Ishmael; Or, In the DepthsSouthworth, Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte
General
Ishmael; Or, In the Depths
Southworth, Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte
Fiction
She had four dollars and a half in the house--the money, you know, that
old Mrs. Jones, with all her hardness, had yet refused to take from the
poor woman. And then Mrs. Brudenell owed her five and a half for the
weaving of this web of cloth. In all she had ten dollars, eight of which
she owed to the Professor of Odd Jobs for his services at Nora's
funeral. The remaining two she hoped would supply her simple wants until
she found work. And in the meantime she need not be idle; she would
employ her time in cutting up some of poor Nora's clothes to make an
outfit for the baby--for if the little object lived but a week it must
be clothed--now it was only wrapped up in a piece of flannel.
While Hannah meditated upon these things the baby went to sleep on her
lap, and she took it up and laid it in Nora's vacated place in her bed.
And soon after Hannah took her solitary cup of tea, and shut up the hut
and retired to bed. She had not had a good night's rest since that fatal
night of Nora's flight through the snow storm to Brudenell Hall, and her
subsequent illness and death. Now, therefore, Hannah slept the sleep of
utter mental and physical prostration.
The babe did not disturb her repose. Indeed, it was a very patient
little sufferer, if such a term may be applied to so young a child. But
it was strange that an infant so pale, thin, and sickly, deprived of its
mother's nursing care besides, should have made so little plaint and
given so little trouble. Perhaps in the lack of human pity he had the
love of heavenly spirits, who watched over him, soothed his pains, and
stilled his cries. We cannot tell how that may have been, but it is
certain that Ishmael was an angel from his very birth.
The next day, as Hannah was standing at the table, busy in cutting out
small garments, and the baby-boy was lying upon the bed equally busy in
sucking his thumb, the door was pushed open and the Professor of Odd
Jobs stood in the doorway, with a hand upon either post, and sadness on
his usually good-humored and festive countenance.
"Ah, Jim, is that you? Come in, your money is all ready for you," said
Hannah on perceiving him.
It is not the poor who "grind the faces of the poor." Jim Morris would
have scorned to have taken a dollar from Hannah Worth at this trying
crisis of her life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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