CAROLYN OF THE SUNNY HEART
BY RUTH BELMORE ENDICOTT
AUTHOR OF
CAROLYN OF THE CORNERS
ILLUSTRATED BY
EDWARD C. CASWELL
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT, 1919
BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC.
_All rights reserved_
CONTENTS
I THE PALE LADY
II A PROBLEM TO SOLVE
III A NEW FRIEND
IV A PUZZLE
V THE RED-HAIRED GIRL--AND OTHERS
VI A NEW BANGLE FOR PRINCE
VII "IF I WERE RICH"
VIII A GREAT DEAL HAPPENS
IX THE GRIFFIN
X CAROLYN MAY IS PUZZLED
XI AT THE CORNERS
XII NEW SCENES
XIII WOODEN LEGS
XIV THE DOG WITH THE BUSHY TAIL
XV AN UNANSWERED QUERY
XVI ARRIVALS
XVII RENEWED ACQUAINTANCE
XVIII THE NIGHT ALARM
XIX A REMOVAL
XX GREAT EXPECTATIONS
XXI CROSS CURRENTS
XXII THE COCKATOO MAN IN TROUBLE
XXIII INTO MISCHIEF AND OUT
XXIV HE TURNS UP AGAIN
XXV ALMOST
XXVI COUSIN OLY'S ACCIDENT
XXVII TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS
XXVIII "MURDER WILL OUT"
XXIX BOTH SIDES OF THE QUESTION
XXX IT ALL COMES OUT RIGHT
ILLUSTRATIONS
The little girl's interest was closely held
"Wait--let me speak to her first, Carolyn!"
"What did he do with the ten thousand dollars?"
"You!" he said explosively
CAROLYN OF THE SUNNY HEART
CHAPTER I
THE PALE LADY
The craggy heights of upper Central Park trailed a skirt of afternoon
shadow across the narrow strip of greensward and the asphalt path. One
felt the chill of spring in the shadow; but the sunshine was warm and
odorous with budding shrubs and trees.
The little girl in the blue tam-o'-shanter and the mongrel dog
straining at his leash sniffed these pungent odours with approbation.
The dog wrinkled his nose and sneezed softly. His little mistress
smiled and dimpled, saying aloud:
"This is such a nice day, Princey! If the angels make each day new
for us, they must have taken par-_tic_-'lar pains with this one. Now,
Princey, you must _not_ do that!"
The dog had made a playful dive for the wheel of a baby go-cart that
rolled across the path, and might have done it some damage with his
strong teeth.
The child halted the runaway cart and wheeled it back to the settee
where it had stood, while Prince, his tongue a-loll and "smiling"
broadly, watched both his mistress and the strange woman who sat on
the bench with a baby in her lap.
She was a very pale lady, and the baby did not seem well nourished,
either. He had wide eyes now for the dog, putting out his little hands
and cooing to Prince.
"Thank you, my dear," the woman said sweetly; but she drew the baby
back hastily from the approach of the dog.
"Oh, don't be afraid of Princey, ma'am," urged the little girl. "He
wouldn't hurt the baby. Why, Princey just _loves_ babies! Edna Price
has a little baby brother. That's why Edna didn't come to walk with us
today. She had to stay at home to mind Eldred. That's her baby's name.
I think it's a very pretty name. Edna's mamma got it out of a moving
picture.
"Why," chattered on Prince's mistress, as the encouraged baby began
gaily to maul the dog's head and cropped ears, "they put Eldred right
down on the floor beside Princey, and the baby climbs all over him--and
sometimes goes to sleep on him. Isn't that funny?" and her own laugh
chimed out clearly. "And Prince behaves just as _goo-od_! He lies right
there and blinks his eyes and won't even snap at a fly for fear of
waking up the baby."
"I see that your dog," said the pale lady, smiling, "is very
intelligent, as well as kind."
"Oh, yes, ma'am," the little girl agreed. "He's not only intelligent.
He's quite interlectial. He knows lots more than other dogs."
She was staring quite frankly at the pale lady, who had beautiful,
heavy coils of golden-red hair upon her shapely head. Her neck, slim
and graceful, seemed scarcely strong enough to hold the heavy head
erect, and it drooped like a flower above the cooing baby. Had she not
been so very, very thin and had she been granted some colour in her
cheeks, the little girl thought the lady would be beautiful indeed.
The baby was pretty, too, in a delicate, fragile way. The little
girl was used to seeing sturdy, pink-cheeked, plump infants on her
block--and she knew them all. This little man was nothing at all like
Eldred Price, or Johnny O'Harrity's baby sister who lived in the
basement of their house. It seemed to the little girl that if she were
choosing a baby--
"Don't--don't you think you'd rather have a fatter baby?" she burst
forth at last.
A little colour rose into the mother's pale cheek, and she hugged the
baby tighter for a moment.
"Of course, I s'pose _some_-body's got to choose the thin babies, or
they wouldn't have any homes at all. But if we ever find a baby--my
mamma and I--I hope it will be a fat one."
"We hope the little mannie will be big and fat and strong some day,"
said the pale lady, and managed to smile again.
The friendly little girl hitched herself up on the bench beside the
woman, her feet dangling almost a foot from the ground.
"So there is no baby at your house," remarked the pale lady, bending
again over her own little one.
