In fact, it would perhaps be difficult to define "Mart" Colon's position
in the house. Yet she was, as I said, becoming known among the young
ladies outside as "Mattie Colson, that handsome young Colson's sister;
as pretty as a doll, and a _protege_ of that lovely Mrs. Roberts,
you know." As for the Young Ladies' Band,--I do not include them when I
talk of the girls "outside,"--what they had done for Mattie Colson she
could not have told you though she tried, her eyes shining with tears.
The days had come wherein the very matrons who had said that it was a
strange thing for Mrs. Roberts to take a girl from the slums into her
family--that it was "tempting Providence to attempt such violent
wrenches"--now said one to another, that "it must be a great relief to
Mrs. Roberts to have that Mattie Colson always at her elbow to see that
everything about the home was just as it should be;" and they added,
with a sigh, that "some people were very fortunate."
Now, dear critic, you stand all ready to say that this is a very nice
_paper_ story, but that in actual life attempts at doing good do
not result so smoothly; that to be "natural," Mrs. Roberts ought, at
least, to have tried in vain to reclaim half of her boys.
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