IN the bottom of that wonderful little trunk lay side by side two little blue and white plaid dresses, made gabrielle fashion, with ruffles around the bottom and around the neck. Never were dresses made with more patient care. All the stitches were small and very neat.
And they represented hours and hours of steady work. Every stitch in them had been taken by Nettie Decker. Long before she had thought of such a thing as coming home, they had been commenced. Birthday presents they were to be to the little sisters whom she had never seen. She had earned the money to buy them. She had borrowed two little neighbors of the same age, to fit them to, and with much advice and now and then a little skilful handling from Mrs. Marshall, they were finally finished to Nettie's great satisfaction.
It was the day the last stitch was set in them that she learned she was to come herself and bring them.
She thought of them this afternoon. If the little girls would only let her comb their hair and wash their faces and hands, she would put on the new dresses. She had not intended to present them in that way, but dresses as soiled and faded and worn as those the little sisters had on, Nettie Decker had never worn.
She opened the trunk, with both children beside her, watching, and drew out the dresses.
"Aren't these almost as pretty as red ones?" she asked, as she unfolded them, and displayed the dainty ruffles.
"No," said Susie, "not near so pretty as red ones. But then they are pretty. They aren't dresses at all; they are aprons. Are they for you to wear?"
"No," said Nettie, "they are for two little girls to wear, who have their hair combed beautifully, and their hands and faces very clean."
"Do you mean us?"
"I do if the description fits. I can think just how nice you would look if your faces were clean and your hair was combed."
"We will put on the aprons," said Susie firmly, "but we won't have our hair combed, nor our faces washed, and you need not try it."
But Miss Susie found that this new sister had as strong a will as she. The trunk lid went down with a click, and Nettie rose up.
"Very well," she said, "then we will not waste time over them. I brought them for you, and meant to put them on you this afternoon to surprise mamma, but if you don't want them, they can lie in the trunk."
"I told you we did want them," said Susie, looking horribly cross. "I said we would put them on."
"Yes, but you said some more which spoiled it.Isay that they cannot go on until your faces and hands are so clean that they shine, and your hair is combed beautifully."
"You can't make us have our hair combed."
"I shall not try," said Nettie, as though it was a matter of very small importance to her. "I was willing to dress you all up prettily, but if you don't choose to look like the little girls I saw on the cars, why you can go dirty, of course. But you can't have the clean new dresses."
"Till when?"
"Not ever. Unless you are clean and neat."
"It hurts to have hair combed."
"I know it. Yours would hurt a good deal, because you don't have it combed every day; if you kept it smooth and nice it would hardly hurt at all. But I didn't suppose you were a cowardly little girl who was afraid of a few pulls. If the dresses are not worth those, we had better let them lie in the trunk."
Nettie was already beginning to understand her queer fierce little sister. She had no idea of being thought a coward.
"Well," she said, after a thoughtful pause, "comb my hair if you like; I don't care. Sate, you are going to have your hair combed, and you needn't cry; because it won't do any good."
It was certainly a trial to all parties; and poor little Sate in spite of this warning, did shed several tears; but Susie, though she frowned, and choked, and once jerked the comb away and threw it across the floor, did not let a single tear appear on her cheeks. And at last the terrible tangles slipped out, and left silky folds of beautiful hair that was willing to do whatever Nettie's skilful fingers told it. When the faces and hands were clean, and the lovely blue dresseshad been arranged, Nettie stood back to look at them in genuine delight. What pretty little girls they were! She sighed in two minutes after she thought this. What did it mean that they looked so neglected and dirty?
"These must go in the wash," she said, as she gathered up the rags which had been kicked off.
"Will we put these on in the morning?" asked Susie, in quite a mild tone. She was looking down at herself and was very much pleased with her changed appearance.
"Oh, no," Nettie said, "they are too light to play in. They are dress-up clothes. You must have dark dresses on in the morning."
"We ain't got no dresses only them," and Susie pointed contemptuously at the rags in Nettie's hand. This made poor Nettie sigh again. What did it all mean?
However, there was no time for sighing. There was still a great deal to be done.
"Now we must get tea," she said, bustling about. "Where does mother keep the bread, and other things?"
"She don't keep them nowhere. We don't have no things. I go to the bakery sometimes for bread, and for potatoes, and sometimes formilk. I would go now; I just want to show that hateful little girl in there my new dress, and my curls, but it isn't a bit of use to go. He won't let us have another single thing without the money. He said so yesterday, and he looked so cross he scared Sate; but I made faces at him."
This called forth several questions as to where the bakery was, and Nettie, finding that it was but a few steps away, and that the little girls really bought most of the things which came from there, counted out the required number of pennies from her poor little purse for a loaf of bread and a pint of milk. In the cupboard was what had once been butter, set on the upper shelf in a teacup. It was almost oil, now.
