"What, can you write?"
"Oh yes, sir, before we got so poor, I used to go to school. I would like to go now, but I have no time. You ought to see my mother write; she can write so pretty."
I saw what was working in the benevolent old gentleman's face, while Stella was writing. He had heard her say, "I would like to go to school now," and he was resolving in his mind, "Why not? Why should I not send her there? I have none of my own to send." It was a good resolve.
"There, that is it. 'Mrs. Athalia Morgan, at Mrs. Laylor's in H——n street.' I don't recollect the number, but you can find it easy enough; mother says it does seem as though the evil one always stood ready to lead folks to such houses. But you had better inquire for Lucy Smith. They don't know her by any other name there. Shall I go now? Good night. I am so anxious to tell mother."
"Athalia!—Athalia!" said my friend, as he spelt over the name on the card. "Athalia! oh, pshaw! that is nonsense, yet it might be—why not? I say, my little girl, you knew her before she was married. What was her name then?"
"And what is that, 'why not,' and what about that name? The little girl is well on her way home, by this time, if she kept on at the speed she went down stairs. Her earnestness makes me begin to feel a good deal interested in that woman."
"Nothing, only a thought, a mere passing thought, and yet I cannot shake it off. It is rather an unusual name. I had a brother—yes, I had a brother, whether I have or not now, I cannot tell; yet he was not exactly a brother either, though we called the same woman mother, and the same man father, and whether he is living now or not I cannot say, but think not. He did very badly, drank up all his property, and took the usual course, and I suppose he is dead, and his wife too, and then his children are orphans, and why not this be one of them; it is the same name. Athalia—it is not a common name; if it had been I should not remember it, for I never saw her but once, then a little girl not as big as this one just here. I wish she had not run away so soon, before I could ask her a single question. What shall I do now?"
"Go and ask Athalia herself."
"What! to-night? It is now ten o'clock, time all respectable citizens were in bed. It is too late."
"No, it is never too late to begin to do good. It is just the hour that the lives of the inmates of such houses, as we propose to visit, begin. From this till one or two o'clock, drinking, carousing, swearing, and all sorts of revelry and debauchery, and then——it is well that night has curtains. Now this house where we are to go, however, I take, from its location, to be one of a different character, one that maintains a show of respectability, yet is one of the most dangerous, for its victims are drawn from among a class just as good as Stella has described Mrs. Morgan."