The Guinea Stamp | Page 3

winter effect in a marshy hollow, there was
nobody to mourn him but his motherless child. It was very pitiful, and
surely in the wide world there must have been found some
compassionate heart who would have taken the child by the hand and
ministered unto her for Christ's sake. If any such there were, Gladys
had never heard of them, and did not believe they lived. She was very
old in knowledge of the world, that bitterest of all knowledge, which
poverty had taught. She had even known what it was, that gentle child,
to be hungry and have nothing to eat--a misery enhanced by the proud,
sensitive spirit which was the only heritage John Graham had left the
daughter for whom, most cheerfully, he would have laid down his life.
The village people had been kind after their homely way; but they,
working hard all day with their hands, and eating at eventide the
substantial bread of their honest toil, were possessed of a great
contempt for the worn and haggard man who tramped their
meadow-ways with his sketch-books under his arm, his daughter
always with him, preserving still the look and manners of the gently
born, though they wore the shabbiest of shabby garments, and could
scarcely pay for the simple food they ate. It was a great mystery to
them, and they regarded the spectacle with the impatience of those who
did not understand.
It was the month of November, and very early that grey day the chilly
darkness fell. When she could no longer see across the narrow street,
Gladys let her head fall on her hands, and so sat very still. She had
eaten nothing for many hours, and though feeling faint and weak, it did
not occur to her to seek something to strengthen her. She had
something more important than such trifling matters to engross her
thoughts. She was so sitting, hopeless, melancholy, half-dazed, when
she heard the voice of an arrival down-stairs, and the unaccustomed

tones of a man's voice mingling with the shriller notes of Miss Peck,
their little landlady. It was not the curate's voice, with which Gladys
had grown quite familiar during her father's illness. He had been very
kind; and in his desperation, when his end approached, Graham had
implored him to look after Gladys. It was a curious charge to lay upon
a young man's shoulders, but Clement Courtney had accepted it
cheerfully, and had even written to his widowed mother, who lived
alone in a Dorsetshire village, asking her advice about the girl. Gladys
was disturbed in her solitude by Miss Peck, who came to the door in
rather an excited and officious manner. She was a little, wiry spinster,
past middle life, eccentric, but kind-hearted. She had bestowed a great
deal of gratuitous and genuine kindness on her lodgers, though
knowing very well that she would not likely get any return but gratitude
for it; but times were hard with her likewise, and she could not help
thinking regretfully at times of the money, only her due, which she
would not likely touch now that the poor artist was gone. She had a
little lamp in her hand, and she held it up so that the light fell full on the
child's pale face.
'Miss Gladys, my dear, it is a gentleman for you. He says he is your
uncle,' she said, and her thin voice quite trembled with her great
excitement.
'My uncle?' repeated Gladys wistfully. 'Oh yes; it will be Uncle Abel
from Scotland. Mr. Courtney said he had written to him.'
She rose from her stool and turned to follow Miss Peck down-stairs.
'In the sitting-room, my dear, he waits for you,' said Miss Peck, and a
look of extreme pity softened her pinched features into tenderness. 'I
hope--I hope, my dear, he will be good to you.' She did not add what
she thought, that the chances were against it; and, still holding the lamp
aloft, she guided Gladys down-stairs. There was no hesitation, but
neither was there elation or pleasant anticipation in the girl's manner as
she entered the room. She had ceased to expect anything good or bright
to come to her any more, and perhaps it was as well just then that her
outlook in life was so gloomy; it lessened the certainty of
disappointment. A little lamp also burned on the round table in the

middle of the narrow sitting-room, and the fire feebly blinked behind
Miss Peck's carefully-polished bars, as if impressed by the subdued
atmosphere without and within. Close by the table stood a very little
man, enveloped in a long loosely-fitting overcoat, his hat in one hand
and a large damp umbrella in the other. He had an abnormally large
head, and a soft, flabby,