“Now this is the real good-by. Ephraim is going to put the letter in the mail-box and I do wish it could get to you right away. It is so long—a week to go and a week to come; two whole weeks between us, mother dear.
“Your loving
“Jessica.”
A week later saw Madam Dalrymple and her household installed in the small cottage up the river. Tipkins was still in charge of the house affairs, but old “Forty-niner” had encased himself in a suit of the overalls which Granny Briggs “finished off” and announced himself as “head gardener,” with “Little Captain” first assistant.
Sophy Nestor was still in hospital. She was rapidly recovering from her burns and as swiftly learning to love the refuge she had found. Her heroism had won her many friends; also her willingness, now, to have the surgeons “experiment” with her deformity. Concerning this, there was diversity of opinion, with the majority inclining to the belief that cure was possible.
“Well, Doctors, if both the child and her grandmother approve, do you go ahead and try. Let no possible expense be spared. The girl whose life she saved can well repay for any outlay,” Madam Dalrymple had assured the hospital staff on the occasion of that memorable visit she had made to little Sophy.
To the crippled child, this was almost more wonderful than the hope of being made straight. To have this beautiful “White Hair” come to that ward and have all the children in it know that the visit was to her, Sophy! All just because she had once done—Why, what any of them might have done if they had had the chance!
“Roses? Roses—for me—Sophy? Oh! Ma’am, I ain’t worth it! I ain’t half worth it! Roses—roses cost a lot. I know. And ’twas only a laylock that was give to me, free for nothing, that I was going—Just laylocks; but roses! Them kind grows in the hot-houses, I know. I hope—I hope nobody didn’t go without their dinner to buy ’em!” protested the flower-girl, half-crying, half-weeping from sheer delight.
“Ah! no, little maid. Nobody would need do that. Why do you say so?” asked the wonderful Madam in her softest voice, that sounded so like a caress.
“Why, Jessica said you was poor, too, now. Don’t seem so. Don’t ’pear as if it could be,” returned the child, critically regarding the plain street costume of her visitor, and which to the tenant of Avenue A looked as fine as it was new.
“Well, little girl, poverty is comparative. You don’t understand that yet, but you will some day. As for you I trust you will never again be as poor as in those old days before Buster made you acquainted with my young cousin. By the way, the broncho is going to be a very happy horse. He is going to live in the country, away from all elevated trains and jangling street-cars, though he’ll not wholly escape from automobiles. Even the country isn’t free from those detestable things.”