and when she saw her dear
mother looking wistfully upon her, she would say, striving to be gay,
and hide from those loving eyes all trace of suffering--

"I'm so cosy in this nice chair, mother darling, and Nora is coming in
soon, you know!"

And of the many who love little Pollie, who so true as Sally Grimes?
Every morning before setting off for the City she comes, anxiously
asking, "How's Pollie?" and on her return, her first care is to inquire
for her little sick friend, bringing with her a few flowers, if she has
any left in the basket, or some other trifle, precious, though, to the
grateful recipient, whose white lips smile gratefully at the kind Sally
for thus thinking of her.

"Ay, but I'm lonesome without you, Pollie," says the girl, as she kisses
the pale cheeks of the child; "and glad I'll be when you gets about
again, the place don't seem the same without you; why, even that big
peeler with the whiskers, who is a'most allers near the Bank, he says
to-day 'How's the little gal?' that he did."

One evening Sally came, rushing in quite breathless with excitement,
startling Mrs. Turner and waking up Pollie, who was dozing in Nora's
arms.

"Good news, good news," she cried out; "luck's come at last, hurray!
there's such a lovely lady coming to see you, Pollie."

"To see Pollie?" asked the widow in surprise; "who is she?"

"I don't know," was the reply, "but she's coming; she told me so, and
soon too."

"Who can it be?" they all questioned of each other, pausing in their
work to look at the excited girl.

"I'll tell you all about it," exclaimed Sally, who felt herself to be of
some importance as the bearer of such wonderful news; "only just let me
get my breath a bit."

"Well," she continued, when sufficiently recovered to proceed with her
story, but which, like all narrators of startling intelligence, she
seemed to wish to spin out, so as to excite the curiosity of her hearers
to the utmost; "well, I was standing at the top of Threadneedle Street,
with my back to the Mansion House, looking to see if any customers were
coming from Moorgate Street way, when some one touched me on my
shoulder. I turned sharp round, as I thought maybe it was a gent wanting
a bunch of flowers for his coat. But instead of a gent it was, oh, such
a pretty lady! Not a young lady; p'raps as old as you, Mrs. Turner,
p'raps older. She was dressed all in black, with, oh my! such crape, and
jet beads; and though she smiled when s