things for ever out of her
own reach, which made my heart heavy for our second housemaid. Not
feeling myself able to comfort her, there was only one other thing to
do. That thing was--to take her in to dinner.

"Help me up," I said. "You're late for dinner, Rosanna--and I have come
to fetch you in."

"You, Mr. Betteredge!" says she.

"They told Nancy to fetch you," I said. "But thought you might like your
scolding better, my dear, if it came from me."

Instead of helping me up, the poor thing stole her hand into mine, and
gave it a little squeeze. She tried hard to keep from crying again,
and succeeded--for which I respected her. "You're very kind, Mr.
Betteredge," she said. "I don't want any dinner to-day--let me bide a
little longer here."

"What makes you like to be here?" I asked. "What is it that brings you
everlastingly to this miserable place?"

"Something draws me to it," says the girl, making images with her finger
in the sand. "I try to keep away from it, and I can't. Sometimes,"
says she in a low voice, as if she was frightened at her own fancy,
"sometimes, Mr. Betteredge, I think that my grave is waiting for me
here."

"There's roast mutton and suet-pudding waiting for you!" says I. "Go in
to dinner directly. This is what comes, Rosanna, of thinking on an empty
stomach!" I spoke severely, being naturally indignant (at my time of
life) to hear a young woman of five-and-twenty talking about her latter
end!

She didn't seem to hear me: she put her hand on my shoulder, and kept me
where I was, sitting by her side.

"I think the place has laid a spell on me," she said. "I dream of it
night after night; I think of it when I sit stitching at my work. You
know I am grateful, Mr. Betteredge--you know I try to deserve your
kindness, and my lady's confidence in me. But I wonder sometimes whether
the life here is too quiet and too good for such a woman as I am, after
all I have gone through, Mr. Betteredge--after all I have gone through.
It's more lonely to me to be among the other servants, knowing I am not
what they are, than it is to be here. My lady doesn't know, the matron
at the reformatory doesn't know, what a dreadful reproach honest people
are in themselves to a woman like me. Don't scold me, there's a dear
good man. I do my work, don't I? Please not to tell my lady I am
discontented--I am not. My mind's unquiet, sometimes, that's all." She
snatched her hand off my shoulder, and suddenly pointed dow