Some of her new experiences had their embarrassing side. Mr. Roberts had been but a few days in the city, when he had certain proteges which circumstance had thrown in his way, in whom he became deeply interested. One of these, he engaged to take Flossy to visit.
"They are very poor," he had said to her, supposing that thereby he enlightened her.
Now Flossy had small knowledge in that direction. There was a certain old lady living at the extreme east end who had once been a servant in their family, and Flossy's nurse. In her, Flossy was much interested, and had been often to see her. She kept house in a bit of a room that was always shining with cleanliness; her floor was covered with bright rag carpeting; her bed was spread with a gay covered quilt, and her little cook stove glistened, and the bright teakettle sputtered cheerily. This was Flossy's idea of poverty.
Therefore, when she arrayed herself for a wintry walk with Mr. Roberts, there was to her mind no incongruity between the rich black silk, the velvet cloak, the elegant laces, and costly furs, and the "very poor family" she was about to visit. Why should there be? She had trailed that same silk over old Auntie Green's bright colored rag carpet a good many times without experiencing any discomfort therefrom.
As for Mr. Roberts, he regarded her with a half amused smile which she did not observe, and said nothing. Probably he had an idea that she would soon be wiser than she was then.
"It is too far to walk," he said, as they reached a point where street cars diverged in many directions; so he hailed a passing car, and during the talk that followed, Flossy was conveyed to a portion of the city she not only had never seen before, but that she did not know existed.
She looked about her in dismay as she stepped down from the car, and during the short rapid walk that followed, had all she could do to rescue her silken robes from contact with awful filth, and to keep her dainty handkerchief applied to her poor little nose. Rapidly and silently they made their way to a long, high building, whose filthy outside stairs they descended and found themselves in a cellar the like of which Flossy had never dreamed of.
A dreadful pile of straw covered over by a tattered and horribly dirty rag that had once been a quilt, on this bed lay a child not yet ten years old, whose deathly pale face and glassy eyes told the story of hopeless sickness. No pillow on which to lay the poor little head with its tangled masses of yellow hair, nothing anywhere that told of care bestowed or necessary wants attended to. Over in another corner on another filthy heap of straw and rags, lay the mother, sick too; with the same absence of anything like decency in everything that pertained to her.
Utter dismay seized upon Flossy. Could it be possible that human beings, beings with souls, for whose souls her blessed Saviour died, were left to such awful desolation of poverty as this! Mr. Roberts promptly turned upside down an old tub that was used to doing duty as a chair, and seated her thereon, while he went forward to the woman.
"Have you had your dinner to-day?" was the first question he asked.