A Red Wallflower

by Susan Warner

'She has no means to pay anybody to take care of her.'

'But how does she live?—if she cannot do anything for herself.'

'She can do nothing at all for herself. She has been dependent on the kindness of her neighbours. They are poor, too, and have their hands full; still, from time to time one and another would look in upon her, light a fire for her, and give her something to eat; that is, when they did not forget it.'

'And what if they did forget it?'

'Then she must wait till somebody remembered; wait perhaps days, to get her bed made; lie alone in her pain all day, except for those rare visits; and even have to hire a boy with a penny to bring her a pitcher of water; lie alone all night and wait in the morning till somebody could give her her breakfast.'

'Why do you tell me all this, Mr. Pitt?' said Betty, facing round on him.

'Ask me that by and by. Come a little farther. Here, in this next house but one, there is a man sick with rheumatism—in a fever; when I first saw him he was lying there shivering and in great pain, with no fire; and his daughter, a girl of perhaps a dozen years old, was trying to light a fire with a few splinters of sticks that she had picked up. That was last winter, in cold weather. They were poverty-stricken, since the man had been some time out of work.'

'Well?' said Betty. 'I must not repeat my question, but what is all this to me? I have no power to help them. Do you know these people yourself?'

'Yes, I know them. In the last house of the row there is another old woman I want to tell you of; and then we will go. She is not ill, nor disabled; she is only very old and quite alone. She is not unhappy either, for she is a true old Christian. But think of this: in the room which she occupies, which is half underground, there is just one hour in the day when a sunbeam can find entrance. For that hour she watches; and when the sky is not clouded, and it comes, she takes her Bible and holds it in the sunshine to read for that blessed hour. It is all she has in the twenty-four. The rest of the time she must only think of what she has read; the place is too dark for any more.'

'Do let us go!' said Betty; and she turned, and almost fled back to the alley, and through the alley back to the street. There they walked more moderately a space of some rods before she found breath and words. She faced round on her conductor again.