The Project Gutenberg eBook ofLovey MaryThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Lovey MaryAuthor: Alice Caldwell Hegan RiceRelease date: June 1, 2004 [eBook #5970]Most recently updated: December 29, 2020Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LOVEY MARY ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Lovey MaryAuthor: Alice Caldwell Hegan RiceRelease date: June 1, 2004 [eBook #5970]Most recently updated: December 29, 2020Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
Title: Lovey Mary
Author: Alice Caldwell Hegan Rice
Author: Alice Caldwell Hegan Rice
Release date: June 1, 2004 [eBook #5970]Most recently updated: December 29, 2020
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LOVEY MARY ***
Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
AUTHOR OF"Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch"
1903
"They met at the pump." ….. Frontispiece
"'Now the Lord meant you to be plain.'"
"'Come here, Tom, and kiss your mother.'"
"''T ain't no street…; this here is the Cabbage Patch.'"
"She puffed her hair at the top and sides."
"'She took on mighty few airs fer a person in mournin'.'"
"She sat on the door-step, white and miserable." 67
"Mrs. Wiggs took pictures from her walls and chairs from her parlor to beautify the house of Hazy."
"Mr. Stubbins, sitting in Mrs. Wiggs's most comfortable chair, with a large slice of pumpkin-pie in his hand."
"'Stick out yer tongue.'"
"Asia held out her hands, which were covered with warm red mitts."
"Master Robert Redding was right side up again, sobbing himself quiet in Lovey Mary's arms."
"'Have you ever acted any?' he asked."
"Europena stepped forward."
"Sang in a high, sweet voice, 'I Need Thee Every Hour.'"
"'Haven't you got any place you could go to?'"
Susie Smithers at the keyhole
"Lovey Mary waved until she rounded a curve."
For life, with all it yields of joy and woe,And hope and fear,…Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love,—How love might be, hath been indeed, and is.BROWNING'S "A Death in the Desert."
Everything about Lovey Mary was a contradiction, from her hands and feet, which seemed to have been meant for a big girl, to her high ideals and aspirations, that ought to have belonged to an amiable one. The only ingredient which might have reconciled all the conflicting elements in her chaotic little bosom was one which no one had ever taken the trouble to supply.
When Miss Bell, the matron of the home, came to receive Lovey Mary's confession of repentance, she found her at an up-stairs window making hideous faces and kicking the furniture. The depth of her repentance could always be gaged by the violence of her conduct. Miss Bell looked at her as she would have looked at one of the hieroglyphs on the Obelisk. She had been trying to decipher her for thirteen years.
Miss Bell was stout and prim, a combination which was surely never intended by nature. Her gray dress and tight linen collar and cuffs gave the uncomfortable impression of being sewed on, while her rigid black water-waves seemed irrevocably painted upon her high forehead. She was a routinist; she believed in system, she believed in order, and she believed that godliness was akin to cleanliness. When she found an exception to a rule she regarded the exception in the light of an error. As she stood, brush in hand, before Lovey Mary, she thought for the hundredth time that the child was an exception.
"Stand up," she said firmly but not unkindly. "I thought you had too much sense to do your hair that way. Come back to the bath-room, and I will arrange it properly."
Lovey Mary gave a farewell kick at the wall before she followed Miss Bell. One side of her head was covered with tight black ringlets, and the other bristled with curl-papers.
"When I was a little girl," said Miss Bell, running the wet comb ruthlessly through the treasured curls, "the smoother my hair was the better I liked it. I used to brush it down with soap and water to make it stay."
Lovey Mary looked at the water-waves and sighed.
"If you're ugly you never can get married with anybody, can you, MissBell?" she asked in a spirit of earnest inquiry.
Miss Bell's back became stiffer, if possible, than before.
"Marriage isn't the only thing in the world. The homelier you are the better chance you have of being good. Now the Lord meant you to be plain"—assisting Providence by drawing the braids so tight that the girl's eyebrows were elevated with the strain. "If he had meant you to have curls he would have given them to you."
[Illustration: "'Now the Lord meant you to be plain'"]
"Well, didn't he want me to have a mother and father?" burst forth Lovey Mary, indignantly, "or clothes, or money, or nothing? Can't I ever get nothing at all 'cause I wasn't started out with nothing?"
Miss Bell was too shocked to reply. She gave a final brush to the sleek, wet head and turned sorrowfully away. Lovey Mary ran after her and caught her hand.
"I'm sorry," she cried impulsively. "I want to be good. Please— please—"
Miss Bell drew her hand away coldly. "You needn't go to Sabbath-school this morning," she said in an injured tone; "you can stay here and think over what you have said. I am not angry with you. I never allow myself to get angry. I don't understand, that's all. You are such a good girl about some things and so unreasonable about others. With a good home, good clothes, and kind treatment, what else could a girl want?"
Receiving no answer to this inquiry, Miss Bell adjusted her cuffs and departed with the conviction that she had done all that was possible to throw light upon a dark subject.
Lovey Mary, left alone, shed bitter tears on her clean gingham dress. Thirteen years ought to reconcile a person even to gingham dresses with white china buttons down the back, and round straw hats bought at wholesale. But Lovey Mary's rebellion of spirit was something that time only served to increase. It had started with Kate Rider, who used to pinch her, and laugh at her, and tell the other girls to "get on to her curves." Curves had signified something dreadful to Lovey Mary; she would have experienced real relief could she have known that she did not possess any. It was not Kate Rider, however, who was causing the present tears; she had left the home two years before, and her name was not allowed to be mentioned even in whispers. Neither was it rebellion against the work that had cast Lovey Mary into such depths of gloom; fourteen beds had been made, fourteen heads had been combed, and fourteen wriggling little bodies had been cheerfully buttoned into starchy blue ginghams exactly like her own.
Something deeper and more mysterious was fermenting in her soul— something that made her long passionately for the beautiful things of life, for love and sympathy and happiness; something that made her want to be good, yet tempted her constantly to rebel against her environs. It was just the world-old spirit that makes the veriest little weed struggle through a chink in the rock and reach upward toward the sun.
"What's the matter with your hair, Lovey Mary? It looks so funny," asked a small girl, coming up the steps.
"If anybody asts you, tell 'em you don't know," snapped Lovey Mary.
"Well, Miss Bell says for you to come down to the office," said the other, unabashed. "There's a lady down there—a lady and a baby. Me and Susie peeked in. Miss Bell made the lady cry; she made her wipe the powders off her compleshun."
"And she sent for me?" asked Lovey Mary, incredulously. Such a ripple in the still waters of the home was sufficient to interest the most disconsolate.
"Yes; and me and Susie's going to peek some more."
