The Alchemist's Secret

by Isabel Cecilia Williams

"She keeps us from starving for a few weeks and then, at last, I find work in your factory. For a time, I am almost happy again, for now grandmother need beg no more; my pay will keep us in food and fire. Even mother seems better for a little while, and I think perhaps she will get well and we will all be happy once again. But mother is soon very, very sick, and I see her dying day by day and can do nothing to help her.

"Then, that day last week, a party of ladies come to visit the factory. The wife of the superintendent is with them. She very handsome, very rich; she beautifully dressed. She stop near my table to take off her coat, the room is warm and the fur coat heavy. She lay her purse down on my table while she remove the garment; one of the ladies call to her and she go away, leaving the purse behind her on my table.

"Mother is very sick that morning; she not sleep all night, but cough, cough, cough. There is the purse before me. No one is looking; I pick it up and open it. It is filled with money, the money that may save my mother's life. That lady will never miss it. I slip the purse inside my dress and go on with my work. I can hardly keep from screaming with joy I am so happy to think I have the money which is going to save my mother's life. The ladies go away and I feel that I am safe; she has forget about her purse. I want to rush away at once, but I must stay at my work so no one will suspect.

"Presently the superintendent he come in and he talk to you and you look very grave. Then he say one of the ladies have left her purse on a table in this room. Will the girls be kind enough to stop work and search for it? He will give five dollars reward to the one who finds it. We all search but no purse is found, and he go away again. Pretty soon he come back and the lady with him. She look around for a few moments, then she walk straight over to my table. The superintendent ask is she sure, quite sure. She say she is perfectly sure. She lay her purse on that table in order to remove her coat, then forget to take it up again when she go away; and she look very hard at me.

"The superintendent ask me if I have seen the purse and I say no. I suppose he know by my face that I am lying for he tell you to take me to the dressing-room and search. Then I know there is no hope for me; if you search you find the purse, so I take it out and hand it to him. He talk to me about my wickedness but I not answer him. He discharge me, but I not say one word. You talk to me, but I not speak to you either, I am too heartbroken, too despairing. My mother she will die now, she will surely die; and grandmother she will have to go out begging once again.

"I come home and I tell them I am discharged. I not tell them why, for they very good and stealing is a sin. They be so shocked and sorry. I sit beside my mother, despair in my heart, and I watch her dying, dying, dying.

"Her pain is all over now; she leave me last night and she never come back again. I watch with her in there when you come. I watch with her some more when you go; then I must tell that she is gone, that she is dead, and they come and take her away," and she threw herself on the floor by the door of her mother's room in a perfect agony of grief.

In a moment the kind-hearted woman was on her knees beside the heartbroken girl, whom she gathered into her motherly arms, murmuring words of comfort all the while. Gradually the dreadful sobbing subsided, and after a time the girl was once more standing before that door she guarded so jealously. Seeing that she was her own calm self again, the forewoman said gently:

"My poor child, again I say that I wish you had told me a week ago. So much suffering would have been saved. However, this is no time for vain regrets, it is the time for action. I must leave you at once, Julie, but I will be back, and will, I hope, bring you good news. In the meantime do you say nothing to anyone about your mother. You will believe that I will help you? You will do as I say?"

"You very good," replied Julie simply, laying her hand in that of the forewoman; "when you want me, you find me there," and she pointed to the door behind which her mother's silent form was resting.