Part 21

From the days of her earliest infancy, Elsie, without making any effort, was a child continually noticed and acclaimed; whereas her next neighbour was but an inconspicuous bit of background, which may have been more trying for Daisy than any one realized. No doubt it also helped great aspirations to sprout within her, and was thus the very cause of the abrupt change in her character during their mutual tenth summer. For it was at this time that Daisy all at once began to be more talked about than Elsie had ever been. All over the neighbourhood and even beyond its borders, she was spoken of probably dozens of times as often as Elsie was—and with more feeling, more emphasis, more gesticulation, than Elsie had ever evoked.

Daisy had accidentally made the discovery that the means of becoming prominent are at hand for anybody, and that the process of using them is the simplest in the world; for of course all that a person desirous of prominence needs to do is to follow his unconventional impulses. In this easy way prodigious events can be produced at the cost of the most insignificant exertion, as is well understood by people who have felt a temptation to step from the roof of a high building, or to speak out inappropriately in church. Daisy still behaved rather properly in church, but several times she made herself prominent in Sunday school; and she stepped off the roof of her father’s garage, merely to become more prominent among a small circle of coloured people who stood in the alley begging her not to do it.

She spent the rest of that day in bed—for after all, while fame may so easily be obtained, it has its price, and the bill is inevitably sent in—but she was herself again the next morning, and at about ten o’clock announced to her mother that she had decided to “go shopping.”

Mrs. Mears laughed, and, just to hear what Daisy would say, asked quizzically: “‘Go shopping?’ What in the world do you mean, Daisy?”

“Well, I think it would be a nice thing for me to do, mamma,” Daisy explained. “You an’ grandma an’ Aunt Clara, you always keep sayin’, ‘I believe I’ll go shopping.’ _I_ want to, too.”

“What would you do?”

“Why, I’d go shopping the way _you_ do. I’d walk in a store an’ say: ‘Have you got any unb’eached muslin? Oh, I thought _this’d_ be only six cents a yard! Haven’t you got anything nicer?’ Everything like that. _I_ know, mamma. I know any amount o’ things to say when I go shopping. _Can’t_ I go shopping, mamma?”

“Yes, of course,” her mother said, smiling. “You can pretend our big walnut tree is a department store and shop all you want.”

“Well——” Daisy began, and then realizing that the recommendation of the walnut tree was only a suggestion, and not a command, she said, “Well, thank you, mamma,” and ran outdoors, swinging her brown straw hat by its elastic cord. The interview had taken place in the front hall, and Mrs. Hears watched the lively little figure for a moment as it was silhouetted against the ardent sunshine at the open doors; then she turned away, smiling, and for the rest of the morning her serene thought of Daisy was the picture of a ladylike child playing quietly near the walnut tree in the front yard.

Daisy skipped out to the gate, but upon the public sidewalk, just beyond, she moderated her speed and looked as important as she could, assuming at once the rôle she had selected in the little play she was making up as she went along. In part, too, her importance was meant to interest Elsie Threamer, who was standing in graceful idleness by the hedge that separated the Threamers’ yard from the sidewalk.

“Where you goin’, Daisy?” the angelic neighbour inquired.

Daisy paused and tried to increase a distortion of her face, which was her conception of a businesslike concentration upon “shopping.” “What?” she inquired, affecting absent-mindedness.

“Where you goin’?”

“I haf to go shopping to-day, Elsie.”

Elsie laughed. “No, you don’t.”

“I do, too. I go shopping almost all the time lately. I haf to.”

“You don’t, either,” Elsie said. “You don’t either haf to.”

“I do, _too_, haf to!” Daisy retorted. “I’m almos’ worn out, I haf to go shopping so much.”

“Where?”

“Every single place,” Daisy informed her impressively. “I haf to go shopping all the way down-town. I’ll take you with me if you haf to go shopping, too. D’you want to?”

Elsie glanced uneasily over her shoulder, but no one was visible at any of the windows of her house. Obviously, she was interested in her neighbour’s proposal, though she was a little timorous. “Well——” she said. “Of course I _ought_ to go shopping, because the truth is I got more shopping to do than ’most anybody. I haf to go shopping so _much_ I just have the backache all the time! I guess——”

“Come on,” said Daisy. “I haf to go shopping in every single store down-town, and there’s lots o’ stores on the way we can go shopping in before we get there.”

“All right,” her friend agreed. “I guess I rilly better.”

