I
"It's a wonder ye're not married yet, Aileen, an' you twenty-six."
It was Margaret McCann, the "Freckles" of orphan asylum days, who spoke.
Her utterance was thick, owing to the quantity of pins she was
endeavoring to hold between tightly pressed lips. She was standing on a
chair putting up muslin curtains in her new home at The Gore, or Quarry
End Park, as it was now named, and Aileen had come to help her.
"It's like ye're too purticular," she added, her first remark not having
met with any response. She turned on the chair and looked down upon her
old chum.
She was sitting on the floor surrounded by a pile of fresh-cut muslin;
the latest McCann baby was tugging with might and main at her apron in
vain endeavor to hoist himself upon his pudgy uncertain legs. Aileen was
laughing at his efforts. Catching him suddenly in her arms, she covered
the little soft head, already sprouting a suspicion of curly red hair,
with hearty kisses; and Billy, entering into the fun, crowed and
gurgled, clutching wildly at the dark head bent above him and managing
now and then, when he did not grasp too wide of the mark, to bury his
chubby creased hands deep in its heavy waves.
"Oh, Maggie, you're like all the rest! Because you've a good husband of
your own, you think every other girl must go and do likewise."
"Now ye're foolin', Aileen, like as you used to at the asylum. But I
mind the time when Luigi was the wan b'y for you--I wonder, now, you
couldn't like him, Aileen? He's so handsome and stiddy-like, an' doin'
so well. Jim says he'll be one of the rich men of the town if he kapes
on as he's begun. They do say as how Dulcie Caukins'll be cuttin' you
out."
"I didn't love him, Maggie; that's reason enough." She spoke shortly.
Maggie turned again from her work to look down on her in amazement.
"You was always that way, Aileen!" she exclaimed impatiently, "thinkin'
nobody but a lord was good enough for you, an' droppin' Luigi as soon as
ever you got in with the Van Ostend folks; and as for 'love'--let me
give you as good a piece of advice as you'll get between the risin' of a
May sun and its settin':--if you see a good man as loves you an' is
willin' to marry you, take him, an' don't you leave him the chanct to
get cool over it. Ye'll love him fast enough if he's good to you--like
my Jim," she added proudly.
"Oh, your Jim! You're always quoting him; he isn't quite perfection even
if he is 'your Jim.'"
"An' is it parfection ye're after?" Maggie was apt in any state of
excitement to revert in her speech to the vernacular. "'Deed an' ye'll
look till the end of yer days an' risk dyin' a downright old maid, if
it's parfection ye're after marryin' in a man! An' I don't need a gell
as has niver been married to tell me my Jim ain't parfection nayther!"
Maggie resumed her work in a huff; Aileen smiled to herself.
"I didn't mean to say anything against your husband, Maggie; I was only
speaking in a general way."
"An' how could ye mane anything against me husband in a gineral or a
purticular way? Sure I know he's got a temper; an' what man of anny
sinse hasn't, I'd like to know? An' he's not settled-like to work in
anny wan place, as I'd like to have him be. But Jim's young; an' a man,
he says, can't settle to anny regular work before he's thirty. He says
all the purfessional men can't get onto their feet in a business way
till they be thirty; an' stone-cuttin', Jim says, is his purfession like
as if 't was a lawyer's or a doctor's or a priest's; an' Jim says he
loves it. An' there ain't a better worker nor Jim in the sheds, so the
boss says; an' if he will querrel between whiles--an' I'm not denyin' he
don't--it's sure the other man's fault for doin' something mane; Jim
can't stand no maneness. He's a good worker, is Jim, an' a good husband,
an' a lovin' father, an' a good provider, an' he don't drink, an' he
ain't the slithery kind--if he'd 'a' been that I wouldn't married him."
There was a note of extreme authority in what Maggie in her excitement
was giving expression to. Now that Jim McCann was back and at work in
the sheds after a seven years absence, it was noted by many, who knew
his wife of old, that, in the household, it was now Mrs. McCann who had
the right of way. She was evidently full of her subject at the present
moment and, carried away by the earnestness of her expressed
convictions, she paid no heed to Aileen's non-responsiveness.
"An' I'm that proud that I'm Mrs. James Patrick McCann, wid a good house
over me head, an' a good husband to pay rint that'll buy it on the
insthalment plan, an' two little gells an' a darlin' baby to fill it,
that I be thankin' God whiniver Jim falls to swearin'--an' that's ivery
hour in the day; but it's only a habit he can't be broke of, for Father
Honore was after talkin' wid him, an' poor Jim was that put out wid
himself, that he forgot an' swore his hardest to the priest that he'd
lave off swearin' if only he knew whin he was doin' it! But he had to
give up tryin', for he found himself swearin' at the baby he loved him
so. An' whin he told Father Honore the trouble he had wid himself an'
the b'y, that darlin' man just smiled an' says:--'McCann, there's other
ways of thankin' God for a good home, an' a lovin' wife, and a foine b'y
like yours, than tellin' yer beads an' sayin' your prayers.'--He said
that, he did; an' I say, I'm thankin' God ivery hour in the day that
I've got a good husband to swear, an' a cellar to fill wid fuel an'
potaters, an' a baby to put to me breast, an'--an'--it's the same I'm
wishin' for you, me dear."
