It would have been a loud sound which would have awakened them during
those deep sleeping hours of the night. They did not even stir on their
poor pillows when, long after midnight, there was the noise of heavy
drunken footsteps and heavy drunken stumbling in the passage below, and
then the raising of a man’s rough voice, and the upsetting of chairs and
the slamming of doors, mingled with the expostulations of the woman,
whose husband had come home in something worse than his frequent
ill-fashion. They slept sweetly through it all, but when the morning
came, and hours of unbroken rest had made their slumbers lighter, and
the sunshine streamed in through the broken windows, they were called
back to the world by loud and angry sounds.
“What is it?” said Meg, sitting bolt upright and rubbing her eyes;
“somebody’s shouting.”
“And somebody’s crying,” said Robin, sitting up too, but more slowly.
It was quite clear to them, as soon as they were fully awake, that both
these things were happening. A man seemed to be quarrelling below. They
could hear him stamping about and swearing savagely. And they could hear
the woman’s voice, which sounded as if she were trying to persuade him
to do or leave undone something. They could not hear her words, but she
was crying, and somebody else was crying, too, and they knew it was the
boy with the little old face and the hump-back.
“I suppose it’s the woman’s husband,” said Meg. “I’m glad he wasn’t here
last night.”
“I wonder if he knows we are here,” said Robin, listening anxiously.
It was plain that he did know. They heard him stumbling up the
staircase, grumbling and swearing as he came, and he was coming up to
their room, it was evident.
“What shall we do?” exclaimed Meg, in a whisper.
“Wait,” Robin answered, breathlessly. “We can’t do anything.”
The heavy feet blundered up the short second flight and blundered to
their door. It seemed that the man had not slept off his drunken fit. He
struck the door with his fist.
“Hand out that dollar,” he shouted. “When my wife takes roomers I’m
going to be paid. Hand it out.”
They heard the woman hurrying up the stairs after him. She was out of
breath with crying, and there was a choking sound in her voice when she
spoke to them through the door.
“You’d better let him have it,” she said.
“I guess they’d better,” said the man, roughly. “Who’d’ they suppose
owns the house?”
Robin got up and took a dollar from their very small store, which was
hidden in the lining of his trousers. He went to the door and opened it
a little, and held the money out.
“Here it is,” he said.
The man snatched it out of his hand and turned away, and went stumbling
down stairs, still growling. The woman stood a minute on the landing,
and they heard her make a pitiful sort of sound, half sob, half sniff.
Meg sat up in bed, with her chin on her hands, and glared like a little
lioness.
“What do you think of _that_?” she said.
“He’s a devil!” said Robin, with terseness. And he was conscious of no
impropriety. “I wanted that boy to have it, and _go_.” It was not
necessary to say where.
“So did I,” answered Meg. “And I believe his mother would have given it
to him, too.”
They heard the man leave the house a few minutes later, and then it did
not take them long to dress and go down the narrow, broken-balustraded
stairs again. As they descended the first flight they saw the woman
cooking something over the stove in her kitchen, and as she moved about
they saw her brush her apron across her eyes.
The squalid street was golden with the early morning sunshine, which is
such a joyful thing, and, in the full, happy flood of it, a miserable
little figure sat crouched on the steps. It was the boy Ben, and they
saw that he looked paler than he had looked the night before, and his
little face looked older. His elbow was on his knee and his cheek on his
hand, and there were wet marks on his cheeks.
A large lump rose up in Meg’s throat.
“I know what’s the matter,” she whispered to Robin.
“So—so do I,” Robin answered, rather unsteadily. “And he’s poorer than
anybody else. It _ought_ not to go by him.”
“No, no,” said Meg. “It oughtn’t.”
She walked straight to the threshold and sat down on the step beside
him. She was a straightforward child, and she was too much moved to
stand on ceremony. She sat down quite close by the poor little fellow,
and put her hand on his arm.
“Never you mind,” she said. “Never you mind.” And her throat felt so
full that for a few seconds she could say nothing more.
Robin stood against the door post. The effect of this was to make his
small jaw square itself.
“Don’t mind us at all,” he said. “We—we know.”
The little fellow looked at Meg and then up at him. In that look he saw
that they did know.
“Mother was going to give that dollar to me,” he said, brokenly. “I was
going to the Fair on it. _Everybody_ is going, everybody is talking
about it, and thinking about it! Nobody’s been talking of nothing else
for months and months! The streets are full of people on their way! And
they all pass me by.”
