"All right, Dick," I said, with a gulp.
Nobody noticed us as we slipped down the path to the Green Door, not
even Norah, who was singing in the kitchen. The hinges squeaked, and the
gate came open with a rumble. It almost seemed as if my mother must
know! We pulled it to behind us in a hurry, and stepped out into the
world. We held each other tight.
It was very different on the other side of the wall from our side. There
were no flowers there, and no vines. There was a street with small,
mean houses, and great piles of clam shells, and a goat or two running
about at a distance, and some very dirty ducks going home in single
file. Away down the square there was a great red building, with smoke
pouring out of its many chimneys, and here and there walking about the
street, and standing at the doors, were the black people--not black in
any true sense of the word, but grimed with the smut of those who labor
in iron works.
It was a dreadful place. We stood outside the gate, flattened against
the fence, looking into the street, and afraid to venture any farther.
Almost, however, in the first moment we found a friend. She was quite a
small woman, with an anxious expression, and she gazed at us in a hungry
way. She had an old plaid shawl drawn loosely over her head, and a
little bundle of shoe-strings dangled from her hand. She had the
prettiest, brightest red cheeks that I had ever seen, and her hair was a
wonderful yellow color, like a doll's. But somehow there was something
about her that I did not quite like.
She had been walking along the street, but when she saw us she stopped
suddenly.
"How do you do, ma'am?" she said. "And how do you do, master?"
We clung together a little tighter, and answered her politely.
"Pretty well, I thank you," we said in a chorus, just as our mother had
taught us to do to strangers.
"Wouldn't you like to take a little walk with me?" she asked,
pleasantly. "Just a block or two? To see my house? And my little girl?"
We were not dressed to go visiting. I had on a brown gingham apron to
play in, and Dick had on one, too, over his knickerbockers. I began to
tell her about it, but she cut me short.
"As if that mattered!" she cried. "My God! And my baby! Come, dears.
Come! My little girl is sick. It would be a Christian charity to come to
see her."
She looked at us almost beseechingly.
"Oh, what can I say to get them to come!" she exclaimed, in a piteous
fashion.
Dick unclasped my hand and went up to her sturdily.
"I'm not afraid," he said. "I'll go with you. Come, sister."
Of course if Dick went I had to go, too, for he was the smaller. I
started with a reluctant step.
"That's the little lady!" the woman cried, exultingly.
Our way lay down the block, and then straight away to the right through
a network of dirty lanes where the houses were crowded together,
leaning up against one another as though for support. In some places the
rain had dripped from the roofs into sloppy pools on the ground, and the
path was rough with fallen bricks and mortar. The woman was very careful
of us. She showed us the cleanest way, and when the goats came too near
she stood in between them and us, and shooed them off. And, at last, we
came to a house, old and battered, with very rickety front steps and
windows stuffed with rags; that was her home.
There was a stout woman going up the steps with a pail of soapy water in
her hand who stopped to regard us.
"Where did you get them kids, Becky Dean?" she demanded.
"That's my business," our new friend cried, fiercely.
She seemed to bristle with rage.
"Well, I hope there's no harm in it," the other replied, curtly,
continuing on her way.
We went up and up three flights of long, shaky steps to a little room
under the eaves. It was very dark there,--so dark that at first I did
not notice a bed in a dim corner, and a child lying on it looking at us
with a pair of beautiful large eyes. She did not say a word, but just
lay and looked and looked.
The woman sat down on the bed, and gathered the child to her tenderly.
"See what I've brought you," she said, almost in a whisper, her cheek
pressed close against the cheek of the child. "See the nice little lady
and gentleman come to play with you. Come to play with my own little
Amy. Ain't you pleased with your mama, Amy? Ain't they nice?"
The child lay and looked at us, and, at last, very slowly, she smiled.
Dick and I were both very bashful, but we smiled back at her from where
we stood by the side of the bed. The mother seemed greatly relieved. She
hunted about under her faded shawl, and brought out some sticks of
candy, the kind that taste of peppermint, and have beautiful red streaks
that run zigzag around them. She generously gave each of us one, and one
to the child. We all sucked in happy unison. But the child soon tired.
The stick of candy rolled out of her hand, unregarded, and she lay back
upon her mother with a faint, wailing cry.
"Maybe she could play a game, if you know one," the mother urged,
anxiously. "Oh, for the love of heaven, think of a game!"
"I know 'Little Sallie Waters,'" Dick declared, speaking for the first
time.
So Dick and I played "Little Sallie Waters" together. It was hard work,
there being only two of us, but we went around and around in a solemn
circle, and sang the words earnestly, and when we came to the lines,
"Rise, Sallie, rise,
Wipe out your eyes,
Fly to the East,
Fly to the West,
Fly to the very one
That you love best,"
we both kissed little Amy Dean, and she smiled at us again from her
mother's arms, where she had been watching us with her great,
mysterious, melancholy eyes.
"Sure she's better," the woman cried, in a tone between laughter and
tears. "My own darlint! She's better! She's better already! They've done
her more good than the doctor. Sure, she was lonesome for the likes of
her own!"
