Dear Kate:
Billy is gone. He sailed away at ten o'clock this morning. I went over to the boat with them and I didn't say nothing. I don't think even Mrs. Smith knew how bad I felt. It seemed when I saw that boat pulling out that it was taking all the world with it, and as I stood on the dock watching Billy dressed in his little blue suit, his pretty gold curls all around his face, I just wanted to die. The Smiths and Billy are the only good things I ever had in my life, and it seemed at the last Icouldn'tlet them go. Even the morning of the sailing Mrs. Smith wanted me to go with them, and I felt at first Ihadto go, that I couldn't stay on here and look all the days and nights in the face and keep on living. Then I knew it would not be playing the game. You do need me, don't you, Kate?You won't be dead sore about Billy, will you, and some day you will understand?
I have just walked the streets all day, I didn't want to go up to the room, and I am writing this in Kelly's restaurant. I begin to work to-morrow night at the Cafe Boulevard, and perhaps when I am dancing I won't remember. You will be out in a few weeks and we will be together and happy again. You won't be sore at me, say you won't, Kate?
Oh, Kate, I wish things had been different, so we could have kept him. It is Hell to be crooked, ain't it?
Yours,Nan.
Dear Kate:
Billy is back! I don't know hardly how I can tell you all about it, it don't seem real to me yet. Two days out from New York the ship that they was on run into another ship in a fog and everybody was saved except eighteen people, and the Smiths was lost. An officer saw Billy and threw him in a boat and the Smiths was put in another boat that was swamped. I read it in the papers first, and it said the Smiths was drowned and of course I thought Billy was with them, and I was near crazy because I thought it was all my fault. If I had not of given him to the Smiths, he would be alive still. I went down to the dock where the people who was brought in by the other boat landed, and one of the first persons I see was Billy, standing with a man and woman,looking just as natural as ever, with his curls around his face and his eyes a laughing just as if nothing had happened. I near went nutty, and made an awful fool of myself, but I was so tickled, I didn't care.
I suppose it is wrong to be so glad as I am to have him back, and I feel so bad about the Smiths, that one minit I am crying about them and the next minit I am hugging the life out of Billy to have him again. I got him up in the room and I will never let him out of my sight a minit if I can help it. I leave him with Myrtle Williams when I am at work and I hurry right home as soon as I am through. He just makes the sun shine in the old room again. He is such a big strong boy, it is all I can do to lift him over to his own side of the bed at night. I take him out in the morning and we have a long walk. We went up to the park the other day and saw the animals. I think I was as tickled with them as much as Billy was, but I guess I made a mistake taking him up there because if he had his way he wouldboard with Miss Murphy and her baby. He seems to take to hippopotamuses and elephants and things big. I bought him all new clothes, and he looks awful cunning. Oh, Kate, he sure is one kid. And talk, why, he has got Bryan beat to a finish. I have to watch him kinda close cause girls have no sense with babies. Myrtle took him out the other afternoon when I was at work and filled him up with ice cream and candy and all kinds of stuff till he nearly died. I gave her a call-down and she said, "Well, he wanted it." I said, "Of course, he wanted it, kids want everything they see, but that is no sign they should have it. Ain't you got nothing in your head but your rat?" She got sore and then I was sorry cause she has been awful good, and I gave her my best slipper buckles to make up. But I tell you it threw a scare into me. Billy got all blue and kinda swelled up and I chased her out for a doctor and he said it was all right, and gave him some stuff and the next day Billy was nearly all right. I gave Billy atalking to and told him that if he coaxed aunt Myrtle for everything he saw that I would spank him. It was hot air, and I think he knows it, cause I couldn't bear to spank him. I only did it once and then I was so mad that I did it before I thought. He and Paul had a fight, and he pulled a big handful of Paul's hair out and made Mrs. Smith mad, and I just up and gave him a good fat spanking where it did the most good and it helped a lot. I just can't whip him, but sometimes I set him down with a thud that jars his teeth. I don't know what I will do with him, as it ain't good for him to live in one room, but I am so glad to have him that I ain't worrying much.
Write me a long letter Kate. I have been scared to see a post man come my way since I sent you the letter about Billy going away, but now, you sure can't be sore, and I will give the old man a good fat hug when I see him ambling up my stairway.
Yours,Nan.
