The Skylight Room

Mrs. Parker rented rooms in her tall old house.To smart, well-dressed callers she showed the fine big rooms near the front door.Only when they said the price was too high did she lead them, step by step, up to the cheaper rooms.

The cheapest of all was the skylight room at the very top, so small that a narrow bed almost filled it.Its only window was a single pane of glass set in the slope of the roof.A small, bright-eyed girl named Miss Leeson took the room; she typed letters for a living.

The other lodgers liked her, and on warm evenings they all sat on the front steps together.One night a lodger pointed up at the stars and named them one by one.Miss Leeson said that the one bright star she could see through her skylight she had named “Billy Jackson.”

As the weeks passed, less and less typing work came her way.Every morning she went out to look for work, and every evening she came back with empty hands.One night she had no money for dinner and climbed the stairs to her room feeling weak and dizzy.

She lay down on the narrow bed and looked up through the skylight.“Good-bye, Billy,” she said softly to her star, and then everything went dark.In the morning she did not come down, and when no one could wake her, the men broke open the door.

They carried her down, and soon an ambulance came with a quick, kind young doctor.As he lifted her, he asked her name for his book; her eyes opened a little and she whispered, “Billy Jackson.”The young doctor smiled, for his own name was William Jackson — and he told the driver to go slowly and gently all the way to the hospital.