Part 12

For the first time since the beginning of her acquaintance with Miss South, Julia felt decidedly anxious to ask questions about her early life. Perhaps Miss South had an insight into her mind. At any rate she said, in a half tone of apology, "Since you are interested, Julia, I will tell you a little about myself. When my brother was ten years old, and I fourteen, our father died. Our mother had died several years before. The little bit of money which our father left was hardly enough to support us until we were educated. Fortunately he had a friend, a lawyer, who looked after it very carefully, and although he had to spend most of the capital for us as well as the interest, we were both able to live comfortably, though in a very economical way, until I was eighteen. At this time we had but a few hundred dollars left, and Louis was glad enough to take a situation in a railroad office offered to him by the efforts of the same kind friend. He was soon earning his board, and every year he has had an increase of salary, with a steady promotion. I went first to the State University in the state where I had grown up and was able to afford myself a good normal course. Since I came to Boston I have been able to save a little from my salary. You can see, then, that I am not very badly off--only I do wish sometimes that I had a few relations."

"Haven't you any, really?" asked Julia.

"None--at least practically none near enough to take any interest in me. You see my mother was an only child, at least her brother and sister died young, and so was my father. Besides he was an Englishman, and what distant cousins of his there are, live in England."

Julia would have liked to ask more, but just at that moment a little figure darted into view, and flung himself upon her. It was Manuel, in all the glory of a new pair of trousers, new at least to him, though even an eye inexperienced in tailoring could see that they had been cut down from garments originally made for a much larger person. But to him they were absolutely the finest pair of trousers that he had ever seen, because they were the first that he had ever worn. After this there was no danger that any one could imagine that he was his own little sister, a mortifying mistake that strangers were in the habit of making.

Miss South and Julia followed him down the crooked street, which their several visits had made very familiar to them, and stood behind him as he pushed open the narrow door. At the very first glance into the room, Miss South, who was ahead, felt a little disheartened. Everything was in disorder, although she had been making such efforts this winter to get Mrs. Rosa to see the necessity for cleanliness and neatness. But when she and Julia went inside she felt that perhaps she had been a little too severe in her judgment. Mrs. Rosa lay back in her chair looking sicker and weaker than they had ever seen her, and though she put out her hand in greeting, she seemed unable to rise.

"How is this?" exclaimed Miss South.

"Oh, miss, I believe I'm real sick," was the reply; "I haven't eaten nothing for such a long time. I can't eat nothing, and I can't hardly raise my voice to the children. Here you, Manuel, don't eat that bread and molasses before the ladies."

Then Mrs. Rosa lay back in her chair in a fit of violent coughing brought on by her efforts to be polite and parental at the same time.

"Aren't you almost ready to go to the hospital, now, Mrs. Rosa?" enquired Miss South, sympathetically. "I think that it is altogether too hard for you to try to stay here to manage these children and take care of yourself."

Mrs. Rosa shook her head. "Not the hospital, miss; I should die, I'm sure, if I should go there."

"But you can't stay here, if you grow worse, and indeed, I am sure that you cannot get any better, if you stay here. Then your children would be much worse off than they would be if you should be parted from them for a little while. The doctors at the hospital might make you perfectly well." Mrs. Rosa shook her head feebly, and Miss South felt decidedly discouraged. Even when Julia added her voice in a gentle persuasive way, Mrs. Rosa refused to be convinced. No, she would stay where she was for a while. By and by perhaps she would go somewhere, but she could not tell; she couldn't leave the children, and the nurse had told her that she could not take them with her to the hospital.

"Well, wouldn't you go to the country if we could find a place for you there?" asked Julia gently; "perhaps we could find a house where you and the children all could go, for you can't get well if you stay here."

At this suggestion, Mrs. Rosa's face brightened a trifle, but from her reply it was hard to tell whether she would be perfectly willing to leave her own unwholesome abode, even for the country.

"You ought to make Angelina keep this room cleaner," said Miss South.

"Oh, I can't make Angelina do nothing," she answered; "Angelina is so lazy I don't know what to do with her. She just reads library books all the time."

Again Mrs. Rosa leaned back in a fit of coughing, and Miss South and Julia, after leaving one or two little delicacies that they had brought her, went away less cheerful than they had been.

"It's rather dreadful, isn't it?" said Julia.

"Yes," replied Miss South, "especially as it would not require a great deal of effort or money to make that family perfectly comfortable."

"How much?" asked Julia.

Miss South laughed. "You are very practical," she said. "Perhaps I ought to have said that it is effort in the right direction that is needed rather than money."

