BUTTERNUT LANE
At the corner Dan Lewis stood aside like a deposed chieftain while his
companions knelt in an excited ring, engrossed in a game sanctioned by
custom and forbidden by law. Even to Nance's admiring eye he looked
dirtier and more ragged than usual, and his scowl deepened as she
approached.
"I ain't goin'," he said.
"Yes, you are, too. Why not?" said Nance, inconsequently.
"Aw, it ain't no use."
"Ain't you been to school?"
"Yep, but I ain't goin' to that lady's house. I ain't fit."
"You got to go to take me," said Nance, diplomatically. "I don't know
where Butternut Lane's at."
"You could find it, couldn't you?"
Nance didn't think she could. In fact she developed a sudden dependence
wholly out of keeping with her usual self-reliance.
This seemed to complicate matters for Dan. He stood irresolutely kicking
his bare heels against the curb and then reluctantly agreed to take her
as far as Mrs. Purdy's gate, provided nothing more was expected of him.
Their way led across the city to a suburb, and they were hot and tired
before half the distance was covered. But the expedition was fraught with
interest for Nance. After the first few squares of sullen silence, Dan
seemed to forget that she was merely a girl and treated her with the
royal equality usually reserved for boys. So confidential did they become
that she ventured to put a question to him that had been puzzling her
since the events of the morning.
"Say, Dan, when anybody kills hisself, is it murder?"
"It's kinder murder. You wouldn't ketch me doin' it as long as I could
get something to eat."
"You kin always git a piece of bread," said Nance.
"You bet you can't!" said Dan with conviction. "I ain't had nothin' to
eat myself since yisterday noon."
"Yer maw didn't come in last night?"
"I 'spec' she went on a visit somewhere," said Dan, whose lips
trembled slightly despite the stump of a cigarette that he manfully
held between them.
"Couldn't you git in a window?"
"Nope; the shutters was shut. Maybe I don't wisht it was December, an' I
was fourteen!"
"Sammy Smelts works an' he ain't no older'n me," said Nance. "You kin
git a fake certificate fer a quarter."
Dan smiled bitterly.
"Where'm I goin' to git the quarter? They won't let me sell things on the
street, or shoot craps, or work. Gee, I wisht I was rich as that Clarke
boy. Ike Lavinski says he buys a quarter's worth of candy at a time! He's
in Ike's room at school."
"He wasn't there yesterday," said Nance. "Uncle Jed seen him with another
boy, goin' out the railroad track."
"I know it. He played hookey. He wrote a excuse an' signed his maw's name
to it. Ike seen him do it. An' when the principal called up his maw this
mornin' an' ast her 'bout it, she up an' said she wrote it herself."
Nance was not sure whether she was called upon to admire the astuteness
of Mac or his mother, so she did not commit herself. But she was keenly
interested. Ever since that day in the juvenile court she had been
haunted by the memory of a trim, boyish figure arrayed in white, and by a
pair of large brown eyes which disdainfully refused to glance in her
direction.
"Say, Dan," she asked wistfully, "have you got a girl?"
"Naw," said Dan disdainfully, "what do I keer about girls?"
"I don't know. I thought maybe you had. I bet that there Clarke boy's
got two or three."
"Let him have 'em," said Dan; then, finding the subject distasteful, he
added, "what's the matter with hookin' on behind that there wagon?" And
suiting the action to the word, they both went in hot pursuit.
After a few jolting squares during which Nance courted death with her
flying skirts brushing the revolving wheels, the wagon turned into a side
street, and they were obliged to walk again.
"I wonder if this ain't the place?" she said, as they came in sight of a
low, white house half smothered in beech-trees, with a flower garden at
one side, at the end of which was a vine-covered summer-house.
"Here's where I beat it!" said Dan, but before he could make good his
intention, the stout little lady on the porch had spied them and came
hurrying down the walk, holding out both hands.
"Well, if here aren't my probationers!" she cried in a warm, comfortable
voice which seemed to suggest that probationers were what she liked best
in the world.
"Let me see, dear, your name is Mac?"
"No, ma'am, it's Dan," said that youth, trying to put out the lighted
cigarette stump which he had hastily thrust into his pocket.
"Ah! to be sure! And yours is--Mary?"
"No, ma'am, it's Nance."
"Why, of course!" cried the little lady, beaming at them, "I remember
perfectly."
