Transcriber's notes: Unusual and inconsistent spelling is as printed.
New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the
public domain.
[Illustration: Daisy on the lookout for Katy.]
KATY HUNTER'S HOMES.
BY
MRS. C. M. LIVINGSTON.
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BOSTON
D LOTHROP COMPANY
FRANKLIN AND HAWLEY STREETS
Copyright, 1876, by D. LOTHROP & CO.
CONTENTS.
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CHAPTER I.
ALONE IN THE WORLD
CHAPTER II.
A HARD DAY
CHAPTER III.
FRIENDS
CHAPTER IV.
SIN AND SORROW
CHAPTER V.
A NEW HOME
CHAPTER VI.
GLEAMS OF SUNSHINE
CHAPTER VII.
A VISITOR
CHAPTER VIII.
SUNSHINE
CHAPTER IX.
"SHALL GIVE ACCOUNT"
CHAPTER X.
CHRISTMAS PRESENTS
CHAPTER XI.
CONSCIENCE AND THE KATY-DIDS
CHAPTER XII.
FOURFOLD
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[Illustration]
KATY HUNTER'S HOMES.
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CHAPTER I.
ALONE IN THE WORLD.
IT was a very dismal old house, and it stood in a narrow alley in the
great city. The doors were broken, and the windows were broken, and
many of them stuffed with old garments to keep out the cold.
In one of the gloomiest rooms, a little girl, about seven years old,
was sitting on a straw bed on the floor. The street lamps had just been
lighted, and shone into the room and brightened it up a little. But
Katy Hunter still sat with her face buried in the old quilt, crying
bitterly and saying, "Oh, mamma, come back! Oh, don't leave me alone!"
Her dear mother had died two days before. They had just taken her away
to lay her in the grave. Nobody had noticed the poor child, so she was
left by herself.
When Katy was about four years old, she lost her father. They used to
live in a pleasant village in New England, in a pretty little cottage.
Mr. Hunter owned a small vessel that plied back and forth between the
busy ports. They were a very happy little family. But in a wild storm
the vessel was lost, and Katy's papa went down with it. Then Mrs.
Hunter had to set herself to work in earnest, to earn a living for
herself and baby. She struggled along for a time, not finding much to
do, although she understood the dress-maker's trade.
At last, she heard that dress-makers were paid very high wages in the
city. She was young and did not understand the world very well, and she
thought if she might but get there, everything else would come easy. So
as quickly as she could, she sold their little home, and bade good-bye
to her native town. She had no relatives living, so there was no one to
look to for help and advice.
We will not try to follow her all through the long, sad time, but she
could not find the establishment that paid such high wages, and she
found she must take very small pay or none. She managed at first, with
the help of the little money she brought with her, to do very well,
always hoping for better days; but the good days did not come to her.
The times grew worse, the pay smaller, and she was obliged to leave the
pleasant attic room where she lived, and go down to the worst part of
the city, where rents were cheaper. But she found a room that was not
quite so bad as some of them, where she hoped to keep her little girl
from the swarms of bad children about them.
She worked beyond her strength and was taken sick. It was terrible to
her to live in such a place, for she had been brought up in a tidy New
England home. And as she lay on her bed burning with fever, she would
groan and cry out, "Poor little Katy! Mamma will hurry and get well,
then we will go away from this bad place. We'll go back to the green
fields and sweet air."
Katy was a happy little thing, even in her dark, gloomy home, and sat
for hours on her mother's bed, playing with her rag dolly or brushing
her mother's hair, taking care of her, she said. Soon the dear Lord
Jesus sent for the poor tired mother to come out of the dark into the
light, to greener fields and sweeter air than she had ever dreamed of.
After the funeral, one of the neighbor women came in and found Katy
asleep, worn out with crying. She took her up and carried her into her
own room and put her in bed with her own children.
In the morning, when Katy awoke, she looked all about her in great
surprise. She looked as if she did not belong to the same race as
the Maloney children, with her fair face, and the short brown curls
clustering about it, and the clear brown eyes that looked so sad now.
The Maloneys awoke, too, and stared at her.
"Who be you, and where did you come from?" said Sally, a stout girl of
ten.
"I know," said her sister Ann. "It's that little Hunter young one,
that her mother has kept shut up in her room, for fear she should get
a chance to speak to the like of us. Stuck up thing! I'm glad she is
dead!"
By this time, Katy was crying and sobbing as if her heart would break.
"Stop that noise!" roared the father, who had, even so early as this,
got whisky enough to make him cross.
So Katy sat scared and trembling, and watched the ragged children, with
clothes half on, with unwashed faces, and uncombed hair, stand around
the table and snatch bits of bread and bones from each other.
They called this breakfast. The mother was off to a day's work. If she
had let drink alone, she would have been an industrious woman. As it
was, she did a day's work now and then, enough, as she said, "to keep a
roof over their heads."
After a little, there came a knock, and Peter Hanks shuffled in to make
a morning call. To have a little talk, he said.
With their old pipes in their mouths, making clouds of smoke in the
room, they sat over the miserable fire, and smoked and drank, for John
Maloney brought out a jug of whisky to entertain his visitor.
While old Peter smoked and drank and talked, he kept casting glances at
Katy, sitting on the bed.
