Page:Dickens - A Child s History of England, 1900.djvu/510

80 I met her in the corridor, walking to and fro, and muttering to herself with a down-looking aspect, and a severe economy of dress, the season considered. I wondered how she came there, and was, to say the least of it, decidedly startled when she stopped directly opposite me, and lifting a pair of blank, brown eyes to my face, said, in a stern voice:

"He was not guilty, my lord judge. God will right him yet. It will all come out some day. It can wait: yes I can wait. I am more patient than death; I am more patient than injustice."

I made a hasty and undignified retreat downstairs when she left the passage free, and, meeting the waiter, inquired who the woman was. The man touched his forehead significantly, and said that she was harmless (I was very glad to hear it); and that she lived on the broken victuals; and that his mistress always gave her a dinner on Christmas-day. While we were speaking together, she descended to where we stood, and repeated the exact formula of which she had made use before. She was a tall woman, strong-limbed, and thin to meagreness. She might be fifty, or perhaps fifty-five; her skin was withered, and tanned by exposure to all sorts of weathers, and her uncovered hair was burned to a rusty iron gray. The waiter suggested to her to go to the kitchen fire; at which she broke into a scornful laugh, and reiterated, "I am more patient than death. I am more patient than injustice," and then walked out at the open door into the snow. "I don't think she feels it, sir," said the waiter, opening my door for me to enter.

I do not think she did. I watched her from my window. She took up a handful of the newly-fallen snow and thrust it into her bosom, then hugged it close, as if it were a living thing, that could be warmed by that eager clasp; I saw also, as she turned her dark face up toward the sky, that the anger scowl left it. I should imagine that sensation in her was dead, except in one corner of her heart, to which had gathered the memory