Dear Kate:
I have been house furnishing. No, not for myself, but for Charlie Haines who lives across the hall from me. He is an awful nice fellow and is working in the General Electric and doing real good. He told me he is getting seventy five a month now and was going to get married to a little girl he has been engaged to a long time, way off in Vermont where he used to live. We had a heart to heart talk and I asked him all about her and found she was just a nice little girl who goes to Sunday school and teaches the girls and has never been farther away from home than Brattleboro, wherever that is. He thought of taking a bigger room and rooming for a while, but I told him not to be a fool, and not to board neither. Take a little girl from the country that has alwayshad something to do and put her in a room in a rooming house or a boarding house, and she would go crazy or get to chasing around with the lazy women who live in them places and if she was not a fine sort of girl you can't tell where she would land. A woman wants something to do, and then it ain't no life for a man to come home from work and have to chase out to a restaurant for his grub or down to a long table of folks. What he wants is to take off his coat and wash his face in the kitchen sink and put on a pair of straw slippers and set down smelling the beef steak and onions frying in his own kitchen. And they can talk without a lot of people rubbering and after supper he can help her wash the dishes, and water the geranium and then get in the morris chair and put his feet on the radiator or window sill and smoke and sing "Home sweet home." He fell for the stuff and got quite excited, but then he sort of shifted around and I tumbled to the fact that he hadn't saved much money and didn't know how to get the furniture.I said, "Now, you just trust your aunt Nancy, we will buy it on the installment plan." I found out he had only about $25 after he had payed their fare down here, cause her folks are poor, so I said, "Well, we will go look up a flat. Better get out a ways so you will get more for your money", and we found a pretty place at 207th Street for twenty dollars a month. Four rooms and bath on the fifth floor and there ain't no elevator, but they are both strong so it won't hurt them to climb the stairs, and he will be so tickled to get home nights that he won't think about them. He wanted to furnish it and have it all ready when they come back, he is going up to get her and be married at her folks', but I put the nix on that too. I said, "We will furnish the bed room and the kitchen so as you can have a place to stay, but let her pick out the fancy things like the parlor rug and the dining room table. It will make it seem more like her own," and so he done everything I said. They got back about five days ago and say,haven't we been the busy ladies! She is an awful nice little thing, has not got much sense and green—well, Kate. Believe me, we are the funniest looking pair. I guess she makes her own clothes and her hats—they must have been wished on her. But I like her and she is the happiest thing about the flat. She thinks it is the grandest place she ever seen. I was right about letting her pick her own things as it has given her something to do, the first few days when she was kinda lonesome for her mother and little bit afraid of Charlie. We went to a place on 125th Street and picked out the furniture, a real nice dining room table and a little side board that looks like real mahogany, and six chairs. Got a centre table and a nifty rug for the parlor and a morris chair and a rocking chair, and got the bed room furniture all white, and didn't we have fun buying kitchen things! We went to the ten-cent store and bought everything you ever heard of, from frying pans to egg beaters, and we packed them home in the subway looking like immigrantsjust landed. She got the grandest set of dishes, a hundred pieces for three ninety five. Each dish has got a wreath of pink roses around the edge and they would make even fried onions smell like Spring. I am going to help her make the curtains, cause lace ones don't look right in such a little place and we bought some white stuff with dots in it for six cents a yard. I can come up mornings once in a while and sew them. They didn't have money enough to pay all down, so I lent Charlie fifteen dollars and they have to pay ten dollars a month. They will get along fine. Alice is going to the market herself and I told them they ought to live for five dollars a week for the two of them, so they will save money.
Gee, it kinda made me feel all in that the flat was not mine. When you come out, Kate, let us hire a flat and you stay home and take care of Billy and do the cooking and I will hustle the dough. Wouldn't I just love to put my door key at night into a little place like they are in, and feel it wasours and go out in the kitchen and eat some Irish stew, and then set down and have a gab fest with you over what we had done all day? Well, maybe we will do it. Just want a thing bad and you will get it and I want a little place of our own some day and you and Billy with me and no fear of the police. I am waiting to hear from you.
Yours,Nan.
Oh, Kate, but your letter made me happy. I just carry it round with me and take a peep at it every once in a while to make sure it is real. You say when setting alone you have been thinking and you want to go straight when you come out for Billy's sake. I understood how you feel about me giving him away and that it was a rotten trick for me to play you, but I didn't know what else to do then. And then you feel so glad to have him back and know you can see him again, that it has kinda braced you up. Now, perhaps if I had not give him away, and he hadn't been nearly drowned, you wouldn't have had the scare about losing him, and you wouldn't never have known how much you cared for him. Oh, Kate, I just feel it in my bones that we are going to be happy as goats when you get out. We will shake Jim someway,and anyway, it will be a long time before he is out, and we will begin over again and you will keep house for Billy and me and—I just can't talk I am so happy. Heaven's going to have to offer a lot to coax Nancy Lane away from little old New York when all these pipes come true.
Yours,Nan.
Dear Kate:
I just don't know how I can tell you all about it. Jim is out and it is awful. I suppose you know it by this time in that way that you people seem to get all the news, especially any news that has to do with crooks or prisons. The papers say that him and French Louis hit one of the guards over the head with a hammer while coming from work, and got away. They hit too hard, and the guard is dead.
Well, I didn't think much about it except to be kinda sorry that Jim had made such a fool of himself as he only had a year more, and it nearly knocked my pins out from under me when I come up to my room one night and found Jim setting there. He was all in and in an awful bad way, and I said to him, "For God's sake, Jim, why did you cometo me? The police will sure watch me." He said, "I couldn't help it, Nan, I am sick and broke and I got to have money and I didn't know who else to touch who wouldn't peach."
Well, I just stood with my back against the door and looked at him, with one ear ready to listen if any one come up the stairs. He sure did look tough. The year hasn't done him no good. He couldn't look even me in the face. I asked him if it was so what it said in the papers that he had killed a guard. He all broke down and said, "Honest to God, Nan, we didn't mean to croak him. We didn't hit hard enough to break a baby's head. It must a been like mush." He got up and walked up and down the room and was all in a tremble and he kept saying, "We didn't mean to croak him."
I asked him how he got in my room cause my door was locked, and he just laughed and said, "Well, if I get so as I can't unlock a crazy lock like this, I better stay in stir the rest of my life."
He talked about half an hour with me andI was scared that he had been seen, and I tried to get him to go away, but it seemed he wanted to talk with some one he was not afraid of. I asked him what he was going to do, and he started to tell me where he was going to hide, but I stopped him and said, "Don't tell me, Jim. Then I won't know if the police get after me." I said, "Here is fifty dollars, all I got now, but I will get you more, only don't let no one come here or don't send no letters nor nothing. The bulls are bound to think of me first thing." Billy was laying in the bed and hadn't waked up cause we talked in whispers, and when he got ready to go, he walked over to the bed and looked down at him, and I really think something come into his rotten little heart. He stood there with his hands in his pockets a long time and then said, "So that is the kid! Well—well—he don't look like me, does he? But he is mine, and if I ever get out of this scrape I'll take him." That made me sick and I nearly said, "Well, I hope you won't get out of this scrape then." I felt for a minit thatif I thought he would get Billy that I would peach on him, though that is the lowest trick and ain't done by no one who is white.