"Nobody can do very much, I am afraid," said Julia, "while Mrs. Rosa is so obstinate. It seems as if some one ought to have the right to oblige her to move."

"Well, personal liberty is one of the privileges that foreigners living in this country appreciate the most. Yet Mrs. Rosa ought not to feel that she can do just as she likes, since she is living on charity altogether now."

"I was wondering--" began Julia.

"Yes," continued Miss South, "her church pays half her rent, and provides her coal; the Provident Association supplies her with groceries. Some of her Portuguese neighbors help her with food from their own table, and one or two charitable people give shoes and old clothes to the children. The dispensary doctor treats her without charge, and she has the occasional services of a district nurse. If Angelina would only follow out some of the directions left by the nurse, the whole family would be much more comfortable."

"I had no idea," said Julia, "that so much would be done for one poor family; and you haven't spoken of what you do yourself, Miss South."

"Oh, my part is very small; I just keep a general oversight, and by calling on Mrs. Rosa once or twice a week, I try to see that things run smoothly."

"There isn't so very much, then, for Brenda and the other girls to do. You know that they are working for a sale from which they hope to raise a lot of money for Manuel and his family."

"Yes, I have heard about it," replied Miss South, "and I should be the last one to discourage them in their efforts; but I am sure that if Mrs. Rosa had been depending on their help she would have suffered this winter. They are too spasmodic."

"What do you think then that there will be for them to do with the money they raise at the Bazaar, for I am sure that they have large expectations?"

"Oh, there are many practical things. This matter of moving the family to the country, for example. To accomplish this will take more money than you might think, and I do not myself know any charitable agency with money to expend in this way."

"But do you think that you can move them?"

"Why not? It may be hard, but if Mrs. Rosa should find it impossible to get help from the people who have been helping her, she may be glad to fall in with our plan."

"Well, it's all very interesting," said Julia, "and it may be that I can help you in some way. Of course I do not wish to interfere with Brenda's plans, and I shall have to find out what she intends to do. If I were going to have anything to do with the Bazaar directly, it would be different."

"Haven't you been admitted yet into the sacred circle of 'The Four'?" said Miss South, smiling. "I thought that you would have been before this."

"No," replied Julia a little sadly. "No, I suppose that they think that I should not have so very much time for fancy work, and I dare say it is better that I should spend what spare hours I have in some other way, but still----"

"But still," said Miss South, finishing out her sentence, "but still it isn't altogether agreeable to be left out."

"No," answered Julia, "it isn't."

While they were talking they had been riding up Hanover street, and leaving the car in Washington street, they did two or three errands in one of the large shops.

"Shall we walk home now, or ride?" enquired Miss South.

"Oh, I would much rather walk," answered Julia, "if it is all the same to you;" and so they walked on through Winter street, intending to cross the Common. Leading off Winter street there is a side street on which is the back entrance of the music hall. Now just as they reached the corner of this street, they saw two girls near the theatre door, walking in their direction.

"Why, how much that looks--why it is Brenda," exclaimed Julia, "and that is Belle with her," she continued in surprise; "I wonder what they are doing down here."

Even as she spoke, the two figures at which she had been looking a moment before disappeared within a doorway.

"Would you like to meet them and ask them to walk home with us?" enquired Miss South.

"Why, I don't know," replied Julia. "I am afraid that they may not wish to come with us; it almost seems as if they are hiding from us. You saw them, didn't you, that first time, Miss South?"

"Yes, indeed, I recognized them both, but isn't it unusual for them to be down town alone?"

"It's against the rules for Brenda, I know, at least I have heard my aunt say that she did not care to have her go down town without her. I imagine that probably they have some one with them. Brenda is rather careful about disobeying, as a general thing."

"Oh, then it's probably all right," said Miss South, "and we might as well go on."

XXII

BRENDA'S SECRET

Julia had not been long in the house after her walk with Miss South, when she heard her aunt at her door. In reply to her "Are you here, Julia?" the young girl ran forward, with a "Yes, indeed, auntie, come right in."

"Why, how pretty your room looks," exclaimed Mrs. Barlow; "I had almost forgotten that it could be so pleasant."

"That sounds as if you had not been up here for some time, and indeed I was thinking myself only this morning that you had rather neglected me lately--at least in the matter of visiting me."

"I know it, dear child, but you know that I have been very busy this winter. There are many things to occupy me, and the Boston season is so short. We haven't had one of our pleasant chats here for several weeks. But I hope that you are perfectly comfortable. I am sure that you would tell me if you should need anything that I had overlooked."

"Nothing has ever been overlooked, Aunt Anna, that could add in any way to my comfort."

