"ANYTHING UNCOMMON ABOUT ME?"
THOUGH they rushed out with even more noise than usual, every
boy of them knew that the noise was to cover a certain sense of
shame-facedness, because they had actually been beguiled into listening
quietly for a few minutes to earnest words.
Directly they had reached the privacy of the street they became quieter.
"I say, boys," said Nimble Dick, "is that an awful green one, or a new
kind?"
"New, I should say," replied one of the younger boys; "she ain't like
anything that's been in that room since we got acquainted with it. I
don't know her style myself."
"What do you take it she meant by that stuff about being friends, and
telling us where she lived, and all that?"
"Dunno what she meant; but she ain't 'green,' you may bet your head on
that. I'll tell you what I think, boys: I b'lieve she knows what she is
about, every time."
What this sage conclusion amounted to, one not acquainted with the
dialect of the street might have been at a loss to understand; but the
rest of the party received it in grave silence and nods of the head, as
though it were a thought that needed careful investigation. In common
parlance, Jerry Tompkins had expressed the opinion that Mrs. Roberts
had some point to gain in being so uncommonly polite and attentive to
them, and they were curious to know what the motive could possibly be.
They considered the important question in silence until they reached
the next corner; then Nimble Dick, tossing back his head as one who had
thrown off an abstruse problem, and would have none of it, said:—
"Well, what next? We've got through with that fun for to-day. What are
you going to do, boys? Say we go around to Poke's, and see what is
going on there?"
To this proposition there was eager agreement from all the party save
one; he maintained a somewhat moody silence.
"What say, Dirk?" the leader asked, addressing him. "Are you ready for
Poke's?"
"No; I don't think I'll go around just now."
"What then? If you've got something better on hand, why don't you let a
fellow know? We're not dying for Poke's place."
"I haven't got a thing on hand; only I don't care about going there."
"Where, then?"
"Nowhere."
"Nowhere! Mean place. Too cold weather to stop in the streets. There
'll be a good fire at Poke's. You come along; don't go to getting the
sulks; it ain't becoming, just after you've been to Sunday school."
But the young fellow persisted in gloomily refusing to join them, and
presently they began to tease, in what they meant to be a good-natured
way.
"Dirk's struck," said one. "That yellow-haired party has got him by
the throat; I saw her looking at him most uncommon sharp, when she was
telling that biggest story of hers about the serpent that swallowed.
Dirk he thinks he's been swallowed by one of 'em; he feels it choking
in his throat."
"No," said another, "that ain't it; Dirk's a-going to get pious. That's
his last dodge; I've seen the spell coming on for some time. Didn't
you see him pick up that there Bible and lay it on the seat the other
Sunday, after Jerry's elbow knocked it off by mistake? I've been scared
about Dirk ever since; and now he won't go to Poke's! It's a bad sign.
I say, Dirk, maybe there's going to be a prayer-meeting down your way,
and you wouldn't mind letting us come?"
They expected him to laugh, but his face grow blacker than before, and
at last he said, in very significant tones:—
"You better hold up there, Scrawley, if you don't want to try the depth
of that gutter."
"Leave him be," said Nimble Dick quickly; "he's going into one of his
tantrums. When he begins like that, there's no end to the fighting
that's in him; and I don't want a row now,—it's too early in the day;
besides, I know something that's better fun. You fellows come along
with me, and let him go."
All this was said in a sort of undertone as Dirk strode on ahead; and
when, at another corner, he dashed down it, leaving them all, there was
no call after him. He was free to go where he would, and for reasons
that he himself could not have explained, he chose that it should be
home—that is, the place which he called home. It might not meet your
ideas of what a spot so named should be.
The road to it led through one of the meanest portions of the city.
Each foot of the way the houses seemed to grow more squalid-looking and
the streets filthier. The particular alley down which he dived at last
was narrower and blacker than any yet passed, and the cellar door which
he pushed open let him into the meanest-looking house in the row—a
long, low, dark room.
In one corner there was the remnant of a stove, braced up by bricks
and stones; but no fire was burning therein, though the day was cold.
