Sometimes an organ-grinder would come into the street and begin playing a melancholy tune. Somehow street organs generally do play melancholy tunes—which the children loved to hear, although it made them feel sad without knowing why. Matthew the while used to fling down his pen, and running his thin fingers through his hair, walk up and down the room with an angry frown, incapable of doing anything until the last note had died away, and often obliged to work late in consequence of the interruption thus occasioned.
The whispering of the children never seemed to disturb him. So good and quiet were they, indeed, that he frequently even forgot that they were in the room. But their mother never did.
Poor loving mother! God only knows the sorrowful thoughts that filled her mind at those times, and that not because she told Him—it would have comforted her if she had—but because He knoweth the secret of all hearts.
Day after day, night after night, week after week, month after month, it was the same thing over and over again. The same weary toil, the same writing, page after page, and sheet after sheet. The same hemming, and sewing, and frilling little dainty garments for other people's children to wear. The same long silent evenings in that large shadow-haunted room. The same melancholy organ coming and going. The same stir of human life in the street below, and on the stairs without, surging on but never coming near them. The same grand theme of conversation, of which the whispering children never seemed to tire. The same ceaseless, prayerless struggle constantly going on in the parents' hearts and lives.
The evening of which we are about to write was nevertheless an eventful one to Polly and Bessie. The fire had burned low in the wide grate, and the room looked gloomy enough as Mrs. Reardon rose to mend it, using her fingers for that purpose, in order not to make more noise than she could possibly help, for fear of disturbing her husband.
It was a pleasant sight to the children to watch the bright flames leaping and dancing up the chimney, as their mother stirred the fire into a cheerful blaze; after which she washed her hands, and having carefully snuffed the candle, pushing it a little nearer to her husband, and a little farther from herself as she did so, quietly resumed her needlework.
A long silence ensued, so long that the flames had finished their dance and vanished, and the fire was nearly gone, too, before Mrs. Reardon moved again.
"Have you much more to do to-night, Matthew?" asked she.
"Not much," replied her husband, without looking up.
"Is it worth while to put on more coals?"