Part 6

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.

"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.