Lucinda didn't rely too much on her mother. She couldn't Less than six months later her mother died. And Lucinda left the factory one afternoon, walked to the railway station, and bought a ticket to New York.
Now, by all the rules, the big city should have swallowed Lucinda. But the rules didn't work in this case. Lucinda was very pretty, and she had known the pains of hunger.
She met and married a rich man. Not that quickly, of course. It took time—but it happened. He had several plants. They all made automobile accessories, and they all made iheir owner rich. He wasn't young, and he wasn't handsome. But he was kind Lucinda didn't love her husband, but she liked and respected him. She tried her best not to be crude, and to learn things his way. She prayed hard for a baby so that she would have something on which to lavish her riches and affection. She asked for a girl but she said shed be satisfied with a boy. Just so long as it was hers.
It was five years before God was able to turn away from the turmoil of the world and listen to Lucinda. But listen he did. And, in his bene-valence he must have smiled at the girl who had had such an unhappy childhood He gave her a girl. And Lucinda's eyes were big and bright when she sáw that her baby had jet-black hair, and ringlets, and cheeks so fat that they hung like red grapes.
It was then that she made a vow. She swore that this baby would be brought up far differently from the way she had been. She vowed that the little girl's happiness would come first. She vowed to use all her riches—al her energy—all her. time—to make it that way.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.