← catalogue

Aunt Jimmy's Will

by Mabel Osgood Wright · English · Gutenberg #42437 · 351,128 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Aunt Jimmy's Will
    
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
at www.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: Aunt Jimmy's Will

Author: Mabel Osgood Wright

Illustrator: Florence Scovel Shinn


        
Release date: March 30, 2013 [eBook #42437]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/42437

Credits: Produced by eagkw, Greg Bergquist and the Online Distributed
        Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
        produced from images generously made available by The
        Internet Archive/American Libraries.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AUNT JIMMY'S WILL ***

  AUNT JIMMY'S WILL




  [Illustration]




  [Illustration: "_'Hem!' The lawyer cleared his throat._"
                                                       (See p. 52.)]




  AUNT JIMMY'S WILL

  BY

  MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT

  AUTHOR OF "BIRDCRAFT," "WABENO THE MAGICIAN,"
  ETC., ETC.

  _ILLUSTRATED BY
  FLORENCE SCOVELL SHINN_

  New York
  THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
  LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
  1903

  _All rights reserved_




  COPYRIGHT, 1903,
  BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

  Set up, electrotyped, and published October, 1903.

  Norwood Press
  J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
  Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.




  [Decoration]

  To my God-child

  MARY ELIZABETH MILLER

  [Decoration]

  "_Aim at the highest, and never mind the money._"
                                    --L. M. ALCOTT.

  [Decoration]




CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                          PAGE
      I. RED PINEYS                   1

     II. HER UNCLE JOHN              23

    III. AUNT JIMMY                  38

     IV. A CAGED BIRD                58

      V. MRS. LANE PLAYS DETECTIVE   77

     VI. BIRD'S COUSINS             103

    VII. SUMMER IN NEW YORK         131

   VIII. THE FLOWER MISSIONARY      146

     IX. 'RAM SLOCUM'S TAUNT        162

      X. LAMMY CONSULTS OLD LUCKY   181

     XI. THE PEWTER TEA-POT         202

    XII. THE TUG OF WAR             217

   XIII. TELLTALE TROUSERS          225

    XIV. THE FIRE-ESCAPE           242

     XV. THE BIRD IS FREED         258




ILLUSTRATIONS


  "'Hem!' The lawyer cleared his throat" (p. 52)        _Frontispiece_

                                                                  PAGE
  "Bird crouched in a black heap"                                    8

  Bird, Lammy, and Twinkle                                          13

  "'Buy something to-day? Nice goots ver' cheap'"                   99

  Bird and Billy on the fire-escape                                137

  "'They ain't fer me, fer sure?'"                                 158

  "'It means, Lammy Lane, that the Lord don't forget the orphan'"  230

  "Bird was found at last"                                         267




Aunt Jimmy's Will




I

RED PINEYS


Bird O'More crouched in a little black heap in the corner of the sofa
that stood between the closed windows in the farmhouse sitting room. Her
eyes, that looked straight before her, yet without seeing anything, were
quite dry; but her feverish cheeks, that she pressed against the cool
haircloth, and the twisting of her fingers in the folds of her gown,
told of grief, as well as her black frock and the closed blinds.

Outside the house, in the road, half a dozen country teams were hitched
to the rickety fence, while their owners roamed about the yard, talking
in low voices, and occasionally wondering aloud "when the women folks
would be ready to go home."

But the women folks had no idea of going yet, and small wonder, for they
had come from a funeral that had made poor Bird an orphan; they had much
to discuss, and without them, also, she would be all alone at the farm
that lay on a straggling cross-road a mile from neighbours, as if it,
like its recent owners, had tried to hide from those who had known it in
better days.

The little girl had been christened Bertha, after her grandmother, but
as, from the time she could speak a word, she was always singing, her
father had called her "Bird." Yet this day the little bird in her throat
was mute and only made a strange fluttering; so that the neighbours,
talking in whispers as they drank the tea that a stout, rosy woman, who
seemed to be in charge, was serving in the kitchen, said, "Poor child,
if she'd only let go and cry it out natural, it would do her good; but
that dry sobbing is enough to break a body's heart."

Then, as she gradually grew quiet, dulled by fatigue and the heat of the
room, her head sliding down on her arm in heavy sleep, they drew sighs
of relief and their voices arose in chat about the happenings of the
last few days and the natural question as to what was to become of Bird.

"Hasn't she got any folks either side?" asked a young woman who had but
recently moved into Laurelville, and did not yet know the comings and
goings and kith and kin of her neighbours.

"Only her father's half-brother," spoke up the rosy woman, Mrs. Lane by
name, "and he lives way down in New York City. Joshua wrote him ten days
back when Mr. More took sick; but he never answered, so two days ago
he wrote again. Joshua says he guesses maybe they've moved, for folks
are awful restless down in York, and shift around as often as every few
years--says he reckons you have to if you're anybody, cause there's
sudden fashions in buildings down there as well as in clothes, and they
get made over frequent to keep in style, likewise the streets.

"Yes, I wouldn't even have known his name if Mis' More hadn't told me
about him before she died, two years back. You see," turning to Mrs.
Tilby, the newcomer, "she was Sarah Turner, born and raised over at the
Milltown, and, being an only child, was give her own head a good deal. I
must allow she was pretty, and had those big black eyes that you can't
guess what they're seeing, same as Bird's got. Her folks felt dreadful
bad when she wouldn't take up with any of the solid fellers who would
have taken pride in the farm and mill business, but married young O'More
that nobody knew a speck about, except that he claimed to be an artist,
but folks didn't buy his pictures, and I don't wonder, for there's some
up attic now, and you have to stand way back to even see a shape to 'em,
being not near as clear as those that come extry with the Sunday papers.

"No, Mis' Slocum, I _don't_ take Sunday papers, on 'count of Joshua's
aunt's husband being deacon, and not desirin' to call trouble on the
family; but if he wasn't I would, for besides them pictures an' readin'
an' advertisements, that wonderful they'd raise curiosity in froze
dough, there's your money's worth o' paper for carpet linin' or kindlin'
over and above.

"Where was I? Mis' Slocum, you shouldn't 'a' set me off the track, so's
I'm not giving Mis' Tilby a clear idee of how it was.

"Ah, yes, I remember,--his wall pictures not sellin', he got a job
to paint posies and neat little views the size of your hand on the
inside covers of sewin'-machine boxes and trays and work-tables over in
Northboro. It paid first-rate, I guess, for a spell, so after the old
folks died, they sold out the farm and mill and moved into town.

"When Bird here was five years old or so, O'More had a knock-down, for
they got some kind of a machine in the factory that could do pictures
quicker than he, and at the same time the folks that had bought the
place on a mortgage caved in, and, between havin' no sense themselves
and lawyers, most everything was ate up and mixed so's Mis' O'More lost
the mill and all, and they moved out here.

"Mis' More--folks round here never could swaller the O', it being the
sign, as it were, of a furrin race and religion--just drew in like a
turtle in a shell, losin' hope altogether, and never went any place.
And as for Terence,--that was him, Bird always callin' him 'Terry' like
he was her brother,--I suppose he was always what bustlin' folks like
us would call slack; but after he came here, he seemed to grow happy in
spite of the fact that only one shop, the work-box and the picture-frame
one, gave him jobs. He painted out his flowers as careful, no two
pictures alike, and when I said, 'Why don't you do one and copy it--it
would be less trouble,' he looked up sort of reproachful and said, 'It
makes me happy to do good work, Mrs. Lane; a machine can do the other
kind.'

"Mis' More fretted herself to death, dumblike, same as snow disappears,
and it's two years now that Bird and her father have made out to get
along alone. Once in a time old Dinah Lucky would come up and wash or
scrub a day, and he and Bird always was together, and he learned her
to be what I call a real lady, and never hurt anybody's feelin's, to
say poetry and write a fine hand, and draw out flowers so you'd know
'em right off. The s'lectmen went after him onct 'cause he'd never sent
the girl to school, but when they found she knew more'n the grammar
grade, they kept their hands off from her; and as for speakin',--since
she talked plain, she's spoke nicer, and chose her words better'n
anybody but story-books and the parson, which come natural, her mother
bein' well learned and her father havin' a tone of voice not belonging
in these parts. Never a cross word did he speak or a complaint, so I
guess it was true he was born a gentleman on one side, as poor Sarah
always claimed, and it stuck to him all through, too, for the day he
died he worried for troublin' me to draw him a cool drink, saying, 'The
well-sweep was out of repair,' which it was, Mis' Slocum, _awful_, 'and
too heavy for a woman to handle,' as if I wasn't always stronger than
two of him. But then I never was, and never will be, his kind of a lady,
for there's folks whose feelin's I'm just achin' to hurt if I knew a
sure way. And now to think of it, Bird left at only thirteen with no own
folks and little better'n nothing."

"Less than nothin', _I_ should say," put in Mrs. Slocum, setting her cup
in its saucer with an unnecessary clash, "for what's here won't pay Mr.
Slocum his back rent on the place and the fence rails of the south lot
that they've seemingly used for firin'. _I_ should say that the clothes
on the girl's back didn't fairly belong to her, mournin' and all.

"If she is only a little turned thirteen from what you say she has
schoolin' enough to pass for fourteen and get work in the factory. I'll
keep her if she'll help me evenings and she gets enough to pay full
board,--growin' girls eats hearty," and Mrs. Slocum settled back in her
chair, folding her arms as if she expected Mrs. Lane to be speechless at
her generosity.

Speechless she was for a few moments, but for a different cause--a
struggle between prudence and a quick but just temper--then she said
very slowly and distinctly: "Mis' Slocum, the back rent is not for me
to deny you, but the fence rails is and the few clothes the poor lamb's
wearin' also. There hasn't been any fence to that south lot since the
summer before my Sammy was born and I was there berryin' and noticed
the rails was rotted and fell, and that's fifteen years! As to clothes,
they was give her outside of the family, which was me, ma'am, made out
of those that belonged to my Janey and for her sake, and besides which a
minor child isn't liable for her father's debts, 'it bein' the law,' as
Joshua says, and he knows.

"I wouldn't have mentioned this in public, except some folks needs to
have witnesses around before they can take in things, Mis' Jedge o'
Probate Ricker bein' here makin' it quite suitable for me to testify.

"As for who'll take her, there's those that'll ask no board, but Joshua
says 'no one's got a right until the uncle either turns up or else
doesn't,' which I'd much prefer. And there'll be no talk of factory and
passin' her for above her age, Mis' Slocum, I bein' the niece-in-law to
a deacon, as I've said before, should feel called upon to testify and
give the truth a full airing."

Whatever action Mrs. Slocum would have taken, it was sidetracked by the
minister's wife, who, with a sharp warning cough and a hurried "s'h'ush,
she's awake," turned the attention toward the darkened room again.

Bird rubbed her eyes drowsily, then started up murmuring, "Yes, Terry,
I'm coming, I didn't mean to fall asleep," as if she fancied herself
called, stumbled toward the door, saw the kitchen full of people, while
the bright light and lilac perfume of the May afternoon came through the
open door. Then she remembered.

"Here, let me wash your face and freshen you up a bit," said Mrs. Lane,
whisking out a clean handkerchief and dipping it in the water bucket,
while at the same time she put her arm around Bird to cut off her
retreat. "Now, that is better. Just a sip of tea, dearie, and a bite,
and then go out and get a mouthful of air, while I open up the windows,
for it's sizzling in here if it does lack two days yet of almanac
summer."

[Illustration: "_Bird crouched in a black heap._"]

The child did as she was told, gave her friend one grateful look, and
slipped out the door without speaking, much to the relief of the others,
the minister's wife nodding caution to Mrs. Tilby who said: "Sakes
alive! she scart me silly, gropin' in that way. I do wonder how much she
heard."

Meanwhile as Bird disappeared around the house a tall boy, carrying a
big bunch of red peonies, came up the track in the grass that served as
a path. It was Sammy, or Lammy Lane, as he was usually called, clad in
his best clothes and red with running, having only come to a full stop
as he reached the kitchen door, where he stood looking anxiously in, the
flowers clutched nervously in both hands.

"Lammy Lane, where've you bin, to go and miss the funeral and all, when
I started you out close after breakfast?" asked his mother, fiercely,
yet with an air of relief.

"Catchin' fish in the brook with his eyes, I reckon," said Mrs. Slocum,
with a glittering smile, which was very trying to Mrs. Lane, for Lammy,
the youngest of her three sons, was not esteemed over clever, in fact
a sort of village Johnny-Look-in-the-Air, always going to do something
that he never did, and lacking in courage to boot. In fact the twisting
of the name of Sammy into Lammy was really a slur upon his lack of sand
and the fighting spirit natural to the average boy.

It is perfectly true that Lammy at this time was not a beauty with his
tousled reddish hair, freckles, and lean colt's legs, but no one who was
a judge of faces could look in his straightforward gray eyes and at the
firm line of his chin without feeling that here was the makings of a
man, if people did not meddle with the plan God had for his work.

Lammy's eyes roved about, and, not seeing the object he wanted, answered
his mother slowly, as if it was hard to remember exactly where he had
been.

"I've been at Aunt Jimmy's most all day until now," he answered. "When
I took the butter down after breakfast, she wanted me to help her
fix up cause she didn't feel smart, 'n' then there was the chickens
to feed, and Jake he didn't go yesterday to spread the grass under
the strawberries, and she said if it rained, they'd spoil, so I did
that; 'n' then I ate dinner, 'n' dressed up again and started. Then
I remembered I told Bird I'd cut her some o' Aunt Jimmy's red pineys
for her to take along up there," nodding his head backward toward the
hillside graveyard.

"Aunt Jimmy's awful particular about those red pineys, and she wouldn't
let me cut 'em. She came out in the yard to do it herself, but it took
her a long while, and when she'd got them tied up, she said, 'Best go
to the house now for they'll be back, and tell your ma to come over
to-night, for somehow I feel all strange and worked up as if I was going
to have a spell,' and that's why I'm late, and where's Bird?" he ended
abruptly.

"Lammy Lane, do you mean that aunt is threatened with a spell, and
you've took all this time to tell me?" said Mrs. Lane, hardly believing
her ears.

"Neighbours, I'll have to close up here, Joshua bein' in charge,
as it were, as Mis' Jedge o' Probate Ricker understands, until a
'ministrator's fixed on, but we can meet to-morrow forenoon to wash up
and discuss the situation. Goodness me, I hope Aunt Jimmy's no more'n
overtired!"

"'Twouldn't be surprisin' if you was resigned to the worst, seein' your
expectations through being the favourite nephew's wife," said Mrs.
Slocum, slyly.

"Expectations, fiddlesticks!" snorted Mrs. Lane, "you know perfectly
well, Mis' Slocum, that the Lord and I are working together as hard as
we can to give Aunt Jimmy every breath of life that's coming to her,
and seein' that she enjoys it too, her ownin' the best southslope fruit
garden between Milltown and Northboro having nothing to do with it.

"Lammy, do you go round, and I guess you'll find Bird back of the shed,
and you can take her a walk to fetch the posies up yonder, and then
bring her down to our house for supper; and if I don't get back first,
the butt'ry key is in the kitchen clock, and you and pa can set out a
full table.

"Young company's best for the young in sorrow," she added to the group
as Lammy shot off.

"Yes, Mis' Slocum, those spoons is real silver, but biting 'em 'll
injure them new teeth o' yourn, and not profit you anything, for they're
_my_ spoons I fetched up for the funeral, minding how well the Turners
always set out things at such times in the old days."

With this parting shot Mrs. Lane shooed the women out and locked
the door, called Joshua from the group of men who were examining a
broken-down grindstone for lack of better occupation, climbed into the
old buggy, and disappeared in a cloud of dust, the others following
until they scattered at the four corners.

       *       *       *       *       *

As Mrs. Lane had said, Bird was behind the shed. She was sitting on an
old log, her face between her hands, as she looked across the fresh
green grass to where the ragged spiræas and purple and white lilacs
waved against the sky. Leaning against her knees was a queer little
rough-haired, brown terrier with unkempt, lopping ears, his keen eyes
intent on her face as if he knew that she was in trouble, and only
waited for some signal that he might understand to go to her aid, while
he vainly licked her hands to attract her attention.

As Lammy came around the corner suddenly, at first the dog gave a growl,
and then bounding toward the boy fairly leaped into his arms in joy,
for Twinkle, named for his keen twitching eyes, had once been Lammy's
best-beloved pup, that he had given to Bird for a companion.

"Hello, Twinkle, where've you been these days?" said the boy, holding
the flowers at arm's-length with one hand, while he tucked the little
dog between his shoulder and neck with the other. "Seems to me you've
got pretty thin wherever you've tramped to."

[Illustration: _Bird, Lammy, and Twinkle._]

"He hasn't been away," answered Bird, looking up; "he was hiding all the
time in Terry's--I mean father's room, and to-day, after they took _him_
away, he knew it wasn't any use waiting any longer, and he came out,
and Lammy, you--know--he's--all--I've--got--now," and, burying her face
in the terrier's ragged coat, she broke into a perfect storm of crying.

Lammy felt like crying, too, and in fact a tear rolled so far down on
his cheek that he had to struggle hard to lick it up, for Bird was his
dear friend, the only girl in the village who had never laughed at him
or called him "Nose-in-the-Air," or "Look-up-Lammy," and seemed to
understand the way in which he saw things. At first he looked around
helplessly, and then remembering that his mother had gone, and that he
must get Bird down to his home before supper-time, he blurted out: "Say,
don't you reckon Twinkle's pretty hungry by this? I guess we'd better
get him some feed down to my house, and you can leave these red pineys
over yonder as we go along if you like."

Lammy could not have done better, for Bird sprang up instantly, all the
pity aroused for the dog, and, turning toward the house, said: "How
selfish of me; we'll go in and get him something right away. Do you
think the people have gone yet? 'They mean kindly,' Terry used to say. I
must never forget that, but they talked so much I couldn't seem to bear
it."

"Yes, they've gone; mother wouldn't leave them behind 'cause of Mis'
Slocum," and he began to tell her about his Aunt Jimmy's ill turn and of
his delay in getting back with the flowers.

Bird listened quietly, and as they stood before the door of the silent,
empty house, a strange look crossed the girl's face that frightened poor
gentle Lammy, as she gazed straight before her and said: "Now I know
that I was not asleep this afternoon, only dull and faint, and that
what I thought was a dream was partly true. Terry _did_ owe rent to
Mrs. Slocum, and that was what he tried to tell me and couldn't when he
said there was only a little bit of money in the Centre bank to pay for
things, so that I must be sure and keep his paint-box and the pictures
in the big portfolio. The Slocums might try to take them. That's why
your mother made the people go and locked the door. Oh, Lammy, I haven't
any home or anything of my very own but Twinkle, but I could work and
learn to paint. Terry said I could and if everything gave out, I can
open the keepsake bag. See, I've got it now," and Bird pulled out a
small, flat, leather case, strongly sewed together, that hung close
around her neck on a thin gold chain.

"Do you know what's in it?" asked Lammy, fingering it curiously.

"No, but I think it's a piece of gold money; for it's round, though one
side is thicker than the other. Mother wore it, and then father put it
about my neck for me to keep, and he said his mother gave it to him when
he came away from home long ago."

As Bird stood looking at the house, the afternoon shadows began to
fall and a change came over her. That morning the thought of leaving
the place frightened her, but now the thing she most wanted was to get
away. "Lammy," she cried presently, "we must get those pictures and the
paint-box _now_; to-morrow the people may come back."

"But mother's taken the key."

"That doesn't matter, the cellar-door flap doesn't fasten--it never has
since I can remember--we can go in that way," and then Lammy, quaking
mightily, though he didn't know why, followed Bird into the house.

Love lights up many a dark, shabby room, and Bird had never been lonely
with her father for a companion, and in spite of his own shiftlessness
and poverty he had taught her much that she never would forget; but now
love had gone, and as she crept down the rickety stairs hugging the box,
Lammy stumbling after with the portfolio, her only desire was to go
somewhere, anywhere to get away, lingering only a moment in the kitchen
to collect some scraps of food for the dog. When they reached the porch,
they stopped to fasten the things together with some twine from Lammy's
pocket. The portfolio was full of flower pictures and some designs such
as wall-papers are made from. Bird turned them over lovingly, explaining
as she did so that a man in New York had written to Terry that if he
could do these well, he could earn money, and that he was only waiting
for spring flowers to begin. The letter was still in the portfolio.

"See," she said, "here is one of red peonies all ready to put the last
color in, and father was only waiting for them to bloom, but it is too
late now, so we will take them to him," and she took the bouquet from
Lammy, gently kissing each of the glowing flowers; and then they went
out of the yard in silence, Twinkle first, then Lammy with the bundle,
while Bird hesitated a moment; lifting the sagging gate she dragged it
to, fastened it to the post with the old barrel hoop that had replaced
the latch, and with one parting look shook the tears from her long
lashes and walked straight down the road. At the gate of the little
graveyard Lammy put down the bundle, and they went in together.