Lovey Mary dried her tears and hurried down to the office. As she stood at the door she heard a girl's excited voice protesting and begging, and Miss Bell's placid tones attempting to calm her. They paused as she entered.
"Mary," said Miss Bell, "you remember Kate Rider. She has brought her child for us to take care of for a while. Have you room for him in your division?"
As Lovey Mary looked at the gaily dressed girl on the sofa, her animosity rekindled. It was not Kate's bold black eyes that stirred her wrath, nor the hard red lips that recalled the taunts of other days: it was the sight of the auburn curls gathered in tantalizing profusion under the brim of the showy hat.
"Mary, answer my question!" said Miss Bell, sharply.
With an involuntary shudder of repugnance Lovey Mary drew her gaze from Kate and murmured, "Yes, 'm."
"Then you can take the baby with you," continued Miss Bell, motioning to the sleeping child. "But wait a moment. I think I will put Jennie at the head of your division and let you have entire charge of this little boy. He is only a year old, Kate tells me, so will need constant attention."
Lovey Mary was about to protest, when Kate broke in:
"Oh, say, Miss Bell, please get some other girl! Tommy never would like Lovey. He's just like me: if people ain't pretty, he don't have no use for 'em."
"That will do, Kate," said Miss Bell, coldly. "It is only pity for the child that makes me take him at all. You have forfeited all claim upon our sympathy or patience. Mary, take the baby up-stairs and care for him until I come."
Lovey Mary, hot with rebellion, picked him up and went out of the room. At the door she stumbled against two little girls who were listening at the keyhole.
Up-stairs in the long dormitory it was very quiet. The children had been marched away to Sunday-school, and only Lovey Mary and the sleeping baby were on the second floor. The girl sat beside the little white bed and hated the world as far as she knew it: she hated Kate for adding this last insult to the old score; she hated Miss Bell for putting this new burden on her unwilling shoulders; she hated the burden itself, lying there before her so serene and unconcerned; and most of all she hated herself.
"I wisht I was dead!" she cried passionately. "The harder I try to be good the meaner I get. Ever'body blames me, and ever'body makes fun of me. Ugly old face, and ugly old hands, and straight old rat-tail hair! It ain't no wonder that nobody loves me. I just wisht I was dead!"
The sunshine came through the window and made a big white patch on the bare floor, but Lovey Mary sat in the shadow and disturbed the Sunday quiet by her heavy sobbing.
At noon, when the children returned, the noise of their arrival woke Tommy. He opened his round eyes on a strange world, and began to cry lustily. One child after another tried to pacify him, but each friendly advance increased his terror.
"Leave him be!" cried Lovey Mary. "Them hats is enough to skeer him into fits." She picked him up, and with the knack born of experience soothed and comforted him. The baby hid his face on her shoulder and held her tight. She could feel the sobs that still shook the small body, and his tears were on her cheek.
"Never mind," she said. "I ain't a-going to let 'em hurt you. I'm going to take care of you. Don't cry any more. Look!"
She stretched forth her long, unshapely hand and made grotesque snatches at the sunshine that poured in through the window. Tommy hesitated and was lost; a smile struggled to the surface, then broke through the tears.
"Look! He's laughing!" cried Lovey Mary, gleefully. "He's laughing 'cause I ketched a sunbeam for him!"
Then she bent impulsively and kissed the little red lips so close to her own.
"Courage mounteth with occasion."
For two years Lovey Mary cared for Tommy: she bathed him and dressed him, taught him to walk, and kissed his bumps to make them well; she sewed for him and nursed him by day, and slept with him in her tired arms at night. And Tommy, with the inscrutable philosophy of childhood, accepted his little foster-mother and gave her his all.
One bright June afternoon the two were romping in the home yard under the beech-trees. Lovey Mary lay in the grass, while Tommy threw handfuls of leaves in her face, laughing with delight at her grimaces. Presently the gate clicked, and some one came toward them.
"Good land! is that my kid?" said a woman's voice. "Come here, Tom, and kiss your mother."
Lovey Mary, sitting up, found Kate Rider, in frills and ribbons, looking with surprise at the sturdy child before her.
Tommy objected violently to this sudden overture and declined positively to acknowledge the relationship. In fact, when Kate attempted to pull him to her, he fled for protection to Lovey Mary and cast belligerent glances at the intruder.
Kate laughed.
"Oh, you needn't be so scary; you might as well get used to me, for I am going to take you home with me. I bet he's a corker, ain't he, Lovey? He used to bawl all night. Sometimes I'd have to spank him two or three times."
Lovey Mary clasped the child closer and looked up in dumb terror. WasTommy to be taken from her? Tommy to go away with Kate?
"Great Scott!" exclaimed Kate, exasperated at the girl's manner. "You are just as ugly and foolish as you used to be. I'm going in to see Miss Bell."
Lovey Mary waited until she was in the house, then she stole noiselessly around to the office window. The curtain blew out across her cheek, and the swaying lilacs seemed to be trying to count the china buttons on her back; but she stood there with staring eyes and parted lips, and held her breath to listen.
[Illustration with caption: "'Come here, Tom, and kiss your mother.'"]
"Of course," Miss Bell was saying, measuring her words with due precision, "if you feel that you can now support your child and that it is your duty to take him, we cannot object. There are many other children waiting to come into the home. And yet—" Miss Bell's voice sounded human and unnatural—"yet I wish he could stay. Have you thought, Kate, of your responsibility toward him, of—"
"Oh! Ough!" shrieked Tommy from the playground, in tones of distress.
Lovey Mary left her point of vantage and rushed to the rescue. She found him emitting frenzied yells, while a tiny stream of blood trickled down his chin.
"It was my little duck," he gasped as soon as he was able to speak. "I was tissin' him, an' he bited me."
At thought of the base ingratitude on the part of the duck, Tommy wailed anew. Lovey Mary led him to the hydrant and bathed the injured lip, while she soothed his feelings. Suddenly a wave of tenderness swept over her. She held his chubby face up to hers and said fervently:
"Tommy, do you love me?"
"Yes," said Tommy, with a reproachful eye on the duck. "Yes; I yuv to yuv. I don't yuv to tiss, though!"
"But me, Tommy, me. Do you love me?"
"Yes," he answered gravely, "dollar an' a half."
"Whose little boy are you?"
"Yuvey's 'e boy."
Satisfied with this catechism, she put Tommy in care of another girl and went back to her post at the window. Miss Bell was talking again.
"I will have him ready to-morrow afternoon when you come. His clothes are all in good condition. I only hope, Kate, that you will care for him as tenderly as Mary has. I am afraid he will miss her sadly."