Her face shone. She looked as if she could hug us both from gratitude.
"I've got a doll at home whose name is Amy," I announced, bashfully,
trying to make conversation.
"That you have," the woman agreed, heartily. "And without doubts you'll
be bringing it for my little girl to see."
"I'll bring her to-morrow," I promised.
"Do you hear that, Amy?" the mother commented, happily.
"And I've got a horse named Alcibiades," Dick added, in his turn. "He's
got red nostrils and a bushy tail. He prances. Like this."
He gave a spirited portrayal of Alcibiades all around the room, ending
with a great whinny of delight.
"Would you let wee Amy take a ride on the pretty horse?" the mother
inquired, persuasively.
"Yes," Dick promised, with eager gallantry. "Dozens and dozens of
rides."
"See there now!" the woman exclaimed. "Won't my Amy have a grand time
playing with the little lady and gentleman!"
The child seemed pleased. She laid one little wasted arm about her
mother's neck in a loving way, and stretched out the other to us. I
almost thought that she tried to speak. Then she settled back again, and
her eyes gazed off far beyond us, through the roof of the mean house,
higher and higher, perhaps at greater joys and glories that were to be
hers forever.
The woman caught the little form to her quickly.
"Sing something else!" she cried, wildly. "Sing--"
She hesitated a moment, rocking herself to and fro on the edge of the
bed with the child in her arms.
"Couldn't you sing a hymn?" she whispered. "Couldn't you, dears?"
Dick and I knew lots and lots of hymns. We always learned them on
Sundays to please our grandmother. We stood closer together, and sang
with full hearts, our voices rising up, clearly, shrilly, with childish
emphasis:
"There's a Home for little children,
Above the bright blue sky,
Where Jesus reigns in glory,
A Home of peace and joy;
No home on earth is like it,
Nor can with it compare,
For everyone is happy,
Nor can be happier there."
There was a sound of weeping in the room, but we sang on, earnestly,
line after line, just as we had played.
Suddenly a hand was laid on each of our heads, and we looked up to see
an old priest standing by us. He motioned for us to be silent, and went
on to the corner where the child lay on the bed with the woman on her
knees beside her, her face buried in the tiny dress.
"My daughter?" he said, inquiringly.
The pretty gay head came up with a start. The red cheeks were disfigured
with weeping.
"She's gone, father!" the woman cried.
She dragged herself around, still on her knees, and laid her head
against his hand.
"I've tried so hard to be good, father. Ever since you talked to me I've
tried and I've tried. You know I have. But it's no use. No use.
Everything goes wrong with me. And now my Amy's gone!"
She burst into tears again, her words becoming incoherent from grief,
and sobbed wildly, her head falling back against the bed.
"Where did these children come from?" the priest demanded, sternly.
She explained through her tears.
"I brought them here for Amy to play with. I thought-- You know how they
all look down on her here, father. She never had a playmate. I thought
if she were happier, if there were little friends of her own age about
her, that I might coax her back again, get her to stay with me for
awhile. I saw the two children standing at their gate. I only borrowed
them. Sure, I didn't mean them any harm."
Her voice broke off again into sobs.
It was Dick who created a diversion at this moment. He had been hunting
through his pockets, and now he brought out all his precious
things,--the knob off the machine drawer, the stopper of the cologne
bottle, the ten missionary cents that were to educate the native child
in India, even the Waterbury watch,--and laid them in a little pile on
the bed. He pulled the old priest's hand to attract his attention.
"They're for her," he explained, with a nod at the bed.
He half touched the watch, and drew his hand away again.
"To keep," he persisted, bravely. "Tell her not to cry. Oh, tell her not
to cry!"
But the woman cried only the harder.
The old priest took us home very carefully, down the rickety steps, and
through the dirty courts and lanes, straight to the Green Door. All the
ferocious-looking black men whom we met stopped to speak to him, and he
ordered them about, with an air of authority, like so many small
children. On the way he asked us many questions, and I confided the
whole story to him, of how little brother Dick had been naughty, and had
eaten the gingerbread and had been disowned, and how we had started out
into the wide world together. Somehow I was glad that we hadn't gone any
farther. Somehow home seemed a nicer place now. It was so quiet and so
safe, with pleasant rooms, and a peaceful, sunny garden, and white,
comfortable beds, where we slept through the long nights, and kind faces
to smile on us, and love to surround us always. I cried a little as I
told him about it.
"There is only one home, and one father and mother," the old priest
said, seriously. "Remember that. And be good children. The holy grace of
God be upon you, my dears."
His kind hands hovered over our heads for a moment.
He took us back into the yard, and locked the Green Door himself, and
went into the house to see my mother. He stayed a long, long while.
Afterwards my mother came out into the garden, and kissed us both, with
all her old affection. Her face was very gentle, as if she, too, had
been crying.
"Where is my little son?" she asked, breathlessly.
But she had her arms around me as well as around Dick.