Nellie was curled up in a big chair with a book; she looked up quickly.
"Why, mamma," she said, "you have been crying!" "Have I, darling?
I daresay it was the sight of that poor man.

He was very wretched." "Is he gone ?" asked the child.
It was unusually late and Nellie was beginning to be sleepy, so that she was more easily quieted than she could have been in ordinary circumstances.

It might have struck her as strange that a wandering tramp should know her mother's Christian name, as still more inexplicable that her mother should have been willing to admit such a man at so late an hour.

She had been badly frightened, but trusting her mother as she did, her terror had quickly disappeared and had been quickly followed by sleepiness.
But Mrs.Goddard.did not sleep that night.

She felt as though she could never sleep again, and for many hours she lay thinking of the new element of fear which had so suddenly come into her life at the very time when she believed herself to be safe for many years to come.