"If I had a lump of ice for this," Nettie murmured, "it might do. Butter costs so much."
"They keep ice at the bakery," said that wise young woman, Susie, "but we never buy it."
This brought two more pennies from the pocketbook; for to Nettie it seemed quite impossible that butter in such a condition could be eaten. So the ice was ordered, and two very neat, and very vain little bits of girls started on their mission.
Tablecloths? Where would the new housekeeper find them? Where indeed! Hunt through the room as she would, no trace of one was to be found. She did not know that the Deckers had not used such an article in months. She thought of the cupboard drawer at home, and of the neat pile which was always waiting there, and at about this hour it had been her duty to set the table and make everything ready for tea. It would not do to think about it. There were sharper contrasts than these. Her proposed present to her mother had been a tablecloth, not very large nor very fine, but beautifully smooth and clean, and hemmed by her own patient fingers. She must get it out to-night, as no other appeared; and of course she could not set the table without one. So it was spread on the clean table, and the few dishes arranged as well as she could. There was a drawing of tea set up in another teacup, and there was a sticky little tin teapot. Nettie, as she washed it, told it that to-morrow she would scour it until it shone; then she made tea. Meantime the little errand girls had returned with their purchases, the butter was resting on a generous lump of ice, the bread which was found to be stale, wastoasted, a plate of cookies from the wonderful trunk was added, and at last there was ready such a supper as had not been eaten in that house for weeks. To be sure it looked to Nettie as though there was very little to eat; but then she had not been used to living at the Deckers. She began to be very nervous about the people who were going to sit down at this neat table. Why did not some of them come?
The wise housekeeper knew that neither tea nor toast improved greatly by standing, but she drew the teapot to the very edge of the stove, covered the toast, and set it in the oven. Then she went softly to the bedroom door and opened it. This time a pair of heavy eyes turned, as the door creaked, and were fixed on her with a kind of bewildered stare. She went softly in.
"How do you feel now?" she asked gently. "I have made a cup of tea and a bit of toast for you. Shall I bring them now? The children said you did not eat any dinner."
"Who are you?" asked the astonished woman, still regarding her with that bewildered stare.
Nettie swallowed at the lump in her throat. It would be dreadful if she should burst out crying and run away, as she felt exactly like doing.
"I am Nettie Decker," she said, and her lips quivered a little. "Father sent for me, you know. Didn't you think I would be here to-day, ma'am?"
"You can't be Nan!"
I cannot begin to describe to you the astonishment there was in Mrs. Decker's voice.
"Yes'm, I am. At least that is what father used to call me once in a while, just for fun. My name is Nanette; but Auntie Marshall where I live, or where I used to live"—she corrected herself, "always called me Nettie. May I bring you the tea, ma'am? I think it will make you feel better."
But the two children had stayed in the background as long as they intended. They pushed forward, Susie eager-voiced:
"Look at us! See my curls, and see my new apron, only she says it is a dress, but it ain't; it is made just like Jennie Brown's apron, ain't it? But we ain't got no dresses on. She's got a white cloth on the table, and cookies, and a lump of ice, and everything; and we had two peaches. Old Jock gave us the bread. She sent the money, and I told him to take his old money and give me some bread right straight."
How fast Susie could talk!
There was scarcely room for the slow sweet Satie to get in her gentle, "and me too." Meaning look at my dress and hair. The bewildered mother raised herself on her elbow and stared—from Nan to the little girls, and then back to Nan. She was sufficiently astonished to satisfy even Susie.
"Well, I never!" she said at last. "I didn't know, I mean I didn't think"—then she stopped and pressed her hand to her head, and pushed back the straggling hair behind her ears. "I took dizzy this morning," she said at last, addressing Nettie as though she were a grown-up neighbor who had stepped in to see her, "and I staggered to the bed, and didn't know nothing for a long while. I had a dreadful pain in my head, and then I must have dropped to sleep. Here I've been all day, if the day is gone. It must be after three o'clock if you've got here. I meant to try to do something towards making things a little more decent; though the land knows what it would have been; I don't. There's nothing to do with. I didn't know till this morning that he had the least notion of sending for you—though he's threatened ittimes enough. I've been ailing all the spring, and this morning I just give out. I don't know what is the matter with me. The bed goes round now, and things get into a kind of a blur."
