Somehow,
the morbid fancies were gone: she was keenly alive; the coarse
real life of this huckster fired her, touched her blood with a
more vital stimulus than any tale of crusader. As she went down
the crooked maze of dingy lanes, she could hear Lois's little
cracked bell far off: it sounded like a Christmas song to her.
She half smiled, remembering how sometimes in her distempered
brain the world had seemed a gray, dismal Dance of Death. How
actual it was to-day,--hearty, vigorous, alive with honest work
and tears and pleasure! A broad, good world to live and work in,
to suffer or die, if God so willed it,--God, the good!
CHAPTER IV.
She entered the vast, dingy factory; the woollen dust, the clammy
air of copperas were easier to breathe in; the cramped, sordid
office, the work, mere trifles to laugh at; and she bent over the
ledger with its hard lines in earnest good-will, through the slow
creeping hours of the long day. She noticed that the unfortunate
chicken was making its heart glad over a piece of fresh earth
covered with damp moss. Dr. Knowles stopped to look at it when
he came, passing her with a surly nod.
"So your master's not forgotten you," he snarled, while the blind
old hen cocked her one eye up at him.
Pike, the manager, had brought in some bills.
"Who's its master?" he said, curiously, stopping by the door.
"Holmes,--he feeds it every morning."
The Doctor drawled out the words with a covert sneer, watching
the cold face bending over the desk, meantime.
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