There was a suspicious tremble in Maggie's voice as she turned again to
her work.
Aileen spoke slowly: "Indeed, I wish I had them all, Maggie; but those
things are not for me."
"Not for you!" Maggie dashed a tear from her eyes. "An' why not for you,
I'd like to know? Isn't ivery wan sayin' ye've got the voice fit for the
oppayra? An' isn't all the children an' the quarrymen just mad over yer
teachin' an' singin'? An' look at what yer know an' can do! Didn't wan
of the Sisters tell me the other day: 'Mrs. McCann,' says she, 'Aileen
Armagh is an expurrt in embroidery, an' could earn her livin' by it.'
An' wasn't Mrs. Caukins after praisin' yer cookin' an' sayin' you beat
the whole Gore on yer doughnuts? An' didn't the Sisters come askin' me
the other day if I had your receipt for the milk-rice? Jim says there's
a man for ivery woman if she did but know it.--There now, I'm glad to
see yer smilin' an' lookin' like yer old self! Just tell me if the
curtains be up straight? Jim can't abide annything that ain't on the
square. Straight, be they?"
"Yes, straight as a string," said Aileen, laughing outright at Freckles'
eloquence--the eloquence of one who was wont to be slow of speech before
matrimony loosened her tongue and home love taught her the right word in
the right place.
"Straight, is it? Then I'll mount down an' we'll sit out in the kitchen
an' hem the rest. It's Doosie Caukins has begged the loan of the two
little gells for the afternoon. The twins seem to me most like my
own--rale downright swate gells, an' it's hopin' I am they'll do well
when it' comes to their marryin'."
Aileen laughed merrily at the matrimonial persistence of her old chum's
thoughts.
"Oh, Maggie, you are an incorrigible matchmaker!"
She picked up the baby and the yards of muslin she had been measuring
for window lengths; leaving Maggie to follow, she went out into the
kitchen and deposited Billy in the basket-crib beside her chair. Maggie
joined her in a few minutes.
"It seems like old times for you an' me to be chattin' together again so
friendly-like--put a finger's length into the hem of the long ones; do
you remember when Sister Angelica an' you an' me was cuddled together to
watch thim dance the minute over at the Van Ostends'?--Och, you
darlin'!"
She rose from her chair and caught up the baby who was holding out both
arms to her and trying in his semi-articulate way to indicate his
preference of her lap to the basket.
"What fun we had!" Aileen spoke half-heartedly; the mention of that name
intensified the pain of an ever present thought.
"An' did ye read her marriage in the papers, I guess 't was a year
gone?"
Aileen nodded.
"Jim read it out to me wan night after supper, an' I got so homesick of
a suddin' for the Caukinses, an' you, an' the quarries, an' Mrs.
Googe--it was before me b'y come--that I fell to cryin' an' nearly cried
me eyes out; an' Jim promised me then and there he'd come back to
Flamsted for good and all. But he couldn't help sayin': 'What the divil
are ye cryin' about, Maggie gell? I was readin' of the weddin' to ye,
and thinkin' to hearten ye up a bit, an' here ye be cryin' fit to break
yer heart, an' takin' on as if ye'd niver had a weddin' all by yerself!'
An' that made me laugh; but, afterwards, I fell to cryin' the harder,
an' told him I couldn't help it, for I'd got such a good lovin' husband,
an' me an orphan as had nobody--
"An' then I stopped, for Jim took me in his arms--he was in the
rockin'-chair--and rocked back an' forth wid me like a mother does wid a
six-months' child, an' kept croonin' an' croonin' till I fell asleep wid
my head on his shoulder--" Mrs. McCann drew a long breath--"Och, Aileen,
it's beautiful to be married!"
For a while the two worked in silence, broken only by little Billy
McCann, who was blissfully gurgling emphatic endorsement of everything
his mother said. The bright sunshine of February filled the barren Gore
full to the brim with sparkling light. From time to time the sharp
crescendo _sz-szz-szzz_ of the trolleys, that now ran from The Corners
to Quarry End Park at the head of The Gore, teased the still cold air.
Maggie was in a reminiscent mood, being wrought upon unwittingly by the
sunny quiet and homey kitchen warmth. She looked over the head of her
baby to Aileen.
"Do you remember the B'y who danced with the Marchioness, and when they
was through stood head downwards with his slippers kicking in the air?"
"Yes, and the butler, and how he hung on to his coat-tails!"
Maggie laughed. "I wonder now could it be _the_ B'y--I mane the man she
married?"