Mrs. Blyth; "but if I
keep her here, she will only be fretting herself into one of her violent
headaches. Besides, she may as well have her walk now, for I shan't
be able to spare Patty later in the day." Influenced by these
considerations, Mrs. Blyth, by a nod, intimated to her adopted child
that she might accompany the housemaid to Kirk Street. Madonna, the
moment this permission was granted, led the way out of the room; but
stopped as soon as she and Patty were alone on the staircase, and,
making a sign that she would be back directly, ran up to her own
bed-chamber.

When she entered the room, she unlocked a little dressing-case that
Valentine had given to her; and, emptying out of one of the trays four
sovereigns and some silver, all her savings from her own pocket-money,
wrapped them up hastily in a piece of paper, and ran down stairs again
to Patty. Zack was ill, and lonely, and miserable; longing for a friend
to sit by his bedside and comfort him--and she could not be that friend!
But Zack was also poor; she had read it in his letter; there were many
little things he wanted to pay for; he needed money--and in that need
she might secretly be a friend to him, for she had money of her own to
give away.

"My four golden sovereigns shall be the first he has," thought Madonna,
nervously taking the housemaid's offered arm at the house-door. "I will
put them in some place where he is sure to find them, and never to know
who they come from. And Zack shall be rich again--rich with all the
money I have got to give him." Four sovereigns represented quite a
little fortune in Madonna's eyes. It had taken her a long, long time to
save them out of her small allowance of pocket-money.

When they knocked at the private door of the tobacco-shop, it was opened
by the landlady, who, after hearing what their errand was from Patty,
and answering some preliminary inquiries after Zack, politely
invited them to walk into her back parlor. But Madonna seemed--quite
incomprehensibly to the servant--to be bent on remaining in the passage
till she had finished writing some lines which she had just then begun
to trace on her slate. When they were completed, she showed them to
Patty, who read with considerable astonishment these words: "Ask where
his sitting-room is, and if I can go into it. I want to leave something
for him there with my own hands, if the room is empty."

After looking at her young mistress's eager face in great amazement