n's
quick eye saw, with both pity and disapproval, that the girl was
unsuitably arrayed for housework in a light cloth dress, which was
necessarily stained and spotted.

"She had on no apron," she told her son that night. "I don't suppose
the poor child owns one, and of course she could not help getting her
dress spotted. Her little hands were clean, though, and I think she
tries hard. The parlor was all in a whirl of dust. She had just been
sweeping, and flirting her broom as people always do who don't know
how to sweep. The poor child's hair was white with dust, and I sat
down in a heap of it, with my best black silk dress, but of course I
wouldn't have seemed to notice it for anything. I brushed it off when
I got in the carriage. I said, 'You are doing your work?' And she
said, 'Yes, Mrs. Anderson.' She laughed, but she looked sort of
pitiful. The poor little thing is tired. She isn't cut out for such
work. I said her hands and arms didn't look as if she could sweep
very easily, but she bristled right up and said she was very strong,
very much stronger than she looked, and papa wanted to get a maid for
her, but she preferred doing without one. She wanted the exercise.
The way she said _preferred!_ I didn't try to pity her any more, for
that. Randolph--"

"What is it, mother?"

"How much has that child seen of you?"

"Not so very much, mother. Why?"

"I think she thinks a great deal about you."

"Nonsense, mother!" Anderson said. It was after tea that night, and
the mother and son sat together in the sitting-room. They had a fire
on the hearth, and it looked very pleasant. Mrs. Anderson had a fine
white apron over her best black silk, and she sat one side of the
table, knitting. Anderson was smoking and reading the evening paper
on the other. He continued to smoke and apparently to read after his
mother made that statement with regard to Charlotte. She looked at
him and knew perfectly well that he was not comprehending anything he
read.

"She is a very sweet girl," she said, presently, in an inscrutable
voice. "I don't like her family, and I must say I think her father,
from what I hear, almost ought to be in prison, but I don't think
that child is to blame."

"Of course not," said Anderson. He turned his paper with an air of
pretended abstraction.

"She says she thinks her father will leave Banbridge before long,"
said Mrs. Anderson, further.

Her son made no response. She sat thinking how, if Carroll