CHAPTER X.
ATHALIA, THE SEWING GIRL.
"It is their husbands' fault, if wives do fall."
"The weakest goes to the wall."
Walter came down on the train with the Grundys. They urged him to "abandon his folly, and go home with them." They little thought they had no home to go to themselves. He said, no; she was his wife, and he never would leave her. He thought so then. If he had left the bottle, he never would.
"Where shall we go, Athalia?"
"Come with me; I have a home."
So he went to her little room in Broome street. The door was fast, and the room dark. She rapped, and was soon answered by Jeannette's voice:
"Who is there?"
"It is me."
What a world of meaning is in those three little words. How the memory of many a wife will wander back into other days, when she heard a midnight rap, and putting her head out of the chamber window, where she had been "making a frock and rocking the cradle" all the early part of the night; and how her heart palpitates at the answer to her half spoken, half whispered question, "Who is there?"