I went down stairs first to see all was right, and then he sneaked out. I come back and sat down in a chair and set there till morning. I was just all in. Now when everything was coming along so nice, why did he have to come and butt in and spoil it all? It is just that way all my life. If it ain't father getting in trouble, it is you or Jim. And the nerve of him to say he would take Billy! I suppose he would bring him up to be a swell second story man or something big in the profession, so as he could live off him. Well, he won't get him, I tell you, and I most hope they find him, although that is rotten in me to even think such a thing.
When it come light and nothing happened, I laid down on the bed by Billy and put my face against him and cried till I woke him up, and he was so sweet. He said, "Poor Nanny, somefing hurt her. Let Billy kiss it," and then I broke all up for sure. I got toget some of my money out of the bank so I can have it handy when Jim sends for it.
Well, good night, Kate, don't worry, I'll keep you posted, and I'll send you some money next week.
Nan.
Dear Kate:
I can't write much, I am so nervous I am near crazy. The police are hot after Jim, and they haven't done a thing to me but give me the third degree twice. Once they had me up before the captain of the police station here, and once they had me at the central office where the old man himself took a turn at me. I was there four hours, and they done everything they could to make me tell short of putting me behind the bars. They promised me that they would see you got better time, but I know that is only hot air, and they coaxed and bullied and tried to scare me for hours. I told them that it was on the level, I didn't know where he was. I said "yes" that I'd seen him, that he came to me but left the same night. The Captain was rotten with me, and if it hadn't been for Tom Cassidy, Ithink he would a locked me up until Jim was found. But that great big cop stood up for me and said, "Oh, Captain, take my word for it, she is all right. She ain't lying. I watched her for years and she is on the level. The only thing to do is to watch her." He talked quite a lot with the Captain and they let me go, but I tell you setting four hours with a police captain who knows you and your people from the time they entered the ark, and who thinks you are lying just because your relations are crooks, ain't a rest cure for nervous women. I can't dance worth a damn, and I am so fidgety that if I hear a door slam I go all to pieces.
That ain't all either. When I was just turning our corner the other night a man came out of Sweeney's saloon and handed me a note from Jim asking me to give the bearer fifty dollars. I had been expecting it so I went down in my sock and give it to him. I don't know who he was, but I was dead scared for fear that he'd been seen.
Don't worry, things will come right some way. They can't be much worse. I will write you all the news.
Nan.
Oh, Kate, can't you get word to Jim some way and call him off? He is just bleeding me to death, and every time I turn round there is some one with a note from him asking for money. I have drawn most all I have in the bank, and will soon be flat broke if this keeps up. I want to help him all I can, but it just kills me to see all the money that I have saved so careful and gone without things so as to have some for you when you come out so as you could rest a while and see what you wanted to do, go to that cheap crook and his friends. I suppose he is a paying them dear to hide him, cause they are a rotten lot and won't do nothing without pay. It scares me cold every time I see a man with a note in his hand, because the police are bound to get on to it sooner or later, and they will follow the fellow and find Jim. I have give him enoughto get to Australia, why don't he go? Oh, I don't want them to get him of course, but I wish something would happen that would call him off of me.
Nan.
Dear Kate:
I am worried near sick, and I can't sleep nor eat nor nothing. I refused to send Jim any more money and the other night a man walked along the street with me and said, "Jim wants you to send him fifty." I said, "I haven't got it to send, I am busted." He bent his head toward me and said, "Jim said to tell you that if you didn't send the dough, he would take the kid." I just near went cold at that, and the man saw it scared me white. I had my week's pay in my bag and like a fool I gave him twenty, which tipped my hand off to them, showing I was scared for the kid. I went home and I ain't let Billy out of my sight since, except when I am working, and then I take him up to Myrtle's, and tell her to keep the door locked, and not to answer it for nobody. I tell you, Kate, ifhe touches Billy, I will peach on him as sure as I am a living sinner. I am dead sore. He has got all my money, and I am in all wrong with the police, but I will help him anyway I can, so long as he keeps his hands off Billy. Now, if you or your friends have got any way of getting word with him, you just let him know it.
Nan.
Dear Kate:
Billy is all right. I got him planted in a place where Jim would never dare look for him. I was in an awful fix. Every time I turned around it seemed I saw some one from Jim, and I got so scared I couldn't do my work, because every time I come home, I thought perhaps they might have copped him. Did you ever know Tom Cassidy, a young cop at our Station? His father was captain there for years and years and years, a great big good-looking Irishman. Well, young Tom is just as good looking as his dad, and he has been awful nice to me. He is the one that took my part before the captain, when the captain tried to give me the third degree. He walks down to the corner with me every once in awhile, and he likes Billy. The other day he walked home with me and Billy, and I wasall in, as I just had a rotten note from Jim. He was so kinda nice, I started a crying in the street, and he said, "You poor little thing, let me go up with you and tell me all about it." First I thought it might be a plant, then I thought I didn't care, for I had to talk to somebody who had some sense, and it would not be peaching on Jim, for I really didn't know where he was. So he came up to the room, and I made some coffee to give me time to get my feelings collected so I could talk, and he sat down and played with Billy. Then I told him all about it, how I didn't know where Jim was, but that he kept a touching me all the time, till I didn't have a cent left, and now he was threatening to take the kid. He was awful nice, and patted my hand with his great big hand, and said, "You poor little red head, it has sure made you peaked looking. Your eyes are bigger than your face. What you going to do?" "That's just it," I said, "I don't know what to do. I've got to work, I can't set around and watch Billy all the time. I just don't knowwhatto do. If I could only get him away somewhere where they couldn't find him, I'd tell the whole bunch to go to Hell."