She came out to the sidewalk, and the two turned toward the city’s central quarter of trade, walking quickly and talking with an accompaniment of many little gestures. “I rilly don’t know how I do it all,” said Elsie, assuming a care-worn air. “I got so much shopping to do an’ everything, my fam’ly all say they wonder I don’t break down an’ haf to go to a sanitanarian or somep’m because I _do_ so much.”

“Oh, it’s worse’n that with _me_, my dear!” said Daisy. “I declare I doe’ know how I do live through it all! Every single day, it’s like this: I haf to go shopping all day _long_, my dear!”

“Well, I haf to, too, my dear! I _never_ get time to even sit _down_, my dear!”

Daisy shook her head ruefully. “Well, goodness knows the last time _I_ sat down, my dear!” she said. “My fam’ly say I got to take _some_ rest, but how can I, with all this terrable shopping to do?”

“Oh, my dear!” Elsie exclaimed. “Why, my dear, _I_ haven’t sat down since Christmus!”

Thus they enacted a little drama, improvising the dialogue, for of course every child is both playwright and actor, and spends most of his time acting in scenes of his own invention—which is one reason that going to school may be painful to him; lessons are not easily made into plays, though even the arithmetic writers do try to help a little, with their dramas of grocers and eggs, and farmers and bushels and quarts. A child is a player, and an actor is a player; and both “play” in almost the same sense—the essential difference being that the child’s art is instinctive, so that he is not so conscious of just where reality begins and made-up drama ends. Daisy and Elsie were now representing and exaggerating their two mothers, with a dash of aunt thrown in; they felt that they _were_ the grown people they played they were; and the more they developed these “secondary personalities,” the better they believed in them.

“An’ with all my trouble an’ everything,” Daisy said, “I jus’ never get a minute to myself. Even my shopping, it’s all for the fam’ly.”

“So’s mine,” Elsie said promptly. “Mine’s every single bit for the fam’ly, an’ I never, never get through.”

“Well, look at _me_!” Daisy exclaimed, her hands fluttering in movements she believed to be illustrative of the rush she lived in. “My fam’ly keep me on the run from the minute I get up till after I go to bed. I declare I don’t get time to say my prayers! To-day I thought I _might_ get a little rest for once in my life. But no! I haf to go shopping!”

“So do I, my dear! I haf to look at—— Well, what do _you_ haf to look at when we go in the stores?”

“Me? I haf to look at everything! There isn’t a thing left in our house. I haf to look at doilies, an’ all kinds embrawdries, an’ some aperns for the servants, an’ taffeta, an’ two vases for the liberry mantelpice, an’ some new towerls, an’ kitchen-stove-polish, an’ underwear, an’ oilcloth, an’ lamp-shades, an’ some orstrich feathers for my blue vevvut hat. An’ then I got to get some——”

“Oh, my dear! _I_ got more’n that _I_ haf to look at,” Elsie interrupted. And she, likewise, went into details; but as Daisy continued with her own, and they both talked at the same time, the effect was rather confused, though neither seemed to be at all disturbed on that account. Probably they were pleased to think they were thus all the more realistically adult.

It was while they were chattering in this way that Master Laurence Coy came wandering along a side-street that crossed their route, and, catching sight of them, considered the idea of joining them. He had a weakness for Elsie, and an antipathy for Daisy, the latter feeling sometimes not unmingled with the most virulent repulsion; but there was a fair balance struck; in order to be with Elsie, he could bear being with Daisy. Yet both were girls, and, regarded in that light alone, not the company he cared to be thought of as deliberately choosing. Nevertheless, he had found no boys at home that morning; he was at a loss what to do with himself, and bored. Under these almost compulsory circumstances, he felt justified in consenting to join the ladies; and, overtaking them at the crossing, he stopped and spoke to them.

“Hay, there,” he said, taking care not to speak too graciously. “Where you two goin’, talkin’ so much?”

They paid not the slightest attention to him, but continued busily on their way.

“My _dear_ Mrs. Smith!” Daisy exclaimed, speaking with increased loudness. “_I_ jus’ pozza_tiv_ely never have a _minute_ to my own affairs! If I doe’ get a rest from my housekeepin’ pretty soon, I doe’ know what on earth’s goin’ to become o’ my nerves!”