"Then you are perfectly contented. Sometimes I fancy that I see an expression on your face that seems to indicate--well, not discontent, but something of the kind, as if you were a little unhappy."

"Oh, no indeed, Aunt Anna. You are all too kind, and I enjoy every moment in Boston. Of course I miss poor papa, but he had expected to leave me for so long a time, that I was prepared, and he himself always said that he wished me to think of him as only gone away for a time, yet of course I miss him. But then you and Uncle Thomas have been everything to me, and so thoughtful. I can't imagine a more delightful room than this with the view of the river, and these dainty, artistic things about me, and my own piano and books. You have no idea how I have enjoyed it."

"Well, I am glad that it all pleases you, for perhaps we could not have done as well for you if Agnes had been at home. You know that this was her studio, and no other room in the house is so large and cheerful. Now it has always seemed hard that you could not have kept Eliza with you this winter; she had been a part of your old life, and you would have been much happier with some one to talk with about it."

"Of course I should have been glad to have had her with me, but I couldn't insist on her staying when her brother needed her so much after the death of his wife. I had such an amusing letter from one of her little nieces the other day, thanking me for lending them their Aunt Eliza, and saying that they did not know when they could return her."

"Then she can't come to spend the summer at Stormbridge?"

"I do not exactly know, for Eliza has not written to me herself; but I half believe that it is better for me to do without a maid; I feel ever so much more independent, although naturally I _do_ miss Eliza."

Mrs. Barlow smiled at the philosophic tone which

Julia had assumed, for she had quietly made her own observations on the state of Julia's mind when at the very beginning of her stay in Boston Eliza had been called away.

"Another year you may need somebody, even if you cannot have Eliza. The older a girl grows the more stitches there are to be taken for her, and next season you will have less time than at present to do things for yourself."

"But I like this feeling of independence, or rather I like to feel that I have to depend almost entirely on myself; I am just so much more of a person than I should be if I had Eliza to wait on me constantly, as I used to."

"A certain amount of independence in a young girl is a good thing," replied Mrs. Barlow, "and I am glad that yours takes a somewhat different form from Brenda's. I wonder, for example, where she is this afternoon. She had an appointment at her dressmaker's, but when I went there to make a suggestion or two about her new coat, they told me that she had not been there, and here it is near dinner-time with no sign of Brenda. Probably she is with Belle or some of the girls, but still I do not like her going off in this way."

While Mrs. Barlow was speaking Julia hoped that she would not ask her if she had seen Brenda, and fortunately she did not do so. To be sure, Julia had nothing special to tell, and indeed had not her aunt spoken of the broken appointment at the dressmaker's, she might have mentioned the glimpse of Brenda that she had had down town, but now she began to suspect that something was wrong, at least it was strange that Brenda should have deceived her mother about the dressmaking appointment. The dressmaker's rooms were not down town, so that it was not this appointment that had taken her to the neighborhood of Winter street.

"But where have you been, yourself, this afternoon, Julia?" asked Mrs. Barlow; and Julia told her of her visit to the Rosas, and of the plans that Miss South had suggested for raising them out of their present trouble. "I am afraid that Brenda won't agree with her," she said, "for she has the idea that the one thing needful is to give Mrs. Rosa a large sum of money to spend just as she likes."

"Brenda isn't very practical," replied Mrs. Barlow. "I only wish that she had your common sense; or if she were more like Agnes, it would be better, for although Agnes is an artist, she is decidedly practical."

"Oh, Brenda is so much younger," said Julia apologetically.

"Yes, I know it, that is undoubtedly one reason for her heedlessness, but it sometimes seems as if her wilfulness increases every day. I am afraid, too, that she has not always been considerate of you; I have been wishing to speak of this for a long time, though it is not an easy thing to do. It would pain me very much to have you feel that any of us--even Brenda had been inhospitable."

"Oh, no indeed, Aunt Anna, I am not likely to think anything of that kind. I make allowances for Brenda, and I honestly think that she is getting to like me better."

"There ought not to be any question of that kind. If it were not for Belle, Brenda would be inclined to throw herself more upon you, but I am sure that Belle keeps her stirred up all the time. But there--I ought not to talk so much about this, at least to you, only I have thought that I ought to tell you that your uncle and I have feared that you have had several experiences this winter that were not altogether pleasant, and I should fail in my duty if I did not express our appreciation of your patience."

Then rising from her chair, Mrs. Barlow leaned over Julia, and kissed her on the forehead, saying as she turned to leave the room, "We have barely time now to get ready for dinner."

