AUNT HENDERSON'S GIRL HUNT.
"Black spirits and white,
Red spirits and gray;
Mingle, mingle, mingle,
You that mingle may."
MACBETH.
It was a small, close, dark room--Mrs. Griggs's Intelligence Office--a
little counter and show case dividing off its farther end, making a
sanctum for Mrs. Griggs, who sat here in rheumatic ponderosity,
dependent for whatever involved locomotion on the rather alarming
alacrity of an impish-looking granddaughter who is elbowing her way
through the throng of applicants for places and servants. She paid no
heed to the astonishment of a severe-looking, elderly lady, who, by her
impetuous onset, has been rudely thrust back into the very arms of a
fat, unsavory cook with whom she had a minute before been quite
unwillingly set to confer by the high priestess of the place.
Aunt Henderson grasped Faith's hand as if she felt she had brought her
into a danger, and held her close to her side while she paused a moment
to observe, with the strange fascination of repulsion, the manifestation
of a phase of human life and the working of a vocation so utterly and
astoundingly novel to herself.
"Well, Melindy," said Mrs. Griggs, salutatorily.
"Well, grandma," answered the girl, with a pert air of show off and
consequence, "I found the place, and I found the lady. Ain't I been
quick?"
"Yes. What did she say?"
"Said the girl left last Saturday. Ain't had anybody sence. Wants you to
send her a first-rate one, right off. Has Care'_line_ been here after
me?"
"No. Did you get the money?"
"She never said a word about it. Guess she forgot the month was out."
"Didn't you ask her?"
"Me? No. I did the arrant, and stood and looked at her--jest as
pious--! And when she didn't say nothin', I come away."
"Winny M'Goverin," said Mrs. Griggs, "that place'll suit you. Leastways,
it must, for another month. You'd better go right round there."
"Where is it?" asked the fat cook, indifferently.
"Up in Mount Pleasant Street, Number 53. First-class place, and plenty
of privileges. Margaret McKay," she continued, to another, "you're too
hard to please. Here's one more place"--handing her a card with
address--"and if you don't take that, I won't do nothing more for you,
if you _air_ Scotch and a Protestant! Mary McGinnis, it's no use your
talking to that lady from the country. She can't spare you to come down
but twice or so a year."
"Lord!" ejaculated Mary McGinnis, "I wouldn't live a whole year with no
lady that ever was, let alone the country!"
"Come out, Faith!" said Miss Henderson, in a deep, ineffable tone of
disgust.
"If _that's_ a genteel West End Intelligence Office," cried Aunt Faith,
as she touched the sidewalk, "let's go downtown and try some of the
common ones."
A large hall--where the candidates were ranged on settees under order
and restraint, and the superintendent, or directress, occupied a desk
placed upon a platform near the entrance--was the next scene whereon
Miss Henderson and Faith Gartney entered. Things looked clean and
respectable. System obtained here. Aunt Faith felt encouraged. But she
made no haste to utter her business. Tall, self-possessed, and
dignified, she stood a few paces inside the door, and looked down the
apartment, surveying coolly the faces there, and analyzing, by a shrewd
mental process, their indications.
Her niece had stopped a moment on the landing outside to fasten her boot
lace.
Miss Henderson did not wear hoops. Also, the streets being sloppy, she
had tucked up her plain, gray merino dress over a quilted black alpaca
petticoat. Her boots were splashed, and her black silk bonnet was
covered with a large gray barége veil, tied down over it to protect it
from the dripping roofs. Judging merely by exterior, one would hardly
take her at a glance, indeed, for a "fust-class" lady.
The directress--a busy woman, with only half a glance to spare for
anyone--moved toward her.
"Take a seat, if you please. What kind of a place do you want?"
Aunt Faith turned full face upon her, with a look that was prepared to
be overwhelming.
"I'm looking for a place, ma'am, where I can find a respectable girl."
Her firm, emphatic utterance was heard to the farthest end of the hall.
The girls tittered.
Faith Gartney came in at this moment, and walked up quietly to Miss
Henderson's side. There was visibly a new impression made, and the
tittering ceased.
"I beg pardon, ma'am. I see. But we have so many in, and I didn't fairly
look. General housework?"
"Yes; general and particular--both. Whatever I set her to do."
The directress turned toward the throng of faces whose fire of eyes was
now all concentrated on the unflinching countenance of Miss Henderson.
"Ellen Mahoney!"
A stout, well-looking damsel, with an expression that seemed to say she
answered to her name, but was nevertheless persuaded of the utter
uselessness of the movement, half rose from her seat.
"You needn't call up that girl," said Aunt Faith, decidedly; "I don't
want her."
Ellen Mahoney had giggled among the loudest.
"She knows what she _does_ want!" whispered a decent-appearing young
woman to a girl at her side with an eager face looking out from a friz
of short curly hair, "and that's more than half of 'em do."
"Country, did you say, ma'am? or city?" asked the directress once more
of Miss Henderson.
"I didn't say. It's country, though--twenty miles out."
"What wages?"
"I'll find the girl first, and settle that afterwards."
"Anybody to do general housework in the country, twenty miles out?"
The prevailing expression of the assemblage changed. There was a
settling down into seats, and a resumption of knitting and needlework.
One pair of eyes, however, looked on, even more eagerly than before. One
young girl--she with the short curly hair who hadn't seen the country
for six years and more--caught her breath, convulsively, at the word.