“Oh, Mrs. Jones!” Elsie exclaimed. “It’s the same way with me, my dear. _I_ haf to have the _doctor_ for _my_ nerves, every morning at seven or eight o’clock. Why, my dear, I never——”

“_Hay!_” Laurence called. “I said: ‘Where you goin’, talkin’ so much?’ Di’n’chu hear me?”

But they were already at some distance from him and hurrying on as if they had seen and heard nothing whatever. Staring after them, he caught a dozen more “my dears” and exclamatory repetitions of “Mrs. Smith, you don’t say so!” and “Why, _Mis-suz_ Jones!” He called again, but the two little figures, heeding him less than they did the impalpable sunshine about them, hastened on down the street, their voices gabbling, their heads waggling importantly, their arms and hands incessantly lively in airy gesticulation.

Laurence was thus granted that boon so often defined by connoisseurs of twenty as priceless—a new experience. But he had no gratitude for it; what he felt was indignation. He lifted up his voice and bawled:

“HAY! Di’n’chu hear what I SAID? Haven’t you got ’ny EARS?”

Well he knew they had ears, and that these ears heard him; but on the spur of the moment he was unable to think of anything more scathing than this inquiry. The shoppers went on, impervious, ignoring him with all their previous airiness—with a slight accentuation of it, indeed—even when he bellowed at them a second time and a third. Stung, he was finally inspired to add: “_Hay!_ Are you gone _crazy_?” But they were halfway to the next crossing.

A bitterness came upon Laurence. “What _I_ care?” he muttered. “I’ll _show_ you what I care!” However, his action seemed to deny his words, for instead of setting about some other business to prove his indifference, he slowly followed the shoppers. He was driven by a necessity he felt to make them comprehend his displeasure with their injurious flouting of himself and of etiquette in general. “Got ’ny politeness?” he muttered, and replied morosely: “No, they haven’t—they haven’t got sense enough to know what politeness means! Well, _I’ll_ show ’em! They’ll _see_ before _I_ get through with ’em! _Oh_, oh! Jus’ wait a little: they’ll be beggin’ me quick enough to speak to ’em. ‘Oh, Laur-runce, _please_!’ they’ll say. ‘_Please_ speak to us, Laur-runce. Won’ chu _please_ speak to us, Laurunce? We’d jus’ give _anything_ to have you speak to us, Laurunce! Won’ chu, Laurunce, pull-_lease_?’ Then I’ll say: ‘_Yes_, I’ll speak to you, an’ you better listen if you want to learn some sense!’ Then I’ll call ’em everything I can think of!”

It might have been supposed that he had some definite plan for bringing them thus to their knees in supplication, but he was only solacing himself by sketching a triumphant climax founded upon nothing. Meanwhile he continued morbidly to follow, keeping about fifty yards behind them.

“Poot!” he sneered. “Think they’re wunnaful, don’t they? You wait! They’ll see!”

He came to a halt, staring. “_Now_ what they doin’?”

Elsie and Daisy had gone into a small drug-store, where Daisy straightway approached the person in charge, an elderly man of weary appearance. “Do you keep taffeta?” she asked importantly. Since she and her friend were “playing” that they were shopping, of course they found it easily consistent to “play” that the druggist was a clerk in a department store; and no doubt, too, the puzzlement of the elderly man gave them a profound if secret enjoyment.

He moved toward his rather shabby soda-fountain, replying: “I got chocolate and strawb’ry and v’nilla. I don’t keep no fancy syrups.”

“Oh, my, no!” Daisy exclaimed pettishly. “I mean taffeta you wear.”

“What?”

“I mean taffeta you wear.”

“‘Wear’?” he said.

“I want to look at some _taffeta_,” Daisy said impatiently. “_Taffeta._”

“Taffy?” the man said. “I don’t keep no line of candies.”

Daisy frowned, and shook her head. “I guess he’s kind of deaf or somep’m,” she said to Elsie; and then she shouted again at the elderly man: “Taffe_tah_! It’s somep’m you _wear_. You wear it _on_ you!”

“What for?” he said. “I ain’t deaf. You mean some brand of porous plaster? Mustard plaster?”

“Oh, my, _no_!” Daisy exclaimed, and turned to Elsie. “This is just the way it is. Whenever I go shopping, they’re _always_ out of everything I want!”

“Oh, it’s exackly the same with me, my dear,” Elsie returned. “It’s too provoking! Rilly, the shops in this town——”

“Listen here,” the proprietor interrupted, and he regarded these fastidious customers somewhat unfavourably. “You’re wastin’ my time on me. Say what it is you want or go somewheres else.”

