“It’s sorry I am to disappoint you; but Leesy’s not with me now, and I hardly venture on the fine work. I make the shirts for the hands about the railroad that hasn’t wives of their own to do it—but for the fine bussums”—doubtfully—“though, to be sure, the machine does the stitches up beautiful—if it wasn’t for the button-holes!”
“Where is Leesy? Doesn’t she stop with you?”
“It’s her I have here always when she’s out of a place. She’s an orphan, poor girl, and it’s not in the blood of a Sullivan to turn off their own. I’ve brought her up from a little thing of five years old—given her the education, too. She can read and write like the ladies of the land.”
“You didn’t say where she was, Mrs. Sullivan.”
“She’s making the fine things in a fancy-store in New York—caps and collars and sleeves and the beautiful tucked waists—she’s such taste, and the work is not so hard as plain-sewing—four dollars a week she gets, and boarded for two and a half, in a nice, genteel place. She expects to be illivated to the forewoman’s place, at seven dollars the week, before many months. She was here to stay over the Sunday with me—she often does that; and she’s gone back by the six o’clock train this mornin’—and she’ll be surely late at that by an hour. I tried to coax her to stay the day, she seemed so poorly. She’s not been herself this long time—she seems goin’ in a decline like—it’s the stooping over the needle, I think. She’s so nervous-like, the news of the murder yesterday almost killed her. ’Twas an awful deed that, wasn’t it, gintlemen? I couldn’t sleep a wink last night for thinkin’ of that poor young man and the sweet lady he was to have married. Such a fine, generous, polite young gintleman!”
“Did you know him?”
“Know him! as well as my own son if I had one!—not that ever I spoke to him, but he’s passed here often on his way to his father’s house, and to Mr. Argyll’s; and Leesy sewed in their family these two summers when they’ve been here, and was always twice paid. When she’d go away he’d say, laughing in his beautiful way, ‘And how much have you earned a day, Miss Sullivan, sitting there all these long, hot hours?’ and she’d answer, ‘Fifty cents a day, and thanks to your mother for the good pay;’ and he’d put his hand in his pocket and pull out a ten-dollar gold-piece and say, ‘Women aren’t half paid for their work! it’s a shame! if you hain’t earned a dollar a day, Miss Sullivan, you hain’t earned a cent. So don’t be afraid to take it—it’s your due.’ And that’s what made Leesy think so much of him—he was so thoughtful of the poor—God bless him! How could anybody have the heart to do it!”
I looked at the officer and found his eyes reading my face. One thought had evidently flashed over both of us; but it was a suspicion which wronged the immaculate memory of Henry Moreland, and I, for my part, banished it as soon as it entered my mind. It was like him to pay generously the labors of a sickly sewing-girl; it was not like him to take any advantage of her ignorance or gratitude, which might result in her taking such desperate revenge for her wrongs. The thought was an insult to him and to the noble woman who was to have been his wife. I blushed at the intrusive, unwelcome fancy; but the officer, not knowing the deceased as I knew him, and, perhaps, having no such exalted idea of manhood as mine, seemed to feel as if here might be a thread to follow.
“Leesy thought much of him, you think, Mrs. Sullivan,” taking a chair unbidden, and putting on a friendly, gossiping air. “Everybody speaks well of him. So she sewed in the family?”
“Six weeks every summer. They was always satisfied with her sewing—she’s the quickest and neatest hand with the needle! She’d make them shirts of yours beautiful, if she was to home, sir.”