He was saying to himself something like this:
"I tell you what it is, she's a pretty little tyke! What bright eyes
she's got. Now she wouldn't make a bad picture at the corner of the
street. Guess she'd get the dimes. I'm bound to have that little gal
for mine, to bring up. She is smart, too, I know she is. I declare she
looks jest like an angel lit down amongst this Maloney pack. But I bet
she'll do well in that business, and it's time I stopped work and took
it a little easier."
Though when he began work, or when he took it anything but easy, it
would have been hard to tell; although he did have a sign over his door
which read—
PETER HANKS, SHOEMAKER.
If people had depended on him to make shoes for them, they would have
been badly off indeed.
Taking out his pipe and knocking out the ashes, he said:
"See here, old fellow, give that 'ere young-un' to me. You have more
mouths now than you can fill; give her to me, and I'll bring her up
right."
"Yes, you're a fit one to do that job, ain't you? But take her along,
it's little I care what becomes of her."
So when Peter got up to go, he went toward Katy and said: "Come, little
gal, come along o' me."
At first, Katy drew back.
But he really looked kindly at her and said: "Come, come along with me
and get some dinner."
Katy was very hungry; she had had no breakfast, so she slipped her hand
in his, and trotted along by his side.
They passed through the alley and turned up a narrow street, stopped
before a miserable-looking house, went down two or three steps, and
opened the door of a cellar. Now, I suppose you will think of your
mother's cellar—clean and dry, with cement floors and whitewashed
walls, and clean shelves full of good things, and the fresh air passing
through, and such a good, sweet smell in it that you never feel like
hurrying out.
It was no such cellar as that. It was dark, and dirty, and damp, so
dark that a lantern had to be hung up in the daytime, to make it
light enough to see anything clearly. There was nothing in the room
but an old table, a bed, a couple of chairs and a broken stove. There
certainly was no appearance of the promised dinner; for Peter's wife,
a stout, red-faced woman, was busy at the wash-tub, splashing the suds
about in a most uncomfortable way.
Peter said:
"Here, Nancy, I've brought this little gal home to work for us." As he
said this, he gave a sly wink.
Nancy knew what he meant, for they had often talked it over how it
would be a good plan to get a child somewhere and train her up to beg
for them. But Nancy was cross to-day, so she only said "Humph!" and
went on with her work.
After awhile, she brought out a few old dishes and some broken bits of
bread and meat, and putting them on the table announced that dinner was
ready. Katy was far too hungry to be dainty, and she ate her part with
a keen appetite.
After dinner, Peter went out, and his wife soon followed. Before she
went out, she threw an old straw bed down on the floor of a little
closet, and, putting an old quilt on it, told Katy there was her bed,
and she could go to it as soon as she liked, for all she cared.
Katy was glad enough to be left alone, so that she might have a chance
to cry, and think about "dear mamma." Her poor little heart was almost
broken, and she said aloud many times:
"Oh, mamma! Mamma! Why didn't you take me with you? I can't stay here
in this dreadful place. What shall I do?"
When she was tired out, she said her little prayer and went to her
lonely bed.
The first sound Katy heard in the morning was the coarse voice of Nancy
Hanks, saying:
"Come, you young one, turn out of that as quick as you can!"
Katy, trembling with fear and cold, put on her clothes. Her mother
had trained her to habits of neatness, and when she was dressed, she
began to look about for some means of washing her face and hands, and
smoothing her hair. But finding none, she ventured to say, "Please will
you tell me where the wash-basin is?"
"Get away with you! Wash-basin indeed! You needn't go to putting on
airs of that kind, miss, I tell you. Let's see what you are good for to
do errands. Take this pail and get a pint of whisky at the grocery, at
the end of the street; and mind you don't drink any of it."
Katy opened her eyes in astonishment; she had never tasted whisky in
all her life, and thought that none but bad people ever did. But she
took the pail and did as she was told.
There was the same pack of rude, ragged children in the streets as
usual. She managed to slip along, without much notice from them when
she went. But as she was coming back, one of the largest of the rough
boys caught hold of her, and said: "Hurrah! What has little Snippie got
in her pail, I wonder? Something good, maybe."
Katy ran as swiftly as she could, but he overtook her, and, snatching
the pail away, drank half of the contents.
"Oh! 'Do' let me have it; do 'give' it to me," begged Katy, but the bad
boy passed it around among the others, till the whole was gone. Then
they threw the pail on the ground, and ran off, yelling and hooting.
Katy picked up the empty pail and started on. But what should she do?
She was afraid to go in without the whisky. She wandered up and down
a long time in the cold, until she saw Mrs. Hanks with a very red and
angry face, standing in the door looking for her.
As soon as she got up to her, she snatched the pail and shouted, "Where
is it? Say, where is it?"
Poor Katy sobbed out the story. But Nancy seized hold of her arm, and
brought her in with such violence that she fell headlong on the floor.
But the angry woman jerked her up, and shook her so that she could
scarcely breathe.
"I'll teach you," she said, as she brought down her heavy hand on
Katy's shoulders; "I'll teach you to go and steal from me. You drank it
yourself, you know you did, or sold it for something else, as likely as
not."
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