“BREAD CAST UPON THE WATERS.”
Allison’s first impulse was to scream for help. But she quickly
conquered it, for she had a horror of becoming the center of a
curious, gaping crowd upon a public thoroughfare.
Almost at the same moment she espied a policeman across the street,
and beckoned him to come to her assistance; then, stooping over
the senseless girl at her feet, tried to move her into a more
comfortable position.
“What has happened?” queried the officer, as he appeared upon the
spot. “A drunk, I reckon--eh?”
“No,” said Allison, flushing with indignation at his indifferent
tone; “the girl’s arm is broken, and she has fainted.”
“Humph! then it’s a case for the hospital. I’ll ring up an
ambulance,” was the perfunctory response.
Allison caught her breath sharply, for, like many others who are
ignorant regarding such institutions, she had a perfect horror of a
hospital.
“No,” she said quickly and decidedly, while she glanced up at a
sign over a window in the next block, “Doctor Ashmore’s office is
quite near--take her there.”
“She doesn’t look as if she could afford to pay a swell surgeon
like Doctor Ashmore--she’s a better subject for the hospital,
miss,” said the man slightingly.
“Well, but I am not going to allow her to be put into an ambulance
and driven a long way over these rough pavements to any hospital,”
Allison asserted decidedly. “I know Doctor Ashmore--he is a
first-class surgeon, and I will be responsible for his charge.
Now, pray do as I ask you, and do not let this poor thing lie here
upon the hard sidewalk a moment longer” she concluded, somewhat
impatiently, for people were beginning to gather about them.
“All right, miss; if you choose to look out for her, it’s no affair
of mine,” said the policeman, and, calling another man to his aid,
the two lifted the still unconscious girl and bore her into the
noted surgeon’s office, Allison swiftly leading the way thither.
“I have brought you a patient, Doctor Ashmore,” she observed, as he
entered, and the gentleman came forward to greet her, whereupon he
ordered the men to deposit their burden upon a couch, and at once
proceeded to make an examination of the case.
“The arm is broken above the elbow,” he observed, after ripping up
the sleeve of the girl’s dress. “Who is this protégée of yours,
Miss Brewster?”
“I do not know,” Allison replied; “I found her leaning against a
lamp-post crying, and asked her what the trouble was, when she
merely pointed to her arm, and then fainted away.”
“Well, we will soon have her comfortably fixed. Perhaps you would
like to go into another room while I set the bone,” said Doctor
Ashmore, after calling his assistant, and ordering him to bring
splints, bandages, and other necessary appliances.
“No, thank you; the poor thing will perhaps feel better if she
comes to herself and finds me here, and I will try not to mind the
operation,” replied Allison, in a spirit of true self-abnegation,
yet not feeling nearly so brave as her words had sounded.
Nothing more was said, and the surgeon proceeded at once about
his task, without attempting to revive his patient, who was still
unconscious.
But as his skilful fingers put the fractured bone into position, a
low, shuddering moan plainly told that the shock and pain of the
setting had resulted in restoring suspended animation.
But the girl made no other sound, no resistance; she lay white
and motionless while the splints were adjusted, and the bandages
arranged, and when all was over she raised herself to a sitting
posture, and looked curiously about her.
“Where am I?” she inquired of Allison, as another patient entered,
and claimed the surgeon’s attention.
“In the office of Doctor Ashmore. I asked a policeman to bring
you here, so that your injury could be attended to immediately,”
Allison explained; “and,” she added, smiling encouragingly into the
pale, pinched face before her, “I am sure the worst is over.”
“Perhaps you think so--but that is all you know about it,” returned
the girl grimly.
“But I have always heard that after a broken bone is once set,
there is very little discomfort experienced while the fracture is
mending.”
“Oh, the arm will do well enough,” said the girl, glancing at the
bandaged member indifferently; “I wasn’t thinking about that at
all.”
“What were you thinking about?” inquired Allison, with surprise.
“Of the money I’ve lost and the scoldings and abuse I shall get
because I sha’n’t be able to do any work for the next few weeks,”
returned the patient, with an anxious frown. “But where’s my
bundle?” she questioned, with a sudden start, and glancing around
the room with a troubled air.
“Over there behind that chair,” said Allison, pointing it out. Then
she asked: “Now will you tell me your name, and how you happened to
get hurt?”
“My name is Ellen Carson,” the girl replied; “I had been to Cohen
& Isaacs, to carry back a lot of work, and get some more, and the
pay for the last. I live with my aunt, or my uncle’s wife, and I do
the housework, while she and Anna--my cousin--make boys’ jackets
for a living. I help on them, too, after the drudgery is done, and
I always have to fetch and carry the bundles. I had the pay for the
last lot--three dollars--in one hand, and was hurrying home, when
an ugly-looking fellow gave me a rough push, knocking me against
that lamp-post, then snatched the purse, and made off with it,
before I hardly knew what had happened. At first I was so wild over
losing the money, and what I should catch when I got home, I didn’t
know that I was hurt; but, after a minute or two, the pain got so
sharp it took my breath away, and then I found my arm was broken.
