"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.
"I couldn't earn enough to get food or a bed, leave alone buy a new stock." Huldah wondered why she had come.

Was it only to beg?
In another moment she knew.
"I came to see if you couldn't 'elp me a bit.

You've got good friends and a comfortable home, and plenty to eat and drink.
You surely wouldn't let me go starving--me that brought you up, and did everything for you." "Everything!" Huldah's thoughts flew back over her life, from the time her mother died until she made her escape, a year ago, and wondered what was meant by "everything." "I know as you can make a good bit by your baskets, and it don't seem fair that strangers should have it all, do it ?" "Strangers don't have it all," said Huldah, warmly.