She was scarcely taller than they were as she walked between them, with
an arm about the shoulder of each. She wore a gray dress and a wide white
collar pinned with a round blue pin that just matched her round blue
eyes. On each side of her face was a springy white curl that bobbed up
and down as she walked.
"Now," she said, with an expectant air, when they reached the house.
"Where shall we begin? Something to eat?"
Her question was directed to Dan, and he flushed hotly.
"No, ma'am," he said proudly.
"Yes, ma'am," said Nance, almost in the same breath.
"I vote 'Yes,' too; so the ayes have it," said Mrs. Purely gaily, leading
them through a neat hall into a neat kitchen, where they solemnly took
their seats.
"My visitors always help me with the lemonade," said the purring little
lady, giving Nance the lemons to roll, and Dan the ice to crack. Then as
she fluttered about, she began to ask them vague and seemingly futile
questions about home and school and play. Gradually their answers grew
from monosyllables into sentences, until, by the time the lemonade was
ready to serve, Nance was completely thawed out and Dan was getting soft
around the edges. Things were on the way to positive conviviality when
Mrs. Purdy suddenly turned to Nance and asked her where she went to
Sunday school.
Now Sunday school had no charms for Nance. On the one occasion when
curiosity had induced her to follow the stream of well-dressed children
into the side door of the cathedral, she had met with disillusion. It was
a place where little girls lifted white petticoats when they sat down and
straightened pink sashes when they got up, and put nickels in a basket.
Nance had had no lace petticoat or pink sash or nickel. She showed her
discomfort by misbehaving.
"Didn't you ever go back?" asked Mrs. Purdy.
"Nome. They didn't want me. I was bad, an' the teacher said Sunday school
was a place for good little girls."
"My! my!" said Mrs. Purdy, "this will never do. And how about you, Dan?
Do you go?"
"Sometimes I've went," said Dan. "I like it."
While this conversation was going on Nance could not keep her eyes from
the open door. There was more sky and grass out there than she had ever
seen at one time before. The one green spot with which she was familiar
was the neat plot of lawn on each side of the concrete walk leading into
the cathedral, and that had to be viewed through a chink in the fence
and was associated with the words, "Keep Out."
When all the lemonade was gone, and only one cookie left for politeness,
Mrs. Purdy took them into the sitting-room where a delicate-looking man
sat in a wheel-chair, carving something from a piece of wood. Nance's
quick eyes took in every detail of the bright, commonplace room; its gay,
flowered carpet and chintz curtains, its "fruit pieces" in wide, gold
frames, and its crocheted tidies presented a new ideal of elegance.
There was a music-box on the wall in which small figures moved about to a
tinkling melody; there were charm strings of bright colored buttons, and
a spinning-wheel, and a pair of bellows, all of which Mrs. Purdy
explained at length.
"Sister," said the man in the chair, feebly, "perhaps the children would
like to see my menagerie."
"Why, dearie, of course they would," said Mrs. Purdy, "Shall I wheel you
over to the cabinet?"
"I'll shove him," said Dan, making his first voluntary remark.
"There now!" said Mrs. Purdy, "see how much stronger he is than I am! And
he didn't jolt you a bit, did he, dearie?"
If the room itself was interesting, the cabinet was nothing short of
entrancing. It was full of carved animals in all manner of grotesque
positions. And the sick gentleman knew the name of each and kept saying
such funny things about them that Nance laughed hilariously, and Dan
forgot the prints of his muddy feet on the bright carpet, and even gave
up the effort to keep his hand over the ragged knee of his pants.
"He knows all about live animals, too," chirped Mrs. Purdy. "You'll have
to come some day and go over to the park with us and see his squirrels.
There's one he found with a broken leg, and he mended it as good as new."
The sun was slipping behind the trees before the children even thought of
going home.
"Next Friday at three!" said Mrs. Purdy, cheerily waving them good-by.
"And we are going to see who has the cleanest face and the best report."
"We sure had a good time," said Nance, as they hurried away through the
dusk. "But I'll git a lickin' all right when I git home."
"I liked that there animal man," said Dan slowly, "an' them cookies."
"Well, whatever made you lie to the lady 'bout bein' hungry?"
"I never lied. She ast me if I wanted her to give me somethin' to eat. I
thought she meant like a beggar. I wasn't goin' to take it that way, but
I never minded takin' it like--like--company."
Nance pondered the matter for a while silently; then she asked suddenly:
"Say, Dan, if folks are borned poor white trash, they don't have to go on
bein' it, do they?"