half in joy that this so sure confidant should share his secret and
appreciate his friend. "Oh! Teacher! Missis Bailey! this is the friend
what I was telling you over. See how he walks on his feet! See how he
has got smilin' looks! See how he carries somethings by his teeth! All
times he makes like that. Rover, he don't carries nothin's, und gold
fishes, they ain't got no feet even. On'y Izzie could to make them
things."
"Oh, is his name Izzie?" asked Miss Bailey, grasping at this
conversational straw and shaking the paw which the stranger was
presenting to her. "And this is the friend you told me about? You let me
think," she chided, with as much severity as Morris had shown to his
Izzie, "that he was a boy."
"I had a 'fraid," said the Monitor of the Gold Fish Bowl frankly.
So had Teacher as she reviewed the situation from Mrs. Mowgelewsky's
chair of state, and watched the friends at supper. It was a revelation
of solicitude on one side, and patient gratitude on the other. Morris
ate hardly anything, and was soon at Teacher's knee--Izzie was in her
lap--discussing ways and means.
He refused to entertain any plan which would separate him immediately
from Izzie, but he was at last brought to see the sweet reasonableness
of preparing his mother's mind by degrees to accept another member to
the family.
"Und he eats," his protector was forced to admit--"he eats somethin'
fierce, Missis Bailey; as much like a man he eats. Und my mamma, I don't
know what will she say. She won't leave me I shall keep him; from long I
had a little bit of a dog, und she wouldn't to leave me I should keep
_him_, und he didn't eat so much like Izzie eats, neither."
"And _I_ can't very well keep him," said Miss Bailey sadly, "because,
you see, there is Rover. Rover mightn't like it. But there is one thing
I can do: I'll keep him for a few days when your mother comes back, and
then we'll see, you and I, if we can persuade her to let you have him
always."
"She wouldn't never to do it," said Morris sadly. "That other dog,
didn't I told you how he didn't eat so much like Izzie, and she wouldn't
to leave me have him. That's a cinch."
"Oh! don't say that word, dear," cried Teacher. "And we can only try.
We'll do our very, very best."
This guilty secret had a very dampening effect upon the joy with which
Morris watched for his mother's recovery. Upon the day set for her
return, he was a miserable battle-field of love and duty. Early in the
morning Izzie had been transferred to Miss Bailey's yard. Rover was
chained to his house, Izzie was tied to the wall at a safe distance from
him, and they proceeded to make the day hideous for the whole
neighborhood.
Morris remained at home to greet his mother, received her encomiums,
cooked the dinner, and set out for afternoon school with a heavy heart
and a heavier conscience. Nothing had occurred in those first hours to
show any change in Mrs. Mowgelewsky's opinion of home pets; rather she
seemed, in contrast to the mild and sympathetic Miss Bailey, more than
ever dictatorial and dogmatic.
At a quarter after three, the gold fish having received perfunctory
attention, and the Board of Monitors being left again to do their worst,
unguarded, Morris and Teacher set out to prepare Mrs. Mowgelewsky's mind
for the adoption of Izzie. They found it very difficult. Mrs.
Mowgelewsky, restored of vision, was so hospitable, so festive in her
elephantine manner, so loquacious and so self-congratulatory, that it
was difficult to insert even the tiniest conversational wedge into the
structure of her monologue.
Finally Miss Bailey managed to catch her attention upon financial
matters. "You gave me," she said, "two dollars and ten cents, and Morris
has managed so beautifully that he has not used it all, and has five
cents to return to you. He's a very wonderful little boy, Mrs.
Mowgelewsky," she added, smiling at her favorite to give him courage.
"He iss a good boy," Mrs. Mowgelewsky admitted. "Don't you get lonesome
sometimes by yourself here, huh?"
"Well," said Miss Bailey, "he wasn't always alone."
"No?" queried the matron with a divided attention. She was looking for
her purse, in which she wished to stow Morris's surplus.
"No," said Teacher; "I was here once or twice. And then a little friend
of his----"
"Friend!" the mother repeated with a glare; "was friends here in mine
house?"
Miss Bailey began a purposely vague reply, but Mrs. Mowgelewsky was not
listening to her. She had searched the pockets of the gown she wore,
then various other hiding-places in the region of its waist line, then a
large bag of mattress covering which she wore under her skirt. Ever
hurriedly and more hurriedly she repeated this performance two or three
times, and then proceeded to shake and wring the out-door clothing which
she had worn that morning.
