Her deformed companion colored and looked up doubtfully at her opposite neighbor, who at once laid aside her brush and said, turning to Selene: 

“That is not what Mary means, my child.  She is doing one-half of your day’s task and I am doing the other, so that your suffering foot may not deprive you of your day’s pay.”

“Do I look so very poor then?” exclaimed Keraunus’ daughter, and a faint crimson tinged her pale cheeks.

“By no means, my child,” replied the woman.  “You and your sister are evidently of good family—­but pray let us have the pleasure of being of some help to you.

“I do not know—­” Selene stammered.

“If you saw that it hurt me to stoop when the wind blows the strips of papyrus on to the floor, would you not willingly pick them up for me?” continued the woman.  “What we are doing for you is neither less nor yet much more than that.  In a few minutes we shall have finished and then we can follow the others, for every one else has left.  I am the overseer of the room, as you know, and must in any case remain here till the last work-woman has gone.”

Selene felt full well that she ought to be grateful for the kindness shown her by these two women, and yet she had a sense of having a deed of almsgiving forced upon her acceptance, and she answered quickly, still with the blood mounting to her cheeks.  “I am very grateful for your good intentions, of course, very grateful; but here each one must work for herself, and it would ill-become me to allow you to give me the money you have earned.”

The girl spoke these words with a decisiveness which was not free from arrogance, but this did not disturb the woman’s gentle equanimity—­“widow Hannah,” as she was called by the workwoman—­and fixing the calm gaze of her large eyes on Selene, she answered kindly: 

“We have been very happy to work for you, dear daughter, and a divine Sage has said that it is more blessed to give than to receive.  Do you understand all that that means?  In our case it is as much as to say that it makes kind-hearted folks much happier to do others a pleasure than to receive good gifts.  You said just now that you were grateful; do you want now to spoil our pleasure?”

“I do not quite understand—­” answered Selene.  “No?” interrupted widow Hannah.  “Then only try for once to do some one a pleasure with sincere and heartfelt love, and you will see how much good it does one, how it opens the heart and turns every trouble to a pleasure.  Is it not true Mary, we shall he sincerely obliged to Selene if only she will not spoil the pleasure we have had in working for her?”

“I have been so glad to do it,” said the deformed girl, “and there—­now I have finished.”

“And I too,” said the widow, pressing the last leaf on to its fellow with a cloth, and then adding her pile of finished sheets to Mary’s.

“Thank you very much,” murmured Selene, with downcast eyes, and rising from her seat, but she tried to support herself on her lame foot and this caused her such pain, that with a low cry, she sank back on the stool.  The widow hastened to her side, knelt clown by her, took the injured foot with tender care in her delicate and slender hands, examined it attentively, felt it gently, and then exclaimed with horror: