’Well, Bessy, how are you?  Better, I hope, now the wind has changed.’

‘Better and not better, if yo’ know what that means.’

‘Not exactly,’ replied Margaret, smiling.

’I’m better in not being torn to pieces by coughing o’nights, but I’m weary and tired o’ Milton, and longing to get away to the land o’ Beulah; and when I think I’m farther and farther off, my heart sinks, and I’m no better; I’m worse.’  Margaret turned round to walk alongside of the girl in her feeble progress homeward.  But for a minute or two she did not speak.  At last she said in a low voice,

‘Bessy, do you wish to die?’ For she shrank from death herself, with all the clinging to life so natural to the young and healthy.

Bessy was silent in her turn for a minute or two.  Then she replied,

’If yo’d led the life I have, and getten as weary of it as I have, and thought at times, “maybe it’ll last for fifty or sixty years—­it does wi’ some,”—­and got dizzy and dazed, and sick, as each of them sixty years seemed to spin about me, and mock me with its length of hours and minutes, and endless bits o’ time—­oh, wench!  I tell thee thou’d been glad enough when th’ doctor said he feared thou’d never see another winter.’

‘Why, Bessy, what kind of a life has yours been?’

’Nought worse than many others, I reckon.  Only I fretted again it, and they didn’t.’

’But what was it?  You know, I’m a stranger here, so perhaps I’m not so quick at understanding what you mean as if I’d lived all my life at Milton.’

‘If yo’d ha’ come to our house when yo’ said yo’ would, I could maybe ha’ told you.  But father says yo’re just like th’ rest on ‘em; it’s out o’ sight out o’ mind wi’ you.’

’I don’t know who the rest are; and I’ve been very busy; and, to tell the truth, I had forgotten my promise—­’

‘Yo’ offered it! we asked none of it.’

‘I had forgotten what I said for the time,’ continued Margaret quietly.  ’I should have thought of it again when I was less busy.  May I go with you now?’ Bessy gave a quick glance at Margaret’s face, to see if the wish expressed was really felt.  The sharpness in her eye turned to a wistful longing as she met Margaret’s soft and friendly gaze.

‘I ha’ none so many to care for me; if yo’ care yo’ may come.

So they walked on together in silence.  As they turned up into a small court, opening out of a squalid street, Bessy said,

’Yo’ll not be daunted if father’s at home, and speaks a bit gruffish at first.  He took a mind to ye, yo’ see, and he thought a deal o’ your coming to see us; and just because he liked yo’ he were vexed and put about.’

‘Don’t fear, Bessy.’

But Nicholas was not at home when they entered.  A great slatternly girl, not so old as Bessy, but taller and stronger, was busy at the wash-tub, knocking about the furniture in a rough capable way, but altogether making so much noise that Margaret shrunk, out of sympathy with poor Bessy, who had sat down on the first chair, as if completely tired out with her walk.  Margaret asked the sister for a cup of water, and while she ran to fetch it (knocking down the fire-irons, and tumbling over a chair in her way), she unloosed Bessy’s bonnet strings, to relieve her catching breath.