"What an odd little brown thing she is!" she thought to herself, half-amused, half-sad.

"I ain't nobody's relative, I haven't got nobody but Dick! She seemed so cheerful about it, too, it makes one feel that she did not mind the want.
I wonder--but I must go and hear more about the strange pair who seem to have dropped out of the clouds to act as good fairies to poor Martha Perry." When, about an hour later, Miss Carew reached the little cottage in Woodend Lane, she found Huldah washing the floor of the little kitchen, Dick lying in the garden gnawing his bone, and Martha Perry lying in bed with eighteenpence on the table beside her, and a bunch of flowers in a jug.

Huldah had taken off Mrs.Perry's apron, for that was far too clean and precious to be worn for such work, whereas her old dress could not possibly be made shabbier.
When she saw Miss Carew standing on the doorstep, she looked up with a bright smile of welcome.

"Please to walk in, miss," she said, shyly.

She had hoped to have had the kitchen washed and made quite neat before the visitor arrived, but nothing could lessen her pleasure at seeing Miss Rose.
Without her white apron she looked browner than ever, and Miss Rose felt as she looked at her a great desire to dress her in pretty, clean, dainty things, a blue, or pink, or green cotton frock, with big white apron and white collar.