"Nor I; but sometimes, you know, the paying is not only difficult but impossible. Why is it difficult in this case?" "Don't ask _me!_ Because another sort of religious folk, that go to church regular enough and say their prayers, won't pay honest wages for honest work. How is a woman to live, that can't get more than a third or a quarter the value o' what she does? So they _don't_ live; they die; and that's how it's goin' to be here." A tear was glittering in Mrs. Marble's honest eyes, while at the same time she bit off her words as if they had been snap gingerbread. "Is it so bad as that?" asked the visiter. "Well, I don' know if you ought to call it, 'bad,'" said Mrs. Marble with a compound expression. "When livin' aint livin' no longer, then dyin' aint exactly dyin'. 'Taint the worst thing, anyhow; if it warnt for the folk left behind. If I was as ready as she is, I wouldn't mind goin', I guess. I s'pose she thinks of her child some." "Would they receive a visit from me?" "I don' know; but they don't have many. So long as they've been here, and that's more'n a year now, there aint a livin' soul as has called to ask after 'em. I guess they'd receive most anybody that come with a friend's face. Shall I ask 'em?" "Not _that_, but if they will see me. I shall be much obliged." Mrs. Marble laid down her work and tripped up stairs. "Rotha," she said putting her head inside the door, "here's somebody to see you." The girl started up and a colour came into her face, as she eagerly asked, "Who?" "I don't know him from Adam. He's a sort of a missionary; they come round once in a while; and he wants to see you." "Mother's gone out," said Rotha, her colour fading as quick as it had risen. "May he come and see you? He's a nice lookin' feller." "I don't care," said Rotha. "I don't want to see any missionary." "O well! it won't hurt you to see this one, I guess." A few minutes after came a tap at the door, and Rotha with a mingling of unwillingness and curiosity, opened it. What she saw was not exactly what she had expected; curiosity grew and unwillingness abated. She asked the stranger in with tolerable civility. He _was_ nice looking, she confessed to herself, and very nicely dressed! not at all the rubbishy exterior which Rotha somehow associated with her idea of missionaries. He came in and sat down, quite like an ordinary man; which was soothing. "Mother is out," Rotha announced shortly. "It is so much the kinder of you to let me come in." "I was not thinking of kindness," said Rotha. "No? Of what then? "Nothing in particular. You do not want kindness." "I beg your pardon. Everybody wants it." "Not kindness _from_ everybody then." "I do." "But some people can do without it." "Can they? What sort of people?" "Why, a great many people. Those that have all they want already." "I never saw any of that sort of people," said the stranger gravely. "Pray, did you?"