"See, I've made it look nice until dad can turf it over," said Lammy,
"and put a little Christmas tree for a head-mark," and sure enough the
mound that a few hours before was a heap of rough gravel was green
with young bayberry twigs and spruce branches, for on the upper side
of the hill had once been a great nursery of evergreens, the seed had
scattered, and the fragrant little Christmas trees had run all down the
hill and clustered in groups around the fence posts.

Kneeling very carefully, Bird arranged the crimson peonies. The country
folk thought only white flowers proper for such a place, but Bird loved
colour and Lammy's gift cheered her more than any words.

"Janey's close by here and grandma," said Lammy, presently, "so it
won't be a bit lonesome for your father, and I was hoping to-day that
he'd remember to tell Janey that you're going to be my sister now and
come down and live at our house, for she'll be glad that mother and I
won't be so lonesome as we've been at our home since she went to heaven.
'Cause you will stop with us, won't you?" he added earnestly as he saw
Bird hesitate. "Mother's going to fix it just as soon as she gets word
from your uncle. She didn't want to write, only dad said she'd ought to
because of the law or something."

"I'll always love you, Lammy," said Bird, slowly, the tears gathering
again, "and I never can like any place so much as this, and I'll never
forget to-day and the red peonies and your covering up the ugly stones,
but I've got to earn my living and I can't be a drag on anybody. I
thought, you know, if there was enough left to get to a city,--New York,
perhaps,--I might learn to paint quicker, and perhaps the man that
wanted Terry to make pictures for wall-paper might tell me how," and
then the poor child, tired and overcome with the long strain and the
new loneliness, could keep up no longer, and, throwing her arms about
Lammy's neck, sobbed, "Oh, take me somewhere out of sight, for I feel as
if I was all falling--way down a--deep--well."

Poor little Bird! All that she knew of the great city was from the
pictures in the papers and an occasional magazine, and it seemed to her
so big and gay and busy that there must be some place in it for her,
and now that night was coming, the country felt so empty and lonely to
the little girl, faint from weariness, and with the door of all the
home she had known closed upon her. For no one but Lammy had had time
to really comfort her, and in her unhappiness God seemed to have taken
her parents away and then hidden Himself. If only Aunt Jimmy had not
had the spell just then and she could have laid her head on Mrs. Lane's
motherly bosom, how different it might all have been. A carriage passed
as they turned into the highway, and the clanking of the harness made
Bird lift her head from Lammy's shoulder where she had hidden it, and
looking up she met the eyes of a young girl who was sitting alone on
the back seat of the handsome victoria. She was perhaps sixteen, or a
little over,--the braids of pale golden hair were fastened up loosely
behind,--and she was beautifully dressed; but it was not the clothes but
her sweet face and wistful big gray eyes that made Bird look a second
time, and then the carriage had passed by.

"How happy she must be," thought Bird.

"I'd rather walk than ride, and wear stubby shoes, or go barefoot, if I
only had a brother so that I need not go alone," was what the other girl
thought.

"That's Miss Marion Clarke that lives in the big stone house on the hill
before you come to Northboro," quoth Lammy. "There's only one of her,
and she can have everything she wants." Then he straightway forgot her.
Bird did not, however, for there was something in the gray eyes that
would not let themselves be forgotten.

By the time they reached the Lane farmhouse Bird was quiet again,
though her eyes drooped with sleep, and Lammy was telling eagerly how
next autumn they could perhaps go over to Northboro to school, for
drawing was taught there, and, he confided to Bird what had never before
taken the form of words, that he too longed to learn to draw, not
flowers, but machinery and engines, such as pulled the trains over at
the Centre.

As they came in sight of the house Lammy noticed that there was a
strange team at the gate, a buggy from the livery-stable at the Centre,
for quiet Lammy kept his eyes open, and knew almost every horse in the
county. On the stoop a short, thick-set man, with a fat, clean-shaven
face, and clad in smart black clothes, stood talking to Lammy's father.

Both men glanced up the road from time to time, and then Lammy noticed
that the stranger held his watch in his hand, and he kept fidgeting and
looking at it as if in a great hurry.

As the children entered the gate they heard Mr. Lane say, "Here she is
now, but you can't catch that evenin' train from the Centre; you'll have
to put over here until morning."

Bird gave a gasp and instinctively clutched Lammy's hand. Could this
be some one from her uncle? Of course it was not he himself, for her
father had been youngish, tall and slight, with fair hair, small feet
and hands, while this man was all of fifty, and had a rough and common
look in spite of his clothes that did not match his heavy boots and
clumsy grimy hands.

For a moment Bird forgot the story of her father's boyhood that he had
so often told her, forgot that fifteen years and a different mother
separated him from his half-brothers, and when Mr. Lane called her, as
she tried to slip in at the side door after Lammy, saying, "Come here,
Bird, this is your Uncle John O'More come from New York," she could only
keep from falling by an effort, and stood still, nervously twisting her
hands in the skirt of her black frock without being able to speak a
word, while Twinkle seated himself at her feet looking anxiously, first
at the stranger, then at Mr. Lane, with his head cocked on one side.




II

HER UNCLE JOHN


"Got a start? Didn't expect to see me here, did you? else maybe you
never knew you had an Uncle John," said the stranger, by way of
greeting, taking Bird roughly, but not unkindly, by the shoulders and
looking her full in the face. Then, noticing how pale she was and that
her eyes were red with crying, he let her go with a pat of his heavy
hand that shook her through and through, saying, half to her and half
to Mr. Lane, "Go along in now and get your supper. You look done up,
and I wouldn't object to a bite myself since I've got to hang around
over night; been chasing round after you since morning, and those
sandwiches I got at that tumble-down ranch at what they call the Centre
were made up of last year's mule-heel. They ain't gone further'n here
yet," he added, striking his chest that was covered by a showy scarf,
emphatically.

Bird began to breathe more freely to know he was going away in the
morning. Her father had told her in one of the long sleepless nights
of his illness about his two half-brothers, one in Australia, as far
as he knew, and the other in New York. Their mother had been a strong,
black-eyed, south-country lass, but his mother, the wife of his father's
later years, was a gentle, fair-haired, English girl, the governess in
the family to which his father was steward. At her death when he was a
lad of about fifteen, family differences arose, and he had gone to his
mother's people until he finally came to America with this brother John.

John was sturdy and coarse-grained; Terence delicate and sensitive.
They soon parted, and in the years between the artist had written
occasionally to his brother, but kept him in ignorance of his poverty.
Yet, in spite of knowing it all, Bird was bitterly disappointed in her
uncle. She built hopes about him, for did he not live in New York, and
there were schools where painting was taught in that magical city, also
the man lived there who wanted the wall-papers. Ah, if her uncle had
only been different, he might have asked her to visit him or perhaps
even have known the wall-paper man himself.

But this uncle seemed an impossibility and fairly repelled her, so that
to get out of his sight was all she desired. Presently she went into the
house, and, after carefully dusting her plain, little, black straw hat
and laying it on the sofa in the best room, she covered her new dress
with Mrs. Lane's gingham apron that hung on its usual peg and fell to
work at helping Lammy with the supper.

Now Bird was a clever little housewife while Lammy was very clumsy at
the work, so that in a few minutes they were both absorbed and chatting
quite cheerfully, never dreaming of the conversation that was going on
in the north porch. Only the white-curtained windows of the best room
could hear it, and they were shut tight.

"Now, Mr. Lane, since the youngster's gone in, I guess we might as well
get right down to business. I've shown you my papers and proofs, and
there's no special use rubbing it into her that her father was a dead
failure clear from the start, and that the sticks of furniture he left
and the few dollars banked or coming from his work 'll only square up
his accounts and leave the kid on the world, so to speak. I own I'm
clean flabbergasted myself, for I thought he was a man of some property
through his wife, for when he wrote, his letters were chuck full of high
ideas for the girl here."

Joshua Lane fidgeted miserably on the edge of his chair, and if ever a
man longed for the presence and ready tongue of his wife, it was he.

"I suppose that's one way o' lookin' at it," he assented after a while,
"but mebbe in some way he didn't flat out so much as it looks. He never
gave an ill word to any one, and Bird here's as smart and talkable and
writes a fist as good as the seminary principal over to Northboro, all
through his teachin', so no wonder she set a store by him. As to leavin'
the child on the world, she'll never feel the hurtin' edge of it while
mother and Joshua Lane's got roof and bite. I told O'More so, and I
reckon it eased him considerable."

"Smart, is she?" echoed the other; "that's a mercy. Girls have to get
a move on them nowadays in the city, and if they can't start in at
type-writing or something when they're sixteen or so, they get shoved
out of the race as leftovers by a new lot before they've earned their
ten a week. I've got a good job now, but I've had to hustle for it and
keep a lively step, too. That's why it goes hard to lose two days'
time on this business. I was mighty afraid when I saw what a forsaken
hole this was that the girl might be green as the grass, and n. g.
altogether. No, I didn't mean any offence," he said, as he noticed
Joshua's face flush at his reference to the pretty hillside village,
"but I've never had a use for the country. Give me streets with a push
of people and a lively noise and trolleys going by at night to remind
you yer alive, if you don't sleep straight through.

"Of course, knowing nothing of the circumstances before I left, I
couldn't quite fix a plan,--might have had to wait around and see to
that mill property if it hadn't vamoosed, but as it is, I don't see why
Bird shouldn't go right back with me to-morrow morning. I've got three
lively boys besides a poor little crippled feller,--them and the city
sights 'll cheer her up. It's different from what I thought to find, and
I don't owe Terry any favours of purse or tongue, but I've no girls, and
blood's thicker 'n water even though the English streak is heatin' to
an all-through Irishman,--but let that go. I'll give her some schooling
until she's fit age to choose her trade, or if she's tasty looking, get
in some good shop, and she can ease her way along meantime in minding
little Billy or helping the woman out. For I'd have you know that though
I've a good job, and there's always meat in the pot, we're plain people
of no pretence. I've money in a land company, though, that'll soon give
us our own home and not so far out either but what a gun would shoot
into the Bowery."

John O'More's speech poured out so rapidly that it almost stunned Joshua
Lane. When he pulled himself together, he gasped: "Did you say that you
calkerlate to take Bird away from us and to-morrow at that? I'll have
to go down to Aunt Jimmy's, I reckon, and call mother to onct," but as
he started from his chair "mother" appeared, coming up the road in the
buggy clucking vigorously to the old gray horse, excitement written in
every line of her homely, lovable face.

As she pulled up the horse at the gate, an entirely unnecessary labour
as for the past ten years he had never willingly gone past it, Joshua,
wearing a white, scared look upon his usually placid face, greeted
her with: "Sakes alive, Lauretta Ann, I'm wonderful put out; it never
rains but it pours; an' 's if there wasn't enough trouble for one
day, Bird's uncle, John O'More, has turned up. He's a rough, drivin',
quick-tongued sort o' chap, like the travellin' man that sold us the
horse-rake that had fits of balking and tearin' up the medder, and when
I complained, he said, says he, 'Why, certainly, I forgot it had the
plough combination,--I had oughter asked you an extry five on it.'"

"Nonsense, Joshua Lane, nobody's going to carry Bird off under our very
noses, uncle or no uncle; I'll soon settle that! But talking of pourin'
rain,--it's certainly let drive on us this day, for your Aunt Jimmy's
had a stroke; and though she can't move she can speak her mind still,
and isn't for lettin' folks in or havin' things done for her as she
ought. I've left Dinah Lucky with her, and I've stopped at Doctor Jedd's
and told him to hurry down, but the time has come when you've just got
to assert yourself willy-nilly. It's you, not me, as is her eldest
nephew and kin, and while I'm more'n willing to do the work, you've got
to show some spunk. Now jist you git into a biled shirt and your good
coat and go down and stand off the neighbours that, now she can't stir,
'll all be wrigglin' and slippin' through that door like eels in the
mill sluice when the gate's up. I'll soon settle that O'More."

Joshua, much relieved, obediently went into the house, while Mrs. Lane,
after looking into the kitchen to be sure that supper was progressing,
smoothed her Sunday dress that she had donned that morning for the
funeral, opened the windows of the best room to impress her visitor with
its green carpet and cabinet organ, and asked John O'More to come in.

"Thanks, Mrs. Lane I take it, but I guess I'll stay out here,--had
enough of shut-up places in that train to-day, besides some ladies
object to smoke in the house."

Before she could speak a word or even notice the long cigar that was
sticking out of his mouth in the direction of his left eye, he had
plunged into the subject at the exact point where it had been dropped.
"Now as to Bird, Mrs. Lane; your husband and I have tongue-threshed
things out, and he can repeat the same to you. I know just how things
stand, so nuff said about what's past. I travel in the west and Canada
for a steady house, and I'm away a good deal; now Bird can be company
for my wife as my kids are all boys. I'll give her schoolin', a trade,
and a shove along on the road in a couple of years. I wouldn't do less
for any kin of my own, and I kind o' take to her."

"But we don't want you to take her, and I reckon she don't either,
for--" put in Mrs. Lane, almost bursting with suppressed speech.

"Excuse me, one moment more, madam," he continued, removing his cigar
and speaking rather more slowly, "I judge that you object to her going
to-morrow; now I can't stop around here, and it's an expensive trip.
Seein' the city 'll be a change, and she'll soon settle down all right."

"But we don't want her to go at all," Mrs. Lane almost shrieked; "we
want her to live with us!"

"As what, for instance?" queried O'More, growing more Irish in his
speech, "a kind of a charity help, or had you intentions of adopting
her by the law? If so, and she wishes, I'll stand in the way of nothing
but a change of her name, to which I'd object."

Mrs. Lane was struck dumb. She had no idea of making a servant of Bird,
but on the other hand she knew that legal adoption would mean to give
Bird a like share with her own boys, and as what little they had, or
might expect, came from her husband's people, this she could not promise
at once.

"I meant--to treat her just like my little girl that died--but"--poor
Mrs. Lane got more and more mixed up--"I haven't asked Joshua about the
adoptin' business--it's so lately happened, we'd not got that far, you
see."

"Yes, mum, I see," said the fat man, drawing his lips together shrewdly,
"yourself has a warm heart, but others, yer own boys likely, may give
it a chill some day, and then where's Bird? No, mum, the girl 'll have
an easier berth with her own, I fancy, and not have to bend her back
drawin' and fetchin' water, either,--we've it set quite handy."

This was said with withering sarcasm for, unfortunately, at that moment,
Bird could be seen lugging in a heavy water bucket from the well,
something she had been warned not to do, and yet did unthinkingly, for
to-day she walked as in a dream.

Mrs. Lane saw that in reality she was helpless, unless she appealed to
Bird herself, and to rouse the child's sensitive spirit she knew would
be not only foolish but wicked, so for once Lauretta Ann Lane sat silent
and with bowed head, only saying with a choking voice, "I will tell her
after--supper--and you'll let--us write--to her, I suppose, and have
her--back to visit if she gets piney for Lammy,--they've been like twin
brother and sister ever since Janey died."

"I will that, ma'am, and I'll say more; if within the year she don't
content herself and settle down and grieves for yer, and yer see it
clear in that time to adopt her fair and square, and guarantee to do by
her as I will,--you'll get the chance."

O'More stretched his legs, stiff with sitting, and jerked his
half-burned cigar into the bushes, while at the same moment Oliver and
Nellis, Lammy's big brothers who worked in Milltown, rode up on their
wheels and the bell rang for supper.

       *       *       *       *       *

No one but Bird ever knew what Mrs. Lane said to her that night,
during the sad hours that she held the child in her arms in the great
rocking-chair that had soothed to sleep three generations of Lane
babies. Perhaps it soothed poor Bird, too, only she did not know it
then; yet she fell asleep, after a storm of crying, with her arms around
Twinkle, the terrier, as soon as Mrs. Lane had put her to bed, promising
to come back from Aunt Jimmy's early in the morning to awaken her, for
her uncle was to take the nine o'clock train from the Centre.

As Mrs. Lane collected, in a valise, the few clothes that made up
Bird's wardrobe, she felt broken-hearted indeed, but she could not but
realize that if the little girl must go, the quicker the better, and who
knew what might turn up, for Mrs. Lane was always hopeful. But Lammy,
poor boy, could not see one bright spot in the darkness. It was with
difficulty that his father could keep the child, usually so gentle,
from flying at O'More; he stormed and begged and finally, completely
exhausted, fled to the stuffy attic where he fell asleep, pillowed by
some hard ears of seed corn.

Next morning when Bird awoke, she had forgotten and felt much better for
her long sleep, but when she sat up and looked at the strange room, it
all came back. One thought mingled with the dread of parting,--she was
going to New York; there was where the wall-paper man lived and people
learned things. Hope was strong in her also, and never did she doubt
for a moment but what she could win her way and come back some day to
her friends if she could only find the right path.

Downstairs all was confusion. Joshua Lane had come from Aunt Jimmy's to
take O'More over to the judge's house to sign some papers. A man had
followed him up to say Dr. Jedd felt the old lady was worse. Mrs. Lane
was giving Bird a thousand directions and warnings that she couldn't
possibly remember, and in the middle of it all Lammy, looking straight
before him and dumb as an owl, his eyes nearly closed from last night's
crying, drove around in the business wagon to take the travellers to the
station, four good miles away.

"Here's my card, so you'll know where I hang out," said John O'More, as
he stepped into the wagon, holding out a bit of printed pasteboard to
Joshua Lane, "and if you need anything in my line, I'll let you in on
the square." On one corner was the picture of a horse's head, on the
other a wagon, and the letters read, "John O'More with Brush & Burr,
Dealers in Horses, Vehicles of all Kinds, Harness & Stable Fixings."
Then they drove away, Bird keeping her eyes fixed on Twinkle who Lammy
had settled in the straw at their feet.

"To think she was going and I was so put about I never asked the
address," sighed Mrs. Lane, adjusting her glasses and looking at the
card. "For goodness sakes, Joshua, _do_ you suppose he's a horse-jockey?
I sort of hoped he might be in groceries, or coal or lumber,--something
solid and respectable. What would poor Terry say?"

"I really don't know, Lauretta Ann," sighed Joshua, whose slow nature
was showing the wear, tear, and hurry of the last few days; "but he's
Terry's brother, not ourn. It takes all kinds of fellers to make up a
world, and I _hev_ met honest horse-jockeys, and then again I haven't. I
wished I'd thought to ask him the bottom price for a new chaise; ourn is
so weak every time you cross the ford I'm afeared you'll spill through
the bottom into the water," and Joshua turned on his heel and went in to
a belated breakfast, while his wife jerked remarks at the chickens she
made haste to feed, about the heartlessness of all men, which she didn't
in the least mean.

       *       *       *       *       *

They had ten minutes or so to wait for the train when they reached
the Centre, and, after taking her valise to be checked and buying the
ticket, O'More returned to the wagon for Bird. For the first time
she remembered that she had not asked about Twinkle and perhaps he
might need a ticket. Making a brave effort to get out the name that
choked her, yet too considerate to use the plain Mr., she said: "Uncle
John,--you won't mind if I take Twinkle with me, will you? He's very
clean and clever; I love him dearly and he was so good to Terry when he
was sick."

O'More was the bustling city man now, and whatever sentiment had swayed
him the night before was slept away. He gave a glance at the dog and
shook his head in the negative.

"That's a no account little yaller cur. If your aunt will let you keep a
pup, there's always a litter around the stable you can pick from, though
they're more'n likely to fall off the fire-escape."

The tears came to Bird's eyes, but she blinked them back; but not before
Lammy saw them. "I'll keep Twinkle all safe for you--till--you come
a-visiting," he said in a shaky voice, reading her wish.

Then the train came around the curve and stopped at the big tank to
drink.

"Come along," called O'More.

"Oh, I've forgotten my paint-box and bundle!" said Bird, running back to
get the precious portfolio that had been wrapped in the horse blanket.

"Your what?" said O'More, "paint-box! Just you leave that nonsense to
your chum along with the dog. You've had enough of paints and painting
for your vittles; I'm going to see you stick to bread and meat," and,
waving his hand good-by to Lammy, he flung him a silver dollar, that
missing the wagon rolled in the dirt.

For a moment the sickening disappointment tempted Bird to turn and run
down the track, anywhere so long as she got away; then her pride came to
her aid, and, stretching out her hands to her playmate, she cried, "Keep
them safe for me, oh, Lammy, please do!"

"You bet I will, don't you fret!" he called back.

Then she followed her uncle quietly to the cars, and her last glimpse,
as the train entered the cut, was of Lammy, seated in the old wagon with
Twinkle at his side, the box and the portfolio clasped in his arms, and
a brave smile on his face.




III

AUNT JIMMY


For a few minutes Lammy sat looking after the vanishing train. Then he
carefully wrapped the paint-box and portfolio in the blanket again, and,
patting Twinkle, who was quivering with excitement and looking into his
face with a pitiful, pleading glance, he put the dog down in the straw
again, saying, "We can't help it, old fellow; we've just got to stand it
until we can fix up some way to get her back."

As he turned the wagon about, with much backing and rasping of cramped
wheels, the bright silver dollar that was lying in the dirt caught his
eye. It seemed like a slap in the face when O'More threw it, though in
his rough way he meant well enough, and Lammy's first impulse was to
drive home and leave it where it had fallen.

