THE PROMISE
Dorothy Dale was delighted with the little one; but she pitied her so,
too! Covertly the schoolgirl wiped her eyes, while the child prattled
on.
“Sometime I know Tom Moran will come for me. Oh, yes! He mus’ be very
smart, for he builds bridges and things. My auntie what died told the
Findling Asylum matron so. But somehow the letters the matron wrote to
Tom Moran never bringed him back.
“Of course, he didn’t get ’em. If he had, he’d come for me. And he’ll
come for me anyway, and find me--even if Mrs. Ann Hogan has got me.
“You see, all us Morans is jes’ as _smart_! Somebody said I was jes’
the cutest little thing they ever see,” and Celia looked up again,
slily, at her new friend.
“I really believe you are--you little dear!” cried Dorothy, suddenly
hugging her.
“I’m glad you like me so much,” said Celia, quite placidly. “For then
you’ll do something for me, I know.”
“Of course I will, my dear,” agreed the older girl.
“Thank you,” said Celia, demurely. “What I want is that you should
find Tom Moran for me. If I could jes’ find him once I know I wouldn’t
have to stay with Mrs. Hogan. For I jes’ _know_,” concluded the
old-fashioned little thing, shaking her head, “that she’s goin’ to have
a--nawful job bringing me up strict--I jes’ know she is!”
“You poor, motherless little thing!” choked Dorothy. “I’ll try my best
to find your brother. I really will, dear.”
“That’ll be nice,” confided Celia. “For I think I shall like better
bein’ with him than with Mrs. Hogan.”
“And where is Mrs. Hogan going to take you, dear?” asked Dorothy.
“To her farm. A farm is a nawful nice place,” said Celia, gravely. “Was
you ever at a farm?”
“Oh, yes.”
[Illustration: “AND WHERE IS MRS. HOGAN GOING TO TAKE YOU, DEAR?”
_Dorothy Dale’s Promise._ _Page 20._]
“So was I,” confided Celia. “Last summer. They sends a bunch of us
kids from the Findling to a farm--O-o-o, _ever_ so far away from the
Findling. And an old lady got me at the station, an’ we drove--O-o-o,
_ever_ so far to where there wasn’t any houses, or streets, or wagons,
or music machines, or saloons, or delicatessen stores.
“There was just one house where the old lady lived. And it was kinder
lonesome; but the grass was there and bushes all flowered out like
what’s in the flower-store windows. An’ they smelled sweet,” continued
Celia, big eyed with her remembrance of her first experience in the
country.
“I felt funny inside--all lonesome, like as though there was a hole
here,” and she put her little hands upon her stomach to show where she
felt the emotion which she could so ill express--the homesickness for
the sights, and sounds, and bustle of the city.
“But the old lady was real nice to me,” confessed Celia. “And she gave
me real nice things to eat. And--Oh, yes! she laughed at me so. You
see, I was a nawful greeny!”
“I expect you were, dear,” chuckled Dorothy. “You had never seen the
country before?”
“No, I never had. And I saw the chickens go to roost, and the old lady
caught one chicken and began to pick his feathers off, and that’s when
she laughed so at me.”
“Why?” asked Dorothy.
“You see, I didn’t know about it, and I asked her: ‘Do you take off
their clo’es every night, lady?’ And of course they _don’t_,” finished
Celia, laughing shrilly herself now. “Chickens ain’t like folks.”
“No; not very much like folks,” agreed Dorothy, greatly amused.
“No. We eat--ed that chicken the next day,” said Celia. “An’ it was
nawful good. We don’t have chicken--much--at the Findling.”
“Perhaps it will be nice at Mrs. Hogan’s for you, Celia, dear,”
suggested the older girl. “Perhaps it will be as nice as it was at that
other farm.”
But the little one shook her head slowly and for the first time the
tears welled into her eyes and over-ran them, falling drop by drop down
her thin cheeks. She did not sob, or cry, as a child usually does.
“No,” she whispered. “Mrs. Ann Hogan isn’t like the good lady I was
with for two weeks las’ summer. No, Mrs. Hogan isn’t like _that_.”
“But she’ll learn to love you, too,” declared Dorothy, determined to
cheer the child if she could.
“No,” said Celia again, gravely. “I’ve got to ‘earn my salt,’ Mrs.
Hogan says. An’ I guess I’ll hafter work nawful hard to earn _that_,
for I like things salt,” and she shook her head.
“You see, at that other farm, the lady didn’t make me work. I played.
And I watched the birds, and the chickens, and the horses and cows.
Why,” she said, her face clearing up with the elasticity of youth,
“Why, there was an old man that brought his cow along the road to feed
every day. The grass was good beside the road and the old man had no
reg’lar lot for her to feed in, so my lady friend said.”
The little old-fashioned way in which she used this last phrase almost
convulsed Dorothy, despite her feeling of pity for the child.
“And I used to watch the cow. It was a pleasant cow,” said Celia,
gravely. “And sometimes the old man would sit down under a tree in
the lane, and he’d open a newspaper an’ read to the cow while she was
chewin’ grass. She must ha’ been a real intel’gent cow,” concluded
Celia, wagging her little head.
