"Trouble, child! What trouble? Has anything gone wrong with you?"
The manner in which this inquiry was made, aroused her, and she said quickly and with feeling:
"Wrong with me? O no, ma'am!"
"But you are in trouble, Polly."
"Not for myself, ma'am—not for myself," was her earnest reply.
"For whom, then, Polly?"
The girl did not answer for some moments. Then with a long, deep sigh, she said:
"You never saw my brother Tom, ma'am. Oh, he was such a nice boy, and I was so fond of him! He had a hard place where he worked, and they paid him so little that, poor fellow! if I hadn't spent half my wages on him, he'd never have looked fit to be seen among folks. When he was eighteen he seemed to me perfect. He was so good and kind. But—" and the girl's voice almost broke down—"somehow, he began to change after that. I think he fell into bad company. Oh, ma'am! It seemed as if it would have killed me the first time I found that he had been drinking, and was not himself. I cried all night for two or three nights. When we met again I tried to talk with Tom about it, but he wouldn't hear a word, and, for the first time in his life, got angry with his sister.
"It has been going on from bad, to worse ever since, and I've almost given up hope."
"He's several years younger than you are, Polly."