Her Faithful Knight — page 76: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

7a 2 Ways and Means. wondering greatly how a girl of refinement and education came to live amid such humble and poverty-stricken sur- roundings, the while the numerous brood of children, be- longing respectively to the charwoman who lived next door, the sweep who lived over the way, and the lady who took in mangling, assembled to stare upon the great man when he left his carriage and came up the paved way be- tween the Board School buildings to Dorothy’s door. He was yet more interested when a second pale and beautiful woman, singularly like his first acquaintance, was introduced to him as his new patient. Phyllis was with difficulty aroused from her heavy, lethargic slumber nor could she easily be made-to understand the ques- tions addressed to her. Dr. Morgan’s practiced eyes in- stantly took in the signs of cruel anxiety of the mind and semi-starvation of the body which the invalid only too plainly showed. Drawing Cresswell apart, as the oldest woman present, he began to question her about her young mistress. But Cresswell burst into tears. She was a short, thin woman of fifty, with handsome aquiline features, which, together with a habitual gravity and taciturnity, im- pressed observers with a sense of dignity and intelligence which she was far from possessing. “Don’t ask me, sir,” she cried, nervously. “Ask Miss Dorothy. Miss Phyllis only came back last night while I was abed and asleep. When I found her here this morn- ing it gave me such a turn; I can’t get over it! She is that altered, too, I don’t know her.” “Where is her husband P” “Oh, don’t ask me, sir. I didn’t know she had one. Leastways, don’t take it from me. She may have got married without telling us. But she'll get well, won’t she, sir?” Eomichbooks sco