Near to the prison door are a young and an old woman--one seventeen years of age on her last birthday, the other seventy. The young woman has no covering on her head; the old woman wears an ancient bonnet, which was the fashion once upon a time. Her little wrinkled face is almost hidden in the bonnet, and her ancient cotton dress falls in such straight lines about her, that, but for the pale wrinkled face and the shrivelled hands that peep from out the folds of a faded shawl, it might reasonably have been supposed it covers the limbs of a child. The bonnet has moved several times in the direction of the girl-woman, as if its owner were curious about her companion; but the girl takes no notice. At length, a piping voice asks, 'Are you waiting for some one, my dear?'
The girl answers 'Yes,' but does not look at the questioner.
'You needn't mind me,' pipes the old woman; 'I don't mean any harm; and it does my old heart good to talk. Perhaps you've got a mother of your own.'
'Mother!' echoes the girl, somewhat bitterly, and yet with a certain plaintiveness. 'No, I've got no mother; I never 'ad one as I knows of.'
'Poor dear, poor dear! Come, my dear, talk kindly to an old woman who might be your grandmother. Ay, I might, my dear. I'm seventy-one come the 10th of November, and I'm waiting for my daughter. You've got a long time before you, my dear, before you come to my age.'
'Seventy-one!' exclaims the girl, '_I_ shall never be seventy-one. I shouldn't like to be. What's your daughter in for? How old is she? She must be older than me.'
'She's thirty, my dear, and she's in for begging. What's yours in for?'
'Your friend. You needn't be so sharp with an old woman like me. You may be a mother yourself one day, poor dear!'
The girl turns with a gasp--it may be of joy or pain--and takes the old woman's hand and begs her pardon.
_Her_ friend is in for worse than beggin', the girl says, and relapses into silence, retaining the old woman's hand in hers, however, for a little while.
Many persons pass this way and that, but few bestow a second glance upon the group; and even if pity enters the heart of one and another, it does not take practical shape, and in its passive aspect it is, as is well known, but cold charity. One man, however, lingers in passing, walks a few steps, and hesitates. He has caught a glimpse of a face that he recognises, and it is evident that he is distressed by it. He turns boldly, and pauses before the forms of the old woman and the girl.