Read.
"Sir," said the door-keeper, to Mr. Pease, one night, "little Madalina, the beggar girl, is at the door, crying bitterly, and says she wants to see you."
"I suppose," said the tired missionary, "I answered hastily, perhaps petulantly, for I had been very much engaged all day. Tell her to go away, I cannot see her to-night; it is eleven o'clock, and I am very tired. She must come to-morrow."
The poor fellow turned upon his heel to go away, but as he did so, the glimpse of his hand and motion of the coat sleeve across his eyes, told a story.
"Tom," said Mr. P., "Tom, my dear boy, what is the matter?"
Tom did not turn round as he had been taught, and usually did, so as to look him full in the face when he answered; in fact he did not answer readily; there was a choking sensation in his utterance which prevented the words from coming forth distinctly.
Now, this boy had been but a short time in "the Home," and perhaps a more squalid, wretched, drunken boy, cannot be found in the purlieus of the Five Points, than he was when he was almost literally picked out of the gutter, as he had been once before he came here finally, in the way you have already seen. Once before, he had actually been dragged out of the filthiest hole in Anthony street, brought in, washed and dressed, before he came to, so as to be conscious of the change that had come over him. Then he was brought back again to his low degradation, by just such wretches and ways of the wicked as were brought to bear upon poor Reagan, and will be upon many others, while the destroyer is permitted to walk abroad like a pestilence at noon-day. Now this outcast, who had cared for nothing human, not even himself, stood vainly trying to choke down his grief for the sorrows of a little beggar girl.
Were the reminiscences of one, almost as low down in the scale of humanity, running through his mind—one who, after having been herself lifted up, had exerted an influence upon him to his salvation?
The tired missionary forgot his fatigue.
"Tom," said he, springing up, "I will go and see what is the matter. Who is this Madalina?"