A HARD DAY.
KATY'S trials had only just begun.
After breakfast, Peter began to think about starting her in business,
as he called it. So he took a look at her to see if she was "rigged
right."
After quite a survey, he made up his mind that she was not, that she
looked quite too well. Her shoes and stockings, though coarse, looked
warm and comfortable; and her delaine dress, a dark brown, with red
berries on it, Katy said, was not in the least like a beggar; neither
was the little red hood nor the well-wadded scarlet cape, for mamma had
turned and washed and colored and made over, and strained every nerve
to keep her darling looking nice. No, in that dress Katy would look
more like a sweet little Red-Riding-Hood, going to take something for
her grandmother's supper, and Peter knew it.
So he called his wife into his counsels, and told her his plans for
Katy, and that he wanted her fixed up right.
Nancy was more than willing to do this, for Katy's clothes would sell
for quite a sum, and she meant that for her own private purse. Besides
she should enjoy dressing the little minx in rags, she thought. So she
took an old dress-skirt of her own that was ragged around the bottom,
and tearing off a skirt long enough for Katy, made it up in a very few
minutes, leaving the rags at the bottom as they were. Then she cut out
a rude sort of waist, and basted, rather than sowed it together, and
Katy's dress was done. Then she told Katy to take off her clothes, and
she did not dare disobey.
Then Nancy dressed her in the rags, put an old hood of her own on the
brown head, and wrapped her in a ragged shawl.
"I look just like a beggar," thought Katy.
Peter came in just then, and said:
"So you are ready, are you? Come on then."
Katy wonderingly followed Peter, who, with basket on his arm, went the
whole length of the alley till he came to a short street that turned
into a wide fine one with handsome houses each side of it. Here he
stopped and said: "Now, little gal, you must take this basket and go
into every house on this street. Tell them yer mother is sick, and
you've got three little sisters, and they haven't got nothing in the
house to eat, and ask 'em to give you some cold pieces; go to the
basement door and pull the bell, and mind you stay till somebody comes;
ring and knock till you bring somebody. Then you must hold out your
hand to every one you meet on the street and ask for pennies, and tell
them the same story about yer sick mother and yer three little sisters."
Katy was a timid little thing, but the idea of being a beggar indeed,
and of being told that she must tell so many naughty lies, put courage
in her, so she looked up in Peter's face and said:
"Oh, no, Mr. Peter, I can't do that. I never begged in my life, and my
mamma told me never to tell a lie. She said God would hear me right off
if I told a lie, and she said he didn't love liars, and he couldn't
take them to heaven, and that's where she said she was going, and I
want to go there so much. Please don't make me do it."
But the old man's face was dark with rage. He took hold of her arm and
gave her a hard shaking, and told her she should do it. "What do you
s'pose I took you for but to work?" he said.
"Oh, I will work," said Katy, with tears rolling down her cheeks.
"I will work, Mr. Peter, pick up chips, or I'll run errands and do
anything you tell me, but I can't be a beggar and tell lies."
"Now, stop that stuff. I say you 'shall,' and you just take this basket
and do as I tell you, and when you have gone all through this street
bring it home. Are you going to do as I tell you?"
Peter was holding out the basket, but Katy did not take it.
"No," said Katy, "I won't be a beggar and a liar, I 'won't.'"
"We'll see about that," said Peter. "I guess you would rather do it
than take a good sound whipping. Come, go along, and you will get some
real nice things to eat, and maybe they'll give you lots of money, then
you shall have a penny for your own. Come, go 'long, that's a good
gal," said Peter, thinking a little coaxing was what was needed.
"No! I can't. I never will," sobbed Katy.
"Come along home then," said Peter, seeing they were attracting the
attention of the passers-by.
Peter was very angry, and he shuffled off home in less time than he
came, dragging Katy with a pale sad face after him. As soon as they get
there, he whipped her most cruelly, then he gave her the basket and
told her to go and do as he bid her, but she could not stand up when
she tried, and fell over on the floor in a fainting fit.
"There, now," said Peter's wife, "better kill her and be done with it."
And Peter almost thought he had killed her, for he splashed cold water
in her face till she came to, then he lifted her up and put her on her
bed, when he left her in peace for the rest of that day. Poor little
lamb! Lying there in her loneliness and sorrow, with no one to comfort
her, unless maybe the angels came and comforted her, for very soon the
sobs ceased, and she fell into a sweet sleep which lasted till the next
morning.
