“Bless my soul!” cried the old lady. “Because you needed the place so much, you get only half price! That is just like Laura Blight. How came you to be so friendless?” “After my father’s death,” said Lally, “I taught music in the school in which I had been educated. The school broke up, the proprietors being advanced in life and being able to retire from labor, and I was thrown adrift. I was obliged to do anything I could get to do. I lived for some weeks or months with an old woman who was seamstress to a boys’ school, and when she died I was out of work again, and came down into Kent and worked in the hop-fields. I was so hungry--” “Do you hear that, Peters?” interrupted the old lady, turning savagely upon her attendant, her bright black eyes beaded with tears. “Do you hear it, and sit there unmoved? She was hungry, while my servants flung away the dainties from my table, and I grumbled because they could not contrive newer delicacies to tempt my appetite. Hungry? Homeless? Friendless? Heaven be merciful to me! Hungry! Ah-h!” “That is all past now, madam,” said Lally softly. “To begin again when Laura Blight chooses to send you packing! She’s full of caprices, is Laura. You’re not sure of a place here over night, unless her interest bids her keep you. How much money have you laid up?” “Mrs. Blight advanced me five pounds, my first quarter’s salary, and I have eighteen shillings remaining,” answered Lally. “Humph. Eighteen shillings between you and the union. Look me in the eye, Lally.” The young girl obeyed, looking into Mrs. Wroat’s piercing eyes with a steady, honest, unflinching gaze, although the color fluttered in and out of her cheeks, as a bird flutters in and out of its cage. “Have you ever done anything in your life of which you are ashamed?” asked the old lady, in a low, sternly anxious voice. “No, ma’am,” answered the girl truthfully, “I never have.” “What do you think of her, Peters?” demanded Mrs. Wroat, turning to her maid and confidant. The woman was crying behind her handkerchief. She had hard features, but her heart was warm and soft. She answered sobbingly: “I think, ma’am, as you’d ought to take her and adopt her, and make her your heiress--that’s what I think, poor, pretty dear!” “Shows your sense, Peters,” said Mrs. Wroat. “You’re a woman of a thousand, Peters, and I’ll double the annuity I’m going to give you. Girl, come and sit here on the stool at my feet.” Lally came forward and sat down as directed.