“Over there behind that chair,” said Allison, pointing it out. Then she asked: “Now will you tell me your name, and how you happened to get hurt?”
“My name is Ellen Carson,” the girl replied; “I had been to Cohen & Isaacs, to carry back a lot of work, and get some more, and the pay for the last. I live with my aunt, or my uncle’s wife, and I do the housework, while she and Anna—my cousin—make boys’ jackets for a living. I help on them, too, after the drudgery is done, and I always have to fetch and carry the bundles. I had the pay for the last lot—three dollars—in one hand, and was hurrying home, when an ugly-looking fellow gave me a rough push, knocking me against that lamp-post, then snatched the purse, and made off with it, before I hardly knew what had happened. At first I was so wild over losing the money, and what I should catch when I got home, I didn’t know that I was hurt; but, after a minute or two, the pain got so sharp it took my breath away, and then I found my arm was broken. Oh, dear! Aunt Lu will just about kill me for letting that money be stolen,” Ellen concluded, with a sob, great tears chasing over her hollow cheeks.
“Hush! Do not cry! I will make the money part of it all right,” said Allison kindly, a great pity for the unfortunate girl surging through her heart. “I am sure your aunt cannot be very kind to you if she will mind the loss of three dollars more than your accident.”
“Kind! huh!” exclaimed Ellen, with a mirthless laugh, “and she’ll mind the broken arm enough, too, but not in the way you mean; she and Anna will have to do the housework now for a while, and I shall get plenty of kicks and cuffs for being in the way and ‘not earning my salt.’ I sha’n’t get much but salt, either, I imagine, to pay for losing that money.”
“Oh, I cannot imagine any one being so cruel,” said Allison, looking deeply troubled. “Your aunt must be very poor, as well as unkind.”
“You bet she is; but it wasn’t always so bad as it is now,” Ellen observed, and, growing confidential. “When Uncle Alan—he was my mother’s brother, and his name was Brown—was alive, I used to go to school, and we lived in a better part of the city. Anna graduated from the high school more’n four years ago; she’s handsome, too—or would be if she could have pretty clothes like yours”—this with an appreciative glance at Allison’s dainty costume. “After Uncle Alan died, Aunt Lu at first threatened to send me to an orphans’ home; but when she found how handy I was in the kitchen, and to run on errands, she got over that, though she doesn’t mind twitting me about being a beggar every day of my life.”
“But does she not pay you something for doing the work and helping upon the jackets?” questioned Allison, with almost a sense of guilt as she compared the ideal life which she had always led with the miserable existence of this poor, abused child.
“Pay me! Good land! Uncle Alan has been dead going on four years, and I haven’t had a dime of my own to spend at one time since. Sometimes I’ve got so desperate I’ve thought I’d run away and leave Aunt Lu and Anna to shift for themselves, and become a cash-girl in some store, but I haven’t a decent dress or a whole pair of shoes or stockings to my name, and nobody’d hire me looking like this,” the girl concluded, as she glanced ruefully down at her faded dress, and the clumsy, defaced shoes upon her feet.
Tears involuntarily rushed to Allison’s eyes, as they fell upon her costly, well-filled purse, and she realized for the first time in her life that she had never known the meaning of the word “poverty.” Again a sense of guilt swept over her as she thought of the dainty ten-dollar boots and the silken stockings that encased her feet—of the expensive hat upon her head, and the many other accessories of her toilet, the price of one of which would have seemed like a small fortune to this destitute girl.
“I suppose you thought you were doing a good thing when you had me brought in here?” Ellen resumed, after a moment of silence, and glancing around the luxurious room they were in; “but Aunt Lu will never pay Doctor Ashmore for setting my arm—he’s one of your swell, high-priced doctors; you would have done better if you’d sent me to some hospital.”