“It’s the poor that knows how to feel for the poor,” said the apple-woman. “It’s I that’ll trust you, Tom, dear.”
Three months before Tom would have told Mrs. Murphy that she was a trump; but though some of her street phrases clung to her, she was beginning to use less of the slang which she had picked up during her long apprenticeship to a street life. Though her position, even at Mrs. Merton’s, had not been as favorable as it might have been elsewhere, the influences were far better than in the home (if it deserved the name) in which she had been reared, and the association of the school which she attended had, likewise, been of advantage to her. I do not wish it to be understood that Tom had in three months changed from a young Arab into a refined young lady. That would be hardly possible; but she had begun to change, and she could never again be quite the wild, reckless girl whose acquaintance we made at the street-crossing.
Tom went out with Mrs. Murphy, helping her to carry her basket of apples. Leaving her at her accustomed stand, she went to the newspaper offices, and laid in a small supply. With these she went to Fulton Ferry, partly because she fancied that there was no danger of granny’s coming there in pursuit of her. Even if the encounter did take place she was resolved not to go back. Still it was better to avoid it altogether.
Tom was rather late in the field. Most of her competitors had been selling papers for an hour, and some had already sold quite a number. However, not being in the least bashful, she managed to obtain her share of the trade that remained. The boats came in at frequent intervals, loaded down with passengers,—clerks, shop-boys, merchants, bankers, book-keepers, operatives, who made a home in Brooklyn, but spent the day in the busy metropolis.
“Morning papers, sir?” asked Tom, to a rather portly gentleman, who did business in Wall Street.
He drew a coin from his pocket, and handed to Tom.
Tom was about to put it in her pocket, supposing from the size that it was a five-cent piece; but, chancing to glance at it more particularly, she saw that it was a five-dollar gold piece.
Her eyes sparkled with joy. To her it was an immense fortune. She had never, in all her life, had so much money before. “But did he mean to give her so much?” was the question that suggested itself to her immediately. He had, to be sure, told her to keep the change, but Tom knew too much of human nature and the ways of the world to think it likely that anybody would pay five dollars in gold for a morning paper, without asking for a return of the change.