Part 8

What do you think? Billy is an heir! Before the Smiths went away they tried to sell their place over in New Jersey, but they was going away too soon, and an agent couldn't sell it for them in such a hurry, so they made a will, that if Mrs. Smith died, the place was to go to Mr. Smith, and if Mr. Smith died first the place was to go to Mrs. Smith, and if they both died, the place was to go to their adopted son, William Smith, and that is Billy. Now, what do you know about that? A lawyer came to me and told me all about it, and the will has been done something to in court, and I have had to sign some papers, and Billy is a landowner. Why, we was all so excited when we heard it, we all talked at once, and when Jack heard it was a farm, he talked onions and pigs at the same time. We went over there last Sunday, and it looked just as pretty as ever. It made me feel awful bad about the Smiths, and I cried at first a lot. The house seemed lonesome with blinds all shut, and no pigs nor chickens or cattle around the barn, or in the pasture. The house inside was just as Mrs. Smith left it, cause they had hoped to sell it furnished, and there was even pickles and preserves in the cellar. We ate our lunch on the kitchen table which we put under the big tree looking out over the lake. It was awful pretty. The water was just like a looking glass, and once and a while a little spurt of wind would come and ruffle it all up and then it would die down quiet again. Mrs. Cassidy said it made her think of her home back in Ireland, which is by a lake, and she talked a long time about her man who has been dead ten years, "who was one of the finest" in New York and that meant something in those days. Mrs. Cassidy set down in the shade with Billy, and Tom and Jack and me went over the place. Jack was crazy about it. He would take little handfuls of mud and smell it or taste it, and say, "too sour," or "it needs salt" or "there ain't lime enough," just kinda talking to himself all the time. He found the pasture with a brook running through it, and said it would be just the right thing for pigs, and he saw about ten acres he said the Lord intended for an onion field. He made over the barn in his mind, and filled it full of holsteins, and I think if it had not begun to get late and we had to catch a train, that he would have all the holsteins mothers of growing families, cause he just located the right kind of a calf pen when we took him by the coat-tails and dragged him away.

We got home awful tired, and everybody went to bed except Jack, who set down with a pencil and paper to figure out how much money it would need to make Lake Rest the model farm of New Jersey.

Good bye, Kate, don't feel too bad. Remember you are going to be just as happy as me some day, and that's going some.

Yours, _Nan_.

XXXVII

_Dear Kate_:

I got the grandest idea. I just can't wait to tell you. I thought it all out in the middle of the night, and I had to talk to somebody, so I got up and went into Mrs. Cassidy's room and got in bed with her and we talked till most morning. She was awful nice, and we talked it over and over. Here it is now, Kate, don't you think it is wonderful? You and Billy and Jack can live at Lake Rest when you come out! now what do you think of it! The house is there all furnished, and Jack will do the farming. He is just crazy about it, and he says sure he can make it pay. Tom says he will cough up and buy the things Jack needs to start, if the little money Jack's father left him ain't enough. You give the farm and the house, and Jack will furnish the farming things and the work, and you can go halves. That sounds all right, doesn't it? Anyway, even if you don't make much the first few years, you get your living, which is about all we get anyway, ain't it, Kate? I feel awful bad that I can't do much, but my money all went to Jim, but I will live on eggs and buttermilk, and every cent I make will go into the place. You can't help but get along, Kate, and out there the old crowd will never get on to you, nobody will ever know nothing about you, and you can begin again as if you was new born.

Oh, I think it is grand, Kate! I can see Tom and Mrs. Cassidy and me coming to see you on a Sunday morning, and you and Billy and Jack waiting for us at the station when the train pulls in, and we will drive over to the place and look at the chickens and scratch the pig and pick the cabbage and hear about the onions, and then after supper we will set on the porch and listen to the frogs and the whip-o-wills and see the shadows come on the lake, and feel that everything is all right, and Somebody must be a sure taking care of us.

