"When will my time come?" asked Rose, sadly.
"Lor'! how you talk – don't go on that way; you've got a while to live yet; you are nothing but a baby."
"Shall I always live here?" asked Rose, looking round again, as if in fear of Mrs. Markham.
"You'll live here till you are bound out, I reckon."
"What's that?" asked Rose, innocently.
"Wall, I never!" exclaimed Timmins; "haven't you never heern about being bound out?"
"No," answered Rose, a little ashamed of her ignorance.
"Wall, the upshot of it is, that you are sent away to live with any body that Mrs. Markham and the committee say, and work for them just as long as they tell you, for your meat, and drink, and clothing."
"What is a committee?" asked Rose.
"Why, it's Mr. Balch, and Mr. Skinner, and Mr. Flint, and Mr. Stone, and Mr. Grant, and them."
"Can't you ever get away from the place where they send you?" asked Rose.
"What a thing you are to ask questions. Yes, I spose you kin, if you die or get married – it amounts to about the same thing," said Timmins, with a shrug of her divorced shoulders.
"To whom shall I be bound out?" asked the child.
"Land's sake, as if I could tell; perhaps to one person, perhaps to another."
This answer not being very satisfactory to Rose, she turned her face to the pillow and heaved a deep sigh.
"Haven't you got no folks?" asked Timmins.
"What?"
"No folks? no relations, like?"
"None but Aunt Dolly."
"Who is Aunt Dolly?"
"I don't know; I never saw her till she brought me here."
"Where did she bring you from?"
"My mother's grave."
"Yes – but what house did you live in when she took you?"
"I didn't live in any house; all day long I sat on my mother's grave, and, at night, I crept behind some boards, by the grave-yard, and slept.
"Land's sake, didn't you have nothing to eat?"
"Sometimes – I was not much hungry, my heart ached so bad; sometimes the children gave me pieces of bread and cake, as they went to school."
"What did you do all day at your mother's grave?"
"Talked to mamma."
"Land's sake, child, dead folks can't hear."
"Can't they?" asked Rose, with a quivering lip. "Didn't my mamma hear what I said to her?"
"In course not," answered Timmins. "Why, what a chick you are. If you weren't so bright, I should think you was an idiot."
"What are you crying for?"
Rose kept on sobbing.
"Come now, don't take on so," said the uneasy Timmins, "you are not the only person who has had a hard time of it. I was a little girl once."
"Were you?" asked Rose, wiping her eyes, and surveying Timmins's Meg Merrilees proportions.
"Yes, of course," said Timmins, laughing; "just as if you didn't know that every grown-up woman must have been a little girl once. Do you say those things a purpose, or do they come by accident, like?"
"Did your mother die?" asked Rose, not appearing to hear Timmins's last question.
"Yes – and father, and brother, and sister, and the hull on 'em."
"Did you cry?"
"I 'spose so; I know I was awful hungry."
"But did you cry because your mother was dead?"
"Partly, I suppose."
"When you went to bed, did you think you saw her face with a cloud all around it, and did you call 'Mother?' and did the eyes look sad at you, but stay still where they were? and when you went up toward the cloud and the face, did it all go away?"
"Lor', no; how you talk," said Timmins, as Rose's face grew still paler. "Don't – you make my flesh creep."
"You wouldn't be afraid of your own dear mamma, would you?" asked Rose.
"Lor', yes, if she came to me that way," answered Timmins. "It isn't natur', child; you saw a – a – ," and Timmins hesitated to pronounce the word ghost.
"I know you wouldn't run away from it, if it looked so sweet and loving at you," said Rose; "but why did it not come nearer to me? and why did it all fade away when I put out my arms to clasp it? That made me think it couldn't be my mamma, after all; and yet it was mamma, too, but so pale and sad."
"Wall – I don't know," said the perplexed Timmins; "you are beyend me; I don't know nothing about sperrits, and I don't want to; but come here; you've been asking me all sorts of questions, now I should like to ask you one."
"Well," said Rose, abstractedly.
"What on airth made you carry on so like sixty about my washing you? Don't you like me?"
"Y – e – s," replied Rose, blushing deeply.
"Wall, then, what was the matter with you? any scars on your body, or any thing?"
"No," said Rose.
"What did ail you, then? for I'm curious to know; why didn't you want me to wash you?"
"It made me feel ashamed," said Rose; "nobody ever washed me but mamma; I didn't mind my mamma."
"Wall, I'm beat if I can understand that," said Timmins, looking meditatively down upon the carpet; "and one of your own sect, as they call it, too. It seems ridikilis; but let me tell you, you'd better make no fuss here; none of the other childern does."
"Other children?" asked Rose, "are there more children here? I did not hear any noise or playing."
"No, I reckon you didn't," said Timmins, laughing. ("I wish to the land Mrs. Markham had heard you say that;") and Timmins laughed again, as if it was too good a joke to be thrown away on one listener.
"Are their mothers dead, too, Timmins?"
"I dare say – I reckon some on 'em don't know much who their fathers and mothers was," said Timmins.
"They had some, didn't they?"
"In course," said Timmins; "why, you are enough to kill old folks; sometimes you are away beyend me, and sometimes not quite up to me, as one may say, but you'd better shut up now, for Mrs. Markham will be along presently."
"Do you think Mrs. Markham is a good woman?" asked Rose.
"About as good as you've seen," said the diplomatic Timmins, touching the cut on Rose's temple; "the quicker you mind her when she speaks, the better – that's all."
"Do you like her?" asked Rose.
"No – sh – yes – why, what a thing you are to make people say what they don't mean to. I like you, any how. But don't you never act as if I did, before folks, because my hands is tied, you see."
"I don't know what you mean," said Rose.
"Sh – sh – didn't I tell you to shut up? Somebody is as stealthy as a cat;" and Timmins looked uneasily at the key-hole of the door.
CHAPTER II
Mr. Balch was a bachelor of forty-five, with a small fortune, and a large bump of credulity. Like all ancient and modern bachelors, he liked "to be made of," and Mrs. Markham's hawk eye discovered this little weakness, and turned it to her own advantage. A moneyed man's vote on a committee is of some importance, and Markham had an eye to the perpetuity of her salary; further than that, we have no right to probe the secrets of her unappropriated heart.
On the visit in question, she received Mr. Balch very graciously, inquired with great solicitude concerning his rheumatism,