Furniture there was none, unless the usual rickety table and two broken
chairs could be called by that name. A door was ajar that led into an
inner cellar, and a glimpse of piles of offensive-looking rags, that
were called "bed-clothes" by the family, might have given you an idea
of what their home life was, as hardly any other phase of it can. The
rags were not all in the farther cellar, however; a gay, patch-work
quilt, or at least one that had once been gay, but from which bits of
black cotton now oozed in every direction, seemed to have curled itself
in a heap against the one window. However, it moved soon after Dirk
opened the door, and showed itself to be more than a quilt. Inside was
a young girl, the quilt wrapped around her closely, drawn up about her
face and head, as if she would hide all but her eyes within, and try to
get rid of shivering.
"You home?" she said, her tones expressing surprise, but at the same
time indifference. "What is it for?"
"Because I wanted to come. Hasn't a fellow a right to come home if he
wants to?"
"Of course; and it's such a lovely home, and you are so fond of it, no
one need wonder at your coming in the middle of the day."
The sentence was sarcastic enough, but the tones were hardly so; they
expressed too much indifference even for sarcasm.
Dirk surveyed her thoughtfully; he seemed to have no answer ready.
In fact, his face wore almost a startled air, and really the thought
which presented itself for consideration was startling. Something about
the face of the girl, done up so grotesquely in her ragged quilt,
suggested the lady who had been his teacher at the mission! Could one
find a sharper contrast than existed between these two? Yet Dirk, as he
looked, could not get away from it.
"What are you staring at?" the girl asked presently, growing uneasy
over the fixedness of his gaze. "Do you see anything uncommon about me?"
"Where's mother?" he asked, dropping his eyes and turning from her.
"In there, asleep. You needn't talk quite so loud; it won't hurt her to
get a bit of rest. She sat up till morning, poking at your old coat."
Dirk looked down at it thoughtfully. There had been an attempt to make
it decent, although the setting of the patches showed an unpractised
hand, and they were of a strikingly different colour from the coat
itself.
"You might have done it for her, then, in the daytime," he said
briefly; and added, "Where's father?"
The girl shrugged her shoulders.
"How should I know? Where he is most of the time. You know more about
it than I do, or ought to; you live on the street."
He gave her an answer which seemed to surprise her:—
"I say, Mart, what is the use in being so horrid cross all the time?"
"You are so good-natured," she said, "and everything is so nice and
pleasant around me, it is a wonder that I should ever be cross!"
"That's all lost, Mart, for I never said I was good-natured, nor
thought I was; and if I don't know just how hateful things are, I
should like to know who does! But, after all, what good does it do to
snarl? Why couldn't you and me say a good-natured word once in a while,
just for a change?"
"Try it," she said; "I wish you would! I'm so tired of things as they
now are that most any change would be fine. But I'll risk your doing
much in that line; it isn't in you."
What was there in this cross girl to remind any one in his senses
of Mrs. Evan Roberts? Yet, even as she spoke that last ungracious
sentence, she turned a little, so that a slant beam of sunshine, one
of the few that ever found their way into this dreary room, laid a
streak of light just across her hair, yellowing it until it was almost
the shade that he had noted in the lady at the mission; and he thought
of her again, and wondered curiously whether, if Mart were dressed in
the shining black dress, and fur wraps, and feather-decked bonnet that
the lady had worn, she would really resemble her. How would Mart look
dressed up, he wondered—even decently dressed, as the girls were whom
he met on the streets? He had never seen her in anything much more
becoming than the ragged quilt. He was studying her in a way that Mart
did not in the least understand. She broke the spell suddenly again:—
"Have you had any dinner?"
"Dinner? Why, no! Of course not. Where would I find that sort of thing?
I looked all up and down the streets, and smelled plenty of it, but not
a bite did I get."
"Where have you been?"
"Oh, around in several places; not much of anywhere."
"I know where you've been,—" a severe light coming into her eyes;
"you've been down to the South End, and if I was you, I'd be ashamed of
myself! I know how you fellows go on down there. Sallie Calkins goes,
and she told me all about it. She said that she was ashamed to live
in the same street with any of you, and that none of the folks in the
mission knew what to do with you, and the next thing you knew you would
all be marched off to the lock-up."
"Let them try it," muttered Dirk, his face growing darker; "we'd make
that street too hot to hold them in short order if they played at any
such game as that, and I guess they know it."
