Sue, A Little Heroine | Page 5

Giles in that little attic?"
"It ain't that," said she, proudly. "It ain't a bit as I can't work, fur I can,
real smart at 'chinery needlework. I gets plenty to do, too, but that 'ere
landlady, she ain't a bit like mother; she'd trusten nobody, and she up
this morning, and mother scarce cold, and says as she'd not let her room
to Giles and me 'cept we could get some un to go security fur the rent;
and we has no un as 'ud go security, so we must go away the day as
mother is buried, and Giles must go to the work'us; and it 'ull kill Giles,
and mother won't trust me no more."
"Don't think that, my child; nothing can shake your mother's trust
where God has taken her now. But do you want me to help you?"

Sue found the color mounting to her little, weather-beaten face. A fear
suddenly occurred to her that she had been audacious--that this man
was a stranger, that her request was too great for her to ask. But
something in the kindness of the eyes looking straight into hers brought
sudden sunshine to her heart and courage to her resolve. With a burst,
one word toppling over the other, out came the whole truth:
"Please, sir--please, sir, I thought as you might go security fur Giles
and me. We'd pay real honest. Oh, sir, will you, jest because mother did
trusten so werry much?"
"I will, my child, and with all the heart in the world. Come home with
me now, and I will arrange the whole matter with your landlady."
CHAPTER III.
GOOD SECURITY.
John Atkins was always wont to speak of Sue and Giles as among the
successes of his life. This was not the first time he had gone security
for his poor, and many of his poor had decamped, leaving the burden of
their unpaid rent on him. He never murmured when such failures came
to him. He was just a trifle more particular in looking not so much into
the merits as the necessities of the next case that came to his knowledge.
But no more, than if all his flock had been honest as the day, did he
refuse his aid. This may have been a weakness on the man's part; very
likely, for he was the sort of man whom all sensible and long-headed
people would have spoken about as a visionary, an enthusiast, a
believer in doing to others as he would be done by--a person, in short,
without a grain of everyday sense to guide him. Atkins would smile
when such people lectured him on what they deemed his folly.
Nevertheless, though he took failure with all resignation, success, when
it came to him, was stimulating, and Giles and Sue he classed among
his successes.
The mother died and was buried, but the children did not leave their
attic, and Sue, brave little bread-winner, managed not only to pay the

rent but to keep the gaunt wolf of hunger from the door. Sue worked as
a machinist for a large City house.
Every day she rose with the dawn, made the room as tidy as she could
for Giles, and then started for her long walk to the neighborhood of
Cheapside. In a room with sixty other girls Sue worked at the
sewing-machine from morning till night. It was hard labor, as she had
to work with her feet as well as her hands, producing slop clothing at
the rate of a yard a minute. Never for an instant might her eyes wander
from the seam; and all this severe work was done in the midst of an
ear-splitting clatter, which alone would have worn out a person not
thoroughly accustomed to it.
But Sue was not unhappy. For three years now she had borne without
breaking down this tremendous strain on her health. The thought that
she was keeping Giles in the old attic made her bright and happy, and
her shrill young voice rose high and merry above those of her
companions. No; Sue, busy and honest, was not unhappy. But her fate
was a far less hard one than Giles's.
Giles had not always been lame. When first his mother held him in her
arms he was both straight and beautiful. Though born of poor parents
and in London, he possessed a health and vigor seldom bestowed upon
such children. In those days his father was alive, and earning good
wages as a fireman in the London Fire Brigade. There was a
comfortable home for both Sue and Giles, and Giles was the very light
and sunshine of his father's and mother's life. To his father he had been
a special source of pride and rejoicing. His beauty