message, "No change, sir," and then hurried away, muttering,—
"World upside down; just my luck; only girl in all the crowd worth that," snapping his finger; "and she going—"
He stopped suddenly at sight of the little flower-girl again.
She was talking to a disreputably dressed lad, who, with a rimless cap stuck on one side of his head, was evidently annoyed at the detention.
"Don't go, Jack. 'T would grieve her, even in heaven, if she knew you'd turn back to the bad after all she's done for yer."