unable to stand, she knelt trembling upon the floor the odour of spruce
again enveloped her, and groping, she found that she was really leaning
against a pile of small trees that had been brought there to decorate
the church for Christmas Eve, and as the door opened, men came in
bringing more--dozens and dozens of them, it seemed.
Bird picked up a broken twig, and in spite of its sharpness pressed it
against her face, kissing it passionately, never noticing that she was
directly in the passage between the door and aisle, where presently a
gentleman coming hurriedly in stumbled over her.
He was about to pass on with a curt apology, but glancing down, he saw
that it was a little girl, and that though comfortably dressed and
not actually poor, her face showed signs of distress and tears, so he
stopped.
"What is it, my child?" he said. "Have you lost your way, or what? Come
here and sit in this pew while you tell me about it. I've a daughter at
home only a couple of years older than you, and she doesn't like to have
any one sad at Christmas time."
It was months since any one had spoken to Bird in the gentle tongue that
had been her father's and was her own, and though the tears started
anew, she made haste to obey, lest he should suddenly disappear like all
her pleasant dreams.
He was an alert, middle-aged man of affairs. He had a fine presence and
keen eyes and, without making her feel that he was prying, succeeded in
drawing out the bare facts of her story, nothing more, so that he had no
idea that the trouble was more than a country-bred child's homesickness
at being shut up in the city, and having to go to school instead of
reading all day long and trying to paint flowers.
"So you used to live in Laurelville?" he said; "why, I have a country
place near there, not far from Northboro, my native town, where I
built an Art School, and I have little city girls come to us there
every summer for a playtime. If you will remember and write, or come
to me when the next summer vacation begins, you shall be one of them.
Meanwhile keep this, my address." He handed her a card and passed on,
for he was a good man and rich, with many people to make happy at
Christmas time, and to be both rich and good in New York one must work
very hard indeed.
Going out into the street again, Bird read the name on the card before
slipping it into her pocket. Wonder of wonders! it was Clarke, the same
as that of the wall-paper manufacturer whose manager had asked Terry to
make designs for him. Of course he must be Marion Clarke's father. The
address was different from the one of the factory, but Bird knew enough
of the city now to guess that this number on the card was of his house,
and she now remembered that people had said that he conducted many
various manufactories.
So he had built the School of Design at Northboro that she had dreamed
about ever since she went there with her father to look at an exhibition
of drawings! Could it be that this card was the Christmas sign of hope
and promise to her? She almost flew homeward after buying the candles
and little toys, and laughed and chatted so cheerfully with Billy when
she gave him his supper, that her cousin Larry, who had always teased
her for being set up, remarked to his mother, "Ladybird is coming down
from her perch some; maybe she'll get to be like us, after all." But it
was upward, not downward, that the brave, clipped wings were struggling.
* * * * *
Between Christmas and New Year there came a snow-storm, and then
bitterly cold weather. In Laurelville snow meant sleighing, coasting,
bracing air, and rosy cheeks; in East 24th Street it signified soaked
skirts, sodden shoes, and sore throats, while for Billy it brought
unhappy shut-in days, for his crutch slipped dangerously in icy weather.
One evening Mrs. O'More was called out to sit with a sick neighbour. She
told Bird not to wait up as she might be late, and she would take the
key with her, as the boys had keys of their own if they came in first.
Bird was used to thus staying shut into the flat alone, and so after
she heard the key turn in the door of their narrow hallway, she amused
herself for perhaps an hour by drawing, and then went to bed. She had
been dragging Billy about on his sled up and down the street all the
afternoon, so she soon fell into a heavy sleep.
It must have been a couple of hours after when she waked up suddenly
and tried vainly to think where she was. The room felt hot and airless,
and a strange smell of scorched leather filled the air. She managed
to get on her feet, pulled on a few clothes, and tried to open a side
window, but it stuck fast. Going to the front, she raised the sash, and
as she did so, a cloud of smoke poured into the room, while the shouts
and clashing of gongs in the street told what it was that had wakened
her--the fire-engines! The great sales stables with their tons of hay
and straw were on fire, and the house also, while in the street all was
in an uproar of frightened horses and men.
