The man was touched.  The warm, reflected glow of the girl’s heart softened for a moment his own icy organ, and his eyes grew moist momentarily.  “You are a good child,” he said.  “Here are thirty-five dollars for your friend, for you’ve been a friend to her indeed.  Most girls would have let them starve for all they cared.  Now send the girl off to the country, and as soon as I can I’ll raise your wages to five dollars.  I’d do it now, only the others would talk and say it wasn’t customary to pay beginners so highly.  Mr. Jocelyn, I congratulate you on the possession of such a daughter, and I sincerely hope you may soon retrieve your fortunes and regain the position to which I see that you both naturally belong,” and he bowed them out with a politeness and respect that were not by any means assumed.

Belle almost danced home by her father’s side, so great was the rebound of her depressed feelings.  Thirty-five dollars!  How much that would do for poor Clara!  Millie would help her make up her mourning, and she would have nothing to pay for but the material.  She would write to Mrs. Atwood that very night, and to Roger, telling him he must be kind to Clara, and take her out to drive.  Her heart fairly bubbled over with plans and projects for the girl whose “place she had taken.”

The poor child had scarcely begun her letter to Mrs. Atwood before her head drooped, and Mildred said, “Tell me what to say, Belle, and I’ll write it all.  You’ve done you part to-day, and done it well.”

“That’s good of you, Millie.  When I get sleepy it’s no use to try to do anything.  I’d go to sleep if the house was on fire.  But you won’t write to Roger, I’m afraid.”

“No.  If he must be written to, you must do that.”

“Well, I will to-morrow.  He’ll do Clara more good than all the rest.”

Our story passes hastily over the scenes that followed.  A brief service was held over Mrs. Bute’s remains by a city missionary, known to Mrs. Wheaton, who was present with Mrs. Jocelyn, Belle, and Mildred.  Three or four neighbors from the tenement lent chairs and came in also.  The girls at the ribbon counter clubbed together and sent an anchor of white flowers, and at the hour of the funeral they looked grave and were quiet in manner, thus taking part in the solemnity in the only way they could.  In due time the city department upon which the duty devolved sent the “dead wagon”; the morsel of human clay was returned to its kindred dust in “Potter’s Field,” a public cemetery on Hart’s Island, in which are interred all who die in the city and whose friends are unable to pay for a grave or a burial plot.  Clara, however, had not the pain of seeing her mother placed in the repulsive red box furnished by the department, for Mr. Jocelyn sent a plain but tasteful coffin, with the woman’s age and name inscribed upon it.