They still owed her something for that early
environment of dirt and disease. The landlord in whose vile tenement she
had lived, the saloon-keeper who had sold her beer, the manufacturer who
had bought the garments she made at starvation wages, were all her
debtors. Society exists for the purpose of doing justice to its members,
and society had not begun to pay its debt to that youthful member whose
lot had been cast in Calvary Alley.
One Saturday afternoon in the early spring of Nance's fourth year at
Forest Home, Miss Stanley stood in the school-house door, reading a
letter. It was the kind of a day when heaven and earth cannot keep away
from each other, but the fleecy clouds must come down to play in the
sparkling pools, and white and pink blossoms must go climbing up to the
sky to flaunt their sweetness against the blue. Yet Miss Stanley, reading
her letter, sighed.
Coming toward her down the hillside, plunged a noisy group of children,
and behind them in hot pursuit came Nance Molloy, angular, long-legged,
lithe as a young sapling and half mad with the spring.
"Such a child still!" sighed Miss Stanley, as she lifted a
beckoning hand.
The children crowded about her, all holding out hot fists full of faded
wild flowers.
"Look!" cried one breathlessly. "We found 'em in the hollow. And Nance
says if you'll let her, she'll take us next Saturday to the old mill
where some yellow vi'lets grow!"
Miss Stanley looked down at the flushed, happy faces; then she put her
arm around Nance's shoulder.
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