“Well, have you got some _very_ nice blue-silk lamp-shades?” Daisy inquired, and she added: “With gold fringe an’ tassels?”

“Lamp-shades!” he said, and he had the air of a person who begins to feel seriously annoyed. “Listen! Go on out o’ here!”

But Daisy ignored his rudeness. “Have you got any _very_ good unb’eached muslin?” she asked.

“You go on out o’ here!” the man shouted. “You go on out o’ here or I’ll untie my dog.”

“Well, I declare!” Elsie exclaimed as she moved toward the door. “I never was treated like this in all my days!”

“What kind of a dog is it?” Daisy asked, for she was interested.

“It’s a _biting_ dog,” the drug-store man informed her; and she thought best to retire with Elsie. The two came out to the sidewalk and went on their way, giggling surreptitiously, and busier than ever with their chatter. After a moment the injured party in the background again followed them.

“They’ll find _out_ what’s goin’ to happen to ’em,” he muttered, continuing his gloomy rhapsody. “‘_Please_ speak to us, Laurunce,’ they’ll say. ‘Oh, Laurunce, pull-_lease_!’ An’ then I’ll jus’ keep on laughin’ at ’em an’ callin’ ’em everything the worst I ever heard, while they keep hollerin’: ‘Oh, Laur-runce, pull-_lease_!’”

A passer-by, a kind-faced woman of middle age, caught the murmur from his slightly moving lips, and halted inquiringly.

“What is it, little boy?” she asked.

“What?” he said.

“Were you speaking to me, little boy? Didn’t you say ‘Please’?”

“No, I didn’t,” he replied, colouring high; for he did not like to be called “little boy” by anybody, and he was particularly averse to this form of address on the lips of a total stranger. Moreover, no indignant person who is talking to himself cares to be asked what he is saying. “I never said a thing to you,” he added crossly. “What’s the matter of you, anyhow?”

“Good gracious!” she exclaimed. “What a bad, rude little boy! Shame on you!”

“I ain’t a little boy, an’ shame on your own self!” he retorted; but she had already gone upon her way, and he was again following the busy shoppers. As he went on his mouth was slightly in motion, though it was careful not to open, and his slender neck was imperceptibly distended by small explosions of sound, for he continued his dialogues, but omitted any enunciation that might attract the impertinence of strangers. “It’s none o’ your ole biznuss!” he said, addressing the middle-aged woman in this internal manner. “_I’ll_ show you who you’re talkin’ to! I guess when you get through with _me_ you’ll know somep’m! Shame on your own self!” Then his eyes grew large as they followed the peculiar behaviour of the two demoiselles before him. “My goodness!” he said.

Daisy was just preceding Elsie into a barber-shop.

“Do you keep taffeta or—or lamp-shades?” Daisy asked of the barber nearest the door.

This was a fat coloured man, a mulatto. He had a towel over the jowl and eyes of his helpless customer, and standing behind the chair, employed his thumbs and fingers in a slow and rhythmic manipulation of the man’s forehead. Meanwhile he continued an unctuous monologue, paying no attention whatever to Daisy’s inquiry. “I dess turn roun’ an’ walk away little bit,” said the barber. “’N’en I turn an’ look ’er over up an’ down from head to foot. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘You use you’ mouth full freely,’ I say, ‘but dess kinely gim me leave fer to tell you, you ain’t got nothin’ to rouse up no int’est o’ _mine_ in you. I make mo’ money,’ I say, ‘I make mo’ money in a day than whut Henry ever see in a full year, an’ if you tryin’ to climb out o’ Henry’s class an’ into mine——’”

“Listen!” Daisy said, raising her voice. “Do you keep taffeta or——”

“Whut you say?” the barber asked, looking coldly upon her and her companion.

“We’re out shopping,” Daisy explained. “We want to look at some——”

“Listen me,” the barber interrupted. “Run out o’ here. Run out.”

Daisy moved nearer him. “What you doin’ to that man’s face?” she asked.

“Nem mine! Nem mine!” he said haughtily.

“What were you tellin’ him?” Daisy inquired. “I mean all about Henry’s class an’ usin’ her mouth so full freely. Who was?”

“Run _out_!” the barber shouted. “Run _out_!”

“Well, I declare!” Daisy exclaimed, as she and Elsie followed his suggestion and emerged from the shop. “It’s just this same way whenever I go shopping! I never _can_ find the things I want; they act almos’ like they don’t care whether they keep ’em or not.”

