“Here is some sago, mother,” said Charley, on his return, “Mrs.—­says it will do you good.”

Now it so happened that, from a child, she had never liked sago.  There was something in it so insipid to her, that she had never felt an inclination to more than taste it.  Particularly now did her stomach loathe it.  But, even if she had felt an inclination to taste the sago, she had not, at the time, any way to prepare it so as to make it palatable.  She did not, however, at the time, send for anything else.  She still had some flour and potatoes, and a little change to buy milk, and on these her children fared very well.  Healthy food does not cost a great deal in this country, and Mrs. Warburton had long before learned to husband well her resources.

On the next morning she tried to get up, but fainted away on the floor.  Her children were still asleep, and were not even awakened by her fall.  It was some time before she recovered sufficiently to crawl upon the bed; and there she lay; almost incapable of thought or motion, for hours.  As feeble nature reacted again, and she was able to think over her situation, she made up her mind to send in her little boy again to Mrs.—­, with an apology for not using the sago, and request her to give her some little thing from her table—­anything at all that would be likely, as she said, “to put a taste in her mouth,” and induce an appetite for food.  The child delivered the message in the best way he knew how, but some how or other it offended the ear of Mrs.—­, who had begun to be tired of what she was pleased to call the importunities of Mrs. Warburton; though, in fact, she had never before even hinted that she was in want of anything.  The truth was, Sarah, the housekeeper, had heard something from somebody, about Mrs. Warburton, and had been relating the puerile scandal to Mrs.—­, who, instead of opposing the tattling propensity in her servant, encouraged it, by lending to her silly stories an attentive ear.  But the story was false, from beginning to end, as are nearly all the idle rumours which are constantly circulating from one family to another, through the medium of servants.

“How did she do,” she had just been saying to Sarah, “before I befriended her?  It is a downright imposition upon my good-nature, and I have no notion of encouraging idleness.”

“The fact is, ma’am,” chimed in the maid, “these here poor people, when you once help ’em, think you must be a’ways at it; they find it so much easier to beg than work.”

Just at this stage of conversation, the child timidly preferred the humble and moderate request of his sick mother; a request that should have thrilled the heart of any one possessing a single human sympathy.  But it came at the wrong moment.  The evil of self-love was active in the heart of Mrs.—­, and all love of the neighbour was for the time extinguished.  She cast upon the child a look so forbidding that the little fellow turned involuntarily to go.