of gray cinders, exhausted night-light, curtained windows, and fragments of the last meal. In each of two cane cribs was sitting up a forlorn child, with loose locks of dishevelled hair, pale thin cheeks glazed with tears, staring eyes, and mouths rounded with amaze at the apparition. One dropped down and hid under the bed-clothes; the other remained transfixed, as her visitor advanced, saying, ‘Well, my dear, you called Mary, and here I am.’
‘Not our own Mary,’ said the child, distrustfully.
‘See if I can’t be your own Mary.’
‘You can’t. You can’t give us our breakfast.’
‘Oh, I am so hungry!’ from the other crib; and both burst into the feeble sobs of exhaustion. Recovering from fever, and still fasting at half-past nine! Mary was aghast, and promised an instant supply.
‘Don’t go;’ and a bird-like little hand seized her on either side. ‘Mary never came to bed, and nobody has been here all the morning, and we can’t bear to be alone.’
‘I was only looking for the bell.’
‘It is of no use; Minna did jump out and ring, but nobody will come.’
Mary made an ineffectual experiment, and then persuaded the children to let her go by assurances of a speedy return. She sped down, brimming over with pity and indignation, to communicate to her father this cruel neglect, and as she passed Henry Ward’s door, and heard several voices, she ventured on a timid summons of ‘papa,’ but, finding it unheard, she perceived that she must act for herself. Going down-stairs, she tried the sitting-room doors, hoping that breakfast might be laid out there, but all were locked; and at last she found her way to the lower regions, guided by voices in eager tones of subdued gossip.
There, in the glow of the huge red fire, stood a well-covered table, surrounded by cook, charwoman, and their cavaliers, discussing a pile of hot-buttered toast, to which the little kitchen-maid was contributing large rounds, toasted at the fire.
Mary’s eyes absolutely flashed, as she said, ‘The children have had no breakfast.’
‘I beg your pardon, ma’am,’ and the cook rose, ‘but it is the nursemaid that takes up the young ladies’ meals.’
Mary did not listen to the rest; she was desperate, and pouncing on the bread with one hand, and the butter with the other, ran away with them to the nursery, set them down, and rushed off for another raid. She found that the commotion she had excited was resulting in the preparation of a tray.
‘I am sure, ma’am, I am very sorry,’ said the cook, insisting on carrying the kettle, ‘but we are in such confusion; and the nursemaid, whose place it is, has been up most of the night with Mr. Leonard, and must have just dropped asleep somewhere, and I was just giving their breakfast to the undertaker’s young men, but I’ll call her directly, ma’am.’
‘Oh, no, on no account. I am sure she ought to sleep,’ said Mary. ‘It was only because I found the little girls quite starving that I came down. I will take care of them now. Don’t wake her, pray. Only I hope,’ and Mary looked beseechingly, ‘that they will have something good for their dinner, poor little things.’
Cook was entirely pacified, and talked about roast chicken, and presently the little sisters were sitting up in their beds, each in her wrapper, being fed by turns with delicately-buttered slices, Mary standing between like a mother-bird feeding her young, and pleased to find the eyes grow brighter and less hollow, the cheeks less wan, the voices less thin and pipy, and a little laugh breaking out when she mistook Minna for Ella.
While tidying the room, she was assailed with entreaties to call their Mary, and let them get up, they were so tired of bed. She undertook to be still their Mary, and made them direct her to the house-maid’s stores, went down on her knees at the embers, and so dealt with matches, chips, and coal, that to her own surprise and pride a fire was evoked.
‘But,’ said Ella, ‘I thought you were a Miss May.’
‘So I am, my dear.’
‘But ladies don’t light fires,’ said Minna, in open-eyed perplexity.
‘Oh,’ exclaimed the younger sister, ‘you know Henry said he did not think any of the Miss Mays were first-rate, and that our Ave beat them all to nothing.’
The elder, Minna, began hushing; and it must be confessed that honest Mary was not superior to a certain crimson flush of indignation, as she held her head into the grate, and thought of Ethel, Flora, and Blanche, criticized by Mr. Henry Ward. Little ungrateful chit! No, it was not a matter of laughing, but of forgiveness; and the assertion of the dignity of usefulness was speedily forgotten in the toilette of the small light skin-and-bone frames, in the course of which she received sundry compliments—’her hands were so nice and soft,’ ‘she did not pull their hair like their own Mary,’ ‘they wished she always dressed them.’
The trying moment was when they asked if they might kneel at her lap for their prayers. To Mary, the twelve years seemed as nothing since her first prayers after the day of terror and bereavement, and her eyes swam with tears as the younger girl unthinkingly rehearsed her wonted formula, and the elder, clinging to her, whispered gravely, ‘Please, what shall I say?’
With full heart, and voice almost unmanageable, Mary prompted the few simple words that had come to her in that hour of sorrow. She looked up, from stooping to the child’s ear, to see her father at the door, gazing at them with face greatly moved. The children greeted him fondly, and he sat down with one on each knee, and caressed them as he looked them well over, drawing out their narration of the wonderful things ‘she’ had done, the fingers pointing to designate who she was. His look at her over his spectacles made Mary’s heart bound and feel compensated for whatever Mr. Henry Ward might say of her. When the children had finished their story, he beckoned her out of the room, promising them that he would not keep her long.
‘Well done, Molly,’ he said smiling, ‘it is well to have daughters good for something. You had better stay with them till that poor maid has had her sleep out, and can come to them.’
‘I should like to stay with them all day, only that Ethel must want me.’
‘You had better go home by dinner-time, that Ethel may get some air. Perhaps I shall want one of you in the evening to be with them at the time of the funeral.’
‘So soon!’