"Gott!" she broke out at last, "mine Gott! mine Gott! it don't stands."
And she began to peer about the floor with eyes not yet quite adjusted.
Morris easily recognized the symptoms.
"She's lost her pocket-book," he told Miss Bailey.
"Yes, I lost it," wailed Mrs. Mowgelewsky, and then the whole party
participated in the search. Over and under the furniture, the carpets,
the bed, the stove, over and under everything in the apartment went Mrs.
Mowgelewsky and Morris. All the joy of home-coming and of well-being was
darkened and blotted out by this new calamity. And Mrs. Mowgelewsky beat
her breast and tore her hair, and Constance Bailey almost wept in
sympathy. But the pocket-book was gone, absolutely gone, though Mrs.
Mowgelewsky called Heaven and earth to witness that she had had it in
her hand when she came in.
Another month's rent was due; the money to pay it was in the
pocket-book. Mr. Mowgelewsky had visited his wife on Sunday, and had
given her all his earnings as some salve to the pain of her eyes.
Eviction, starvation, every kind of terror and disaster were thrown into
Mrs. Mowgelewsky's wailing, and Morris proved an able second to his
mother.
Miss Bailey was doing frantic bookkeeping in her charitable mind, and
was wondering how much of the loss she might replace. She was about to
suggest as a last resort that a search should be made of the dark and
crannied stairs, where a purse, if the Fates were very, very kind, might
lie undiscovered for hours when a dull scratching made itself heard
through the general lamentation. It came from a point far down on the
panel of the door, and the same horrible conviction seized upon Morris
and upon Miss Bailey at the same moment.
Mrs. Mowgelewsky in her frantic round had approached the door for the
one-hundredth time, and with eyes and mind far removed from what she was
doing, she turned the handle. And entered Izzie, beautifully erect upon
his hind legs, with a yard or two of rope trailing behind him, and a
pocket-book fast in his teeth.
Blank, pure surprise took Mrs. Mowgelewsky for its own. She staggered
back into a chair, fortunately of heavy architecture, and stared at the
apparition before her. Izzie came daintily in, sniffed at Morris,
sniffed at Miss Bailey, sniffed at Mrs. Mowgelewsky's ample skirts,
identified her as the owner of the pocket-book, laid it at her feet, and
extended a paw to be shaken.
"Mine Gott!" said Mrs. Mowgelewsky, "what for a dog iss that?" She
counted her wealth, shook Izzie's paw, and then stooped forward,
gathered him into her large embrace, and cried like a baby. "Mine Gott!
Mine Gott!" she wailed again, and although she spent five minutes in
apparent effort to evolve another and more suitable remark, her
research met with no greater success than the addition:
"He ain't a dog at all; he iss friends."
Miss Bailey had been sent to an eminently good college, and had been
instructed long and hard in psychology, so that she knew the psychologic
moment when she met it. She now arose with congratulations and
farewells. Mrs. Mowgelewsky arose also with Izzie still in her arms. She
lavished endearments upon him and caresses upon his short black nose,
and Izzie received them all with enthusiastic gratitude.
"And I think," said Miss Bailey in parting, "that you had better let
that dog come with me. He seems a nice enough little thing, quiet,
gentle, and very intelligent. He can live in the yard with Rover."
[Illustration: She staggered back into a chair, fortunately of heavy
architecture, and stared at the apparition before her]
Morris turned his large eyes from one to another of his rulers, and
Izzie, also good at psychologic moments, stretched out a pointed pink
tongue and licked Mrs. Mowgelewsky's cheek. "This dog," said that lady
majestically, "iss mine. Nobody couldn't never to have him. When I was
in mine trouble, was it mans or was it ladies what takes und gives me
mine money back? No! Was it neighbors? No! Was it you, Miss Teacher,
mine friend? No! It was that dog. Here he stays mit me. Morris, my
golden one, you wouldn't to have no feelin's 'bout mamma havin' dogs?
You wouldn't to have mads?"
"No, ma'am," responded her obedient son; "Missis Bailey she says it's
_fer_ boys they should make all things what is lovin' mit cats und dogs
und horses."
"Goot," said his mother; "I guess, maybe, that ain't such a
foolishness."
It was not until nearly bedtime that Mrs. Mowgelewsky reverted to that
part of Miss Bailey's conversation immediately preceding the discovery
of the loss of the purse.
