Rosa’s mother moves.

“Miss Browning, here’s your steak I broiled fer you and some toast and tea.  I fixed some fer Rosa, too you’re so mighty queer, I knew you wouldn’t eat unless she had some.  I can’t afford to buy her any more, and there ain’t many that’d done it this time.  I have to work awful hard fer all I git.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Gray, you are very kind, but,” she added softly, lest Rosa who had run in to speak to grandpa might hear, “if only I knew what would become of her!  Oh, my poor child! how can I bear to leave her, and what will her future be?”

The moans of the poor, tortured mother, whose life was fast ebbing away, were most piteous.

“Now, Mis’ Browning, don’t take on so; chirk up a bit!  She’s plenty old enough to work and make her own livin’.  Of course you couldn’t expect me to say I’d keep her.  Land sakes!  Grandpa’s all I can manage now, and he’s gittin’ worse and more tryin’ every day.  Why, jest this mornin’ when I wuz that busy I didn’t know what to do a-finishin’ up that sewin’, what should he do but stumble ag’in the coal pail and upset the whole thing right on the floor, and jest after I’d scrubbed, too!  Then I thought I’d git rid of him a few minutes by sendin’ him to the grocery.  Of course I never trust him with a cent of money.  They know him at the corner grocery, so it’s all right; but it all comes of my credit a-bein’ so good, that’s the reason.  Well, I told him it wuz not necessary fer him to be gone but fifteen minutes, but when he wuz gone twenty, I had to put my work down and go after him.  I’d better have gone in the first place.  That’s always the way when I trust him fer anything, it jest makes it that much harder fer me in the end.  I had to go clean down the stairs, and in some way twisted my ankle, so I ain’t got over it yet; then I saw him a-comin’, but that slow, it made me real provoked.  If he’d jest a-hurried up a little, it would have saved me all that trouble.  He said he wuz tired, but I think I wuz the one to be tired, a-hurryin’ down them steps so, and a-gittin’ hurt, too.

“Land sakes, Mis’ Browning, I’d think you could see I have my hands more’n full now, though I don’t wonder you would like to have Rosa brought up by me.  I could train her mighty well, so as she’d know how to do somethin’.  She’s old enough to work, and I’ll keep an eye on her and correct her whenever she needs it, and that’ll be often.  I’d think you’d ought to be satisfied with that.  There ain’t many that’d take sech an interest in a homeless little waif, I can tell you.

“You eat your supper now, and I’ll tell Rosa to come home.  That’s one thing she’ll have to quit, a-wastin’ so much time.  What she sees in grandpa is more’n I can tell, fer he ain’t got a bit of sense.  Often in the night he wakes me up a-hollerin’ and a-carryin’ on a-thinkin’ he’s a boy ag’in.  There’s not many as patient as I am, or they wouldn’t put up with it.”