You would have been interested, an hour later, to have seen Mart skip up the rickety stairs leading to the Calkins abode. You would probably have thought that she endangered life or limb by her rapid movements; but Mart was used to such staircases, and the news she had to communicate required haste.
“There's a chance!” she said, breathless with speed and eagerness; “Sallie Calkins, there's a chance, and you'd never guess how. Dirk he wants me to go to a show with him this very night! He's got tickets. It is a big show,—where all the grand folks go. It is in the very biggest hall in this city, and Dirk he says I am to go. Sallie Calkins, do you mean it, truly, that I am to wear your lovely new bonnet and cape? Do you suppose I can really go anywhere? I don't known why Dirk wants me to so bad, but he coaxed and coaxed.”
Poor Sallie! She stooped quickly to pick up a pin from the floor, so that Mart might not get a glimpse of her eyes with the sudden tears in them. Yet, as she stooped, she made her final, grand sacrifice—Mart should go!
Then she entered with entire abandon into the preparations. Not only her bonnet and cape, but her shoes—new ones that Mark had bought her with his first earnings after his illness—were to attend the lecture.
She rejoiced over the excellent fit of the shoes. She did more than this. As Mart watched the process of buttoning them, and remarked complacently that she shouldn't wonder if Dirk would buy her a pair some day, when he earned money enough, she kept her lip from curling with an incredulous sneer. You will remember that she had not the slightest faith in Dirk.
Neither must I forget that there was another thing to lend—her comb, in order that Mart's wonderful yellow hair might be for once reduced to something like order. And at the risk of leading you to think that Sallie was altogether too “aesthetic” for her position in life, I shall have to confess that this was her hardest bit of sacrifice; her comb was so new and so pretty!
However, it did its duty on Mart's tawny locks, and the transforming effect was marvellous. In fact, when all was ready, the cape adjusted, the hat which Mrs. Roberts had shown her how to wear set on the yellow head, Sallie said not a word, but went to the packing-box in the corner which served as a treasure cupboard, and drew forth the one possession about which she had been utterly silent—a little hand-glass which Mark had brought her one winter evening just before he was hurt. A cheap, little, ugly glass, which you would have turned from in disgust, saying that it made your nose awry, and your chin protrude and your eyes squint, and was altogether horrid; but, held before Mart's glowing face, what a secret did it reveal! Mart looked, and was silent, too; and went home in a hushed frame of mind to wait for Dirk. Home was deserted. The mother had dragged her wearied body out for a day of “light” work. The time had gone by when she was able to do any that people called heavy. Where the father was, none of the family knew, and their chief hope concerning him was that he would stay away as long as possible.
I find myself longing to give you an idea of what that elegant, brilliantly lighted hall, with its brilliant audience, was to this girl, and being unable to do it.
When people live so far below us that our every-day experiences are to them like a day at the World's Fair, it is very hard indeed to describe how our special treats affect them.
It is a treat to everybody to hear Gough. How then can I tell you what it was to this girl and her brother? Dirk listened; he must have listened well, for long afterward he was able to repeat entire paragraphs, and to imitate the manner of the great orator with remarkable skill;—yet at the time he would have seemed to a close watcher to have been absorbed in another way. He looked at Mart somewhat as he had on that Sabbath when his acquaintance with Mrs. Roberts began. But the thought which had dimly haunted him that day blossomed on this evening. Certainly Mart looked like Mrs. Roberts! It might be folly to think so; doubtless the fellows would make no end of fun of him if he should ever tell them so, which he meant to take excellent care not to do; but the fact remained, that in Sallie's bonnet and cape, and, above all, with the waves of hair floating about her, there was a look which instantly and strongly reminded him of that lady.