taking off his greatcoat.

"Who? Really, I don't know," answered Hollingsworth, looking at me
with some surprise. "It is a young person who belongs here, however;
and no doubt she had been expected. Zenobia, or some of the women
folks, can tell you all about it."

"I think not," said I, glancing towards the new-comer and the other
occupants of the kitchen. "Nobody seems to welcome her. I should
hardly judge that she was an expected guest."

"Well, well," said Hollingsworth quietly, "We'll make it right."

The stranger, or whatever she were, remained standing precisely on
that spot of the kitchen floor to which Hollingsworth's kindly hand
had impelled her. The cloak falling partly off, she was seen to be a
very young woman dressed in a poor but decent gown, made high in the
neck, and without any regard to fashion or smartness. Her brown hair
fell down from beneath a hood, not in curls but with only a slight
wave; her face was of a wan, almost sickly hue, betokening habitual
seclusion from the sun and free atmosphere, like a flower-shrub that
had done its best to blossom in too scanty light. To complete the
pitiableness of her aspect, she shivered either with cold, or fear,
or nervous excitement, so that you might have beheld her shadow
vibrating on the fire-lighted wall. In short, there has seldom been
seen so depressed and sad a figure as this young girl's; and it was
hardly possible to help being angry with her, from mere despair of
doing anything for her comfort. The fantasy occurred to me that she
was some desolate kind of a creature, doomed to wander about in
snowstorms; and that, though the ruddiness of our window panes had