Still, after all, it was money, and to earn money vaguely seemed to
him the only way by which he could get Bird back again, for though
Lammy had a comfortable home, enough clothing, and plenty to eat, whole
dollars were as rare in his pockets as white robins in the orchard.

So he picked up the shining bit of silver, wiped it carefully on his
sleeve, and, wrapping it in a scrap of paper, opened the precious
paint-box, and tucked the coin into one of the small compartments. It
never occurred to him to spend the money for any of the little things
a boy of fourteen always wants, and he quite forgot that his knife had
only half of one blade left. The money was for Bird, and from that
moment the paint-box, which was to spend some months in his lower bureau
drawer in company with his best jacket and two prizes won at school,
became a savings bank.

Lammy stopped at the "Centre" druggist's for some medicine for Aunt
Jimmy, and while he was waiting for the mixture, he had to undergo a
running fire of questions concerning his aunt's "spell" from the people
who came in from all sections for their mail, as this store was also
the post-office and there was as yet no rural free-delivery system to
deprive the community of its daily trade in news.

Now Aunt Jimmy, otherwise Jemima Lane, occupied an unusual position in
the neighbourhood and was a personage of more than common importance.
In the first place she was a miser, which is always interesting, as a
miser is thought to be a sort of magician whose money is supposed to
lie hidden in the chimney and yet increase as by double cube root; then
she owned ten acres of the best land for small fruits--strawberries,
raspberries, currants, and peaches--in the state. The ground was on the
southern slope of Laurel Ridge, and though it was shielded in such a way
that the March sun did not tempt the peach blossoms out before their
time, yet Aunt Jimmy's strawberries were always in the Northboro market
a full week ahead of the other native fruit.

Of course there was nothing particularly strange in this interest, as
many people coveted the land. The odd part that concerned the gossips
was that Aunt Jimmy had three able-bodied nephews, of which Joshua Lane
was eldest, all farmers struggling along on poorish land, while she,
though seventy-five years old, insisted upon running her fruit farm
and house entirely alone, hiring Poles or Hungarians, who could speak
no English, to till and gather the crops, instead of going shares with
her own kin. In fact, until a few years back, no one, man, woman, or
child, except little Janey Lane, had ever got beyond the kitchen door.
Then when she died, Aunt Jimmy had opened her house and heart to Joshua
Lane's wife, and ever since, that dear, motherly soul had done all that
she could for the queer, lonely old woman, in spite of the fact that the
gossips said she did it from selfish motives.

Joshua Lane was very sensitive about this talk and would have held aloof
like his two brothers, who lived beyond the Centre, one of whom had a
sick wife and was too lazy to more than scratch half rations from his
land, while the other had once given the old lady some unwise advice
about pruning peach trees, and had been forbidden inside the gate under
pain of being cut off with a "china button," Aunt Jimmy's pet simile for
nothing.

Mrs. Joshua, however, was gossip proof, and, tossing her head, had
publicly declared, "I'm a-going to keep the old lady from freezin',
burnin', or starvin' herself to death jest so far 's I'm able, accordin'
to scripture and the feelings that's in me, and if that's 'undue
influence,' so be it! I shan't discuss the subject with anybody but the
Lord," and she never did.

Many a meal of hot cooked food she took to the old woman to replace the
crackers and cheese of her own providing. It was not that Aunt Jimmy
meant to be mean, but she had lived so long alone that she had gotten
out of the habits of human beings. She certainly looked like a lunatic
when she went about the place superintending her men, clad in a short
skirt, a straw sunbonnet, and rubber boots, merely adding in the winter
a man's army overcoat and cape that she had picked up cheap; but the
lawyer who had come down from Northboro a year before to make her will
said he had never met a clearer mind outside of the profession, for she
had Dr. Jedd testify that she was of sound mind, and a second physician
from Northboro swear that Dr. Jedd's wits were also in good order.

Shortly after this she had given it out quietly that, though Joshua Lane
was the only one of her kin that was worth a box of matches, yet they
would share and share alike, as she didn't believe in stirring up strife
among brothers by showing favour.

Then everybody expected Mrs. Lane would lessen her attentions, but as
often happens everybody was mistaken.

Of course the good woman could not help thinking once in a while what
a fine thing it would be if some day her elder boys could work the
fruit farm (Lammy she never thought of as working at anything) instead
of delving in a shop at Milltown, but she put the idea quickly from
her. However, it would keep coming back all that night after Terence
O'More's funeral when she watched with the old lady, while poor Bird
slept her grief-spent sleep before her journey.

If the fruit farm could ever be hers, she would adopt Bird without
hesitation, for the little lady-child had crept into the empty spot
that Janey had left in her big mother heart and filled it in a way that
greatly astonished her.

       *       *       *       *       *

Lammy finally secured the medicine and jogged homeward, thinking, all
the time thinking about Bird. He knew that people said he was stupid,
and yet he also felt that he could learn as well as any one if they
would only let him pick his own way a little. His father wanted him to
be a carpenter, his mother thought that too rough, and that he was still
a baby and some day perhaps he might be a clerk.

But Lammy himself, as he looked into the future, saw only the whirling
wheels of the machinery at Milltown, or the wonders of the locomotive
works that he had once visited at Northboro. That was why he was always
day-dreaming and looking in the air. Of course it was very stupid and
dumb of him not to tell his parents, but Bird's was the only ear that
had ever heard his thoughts.

All that day he stayed about the place at home, keeping the fire in and
doing the chores, for his mother's time was divided between her aunt's
and straightening things at Bird's old home, and his father was up in
the back lots planting corn. Toward night, as he was sitting on the
steps having brought back Twinkle who had run to his old home in search
of his little mistress, Mrs. Lane bustled in, mystery and importance
written on her face. Spying Lammy, she beckoned him to follow her
into the kitchen, then, carefully closing the doors, putting Twinkle
in the closet and the cat out of the window, as if they could carry
tales, she unfastened her bonnet and collar and settled herself in the
rocking-chair.

"Samuel Lane," she began solemnly, shaking her forefinger and making the
boy quake at the unused title, while his eyes opened wide in wonder,
"No, 'tain't _that_; Aunt Jimmy's _much_ more comfortable, and I suspect
she's going to pick up again after scaring us well, or I wouldn't be
home, but she said private words to me this afternoon that if I do keep
quite to myself, I'll burst, I know, and maybe get a headache spell
that'll lay me by a day and upset everything. Now, Samuel, I've found as
far as givin' messages you're told to carry, you're as good as nobody,
so I reckon you'll be tight sealed on something that you're bid to keep
close and forget maybe for some years."

"Is it about Bird?" asked Lammy, suddenly jumping up and fixing his big,
gray eyes on his mother's face with a gaze that made her nervous, for
she well knew that there was something in this pet son of hers that was
a little beyond her comprehension.

"No, not about Bird,--that is, not straight, though another way it may
have a lot to do with her; it all depends. Listen, Samuel!

"This afternoon Aunt Jimmy waked up, and, seeing me sitting by the
window croshayin',--true I was making a bungle of the tidy, not feelin'
like workin' (but she hates, same 's I do, for watchers to set idle
looking ready to jump at a body like a cat does at a mouse hole),--she
says, says she, her voice comin' back steady, 'Set nearer, Lauretta Ann
Lane, I'm goin' to tell you somethin' no one else need ever know.'

"I drew up all of a flutter, of course. 'You're a good woman, Lauretta
Ann,' says she, 'and you've never poked and pried, or shown desires for
what's another's, an' you've worked hard to keep me livin', which I've
done to my satisfaction beyond my expectations.'

"I burst out cryin', I couldn't help it; for I never thought she set any
store by me, and I felt guilty about wishes I'd had last night and had
fed with thoughts inwardly.

"'Hush up, now, and don't spoil all by pretendin',' she ran on; 'I
know you'd like to have my farm, though not a day before I'm done with
it. _I'll_ credit you that. It's natural and proper and I'm glad to
have interest took in it, likewise I've said I'd share and share alike
between my nephews, which I intend; but listen, Lauretta Ann, for
there's ways of circumventin' that suits me, _I've left you the farm for
your own_; moreover, I've fixed it so there'll be no talk and no one'll
know it but you. You think I'm crazy, I guess, and that you couldn't get
the farm unbeknown, nohow. Just wait and see!'

"Then she asked me to draw her a cup of tea, and when I went to fetch
that battered old pewter tea-pot she's used I reckon these fifty years,
'twasn't in its place, but on her mantel-shelf, and when I reached up
to take it down she said, 'Leave that be and take the chiney one; its
work's over for me and we're both takin' a rest;' then she dozed off
after the very first sup."

"Mother," said Lammy, who was now leaning on her knees with his hands
behind her head and drawing it close, while his eyes glowed like coals,
"if--if you ever get the farm--will--you--"

"Bring Bird back?" she finished for him, hugging him close. "Yes, I
will, and you shall both go to school to Northboro, too; but mind you,
Samuel, no crowdin' Aunt Jimmy, and it may be years yet.

"Now bustle round and help me cook up something, for I must go back to
Aunt Jimmy's before seven, as Mis' Jedge o' Probate Ricker is the only
one I'll trust to spell me, for Dinah Lucky's mush in a bowl when the
village folks smooth her down with their palarver."

So Lammy flew about, sifting flour, skimming milk, or rattling cups
and saucers, and it was not quite dark, supper over, and every dish
washed, when he went back to the porch steps and whispered the precious
hope to Twinkle, who raised one ear and his lip together as much as if
he understood and cautioned silence. Then the boy began day-dreaming
anew, but this time his mind, instead of following flying wheels, was
busy weeding strawberry plants and carefully picking raspberries, so as
not to crush them, while Bird stood by and watched. "And," he startled
himself by saying aloud, "the first thing I'll do 'll be to divide off a
root of those red pineys and plant it up on the hill, so Bird 'll find
it next spring all in blow."

       *       *       *       *       *

A few days later when Dr. Jedd and all the neighbours were convinced
that Aunt Jimmy would be out in the garden again by raspberry time,
with good chance of another ten years, and Mrs. Lane had made indoors
more comfortable than it had been for years by a thorough cleaning and
renovating, the strange old lady again upset all their calculations and
died. Then in due time the lawyer from Northboro sent letters to the
three nephews and their families, to Dr. Jedd, to the minister of the
First Congregational Church, and to the superintendent of the new School
of Industrial Art of Northboro, to meet on a certain Friday afternoon at
Aunt Jimmy's house to hear the will read.

Once more was the entire community involved in a guessing match. The
summoning of the kin was a matter of course, and usually took place
immediately, so that the lawyer was evidently carrying out special
directions in delaying the matter for more than a week, but as to what
the doctor, the minister, and the teacher from Northboro could possibly
have to do in the matter was a mystery that not even the fertile brain
of Mrs. Slocum could settle, either for good nor evil.

It couldn't be that Aunt Jimmy had left these three outside men
anything, for it was known that she only employed Dr. Jedd because she
couldn't help it, that she hadn't been to church for five years because
the minister had preached a sermon against avarice and the vanity of
hoarding money, and as to the Northboro teacher it was positively
certain that she had never even seen him, for he was a stranger in these
parts, having recently been sent from New York, to take charge of the
school, by a wealthy man who had been influential in founding it and
whose country place was on the farther edge of the town.

Mrs. Lane was as much in the dark as any one and did not hesitate
to say so, while excitement ran so high that on this particular
Friday afternoon the women sat in their fore-room windows overlooking
the village street with the expectant air of waiting for a passing
procession.

Mrs. Dr. Jedd, Mrs. Judge of Probate Ricker, and the minister's wife
were privileged to attend the reading by courtesy for reason of being
their husband's wives, and cakes had been baked and several plans
made to waylay them separately on their divers routes home to drink a
cup of tea, that every detail might be gleaned for comparing of notes
afterward.

"We shall soon see whether Lauretta Ann Lane's cake is dough or fruit
loaf," sniffed Mrs. Slocum, angrily, drawing in her head suddenly from
the third fruitless inspection of the road that she had made in fifteen
minutes and giving it a smart bump against the sash as she did so.
"Either the folks is late, or they're gone around the back road, and if
so, why? I'd just like you to tell me," she snapped at Hope Snippin, the
meek little village dressmaker who, drawn over as if she had a perpetual
stitch in her side, was remaking a skirt for the lady of the house and
felt very much discouraged, as it had been turned once before, at the
possibility of making it look startlingly new.

"Maybe they've stopped down to the Lane's and have walked around the
meadow path," ventured Hope Snippin. "The other day when I was fixin'
up Mis' Lane's black gown, changing the buttons and such like to turn
it from just Sunday best to mourning, I heard her tell Mis' Jedd that,
as there was no convenience for gettin' up a proper meal down to Aunt
Jimmy's, seein' as nothing must be touched until the will was read,
she'd asked all the folks concerned to dinner--a roast-beef dinner
with custards--at her house so's they could be comfortable and stable
their teams, and then walk right around short cut to the other house
after. You see the two farms meets the road separate, like the two
heels of a horseshoe, and then join by going back of the doctor's hill
woods. My father was sayin' last night if those two farms _and_ the
wood lot went together, they'd be something worth while," and Miss
Snippin smiled pleasantly as if she thought she had propitiated Mrs.
Slocum by her news.

"Then you knew all the while they wouldn't come by here and never told
me, though seein' me slavin' over that cake," snapped Mrs. Slocum. "I
wish you'd mind your work closer; you're makin' that front breadth up
stain out."

"But it runs clean through," pleaded the dressmaker, miserably.

"Depend upon it," Mrs. Slocum muttered to herself, not heeding the
protest, "she's made sure of that farm, or she wouldn't risk the cost of
a roast dinner for a dozen folks if she wasn't."

       *       *       *       *       *

Meanwhile this dinner had been eaten and the party, headed by the lawyer
and the teacher, had gone through the sweet June fields to Aunt Jimmy's
house and seated themselves upon the stiff-backed, fore-room chairs that
were ranged in a long row, as if the company expected to play "Go to
Jerusalem."

Outside, the bees were humming in the syringa bushes while the cat-birds
and robins, unmolested, were holding a festival in the great strawberry
bed, for to-day there was no one to see that the birds "kept moving"
after the usual custom, as the hired man on returning from taking eggs
to market had gone to sleep in the hay barn, knowing that the stern
voice of the old lady in rubber boots and sunbonnet would not disturb
his dreams.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Hem," the lawyer cleared his throat and read the usual preliminaries
about "last will and testament, sound mind," etc., "paying of just
debts," etc., in a clear but rapid voice that grew gradually solemn
and important, until, as the pith of the matter was reached, every
word was separated from its neighbour, and the buzzing of a fly on the
window-pane seemed an unbearable noise.

"I give and bequeath to Amelia, the wife of William Jedd, doctor of
medicine in this town, the sum of two thousand dollars, because I think
she may need it owing to her husband's slack way of collecting bills."

Mrs. Jedd, who had for a moment looked radiant, quickly cast down her
eyes after a frightened glance at her husband who was, with apparent
difficulty, refraining from laughter as he looked crosswise at the
minister.

"I give and bequeath to Sarah Ann, wife of Joel Stevens, minister of the
First Congregational Church, a like sum of two thousand dollars because
she is sure to need it, this being twice the amount that he once desired
me to give to foreign missions. If he still holds to his views of
avarice and hoarding, he will doubtless be able to persuade her to share
his ideas as to its use."

It was the minister's turn now to look red and confused, while his
wife's face expressed her views on the subject beyond a doubt.

"I give and bequeath to the Trust Fund of the School of Industrial Art
in Northboro the sum of $10,000, the income therefrom to be applied to
the board and teaching of two girls each year who cannot afford to pay,
for the reason that I think a girl is usually worth two boys if she has
a chance, and I don't like to see our best girls running to the big
cities for schooling.

"I direct that my fruit farm of ten acres, more or less, with the
adjoining one hundred acres of meadow and woodlands, and all buildings
and fixtures, other than household furniture, appertaining thereto,
shall be sold at public auction within six months of my death, and that
the cash proceeds be divided between my three nephews, share and share
alike, I holding the hope that one of them will be the purchaser. I also
direct that the pieces of household furniture mentioned in the enclosed
memorandum shall be divided between the wives of my three nephews by the
drawing of lots, and I charge that all other furnishings not mentioned
in this paper, being of no value except to myself, shall be destroyed
either by burning or burying in the swamp bog-hole according to their
character, as I don't wish them scattered about for the curiosity of the
idle, of which this town has its full share.

"Making one exception to the above, I give to my dear niece by marriage,
Lauretta Ann, wife of Joshua Lane, in token of my respect for her, my
old pewter tea-pot that, as she knows, I have treasured as having laid
buried in the garden through the War of Independence and had in daily
use for years, hoping she will cherish it and by like daily use hold me
in constant remembrance by the sight of it."

At this juncture no one dared look up, for all felt the cruelty of the
gift after Mrs. Lane's years of service, and the poor woman herself
merely tightened her grasp upon the chair arms, but she could not
prevent the sickening sense of disappointment that crept over her.

"I hereby appoint my nephew, Joshua Lane, as my sole executor, directing
that he be paid the sum of $1000 from my estate for his services,
desiring him to carry on the fruit business for the current year, the
profits to be added to my estate. (Here followed special instructions.)
If there be any residue after paying to the before-named legacies, I
direct that he divide it equally between himself and his two brothers,
and I hope that all concerned may feel the same pleasure in hearing this
testament that I have had in making it."

As the lawyer stopped reading there was a pause, and then a rush of
voices, congratulations and condolences mingled. That he had made an
error in summoning Dr. Jedd and the minister instead of their wives was
plain.

The two brothers, who cared nothing for the fruit farm except its cash
price and had been too indolent to bother about the matter or go to see
their aunt except in fruit time, assumed importance and talked about
wounded pride and the injustice of having but one executor. The school
superintendent, an Englishman of fifty or so who had received his art
training at South Kensington and brought it to market in America,
confused by his surroundings, but of course pleased at the gift by
which his school benefited, made haste to leave, feeling that he was
intruding in a gathering where a family storm was brewing.

"Mebbe there's something _in_ the tea-pot," suggested the minister's
wife, hopefully, "else I can't think she knew her own mind."

"There's surely something in it," echoed Mrs. Dr. Jedd.

The lawyer, who himself had thought this possible, went upstairs, and
took down the battered bit of pewter from the best bedroom shelf, where
it had remained since the day Mrs. Lane had placed it there at Aunt
Jimmy's request, opened it, shook it, and held it toward the eager
group,--it was absolutely empty!

Mrs. Lane stretched out her hand for the legacy, but her husband grasped
her arm and asserting himself for the first time in his married life,
said: "Lauretta Ann, don't you tech it; it'll go down in the swamp hole
with the other trash for all of you. I'll not have you a-harbourin' a
viper. I'll do my lawful duty, but, by crickey, I'll not have you put
upon no more."

This very ambiguous speech so impressed the hearers that it was reported
that "Joshua Lane wasn't tied to Lauretta's apron-strings and could
hold his own equal to anybody," which had been seriously doubted, while
the news was a surprise and disappointment to every one but Mrs. Slocum,
who said, "Dough! I told you so,"--and actually cut a big slice of cake
for Hope Snippin to take home for tea.

As for Lammy he seemed dazed for a while, and then set to work daily
with his father on the fruit farm, so that he might earn the tickets
to send to Bird when hot weather and the time for her visit came. His
mother noticed that he did not gaze about as much as usual, and, while
he was picking berries for market, he said to himself, "I'll snake a
root of those red pineys for Bird anyhow before the auction, 'long in
November, and maybe before then something 'll turn up."




IV

A CAGED BIRD


When the high banks of the cut shut off Lammy from Bird's sight, she
followed her uncle into the car, vainly trying to blink back her tears.
He, however, did not notice them; but, putting her valise on a seat,
told her she had better sit next to the window so that she could amuse
herself by looking out, as it would be two hours before they changed
cars at New Haven, and then, taking another seat for himself, pulled his
hat over his eyes and promptly fell asleep.

At first the poor child was content to sit quite still and rest, trying
to realize who and where she was. The changes of the past two weeks had
been so sudden that she did not yet fully realize them. Beginning with
the day when her father, all full of hope, had been soaked by the rain
in walking back from Northboro, where he had gone to buy materials for
beginning his work for the wall-paper man, and caught the deadly cold,
until now when she was leaving the only friends she had ever known,
seemed either a whole lifetime or a dream from which she must awake.

But as the train flew on and the familiar places one by one were lost in
the distance, little by little the bare cold truth came to her. Not only
was she going to a strange place to live among strangers, but the hope
that had comforted her the previous night had been swept away when her
uncle had refused to let her bring her paint-box, and she knew by the
contemptuous way he spoke that he was even more set against her father's
work than their farming neighbours had been.

