Chapter 27

Several weeks passed during which Miss Margery saw nothing of the Callahans. Mr. Callahan came back from the workhouse and, with fear of another term before his eyes, he managed to keep away from his old comrades and to provide for his family. Anne saw Peggy at school and, with Cousin Dorcas's permission, talked to her sometimes in recess and kept informed as to how many teeth the baby had and the new words Bud could say. All the children had bad colds, Peggy said one day, "terrible bad, and the doctor he says mommer must keep the windows open and she lets 'em stay up while he's there to pleasure him and shuts 'em soon as he goes away."

The next day and for several days thereafter, Peggy was absent from school. Anne looked eagerly forward to Saturday when she was to put on her old shoes--she had new ones now--and go with Miss Margery to inquire about the little Callahans.

Friday afternoon, however, brought Peggy to the door, asking for Anne. It was an anxious-faced Peggy. "I ain't been to school 'cause Lois is sick," she explained. "She been sick all week and she gets no better all the time. And she keeps on frettin' to see that doll of yours. She been talkin' 'bout it ever since you was there. And she say if she can just see that doll--she don't ask to touch it--she'll take her medicine. That's why she's so bad off. She won't take her medicine. And mommer sent word to know, won't you please come over and bring your doll for her to see."

"What is the matter with Lois?" asked Miss Dorcas.

"Doctor says she's threatened with the pneumony and she's terrible bad off," said Peggy.

As Miss Margery was not at home, Miss Dorcas herself went with Anne and Honey-Sweet to see the sick child. They walked down the dingy street, took short cuts across vacant lots, passed through the 'No Thoroughfare' gate, and followed the straggling path that led to the little brown house.

Their knock at the door was followed by a scrambling and scampering within, and a hoarse wail from Lois. Then a window was raised, a little face peeped out, and a relieved voice said: "'Tain't the doctor-man. It's Honey-Sweet's girl and a lady."

Peggy opened the door. "Come right in," she said. Then she explained: "We was tryin' to get Lois back in bed. The doctor says she must stay in bed and she hates it, so she will get up and have a pillow-pallet on the floor."

There the child was lying, tossing restlessly about, while Mrs. Callahan's machine rattled away as usual.

Lois gave a cry of delight when Anne came in with Honey-Sweet. "Pretty sweet Honey!" she exclaimed. "Le' me kiss her one time."

"You wait," said Mrs. Callahan. "That dolly ain't coming nigh you till you take your dost of medicine. Then I'll ask the lady to let her lay on the pillow."

Lois looked inquiringly at Anne.

"Take your medicine like a good girl," said Honey-Sweet's little mother, "and I'll let you hold my baby doll in your own hands."

Lois opened her mouth to receive the bitter draught and then stretched out her arms for Honey-Sweet. She touched shoes and dress and hair with light, admiring fingers.

"Pretty sweet Honey," she murmured.

Mrs. Callahan breathed a sigh of relief. "That's the first dost of medicine we've got her to take to-day," she said. "We've all been tryin' to worrit it down her. We've give her everything in the house she fancied. Pa he paid her a bottle of beer to take a spoonful last night. Bless you, no'm"--even in her distress she laughed at Miss Dorcas's shocked look--"she didn't drink a drop of it. She likes to see it sizzle, and she had him pull off the cap and let it foam and drizzle on the floor."

"I would whip her," said Miss Dorcas, drawing her mouth down at the corners.

"No'm, you wouldn't," said Mrs. Callahan, "not if you was her mother and she sick. But it do worrit me awful. These two days I been pourin' out a spoonful of her medicine every two hours--time she ought to take it--and a-throwin' it away. It's a dreadful waste. But I got to do something to make the doctor think she's took it. It makes him so mad when she don't."

Miss Dorcas exclaimed in dismay. "Aren't you afraid the child will die if she doesn't take the medicine?"

"Yessum, I am. But what can I do?" said Mrs. Callahan. "I try to get her to take it every time she ought to have a dost. And what's the use of worritin' the doctor if she won't? It makes him so mad."

Lois, meanwhile, was having a happy time with Honey-Sweet. Anne showed how her shoes came off and on and untied her cap to display her curls. "Here's how she goes to sleep at night," she said. "I put her to bed by me and I sing to her:--

'Honey, honey! Sweet, sweet, sweet! Honey, honey! Honey-Sweet!'"

As she crooned the lullaby, Lois lisped it after her.

It grew late and Miss Dorcas rose to go.

"If you'll take your medicine to-night, like a little lady," said Anne, "we will come back to see you to-morrow--Honey-Sweet and I. Mayn't we, Cousin Dorcas?--Oh, oh! if you cry, we can't come! Will you promise to take your medicine?"

