“Of course! There, young man,” said Hughes, “is a psychological problem better worth your study than the phenomena of hypnotism: the ability of poverty to provide for want out of its very destitution. The miracle of the loaves and fishes is wrought here every day in the great tenement-houses. Those who have nothing for themselves can still find something for others. The direst want may be trusted to share its crust with those who have not a crust; and still something remains, as if Christ had blessed the bread and broken it among the famishing. Don’t you think that an interesting and romantic fact, a mystery meriting the attention of literary art?”
It did strike Ray as a good notion; something might be done with it, say in a Christmas story, if you could get hold of a tenement-house incident of that kind, and keep it from becoming allegorical in the working out.
This went through Ray’s mind as he stood thinking also how he should ask the girl for his manuscript and the criticisms on it without seeming foolishly eager. Her father’s formidable intervention had dispensed him from the usual greetings, and he could only say, “Oh! Miss Hughes, Mr. Brandreth told me I might come and get my story of you—A Modern Romeo—and the readers’ opinions. I—I thought I should like to look them over; and—and”—
“I haven’t had time to copy them yet,” she answered. “Mr. Brandreth wished you to see them; but we keep the readers anonymous, and he thought I had better show them to you all in my handwriting.”
“I shouldn’t know the writers. He said I could see them as they are.”
“Well, then, I will go and get them for you,” she answered. She left him a moment, and he remained with her father unmolested. The old man sat staring out on the avenue, with his head black against its gathering lights.
She gave him the packet she brought back with her, and then she followed him out of the apartment upon the landing, after he had made his acknowledgments and adieux.
“I thought,” she said, timidly, “you would like to know that I had given your dollar for these poor children. Was that right?”
Ray’s head was so full of his story that he answered vaguely, “My dollar?” Then he remembered. “Oh! Oh yes! It was right—quite right! I’m glad you did it. Miss Hughes! Excuse me; but would you mind telling me whether you have happened to look at the story yourself?”
She hesitated, and then answered: “Yes, I’ve read it.”