AUNTIE MAY
Alwayswhen I think of Auntie May, I remember sunshine, and the wind blowing, and a lilac bush in purple bloom by the garden gate. We were standing there together, very quiet and confidential, she, tall and slim, and I a little girl who liked to cling to her hand. We had on our best white dresses, for it was Sunday, and her church service was white and violet, and mine was white and gold. We had parasols just alike, and we stood waiting until the first boom rang out from the big bell in the church tower far down the street.
"Now we will go," Auntie May said.
She opened the garden gate, and we passed out, very demurely.
It was seldom that I went into the big world; but when I did I enjoyed it so! The parasols cast a pleasant shade, and I had a big five-cent piece in my right hand that meant church, and another clutched tightly in my left that meant Sunday school. There were other family parties to be met on the street, elderly ladies carrying Bibles, and little girls and boys walking with careful precision, and down near where the big bell boomed there was another church which commenced after ours did where Burton Raymond played the violin. I could not remember when I had not known Burton Raymond and his violin, for they were one person.
"When Burton Raymond goes to bed," I had heard my mother say, "he always puts the violin to bed, too."
"In a bed, mother?" I demanded.
"No. In a box by his bed, wrapped in his pocket handkerchief, poor fellow."
It was after this time that Auntie May embroidered an oddly shaped velvet mat quite secretly. It had forget-me-nots on it, and when it was finished she tied it up in a beautiful white paper, and slipped it in the mail box down at the corner. And, once, months afterwards, when Burton Raymond played one evening at our house, he put his violin to bed in a velvet jacket just like the one which Auntie May had made.
We were great friends. When we met down by the church steps he would call to me, cheerfully.
"Good-morning, Rhoda."
"There he is, Auntie May!" I would cry. "Don't you see him? Look, Auntie May!"
Somehow, or other, although he never called to her, I always wanted her to see him, too.
He looked very pleasant in the bright sunshine. His hair was nicely brushed,and his shoes were blacked. There was a patch on his right elbow; but you could not see it unless you looked closely. There was something noble in the way in which he carried his dark head. Somebody, perhaps it was Norah, had told me that one of his ancestors had been a great lord, back in the days when the lords were crusaders, and I liked to think of Burton Raymond in chain armor killing people, recklessly. Little Dick and I used to act it out sometimes in the dark end of the hall. We killed a number of things there, Saracens, and lions, and tigers, and the rocking-horse, and little Trixie, and would come in quite breathless afterwards to the sitting room where the family sat in the lamplight. Sometimes we found them talking about Burton Raymond.
"Every time that I walk down our block I seem to meet Burton Raymond," my father grumbled, one evening. "It'sgetting to be a nuisance. Especially since May has been visiting here," he added, after a serious moment's pause.
"He passed the house fifteen times to-day," my mother said, quietly.
She said it with a blush, and then, suddenly, she made an impulsive dive at my father's hand and squeezed it.
"We were young ourselves once!" she cried.
"The lad hasn't a cent to bless himself with," grandmother demurred.
"But he has genius!" my mother cried again. "There is a great future opening before him. And when we were married we had very little, Robert. There was just one small twenty-five cent piece left after the wedding trip. Do you remember, Robert? And you spent it in flowers—for me! They were roses. I have some of them dried yet."
My mother's voice had sunk lower and lower, falling almost into a whisper, asit always did when she was greatly moved. Sometimes I used to fancy that my mother was not so clever as my father. He could add up sums for you, and tell you about the presidents, and who were the greatest generals in the world; but my mother knew quite different things, the kind that stay with you forever. To her life was a poem and a dream. She was her happiest when she could help somebody, so that for any one to be poor, and very unfortunate, was an open sesame to her heart.
I heard a good deal about Burton Raymond that night, and when I went to bed I asked a sudden question, staring with wide open eyes at my mother over the white coverlet.
"Mother, how poor is Burton Raymond?"
