“It pains me to refuse you; but I have given good reasons, and cannot think of changing my determination.  I hope you will not annoy me by any future efforts to enter my house.  There is a present for you.  Good-evening.”

She tossed a five-dollar gold piece toward the kneeling figure, and, closing the door, locked it on the inside.  The money rolled ringingly down the steps, and the grating sound of the key, as it was hurriedly turned, seemed typical of the unyielding lock which now forever barred the child’s hopes.  The look of utter despair gave place to an expression of indescribable bitterness.  Springing from her suppliant posture, she muttered with terrible emphasis: 

“A curse on that woman and her husband!  May God answer their prayers as she has answered mine!”

Picking up the coin which lay glittering on the sidewalk, she threw it forcibly against the door, and, as it rebounded into the street, took the carriage tongue, and slowly retraced her steps.  It was not surprising that passers-by gazed curiously at the stony face, with its large eyes, brimful of burning hate, as the injured orphan walked mechanically on, unconscious that her lips were crushed till purple drops oozed over them.  The setting sun flashed his ruddy beams caressingly over her brow, and whispering winds lifted tenderly the clustering folds of jetty hair; but nature’s pure-hearted darling had stood over the noxious tarn, whence the poisonous breath of a corrupt humanity rolled upward, and the once sinless child inhaled the vapor until her soul was a great boiling Marah.  Ah, truly

“There are swift hours in life—­strong, rushing hours—­That do the work of tempests in their might!”

Peaceful valleys, green and flowery, sleeping in loveliness, have been unheaved, and piled in somber, jagged masses, against the sky, by the fingering of an earthquake; and gentle, loving, trusting hearts, over whose altars brooded the white-winged messengers of God’s peace, have been as suddenly transformed by a manifestation of selfishness and injustice, into gloomy haunts of misanthropy.  Had Mrs. Grayson been arraigned for cruelty, or hard-heartedness, before a tribunal of her equals (i. e., fashionable friends), the charge would have been scornfully repelled, and unanimous would have been her acquittal.  “Hard-hearted! oh, no! she was only prudent and wise.”  Who could expect her to suffer her pampered, inert darling to meet and acknowledge as an equal the far less daintily fed and elegantly clad sister, whom God called to labor for her frugal meals?  Ah, this fine-ladyism, this ignoring of labor, to which, in accordance with the divine decree, all should be subjected:  this false-effeminacy, and miserable affectation of refinement, which characterizes the age, is the unyielding lock on the wheels of social reform and advancement.