“Oh, she is your niece? I suppose so—a tall girl with dark eyes and hair.”
“That’s Leesy, herself. Was you wanting any work done?”
“Yes,” answered the officer, quickly, taking the matter out of my hands. “I wanted to get a set of shirts made up—six, with fine, stitched bosoms.” He had noticed a cheap sewing-machine standing near the window, and a bundle of coarse muslin in a basket near by.
“It’s sorry I am to disappoint you; but Leesy’s not with me now, and I hardly venture on the fine work. I make the shirts for the hands about the railroad that hasn’t wives of their own to do it—but for the fine bussums”—doubtfully—“though, to be sure, the machine does the stitches up beautiful—if it wasn’t for the buttonholes!”
“Where is Leesy? Doesn’t she stop with you?”
“It’s her I have here always when she’s out of a place. She’s an orphan, poor girl, and it’s not in the blood of a Sullivan to turn off their own. I’ve brought her up from a little thing of five years old—given her the education, too. She can read and write like the ladies of the land.”
“You didn’t say where she was, Mrs. Sullivan.”
“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?”
“Six weeks every summer. They was always satisfied with her sewing—she’s the quickest and neatest hand with the needle! She’d make them shirts of yours beautiful, if she was to home, sir.”
“When did she go to New York to live?”
“Last winter, early. It’s nearly a year now. There was something come across her—she appeared homesick like, and strange. When she said she meant to go to the city and get work, I was minded to let her go, for I thought the change mebbe would do her good. But she’s quite ailing and coughs dreadful o’ nights. I’m afraid she catched cold in that rainstorm night afore last; she came up all the way from the depot in it. She was wet to the skin when she got here and as white as a sheet. She was so weak-like that when the neighbors came in with the news yesterday, she gave a scream and dropped right down. I didn’t wonder she was took aback. I ain’t got done trembling yet myself.”
I remembered the gentleman who had first spoken to me about the girl said that she had come in on the morning train Saturday; I could not reconcile this with her coming up from the depot at dark; yet I wished to put my question in such a way as not to arouse suspicion of my motive.
“If she came in the six o’clock train she must have been on the same train with Mr. Moreland.”
“I believe she was in the seven o’clock cars—yes, she was. ’Twas