"Let me bring you a cup of tea and something to eat," said Nettie; "I think you are faint." Then she vanished, the children following. She was back in a few minutes, under her arm a white towel from her trunk; this she spread on the barrel head which you will remember did duty as a table. She spread it with one hand, little Sate carefully smoothing out the other end. In her left hand she carried a cup of tea smoking hot, and poor Mrs. Decker noticed that the cup shone. Susie followed behind, an air of grave importance on her face, and in her hands a plate, covered by a smaller one, which being taken off disclosed a delicately browned slice of bread with a bit of butter spread carefully over it.
"Well, I never!" said Mrs. Decker again, but she drank the tea with feverish haste, stopping long enough to feel of the cup with a curious look on her face. It was so smooth. There was a sound of heavy feet outside, and thechildren appeared at the door and announced that father and Norm had come. Nettie took the emptied cup, promising to fill it again, urged the eating of the toast while it was hot, and went with trembling heart to meet the father whom she had not seen in so many years that she remembered very little about him.
A great rough-faced, unshaven man, with uncombed hair, ragged and dirty shirt sleeves, ragged and dirty pants, a red face and eyes that seemed but half open, and watery. Nothing less like what Nettie had imagined a father, could well be described. However, if she had but known it, this was a great improvement on the man who often came home to supper. He was nearly sober, and greeted her with a rough sort of kindness, giving her a kiss, which made her shrink and tremble. It was perfumed with odors which she did not like.
"Well, Nan, my girl, you have grown into a fine young lady, have you? Tall for your years, too. And smart, I'll be bound; you wouldn't be your mother's girl if you wasn't. Is it you that has fixed up things so? It is a good thing you have come to take care of us. We haven't had anything decent here in so long, we've mostforgot how to treat it. Come on, Norm. This table looks something like living again."
And "Norm" shambled in. Rough, and uncombed, and unwashed, except a dab at his hands which left long streaks of brown at the wrists. A hard-looking boy, harder than Nettie had ever spoken to before. She could not help thinking of Jim Daker who lived in a saloon not far from her old home, and whom she had always passed with a hurried step, and with eyes on the ground, and of whom she thought as of one who lived in a different world from hers, and wondered how it felt to be down there in the slum. Now here was a boy whom it was her duty to think of as a brother; and he reminded her of Jim Daker!
Still there was something about Norm that she could not help half liking. He had great brown, wistful-looking eyes, and an honest face. She had not much chance, it is true, to observe the eyes; for he did not look at her, nor speak, until his father said:
"Why don't you shake hands with Nan? You ought to be glad to see her. You ain't used to such a looking supper as this."
The boy laughed, in an embarrassed way, andsaid he was sure he did not know whether he was glad to see her or not: depended on what she had come for. He gave her just a gleam then from the brown eyes, and she smiled and held out her hand. He took it awkwardly enough, and dropped it as suddenly as though it had been hot; then sat down in haste at the table, where his step-father was already making havoc with the toast. It was not a very substantial meal for people who had dined on bread and cheese, and were hungering at that moment for beer; but the man had spoken the truth, it was better than they generally found. There was one part of the story, however, that he failed to tell: which was, that he did not furnish money to get anything better. As for Susie and Sate, they had become suddenly silent. They sat close together and devoured their toast, like hungry children indeed, but also like scared children. They gave occasional frightened glances at their father which puzzled and pained Nettie. No suspicion of the truth had yet come to her. Oh, yes, she had smelled the liquor when her father kissed her; but she thought it was something which had to do with the machinery around which he worked.
"Where is the old woman?" he asked suddenly, setting down his empty cup which Nettie had filled for the third time. She looked up at him with a startled air. To whom was he speaking and what old woman could he mean? Her look seemed to make him cross. "What are you staring at?" he said sharply. "Can't you answer a question? Where's your mother?"
Nettie hurried to answer; she was sick, had been real sick all day, but was better now, and was trying to get up.
"She is everlastingly sick," the father said with a sneer; "you will get used to that story if you live here long. I hope you ain't one of the sickly kind, because we have heard enough of that."
This sentence and the tone in which it was spoken, brought the blood in great waves to Nettie's face. It was the first time she had ever heard a man speak of his wife in such a way. Norm looked up from his cookie, and flashed angry eyes on his step-father for a moment, and said "he didn't know as that was any wonder. She had enough to make any woman sick."
"You shut up," said the father in increasingirritability; and the children slipped out of their seats and moved toward the door, keeping careful eyes on the father until they were fairly outside. Nettie felt her limbs trembling so that her knees knocked together under the table. But at last every crumb of toast was eaten, and every drop of tea swallowed, and Mr. Decker pushed himself back from the table, and spoke in a somewhat gentler tone: "Well, my girl, make yourself as comfortable as you can. I'm glad to see you. We need your help, you'll find, in more ways than one. You've been working for other folks long enough. It is a poor place you've come to, and that's a fact. I ain't what I used to be; I've been unfortunate. No fellow ever had worse luck. Everything has gone wrong with me ever since your mother died. A sick wife, and young ones to look after, and nobody to do a thing. It is a hard life, but you might as well rough it with the rest of us. You'll get along somehow, I s'pose. The rest of us always have. I've got to go out for awhile. You tell the old woman to fix up some place for you to sleep, and we'll do the best we can."