Rushing back to her room, she shook Billy awake and, wrapping a few
clothes about him, dragged him toward the hall door. It was locked of
course, as Mrs. O'More had taken the key. By this time the smoke and
flames were pouring in the front windows. Ah, the fire-escape! Through
the kitchen she struggled, and out on to the icy balcony, having the
sense to close the window behind her.
The back yards were full of firemen, and excited people hung from the
windows of opposite buildings. Bird tried to raise the trap in the floor
door, but the boxes of frozen earth that had held the morning-glories
bore it down, making it useless, and the one below was hopelessly heaped
with litter.
Would nobody see her? Billy clung to her, sobbing pitifully, for he
was lightly covered, and shivered with cold as well as fear. The
window-frame inside was catching, and heat also came up from below. Was
this the end? Must the wild bird die in her cage?
Suddenly a great shout arose in the rear; people had seen and were
pointing them out. Up came the firemen, climbing, clinging, battering
down the obstructions before them. Ah, those wonderful firemen that
keep our faith in old-time valour!
A moment more, and an axe struck open the prisoned trap-door, a head
came through, and a voice cried, "Good God, it's Bird and little Billy!"
"Dave, my fireman!" sobbed the boy, flinging himself into the strong
arms. "Take him," commanded Bird, as the man hesitated an instant; "I
can follow." Down the ladder they went step by step until the flames
from the lower story crept through and stopped them again, and the
slender fire ladder, held by strong arms, shot up to them, and Dave's
mate grasped Bird and carried her down to safety. Then the firemen
cheered, and tears rolled down Big Dave's cheeks unchecked.
Kind, if rough, people took them in and warmed and fed them, and more
kind people guided Mrs. O'More to them when she rushed frantically home.
But little Billy had suffered a nervous shock, and lay there moaning and
seeming to think that the fire still pursued him.
"He will need great care and nursing to pull him through, for he is
naturally delicate," said the doctor the next day when they had moved
into a couple of furnished rooms that were rented to Mrs. O'More by a
friend in a near-by street until she could pull herself together, as
they had lost everything. "He must either go to a hospital or have a
nurse," continued the doctor, gravely. But Mrs. O'More could not be made
to see it.
"His father'd never forgive me if I put him out o' me hands," she said;
"he'll pick up from the fright after a bit, and what with John away,
and never saving a cent of cash no more than the boys, and the business
all burned out along with us, I've not money in hand for the wasting on
nurses."
Bird knew better,--knew that Billy was very sick, and she could not let
him die so. Ah! the keepsake, the precious coin! Now was the time to
spend it, for there could be no greater necessity than this. What if it
was not enough? Even if it was not much, it might do until her uncle got
back, and then she knew Billy would have care if his father begged in
the street for it.
Going away in a corner, she unfastened the silver chain and detached the
little bag from it. With difficulty she ripped the thong stitches, but
instead of a coin, out of many wrappings fell a slender band of gold
set with one large diamond. As she turned the ring over in surprise,
some letters within caught her eye--"Bertha Rawley, from her godfather,
J. S."
This was the name of Terence O'More's mother, and the ring had been a
wedding gift from her godfather, and the one valuable possession that
she had clung to all her troubled life. But Bird knew nothing of this.
What could Bird do with it? She pondered--her city life had made her
shrewd; she knew the miseries of the poor who went to the pawn shops,
and guessed that any one in the neighbourhood might undervalue the ring,
or likely enough say that she stole it.
Mr. Clarke--she would go to him! Now was the time! She borrowed a hat
and wrap from the woman of whom the rooms were rented and stole out. In
an hour she came back with a triumphant look upon her face, and laying a
roll of bills before her aunt, said, "I've sold my keepsake; now we will
have a nurse for Billy right away."
After she understood about the money, and found that it was one hundred
dollars, Mrs. O'More broke down and cried like a baby, telling Bird
that she was a real lady and no mistake. And then adding, to Bird's
indignation, "I wonder did you get the value o' the ring, or did he
cheat you, the old skin!" But, nevertheless, the nurse came, and not an
hour too soon.
