The next day, about the middle of the afternoon, a light step crossed the shed, and the great door opening gently, in walked Miss Alice Humphreys. The room was all "redd up," and Miss Fortune and her mother sat there at work; one picking over white beans at the table, the other in her usual seat by the fire, and at her usual employment, which was knitting. Alice came forward and asked the old lady how she did.
"Pretty well! oh!, pretty well!" she answered, with the look of bland good-humour her face almost always wore "and glad to see you, dear. Take a chair."
Alice did so, quite aware that the other person in the room was not glad to see her.
"And how goes the world with you, Miss Fortune?"
"Humph! it's a queer kind of world, I think," answered that lady, drily, sweeping some of the picked beans into her pan: "I get a'most sick of it, sometimes."
"Why, what's the matter?" said Alice, pleasantly; "may I ask?
Has anything happened to trouble you?"
"Oh, no!" said the other, somewhat impatiently; "nothing that's any matter to anyone but myself; it's no use speaking about it."
"Ah! Fortune never would take the world easy," said the old woman, shaking her head from side to side; "never would; I never could get her to."
"Now, do hush, mother, will you!" said the daughter, turning round upon her with startling sharpness of look and tone; " 'take the world easy!' you always did; I am glad I ain't like you."
"I don't think it's a bad way, after all," said Alice; "what's the use of taking it hard, Miss Fortune?"