Martha
I
From the first day that she came to Underwood Terrace Martha interested me. She arrived, I remember, one dull November afternoon. I saw her pass down the street, peering, in a short-sighted fashion, at the numbers over the doors. She carried a large bonnet-box in one hand and a neat brown paper parcel in the other. She had no umbrella, and the rain dripped from the limp brim of her large straw hat. Her skirt, shabby and worn, had slipped from her overladen fingers and dragged upon the muddy pavement. I don't know why I noticed her, but, as I glanced up from my book, my eyes fell upon her forlorn little figure, and I felt that sudden, curious sensation of pity which sometimes, we don't know why, takes us by the throat and shakes us out of our egotism and self-reflection. Very possibly my first interest in her was merely a matter of mood. Perhaps, had I been happier myself, I should not have taken much notice of her; but my own concerns appeared, just then, so dull and grey that it was a relief to turn from them to the contemplation of somebody else's. For the present, however, the little figure in the draggled black
