She followed him in, and looked round the bedroom, with renewed admiration of everything that she saw. At the sight of the hairbrushes and the comb, she clapped her hands in ecstasy. “Oh, how different from mine!” she exclaimed. “Is the comb tortoise-shell, sir, like one sees in the shop-windows?” The bath and the towels attracted her next; she stood, looking at them with longing eyes, completely forgetful of the wonderful comb. “I’ve often peeped into the ironmongers’ shops,” she said, “and thought I should be the happiest girl in the world, if I had such a bath as that. A little pitcher is all I have got of my own, and they swear at me when I want it filled more than once. In all my life, I have never had as much water as I should like.” She paused, and thought for a moment. The forlorn, vacant look appeared again, and dimmed the beauty of her blue eyes. “It will be hard to go back, after seeing all these pretty things,” she said to herself—and sighed, with that inborn submission to her fate so melancholy to see in a creature so young.
“You shall never go back again to that dreadful life,” Amelius interposed. “Never speak of it, never think of it any more. Oh, don’t look at me like that!”
She was listening with an expression of pain, and with both her hands lifted to her head. There was something so wonderful in the idea which he had suggested to her, that her mind was not able to take it all in at once. “You make my head giddy,” she said. “I’m such a poor stupid girl—I feel out of myself, like, when a gentleman like you sets me thinking of new things. Would you mind saying it again, sir?”
“I’ll say it to-morrow morning,” Amelius rejoined kindly. “You are tired, Sally—go to rest.”
She roused herself, and looked at the bed. “Is that your bed, sir?”
“It’s your bed to-night,” said Amelius. “I shall sleep on the sofa, in the next room.”
Her eyes rested on him, for a moment, in speechless surprise; she looked back again at the bed. “Are you going to leave me by myself?” she asked wonderingly. Not the faintest suggestion of immodesty—nothing that the most profligate man living could have interpreted impurely—showed itself in her look or manner, as she said those words.
Amelius thought of what one of her women-friends had told him. “She hasn’t grown up, you know, in her mind, since she was a child.” There were other senses in the poor victim that were still undeveloped, besides the mental sense. He was at a loss how to answer her, with the respect which was due to that all-atoning ignorance. His silence amazed and frightened her.
“Have I said anything to make you angry with me?” she asked.
Amelius hesitated no longer. “My poor girl,” he said, “I pity you from the bottom of my heart! Sleep well, Simple Sally—sleep well.” He left her hurriedly, and shut the door between them.