thin this
fireplace sat the old woman we had come to interview. Her back was to
us, and she looked helplessly and hopelessly deaf.

"Ask her," said William, pointing towards her with a rude gesture, "if
she will come to the house at sunset. My sisters have some work for her
to do. They will pay her well."

Advancing at his bidding, I passed a rocking-chair, in the cushion of
which a dozen patches met my eye. This drew my eyes toward a bed, over
which a counterpane was drawn, made up of a thousand or more pieces of
colored calico, and noticing their varied shapes and the intricacy with
which they were put together, I wondered whether she ever counted them.
The next moment I was at her back.

"Seventy," burst from her lips as I leaned over her shoulder and showed
her the coin which I had taken pains to have in my hand.

"Yours," I announced, pointing in the direction of the house, "if you
will do some work for Miss Knollys to-night."

Slowly she shook her head before burying it deeper in the shawl she wore
wrapped about her shoulders. Listening a minute, I thought I heard her
mutter: "Twenty-eight, ten, but no more. I can count no more. Go away!"

But I'm nothing if not persistent. Feeling for her hands, which were
hidden away somewhere under her shawl, I touched them with the coin and
cried again:

"This and more for a small piece of work to-night. Come, you are strong;
earn it."

"What kind of work is it?" I asked innocently, or it must have appeared
innocently, of Mr. Knollys, who was standing at my back.

He frowned, all the black devils in his heart coming into his look at
once.

"How do I know! Ask Loreen; she's the one who sent me. I don't take
account of what goes on in the kitchen."

I begged his pardon, somewhat sarcastically I own, and made another
attempt to attract the attention of the old crone, who had remained
perfectly callous to my allurements.

"I thought you liked money," I said. "For Lizzie, you know, for Lizzie."

But she only muttered in lower and lower gutturals, "I can count no
more"; and, disgusted at my failure, being one who accounts failure as
little short of disgrace, I drew back and made my way toward the door,
saying: "She's in a different mood from what she was yesterday when she
snatched a quarter from me at the first intimation it was hers. I don't
think you can get her to do any work to-night. Innocents take these
freaks. Isn't there some one else you can call in?"

Th