CHAPTER III.—OPHELIA.

“They’ve come! They’ve come!” shrieked Migwan, running into the dining-room where the rest of the family were peacefully finishing their breakfast.

“Who’ve come?” said Nyoda, excitedly, “the Mexicans?”

“The bean weevils,” said Migwan, tragically. “Mr. Landsdowne said to watch out for them, although they were hardly ever found up north, but they’re here. He just found a bush with them on.”

“To arms!” cried Sahwah, springing up. “The Flying Column to the rescue!

“Forward the Bug Brigade, Is there a leaf unsprayed?”——

Here she tripped over the carpet and her Amazonian shout came to an abrupt end.

“Where are the weevils?” she asked, when they had all gathered around the bean patch.

“On here,” said Migwan, indicating a hill of beans.

“Oh,” said Sahwah, in a disappointed tone.

“Where did you think they were?” asked Migwan.

“From the noise you were making,” said Sahwah, “I expected to find them drawn up in battle lines, waiting to charge the garden with fixed bayonets.”

“They’ll do just as much damage as if they had bayonets,” remarked Farmer Landsdowne.

“Do be cautious in approaching such deadly foes,” said Sahwah in a tone of mock anxiety, as Migwan came along with the sprayer, “take careful aim, and don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes.”

“I’ll spray you in a minute if you don’t keep still,” said Migwan.

“What must it feel like to be a weevil,” said Gladys, musingly, “and be hunted down remorselessly wherever you went?”

“Gladys has gone over to the side of the enemy,” said Sahwah, teasingly. “There is the subject for your next book, Migwan, ‘Won by a Weevil’, by the author of ‘Enthralled by a Thrip’! It must have been weevils Tennyson meant when he wrote ‘The Lotus Eaters.’”

“Battle over?” asked Hinpoha, as Migwan laid down the sprayer. “Then let’s celebrate the victory. Cheer the bean crop.” To the tune of “We will, We will Cheer,” they sang,

“Weevil, weevil, weevil, weevil, Weevil cheer our bean crop, Weevil, weevil, weevil, weevil, Weevil cheer our bean crop, Weevil cheer our bean crop, Weevil cheer our bean crop, Weevil cheer our bean crop, O!”

“Don’t crow too soon,” said Farmer Landsdowne, picking up his sprayer preparatory to taking his departure, “there may be twice as many on to-morrow.”

“I flatly refuse to worry about to-morrow,” said Nyoda, “‘sufficient unto the day is the weevil thereof!’”

Calvin Smalley, working in the vegetable patch in front of the Red House, heard that cheer and paused in his work to look over at the other garden. He was wondering what was so funny about gardening. “I wish,” he sighed, as he turned back to his endless task, “that those girls were my sisters!”

Gladys went into town alone when the last of the strawberries were ripe, for none of the other girls could be spared that day. The squash bugs had descended on the garden and all hands were required on deck to save the squash and melon vines from being eaten alive. On the way she passed Mr. Smalley, driving the identical wreck of a horse he had tried to hire out to the girls. He had a heavy load of vegetables, and the poor, broken down creature would hardly move it from the spot. He started nervously as the machine passed him on the narrow road, and Mr. Smalley pulled him up sharply and brought the whip down on his back with a heavy cut. “Ain’t you used to automobiles yet, you stupid brute?” he growled.

Gladys delivered the eight quarts of extra large berries to Mrs. Davis first. “Wouldn’t you like to stay in town and have lunch with us and go to the theatre afterward?” Mrs. Davis said in such a patronizing tone that Gladys quite started, and then laughed inwardly.

“I’m sorry, but I haven’t sold all of my berries yet,” she answered soberly, “and I have to hurry back and help pick bugs.”

“Pick bugs?” exclaimed Mrs. Davis, in a horrified tone.

“Yes,” said Gladys, with a relish, “nice juicy, striped bugs that crunch beautifully when you step on them.”