"Say, kid," he said, "I got an idea. Why don't you send him up to my mother's? We got a swell little house up at 225th Street, lots of room, a big yard where he could play, and ma would be tickled to death to have him. She is dippy on kids, and since me and Jack growed up, she says her hands have been empty." I nearly fainted, a thinking of Billy in the home of a cop, cause that is the last place on earth they would think of looking for him, and then I got suspicious again. You know, Kate, I have got an awful bad suspicious disposition. I am looking everywhere for a plant, but I studied it all over, and I couldn't see none in this, and I was so tickled that I couldn't say even "thank you." Tom said to me, "Now, you put his little duds in a bundle, and when I go off duty at four o'clock, I will come and get you, and we will go up on the subway." Then I got a thinking after he went away that some ofJim's friends might be watching the house, so I went down to Cassidy's beat, and told him I would meet him at the Grand Central, where there wouldn't be so much danger of us being piped off.
Talk about a grand little home, Kate. Tom Cassidy has sure got it, and his mother is the nicest little Irish woman that ever lived! AndIrish! You could cut her brogue with a knife. But she just laughs all the time, and her face breaks up in the funniest little wrinkles that make you laugh with her. She came to the door herself, wiping her hands on her kitchen apron, and when she saw Tom and me and Billy, she looked at us funny for a minit and then she said, "Say, Tom, ye ain't been married all these years, and just now a bringing your family to your old mother?" Tom laughed and said, "No such luck, mother, but I've adopted a family. I think the house is lonely without kids." She took Billy and me up to a little bed room, and she helped take off his hat and coat, talking all the time, Billy talking back, not a bit scaredof her. Then we went down to the kitchen to finish getting supper. Another son came in named Jack who is studying farming and he is crazy about it. Tom introduced him to me by saying, "This is John Cassidy, farmer, greatest onion expert in the world." The kid, who is about nineteen, said, "Ah, cut it out, Tom," and Tom's mother said, "Now, don't plague the bye." Then we sat down and had the dandiest dinner. We ate in the kitchen, and then I had to go to work. Billy was all right, didn't seem to feel a bit bad about me going. Jack had him in the back yard, building something with little pieces of wood. Tom went to the station with me, but I wouldn't let him go no farther, cause I did not want to be seen too much with him. I told him I wouldn't come and see Billy, cause I might be followed. I tell you, I went home feeling better than when I went up there, cause Jim can do his worse now, he can't get Billy.
I got your letter, Kate. It was an awfulnice letter. You seem all different, and it makes me happy way inside.
Yours,Nan.
Dear Kate:
I don't know how I'm going to tell you, so you won't feel too bad. Jim is dead. He sent two or three times to me asking me for money, and I wouldn't send it to him, cause I didn't have it, and when the last fellow threatened to take the kid, I told him to go to the devil, that the kid was where they couldn't touch it. Well, that night I just got home from work and had taken my waist off and was starting to brush my hair when I saw my door open sneaking like, and Jim crept in. I was paralyzed for a minit and couldn't move, just stood there with the brush on my hair. He had been drinking and looked awful. I said low like, "Jim, for God's sake, Jim, why do you come here?" He said, "Where else am I to go?" I said, "Jim, go—go—don't stay a minit." He didn't move,just stood and looked at me. "But, Jim," I said, "the police, they're watching the place." He come up to me and put his face close against mine and I backed away, and said, "Jim, get out. You've been drinkin'." Then he sort of got sore and he said, "What do you mean by sendin' me the messages you have?" I said, "I mean just what I said, I ain't got no more money to give you," and he sneered at me. "Oh, you ain't got no money, and you ain't hauling down thirty a week, are you?" "Well," I said, "suppose I am, it's mine, ain't it?" And then he said I ought to divy up when a feller's in trouble, and at that I got mad. "Divy up?" I said. "Divy up.What have I been doin' the last month but divy up. I've give you all I got. Why don't you get out of the country, you'll be pinched the first thing you know." And then he said fierce like and with an awful look on his face, "You take it from me, Nan, they'll never pinch Jim Sheridan. If the bulls git me it'll be because I can't handle a gun." I didn't know what to do with him and I saidagain, "Get out, Jim, I'm scared to death you've been seen." He said, "Gimme some money. I got to have money." I asked him, "What've you done with all I sent you. I've give you enough to take you to Australia." He said, "I've had to pay for my hidin' and I got to put up some more." That kind of made me sick and I said, "Well, you'll have to get it from some one else then, I've give you the last dollar I've got. I'm busted." He kind of saw it was true I think, cause he started looking around the room, then he said, "Where's the kid?" I said, "Never you mind where he is," and he got sore again and said, "Never mind my own kid. Well, believe me, he's mine, and I've got an idea I want him. Where is he?" and I said, "He's where you won't get him." Jim come over to me again and stood in front of me and says, "He is, is he? Well, I'm going to have him," and then I got mad clear through and said, "Well, you can't have him. So help me God, Jim, if you try to touch Billy, I'll peach on you as sure as I'm alive." Jim laughed and said,"Yes, you will, you ain't that kind," and I said quick, "Oh, I ain't, ain't I. No, I ain't that kind. I been brought up to believe that it's the last trick to peach, but I'll go back on all I ever knowed, and put you behind the bars if you ever try to touch that kid." Jim kind of sneered. "What do you want of him?" he said; "he ain't no better off with you than with me." I said, "Perhaps he ain't. But he won't be raised with crooks and grow up feeling that crookedness is straight. He'll know decent people, not a lot of cheap second story men and dips."
