When Kate accompanied her on her round of visits, Miss Theodora did not
penetrate far into the little lanes that zigzagged off from Phillips
Street. She kept more to the main road, and seldom took the young girl
upstairs, or down into the dingy basements. For in her mind's eye a
large place was occupied by Mrs. Stuart Digby, who at any time might end
Kate's visiting among the poor. Kate, therefore, had to content herself
with restricted vistas of fascinating alleys with wooden houses sloping
toward each other at a curious angle, with little balconies of strangely
southern appearance; and she sighed that she could not wander within
them. She looked longingly, too, at the little church whenever they
passed it; for Ben, who, rather for entertainment than edification, went
there occasionally to the evening prayer meetings, had repeated many
amusing speeches made by the colored brothers.
Still, if she could not do all that she wished to, she made the most of
what came in her way. She loved to notice the difference between the
kinds of things sold in Phillips Street shops and in those of the more
pretentious thoroughfare to the north, through which the horse-cars ran
to Cambridge. In the former case, eatables of all kinds were
conspicuous,--not only meat and vegetables, and especially sausages, but
corn for popping and molasses candy and spruce gum, all heterogeneously
displayed in the small window of one little shop. On Cambridge Street,
oyster saloons and bar-rooms and pawn-shops, before which hung a great
variety of old garments on hooks, jostled against each other, strangely
contrasting with numerous cake-shops, which offered to the passer-by a
great variety of unwholesome comestibles. From the little windows of the
dwelling rooms above the shops, frowsy and unkempt women looked down on
the street below, and Miss Theodora usually drew Kate quickly along, as
occasionally they traversed it for a short distance on their way to the
hospital.
In the same neighborhood was a short street of unsavory reputation,
partly on account of a murder committed within its limits many years
before, and partly because it held the city morgue. Hardly realizing
where she was, Miss Theodora one day was picking her way along the
slippery sidewalk, with Kate closely following, when something dark
crossed their path. They stopped to make way for it. It was a grim,
indefinite something, which two men had lifted from a wagon to carry
into a neighboring building--a something whose resemblance to a human
body was not concealed by the dark green cloth covering it. Then they
knew that they were near the morgue; and while the elder woman was
regretting that she had brought Kate with her, she heard a voice speak
her name, and, turning, saw Ben Bruce but a few steps behind.
"Isn't it late for you ladies to be in this part of the city?" he
exclaimed as he overtook them, and they realized that it was almost
dusk.
"We are not timid," smiled Miss Theodora; "but we shall be glad of your
company, Ben. We stayed longer than we meant to stay at the hospital,
and I know that I ought not to have kept Kate so late."
"I wasn't thinking so much of the time as the place," said Ben. "Some
way I do not like to have you and Miss Kate wandering about in these
dirty streets--at least alone."
"I suppose you think that we would be better off with any slip of a boy.
But truly we do not need a protector, although we shall be very glad of
your company home."
"I do not mean safety exactly," answered Ben; "but it does not seem to
me--well, appropriate for you and Miss Kate to go around into all kinds
of dirty houses," and he glanced at Kate's pretty gown and fur-trimmed
coat.
"Oh, it does not hurt my clothes at all," Kate answered, as he glanced
at her dress. "I have only my oldest clothes on to-day, and I've been in
a very clean place, too. I'm sure nothing could be cleaner than the
hospital."
"Well, you can turn it into fun, but you know what I mean," said Ben.
For like many another young man, he felt that tenderly bred women
should be kept ignorant of the unsightly parts of a city. Thus as they
went up the hill Ben and Kate kept up their merry banter, until they
reached Miss Theodora's door.
"Come in to tea with us. Ernest will be glad to see you," said the elder
woman. But Ben shook his head.
"Thank you very much, but they expect me home."
Nevertheless, he went inside for a little while, and sat before the open
fire in the little sitting-room,--Miss Theodora allowed herself this one
extravagance,--and heard Kate humorously relate the adventures of the
afternoon.
"I have brought," she said, "a bottle of old Mrs. Slawson's bitters. I
feel guilty in not having any of the many diseases they are warranted to
cure, but I shall give the bottle to our cook, who is always
complaining, and keeps a dozen bottles sitting on the kitchen
mantelpiece. You know about Mrs. Slawson, don't you, Ben?"
"Oh, she's the old person who made so much money out of a patent
medicine."
"Yes, and then married a 'light-skinned darky,' as she called him, who
ran away with it all. It is great fun to hear her tell of the large
number of people she has cured. Why, the greatest ladies in Boston, she
says, used to drive up in their carriages to patronize her."
"Why doesn't she keep up her business now?"
"Well, she is too old to continue it herself, and she does not wish any
one else to have her formulas. She has just enough money to live on, and
once in a while she has a few bottles put up to give away to her
friends. My visits to her are purely social, not charitable, and this is
my reward"--and Kate displayed a clumsy package in yellow wrappings.
Then Ernest came in--now a tall lad looking younger than Kate, though a
year older--and welcomed Ben, and begged him to spend the evening. But
Ben, resolute, though reluctant to leave the pleasant group clustered
around Miss Theodora's fire, hurried off just as the clock struck six.
[Illustration]