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“How are you, Mrs. Caldwell?” said the visitor, as the two ladies met.

“Miserable,” was answered. And not even the ghost of a smile played over the unhappy face.

“Are you sick?” asked Mrs. Bland, showing some concern.

“No, not exactly sick. But, somehow or other, I’m in a worry about things all the while. I can’t move a step in any direction without coming against the pricks. It seems as though all things were conspiring against me.”

And then Mrs. Caldwell went, with her friend, through the whole series of her morning troubles, ending with the sentence,–

“Now, don’t you think I am beset? Why, Mrs. Bland, I’m in a purgatory.”

“A purgatory of your own creating, my friend,” answered Mrs. Bland with the plainness of speech warranted by the intimacy of their friendship; “and my advice is to come out of it as quickly as possible.”

“Come out of it! That is easily said. Will you show me the way?”

“At some other time perhaps. But this morning I have something else on hand. I’ve called for you to go with me on an errand of mercy.”

There was no Christian response in the face of Mrs. Caldwell. She was too deep amid the gloom of her own, wretched state to have sympathy for others.

“Mary Brady is in trouble,” said Mrs. Bland.

“What has happened?” Mrs. Caldwell was alive with interest in a moment.

“Her husband fell through a hatchway yesterday, and came near being killed.”

“Mrs. Bland!”

“The escape was miraculous.”

“Is he badly injured?”

“A leg and two ribs broken. Nothing more, I believe. But that is a very serious thing, especially where the man’s labor is his family’s sole dependence.”

“Poor Mary!” said Mrs. Caldwell, in real sympathy. “In what a dreadful state she must be! I pity her from the bottom of my heart.”

“Put on your things, and let us go and see her at once.”

Now, it is never a pleasant thing for persons like Mrs. Caldwell to look other people’s troubles directly in the face. It is bad enough to dwell among their own pains and annoyances, and they shrink from meddling with another’s griefs. But, in the present case, Mrs. Caldwell, moved by a sense of duty and a feeling of interest in Mrs. Brady, who had, years before, been a faithful domestic in her mother’s house, was, constrained to overcome all reluctance, and join her friend in the proposed visit of mercy.

“Poor Mary! What a state she must be in!”

Three or four times did Mrs. Caldwell repeat this sentence, as they walked towards that part of the town in which Mrs. Brady resided. “It makes me sick, at heart to think of it,” she added.

At last they stood at the door of a small brick house, in a narrow street, and knocked. Mrs. Caldwell dreaded to enter, and even shrank a little behind her friend when she heard a hand on the lock. It was Mary who opened the door–Mary Brady, with scarcely a sign of change in her countenance, except that it was a trifle paler.

“O! Come in!” she said, a smile of pleasure brightening over her face. But Mrs. Caldwell could not smile in return. It seemed to her as if it would be a mockery of the trouble which had come down upon that humble dwelling.

“How is your husband, Mary?” she asked with a solemn face, as soon as they had entered. “I only heard a little while ago of this dreadful occurrence.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” replied Mrs. Brady, her countenance hardly falling to a serious tone in its expression. “He’s quite comfortable to-day; and it’s such a relief to see him out of pain. He suffered considerably through the night, but fell asleep just at day dawn, and slept for several hours. He awoke almost entirely free from pain.”

“There are no internal injuries, I believe,” said Mrs. Bland.

“None, the doctor says. And I’m so thankful. Broken bones are bad enough, and it is hard to see as kind and good a husband as I have suffer,”–Mary’s eyes grew wet, “but they will knit and become strong again. When I think how much worse it might have been, I am condemned for the slightest murmur that escapes my lips.”