Meanwhile a certain rich man sat at his library desk, holding a diamond
ring in his hand, saying, half aloud: "I believe the girl's story,
though I suppose most people would say she stole the ring, or was given
it by those who did. It is healthier to believe than to doubt. I shall
investigate the matter to-morrow and keep the ring for the child. It
is a fine stone worth four times the sum I gave her, but she would not
take any more than the one hundred dollars, nor was it wise for me to
press her. Ah! letters inside! Bertha Rawley! She said her grandmother
was an Englishwoman. That new superintendent of the Northboro Art School
is named Rawley. He studied at South Kensington. I wonder if they could
be related. O'More. I think that name comes into that Mill Farm deed
mix-up. I will write to Rawley at once and see what is known about the
girl in Laurelville, for something tells me that child is 'one of these
little ones' who should be helped."
XV
THE BIRD IS FREED
January was half over before it was possible for the Lanes to take their
long-promised trip to New York to look up Bird and bring her back, as
her uncle had exacted, a legal sister to Lammy.
Moving from the small house into the large one, even though the
necessary repairs were to be made by degrees, was more of an undertaking
than Mrs. Lane had bargained for. Also it took Lammy a long time to get
"the bones back in his legs," though happiness and Dr. Jedd's tonics
worked wonders.
Dr. Jedd had suggested that a furnace required much less care than three
or four stoves, and so one had been put in. Mrs. Jedd, who had very
good taste, and a tactful way of expressing it that never gave offence,
suggested to Mrs. Lane that, instead of covering the mahogany parlour
set with red plush, the floor with a red-figured tapestry brussels,
replacing the small window-panes with great sheets of glass, bricking
up the wide fireplace, and then closing the whole room up except,
as Joshua said, for funerals, it should be turned into a comfortable
living-room.
This suited Joshua, the older boys, and Lammy exactly, and though
Lauretta Ann demurred at first, saying, "It didn't seem hardly
respectable not to hev a best room," she quickly yielded, and said that
it "would be a real comfort to have a separate place to eat in when
there was a lot of baking on hand and the kitchen all of a tousle,
likewise to set in after meals."
So the old furniture was recovered with a suitable dull green corduroy,
and some comfortable Morris chairs added, "that pa and the boys
wouldn't be tempted to set back on the hind legs of the mahogany, which
is brittle." A deep red rug, that would not have to be untacked at
housecleaning times, covered the centre of the floor, with Grandmother
Lane's long Thanksgiving dinner-table in the centre, and a smaller
round one with folding leaves in the corner, for the entertaining of
the friends who were constantly dropping in for a chat and a cup of tea
and crullers or a cut of mince pie, for no one in the county had such a
reputation for crullers and mince meat, combined with a lavish use of
them, as Lauretta Ann Lane.
Next Mrs. Jedd ventured to suggest that the fireplace be left open and
some of the big logs, with which Aunt Jimmy had always kept the woodshed
filled, simply because her mother had done so before her, used for a
nightly hearth fire.
Mrs. Lane said she hadn't any andirons and the ashes would make dust,
but Joshua was so pleased with the idea of returning to old ways that
she yielded; and when, on the old fire-board being removed to clean
the chimney of soot and swallows' nests, a pair of tall andirons and a
fender were found, the matter settled itself, and Mrs. Lane soon came
to take pride in the cheerful blaze, while the best dishes, which were
of really handsome blue and white India porcelain, were ranged in racks
over the mantel-shelf.
Then there was a sunny southwest window, and Joshua fastened a long
shelf in front of this for his wife's geraniums, wax-plant, and
wandering Jew that had shut out the light from the best window in the
kitchen, and these brought in the welcome touch of greenery in spite of
the particoloured crimped paper with which she insisted upon decorating
the pots.
"How Bird will love this room!" Lammy said a dozen times a day, as he
remembered how prettily she had arranged the scanty furnishings at the
house above the crossroads, and disliked everything that savoured of
show or cheap finery, and it seemed to him that Bird's companionship
was the only thing necessary to prove that heaven, instead of being a
far-away region, at least had a branch at the fruit farm in Laurelville.
The doctor said that Lammy must not return to school until the midwinter
term, and so he spent his time in the shop back of the barn, making many
little knickknacks for the house, not a few of them being intended for
Bird's room, for which he also designed a low book-shelf that made a
seat in the dormer window, and a table with a hinge that she could use
when she wished to draw or paint, and then close against the wall.
