late for supper. In fact they did not come in until she had gone to bed
on the "extension" lounge in the parlour, where she was lying with her
teeth clenched in an effort to keep her eyes shut and to choke down the
nervousness to which crying would have brought the quickest relief. If
Bird could only have been alone in the dark and quiet for a few hours,
it would have been much easier for her to have overcome her great
disappointment. But in the corner of the family sitting room, amid a
litter of sewing and the smell of pipe smoke, with the glare and noise
of a busy street coming in the two small windows, sleep was impossible.
Finally her aunt closed the lid of the sewing-machine with a bang,
tossed her work into a heap in the corner, and, turning out the gas,
went into the kitchen.
There were six rooms in the flat, all quite small. The sitting room in
front and the kitchen in the rear had windows that opened out, above
the three bedrooms clustered round an air-shaft that was like a great
chimney having small windows let into it, through which even at noon
only a gray, sunless light entered, and the air had no freshness but was
full of odours and noises from the flats above and below.
Mr. and Mrs. O'More occupied the room next to the sitting room, Billy
sleeping beside them on a small mattress that was propped up nightly
upon two chairs; for when the bed was thus made, there was no room to
move about. Jack and Larry slept in the middle room which had a door
into the hallway, while the third room, opening out of the kitchen, had
been used by the oldest boy, Tom, before he had taken wholly to wild
ways and drifted off. Now it was more than a year since he had slept
there and it was tightly packed with broken furniture, old boxes, and
various kinds of trash that it had been easier to throw in there than to
dispose of in any other way. A small bath-room at the end of the hall
was littered up in much the same way, and it was evident that no one
cared for bathing, as the tub was used as a cubby hole for pails, a mop,
broom, and the wash boiler and board, for which there was no room on the
overloaded fire-escape. Still Mrs. O'More felt the dignity of having a
bath-room, for it stamped her home as a "flat," tenements so called
having no such luxuries.
Presently Bird gave up all idea of going to sleep or even of closing her
eyes, and do her best she could not keep from hearing the conversation
that passed between her aunt and uncle in the kitchen, for they made no
effort to lower their voices, and she dared not close the door as the
only breath of air that reached little Billy, who was tossing about and
muttering in his sleep, came through the front windows.
After hearing herself thoroughly discussed until her cheeks burned, her
uncle closed with the remark, "Well, of course Terry was all kinds of a
helpless fool, but he shouldn't be blamed for it, his mother was a lady
out of our class, and his wife too, judging from the looks and ways of
the kid, and don't you forget it, and it must come rough to her to be
shoved about, anyhow."
Then a new resolve came to Bird from the rough but well-meaning words.
Her grandmother and her mother had been ladies,--she would not forget
that any more than she would forget her father's wish that she should
learn to paint and win the success that had been denied to him.
Presently the subject changed and she heard her aunt speak of Tom and
say that it was three months since she had heard from him, and she
feared he was dead.
"I hope it will be three months more, then," O'More had cried with an
oath that made Bird quiver and pull the pillow over her head, but she
was obliged to take it off again because of the heat. "He never minds us
unless he's in a scrape, or there's something to pay. But he's not dead,
if that's any comfort, for he wrote to me two weeks gone, saying he must
have fifty dollars or leave his job, and I wrote him that he'd leave it
for all of me."
"And you never told me! I could have sent him a trifle; God knows what
he's done by this," and Mrs. O'More covered her red head with her apron
and began to whimper.
"Look here, Rose O'More," answered her husband, while Bird judged by the
jar that he had brought his fist down on the table with a bang, "that
scoundrel has bled you long enough; now we are saving up to have little
Billy doctored, and I'll not see you rob yourself and him for that other
that we gave the best of everything, and he's turned it to the worst,
even if he is the eldest born. If I were you, I'd bank the bit o' money
that comes in from the sewin' and not keep it about ye."
"The top drawer of the bureau is bank enough for me. The sum is near
complete to buy the frame for his leg, and it will be wanted next week
when I take Billy to the doctor, for it's to his own house he shall go,
and not to the thing they call the "clink" at the hospital, to be stood
up and twisted before a crowd o' dunce heads."
So Billy was to go to a doctor. That was good news, and Bird began to
take an interest in life again, for Billy, in a single hour had crept
quickly into her sensitive, motherly little heart, and with her to love
and to serve were one and the same impulse.
