Faith Gartney's Girlhood, Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney [good e books to read .txt] 📗

as if not a moment had gone by since she held him so in the little, dark, upper entry in Budd Street, where he had toddled to her in his nightgown, for her grieved farewell, was hugging and kissing him, with the old, forgetting and forgiving love.

Mrs. Grubbling looked on in petrified amaze. Glory had transferred a fragrant white paper parcel from her pocket to the child's hands, and had thrust upon that a gay tin horse from the counter, before it occurred to her that the mother might, possibly, neither remember nor approve.

"I beg your pardon, ma'am, for the liberty; and it's very likely you don't know me. I'm Glory McWhirk, that used to live with you, and mind the baby."

"I'm sure I'm glad to see you, Glory," said Mrs. Grubbling patronizingly; "and I hope you've been doing well since you went away from me." As if she had been doing so especially well before, that there might easily be a doubt as to whether going farther had not been faring worse. I have no question that Mrs. Grubbling fancied, at the moment, that the foundation of all the simple content and quiet prosperity that evidenced themselves at present in the person of her former handmaid, had been laid in Budd Street.

"And where are you living now?" proceeded she, as Glory resigned the boy to his mint stick, and was saying good-by.

"Out in Kinnicutt, ma'am; at Miss Henderson's, where I have been ever since."

She never thought of triumphing. She never dreamed of what it would be to electrify her former mistress with the announcement that she whom she had since served had died, and left her, Glory McWhirk, the life use of more than half her estate. That she dwelt now, as proprietress, where she had been a servant. Her humbleness and her faithfulness were so entire that she never thought of herself as occupying, in the eyes of others, such position. She was Miss Henderson's handmaiden, still; doing her behest, simply, as if she had but left her there in keeping, while she went a journey.

So she bade good-by, and courtesied to Mrs. Grubbling and gathered up her little parcels, and went out. Fortunately, Mrs. Grubbling was half stunned, as it was. It is impossible to tell what might have resulted, had she then and there been made cognizant of more. Not to the shorn lamb, alone, always, are sharp winds beneficently tempered. There is a mercy, also, to the miserable wolf. Glory had one trouble, to-day, that hindered her pure, free and utter enjoyment of what she had to do.

All day she had seen, here and there along the street, little forlorn and ragged ones, straying about aimlessly, as if by any chance, a scrap of Christmas cheer might even fall to them, if only they kept out in the midst of it. There was a distant wonder in their faces, as they met the buyers among the shops, and glanced at the fair, fresh burdens they carried; and around the confectioners' windows they would cluster, sometimes, two or three together, and _look_; as if one sense could take in what was denied so to another. She knew so well what the feeling of it was! To see the good times going on, and not be in 'em! She longed so to gather them all to herself, and take them home, and make a Christmas for them!

She could only drop the pennies that came to her in change loose into her pocket, and give them, one by one, along the wayside. And she more than once offered a bright quarter (it was in the days when quarters yet were, reader!), when she might have counted out the sum in lesser bits, that so the pocket should be kept supplied the longer.

* * * * *

Down by the ---- Railway Station, the streets were dim, and dirty, and cheerless. Inside, the passengers gathered about the stove, where the red coals gleamed cheerful in the already gathering dusk of the winter afternoon. A New York train was going out; and all sorts of people--from the well-to-do, portly gentleman of business, with his good coat buttoned comfortably to his chin, his tickets bought, his wallet lined with bank notes for his journey, and secretly stowed beyond the reach (if there be such a thing) of pickpockets, and the _Mishaumok Journal_, Evening Edition, damp from the press, unfolded in his fingers, to the care-for-naught, dare-devil little newsboy who had sold it to him, and who now saunters off, varying his monotonous cry with:

"_Jour-nal_, gentlemen! Eve-nin' 'dition! Georgy out!"

("What's that?" exclaims an inconsiderate.)

"Georgy out! (Little brother o' mine. Seen him anywhere?) Eve-nin' 'dition! _Jour-nal_, gentleman!" and the shivering little candy girl, threading her way with a silent imploringness among the throng--were bustling up and down, in waiting rooms, and on the platforms, till one would think, assuredly, that the center of all the world's activity, at this moment, lay here; and that everybody _not_ going in this particular express train to New York, must be utterly devoid of any aim or object in life, whatever.

So we do, always, carry our center about with us. A little while ago all the world was buying dolls and tin horses. Horizons shift and ring themselves about us, and we, ourselves, stand always in the middle.

By and by, however, the last call was heard.

"Passengers for New York! Train ready! All aboard!"

