At the sight of a stranger one of the heads turned toward him and a little voice said:
“Ma’s out washin’, she is, and won’t be home till night.”
There was a cold, heavy feeling of disappointment settling round Frederic’s heart, for nothing there seemed at all like what he remembered of the neat, tidy Mrs. Merton, but he nerved himself to ask:
“What is your mother’s name?”
“Bunce, and my pa is in the Tombs,” was the reply.
“How long have you lived here?” was the next question, asked with a colder, heavier heart.
“Next Christmas a year,” said the little girl, and catching Frederic’s arm, Alice whispered,
“Do let’s go out into the open air.”
But Frederic did not move—there was a spell upon him, and for several moments it kept him there in the very room where Marian had wept so many tears for him, and where, in her desolation, she had asked that she might die when the greatest sorrow she had ever known came upon her—the sorrow brought by Isabel’s cruel letter. There close to where he stood was the door of the little room where for weeks and months she had lain, tossing in her feverish pain, while over her Ben Burt kept his tireless watch, nor asked for greater reward than to know that she would live. And was there nothing to tell him of all this—nothing to whisper that the one he sought had been there once, but was waiting for him now in his own home! No, there was nothing but dark, cheerless poverty staring him in the face, and with a sigh he turned away, and knocking at other doors, asked for the former occupants of those front rooms. Nearly all the present tenants had moved there since Mrs. Burt’s death, and none knew aught of her save one rather decent-looking woman, who said “she remembered the folks well, though they held their heads above the likes of her. She’d seen them comin’ in and out and had peeked into their room, so she knew they was well to do.”
“Was their name Merton? and did a young girl live with, them?” asked Frederic; and the woman replied: