The next comer was the fat little maid-of-all-work from the butcher's, near by. She was red-haired, with a large goitre over which her afternoon black frock would not quite button. She was hardly worked from early morning, to late evening, and Mrs. Day, ever full of compassion for the weak and oppressed, was kind and gentle to her.
She was generally breathless with hurry and the trouble of the goitre, and
Mrs. Day took no special notice of her panting condition now.
"What for you to-night, Alice?" she asked her.
"It's soap," Alice gasped. "Soap, and matches, and six eggs for the morning's breakfast, and I was to tell you, if you please, as you was to put in seven, steads of six, for one in the last lot was stale. And have you heard, please, there's been an accident with that there Mr. Forcus's tricky horse?"
Mrs. Day's dark eyes gazed at the girl out of a face blanched to the pallor of the dead.
"There have, then! Master, he jus' come in and said so. His horse is kilt; and the groom, he's cut about the face; and your little boy, what he took a ridin' with him, have got his neck broke."
CHAPTER XXV
To Make Reparation
"Of course we must do something for them," Sir Francis said. "The difficulty is to decide what."
He and his sister had followed in their carriage the funeral of Franky Day. Sir Francis had wished, seeing that he must appear there, to appear unobtrusively, but Ada had thought that she also—painful as it was—must be present, and Ada could not go afoot. The Forcus carriage, therefore, had been conspicuous in the meagre procession following the little coffin to the cemetery.