"IF I WERE RICH"
After school the next day, as Carolyn had promised, she took Prince to
call on the pale lady's baby.
Little did she mark the locality as being fearsome or unpleasant.
She was in Prince's care, and Carolyn May usually found something
interesting, and therefore pleasant, wherever she went.
Here were children of all ages, and so many, many babies! Of course
they were dirty-faced and raggedly clothed in most instances. Quite in
contrast to the babies on her own block or most of those she saw in the
park when she went there to walk.
"I s'pose," thought the observant little girl, "that these children are
so dirty because their mothers have so many to take care of. While they
are washing one baby the others are getting dirty in this awfully dirty
street. So, if they keep on all day washing them, they would never
be all clean at once! But," admitted the philosophical Carolyn May,
slowly, "it's funny not to see _any_ clean babies here at all. I wonder
where those are that have just been scrubbed."
The house, the number of which the pale lady had given the little girl,
seemed slightly less disreputable than many of its neighbours. It was
merely a slice of the brick block, but had been recently painted.
There were four apartments on each floor, two in front and two in the
rear.
The pale lady lived in one of the rear apartments, one flight up from
the street. The children who crowded the stairway made way for Prince
and watched him narrowly. Without him Carolyn might have found some
difficulty in getting up to the pale lady's rooms.
She might, too, have found some of these children as unpleasant as the
red-haired Sade had been, had Prince not been her companion. But, as it
was, she went boldly to the pale lady's door and knocked.
The latter welcomed Carolyn and Prince cheerfully. Her little, dark
rooms were scrupulously clean; but in the kitchen, to which the lady
took her small friend, the evidences of poverty were not to be hidden.
The kitchen had two big windows overlooking a littered and dirty
backyard. These windows were really the only ones of any account in
the place; for those of the sitting room and bedroom between looked
out into airshafts. The smells of cooking and boiling clothes rose
through the house, and odours from the yard were such that it was far
pleasanter to keep the windows closed than open.
The lady, with her beautiful hair, her beautifully clean and
sweet-smelling skin, her well-cared-for hands, her warm if rather
wistful smile, all appealed strongly to the little girl. Poor as the
pale lady must be, Carolyn saw that she was quite as careful of her
personal appearance as was her own mamma. And the baby was as sweet as
a rose!
They put him down on the floor on a folded quilt and let him play with
Prince to his heart's content. Meanwhile the pale lady and Carolyn
became very well acquainted.
Of course, it began with babies; but "babies" is such a fruitful
subject for discussion that they branched off into a dozen topics, all
leading from, or appertaining to, babies. Carolyn could not remember
much about her own babyhood--and that was funny, she said, because she
certainly ought to be the one to recall most clearly what happened to
her at that time. But she had known about babies, she told the pale
lady, "for years and years."
"You see," she said, "there is always somebody in our apartment house
who has a new baby. Why! it's so surprising, sometimes. There's Mrs.
Price and Edna. Edna's my par-_tic_'lar friend, you know. They had no
more idea of finding Baby Eldred than nothing 'tall. Why! Edna wasn't
even at home when the baby came--and she certainly wouldn't have gone
to Brooklyn to her auntie's to stay for a week that time, if she or her
mother had had any _idea_ that they were to find Baby Eldred.
"No! It's really quite startling when you come to think of it.
I said to my mamma that I really wouldn't want to be alone in
our house if _we_ found a baby. Suppose I opened my closet door
and--and--there--he--was! Wouldn't it startle you?"
"I am sure it would be quite shocking," admitted the pale lady gravely.
For her part she told Carolyn a great many things about her baby, and
how much she and his father thought of him. His father she called
"Laird" and that, Carolyn presumed, was his surname. Bridget Dorgan
always spoke of her husband as "Dorgan." Carolyn rather thought that
some men did not possess any given names at all. Her own father was
particularly rich in that he had two.
So "Mrs. Laird" and "Baby Laird" the pale lady and her baby became in
Carolyn May's mind, and she chattered about them so much at home that
soon Mr. Cameron and Carolyn's mother spoke of the little girl's new
friend as "Mrs. Laird."
Her little daughter having shown herself to be so enamoured of her new
friend, Mrs. Cameron would most certainly have soon visited the pale
lady; but just at this time she was extremely busy preparing for the
summer. It had been decided that she and Carolyn should spend the long
vacation away from the hot city.
Mr. Cameron's increased salary now made these plans possible. Besides,
his wife and child were to go to a seaside resort, Block Island, which
he could easily visit for the week end himself.
It was planned, however, that Carolyn and her mother should spend the
first fortnight of the long vacation at the Corners, and the little
girl looked forward more eagerly to that than to the unknown delights
of the ocean-girt island they were later to visit.
