But Kate Barton's day shall come, some day; and those who shun her now will assert their cringing hypocracy when she has been lifted up, and not lifted by their hands.
Charity is not what the Kate Bartons want—it is the meed of opportunity.
CHAPTER V.
STAR BARTON SEEKS A NEW HOME.
Star Barton? She was the one scintillating light that shone out of the milky way of the Barton family. She was a sport of the family tree—a lily nourished in a quagmire. And how a wondering world marvels at such unaccountable things of nature!
Through eighteen weary summers and eighteen dreary winters she went, before seeing a light above the dim horizon of her impoverished world. Through babyhood she crawled in frightful filth, as if it were a part of her wretched existence, seeing nothing beyond the bare walls and bare floors of her cramped up playgrounds; through childhood she toddled, with the same dismal conditions abetting her expanding innocence; through the period of adolescence she walked without a thought of what the outside world contained, except as she intuitively gathered such knowledge as the thick curtain of ignorance slowly rose before her; till now she had come to the springtime of womanhood, full of its snares and pitfalls for such as she. Then, like the bursting of the sun through a rent-way in the clouds on a rainy day, she, for the first time, saw the beckoning star that should lead her on—on—on—to a life of rectitude, or—dissoluteness.
Star Barton was the second child of Kate Barton, and early in her teening years gave some promise of her future. When only ten she began to be a drudge, doing all the things that her delicate hands could, with exertion, be laid to. She was the patient "little mother" to all the new babies as they yearly floated out of Paradise to this place of desolation. She was the scrub-woman, the washer-woman, the charwoman, the cook, the chamber maid, ever cheerful in her efforts to perform her tasks. Illy clad, scantily fed, roundly abused by her father, continually scolded by her mother, and never praised by either parent, she mutely submitted, like a black slave, to all the torments of blighting servitude that could be heaped upon her. Thus, for eighteen long years, Star Barton was subjected to all the demoralizing influences of drunkenness and poverty; and how she came out of it unblighted any one may wonder at. And now, at this age, she stood looking out the narrow window of her vantage point, seeing the promise of a brighter life.
Then why was she a freak of nature from the family tree? Because she had a round face, pink cheeks, two even rows of white teeth, two mild blue eyes underneath dark eyebrows, a sharp, shrewd, straight nose, and dark hair; and because she was of average height, well formed, muscular and courageous; and still, because nature had provided her, as it provides the offspring of the weak, sometimes, with all the qualities and graces that were necessary to combat the deteriorating effects of a life of toil.
As suddenly as she had seen the new light mount the horizon of her life, as suddenly did she long for better ways, a better home, a better life. This longing came to her the very time her father disappeared. She sought work, and found it, still as a drudge, in a lodging house up in Birmingham. The small pittance that she earned she took home every Saturday night, and gave it to her mother as a helping mite towards banishing the horde of wolves that constantly prowled about her door. This small sum was not sufficient to maintain a successful contest with those beasts of starvation that gnawed their way, like famished whelps, into the growing bodies of the ten starvelings of Kate Barton. But, notwithstanding, Star never failed in her willingness to turn her last penny for their sustenance. An older brother had been her assistant in this trial, and he kept it up with a good will till about the hour the father had deserted them; but he, losing heart, after acquiring new habits and forming ill-savored acquaintances, so far forgot his duty to his mother that he also deserted her in her time of greatest need. He went away as suddenly as her father—they knew not where. And Star was ever faithful, ever trustworthy, ever to be relied upon by her hapless mother.