"If he's like me, he'll forget about her in two or three days," answered the other voice. "It always was 'out of sight, out of mind' with me."
Miss Bell's answer was indistinct, and in a few minutes Lovey Mary heard the hall door close behind them. She shook her fists until the lilacs trembled. "She sha'n't have him!" she whispered fiercely. "She sha'n't let him grow up wicked like she is. I won't let him go. I'll hide him, I'll—"
Suddenly she grew very still, and for a long time crouched motionless behind the bushes. The problem that faced her had but one solution, and Lovey Mary had found it.
The next morning when the sun climbed over the tree-tops and peered into the dormitory windows he found that somebody else had made an early rise. Lovey Mary was sitting by a wardrobe making her last will and testament. From the neatly folded pile of linen she selected a few garments and tied them into a bundle. Then she took out a cigar-box and gravely contemplated the contents. There were two narrow hair- ribbons which had evidently been one wide ribbon, a bit of rock crystal, four paper dolls, a soiled picture-book with some other little girl's name scratched out on the cover, and two shining silver dollars. These composed Lovey Mary's worldly possessions. She tied the money in her handkerchief and put it in her pocket, then got up softly and slipped about among the little white beds, distributing her treasures.
"I'm mad at Susie," she whispered, pausing before a tousled head; "I hate to give her the nicest thing I've got. But she's just crazy 'bout picture-books."
The curious sun climbed yet a little higher and saw Lovey Mary go back to her own bed, and, rolling Tommy's clothes around her own bundle, gather the sleeping child in her arms and steal quietly out of the room. Then the sun got too high up in the heavens to watch little runaway orphan girls. Nobody saw her steal through the deserted playroom, down the clean bare steps, which she had helped to wear away, and out through the yard to the coal-shed. Here she got the reluctant Tommy into his clothes, and tied on his little round straw hat, so absurdly like her own.
"Is we playin' hie-spy, Yuvey?" asked the mystified youngster.
"Yes, Tommy," she whispered, "and we are going a long way to hide. You are my little boy now, and you must love me better than anything in the world. Say it, Tommy; say, 'I love you better 'n anybody in the whole world.'"
"Will I det on de rollin' honor?" asked Tommy, thinking he was learning his golden text.
But Lovey Mary had forgotten her question. She was taking a farewell look at the home, every nook and corner of which had suddenly grown dear. Already she seemed a thing apart, one having no right to its shelter and protection. She turned to where Tommy was playing with some sticks in the corner, and bidding him not to stir or speak until her return, she slipped back up the walk and into the kitchen. Swiftly and quietly she made a fire in the stove and filled the kettle with water. Then she looked about for something more she might do. On the table lay the grocery book with a pencil attached. She thought a moment, then wrote laboriously under the last order: "Miss Bell I will take kere Tommy pleas don't be mad." Then she softly closed the door behind her.
A few minutes later she lifted Tommy out of the low shed window, and hurried him down the alley and out into the early morning streets. At the corner they took a car, and Tommy knelt by the window and absorbed the sights with rapt attention; to him the adventure was beginning brilliantly. Even Lovey Mary experienced a sense of exhilaration when she paid their fare out of one of the silver dollars. She knew the conductor was impressed, because he said, "You better watch Buddy's hat, ma'am." That "ma'am" pleased her profoundly; it caused her unconsciously to assume Miss Bell's tone and manner as she conversed with the back of Tommy's head.
"We'll go out on the avenue," she said. "We'll go from house to house till I get work. 'Most anybody would be glad to get a handy girl that can cook and wash and sew, only—I ain't very big, and then there's you."
"Ain't that a big house?" shouted Tommy, half way out of the window.
"Yes; don't talk so loud. That's the court-house."
"Where they make court-plaster at?" inquired Tommy shrilly.
Lovey Mary glanced around uneasily. She hoped the old man in the corner had not heard this benighted remark. All went well until the car reached the terminal station. Here Tommy refused to get off. In vain Lovey Mary coaxed and threatened.
"It'll take us right back to the home," she pleaded. "Be a good boy and come with Lovey. I'll buy you something nice."
Tommy remained obdurate. He believed in letting well enough alone. The joys of a street-car ride were present and tangible; "something nice" was vague, unsatisfying.
"Don't yer little brother want to git off?" asked the conductor, sympathetically.
"No, sir," said Lovey Mary, trying to maintain her dignity while she struggled with her charge. "If you please, sir, would you mind holding his feet while I loosen his hands?"
Tommy, shrieking indignant protests, was borne from the car and deposited on the sidewalk.
"Don't you dare get limber!" threatened Lovey Mary. "If you do I'll spank you right here on the street. Stand up! Straighten out your legs! Tommy! do you hear me?"
Tommy might have remained limp indefinitely had not a hurdy-gurdy opportunely arrived on the scene. It is true that he would go only in the direction of the music, but Lovey Mary was delighted to have him go at all. When at last they were headed for the avenue, Tommy caused another delay.
"I want my ducky," he announced.
The words brought consternation to Lovey Mary. She had fearfully anticipated them from the moment of leaving the home.
"I'll buy you a 'tend-like duck," she said.
"No; I want a sure-'nough ducky; I want mine."
Lovey Mary was exasperated. "Well, you can't have yours. I can't get it for you, and you might as well hush."
His lips trembled, and two large tears rolled down his round cheeks. When he was injured he was irresistible. Lovey Mary promptly surrendered.
"Don't cry, baby boy! Lovey'll get you one someway."
For some time the quest of the duck was fruitless. The stores they entered were wholesale houses for the most part, where men were rolling barrels about or stacking skins and hides on the sidewalk.
"Do you know what sort of a store they sell ducks at?" asked LoveyMary of a colored man who was sweeping out an office.
"Ducks!" repeated the negro, grinning at the queerly dressed children in their round straw hats. "Name o' de Lawd! What do you all want wif ducks?"
Lovey Mary explained.
"Wouldn't a kitten do jes as well?" he asked kindly.
"I want my ducky," whined Tommy, showing signs of returning storm.
"I don' see no way 'cept'n' gwine to de mahket. Efen you tek de cah you kin ride plumb down dere."
Recent experience had taught Lovey Mary to be wary of street-cars, so they walked. At the market they found some ducks. The desired objects were hanging in a bunch with their limp heads tied together. Further inquiry, however, discovered some live ones in a coop.
"They're all mama ducks," objected Tommy. "I want a baby ducky. I want my little ducky!"
When he found he could do no better, he decided to take one of the large ones. Then he said he was hungry, so he and Mary took turn about holding it while the other ate "po' man's pickle" and wienerwurst.
