“I gathered from her conversation with my aunt,—while I looked on and wondered,—that Mrs. Hall had long been a confirmed invalid. They even spoke of a ruptured blood-vessel, from the effects of which she was now suffering. She did not complain—there was not a single murmur at her illness, or the hard fate that compelled her to work for her daily bread. I never saw such perfect cheerfulness, and yet I knew, from the contracted features and teasing cough, that she was suffering intensely. The little savage we had seen on our arrival, proved to be the son of her landlady, who was also her nurse and waiting-maid. “I was very much interested, and, by the time we bade her good-bye, I had sketched out quite a romance, in which I was sure she had been the principal actor. “‘Poor lady,’ said I, the instant we were out of the gate. ‘Why do you let her work, aunt? Why don’t you take her home, you have so many vacant rooms—or, at least, I should think, there were rich people enough in Milton to support her entirely. She does not look fit to hold a needle. Has she no children? and when did her husband die?—was she very wealthy?’ “I poured out my questions so fast that aunt had no time to answer any one of them, and I had been so much engaged, that I had not noticed a man reeling along the side-walk toward us, until just in time to escape the rude contact of his touch, from which I shrunk, almost shrieking. “‘Who told you that Mrs. Hall was a widow, Isabel?’ said aunt, to divert me from my mishap. “‘Nobody; but I knew it at once, as soon as I looked at her; how lonely she must be—and how terrible to see one’s best friend die, and know you cannot call them back again.’ “‘Not half so dreadful, dear,’ answered she, very seriously, ‘as to live on from day to day and see the gradual death of the soul, while the body is unwasted. It would be a happy day for Mrs. Hall that made her a widow, though she, poor thing, might not think so. That wretched inebriate’—and she pointed to the man we had just met—‘is her husband; and this is why she plies her needle when we would willingly save her from all labor. She cannot bear that _he_ should be indebted to the charity of strangers.’ “It was even so, for the poor fellow had reached the garden-gate, and was staggering in.