She flung aside her bonnet and shawl.
Then it might be seen that, in spite of her faded dress, she was a very beautiful young woman; not only beautiful in regularity of features, but in the whiteness of her shoulders, the fullness of her bust, the proportions of her tall and rounded form. Her hair, escaping from the ribbon which bound it, streamed freely over her shoulders, and caught the rays of the light on every glossy wave.
She leaned her forehead upon her head, and—thought.
Hard she had tried to keep a home for the poor Idiot, who sat in the chair—very hard. She had tried her pencil, and gained bread for awhile, thus; but her drawings ceased to command a price at the picture store, and this means of subsistence failed her. She had taught music, and had been a miserable dependent upon the rich; been insulted by their daughters, and been made the object of the insulting offers of their sons. And forced at length by the condition of her Idiot Father, to remain with him, in their own home—to be constantly near him, day and night—she had sought work at the shirt store on Canal street, and been robbed of the treasure which she had accumulated through the summer; an immense treasure—Five Dollars.
She had not a penny; there was no bread in the closet; there was no fire in the sheet iron stove which stood in one corner; her Idiot Father, her iron fate were before her—harsh and bitter realities.
She was thinking.
Apply to those rich relations, who had known her father in days of prosperity? No. Better death than that.
She was thinking. Her forehead on her hand, her hair streaming over her shoulders, her bosom which had never known even the thought of pollution, heaving and swelling within her calico gown—she was thinking.
And as she thought, and thought her hair began to burn, and her blood to bound rapidly in her veins.
Her face is shaded by her hand, and a portion of her hair falls over that hand; therefore you cannot tell her thoughts by the changes of her countenance.