“No, no! I could not do it. Knowing how keenly a poor girl can feel, no amount of prosperity could induce me to wound one as—as that girl has hurt me. If I were rich—”
“Well, if you were rich? What then?”
“I would think of others, use my wealth to make others prosperous. No girl with a soul should be shut up in a great room like this, to show off garments for happier woman to wear.”
“Yet it is only a little time since you were so glad to come here.”
Eva’s face changed and the cloud was swept from it as if by a flash of lightning. She reached forth her hand.
“You think me impatient, and so I am; ungrateful—but that I am not. I was glad to come here—so glad! The sweetest hour of my life will be that in which I carry home my first week’s wages, and see those poor, dear faces brighten with a sight of the money. How can I be so unreasonable? Forgive me!”
CHAPTER III.
A HUMBLE HOME.
Up town, where vacant lots can still be found, stood a small wooden building, scarcely more than a shantie in dimensions, but perfectly finished, so far as it went, and neat in all its appointments as any palace. Two small rooms on the first floor, and a like number of sleeping chambers, with their ceilings in the roof, took up the entire length and breadth of the building. The little space of ground, not occupied by the building, was given up to turf and brightened with flowers, which climbed the fences and ran up the little portico, as leaves cluster around a bird’s-nest in the spring. Indeed, that little spot of earth was lovely. In the cool of the day, thousands of purple and pink morning glories shook the dew from their delicate bells, and, at all hours masses of scarlet beans, cypress-vines, and sweet scented clematis, kept the little enclosure bright and beautiful, week in and week out, so long as the season lasted.
The house itself contained little of value. Curtains of cheap muslin, white as snow, through which you could see a thousand delicate shadows from the flowers outside, shaded the windows.
In the front room was a pretty chintz couch, home-made, with dainty cushions, and an easy-chair to match, the workmanship of some strong, deft hand in the first construction, and finished up by the taste, still more perfect, of a woman, to whom the aesthetic influence was second nature.