CHAPTER III.
f you had peeped into the big attic bedroom the three girls occupied at the top of the high New York boarding-house, you would have seen Ada Nicoli in her pretty white dressing-gown—such a pitiful reminder of her former luxury—putting little Sadie’s hair into curl-papers. In her lonely life she had grown passionately attached to her two little sisters who were so dependent on her, and the thing that hurt her most about her poverty was seeing little Sadie look careless and neglected. Often at night she was so tired and weary that it took all her courage to brush and dress their two heads of hair, and see that their clothes were in proper order for going to school the next day. A hat-box full of Southern bank-notes, which had been Marjorie’s and Sadie’s amusement for many a day in their old home for playing at store-keeping, came in handy for curling Sadie’s hair, and the child always wanted Ada to tell her the same story, how her mother’s mother had saved up the bank-notes during the great war, believing that the South would be victorious, and how she had made some of the notes during the war by making slippers out of the felt carpets and selling them.
“If they were all real good dollars now, Ada,” the child said, “we needn’t live in this hen-roost any longer, need we?”
Ada took the child in her arms. “Poor little Sadie,” she said. “While we three are together, it doesn’t so much matter, does it? We can have a little fun sometimes, can’t we?”
“It isn’t so bad, siss,” the child answered, “but I do want to go to Barnum’s, and I wish the girls at school wouldn’t say, ‘When’s your father coming back? He’s been visiting for a long time.’”
Then Marjorie chimed in with—“I passed two of the girls I used to go to school with to-day, Ada, and they both looked in at a shop window when I passed.”
“Never mind,” Ada said, with her heart growing sadder every minute. “It’s a good thing not to be at school with girls who are so vulgar.” Ada’s own rich friends had also disappeared in a marvellous fashion. It is true she had left her old home so suddenly, and had to avoid seeing people whom it would be painful to meet in her altered circumstances, so much that, perhaps, they were not altogether to blame. She had been working for some months at Madame Maude’s now, and she had found that she had very little time in her busy life for musing over the faithlessness of her rich friends. Her mother’s mental condition had not improved, and she had not had a single line from her father. He had left the country to avoid disgrace as well as ruin. The cold weather had come, and Ada was feeling the hardship of walking every morning and evening to her business. It was a long way, and the girl’s constitution was not suited to the strain made upon it. The people in the boarding-house had watched her growing slighter and paler as the weeks passed, and her eyes had grown feverishly bright. Marjory was a selfish, peevish child, who did not do what she could to help her sister.
“She’s not worth Ada’s little finger!” the fat boarder would exclaim, when the child deceived her sister by making friends with girls that Ada had asked her not to know, and had spent Ada’s hardly-earned money on candies, and iced-cream sodas. “She’s her father’s own child, that’s what she is, and Ada Nicoli’s too fine a girl to kill herself for that saucy brat.”
But Ada could see no fault in Marjory, for Marjory was clever enough to deceive her. And so while Ada was toiling night and day to bring her up as a refined and cultivated child, Marjory was hankering after the society of vulgar companions, and paying little attention to her lessons. But little Sadie was a sweet and loving child, and her devotion to Ada was touching. At the boarding-house dinner-table it was a pretty sight to see Ada Nicoli with a little sister on each side of her. She was the prettiest, daintiest creature herself, and it was her greatest joy to see people look with admiration at her two children, as she called them. They were always wonderfully clean and freshly dressed.
“How long can she keep it up?” the fat boarder said. “She fairly amazes me, that girl. She had never even brushed her own hair a year and a half ago, and now she’s keeping these two children so sweet and fresh, and bringing them up so well, too. They are a deal nicer children than when they first came, but it’s wearing her out—that light burning up in her room till past twelve at night, and she’s up by seven o’clock in the morning.”
Beside the people in the boarding-house there was someone else who had been watching Ada working the soft curves of her face into sharper lines, and seeing the deeper shadows come below her bright eyes. It was an old man who drove to business every day on the Fifth Avenue stage-coach. He always knew that, if it was a wet day, Ada would be waiting at 20, East 32nd Street for the coach to pass, but if it was fine, she would save her twenty-five cents and walk. He was an observant old man, and somewhat of a character. He was supposed to be a miser, and very wealthy, though he lived in a small tenement house, and kept no servant. While he sat huddled up in the corner of the coach, which rattled and shook over the stones of Fifth Avenue like a relic from the last century, he had noticed every detail of the girl’s dress, he had seen the once pretty frocks become almost threadbare, and the dainty shoes lose their freshness. He had made inquiries, and found out her story. One day she had given the conductor a five-dollar bill to pay for her fare. The man gave her back a quarter too much change. The old man watched her count the money, and look at the extra quarter. It was bitterly cold weather, and he knew that that quarter would pay for her journey there and back for another two days. The girl’s expression said it as plainly as words could have done. “You’ve given me a quarter too much,” she said, with a little tremble in her voice. The man did not even say “Thank you,” but snatched the money out of her hand roughly. The old man smiled; he had long ago lost his belief in human nature, and this little act of honesty on the girl’s part did him good. If was like going near a fire on a cold winter day. The meeting of Ada coming and going from her work grew to be the one interest in the old hermit’s life. He had watched her so carefully that he had gained a knowledge of her life of which she was wholly unconscious. He had seen her tenderness to her little sisters when he met them out together on a Saturday afternoon. Often he had wandered over Central Park with his keen eyes looking out eagerly for the graceful figure of Ada Nicoli laced arm-in-arm with the two young children, and when they stopped to feed the swans on the lake, or rest in some summer-house, the old man seated himself where he could feast his eyes on his adopted family unseen.