And with the ringing of the bell, and the mighty gasping of the impatient engine, and a scuffle and scurry of a minute, in which carpetbags and babies were gathered up and shouldered indiscriminately, the rooms and the platforms were suddenly cleared of all but a few stragglers, and half a dozen women with Christmas bundles, who sat waiting for trains to way stations.

Two little pinched faces, purple with the bitter cold, looked in at the door.

"It's good and warm in there. Less' go!"

And the older drew the younger into the room, toward the glowing stove.

They looked as if they had been wandering about in the dreary streets till the chill had touched their very bones. The larger of the two, a boy--torn hopelessly as to his trousers, dilapidated to the last degree as to his fragment of a hat--knees and elbows making their way out into the world with the faintest shadow of opposition--had, perhaps from this, a certain look of pushing knowingness that set itself, by the obscure and inevitable law of compensation, over against the gigantic antagonism of things he found himself born into; and you knew, as you looked at him, that he would, somehow, sooner or later, make his small dint against the great dead wall of society that loomed itself in his way; whether society or he should get the worst of it, might happen as it would.

The younger was a little girl. A flower thrown down in the dirt. A jewel encrusted with mean earth. Little feet in enormous coarse shoes, cracked and trodden down; bare arms trying to hide themselves under a bit of old woolen shawl; hair tangled beneath a squalid hood; out from amidst all, a face of beauty that peeped, like an unconscious draft of God's own signing, upon humanity. Was there none to acknowledge it?

An official came through the waiting room.

The boy showed a slink in his eyes, like one used to shoving and rebuff, and to getting off, round corners. The girl stood, innocent and unheeding.

"There! out with you! No vagrums here!"

Of course, they couldn't have all Queer Street in their waiting rooms, these railway people; and the man's words were rougher than his voice. But these were two children, who wanted cherishing!

The slink in the boy's eye worked down, and became a sneak and a shuffle, toward the door. The girl was following.

"Stop!" called a woman's voice, sharp and authoritative. "Don't you stir a single step, either of you, till you get warm! If there isn't any other way to fix it, I'll buy you both a ticket somewhere and then you'll be passengers."

It was a tall, thin, hoopless woman, with a carpetbag, a plaid shawl, and an umbrella; and a bonnet that, since other bonnets had begun to poke, looked like a chaise top flattened back at the first spring. In a word, Mehitable Sampson.

Something twitched at the corners of the man's mouth as he glanced round at this sudden and singular champion. Something may have twitched under his comfortable waistcoat, also. At any rate, he passed on; and the children--the brief battledore over in which they had been the shuttlecocks--crept back, compliant with the second order, much amazed, toward the stove.

Miss Sampson began to interrogate.

"Why don't you take your little sister home?"

"This one ain't my sister." Children always set people right before they answer queries.

"Well--whoever she is, then. Why don't you both go home?"

"'Cause it's cold there, too. And we was sent to find sticks."

"If she isn't your sister, who does she belong to?"

"She don't belong to nobody. She lived upstairs, and her mother died, and she came down to us. But she's goin' to be took away. Mother's got five of us, now. She's goin' to the poorhouse. She's a regular little brick, though; ain't yer, Jo?"

The pretty, childish lips that had begun to grow red and lifelike again, parted, and showed little rows of milk teeth, like white shells. The blue eyes and the baby smile went up, confidingly, to the young ragamuffin's face. There had been kindness here. The boy had taken to Jo, it seemed; and was benevolently evincing it, in the best way he could, by teaching her good-natured slang. "Yes; I'm a little brick," she lisped.

Miss Sampson's keen eyes went from one to the other, resting last and long on Jo.

"I shouldn't wonder," she said, deliberately, "if you was Number Four!"

"Whereabouts do you live?" suddenly, to the boy.

"Three doors round the corner. 'Tain't number four, though. It's ninety-three."

"What's your name?"

"Tim Rafferty."

"Tim Rafferty! Did anybody ever trust you with a carpetbag?"

"I've carried 'em up. But then they mostly goes along, and looks sharp."

"Well, now I'm going to leave you here, with this one. If anybody speaks to you, say you was left in charge. Don't stir till I come back. And--look here! if you see a young woman come in, with bright, wavy hair, and a black gown and bonnet, and if she comes and speaks to you, as most likely she will, tell her I said I shouldn't wonder if this was Number Four!"

And Nurse Sampson went out into the street.

When she came back, the children sat there, still; and Glory McWhirk was with them.

"I don't know as I'd any business to meddle; and I haven't made any promises; but I've found out that you can do as you choose about it, and welcome. And I couldn't help thinking you might like to have this one for Number Four."

Glory had already nestled the poor, tattered child close to her, and given her a cake to eat from the refreshment counter.

Tim Rafferty delivered up the carpetbag, in proud integrity. To be sure, there were half a dozen people in the room who had witnessed its intrustment