SELFISHNESS,” says that wise and happy and altogether radiant person, Gloria Greene, “comes from lack of vitality. Most people haven’t enough capital stock of vigor to live on comfortably. So you can’t expect them to loan or give away any in the form of thoughtfulness for any one else. They’re paupers, poor things! The bankruptest person I ever knew had eighty thousand a year, and nothing else.”
Adroitly and by indirection the proponent of this doctrine had been suggesting it to Darcy Cole, and that adaptable pupil had unconsciously absorbed much of it. The new character that she had built up out of discipline and abstinence as the weeks grew into months, the solidifying confidence in herself, the burgeoning of vigor, and the subtle development of that wondrous and mysterious quality which we term personality and which is the touchstone between our inner and outer worlds, had combined to open and broaden Darcy’s life. Andy Dunne had long ago begun to take certain of his professional problems to her and profit by her shrewd helpfulness. More than once she had, of her own initiative, laid hold on some shrinking, draggled, disheartened neophyte, such as she herself had been, who through mere helplessness had reduced Andy to wrathful despair, and, by a forced loan of will power and buoyancy, pulled her through the shallows to fair going again. On one occasion she had gone to police court with Andy on behalf of a girl who was “going wrong,” the sister of one Gillig, a promising young pugilist under Andy’s guidance; where she had so impressed the magistrate that (seeing her with Andy, whom he knew) he asked if she was a trainer, and hinted that he would be glad of her help on some of the border-line cases which reach our lower courts in a status of suspended balance, and are either hauled back to safety or plunged into the chasm of the underworld, according as they are handled with or without tact and sympathy. After that visit, Darcy took to dropping in at the court twice a week or so to act as unofficial counselor where the judge mistrusted the mechanical rigidity of official intervention. It gave her a fresh zest in life to find herself of some practical use to others. As to the extra work, she took that upon her supple shoulders without a quiver. Body and soul, Darcy had grown as fresh and vigorous as ripening fruit and as sturdy as the tree that bears it.
Satisfying as was the compliment paid her by the magistrate, she had a better one from Andy not long after. At the conclusion of one of their five-minute boxing bouts, in the course of which she had landed once with force and precision below the professional’s properly cauliflowered ear, he said to her, with a somewhat hesitant air:
“Say, Miss Darcy; are yah rich?”
“I certainly am not.”
“But—excuse me if I’m too nosey—yah got money, ain’t yah?”
“Only what I earn.”
“Earn? D’ yah work?”
“Of course. I’m the original Honest Working Girl you read about, Andy.”
“Pretty good job?”