When Katy awoke the next morning, nobody else was stirring, so she lay
still and thought it all over—all the hard things she went through
yesterday, it seemed a good many days in one. Then she went back to the
other days, when mamma and she lived in the pleasant attic room, before
they got so very poor.
How brightly the sun peeped in there mornings, and how nice their
little room looked when she opened her eyes and saw mamma setting the
table for breakfast, and the fire burning brightly and the tea-kettle
singing, and the coffee boiling, and the potatoes roasting; how good
they did smell. Then pretty soon mamma's voice would say—
"Where is my little dautie? Don't she want to be dressed and eat
breakfast with mamma?"
Oh, why didn't that nice time stay? Was that warm happy Katy and this
poor hungry cold Katy the same? But what should she do about the
begging? For she knew old Peter would send her as soon as he got up.
The poor little body shrank from the thought, of any more dreadful
blows, but then to put on those horrid clothes and be a beggar, such as
she had often watched from the window.
"Oh dear! Oh dear!" she sobbed. "I suppose I've got to be a beggar, but
I won't tell lies, anyhow.
"I wonder where my own clothes are, and if I have got to wear the dirty
rags all the time. She's a naughty, bad woman to take away my clothes
that my own mamma made me."
Just then Nancy told her to get up.
"I want my clothes," said Katy, but the only answer she received was a
blow, and a command to put on the clothes she gave her, as that was all
she would get.
Peter took the command now and told Katy to dress herself pretty fast
and take her basket and start,—that she would get no breakfast until
she begged it, and if she didn't find something to bring home for their
dinners, she would get such a "thrashing" as she never heard of.
So out into the cold frosty air she went, without breakfast, with her
bare feet and her thin clothes, letting in snow and wet. She did not
tell the story that Peter told her to, though, she simply asked for
pieces, and at many a place she fared well. Some seemed touched by the
modest, half-ashamed way in which she asked. Then, for all she was
dressed in rags, her little pale face, so sweet and sad, was different
from the other beggars that came about.
The basket was getting nearly full, but Katy had the hardest part to do
yet; she had not asked anybody for pennies. That was so hard to do, but
she was afraid to go back without any; so with her head down, and her
eyes on the ground, she held out her little hand to the first person
she met.
She was such a wee little girl that the people in their hurry hardly
saw her, and came near throwing her over, but many noticed the bright
eyes far back in the hood and threw their pennies to her. One old
gentleman gave her five cents, and said: "Bless me, what a baby that is
to send out this cold day!"
She thought now she might venture to go back, for she was so tired and
cold.
Peter and his wife were well satisfied with her first day's work.
"Didn't I tell you," said Peter, "that she could earn her own and ours,
too?"
That day was a sample of a great many other long days and months that
followed. Katy was started off every morning; be it cold, or wet, or
stormy, no weather was allowed to keep her in. Sometimes she felt
too weak and tired to walk any farther, and she would creep away in
some sheltered place and lie down. The cold and thin clothes made her
look very unlike the round-faced little girl she used to be. But she
would drag herself about, all through the weary day, sometimes treated
coldly, and told that she was a "nuisance," to "Get out! And not come
there any more."
Often the people said, "nothing to-day." Then Katy had to go father
into the other streets, and look till she found something to take home,
for once or twice she had brought home an empty basket, and Peter had
nearly killed her, he was so angry with her.
He and his wife both drank harder than before, and Katy was glad when
she came home tired and shivering with cold to crawl into her poor
little bed and wrap the old quilt about her, as often that was all
the warmth she could get, for the miserable couple would both be in
a drunken sleep, and the fire all out. If they were awake, they were
usually quarreling, so she was glad to get away from them as quickly as
she could.
For a while she used to say her prayer, but after a time she thought,
"What's the use? I guess God has forgot all about me; I don't suppose
he cares much for folks that live down in cellars anyhow."
So the poor little girl ran away from the only One that could help or
comfort her.
Sometimes she had trouble with the bad boys in the alley. They would
snatch her basket and steal everything she had in it. Then she must go
back and get something more, or go home and be pounded and kicked as if
she were a little animal.
But Peter, if he were sober enough, kept a sharp lookout after such
times, although he always told Katy he didn't "believe a word of it."
[Illustration]