“There! There!” she said. “You mustn’t cry, dear! Come! We’ll go into your own nice, comfy little room and put your things away, and then you’ll feel more at home.”
She led her into a decent enough little cell, clean and orderly, and opened the little bundle. It did not contain what, according to all proper stories of poor little girls, it should have contained, the traditional clothes, few in number, but neatly patched and darned, and spotlessly clean. Mrs. Monahan had taken it for granted that a new outfit would be bought for Rosaleen, and she hadn’t wasted her time mending things that would certainly be discarded. She had, on the contrary, kept all Rosaleen’s better things at home, for the other children, so that what Miss Julie unwrapped was poor enough.
“A bundle of rags!” she reflected, shocked.
She didn’t quite know what to do with the child that evening. She was very anxious to make her happy, to console and comfort her. She sat down at the piano and played all her small repertory—marches, polkas, mazurkas, and waltzes, all of the brilliant style. But Rosaleen was thoroughly accustomed to piano playing; every family she knew had one piano-playing daughter. Her mother had once had a piano, on “time payments”; it had had to go back whence it came after three months, but she had enjoyed experimenting on it while it lasted.
Then Miss Julie gave her picture books to look at, things insultingly beneath her intelligence. This good lady didn’t realise that Rosaleen had for a long time been treated as an adult; that she sat with her mother and her mother’s friends, listening with profound interest to long tales of illnesses, births, deaths, of bad husbands and good ones, of tragedies beyond the knowledge of this household. Babies scalded in wash tubs, women maltreated by their men, girls who disappeared, lingering illnesses in bleak poverty. So blank and desolate for her was this first evening at the Humberts, that she was glad enough to go to bed at nine o’clock, although her usual time was at least two hours later.
Miss Julie tucked her comfortably into her clean little bed, opened the window, put out the light and kissed her good-night.
“If you want anything, call me!” she said. “Are you quite comfortable, and all right, pet?”
The child answered, “Yes, ma’am!” But almost before the door had closed upon her benefactress, she was weeping bitterly.
Miss Julie let her sleep late the next morning, and when she finally awakened, she was greeted by a new face, beyond words welcome to her, a good wrinkled old Irish face. It was Mrs. Cronin, who came in to wash by the day.
“They’re all out!” she announced to the little girl. “You and me will be keeping house together all the day. How will that suit ye?”