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Its curious content stung the woman walking by her side. What secret of recompense had the poor wretch found? "Your father is here, Lois," she said carelessly, to break the silence. "I saw him at the mill yesterday." Her face kindled instantly. "He's home, Miss Marg'et, yes. An' it's all right wid him.
"He got th' cart fur me, 'n' this blessed old donkey, 'n' my room. Did yoh ever see my room, Miss Marg'et?" Her face lighted suddenly with its peculiar childlike smile. "No? Yoh'll come some day, surely? It's a pore place, yoh'll think; but it's got th' air, th' air." She stopped to breathe the cold morning wind, as if she thought to find in its fierce freshness the life and brains she had lost.
"But Mary is to help with the housework, in return for her board and clothes." "Let her wear a kep an' apron, then, an' eat wi' Marg'et." "Margaret might object," and I laughed at the probable dismay of our stalwart, rough-and-ready five-foot-tenner, should this ladyfied blonde permanently invade her domain. "Hoo lang's she gaun to st'y?" "That's more than I can tell you."
I kind o' grew into that place in them years: seemed to me like as I was part o' th' engines, somehow. Th' air used to be thick in my mouth, black wi' smoke 'n' wool 'n' smells. It 's better now there. I got stunted then, yoh know. 'N' th' air in th' alleys was worse, where we slep'. I think mebbe as 't was then I went wrong in my head. Miss Marg'et!" Her voice went lower.
"Ther' 's places in them alleys 'n' dark holes, Miss Marg'et, like th' openin's to hell, with th' thick smells 'n' th' sights yoh'd see." She went back with a terrible clinging pity to the Gehenna from which she had escaped. The ill of life was real enough to her, a hungry devil down in those alleys and dens.
Miss Marg'et!" Her face flashed. "Well, Lois?" "Th' Master has His people 'mong them very lowest, that's not for such as yoh to speak to. He knows 'em: men 'n' women starved 'n' drunk into jails 'n' work-houses, that'd scorn to be cowardly or mean, that shows God's kindness, through th' whiskey 'n' thievin', to th' orphints or such as me.
I had to take back to town the train by which she had come out, but she made the most of her time. "There's been great doin's in yer hoose in yer absence. Marg'et 's been tellin' yer sister's servant a' aboot Mary's luv affairs. Mary tell't her 'at Eesabelle bade her write Willum Axworthy an' spier his intentions; that if she didna, Mrs.
"But the mill," Margaret recalled her. "Th' mill, yes. There was three of us, father 'n' mother 'n' me, 'n' pay was poor. They said times was hard. They was hard times, Miss Marg'et!" she said, with a nervous laugh, the brown eyes strangely wandering. "Yes, hard," she soothed her, gently. "Pay was poor, 'n' many things tuk money."
'Fore I went in, I had the rickets, they say: that's what ails me. 'T hurt my head, they've told me, made me different frum other folks." She stopped a moment, with a dumb, hungry look in her eyes. After a while she looked at Margret furtively, with a pitiful eagerness. "Miss Marg'et, I think there BE something wrong in my head. Did YOH ever notice it?"
"He got th' cart fur me, 'n' this blessed old donkey, 'n' my room. Did yoh ever see my room, Miss Marg'et?" Her face lighted suddenly with its peculiar childlike smile. "No? Yoh'll come some day, surely? It's a pore place, yoh'll think; but it's got th' air, th' air." She stopped to breathe the cold morning wind, as if she thought to find in its fierce freshness the life and brains she had lost.
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