He rubbed his sleeve across his forlorn face and swallowed hard.
“There’s pictures in the shops,” he went on, “and flags flying. And
everything’s going that way, and me staying behind!”
Two of the large, splendid drops, which had sometimes gathered on Meg’s
eyelashes and fallen on the straw, when she had been telling stories in
the barn, fell now upon her lap.
“Robin!” she said.
Robin stood and stared very straight before him for a minute, and then
his eyes turned and met hers.
“We’re very poor,” he said to her, “but _everybody_ has—has something.”
“We couldn’t leave him behind,” Meg said, “we _couldn’t_! Let’s think.”
And she put her head down, resting her elbows on her knee and clutching
her forehead with her supple, strong little hands.
“What can we do without?” said Robin. “Let’s do without something.”
Meg lifted her head.
“We will eat nothing but the eggs for breakfast,” she said, “and go
without lunch—if we can. Perhaps we can’t—but we’ll try. And we will not
go into some of the places we have to pay to go into. I will make up
stories about them for you. And, Robin, it _is_ true—everybody has
something to give. That’s what I have—the stories I make up. It’s
_something_—just a little.”
“It isn’t so little,” Robin answered; “it fills in the empty place,
Meg?” with a question in his voice.
She answered with a little nod, and then put her hand on Ben’s arm
again. During their rapid interchange of words he had been gazing at
them in a dazed, uncomprehending way. To his poor little starved nature
they seemed so strong and different from himself that there was
something wonderful about them. Meg’s glowing, dark little face quite
made his weak heart beat as she turned it upon him.
“We are not much better off than you are,” she said, “but we think we’ve
got enough to take you into the grounds. You let us have your bed. Come
along with us.”
“To—to—the Fair?” he said, tremulously.
“Yes,” she answered, “and when we get in I’ll try and think up things to
tell you and Robin, about the places we can’t afford to go into. We can
go into the Palaces for nothing.”
“Palaces!” he gasped, his wide eyes on her face.
She laughed.
“That’s what we call them,” she said; “that’s what they are. It’s part
of a story. I’ll tell it to you as we go.”
“Oh!” he breathed out, with a sort of gasp, again.
He evidently did not know how to express himself. His hands trembled,
and he looked half frightened.
“If you’ll do it,” he said, “I’ll remember you all my life! I’ll—I’ll—if
it wasn’t for father I know mother would let you sleep here every night
for nothing. And I’d give you my bed and be glad to do it, I would. I’ll
be so thankful to you. I hain’t got nothin’—nothin’—but I’ll be that
thankful—I”—there was a kind of hysterical break in his voice—“let me go
and tell mother,” he said, and he got up stumblingly and rushed into the
house.
Meg and Robin followed him to the kitchen, as excited as he was. The
woman had just put a cracked bowl of something hot on the table, and as
he came in she spoke to him.
[Illustration: “TO—TO—THE FAIR?” HE SAID, TREMULOUSLY.]
“Your mush is ready,” she said. “Come and eat while it’s hot.”
“Mother,” he cried out, “they are going to take me in. I’m going!
They’re going to take me!”
The woman stopped short and looked at the twins, who stood in the
doorway. It seemed as if her chin rather trembled.
“You’re going—” she began, and broke off. “You’re as poor as he is,” she
ended. “You must be, or you wouldn’t have come here to room.”
“We’re as poor in one way,” said Meg, “but we worked, and saved money to
come. It isn’t much, but we can do without something that would cost
fifty cents, and that will pay for his ticket.”
The woman’s chin trembled more still.
“Well,” she said, ”I—I—O Lord!” And she threw her apron over her head
and sat down suddenly.
Meg went over to her, not exactly knowing why.
“We could not bear to go ourselves,” she said. “And he is like us.”
She was thinking, as she spoke, that this woman and her boy were very
fond of each other. The hands holding the apron were trembling as his
had done. They dropped as suddenly as they had been thrown up. The woman
lifted her face eagerly.
“What were you thinking of going without?” she asked. “Was it things to
eat?”
“We—we’ve got some hard-boiled eggs,” faltered Meg, a little guiltily.
“There’s hot mush in the pan,” said the woman. “There’s nothing to eat
with it, but it’s healthier than cold eggs. Sit down and eat some.”
And they did, and in half an hour they left the poor house, feeling
full-fed and fresh. With them went Ben—his mother standing on the steps
looking after him—his pale old face almost flushed and young, as it set
itself toward the City Beautiful.