There were ashes upon the hearth and ashes upon the floor, a
hair-brush upon the table and an empty plate upon the chair, with
swarms of flies sipping the few drops of molasses and feeding upon the
crumbs of bread left there by the elfish-looking child now in the bed
beside its mother. There was nothing but poverty--squalid, disgusting
poverty--visible everywhere, and Lucy grew sick and faint at the, to
her, unusual sight.
"They have not lived here long. We only found them three weeks ago;
they will look better by and by," Anna whispered, feeling that some
apology was necessary for the destitution and filth visible
everywhere.
Daintily removing the plate to the table, and carefully tucking up her
skirts, Lucy sat down upon the wooden chair and looked dubiously on
while Anna made the sick woman more tidy in appearance, and then fed
her from the basket of provisions which Grandma Humphreys had sent.
"I never could do that," Lucy thought, as, shoving off the little
dirty hand fingering her shoulder-knots she watched Anna washing the
poor woman's face, bending over her pillow as unhesitatingly as if it
had been covered with ruffled linen like those at Prospect Hill,
instead of the coarse, soiled rag which hardly deserved the name of
pillow-case.
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