"Put it on at once; it is not to be only looked at," said Bessie.
The woman proceeded to obey, but when she wanted to tie it behind she
found a difficulty from a stiffness of one shoulder, and said, "It is
the rheumatics, miss; one catches it being out in the wet."
"Let me tie it for you," said Bessie.
"Thank you, miss, and thank the mistress for her goodness," said the
woman when it was done, gazing curiously at the young lady. And she
stooped again to her task, the wind making sport with her thin and
scanty skirts.
Bessie walked farther down the grove, green in the teeth of winter. She
was thinking that this poor widow, work and pain included, was not less
contented with her lot than herself or than the beautiful young lady who
reigned at Castlemount. Yet it was a cruelly hard lot, and might be
ameliorated with very little thought. "Blessed is he that considereth
the poor," says the old-fashioned text, and Bessie reflected that her
proud school-fellow was in the way of earning this blessing.
She was confirmed in that opinion on the following day, when the weather
was more genial, and they took a drive together in the afternoon and
passed through the hamlet of Morte. It had formed itself round a
dilapidated farm-house, now occupied as three tenements, in one of which
lived the widow. The carriage stopped in the road, and Mrs. Chiverton
got out with her companion and knocked at the door.
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