And he lounged away; Norm having left thetable and the room some minutes before. And this was the father to whom Nettie Decker had come home!
She swallowed at the lump which seemed growing larger every minute in her throat. She had choked back a great many tears that afternoon. There was no time to cry. Some place must be fixed for her to sleep.
In the home that she had left, there was a little room with matting on the floor, and a little white bed in the corner, and a pretty toilet set that the carpenter's son had made her at odd times, and a wash bowl and pitcher that had been her present on her eleventh birthday, and a green rocking-chair that aunt Kate had sent her: not her own aunt Kate, but Mrs. Marshall's sister who had adopted her as a niece, and these things and many another little knickknack were all her own. The room was empty to-night; but then Nettie must not cry!
She began to gather the dishes and get them ready for washing. Just as she plunged her hands into the dishwater, the bedroom door opened, and her mother came out, stepping feebly, like one just recovering from severe illness.
"I'm dreadful weak," she said in answer to Nettie's inquiries, "but I guess I'm better than I have been in a good while. I've had a rest to-day; the first one I have had in three years. I don't know what made me give out so, all of a sudden. I tried to keep on my feet, but I couldn't do it no more than I could fly. You oughtn't to have to wash them dishes, child, with your pretty hands and your pretty dress. Oh, dear! I don't know what is to become of any of us."
"This is my work apron," said Nettie, trying to speak cheerily, "and I am used to this work: I always helped with the tea dishes at home." Then she plunged into the midst of the subject which was troubling her. "Father said I was to ask you where I was to sleep."
"He better ask himself!" said the wilted woman, rousing to sudden energy and indignation. "How does he think I know? There isn't the first rag to make a bed of, nor a spot to put it, if there was. I say it was a sin and a shame for him to send for you, and that's the truth! If he had one decent child who had a place to stay, where she would be took care of, he ought to have let you alone. You have come to an awful home, child. You have got to know the truth,and you might as well know it first as last. It is enough sight worse than you have seen to-night, though I dare say you think this is bad enough. You don't look nor act like what I was afraid of, and you must have had good friends who took care of you; and he ought to have let you alone. This is no place for a decent girl. It is bad enough for an old woman who has given up, and never expects to have anything decent any more. He won't provide any place for you, nor any clothes, and what we are to do with one more mouth to feed is more than I can see. I wouldn't grudge it to you, child, if we had it; but we are starved, half the time, and that's the living truth."
"I won't eat much," said poor Nettie, trembling and quivering, "and I will try very hard to help; but if you please, what makes things so? Can't father get work?"
"Work! of course he can; as much as he can do. He is as good a machinist to-day as there is in the shops; when they have a particular job they want him to do it. He works hard enough by spells; why, child, it's the drink. You didn't know it, did you? Well, you may as well know it first as last. He was nearer sober to-nightthan he has been in a week; but he wasn't so very sober or he wouldn't have been cross. He used to be good and kind as the best of them, and we had things decent. I never thought it would come to this, but it has, and it grows worse every day. Yes, you may well turn pale, and cry out. Turning pale won't do any good. And you may cry tears of blood, and them that sells the rum to poor foolish men will go right on selling it as long as they have money to pay, and kick them out when they haven't. That is the way it is done, and it keeps going on here year after year, homes ruined, and children made beggars, and them that have the making of the laws, go right on and let it be done. I've watched it. And I've tried, too. You needn't think I gave up and sat down to it without trying as hard as ever woman could to struggle against the curse; but I've give up now. Nothing is of any use. And the worst of it is my Norm is going the same road."
AND then the poor woman who thought she had no more tears to shed, buried her face in her hands and shed some of the bitterest ones she ever did in her life.
Poor Nettie! she tried to turn comforter; tried to think of one cheering word to say; but what was there to cheer the wife of a drunkard? Or the daughter of a drunkard? Could it be possible that she, Nettie Decker, was that! Oh, dear! how often she had stood in the door, and with a kind of terrified fascination watched Jane Daker stealing home in the darkness, afraid to go in at the front door, lest her drunken father should see her and vent his wrath on her. Could she ever creep around in the dark and hide away from her ownfather? Wouldn't it be possible for her to go back home? She had not money enough to get there, but couldn't shework somehow, and earn money? She could write a letter to the folks at home and tell them the dreadful story, and they would surely find a way of sending for her. But then, money was not plenty in that home, and she began to understand that they had done a great deal for her, and that it had cost a good deal to pay her fare to this place. She had wondered, at the time, that her father did not send the money for her to come home, but she said to herself: "I suppose he did not know how much it would cost, and he will give it to me to send in my first letter. Perhaps he will give me a little bit more than it costs, too, for a little present for Jamie."