"I take it now if pretty Honey stay," said Lois.

"No, no! it isn't time now. But if you take it at the right time, we'll come back, and Honey-Sweet may lie on the pillow beside you."

The next afternoon, Anne brought Honey-Sweet, dressed in a blue muslin frock and a new hat that Miss Margery had made of lace and rosebuds and blue ribbon.

Lois's face beamed when she saw this finery. "Can I kiss her dwess?" she asked, gulping down the bitter draught. "Bad medicine gone now. Oh, the pretty flowers!" and she counted on her fingers the rosebuds on Honey-Sweet's hat: "One, two, free, five, seben, leben, hundred beauty flowers."

Mrs. Callahan was, as she said, 'flustered.' Her thread snarled and snapped as she sewed on buttons. "Doctor was here after you left yestiddy," she said. "You'd 'a' thought he'd been at that window peekin' in. He didn't believe me at all when I told him Lois was takin' her medicine reg'lar. He says she's gettin' worse every day since Choosday, and if she don't take her medicine reg'lar, he can't do her no good. She took it two--three times after you left with me a-tellin' her 'bout that beauteous doll that was comin' to-morrow. But she's little and to-morrow looked slow in comin', so after 'while when I'd hold out the spoon, she'd just shake her head and say, 'No, no, no! Mammy tellin' story! Sweet Honey ain't comin'.'"

"It is as I told you it would be, Mrs. Callahan," said Miss Margery. "Your child doesn't trust you. You have told her falsehoods and now she doesn't believe you."

"Ain't it smart of her to take that much notice and she so little!" said Mrs. Callahan, admiringly. "Well, glory be, she's got one more dost down her."

When it was time for Anne to go, Lois wailed aloud. "I don't want sweet Honey to go! I don't want sweet Honey to go!"

"If you'll take your medicine, she'll come back to see you," promised Anne.

"Don't want her to come back--want her to stay," sobbed Lois.

Anne tried to soothe her with promises that she would bring Honey-Sweet back soon, dressed in a pink hat and a pink-flowered muslin. But Lois would not be consoled and Anne left her at last in tears.

Monday morning before school time, Peggy and John Edward and Elmore came to Miss Dorcas's door and asked for Anne. Would she please lend them Honey-Sweet that day? They'd be ever and ever so careful.

"Lend Honey-Sweet!" exclaimed Anne.

They hated to ask it but Lois would not take her medicine. She had pushed aside and spilled dose after dose. "She says she won't take that nasty old bitter old stuff. And her cheeks are so red and she breathes so rattly. Mommer's scairt. And the doctor man'll be so mad. Mommer asked her if she'd take her medicine for Honey-Sweet and she said 'Yes.' So mommer say for us to run and beg you do please lend us your baby-doll to-day."

"If Lois is so sick,--oh, I suppose I must," said Anne; "but--Peggy, will you be careful of her every minute of the time and bring her back this afternoon--sure and certain?"

Peggy promised, and Peggy did. "Lois took her medicine fine," she said, smiling and dimpling. "Mommer give her a dost a hour before time so's I could bring your baby-doll and get home before dark. Here she is. See! I ain't even mussed her curls."

The next day, Lois was worse again. Her mother confessed that they had "worrited half the night with her and not got a dost down her," but Honey-Sweet brought her to terms.

When Miss Margery rose to go, Anne hesitated a minute, then said, "Mrs. Callahan, if I let Honey-Sweet stay here to-night with Lois, can you take good, good care of her?"

Mrs. Callahan's face beamed. "That I can, and that I will. I been wantin' to ask you to let her stay and hatin' to do it, seein' how much you set store by her. I'll take care of her good as if she was my own baby."

The next afternoon, Anne found Honey-Sweet sitting in state on the mantel-piece beside the medicine bottle.

"She comes down with it and she goes back with it," said Mrs. Callahan. "The doctor was here this noon and he says she's better and if she takes her medicine reg'lar and keeps on the mend till Sadday he thinks she'll be all right. I hope she'll take it. She does every time for that doll." And the worried mother looked anxiously at Anne.

"I reckon I'll have to spare Honey-Sweet till Saturday," said Anne, with an effort. She missed her pet and the Callahan family was so big and so careless! "Please, Mrs. Callahan, be careful with her every minute. I love her so very dearly."

"Bless your heart, I wouldn't have harm come to her for the world. There she sits like a queen on her throne, and ain't took down but by my own hands with the medicine bottle. I've told the kids I'll skin 'em alive if they put finger on her."