She was taking away the light; but she came back again.
"He is so poor," she said, dramatically,"that he lives in a garret room at Widow Denton's. It is quite a cold room, without a fire, and the bed is not soft like yours, Rhoda. He has a few books on the end of the shelf by his violin box. He plays whenever he can get a chance. Sometimes, perhaps, he is hungry! Yes, sometimes he is hungry!"
I shivered.
"But it's no sin to be poor, is it, mother?" I demanded, anxiously. "We can love people who are poor?"
She put down the light on the bureau before she answered me.
"Money never bought the real things of life," she said, slowly. "To be good and true is the greatest of all. It is sincerity that counts. And when we see some one very noble, and very poor, we must help them, and love them always. Yes, love them always!"
She gave me a sudden kiss, and took the lamp away.
I lay staring into the dark. I could see that garret room, and the violin on the shelf, almost I could see Burton Raymond walking around, very cold and poor, perhaps; but so lovable, yes, so lovable, that poverty seemed the very highest distinction. I made up a long story about him all by myself. He had a great fortune left him, and grew into a lord again, and married Auntie May long before I went to sleep.
But there was another side to the picture.
"It's the cheek that himself has to be coming after our young lady," Norah declared. "A lad out of a butter and eggs shop! Is it fitting for the likes of him to lift his eyes to her?"
"Who, Norah?" I asked, breathlessly.
She was washing clothes with her sleeves rolled to the elbow. First her hands went down into the water with a rush, and then they came up again, andshe rubbed something white on a board, amid a snowy froth of suds that was good to look upon. Norah was an authority on washing, and she was, also, an authority on love. Sometimes she would toss back the stray locks from her face, and sing as she scrubbed with a naïve abandon that would bring grandmother to the scene in a hurry:
"I'm jist siventeen,And I've niver had a beau."
Norah sang at the top of her strong voice accenting each line with great enjoyment.
"Is there any gint will have me?Ah, don't say no!"
The last phrase was coaxing in the extreme, and I might have been properly impressed if I had not known that Norah was quite old, twenty-five almost, and that down in the very bottom of her trunk there was the picture of a wild Irishlad whom she had loved and left in the old country. Sometimes I used to dream that he would come to America, too, and get rich notwithstanding his wildness, and find Norah out, and, just suppose, he might make a great lady out of her! Life was full of such glorious possibilities in those days!
But to go back to the story.
"Why it's Burton Raymond," Norah explained, in disconnected jerks. "And his uncle keeps the shop. A small, dark shop with eggs in the window. And there's mice under the counter, the freshest mice that I've iver seen. It's like household pets that they be! And Burton waits on the customers. And at night he fiddles to himself. But there's no money in fiddling. Sure I knew a lad in Ireland wance that fiddled for tuppence a night. And he died of starvation, and wint to glory, rest be to his sowl."
She stopped to hold up a small wet garment with indignant hands.
"How did you iver git them black stains?" she demanded.
"I don't know, Norah," I answered, meekly.
After that I was divided in spirit about Burton Raymond. There was the part of me that gloried in the crusader, and even found something romantic in starvation, and the other part that winced at the butter and eggs shop.
The lovers were very pretty to watch. Burton Raymond went up and down our street a great many times every day, and Auntie May always seemed to be out in the garden looking at the flowers. She was growing tall herself, like one of the plants. All her soft hair was gathered upon the top of her head, and she never ran about as she used to do. She had forgotten how to be a little girl. She changed her dress a greatmany times a day, and she bought a band of velvet ribbon to wear around her throat, and sometimes she would catch me in a dark corner, and hug me, rapturously.
"The saints preserve me from iver being in love!" Norah cried, shaking her head. "What will the owld gintlemin say? And the owld lady?"