"Never mind," thought the brave, lonely little heart, "I simply _must_
learn somehow, and perhaps my aunt and cousins may be different and
help me to persuade Uncle John to let me go on with drawing at the
school he sends me to, for I heard him tell Mrs. Lane that I should go
to school." Then Bird began to imagine what the aunt and cousins would
be like, and what sort of a house they would live in. She thought the
house would be brick or stone like some in Northboro, and she did not
expect that there would be a very big garden, perhaps only at the back
with a little strip at the sides and in front, but then that would hold
enough flowers for her to draw so that she need not forget the way in
which Terry had taught her to do it from life, and even if she had no
paints and only bits of paper and a pencil, she could work a little out
of the way up in her room so as not to annoy her uncle and yet not quite
give up. That she was determined she would never do, for Bird had, in
addition to a talent that was in every way greater than her father's,
something that came from her mother's family and that he had wholly
lacked,--perseverance, a thing that people are apt to call obstinacy
when they do not sympathize with its object.

So busy was she with castle-building that she was quite surprised when
the brakeman called: "New Haven! Last stop. Change cars for New York and
Boston. Passengers all out!" and her uncle jumped up, flushed and stupid
with sleep and bundled her out of the train into the station restaurant
"to snatch a bite of dinner" before they went on.

Now Bird, being a perfectly healthy child, even though overwrought
and tired, was hungry and gladly climbed up on one of the high stools
that flanked the lunch counter, while her uncle gathered a sandwich,
two enormous doughnuts, and a quarter of a mince pie on one plate and
pushed it toward her saying: "Tea or coffee? You'd better fill up snug,
for we won't be home until well after dinnertime," then John O'More
proceeded to cool his own coffee by pouring it from cup to saucer and
back again with much noise and slopping.

"Please, I'd rather have milk," answered Bird, rescuing the sandwich
from under the pie and making a great effort not to stare at her uncle,
who had begun by stuffing half a doughnut into his mouth and pouring the
larger part of a cup of coffee after it before he swallowed, so that
his cheeks bulged, his eyes seemed about to pop from their sockets,
and beads of sweat stood on his forehead, while the next moment he was
shovelling up great mouthsful of baked beans and ramming them down with
cucumber pickles, very much as she had seen Lammy charging his father's
old muzzle-loading shot-gun when going to hunt woodchucks.

Though sometimes the food at home had not been any too plentiful, Bird's
parents had always been particular about her manners at table. She had
had their example before her and was naturally dainty in her own ways,
so that her uncle's gorging gave her another shock, and unconsciously
she began to pick at her food like a veritable feathered bird.

"The country ain't what it's cracked up to be," remarked O'More, when he
was able to speak. "I thought country girls was always fat and rosy and
ate hearty. Just wait until you get to New York and see my kids stoke in
the vittles; it'll learn you what it means to eat right."

"Express train for New York, stopping at Bridgeport and Stamford only,"
called a man through the open door.

"Come along," shouted O'More, wedging in another doughnut, throwing
the pay to the waiter and seizing a handful of toothpicks from a glass
on the counter, and before Bird had but half finished the sandwich and
milk, she found herself on the train again.

The second part of the journey passed more cheerfully, for all along
at the east side of the road were beautiful glimpses of the Sound and
silvery creeks and inlets came up to the track itself.

Bird had never before seen the sea, or any river greater than the mill
stream, and she exclaimed in delight.

"Like the looks of salt water, do you? Then you're going to an A 1 place
to see it. New York's an island, and you only have to go to the edge
anywhere to see water all round, not forsaken lookin' empty water like
this either, but full of ships and boats and push. Down at the far end
of the town is Battery Park, smash on to the water, and there's sea air
and seats in it and music summer nights, along with a building full of
live swimmin' fishes that little Billy's crazed over goin' to see. Oh,
you'll find sport in the city for sure."

"Who is little Billy?" asked Bird, feeling that she was called upon to
say something, and now realizing that she knew nothing about the cousins
she was to meet.

"Little Billy? Oh, he's the youngest of the four boys. Tom, he's the
eldest, and a wild hawk; he's got a rovin' job, and he seldom turns
up lest he's in trouble, but for all that his mother's crazed after
him. Jack, he's next, seventeen, and fine and sleek and smart with the
tongue, and keeps the clean coat of a gentleman; he's in a clerking job,
but he goes to night school, and he'll be somebody. Larry's fifteen,
and he's just quit school and got a place helping a trainer on the
race-track; he's minded to make money quick, and thinks that's the road,
which I don't. Then little Billy,--he's turning six, and he's worth
more'n the whole lot together to me, if he is only a four-year size and
hops with a crutch. Ah, but he's got the head for thinkin', and he's
every way off from the rest of us, pale and yellow-haired, while the
others are coloured like sloes and crows' wings in the eyes and hair."

As O'More spoke his whole face softened and lightened up, and it was
plain to see that little Billy filled the soft spot that is in every
heart if people only have the eyes to see it.

"Until little Billy was turned three he was as pretty as an angel,"
he continued, "and sturdy as any other child. Then come a terrible
hot summer,--oh, I tell you it was fierce; you couldn't draw a breath
in the rooms, and so the missis she fixed a bed for Billy out on the
fire-escape and used to take him there to sleep."

Bird was just about to ask what sort of a place a fire-escape was, for
this was the second time her uncle had mentioned it that day having said
that if she had a dog, it would likely fall from it, but he talked so
quickly that she forgot again.

"As luck had it, one night the wind come up cool, and, the woman bein'
dead tired, never woke up to notice it, and in the morning little Billy
set up a terrible cry, for when he tried to get up he couldn't, for the
wind had checked the sweat and stiffened his left leg, as it were.
Of course we had a big time and had in full a dozen doctors, and some
said one thing and some another, but they all give it the one name 'the
infant paralysis.'

"The doctors they wanted him to go to the 'ospital and have the leg shut
into a frame and all that, but I said 'twas a shame to torment him, and
I'd have him let be till he could say for himself.

"The woman takes him awful hard, though, as if he was a reproach to her
for not wakin' up, which is no sense, for what be's to be, be's--that's
all," which shiftless argument Bird afterward found was her uncle's
answer to many things that could have been bettered.

"I hope Billy will like me," said Bird, half to herself after a few
minutes' silence; "somehow I think I like him already."

"If you do that and act well by him, I buy you a hat with the longest
feather on Broadway for your Christmas," said O'More, grasping her
slender fingers and almost crushing them in his burst of enthusiasm.
"But whist a minute, girl, for we're most home now. If the woman,--I
mean my missis, your Aunt Rosy,--is offish just at the start, don't get
down-hearted, for you see as she don't expect I'm bringing you, she may
be--well--a trifle startled like. She'll soon settle down and take what
be's to be straight enough," and with this rather discouraging remark
the train crossed the Harlem River and entered the long tunnel that is
apt to cast a gloom over every one's first entrance to New York, even
when they are bent on pleasure and not sad and lonely.

"We're in now," said O'More in a few minutes, as the echo of the close
walls ceased and the train slid across a maze of tracks into an immense
building with a glass roof like a greenhouse.

"Grand Central Station--all out," called a brakeman, and Bird found
herself part of a crowd of men, women, children, and red-capped porters
moving toward a paved street, full of carriages, wagons, trucks,
electric cars, besides many sort of vehicles that she had never seen
before, coming, going, dashing here and there in confusion, while on
every side there was a wall of houses, and below the earth was upturned
and trenched, not a bit of grass or tree to be seen anywhere, and the
sky, oh, so far away and small. Bird almost fell as she stumbled blindly
along toward a trolley car after the uncle, for what could seem more
unreal to this little wild thrush from the country lane, with song
in her throat, and love of beauty and colour born in her heart, than
Forty-second Street in the middle of the first warm summer afternoon?

       *       *       *       *       *

The car they boarded went through another short tunnel, and on every
side could be heard the noise of hammers or drilling in the rock.

"Is this a stone quarry?" asked Bird, innocently, not understanding, and
wondering why the near-by passengers smiled as her uncle replied: "Lord
bless yer! no; it's the subway, a road below ground they're building
to let out folks from where they work to where there's room to live;
there's such push here below town there's little room for sitting, let
alone sleeping. Oh, but it's a fine city is New York, all the same."

Next a broad avenue with a jumble of old, low shops and fine new
buildings side by side; still Bird looked anxiously out for some place
where it seemed possible that people might live and found none.

"Here's 2--th Street where we land," said O'More, presently looking
up, and when the car had stopped, Bird found herself walking along a
sidewalk between another wall of buildings without gardens, while the
heat of the first warm day rising from the pavement made her dizzy, and
she asked, "Is it far from here to where you live, Uncle John?"

"No, right close by, only a few steps farther. We're facing east now and
down yonder half a dozen blocks is the river, the same as we crossed
coming in saving a turn in it.

"Getting tired, ain't yer? Well, it's been a long day for us, and I'm
mighty glad to be gettin' to a homelike place myself."

"Do you live right by the water, and is there any garden?" Bird
continued, a feeling of nameless dread creeping over her as she saw
nothing but buildings still closing in on all sides; even a blacksmith's
shop, from which a spirited pair of horses were coming with newly shod
polished hoofs, seemed strange and out of place. Then there were more
poor looking buildings, and a great stable with many men standing about
and horses being constantly driven in and out to show the people who
waited on the curbstone.

"By the river, and do I have a garden," he echoed, laughing heartily.
"Do you think I'm one o' the millionnaires you read about in the papers,
my girl? Do I keep an automobile and eat at the Waldorf-Astoria?" and
then, seeing that Bird could not understand the comparison, he patted
her good-naturedly on the shoulder.

As they passed the stable quite a number of the men spoke to her uncle,
but instead of resenting it as she expected, he joked and laughed and
seemed very glad to see them.

"It's called the 'Horse's Head,' and it's out of there my job is," he
said to Bird, pointing over his shoulder at the stable, "for half the
time I'm over the country from Kentucky to Canada picking up horses, and
the other half of the time I'm helping to sell them out again, so I live
as near by as may be for convenience."

At this Bird's heart sunk still farther, for in the prim New England
town where she was born and bred a Puritan, a horse-dealer meant either
some oversharp farmer who could outwit his neighbours or a roving
fellow, half gypsy, half tramp, of very ill repute, who went about from
town to town buying and selling animals who mostly had something the
matter with them that had to be concealed by lying.

John O'More, striding on ahead, did not notice her expression, nor would
he have understood if he had read her thoughts, for he was perfectly
satisfied with himself and everything else in his surroundings, except
the fact of little Billy's lameness, and for a man of his class he was
roughly honest and good-hearted.

"Here's where!" he said at last, turning into the doorway of a tall
building with one door and many windows. The square vestibule was
dusty and had a ragged mat in the centre, while on one side were ten
letter-boxes in a double row, with a bell knob and speaking-tube, as
O'More explained, over each.

"Is this your house? It seems pretty big," said Bird, wearily.

"One floor of it is," he answered, laughing again; "it's what's called
'a flat house,' because each tenant lives flat on one floor, with
conveniences at hand and no water to carry, which beats the country all
out," he added slyly. "See, I'll but touch the bell and the door 'll
open itself."

And he suited the action to the word, the door opening to reveal a
narrow, dark hall with a flight of steep stairs covered with a shabby
red carpet.

As Bird groped her way up, one, two, three flights, fairly gasping for
breath in the close, hot place, she stumbled against groups of children
who were sitting or playing school on the stairs.

"It's lighter near the top; that's why I choose it," called her uncle,
himself puffing and blowing as he climbed. "Here we are," and he pushed
open a door into an inner hall, and then another into a sort of sitting
room where a tall, red-haired woman, clad in a collarless calico sack
was sewing on a machine, while a pile of showy summer silks and muslins
was lying on a chair beside her.

"Hello, Rosie, old woman; here's Bird O'More, Terry's orphan, that I
brought back to stop a bit until we see where we're at," and he gave his
wife a knowing wink as much as to say, "I know it's sudden on you, but
let her down as easy as you can."

The "old woman," who was perhaps forty, or at most forty-five, glanced
up, and then, either not understanding or pretending not to, her face
flushed as she jerked out, her eyes flashing, "Well, if you ain't the
aggravatment of men, John O'More, to bring company just when I've got
Mame Callahan's trou-sew to finish, and she gettin' married next week,
and Billy bein' that cantankerous with cryin' to go over to the park or
down to see them fishes that my head's ready to split," she whimpered.

With all his will the man cowered before her tongue, and in spite of her
own pain Bird's womanly little heart pitied him. She saw the piled-up
garments and knew at once that her aunt was a dressmaker, and her
gentle breeding led her to say the one thing that could have averted an
explosion.

"Aunt Rose, I could take Billy to see the fish or something if you'll
tell me the way."

"That's what I figured on when I brought her," said O'More, greatly
relieved, and quickly following the lead; "I knew you'd often spoke of
gettin' a girl from the Sisters, and that's why I brought Bird instead
of leavin' her to slave fer strangers," he stammered.

"Humph," answered Mrs. O'More, at least somewhat pacified, "Billy's
fastened in his chair on the fire-escape; she'd better go there and sit
with him a while until it's supper-time. It's too late for them to go
traipsing around the streets to-night. Can you do anything useful?" she
said, fixing her sharp, greenish eyes on Bird, who tried to gather her
wits together as she answered, "I can make coffee, and toast, and little
biscuits, and two kinds of cake, and--" then she hesitated and stopped,
for she was going to say "do fractions, write, read French a little, and
draw and paint," but she felt as if these last items would count against
her.

"Humph," said her aunt again, this time more emphatically, "I guess
you done well to bring her, Johnny. Turned thirteen, you say. Of
course she'll have to make a show of goin' to school for another year
on account of the law, but they can't ask it before the fall term. I
suppose she'll have to sleep on this parlour lounge, though; there's no
other place."

John O'More was now beaming as he led Bird through a couple of dark
bedrooms toward the kitchen, where the mysterious "fire-escape" seemed
to be located.

Going to an open back window he looked out, motioning Bird to follow.
What she saw was a small platform, about three feet wide and ten feet
long, surrounded by an iron railing; one end was heaped with a litter
of boxes and broken flowerpots that partly hid a trap door from which
a ladder led to the balcony belonging to the floor below. At the other
end, fastened in a baby's chair by the tray in front, sat a dear little
fellow with great blue eyes and a curved, sensitive mouth, while tears
were making rivers of mud on his pale cheeks as he sobbed softly to
himself, "I want to go; oh, I want to get out and see the fishes."

"So you shall," said O'More, undoing the barrier and lifting the child
on his strong arm while he tried awkwardly to wipe his face.

"Let me," said Bird, wetting her handkerchief at the kitchen sink and
gently bathing eyes, nose, and mouth carefully, as Mrs. Lane had bathed
hers--only a day ago, was it? It seemed a lifetime.

"Who are you?" said Billy, gazing at Bird over his father's shoulder,
as he wound his little arms around the thick neck.

"She's your cousin Bird, come from the country to play with Billy and
take him to see the fishes. Go out there on the platform with him a
spell till the heat dies down; the doctor says he's to get plenty of air
you see."

"Where do you get the air here?" asked Bird, wonderingly, looking at the
paved yards filled with rubbish, the tall clothes poles, and the backs
of the other buildings where more fire-escapes clung like dusty cobwebs.

"Air? Oh, out here and down in the street mostly if there's no time fer
going across to any o' the parks. Get a bit acquainted now, youngsters,
for I've got to report at the stable before supper," said O'More,
putting Billy back into his chair and preparing to leave, wiping the
sweat from his face as if he had thus put the whole matter of Bird from
him.

For a few minutes the pair were silent. "Is your name Bird?" asked
Billy, eying her solemnly, and, upon her nodding "Yes," he rambled on,
"There's a yellow bird in a cage downstairs at Mrs. Callahan's--it's
name is Canary and it can sing. Can you sing?"

"Yes; that is, I used to last week," she said uncertainly, the tears
running between her fingers that she held before her face, for in the
past ten minutes her last hope had fled. No room where she could work
alone, not even a back-yard garden or a leaf to pick, and the bars of
the fire-escape seemed to be closing in like a cage.

"Now you're crying, too," said Billy, prying open her hands with his
thin fingers, while his lip quivered; "do you want to get out and see
the fishes too?"

"Yes, Billy, I do; but we can't go just now, so we must play we are
birds in a cage like the one downstairs," smiling through her tears.
"I'll sing for you," and she began in a low voice a song that Terry had
taught her:--

   "When little birdie bye-bye goes,
    Silent as mice in churches,
    He puts his head where no one knows
    And on one leg he perches."

When she finished, the little arms stole around her neck also, and
Billy, his face all smiles, said, "That bird's me, cause I've only got
one good leg, and I'm going to have you for my canary, only," looking
at her gown and hair, "you're more black than yellow," and giving her a
feeble squeeze, "and some day you'll get me out to see the fishes, won't
you?"

At his baby caress Love lit a new lamp in her dark path and Hope stole
back and led the way as she hugged Billy close and said, "Yes, some day
we'll surely get out of the cage together and fly far away."




V

MRS. LANE PLAYS DETECTIVE


For several weeks after the reading of Aunt Jimmy's will, it was the
talk of the neighbourhood, the alternate topic of conversation being
the death of Terence O'More and the sudden disappearance of Bird. For
Bird's Uncle John had come and gone so suddenly that few knew of his
flying visit, and those who did turned it into an interesting mystery.
Some said that he was a very rich relation from the west, others that
he was not an uncle at all, but the agent of the State Orphan Asylum to
which the Lanes, afraid of being expected to care for Bird, had hurried
her off. It is needless to say that it was Mrs. Slocum, piqued at not
securing Bird as a maid of all work and no pay, who concocted this tale.

In due time Probate Judge Ricker appointed Joshua Lane administrator, to
take charge of the furniture and few effects that O'More had left and
settle up his debts as far as possible. There was a little money left of
what his wife had inherited, in the Northboro Bank, but only enough to
pay his debts, it was feared, without so much as leaving a single dollar
for Bird.

Since the homestead and Mill Farm property that belonged to Mrs. O'More
had been forfeited through some defect in the drawing up of a mortgage
coupled with O'More's slackness in attending to the matter, Joshua Lane
had felt there was something wrong and that a little good legal advice,
combined with common sense, might have at least saved something if not
the entire property.

When, a year later, the mill had slipped into Abiram Slocum's hands,
Joshua's suspicions were again aroused, for Slocum's transactions in
real estate were usually adroit and to the cruel disadvantage of some
one, if not absolutely dishonest according to the letter of the law; but
when Joshua had spoken to O'More about the matter, he, feeling hopeful
about his painting, had put him off with a promise to "some day" show
him the "letters and papers" that bore upon the unfortunate business.

The day had never come, and now that Joshua had the right he determined
to sift the affair thoroughly, but the papers were nowhere to be found.
The envelope containing O'More's bank-book held nothing else but the
certificate of his marriage with Sarah Turner, and some letters from
his mother in the old country.

Joshua, though slow, was not without shrewdness, and he had not only
kept the old house where the O'Mores had lived securely locked by day,
until when, upon the selling of the furniture, it should again return to
the Slocums from whom it was rented, but at Mrs. Lane's suggestion he
had Nellis, his oldest son, sleep there at night, as she said, "To keep
folks whom I'll not name from prowlin'."

Joshua looked to the sale of the furniture to at least pay the last
quarter's rent due. By a strange happening the afternoon before the
vendue was to take place, as he was about to drive up to the old house
at the cross-roads to make a final thorough search in closets, drawers,
and the old-time chimney nooks for the missing papers, a passer-by,
hurrying in the same direction, called out to him: "There's a fire
up cemetery hill way; smoke's comin' over the hickory woods. Maybe
Dr. Jedd's big hay barn or Slocum's old farm, both bein' in a plum
line from here." When, sharply whipping up the old mare, much to her
astonishment, he hurried to the place, he not only found that it was
the old farm-house hopelessly ablaze from roof to cellar, but Abiram
Slocum appearing a few moments later by the road that ran north of the
place, flew into either a real or well-acted rage, shaking his fist and
calling: "It's that there hulking boy, Nellis, o' yourn, that has done
me this mischief. Must 'a' smoked his pipe in bed or left his candle
lighted until it burned down, for it's plain to be seen by the way the
roof's ketched, the fire started upstairs and smouldered around all day
until it bust out everywheres to onct."

"I reckon yer insured," said Joshua, dryly, taking little account of
what he said, as he began to realize that the fire had put an end
forever to the discovery of the papers that might have brought good luck
to Bird, as well as destroyed a part of the slender property.

"A trifle--a mere trifle--not the cost of the wood in the house, let
alone the labour at present rates. I could hev rented the place tew
teachers for a summer cottage for twenty a month, and I intended buyin'
in the furniture so to do. If"--and he drew his mean features together,
and then spread them out again in a spasm of indignation--"law was just,
you'd ought to make it up to me, Joshua Lane,--that you had."

But when he found that the few neighbours who had gathered were not
sympathetic, and only seemed to regret the fire on account of the O'More
furniture, he disappeared, and, strangely enough, later on no one could
tell in which direction he went or if he had gone afoot, on horseback,
or in the yellow buckboard in which he was wont to drive about to harry
his tenants and surprise his farm hands if they but paused to straighten
their backs.

When Joshua told of the fire at the supper-table, Mrs. Lane fairly
snorted with indignation, saying, "Firstly, Nellis didn't smoke last
night, bein' out o' tobacco and leavin' his pipe on the chimneypiece,
where it is now, and secondly he asked me for a candle; and then, the
Lockwood boys comin' along, and offerin' to walk up with him, he went
off while I was lookin' for the store-closet key which had fallen off
its nail, and clean through the bottom of the clock"--(the inside of the
long body of the tall clock being the place where the Lane family's keys
lived, each on its own nail).

