Old Grumpy put the little girl on a stool by the fire, and stood looking at her, with such a loving, kind, motherly smile, that the neighbors would not have known the old woman if they had seen her.
“What do they call you, my pretty darling?” said Old Grumpy gently.
“Lily! Mother calls me Lily. Where is mother? I want to go to mother.”
“That is a pretty name!” said the old woman. “I never heard a prettier name than that.”
“Mother brought me a posy of lilies one day,” said the child, “and she said their faces were as white as mine.”
“They couldn’t be much whiter, poor lamb,” said the old woman; and she was going to take the child on her knee when suddenly it struck her how dirty she was beside the child. The child’s fair skin had not a speck of dirt on it, and her print frock, though it was faded and patched, was clean and tidy; her pinafore was as white as washing could make it, and her soft brown hair had evidently been brushed and cared for. Such a clean, pretty little thing she looked as she sat on the stool by the fire. Old Grumpy had never known before how dirty and forlorn she was. She did not like to touch the child with those dirty hands, or to take her to sit on her knee, while she had that dirty, ragged apron on.
The room, too, seemed a dismal, filthy place for such a child to live in. It had never struck Old Grumpy before that there was anything the matter with it. Now she felt the first thing to be done was to make the room more fit for the child to live in, and herself more fit to nurse her, and look after her.
“Where is my mother?” cried the child. “I want to go back to her.”
“Mother’s gone away,” said Old Grumpy; “you’re coming to live with me, my little darling. I’m your mother now.”
“Oh, no, no; no,” sobbed the child, “no, no, no! I don’t want to stop here. Take me to my own mother. I want my own mother.”
The old woman tried to comfort her, but in vain. The more she talked to her, so much more the child cried and sobbed, and asked to be taken to her own, own mother.
Old Grumpy’s bright picture seemed to be fading away. Would the child never stop crying? Would she never be happy?
“What’s the matter with the bairn?” said old Joel’s voice, at the bottom of the staircase. “Are you a-beating of her already?”
Grumpy did not deign to answer him but tried once more to quiet the child. She took her on her knee, in spite of her dirty apron: she kissed her, she offered her a piece of sugar, she called her all kinds of loving and endearing names, and she made her numberless promises of what she would do for her and get for her if she would be a good girl and not cry any more.
But it was all of no use. Little Lily still sobbed on, and still cried, “Take me to my mother; I want my own mother.”
At last, in despair, the old woman took her up in her arms and carried her down the court to the house where the man with the pipe had stood at the door. The man was not there now, but his wife, a little rosy-cheeked woman, was hanging some clothes out to dry, on a line that went across the court.
“Well, I never!” said the woman. “Why, here’s Old Grumpy and her bairn. What’s the matter with the little ’un?”
“She doesn’t like me,” said the old woman bursting into tears. “She does nothing but cry for her mother. Whatever shall I do with her Mrs. McKay?
“Poor wee lamb!” said the rosy-cheeked woman. “Let her bide here today; she’ll maybe get settled a bit. Our Georgiana Maria will mind her.”
It was a distinguishing feature of Ivy Court that nearly all the children in it had two Christian names, by which two names they were always called. The fashion had been started by Mrs. Perkins, who was a much-respected person, because she lived in a front house, and because she took in lodgers. After Mrs. Perkins having set the example at the christening of her first-born, Richard James, all the mothers of Ivy Court had at once begun to follow it. It had been taken up by one family after another, until it began to be looked upon almost as a disgrace for a child to be named plain Harry, or Edward, or Mary. But it was agreed by all the neighbors that Mrs. McKay had chosen the finest names of all; and as for Georgiana Maria, her name was considered to be unrivaled in beauty. She was a little girl of eight years, as round and rosy as her mother, and with as bright and pleasant a face. She took the sobbing child in hand at once, dried her tears on her pinafore, took her into the kitchen, put her on a stool by the fire, and brought a picture-book for her to look at.
After a time the sobbing ceased, and the child seemed happier.
“She’ll be all right now,” said Mrs. McKay. “Let her stop here till tomorrow, and she’ll settle down a bit.”
“Very well,” said the old woman, “but you’ll be sure and let me have her then. You won’t take her away from me, will you?”
“Oh, never fear,” said rosy Mrs. McKay laughing. “We’ve got plenty of ’em here; we don’t want any more, I can tell you. If you was to see this kitchen, when the children come in from school, and when Timothy John and Anne Jane are awake, too, dear me! You wouldn’t think we was tempted to run off with any more. Why, the kitchen is as full as bees in a hive and as tight packed as herrings in a barrel. It is—I do assure you,” said Mrs. McKay.
So Old Grumpy left her child and went home again. She had much to do that day and the next. She was going to make a nest fit for her little bird to live in. “Perhaps she’ll be happy then,” she said to herself.
The first thing the old woman did, when she got to her room, was to lock her door, to draw down the old ragged blind before her window, and to stop up the keyhole. Then she drew from under her bed a small square box. The box was locked, but Old Grumpy cautiously unfastened her dress, took out a key which was tied round her neck, and opened it. Inside there was another box, smaller still, made of cardboard, and tied up with a piece of faded blue ribbon. The old woman untied the string and looked in. There was not much inside the box, only a wedding-ring, a lock of fair hair, and a small book. The ring had been her mother’s, and the lock of hair had been cut off by the workhouse nurse, after her mother was dead. Old Grumpy put the hair to her lips, and tears came into her eyes as she looked at it. The book had been found in her mother’s pocket, but the old woman had never read it. There was a school in the workhouse, but she had been a “stupid” child, and had not learned much. “It was no use trying to teach her,” they said. So she had been sent to a “little place” when she was quite young, and no one had seemed to think it mattered much whether she could read or not.
Old Grumpy wrapped these things carefully up again and took out the only other thing in the box, a small leather purse. In this purse she had put all her savings. Not that she had ever had much to save. She had been in many situations, but she had been the drudge in them all and had done a great deal of work for very little money. Still, though she had received little, she had spent less; and, by degrees, and careful stinting and scraping and hoarding, she had quite a little fortune in the old leather purse; at least, so it seemed to her that morning as she counted it.
Why she had saved it she could not have told. It had never been of any use to her. Most of it had been locked up in that box for many years, and yet, though she had often been very poor, and though sometimes she had not known where the next meal was to come from, she had never touched this little hoard; she had even felt as if she would rather starve than make it less. But for the sake of the child some of it must be spent. It was a great wrench to part with it, but it must be done.
“Anything for that pretty bairn!” she said to herself, “anything for her!”