Maggie's Christmas Dream

In 1875, Maggie Johnson had three things in the world that belonged to her: A lucky penny with the year worn off, a dog-eared book of Methodist hymns, and the conviction that she could build a future for herself somewhere beyond the river-wrinkled, mud-choked streets of a large Northern city. Her earliest memories were of hands-her mother's, her father's, both gone before she could talk-and later the hands of strangers, guiding her through orphan homes and church basements and into a world that expected little from girls like her.
But Maggie was not one for shrinking. Every morning, she rose early to sweep the parsonage floors, feed the pastor's chickens, and help the laundress wring out the water from the preacher's starched shirts. She never stole, never lied-except to herself, sometimes, when the ache of loneliness burrowed deep. Maggie Johnson had always been a watcher by necessity. As a child, she'd peered through cracks in church doors to see what the well-dressed parishioners did when they thought they weren't being watched; she'd kept to the corners in crowded soup kitchens, eyes wide as she learned who was kind and who was cruel, who would give away a heel of bread and who would swat a hand for reaching.
The world had chewed up dozens of girls like her and spit them out into the streets, but Maggie, with her soft-spoken voice and steadfast heart, seemed to glide through the rough patches like a skater on the slickest pond.