“To Clary’s great sorrow and disappointment, when she went next day to the printing-office, the pile of printed paper had been removed; and not only so, but a new set of plates given her instead of those of the hymn book. Clary’s only comfort was to repeat over and over to herself the words she had already learned, and to try to get at their meaning. Sometimes she thought she would ask the foreman, who was very pleasant and good-natured—but that was only while he was at some other press,—whenever he came near hers, Clary was frightened and held her head down lest he should guess what she was thinking of. And as week after week passed on, she grew very weary and discouraged; yet still clinging to those words as the last hope she had. If she could possibly have forgotten them, she would have been almost desperate.
“The winter passed, and the spring came; and it was pleasanter now to go down to the printing-office in the early morning, and to walk home at night; and she could hear other people’s canaries sing, and see the green grass and flowers in other people’s courtyards; and on Sunday as she had no work she could sit out on the doorstep—if there weren’t too many children about—or walk away from that miserable street into some pleasanter one.
“She had walked about for a long time one Sunday, watching the people that were coming from afternoon church; and now the sun was leaving the street and she turned to leave it too,—taking a little cross street which she had never been in before.
“It hardly deserved the name of street, for a single block was all its length. The houses were not of the largest, but they looked neat and comfortable, with their green blinds and gay curtains; and Spring was there in her earliest dress—a green ground, well spotted with hyacinths, snowdrops, and crocuses. It was very quiet, too, cut short as it was at both ends; and the Sabbath of the great city seemed to have quitted Broadway and established itself here.
“Upon one of the low flights of steps, Clary saw as she approached it, sat a little girl having a book in her hand. With a dress after the very pattern of Spring’s, a little warm shawl over her shoulders, and a little chair that was just big enough, she sat there in the warm sunshine which streamed down through a gap in the houses, turning over the leaves of her book. If you had guessed the child’s name from her looks, you would have called her ‘Sweet Content.’
“Clary stopped a little way off to look at her; thinking bitterly of the five children she had left playing in the dirt at home; and as she stopped, the little girl began to sing,—
‘O how happy are they
Who the Saviour obey,
And have laid up their treasure above.’
“The little voice had no more than brought these words to Clary’s ear, when a carriage came rolling by and the rest of the verse was lost; but in an instant Clary was at the house, and feeling as if this were the only chance she ever should have, she opened the little gate and went in.