"Well, anyhow, I wouldn't be meaner and lower down than I had to be,
Dirk Colson! It is bad enough as it is—a drunkard for a father, and we
nothing more than beggars! But I'd behave myself half-way decent when I
went among folks that wanted to be good to me, or else I'd stay away."
"Look here! You keep your preaching for them that wants to hear it; I
don't. A fellow can't come home without having a row; if it isn't of
one kind, it's another. I wonder I ever come home at all."
Dirk was angry now, and his dark, thin face looked fierce with passion.
His sister kept the curiously composed tone and manner with which she
had said all her exasperating things.
"I wonder you do," she said. "I suppose you get starved, and can't help
it, now and then. There's some dinner I saved for you. If you want it,
eat it, and then take yourself to some place that suits you better."
As she spoke, she jerked open the door of a little cupboard near which
she stood, and brought therefrom a much-cracked plate, on which lay
a baked potato, with one end broken or bitten off, then carefully
replaced, as if the owner might have had a second thought as to its
disposal; a bit of corn-bread, somewhat burned, and half of a roasted
apple.
Meagre as the fare was for a hungry boy, there was more variety than he
had expected, and something in the simple preparation touched him and
quieted his anger.
"Where did this come from?" he asked, taking in the unaccustomed morsel
of apple with two eager bites. "I tell you that is good!"
"Sallie Calkins gave it to me last night. She got one give to her
somewhere."
Just as the last bite was gone, it occurred to Dirk first to wonder,
and then to be almost certain, that his sister, having shared the
apple, had saved her entire share for him. It was not the first time he
had known of such an effort on her part to supply him with food. Had he
thought of it sooner, he would certainly have left a bit of the dainty
for her; but no thought of telling her so, for an instant crossed his
mind.
Neither had she, on her part, the slightest idea of describing to him
with what care and patience she and Sallie had roasted the choice
morsel before Sallie's fire, only last night—Sallie's father being
fortunately late in coming, and so giving them a chance; then she had
borne hers home in a bit of paper, and carefully guarded it all day,
just for this hour. Also, she might have told him that she bit the end
from the potato before she remembered that there would be none left for
him, and then fitted it on again as best she could, and went without.
She would not have told him for worlds. Why? She could not have
explained why. Something within her shrank from letting him know, not
that she sacrificed for him, but that she cared enough for him to want
to do it!
Potato and corn-bread were gone, to the last crumb; it seemed to Dirk
that there had been only enough of them to show him how hungry he was.
"I suppose there isn't anything more?" he said wistfully, with the
rising inflection, indeed, but not as one who had any idea of receiving
an affirmative answer.
"I should think there wasn't!"—defiance in the tone. "There's a piece
of bread that I kept for mother's supper, and I mean she shall have it."
"Well, don't bite me! I'm perfectly willing that she shall. Isn't there
anything for a fire?"
"Only some chips that I'm saving till mother has her nap out."
"You better go to bed yourself, then; it's awful cold here."
"I ain't going to stir from this corner so long as this streak of light
lasts. It isn't so very often I see it that I can afford to lose it."
Her brother turned and looked at her. She had gathered the folds of the
ragged quilt about her again, and was crouching at the low window, and
the very last gleam that the sunshine would vouchsafe them came and
glimmered in her hair.
There it was again—that mysterious, haunting resemblance! What would
Mart think if he told her of it? Probably that he was trying to poke
fun at her. At least, he should not experiment. Yet he could not help
wondering again how Mart would look if she were dressed like other
people.
"I say, Mart," he began suddenly, breaking the stillness, "let's you
and I get out of this, where it is warmer. Come and take a walk down on
the avenue; the sun will shine yet for half an hour and it is real warm
and bright."
"In this quilt?" she asked significantly, looking down at it.
The boy's face darkened.
"Hasn't your shawl got out of pawn yet?"
"How should it?"
He flung himself angrily out of the broken chair, picked up his ragged
cap, and strode angrily and noisily across the room, out at the door,
stumbling up the steps, like one half-blind with disgust or rage, and
went on swift feet down the street out of sight. And Mart, poor Mart,
left thus to solitude, let the last beam of the sun go without watching
and buried her face in the ragged quilt and cried.