It was the afternoon of the 24th of December, a dull, gray afternoon, with a sky frowning over it which was all one cloud, but from which neither rain nor snow fell. A certain insinuating breath of cold was in the air, more penetrating than the crisp, keen wind of the sharpest January day.
Olive Haygarth shivered as she walked along the bleakest side of Harrison Avenue, down town. She was making her way to Dock Square, to carry home to a clothing store some vests which she and her mother had just completed.
After a while she turned and walked across into Washington Street, for an impulse came over her to see all the bright Christmas things in the shop windows, and the gay, glad people, getting ready to keep holiday.
She had meant, when she set out on her walk, to avoid them, for she knew that her mood was bitter enough already. She had left no brightness behind her at home. There were but two of them, herself and her mother, and they were poor people, with only their needles between them and want.
They had never known actual suffering, however, for Mrs. Haygarth had worked in a tailor's shop in her youth, and had taught Olive so much of the intricacies of the business as sufficed to make her a good workwoman.
Accordingly they did their sewing so well as to command constant employment and fair prices. But after all it was ceaseless drudging, just to keep body and soul together. What was the use of it all? Not enjoyment enough in any one day to pay for living,—why not as well lie down and die at once?
She walked on sullenly, thinking of these things. An elegant carriage stopped just in front of her, and a girl no older than herself got out, trailing her rich silk across the sidewalk, and went into a fashionable jeweller's.
Olive stopped, and looking in at the window, ostensibly at the vases and bronzes, watched the girl with her dainty, high-bred air. She noted every separate item of her loveliness,—the delicate coloring, the hair so tastefully arranged, the pure, regular features. Then she looked at the lustrous silk, the soft furs, the bonnet, which was a pink and white miracle of blonde and rosebuds. How much of the beauty was the girl's very self, and how much did she owe to this splendid setting? Olive had seen cheeks and lips as bright and hair as shining when she tied on her own unbecoming dark straw bonnet before her own dingy looking-glass.
She went on with renewed bitterness, asking herself, over and over again, Why? Why? Why? Did not the Bible say that God was no respecter of persons? But why did He make some, like that girl in there, to feed on the roses and lie in the lilies of life,—to wear silks, and furs, and jewels, and laces, and then make her to work buttonholes in Butler & Co.'s vests? Was there any God at all? or, if there was, did He not make some people and forget them altogether, while He was heaping good things on others whom He liked better? She could not understand it. And then to be told to love God after all; and that He pitied her as a father pitied his children! Why! that girl in the silk dress could love God, easily,—that command must have been meant for her.
Going on she caught a glimpse of an illumination in the window of a print shop.