Page:The Yellow Book - 07.djvu/318

 which only a very rare love and sympathy can overclimb. I can't be sure; but—be that as it may—I never think of Martha, and of Martha's patient service and uncomplaining diligence, without a pang of self-reproach. I was old enough to be her mother, and, since her mistress would not dream of doing so, I ought to have kept an eye upon her. But I grew accustomed to her coming and going; to her anxious, flushed little face as she handed the dishes at meal times; to the sound of her heavy feet as, when everyone else had gone to bed, she climbed the carpetless ladder to her attic under the roof, and I forgot how eagerly, in so dreary a life, she must welcome a little freedom and a little love.

I was away for some time in the early summer, and, on my return, I found that Martha's place was filled by a stranger. I made instant inquiries. Mrs. Norris answered, with full information. Amy drew herself up in prim and conscious rectitude. She was to be married in the autumn, and could afford to look with severity upon the frailty of a servant maid.

Martha, it appeared, had got herself into trouble. Martha, like Eliza, had been dismissed at once, without a Character. She and her meagre baggage—the same bonnet-box with which she had arrived, and a rather larger brown-paper parcel—had been turned out of the house at an hour's notice. She had begged for my address, but that, in order to save me from annoyance, had been withheld from her.

I said very little—what was the use? —but I found out the name of the Surrey village from which she had come to us, and I went down there in the course of the week. My memory of the girl, as so often happens, was more pathetic than her actual presence had been. I felt uneasy until I could get news of her.

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