“Oh, dear me! you funny little thing!” murmured Dorothy. “I do wish
Tavia could hear you.”
But this she said to herself. Celia Moran talked on, in her
old-fashioned way: “No’m; I ain’t goin’ to like it so well at Mrs. Ann
Hogan’s. I--I’m ’most afraid of Mrs. Hogan. I--I don’t think she likes
little girls a-tall.”
“Oh! I hope she’ll like you,” said Dorothy.
“But you will find my brother, Tom?” urged Celia, earnestly. “Tom Moran
will take care of me if he finds me. I know he will.”
“I will do my very best to find him, dear,” promised the bigger girl,
again, with her arm about Celia’s shoulders.
In the distance she saw the grenadier Mrs. Hogan approaching, and she
had a feeling that the woman would not be pleased if she knew Celia had
been talking to anybody.
“Here, dear,” said Dorothy, hastily, drawing out her purse and giving
the child a crisp dollar bill. “You hide that away. Maybe you will want
to spend some of it for candies, or ribbons, or something. Let me kiss
you. You dear little thing! I will try to find your brother just as
hard as ever I tried to do anything in my life.”
“I guess you can find him,” returned Celia, with assurance, looking
wistfully up at Dorothy Dale. “You’re so big, you know. I want to see
you again.”
“And you shall. I’ll find out where Mrs. Hogan lives and come to see
you,” declared Dorothy.
But then the big woman came and grabbed the child by the wrist. “Come
on, you!” she exclaimed. “We gotter hurry now, for Bentley’s waitin’.”
Celia looked back once over her shoulder as she was borne so hurriedly
away. The little, thin face was twisted into a pitiful smile, and
Dorothy bore the remembrance of that smile in her heart for many a long
day.
Mrs. Hogan had been so abrupt that Dorothy had not plucked up courage
to accost her. When she asked one of the railroad men if he knew where
Jim Bentley, or Mrs. Hogan, lived, the man had never heard the names.
There was no time then to seek further for the locality of the farm to
which little Celia Moran was being taken, for a train was backing down
beside the platform and the conductor told her it would start in ten
minutes for Glenwood.
So Dorothy ran to gather her scattered flock of schoolmates. Ned
Ebony’s coat was dry enough to put on; but she had to go dressed in a
conglomeration of other garments, some of which did not fit her very
well. Tavia and the others made much fun over Edna’s plight.
“That hat!” groaned Tavia. “It--it looks just like you’d had it in
pawn, Ned.”
“In pawn! what do you mean?” queried Edna, doubtfully, and putting up
both hands to the really disgraceful-looking hat--for it had been dried
out before the sitting room stove at the railroad station agent’s, too.
“Anyway, it looks like it had been in soak, Neddie, dear,” giggled
Tavia. “And to use a slang phrase----”
“I should say that _was_ slang,” returned Edna, in disgust. “The very
commonest kind--‘in soak,’ indeed!”
“And that bird on your hat,” pursued Tavia, wickedly. “That is sure
enough one of those extinct fowl you read about.”
“Lots you know about extinct birds,” sniffed Edna.
“There’s the dodo,” suggested one of the other girls.
“Oh, I know what an extinct bird is,” declared Cologne. “It’s Billy,
our poor old canary--poor thing! The cat got him this morning before I
left home, so he’s extinct now!”
Ned Ebony couldn’t take her coat off because she wore Dorothy’s morning
gown instead of a street dress. And she had on Tavia’s slippers
instead of real shoes; and there hadn’t been a guimpe in any girl’s
bag that would fit her, so she was afraid of removing the coat as she
might catch cold. She had been used to wearing a fur-piece around her
neck and that much bedraggled article was in the big bundle of her
half-dried belongings, thrust into the baggage rack overhead.
“I know that fur is just ruined,” she moaned. “And it’s brand new, too.”
“Never mind,” giggled Tavia. “I bet it’s only cat’s fur, and there’s
slathers of cats at the Glen. We can trap some and make you a new scarf
just as good.”
“Miss Smartie!”
“I declare, Ned, you looked just like a half-drowned pussy-cat yourself
when Doro hauled you ashore.”
“Yes,” complained Edna, “you others would have left me to swim out as
best I might alone--no doubt of that. It is always Doro who comes to
the rescue.”
Dorothy smiled half-heartedly. She did not join the general cross-fire
of joking and repartee. She could not get the wan little face of Celia
Moran out of her mind--that wistful little smile of hers--while she
seemed to hear again the sweet little voice say: “An’ I’m jes’ the
cutest little thing you ever see!”
But Dorothy was afraid that, as cute as she was, the ogress would be
too much for her!
“That’s just what that Hogan woman is--an ogress,” thought Dorothy.
Celia had been woefully afraid of Mrs. Hogan; yet how brave she had
been, too!
“Somehow I’ll find her brother--Tom Moran--for her,” thought Dorothy.
“I will! I must!”