It was two o'clock by the time they reached the avenue, and by four they were foot-sore and weary, but they trudged bravely along from house to house asking for work. As dusk came on, the houses, which a few squares back had been tall and imposing, seemed to be getting smaller and more insignificant. Lovey Mary felt secure as long as she was on the avenue. She did not know that the avenue extended for many miles and that she had reached the frayed and ragged end of it. She and Tommy passed under a bridge, and after that the houses all seemed to behave queerly. Some faced one way, some another, and crisscross between them, in front of them, and behind them ran a network of railroad tracks.
"What's the name of this street?" asked Lovey Mary of a small, bare- footed girl.
"'T ain't no street," answered the little girl, gazing with undisguised amazement at the strange-looking couple; "this here is the Cabbage Patch."
[Illustration: "'T ain't no street…; this here is the CabbagePatch.'"]
"Here sovereign Dirt erects her sable throne,The house, the host, the hostess all her own."
Miss Hazy was the submerged tenth of the Cabbage Patch. The submersion was mainly one of dirt and disorder, but Miss Hazy was such a meek, inefficient little body that the Cabbage Patch withheld its blame and patiently tried to furnish a prop for the clinging vine. Miss Hazy, it is true, had Chris; but Chris was unstable, not only because he had lost one leg, but also because he was the wildest, noisiest, most thoughtless youngster that ever shied a rock at a lamp-post. Miss Hazy had "raised" Chris, and the neighbors had raised Miss Hazy.
When Lovey Mary stumbled over the Hazy threshold with the sleeping Tommy and the duck in her arms, Miss Hazy fluttered about in dismay. She pushed the flour-sifter farther over on the bed and made a place for Tommy, then she got a chair for the exhausted girl and hovered about her with little chirps of consternation.
"Dear sakes! You're done tuckered out, ain't you? You an' the baby got losted? Ain't that too bad! Must I make you some tea? Only there ain't no fire in the stove. Dear me! what ever will I do? Jes wait a minute; I'll have to go ast Mis' Wiggs."
In a few minutes Miss Hazy returned. With her was a bright-faced little woman whose smile seemed to thaw out the frozen places in Lovey Mary's heart and make her burst into tears on the motherly bosom.
"There now, there," said Mrs. Wiggs, hugging the girl up close and patting her on the back; "there ain't no hole so deep can't somebody pull you out. An' here's me an' Miss Hazy jes waitin' to give you a h'ist."
There was something so heartsome in her manner that Lovey Mary dried her eyes and attempted to explain. "I'm tryin' to get a place," she began, "but nobody wants to take Tommy too. I can't carry him any further, and I don't know where to go, and it's 'most night—" again the sobs choked her.
"Lawsee!" said Mrs. Wiggs, "don't you let that worry you! I can't take you home, 'cause Asia an' Australia an' Europeny are sleepin' in one bed as it is; but you kin git right in here with Miss Hazy, can't she, Miss Hazy?"
The hostess, to whom Mrs. Wiggs was an oracle, acquiesced heartily.
"All right: that's fixed. Now I'll go home an' send you all over some nice, hot supper by Billy, an' to-morrow mornin' will be time enough to think things out."
Lovey Mary, too exhausted to mind the dirt, ate her supper off a broken plate, then climbed over behind Tommy and the flour-sifter, and was soon fast asleep.
The business meeting next morning "to think things out" resulted satisfactorily. At first Mrs. Wiggs was inclined to ask questions and find out where the children came from, but when she saw Lovey Mary's evident distress and embarrassment, she accepted the statement that they were orphans and that the girl was seeking work in order to take care of herself and the boy. It had come to be an unwritten law in the Cabbage Patch that as few questions as possible should be asked of strangers. People had come there before who could not give clear accounts of themselves.
"Now I'll tell you what I think'll be best," said Mrs. Wiggs, who enjoyed untangling snarls. "Asia kin take Mary up to the fact'ry with her to-morrow, an' see if she kin git her a job. I 'spect she kin, 'cause she stands right in with the lady boss. Miss Hazy, me an' you kin keep a' eye on the baby between us. If Mary gits a place she kin pay you so much a week, an' that'll help us all out, 'cause then we won't have to send in so many outside victuals. If she could make three dollars an' Chris three, you all could git along right peart."
Lovey Mary stayed in the house most of the day. She was almost afraid to look out of the little window, for fear she should see Miss Bell or Kate Rider coming. She sat in the only chair that had a bottom and diligently worked buttonholes for Miss Hazy.
"Looks like there ain't never no time to clean up," said Miss Hazy, apologetically, as she shoved Chris's Sunday clothes and a can of coal-oil behind the door.
Lovey Mary looked about her and sighed deeply. The room was brimful and spilling over: trash, tin cans, and bottles overflowed the window- sills; a crippled rocking-chair, with a faded quilt over it, stood before the stove, in the open oven of which Chris's shoe was drying; an old sewing-machine stood in the middle of the floor, with Miss Hazy's sewing on one end of it and the uncleared dinner-dishes on the other.
Mary could not see under the bed, but she knew from the day's experience that it was used as a combination store-room and wardrobe. She thought of the home with its bare, clean rooms and its spotless floors. She rose abruptly and went out to the rear of the house, where Tommy was playing with Europena Wiggs. They were absorbed in trying to hitch the duck to a spool-box, and paid little attention to her.
"Tommy," she said, clutching his arm, "don't you want to go back?"
But Tommy had tasted freedom; he had had one blissful day unwashed, uncombed, and uncorrected.
"No," he declared stoutly; "I'm doin' to stay to this house and play wiv You're-a-peanut."
"Then," said Mary, with deep resignation, "the only thing for me to do is to try to clean things up."
When she went back into the house she untied her bundle and took out the remaining dollar.
"I'll be back soon," she said to Miss Hazy as she stepped over a basket of potatoes. "I'm just going over to Mrs. Wiggs's a minute."
She found her neighbor alone, getting supper. "Please, ma'am,"—she plunged into her subject at once,—"have any of your girls a dress for sale? I've got a dollar to buy it."
Mrs. Wiggs turned the girl around and surveyed her critically. "Well,I don't know as I blame you fer wantin' to git shut of that one. Thereain't more 'n room enough fer one leg in that skirt, let alone two.An' what was the sense in them big shiny buttons?"
"I don't know as it makes much difference," said Lovey Mary, disconsolately; "I'm so ugly, nothing could make me look nice."