Jim laughed. "You're a nice one to talk, old Bill Lane's daughter." And then Kate, oh I said awful things, and I remember every word and go over it all at night. I said, "Yes, and Kate Lane's sister. I know, I've had it rubbed in enough. No one ever says Nancy Lane, they always say Bill Lane's daughter, Kate Lane's sister or Jim Sheridan's sister-in-law. Hain't I had that to fight against all my life? Ain't I lost every good chance that I ever had to work in the good places, just becauseI've had to buck against the reputation of my family? And then whenyoucome in the family, I might a carried the others, but no one could carry you. Why, you dirty crook, you're known from San Francisco to New York, and I've had to work in cheap shows and dirty cabarets just because of you always coming and queering me when I got started. Look at the crowd I go with," I said. "Do you suppose I'm crazy about them? But I have to go with that kind, the kind that don't fall dead, when they find out who I am." Jim looked at me a minit, then he said, "You're getting dam nice lately, what's the matter with you?" I thought a minit and then I said, "Yes, I'm different, I know it, but I've had most two years of not havin' to be scared to death, not having to look over my shoulder for fear a cop was following me to find out about some of you. I've been able to read the papers without being scared I'd see some of your names in it, and I've been allowed to work in peace. And I've done good work too, I've been able to leave therotten joints and I'm workin' up, and I'd get to the top if I was left alone. Why the only peace I've had in all my life has been the last year when you and Dad and Kate was all in jail. I been able to sleep nights knowing where you all was and that you couldn't be doing nothing to get in trouble."
Jim said, "Oh, can the hot air. I want the kid, I'm going to get out, but I'm going to take him with me." I said, "Yes, you are,nit." Jim looked at me kind of curiously for a minit and said, "What are you so crazy about him for, why do you want him?" I said, "I don't know what I want him for. I don't know, but you won't have him. He's the first thing I ever had in my life that's sweet and clean, and he's the first thing that ever loved me without thinking what they could make out of me. Why, when he was in the country and he'd come to the gate to meet me, with his eyes shining with love and his face all dimpling with laughs, I'd choke up and some times not be able to speak. Billy's made melive. He's made somethingnew come to me, he's made me see all life different, and I'm going to pay him back for what he's done for me by giving him a chance." Jim laughed, "You give him a chance," he said, "what kind of a chance can you give him?" I said, "I don't know for sure. I ain't got it all figured out, but he's going to have his chance to grow up like other men." Jim acted sore again and said, "Ah—what's the use of talking. We're wasting time. I want money and I'm going to have the kid. If I can't find him I'll put the gang wise, and some of them'll find him all right." At that I think I just went off my head, and I didn't care whether the police heard me or not. I said, "Jim, don't youdareto try to take Billy. Don't youdareto put any of your dirty gang on to get him away from me. I tell you I'll peach on you. I'll find out where you're hiding and I'll bring the police there myself. I'll fight for Billy. I'll fight as any woman'll fight for a baby. If you dare to touch him or let any of your sneakin' pals come near him, I'll follow youtill I see you behind the bars if I have to follow you till Hell freezes over." Jim seemed as if he couldn't speak for a minit, then his face got red and he come towards me. He said, low and fierce like, "Tell me where that kid is." I said, and moved away from him, "I won't tell you." He said again to me, "I say, tell me where he is." I said again, "I won't tell you. He's planted where you'll never find him." I was standing by the bed and he grabbed me by the throat, and bent me over backwards, and his eyes just burned into mine. "Oh," he said, "You won't tell me, you won't—we'll see if you won't, by—" and just then the door opened and three plain clothes men and two cops walked in. I don't know how it happened. I don't know nothing that happened after Jim turned and knew the game was up, but there was three quick shots all at once, and when the smoke cleared away, Jim was lying on his back on the floor, one of the plain clothes men had a bullet through his shoulder. They bent over and found that Jim was all in. Pretty soon anambulance come, and he was took away. The sergeant talked to me, but I can't remember nothing he said. It all happened so quick, that it seemed an awful nightmare, and I just sat there, saying "yes and no" to the sergeant, not understanding nor caring. When they all went away, Tom Cassidy stayed behind, and he come up to me, and put his arms around my shoulders and said, "You poor little red head, you do seem to be getting more than your share, don't you?" And at that I just all broke up, and I put my head against his great big chest, and I cried all down the front of his uniform. He just patted me quiet like, and let me cry, and then when things quieted down a bit, he said, "Now, I will tell you what you do. You just put on your bonnet and I will take you up to the old lady's. You don't want to sit here alone, and Billy will be tickled to death to see you." I said, I didn't want to be a trouble to him, that having one of us was enough, and he said, "My grandmother's grey cat's kittens, why you won't be no trouble, mother likessomebody to wipe the dishes, and Jack likes somebody to talk onions to. We have all heard it, but it will be new to you." Well, he helped me find my hat, and he almost put the hat pin through my brains, and he helped me find my blouse, I had been a setting all the time without a waist and didn't know it, and he was awful nice, never showed by the bat of an eye that I wasn't dressed in a mackintosh. Then when I had powdered my eyes, we went over to the station. He wasn't on duty, but he had heard the men talking about Jim being at my place, and he come along with them to see that nothing happened to me.
I am going to stay here a week. I can't work and Tom went and saw the manager and Fred Keeney, my dancing partner, and got me off for a week. Mabel Sullivan is going to take my place. She dances a good deal better than I have the last month since I have been so worried, so it'll be all right. Billy is looking fine. He calls the old lady "granny" and talks as Irish as she does. Sheis crazy about him, and says she will never let me take him away.
Now, don't feel too broke up, Kate. I am afraid I haven't told you very well about it, but I had rather have you hear it from me, so you will get it straight. There is no use a telling you I am sorry, cause I ain't. I always hated Jim's eyes, yet I wouldn't have peached on him, nor done nothing to hurt him.
Yours,Nan.
