Resumo de The Skylight Room

Another one of O Henry's delightful stories, "The Skylight Room" is a modern day fairy tale, set in the heart of the author's favorite city, New York. This heartwarming tale describes the dream come true romance of Miss Leeson, a poor working girl in New York.

Miss Leeson is a young woman who works as a freelance typist with the big firms in the city. Her income is, however, insufficient to get her decent lodgings, so she is forced to rent what experienced house hunters call "the skylight room". The skylight room is a "well of stygian blackness", a sort of black hole where once light enters, it just dies in agony. The only source of natural light here is a small rectangular skylight. The skylight room has no windows; a small door leads to the landing. For a bright, vivacious and whimsically imaginative girl like Miss Leeson, this is the worst it can get. The bare room has a small cot, a wash stand and a dresser- all that Miss Leeson can afford.

On the floors below live the more affluent lodgers of the sharp tongued and snobbish Mrs. Parker, Miss Leeson's landlady. Mr. Skidder is a playwright, perpetually on the lookout for a muse. Miss Leeson fits the bill, and the heroine of Mr. Skidder's next play becomes a short, happy-go-lucky woman who has long auburn hair. Mr. Hoover, a fat, middle aged man, is not above taking advantage of poor young girls, and the young Mr. Evans is genuinely attracted to this woman whose fancies are forever skimming the skies and the stars. The schoolteacher, Miss Longnecker, a beautiful woman with no time for fancies, and the sports obsessed Miss Dorn are the other lodgers of Mrs. Parker's establishment.

Miss Leeson soon becomes popular with all the lodgers, despite the fact that she is a poor outcast who has to live in "the skylight room". On a balmy evening, when the lodgers are sitting on the steps leading to the apartments, Miss Leeson points out Billy Jackson, the only star she can see through the skylight in her room. Though Miss Longnecker disagrees with her astronomical nomenclature and insists it is "Gamma", the other lodgers think Billy Jackson is a better name for a star. For Miss Leeson, the star is the only friend in a wide world whose only share comes to her in the form of a patch of black darkness called "the skylight room". It is not just a ball of gas and heat for her, it is a friend and confidante who knows her distress and sorrows.

A few days later, Miss Leeson finds that jobs are not coming her way. Things become so bad that she cannot even afford a meal. When the time for dinner comes, she just tries to climb the stairs to her room, because she cannot afford going to the restaurant. Mr. Hoover comes to offer her marriage, Mr. Skidder wants her to act in his play- dodging them all, she goes to her room and faints.

When she is found later in the morning, an ambulance is called for. The medic who comes in the ambulance is an efficient young doctor who knows enough about skylight rooms and what they do to human beings who need sunshine and air to live a healthy life. He seems to have taken a fancy to the frail Miss Leeson. Miss Leeson is taken to the hospital. The doctor, William Jackson, truly turns out to be her friend and saviour, as he helps her recover from her starvation induced illness.

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