Presently two new voices joined the conversation, knives and forks
rattled, and amid pauses she heard scraps of conversation muffled by
food-filled mouths, and knew that they were talking of her. Jack and
Larry had come home and were having supper. Jack, who worked in an
office by day, was attending an evening school of type-writing and
bookkeeping, while Larry, who was of slight build and whose ambition was
to be a jockey and ride races, was kept late on the track where he was
serving an apprenticeship as handy man to a well-known trainer.
"Where is she? Let's have a peek at her. I hope she's pretty if I've got
to look at her steady," said Larry, who prided himself on his eye for
beauty, and wore plaid clothes and wonderful pink and green neckties,
the colours of the stable to which he was attached, and thought it the
finest thing in the world, for jockeys are often as loyal to their
racing colours as college men are to theirs.
"She isn't so handsome but what it'll keep until morning, and she's dead
asleep by this. Quit yer noise, all of ye; ye'll wake little Billy, and
he's been that fretful to-day that the rasp of his voice would wear
through an iron bar," Mrs. O'More added, as the three burst into loud
laughter over some tale of track happenings that Larry told.
Then the voices dropped to a hum, and then turned to the song of the
bees in Mrs. Lane's hives, and Bird drifted away into that sleep that
God sends to make our tired bodies and minds able to live together
without quarrelling.
* * * * *
Bird slept heavily for many hours, yet to her it seemed only a few
minutes when she awoke again, a streak of light shining directly across
her face and the same noises coming from every side. This time, however,
the light was from the sun, not from the gas, and the noises were
fourfold, for there is nothing so varied, penetrating, and stunning as
the sound of the awakening of a great city to unaccustomed ears.
For a few moments she lay quite still, gazing about, and trying to
realize where she was, and whether awake or asleep, for so many things
had happened during the past week, that it all seemed like a bad dream.
Not many days before, morning light brought the hope to Bird that this
day her father might be better; only the day before she had waked in
Mrs. Lane's big white bed, to see that kind soul watching beside her and
Twinkle had come racing upstairs.
Presently it all came back to her, and, getting up, she raised the shade
quietly, for no one else was awake, and looked down into the street
in which wagons of all kinds were passing, while the sidewalks were
already, at six o'clock, swarming with children, driven into the air as
early as possible by the heat of the night. Then she looked about for
her clothes and a place where she might go to bathe and dress, for the
small rooms were all open through, and the lack of privacy and the sight
of the flushed disordered sleepers was a fresh jar to her.
Finally she tiptoed into the kitchen where a friendly clothes-horse
offered shelter, and managed to make herself neat, and arranged her hair
at a mirror hung over the kitchen sink, which she afterward found was
the family toilet place; then she stepped out on to the fire-escape
where there was the possibility of a breeze.
At that moment she heard Billy's querulous little voice wail, "Oh, I'm
so tired--tireder than last night, and I hurt all over," and she slipped
back through the hallway into the front room again to meet her aunt who
stood in the middle of the parlour, gazing at the empty sofa and open
window in some alarm.
"Oh, so yer up and dressed betimes and not fallen out of the winder
through sleep-walkin'," she said, not unkindly. "Jack has turns of it at
the coming of every hot weather, and he's been down the escape to the
ground, up to the roof and every place he could get, so it gave me a
turn when I missed yer. Here, I'll just throw a few clothes on Billy and
you can take him down to the street for a mouthful of air, while I get
the breakfast. I'll fetch him to the doctor to-day if it does put back
my sewin', and see if I can't get some ease for him."
"Shall I wash him first?" Bird asked quickly, as his mother began to
pull and jerk at his clothes, and then stopped short as she saw a flash
in her aunt's eyes that told her that she must be careful what she said.
"Wash him this time of the morning when he's scarce awake, and have
him all tired before he has a bite of breakfast? I guess not. You can
clean him up this noon, before I take him to the doctor's," and Billy,
now hopping, now stumbling along on his little crutch, led the way down
the three flights of dark stairs, moving carefully from step to step so
that he should not trip in the holes in the carpet with which they were
covered.