The old gentleman was my granddad Lawrence, who lived around the corner in a big house that outshone ours as the sun does the moon. There were more flowers there and more trees, and a fat horse in the stable that drew a little dog-cart about the streets of our town, and best of all there was a fountain in the garden, where two little iron boys stood under an iron umbrella, and watched the birds that came to take their baths in the pool at their feet. Just now, however, the house was all closed up, granddad and grandmother were away, the fountain inthe garden was quite choked and dusty, and the birds had found another place to bathe.
Grandmother Lawrence was my worldly grandmother, and when she was at home we tried to live in as good style as possible that she might be pleased with us. Always it had been a sorrow to her that my mother had married a poor man, and she was quite resolved that no such catastrophe should happen to Auntie May.
"I would rather see May dead," I have heard her declare dramatically, "yes, dead at my feet, than married to a poor man!"
She never said this when my father was around; but he knew as well as the rest of us that Auntie May was destined for great things.
She was so pretty, Auntie May was. Sometimes she let me stay in her room when she did her hair before the glass,and I would handle its soft lengths fondly.
"Auntie May," I asked once, peeping over her shoulder into the mirror, "may I be your bridesmaid?"
First she flushed up and laughed, and then she leaned back in the chair, and gazed at me, wretchedly.
"Rhoda," she said, "I am the most miserable girl in the whole world!"
That was the day that grandmother and granddad Lawrence came home, and there was a stir all through their big house and our little one, and Auntie May was back in her own room, surrounded by all the pretty things that were particularly hers. She looked around it, consideringly. There were roses on the carpet, and roses on the big arm-chairs, and roses climbed up the walls and fell in festoons about the ceiling. There was a white fur rug in front of the fire-place, and a silver glitter onthe bureau. Auntie May looked at it all in quite a discontented fashion.
"I like things plainer," she said, plaintively.
Her lip trembled.
"I'd like a garret—and bare floors—and music!" she cried.
"What is that about music?" grandmother Lawrence questioned, coming in the door.
She had a string of pearls in her hand, and she fastened it around Auntie May's throat as she spoke. It was a present brought from abroad.
"There, child," she said, not unkindly, "wear your pearls and be happy, and don't let us have any more of this nonsense."
"Nonsense!" Auntie May exclaimed.
"Yes, nonsense," grandmother Lawrence repeated, coldly.
Auntie May's eyes flashed.
"Do you think you can pay me togive him up?" she asked, in growing indignation. "Do you think that I care about pearls? Do you think that I care about anything—but just him?"
She had risen to her feet, and was confronting grandmother.
"Let me be happy in my own way," she pleaded, with soft appeal. "Mother, let me be happy!"
I thought that for just a moment grandmother weakened; but it was only for a moment.
"Happy with a beggar!" she retorted. "Never!"
The pearls went down on the floor in a sudden shower.
"Then I'll never be happy in all my life!" Auntie May answered, in a broken voice.
After that it seemed as if there was a heavy cloud over the whole family. We were none of us as cheerful as we used to be, not one, and people spoke in whispersas they do when some one is very sick. And Auntie May cried! She cried until her pretty eyes were red, and all her soft hair was tousled and damp from much mourning. And my mother cried with her. It was a terrible time.
We children had talked the matter over among ourselves, and we all sided with Auntie May. Every night little Dick prayed an extra clause to his long prayer. It came right after the place where he prayed for puppies.
"Please, God, let me have two puppies," he asked, in a loud, decided tone. "One brown one, and one white one with brown spots and a brown tail. And, please, God, bless Auntie May, and send her a new beau."
One night he made another announcement.
"Please, God, you needn't bother about Auntie May's beau. When I grow up I'll marry her myself."
"You shan't!" little Trixie cried, in sudden wrath, from the next crib. "When I grow up I'm going to marry hermyself."
She bounced in her bed.
Dick answered her from his knees. He looked like an angel as he knelt there in his nightgown, with his fair curls falling about his flushed face.
"Girls can't marry girls," he explained, scornfully.