Write me soon, Kate, and tell me you are as glad about this as I am.

_Nan_.

XXXVIII

_Dear Kate_:

I feel so kind of shamed, kind of choked up and happy, that it is awful hard for me to put down on paper just what I am a feeling, I don't know what you will say about it, Kate, and I know that you will nearly drop dead when you read this, but I am going to get married and--wait a minute--I am going to marry a cop! Can you beat that? Me, Nancy Lane, who has been brought up since a kid to feel that cops is her natural enemy, and to hate a uniform as the devil hates holy water. But some way I never think of Tom as being a policeman, he is so kind and good and big hearted, always doing something nice for people, and he is so nice at home, just like a great, big boy. He loves his little mother and jollies her and laughs at her, he is just like a good pal to both her and Jack, and they simply worship the ground he walks on, and I don't blame them, Kate, because--put your head down close--dear, I do too. It is the first time I dared say it out loud even to myself. I didn't know what was the matter with me, I used to be so anxious to get up in the morning to see him at the breakfast table, and I liked to pour his coffee, and fasten his stick in his belt and go to the gate with him. It seemed like the day would never go by until he got back. Sometimes he would call me up on the telephone. Why, Kate, I couldn't hardly talk to him and he would notice it and his voice would get worried and he would ask me if I was sick. When he would come home at night, we would all have supper, and set around and josh and laugh and talk, him and Jack half quarreling in a good natured way over their vegetables, or we would dance, or just set out on the front porch with some of the neighbors who'd come in. I didn't know I was loving him cause I wanted to be close to him, but when he was a setting by me, I didn't want to talk or nothing, I was happy just being near him. One night everybody went in and left us on the porch together. He was quiet for a long while, then he moved over closer to me and put his arm around me and he said soft and quiet-like, "Nan, are you happy here with us?" And I said, "Why, I ain't never been so happy in my life," and he said, "Do you think you could stand it to stay always," and I kinda edged away from him and said, "I can't stay always, I must go to work next week," and he said, "No, you ain't going to work no more, Nan, except for Tom Cassidy. You have got a life-long job teaching him to tango." I laughed kinda nervous-like. "That ain't no lie. It would take more than one life to teach you to tango." Tom took hold of my face and leaned my head back, and said, "Nannie, little girl, I just want you. Won't you marry me?" "Oh, Tom," I said, and I couldn't say no more, and he said, "I don't know how to make love much, but I do love you, Nan. From the first minit I laid eyes on you I wanted to take you up in my big arms and take care of you, you seemed so little and alone--and you crept right inside of my uniform and stuck around my heart till there ain't room for nothing else. Why everything I hear says your name, and your face goes dancing before me as I walk up and down my beat, and when I looked up sudden the other day at the captain, hanged if for a minit he didn't have red, curly hair. Say you will marry me, Nancy, and we will be the happiest bunch in the Bronx." When he had been talking to me it seemed I was just choked up two ways, one with happiness and the other with misery. I said to him, "Oh, Tom, I couldn't marry you." He said, "Why not, don't you love me?" "It ain't that, Tom," I said, "but my family is all crooks. You couldn't marry _me_." He said, "Well, what has that got to do with it? I don't see how they can stop me marrying you. Most of them is in jail anyway." I couldn't help but laugh, as he was so earnest about it, but I said, "Why, Tom, if they knowed down at Central Office that you had married me, they might break you. All the bulls know father." And then Tom got mad. "Break me--what would they break me for? I guess I got the right to marry the finest little girl in New York if I want to and I would just as soon take you right up to the chief himself and say 'Chief, this is Nancy Lane and I am going to marry her. Her father is old Bill Lane, and the worst crook this side of the Pacific, but my little girl is white and clean right through.' And do you know what he would do? He would give you one look over with that clever eye of his, and say, 'Put a rose in your hair and go as far as you like, _and_ because you have shown common sense for once in your life, you will be made a captain next week.'" I laughed and couldn't say nothing much, and he moved over close to me again and laid my face against his coat, and put his head down on my hair, kinda patting my face soft with his big hand. He said, "Nancy darling, you do like me a little bit, don't you? I will be so good to you, little one, and I will stand between you and all your troubles. You have had your share, and you never need to have no more, cause when things don't go right, all you need to do is to run to big Tom Cassidy, and rub your little face up and down the front of his big coat, and squeeze a little water out of one eye, and put a little tremble in your voice, and he would go out and lick a St. Patrick's Day procession for you." Then he was quiet but went on after a while soft and tender like, "I sure do love you, little one. Don't you care for me a little?" "Oh, Tom," I said, "it ain't little, it is lots." Then he said, "Why won't you say we will be married?" And I said, "Tom, I care more for you than for anything in the world, but I wouldn't hurt you for nothing." And he said, "The only way you can hurt me, Nan, is to say you won't have me and you don't say that, do you dear?" I looked up at him for a minit and he must a saw what was in my eyes, cause he was quiet, just a looking deep into my eyes. Then he drew my face to him with his two hands and kissed me. Kate I went all of a tremble and it seemed my heart came right up on my lips when I felt his touch mine, and when he said, "Say, 'I love you, Tom,'" I only needed to whisper it for him to hear, and I was glad cause I couldn't have spoke it out loud to save my soul.

