"What is a committee?" asked Rose. "Why, it's Mr. Balch, and Mr. Skinner, and Mr. Flint, and Mr. Stone, and Mr. Grant, and them." "Can't you ever get away from the place where they send you?" asked Rose. "What a thing you are to ask questions. Yes, I spose you kin, if you die or get married--it amounts to about the same thing," said Timmins, with a shrug of her divorced shoulders. "To whom shall I be bound out?" asked the child. "Land's sake, as if I could tell; perhaps to one person, perhaps to another." This answer not being very satisfactory to Rose, she turned her face to the pillow and heaved a deep sigh. "Haven't you got no folks?" asked Timmins. "What?" "No folks? no relations, like?" "None but Aunt Dolly." "Who is Aunt Dolly?" "I don't know; I never saw her till she brought me here." "Where did she bring you from?" "My mother's grave." "Yes--but what house did you live in when she took you?" "I didn't live in any house; all day long I sat on my mother's grave, and, at night, I crept behind some boards, by the grave-yard, and slept. "Land's sake, didn't you have nothing to eat?" "Sometimes--I was not much hungry, my heart ached so bad; sometimes the children gave me pieces of bread and cake, as they went to school." "What did you do all day at your mother's grave?" "Talked to mamma." "Land's sake, child, dead folks can't hear." "Can't they?" asked Rose, with a quivering lip. "Didn't my mamma hear what I said to her?" "In course not," answered Timmins. "Why, what a chick you are. If you weren't so bright, I should think you was an idiot." "What are you crying for?" Rose kept on sobbing. "Come now, don't take on so," said the uneasy Timmins, "you are not the only person who has had a hard time of it. I was a little girl once." "Were you?" asked Rose, wiping her eyes, and surveying Timmins's Meg Merrilees proportions. "Yes, of course," said Timmins, laughing; "just as if you didn't know that every grown-up woman must have been a little girl once. Do you say those things a purpose, or do they come by accident, like?" "Did _your_ mother die?" asked Rose, not appearing to hear Timmins's last question. "Yes--and father, and brother, and sister, and the hull on 'em." "Did you cry?" "I 'spose so; I know I was awful hungry." "But did you cry because your mother was dead?" "Partly, I suppose." "When you went to bed, did you think you saw her face with a cloud all around it, and did you call 'Mother?' and did the eyes look sad at you, but stay still where they were? and when you went up toward the cloud and the face, did it all go away?" "Lor', no; how you talk," said Timmins, as Rose's face grew still paler. "Don't--you make my flesh creep." "You wouldn't be afraid of your own dear mamma, would you?" asked Rose. "Lor', yes, if she came to me that way," answered Timmins. "It isn't natur', child; you saw a--a--," and Timmins hesitated to pronounce the word ghost.