Mrs. Wiggs shook her by the shoulders good-naturedly. "Now, here," she said, "don't you go an' git sorry fer yerself! That's one thing I can't stand in nobody. There's always lots of other folks you kin be sorry fer 'stid of yerself. Ain't you proud you ain't got a harelip? Why, that one thought is enough to keep me from ever gittin' sorry fer myself."
Mary laughed, and Mrs. Wiggs clapped her hands. "That's what yer face needs—smiles! I never see anything make such a difference. But now about the dress. Yes, indeed, Asia has got dresses to give 'way. She gits 'em from Mrs. Reddin'; her husband is Mr. Bob, Billy's boss. He's a newspaper editress an' rich as cream. Mrs. Reddin' is a fallen angel, if there ever was one on this earth. She sends all sorts of clothes to Asia, an' I warm 'em over an' boil 'em down till they're her size.
"Asia Minor!" she called to a girl who was coming in the door, "this here is Mary—Lovey Mary she calls herself, Miss Hazy's boarder. Have you got a dress you could give her?"
"I'm going to buy it," said Mary, immediately on the defensive. She did not want them to think for a moment that she was begging. She would show them that she had money, that she was just as good as they were.
"Well, maw," the other girl was saying in a drawling voice as she looked earnestly at Lovey Mary, "seems to me she'd look purtiest in my red dress. Her hair's so nice an' black an' her teeth so white, I 'low the red would look best."
Mrs. Wiggs gazed at her daughter with adoring eyes. "Ain't that the artis' stickin' out through her? Couldn't you tell she handles paints? Up at the fact'ry she's got a fine job, paints flowers an' wreaths on to bath-tubs. Yes, indeed, this here red one is what you must have. Keep your dollar, child; the dress never cost us a cent. Here's a nubia, too, you kin have; it'll look better than that little hat you had on last night. That little hat worried me; it looked like the stopper was too little fer the bottle. There now, take the things right home with you, an' tomorrow you an' Asia kin start off in style."
Lovey Mary, flushed with the intoxication of her first compliment, went back and tried on the dress. Miss Hazy got so interested that she forgot to get supper.
"You look so nice I never would 'a' knowed you in the world!" she declared. "You don't look picked, like you did in that other dress."
"That Wiggs girl said I looked nice in red," said Lovey Mary tentatively.
"You do, too," said Miss Hazy; "it keeps you from lookin' so corpsey. I wisht you'd do somethin' with yer hair, though; it puts me in mind of snakes in them long black plaits."
All Lovey Mary needed was encouragement. She puffed her hair at the top and sides and tucked it up in the latest fashion. Tommy, coming in at the door, did not recognize her. She laughed delightedly.
"Do I look so different?"
"I should say you do," said Miss Hazy, admiringly, as she spread a newspaper for a table-cloth. "I never seen no one answer to primpin' like you do."
[Illustration: "She puffed her hair at the top and sides."]
When it was quite dark Lovey Mary rolled something in a bundle and crept out of the house. After glancing cautiously up and down the tracks she made her way to the pond on the commons and dropped her bundle into the shallow water.
Next day, when Mrs. Schultz's goat died of convulsions, nobody knew it was due to the china buttons on Lovey Mary's gingham dress.
"Our deeds still travel with us from afar,And what we have been makes us what we are."
Through the assistance of Asia Wiggs, Lovey Mary secured pleasant and profitable work at the factory; but her mind was not at peace. Of course it was a joy to wear the red dress and arrange her hair a different way each morning, but there was a queer, restless little feeling in her heart that spoiled even the satisfaction of looking like other girls and earning three dollars a week. The very fact that nobody took her to task, that nobody scolded or blamed her, caused her to ask herself disturbing questions. Secret perplexity had the same effect upon her that it has upon many who are older and wiser: it made her cross.
Two days after she started to work, Asia, coming down from the decorating-room for lunch, found her in fiery dispute with a red- haired girl. There had been an accident in front of the factory, and the details were under discussion.
"Well, I know all about it," declared the red-haired girl, excitedly, "'cause my sister was the first one that got to her."
"Is your sister a nigger named Jim Brown?" asked Lovey Mary, derisively. "Ever'body says he was the first one got there."
"Was there blood on her head?" asked Asia, trying to stem the tide of argument.
"Yes, indeed," said the first speaker; "on her head an' on her hands, too. I hanged on the steps when they was puttin' her in the ambalance- wagon, an' she never knowed a bloomin' thing!"
"Why didn't you go on with them to the hospital!" asked Lovey Mary. "I don't see how the doctors could get along without you."
"Oh, you're just mad 'cause you didn't see her. She was awful pretty!Had on a black hat with a white feather in it, but it got in the mud.They say she had a letter in her pocket with her name on it."
"I thought maybe she come to long enough to tell you her name," teased her tormentor.
"Well, I do know it, Smarty," retorted the other, sharply: "it's MissKate Rider."
Meanwhile in the Cabbage Patch Miss Hazy and Mrs. Wiggs were holding a consultation over the fence.
"She come over to my house first," Mrs. Wiggs was saying, dramatically illustrating her remarks with two tin cans. "This is me here, an' I looks up an' seen the old lady standin' over there. She put me in mind of a graven image. She had on a sorter gray mournin', didn't she, Miss Hazy?"
"Yes, 'm; that was the way it struck me. Bein' gray, I 'lowed it was fer some one she didn't keer fer pertickler."
"An' gent's cuffs," continued Mrs. Wiggs; "I noticed them right off. ''Scuse me,' says she, snappin' her mouth open an' shut like a trap— ''scuse me, but have you seen anything of two strange children in this neighborhood?' I th'owed my apron over Lovey Mary's hat, that I was trimmin'. I wasn't goin' to tell till I found out what that widder woman was after. But before I was called upon to answer, Tommy come tearin' round the house chasin' Cusmoodle."
"Who?"
"Cusmoodle, the duck. I named it this mornin'. Well, when the lady seen Tommy she started up, then she set down ag'in, holdin' her skirts up all the time to keep 'em from techin' the floor. 'How'd they git here?' she ast, so relieved-like that I thought she must be kin to 'em. So I up an' told her all I knew. I told her if she wanted to find out anything about us she could ast Mrs. Reddin' over at Terrace Park. 'Mrs. Robert Reddin'?' says she, lookin' dumfounded. 'Yes,' says I, 'the finest lady, rich or poor, in Kentucky, unless it's her husband.' Then she went on an' ast me goin' on a hunderd questions 'bout all of us an' all of you all, an' 'bout the factory. She even ast me where we got our water at, an' if you kept yer house healthy. I told her Lovey Mary had made Chris carry out more 'n a wheelbarrow full of dirt ever' night since she had been here, an' I guess it would be healthy by the time she got through."