"They can!" Trixie screamed.
"They can't!" Dick roared.
He picked up one of his little shoes by the side of the bed, and threw it at Trixie. There was an immediate wail from the next crib. Dick was always a good shot.
"Oh, children, children!" my mother cried, in despair. "Dick, go to sleep this moment. Trixie, Trixie, dear, you are not really hurt."
"But her feelings are, mother," I protested.
I knew that the littlest things hurt just as much as the big.
My mother settled down, disconsolately, in her rocking chair, with a small, weeping burden in her arms, and rocked and sang.
"This is a dreadful family," she said, in between verses. "There is always a fuss."
As for Dick he made one more triumphant discovery before he finally subsided for the night.
"Girls are soft things," he declared, jealously, from his crib. "They are! They are!"
"Dick!" my father called from downstairs, "you stop that!"
Which settled the subject for the time being.
There was just one person in the family who was not upset, and that was my grandmother Harcourt. She read her Bible as usual, and watched us withgrave eyes. She watched grandmother Lawrence buying pretty dresses by the dozen for Auntie May, and scolding violently, because they were not worn, and she watched granddad going about, with a perplexed face and a heavy heart, and even my own father laboriously concocting funny stories at which nobody laughed. When grandmother spoke her remarks were oracular.
"Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder," she said, with dignity.
And one day when things were at their very worst, and Auntie May had come to our house, "to cry in peace," as she said, grandmother Harcourt laid a small white note in her hand.
"Go out in the garden, dear," she said, impressively. "Behind the lilac bush. Quick!"
Away flew Auntie May, and I after her.
Now behind the lilac bush was my own particular domain. It was where I made my little mudpies in beautiful clam shells, and once I had had a caterpillar colony there, all pretty brown and yellow ones, and some few with neat tufted backs and red whiskers. And Jeremiah John, the wandering turtle, lived there. But no grown-up person ever ventured behind the lilac bush, so it was a surprise to find Burton Raymond, with cobwebs on his coat and a pale face, waiting for us.
"You!" Auntie May cried.
She said it almost in a shriek. She put her arms about him and clung to him.
"You!" she said again, with infinite content.
They didn't appear to mind me in the least, and they nearly killed Jeremiah John, who had gone to sleep in the sun.
Burton Raymond had seemed frightened at first; but when he saw howAuntie May cried and clung to him, his head went up, and his eyes grew dark, and he looked every inch a crusader. They talked together in whispers. He was persuading her to do something.
"Oh, no, no!" she cried.
She looked down at her clothes.
"What! In this dress!" she exclaimed, hotly.
He whispered again, and little by little she stopped shaking her head, and grew a trifle rosy and confused, and, at last, it seemed to me that she said, "yes." It must have been something very terrible to which she had agreed, for she faltered afterwards, and had to be encouraged some more. Then she picked a bunch of the lilacs and pinned it in her belt, and they went on toward the gate together. Her hand was on the latch before she remembered me.
"Oh, there's Rhoda!" she said.
Her eyes questioned mine, anxiously.
"Will you come, too, Rhoda?" she asked.
Somehow I felt that she would be glad to have one of the family with her, so I went.
Of course I knew that it was an elopement. Auntie May was running away, just like a princess in a fairy tale! I knew whole pages and pages of fairy tales, and I had always liked the ones best where the princess ran away; but I had never expected to be in a fairy tale myself. The sun was so bright, and the air was golden with mystery. The gate shut with a soft click. I felt that it would never betray us. It was very exciting afterwards. We turned around a corner, and there was a horse and buggy waiting for us in quite a magical fashion, and in a moment we were in and off.
"Oh, make him go fast, Burton," Auntie May prayed.
She was frightened again.
"Oh, make him go very fast!" she cried.
