“I was all right so far as the lawyer ever knew,” Jessie answered. “An’ as for the minister, he sipped his drappie too, an’ he never saw me the waur o’ mine, which is mair than I can say o’ him.”
“Hush, Jessie,” said Mrs. Challoner. “But how could you do your duty to your aged mistress if you got into such a state as you were yesterday?”
“I never did that till I went to live with that woman there,” she answered, turning on the cousin with ill-repressed fury. “When they asked me up to London they knew I’d got my nice little legacy. She wouldn’t have let her husband invite me but for that!” she interpolated bitterly. “And they didn’t want me to go till it was all spent, at least she didn’t!” she said, with an acrimonious emphasis on the feminine pronoun. “And she used to treat me plentiful, an’ me just pinin’ with loneliness and homesickness; and then when my money was gone there I was, an’ she run me into debt, and turned up here and bullied my first month’s wages out of me, an’ when you came down on Christmas Eve, like an angel, and put my next month’s wages into my hand, thinks I to myself, somebody’ll turn up to-morrow and get it all away, an’ I thought I’d just run out and buy myself something in case I got a cold, or was too low to get well through my cooking, and then somehow that picture that hangs on the kitchen wall (‘The Empty Chair,’ m’m, it’s called) was just too much for my spirits, and I took a drop and lost my reckoning, and there it was! Oh, m’m, may you never know what it is to be a poor widow-woman!”
How much was merely maudlin, or how much was the incoherent cry of a weak soul that had lost itself in loneliness and neglect, Lucy could not decide. It was possibly less the woman’s words than the chord of Lucy’s own life which they reached, that brought tears to Lucy’s eyes.
“I’m not asking you to give me another trial, m’m,” went on the miserable creature, in a tone which yet had something of a forlorn hope in it.
Lucy could not answer, but her head gave a half-involuntary shake.
“I’m not asking you to give me another trial, m’m,” she repeated. “It’s not for the likes o’ you. I see well enough what your life’s got to be, and you’ve quite enough to do for yourself and the dear little master.”
“Oh, Mrs. Morison,” cried Lucy earnestly, “won’t you make an effort to put this evil thing away? Though you must go out of this house, I will do all I can to help you. I will try to get you into a Home, where they will take care of you and help you to do right.”
Mrs. Morison did not answer at once. Perhaps a good impulse and an evil habit contended within her. The habit conquered, as alas! a habit generally does.
“I don’t need to go into a Home,” she said, with a soft stubbornness. “I’ve just got to make up my mind to keep right. I don’t believe in Homes. I’ve been, in a way, my own mistress all my life, being so much trusted. If I take myself in hand, that’ll do.”