"This morning when he came down home to breakfast he mentioned it, and
said it didn't matter because the moon was so bright he undressed by
light of it, Bill Lockwood stopping up there with him for company's
sake.

"A trifle of insurance indeed! and all hope of Bird bein' righted gone!
Joshua Lane, do you know what I think and believe?" And Lauretta Ann
jumped up so suddenly that her ample proportions struck the tea-tray
edge and an avalanche of cups and saucers covered the floor.

"Your thoughts and beliefs 'll soon fill a book, big as the dictionary
and doubtless be worth as much," said Joshua, pausing a second with a
potato speared on his fork, while he gave his wife a stern, silencing
look that was so rare that whenever she saw it, she gave heed at once,
"but in this here matter I'd advise you to keep 'em good and close to
yourself. We've got plenty ahead to shoulder this summer, besides which
if papers had been found, 'tain't likely any lawyer hereabouts would
risk taking the matter without money to back him, and 'Biram Slocum to
face."

So saying, Joshua, having put himself outside of the potato, a final
piece of pie, and the tea that had been cooling in his saucer, pushed
back his chair and drew on his coat, saying as he went out: "The first
strawberries over ter Aunt Jimmy's 'll be ready for marketing on Monday,
and this is Thursday. I must look around and engage pickers. That acre
bed of the new-fangled kind is a week ahead of Lockwood's earliest.
Aunt Jimmy was no fool when it came to foresighted fruit raisin'."

"I never said she was, nor in other things either if her meanin' could
be read. What time did you say the fire started?" she added in an
unconcerned sort of way, as she stooped to pick up the scattered cups,
which were so substantial that they had not been broken by their fall.

"Let me see--it must hev been close to two o'clock when I drove out of
the yard; the mail carrier had just passed, and he's due at the corner
at two, and at the rate I went I wasn't fifteen minutes from the fire.
From the way it had holt, it must have been goin' all of half an hour.
Queer 'Biram didn't scent it sooner workin' in the corn patch back of
the wood lot as he appeared to be, leastways he came down the lane from
there.

"Fire couldn't hev ketched before one o'clock, for the hands up at
Lockwood's go up that way before and after noon as well as of mornings,
and if Nellis had left anything smouldering, they'd have surely smelt
it, first or last."

Joshua paused a moment, but, as Mrs. Lane asked no more questions, went
out, closing the door. No sooner did she hear the latch catch than she
jumped up, saying to herself: "Appeared to come from the corn patch,
did he? I wonder what he was doin' there? He planted late, so the corn
can't be set for hoeing; he _might_ be watchin' for crows or riggin' a
scarecrow." As she pronounced the last word she had reached the dresser
where hung a large square calendar that advertised one of the husky
sorts of breakfast foods that taste as if they might have been the
stuffing of Noah's pillow.

Lifting this down she carried it to the table, and, after hunting in
the dresser drawer for the pencil with which she kept her various egg
and butter accounts, she proceeded to put a series of dots about the
particular day of the month (it was June 10th), and then reversing the
sheet, she covered the back with a collection of curiously spelled and,
to the casual observer, meaningless words.

She had barely time to replace the calendar when the boys came in for
their supper, and she fell vigorously to rearranging the table and
brewing fresh tea.

The elder boys spoke of the fire as a bit of "old Slocum's usual luck,"
for it was known that the house would need a great deal of repairing
before any one but the artist, whose thoughts were always in the
clouds, would be willing to hire it. Lammy alone rejoiced in the fire
because, as he said, "When Bird comes back, the house won't be there for
her to see and make her sorry."

"Better not say that outdoors," warned Nellis, "or Slocum 'll say you
fired it on purpose--he'd like nothing better. By the way, mother," he
continued, as Mrs. Lane glanced keenly at Lammy, "what do you think I
heard at the shop to-day?"

"Concernin' what?"

"The Mill Farm."

"I can't think. Those Larkin folks hev worked the land these two years
past, but the mill hasn't run this long while,--not since the winter
Mis' O'More died and the ice bulged the dam; the fodder trade has all
gone away, and I don't know what 'Biram Slocum can turn it to 'nless he
can insure the water an' then let it loose somehow."

"There is a party of engineer fellows, or something of the sort, just
come to camp out up by Rooster Lake,--sort of a summer school, I guess,
for there are some older men along that they call professors. They
scatter all over the country surveyin' and crackin' up the rocks with
little hammers to see what they are made of.

"This afternoon half a dozen of them came down to the shop to see some
new kind of a boring tool that our foreman has designed, and Mr. Clarke
was with them,--you know he is the man who started the Art and Trade
School in Northboro, and has his finger in a dozen pies. Pretty soon
the superintendent called me and said, 'Here, Lane, you live out at
Laurelville; these gentlemen wish to see the old Turner Mill Farm place.
I'll let you off the rest of the day if you'll show them the way over.'

"I got in the runabout with Mr. Clarke and the others followed in a
livery six-seater. The old gentleman asked me all sorts of questions
about the water-power, and how low the stream fell in summer, and if the
pond ever froze clear through, and one thing and another.

"When we got to the Mill Farm, there was no one at home but the dogs and
hens; I suppose the folks had all gone to Northboro to the circus."

"Sure enough, it is circus day! How did I forget it?" ejaculated Mrs.
Lane. "That accounts for why there were so few folks on the roads this
noon!"

"Yes, everybody seems to have gone but ourselves, even Lockwood's
field-hands took a day off."

"They did? Then they didn't go up and down the cemetery hill road this
noon?"

"Of course not, why should they?" replied Nellis.

"You didn't remember that it was circus day, did you, and I guess it is
the first time you ever forgot it," said Mrs. Lane to Lammy.

"I knew--all right, but I'm savin' up for--you know," replied Lammy,
wriggling out of his chair and going to the door where he began crumbing
bread and throwing it to some little chickens that had strayed up out of
bounds.

"I do wish you had mentioned it, anyhow; it would hev done us all good
to have a change, though to be sure I _do_ suppose some folks would
have turned our going into disrespect to Aunt Jimmy,--Mis' Slocum in
particular."

"She went, and Ram, and Mr. Slocum, though he came home early. I saw him
down in the turnpike store back of the schoolhouse this noon; he was
sayin' he'd had to come back early on account of havin' a lot of things
to attend to over at the Mill Farm this afternoon," said Lammy.

"The turnpike store? He doesn't trade there--it's a mile out of his
way," said Mrs. Lane, thoughtfully.

"He didn't get to the Mill Farm, anyway," said Nellis, "because I was
there from after dinner until I came home just now. Where was I? You
got me all off the track."

"You were sayin' that Mr. Clarke asked you all sorts of questions about
the mill stream," said Mrs. Lane, who now seemed to have lost interest
in Nellis's story.

"Oh, yes,--well, Mr. Clarke and that Mr. Brotherton,--that is
superintendent of the engine shop in Northboro,--poked about a lot
together, measuring things and figuring in a little book he had in his
pocket. It looked as if they were going to make an afternoon of it, and
as I saw a fishin' pole inside one of the open sheds, I thought I'd go
down the sluice way and try for a mess of perch. I was lyin' quiet out
along a willow stump, thinkin' the folks were in the mill, when I heard
voices on the dam above. Mr. Clarke said: 'I tell you what, Brotherton,
I want you to negotiate this affair for me. That Slocum is a tricky
fellow. I saw him a month ago and told him I'd not touch the property
until that snarl about the mortgage foreclosure was untangled, the price
he asked was outrageous for two hundred acres, of course the buildings
are only fit for kindling. Now I want you to either buy me the farm and
water right, or else lease it for say twenty years; then I will run a
spur of the Northboro Valley railroad down here, move the locomotive
works and the paper-mill, and enlarge both plants. This is the right
place; plenty of room to build houses for the hands, and close enough to
my place to be under my eye without being annoying.

"'It will suit my daughter Marion, too. She has all sorts of ideas about
building a model village. Of course this is between ourselves, for if
that old Slocum rat dreamed that I was behind you, he would ask a dollar
a blade for every spear of run-out wire-grass on the farm.'"

"To think of it!" sighed Mrs. Lane, sitting down so suddenly in the big
rocking-chair that it nearly turned a somersault in surprise, "and it
was only a scrap of a mortgage, not more'n $2500, that was the cause of
workin' the O'Mores out of property that had been in her family near two
hundred years. Everybody knows there was crooked business if it could
only be proved. But your father can't find any papers, and now just as
he was going this afternoon to search through poor O'More's furniture
and things at the house, it had to go and burn down, and the hopes we
had that something might be worked out for Bird hev all gone up in
smoke," she said, addressing the stove solemnly.

The boys went out together to take a stroll up to the scene of the
fire. Hardly had they disappeared when Mrs. Lane jumped from the chair
with such a bound that it completed the somersault and stood on its head
facing the wall.

"I wonder!" she ejaculated, addressing the pump by the sink, and shaking
her finger at it as if the gayly painted bit of iron was her husband.
"Yes, it must be it. All along I allowed 'Biram Slocum fired that house
for the insurance. Now, by a new light I read he did it so in case there
was any papers or letters to and fro about that mortgage that they'd get
burned.

"I've noticed he and she hev made plenty of excuses to get into the
house alone, but I never reckoned it was for anything else but for
general meddlin', and pa's keepin' everything so close, even nailing up
the cellar doors and winders, balked 'em.

"He knew the auction was ter-morrow, and that he'd rather burn the
papers and furniture than risk Joshua or others finding 'em is my firm
belief, and I'd like to prove it. Not that it'll do Bird any good now,
but it would be a satisfaction, even though, as Joshua says, 'We've got
enough business of our own to shoulder before fall and settlin' time
comes.' I wonder if 'Biram 'll hev the cheek to ask for the rent now.

"Yes, I'm going to do a little nosing on my own account,--yes I be!"
she continued, adding more mysterious words to the back of the calendar
and nodding determinedly at the pump as if it had contradicted. "Knowing
never does come amiss, even if it is salted down for a spell. Shoo!" she
cried presently, waving the dish towel at the chickens who had boldly
ventured in, and then the tumult, caused by Twinkle's chasing them back
to their yard with much barking and sundry nips, brought her back to the
present and the work of dish-washing and tidying the kitchen for the
evening.

Even then her head and hands did not work together. She hung the biscuit
in a pail down the well and set away the butter in the bread-box, put
sugar instead of salt into the bread sponge she was setting; and,
finally, before she sat down to rest remembering that the pantry door
locked hard and creaked when it opened, she poured toothache drops
instead of oil upon both hinges and key, and presently began to sniff
about and wonder if Dinah Lucky, who had been in that day to do the
weekly laundry, was doctoring for "break-bone pains" again, and hoped
she had used the laudanum outside instead of in, otherwise nobody could
tell when she would turn up to do the ironing.

       *       *       *       *       *

Next morning if Joshua Lane and Lammy had not been in such a hurry to
get down to the fruit farm to prepare the crates and small boxes for the
coming strawberry picking, they would have noticed that Lauretta Ann
seemed to be quite excited and anxious to get them out of the way.

But Joshua was unusually absorbed and quiet--he was disappointed at
not finding the papers--but he had a hard summer's work ahead of him
with plenty of thinking in it; while as for Lammy,--he was trying to
calculate how many strawberries he must pick at a cent and a half a
quart to buy a round-trip ticket from Laurelville to New York, so that
he might invite Bird to come up for a Fourth of July visit; also as
to whether it would be possible to do this and have anything left to
buy fire-crackers. Yet, after all, crackers were of small account, for
Bird did not care much for noisy pleasure, and if she didn't come, he
wouldn't care for even cannon crackers himself.

"I suppose 'Biram Slocum will go over to Northboro smart and early to
collect his insurance," Mrs. Lane remarked, apparently looking out of
the window, but stealing a side glance at her husband's face.

"Mebbe he will; but when I turned the cows out an hour ago, I saw
him driving Milltown way in his ordinary clothes with a plough and a
dinner-pail along, so I reckoned he was goin' to work on that patch of
early corn he's got down at the Mill Farm."

At this Mrs. Lane's eyes glistened, and she plunged some dishes into the
tub of suds with a splash that was an unmistakable signal that breakfast
was over and all but lazy people should be out.

This morning she bustled so that a half hour did all the work of
"redding" up that usually took two at the very least, and when Dinah
Lucky came to do the ironing with no sniff of laudanum about her, though
the kitchen was still heavy with it, Mrs. Lane looked puzzled, then much
to that fat aunty's astonishment popped the batch of six plump loaves
into the oven and, leaving Dinah to tend the baking,--a thing that save
for illness she had never trusted to other hands in her twenty years of
housekeeping,--she took a small basket, a knife, and her crisp gingham
sunbonnet, and muttering something about trying to get one more mess of
dandelion greens, even if it was counted late, disappeared through the
woodshed door.

Dandelions grew in plenty in the moist meadow below the cow barn, but
Mrs. Lane crossed the road and took a winding path through the woods.
After following this for some distance and crossing several fields
where she filled her basket with greens, cutting only the very youngest
tufts with the greatest deliberation, she turned into the highway
through the cemetery gate and walked rapidly past the "four corners,"
never stopping until she stood in the enclosure that had once been Bird
O'More's garden. Then she set down the basket, and, seating herself on
the scorched chopping-block, looked about her.

The house had burned down to the foundation; some of the heavy chestnut
beams had not been wholly consumed but lay in a heap on the hard dirt
floor of the cellar. Otherwise the only bits of woodwork remaining were
the frames of two cellar windows that had been protected by the deep
stone niches in which they rested. The great centre chimney, around
which so many old houses are built, held its own, and its various
openings, most of them long unused, marked the location of the different
rooms; several of these, such as the smoke closet and brick oven, being
closed by rusty iron doors.

Presently Mrs. Lane set out on a tour of inspection. The half dozen
outbuildings were quickly explored, for, with the exception of the barn,
they were quite open to the weather and as rickety as card houses. Tall
weeds struggled with the straggling sweet-william and fiery, hardy
poppies in the strip before the lilac bushes that Bird had called her
garden, and the rusty wire of the henyard fence enclosed a crowd of
nettles that stretched toward the light like ill-favoured prisoners in
a pen. The grass and low bushes had been trampled by the people who had
gathered to watch the fire, as well as by the cows that had strayed in
through the latchless gate.

Clearly there was nothing to be discovered here. Next Mrs. Lane walked
about the ruined foundation looking for a likely spot to get down into
the cellar. The old chimney with its nooks and crannies was the only
thing left to examine, and she had made up her mind to do it even if it
meant a rough climb, bruised knees, and scratched fingers.

In some places little heaps of ashes were still smouldering, but by
picking her way carefully down the stone steps that had been under the
flap-door, she reached the base of the chimney and tried the first iron
door. It was warped with the heat, but after some difficulty she opened
it, only to find the ample closet absolutely empty. Talking to herself
and saying that it was not likely that anybody, even an artist, would
hide papers in a cellar, Mrs. Lane looked up to see how it would be
possible to reach what had been the kitchen level, where the chances
looked brighter; for there was the brick oven and a wide fireplace,
closed by sheet iron through which a stove-pipe had pierced. There was
no way up but to use the chinks between the big stones for stairs and
climb. True, she had seen an old ladder in the barn, but Lauretta Ann
was too practical a woman to trust a dozed rickety ladder--she preferred
to cling with her fingers and climb, and cling and climb she presently
did.

To young people it seems a very small feat to climb the outside of a
broad, rough, stone chimney that slopes gradually from a wide base
toward the top. For Mrs. Lane--stout, thick of foot and nearer fifty
than forty--it was a terrible exertion, and she paused between every
step she took to catch her breath, muttering, "Lauretta Ann Lane, you
are a fool if ever there was one. Suppose folks should pass by and see
you creepin' up here like a squawkin' pigeon woodpecker hanging to a
tree?"

She, however, did not in the least resemble even that heavy-bodied bird.
Did you ever see a woodchuck mount a low tree when cornered by dogs?
That was what Mrs. Lane looked like as she climbed. And did you ever see
the same woodchuck scramble, slip, and flop down, flatten himself, and
then amble to his hole, when he thought his pursuers had ceased their
hunt? Well, that was the way in which Mrs. Lane came down to the cellar
bottom, when she found that the brick oven had been used merely to hold
broken crockery and such litter.

For a minute or two she sat flat on the floor, resting, nursing her
bruised hands, and gazing idly at the outline of the sky through one
of the window holes in the stone wall. Then, as she recovered herself,
a bit of something fluttering from a broken staple in the scorched
window-frame attracted her attention. She picked herself up and examined
it. The glass had broken and fallen in, while the bit of metal had
caught a narrow rag of woollen material some six inches in length. This
was singed at the edges, but enough remained to show that it was a
herring-bone pattern of brown and gray such as is often seen in men's
suitings.

Mrs. Lane looked at the rag thoughtfully for a moment, then, detaching
it, pinned it carefully inside the lining of her waist, picked up her
basket of greens which were by this time rather withered, freshened
them with water from the well, and trudged home openly by the
highway, saying, as she walked, "'Tain't much, and most likely it's
nothin'--still maybe it's a stitch in the knittin', and if it is,
another 'll turn up sooner or later to loop on to it."

At dinner Mr. Lane gave his wife an odd look saying: "Why, mother,
where've you been? You look as if you'd gone a berryin' on all fours!
You're scratched on the nose and chin, let alone your hands."

"Be I?" answered "mother," so fiercely that Joshua quailed, and
remembered guiltily that he had forgotten her request to clear a tangle
of cat brier from over a tumble-down stone wall in the turkey pasture,
where his wife passed many times a day to herd this most contrary and
uncertain of the poultry tribe, so he said nothing more, but held his
quarter of dried apple pie before his face like a fan, while he slowly
reduced its size by taking furtive bites at the corners.

About four o'clock Mrs. Lane seated herself on the front porch to sew.
She was dressed in a clean print gown, with her collar fastened by a
large photograph "miniature" pin of Janey when a baby, a sign that she
considered herself dressed for callers. True it was Saturday and Dinah
Lucky was still pounding the ironing board, but that was because she had
"disappointed" on the two first week-days sacred to such work, and not
through any slackness on Mrs. Lane's part.

The weekly mending was always a knotty bit of business, and to-day
doubly so, for now that Lammy was working at the fruit farm, it
seemed as if he fairly moulted buttons and shed the knees and seats of
his trousers as crabs do their shells. Spreading a well-worn pair of
knickerbockers on the piazza floor, she trimmed the edges of the holes
and dived into a big piece bag for material for the patches.

"Seems to me I can't find two bits alike and I do hate to speckle him up
all colours and kinds as if he was a grab-bag. I know what I'll do--I'll
put in what I've got and clip down to the store for some blue jean, and
run him up a couple o' pairs of long overalls to cover him, same as his
brother's and Joshua's. Wonder I didn't think of 'em before, only I
can't realize that Lammy is big enough to be at work."

A man's shadow crossed the piazza. Mrs. Lane looked up quickly; she had
not heard the gate click, and Twinkle, who kept both eyes open as well
as ears cocked most of the time, was down at the fruit farm with Lammy.

"Buy something to-day? Nice goots, ver' cheap," said a voice in broken
English, and a pedler stood on the broad step and swung two heavy packs
down to the floor, while he wiped his face and asked if he might get
some water from the well.

[Illustration: "'_Buy something to-day? Nice goots ver' cheap._'"]

"Certainly, 'nless you'd prefer milk," said Mrs. Lane, cheerfully, for
she was naturally cheerful and generous, unless she was imposed upon.
The pedler, a foreigner, had a full-moon face, that looked both young
and tired, two things that always appealed to her, besides which his
packs were temptingly fat, and she had a weakness for pedlers. So after
getting the milk, she leaned back in her rocker, folded her arms, and
prepared to enjoy the exhibition, saying in the same breath: "I don't
know as I care to buy. What have you got?"

The packs contained a little of everything in addition to the usual
tinsel jewellery and cheap finery which she motioned aside, while she
selected half a dozen gingham shirts, the overalls, which the man
assured her truthfully were only what the goods would cost in the
village, and some stout red handkerchiefs.

"You don'd need trouble vit him," he said, pointing to the tattered
trousers. "I sells you somedings vot you can make down schmall," said
the pedler, growing confidential and pulling a stout pair of long pants
from a separate compartment in his pack. "Only a dollar, and I give the
schentlemens ninety cents for him,--yes, I did. I keep dem for mineself
if I home vas going, but I joust stard out. Only von dollar, and only
von leetle place broke."

"I don't like to trust to buy second-hand clothes; nobody knows what
kind of folks have wore 'em," objected Mrs. Lane, yet at the same time
fingering the substantial goods lovingly. "Where are they tore?"

"Here it vas, joust by der side leg ver you can schmaller make him, and
so help me gracious it vas no dirdy peoples wore dem. It vas a rich mans
to sell so fine a pants for ninety cents for such a break. Maybe you
knows him alretty, for he live"--pointing eastward--"in a big what you
call red house by the road there farther."

