Ida May shook her head, her breast heaved, her white lips quivered, while great tears welled up to the great dark eyes, so like purple velvet pansies drowned in rain.
"I have no friends—no one. I am all alone in the world, sir," she sobbed. "My mother is dead—dead. I have just left her grave. She and I were all in all to each other; now she is gone, and I—Oh, only the angels know that no sorrow is so bleak, so pitiful, so awful, as to be all alone in the world."
"I can understand the situation perfectly," he answered in a low voice, "and I can pity you. Although not quite alone in the world myself, I am almost as badly off. But to return to yourself: I may be able to serve you. What kind of employment were you intending to search for? In some store, or dress-making or millinery establishment?" he queried.
She looked blankly up into his fair, handsome, earnest face.
"I do not know how to do anything of that kind," she answered, simply. "I thought perhaps I might find employment in some telegraph office."
"Why, yes, indeed. I wonder that that idea did not occur to me before. A friend of mine is superintendent of a large branch of the Western Union, up Broadway. I will give you a note to him, and I have no doubt he will do all in his power to aid you, providing he has a vacancy."
"Oh, thank you a thousand times, sir," cried Ida May, thankfully; "I shall be so grateful—oh, so very grateful!"
"Mind, it is not a certainty, you know," admonished the stranger earnestly; "I can only write the letter. But that is not assuring you of a situation—we can only hope for it."
He tore out a leaf from his memorandum, and taking a gold pencil from his vest pocket, hastily jotted down a few lines upon it.
"I am sorry I am not going through to New York; otherwise I would take you there myself," he said, courteously, as he folded up the note and handed it to her.