She did not pass that night in bed any more than Job; but she was
under a respectable roof, and among kind, though rough people.
She had offered no resistance to the old boatman, when he had
clutched her arm, in order to insure her following him, as he
threaded the crowded dock-ways, and dived up strange by-streets.
She came on meekly after him, scarcely thinking in her stupor where
she was going, and glad (in a dead, heavy way) that some one was
deciding things for her.
He led her to an old-fashioned house, almost as small as house could
be, which had been built long ago, before all the other part of the
street, and had a country-town look about it in the middle of that
bustling back-street. He pulled her into the house-place; and
relieved to a certain degree of his fear of losing her on the way,
he exclaimed--
"There!" giving a great slap of one hand on her back.
The room was light and bright, and roused Mary (perhaps the slap on
her back might help a little too), and she felt the awkwardness of
accounting for her presence to a little bustling old woman who had
been moving about the fireplace on her entrance.
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