Just as Julia opened her door to go down to the library where she usually talked with her uncle for a few minutes before dinner, she saw Brenda rushing upstairs to the floor above.

"Where's Brenda?" asked Mr. Barlow, as they took their places at the table. There was a note of severity in his voice, that Mrs. Barlow and Julia detected at once.

"Why, she has been out all the afternoon," replied the former; "but I have sent word for her to hasten downstairs."

At this moment the delinquent entered the dining-room, and took her place at the table. Although she had changed her street dress, she had apparently dressed in a great hurry, and her hair looked almost disheveled, as she had evidently not had time to rearrange it.

Hardly responding to the greetings of her parents and cousin, Brenda began to talk very rapidly about--well about the subject to which many of us turn when we are embarrassed,--the weather.

"Yes," said her father, in a kind of general response to her very vague remarks. "Yes, I will admit that it has been a fine day, almost the first really springlike day that we have had, that it is a delightful day to have been out in the open air, but all this does not prevent my asking you why you should be so late to dinner; you know my rule, and that I shall have to punish you in some very decided way if this happens again."

"For once Brenda has no excuse ready," added Mrs. Barlow; "now _I_ am anxious to know where you have been this afternoon?"

Brenda turned very red before replying, "Oh, Belle and I have been together."

"I dare say," said Mr. Barlow, "but that does not tell us where you have been?"

"Any one would think," cried Brenda, almost in tears, "that I was a girl of ten years of age. I do not know any one who has to account for everything she does; there is not a girl at school who is watched in this way."

"Sometimes I think that it would be better if you were under closer guardianship. Some one has been telling me that you need it."

Brenda flashed a glance at Julia as if she might be the informant, and Julia rejoiced that she had not even mentioned having seen Brenda down town.

"You were not at the dressmaker's this afternoon," said Mrs. Barlow reproachfully.

"I hope that you were not on the bridge, looking at the crews," said Mr. Barlow.

"No," said Brenda quickly, "I was not. Why did you think of that?"

"Because some one has been telling me that a number of foolish girls are in the habit of going where the Harvard Bridge is building on fine afternoons, just as the class crews are out exercising, and that some of these girls always wave their handkerchiefs, and even cheer, as their favorites come near--and more than this some one has told me that you are often to be seen among these girls; now, Brenda, I tell you frankly that this won't do."

"Oh, papa, you are so particular; a great many girls think that it is perfectly proper to go there, and no one ever says a word about it. I wonder who told you; some old maid, I am certain of that."

"No, indeed, no old maid, but a young man, and a student, too. He felt very sorry that you should be seen there; he says that there is always a great mixture of people in the crowds on the bridge, and that it must be far from an agreeable place for a young lady, besides not being a proper one."

"Well I only wish that I could tell who that young man is," cried Brenda. "I should call him a perfect goose."

"He is far from that," responded Mr. Barlow; "and I ought to say that I agree with him thoroughly. I only wish that I had heard about this before, and now I hope that you will understand, Brenda, that you are forbidden to go near the Harvard Bridge in the afternoon."

"Not to the bridge at all!" cried Brenda, in a most doleful voice. "Why, I can't see the harm."

"Well, I can, and that is enough."

"You can go to the races themselves, Brenda, when they actually come off," interposed Mrs. Barlow, "but if you think it over, you will see good reasons for not hanging about the bridge, as a boy might, merely to see the crews pass."

Brenda made no attempt at further argument, and one result of the little discussion that there had been about the bridge and the crews was to divert her father and mother from asking further questions about the way in which she had spent this particular afternoon. She was rather relieved when the evening passed without Julia's referring to having seen her down town. She was almost sure that Julia and Miss South had recognized her, and Belle and she were in dread lest in this way her father and mother should learn that she and her rather mischievous friend had gone alone to a matinee.

For this was now Brenda's secret,--she had not only gone down town alone, but she had gone to the Music Hall without an older person accompanying her. With parents as indulgent as hers there seemed no need for her to try to secure forbidden pleasures. Nor would she probably have done this but for Belle. It had been the study of Belle's life to get what she wished in a clandestine way. Her stern old grandmother was constantly forbidding her to do this thing or that, and her commands were often really unreasonable. No one was quicker to detect this than Belle herself, and it was on this ground that she often excused her own disobedience. "Why even mamma does not expect me to mind everything that grandmamma says," and as her mother was rather timid, as well as half-ill all the time, she gave her self-possessed daughter very few commands of her own.

"I don't believe that I should be so ready to disobey mamma," Belle would say to Brenda when the latter on occasions remonstrated with her, "but with grandmamma it is different, for I do not consider that she has any right to lay down the law as she does."