Once in the street Bird was at the same time interested and confused by
what was going on about her. A Jewish fish pedler, with much wagging
of head and hands, was trying to sell some stale-smelling flat-fish to
a woman who had preceded them downstairs. Another pedler, with a push
cart, piled high with cabbages, radishes, and greens, went into one of
the houses with a basketful of his wares at the very moment that a big,
roan truck-horse halted with his soft, inquisitive nose dangerously near
the green stuff. First he sampled a bunch of radishes, but these were
too hot for his taste, so he tried a carrot or two, and mangled fully
a peck of spinach before he sniffed the cabbages. At these he gave a
whinny of delight and nosed among them so vigorously that half a dozen
rolled into the gutter, and when the man returned, the horse had started
back a yard or so in fright and looked guiltless of the mischief, and
the pedler ran down the street after some suspicious-looking boys.
Meanwhile the horse stepped forward and nibbled the biggest cabbage with
great relish, while Billy clapped his hands, half a dozen other children
cheered, and Bird herself laughed and felt glad to see the horse, who
did not look overfat, have such a good breakfast.
For if Bird loved flowers and all outdoors, she loved animals still more
even if she did not know it, but the other children did not think of the
horse at all; they were only glad because it had outwitted the pedler,
for between the people of poorer New York and the push-cart people there
is everlasting war. This lesson Bird learned that morning before the
various factories in the neighbourhood had blown their seven-o'clock
whistles.
Another thing that struck her sensitive ear was the different languages
that were spoken by the passers-by,--the various mixtures of slang
and foreign idioms that the speakers used for English being almost as
difficult for her to understand as the German and Italian.
At Laurelville, to be sure, people spoke in two ways. The real country
folk had a vigorous, if homely, dialect, such as the Lanes spoke, while
Dr. Jedd, the minister, and her father and mother used a purer speech,
though her father alone had the soft, distinct way of pronouncing the
words that was one of Bird's great attractions.
Little Billy, however, was quite at home with this street language, as
far as understanding it went, but no word of it came from his baby lips,
strangely enough, and though he was really over six years old, he had
the slight frame and innocent, open-eyed gaze of a child of four, and he
was entirely "different like" from the rest of his family, as his mother
said, and it provoked her as if the fact of the child's being apart from
her own rudeness was a personal reproach.
"Hullo, Billy," called a freckled, lanky-looking girl of perhaps
fifteen,--reading by her face, though she was no taller than Bird,--who
was coming across the street from a grocer's carefully carrying a bottle
of milk as if it was a rare possession.
"Hello, Mattie," he answered cheerfully, hopping to the curb to meet
her. "Where've you been? I thinked you moved away."
"I've been working all of two weeks, and we moved right in back of your
house yesterday. We've got two fine rooms now, and I buy Tessie a bottle
of milk every morning now my own self," she said proudly.
"Tessie's legs are very bad again, and I can't get her out except
Sundays when mother's at home to help, but she's got a rocking-chair and
she can pull it all round the room an' see up out the winder to your
'scape. We seen you sittin' up there last night. Who's the girl?" she
added, dropping her voice as Bird drew near to Billy, not knowing how he
went about alone and fearful lest he should fall.
"It's Bird, my cousin; she came last night from the far-away country,"
he answered, clinging to Bird's hand, while the two girls looked at each
other, one shyly and the other--city bred and quick-witted--curiously,
noticing at once the plain black gown.
"Come to visit or stop?" she asked presently.
"I've come to stay," said Bird, slowly, only half realizing the truth of
the words.
"Father dead?"
"Yes."
"Mother living?"
"No."
"Any brothers and sisters?"
"No."
"Well, that's tough luck," said Mattie, her tone full of sympathy. As
she set the precious bottle on a damp spot on the sidewalk, so that her
hands need not heat the milk, she noticed the tears in Bird's eyes and
changed the subject quickly.
"Ain't you going to work soon? I've got a good job--cash-girl--$3.50 a
week, Saturday afternoons off all summer; 'n, if I'm smart in a year,
I can get to be an assistant stock-girl. How old are you, anyhow? I'm
fifteen and over."
"I'm thirteen and Uncle John is going to send me to school by and by; he
says that it closes too soon to make it worth while this term."
"Yes, you'll have to go until you're fourteen or they'll chase you up,
even if you do live in a flat with stair carpet. It's too bad, though;
you'd have lots more fun working."
"But I want to go to school as long as I can," said Bird, smiling at
Mattie's mistake.
"Oh, then you want to begin in an office type-writing or keeping sales
books. I don't like that; it's too slow and you can't see the crowd.
