She resolved to go first to Lady Pelham, that coming early she might find her disengaged, and afterwards to proceed to the print-shop.
The wind blew keen across the snow as Laura began her reluctant pilgrimage. Her summer attire, to which her finances could afford no addition, ill defended her from the blast. Through the streets of London she was to explore her way unattended. Accustomed to find both beauty and pleasure in the solitude of her walks, she was to mix in the throngs of a rude rabble, without protection from insult. But no outward circumstances could add to the feelings of comfortless dismay with which she looked forward to the moment, when, ushered through stately apartments into the presence of self-important greatness, she should announce herself a beggar. Her courage failed--she paused, and made one step back towards her home. But she recalled her former thoughts. 'I have need to be humbled,' said she; and again proceeded on her way.
As she left the little garden that surrounded her lodgings, she perceived an old man who had taken shelter by one of the pillars of the gate. He shivered in the cold, which found easy entrance through the rags that covered him, and famine glared from his hollow eye. His gray hair streamed on the wind, as he held out the tattered remains of a hat, and said, 'Please to help me, Lady.--I am very poor.' He spoke in the dialect of her native land, and the accents went to Laura's heart;--for Laura was in the land of strangers. She had never been deaf to the petitions of the poor; for all the poor of Glenalbert were known to her; and she knew that what she spared from her own comforts, was not made the minister of vice. Her purse was already in her hand, ere she remembered that to give was become a crime.
As the thought crossed her, she started like one who had escaped from sudden danger. 'No, I must not give you money,' said she, and returned the purse into her pocket, with a pang that taught her the true bitterness of poverty. 'I am cold and hungry,' said the man still pleading, and taking encouragement from Laura's relenting eye. 'Hungry!' repeated Laura, 'then come with me, and I will give you bread;' and she returned to the house to bestow on the old man the humble fare which she had before destined to supply her own wants for the day, glad to purchase by a longer fast the right to feed the hungry.