"But it's no sin to be poor, is it, mother?" I demanded, anxiously. "We
can love people who are poor?"
She put down the light on the bureau before she answered me.
"Money never bought the real things of life," she said, slowly. "To be
good and true is the greatest of all. It is sincerity that counts. And
when we see some one very noble, and very poor, we must help them, and
love them always. Yes, love them always!"
She gave me a sudden kiss, and took the lamp away.
I lay staring into the dark. I could see that garret room, and the
violin on the shelf, almost I could see Burton Raymond walking around,
very cold and poor, perhaps; but so lovable, yes, so lovable, that
poverty seemed the very highest distinction. I made up a long story
about him all by myself. He had a great fortune left him, and grew into
a lord again, and married Auntie May long before I went to sleep.
But there was another side to the picture.
"It's the cheek that himself has to be coming after our young lady,"
Norah declared. "A lad out of a butter and eggs shop! Is it fitting for
the likes of him to lift his eyes to her?"
"Who, Norah?" I asked, breathlessly.
She was washing clothes with her sleeves rolled to the elbow. First her
hands went down into the water with a rush, and then they came up again,
and she rubbed something white on a board, amid a snowy froth of suds
that was good to look upon. Norah was an authority on washing, and she
was, also, an authority on love. Sometimes she would toss back the stray
locks from her face, and sing as she scrubbed with a naïve abandon that
would bring grandmother to the scene in a hurry:
"I'm jist siventeen,
And I've niver had a beau."
Norah sang at the top of her strong voice accenting each line with great
enjoyment.
"Is there any gint will have me?
Ah, don't say no!"
The last phrase was coaxing in the extreme, and I might have been
properly impressed if I had not known that Norah was quite old,
twenty-five almost, and that down in the very bottom of her trunk there
was the picture of a wild Irish lad whom she had loved and left in the
old country. Sometimes I used to dream that he would come to America,
too, and get rich notwithstanding his wildness, and find Norah out, and,
just suppose, he might make a great lady out of her! Life was full of
such glorious possibilities in those days!
But to go back to the story.
"Why it's Burton Raymond," Norah explained, in disconnected jerks. "And
his uncle keeps the shop. A small, dark shop with eggs in the window.
And there's mice under the counter, the freshest mice that I've iver
seen. It's like household pets that they be! And Burton waits on the
customers. And at night he fiddles to himself. But there's no money in
fiddling. Sure I knew a lad in Ireland wance that fiddled for tuppence a
night. And he died of starvation, and wint to glory, rest be to his
sowl."
She stopped to hold up a small wet garment with indignant hands.
"How did you iver git them black stains?" she demanded.
"I don't know, Norah," I answered, meekly.
After that I was divided in spirit about Burton Raymond. There was the
part of me that gloried in the crusader, and even found something
romantic in starvation, and the other part that winced at the butter and
eggs shop.
The lovers were very pretty to watch. Burton Raymond went up and down
our street a great many times every day, and Auntie May always seemed to
be out in the garden looking at the flowers. She was growing tall
herself, like one of the plants. All her soft hair was gathered upon the
top of her head, and she never ran about as she used to do. She had
forgotten how to be a little girl. She changed her dress a great many
times a day, and she bought a band of velvet ribbon to wear around her
throat, and sometimes she would catch me in a dark corner, and hug me,
rapturously.
"The saints preserve me from iver being in love!" Norah cried, shaking
her head. "What will the owld gintlemin say? And the owld lady?"
The old gentleman was my granddad Lawrence, who lived around the corner
in a big house that outshone ours as the sun does the moon. There were
more flowers there and more trees, and a fat horse in the stable that
drew a little dog-cart about the streets of our town, and best of all
there was a fountain in the garden, where two little iron boys stood
under an iron umbrella, and watched the birds that came to take their
baths in the pool at their feet. Just now, however, the house was all
closed up, granddad and grandmother were away, the fountain in the
garden was quite choked and dusty, and the birds had found another place
to bathe.
