"She's making the fine things in a fancy-store in New York--caps and
collars and sleeves and the beautiful tucked waists--she's _such_
taste, and the work is not so hard as plain-sewing--four dollars a week
she gets, and boarded for two and a half, in a nice, genteel place. She
expects to be illivated to the forewoman's place, at seven dollars the
week, before many months. She was here to stay over the Sunday with
me--she often does that; and she's gone back by the six o'clock train
this mornin'--and she'll be surely late at that by an hour. I tried to
coax her to stay the day, she seemed so poorly. She's not been herself
this long time--she seems goin' in a decline like--it's the stooping
over the needle, I think. She's so nervous-like, the news of the murder
yesterday almost killed her. 'Twas an awful deed that, wasn't it,
gintlemen? I couldn't sleep a wink last night for thinkin' of that poor
young man and the sweet lady he was to have married. Such a fine,
generous, polite young gintleman!"
"Did you know him?"
"Know him! as well as my own son if I had one!--not that ever I spoke
to him, but he's passed here often on his way to his father's house,
and to Mr. Argyll's; and Leesy sewed in their family these two summers
when they've been here, and was always twice paid. When she'd go away
he'd say, laughing in his beautiful way, 'And how much have you earned
a day, Miss Sullivan, sitting there all these long, hot hours?' and
she'd answer, 'Fifty cents a day, and thanks to your mother for the
good pay;' and he'd put his hand in his pocket and pull out a
ten-dollar gold-piece and say, 'Women aren't half paid for their work!
it's a shame! if you hain't earned a dollar a day, Miss Sullivan, you
hain't earned a cent. So don't be afraid to take it--it's your due.'
And that's what made Leesy think so much of him--he was so thoughtful
of the poor--God bless him! How could anybody have the heart to do it!"
I looked at the officer and found his eyes reading my face. One thought
had evidently flashed over both of us; but it was a suspicion which
wronged the immaculate memory of Henry Moreland, and I, for my part,
banished it as soon as it entered my mind. It was like him to pay
generously the labors of a sickly sewing-girl; it was not like him to
take any advantage of her ignorance or gratitude, which might result in
her taking such desperate revenge for her wrongs. The thought was an
insult to him and to the noble woman who was to have been his wife. I
blushed at the intrusive, unwelcome fancy; but the officer, not knowing
the deceased as I knew him, and, perhaps, having no such exalted idea
of manhood as mine, seemed to feel as if here might be a thread to
follow.
"Leesy thought much of him, you think, Mrs. Sullivan," taking a chair
unbidden, and putting on a friendly, gossiping air. "Everybody speaks
well of him. So she sewed in the family?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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