The houses whisked past us. The people in the streets looked at us, strangely, and one old man, a lifelong friend of my grandfather's, ran out to the curb, and held up his cane, imperatively, for us to stop. On we went, with a clatter and a bounce, right through the town, and out into the quiet country beyond, where there were daisies in the fields, and cows to regard us with astonishment, and dogs to bark as we went along. We were all quite pale by now, I fancy, and wild-eyed. At least the prince and the princess were, and they held hands as if they had been lost and had found each other. And, then, away off in the distance I saw the steeple of a tiny church. It grew taller and taller.
Always when I had thought of beingAuntie May's bridesmaid, I had expected to wear a white dress and carry flowers, and walk right down the aisle with all the golden and red and blue ladies in the church windows watching me; but now when the time came I concluded that I liked this new way best of all. The minister was out in his front yard when we drove up, and I thought that he looked at our bridal party rather pityingly. And I also thought that he considered us a joke. We walked up to him trembling, and stood about the bed which he was digging.
"We'd like to be married, sir," Burton announced, awkwardly.
The minister regarded us all through big, benevolent, silver-rimmed spectacles. He left off his digging to smile at us. He had a geranium in one hand, and a shovel in the other.
"I thought you were a christening party," he said.
He pointed his shovel at me.
"Who's that?" he demanded, beaming.
"I'm the bridesmaid," I told him.
Then I felt a sudden confidence in him. I pulled at his sleeve.
"They're running away," I confided, anxiously. "Won't you marry them? If you don't poor Auntie May will never be married at all!"
"We've only got a few moments' start, sir," Burton explained, breathlessly. "There's a carriage after us. Listen!"
Far in the direction of town we could hear the sound of coming wheels. While we listened they seemed to redouble their speed.
"Oh, if you'd please hurry, sir!" Auntie May begged, in a panic. "They'll take me home again! I know they will. Oh, what shall I do! What shall I do!"
She looked about with wild eyes as though for somewhere to hide.
The minister himself seemed to catch fire a bit at that, and he did hurry. He had us all in the parsonage parlor in a moment, and went off upstairs calling for "Dora." He was back again immediately in his surplice, with his wife following him, and there, standing before a sunny window, the wilted lilacs still pinned in her belt, Auntie May became Mrs. Burton Raymond.
She looked so pretty! Her eyes were full of tears, and her cheeks were pink. She trembled a little still from agitation. After it was all over she turned to Burton, and held out her hands to him in a frightened way.
"You'll be good to me?" she questioned.
"Good!" Burton cried, with his arms about her.
He looked as if he could dare the whole world in her defense.
"If he isn't he'll have to answer to me," the minister declared, stoutly.
"And to me!" another voice cried, irately, and there was granddad Lawrence stalking, unexpectedly, into the room.
He was very much out of breath, and very angry. I don't believe that I ever saw granddad Lawrence so angry before. For one moment I thought that he was going to shake Burton; but after a bit he calmed down, and we all went home together, the bridal couple in their buggy in advance, and granddad and I behind in the dog-cart. Granddad seemed very sorrowful, and, at last, he unburdened his mind to me.
"This is all very well, Rhoda," he said, in a rueful fashion. "But who's going to break the news to your grandmother!"
He took off his hat, and rumpled uphis gray hair until it stood up like quills all over his head.
"Who's going to tellher?" he asked, blankly.
It worried us both all the way home; but the question was settled in quite an unexpected manner, for it was grandmother Harcourt who went to tell grandmother Lawrence. She put on her best black silk, and her lace veil, and her cameo pin, and she held up her head very high in the air as she went out of the front gate.
"I shall tell her a few wholesome truths," she said, determinedly. "I shall speak as woman to woman."
"It is really not so bad after all," my father told my mother. "They talk of a concert tour for the boy, and he comes of a good old family, if ithasfallen on evil times."
He paused for a moment, his eyes searching the future.
"And if your father runs for mayor—I don't say that he will, but if he should be persuaded to run—why, that story would bring him in a great many votes. It's so pretty and romantic. All the world loves a lover you know."