Oh, dear! Aunt Lu will just about kill me for letting that money be
stolen,” Ellen concluded, with a sob, great tears chasing over her
hollow cheeks.
“Hush! Do not cry! I will make the money part of it all right,”
said Allison kindly, a great pity for the unfortunate girl surging
through her heart. “I am sure your aunt cannot be very kind to you
if she will mind the loss of three dollars more than your accident.”
“Kind! huh!” exclaimed Ellen, with a mirthless laugh, “and she’ll
mind the broken arm enough, too, but not in the way you mean; she
and Anna will have to do the housework now for a while, and I shall
get plenty of kicks and cuffs for being in the way and ‘not earning
my salt.’ I sha’n’t get much but salt, either, I imagine, to pay
for losing that money.”
“Oh, I cannot imagine any one being so cruel,” said Allison,
looking deeply troubled. “Your aunt must be very poor, as well as
unkind.”
“You bet she is; but it wasn’t always so bad as it is now,”
Ellen observed, and, growing confidential. “When Uncle Alan--he
was my mother’s brother, and his name was Brown--was alive, I
used to go to school, and we lived in a better part of the city.
Anna graduated from the high school more’n four years ago; she’s
handsome, too--or would be if she could have pretty clothes like
yours”--this with an appreciative glance at Allison’s dainty
costume. “After Uncle Alan died, Aunt Lu at first threatened to
send me to an orphans’ home; but when she found how handy I was in
the kitchen, and to run on errands, she got over that, though she
doesn’t mind twitting me about being a beggar every day of my life.”
“But does she not pay you something for doing the work and helping
upon the jackets?” questioned Allison, with almost a sense of guilt
as she compared the ideal life which she had always led with the
miserable existence of this poor, abused child.
“Pay me! Good land! Uncle Alan has been dead going on four years,
and I haven’t had a dime of my own to spend at one time since.
Sometimes I’ve got so desperate I’ve thought I’d run away and leave
Aunt Lu and Anna to shift for themselves, and become a cash-girl in
some store, but I haven’t a decent dress or a whole pair of shoes
or stockings to my name, and nobody’d hire me looking like this,”
the girl concluded, as she glanced ruefully down at her faded
dress, and the clumsy, defaced shoes upon her feet.
Tears involuntarily rushed to Allison’s eyes, as they fell upon
her costly, well-filled purse, and she realized for the first
time in her life that she had never known the meaning of the word
“poverty.” Again a sense of guilt swept over her as she thought of
the dainty ten-dollar boots and the silken stockings that encased
her feet--of the expensive hat upon her head, and the many other
accessories of her toilet, the price of one of which would have
seemed like a small fortune to this destitute girl.
“I suppose you thought you were doing a good thing when you had me
brought in here?” Ellen resumed, after a moment of silence, and
glancing around the luxurious room they were in; “but Aunt Lu
will never pay Doctor Ashmore for setting my arm--he’s one of your
swell, high-priced doctors; you would have done better if you’d
sent me to some hospital.”
“I couldn’t,” said Allison; “somehow, I have a prejudice against a
hospital; but you need not worry about Doctor Ashmore’s fee--I am
going to pay him myself.”
“H’m! that’s very good of you, and you must have lots of spare
cash to be able to sling it about in that way,” Ellen observed,
with a wistful glance at the silver-tipped pocketbook in Allison’s
daintily gloved hand. “But,” starting to her feet, “I must be
getting along home, though goodness knows how I am going to carry
that bundle with only one hand, and--and my knees have a queer,
shaky feeling in them, too,” she concluded, growing pale and
sinking back upon the couch again.
“Where do you live?” Allison questioned, in a voice that was
somewhat husky.
“Down on Greenwich Street.”
“Oh!” breathed the petted child of fortune, with a shiver of
repulsion; and then she abruptly crossed the room to speak to the
surgeon’s assistant. She asked him if he would call a carriage for
her, after which she went thoughtfully back to her protégée.
“I am going to send you and your bundle home in a carriage,” she
said to her; “and now tell me, please, was it exactly three dollars
that was stolen from you this morning?”
“Yes, just the price of a dozen jackets.”
“What! you do not mean that you only get that amount for making a
dozen jackets?” exclaimed Allison, aghast.
“That is all--just twenty-five cents apiece,” said the girl, with a
confirmative nod.
