, timidly and
softly; then there was the same sweet, earnest, pleading voice with
which she had spoken to me. In the intervals of my own conversation, I
overheard one or two sentences. I heard her telling of the sermon she
had heard, which seemed to have made a great impression on her mind; and
then I heard her say:

'I'm sure if it had been mother's house that had been burnt down, and
you had heard how father and mother and me and my brothers and sisters
had no house, nor furniture, nor clothes, you would have done what you
could to help us; now, wouldn't you? And you know it's just the same
thing, only it's you and your children instead of mother and us that's
in trouble; and you needn't mind taking a little help when you would
willingly have given it.'

'And that's true,' I heard the widow reply, in a tone of greater
interest than I had yet known her speak.

Her hostess looked at me, and said low, 'Them's the first words she has
spoken in her own natural voice since her trouble.'

Jane continued, not aware that we were listening to her now:

'I've often heard father say it's no disgrace to be ever so poor, and to
get help from others, when it comes on us from God's hand, and not
because we are idle and won't work. Many a time he says that, when he is
ill and can't work, and mother gets downhearted, and thinks we'll have
to come on the parish; and he says even going on the parish ain't no
disgrace then, when it ain't one's own fault. But mother says she'd work
her fingers to the bone sooner than she'd go on the parish; and with one
thing and another, we've always got on somehow, and so will you, I'm
sure.'

'Yes,' said the woman, with an energy that startled us all, while it
delighted us,--'yes, I may get on too, with God's help; but not if I am
to sit here with my hands folded, before the fire, thinking of my
trouble instead of trying to mend it. God bless you, my lass, for your
money, which I'll take from you thankfully; and if I can't never repay
you, may He do it. It will serve to get me some clothes, and then I can
work; and who knows but I may have a home of my own again some day?'

Finding her able and willing now to listen to reason, I explained to her
that some friends who had heard of her loss had placed three pounds at
my disposal for her use, and that she must look upon the help she got
quite as much as coming from God as Elijah did when the ravens fed him,
because it was God who put it into people