My mother sighed blissfully, and motioned to him to peep in the parlor door.
There in the darkest corner sat Auntie May and Burton Raymond on a sofa together. They sat and looked at each other for hours and hours and hours.
THE GREEN DOOR
"Ofall the childer I've iver seen he's the worst," Norah cried. "He's as sharp as tacks, and as bad as a young magpie."
She had come into the sitting room, and stood regarding my mother at her sewing.
"What is the matter, Norah?" my mother demanded, anxiously.
"It's Dick, ma'am. What else should it be? Ain't I been after making a grand gingerbread for your lunch? And ain't he under your own bed this blessèd moment?"
She paused for breath, almost crying, and wringing her hands.
"He's eating the whole of it!" she exclaimed.
"What, a whole gingerbread?" my mother repeated, evidently startled.
"Yes, ma'am. I've been poking at him with a broom; but it's no use."
There was a quick procession up to my mother's room, my mother leading it, with her head thrown up in wrath, then little Trixie and I hand-in-hand, and Norah following behind us to see justice done. The room was dark and orderly; but there was a curious shuffling sound under the bed.
"Dick!" my mother cried. "Come out of there! Dick! Do you hear what I say? Richard!"
When my mother said "Richard" things were apt to be pretty serious.
Little Dick crawled out from under the bed very reluctantly. He was red and sticky; but he had a happy expressionas if he had been having rather a good time. He brought a tin plate with him, and it was quite empty. There was not even so much as a crumb in it. My mother looked at him in horror, and grandmother, who had been attracted by the noise, looked at him, too, over my mother's shoulder, with strong disapprobation.
"If he were my son," she said, distinctly, "I'd give him a good thrashing. He richly deserves it."
It was a dreadful moment. Little Trixie and I stared at the scene fascinated, while my mother wavered between justice and mercy. When she finally spoke her voice was very cold and severe.
"I don't know what I ever did to have such a son," she said. "After this I am not going to be his mother any longer. I shall call him Master Richard, as if he were a stranger, andhe shall call me Mrs. Harcourt. Nothing else."
Trixie and I held each other closer. It was a terrible sentence. To be a stranger in one's own home! And not to have any mother! Little Dick's red, childish cheeks paled, and he looked frightened. He made a hurried movement forward, and caught hold of my mother's dress.
"Oh, mother!" he cried, beseechingly.
"Go away, Master Richard," she commanded. "I am not your mother."
"Oh, please, Mrs. Harcourt," Dick wailed. "Oh, please, Mrs. Harcourt, let me call you mother!"
But my mother was inexorable. She pushed away his hands, and walked out of the room, leaving him behind. They all went away, she, and grandmother, and Norah, and even little Trixie. I was the only one who remained.
I was very sorry for Dick, and I wanted to hug him badly. But I did not quite dare. Dick never liked anybody to hug him, and it was very seldom that he cried. He dug his fists into his eyes for a moment, and then he took them away, and looked at me, gloomily.
"All right," he said. "If she ain't my mother I ain't her little boy!"
Then he walked into the next room which was his own, and went down into the bottom bureau drawer, and got out a box with a red lining. In it was his Waterbury watch. That was the most valuable thing that Dick possessed. He always took it to bed with him at night, and he wound it up in the mornings, and sometimes, when he didn't mean to play very hard, sometimes he wore it. He put it on now, and he put two clean handkerchiefs in his pocket, and his knife, and a red ball, and the knob off the machine drawer, and two rubberbands, and a wish-bone, and the little box out of a doll that makes her cry, and the stopper of a cologne bottle. And he opened his missionary box, and fished out ten pennies,—the ones which he was saving to educate a native child in India. When I saw that I knew that things were very serious. I went up close to him and touched him.
"Dick," I said. "Dick! What are you going to do? Oh, Dick!"
