He accepted the charge, and her flowers' drooping heads told how nobly
he had fulfilled it. Susan was charitable. Every day it had been her
custom to visit more than one poor person; she carried meal to one,
soup to another, linen to another, meat and bread to another, money to
another--to all words and looks of sympathy. This practice she did not
even now give up, for it came under the head of her religious duties;
but she relaxed it. She often sent to places where she used to go.
Until George went she had never thought of herself; and so the
selfishness of those she relieved had not struck her. Now it made her
bitter to see that none of those she pitied, pitied her. The moment
she came into their houses it was, "_My_ poor head, Miss Merton;
_my_ old bones do ache so."

"I think a bit of your nice bacon would do ME good. I'M a poor
sufferer, Miss Merton. _My_ boy is 'listed. I thought as how you'd
forgotten _me_ altogether. But 'tis hard for poor folk to keep a
friend." "You see, miss, _my_ bedroom window is broken in one or
two places. John, he stopped it up with paper the best way he could,
but la, bless you, paper baint like glass. It is very dull for
_me_. You see, miss, I can't get about now as I used to could, and
I never was no great reader. I often wish as some one would step in
and knock me on the head, for I be no use, I baint, neer a mossel." No
one of them looked up in her face and said, "Lauks, how pale _you_
ha got to look, miss; I hopes as how nothing amiss haven't happened to
_you_, that have been so kind to us this many a day." Yet suffering
of some sort was plainly stamped on the face and in the manner of this
relieving angel. When they poured out their vulgar woes, Susan made an
effort to forget her own and to cheer as well as relieve them. But she
had to compress her own heart hard to do it; and this suppression of
feeling makes people more or less bitter. She had better have out with