Dear Kate:
I am having a dandy time! This is an awful pretty place. It is kinda in the country, yet it is right in the city. Captain Thomas Cassidy must have been a very saving man, or else he didn't let many things get by him, to be able to buy a nice little home like this. Yet, perhaps, he bought it when this was real country, and cheap. The house has got a parlor and a dining room and another room and a kitchen and a laundry down stairs, and up stairs there are five bed rooms and a bath, and a great big attic where Billy can play when it rains. There is a big yard, both front and back. The front yard has flowers and belongs to Mrs. Cassidy, and the back yard has a vegetable garden, and belongs to Jack and Tom, half and half. You would laugh to see them two great big babiesquarreling over their vegetables. Tom comes home and takes off his uniform and his collar and fusses around his garden every night. He weeds and sweats and swears, and his garden ain't nothing like Jack's. All Jack has to do is to look at a cabbage and it grows, and their poor mother has an awful time keeping peace in the family. If they have lettuce from Jack's garden, Jack says to her, "Mother, ain't that the finest lettuce you ever et?" And Tom drops his knife and looks up sudden at her, and she says careful-like, "It is awful good lettuce, Jacky bye, but that we had yesterday was most as good," and then Tom goes on eating. Jack has just finished his farm schooling, and he is dippy about it. Onions is his graft. Why, he will talk about an onion for an hour. He got me in a corner one day, and he talked about the money there was in raising onions, how many bushels there was eaten in the world, and how many thousands of bushels there was brought in from some place down south, and the price of onions a bushel, and how many million could beraised on an acre, well, my head whirled before he got through, and I felt as if everybody had made a mistake by not turning the whole earth into an onion farm. I said to him one day, "What are you studying farming for, that don't pay? Why don't you go into the police like your father and like Tom?" "Ah," he said, "who wants to walk up and down a hot street all day and bat a drunk over the head or pinch a kid for hooking a watermelon. I am going out in the country where I can see things grow." His mother said, "He do be taking after my people. He is just like me feyther, who always had to have his little bit of garden and his pig." Here Jack started in again talking so fast you could hardly understand him, he gets so excited and his eyes get bright and he waves his hands around in the air—he is awful funny. Tom and his mother set back in a chair and laugh at him, just like I did when he started on pigs. He said, "Now for pigs, there is more money in pigs—" Just then Tom hollered, "Choke him, Nan, choke him, if hegets started on pigs we are done for. Onions is bad enough, but pigs is pigs." Jack gets awful mad and hates to be laughed at, and his mother has to smooth him down. She says to him running her hand soft up and down his coat sleeve, "Never you mind, Jacky me bye, it is yourself that will be making the family fortune one of these days, with your onions and your pigs." Tom laughed and says, "Yes, if he feeds the onions to the pigs." But I think Jack is right, and I hope some day he has a chance to get a farm, cause it would be a shame for a person to love a thing the way he loves it, and not be able to work at it. I asked him one day if he thought he could make it pay, and he said, "Sure, don't the Italians and the Chinamen out West make truck farming pay? The trouble with us is, we don't go at it right. We go at it too big, and raise corn and oats and barley instead of vegetables. Why, a farm near a big city like this, if it was run right, ought to just coin money."
I am teaching, the boys to dance. Youwould kill yourself a laughing watching them. After supper we push the kitchen table back, cause the kitchen is a big old-fashioned kind, and Tom takes off his coat, because he goes at it as if he was going to saw a load of lumber, and Jack runs the phonograph and I try to teach Tom to dance, but you might just as well teach an elephant to walk a tight rope. Tom is all feet. To begin with, he is six feet two, and I come to about the second button on his coat, and I have an awful time trying to get him around. He tries so hard, he puckers his face all up in worried lines, and he sweats and he breathes hard, and then when he gets through, he falls into a chair just done up, mops his face and the back of his neck with a handkerchief or a handy towel, and says, "Talk about work, why I would rather load a dray all day." Then when he gets cooled off, he runs the phonograph for Jack. Jack dances lovely. He is awful light on his feet. You don't have to show him a step but once when he knows it, but he don't care much for dancing, not half as muchas Tom does, who would never learn the tango if he lived a thousand years. But it is funny to see Tom. When Jack is a dancing Tom will take an onion and go in front of Tom, holding it just out of reach and moving just as Jack moves, as if he was trying to chase the onion. When I say Jack is a good dancer, Tom says, "Sure, he is, cause he thinks he is chasing an onion. Now if we only had a pig, no tellin' what he'd do."
The one that can beat them all out is Mrs. Cassidy. At first she wouldn't get up and try, and said, "The likes of an old woman like me dancing around," but I gave her a great line of talk, told her how all the old ladies was dancing, that if she went down to the restaurants where I danced, she would see women old enough to be her grandmother, having the time of their lives. First she wouldn't listen to it, and said, "Gwan, they are trying to make a fool of me in my old age," but finally I got her to try, and say, she done grand. Like all Irish girls, she used to dance when she was young, and it all comeback to her, and she took to the new steps just natural. It was fun to see her. Her face flushed, her eyes got bright, and she didn't seem to be old no more. Tom and Jack were tickled to death. When she got through, they clapped their hands, stamped their feet on the floor, just like the hoodlums do in the gallery, when the hero rescues the maiden. Mrs. Cassidy flushed, was half ashamed, and half tickled, and said she would never make a fool of herself again, but she does and she likes it, and she and Jack can do the hesitation waltz beautiful.
I mustn't write you any more, Kate. I am awful happy here. I think of you all the time, and your letters are so good.
Yours,Nan.
Dear Kate:
I got your letter and I know how you feel. If Jim was no good, he was your husband and you cared for him, and you were a mighty good wife, too. I am sorry if I said things that hurt you about him, but oh, Kate, I am glad for one thing, that is, you begin to see that crookedness don't pay, whether it is right or whether it is wrong, it justdon't pay. Look at Jim and his crowd. He is dead and five of his friends are in prison, and most of the rest of them are afraid to lift their heads for fear they will see a cop a watching them. I am so glad you see it that way now, and I like to hear you say you have had enough of prison. You will never see one again, Kate, except to admire the architecture from the outside.
You are right about one thing. You canbrace up in New York just as well as outside of it. There is no reason in the world why you should leave this little old berg. We will get up in the Bronx somewhere in a little flat like Charlie Haines', and you won't never need to see the old crowd. Something will turn up some way for you to do, and anyway, I can make enough to keep us three. Why, Kate, I would dance my legs off to have you and Billy with me, and you a playing the game straight. So cheer up, old lady, everything is fine and dandy, and you are going to be the happiest woman one of these days in the buzum of your family.