I said it timidly, for although little brother Dick was only six, and I was nine, he was nearly as big as I was. And he was always masterful. But he didn't repulse me this time, so I kissed him on his ear, and rubbed my head against his shoulder, just to let him know that I loved him. Somehow I thought that he would like to be loved just then. And wonder of wonders he rubbed back!
"When I come home—" Dick said. "When I'm a rich man, sister, I'll buy you some nice things. I'll buy you some candy, and a pretty dress. And I'll buy you some guinea-pigs! I guess you'd like to have some guinea-pigs, wouldn't you, sister?"
I didn't care a rap for guinea-pigs, but I nodded at him just to comfort him. I felt that I should like an elephant if Dick bought it.
"And we'll build a nice house for them in the backyard," Dick went on, evidently cheering up at the prospect. "Under the walnut-tree. And there'll be fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers, and little weany, weany ones, all white and pink!"
"But where are you going, Dick?" I demanded.
His face fell.
"I'm going through the Green Door," he said, doggedly.
"Oh!" I breathed, in alarm.
Now there was a long, high fence behind our house where the morning-glory vines climbed up and still up, and then fell in beautiful showers of purple and pink blossoms, and just in the very center of the fence where the vines were the thinnest there was a door,—a bright, green door, with a massive lock, and a huge key, and two great iron hinges. None of us children knew what lay on the other side; but there was something secret-looking about that door, as if it might lead into Bluebeard's house, or out into fairy lanes and meadows. Once, a good while ago, little Dick had climbed up to the top and looked over. Then he came down again in a scramble.
"What did you see, brother?" I quavered.
"The black people!" he replied, in a whisper.
He caught hold of my apron, andwe both stood listening. It seemed to me that I could hear some one singing in the distance, a queer, elfish sort of a song, and once a step passed along outside the gate,—a loitering step.
"Run, sister, run!" Dick cried.
He caught me by the hand in sudden panic, and we both fled back to the house together, and we never went near the Green Door for whole days and days.
I remembered all this now, and I felt sorry for Dick. I think that Dick felt sorry for himself, for he looked around the bedroom almost wistfully when he went away. And he didn't slide down the banisters as he usually did, but walked downstairs, step by step, very slowly, and paused by the sitting room door. My mother was talking inside in quite a happy fashion. There was the buzz of the sewing-machine, and a murmur of conversation between her andgrandmother, and once when she came to the end of a seam, once the machine stopped, and my mother laughed. When Dick heard that he went on down the hall with his head up; but he came to a halt in the dark corner to hug the hobby-horse, and he cut off a bit of its white mane, and put the piece carefully away in his pocket. Dick was always very fond of the hobby-horse.
"Good-bye, old fellow, good-bye," he said. "Don't forget me, Alcibiades."
Alcibiades pranced a little, but he did not say anything.
I was the one who spoke. I had been feeling pretty bad for sometime; but now I couldn't stand it any longer. To see dear little brother Dick go out into the world alone! Never to have any brother any more! I threw my arms about him from the other side of the hobby-horse.
"Dick," I cried, tearfully. "Oh,please, Dick, don't go away! Take me with you, won't you, Dick?"
"Will you go, too, sister?" Dick demanded, eagerly.
I nodded at him.
"We won't never come back," he cautioned.
I stole a look down the hall, the dear, familiar hall.
"All right, Dick," I said, with a gulp.
Nobody noticed us as we slipped down the path to the Green Door, not even Norah, who was singing in the kitchen. The hinges squeaked, and the gate came open with a rumble. It almost seemed as if my mother must know! We pulled it to behind us in a hurry, and stepped out into the world. We held each other tight.
It was very different on the other side of the wall from our side. There were no flowers there, and no vines. There was a street with small, meanhouses, and great piles of clam shells, and a goat or two running about at a distance, and some very dirty ducks going home in single file. Away down the square there was a great red building, with smoke pouring out of its many chimneys, and here and there walking about the street, and standing at the doors, were the black people—not black in any true sense of the word, but grimed with the smut of those who labor in iron works.
