MISS WIMPLE'S HOOP.
[Concluded.]
CHAPTER III.
A year had passed since Maddy's flitting. The skimped delaine was sadly rusty,—Miss Wimple very poor. The profits of the Hendrik Athenæum and Circulating Library accrued in slow and slender pittances. A package of envelopes now and then, a few lead pencils, a box of steel pens, a slate pencil to a school-boy, were all its sales. Almost the last regular customer had seceded to the "Hendrik Book Bazaar and Periodical Emporium,"—a pert rival, that, with multifarious new-fangled tricks of attractiveness, flashed its plate-glass eyes and turned up its gilded nose at Miss Wimple from the other side of the way.
But Miss Wimple's proud and honorable fund for the relief of the shop, by no means fell off. As she had anticipated, her expert and nimble needle was in steady demand by all the folks of Hendrik who had fine sewing to give out. Her earnings from this source were considerable; and, severely stinting herself in the very necessaries of life by a strained ingenuity of economy, to which the skimped delaine—turned and altered to the utter exhaustion of the cleverest dressmaker's invention, and magically rejuvenated, as though again and again dipped in the fountain of perpetual youth—bore conclusive testimony, she bravely reinforced her fund from time to time.
Miss Wimple's repasts were neither frequent nor sumptuous; "all the delicacies of the season" hardly found their way to her table; and in her bleak little nest, for it was now winter, a thin and scanty shawl but coldly did the office of a blanket.
But Miss Wimple partook of her tea and dry toast with a cheerful heart, and shivered in her nest with illustrious patience,—regaled by satisfied honor, and warmed by the smiles of courage and of hope.
Between Simon and herself negotiations rested where we left them last; only there was now a heartier welcome for him when he came, and often a sparkling smile, that seemed to say, he had waited well, and not in vain, she hoped,—a smile that, to the eye of his healthy spirit, was an earnest of the rose-star's reappearance; it was only behind the rusty skimped delaine, as behind a cloud. His visits were not so rare as before, nor always "upon business"; he lingered sometimes, and sometimes had his way.
One night, Simon was outrageously rebellious; he had cheated Sally of half an hour, and spent it in rank mutiny; he compared the rose-star to the remotest of the asteroids, as seen through Lord Rosse's telescope, and instituted facetious comparisons between Miss Wimple's honorable fund and the national debt of England. It was near closing-time; Miss Wimple said, "Now, Simon, will you go?" —she had said that three times already. Some one entered. O, ho! Miss Wimple snatched away her hand:—"Now go, or never come again!" Simon glanced at the visitor,—a woman,—a stranger evidently, and poor,—a beggar, most likely, or one of those Wandering Jews of womankind, who, homeless, goalless, hopeless, tramp, tramp, tramp, unresting, till they die. She had almost burst in, quite startling Miss Wimple; but now she stood by the glass case, with averted face, and shabby shawl drawn suspiciously about her, and waited to be noticed, peering, meanwhile, through the little window into the dark street.
"Good-night, little Sally!" said Simon; "put up your bars, and so put up my bars. Now there's a fine speech for you!—if my name were Philip Withers, you'd call it poetry."
