I hesitate to tell the story of Polly. She is not fit to enter the presence of these friends of mine. Moreover, I do not know her, for I never saw her after her disgrace. I remember her as a chubby, curly-headed child; I remember her as a girl of twelve.
But her fate came to me as an awful confirmation of some facts that the Anarchist had told me about conditions of work in our large city shops. I had refused to believe them: they were too sensational. I have learned since that they are sensational enough to be true.
The day before Easter I was in the office alone, examining reports. The door opened. Looking up, I saw a feeble old man, who walked unsteadily as he entered the room.
“I come to see,” he said solemnly, “if you knowed anything about Polly.”
“Polly?” I said inquiringly. Then I recognized the wrinkled face before me, with its fringe of beard, and I stretched out my hand to my guest. He had been my host for two summers, long ago, on his farm in Vermont.
“Polly’s gone wrong,” said the old man.
I saw that grief had settled in every line and wrinkle of his weather-beaten face.
He told me the story very simply. Polly had been restless. They had grown poorer every year upon their rocky farm, and Polly rebelled against her narrow life. She had come to the city to work in a shop, and after three years had given up the struggle and had gone away with a man who did not marry her.
“I ain’t never been able to understand it,” said her father, looking at me pleadingly with his pale blue eyes. “It ain’t in the family. I don’t know how she come by it. I’ve always thought there must be something to account for it.”
“There are many things that might account for it,” I answered. “She may have been deceived, or perhaps she was actually starving, and saw no other way of escape.”