Min' and say yer prayers."
Annie kissed him with all her heart, but could not reply. He set her
down again, and went out. She heard the harness rattle, and the cart go
off. She was left sitting on the sack.
Presently Mr Bruce came in, and passing behind his counter, proceeded
to make an entry in a book. It could have been no order from poor,
homeless Margaret. It was, in fact, a memorandum of the day and the
hour when Annie was set down on that same sack--so methodical was he!
And yet it was some time before he seemed to awake to the remembrance
of the presence of the child. Looking up suddenly at the pale, weary
thing, as she sat with her legs hanging lifelessly down the side of the
sack, he said--pretending to have forgotten her--
"Ow, bairn, are ye there yet?"
And going round to her, he set her on the floor, and leading her by the
hand through the mysterious gate of the counter, and through a door
behind it, called in a sharp decided tone:
"Mother, ye're wanted!"
Thereupon a tall, thin, anxious-looking woman appeared, wiping her
hands in her apron.
"This is little Miss Anderson," said Bruce, "come to bide wi's. Gie her
a biscuit, and tak' her up the stair till her bed.
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