“Indeed I don’t.”
“Why not try something else?”
“I wish I could. I thought I’d like to get a place in a store as cash girl, but I was so small nobody wanted me, an’ besides, I didn’t have any decent clothes. You see, if a girl like me gets that kind of a job, she’s got to dress up mighty fine.”
“Well,” Josiah said as he stepped back a few paces and surveyed her critically, “there’s one thing certain, you ain’t dressed very fine now.”
“I know it,” the girl said half apologetically, as she looked down at her faded gown; “but when a feller’s got on the best she owns, what you goin’ to do ’bout it?”
Josiah was unable to answer this question. He had never seen any one who looked so thoroughly wretched, as far as outside appearance was concerned, not even the tramps who occasionally stopped at the farm-house for food, and instinctively his hand went to that portion of his vest underneath which rested the huge pocket-book.
“I haven’t got much money,” he said slowly, as if weighing some important question in his mind; “but I’ll tell you what it is, little girl; I’m willin’ to give you some of it to help along, ’cause it don’t seem to me as if you was goin’ to earn much of anything to-night.”
The match-girl looked at him a moment, as if determining whether he was serious in making this generous offer, and then said with what might have been a laugh:—
“If you’re goin’ to stay in New York very long I guess you’ll need all the money you’ve brought, an’ I must take care of myself same’s I’ve been doin’. Say, where do you live?”
“At Berry’s Corner.”