[Illustration: "'She took on mighty few airs fer a person in mournin'.'"]
Miss Hazy moved uneasily. "I told her I couldn't clean up much 'count of the rheumatism, an' phthisic, an' these here dizzy spells—"
"I bet she didn't git a chance to talk much if you got started on your symptims," interrupted Mrs. Wiggs.
"Didn't you think she was a' awful haughty talker?"
'No, indeed. She took on mighty few airs fer a person in mournin'. When she riz to go, she says, real kind fer such a stern-faced woman, 'Do the childern seem well an' happy?' 'Yes, 'm; they're well, all right,' says I. 'Tommy he's like a colt what's been stabled up all winter an' is let out fer the first time. As fer Mary,' I says, 'she seems kinder low in her mind, looks awful pestered most of the time.' 'It won't hurt her,' says the lady. 'Keep a' eye on 'em,' says she, puttin' some money in my hand,' an' if you need any more, I'll leave it with Mrs. Reddin'.' Then she cautioned me pertickler not to say nothin' 'bout her havin' been here."
"She told me not to tell, too," said Miss Hazy; "but I don't know what we're goin' to say to Mrs. Schultz. She 'most sprained her back tryin' to see who it was, an' Mrs. Eichorn come over twicet pertendin'-like she wanted to borrow a corkscrew driver."
"Tell 'em she was a newfangled agent," said Mrs. Wiggs, with unblushing mendacity—"a' agent fer shoestrings."
"There is in the worst of fortunesThe best of chances for a happy change."
"Good land! you all're so clean in here I'm feared of ketchin' the pneumony."
Mrs. Wiggs stood in Miss Hazy's kitchen and smiled approval at the marvelous transformation.
"Well, now, I don't think it's right healthy," complained Miss Hazy, who was sitting at the machine, with her feet on a soap-box; "so much water sloppin' round is mighty apt to give a person a cold. But Lovey Mary says she can't stand it no other way. She's mighty set, Mis' Wiggs."
"Yes, an' that's jes what you need, Miss Hazy. You never was set 'bout nothin' in yer life. Lovey Mary's jes took you an' the house an' ever'thing in hand, an' in four weeks got you all to livin' like white folks. I ain't claimin' she ain't sharp-tongued; I 'low she's sassed 'bout ever'body in the Patch but me by now. But she's good, an' she's smart, an' some of her sharp corners'll git pecked off afore her hair grows much longer."
"Oh, mercy me! here she comes now to git her lunch," said Miss Hazy, with chagrin. "I ain't got a thing fixed."
"You go on an' sew; I'll mess up a little somethin' fer her. She'll stop, anyway, to talk to Tommy. Did you ever see anything to equal the way she takes on 'bout that child? She jes natchally analyzes him."
Lovey Mary, however, did not stop as usual to play with Tommy. She came straight to the kitchen and sat down on the door-step, looking worried and preoccupied.
"How comes it you ain't singin'?" asked Mrs. Wiggs. "If I had a voice like yourn, folks would have to stop up their years with cotton. I jes find myself watchin' fer you to come home, so's I can hear you singin' them pretty duets round the house."
Lovey Mary smiled faintly; for a month past she had been unconsciously striving to live up to Mrs. Wiggs's opinion of her, and the constant praise and commendation of that "courageous captain of compliment" had moved her to herculean effort.
But a sudden catastrophe threatened her. She sat on the door-step, white and miserable. Held tight in the hand that was thrust in her pocket was a letter; it was a blue letter addressed to Miss Hazy in large, dashing characters. Lovey Mary had got it from the postman as she went out in the morning; for five hours she had been racked with doubt concerning it. She felt that it could refer but to one subject, and that was herself. Perhaps Miss Bell had discovered her hiding- place, or, worse still, perhaps Kate Rider had seen her at the factory and was writing for Tommy. Lovey Mary crushed the letter in her hand; she would not give it to Miss Hazy. She would outwit Kate again.
"All right, honey," called Mrs. Wiggs; "here you are. 'T ain't much of a lunch, but it'll fill up the gaps. Me an' Miss Hazy jes been talkin' 'bout you."
Lovey Mary glanced up furtively. Could they have suspected anything?
[Illustration: "She sat on the door-step, white and miserable."]
"Didn't yer years sorter burn! We was speakin' of the way you'd slicked things up round here. I was a-sayin' even if you was a sorter repeatin'-rifle when it come to answerin' back, you was a good, nice girl."
Lovey Mary smoothed out the crumpled letter in her pocket. "I'm 'fraidI ain't as good as you make me out," she said despondently.
"Oh, yes, she is," said Miss Hazy, with unusual animation; "she's a rale good girl, when she ain't sassy."
This unexpected praise was too much for Lovey Mary. She snatched the letter from her pocket and threw it on the table, not daring to trust her good impulse to last beyond the minute.
"'Miss Marietta Hazy, South Avenue and Railroad Crossing,'" read Mrs.Wiggs, in amazement.
"Oh, surely it ain't got me on the back of it!" cried Miss Hazy, rising hurriedly from the machine and peering over her glasses. "You open it, Mis' Wiggs; I ain't got the nerve to."
With chattering teeth and trembling hands Lovey Mary sat before her untasted food. She could hear Tommy's laughter through the open window, and the sound brought tears to her eyes. But Mrs. Wiggs's voice recalled her, and she nerved herself for the worst.
"Miss Hazy.
"DEAR MISS [Mrs. Wiggs read from the large type-written sheet before her]: Why not study the planets and the heavens therein? In casting your future, I find that thou wilt have an active and succesful year for business, but beware of the law. You are prudent and amiable and have a lively emagination. You will have many ennemies; but fear not, for in love you will be faitful and sincer, and are fitted well fer married life."
"They surely ain't meanin' me?" asked Miss Hazy, in great perturbation.
"Yes, ma'am," said Mrs. Wiggs, emphatically; "it's you, plain as day. Let's go on:
"Your star fortells you a great many lucky events. You are destined to a brilliant success, but you will have to earn it by good conduct. Let wise men lead you. Your mildness against the wretched will bring you the friendship of everbody. Enclosed you will find a spirit picture of your future pardner. If you will send twenty-five cents with the enclosed card, which you will fill out, we will put you in direct correspondance with the gentleman, and the degree ordained by the planets will thus be fulfilled. Please show this circuler to your friends, and oblige
"Astrologer."
As the reading proceeded, Lovey Mary's fears gradually diminished, and with a sigh of relief she applied herself to her lunch. But if the letter had proved of no consequence to her, such was not the case with the two women standing at the window. Miss Hazy was re-reading the letter, vainly trying to master the contents.
