The Girl Who Had Nothing

								

racehorse and the imagination of a Scheherazade.  She lived practically
a double life within herself, but never until this moment had she been
consciously jealous of the happier fate of a fellow-creature.
In looking from the shelter where she sat in shadow, at the other girl
who walked in sunshine, she knew the crunching pain of the monster’s
fangs.
The other girl had long, fair hair; she wore white muslin, foaming with
lace frills, white silk stockings, and shoes of white suede.  Her face
was shaded by a great, rose-crowned, leghorn hat, which flopped into
soft curves and made a picture of small features which without it might
have seemed insignificant.  The magnetism that was in Joan Carthew’s
eyes forced the girl to turn and throw a glance as she passed at the
shabby child in faded brown serge (a frock altered from a discarded one
of Mrs. Boyle’s) who sat huddled in the shelter, with a tawdrily dressed
baby asleep by her side. The glance had all the primitive, merciless
disdain of a sleek, fortunate young animal for a miserable, hunted one,
and Joan felt the meaning of it in her soul.
"Why should she have everything and I nothing?" was the old-new question
which shaped itself wordlessly in the child’s brain. "She looks at me as
if I were a rat.  I’m not a rat!  I’m as good as she is, if I had her
clothes.  I’m cleverer, and prettier, too, I know I am--heaps and heaps.
Oh!  I want to be like her, only better--I must be--I shall!"
She quivered with the fierceness of her revolt against fate, yet in it
was no vulgar jealousy.  The other girl’s pale blue eyes, in one
contemptuous glance, had found every patch on her frock and shoes, had
criticised her old hat, and sneered at her little, rough, work-worn
hands, scorning her for them as if she were a creature of an inferior
race; but Joan had no personal hatred for the happier child, no wish for
revenge, no desire to take from the other what she had.  The feeling
which shook her with sudden, stormy passion was merely the sharp
realisation of injustice, the conviction that by nature she herself was
worthy of the good things she had missed, the savage resolve to have
what she ought to have, at any cost.
It was not tea-time yet, and Minnie was happily asleep; Joan was certain
to be scolded just as sharply on her return as if she had stopped away
for hours longer, therefore she might as well have drained her birthday
cup of stolen pleasure to the dregs; but the good taste of the draught
was gone. She yearned only to go home, to get the scolding over, and to
have a few minutes to herself in the tiny back room which she shared
with the baby.  There seemed to be much to think of, much to decide.
The child waked Minnie, who was cross at being roused, and refused to
walk.  The quickest way of triumphing over the difficulty was to carry
her, and this method Joan promptly adopted.  But the baby was heavy and
fractious.  She wriggled in her young nurse’s grasp, and just as Joan