"Poor Myra, can't you get to sleep?"
"It is so fearfully cold," was the reply; "and when will you have done, and come to bed?"
"One quarter of an hour more, and I shall have finished it. Poor Myra, you are so nervous, you never can get to sleep till all is shut up—but have patience, dear, one little quarter of an hour, and then I will throw my clothes over your feet, and I hope you will be a little warmer."
A sigh for all answer; and then the true heroine—for she was extremely beautiful, or rather had been, poor thing, for she was too wan and wasted to be beautiful now—lifted up her head, from which fell a profusion of the fairest hair in the world, and leaning her head upon her arm, watched in a sort of impatient patience the progress of the indefatigable needle-woman.
"One o'clock striking, and you hav'n't done yet, Lettice? how slowly you do get on."
"I can not work fast and neatly too, dear Myra. I can not get through as some do—I wish I could. But my hands are not so delicate and nimble as yours, such swelled clumsy things," she said, laughing a little, as she looked at them—swelled, indeed, and all mottled over with the cold! "I can not get over the ground nimbly and well at the same time. You are a fine race-horse, I am a poor little drudging pony—but I will make as much haste as I possibly can."
Myra once more uttered an impatient, fretful sigh, and sank down again, saying, "My feet are so dreadfully cold!"
"Take this bit of flannel then, and let me wrap them up."
"Nay, but you will want it."
"Oh, I have only five minutes more to stay, and I can wrap the carpet round my feet."