me! Because another sort of religious folk, that go to church regular enough and say their prayers, won't pay honest wages for honest work. How is a woman to live, that can't get more than a third or a quarter the value o' what she does? So they don't live; they die; and that's how it's goin' to be here."
A tear was glittering in Mrs. Marble's honest eyes, while at the same time she bit off her words as if they had been snap gingerbread.
"Is it so bad as that?" asked the visiter.
"Well, I don' know if you ought to call it, 'bad,'" said Mrs. Marble with a compound expression. "When livin' aint livin' no longer, then dyin' aint exactly dyin'. 'Taint the worst thing, anyhow; if it warnt for the folk left behind. If I was as ready as she is, I wouldn't mind goin', I guess. I s'pose she thinks of her child some."
"Would they receive a visit from me?"
"I don' know; but they don't have many. So long as they've been here, and that's more'n a year now, there aint a livin' soul as has called to ask after 'em. I guess they'd receive most anybody that come with a friend's face. Shall I ask 'em?"
"Not that, but if they will see me. I shall be much obliged."
Mrs. Marble laid down her work and tripped up stairs.
"Rotha," she said putting her head inside the door, "here's somebody to see you."
The girl started up and a colour came into her face, as she eagerly asked, "Who?"
"I don't know him from Adam. He's a sort of a missionary; they come round once in a while; and he wants to see you."
"Mother's gone out," said Rotha, her colour fading as quick as it had risen.
"May he come and see you? He's a nice lookin' feller."
"I don't care," said Rotha. "I don't want to see any missionary."
"O well! it won't hurt you to see this one, I guess."
A few minutes after came a tap at the door, and Rotha with a mingling of unwillingness and curiosity, opened it. What she saw was not exactly what she had expected; curiosity grew and unwillingness abated. She asked the stranger in with tolerable civility. He was nice looking, she confessed to herself, and very nicely dressed! not at all the rubbishy exterior which Rotha somehow associated with her idea of missionaries. He came in and sat down, quite like an ordinary man; which was soothing.
"Mother is out," Rotha announced shortly.
"It is so much the kinder of you to let me come in."
"I was not thinking of kindness," said Rotha.
"No? Of what then?
"Nothing in particular. You do not want kindness."
"I beg your pardon. Everybody wants it."
"Not kindness from everybody then."
"I do."
"But some people can do without it."
"Can they? What sort of people?"
"Why, a great many people. Those that have all they want already."
"I never saw any of that sort of people," said the stranger gravely.
"Pray, did you?"
"I thought I had."
"And you thought I was one of them?"
"I believe so."
"You were mistaken in me. Probably you were mistaken also in the other instances. Perhaps you were thinking of the people who have all that money can buy?"
"Perhaps," Rotha assented.
"Do you think money can buy all things?"
"No," said Rotha, beginning to recover her usual composure; "but the people who have all that money can buy, can do without the other things."
"What do you mean by the 'other things'?"
Rotha did not answer.
"I suppose kindness is one of them, as we started from that."
Rotha was still silent.
"Do you think you could afford to do without kindness?"
"If I had money enough," Rotha said bluntly.
"And what would you buy with money, that would be better?"
"O plenty!" said Rotha. "Yes, indeed! I would stop mother's working; and I would buy our old home, and we would go away from this place and never come back to it. I would have somebody to do the work that I do, too; and I would have a garden, and plenty of flowers, and plenty of everything."
"And live without friends?"
"We always did," said Rotha. "We never had friends. O friends! – everybody in the village and in the country was a friend; but you know what I mean; nobody that we cared for."
"Then you have no friends here in New York?"
"No."
"I should think you would have stayed where, as you say, everybody was a friend."
"Yes, but we couldn't."
"You said, you would if you could stop your mother's working. Do you think she would like that?"
"O she's tired to death!" said Rotha; and her eyes reddened in a way that shewed there were at least two sides to her character. "She is not strong at all, and she wants rest. Of course she would like it. Not to have to do any more than she likes, I mean."
"Then perhaps she would not choose to take some work I was thinking to offer her. Or perhaps you would not take it?" he added smiling.
"We must take it," said Rotha, "if we can get it. What is it?"
"A set of shirts. A dozen."
"Mother gets seventy five cents a piece, if they are tucked and stitched."
"That is not my price, however. I like my work particularly done, and I give two dollars a piece."
"Two dollars for one shirt?" inquired Rotha.
"That is my meaning. Do you think your mother will take them?"
For all answer the girl clapped her two hands together.
"Then you are not a master tailor?" she asked.
"No."
"I thought maybe you were. I don't like them. What are you, please?"
"If I should propose myself as a friend, would you allow it?"
Is this a "kindness"? was the suspicion that instantly darted into Rotha's mind. The visiter saw it in her face, and could have smiled; took care to do no such thing.
"That is a question for mother to answer," she said coolly.
"When it is put to her. I put