Mrs. Cameron's sewing machine was very busy, and Carolyn May had to
spend what seemed to her long, long hours being fitted and refitted
with the pretty summer frocks that her mother made for her. Carolyn was
delighted with all these new fineries, but she confessed she found the
trying-on process very trying indeed.
"You see, my arms and legs get so squirmy," she said to Papa Cameron.
"I can just feel worms crawling and creeping all under my skin, and up
and down my whole body. Of course, I know they aren't really worms.
Mamma says they are nerves. But if they feel like worms they might as
well be worms, I should think."
"My goodness!" gasped Papa Cameron, entering into the spirit of his
little daughter's imaginings, as he almost always did, "you wouldn't
really want to know that you were _wormy_, would you, Snuggy? My
goodness! Just like a wormy chestnut, or a wormy apple! I couldn't love
a wormy little girl, I am afraid."
Carolyn, sitting on his lap, allowed herself to shudder deliciously at
the thought.
"Mamma says the nerves are under my skin and that they spread all over
me, like a fine net. Like a hair-net, I spect. And if they were worms
crawling under my skin I don't believe they would feel any worse."
So Carolyn's visits with her dog to the pale lady were curtailed
because of the dressmaking activities. Nevertheless, within the
following few weeks the little girl became very good friends indeed
with Mrs. Laird. She never saw Mr. Laird, but they often spoke of him,
for the pale lady evidently loved him very much and believed heartily
that he was a much more worthy man than their circumstances seemed to
suggest. What Mr. Laird did for a living Carolyn was never told; but it
was evident he did not earn much money. The pale lady was continually
taking medicine, so the doctor must get a good part of what her husband
earned; and the baby had cost a great deal, of course.
"Yes; they always do," agreed Carolyn May, commenting upon this final
fact. "It seems just as though nobody ever finds a baby that doesn't
need a doctor, and nurses, and clothes, and a baby carriage, and a
whole lot of things. It would be lots nicer," observed Carolyn May,
stating an obvious fact as though it were quite original, "if babies
were left right outside your door in a nice carriage all dressed up,
and with a boxful of clothes. Then there wouldn't be a single, sol'tary
thing to worry about."
"I believe, Carolyn May," said the pale lady, laughing faintly, "that
if you could make this old world over you would have things much more
nicely arranged than they now are. I am sure we should all be happier."
"Oh, as for being happy," said the little girl, "that is altogether in
our own hands. So my papa says. It's just like burning a tiny, tiny
candle in a very dark place, he says. Never mind how small the light
is, right close to it there is plenty to see by. We may not light up
the whole big world with our little candle; but we can light ourselves,
anyway. Papa Cameron," added the small philosopher, who came honestly
enough by her optimism, "says always to look out and up, never to look
inside us at our troubles. You know," and the giggles bubbled up and
the little girl's eyes danced. "You know, he always says he works for
the firm of 'Grin and Bearit' and so, no matter what happens, he is
prepared for it.
"It's an awful nice way to be," added the little girl. "My papa's a
real comferble man to have about the house. My mamma often says so."
The pale lady thought that cheerful little Carolyn was most "comferble"
to have around one too. In spite of the frock fittings the child came
frequently, if only for half an hour at a time.
The pale lady went out but seldom with her baby. Although he was such
a "skinny" child in Carolyn's opinion, the baby was a good deal of a
burden for the frail mother. And lacking a carriage now, it was too
great a task for her to carry the baby as far as Central Park.
The little girl wanted very much to know why Mrs. Laird would not use
the twenty-dollar bill sent her by the rich man with which to buy
another go-cart; but she was too polite to ask. Indeed, although she
realized that her new friend was poor, she said or did nothing to show
that she noticed the deficiencies in housekeeping arrangements and the
like that were so apparent in the pale lady's apartment. The latter
might have felt much embarrassed had Mrs. Cameron called; but one could
not experience that feeling for long with friendly little Carolyn May.
The weather was growing hotter and harder to bear. The sun poured into
the kitchen windows of the cramped little apartment in the afternoon
and made the place almost stifling. The big-eyed baby showed the
effects of the heat, and the pale lady grew more pale and wan every
day.
Carolyn May's visits, however, cheered her friend immensely. Sometimes
the little girl carried some plaything she had bought for the baby with
her own money. She saw that, unlike other babies she knew--Eldred Price
for instance--the pale lady's baby woefully lacked toys.
Then, on several occasions, she brought sweets which her mother made,
carrying the confection carefully in a flowered bowl and wrapped in a
damask napkin under the outside cover of paper. They had a little feast
in the pale lady's kitchen at such times, all four of them; for of
course Prince had to have his share. He certainly had a sweet tooth!