“It’s dreadful!” Elsie agreed, and, greatly enjoying the air of annoyance they were affecting, they proceeded on their way. No one would have believed them aware that they were being followed; and neither had spoken a word referring to Master Coy; but they must have understood each other perfectly in the matter, for presently Daisy’s head turned ever so slightly, and she sent a backward glance out of the very tail of her eye. “_He’s still comin’!_” she said in a whisper that was ecstatic with mirth. And Elsie, in the same suppressed but joyous fashion, said: “Course he is, the ole thing!” This was the only break in their manner of being the busiest shoppers in the world; and immediately after it they became more flauntingly shoppers than ever.

As for Laurence, his curiosity was now almost equal to his bitterness. The visit to the drug-store he could understand, but that to the barber-shop astounded him; and when he came to the shop he paused to flatten his nose upon the window. The fat mulatto barber nearest the window was still massaging the face of the recumbent customer and continuing his narrative; the other barbers were placidly grooming the occupants of their chairs, while two or three waiting patrons, lounging on a bench, read periodicals of a worn and flaccid appearance. Nothing gave any clue to the errand of Laurence’s fair friends; on the contrary, everything that was revealed to his staring eyes made their visit seem all the more singular.

He went in, and addressed himself to the fat barber. “Listen,” he said. “Listen. I want to ast you somep’m.”

“Dess ’bout when she was fixin’ to holler,” the barber continued, to his patron, “I take an’ slap my money ri’ back in my pocket. ‘You talk ’bout tryin’ show me some _class_,’ I say. ‘Dess lem me——’”

“Listen!” Laurence said, speaking louder. “I want to ast you somep’m.”

“‘Dess lem me tell you, if you fixin’ show me some class,’” the barber went on; “‘if you fixin’ show me some class,’ I say. ‘Dess lem me tell you if——’”

“_Listen!_” Laurence insisted. “I want to ast you somep’m.”

For a moment the barber ceased to manipulate his customer and gave Laurence a look of disapproval. “Listen _me_, boy!” he said. “Nex’ time you flatten you’ face on nat window you don’ haf to breave on nat glass, do you? Ain’ you’ folks taught you no better’n go roun’ dirtyin’ up nice clean window?”

“What I want to know,” Laurence said: “—What were they doin’ in here?”

“What were who doin’ in here?”

“Those two little girls that were in here just now. What did they come here for?”

“My goo’nuss!” the barber exclaimed. “Man’d think barber got nothin’ do but stan’ here all day ’nanswer questions! Run out, boy!”

“But, listen!” Laurence urged him. “What were they——”

“Run out, boy!” the barber said, and his appearance became formidable. “Run _out_, boy!”

Laurence departed silently, though in his mind he added another outrage to the revenge he owed the world for the insults and mistreatments he was receiving that morning. “I’ll show you!” he mumbled in his throat as he came out of the shop. “You’ll wish you had some _sense_, when I get through with you, you ole barber, you!”

Then, as he looked before him, his curiosity again surpassed his sense of injury. The busy shoppers were just coming out of a harness-shop, which was making a bitter struggle to survive the automobile; and as they emerged from the place, they had for a moment the hasty air of ejected persons. But this was a detail that escaped Laurence’s observation, for the gestures and chatter were instantly resumed, and the two hurried on as before.

“My gracious!” said Laurence, and when he came to the harness-shop he halted and looked in through the open door; but the expression of the bearded man behind a counter was so discouraging that he thought it best to make no inquiries.

The bearded man was as irritable as he looked. “Listen!” he called. “Don’t block up that door, d’you hear me? Go on, get away from there and let some air in. Gosh!”

Laurence obeyed morosely. “Well, doggone it!” he said.

He had no idea that the pair preceding him might have been received as cavalierly, for their air of being people engaged in matters of importance had all the effect upon him they desired, and deceived him perfectly. Moreover, the mystery of what they had done in the barber-shop and in the harness-shop was actually dismaying; they were his colleagues in age and his inferiors in sex; and yet all upon a sudden, this morning, they appeared to deal upon the adult plane and to have business with strange grown people. Laurence was unwilling to give them the slightest ground for a conceited supposition that he took any interest in them, or their doings, but he made up his mind that if they went into another shop, he would place himself in a position to observe what they did, even at the risk of their seeing him.