Then the hopelessness of the struggle she was making rose before her. How much longer would this go on? Up at six o'clock; a cup of coffee and a piece of bread; then the monotonous sorting of letters and papers—the ceaseless answering of stupid questions; then half an hour for dinner; then the routine again till train time, and home to the mother and the two chairs by the fire, only to begin the dreary tread-mil! again the next morning. And with this the daily growing older—older; her face thinner and more pinched, the shoulders sharp; her hair gray, head bent, just as her poor mother's was, and, with all that, hardly money enough to buy herself a pair of shoes—never enough to give her dear mother the slightest luxury.
Discouraged! Hadn't she reason to be?
The next morning Hiram walked into the post-office and called to Abbie, through the square window, to open the door. Once inside he loosened his fur driving-coat, took out a long, black wallet, picked out a thin slip of paper and laid it on Abbie's desk.
“I have been thinking over what I told you yesterday. There's a check drawn to your order for two hundred dollars. All you got to do is to put your name on the back of it and it's money. It's good—never knew one that warn't.”
The girl started back.
“I didn't ask you for it. I don't—”
“I know you didn't, and when you did it would be too late maybe—got to catch things sometimes when they're flying past. I don't know whether it's those town lots they're booming over to Haddam's Corners, and I don't care, but if that ain't enough there's more where that came from. Good-day!” and he slammed the glass door behind him. Abbie picked up the thin slip of paper and studied every line on its face, from the red number in the upper corner to “Hiram Taylor” in a bold, round hand. Then her eyes lighted on “Abijah Todd or order.”
Yes, it was hers—all of it. Not to spend, but to make money out of. Then her mother's words of warning rang clear: “Worse than a ghost, my child!” Should she—could she take it? She turned to lay it in a drawer until she could hand it back to him and her eyes fell upon the poster framed in by the square of her window. She stopped and shut the drawer. Was she never to have her chance? Would the treadmill never end? Would the dear mother's head never be lifted? Folding the check carefully, she loosened the top button of her dress and pushed it inside. There it burned like a hot coal.
That night, after putting her mother to bed, she pinned a shawl over her head, threw her mother's cloak about her shoulders, sneaked into Maria's house, and crept up into her friend's room like a burglar. What was to be done must be done quickly, but intelligently.