“Oh, oh,” said Mrs. Davis, putting her hands over her ears. “Give my love to your poor, dear mamma,” she said gushingly, when Gladys was departing. “Tell her she has my fullest sympathy.” As Gladys’s poor, dear mamma was, at that moment, seated on the observation platform of a luxurious railway coach, speeding through the mountains of Washington while Mrs. Davis was obliged to stay in town for the time being, she was not really in as much need of Mrs. Davis’s sympathy as that lady fondly imagined.

Gladys disposed of the remaining berries to other amused or patronizing friends, and then decided to look up a laundress she knew of and get her to come out to Onoway House once in a while to do the heavy washing. The street where the laundress lived was narrow and crowded with children playing in the middle of the road, and progress was rather slow. One little girl in particular made Gladys extremely nervous by running across the street right in front of the machine and daring her to run over her, shaking her fists at her and making horrible grimaces. She got across the street once in safety and then started back again. Just then a small child sprang up from the ground right under the very wheels of the machine and Gladys turned sharply to one side. The fender struck the saucy little girl who was daring her to run over her and she rolled under the car, screaming. Gladys jammed down the emergency brake with a jerk that almost wrenched the machinery of the automobile asunder. White as a sheet she jumped out and picked the girl up. In an instant an angry crowd of women and children had surrounded the machine. “Darn yer!” cried the child shrilly, shaking a dirty fist in Gladys’s face, while the other arm hung limp. “I thought yer didn’t dast run into me.”

“Get into the car,” said Gladys, terrified, “and I’ll take you home.”

“I dassent go home,” shrieked the child, “Old Grady’ll lick the tar out of me if I go home without sellin’ me papers.”

“Then let me take you to the hospital, or somewhere,” said Gladys, anxious to get away from the threatening crowd.

“What’s the matter?” asked one voice after another, as the tenements poured their human contents into the street.

“Ophelia’s run over,” explained a powerful Irish woman, with a shawl over her head, who kept her hand on the handle of the car door. “Lady speedin’ run her down like a dog.” An angry murmur rose from the crowd. Gladys shook in her shoes and wondered if she dared start the car with all those children hanging on the front of it. She looked around helplessly for someone who would help her out of her difficulty. Just then a policeman turned into the street, attracted by the crowd.

“Cheese it, de cop!” screamed a ragged gamin, who stood on the step of the car, and the women and children began to slink into the doorways. Gladys waited until he came up, and then explained the whole matter and asked where the nearest hospital was.

“Can’t blame you for hitting that brat,” said the policeman, “she’s the terror of drivers for two blocks.” Ophelia stuck out her tongue at him. Gladys drove her to the hospital where it was discovered that the left arm was broken below the elbow. Painful as the setting may have been there was “never a whang out of her,” as the doctor remarked, although she hung on tightly to Gladys’s white sleeve with her dirty hand. Her waist was taken off to find the extent of the damage, and Gladys was frightened to see that the other arm was fearfully bruised and scratched, and there was a ring of purple and green blotches around her neck like a collar.

“She must have been thrown down harder than I thought,” said Gladys to the nurse.

“Thrown down nothin’,” answered Ophelia, “Old Grady did that the other day when I threw a stone through the winder.” And she held up the mottled arm where all might see.

“Oh,” said Gladys, with a shudder, “cover it up.” Putting Ophelia into the machine again she drove back to the scene of the accident and entered the squalid tenement in which the child said she lived.

“Won’t Old Grady beat me up though, when she finds I’ve busted me wing,” said Ophelia, as they mounted the rickety stairs. Hardly had she spoken when the door at the head of the stairs flew open and a large, red-faced, coarse-looking woman strode out and shook her fist over the banisters.

“I’ll fix ye fer stayin’ out afther I tell ye ter come in, ye little devil,” she shouted. “I’ll break every bone in yer body. Gimme the money for the papers first.”

“Go chase yerself,” said Ophelia, standing still on the stairs with a spiteful gleam in her eye, “there ain’t no money. I ain’t had time ter peddle this afternoon.”

“What yer mean, no money?” screamed the woman. “Just wait till I get me hands on yer!”