Oh, poor little girl! building hopes on a father like hers. She had not been at home half a day, but she knew now that no money would ever go back to the Marshalls in return for all they had done for her. Worse than that, she might not be able to get back to them herself. Would her father be likely to let her go? He had sent for her, and had told her during this first hour of their meeting, that she had worked for other people long enough. This made her heart swell with indignation.
Done enough for others, indeed! What hadthey not done for her? She never realized it half so plainly as she did to-night. "I will go back!" she muttered, setting the little bowl she was drying on the table with a determined thump. "I can't stay in such a place as this. I will write to Auntie Marshall this very night if I can get a chance, and she will contrive some way."
Certainly, Nettie in that mood could have no comfort for a weeping mother, and attempted none, after the first murmured word of pity. But meantime she knew very well that she could not go back home that night, and the present terror was, where was she to sleep?
Her mother went back into the bedroom after a few minutes of bitter weeping, and Nettie finished the work, then stood drearily in the doorway, wondering what she could do next, when a good, homely, motherly face looked out of the side window of the small house next their own, and a cheery voice spoke:
"Are you Joe Decker's little Nannie?"
"Yes'm," said Nettie, sadly, wondering drearily, even then, if it could be possible that this was so.
"Well," said the voice, "I calculated that youmust be; though I never should have known you in the world, if I hadn't heard you was coming, you was such a mite of a thing when you went away. What a tall nice girl you've got to be. Your ma is sick, the children said. I've been away ironing all day, or I would have been in to see if I could help the poor thing any. I don't know her very much, but she is sickly, and has hard times now and then, and I'm sorry for her. Now what I was wondering is, where are they going to put you to sleep? The upper part of that house ain't finished off, is it? It is one big attic, ain't it, where Norm sleeps? I thought so. I suppose there could be quite a nice room made up there with a little work and a few dollars laid out, but your pa ain't done it, I'll be bound. And I knew there wasn't but one bedroom down-stairs, and I couldn't think how they would manage it."
"It isn't managed at all, ma'am," said Nettie, seeing that she seemed to wait for an answer, and there was nothing to say but the simple truth. "There is no place for me to sleep."
"You don't say! Now that's a shame. Well, now, what I was thinking was, that maybe you would like to sleep in the woodhouse chamber;it is a nice little room as ever was, and it opens right out of my Sarah Ann's room; so you wouldn't be lonesome. I haven't any manner of use for it, now my boy's gone away, and I just as soon you would sleep there as not until your folks get things fixed. You're a dreadful clean-looking little girl, and I like that. I'm a master hand to have clean things around me; Job says he believes I catch the flies and dust their wings before I let them go into my front room. Job is my husband, and that is his little joke at me, you know." And she laughed such a jolly little roly-poly sort of laugh that poor Nettie could not keep a smile from her troubled face. A refuge in the woodhouse chamber of this neat, good-natured-looking woman seemed like a bit of heaven to the homesick child.
"I am very much obliged to you, ma'am," she said respectfully; "I will tell my mother how kind you are, and I think she will be glad to accept the kindness for a few days. I—" and then Nettie suddenly stopped. It might not be well to say to this new friend that she would not need to trouble the woodhouse chamber long, for she meant to start for home as soon as a letter could travel there, and another travel back.Something might come in the way of this resolve, though it made her feel hot all over to think of such a possibility.
"Bless my heart!" said Mrs. Job Smith as Nettie vanished to consult her mother. "If that ain't as polite and pretty-spoken a child as ever I see in my life. She makes me think of our Jerry. To think of that child being Joe Decker's girl and coming back to such a home as he keeps! It is too bad! I am sure I hope they will let her sleep in the woodhouse chamber. It is the only spot where she will get any peace."
Mrs. Decker was only too glad to avail herself of her neighbor's kind offer. "It is good of her," she said gratefully to Nettie. "I wish to the land you could have such a comfortable room all the time; they are real clean-looking folks. You wouldn't suppose from the looks of this house that I cared for clean things, but I do, and I used to have them about me, too. I was as neat once as the best of them; but it takes clothes and soap and strength to be clean, and I have had none of 'em in so long that I have most forgot how to do anything decent."
