Chapter 7

In the tide of the Jenkins's prosperity there came the inevitable ebb. On the fateful Friday morning succeeding the concert, Mrs. Hudgers, looking from her window, saw a little group of children with books under their arms returning from school. Having no timepiece, she was accustomed to depend on the passing to and fro of the children for guidance as to the performance of her household affairs.

"My sakes, but twelve o'clock come quick to-day," she thought, as she kindled the fire and set the kettle over it in preparation of her midday meal.

A neighbor dropping in viewed these proceedings with surprise.

"Why, Mrs. Hudgers, ain't you et yer breakfast yet?"

"Of course I hev. I'm puttin' the kittle over fer my dinner."

"Dinner! why, it's only a half arter nine."

Mrs. Hudgers looked incredulous.

"I seen the chillern agoin' hum from school," she maintained.

"Them was the Jenkinses, Iry hez come down with the scarlit fever, and they're all in quarrytine."

"How you talk! Wait till I put the kittle offen the bile."

The two neighbors sat down to discuss this affliction with the ready sympathy of the poor for the poor. Their passing envy of the Jenkins's good fortune was instantly skimmed from the surface of their friendliness, which had only lain dormant and wanted but the touch of trouble to make them once more akin.

When the city physician had pronounced Iry's "spell" to be scarlet fever, the other members of the household were immediately summoned by emergency calls. The children came from school, Amarilly from the theatre, and the Boarder from his switch to hold an excited family conference.

"It's a good thing we got the washin's all hum afore Iry was took," declared the optimistic Amarilly.

"Thar's two things here yet," reported Mrs. Jenkins. "Gus come hum too late last night to take the preacher's surplus and Miss King's lace waist. You was so tired I didn't tell you, 'cause I know'd you'd be sot on goin' with them yourself. They're all did up."

"Well, they'll hev to stay right here with us and the fever," said Amarilly philosophically.

At heart she secretly rejoiced in the retaining of these two garments, for they seemed to keep her in touch with their owners whom she would be unable to see until Iry had recovered.

"I don't see what we are going to do, Amarilly," said her mother despairingly. "Thar'll be nuthin' comin' in and so many extrys."

"No extrys," cheerfully assured the little comforter. "The city doctor'll take keer of Iry and bring the medicines. We hev laid by some sence we got the church wash. It'll tide us over till Iry gits well. We all need a vacation from work, anyhow."

At the beginning of the next week a ten-dollar bill came from Colette, "to buy jellies and things for Iry," she wrote. A similar contribution came from John Meredith.

"We air on Easy Street onct more!" cried Amarilly joyfully.

"I hate to take the money from them," sighed Mrs. Jenkins.

"We'll make it up to them when we kin work agin," consoled Amarilly. "Better to take from friends than from the city. It won't be fer long. Iry seems to hev took it light, the doctor said."

This diagnosis proved correct, but it had not occurred to Amarilly in her prognostications that the question of the duration of the quarantine was not entirely dependent upon Iry's convalescence. Like a row of blocks the children, with the exception of Flamingus and Amarilly, in rapid succession came down with a mild form of the fever. Mrs. Jenkins and Amarilly divided the labors of cook and nurse, but the mainstay of the family was the Boarder. He aided in the housework, and as an entertainer of the sick he proved invaluable. He told stories, drew pictures, propounded riddles, whittled boats and animals, played "Beggar my Neighbor," and sang songs for the convalescent ward.

When the last cent of the Jenkins's reserve fund and the contributions from the rector and Colette had been exhausted, the Boarder put a willing hand in his pocket and drew forth his all to share with the afflicted family. There was one appalling night when the treasury was entirely depleted, and the larder was a veritable Mother Hubbard's cupboard.

"Something will come," prophesied Amarilly trustfully.

Something did come the next day in the shape of a donation of five dollars from Mr. Vedder, who had heard of the prolonged quarantine. Amarilly wept from gratitude and gladness.

"The perfesshun allers stand by each other," she murmured proudly.

This last act of charity kept the Jenkins's pot boiling until the premises were officially and thoroughly fumigated. Again famine threatened. The switch remained open to the Boarder, and he was once more on duty, but he had as yet drawn no wages, one morning there was nothing for breakfast.

"I'll pawn my ticker at noon," promised the Boarder, "and bring home something for dinner."

"There is lots of folks as goes without breakfast allers, from choice," informed Amarilly. "Miss Vail, the teacher at the Guild, says it's hygeniack."

"It won't hurt us and the boys," said Mrs. Jenkins, "but Iry and Co is too young to go hungry even if it be hygeniack."

"They ain't agoin' hungry," declared Amarilly. "I'll pervide fer them."

With a small pitcher under her cape she started bravely forth on a foraging expedition. After walking a few blocks she came to a white house whose woodhouse joined the alley. Hiding behind a barrel she watched and waited until a woman opened the back door and set a soup plate of milk on the lowest step.

"Come a kits! Come a kits!" she called shrilly, and then went back into the house.

The "kits" came on the run; so did Amarilly. She arrived first, and hastily emptied the contents of the soup plate into her pitcher. Then she fled, leaving two dismayed maltese kittens disconsolately lapping an empty dish.

