Belle looked around and found an old tea pot in which there were a few
leaves. There were some dry crusts in the cupboard, while two little
children crouched by the embers in the grate, and cried for the mother.
Belle soon found a few coals in an old basin with which she replenished
the fire, and covering up the sick woman as carefully as she could,
stepped into the nearest grocery and replenished her basket with some of
good the things of life.

"Is it not too heavy for you[r] might?" said Paul Clifford from whose
grocery Belle had bought her supplies.

"Can I not send them home for you?"

"No I don't want them sent home. They are for a poor woman and her
suffering children, who live about a square from here in Lear's Court."
Paul stood thoughtfully a moment before handing her the basket, and
said--"That court has a very bad reputation; had I not better accompany
you? I hope you will not consider my offer as an intrusion, but I do not
think it is safe for you to venture there alone."

"If you think it is not safe I will accept of your company; but I never
thought of danger for myself in the presence of that fainting woman and
her hungry children. Do you know her? Her name is Mrs. Gough." "I think
I do. If it is the person I mean, I remember her when she was as
lighthearted and happy a girl as I ever saw, but she married against her
parents' consent, a worthless fellow named Joe Gough, and in a short
time she disappeared from the village and I suppose she has come home,
broken in health and broken in spirit."

"And I am afraid she has come home to die. Are her parents still alive?"