"So-o-oh, my golden one," she began, lying back in her chair with Izzie
on her lap--"so-o-oh, you had friends by the house when mamma was by
hospital."
"On'y one," Morris answered faintly.
"Well, I ain't scoldin'," said his mother. "Where iss your friend? I
likes I shall look on him. Ain't he comin' round to-night?"
"No, ma'am," answered Morris, settling himself at her side, and laying
his head close to his friend. "He couldn't to go out by nights the while
he gets adopted off of a lady."
THE MAGIC CAPE
The heart of the janitor of an East Side school is not commonly supposed
to be a tender organ. And yet to Miss Bailey, busy with roll-books and
the average attendance of First Readers, there entered the janitor with
an air half apologetic, half defiant. There was snow upon the janitor's
cap and little icicles upon his red mustache, for a premature blizzard
had closed down upon New York during the last days of November.
"Well, Mr. McGrath, what can I do for you?" asked Miss Bailey
pleasantly, for McGrath was the true despot of the school, controlling
light and air and heat and cold, and his good-will was a thing worth
having.
"I just stepped in," answered this kindly god of the machine, "to pass
the remark that there's one of your children, a girl what oughtn't to be
left down in the yard with the others, waiting for the bell to ring and
let them up. She ain't dressed for it."
"So few of them are," said Miss Bailey sadly. "I wish you could send
them all straight up here instead of lining them up in the cold. Some of
them are so determined to be in time that they have to wait down there
for ten or fifteen minutes."
"I know they do," the janitor acquiesced. "But I can't let them all up.
But this little girl I'm telling you about--you know her--she wears a
blue gingham dress, and"--he dropped his voice to confidential
pitch--"and mighty little else as I can see."
"Yes, yes," said Miss Bailey, "that is Becky Zabrowsky."
"Well, I could pass _her_ right straight up to you here where it's warm.
I'm a married man myself, and I've got kids of my own, so I guess you'll
excuse me butting in on this."
"But I shall be very grateful to you," cried Teacher. "It breaks my
heart to see her. And she comes dressed just as you say, whatever the
weather may be."
After a few professional questions as to heating and sweeping, after
taking the temperature of the radiators with a thermometric hand, and
examining their valves, the janitor withdrew, and when Miss Bailey
reached Room 18 on the next morning, Becky Zabrowsky, as blue of lips
and fingers as of vesture, was waiting for her. And indeed her costume
gave cause for pity, even as her smile and her bravery gave cause for
tears. Besides the gingham dress referred to by the janitor, she wore a
pair of black and pink stockings, of mature growth and many holes,
flapping adult shoes with all the buttons gone, and a hair ribbon which
had begun life as a bandage. That was all. But she was clean. And her
self-respect made her seven years as high a barrier against patronage as
though they had been seventy. She was as proudly and as sensitively on
her guard as though she were an old marquise fallen upon evil days, and
obliged to give lessons in French or die, and who was restrained from
the bitter and pleasanter alternative only by religion.
Miss Bailey was accustomed to more normal children. As a rule her little
First Readers took all that was offered to them, and a good deal that
was not. Their consumption of Kindergarten materials--colored paper,
colored sticks, chalks, pencils, books--anything which could be cached
upon the human body--was colossal, and only an eagle eye and a large
corps of subsidized monitors kept the balance true between the number of
"young learners" and the number of readers. But this particular little
Becky had none of these taking ways. Had she been like other Beckies and
Rachels, Miss Bailey would have bought her a little shawl and a few
suits of underwear. With this particular Becky such a liberty was out of
the question. Teacher had encountered the Zabrowsky spirit once, and had
been defeated by it.
That had been upon the question of lunch. Teacher had noticed that Becky
frequently remained at school during the luncheon hour, but that she
never ate anything. Other little girls sometimes urged refreshment upon
her in vain. Miss Bailey, wise by this time in the laws of kosher and of
traff, the clean and the unclean, according to Mosaic dietary laws,
suggested a glass of milk at a neighboring dairy, or a roll from the
delicatessen shop across the street. Any one of her charges would starve
cheerfully to death or at the hospital ward before they would touch any
of her food. She was a Christian, and though they loved her, learned
from her, and honored her, they, like Shylock of old, would not eat with
her. And Becky Zabrowsky, adding pride unto faith, and manners unto
both, would smile her heart-breaking smile, shake her bandage-bowed
head, and go on starving.
"Teacher, I tells you s'cuse, I don't needs I shall eat," was her always
courteous answer. And not all Miss Bailey's tact or wiles could prevail
against it.