You'll have a daisy time this summer, though, with nothin' to do but
takin' Billy riding in trolleys and seein' the town. I'll tell you all
the parks where they have music. Billy's pa is free with dimes for
trolley rides. Last year, before my pa's falling accident, we lived down
this street, and when Tessie's legs were well enough, Mr. O'More 'd
often give me a quarter to take Billy along fer a ride. You can ride
near all day fer that, if you know how to work the transfers and stick
up fer yer rights."
"Was your father badly hurt?" asked Bird, drawn to this stranger by a
common chord.
"Yes, hurt dead," she answered, in a matter-of-fact tone without the
trace of a tremble, "and then pretty soon we had to move, and we've
been doin' it most ever since, so I kinder lost track o' Billy. You see
mother worried sick and we all got down on our luck, but now she's got a
steady job to do scrubbin' at the Police Court, and I've got a job, and
we've got two rooms and everything is all hunky; that is 'cept Tessie's
legs, but some's worse than her and can't even sit up."
"You say you live behind us; which house is it? Perhaps I could see your
sister through the window," said Bird, somehow feeling reproached at
Mattie's cheerfulness.
"It's the little low house down in the yard, back of yours, that's got
winders that stick out of the roof. Ours is the top middle and it's got
blinds to it,--all the winders haven't,--and they're fine to draw-to
if it rains, 'cause you don't have to shut the window. It's a rear
building, and some don't like 'em, and of course Tessie would rather
see out to the street, but rents come so high and rear buildings are
stiller at night; that is, when there's not too many cats. Were rents
high a month where you came from?"
"I don't exactly know," said Bird, trying to remember. "I think we paid
ten dollars, but we had a whole house, though it was old, and a garden,
and a woodshed, and a barn, and chickens. Everybody lived in whole
houses in Laurelville, even though some had only two or three rooms."
"Ten dollars for all that, and we pay eight for two rooms!" ejaculated
Mattie, looking hard at Bird to see if she was in earnest, and, seeing
that she was, quickly grew confidential, and, coming close, whispered:
"Would you, may be, sometime come in and tell Tessie about it and the
garden and chickens? She's read about the country in a book she's
got,--oh, yes, she can read; she's twelve and went to school up to last
year, for all she isn't much bigger 'n Billy--but she can't seem to
understand what it's just like and she's cracked after flowers; the man
in the corner market gave her one in a pot last year, but it didn't live
long because we hadn't a real window that opened out then. Maybe your
aunt won't let you come 'cause we live in a rear; my mother says she's
awful proud; but then, most anybody would be, living in a whole flat
with bells and a stair carpet.
"Say, Bird," she continued, after a moment's silence,--during which the
pedler had given up chasing the boys, rearranged his scattered wares,
and plodded patiently on,--this time dropping her voice to a whisper and
putting her lips to the other's ear, "if yer aunt won't let yer come
over, maybe you'd wave to Tessie when you and Billy's takin' the air on
the 'scape. I'll tie a rag to our blind so's you'll know the winder.
It would be an awful lot of company fer her daytimes when we're out to
have somebody to wave to. Yer will? I believe ye; somehow I could tell
in a minute ye'd be different from the rest," and giving Bird a thump on
the back expressive of gratitude, Mattie picked up her milk bottle and
hurried round the corner.
A shout from above next attracted Bird, and looking up she saw her uncle
leaning out of the window and calling to them to come up for breakfast.
Billy could hop downstairs quite easily, but in going up he was obliged
to crawl, baby fashion, on his hands and knees, so Bird followed, slowly
carrying his crutch.
Her uncle and cousins were already seated at the table when the pair
came up, both rather out of breath. Of the two boys, Larry made no
attempt to rise and shake hands, but stared hard at Bird's pale,
clear-cut face and neatly brushed almost blue-black hair and lashes
that made her violet-black eyes darker yet, then gave a quick nod in
which recognition and approval were combined, and continued his meal;
while Jack got up, came forward pleasantly, if with the very flourishy
sort of manner that somehow always reminds one of the pigeon wings
and squirrels in old fashioned writing-books, and waved her to a seat
between himself and his father and began to collect the dishes about her
plate.
"Go on with yer eatin'," said Mrs. O'More, rather sharply, as if
resenting the attention. "Bird can wait on herself,--she's got all day
to do it in and it's time you were off. Come round this side by Billy's
chair so's you can spread his bread; he's always cuttin' himself," she
added.