"Soap?" said Nettie, wonderingly. She wasbeating up the poor rags which composed the bed in her mother's room, trying to get a little freshness into them.
"Yes, soap; I don't suppose you can imagine how it would seem not to have all the soap you wanted; I couldn't, either, once, but I tell you I save the pennies nowadays for bread, so that I need not see my children starve before my eyes. I would rather do without soap than bread; especially when our clothes are so worn out that there is nothing much to change with. Oh, I tell you when you get into a house where the men folks spend all they can get on beer or whiskey, there are not many pennies left. Mrs. Smith has been real kind; she sent the children in a bowl of soup one day when their father had gone off and not left a thing in the house, nor a cent to get anything with.
"And she has done two or three things like that lately; I'm grateful to her, but I'm ashamed to say so. I never expected to sink so low that I should be glad of the scraps which a poor neighbor like her could send in. Oh, no; they are not very poor. Why, they are rich as kings, come to compare them with us; but they are not grand folks at all; he is a teamster, andworks hard every day; so does she; but he doesn't drink a drop, and they have a good many comfortable things. Their boy is away at school, and their girl, Sarah Ann, is learning a dressmaker's trade. You will have a comfortable bed in there, and I'm glad of it."
And now it was eight o'clock. Susie and Sate were asleep in their trundle bed, the tired Nettie having coaxed them to let her give them a splendid bath first, making the idea pleasant to them by producing from her trunk a cunning little cake of perfumed soap. They looked "as pretty as pictures," the sad-eyed mother said, as she bent over them when they were asleep, with their moist hair in loose waves, and their clean faces flushed with health. "They are real pretty little girls," she added earnestly, as she turned away. "He might be proud of them. And he used to be, too. When Sate was a baby, he said she had eyes like you, and he used to kiss her and tell her she was pretty, until I was afraid he would spoil her; but there isn't the least danger of that now. He never notices either of them except to slap them or growl at them."
"How came father to begin to drink?" Nettieasked the question timidly, hesitating over the last word; it seemed such a dreadful word to add to a father's name.
"Don't ask me, child; I don't know. They say he always drank a little; a glass of beer now and then. I knew he did when I married him, but I thought it was no more than all hard-working men did. I never thought much about it. I know it never entered my head that he could be a drunkard. I'd have been too afraid for Norm if I had dreamed of such a thing as that.
"He kept increasing the drinks, little by little—it grows on them, it seems, the habit does; they say that is the way with all the drinks; I didn't know it. I never was taught about these things. If I had been, I think sometimes my life would have been very different. I know I wouldn't have walked right into the fire with my one boy, anyhow. I'm talking to you, child, as though you were a woman grown, and you seem most like a woman to me, you are so handy, and quiet, and nice-looking. I was sorry you were coming, because I thought you would just be an added plague; and now I am sorry for your own sake."
Nettie hesitated greatly over the next question. It was a very hard one to ask this sick and discouraged mother, but she must know the whole of the misery by which she was surrounded. "Does Norman drink too?"
"Norm," said Mrs. Decker, dropping into the one chair, and putting her hand to her heart as though there was something stabbing her there, "Norm has been led away by your father. He was a bright little fellow, and your father took to him amazingly. I used to tell him his own little girls would have reason to be jealous of his step-son. He took Norm with him everywhere, from the first. And taught him to do odd things, for a little fellow, and was proud of his singing, and his speaking, and all that. And when Susie there, was a baby, and I was kept close at home with her, and Norm would tear around in the evening and wake her up, I slipped into the way of letting him go out with your father to spend the evenings; I didn't know they spent them in bar-rooms, or groceries where they sold beer. I neverdreamedof such a thing. Your father talked about meeting the men, and I thought they met at some of the houses where there wasn't a baby to cry, and talked theirwork over, or the news, you know. And there he was teaching Norm to drink. He was a pretty little fellow, and he would sing comic songs, and then they would treat him to the sugar in their glasses! When I found it out, he had got to liking the stuff, and I don't suppose a day goes by without his taking more or less of it now. He never gets as bad as your father; but he will. He is never cross and ugly to me, nor to the children, but he will be. It grows on him. It grows on them all. And to think that I led him into the trap! If I had stayed in the country where I was brought up, or if I had left him with his grandfather, as he wanted me to, he might have been saved. The grandfather is gone now, and so is the farm. Your father got hold of my share of that, and lost it somehow. He didn't mean to, and that soured him, and he drank the harder and we are going down to the very bottom of everything as fast as we can."
It seemed to poor Nettie that they must have reached the bottom now. She could not imagine any lower depths than these.