It was at about this time that Miss Bailey in her unofficial capacity
accepted an invitation to a costume dance. Looking through old trunks
and long-neglected shelves, she came upon a little tight-fitting
shoulder cape of prehistoric date and fashion. It was such a cape as you
can find in some of Du Maurier's drawings. It pinned the wearer's arms
to her side, it gagged her tightly around the throat, it was of velvet,
and its color was royal blue.
Constance Bailey, peering back into the dim vista of the years, could
remember the pride and happiness which she had felt when her
over-indulgent grandmother had given her, then a child of about twelve,
this gorgeous garment. She could remember how it had dwarfed and faded
the rest of her wardrobe, how she had wept to wear it upon all possible
and impossible occasions, and how tragic had been the moment when it
refused to meet across her loving breast.
Here, she thought triumphantly, was something before which the Zabrowsky
spirit would break down. It did not in any way suggest the useful,
serviceable, humiliating, charitable devotion. It was gay and festive,
palpably a gift, and Teacher, with many misgivings but some hope,
submitted it to Becky's consideration. She represented that she had
herself outgrown it, that she had no costume with which it could
appropriately be worn, that it was menaced by moths, a prey to creases,
and a responsibility under which she could no longer find peace or
security. Under the circumstances, she pleaded, would Becky relieve her
of it? And Becky was delighted, translated, enchanted. She would never
allow that cape to hang with the ordinary outdoor apparel of the other
members of the class. It rested in her desk when she was busy, and she
lulled it in her arms when she was not. Before coming into this shining
fortune she had been rather looked down upon by other members of the
class, and had avoided publicity in every possible way. She had with
chattering teeth and livid lips assured her more warmly clad classmates
that she was "all times too hot on the skin," and that her mamma
considered her Sunday coat too stylish to wear at school. But, girded in
blue velvet, she was another child. Once the most retiring of the class,
she now became the least so. Once the most studious, she now yearned to
be sent on outpost duty, on small shopping expeditions for her teacher,
to the Principal's office, or to other class rooms with notes or with
new students. And upon all these expeditions she wore an air of
conscious correctness and the royal-blue velvet cape. She had once been
the most truthful of small persons, but the glory of the cape tinged
everything, and she allowed the other children to infer--nay, she even
definitely stated--that this was the Sunday coat earlier referred to,
and that she was wearing it to school because it had been superseded by
another even more wonderful. Her auditors were too impressed to be
unconvinced, and, to cover her very literal nakedness in every other
respect, she invented for herself an entirely new disease.
"Say, Becky," one of the little girls in her class asked her, "don't you
never put yourself on mit underwear nor underclothes? Ain't you scared
you should to get cold in your bones? My mamma, she puts me on mit all
from wool underwear--costs twenty-seven cents a suit by Grand
Street--and I puts them on when the school opens, and I don't takes them
off to the fourth of July."
"Oh," retorted Becky, with more truth than she knew, "it ain't so awful
healthy you should make like that. My mamma says it is healthy for me
the wind shall come on my skin. She says sooner no wind comes outside
of your skin, no blood could go inside of your skin. And don't you know
how teacher says what somebody what ain't got blood going in them is
dead ones?"
"Und you _likes_," marvelled her friend, "you _likes_ the wind shall
blow on you?"
"Sure," lied Becky, with a shiver, and she certainly had her wish.
But these appearances were only kept up for the eyes of the common herd.
In the sanctuary of Teacher's confidence she was more unreserved, and
whenever she could secure that young lady's kind ear, she bombarded it
with gratitude and with reports of the impression made in the
neighborhood of her one-roomed home by the shining splendor of that
precious gift.
"Sooner I comes on mine house," she reported, "sooner all the ladies
opens the doors and rubbers on mine cape. Sooner I walks by my block
all the children wants I shall let them wear it. Only I won't let nobody
wear it the while it is a present off of you."
"That's very nice of you," smiled Miss Bailey, not surprised at this new
delicacy of feeling in so small and unfortunate and sorely tried a
heart. "Very nice of you indeed."
"Sure I won't let anybody wear it," reiterated Becky, "not 'out they
pays me a penny for walkin' up and down the block, and two cents for
walkin' all round the block mit mine stylish from-plush cape."
"Of course not," Teacher agreed, hastily adjusting herself to this
standard of right dealing.