It was a dreadful place. We stood outside the gate, flattened against the fence, looking into the street, and afraid to venture any farther.
Almost, however, in the first moment we found a friend. She was quite a small woman, with an anxious expression, and she gazed at us in a hungry way. She had an old plaid shawl drawn loosely over her head, and a little bundle of shoe-strings dangled from her hand.She had the prettiest, brightest red cheeks that I had ever seen, and her hair was a wonderful yellow color, like a doll's. But somehow there was something about her that I did not quite like.
She had been walking along the street, but when she saw us she stopped suddenly.
"How do you do, ma'am?" she said. "And how do you do, master?"
We clung together a little tighter, and answered her politely.
"Pretty well, I thank you," we said in a chorus, just as our mother had taught us to do to strangers.
"Wouldn't you like to take a little walk with me?" she asked, pleasantly. "Just a block or two? To see my house? And my little girl?"
We were not dressed to go visiting. I had on a brown gingham apron to play in, and Dick had on one, too, overhis knickerbockers. I began to tell her about it, but she cut me short.
"As if that mattered!" she cried. "My God! And my baby! Come, dears. Come! My little girl is sick. It would be a Christian charity to come to see her."
She looked at us almost beseechingly.
"Oh, what can I say to get them to come!" she exclaimed, in a piteous fashion.
Dick unclasped my hand and went up to her sturdily.
"I'm not afraid," he said. "I'll go with you. Come, sister."
Of course if Dick went I had to go, too, for he was the smaller. I started with a reluctant step.
"That's the little lady!" the woman cried, exultingly.
Our way lay down the block, and then straight away to the right through a network of dirty lanes where thehouses were crowded together, leaning up against one another as though for support. In some places the rain had dripped from the roofs into sloppy pools on the ground, and the path was rough with fallen bricks and mortar. The woman was very careful of us. She showed us the cleanest way, and when the goats came too near she stood in between them and us, and shooed them off. And, at last, we came to a house, old and battered, with very rickety front steps and windows stuffed with rags; that was her home.
There was a stout woman going up the steps with a pail of soapy water in her hand who stopped to regard us.
"Where did you get them kids, Becky Dean?" she demanded.
"That's my business," our new friend cried, fiercely.
She seemed to bristle with rage.
"Well, I hope there's no harm init," the other replied, curtly, continuing on her way.
We went up and up three flights of long, shaky steps to a little room under the eaves. It was very dark there,—so dark that at first I did not notice a bed in a dim corner, and a child lying on it looking at us with a pair of beautiful large eyes. She did not say a word, but just lay and looked and looked.
The woman sat down on the bed, and gathered the child to her tenderly.
"See what I've brought you," she said, almost in a whisper, her cheek pressed close against the cheek of the child. "See the nice little lady and gentleman come to play with you. Come to play with my own little Amy. Ain't you pleased with your mama, Amy? Ain't they nice?"
The child lay and looked at us, and, at last, very slowly, she smiled. Dick and I were both very bashful, but wesmiled back at her from where we stood by the side of the bed. The mother seemed greatly relieved. She hunted about under her faded shawl, and brought out some sticks of candy, the kind that taste of peppermint, and have beautiful red streaks that run zigzag around them. She generously gave each of us one, and one to the child. We all sucked in happy unison. But the child soon tired. The stick of candy rolled out of her hand, unregarded, and she lay back upon her mother with a faint, wailing cry.
"Maybe she could play a game, if you know one," the mother urged, anxiously. "Oh, for the love of heaven, think of a game!"
"I know 'Little Sallie Waters,'" Dick declared, speaking for the first time.
So Dick and I played "Little Sallie Waters" together. It was hard work,there being only two of us, but we went around and around in a solemn circle, and sang the words earnestly, and when we came to the lines,