My little maid’s countenance fell as she replied, “By the doctor’s shop, miss.” For Charley wore her black frock yet.
I asked if the brickmaker’s wife were ill, but Charley said no. It was someone else. Someone in her cottage who had tramped down to Saint Albans and was tramping he didn’t know where. A poor boy, Charley said. No father, no mother, no anyone. “Like as Tom might have been, miss, if Emma and me had died after father,” said Charley, her round eyes filling with tears.
“And she was getting medicine for him, Charley?”
“She said, miss,” returned Charley, “how that he had once done as much for her.”
My little maid’s face was so eager and her quiet hands were folded so closely in one another as she stood looking at me that I had no great difficulty in reading her thoughts. “Well, Charley,” said I, “it appears to me that you and I can do no better than go round to Jenny’s and see what’s the matter.”
The alacrity with which Charley brought my bonnet and veil, and having dressed me, quaintly pinned herself into her warm shawl and made herself look like a little old woman, sufficiently expressed her readiness. So Charley and I, without saying anything to anyone, went out.
It was a cold, wild night, and the trees shuddered in the wind. The rain had been thick and heavy all day, and with little intermission for many days. None was falling just then, however. The sky had partly cleared, but was very gloomy—even above us, where a few stars were shining. In the north and northwest, where the sun had set three hours before, there was a pale dead light both beautiful and awful; and into it long sullen lines of cloud waved up like a sea stricken immovable as it was heaving.