"Slocum's!" ejaculated Mrs. Lane, her hands trembling with excitement.

"Yes, dat vas his name. You take de pants, hein?"

For a moment Mrs. Lane was silent, examining the rent, for the trousers
though bright and new were of the same brown and gray herring-bone
pattern as the dingy rag she had brought from the cellar window of the
burned house.

"Yes, I'll take 'em. They _could_ be cut to advantage, and you may leave
me a box of that machine cotton, too; I'm clean out. Now, pack up and
move on, my man; I've got to see to supper."

"She vas very glad of dose pants," thought the pedler to himself, as he
trudged away, smiling at the sales he had made.

Up in the attic Mrs. Lane presently stood by a gigantic cedar chest, the
lid of which she lifted with difficulty, next the top tray. In the one
below she spread the pair of pants to the torn leg of which was pinned
_the_ rag.

"It does seem a shame to lay away a pair of 'Biram Slocum's pants
so near my weddin' shawl, but so must it be. Well, now, there's two
stitches in the garter I've set up to knit for the hobbling of 'Bi
Slocum's pace; the third stitch will be to show why he crawled in that
cellar window before the fire for he surely didn't do it after, and why
he was afeared to let his wife mend his torn pants."




VI

BIRD'S COUSINS


On the night of Bird's arrival in New York Jack and Larry O'More were
late for supper. In fact they did not come in until she had gone to bed
on the "extension" lounge in the parlour, where she was lying with her
teeth clenched in an effort to keep her eyes shut and to choke down the
nervousness to which crying would have brought the quickest relief. If
Bird could only have been alone in the dark and quiet for a few hours,
it would have been much easier for her to have overcome her great
disappointment. But in the corner of the family sitting room, amid a
litter of sewing and the smell of pipe smoke, with the glare and noise
of a busy street coming in the two small windows, sleep was impossible.
Finally her aunt closed the lid of the sewing-machine with a bang,
tossed her work into a heap in the corner, and, turning out the gas,
went into the kitchen.

There were six rooms in the flat, all quite small. The sitting room in
front and the kitchen in the rear had windows that opened out, above
the three bedrooms clustered round an air-shaft that was like a great
chimney having small windows let into it, through which even at noon
only a gray, sunless light entered, and the air had no freshness but was
full of odours and noises from the flats above and below.

Mr. and Mrs. O'More occupied the room next to the sitting room, Billy
sleeping beside them on a small mattress that was propped up nightly
upon two chairs; for when the bed was thus made, there was no room to
move about. Jack and Larry slept in the middle room which had a door
into the hallway, while the third room, opening out of the kitchen, had
been used by the oldest boy, Tom, before he had taken wholly to wild
ways and drifted off. Now it was more than a year since he had slept
there and it was tightly packed with broken furniture, old boxes, and
various kinds of trash that it had been easier to throw in there than to
dispose of in any other way. A small bath-room at the end of the hall
was littered up in much the same way, and it was evident that no one
cared for bathing, as the tub was used as a cubby hole for pails, a mop,
broom, and the wash boiler and board, for which there was no room on the
overloaded fire-escape. Still Mrs. O'More felt the dignity of having a
bath-room, for it stamped her home as a "flat," tenements so called
having no such luxuries.

Presently Bird gave up all idea of going to sleep or even of closing her
eyes, and do her best she could not keep from hearing the conversation
that passed between her aunt and uncle in the kitchen, for they made no
effort to lower their voices, and she dared not close the door as the
only breath of air that reached little Billy, who was tossing about and
muttering in his sleep, came through the front windows.

After hearing herself thoroughly discussed until her cheeks burned, her
uncle closed with the remark, "Well, of course Terry was all kinds of a
helpless fool, but he shouldn't be blamed for it, his mother was a lady
out of our class, and his wife too, judging from the looks and ways of
the kid, and don't you forget it, and it must come rough to her to be
shoved about, anyhow."

Then a new resolve came to Bird from the rough but well-meaning words.
Her grandmother and her mother had been ladies,--she would not forget
that any more than she would forget her father's wish that she should
learn to paint and win the success that had been denied to him.

Presently the subject changed and she heard her aunt speak of Tom and
say that it was three months since she had heard from him, and she
feared he was dead.

"I hope it will be three months more, then," O'More had cried with an
oath that made Bird quiver and pull the pillow over her head, but she
was obliged to take it off again because of the heat. "He never minds us
unless he's in a scrape, or there's something to pay. But he's not dead,
if that's any comfort, for he wrote to me two weeks gone, saying he must
have fifty dollars or leave his job, and I wrote him that he'd leave it
for all of me."

"And you never told me! I could have sent him a trifle; God knows what
he's done by this," and Mrs. O'More covered her red head with her apron
and began to whimper.

"Look here, Rose O'More," answered her husband, while Bird judged by the
jar that he had brought his fist down on the table with a bang, "that
scoundrel has bled you long enough; now we are saving up to have little
Billy doctored, and I'll not see you rob yourself and him for that other
that we gave the best of everything, and he's turned it to the worst,
even if he is the eldest born. If I were you, I'd bank the bit o' money
that comes in from the sewin' and not keep it about ye."

"The top drawer of the bureau is bank enough for me. The sum is near
complete to buy the frame for his leg, and it will be wanted next week
when I take Billy to the doctor, for it's to his own house he shall go,
and not to the thing they call the "clink" at the hospital, to be stood
up and twisted before a crowd o' dunce heads."

So Billy was to go to a doctor. That was good news, and Bird began to
take an interest in life again, for Billy, in a single hour had crept
quickly into her sensitive, motherly little heart, and with her to love
and to serve were one and the same impulse.

Presently two new voices joined the conversation, knives and forks
rattled, and amid pauses she heard scraps of conversation muffled by
food-filled mouths, and knew that they were talking of her. Jack and
Larry had come home and were having supper. Jack, who worked in an
office by day, was attending an evening school of type-writing and
bookkeeping, while Larry, who was of slight build and whose ambition was
to be a jockey and ride races, was kept late on the track where he was
serving an apprenticeship as handy man to a well-known trainer.

"Where is she? Let's have a peek at her. I hope she's pretty if I've got
to look at her steady," said Larry, who prided himself on his eye for
beauty, and wore plaid clothes and wonderful pink and green neckties,
the colours of the stable to which he was attached, and thought it the
finest thing in the world, for jockeys are often as loyal to their
racing colours as college men are to theirs.

"She isn't so handsome but what it'll keep until morning, and she's dead
asleep by this. Quit yer noise, all of ye; ye'll wake little Billy, and
he's been that fretful to-day that the rasp of his voice would wear
through an iron bar," Mrs. O'More added, as the three burst into loud
laughter over some tale of track happenings that Larry told.

Then the voices dropped to a hum, and then turned to the song of the
bees in Mrs. Lane's hives, and Bird drifted away into that sleep that
God sends to make our tired bodies and minds able to live together
without quarrelling.

       *       *       *       *       *

Bird slept heavily for many hours, yet to her it seemed only a few
minutes when she awoke again, a streak of light shining directly across
her face and the same noises coming from every side. This time, however,
the light was from the sun, not from the gas, and the noises were
fourfold, for there is nothing so varied, penetrating, and stunning as
the sound of the awakening of a great city to unaccustomed ears.

For a few moments she lay quite still, gazing about, and trying to
realize where she was, and whether awake or asleep, for so many things
had happened during the past week, that it all seemed like a bad dream.

Not many days before, morning light brought the hope to Bird that this
day her father might be better; only the day before she had waked in
Mrs. Lane's big white bed, to see that kind soul watching beside her and
Twinkle had come racing upstairs.

Presently it all came back to her, and, getting up, she raised the shade
quietly, for no one else was awake, and looked down into the street
in which wagons of all kinds were passing, while the sidewalks were
already, at six o'clock, swarming with children, driven into the air as
early as possible by the heat of the night. Then she looked about for
her clothes and a place where she might go to bathe and dress, for the
small rooms were all open through, and the lack of privacy and the sight
of the flushed disordered sleepers was a fresh jar to her.

Finally she tiptoed into the kitchen where a friendly clothes-horse
offered shelter, and managed to make herself neat, and arranged her hair
at a mirror hung over the kitchen sink, which she afterward found was
the family toilet place; then she stepped out on to the fire-escape
where there was the possibility of a breeze.

At that moment she heard Billy's querulous little voice wail, "Oh, I'm
so tired--tireder than last night, and I hurt all over," and she slipped
back through the hallway into the front room again to meet her aunt who
stood in the middle of the parlour, gazing at the empty sofa and open
window in some alarm.

"Oh, so yer up and dressed betimes and not fallen out of the winder
through sleep-walkin'," she said, not unkindly. "Jack has turns of it at
the coming of every hot weather, and he's been down the escape to the
ground, up to the roof and every place he could get, so it gave me a
turn when I missed yer. Here, I'll just throw a few clothes on Billy and
you can take him down to the street for a mouthful of air, while I get
the breakfast. I'll fetch him to the doctor to-day if it does put back
my sewin', and see if I can't get some ease for him."

"Shall I wash him first?" Bird asked quickly, as his mother began to
pull and jerk at his clothes, and then stopped short as she saw a flash
in her aunt's eyes that told her that she must be careful what she said.

"Wash him this time of the morning when he's scarce awake, and have
him all tired before he has a bite of breakfast? I guess not. You can
clean him up this noon, before I take him to the doctor's," and Billy,
now hopping, now stumbling along on his little crutch, led the way down
the three flights of dark stairs, moving carefully from step to step so
that he should not trip in the holes in the carpet with which they were
covered.

Once in the street Bird was at the same time interested and confused by
what was going on about her. A Jewish fish pedler, with much wagging
of head and hands, was trying to sell some stale-smelling flat-fish to
a woman who had preceded them downstairs. Another pedler, with a push
cart, piled high with cabbages, radishes, and greens, went into one of
the houses with a basketful of his wares at the very moment that a big,
roan truck-horse halted with his soft, inquisitive nose dangerously near
the green stuff. First he sampled a bunch of radishes, but these were
too hot for his taste, so he tried a carrot or two, and mangled fully
a peck of spinach before he sniffed the cabbages. At these he gave a
whinny of delight and nosed among them so vigorously that half a dozen
rolled into the gutter, and when the man returned, the horse had started
back a yard or so in fright and looked guiltless of the mischief, and
the pedler ran down the street after some suspicious-looking boys.
Meanwhile the horse stepped forward and nibbled the biggest cabbage with
great relish, while Billy clapped his hands, half a dozen other children
cheered, and Bird herself laughed and felt glad to see the horse, who
did not look overfat, have such a good breakfast.

For if Bird loved flowers and all outdoors, she loved animals still more
even if she did not know it, but the other children did not think of the
horse at all; they were only glad because it had outwitted the pedler,
for between the people of poorer New York and the push-cart people there
is everlasting war. This lesson Bird learned that morning before the
various factories in the neighbourhood had blown their seven-o'clock
whistles.

Another thing that struck her sensitive ear was the different languages
that were spoken by the passers-by,--the various mixtures of slang
and foreign idioms that the speakers used for English being almost as
difficult for her to understand as the German and Italian.

At Laurelville, to be sure, people spoke in two ways. The real country
folk had a vigorous, if homely, dialect, such as the Lanes spoke, while
Dr. Jedd, the minister, and her father and mother used a purer speech,
though her father alone had the soft, distinct way of pronouncing the
words that was one of Bird's great attractions.

Little Billy, however, was quite at home with this street language, as
far as understanding it went, but no word of it came from his baby lips,
strangely enough, and though he was really over six years old, he had
the slight frame and innocent, open-eyed gaze of a child of four, and he
was entirely "different like" from the rest of his family, as his mother
said, and it provoked her as if the fact of the child's being apart from
her own rudeness was a personal reproach.

"Hullo, Billy," called a freckled, lanky-looking girl of perhaps
fifteen,--reading by her face, though she was no taller than Bird,--who
was coming across the street from a grocer's carefully carrying a bottle
of milk as if it was a rare possession.

"Hello, Mattie," he answered cheerfully, hopping to the curb to meet
her. "Where've you been? I thinked you moved away."

"I've been working all of two weeks, and we moved right in back of your
house yesterday. We've got two fine rooms now, and I buy Tessie a bottle
of milk every morning now my own self," she said proudly.

"Tessie's legs are very bad again, and I can't get her out except
Sundays when mother's at home to help, but she's got a rocking-chair and
she can pull it all round the room an' see up out the winder to your
'scape. We seen you sittin' up there last night. Who's the girl?" she
added, dropping her voice as Bird drew near to Billy, not knowing how he
went about alone and fearful lest he should fall.

"It's Bird, my cousin; she came last night from the far-away country,"
he answered, clinging to Bird's hand, while the two girls looked at each
other, one shyly and the other--city bred and quick-witted--curiously,
noticing at once the plain black gown.

"Come to visit or stop?" she asked presently.

"I've come to stay," said Bird, slowly, only half realizing the truth of
the words.

"Father dead?"

"Yes."

"Mother living?"

"No."

"Any brothers and sisters?"

"No."

"Well, that's tough luck," said Mattie, her tone full of sympathy. As
she set the precious bottle on a damp spot on the sidewalk, so that her
hands need not heat the milk, she noticed the tears in Bird's eyes and
changed the subject quickly.

"Ain't you going to work soon? I've got a good job--cash-girl--$3.50 a
week, Saturday afternoons off all summer; 'n, if I'm smart in a year,
I can get to be an assistant stock-girl. How old are you, anyhow? I'm
fifteen and over."

"I'm thirteen and Uncle John is going to send me to school by and by; he
says that it closes too soon to make it worth while this term."

"Yes, you'll have to go until you're fourteen or they'll chase you up,
even if you do live in a flat with stair carpet. It's too bad, though;
you'd have lots more fun working."

"But I want to go to school as long as I can," said Bird, smiling at
Mattie's mistake.

"Oh, then you want to begin in an office type-writing or keeping sales
books. I don't like that; it's too slow and you can't see the crowd.
You'll have a daisy time this summer, though, with nothin' to do but
takin' Billy riding in trolleys and seein' the town. I'll tell you all
the parks where they have music. Billy's pa is free with dimes for
trolley rides. Last year, before my pa's falling accident, we lived down
this street, and when Tessie's legs were well enough, Mr. O'More 'd
often give me a quarter to take Billy along fer a ride. You can ride
near all day fer that, if you know how to work the transfers and stick
up fer yer rights."

"Was your father badly hurt?" asked Bird, drawn to this stranger by a
common chord.

"Yes, hurt dead," she answered, in a matter-of-fact tone without the
trace of a tremble, "and then pretty soon we had to move, and we've
been doin' it most ever since, so I kinder lost track o' Billy. You see
mother worried sick and we all got down on our luck, but now she's got a
steady job to do scrubbin' at the Police Court, and I've got a job, and
we've got two rooms and everything is all hunky; that is 'cept Tessie's
legs, but some's worse than her and can't even sit up."

"You say you live behind us; which house is it? Perhaps I could see your
sister through the window," said Bird, somehow feeling reproached at
Mattie's cheerfulness.

"It's the little low house down in the yard, back of yours, that's got
winders that stick out of the roof. Ours is the top middle and it's got
blinds to it,--all the winders haven't,--and they're fine to draw-to
if it rains, 'cause you don't have to shut the window. It's a rear
building, and some don't like 'em, and of course Tessie would rather
see out to the street, but rents come so high and rear buildings are
stiller at night; that is, when there's not too many cats. Were rents
high a month where you came from?"

"I don't exactly know," said Bird, trying to remember. "I think we paid
ten dollars, but we had a whole house, though it was old, and a garden,
and a woodshed, and a barn, and chickens. Everybody lived in whole
houses in Laurelville, even though some had only two or three rooms."

"Ten dollars for all that, and we pay eight for two rooms!" ejaculated
Mattie, looking hard at Bird to see if she was in earnest, and, seeing
that she was, quickly grew confidential, and, coming close, whispered:
"Would you, may be, sometime come in and tell Tessie about it and the
garden and chickens? She's read about the country in a book she's
got,--oh, yes, she can read; she's twelve and went to school up to last
year, for all she isn't much bigger 'n Billy--but she can't seem to
understand what it's just like and she's cracked after flowers; the man
in the corner market gave her one in a pot last year, but it didn't live
long because we hadn't a real window that opened out then. Maybe your
aunt won't let you come 'cause we live in a rear; my mother says she's
awful proud; but then, most anybody would be, living in a whole flat
with bells and a stair carpet.

"Say, Bird," she continued, after a moment's silence,--during which the
pedler had given up chasing the boys, rearranged his scattered wares,
and plodded patiently on,--this time dropping her voice to a whisper and
putting her lips to the other's ear, "if yer aunt won't let yer come
over, maybe you'd wave to Tessie when you and Billy's takin' the air on
the 'scape. I'll tie a rag to our blind so's you'll know the winder.
It would be an awful lot of company fer her daytimes when we're out to
have somebody to wave to. Yer will? I believe ye; somehow I could tell
in a minute ye'd be different from the rest," and giving Bird a thump on
the back expressive of gratitude, Mattie picked up her milk bottle and
hurried round the corner.

A shout from above next attracted Bird, and looking up she saw her uncle
leaning out of the window and calling to them to come up for breakfast.
Billy could hop downstairs quite easily, but in going up he was obliged
to crawl, baby fashion, on his hands and knees, so Bird followed, slowly
carrying his crutch.

Her uncle and cousins were already seated at the table when the pair
came up, both rather out of breath. Of the two boys, Larry made no
attempt to rise and shake hands, but stared hard at Bird's pale,
clear-cut face and neatly brushed almost blue-black hair and lashes
that made her violet-black eyes darker yet, then gave a quick nod in
which recognition and approval were combined, and continued his meal;
while Jack got up, came forward pleasantly, if with the very flourishy
sort of manner that somehow always reminds one of the pigeon wings
and squirrels in old fashioned writing-books, and waved her to a seat
between himself and his father and began to collect the dishes about her
plate.

"Go on with yer eatin'," said Mrs. O'More, rather sharply, as if
resenting the attention. "Bird can wait on herself,--she's got all day
to do it in and it's time you were off. Come round this side by Billy's
chair so's you can spread his bread; he's always cuttin' himself," she
added.

The food was plentiful enough, if rather coarse in quality,--a dish of
oatmeal, slices of head-cheese and corn-beef on the same dish, potatoes
sliced cold with pickled cabbage, a bowl of hard-boiled eggs, a huge
plate of bread with a big pot of coffee, still further heating the close
room from its perch on the gas range. But the table-cloth was soiled and
tumbled, and Bird saw with horror that her uncle wiped his mouth on the
edge of it, using it as a napkin, while the dishes seemed to have been
thrown on without any sort of arrangement.

Not feeling hungry herself, she began to cut up some meat for Billy,
who fed himself awkwardly using his knife instead of a fork; but Bird
did not dare say anything, and in a few minutes his appetite failed
and he sat picking holes in a piece of bread, while Bird looked at the
heaped-up plate her uncle pushed toward her with dismay, yet forced
herself to eat from inbred politeness.

Larry and Jack, having finished, pushed back their chairs, and hastily
filling their lunch-boxes with bread, meat, and eggs, took their coats
from the rack in the narrow hall and went out, Larry calling, "So long,"
as he went downstairs, but Jack turned back and said pleasantly to Bird,
"Good-by till night, and don't get homesick, Ladybird!"

"Ladybird, indeed," snapped Mrs. O'More, "you needn't bother; she can't
well sicken long over what she ain't got," at which unnecessarily cruel
remark, that made Bird stoop lower over her plate and swallow some
coffee so quickly that coughing hid her tears, O'More looked up and
said: "What's wrong with yer to-day, Rosy? You've no call to hit out
when nobody's touchin' yer."

"What's wrong? What's right, I'd like you to tell me?" she flashed; "me
with a lot uv sewin' to do, and to get Billy up-town to the doctor's by
ten."

"You don't do that tomfool dressmakin' with my leave and consent. I can
keep my family and well, too, if you weren't so set on robbin' yerself
fer Tom, who'll land himself in prison yet for all of you, if, please
God, he doesn't drag the rest of us along with him."

"I can wash the dishes and dress Billy if I may," said Bird, timidly,
feeling the tension of a bitter quarrel in the air.

"Well, you may try it for onct, but look to it you neither smash them
nor make him cry; there's days he near takes fits at the sight of water.
Here's his clean suit, and I'll just go and finish up that silk skirt,"
and Mrs. O'More pulled some clothes from a corner bureau and left Bird
and Billy alone.

"Don't you worry with what she says," said O'More, in a gruff whisper,
pressing Bird's shoulder with his kindly grasp. "Just you be good to the
little feller and yer Uncle John 'll stand by yer, and maybe ye'll see
some way to chirk things up a bit. I've been thinkin' some of puttin'
a bit uv an awning out on the 'scape to keep the sun off him while
he's takin' the air, only travellin' so much I've not got to it. I'd
do it to-day, only I must go to the yards to unload a car o' horses.
To-morrer, maybe, I'll stay around home."

"Don't you want any breakfast, Billy?" Bird asked, as her uncle clumped
downstairs.

