It was on a particularly beautiful morning in June that Margaret and
Patty started for New York--so beautiful that Margaret declared it to be
a good omen.
"We'll find them--you'll see!" she cried.
Little Maggie had been left at the Mill House with the teachers, and for
the first time for years Patty found herself care-free, and at liberty
to enjoy herself to the full.
"I hain't had sech a grand time since I was a little girl an' went ter
Mont-Lawn," she exulted, as the train bore them swiftly toward their
destination. "Even when Sam an' me was married we didn't stop fur no
play-day. We jest worked. An' say, did ye see how grand Sam was doin'
now?" she broke off jubilantly. "He wa'n't drunk once last week! Thar
couldn't no one made him do it only you. Seems how I never could thank
ye fur all you've done," she added wistfully.
"But you do thank me, Patty, every day of your life," contended
Margaret, brightly. "You thank me by just helping me as you do at the
Mill House."
"Pooh! As if that was anything compared ter what you does fur me,"
scoffed Patty. "'Sides, don't I git pay--money, fur bein' matron?"
In New York Margaret went immediately to a quiet, but conveniently
located hotel, where the rooms she had engaged were waiting for them. To
Patty even this unpretentious hostelry was palatial, as were the service
and the dinner in the great dining-room that evening.
"I don't wonder folks likes ter be rich," she observed after a silent
survey of the merry, well-dressed throng about her. "I s'pose mebbe Mis'
Magoon'd say this was worse than them autymobiles she hates ter see so;
an' it don't look quite--fair; does it? I wonder now, do ye s'pose any
one of 'em ever thought of--divvyin' up?"
A dreamy, far-away look came into the blue eyes opposite.
"Perhaps! who knows?" murmured Margaret. "Still, _they_ haven't
ever--crossed the line, perhaps, so they don't--_know_."
"Huh?"
Margaret smiled.
"Nothing, Patty. I only meant that they hadn't lived in Mrs. Whalen's
kitchen and kept all their wealth in a tin cup."
"No, they hain't," said Patty, her eyes on the sparkle of a diamond on
the plump white finger of a woman near by.
Margaret and Patty lost no time the next morning in beginning their
search for the twins. There was very little, after all, that Patty knew
of her sisters since she had last seen them; but that little was
treasured and analyzed and carefully weighed. The twins were at the
Whalens' when last heard from. The Whalens, therefore, must be the first
ones to be looked up; and to the Whalens--as represented by the address
in Clarabella's last letter--the searchers proposed immediately to go.
"An' ter think that you was bein' looked fur jest like this once,"
remarked Patty, as they turned the corner of a narrow, dingy street.
"Poor dear mother! how she must have suffered," murmured Margaret, her
eyes shrinking from the squalor and misery all about them. "I think
perhaps never until now did I realize it--quite," she added softly, her
eyes moist with tears.
"Ye see the Whalens ain't whar they was when you left 'em in that nice
place you got fur 'em," began Patty, after a moment, consulting the
paper in her hand. "They couldn't keep that, 'course; but Clarabella
wrote they wa'n't more'n one or two blocks from the Alley."
"The Alley! Oh, how I should love to see the Alley!" cried Margaret.
"And we will, Patty; we'll go there surely before we return home. But
first we'll find the Whalens and the twins."
The Whalens and the twins, however, did not prove to be so easily found.
They certainly were not at the address given in Clarabella's letter. The
place was occupied by strangers--people who had never heard the name of
Whalen. It took two days of time and innumerable questions to find
anybody in the neighborhood, in fact, who had heard the name of Whalen;
but at last patience and diligence were rewarded, and early on the third
morning Margaret and Patty started out to follow up a clew given them by
a woman who had known the Whalens and who remembered them well.
Even this, however, promising as it was, did not lead to immediate
success, and it was not until the afternoon of the fifth day that
Margaret and Patty toiled up four flights of stairs and found a little
bent old woman sitting in a green satin-damask chair that neither
Margaret nor Patty could fail to recognize.
"Do I remember 'Maggie'? 'Mag of the Alley'?" quavered the old woman
excitedly in response to Margaret's questions. "Sure, an' of course I
do! She was the tirror of the hull place till she was that turned about
that she got ter be a blissed angel straight from Hiven. As if I could
iver forgit th' swate face of Mag of the Alley!"
"Oh, but you have," laughed Margaret, "for I myself am she."
"Go 'way wid ye, an' ye ain't that now!" cried the old woman, peering
over and through her glasses, and finally snatching them off altogether.
"But I am. And this is Mrs. Durgin, who used to be Patty Murphy. Don't
you remember Patty Murphy?"
Mrs. Whalen fell back in her chair.
"Saints of Hiven, an' is it the both of yez, all growed up ter be sich
foine young ladies as ye be? Who'd 'a' thought it!"
"It is, and we've come to you for help," rejoined Margaret. "Do you
remember Patty Murphy's sisters, the twins? We are trying to find them,
and we thought perhaps you could tell us where they are."
Mrs. Whalen shook her head.
"I knows 'em, but I don't know whar they be now."
"But you did know," interposed Patty. "You must 'a' known four--five
years ago, for my little Maggie was jest born when the twins come ter
New York an' found ye. They wrote how they was livin' with ye."
The old woman nodded her head.
