"Look,—that’s Miss McDonald," Guy’s friend said to him, "the greatest
heiress in New York, and I reckon the one who does the most good. Why,
she supports more old people and children and runs more ragged schools
than any half-dozen men in the city, and I don’t suppose there’s a den
in New York where she has not been, and never once, I’m told, was she
insulted, for the vilest of them stand between her and harm. Once a
miscreant on Avenue A knocked a boy down for accidently stepping in a
pool of water and spattering her white dress in passing. Friday nights
she has a reception for these people, and you ought to see how well they
behave. At first they were noisy and rough, and she had to have the
police, but now they are quiet and orderly as you please, Perhaps you’d
like to go to one. I know Miss McDonald, and will take you with me."
Guy said he should not be in town on Friday, as he must, return to
Cuylerville the next day, and with a feeling he could not quite analyze
he turned to look at the turnout which excited so much attention. But it
was not so much at the handsome bays and the bevy of queer-looking
children he gazed, as at the lady in their midst, clad in velvet and
ermine, with a long white feather falling among the curls of her bright
hair. When Daisy first entered upon her new life, she had affected a
nun-like garb as most appropriate, but after a little child said to her
once: "I don’t like your black gown all the time. I likes sumptin’
bright and pretty," she changed her dress and gave freer scope to her
natural good taste and love of what was becoming. And the result showed
the wisdom of the change, for the children and inmates of the dens she
visited, accustomed only to the squallor and ugliness of their
surroundings, hailed her more rapturously than they had done before, and
were never weary of talking of the beautiful woman who was not afraid to
wear her pretty clothes into their wretched houses, which gradually grew
more clean and tidy for her sake.
"It wasn’t for the likes of them gownds to trail through sich truck,"
Bridget O’Donohue said, and on the days when Daisy was expected, she
scrubbed the floor, which, until Daisy’s advent had not known water for
years, and rubbed and polished the one wooden chair kept sacred for the
lady’s use.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account