Her furniture was all her own, too, now; to the kind liberality of Flora Wilton she was indebted for that, and she had, at least, a sovereign by her for an emergency. She had begun to deposit in a Savings Bank already. She had a plan daintily conceived, which involved a fair amount of poetical justice. She had indomitable perseverance, and, if events unforeseen and uncontrollable did not occur, she fully resolved to carry it out. Her room—her one room, for she had only one—was a little picture, so clean, so tidy, so prettily arranged it was. There was her table with its two flaps, so that if she felt lonely and somewhat disposed to turn with liberal hand her economy aside it would accommodate a visitor—ay, actually company.
Then, in addition to her neat set of chairs, there was a sofa, which, by a marvel of mechanical ingenuity was converted at night into a pretty little bedstead. There was upon the floor a neat-patterned carpet. Upon the flowered walls a picture or two, not of much value, but they added to the liveliness of the room.
She had, too, a charming little canary, such a dear tiltle “dick,” which chirruped and sang to her all the long day, looking at her every now and then, and calling “sweet” to her with as knowing an expression in his little bright eye, as if he were that young smart though anky grocer himself round the corner, who never served her with sugar but he gazed upon her as if, like the genuine “barley,” he was a “sweetness long drawn out.”
There were flowers in the window. She was very fond of flowers. She could not afford the more expensive kinds, but as it was, she delighted in tending her geraniums, her mignionette, her fuchsias, and her trained convolvuli.
Altogether, in her eyes, her room was an earthly Paradise. She almost sighed with too much happiness as at times she lifted up her eyes from her work to gaze around.
“Oh, if Charley could only see me here, how happy he would be!” she would often say to herself; and then she would pray with earnest fervour that he might soon be restored to her.
As yet she had not had a visitor. Flora was away in the country. Hal Vivian she had expected to call, if only to say, “How do you do?” but he had never been, and Mrs. Bantom—who had promised to return the visit, which Lotte, full of gratitude and thankfulness to her for her motherly kindness in her distress, had paid—had not yet put in an appearance. Several times when a loud ring came to “her” bell, she ran with a light step and a beating heart down the stairs to answer the door, expecting to see some loved face reward her hopeful anticipations, but it was only “the milk,” or a boy to bring her a fresh supply of work, and take away that which she had done. She would return up to her room with just a little bit of a sigh, and take refuge once more in the sanguine belief that some one would come to see her, and that before long.
She little dreamed all this while that there was “some one” on the look-out to find her—one who was fully as anxious to become a visitor to her as she could be to receive one.
She was all unconscious that her round, attractive face had won the heart of “the heir of the haughty Grahame”—that is, so much of the article as he possessed. Alas! too, like many others of his sex, as far as woman was concerned, his heart greatly resembled a garden-grown cabbage, luxuriant in leaf, but without the solid centre, which was necessary to make it of value to the possessor.
She had no inkling that while she longed for some face, bearing a kind expression, to come shining through her doorway, that a suitor for her—love—was roaming through the more retired of the west-end streets, examining apartments to let, making kind inquiries after imaginary persons of impatient landladies, in the strong hope, that he should at last “come shining through the doorway” to her, as though by the most charming accident in the world.