Oh, Kate, I didn't know there was such a thing in the world as what I am feeling. I am so happy it keeps me quiet, and I like to set by myself and think of Tom, how big and strong he is, how he will always fight my troubles. But I feel I will never have troubles if I live with him, cause he is so good and kind and gentle, that sorrow could never come near him or his.

I won't write you more, cause if I wrote you a hundred pages, I couldn't say more than that I'm the happiest girl in the world, cause I love him, love him, love him.

_Nan_.

XXXIX

_Dear Kate_:

Tom told his mother this morning at the breakfast table and she put down her saucer of coffee, and come over to me and kissed me, and said, "Faith, the Gosoon, I thought he never was going to do it. Sure he's not the son of his father, or he'd a asked you the question the second day you was here. I've always wanted a daughter and now I've got one that couldn't a suited me better if I'd ordered her making."

She was so happy, she spent the whole morning making plans for the future, how she would pass part of the time with me and Tom, and then when we got tired of her, she would go over to see you and Jack. And Kate you sure will love her. She is just a dear little Irish woman who has always had a great big husband or a son to stand between her and anything that might hurt her. And just think, dear, I won't never have to be alone no more, never have to worry about things all by myself, cause I, too, am going to have a great big man all my own.

Your happy _Nan_.

XL

_Dear Kate_:

We were married this morning by the priest at the church near here. Mother was there (oh, Kate, it is nice to say "mother"), and Jack and the Captain of the station that bullied me so, but he is really all right when his uniform is off and he was a great friend of Tom's father. It was over awful sudden. It seemed they just had begun, when he said, "Kiss your wife," and I found we was married.

Now you are out on Saturday, Kate. Tom is coming with me, and we will be there at 10:30. Now, I don't want you to feel, like you said in your letter, that you are ashamed to look anybody in the face. You don't need to be, and when those old doors close behind you, you just forget them, and think of what is before you. Why, you went in there with nobody but me and Jim and Billy, and you come out having a great big family, a mother and two brothers, a kid and a sister, not to speak of a farm and two live pigs and a black and white cow that is a waiting for you, and we are all a loving you, and ain't a thinking or a caring nothing about your past, just going to help you make a future. When we step out of the gates, we will look up at the great big, blue sky and though none of us ain't long on prayer, perhaps who is ever watching above there, will know just what we feel and will start us right. Anyway, Kate, we will be waiting for you, and we are all going to be so happy, that there will never be a grey day, they will all be blue and gold with the sun a shining.

Yours, _Nan Cassidy_.

THE END