She made up the poor bed as well as she could, and then went back to the kitchen to see whatcould be done about breakfast. Her new mother was evidently too weak and sick to be troubled with the thought of it, and while she stayed, Nettie resolved that she would help the poor woman all she could. She went out into the yard to examine, and discovered to her satisfaction that there must be a cooper's shop just around the corner, for the chips lay thick. She gathered some for the morning fire, determined in her mind that she would buy a few potatoes at the grocery in the morning! In the cupboard she had found a cup of sour milk; this she had carefully treasured with an eye to breakfast, and she now looked into her purse to see if she could spare pennies for a quart of flour. If she could, then some excellent cakes would be the result. And now everything that she knew how to do towards the next day's needs was attended to, and she went out in the moonlight, and sat down on the lowest step of the back stoop, and did what she had been longing to do all the afternoon—cried as though her poor young heart was breaking.
Astride a saw-horse in the yard which belonged to Job Smith, and which was separated from the stoop where she sat only by a lowfence, was a curly-headed boy, who had come there apparently to whittle and whistle and watch her. He was not there when she sat down and buried her head in her apron. She did not notice his whistling, though he made it loud and shrill on purpose to attract her attention, He knew quite a little about her by this time. He had come upon the boys of the Grammar School in the midst of their afternoon recess and heard Harry Stuart interrupt little Ted Barrows who was the youngest one in the class and wrote the best compositions. They were gathered under a tree listening to Ted, while he read them "The Story of An Hour," which was especially interesting because it had some of their own experiences skilfully woven in.
"Hold on," Harry was saying, just as the whistling boy appeared within hearing. "You didn't make that thing up; you got it from the Deckers; that is what is just going to happen there. Old Joe's Nan is coming home this very day, and she is about as old as the girl you've got in your story, and is freckled, I dare say; most girls are."
"I didn't even know old Joe Decker had a girl to come home!" said little Ted, lookinginjured. "I made every word of it out of my own mind."
But the boys did not hear him; their interest had been called in another direction. "Is that so? Is Nan Decker coming home? My! What a house to come to. Mother said only yesterday that she hoped the folks who had her would keep her forever. What is she coming for? Who told you?"
"Why, she is coming because Joe thinks that will be another way to plague the old lady. At least that is what my mother thinks. Mrs. Decker told her once that when Joe had been drinking more than usual he always threatened to send for Nan; but she didn't think he would. And now it seems he has. I heard it from the old fellow himself. He was telling Norm about it, while I stood waiting for father's saw. He said she was coming in the stage this afternoon; that she had worked for other folks long enough and it was time he had some good of her himself. I pity her, I tell you."
Then the whistler had come out from behind the trees, and said good-afternoon, and asked a few questions. The boys had answered him civilly enough, but in a way which showed thatthey did not count him as one of them. The fact was, he was a good deal of a stranger. He had been in town only a few weeks, and he did not go to school, and he boarded with or lived with, the Smiths, who lived next door to the Deckers, and were nice enough people, but did not have much to do with the fathers and mothers of these boys, and—well, the fact was, the boys did not know whether to take this new comer in, and make him welcome, or not. They sort of liked him; he was good-natured, and accommodating so far as they knew, but they knew very little about him. He asked a good many questions about the expected Nan Decker. He had never heard of her before. Since he was to live next door to her, it might be pleasant to know what sort of a person she was. But the boys could tell him very little. Seven years, at their time of life, blots out a good many memories. They only knew that she was Nan Decker who went away when her mother died, and who had lived with the Marshalls ever since; and all agreed in being sorry for her that she was obliged at last to come home.
The whistling boy walked away, after having cross-questioned first one, and then another, andlearned that they knew nothing. He was on his way to the woods for one of his long summer rambles. He felt a trifle lonely, and wished that the boys had asked him to sit down under the trees and have a good time with them.
boy with sun behind himJERRY ON ONE OF HIS SUMMER RAMBLES.
JERRY ON ONE OF HIS SUMMER RAMBLES.
He would have liked to hear Ted's composition, he said to himself; the boy had a sweet face, and a head that looked as though he might be going to make a smart man, one of these days. What was the matter with those fellows, he wondered, that they were not more cordial?
He thought about it quite awhile, then plunged into the mosses and ferns and gathered some lovely specimens, which he arranged in the box he carried slung over his shoulder, and forgot all about the boys, and poor little Nan Decker. On the way home, in the glow of the setting sun, he thought of her again, and wondered if she had come, and if she would be a sorrowful and homesick little girl. It seemed queer to think of being homesick when one came home! But then, it was only a home in name; he had not lived next door to it for five weeks without discovering that, and the little girl's mother was dead! Poor Nan Decker! A shadow came over his bright face for a moment as he thought of this.His mother was dead. He resolved to speak a kind word to the little girl the very first time that he had a chance. And here in the moonlight was his chance.