"No, ma'am," said Becky. "I should never leave nobody have nothings what
you gives me 'out they pays me good. The lady of our floor, she goes on
a dancing-ball over yesterday, and she wants I shall leave her put her
on mit mine cape--she's a awful little lady--only she don't wants she
shall pay me. Und so I ain't let her take it, the while you gives it to
me, and I am loving much mit you."
A teacher who gains the confidence of her small charges, even to a
slight degree, is sure to be made familiar with their family history
unto the third or fourth generation. And so Teacher knew that the
poverty of Becky's home life was embittered and made even harder to bear
by the contrasting elegance of an aunt, who lived, amid rank and
fashion, in the "tony" purlieus of Cherry Street. Her abode consisted,
according to her smarting small relative, of "a room and a closet," a
lavish and extravagant area for a household as small as hers.
"Why," Becky informed Miss Bailey, with upturned palms, upscrewed
shoulders, and upturned eyes, "my aunt, she ain't got only five children
and three boarders!"
It had been the habit of this rich and fashionable dame to pay visits of
state and ceremony to her less fortunate sister-in-law, whose abode
differed from hers only by the subtraction of the room. There, in the
chaste consciousness of an incredible wig and an impenetrable shawl, she
would monopolize many hundreds of cubic feet of space and air; indulge
in conversations of the elegant and fashionable kind, which, so Becky
reported to her teacher, "makes the tears in my mamma's eyes, and gives
my papa shamed feelings," and caused an epidemic of ill-temper, with
resulting slaps and kicks and yelling among her nephews and nieces.
"And what you think?" Becky had sadly added; "she says like that all
times on my mamma, out of Jewish, she says: 'Why don't you never come
over for see me?' Und my mamma, she says all times, mit more tears in
the eyes--bend down your head, Teacher. I likes I shall whisper mit you
in your ear--she couldn't come the whiles she ain't got nothing she
could wear on the block. My papa has fierce feelings over it. He says
like that, his sister--that's my aunt--is awful nosy."
Teacher often pondered as to whether it were possible, or even
desirable, to provide the means to more frequent intercourse between the
two families. She knew that this would mean shopping; that any article
of her own apparel, or that of any of her friends, would be inadequate
to enshroud the matronly form of Becky's mother, for years of
confinement to the house, years of sedentary occupation, and years of
ill-considered and ill-adapted diet had co-operated to produce almost
geographical outlines in Mrs. Zabrowsky. Mountains, valleys,
promontories, and plains seemed the terms most suitable to describe her,
and she looked about as movable as these natural formations. Teacher
thought of waiting until Christmas time, and of then doing something
anonymously. Meanwhile the episode of the cape occurred, and some weeks
later Becky reported with triumph:
"Teacher, what you think?" this was always her opening phrase; "my
stylish aunt by Cherry Street, she goes and has a party, und my papa he
goes on the party, und my mamma, she goes by my papa's side."
"Then she bought a shawl," cried Teacher. "I am ever and ever so glad."
Becky shook her head.
"No, ma'am, she don't needs she shall buy no shawl. She puts her on mit
mine blue from-plush cape."
A vision of Becky's mother rose before Teacher's eyes, flanked by
another of the tiny cape, and she laughed.
"But that is impossible, my dear. She couldn't."
"Teacher, she does."
"But, Becky," cried Teacher, "how could she? You know that the cape is
too small for me, and it is only the right size for you, and you know
your mamma is twice as big as both of us. So how could she wear it,
dear? It never could have hooked up the front."
"No, ma'am, it didn't hook," Becky admitted. "My mamma's back needs the
most of it, und in front it don't fits very good, only that makes mit my
mamma nothings. She goes on my nosy auntie's party mit proud feelings,
the while she knows how her back is stylish. Und in the front where the
cape don't goes, my mamma, she wears my little sister."
"What!" gasped my friend. "What did you say she wore in the front?"
"She wears the baby," Becky repeated. "Und my nosy auntie's awful fresh.
She says like that on my mamma: 'Don't you likes you shall lay the baby
down by the bed?' She says like that, the while she knows my mamma ain't
got capes only in back, und she wants my mamma shall have shamed
feelings before all the peoples what is on the party. Und my mamma, she
says like that, just as smart, she says: 'No, I guess I don't likes I
shall lay my baby on no strange beds. It ain't healthy, maybe.' And she
holds the baby, and nobody knows how the front from that cape is, und my
mamma enjoyed a pleasant time, and my papa had a proud."
"BAILEY'S BABIES"