This room was next to Mrs. Lane's, and had two dormer windows and a deep
press closet lighted by a high window, under which the washstand stood.
It was furnished with a white enamelled bed and a plain white painted
dresser, upon which, Lammy said, Bird could paint whatever flowers she
chose. There were frilled curtains of striped dimity at the windows,
and a quilt and bed valance of the same, for Mrs. Lane despised any
ornamental fabric that would not wash and "bile." The floor was covered
with matting, but three sheepskin rugs of home raising and dyed fox
colour were placed, one at the side of the bed, one before the bureau,
and one under the wall table, upon which Bird's paint-box stood close
to the leather-paper portfolio that Lammy had made to hold the precious
sketches.
He had tried his best to find a wall paper with a red "piney" border,
but they told him at the great paper warehouse at Northboro that they
had never seen such a paper, so he took wild-rose sprays instead.
Lammy had also filled a small bark-covered box with Christmas ferns,
ebony spleenwort, wintergreen, partridge-berries, and moss, for the
window-ledge, while fresh festoons of ground-pine topped the windows
even though Christmas was long past. In fact, Lammy could hardly keep
away from the room, and often when he went in, he met his mother, for
whom it had the same attraction, and then they would both laugh happily
and, closing the door, come away hand in hand.
It never occurred to a single member of this simple, warm-hearted
family, that there was any possibility of there being a slip between cup
and lip, and in this faith they presently set out upon their pilgrimage
to New York, for which event Lammy wore a high collar and a new suit,
his first to have long trousers.
The minister's wife and Dinah Lucky took joint charge of the house while
the Lanes were in New York, for they intended staying several days,
perhaps a week, as Dr. Jedd said the change was exactly what they all
needed after the doings and anxieties of the past eight months, and Mr.
Cole, the lawyer from Northboro, gave them the card of a good hotel
close to the Grand Central Station, where they would be well treated and
neither snubbed nor overcharged. For he well knew that in a New York
hotel, Laurelville's Sunday-best clothes looked as strangely out of
place as Dr. Jedd's carryall would on Fifth Avenue.
During the past few weeks, Alfred Rawley, the new superintendent of
the Northboro School of Industrial Art, had made several visits to the
Lanes, at first upon business connected with Aunt Jimmy's legacy, and
then because he seemed to like to come. He was a fine-looking man of
fifty, and not only a stranger in Northboro, but a bachelor without home
ties. He seemed greatly interested in Bird, about whom Lammy talked so
constantly that the visitor could not but hear of her, and asked to see
the portfolio of drawings in which were some of hers, and he praised
them very highly for their promise.
The Lanes arrived in New York just before dark of a Tuesday afternoon,
and spent the rest of the evening in looking out of their windows at the
remarkable and confused thoroughfare below them that was made still more
of a spectacle by the glare of electric lights. Lammy wished to go and
look for Bird at once, but his father wouldn't hear of doing so until
broad daylight, saying:--
"Sakes alive, it ain't safe. I've been across Hill's swamp without a
lantern on a foggy night a-callin' up lost sheep, but that down there
with them queer kind o' two-wheel carts that bob along in narrow places
like teeter snipe crossin' the mill-dam, I'll not venture it, leastwise
not with mother along." So Lammy went to bed to kill time, but a little
later curiosity got the better of Joshua, and he spent an hour in the
lobby, where he learned, besides several other things, that the "teeter
snipe" carts were called "hansome cabs."
To the surprise of the early-rising country folk, it was eleven
o'clock the next morning before they found themselves ready to take a
south-bound Fourth Avenue car, for the visit to Bird, and Joshua told
the conductor four times in ten blocks where they wished to get off,
and what they were going for, while Mrs. Lane sat still, smiling and
quivering all over from the shiney tips of her first boots (other than
Congress gaiters) to the jet fandango atop of a real Northboro store
bonnet, and the smile was so infectious that it soon spread through the
entire car.
When they got off at 24th Street and made the sidewalk in tremulous
safety, they marched east in silence, counting the numbers as they went.
"'Tain't much of a neighbourhood," sniffed Mrs. Lane, wondering at the
ash barrels and pails of swill that lined the way.
