“I don’t know that she has always been very kind,” Sara Wharton answered thoughtfully. “Now shut that window behind you; I don’t want you to sit in a draft; and the fresh air has driven out the perfumery. Why do you use perfumery, Nellie? Nice girls don’t.”
The girl looked at her blankly.
“Yes; your aunt told me about you. She told me how she had taken care of you ever since your mother died; and how she had sent you to school, and bought pretty dresses for you, and done the housework herself so that you shouldn’t spoil your hands; and how she took in washing so that you might go to dancing-school. She loved you very much, Nellie; but I am not sure that she was kind. Perhaps if you had had to work you wouldn’t have come to this dreadful house, and brought shame and disgrace to Mrs. Sherman. You’ve broken her heart, Nellie.”
The girl’s face paled and flushed; and then quivered suddenly into a storm of tears.
“I don’t like it here. But I can’t help it. I lost my place in the shop. I was late, and they discharged me. And I was afraid to go home and tell my aunt, she jaws at me so. That was four weeks ago. It was the third place I’d lost. So I—came here. I don’t like it. I was just crying when you came in!” She squeezed her handkerchief into a damp ball and pressed it against her eyes, sobbing. “The woman is so cross. And—and I owe her for board.”
Sara was silent.
“But there ain’t anything I can do; I’d die rather than go back to my aunt’s. She’d never forgive me. I don’t blame her. But I don’t like it here.”
“Perhaps your aunt will forgive you?” Sara said gently. Nellie rocked back and forth, sobbing.
“I’m too wicked,” she recited; her eyes roved over Sara’s dark dress, and inspected her pretty little bonnet, and dwelt on the glitter of an amethyst pin at her throat. “Oh, dear, I wish I hadn’t; I wish I was dead,” she said helplessly.