He stopped whistling at last and spoke: "If it is anything about which I can help, I shall be very glad to do it." A kind, cheerful voice. Nettie looked up quickly and choked back her tears. She was not one to cry, if there were to be any lookers-on.
"I guess you are homesick," said the boy from, his horse's back; "and that isn't any wonder. I'm homesick myself, nearly every night, especially if it is moonlight. I don't know what there is about the moon that chokes a fellow up so, but I've noticed it often; but then I feel all right in the morning."
"Are you away from your home?"
"I should say I was! Or rather home has gone away from me. I haven't any home in particular, only my father, and he is away out in California. I couldn't go there with him, and since my school closed I am waiting here for him to come back. It is home, you know, wherever he is. He doesn't expect to be back yet for months. So you and I ought to be pretty goodfriends, we are such near neighbors. I live right next door to you. We ought to be introduced. You are Nannie Decker, I suppose, and I am Jerry Mack at your service. I don't wonder you are homesick; folks always are, the first night."
"My name is Nanette," said Nettie, gently, "but people who like me most always say Nettie: and it isn't being homesick that makes me feel so badly—though I am homesick; but it is being scared, and astonished, and, oh! everything. Nothing is as I thought it would be; and there are things about it that I did not understand at all, or maybe I wouldn't have come; and now I am here, I don't know what to do." She was very near crying again, in spite of a watcher.
"I know," he said, nodding his head, and speaking in a grave, sympathetic voice. "Job Smith—that is the man I am staying with—has told me how it used to be with your father. He says he was a very nice father indeed. I am as sorry for you as I can be. But after all, I wouldn't give up if I were you; and I should be real glad that I had come home to help him. He needs a great deal of help. Folks reform, you know. Why, people who are a great dealworse than your father has ever been yet, have turned right around and become splendid men. If I were you I would go right to work to have him reform. Then there's Norm—he needs help, too; and he ought to have it before he gets any older, because it would be so much easier for him to get started right now."
"I don't know the least thing to do," said Nettie; but she dried her eyes on her neat little handkerchief as she spoke, and sat up straight, and looked with earnest eyes at the boy on the other side the fence. This sort of talk interested and helped her.
"No; of course you don't. You haven't studied these things up, I suppose. But there is a great deal to do. My father is a temperance man, and I have heard him talk. I know a hundred things I would like to do, and a few that I can do. I'll tell you what it is, Nettie, say we start a society, you and I, and fight this whole thing?
"We can begin with little bits of plans which we can carry out now, and let them grow as fast as we can follow them and see what we can do. Is it a bargain?"
"There is nothing I would like so well, if youwill only show me how," said Nettie, and her eyes were shining.
It was wonderful what a weight these few words seemed to lift from her troubled heart. The boy's face had grown more thoughtful. He seemed in doubt just how to express what he wanted to say next.
"I don't know how you feel about it," he said as last, "but I know somebody who would be sure to help in anything of this kind that we tried to do—show us how, you know, and make ways for us to get money, and all that."
"Who is it?"
Nettie spoke quickly now, for her heart was beating loud and fast. Was there somebody in this town who could be asked to come to the rescue, and who was willing to give such hearty help as that? If such were the case, she could see that a great deal might be accomplished. She waited for her new friend's answer, but he looked down on the stick he was whittling and gravely sharpened the end to a very fine point, before he spoke again.
"I don't know what you think about such things, but I mean—God. Iknowhe is on our side in this business, don't you?"
"Yes," said Nettie, thoughtfully, and her manner changed.
Her voice which had been only eager before, became soft and gentle, and she looked over at the boy in the moonlight and smiled. "I know Him," she said, "and I am His servant. It is strange I forgot for a little while that He knew all about this home, and father, and everything! Maybe He wants me to help father. I mean to begin right away. I will do every single thing I can think of, to keep father, and Norm, and everybody else from drinking liquor any more forever."
There was a sudden spring from the saw-horse, a long step taken over the low fence, and the boy stood beside her.
"There are two of us," he said gravely. "There is my hand on it. I am a Christian, too. And father gave me a verse once, which always helps me when I think of the rumsellers: 'If God be for us, whocanbe against us!' I know he is for us, and so, though the rumsellers are against us, and think they are going to beat, one of these days he will show them! What you and I want to do is to keep working at it all we can, so as to show that we believe in him."
"Now we are partners—Nettie Decker and Jerry Mack, who knows what we can do? Anyhow, we are friends, and will stand by each other through thick and thin, won't we?"
"Yes," said Nettie, "we will." And she rose up from the doorstep, and they shook hands.