Yours,Nan.
Dear Kate:
What do you think? Billy is an heir! Before the Smiths went away they tried to sell their place over in New Jersey, but they was going away too soon, and an agent couldn't sell it for them in such a hurry, so they made a will, that if Mrs. Smith died, the place was to go to Mr. Smith, and if Mr. Smith died first the place was to go to Mrs. Smith, and if they both died, the place was to go to their adopted son, William Smith, and that is Billy. Now, what do you know about that? A lawyer came to me and told me all about it, and the will has been done something to in court, and I have had to sign some papers, and Billy is a landowner. Why, we was all so excited when we heard it, we all talked at once, and when Jack heard it was a farm, he talked onions and pigs at the sametime. We went over there last Sunday, and it looked just as pretty as ever. It made me feel awful bad about the Smiths, and I cried at first a lot. The house seemed lonesome with blinds all shut, and no pigs nor chickens or cattle around the barn, or in the pasture. The house inside was just as Mrs. Smith left it, cause they had hoped to sell it furnished, and there was even pickles and preserves in the cellar. We ate our lunch on the kitchen table which we put under the big tree looking out over the lake. It was awful pretty. The water was just like a looking glass, and once and a while a little spurt of wind would come and ruffle it all up and then it would die down quiet again. Mrs. Cassidy said it made her think of her home back in Ireland, which is by a lake, and she talked a long time about her man who has been dead ten years, "who was one of the finest" in New York and that meant something in those days. Mrs. Cassidy set down in the shade with Billy, and Tom and Jack and me went over the place. Jack was crazy about it. He would takelittle handfuls of mud and smell it or taste it, and say, "too sour," or "it needs salt" or "there ain't lime enough," just kinda talking to himself all the time. He found the pasture with a brook running through it, and said it would be just the right thing for pigs, and he saw about ten acres he said the Lord intended for an onion field. He made over the barn in his mind, and filled it full of holsteins, and I think if it had not begun to get late and we had to catch a train, that he would have all the holsteins mothers of growing families, cause he just located the right kind of a calf pen when we took him by the coat-tails and dragged him away.
We got home awful tired, and everybody went to bed except Jack, who set down with a pencil and paper to figure out how much money it would need to make Lake Rest the model farm of New Jersey.
Good bye, Kate, don't feel too bad. Remember you are going to be just as happy as me some day, and that's going some.
Yours,Nan.
Dear Kate:
I got the grandest idea. I just can't wait to tell you. I thought it all out in the middle of the night, and I had to talk to somebody, so I got up and went into Mrs. Cassidy's room and got in bed with her and we talked till most morning. She was awful nice, and we talked it over and over. Here it is now, Kate, don't you think it is wonderful? You and Billy and Jack can live at Lake Rest when you come out! now what do you think of it! The house is there all furnished, and Jack will do the farming. He is just crazy about it, and he says sure he can make it pay. Tom says he will cough up and buy the things Jack needs to start, if the little money Jack's father left him ain't enough. You give the farm and the house, and Jack will furnish the farming things and the work, and youcan go halves. That sounds all right, doesn't it? Anyway, even if you don't make much the first few years, you get your living, which is about all we get anyway, ain't it, Kate? I feel awful bad that I can't do much, but my money all went to Jim, but I will live on eggs and buttermilk, and every cent I make will go into the place. You can't help but get along, Kate, and out there the old crowd will never get on to you, nobody will ever know nothing about you, and you can begin again as if you was new born.
Oh, I think it is grand, Kate! I can see Tom and Mrs. Cassidy and me coming to see you on a Sunday morning, and you and Billy and Jack waiting for us at the station when the train pulls in, and we will drive over to the place and look at the chickens and scratch the pig and pick the cabbage and hear about the onions, and then after supper we will set on the porch and listen to the frogs and the whip-o-wills and see the shadows come on the lake, and feel that everything is all right,and Somebody must be a sure taking care of us.
Write me soon, Kate, and tell me you are as glad about this as I am.
Nan.