"Here's milk for Iry," she announced, handing the pitcher to her mother. "Now I'll go and get some breakfast for Co."

She returned presently with a sugared doughnut.

"Where did you borry the milk and nut-cake?" asked her mother wonderingly.

"I didn't borry them," replied Amarilly stoically. "I stole them."

"Stole them! Am-a-ril-ly Jenk-ins!"

"Twan't exackly stealin'," argued Amarilly cheerfully. "I took the milk from two little cats what git stuffed with milk every morning and night. The doughnut had jest been stuck in a parrot's cage. He hedn't tetched it. My! he swore fierce! I'd ruther steal, anyway, than let Iry and Co go hungry."

"What would the preacher say!" demanded her mother solemnly. "He would say it was wrong."

"He don't know nothin' about bein' hungry!" replied Amarilly defiantly. "If he was ever as hungry as Iry, I bet he'd steal from a cat."

The season was now summer. Some time ago John Meredith had gone to the seashore and the King family to their summer home in the mountains, unaware that the fever had spread over so wide an area in the Jenkins domain. The theatre and St. Mark's were closed for the rest of the summer. The little boys found that their positions had been filled during the period of quarantine. None of these catastrophes, however, could be compared to the calamity of the realization that Bud alone of all the patients had not convalesced completely. He was a delicate little fellow, and he grew paler and thinner each day. In desperation Amarilly went to the doctor.

"Bud don't pick up," she said bluntly.

"I feared he wouldn't," replied the doctor.

"Can't you try some other kinds of medicines?"

"I can, but I am afraid that there is no medicine that will help him very much."

Amarilly turned pale.

"Is there anything else that will help him?" she demanded fiercely.

"If he could go to the seashore he might brace up. Sea air would work wonders for him."

"He shall go," said Amarilly with determination.

"I can get a week for him through the Fresh Air Fund," suggested the doctor.

He succeeded in getting two weeks, and, that time was extended another fortnight through the benevolence of Mr. Vedder.

Bud returned a study in reds and browns.

"The sea beats the theayter and the church all to smitherines, Amarilly!" he declared jubilantly. "I kin go to work now."

"No!" said Amarilly resolutely. "You air goin' to loaf through this hot weather until church and school open."

The family fund once more had a modest start. Mrs. Jenkins obtained a few of her old customers, Bobby got a paper route, Flamingus and Milton were again at work, but Amarilly, Gus, and Cory were without vocations.

Soon after the quarantine was lifted Amarilly went forth to deliver the surplice and the waist which had hung familiarly side by side during the weeks of trouble. The housekeeper at the rectory greeted her kindly and was most sympathetic on learning of the protracted confinement. She made Amarilly a present of the surplice.

"Mr. Meredith said you were to keep it. He thought your mother might find it useful. It is good linen, you know, and you can cut it up into clothes for the children. He has so many surplices, he won't miss this one."

"I'll never cut it up!" thought Amarilly as she reverently received the robe. "I'll keep it in 'membrance of him."

"It's orful good in him to give it to us," she said gratefully to the housekeeper.

That worthy woman smiled, remembering how the fastidious young rector had shrunk from the thought of wearing a fumigated garment.

At the King residence Amarilly saw the caretaker, who gave her a similar message regarding the lace waist.

"I'll keep it," thought Amarilly with a shy little blush, "until I'm merried. It'll start my trousseau."

She took the garments home, not mentioning to anyone the gift of the waist, however, for that was to be her secret--her first secret. She hid this nest-egg of her trousseau in an old trunk which she fastened securely.

On the next day she was summoned to help clean the theatre, which had been rented for one night by the St. Andrew's vested choir, whose members were to give a sacred concert. A rehearsal for this entertainment was being held when Amarilly arrived.

"These surplices are all too long or too short for me," complained the young tenor, who had recently been engaged for the solo parts.

Amarilly surveyed him critically.

"He's jest about Mr. St. John's size," she mused, "only he ain't so fine a shape."

With the thought came an inspiration that brought a quickly waged battle. It seemed sacrilegious, although she didn't express it by that word, to permit another to wear a garment so sacred to the memory of Mr. Meredith, but poverty, that kill-sentiment, had fully developed the practical side of Amarilly.

She made answer to her stabs of conscience by action instead of words, going straight to her friend, the ticket-seller.

"That feller," she said, indicating the tenor, "ain't satisfied with the fit of his surplus. I've got one jest his size. It's done up spick and span clean, and I'll rent it to him fer the show. He kin hev it fer the ev'nin' fer a dollar. Would you ask him fer me?"

"Certainly, Amarilly," he agreed.

He came back to her, smiling.

"He'll take it, but he seems to think your charge rather high--more than that of most costumers, he said."

"This ain't no common surplus," defended Amarilly loftily. "It was wore by the rector of St. Mark's, and he give it to me. It's of finer stuff than the choir surpluses, and it hez got a cross worked onto it, and a pocket in it, too."

"Of course such inducements should increase the value," confirmed Mr. Vedder gravely, and he proceeded to hold another colloquy with the twinkling-eyed tenor. Amarilly went home for the surplice and received therefor the sum of one dollar, which swelled the Jenkins's purse perceptibly.

And here began the mundane career of the minister's surplice.