Daisy was in high spirits. It was wonderful to have found work so easily and so soon. She was to receive three dollars a week. She could not understand her good fortune. Again and again Mrs. Holt's hard eyes flicked over the joyous, brightly colored young face. Less often an expression not altogether hard accompanied such surveys. For although Mrs. Holt knew that she had found a pearl among swine, her feelings of elation were not altogether free from a curious and most unaccustomed tinge of regret.
"But I must get you a better dress than that," she said. "I want my help to look cared for and smart. I don't mean you're not neat and clean looking; but maybe you've something newer and nicer in your bundle?"
"Oh, yes," said Daisy. "I have my Sunday dress. That is almost new."
"Well," said Mrs. Holt, "I'll have a look at it. This is where I live."
She opened the front door with a latch-key; and to Daisy it seemed as if paradise had been opened—from the carved walnut rack, upon which entering angels might hang their hats and coats, to the carpet upon the stair and the curtains of purple plush that, slightly parted, disclosed glimpses of an inner and more sumptuous paradise upon the right—a grand crayon of Mrs. Holt herself, life-size, upon an easel of bamboo; chairs and sofas with tremendously stuffed seats and backs and arms, a tapestry-work fire-screen—a purple puppy against a pink-and-yellow ground.
"I'll take you up to your room right off," said Mrs. Holt, "and you can show me your other dress, and I'll tell you if it's nice enough."
So up they went three flights. But it was in no garret that Daisy was to sleep. Mrs. Holt conducted her into a large, high-ceilinged, old-fashioned room. To be sure, it was ill lighted and ill ventilated—giving on a court; but its furniture, from the marble-topped wash-stand to the great double bed, was very grand and overpowering. Daisy could only gape with wonder and delight. To call such a room her own, to earn three dollars a week—with a golden promise of more later on if she proved a good girl—it was all very much too wonderful to be true.
"Now, Daisy, let me see your Sunday dress—open the bundle on the bed there."
Daisy, obedient and swift (but blushing, for she knew that her dress would look very humble in such surroundings), untied the string and opened the parcel. But it was not the Sunday dress that caught Mrs. Holt's eye. She spoke in the voice of one the most of whose breath has suddenly been snatched away.
"And what," she exclaimed, "for mercy sake, is that?"