"For herself, she knew that 'when time shall be no more,' she should find eternal peace."
There was a quick, gasping sob, and Clemence looked up, as she finished, to see a little figure in faded blue calico, flying frantically down the road.
"Which of the scholars left?" she asked.
"Only Ruth Lynn," said Maurice Wayne. "Her father used to drink, and fell in the mill pond about a year ago, and got drowned. Her mother's sick, too, and Dr. Little says she can't live, and has give up goin' to see her any longer, 'cause she can't pay. He's stingy mean to do it, for he goes twice a day to see that spiteful old Mrs. March, and I'm sure she can't live, for ma said yesterday that all her money couldn't save her. When I grow up, I'm going to be a doctor, and I'll look after every poor person twice as good as I will a rich one. That's what I'll do."
"I did not know before that Ruth's mother was so very ill," said Clemence. "I must go and see her."
She forgot it again, though, until about a week after, when the roll was called, and she marked again "absent" after Ruth's name, as she had already done several times before.
"She can't come any more," said Maurice, "her mother's worse, and they say she won't live much longer."
Clemence felt conscience-stricken at having forgotten her, and set out for the little one-roomed cabin directly after school was dismissed.
She found the direst poverty and wretchedness. A dark-haired, strong-featured woman lay on a couch under a window, where there was scarcely a whole pane of glass, and which was stuffed full of rags to keep out the draught. A stove, at which a frowsy neighbor was cooking some fat slices of pork, for the sick woman, filled the apartment with stifling heat and greasy odors.
"There's the schoolma'am," she heard in a loud whisper, as she paused for a moment upon the threshold. The invalid tried to raise herself, and gave a look of dismay at the squalid scene. Poor Mrs. Lynn had been a noted housekeeper, in her days of prosperity, and even at her greatest need, nobody could ever call her neglectful, either of her house or little Ruth, who, though always poorly clad, looked clean and wholesome. Clemence read the whole at a glance.