"Please, please, Malcolm, do not say any more; it was very wrong of nurse to put these ideas in your head. You know mother spoke to Dr. Armstrong, and he is giving me a tonic; he says I must go out more, so mother is trying to spare me all she can."
"And the headaches are better?" Malcolm looked at her quite sternly as he put the question.
"Yes, I think so—I hope so," rather hesitatingly, for Anna was absolutely truthful. "I still feel rather stupid of an evening; but mother is so good, she lets me go to bed early."
She sighed rather heavily. "I wish I were stronger, Malcolm. Nurse says I have never been robust. I do so love to help mother. I always feel as though I can never do enough to show my gratitude to her. What would have become of me when my parents died if she had not brought me here. We were so dreadfully poor, and had so few friends. Oh Malcolm, think of it," and then she whispered in his ear, "they would have taken me to the workhouse—there was nothing else."
"Nonsense—rubbish," began Malcolm wrathfully; but Anna put her hand upon his lips.
"No, dear, not nonsense. I am telling you the sober truth—mother would endorse it. Do you think I do not owe her a life's service and love for all her dear care of me!"
"If I am tired, I glory in my fatigue, for it is for my adopted mother and her poor that I am working;" and Anna's eyes were very soft and bright. "Malcolm, you have no idea how much happier she is now I share her work. I know she never complained of her loneliness—it is not her way to complain—but she has missed Florence so terribly. We talk of her sometimes, mother and I," continued the girl thoughtfully, "and she tells me what a sweet daughter she would have been, and how we should have been sisters. It is so dear of her never to exclude me, even when she is thinking and talking of Florence. 'If my little girl had lived,' she said once, 'I should have had two daughters.'"
Malcolm had to hold his tongue at last, but he grumbled freely to Nurse Dawson. In her he had a staunch ally; the old woman was devoted to Anna, and by no means sided with her mistress.
"You see it is just this way, Mr. Malcolm, my dear," she said to him once; "the mistress, bless her heart, thinks of nothing but them charitable societies, from morning till night; they are more to her than meat or drink or rest. She is as strong as a horse, and so she is never tired like other folks. Why, my dear, I have known her spend a whole day going from one meeting to another, speechifying and reading reports, and yet when I have gone up to dress her in the evening she has been as fresh as paint. She is made of cast-iron, that's my belief," continued Dawson, who secretly adored her mistress; "but cast-iron is one thing and a fragile blossom like Miss Anna is another, as I made bold to tell my mistress the other day; 'for it stands to reason, ma'am,' I said to her, 'that a young creature like Miss Anna is not seasoned and toughened like a lady of your age, and I never did think much of her constitution.'"
"And what did my mother say to that, Dawson?"