"No, oh, no. I love you very dearly," Anna replied, her tears falling
like rain upon the slight form she hugged so passionately to her, and
which she would willingly have borne in her arms the remainder of
their way, as a kind of penance for her past misdeeds; but Lucy was
much better, she said, and so the two, between whom there was now a
bond of love which nothing could sever, went on together to the low,
dismal house where the Widow Hobbs lived.
The gate was off the hinges, and Lucy's muslin was torn upon a nail
as she passed through, while the long fringe of her fleecy shawl was
caught in the tall tufts of thistle growing by the path. In a muddy
pool of water a few rods from the house a flock of ducks were
swimming, pelted occasionally by the group of dirty, ragged children
playing on the grass, and who at sight of the strangers and the basket
Anna carried, sprang up like a flock of pigeons and came trooping
towards her. It was not the sweet, pastoral scene which Lucy had
pictured to herself, with Arthur for the background, and her ardor was
greatly dampened even before the threshold was crossed, and she stood
in the low, close room where the sick woman lay, her large eyes
unnaturally bright, and turned wistfully upon them as she entered.
There were ashes upon the hearth and ashes upon the floor, a
hair-brush upon the table and an empty plate upon the chair, with
swarms of flies sipping the few drops of molasses and feeding upon the
crumbs of bread left there by the elfish-looking child now in the bed
beside its mother. There was nothing but poverty--squalid, disgusting
poverty--visible everywhere, and Lucy grew sick and faint at the, to
her, unusual sight.
"They have not lived here long. We only found them three weeks ago;
they will look better by and by," Anna whispered, feeling that some
apology was necessary for the destitution and filth visible
everywhere.
Daintily removing the plate to the table, and carefully tucking up her
skirts, Lucy sat down upon the wooden chair and looked dubiously on
while Anna made the sick woman more tidy in appearance, and then fed
her from the basket of provisions which Grandma Humphreys had sent.
"I never could do that," Lucy thought, as, shoving off the little
dirty hand fingering her shoulder-knots she watched Anna washing the
poor woman's face, bending over her pillow as unhesitatingly as if it
had been covered with ruffled linen like those at Prospect Hill,
instead of the coarse, soiled rag which hardly deserved the name of
pillow-case. "No, I never could do that," and the possible life with
Arthur which the maiden had more than once imagined began to look very
dreary, when, suddenly, a shadow darkened the door, and Lucy knew
before she turned her head that the rector was standing at her back,
the blood tingling through her veins with a delicious feeling; as,
laying both hands upon her shoulders, and bending over her so that she
felt his breath upon her brow he said: "What, my Lady Lucy here? I hardly expected to find two ministering
angels, though I was almost sure of one," and his fine eyes rested on
Anna with a strange, wistful look of tenderness, which neither she nor
Lucy saw.