"I wish I dar'st! I've a great mind!" whispered she to her tidy
companion.
While she hesitated, a slatternly young woman, a few seats farther
forward, moved, with a "don't care" sort of look, to answer the summons.
"Oh, dear!" sighed the first. "I'd ought to a done it!"
"I don't think she would take a young girl like you," replied her
friend.
"That's the way it always is!" exclaimed the disappointed voice, in
forgetfulness and excitement uttering itself aloud. "Plenty of good
times going, but they all go right by. I ain't never in any of 'em!"
"Glory McWhirk!" chided the directress, "be quiet! Remember the rules,
or leave the room."
"Call that red-headed girl to me," said Miss Henderson, turning square
round from the dirty figure that was presenting itself before her, and
addressing the desk. "She looks clean and bright," she added, aside, to
Faith, as Glory timidly approached. "And poor. And longing for a chance.
I'll have her."
A girl with a bonnet full of braids and roses, and a look of general
knowingness, started up close at Miss Henderson's side, and interposed.
"Did you say twenty miles, mum? How often could I come to town?"
"You haven't been asked to go _out_ of town, that I know of," replied
Miss Henderson, frigidly, abashing the office _habitué_, who had not
been used to find her catechism cut so summarily short, and moving aside
to speak with Glory.
"What was it I heard you say just now?"
"I didn't mean to speak out so, mum. It was only what I mostly thinks.
That there's always lots of good times in the world, only I ain't never
in 'em."
"And you thought it would be good times, did you, to go off twenty miles
into the country, to live alone with an old woman like me?"
Miss Henderson's tone softened kindly to the rough, uncouth girl, and
encouraged her to confidence.
"Well, you see, mum, I should like to go where things is green and
pleasant. I lived in the country once--ever so long ago--when I was a
little girl."
Miss Henderson could not help a smile that was half amused, and wholly
pitiful, as she looked in the face of this creature of fourteen, so
strange and earnest, with its outline of fuzzy, cropped hair, and heard
her talk of "ever so long ago."
"Are you strong?"
"Yes'm. I ain't never sick."
"And willing to work?"
"Yes'm. Jest as much as I know how."
"And want to learn more?"
"Yes'm. I don't know as I'd know enough hardly, to begin, though."
"Can you wash dishes? And sweep? And set table?"
To each of these queries Glory successively interposed an affirmative
monosyllable, adding, gratuitously, at the close, "And tend baby, too,
real good." Her eyes filled, as she thought of the Grubbling baby with
the love that always grows for that whereto one has sacrificed oneself.
"You won't have any babies to tend. Time enough for that when you've
learned plenty of other things. Who do you belong to?"
"I don't belong to anybody, mum. Father, and mother, and grandmother is
all dead. I've done the chores and tended baby up at Mrs. Grubbling's
ever since. That's in Budd Street. I'm staying now in High Street, with
Mrs. Foye. Number 15."
"I'll come after you to-morrow. Have your things ready to go right off."
"I'm so glad you took her, auntie," said Faith, as they went out. "She
looks as if she hadn't been well treated. Think of her wanting so to go
into the country! I should like to do something for her."
"That's my business," answered Aunt Faith, curtly, but not crossly.
"You'll find somebody to do for, if you look out. If your mother's
willing, though, you might mend up one of your old school dresses for
her. 'Tisn't likely she's got anything to begin with." And so saying,
Aunt Faith turned precipitately into a drygoods store, where she bought
a large plaid woolen shawl, and twelve yards of dark calico. Coming out,
she darted as suddenly, and apparently unpremeditatedly, across the
street into a milliner's shop, and ordered home a brown rough-and-ready
straw bonnet, and four yards of ribbon to match.
"And that you can put on, too," she said to Faith.
That evening, Faith was even unwontedly cheery and busy, taking a burned
half breadth out of a dark cashmere dress, darning it at the armhole,
and pinning the plain ribbon over the brown straw bonnet.
At the same time, Glory went up across the city to Budd Street, with a
mingled heaviness and gladness at her heart, and, after a kindly
farewell interview with Katie Ryan at the Pembertons' green gate, rang,
with a half-guilty feeling at her own independence, at the Grubblings'
door. Bubby opened it.
"Why, ma!" he shouted up the staircase, "it's Glory come back!"
"I've come to get my bundle," said the girl.
Mrs. Grubbling had advanced to the stair head, somewhat briskly, with
the wakeful baby in her arms. Two days' "tending" had greatly mollified
her sentiments toward the offending Glory.
"And she's come to get her bundle," added the young usher, from below.
Mrs. Grubbling retreated into her chamber, and shut herself and the baby
in.
Poor Glory crept upstairs to her little attic.
Coming down again, she set her bundle on the stairs, and knocked.
"What is it?" was the ungracious response.
"Please, mum, mightn't I say good-by to the baby?"
The latch had slipped, and the door was already slightly ajar. Baby
heard the accustomed voice, and struggled in his mother's arms.
"A pretty time to come disturbing him to do it!" grumbled she.
Nevertheless, she set the baby on the floor, who tottled out, and was
seized by Glory, standing there in the dark entry, and pressed close in
her poor, long-wearied, faithful arms.
"Oh, baby, baby! I'm in it now! And I don't know rightly whether it's a
good time or not!"