"I've come to know if you can help me," she began, in the same old
fretful, whining voice. "I know you don't want to see me again,
nobody does, but I'm starving. I've been starving mostly ever since
Tom was took away--"
"Took away," gasped Huldah faintly. "Where?"
"He's got three years. Didn't you know? And I'm left to keep
myself, and I can't do it. I'll never live till he comes out, I
know. I've sold the van and everything. I couldn't go round with it
by meself, but the man that had it off me cheated me something crool.
When Tom knows he'll--he'll--oh he'll be mad with me--"
"And Charlie?" asked Huldah, anxiously.
"Charlie! Oh, he's dead. He dropped down in the road one day.
'Twas lucky I'd sold him, wasn't it? He died only two days after."
Tears sprang to Huldah's eyes. "Oh, Charlie, poor dear old Charlie!"
she cried, "and--and I never said good-bye to him, or anything!"
"He's best off," said Emma Smith, coldly. "I wouldn't have been
sorry if I'd dropped down dead, too."
Huldah gasped.
"I can't get anything to do. I've tried to sell laces and buttons,
and cotton, but nobody don't seem to want any,--leastways not of me,"
and neither of her listeners wondered, when they looked at her, so
dirty, so untidy, so forbidding in appearance.
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