“Oh, madam!” said Anne, “you are too good to us, indeed—too good! and if you could but see into our hearts, you would know that we are not ungrateful.”
“I am sure that is what you never will be, my dear,” said the old lady; “at least such is my opinion of you.”
“Thank you, ma’am! thank you, from the bottom of my heart!—We should all have been starved, if it had not been for you. And it is owing to you that we are so happy now—quite different creatures from what we were.”
“Quite a different creature indeed, you look, child, from what you did the first day I saw you. To-morrow my own maid goes, and you may come at ten o’clock; and I hope we shall agree very well together—you’ll find me an easy mistress, and I make no doubt I shall always find you the good, grateful girl you seem to be.”
Anne was impatient for the moment when she was to enter into the service of her benefactress; and she lay awake half the night, considering how she should ever be able to show sufficient gratitude. As Mrs. Carver had often expressed her desire to have Anne look neat and smart, she dressed herself as well as she possibly could; and when her poor father and mother took leave of her, they could not help observing, as Mrs. Carver had done the day before, that “Anne looked quite a different creature from what she was a few weeks ago.” She was, indeed, an extremely pretty girl; but we need not stop to relate all the fond praises that were bestowed upon her beauty by her partial parents. Her little brother John was not at home when she was going away; he was at a carpenter’s shop in the neighbourhood mending a wheelbarrow, which belonged to that good-natured orange-woman who gave him the orange for his father. Anne called at the carpenter’s shop to take leave of her brother. The woman was there waiting for her barrow—she looked earnestly at Anne when she entered, and then whispered to the boy, “Is that your sister?”—“Yes,” said the boy, “and as good a sister she is as ever was born.”
“Maybe so,” said the woman; “but she is not likely to be good for much long, in the way she is going on now.”
“What way—what do you mean?” said Anne, colouring violently.
“Oh, you understand me well enough, though you look so innocent.”
“I do not understand you in the least.”
“No!—Why, is not it you that I see going almost every day to that house in Chiswell-street?”