“O, thank you! and do you think it would be bad without the velvet?”
“Sylly, no; but why shouldn’t you have the velvet if you want it?”
And then came the whole story of poor Mary Gordon, and—in such an eager tone,—
“Don’t you see, with the money the velvet would cost, and a little more, I could get her the sewing-machine; and Madame Bodin wouldn’t ask so much to make the dress if it is plainer?”
Mr. Graham was a rich man, and his first thought was to give her the money for the machine, and let her have her pretty dress, as she had fancied it, first. But a second thought restrained him. She was just beginning to learn the joy and beauty of self-sacrifice. Should he interfere? He kissed her with a half-solemn tenderness, and answered her,—
“You shall do precisely as you please, my dear. The two hundred dollars is yours. Use it just as you like. I shall never inquire into its fate again.”
And then she went away—and was it her voice or that of some blessed spirit that came to him, a moment after, from the shadowy corner where the piano stood, singing an old middle-age hymn, about the city—
“Where all the glad life-music,
Now heard no longer here,
Shall come again to greet us,
As we are drawing near.”
The next day, who so busy and happy as Syl—dragging Aunt Rachel from one warehouse to another—it was in the days when sewing-machines were costly—till she was quite sure she had found just the right machine; and then ordering it sent, at three o’clock, no earlier, no later, to Miss Gordon, No. 2 Crescent Place.
At a quarter before three Syl went there herself. The pleasure of witnessing Mary Gordon’s surprise was the thing she had promised herself, in lieu of velvet on her gown. She found the poor room neat and clean, and by no means without traces of comfort and refinement; and Mrs. Gordon was a sweet and gentle woman, such as Mary’s mother must have been to be in keeping with Mary. She chatted with them for a few minutes, noticing the invalid’s short breath and frequent cough, and Mary’s careful tenderness over her.