"Don't jedge hasty, mother," said Joshua; "we mustn't be hard on
city folks that ain't got our advantages in the way o' pigs to turn
swill into meat, and bog-holes ter swaller ashes what don't go to
road-makin'."
"We must be near there," gasped Lauretta Ann, presently. She had been
persuaded to have her new gown made a "stylish length" by Hope Snippin,
the village dressmaker, in consequence of which she was grasping her
skirts on both sides, floundering and plunging along very much like an
old-style market schooner, with its sails fouled in the rigging.
"Oh, mother, look there!" said Lammy, with white, trembling lips. He
had been running on ahead and keeping track of the numbers, but he now
stood still, pointing to a half block of burned and ruined buildings,
walled in ice and draped with cruel icicles that seemed to pierce his
very flesh as he gazed at them.
For a minute they were all fairly speechless and stood open-mouthed,
then Joshua, recovering first, settled his teeth firmly back in place,
and laughing feebly, said: "Been a fire, I reckon; thet's nothing. I've
heard somethin' gets afire as often as every week in N'York. They must
be somewhere, and we'll jest calm down and ask the neighbours over the
way--in course they'll know."
But to Joshua's wonder they didn't, at least not definitely, and all he
could learn was that the O'Mores had moved somewhere a couple of blocks
"over."
"Gosh, but ain't N'York a heathen town," muttered Joshua; "jest think,
folks burned out an' their neighbours don't take no trouble about
'em; we might even get knocked down, and I bet they wouldn't be a bit
surprised. I'd like to strike fer home."
As they wandered helplessly along block after block, the crowd of
workmen and children in the streets coming home to dinner told that it
was noon.
There was no use in going they did not know where, and they had not met
a single policeman whom they could question. As they stood upon a corner
consulting as to what they had best do, a group of girls coming up and
dividing passed on either side of them, one bold-looking chit in a red
plush hat and soiled gown singing out something about "When Reuben comes
to town," and giving Lammy a push at the same time.
As he turned to avoid her, he heard his name called, and breaking from
her mates, a slender little figure with big black eyes dropped her
satchel and flung her arms around his neck, heedless of the merriment
and jeers of her companions. Bird was found at last!
[Illustration: "_Bird was found at last._"]
There was no longer any use in trying to keep up the barrier of pride,
or of pretending she was happy, and Bird led her friends home to the new
flat, wherein O'More had established his family on his return.
That afternoon there was a long powwow in which Mrs. O'More made herself
very disagreeable, as she had come to rely upon Bird and did not wish
to have Billy back upon her hands, but John O'More stood firm by his
promise, saying, even if he'd never made it, Bird should have her choice
after the way she'd stood by Billy in time of need. "She stuck by her
blood kin, and she's a lady through and through, and we're different,
and it's neither's fault that we're a reproach to each other," was
O'More's summing up. "If you can keep her, you can take her, but God
help little Billy! The doctor says good care a couple o' years more, an'
he'll have a chance for his leg. I can pay for care, but it's not to be
bought around here."
Mrs. Lane saw the tears in the rough man's eyes, and her big
mother-heart throbbed, and to some purpose, as usual.
"Our doctor's wife would take him to board, I guess," she said, after
thinking a minute. "She took a little boy from Northboro last summer,
and did real well by him, her children bein' grown now and out of hand.
Dr. Jedd, he'd give him care besides. I'll take him along with us if you
think he'll grieve, and you can write or come up and settle it."
It was only then that Bird's happiness was complete, and little Billy
hugged and hugged her, and cried in his piping voice, "Now we're going
to fly away out of the cage to your country for _sure_ this time," and
Bird answered joyfully and truthfully, "Yes."
"And the sooner we'll fly, the better I'll like it," added Joshua.
"This very afternoon would suit me."
But Lauretta Ann had determined upon two things: she was going to buy
the material for a black silk gown in New York, also a handsome china
jar to contain the remains of the pewter tea-pot and be "a moniment
to Aunt Jimmy," in the centre of the India china on the living-room
mantel-shelf. Mrs. O'More, sullenly accepting her defeat, and now in her
element, which was buying dress goods, offered to conduct the stranger
through the mazes of Sixth Avenue department stores; so after a hasty
lunch they set out, while her husband and Joshua Lane talked matters
over, and the children were in a seventh heaven of anticipation.