"Mary," she said, "git up an' see if you can find my other pair of lookin'-glasses. Seems like I can't git the sense of it."
Mrs. Wiggs meanwhile was excitedly commenting on the charms of the "spirit picture":
"My, but he's siylish! Looks fer all the world like a' insurance agent. Looks like he might be a little tall to his size, but I like statute men better 'n dumpy ones. I bet he's got a lot of nice manners. Ain't his smile pleasant!"
Miss Hazy seized the small picture with trembling fingers. "I don't seem to git on to what it's all about, Mis' Wiggs. Ain't they made a mistake or somethin'?"
"No, indeed; there's no mistake at all," declared Mrs. Wiggs. "Yer name's on the back, an' it's meant fer you. Someway yer name's got out as bein' single an' needin' takin' keer of, an' I reckon this here 'strologer, or conjurer, or whatever he is, seen yer good fortune in the stars an' jes wanted to let you know 'bout it."
"Does he want to get married with her?" asked Lovey Mary, beginning to realize the grave importance of the subject under discussion.
"Well, it may lead to that," answered Mrs. Wiggs, hopefully. Surely only a beneficent Providence could have offered such an unexpected solution to the problem of Miss Hazy's future.
Miss Hazy herself uttered faint protests and expostulations, but in spite of herself she was becoming influenced by Mrs. Wiggs's enthusiasm.
"Oh, shoo!" she repeated again and again. "I ain't never had no thought of marryin'."
"Course you ain't," said Mrs. Wiggs. "Good enough reason: you ain't had a show before. Seems to me you'd be flyin' straight in the face of Providence to refuse a stylish, sweet-smilin' man like that."
"He is fine-lookin'," acknowledged Miss Hazy, trying not to appear too pleased; "only I wisht his years didn't stick out so much."
Mrs. Wiggs was exasperated.
"Lawsee! Miss Hazy, what do you think he'll think of yer figger? Have you got so much to brag on, that you kin go to pickin' him to pieces? Do you suppose I'd 'a' dared to judge Mr. Wiggs that away? Why, Mr. Wiggs's nose was as long as a clothespin; but I would no more 'a' thought of his nose without him than I would 'a' thought of him without the nose."
"Well, what do you think I'd orter do 'bout it?" asked Miss Hazy.
"I ain't quite made up my mind," said her mentor. "I'll talk it over with the neighbors. But I 'spect, if we kin skeer up a quarter, that you'll answer by the mornin's mail."
That night Lovey Mary sat in her little attic room and held Tommy close to her hungry heart. All day she worked with the thought of coming back to him at night; but with night came the dustman, and in spite of her games and stories Tommy's blue eyes would get full of the sleep-dust. Tonight, however, he was awake and talkative.
"Ain't I dot no muvver?" he asked.
"No," said Lovey Mary, after a pause.
"Didn't I never had no muvver?"
Lovey Mary sat him up in her lap and looked into his round, inquiring eyes. Her very love for him hardened her heart against the one who had wronged him.
"Yes, darling, you had a mother once, but she was a bad mother, a mean, bad, wicked mother. I hate her—hate her!" Lovey Mary's voice broke in a sob.
"Ma—ry; aw, Ma—ry!" called Miss Hazy up the stairs. "You'll have to come down here to Chris. He's went to sleep with all his clothes on 'crost my bed, an' I can't git him up."
Lovey Mary tucked Tommy under the cover and went to Miss Hazy's assistance.
"One night I had to set up all night 'cause he wouldn't git up," complained Miss Hazy, in hopelessly injured tones.
Lovey Mary wasted no time in idle coaxing. She seized a broom and rapped the sleeper sharply on the legs. His peg-stick was insensible to this insult, but one leg kicked a feeble protest. In vain Lovey Mary tried violent measures; Chris simply shifted his position and slumbered on. Finally she resorted to strategy:
"Listen, Miss Hazy! Ain't that the fire-engine?"
In a moment Chris was hanging half out of the window, demanding,"Where at?"
"You great big lazy boy!" scolded Lovey Mary, as she put Miss Hazy's bed in order. "I'll get you to behaving mighty different if I stay here long enough. What's this?" she added, pulling something from under Miss Hazy's pillow.
"Oh, it ain't nothin'," cried Miss Hazy, reaching for it eagerly. ButLovey Mary had recognized the "spirit picture."
"Love is not loveWhich alters when it alteration finds,Or bends with the remover to remove."
If the Cabbage Patch had pinned its faith upon the efficiency of the matrimonial agency in regard to the disposal of Miss Hazy, it was doomed to disappointment. The events that led up to the final catastrophe were unique in that they cast no shadows before.
[Illustration: "Mrs. Wiggs took pictures from her walls and chairs from her parlor to beautify the house of Hazy."]
Miss Hazy's letters, dictated by Mrs. Wiggs and penned by Lovey Mary, were promptly and satisfactorily answered. The original of the spirit picture proved to be one Mr. Stubbins, "a prominent citizen of Bagdad Junction who desired to marry some one in the city. The lady must be of good character and without incumbrances." "That's all right," Mrs. Wiggs had declared; "you needn't have no incumbrances. If he'll take keer of you, we'll all look after Chris."
The wooing had been ideally simple. Mr. Stubbins, with the impetuosity of a new lover, demanded an early meeting. It was a critical time, and the Cabbage Patch realized the necessity of making the first impression a favorable one. Mrs. Wiggs took pictures from her walls and chairs from her parlor to beautify the house of Hazy. Old Mrs. Schultz, who was confined to her bed, sent over her black silk dress for Miss Hazy to wear. Mrs. Eichorn, with deep insight into the nature of man, gave a pound-cake and a pumpkin-pie. Lovey Mary scrubbed, and dusted, and cleaned, and superintended the toilet of the bride elect.
The important day had arrived, and with it Mr. Stubbins. To the many eyes that surveyed him from behind shutters and half-open doors he was something of a disappointment. Mrs. Wiggs's rosy anticipations had invested him with the charms of an Apollo, while Mr. Stubbins, in reality, was far from godlike. "My land! he's lanker 'n a bean-pole," exclaimed Mrs. Eichorn, in disgust. But then Mrs. Eichorn weighed two hundred, and her judgment was warped. Taking everything into consideration, the prospects had been most flattering. Mr. Stubbins, sitting in Mrs. Wiggs's most comfortable chair, with a large slice of pumpkin-pie in his hand, and with Miss Hazy opposite arrayed in Mrs. Schultz's black silk, had declared himself ready to marry at once. And Mrs. Wiggs, believing that a groom in the hand is worth two in the bush, promptly precipitated the courtship into a wedding.
