“Ah, to be sure, I did.”

“There’s no fireplace in the garret, ma’am.  I’m afraid the little girl must be cold and lonely.”

It was useless to plead for Syd—­Mrs. Westerfield was not listening.  Her attention was absorbed by her own plump and pretty hands.  She took a tiny file from the dressing-table, and put a few finishing touches to her nails.  “Send me some hot water,” she said; “I want to dress.”

The servant girl who carried the hot water upstairs was new to the ways of the house.  After having waited on Mrs. Westerfield, she had been instructed by the kind-hearted landlady to go on to the top floor.  “You will find a pretty little girl in the garret, all by herself.  Say you are to bring her down to my room, as soon as her mamma has gone out.”

Mrs. Westerfield’s habitual neglect of her eldest child was known to every person in the house.  Even the new servant had heard of it.  Interested by what she saw, on opening the garret door, she stopped on the threshold and looked in.

The lumber in the room consisted of two rotten old trunks, a broken chair, and a dirty volume of sermons of the old-fashioned quarto size.  The grimy ceiling, slanting downward to a cracked window, was stained with rain that had found its way through the roof.  The faded wall-paper, loosened by damp, was torn away in some places, and bulged loose in others.  There were holes in the skirting-board; and from one of them peeped the brightly timid eyes of the child’s only living companion in the garret—­a mouse, feeding on crumbs which she had saved from her breakfast.

Syd looked up when the mouse darted back into its hole, on the opening of the door.  “Lizzie!  Lizzie!” she said, gravely, “you ought to have come in without making a noise.  You have frightened away my youngest child.”

The good-natured servant burst out laughing.  “Have you got a large family, miss?” she inquired, humoring the joke.

Syd failed to see the joke.  “Only two more,” she answered as gravely as ever—­and lifted up from the floor two miserable dolls, reduced to the last extremity of dirt and dilapidation.  “My two eldest,” this strange child resumed, setting up the dolls against one of the empty trunks.  “The eldest is a girl, and her name is Syd.  The other is a boy, untidy in his clothes, as you see.  Their kind mamma forgives them when they are naughty, and buys ponies for them to ride on, and always has something nice for them to eat when they are hungry.  Have you got a kind mamma, Lizzie?  And are you very fond of her?”

Those innocent allusions to the neglect which was the one sad experience of Syd’s young life touched the servant’s heart.  A bygone time was present to her memory, when she too had been left without a playfellow to keep her company or a fire to warm her, and she had not endured it patiently.

“Oh, my dear,” she said, “your poor little arms are red with cold.  Come to me and let me rub them.”