"I know," she said, "I know. We was livin' over by the Alley. But they
didn't stay. My old man he died an' we broke up. Sure, an' I'm nothin'
but a wanderer on the face of the airth iver since, an' I'm grown old
before my time, I am."
"But, Mrs. Whalen, just think--just remember," urged Margaret. "Where did
they go? Surely you can tell that."
Again Mrs. Whalen shook her head.
"Mike died, an' Tom an' Mary, they got married, an' Jamie, sure an' he
got his leg broke an' they tuk him ter the horspital--bad cess to 'em!
An' 'twas all that upsettin' that I didn't know nothin' what did happen.
I seen 'em--then I didn't seen 'em; an' that's all thar was to it. An'
it's the truth I'm a-tellin' yez."
It was with heavy hearts that Margaret and Patty left the little attic
room half an hour later. They had no clew now upon which to work, and
the accomplishment of their purpose seemed almost impossible.
In the little attic room behind them, however, they left nothing but
rejoicing. Margaret's gifts had been liberal, and her promises for the
future even more than that. The little bent old woman could look
straight ahead now to days when there would be no bare cupboards and
empty coal scuttles to fill her soul with apprehension, and her body
with discomfort.
Back to the hotel went Margaret and Patty for a much-needed night's
rest, hoping that daylight and the morning sun would urge them to new
efforts, and give them fresh courage, in spite of the unpromising
outlook. Nor were their hopes unfulfilled. The morning sun did bring
fresh courage; and, determined to make a fresh start, they turned their
steps to the Alley.
The Alley never forgot that visit, nor the days that immediately
followed it. There were men and women who remembered Mag of the Alley
and Patty Murphy; but there were more who did not. There were none,
however, that did not know who they were before the week was out, and
that had not heard the story of Margaret's own childhood's experience in
that same Alley years before.
As for the Alley--it did not know itself. It had heard, to be sure, of
Christmas. It had even experienced it, in a way, with tickets for a
Salvation Army tree or dinner. But all this occurred in the winter when
it was cold and snowy; and it was spring now. It was not Christmas, of
course; and yet--
The entire Alley from one end to the other was flooded with good things
to eat, and with innumerable things to wear. There was not a child that
did not boast a new toy, nor a sick room that did not display fruit and
flowers. Even the cats and the dogs stopped their fighting, and lay
full-stomached and content in the sun. No wonder the Alley rubbed its
eyes and failed to recognize its own face!
The Alley received, but did not give. Nowhere was there a trace of the
twins; and after a two weeks' search, and a fruitless following of clews
that were no clews at all, even Margaret was forced sorrowfully to
acknowledge defeat.
On the evening before the day they had set to go home, Patty timidly
said:
"I hadn't oughter ask it, after all you've done; but do ye s'pose--could
we mebbe jest--jest go ter Mont-Lawn fur a minute, jest ter look at it?"
"Mont-Lawn?"
"Yes. We was so happy thar, once," went on Patty, earnestly. "You an' me
an' the twins. I hain't never forgot it, nor what they learnt me thar.
All the good thar was in me till you come was from them. I thought mebbe
if I could jest see it once 'twould make it easier 'bout the other--that
we can't find the twins ye know."
"See it? Of course we'll see it," cried Margaret. "I should love to go
there myself. You know I owe it--everything, too."
It was not for home, therefore, that Margaret and Patty left New York
the next morning, but for Mont-Lawn. The trip to Tarrytown and across
the Hudson was soon over, as was the short drive in the fresh morning
air. Almost before the two travelers realized where they were, the
beautiful buildings and grounds of Mont-Lawn appeared before their eyes.
Margaret had only to tell that they, too, had once been happy little
guests in the years gone by, to make their welcome a doubly cordial one;
and it was not long before they were wandering about the place with eyes
and ears alert for familiar sights and sounds.
In the big pavilion where their own hungry little stomachs had been
filled, were now numerous other little stomachs experiencing the same
delight; and in the long dormitories where their own tired little bodies
had rested were the same long rows of little white beds waiting for
other weary little limbs and heads. Margaret's eyes grew moist here as
she thought of that dear mother who years before had placed over just
such a little bed the pictured face of her lost little girl, and of how
that same little girl had seen it and had thus found the dear mother
arms waiting for her.
It was just as Margaret and Patty turned to leave the grounds that they
saw a young woman not twenty feet away, leading two small children.
Patty gave a sudden cry. The next moment she bounded forward and caught
the young woman by the shoulders.
"Clarabella, Clarabella--I jest know you're Clarabella Murphy!"
It was a joyous half-hour then, indeed--a half-hour of tears, laughter,
questions, and ejaculations. At the end of it Margaret and Patty hurried
away with a bit of paper on which was the address of a certain city
missionary.
All the way back to New York they talked it over--the story of the twins'
life during all those years; of how after months of hardship, they had
found the good city missionary, and of how she had helped them, and they
had helped her, until now Clarabella had gone to Mont-Lawn as one of the
caretakers for the summer, and Arabella had remained behind at the
missionary's home to help what she could in the missionary's daily work.
"And we'll go now and see Arabella!" cried Patty, as they stepped from
the train at New York. "An' ain't it jest wonderful--wonderful ter think
that we are a-goin' ter see Arabella!"