"No,--yes,--I'm hungry, but I'm tired more," he answered, laying his
head on the table.

"Suppose I wash and dress you first, and then you can go out on the
piazza and eat something and see if you can spy Tessie."

"Will you hurt Billy's bones when you wash him? Ma always does," he
added, his lower lip beginning to quiver. He always called himself by
name and often spoke in short sentences as very young children do.

"I'll try not to; and if I do, you must tell me and I'll stop right
away."

Bird looked about the room to see what she could find without calling
her aunt, whose very presence seemed to irritate Billy. There were two
stationary wash-tubs beside the range; one of these being empty, she
proceeded to fill it half full of water, making it comfortably warm by
aid of the tea-kettle. Next she hunted up a piece of soap and found a
towel with much difficulty, for the roller towel on the kitchen door was
for general use.

"Come and play duck and go in swimming," she said to Billy, who had been
watching her with interest as she overturned a pail and put it in the
corner of the tub for a seat.

The idea struck the child's fancy so completely that he could hardly
wait to slip out of his few clothes and be helped up on a chair and then
into the tub, where he sat comfortably pouring the water over himself
with a tea-cup, and chuckling in a way that would have warmed his
father's heart.

Meanwhile, Bird gathered the dishes together in the sink, wiping off
the plates with bits of bread,--as she had done ever since she could
remember and had seen her mother do in the short "better days" when they
had a pretty home and her mother had always herself washed the best
china in the inside pantry,--and straightened the furniture and hung up
various articles that littered the floor so that there was room to move
about. By this time Billy was ready for drying, which Bird did so gently
that he did not even wince, for she had ministered to her father, seen
her father care for her mother, and God had given her the best gift that
a girl, be she child or woman, can have,--the gift of loving touch, of
doing the right thing almost unconsciously for the weak or helpless.

Billy, clean, refreshed, with his bright hair brushed into a wreath
around his forehead, sitting in his little chair on the fire-escape,
and being fed with bread and milk by Bird, who talked to him as he ate,
was a different being from the crumpled little figure that had only a
few moments before looked so pathetic sitting in his high-chair, head on
table.

As Bird gave him the last morsel and wiped his mouth, he leaned backward
to where she knelt behind him and, clasping his arms around her neck,
pulled her head down to him, and, nestling there, whispered, "Billy
loves Bird very much, and she must stay close by him forever 'n' ever,
won't she?"

"See, that must be Tessie's window down there," she said, not trusting
herself to answer and catching sight of a white rag hanging from the
blind of a low building that stood in the rear of a shop that fronted on
the next street. It was an old-fashioned, two-story, wooden house, with
dormer windows in a roof that had been once shingled. There were a dozen
such in Laurelville, and as Bird looked at it she wondered how it came
to be there, built in on all sides, and if it didn't miss the garden
that must have once surrounded it.

Then as she looked she saw the outline of a face inside the window.
It was so far down and across that she could not distinguish the
features, but she waved the towel she held, and Billy shook his hand.
Presently something white waved back, and thus a telegraph of love
and sympathy crossed the dreary waste of brick and clothes-lines, and
put the three in touch, and the Bird, who had been taken from the
country wilds and put in a city cage, and the two little cripples were
no longer alone, for even at these back windows there was some one to
wave to and respond.

Mrs. O'More was in a better mood when, an hour later, having finished
the gown, she came back to the kitchen to find the dishes washed and set
away, and Billy sitting contentedly in his chair throwing crumbs to try
to coax some pigeons that lived in the stable next door from the roof to
the fire-escape.

"I'll take him up to the doctor's now," she said to Bird, without
vouchsafing any remarks upon the improved appearance of the kitchen,
though she saw it all. "You can come along with me if you like, or you
can stop here and look about and rest yourself a bit. There's plenty of
passing to be seen from the front room."

Bird said she thought she would rather stay at home.

"Mind, now, and lock the inside hall door as soon as we've gone and
don't let anybody in, for, in spite of the catch on the door below,
there's always pedlers and one thing and another pushing up."

After Mrs. O'More had left, Bird went through into the sitting room.
Seating herself by the window with her arms on the sill, she looked
down into the street. It was an intensely hot day in spite of a breeze
that blew from the East River; down by the pavement the mercury was
climbing up into the nineties--summer had come with a jump. Could it be
only a week ago that she had been picking long-stemmed, purple violets
by the brook beyond the wood lot at Laurelville? Was it only day before
yesterday that Lammy had brought her the red peonies, and they had
walked up the hill road together?

She had stayed by the window for some time, perhaps half an hour,
watching the horses that were led out from the stable to be cooled by
spray from the hose attached to the hydrant in front, when a slight
noise in the kitchen caused her to turn. The light from the window
opening on the fire-escape was darkened, and a man's figure showed for
a second in outline against the sky and then swung noiselessly into the
kitchen.

Bird's first impulse was to scream, but, checking it, she shrank
trembling behind a tall rocking-chair and watched. The man glanced about
the kitchen and came directly through to the room where her uncle and
aunt slept. It did not seem to occur to him that there was anybody at
home, though Bird did not think of this until afterward.

Pausing before the bureau, he opened the upper drawer, and, after
passing his hand rapidly through the clothing it contained, drew out a
long wallet, which Bird recognized as the one from which her aunt had
taken some money before going to the doctor's. Without thinking of the
result or counting the cost, she rushed forward and caught the wallet
tight in both hands, crying, "You mustn't take it, you shan't; for it's
the money to pay for mending poor Billy's leg."

The man, taken utterly by surprise, fell back, but only for a moment,
and, muttering a string of such words as Bird had never before heard,
seized her by the shoulder with one hand while he tried to wrench the
pocket-book from her with the other; but, strong as he was, this took
several minutes, for Bird hung on desperately, clinging to his arm after
he had secured the wallet, until finally he picked her up bodily and
threw her on to the bed, and before she could recover herself, locked
the door into the sitting room, and, taking out the key, did the same to
the door into the boys' room, through which he retreated, leaving her a
prisoner, for the window into the air-shaft was high out of reach.

As Bird sat on the edge of the bed sobbing with fright and the thought
of what the loss of the money might mean to Billy, noise of a scuffle
reached her ears from the kitchen and the locked door burst open
suddenly as it had closed, pushed by a strong shoulder, but it was the
face of a perspiring policeman that peered through the crack.

"Catch him, oh, do catch him!" she implored; "he's got the money from
Aunt Rose's drawer that's to pay for mending Billy's leg!"

"He's caught safe enough, my girl,--me mate has him in the kitchen and
the money, too, though he did try to throw it over the yards when we
grappled him. You see there's been a slew of these daylight thieves
around these parts lately, sneaking over roofs and down escapes when
folks are at work. We spotted this one goin' through the saloon on the
corner and in among the skylights, and we followed but lost track, for
he has another wallet lifted besides this one, and if he'd slid out a
minute sooner, we'd have lost him."

"Then holding on did some good, after all," Bird gasped, still standing
with tightly clasped hands as if she were holding the precious money in
them.

"An' did yer grab him, now? Look at that fer pluck,--it's a wonder he
didn't smash yer entirely. Come out and take a look at him; maybe ye
can tell did ye see him before."

Bird looked, but the young man was a stranger to her. He did not appear
to be more than twenty, and, as they led him away, handcuffed to an
officer, he pulled his hat so low over his face that the crowd that
gathered and followed as soon as the street was reached could not see
his features, or if he was old or young.

Bird gave the officer her uncle's name, and he said: "When he comes in,
tell him to come round to the station-house and he'll get his money
all right. I've got to take it in as evidence." The street was hardly
clear again of the curious crowd when the twelve-o'clock whistle sounded
and workmen appeared from all quarters, either with pails to eat their
dinners in the shade of the house fronts, or on the way to their various
homes.

Mrs. O'More and her husband--for he had been watching for their
car--came up the street together, little Billy between them, and it was
strange that they did not meet the policemen with their prisoner. Bird
was watching eagerly for them, and, after hearing their news,--that the
doctor said it was possible to help the lame leg, only that Billy must
grow stronger before it could be done,--told them hers.

Both listened eagerly. Her uncle said, "Yer pluck does credit to the
O'Mores, but did ye mind the villain's face what it was like?"

"Oh, yes," Bird answered excitedly, "it was smooth and fair, and he had
very blue eyes with a long scar over one, and his hair was quite red."
Glancing at her aunt, she saw that she had turned deadly pale, and a
certain resemblance struck her for the first time.

"God help us,--it's Tom come back to rob his own mother," gasped poor
John O'More.

"But you'll not appear against him, John," cried his wife, throwing her
arms around him as he seized his hat and turned to go out.

"I can't, woman, I can't; but maybe it'll do no good. I must go round to
the station and get the wallet and see to this, anyway."

And Bird, after laying Billy on the lounge for a nap, sat by her
aunt,--who, while waiting to hear the outcome, had collapsed and was
crying noisily,--and tried to take off her tight waist and bathe her
face, and she realized that there were even worse griefs than leaving
one's home and father, for surely dear Terry was safe beyond all harm
now.




VII

SUMMER IN NEW YORK


The arrest of Tom O'More threw the matter of little Billy's leg into
the background for a time. When the father had gone to the court where
his son was arraigned, he found that not only was there another charge
against him, but that all unknown to his family he had committed petty
thefts in other places, and had already what the police call "a record,"
so that he had to go to the penitentiary for a year, and John O'More,
feeling his disgrace keenly, for though he was a rough man and coarse in
many ways he was as honest as the day, turned doubly to little Billy,
and could not bear to have him out of his sight when he was at home.

The doctor's orders concerning Billy had been short and clear, but it
was fully a week after the visit before his mother could pull herself
together or even think of carrying them out, and then when O'More took a
day at home and had leisure to ask for details, she began by saying that
what the doctor had ordered to get the child in condition for treatment
was nonsense, and only to be had by rich folks.

"Well, well, woman, let's hear and get to the core o' the matter," said
John O'More, tired of the continual word warfare.

"He's to have a real bed and no shake-down, so's he can stretch out and
roll about, and it's to be in a room opening to the light where he can
lie quieter by himself an hour or so every day. Then he's to get a full
bath every morning and a light meal, and fresh meat at noon, and a bite
and sup between that at supper, and the between times filled in with air
and a bottle o' tonic, and the saints knows what else.

"'Do yer think I keep a 'ospital to do all them things,' sez I to the
doctor.

"'No,' he answers quick like, 'and for that reason I think it will pay
you best to send him to the 'ospital to get him built up.'

"'His father will not hear to it,' I said.

"'Very well, then,' said he, 'you know what _I_ think; go home and talk
it over.'"

So John O'More sat and thought and blinked at the ground, and thought
some more, but it was Bird who first spoke, though very hesitatingly,
for her aunt resented almost everything she said, and in her ignorance
and prejudice seemed to owe poor Bird a grudge as being partially
responsible for Tom's arrest, rather than showing any gratitude toward
her for trying to prevent the theft of the money.

"Couldn't Billy have a bed in the little room that was--that is shut
up?" she asked finally. "The door is close to the kitchen window, and a
good deal of air would come in."

"It's packed solid full, and besides the room is off from me, so's I
couldn't hear the child to tend him in the night if needs," objected
Mrs. O'More, somewhat hotly.

"Couldn't the things be put in the attic or somewhere?" persisted Bird,
seeing a flash of approval cross her uncle's face, "and then there would
be room for two beds, and I could stay with Billy and give him his bath
every morning."

"Attic! do you hear her?" mocked the aunt, "and a fine slop there'd be
in me kitchen, and a nice place for folks to eat breakfast, with the
bath."

"If the things were taken out of the bath-tub we could use that,"
continued Bird, waxing bold at the prospects, "and I'm sure, Aunt Rose,
it would be much nicer for you to have the parlour to yourself, and not
have to make me a bed there every night."

"That last is true; I've been greatly put out these days when company
called," the company being the slipshod factory girls for whom she did
sewing, but, as often happened, Bird had unconsciously said the one
thing that could have appeased her aunt, for only when something was
suggested that would benefit herself was she willing to have others
considered.

"The tub is full of holes, and the agent he won't mend it, saying that I
made them with the ice-pick, when for convenience I used that same tub
for an ice-box, me own givin' out."

"If that's all, a bit o' solder is cheap," said O'More, springing to his
feet, and preparing to take action.

"I've the day on me hands, and a few extry dollars in me pocket, and if
something can't be worked out o' this, 'twon't be my fault; and while
I recommember it, I think you'd be the better of a new hat, Rosie, and
while yer out buyin' it, jest step in the store, round on Third Avenue
and get two o' them light-lookin', white iron beds; they're cheap, for I
saw yesterday when passin' that they be havin' a bargain sale of them,"
and John, with the quick-witted diplomacy of his race, handed his wife
some money which she took, and, half mollified, at once prepared to go
out, instructing Bird to "do up the rooms" while she was gone.

The door had not fairly closed when O'More gave a shout that almost
frightened Bird, and said: "Now we'll do some hustlin'; there's no
attic, me girl, but there's the coal-closet in the cellar which is
empty, now that we use gas in the range. Half the stuff is but fit for
the ashman, and the rest I'll bundle down there quick as I get a man
from the stable to help. Now watch sharp whilst I put the truck out and
see if there's aught yer can use."

When the room was finally cleared, a mirror, a chair, and a small chest
of drawers were the only useful assets, and these Bird pulled into the
kitchen, while she dusted and wiped away at them until they looked
clean, even if somewhat shabby.

Returning from the cellar O'More (in his youth a handy man in a stable)
attacked the dust in the little room with broom, mop, and finally a
scrubbing-brush to such good purpose that in an hour it was quite
another place, for the walls fortunately had been painted a light cream
and were in fairly good condition.

If John O'More had been asked to go down on his knees and scrub a room,
he would have resented the work as an insult to his manhood, but love
had set the task. Little Billy, sitting there in his chair, his face all
eagerness, needed the room, and so he did the work as nonchalantly as he
would have stepped into the stable and curried a horse in a hurry time.
It was only when Bird clapped her hands in admiration and said, "Why,
uncle, how nice and quick you did that; Dinah Lucky would have taken a
whole day," that he became embarrassed, and, giving her an apologetic
wink, said with lowered voice, "It's a job well done, but whist! 'tis
not for the good of my health to be repeated," and Bird understood and
wondered, as she did a hundred times during that long summer, why she
always understood her uncle and he her, while life with her aunt seemed
one long misunderstanding.

A plumber, living in the flat below, came up in the noon hour and
soldered the holes in the tub, which O'More declared to be too black
even for a pig's trough, so he sped out around one of those many
"corners," of which at first Bird thought the city must be made, for a
quart of boat paint and a brush.

"Yer aunt must be havin' a hard time with her tradin'," he remarked on
his return, seeing that his wife had not come back to prepare dinner.
But just as Bird had spread the table with various articles of cold
food, whose abiding-places she very well knew, and was making Billy some
little sandwiches to coax him to eat meat for which he had a distaste,
Mrs. O'More came in, talkative and almost pleasant as the result of her
morning's bargaining.

Before night two narrow beds were carefully fitted into opposite sides
of the little room, with the chest of drawers set between, in front of
the now-closed door that led to the boys' room, with the looking-glass
hung above it. It was only a bit of a place and still very close and
stuffy, but Billy and Bird had at least beds of their very own, if only
in a niche apart, and Bird's heart took fresh courage.

The next step was to coax her uncle to fill some long boxes with earth
and set them inside the outer railing of the fire-escape. There is a law
against filling up these little balconies with boxes or furniture of any
kind, but Bird knew nothing about it, and her uncle regarded it as a
sort of tyranny that he, a free-born citizen, should disregard. All Bird
thought of was that she might plant morning-glory seeds in the earth
so they would climb up the strings she fastened to the next story, and
later on there was, in truth, a little bower blooming above that arid
waste of bricks and ashes.

[Illustration: _Bird and Billy on the Fire-escape._]

After the new room was arranged, and permission given to Bird to see
that Billy had what the doctor ordered that he should eat, and to
take him out whenever he wanted to go, everything began to move more
regularly and in some respects more comfortably, then Bird, to her
dismay, saw the city summer, like a long roadway without a tree or bit
of shade, stretching out before her.

There was not a book in the house and no one to tell her of the free
library where she might get them, and school, where she hoped to find
a sympathetic teacher for a friend, belonged to September three months
away. No one who has always lived in the city can possibly understand
what this change, with its confinement and lack of refined surroundings,
meant to this young soul. To be poor, in the sense of having little to
spend and plain food, she was accustomed,--in fact, she had much more
to eat now, and through her uncle's careless kindness she was seldom
without dimes for the trolley rides to Battery Park "where the fishes
lived," or Central Park with the swan-boats that were to "make a man" of
Billy. But to be shut away from the woods, the sky, the beauty of the
sunsets, to have no flowers to gather and love, and to be brought face
to face daily with all the ugliness of the life that is merely of the
body, was almost too much for her courage.

How could she keep her head above the street level, how remember what
her father had taught her?--already the memory of the past was becoming
confused. Sometimes she was on the verge of ceasing to try and settling
down into a silent drudge, content to take what came, and falling
into the habits and commonplace pleasures of the girls of her cousins'
acquaintance with whom she was thrown in the parks and on the stoop and
streets. It would have been much easier in some respects,--her aunt
would have been better pleased to see her go off with the others, to
some noisy if harmless excursion, arrayed in a cheap, flower-wreathed
hat and gay waist, shrieking with laughter, and chewing gum, than to
see her always neat amid disorderly surroundings and ever willing
to do the endless little tasks that her own mismanagement piled up,
and Ladybird--Jack's name for her--strangely enough seemed a term of
reproach, not compliment.

At first Bird had hoped that Sunday might bring better things; but no,
Sunday in the quiet, peaceful, Protestant sense that Bird understood
it,--there was none. The family straggled to early mass one by one, for
Mrs. O'More and her sons were Romanists, though O'More was not, being
from the north of Ireland, and the rest of the day was spent by the men
either lying in bed and smoking, or standing in groups about the street.

In these hard days little Billy was Bird's only ray of light. The two,
being of equally sensitive natures, clung together, and the child was
so happy in his new-found friend and ceased his incessant fretting
whenever he was with her, that Mrs. O'More at last gave him completely
to Bird's charge with a sigh of relief, for her youngest child was as
much a puzzle to her as her niece, and she felt that he also was of a
different breed, as it were, and it annoyed her.

All the fierce scorching summer days Bird and Billy wandered about
together, sometimes going over to Madison Square, sometimes riding in
the trolley to Central Park, but more often down to the Battery where
the air tasted salt and good, where the wonderful fishes lived in the
round house and the big ships went past out to that unknown sea of which
Bird was so fond of telling Billy stories.

Bird, too, soon learned to find her way about, for six-year-old Billy
had all the New York gamin's knowledge of his whereabouts coupled with a
cripple's acute senses. He hopped along with his crutch quite well, and
many a lesson in human nature and life did Bird learn these days in the
treeless streets of poorer New York.

After a time she found that her uncle had seemed to forget his hatred
of anything like drawing or painting, so one day she ventured to buy a
good-sized pad and pencil, and then watching Bird "make pictures" became
Billy's great joy, while she to her surprise found that she could draw
other things besides flowers.

Oftentimes the children would go down to sit on the steps and watch
the horses from the great sales stable being exercised up and down the
street. Bird tried to draw these too, and one day succeeded so well that
her uncle, passing in at the door, stopped and looked down, and then
said, "Bully! any one would know it for a horse, sure!" After that she
worked at every odd minute.

She loved horses dearly, but she and Billy were forbidden to go into
the stables, which were almost underneath the flat, and Bird really
had no wish to, for the men there were so rough and there was so much
noise and confusion; but a few doors away was a fire-engine house where
lived three great, gentle, gray horses that ran abreast, and had soft
noses that quivered responsively when they saw their driver even in the
distance. Bird made friends with these, taking them bits of bread or
green stuff, until the firemen came to expect the daily visit and "Bird"
and "Billy" became familiar names in the engine-house; and there was a
little dog there that ran with the engine and reminded her of Twinkle.

Dan was the heaviest of the three horses and Bird's favourite, and
one day, after many attempts, seated on the stoop of the next house,
she succeeded in drawing a small head of him that was really a good
likeness, at least so the firemen thought, for they put it in a frame
and hung it in the engine-house, and the next day big Dave Murray, Dan's
driver, gave her a small box of paints "with the boys' compliments."

Ah, if the big, bluff fellow only knew what the gift meant to poor
little Ladybird struggling not to forget and to still keep the heavenly
vision in sight.

Bird had written a short note to Mrs. Lane telling of her safe arrival
in the city, and giving her address, but more than that she could not
say. If she said that she was happy and gilded the account of her
surroundings, it would have been false. If she told the truth, her
Laurelville friends would be distressed, and it would seem like begging
them to take her back when it evidently was not convenient, for she did
not know that her Uncle John had refused to let her stay with Mrs. Lane
unless she was legally adopted.