Grandmother Lawrence was my worldly grandmother, and when she was at
home we tried to live in as good style as possible that she might be
pleased with us. Always it had been a sorrow to her that my mother had
married a poor man, and she was quite resolved that no such catastrophe
should happen to Auntie May.
"I would rather see May dead," I have heard her declare dramatically,
"yes, dead at my feet, than married to a poor man!"
She never said this when my father was around; but he knew as well as
the rest of us that Auntie May was destined for great things.
She was so pretty, Auntie May was. Sometimes she let me stay in her room
when she did her hair before the glass, and I would handle its soft
lengths fondly.
"Auntie May," I asked once, peeping over her shoulder into the mirror,
"may I be your bridesmaid?"
First she flushed up and laughed, and then she leaned back in the chair,
and gazed at me, wretchedly.
"Rhoda," she said, "I am the most miserable girl in the whole world!"
That was the day that grandmother and granddad Lawrence came home, and
there was a stir all through their big house and our little one, and
Auntie May was back in her own room, surrounded by all the pretty things
that were particularly hers. She looked around it, consideringly. There
were roses on the carpet, and roses on the big arm-chairs, and roses
climbed up the walls and fell in festoons about the ceiling. There was a
white fur rug in front of the fire-place, and a silver glitter on the
bureau. Auntie May looked at it all in quite a discontented fashion.
"I like things plainer," she said, plaintively.
Her lip trembled.
"I'd like a garret--and bare floors--and music!" she cried.
"What is that about music?" grandmother Lawrence questioned, coming in
the door.
She had a string of pearls in her hand, and she fastened it around
Auntie May's throat as she spoke. It was a present brought from abroad.
"There, child," she said, not unkindly, "wear your pearls and be happy,
and don't let us have any more of this nonsense."
"Nonsense!" Auntie May exclaimed.
"Yes, nonsense," grandmother Lawrence repeated, coldly.
Auntie May's eyes flashed.
"Do you think you can pay me to give him up?" she asked, in growing
indignation. "Do you think that I care about pearls? Do you think that I
care about anything--but just him?"
She had risen to her feet, and was confronting grandmother.
"Let me be happy in my own way," she pleaded, with soft appeal. "Mother,
let me be happy!"
I thought that for just a moment grandmother weakened; but it was only
for a moment.
"Happy with a beggar!" she retorted. "Never!"
The pearls went down on the floor in a sudden shower.
"Then I'll never be happy in all my life!" Auntie May answered, in a
broken voice.
After that it seemed as if there was a heavy cloud over the whole
family. We were none of us as cheerful as we used to be, not one, and
people spoke in whispers as they do when some one is very sick. And
Auntie May cried! She cried until her pretty eyes were red, and all her
soft hair was tousled and damp from much mourning. And my mother cried
with her. It was a terrible time.
We children had talked the matter over among ourselves, and we all sided
with Auntie May. Every night little Dick prayed an extra clause to his
long prayer. It came right after the place where he prayed for puppies.
"Please, God, let me have two puppies," he asked, in a loud, decided
tone. "One brown one, and one white one with brown spots and a brown
tail. And, please, God, bless Auntie May, and send her a new beau."
One night he made another announcement.
"Please, God, you needn't bother about Auntie May's beau. When I grow up
I'll marry her myself."
"You shan't!" little Trixie cried, in sudden wrath, from the next crib.
"When I grow up I'm going to marry her _myself_."
She bounced in her bed.
Dick answered her from his knees. He looked like an angel as he knelt
there in his nightgown, with his fair curls falling about his flushed
face.
"Girls can't marry girls," he explained, scornfully.
"They can!" Trixie screamed.
"They can't!" Dick roared.
He picked up one of his little shoes by the side of the bed, and threw
it at Trixie. There was an immediate wail from the next crib. Dick was
always a good shot.
"Oh, children, children!" my mother cried, in despair. "Dick, go to
sleep this moment. Trixie, Trixie, dear, you are not really hurt."
"But her feelings are, mother," I protested.