Adelaide’s father and mother had gone West for the winter. Mr. Armstrong was an able financier, and he wished to make Adelaide a thorough business woman. She was eighteen years old and she might be a great heiress some day, if his wealth continued to accumulate, and he wished to accustom her to the management of money.
He had given her the year before a model tenement house, built after the most approved principles, on the site of Richetts’ Court, previously occupied by one of the worst tenement houses in the city. The new building contained accommodations for ten families; the sanitation was perfect; there were no dark rooms, but bath rooms, fire escapes, and provision for every necessity. A good janitor, Stephen Trimble, occupied the lower apartment and looked after the order and comfort of the building, and every month Adelaide, attended by one of the teachers, went down and personally collected her rents, and listened to the complaints and requests of her tenants. There were few of either, and as a general rule the pay was prompt, for the rent was low, and Adelaide did all she could to oblige her tenants, having a small drying room built for the laundress, Mrs. McCarthy, who had contracted rheumatic fever from hanging out her wash on the roof and so exposing herself to the icy winds, when over-heated from the steaming tubs. Adelaide had no stringent rules against pets. She caused kennels to be built in the court for several pet dogs, and added some blossoming plants to Mrs. Blumenthal’s small conservatory in the sunny south window. Noticing that the Morettis were fond of art, and had pasted cigarette pictures on their walls and driven nails to suspend some gaudy prints of the virgin and saints, she had a narrow moulding with picture hooks placed just under the ceiling in every sitting-room. She patronized all their small industries as far as it was in her power, and interested her friends in them; having her boots made by the little shoemaker on the top floor, who was really a good workman, but had been turned away from a prominent firm, as they had cut down their list of employees. Her underclothing was made by the little seamstress on the third floor back. She gave each of her tenants a Thanksgiving dinner and a substantial present on Christmas Day, and only allowed those to be evicted whose flagrant misbehaviour showed that nothing could be done for them.
From the income of this building her father had insisted that Adelaide must pay all her expenses. As Madame’s boarding school was a fashionable one, the margin left, after the payment of tuition, to be divided between dress and charity, was not very large.
Mr. Armstrong knew that Adelaide’s weakness was a love for beautiful clothing; that she delighted in sumptuous velvets, in the sheen of satin, and the shimmer of gauze. Her regal beauty would not have been over-powered by a queen’s toilette, but she adorned the simplest costume, and set the fashion in hats for the school season.
Mr. Armstrong also knew that Adelaide was very tender of heart, and that if left entirely to herself she would gladly have opened the doors of her tenement house freely to unscrupulous and undeserving people; that she would have easily credited every woeful story, and have remitted rents when it would have been no real kindness to do so. He therefore pitted these two weaknesses against each other. “We will see what comes of it at the close of the year,” he said. “She may become a grinding, close-fisted proprietress, screwing the last possible dollar out of the poor to lavish it on her own personal adornment, but I hope better things of Adelaide than that. It would be more like her, I think, to go to the opposite extreme—dress like an Ursuline nun and take nothing from her tenants; but let us hope that she may be able to strike the golden mean.”
It was a hard thing to do, and Adelaide went without a new winter cloak until nearly Christmas time, waiting for the Morettis to pay up an arrearage; and only consented to the turning out of a shiftless family who occupied the best apartment, and were three months behind hand, because the tuition for the first term at Madame’s would be due in a few days, and a respectable wood engraver offered to pay two months in advance. It was hard, because she did not wish to spend all the money on herself. She was as interested as any of us in the Home of the Elder Brother, and longed to contribute more generously to it; but since these poor people were her tenants, they were in some sense her own family, and she felt that charity began at home. Often I know that Adelaide denied herself as really, in not being more lenient, as her tenants did to scrape together their monthly rental. She was a generous girl to her friends, and before her father had made this arrangement she deluged us all with her presents. Milly, who had unlimited credit at several stores, kept up this pernicious custom of lavishly giving presents of flowers and candies. It was hard for Winnie and me, who were in moderate circumstances, not to return them, but doubly so for Adelaide—who entreated her to desist, as we all did, but without avail. Milly was incorrigible. “You don’t seem to understand,” Winnie said to her at Christmas time, “that the receipt of a gift which one cannot return in kind is a bitter pill to a sensitive nature.”
“No,” replied Milly, “I don’t understand anything of the sort. Adelaide always translates my Cæsar for me. You help me with my algebra, and Tib as good as writes my compositions. I couldn’t return any of those favors ‘in kind,’ and they are pills that are not the least bit bitter to me——”
“It’s of no use, Adelaide,” laughed Winnie, “we must let Milly have her own way. It is such a pleasure to Milly to give that we will sacrifice our own feelings and bear the infliction.”
Mr. Armstrong had given Adelaide an old oak cabinet, beautifully carved in the style of the Italian Renaissance of the fifteenth century, with architectural columns, caryatides, scroll work, and arabesques. The upper cupboard of this cabinet was used as a strong box to hold the funds of our little circle. The interior was divided into pigeon holes and shelves, and the door was provided with a curious key with a delicate wrought-iron handle.
Adelaide had given each of us a compartment in this little safe, but when its entire contents were counted there was rarely much money kept here, for Adelaide had a bank account, and after collecting her rents usually deposited them at the bank before returning to school, paying all her debts by cheque. Milly, as before explained, had her running accounts charged to her father,—a book at Arnold’s, at the florist’s, the confectioner’s, the dressmaker’s, stationer’s, etc.,—but her supply of ready cash was never equal to demand, and though she could telephone for a messenger and order a coupé at any time, she was always in debt to the other girls, and I have frequently lent her postage stamps and paid her car fare.