[Illustration: "Mr. Stubbins, sitting in Mrs. Wiggs's most comfortable chair, with a large slice of pumpkin-pie in his hand"]
The affair proved the sensation of the hour, and "Miss Hazy's husband" was the cynosure of all eyes. For one brief week the honeymoon shed its beguiling light on the neighborhood, then it suffered a sudden and ignominious eclipse.
The groom got drunk.
Mary was clearing away the supper-dishes when she was startled by a cry from Miss Hazy:
"My sakes! Lovey Mary! Look at Mr. Stubbins a-comin' up the street! Do you s'pose he's had a stroke?"
Lovey Mary ran to the window and beheld the "prominent citizen ofBagdad Junction" in a state of unmistakable intoxication. He wasbareheaded and hilarious, and used the fence as a life-preserver. MissHazy wrung her hands and wept.
"Oh, what'll I do?" she wailed. "I do b'lieve he's had somethin' to drink. I ain't goin' to stay an' meet him, Mary; I'm goin' to hide. I always was skeered of drunken men."
"I'm not," said Mary, stoutly. "You go on up in my room and lock the door; I'm going to stay here and keep him from messing up this kitchen. I want to tell him what I think of him, anyhow. I just hate that man! I believe you do, too, Miss Hazy."
Miss Hazy wept afresh. "Well, he ain't my kind, Mary. I know I'd hadn't orter marry him, but it 'pears like ever' woman sorter wants to try gittin' married oncet anyways. I never would 'a' done it, though, if Mrs. Wiggs hadn't 'a' sicked me on."
By this time Mr. Stubbins had reached the yard, and Miss Hazy fled. Lovey Mary barricaded Tommy in a corner with his playthings and met the delinquent at the door. Her eyes blazed and her cheeks were aflame. This modern David had no stones and sling to slay her Goliath; she had only a vocabulary full of stinging words which she hurled forth with indignation and scorn. Mr. Stubbins had evidently been abused before, for he paid no attention to the girl's wrath. He passed jauntily to the stove and tried to pour a cup of coffee; the hot liquid missed the cup and streamed over his wrist and hand. Howling with pain and swearing vociferously, he flung the coffee-pot out of the window, kicked a chair across the room, then turned upon Tommy, who was adding shrieks of terror to the general uproar. "Stop that infernal yelling!" he cried savagely, as he struck the child full in the face with his heavy hand.
Lovey Mary sprang forward and seized the poker. All the passion of her wild little nature was roused. She stole up behind him as he knelt before Tommy, and lifted the poker to strike. A pair of terrified blue eyes arrested her. Tommy forgot to cry, in sheer amazement at what she was about to do. Ashamed of herself, she threw the poker aside, and taking advantage of Mr. Stubbins's crouching position, she thrust him suddenly backward into the closet. The manoeuver was a brilliant one, for while Mr. Stubbins was unsteadily separating himself from the debris into which he had been cast, Lovey Mary slammed the door and locked it. Then she picked up Tommy and fled out of the house and across the yard.
Mrs. Wiggs was sitting on her back porch pretending to knit, but in truth absorbed in a wild game of tag which the children were having on the commons. "That's right," she was calling excitedly—"that's right, Chris Hazy! You kin ketch as good as any of 'em, even if you have got a peg-stick." But when she caught sight of Mary's white, distressed face and Tommy's streaming eyes, she dropped her work and held out her arms. When Mary had finished her story Mrs. Wiggs burst forth:
"An' to think I run her up ag'in' this! Ain't men deceivin'? Now I'd 'a' risked Mr. Stubbins myself fer the askin'. It's true he was a widower, an' ma uster allays say, 'Don't fool with widowers, grass nor sod.' But Mr. Stubbins was so slick-tongued! He told me yesterday he had to take liquor sometime fer his war enjury."
"But, Mrs. Wiggs, what must we do?" asked Lovey Mary, too absorbed in the present to be interested in the past.
"Do? Why, we got to git Miss Hazy out of this here hole. It ain't no use consultin' her; I allays have said talkin' to Miss Hazy was like pullin' out bastin'-threads: you jes take out what you put in. Me an' you has got to think out a plan right here an' now, then go to work an' carry it out."
"Couldn't we get the agency to take him back?" suggested Mary.
"No, indeed; they couldn't afford to do that. Lemme see, lemme see—" For five minutes Mrs. Wiggs rocked meditatively, soothing Tommy to sleep as she rocked. When she again spoke it was with inspiration:
"I've got it! It looks sometime, Lovey Mary, 's if I'd sorter caught some of Mr. Wiggs's brains in thinkin' things out. They ain't but one thing to do with Miss Hazy's husband, an' we'll do it this very night."
"What, Mrs. Wiggs? What is it?" asked Lovey Mary, eagerly.
"Why, to lose him, of course! We'll wait till Mr. Stubbins is dead asleep; you know men allays have to sleep off a jag like this. I've seen Mr. Wiggs—I mean I've heared 'em say so many a time. Well, when Mr. Stubbins is sound asleep, you an' me an' Billy will drag him out to the railroad."
Mrs. Wiggs's voice had sunk to a hoarse whisper, and her eyes looked fierce in the twilight.
Lovey Mary shuddered.
"You ain't going to let the train run over him, are you?" she asked.
"Lor', child, I ain't a 'sassinator! No; we'll wait till the midnight freight comes along, an' when it stops fer water, we'll h'ist Mr. Stubbins into one of them empty cars. The train goes 'way out West somewheres, an' by the time Mr. Stubbins wakes up, he'll be so far away from home he won't have no money to git back."
"What'll Miss Hazy say?" asked Mary, giggling in nervous excitement.
"Miss Hazy ain't got a thing to do with it," replied Mrs. Wiggs conclusively.
At midnight, by the dark of the moon, the unconscious groom was borne out of the Hazy cottage. Mrs. Wiggs carried his head, while Billy Wiggs and Mary and Asia and Chris officiated at his arms and legs. The bride surveyed the scene from the chinks of the upstairs shutters.
Silently the little group waited until the lumbering freight train slowed up to take water, then with a concerted effort they lifted the heavy burden into an empty car. As they shrank back into the shadow, Billy whispered to Lovey Mary:
"Say, what was that you put 'longside of him?"
Mary looked shamefaced.
"It was just a little lunch-dinner," she said apologetically; "it seemed sorter mean to send him off without anything to eat."
"Gee!" said Billy. "You're a cur'us girl!"
The engine whistled, and the train moved thunderously away, bearing an unconscious passenger, who, as far as the Cabbage Patch was concerned, was henceforth submerged in the darkness of oblivion.