PEPSIE
Every one about that part of Good Children Street knew Pepsie. She
had been a cripple from infancy, and her mother, Madelon, or “Bonnie
Praline,” as she was called, was also quite a noted figure in the
neighborhood. They lived in a tiny, single cottage, wedged in between
the pharmacist, on the corner, and M. Fernandez, the tobacconist, on
the other side. There was a narrow green door, and one long window,
with an ornamental iron railing across it, through which the interior
of the little room was visible from the outside. It was a very neat
little place, and less ugly than one would expect it to be. A huge
four-post bed, with red tester and lace-covered pillows, almost filled
one side of the room; opposite the bed a small fireplace was hung
with pink paper, and the mantel over it was decorated with a clock,
two vases of bright paper flowers, a blue bottle, and a green plaster
parrot; a small _armoire_, a table above which hung a crucifix and
a highly colored lithograph of the Bleeding Heart, and a few chairs
completed the furniture of the quaint little interior; while the floor,
the doorsteps, and even the sidewalk were painted red with powdered
brick-dust, which harmonized very well with the faded yellow stucco of
the walls and the dingy green of the door and batten shutter.
Behind this one little front room was a tiny kitchen and yard,
where Madelon made her pralines and cakes, and where Tite Souris, a
half-grown darky, instead of a “little mouse,” washed, cooked, and
scrubbed, and “waited on Miss Peps” during Madelon’s absence; for
Madelon was a merchant. She had a stand for cakes and pralines upon
Bourbon Street, near the French Opera House, and thither she went every
morning, with her basket and pans of fresh pralines, sugared pecans,
and calas tout chaud, a very tempting array of dainties, which she was
sure to dispose of before she returned at night; while Pepsie, her only
child, and the treasure of her life, remained at home, sitting in her
high chair by the window, behind the iron railing.
And Pepsie sitting at her window was as much a part of the street as
were the queer little houses, the tiny shops, the old vegetable woman,
the cobbler on the _banquette_, the wine merchant, or the grocer. Every
one knew her: her long, sallow face with flashing dark eyes, wide
mouth with large white teeth, which were always visible in a broad
smile, and the shock of heavy black hair twisted into a quaint knot
on top of her head, which was abnormally large, and set close to the
narrow, distorted shoulders, were always visible, “from early morn
till dewy eve,” at the window; while her body below the shoulders was
quite hidden by a high table drawn forward over her lap. On this table
Pepsie shelled the pecans, placing them in three separate piles, the
perfect halves in one pile, those broken by accident in another, and
those slightly shriveled, and a little rancid, in still another. The
first were used to make the sugared pecans for which Madelon was justly
famous; the second to manufacture into pralines, so good that they
had given her the sobriquet of “Bonne Praline”; and the third pile,
which she disdained to use in her business, nothing imperfect ever
entering into her concoctions, were swept into a box, and disposed of
to merchants who had less principle and less patronage.
All day long Pepsie sat her window, wielding her little iron
nutcracker with much dexterity. While the beautiful clean halves fell
nearly always unbroken on their especial pile, she saw everything that
went on in the street, her bright eyes flashed glances of recognition
up and down, her broad smile greeted in cordial welcome those who
stopped at her window to chat, and there was nearly always some one
at Pepsie’s window. She was so happy, so bright, and so amiable that
every one loved her, and she was the idol of all the children in the
neighborhood—not, however, because she was liberal with pecans. Oh, no;
with Pepsie, business was business, and pecans cost money, and every
ten sugared pecans meant a nickel for her mother; but they loved to
stand around the window, outside the iron railing, and watch Pepsie
at her work. They liked to see her with her pile of nuts and bowl of
foaming sugar before her. It seemed like magic, the way she would
sugar them, and stick them together, and spread them out to dry on the
clean white paper. She did it so rapidly that her long white fingers
fairly flashed between the bowl of sugar, the pile of nuts, and the
paper. And there always seemed just enough of each, therefore her just
discrimination was a constant wonder.
When she finished her task, as she often did before dark, Tite Souris
took away the bowl and the tray of sugared nuts, after Pepsie had
counted them and put the number down in a little book, as much to
protect herself against Tite Souris’s depredations as to know the exact
amount of their stock in trade; then she would open the little drawer
in the table, and take out a prayer-book, a piece of needlework, and a
pack of cards.
She was very pious, and read her prayers several times a day; after
she put her prayer-book aside she usually devoted some time to her
needlework, for which she had real talent; then, when she thought
she had earned her recreation, she put away her work, spread out her
cards, and indulged in an intricate game of solitaire. This was her
passion; she was very systematic, and very conscientious; but if she
ever purloined any time from her duties, it was that she might engage
in that fascinating game. She decided everything by it; whatever she
wished to know, two games out of three would give her the answer, for
or against.
Sometimes she looked like a little witch during a wicked incantation,
as she hovered over the rows of cards, her face dark and brooding, her
long, thin fingers darting here and there, silent, absorbed, almost
breathless under the fatal spell of chance.
In this way she passed day after day, always industrious, always
contented, and always happy. She was very comfortable in her snug
little room, which was warm in winter and cool in summer, owing to the
two high buildings adjoining; and although she was a cripple, and her
lower limbs useless, she suffered little pain, unless she was moved
roughly, or jarred in some way; and no one could be more carefully
protected from discomfort than she was, for although she was over
twelve, Madelon still treated her as if she were a baby. Every morning,
before she left for the Rue Bourbon, she bathed and dressed the girl,
and lifted her tenderly, with her strong arms, into her wheeled chair,
where she drank her coffee, and ate her roll, as dainty as a little
princess, for she was always exquisitely clean. In the summer she wore
pretty little white sacks, with a bright bow of ribbon at the neck, and
in winter her shrunken figure was clothed in warm, soft woolen.
Madelon did not sit out all day in rain and shine on Bourbon Street,
and make cakes and pralines half the night, for anything else but
to provide this crippled mite with every comfort. As I said before,
the girl was her idol, and she had toiled day and night to gratify
her every wish; and, as far as she knew, there was but one desire
unsatisfied, and for the accomplishment of that she was working and
saving little by little.
Once Pepsie had said that she would like to live in the country. All
she knew of the country was what she had read in books, and what her
mother, who had once seen the country, had told her. Often she closed
her eyes to shut out the hot, narrow street, and thought of green
valleys, with rivers running through them, and hills almost touching
the sky, and broad fields shaded by great trees, and covered with
waving grass and flowers. That was her one unrealized ideal,—her
“Carcassonne,” which she feared she was never to reach, except in
imagination.