"
"I'm afeard not, Miss Ellen," said he, soberly, after a
minute's pause.
"Because," said Ellen, bursting into tears, "I wish you were,
very much."
She carried the great brown hand to her lips before she let it
go. He went, without saying a word. But when he got out, he
stopped and looked at a little tear she had left on the back
of it. And he looked till one of his own fell there to keep it
company.
CHAPTER XXI.
Footsteps of Angels.
The next day, about the middle of the afternoon, a light step
crossed the shed, and the great door opening gently, in walked
Miss Alice Humphreys. The room was all "redd up," and Miss
Fortune and her mother sat there at work; one picking over
white beans at the table, the other in her usual seat by the
fire, and at her usual employment, which was knitting. Alice
came forward and asked the old lady how she did.
"Pretty well! — oh!, pretty well!" she answered, with the look
of bland good-humour her face almost always wore — "and glad
to see you, dear. Take a chair."
Alice did so, quite aware that the other person in the room
was _not_ glad to see her.
"And how goes the world with you, Miss Fortune?"
"Humph! it's a queer kind of world, I think," answered that
lady, drily, sweeping some of the picked beans into her pan:
"I get a'most sick of it, sometimes."
"Why, what's the matter?" said Alice, pleasantly; "may I ask?
Has anything happened to trouble you?"
"Oh, no!" said the other, somewhat impatiently; "nothing
that's any matter to anyone but myself; it's no use speaking
about it.
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