Saturday morning brought Peggy to see Anne,--a sad Peggy with downcast eyes and red nose and croaking voice.

"You've a bad cold, Peggy, haven't you?" said Miss Dorcas.

Peggy nodded. "Yessum, lady. Terrible bad. Maybe so I'll have the pneumony, like Lois, and maybe so I'll die."

"Oh, I hope not!" exclaimed Anne who had hastened out when she heard Peggy. She hoped Honey-Sweet was in that bundle--though she knew it was too small.

"Mommer sent me," said the saddened Peggy with the downcast eyes, "to ask you ladies, please'm, not to come home to-day."

"Is Lois worse?" was Miss Dorcas's anxious question.

"No'm. The doctor says she's lots better, but"--Peggy hesitated--"he says she mustn't have no company and I think he says she mustn't have no company till Monday. And here's something for you." She thrust into Anne's hand a newspaper package which being opened revealed a gauze fan spangled with silver, soiled and frayed, but the pride of Peggy's heart. "And you won't come till Monday, ma'am?" she urged.

Miss Dorcas agreed, but Miss Margery, when she heard the tale, shook her head.

"That's one of Peggy's tales that I'm going to look into," she said. "I have to see a girl in that neighborhood and I'll go there this afternoon."

"And you'll let me go with you? Please," pleaded Anne. "I'm so homesick for Honey-Sweet. She's never been away from me before. You can hand her out the window and let me visit her, if I can't see Lois."

It was a raw December day and none of the Callahan children were playing, as usual, in front of the little brown house. The sewing-machine was rattling away at such furious speed that Miss Margery's knock at the door was unheard. The Charity lady hesitated a moment. "If Lois can stand that rattle-ty-banging, she can stand sight and sound of us. Let's go in," she said and she opened the door.

Anne's eyes went straight to the mantel-piece. Honey-Sweet was not there. Anne looked down at the pallet, where Lois lay asleep. No Honey-Sweet there. The child's questioning, appealing eyes turned to Lois's mother.

Mrs. Callahan dropped her face in her apron. "I wouldn't 'a' had it happen for the world!" she sobbed. "Not for all the world."

"What is the matter, Mrs. Callahan?" inquired Miss Margery.

"Where's Honey-Sweet?" asked Anne.

"I wouldn't 'a' had that doll ruint for nothin'," wailed Mrs. Callahan.

"Honey-Sweet? ruined?" stammered Anne.

"What has happened to Anne's doll, Mrs. Callahan? Will you please explain at once?" Miss Margery was at her sternest.

"Peggy done it--and she's cried herself 'most sick. 'Twas yestiddy. I'd gone to take home some sewin'. Peg she's been possessed to show that doll to the Flannagan children. Bein' as I was gone and Lois 'sleep, she slipped out. And while they were all mirationin' over the doll's shoes and stockin's, that low-down Flannagan dog grabbed the doll and made off with it. And they couldn't get it away from him--he tore it to pieces, worritin' it like 'twas a cat. He ought to be skinned alive, I say. It's low-down to keep such a dog."

"If Peggy had obeyed--" began Miss Margery.

"Yessum," interrupted Mrs. Callahan. "And nobody's got any business to keep such a dog! We wouldn't 'a' had it happen for the world, ma'am. I sent you that word 'bout Lois," she went on, addressing Anne, "so's you wouldn't come. We didn't want you to know 'bout it till Monday. Pa he draws his pay to-night and John Edward, too. John Edward he's errant boy for a grocer down on M Street. They're going to take all their money and buy you the finest doll in Washington, rent or no rent, victuals or no victuals."

"No, no, no," protested Anne.

"Don't you look so white and pitiful," sobbed Mrs. Callahan. "I wouldn't 'a' had it happen for the world. You shall have the finest doll--"

"I don't want a doll," Anne spoke with difficulty. "Tell them not to, Miss Margery. It wouldn't be Honey-Sweet. Please, oh, please, let's go home, Miss Margery."

Poor little Anne! Miss Margery had her downstairs to tea that evening, and gave her milk toast and pink iced cakes and candy in a Santa Claus box that was to have waited till Christmas. Then she sang Anne's favorite songs. But the shadow did not lift. Anne kissed her friend good-night and crept away to bed before nine o'clock. An hour later, Miss Dorcas and Miss Margery tiptoed into her room. There she lay, her face swollen with weeping and her breath coming in sobbing gasps. She stirred and crumpled a pillow in her arms, and crooned in her sleep the old lullaby:--

"'Honey, honey! Sweet, sweet, sweet! Honey, honey! Honey-Sweet!'"