nths afterwards, of the governor of the workhouse.
The governor could only say she was a single woman of the name of Smith,
who had no use of her right hand. As to who she was, he could tell no
more than this; but his wife had sometimes mentioned her as a different
sort of person from those they generally saw there. She could not only
read, but she read very well: and she read a great deal aloud to the old
people, and in the infirmary. She talked unlike the rest, too. She said
little; but her language was good, and always correct. She could not do
much on account of her infirmity: but she was always willing to do what
could be done with one hand; and she must have been very handy when she
had the use of both.

"I should have thought her eyes had been too weak for much reading,"
observed the Commissioner. "Has the medical officer attended to her?"

The governor called his wife: and the wife called a pauper woman who was
told the question. This woman said that it was not exactly a case for
the doctor. Nobody that shed so many tears could have good eyes. Ah! the
governor might be surprised; because Smith seemed so brisk in the
daytime, and cheered the old people so much. But she made up for it at
night. Many and many a time she cried the night through.

"How do you know?" asked the Commissioner.

"I sleep in the next bed, sir. I can't say she disturbs any body; for
she is very quiet. But if any thing keeps me awake I hear her sobbing.
And you need but feel her pillow in the morning. It is wet almost
through."

"And does that happen often?"

"Yes, sir. Many a time when she has turned her back,--gone into the
infirmary, or been reading to the old people,--I have got her pillow and
dried it. And I have seen her do it herself, with a smile on her face
all the time."

The Commissioner walked away. Before he left the place, the woman Smith
was beckoned out by the governor. She went with a beating heart, with
some wild idea in her head that the Morells had sent, that some friends
had turned up. While still in the passage, however, she said to herself
that she might as well look to see her parents risen from the dead.

The Commissioner had, indeed, nothing to tell. He wanted to ask. He did
ask, as much as his delicacy would allow. But he learned nothing;
except, indeed, what he ought to have considered the most important
thing, the state of her mind about being there. About that, she was
frank enough. She said over again