"No, ma'am. There's just Princey and me and my papa and mamma, and
sometimes Aunty Rose Kennedy, who comes to our house from Sunrise Cove
and the Corners and stays with us. She's just gone back home now to
make her garden. She says she cert'nly would have a conniption fit if
she didn't dig in the dirt in the spring. She says it's in her blood,
you know. But she doesn't take anything for it like _I_ have to when it
comes spring. My mamma says a spring tonic's quite nec'sary."
"I see," said the pale lady. "It must be nice to have a garden. But one
cannot have a garden in the city."
"Oh, some folks can!" cried the child, her eyes shining. "I'm
'quainted with a very nice gentleman here in the park--his name is
Mr. M'Cooey--and he's got a lovely big garden up yonder," she added,
pointing to the heights.
"There's going to be jonquils, and crocuses, and hy'cinths in it. He
told me so; and he ought to know, for he buried their feet in the
ground last fall. I saw him bury 'em. Princey wanted to dig 'em up; he
has always to be on his leash up in _that_ part of the park.
"Mr. M'Cooey's awful glad to work in the garden again, now it's come
spring. In the winter he has to go around with a bag and spear papers
with a stick--_you_ know, papers and peanut bags where folks have been
feeding the squirrels. That's quite int'resting work, too. Mr. M'Cooey
let me try it once, and I speared a lot of papers for him."
"I think you must make many friends, little girl," said the pale
lady--was it said wistfully? "Do you come to the park often?"
"Oh, yes, ma'am! But lots of times we come very early in the morning,
when other folks aren't up. My papa and Princey and I. You see, my papa
gets home from his paper awful early, and sometimes when it's pleasant
I get up and we take a walk while mamma gets breakfast.
"That's how I come to know Mr. M'Cooey and the policeman who lets
Princey run without his leash," the little girl proceeded. "_He's_ a
very nice man, too. His name is Mr. Lonergan, and he's got ten children
at home. And what do you s'pose? He says he wouldn't sell _one_ of them
for a million dollars, but he wouldn't give ten cents for another baby!"
The child's laugh chimed out again. Even the pale lady must smile in
response. The baby crowed and pulled at the ears of the mongrel dog.
But the lengthening shadows warned the woman of the time. She shook out
the baby's blanket and wrapped his feet and limbs in it, laying the
little man over her shoulder as she rose.
"I must take him home, my dear," she said to the little girl, who also
climbed down from the bench. "Do you go this way, too?"
She turned toward the avenue, pushing the go-cart with her free hand.
The child and her dog accompanied her, the former still gaily talking.
The avenue crossing was a whirlpool of flying motors, of trucks and
cars passing on the wide crosstown street, and of pedestrians dodging
this way and that. There were, too, many homing baby carriages at this
hour. The traffic officer had his hands full. He really could not see
everything and everywhere at the same moment.
The pale lady, seeing what she thought was a clearing in the tangle of
traffic, let the little go-cart slip over the edge of the curbing into
the gutter. The child suddenly screamed.
"Oh, don't! Oh, don't! Princey, don't let her!"
The dog uttered a single bark and seized the skirt of the pale lady
from behind. Around the corner into the avenue, making a sharp turn,
came a great motor-car--all shiny varnish, beautiful upholstering, and
polished nickel trimmings--a car which told of wealth and ease, and the
occupants of which seemed of a world quite apart from that of the pale
lady and her baby.
The wheel of the motor-car crushed the go-cart against the curbing only
a second following the child's warning cry. The pale lady fell back
from the peril, the dog dragging upon her skirt. The baby, crowing and
fearless, confronted the man and woman in the tonneau of the car, which
was brought to a stop by the chauffeur within its own length.
The little girl was breathless with excitement, but she was, too,
vastly observant. She noted that the man in the car was of a florid
complexion, grey-haired, and exceedingly stern looking. The lady was
very fashionably dressed and revealed a cold and selfish nature in her
manner and her gaze. Through a shell-mounted lorgnette she stared at
the baby held so high and shielding his trembling mother's face.
"How could that person be so careless?" demanded this woman sharply.
"Suppose the child had been in the carriage? I shudder to think of it!"
The pale lady withdrew from the vicinity of the motor-car. She seemed
only desirous of effacing herself in the crowd that was loitering and
curious.
"Dear me!" proceeded the woman in the car, "people like that do not
deserve to have children. And it is a pretty child, too." Then she
added to her husband: "What will you do, Henry?"
The little girl standing sturdily aside with her dog, and with strong
disapproval set upon her flowerlike face, had attracted the attention
of the man. He looked up.
"The woman's gone!" he said. "She's a fool! Run away! Must be something
wrong with her. See here, child," he added harshly to Prince's little
mistress, "is she your mother, too?"
"No, sir," said the little girl gravely. "She's just a friend of
mine. And I don't think it was nice at all of you to smash her baby's
carriage. You see, it will be no good at all any more."
The woman put up her lorgnette again and stared disapprovingly at the
little girl. But her husband was much amused.
"Indeed?" he said, grimly smiling. "So she is a friend of yours! And
who are you?"
"Oh, I am Carolyn May Cameron," said the little girl, and mentioned the
name of the apartment house in which she lived, only a few blocks away.
"Very well, Carolyn May Cameron," said the man, leaning from the car to
place in her hand a folded bank note, "give this money to your friend
and tell her to buy another go-cart with it."
"Why should you?" objected the woman beside him.
"Drive on, Ren," said the man briefly, and the motor-car rolled away,
leaving the amazed little girl with twenty dollars in one hand and the
leash of the mongrel dog in the other.
Carolyn May did not know anything about the pale lady who had run
away--her name, nor where she lived. She did not see how she was going
to give that money to her.