The food was plentiful enough, if rather coarse in quality,--a dish of
oatmeal, slices of head-cheese and corn-beef on the same dish, potatoes
sliced cold with pickled cabbage, a bowl of hard-boiled eggs, a huge
plate of bread with a big pot of coffee, still further heating the close
room from its perch on the gas range. But the table-cloth was soiled and
tumbled, and Bird saw with horror that her uncle wiped his mouth on the
edge of it, using it as a napkin, while the dishes seemed to have been
thrown on without any sort of arrangement.
Not feeling hungry herself, she began to cut up some meat for Billy,
who fed himself awkwardly using his knife instead of a fork; but Bird
did not dare say anything, and in a few minutes his appetite failed
and he sat picking holes in a piece of bread, while Bird looked at the
heaped-up plate her uncle pushed toward her with dismay, yet forced
herself to eat from inbred politeness.
Larry and Jack, having finished, pushed back their chairs, and hastily
filling their lunch-boxes with bread, meat, and eggs, took their coats
from the rack in the narrow hall and went out, Larry calling, "So long,"
as he went downstairs, but Jack turned back and said pleasantly to Bird,
"Good-by till night, and don't get homesick, Ladybird!"
"Ladybird, indeed," snapped Mrs. O'More, "you needn't bother; she can't
well sicken long over what she ain't got," at which unnecessarily cruel
remark, that made Bird stoop lower over her plate and swallow some
coffee so quickly that coughing hid her tears, O'More looked up and
said: "What's wrong with yer to-day, Rosy? You've no call to hit out
when nobody's touchin' yer."
"What's wrong? What's right, I'd like you to tell me?" she flashed; "me
with a lot uv sewin' to do, and to get Billy up-town to the doctor's by
ten."
"You don't do that tomfool dressmakin' with my leave and consent. I can
keep my family and well, too, if you weren't so set on robbin' yerself
fer Tom, who'll land himself in prison yet for all of you, if, please
God, he doesn't drag the rest of us along with him."
"I can wash the dishes and dress Billy if I may," said Bird, timidly,
feeling the tension of a bitter quarrel in the air.
"Well, you may try it for onct, but look to it you neither smash them
nor make him cry; there's days he near takes fits at the sight of water.
Here's his clean suit, and I'll just go and finish up that silk skirt,"
and Mrs. O'More pulled some clothes from a corner bureau and left Bird
and Billy alone.
"Don't you worry with what she says," said O'More, in a gruff whisper,
pressing Bird's shoulder with his kindly grasp. "Just you be good to the
little feller and yer Uncle John 'll stand by yer, and maybe ye'll see
some way to chirk things up a bit. I've been thinkin' some of puttin'
a bit uv an awning out on the 'scape to keep the sun off him while
he's takin' the air, only travellin' so much I've not got to it. I'd
do it to-day, only I must go to the yards to unload a car o' horses.
To-morrer, maybe, I'll stay around home."
"Don't you want any breakfast, Billy?" Bird asked, as her uncle clumped
downstairs.
"No,--yes,--I'm hungry, but I'm tired more," he answered, laying his
head on the table.
"Suppose I wash and dress you first, and then you can go out on the
piazza and eat something and see if you can spy Tessie."
"Will you hurt Billy's bones when you wash him? Ma always does," he
added, his lower lip beginning to quiver. He always called himself by
name and often spoke in short sentences as very young children do.
"I'll try not to; and if I do, you must tell me and I'll stop right
away."
Bird looked about the room to see what she could find without calling
her aunt, whose very presence seemed to irritate Billy. There were two
stationary wash-tubs beside the range; one of these being empty, she
proceeded to fill it half full of water, making it comfortably warm by
aid of the tea-kettle. Next she hunted up a piece of soap and found a
towel with much difficulty, for the roller towel on the kitchen door was
for general use.
"Come and play duck and go in swimming," she said to Billy, who had been
watching her with interest as she overturned a pail and put it in the
corner of the tub for a seat.
The idea struck the child's fancy so completely that he could hardly
wait to slip out of his few clothes and be helped up on a chair and then
into the tub, where he sat comfortably pouring the water over himself
with a tea-cup, and chuckling in a way that would have warmed his
father's heart.