Gladys shrank back against the wall in terror, then collecting herself she thrust Ophelia behind her and faced the angry woman. “Ophelia has had an accident,” she explained. “I ran over her with my machine and broke her arm.” The woman brushed past her and grabbed Ophelia by the shoulder. Overcome with fury at the thought that her household drudge would be of no use to her for several weeks, she boxed her ears again and again, calling her every name she could think of. Finally she let go of her with a push that sent Ophelia stumbling down half a dozen stairs.

“Get out o’ my sight!” she shrieked. “Do yer think I’m going ter house an’ feed a worthless brat that ain’t doin’ nothin’ fer her keep? Get out an’ live in the streets yer like ter play in so well!” With a final exclamation she strode back into the room and slammed the door after her. Ophelia picked herself up from the step, shaking her one useful fist at the closed door at the head of the stairs.

Gladys was inexpressibly shocked at this heartless treatment of an injured child. “Come—come home with me,” she said faintly. Seated beside her in the big car, Ophelia ran out her tongue and made faces at the jeering children who watched her ride away.

“This is the life!” she exclaimed, as she settled herself comfortably in the cushioned seat. People in the streets turned to stare at the dirty little ragamuffin riding beside the daintily gowned young girl, shouting saucily at the passers-by, or making jeering remarks in a voice audible above the noise of traffic.

The girls were all out in front watching for her as Gladys drove up. It was past supper time and they were wondering what had become of her. What a chorus of surprised exclamations arose when Ophelia was set down in their midst! Gladys explained the situation briefly and asked Migwan if they could not keep her there awhile. Migwan consented hospitably and went off to find a place for her to sleep, while Gladys proceeded to wash the accumulated layers of dirt from Ophelia’s face and divest her of her spotted rags. She came to the table in a kimono of Gladys’s, for there were no clothes in the house that would fit her. She was nine years old, she said, but small and thin for her age, with arms and legs like pipe-stems which fairly made one shiver to look at. She had a little, pinched, sharp featured face, cunning with the knowledge of the world gained from her life on the streets, big grey-green eyes filled with dancing lights, and black hair that tumbled around her face in tangled curls, which Gladys was not able to smooth out in her hasty going over before supper.

Not in the least shy in her new surroundings, nor complaining of discomfort from the broken arm, she sat at the table and kept up a cheerful stream of talk, racy with slang and the idiom of the streets. Hinpoha was instantly dubbed “Firetop.” “Is it red inside of yer head?” she asked, after gazing steadfastly at Hinpoha’s hair for several minutes. To all questions about her father and mother she shrugged her shoulders. “Ain’t never had any,” she replied. “I was born in the Orphan Asylum. Old Grady got me there.” Here a spasm of rage distorted her face at the remembrance of Old Grady’s ministrations, followed by a wicked chuckle when she thought how that tender guardian’s plan for turning her out homeless into the street had been frustrated by this lucky stroke of fate. What her last name was she did not know. “I guess I never had one,” she said cheerfully. “I’m just Ophelia.” Gladys was much distressed because she would not drink milk. “No,” she said, shoving it away, “that’s for the babies. Gimme coffee or nothin’.” Disdaining the aid of fork or spoon, she conveyed her food to her mouth with her fingers. “Say,” she said, after staring fixedly at Nyoda in a disconcerting way she had, “are yer teeth false?”

“Certainly not!” said Nyoda indignantly. “What made you think so?”

“They’re so white and even,” said Ophelia. “Nobody ever had such teeth of their own.”

“Did you bleach yer hair?” she asked next, turning her attention to Gladys’s pale gold locks. Gladys merely laughed.

Ophelia waxed more loquacious as she filled up on the good things on the table. “Did yer husband leave yer?” she inquired sociably of Mrs. Gardiner. Gladys rose hastily and bore Ophelia away to her room, where a cot had been set up for her.

“Three flies in the spider’s parlor,” said Migwan.

“And one in the ointment, or my prophetic soul has its signals crossed,” said Nyoda.