Neither was Bird worldly wise enough to act a part and simply write of
her visits to the park and the little excursions with Billy which in
themselves were pleasant enough. She was crystal clear, and knew of but
two ways, either to speak the whole truth or keep silent. She was too
loyal to those whose bread she was eating to do the first, and so she
did not write.

In due time a long letter came from Lammy written with great pains and
all the copy-book flourishes he could master, telling of Aunt Jimmy's
strange will, of how he was going to work all summer at the fruit farm,
and ended up by telling her of the preparations he had made for the
Fourth, never dreaming it possible that, the matter of tickets disposed
of, Bird should refuse his invitation.

At first the thought of getting away from the city, and being among
friends again quite overcame her. She began to wonder if Twinkle would
be glad to see her, and if the ferns met over the brook as they did last
year, and if Mrs. Lane would have the white quilt on the best-room bed,
or the blue-and-white patch with the rosebuds. Then she realized that
if she met the Laurelville people face to face, she would surely break
down, while the saying "good-by" again would be harder than not going.
Then, too, there was little Billy. How could she leave him at the very
time when, in spite of continued hot weather, he seemed to be gaining?

No--she sat down resolutely and wrote a short note that wrung her heart
and kissed it passionately before she mailed it, for was it not going to
the place that now seemed like heaven to her?

But the letter that arrived as the Lanes sat on porch after supper said
no word of all this, and seemed but a stiff, offish little note to
warm-hearted Mrs. Lane and Lammy who, having now quite earned the ticket
money, was cut to the quick when he found that it was all in vain.

"She's gone to the city and forgotten us," he gulped in a quavering
voice, as he read the letter, coming as near to letting a tear run down
his nose as a sturdy New England boy of fourteen could without losing
his self-respect.

"It doos _appear_ that way," said Mrs. Lane, who was gazing straight
before her out of the window with an abstracted air; "but, after all,
what's in appearances, Lammy Lane? Don't your copy-book say that they
are deceitful? Well, that's what I think of 'em. Likely 'nough it
appears to Bird that I didn't want to keep her, 'cause owing to this
other mix-up, I couldn't divide the share of you boys without thinking
it over, and 'dopt her then and there. But my intentions and them
appearances is teetotally different.

"No, Lammy, I'm goin' straight on lovin' Bird and trustin' her and
keepin' a place in my heart for her, besides havin' the best-room bed
always aired and ready, and jest you keep on lovin' and trustin' her,
too, and like as not the Lord will let her know it somehow, for I do
believe kind feelings is as well able to travel without wires to slide
on as this here telegram lightnin' that hollers to the ships that's
passin' by in the dark. 'Think well and most things 'll come well,' say
I."

"How about Aunt Jimmy's will? Yer always thought well enough o' her,"
said Joshua, who had laid down his paper and folded his spectacles to
listen to the reading of the letter.

"An' I do still," Mrs. Lane averred stoutly; "it doos _appear_
disappointing, but I allers allowed that if we was only able to read
her meanin', 'twould be a fair and kindly one."




VIII

THE FLOWER MISSIONARY


It was the last day of June when one morning, before the sun had a
chance to turn the pavements into ovens, Bird, having finished some
marketing for her aunt, was leading Billy slowly in and out along the
shady sides of the streets toward Madison Square, where they were
watching the lotus plants in the fountain for the first sign of an open
flower, for already buds were pushing their stately way through the
great masses of leaves.

Chancing to glance at the window of a newly finished store that was not
yet rented, Bird read the words, "Flower Mission." As she paused to look
at the sign, wondering what it might mean, an express wagon stopped at
the curb and several slat boxes and baskets filled with flowers, for
sprays peeped from the openings, were carried into the building, a wave
of moist coolness and perfume following them.

Bird's heart gave a bound of longing, for the fragrance of the flowers
painted a picture of her little straggling garden and held it before her
eyes for a brief moment.

"Oh, look, Bird, come quick and look; it's all full of pretty flowers in
there! Do you think they would let Billy go in and smell close?" Billy
was standing by the open door, and, as Bird glanced over his shoulder,
she saw that one side of the store was filled by a long counter,
improvised by placing boards upon packing cases, which was already
heaped with flowers of every description in addition to those that the
expressman had just brought.

An elderly lady, with a big, white apron tied over a cool, gray, summer
gown, was sorting the flowers from the mass, while a tall, slender young
girl, of not more than sixteen, dressed all in white, was making them
into small bouquets and laying them in neat rows in an empty hamper.

It was the young girl who overheard Billy's question to Bird and
answered it, saying, "Of course Billy may come in and smell the flowers
as much as he pleases, and have as many as he can carry home."

"Oh, can we?" said Bird, clasping her hands involuntarily with her old
gesture that expressed more joy than she could speak.

At the sound of the second voice, the young girl pushed back the brim
of her drooping, rose-trimmed hat and looked up with clear, gray eyes.
As she did so Bird recognized her as Marion Clarke, the daughter of the
man who spent his summers in the stone house on the hillside beyond
Northboro, and it was she who had passed Bird and Lammy on the roadside
the day when she had left her old home and, carrying Twinkle, was going
to Mrs. Lane's.

But if Bird recognized Marion, the memory was on one side, as it is apt
to be where one sees but few faces and the other many. This however
did not prevent Marion from holding out her free hand to the younger
girl, as she made room for her to pass between the boxes, saying, in a
charming voice, low-keyed and softly modulated, yet without a touch of
affectation: "If you are fond of flowers and can spare the time, perhaps
you would help us this morning; so many of our friends have left the
city that we are short-handed. Here is a little box your brother can sit
on if he is tired." Oh, that welcome touch of companionship, and that
voice,--it made Bird almost choke, as she said:--

"Billy is my cousin, and I should love to tie the flowers, for Aunt Rose
does not expect us back until noon."

It was one of Marion Clarke's strong points, young as she was, that she
had insight as well as tact. She saw at a glance that these children
were not of the ordinary class that play about the streets, interested
in every passing novelty, merely because it is new, so she had given
Bird a friendly greeting and asked her to help, instead of merely
offering the children a bouquet and letting them pass on as objects of
charity, no matter how light the gift.

When Bird replied in direct and courteous speech, Marion knew that she
had read aright. An ordinary street child of that region would have
said, "I dunno 's I will," or "What 'll ye give me 'f I do?" or perhaps
declined wholly to answer and bolted off after grabbing a handful of
flowers.

"Aunt Laura, will you let us have some string? There, see, it is cut in
lengths, so that you can twist it around twice and tie it so. I do wish
people would tie up their flowers before they send them, they would keep
so much better; but as they do not, we have to manage as best we may.

"Oh, how nicely you do it," she continued, as Bird held up her first
effort for approval,--a dainty bouquet of mignonette, a white rose, and
some pink sweet-william, with a curved spray of honeysuckle to break the
stiffness.

"So many people put the wrong colours together, and tie the flowers
so tight that it seems as if it must choke the dear things,--see, like
this," and Marion held up a bunch in which scarlet poppies and crimson
roses were packed closely together without a leaf of green.

"Yes, I understand; those colours--hurt," Bird answered, groping for a
word and finding exactly the right one.

"You must have lived in the country and been a great deal with flowers
to touch them so deftly and know so well about the colours."

"I always lived in the country until this summer, and Terry taught me
all about the colours and how to mix them."

"Who was Terry?" asked Marion, much interested, and not knowing that she
was treading upon dangerous ground.

"He was father," and Bird, remembering where she was, stopped abruptly,
and Marion, who had noticed the rusty black gown, understood that there
was a story in its shabby folds and forbore to intrude.

Miss Laura Clarke, who was the lady in gray, gave Billy a pasteboard box
lid of short-stemmed blossoms to play with, and he sat quite content,
while the others kept on tying the flowers until only one basketful was
left.

"The flowers come in every Wednesday morning, and I ask people to send
them in as early as possible, so that they may be sorted and tied
up by ten o'clock when the ladies come to distribute them," Marion
explained as they worked. "They are Miss Vorse, the deaconess from the
mission, beside two workers from the College Settlement, and half a
dozen district visitors. Those two hampers go direct to hospitals, but
the ladies take the flowers about to the sick in the tenements and to
special cases.

"I have come here from the country place where I live every week all
through May and June, but this is my last day this season, because I'm
going to Europe next week with my aunt, and Miss Vorse will take my
place."

Another disappointment for Bird. At last she had met some one to whom
she had felt drawn, and whom she thought she might see occasionally, and
almost in the same breath learned that she was going away.

"Do you know of any children who would like some flowers, or any one who
is ill?" she added, as she noticed that Bird was silent and loath to go,
even though all the bouquets were ready and Miss Laura was packing them
in the baskets and boxes for distribution.

"There's Tessie; oh, I know that Tessie would love to have some!" cried
Bird, eagerly; "she has not waved to us for nearly a week, and I was
going to see her this afternoon when Billy takes his nap, if Aunt Rose
will let me," and Bird told what she knew of the little cripple who
"kept house" by herself while her mother and sister worked.

Then a happy idea came to Marion Clarke. Handing out a flat wicker
basket, that held perhaps twenty-five bouquets, to Bird, she said:
"Would you like to be one of the Flower Missionaries this summer and
carry bouquets? Yes?" as she saw the glad look in her eyes; "then you
may fill this basket, and here is a big bouquet for you and something
extra sweet to add to the basket,--see, a bunch of real wallflowers,
such as grow over seas, some foreign-born body will go wild with joy
over it, and here is a fruit bouquet a youngster has evidently put
together,--big strawberries on their stalks set in their own leaves.

"Miss Vorse is coming now. I will introduce you and tell her to give
you the flowers. What is your name? Bird O'More. I'm glad of that; it
seems to fit you. I should have been disappointed if it had been Jane
Jones," she continued, as a sweet-faced, tall young woman, dressed in a
dark blue gown and bonnet, entered, saying: "I'm afraid that I am late,
but there is so much illness among the little children in the district
now that I could not get away. A new Flower Missionary! That is good;
children can reach those whom we cannot."

Presently Bird found herself walking along the street, Billy's hand in
one of hers, and the basket of flowers in the other. Billy was prattling
happily, but for once she scarcely heard what he said, the flower voices
were whispering so gently and saying such beautiful things.

"Take us to Tessie," whispered one. "God lets us bring sunlight to
dark places," said another--"You can do the same." "Be happy, you have
something to give away," breathed another, and this flower was a spray
of cheerful honeysuckle that blooms freely for every one alike.

Yes, Bird was happy, for Marion Clarke had held her by the hand and
called her a Flower Missionary; she had flowers to give away and flowers
to take home. Oh, joy! she could try to paint them, and she pushed the
bouquet that held the old garden flowers, the mignonette, sweet brier
and honeysuckle under the others to keep for her own.

If she waited to go home first, the flowers might fade, so an impulse
seized her to give Tessie her flowers first, and then turned into the
street below their own, trying to remember Mattie's directions--"Count
six houses from the butcher's, and then go through the arch, and up two
pairs of stairs to the top."

Before she had gone a block, two little girls had begged her for
flowers, one rosy and sturdy chose red and yellow zenias; the other,
who, like Billy, had a "bad leg" and hopped, chose delicate-hued sweet
peas. Bird had never seen a lame child in Laurelville, but now she met
them daily, for such little cripples are one of the frequent sights of
poorer New York.

At the first corner a blind woman, selling the mats she herself
crocheted, begged for "a posy that she could tell by the smell was
passing." To her Bird gave the bunch of mignonette. A burly truckman,
who thought she was selling the flowers, threw her a dime and asked for
a "good-smellin' bokay for the missis who was done up with the heat,"
so she tossed him back the coin and a bouquet of spicy garden pinks and
roses together, while Billy called in his piping voice, "We're a Flower
Mission--we gives 'em away," so that the man drove off laughing, his fat
face buried in the flowers.

When Bird had counted the "six houses from the butcher's" and found the
archway, which was really the entrance to a dismal alley, her basket was
almost empty. She hesitated about taking Billy into such a place, and in
fact but for her great desire to give Tessie the flowers, she would have
turned back herself. As she looked up and down the street, a policeman
passing noticed her hesitation and stopped.

"Sure it's the plucky girl from Johnny O'More's beyond that tried to
catch the thief,--and what do you be wantin' here?"

Bird recognized the policeman and explained, and he said, "Ye do right
not to be pokin' in back buildings heedless; it's not fit fer girls like
you, but this same is a dacent place, though poor, and as I'm not on me
beat, only passin' by chance, I'll go through to the buildin' with ye,
and the kid can stay below with me while ye go up, for stairs isn't the
easiest fer the loikes av him."

So through they went, the big policeman leading the way, and entering
the back building Bird began to grope upward. When the house had stood
by itself in the middle of an old garden, the sun had shone through and
through it, but now the windows on two sides were closed, and the halls
were dark, and the bannister rails half gone.

At the first floor landing she paused a moment. What was that tap,
tapping? It came from a small room made by boarding off one end of the
broad, old-fashioned hallway. The door was open and a single ray of sun
shot across from an oval window that had originally lighted the stairs
and was high in the wall.

In the streak of sun was a cobbler's bench and on it sat a man busily at
work fastening a sole to a shoe, so old that it scarcely seemed worth
the mending.

Then she went on again and, after knocking at two wrong doors, finally
found the right one.

"Come in," piped a shrill, cheery voice; "I can't come to open it," and
in Bird went.

"I hoped that you would come to-day," said the small figure, sitting
bolstered up in a wooden rocking-chair with her feet on a box covered
with an end of rag carpet, by way of greeting. No introduction was
necessary, for the two girls knew each other perfectly well, although
their previous acquaintance had merely been by waving rags across the
yards.

"My legs haven't felt as if they had bones in 'em in a week," Tessie
continued, "so's I couldn't reach up high enough to wave, and it seemed
real lonesome, but I've got a new pattern for lace, and there's a man in
the store where Mattie works who says he'll give me half-a-dollar for
every yard I make of it,--what do you think of that?" and she spread
out proudly a handsome bit of Irish crocheted lace upon which she was
working. It was four inches wide, a combination of clover leaves, and
very elaborate, of the kind that is so much sought now and costs many
dollars a yard in the shops.

"It is beautiful," explained Bird; "how do you know how to do it?"

"My mother learned long ago in the Convent in the old country, but her
hands are too stiff to make it now, and besides she says it wouldn't pay
her. So she showed me the stitch and some of the old patterns, and one
night last week, when I couldn't sleep very good, I was thinkin' of the
lace work, and I guess I must have dreamed the new pattern, for the next
morning I worked it right out. Those leaves is like some that came in a
pocketful of grass Mattie fetched me home; one day they were cutting it
over in the square, and the man let her take it. I just love the smell
o' grass, don't you? And now's I can't get out, Mattie brings me some in
her pocket every time she can. I guess she will to-night if they've cut
it to-day."

All this time Bird held her basket behind her, but now she wheeled
about and rested it on the arm of Tessie's chair. The joy of the child
was wonderful, almost startling. Her dark eyes dilated and she looked
first at Bird and then at the flowers, as she almost whispered in the
excitement of her surprise, "Ye ain't got 'em to keep, have ye?" Then as
Bird tipped them into her lap, "They ain't fer me, fer sure?"

[Illustration: "'_They ain't fer me, fer sure?_'"]

"Yes, they are, and I'm going to bring you some every Wednesday," said
Bird, joyfully, and then she told about Marion Clarke and the Flower
Mission.

"Ain't it jest heavenly to think of,--me with a whole winder to myself
that opens out and the crochet to do and real flowers, new ones that
ain't been used at all," and Tessie leaned back and closed her eyes in
perfect content.

Then suddenly Bird's sorrow seemed to grow lighter and life a little
brighter, and the sunlight as it were crept in to sweeten them both--she
had something to give away, and lo, it was good.

Tessie was down handling the blossoms again and discovered the berry
bouquet beneath. "Oh, but here's growing strawberries on a bush like!
Well, I never, never! But they're handsome! Maybe I could make a pattern
from them, too. Oh, surely there's angels about somewhere doin' things.
You know Father John, he says I've got a Guardian Angel looking out
after me, and St. Theresa my name saint chose her, and that everybody
has, though for a long spell I didn't know it. You see it's been easier
for her to look after me since we've got a room with an opened-out
winder. I reckon if I was an angel, I wouldn't care to poke around
air-shafts much. Oh, what's these browny-yeller flowers that smell so
elegant?" and Tessie held up the wallflowers.

When Bird told their name, Tessie gave a little cry and said, "They're
what mother talks about that grew up in the wall below the big house
at home where her father was a keeper, and the smell of them came in
the cottage windows in the night air right to her, and she's often said
she'd cross the sea again to smell them if she had the price, and now
she won't have to take that trouble. That angel has found our winder for
sure. Would you get me the little pitcher and some water in it yonder?"

The larger of the two rooms, the one with the window, had two clean
beds in it, over which a newspaper picture of the Madonna and Child was
pinned to the wall, two chairs, and an old bureau, while the smaller
room, little more than a closet, held a table, a few dishes, and an oil
cooking-stove, all as neat as wax. A pail of water stood on the table,
from which Bird filled the pitcher, and set it on a chair by Tessie
that she might herself arrange the flowers. Then, remembering that the
policeman and Billy were waiting, she picked up her basket and her own
flowers, and, promising to come the next week, groped her way downstairs
again.

Bird did not see the tired mother, when she returned from her day's
scrubbing, enter the dark room and drawing a quick breath say, in an
awe-struck voice, "I smell them--I smell the wallflowers! Sure, am I
dreaming or dying?" or see the way in which she buried her face in the
mass, laughing and crying together, when the lamp was lit and Tessie had
told her the how and why of it.

There were dreary days often after this, when her uncle was away on long
trips and her aunt was cross, but though Bird did not yet give up all
hope of going back some day among her friends, or studying, as she had
promised her father, she was learning the lesson of patience, which,
after all, is the first and last one to know by heart.

Now the morning-glories had reached the window tops, and in the little
bower above the clothes-lines she and Billy often sat as she told him
stories of the real country, of Lammy and Twinkle, the old white horse,
and the red peonies, and flew there in imagination. Then the child's big
eyes would flash as he gazed at her, and he always ended by asking,
"When we stop being birds in this cage, we'll fly right up there to
your country and be real birds and see Lammy and Twinkle, won't we?"
And Bird always answered, "Yes," to please him, but it was a word that
meant nothing to her. So the summer wore on, and Bird did not go back to
Laurelville.




IX

'RAM SLOCUM'S TAUNT


While Bird was putting away from her all thought of going back to
Laurelville for a summer visit, Lammy Lane was trying in every way to
bring about her return.

His mother was the only person in the family or village who really read
Lammy aright and valued him at his worth. She never laughed at his
various contrivances and mechanical inventions, and when he appeared to
be star-gazing, she firmly believed that it was not idleness, but that
he was interested in things other than the mere jog-trot work on the
farm.

His brothers had all taken up other occupations in factory and shop,
and Joshua Lane had expected that easy-going Lammy, the youngest by
several years, would naturally drift along into farm work; but the boy
had said, when his father had spoken upon the subject, "Farming is all
right, only this one isn't big enough for mo'n two, and I like to live
in the country for pleasure; but for a trade I'm going into making
somethin' that bugs can't eat, and that won't get dried up, nor drowned
out neither." To Joshua this remark savoured of feeble-mindedness; but
when he repeated it to Dr. Jedd, that keen-eyed person laughed, saying
they need not worry about Lammy, for that some day he might surprise
them all.

All through June he worked diligently at strawberry picking; then
currants and raspberries followed in quick succession, so that it was
nearly August, when, with twenty dollars to his credit in the Northboro
Savings Bank, he took a vacation and went to his old haunts with the
other boys.

Lammy had been bitterly disappointed when he found that Bird could not
return to spend the Fourth of July, but he was not in the least daunted;
for, after all, what was a whole summer even, when some day Bird would
come back for good? The boy firmly believed that something would turn up
to enable his father to buy the fruit farm, or if that was impossible,
he would try to coax his father and mother to get her back without.
There was always plenty to eat, and his home seemed so pleasant to him
that he did not realize how hard his parents had to struggle to make
both ends meet in the bad seasons when the bugs ate and the drought
dried. He did not, of course, know of John O'More's requirement that
if Bird ever returned she must be legally adopted, and share and share
alike with his brothers and himself; but if he had, it would have made
no difference.

Lammy was very fond of prowling in the deep woods and along the
river. He had intimate acquaintances among the gray squirrels, always
knew where fox cubs could be found, and had once reared a litter of
skunk pups under an abandoned barn. Their mother had evidently been
trapped,--for he never saw her,--and he fed the young with milk and
scraps, in the childish belief that they were some sort of half-wild
kittens, and was very much disgusted, when they were old enough to
follow him home, that his father declined to have them about, and that
they disappeared the very same night.

But the river interested him the most, and he not only knew every
swimming and pike hole, perch run and spawning shallow, along its
ten-mile course from Northboro down to the Mill Farm at Milltown, and
the windings of every trout brook that fed it, but he understood all
that went on in the half dozen mills or shops along the route. He could
explain exactly how the water was turned on and off and the gearing
adjusted in the gristmill, the stamping and perforating done at the
button factory, or the sand moulds prepared at the forge where scrap
iron was turned into cheap ploughsh

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/42437