Allison opened her purse, and took from it three dollars.
“Ellen,” she said, in a very winning tone, “I am going to give you
that much to take to your aunt, so that she cannot blame you for
the loss.”
“My! but ain’t you good!” breathed the girl, with a long, grateful
sigh, as she reached eagerly for the money.
“Wait,” said Allison; “I will get an envelope from Doctor Ashmore
to put it in--it will be safer so,” and going to the surgeon, who
was now writing at his desk, she asked him to give her two.
She placed the three dollars in one, then returned to Ellen, to
whom she gave it, and who hastily thrust it into the bosom of her
dress.
“Now,” continued Allison, “I am sorry that I cannot know how you
will get on with your arm, for I am going to leave the city for the
summer to-morrow morning. But, of course, you will have to come
to Doctor Ashmore occasionally, and I shall learn from him how
you are, when I return, and perhaps then I can help you to find
something to do in a pleasanter home----”
“Oh, would you?--will you?” cried the girl, with pathetic
eagerness. “I should love you with all my heart for it.”
Allison was almost ready to weep as she met the wistful eyes
uplifted to hers.
“I will try, if you will leave your address with Doctor Ashmore,”
she replied, as she quietly slipped a ten-dollar bill into the
other envelope; “and now I am going to give you this for your very
own,” she continued, as she tucked her gift into Ellen’s hand; “you
can do whatever you like with it.”
“For me! Oh! do you mean that you have given me all that? Ten
dollars!” gasped the astonished girl, whose quick eyes had detected
the denomination of the bill. “Have you a right to give away so
much money? What will your father and mother say? Why, I can’t
believe it!”
Her voice shook from intense excitement and the hand that held the
coveted sum trembled visibly.
“Yes, Ellen, I have the right to give away what I like, and I have
no father nor mother, I regret to say, to question my pleasure
in that respect. You need not say anything about it to your aunt
unless you choose.”
“I guess I sha’n’t tell either Aunt Lu or Anna a word about it,”
Ellen hastily interposed. “I shouldn’t have it long if I did. I
shall keep very mum, and when my arm gets well, I will make a good
use of it,” she added, with a gleam of triumph in her eyes that
Allison never forgot. Then, with something very like a sob, she
continued: “Why, miss, I think I must feel something like the slave
I read about not long ago, when his master gave him his liberty: ‘I
’clar to goodness,’ he said, ‘dis am a new world to me!’ This money
means freedom to me and a new world to live in. How I love you for
being so kind to me! I--I hope you do not mind my saying it”--in
an apologetic tone--“I know I’m of no account, but I haven’t had
anybody to love since my mother died, seven years ago.”
Allison was deeply touched by the girl’s emotion, and the pathos of
this last remark.
“Indeed, Ellen, you are of a great deal of account,” she returned,
with a winning smile; “and when I come back to the city, in the
fall, I will try to see you again, and I hope I shall find you well
and happier than you are to-day. Ah, I think the carriage has come
for you,” she concluded, as Doctor Ashmore’s attendant at that
moment returned, accompanied by the coachman, who had come for the
bundle.
The surgeon then came forward, gave his patient some directions,
making an appointment for her to come to him again in a few days,
after which Allison bade her a kind good-by, paid the hackman his
fare, and charged him to “be sure and carry the bundle into the
house for Ellen when she reached home.”
Then Allison turned to Doctor Ashmore and requested him to name his
charge for setting the broken arm.
He smiled into her beautiful, earnest face.
“Are you in the habit of picking up disabled protégées in the
streets of New York, Miss Allison?” he questioned.
“No; I am ashamed to say that this is my first experience of
anything of the kind,” Allison gravely replied; “but it would have
been inhuman to have left her lying there upon the pavement, or to
have allowed her to be carried away to a hospital, when help was so
near. I knew, too, that she could not fall into better hands than
yours.”
“Thank you for your tribute and confidence,” said the surgeon, in a
gratified tone, “but there will be no charge for what I have done.”
“Oh, but I never should have presumed to bring her here if I had
not expected to be responsible for her fee,” Allison exclaimed, and
flushing sensitively.
“I understand; but I think you have already done your share for
that poor, forsaken-looking child,” the man kindly responded. “I
like to do a good deed once in a while myself, so we will not talk
any more about the fee.”
He had not been unmindful of what had occurred between the two
girls, notwithstanding he had appeared to be absorbed in other
things.
Allison thanked him heartily for his personal interest in the case,
and then, after a few moments of friendly chatting, bade him good
afternoon, and went home, having received a vivid object lesson
upon human poverty and suffering which she felt she should never
forget, and little thinking how the “bread which had that day been
cast upon the waters” would be returned to her after many days.