Two or three times he had seen something very like tears in Ada’s eyes when a carriage with some beautifully-dressed women in it would pass the girl, and they would give her a stiff little bow of recognition.
It was one of the coldest winters New York had experienced for many years, but the old man’s shrivelled-up heart was, day by day, stretching and expanding towards the girl, who was always gentle. She had many times helped him as he got in and out of the Fifth Avenue stage-coach, and she had often offered to give up her seat in the snug top corner in exchange for his draughty one near the door, but beyond these natural, kindly little attentions, Ada Nicoli had thought little about the old man, whom so many people laughed and poked fun at. He had even taken the trouble to follow her to the private asylum where her mother lived, and would wait there until she came out with her sweet blue eyes filled with sadness. He had heard of her father’s cruel desertion, and many a time the old man could feel his fingers close upon the villain’s neck in his longing to thrash him.
On this particular day, when everything was a world of snow, and the temperature was twenty degrees below zero, the old man had been slowly following Ada to her mother’s home. He had long since learnt that Wednesdays were the visiting days in this house of sorrow, and that Ada Nicoli never failed to be there in her lunch hour. The house was in a quiet street, where there was little traffic or noise, and Ada hurried along as fast as her numbed feet would carry her. In the old man’s eyes she had never looked so beautiful, for the cold, crisp air had brought a lovely colour to her cheeks, and her hair was bright gold in the winter sunlight. Suddenly he saw her stop, and bend over something that had fallen in the snow on the side-walk. It was the figure of a man, and from his position it looked as if he was intoxicated, rather than overcome with the cold. There was no one in sight but the old man who was following her. Ada touched the man, and spoke to him, but he could give no coherent answer. He was too drunk to tell her even what his name was. When the old man came up to her she was searching the road with a troubled look.
“There is no sleigh in sight,” she said, “and he must not lie here, he will freeze to death.”
“Perhaps he ain’t of much account living,” the old man said; “folks like that are better dead.”
“Oh, don’t say that,” Ada cried, in a reproachful voice; “he may have a wife and family dependent upon him.”
“A mighty poor thing to depend on, lying drunk on the side-walk at midday. Don’t you waste your pity on the likes of him.” The old man knew that he would have been grievously disappointed if his pretty young lady with the sweet blue eyes had gone on her way and left a fellow creature to freeze to death.
“It may be hours before a policeman passes this way,” Ada said. “It’s sheer murder to leave him. I will run down this side street and see if I can find a cab.” The old man waited for the girl’s return, walking up and down the side-walk where the drunken man lay in an unconscious sleep. Soon he heard the sound of sleigh-bells, and in another instant one appeared round the corner with Ada seated in it. She jumped out when she reached the spot where the man lay, and told the hackman to get down and lift him into the cab. “Take him to the nearest police-station,” she said, “and keep him there until he is himself again.”
“And who’s going to pay me?” the man asked sullenly.
“I will,” Ada replied proudly, “if you do not care to do it for charity.”
“If I was plying round the city looking out for driving acts of charity, I guess my wife and young ’uns would be as badly off as these drunken brutes are.”
Ada took her thin little purse from her pocket. “Will you do it for a dollar?” she said; “it is all I have to give you. Will you help the hackman to lift him in,” she said, turning to the old man. But as she looked at his shrivelled old figure, in his badly-fitting clothes, she seemed to regret what she had said, and stooped down to take the man by the shoulders, while the hackman took his feet; but the old man quickly put her aside, with almost a cry in his cracked old voice, as he said, “Don’t touch him, don’t touch him. To think of you defiling your pretty fingers on a drunken brute.”
Ada looked at him in mild surprise, and gave up her place. When the hackman drove off she turned and thanked the old man.
“If the friendless and poor aren’t kind to each other,” she said sadly, “where can we look for help?” She thought that he did not understand that she was placing herself amongst the list of the poor and friendless. She, his daintily-reared lady, standing there, a slight, proud figure, with her queenly little head thrown back, and her cheeks as delicate as the pink apple-blossom in his old garden at home. In all the big city of New York where he had worked and toiled for forty years, this girl was the one glad and beautiful thing for him; he felt his time-worn heart beat young again when he looked at her.
(To be concluded.)