"Only, if he wouldn't gollop everything down so!" sighed his little
mistress. "One lick of his tongue and a swallow, and his share is gone.
And then he begs with his eyes and mouth all the time you are eating
your share. It's no use. You can't teach a dog much etiquette, I guess."
They played games as well as gossiped. Carolyn had one favourite
"solitaire" game which she had made up herself and which she often
played on rainy days when she might not go out and when her mother was
too busy to stop her work to play with her. It was a most fascinating
form of exercise for the imagination, for Carolyn called it, "If I Were
Rich" and it consisted of "spending money in your mind."
"You know," she told the pale lady, "I could spend a million if I had
the time. And it's lots of fun to 'supposing.' Why! I guess half the
fun in the world is 'supposing' about things."
But Carolyn was too generous to wish to enjoy entirely this imaginary
good fortune.
"You tell what you'd buy, and where you'd live, and how many servants
and all you'd have, if you owned a million, million dollars," she urged
the lady.
"That must be a great deal of money, Carolyn May," said the other
thoughtfully. She had a bit of sewing in her lap--oh! something ever so
coarse and commonplace. And she let her white hands remain idle while
she stared out through the window at a picture the little girl could
not see.
"That must be a great deal of money," she repeated.
"What would you do with part of it?" asked Carolyn. "What kind of house
would you live in?"
"Oh, I can see the house, Carolyn May," sighed the pale lady. "It would
be a big, sprawling, brown stone house with white pillars before it
holding up a veranda roof at the level of the second floor windows.
And, oh! the cool, wide veranda itself, deep and quiet, with chairs and
benches and swinging seats. It was lovely in the hot weather."
"Yes, yes," said the little girl. "That would be nice! I like hammocks
and swings."
"And a maid to wheel out the tea wagon in the afternoon, and _real_
orange-pekoe tea and cupcakes made by Margaret--"
"Who is Marg'ret?" asked Carolyn May quickly.
"Oh!" said the pale lady. "That is what I will call a dear old nurse
who, perhaps, has been in the family for years and years. And she
makes lovely cupcakes."
"Like my Aunty Rose Kennedy. _She_ makes jumbles, too," said Carolyn,
nodding. "Yes?"
"And a beautiful, old, shady lawn sloping down to the river, the far
bank of which rises in terraces of green forest and grey rock on, oh!
the most beautiful stretch of the Hudson. And in the cool of the day a
lovely, smoothly running car would come around from the garage and we
would go to drive in it, over the hills and far away--sometimes as far,
even, as Poughkeepsie.
"Sometimes we would stop for dinner at a roadside hotel, where there
was music and dancing. And often we went to the Country Club and there
we had regular parties."
"I _love_ parties!" gasped Carolyn, with shining eyes and clasping her
hands.
"Do you?" almost whispered the pale lady, still with her vision
set upon things a great way off. Her baby was asleep. So was
Prince--brokenly--on the floor at their feet. It was hot in the
kitchen, and Prince twitched his legs and occasionally snapped at a fly.
"Do you?" the pale lady repeated. "It was at a party given for me by
some friends that I first met Laird. Then--_then_--the beautiful old
home was already lost; the dear old people who had owned it and who
had brought me up to know nothing but the good things of life, had
lost their all--everything had been swept away, and they had died,
broken-hearted. Other friends had taken me in--for a time. I met
Laird. Of course I _had_ to marry. All my friends said so. There was
nothing else for me to do--absolutely penniless as I was. But," and
she smiled suddenly, and it was such a lovely, revealing smile that
Carolyn, too, broke into smiles, "they did not have to urge me to marry
Laird. I loved him from the first, you see."
"Oh, yes," said Carolyn May, earnestly. "That is just how it was with
my Uncle Joe Stagg and Miss Amanda Parlow. _They_ were loving each
other for years an' years and at last they just _had_ to get married."
"We did not have to wait years and years," said Carolyn's friend.
"People said we ought, for Laird--well! he had nothing at all when I
married him but his two bare hands. But he is going to earn plenty for
us--for Baby and me--some day."
She sighed. She looked around the poor room. All the glory of
remembrance went out of her face and her eyes misted with unbidden
tears. It was some time before she spoke again and the game of "If I
Were Rich" was ended for that afternoon.
"But," said Carolyn May, in telling her mother all about it, "my pale
lady must have been truly rich once. She don't have to supposing when
she plays my game. She lived in a great house--big as the public
library down on Fifth Avenue, I guess--only without those funny lions
in front. And she had automobiles and _every_thing.
"But of course," concluded the little girl, within whose breast stirred
already the true instinct of motherhood, "I s'pose she thinks Baby
Laird makes up for everything she's lost."