Page:Leah Reed--Brenda's summer at Rockley.djvu/276

258 “Old Mrs. Tracy,” said Eliza, “is in constant fear that she ’ll have to go to the poor-house. If her son and his wife had n’t been killed in that railroad accident, she’d  never have come to this, and she’s such a good, pious  woman, too.”

So it happened that Julia, after talking it over carefully with Eliza, offered to pay the three dollars a week that  would keep the old lady off the town, and compensate the  cousin with whom she lived for taking care of her. Old Mr. Steiner, with his wooden leg, was another of Julia’s  proteges.

“If I’d a-lost that leg in the war, I’d a-had a pension; but just because I tried to stop a runaway horse, it don’t  seem right that I should be so helpless. I stopped the horse fast enough, and I was knocked down and dragged,  so that my leg had to be amputated.”

Old Mr. Steiner said “hoss” and “ampitated,” but Julia had great interest in him because she knew that his  bravery had saved two lives. The people whom he had rescued were too poor to do more than offer him a  home, when a worthless son had made him lose his farm  through a mortgage note. The three dollars a week which she guaranteed to them made old Mr. Steiner  as happy as a king, and he overwhelmed her with his  thanks.

“You won’t have to pay it a great many years. Miss Julia,” said Eliza. “They ’re neither of them going to hold out much longer. But you could n’t have made your money go a greater ways in doing good than you have.