Dido, in a few simple words, frankly told Maggie all that had befallen her since her arrest. She did not omit her rash attempt to commit suicide, and Richard’s timely intervention.
Meanwhile Richard had taken a glance about the little bare room.
A plain, single-board table, covered with a bit of badly worn oilcloth, had been pulled out into the room, and they now sat around it. A little low oil lamp, with a broken chimney—which had been patched with a scrap of paper—was the only light in the room. Dick carefully slipped a paper bill under the newspaper which lay on the table where Margaret had flung it when she came to open the door for them.
A small stove stood close to the wall, and on it was a tin coffee-pot and an iron tea-kettle with a broken spout.
Above the stove was a little shelf, which held some tallow candles in a jar, and some upturned flat-irons.
The bed looked very unsafe and uncomfortable. It was covered with a gayly colored calico patchwork quilt. The patchwork was made in some set pattern, which was unlike anything Richard had ever seen or dreamed of.
Several pieces of as many carpets lay on the floor, and a much worn blanket was hung on two nails over the window, to take the place of a shade or curtain.
Dick’s heart ached at the evident signs of poverty, and a warm instinct of protection possessed him.
“I hope you will allow me to be of some assistance to you,” he said, when the girls, having finished their confessions, became silent. “I think I can, in a few days, assure Miss Dido of a better position than the one she has lost.”
As he spoke, there came a timid knock on the door, and Maggie sprang to open it.