Dear Kate:
I feel so kind of shamed, kind of choked up and happy, that it is awful hard for me to put down on paper just what I am a feeling, I don't know what you will say about it, Kate, and I know that you will nearly drop dead when you read this, but I am going to get married and—wait a minute—I am going to marry a cop! Can you beat that? Me, Nancy Lane, who has been brought up since a kid to feel that cops is her natural enemy, and to hate a uniform as the devil hates holy water. But some way I never think of Tom as being a policeman, he is so kind and good and big hearted, always doing something nice for people, and he is so nice at home, just like a great, big boy. He loves his little mother and jollies her and laughs at her, he is just like a good pal to both her and Jack, and theysimply worship the ground he walks on, and I don't blame them, Kate, because—put your head down close—dear, I do too. It is the first time I dared say it out loud even to myself. I didn't know what was the matter with me, I used to be so anxious to get up in the morning to see him at the breakfast table, and I liked to pour his coffee, and fasten his stick in his belt and go to the gate with him. It seemed like the day would never go by until he got back. Sometimes he would call me up on the telephone. Why, Kate, I couldn't hardly talk to him and he would notice it and his voice would get worried and he would ask me if I was sick. When he would come home at night, we would all have supper, and set around and josh and laugh and talk, him and Jack half quarreling in a good natured way over their vegetables, or we would dance, or just set out on the front porch with some of the neighbors who'd come in. I didn't know I was loving him cause I wanted to be close to him, but when he was a setting by me, I didn't want to talk or nothing, I was happyjust being near him. One night everybody went in and left us on the porch together. He was quiet for a long while, then he moved over closer to me and put his arm around me and he said soft and quiet-like, "Nan, are you happy here with us?" And I said, "Why, I ain't never been so happy in my life," and he said, "Do you think you could stand it to stay always," and I kinda edged away from him and said, "I can't stay always, I must go to work next week," and he said, "No, you ain't going to work no more, Nan, except for Tom Cassidy. You have got a life-long job teaching him to tango." I laughed kinda nervous-like. "That ain't no lie. It would take more than one life to teach you to tango." Tom took hold of my face and leaned my head back, and said, "Nannie, little girl, I just want you. Won't you marry me?" "Oh, Tom," I said, and I couldn't say no more, and he said, "I don't know how to make love much, but I do love you, Nan. From the first minit I laid eyes on you I wanted to take you up in my big arms and take care of you, you seemedso little and alone—and you crept right inside of my uniform and stuck around my heart till there ain't room for nothing else. Why everything I hear says your name, and your face goes dancing before me as I walk up and down my beat, and when I looked up sudden the other day at the captain, hanged if for a minit he didn't have red, curly hair. Say you will marry me, Nancy, and we will be the happiest bunch in the Bronx." When he had been talking to me it seemed I was just choked up two ways, one with happiness and the other with misery. I said to him, "Oh, Tom, I couldn't marry you." He said, "Why not, don't you love me?" "It ain't that, Tom," I said, "but my family is all crooks. You couldn't marryme." He said, "Well, what has that got to do with it? I don't see how they can stop me marrying you. Most of them is in jail anyway." I couldn't help but laugh, as he was so earnest about it, but I said, "Why, Tom, if they knowed down at Central Office that you had married me, they might break you. All the bulls knowfather." And then Tom got mad. "Break me—what would they break me for? I guess I got the right to marry the finest little girl in New York if I want to and I would just as soon take you right up to the chief himself and say 'Chief, this is Nancy Lane and I am going to marry her. Her father is old Bill Lane, and the worst crook this side of the Pacific, but my little girl is white and clean right through.' And do you know what he would do? He would give you one look over with that clever eye of his, and say, 'Put a rose in your hair and go as far as you like,andbecause you have shown common sense for once in your life, you will be made a captain next week.'" I laughed and couldn't say nothing much, and he moved over close to me again and laid my face against his coat, and put his head down on my hair, kinda patting my face soft with his big hand. He said, "Nancy darling, you do like me a little bit, don't you? I will be so good to you, little one, and I will stand between you and all your troubles. You have had your share,and you never need to have no more, cause when things don't go right, all you need to do is to run to big Tom Cassidy, and rub your little face up and down the front of his big coat, and squeeze a little water out of one eye, and put a little tremble in your voice, and he would go out and lick a St. Patrick's Day procession for you." Then he was quiet but went on after a while soft and tender like, "I sure do love you, little one. Don't you care for me a little?" "Oh, Tom," I said, "it ain't little, it is lots." Then he said, "Why won't you say we will be married?" And I said, "Tom, I care more for you than for anything in the world, but I wouldn't hurt you for nothing." And he said, "The only way you can hurt me, Nan, is to say you won't have me and you don't say that, do you dear?" I looked up at him for a minit and he must a saw what was in my eyes, cause he was quiet, just a looking deep into my eyes. Then he drew my face to him with his two hands and kissed me. Kate I went all of a tremble and it seemed my heart came right up on my lipswhen I felt his touch mine, and when he said, "Say, 'I love you, Tom,'" I only needed to whisper it for him to hear, and I was glad cause I couldn't have spoke it out loud to save my soul.
Oh, Kate, I didn't know there was such a thing in the world as what I am feeling. I am so happy it keeps me quiet, and I like to set by myself and think of Tom, how big and strong he is, how he will always fight my troubles. But I feel I will never have troubles if I live with him, cause he is so good and kind and gentle, that sorrow could never come near him or his.
I won't write you more, cause if I wrote you a hundred pages, I couldn't say more than that I'm the happiest girl in the world, cause I love him, love him, love him.
Nan.
Dear Kate:
Tom told his mother this morning at the breakfast table and she put down her saucer of coffee, and come over to me and kissed me, and said, "Faith, the Gosoon, I thought he never was going to do it. Sure he's not the son of his father, or he'd a asked you the question the second day you was here. I've always wanted a daughter and now I've got one that couldn't a suited me better if I'd ordered her making."
She was so happy, she spent the whole morning making plans for the future, how she would pass part of the time with me and Tom, and then when we got tired of her, she would go over to see you and Jack. And Kate you sure will love her. She is just a dear little Irish woman who has always had a great big husband or a son to stand betweenher and anything that might hurt her. And just think, dear, I won't never have to be alone no more, never have to worry about things all by myself, cause I, too, am going to have a great big man all my own.
Your happyNan.
Dear Kate:
We were married this morning by the priest at the church near here. Mother was there (oh, Kate, it is nice to say "mother"), and Jack and the Captain of the station that bullied me so, but he is really all right when his uniform is off and he was a great friend of Tom's father. It was over awful sudden. It seemed they just had begun, when he said, "Kiss your wife," and I found we was married.
Now you are out on Saturday, Kate. Tom is coming with me, and we will be there at 10:30. Now, I don't want you to feel, like you said in your letter, that you are ashamed to look anybody in the face. You don't need to be, and when those old doors close behind you, you just forget them, and think of what is before you. Why, you went in there withnobody but me and Jim and Billy, and you come out having a great big family, a mother and two brothers, a kid and a sister, not to speak of a farm and two live pigs and a black and white cow that is a waiting for you, and we are all a loving you, and ain't a thinking or a caring nothing about your past, just going to help you make a future. When we step out of the gates, we will look up at the great big, blue sky and though none of us ain't long on prayer, perhaps who is ever watching above there, will know just what we feel and will start us right. Anyway, Kate, we will be waiting for you, and we are all going to be so happy, that there will never be a grey day, they will all be blue and gold with the sun a shining.
Yours,Nan Cassidy.