THE two little girls, Daisy Mears and Elsie Threamer, were nine years
old, and they lived next door to each other; but there the coincidence
came to an end; and even if any further similarity between them had been
perceptible, it could not have been mentioned openly without causing
excitement in Elsie’s family. Elsie belonged to that small class of
exquisite children seen on canvas in the days when a painter would
exhibit without shame a picture called “Ideal Head.” She was one of
those rare little fair creatures at whom grown people, murmuring
tenderly, turn to stare; and her childhood was attended by the
exclamations not only of strangers but of people who knew her well.
“Greuze!” they said, or “A child Saint Cecilia!” or “That angelic
sweetness!” But whatever form preliminary admiration might take, the
concluding tribute was almost always the same: “And so unconscious, with
it all!” When some unobservant and rambling-minded person did wander
from the subject without mentioning Elsie’s unconsciousness, she was apt
to take a dislike to him.
People often wondered what that ineffable child with the shadowy
downcast eyes was thinking about. They would “give _anything_,” they
declared, to know what she was thinking about. But nobody wondered what
Daisy Mears was thinking about—on the contrary, people were frequently
only too sure they knew what Daisy was thinking about.
From the days of her earliest infancy, Elsie, without making any effort,
was a child continually noticed and acclaimed; whereas her next
neighbour was but an inconspicuous bit of background, which may have
been more trying for Daisy than any one realized. No doubt it also
helped great aspirations to sprout within her, and was thus the very
cause of the abrupt change in her character during their mutual tenth
summer. For it was at this time that Daisy all at once began to be more
talked about than Elsie had ever been. All over the neighbourhood and
even beyond its borders, she was spoken of probably dozens of times as
often as Elsie was—and with more feeling, more emphasis, more
gesticulation, than Elsie had ever evoked.
Daisy had accidentally made the discovery that the means of becoming
prominent are at hand for anybody, and that the process of using them is
the simplest in the world; for of course all that a person desirous of
prominence needs to do is to follow his unconventional impulses. In this
easy way prodigious events can be produced at the cost of the most
insignificant exertion, as is well understood by people who have felt a
temptation to step from the roof of a high building, or to speak out
inappropriately in church. Daisy still behaved rather properly in
church, but several times she made herself prominent in Sunday school;
and she stepped off the roof of her father’s garage, merely to become
more prominent among a small circle of coloured people who stood in the
alley begging her not to do it.
She spent the rest of that day in bed—for after all, while fame may so
easily be obtained, it has its price, and the bill is inevitably sent
in—but she was herself again the next morning, and at about ten o’clock
announced to her mother that she had decided to “go shopping.”
Mrs. Mears laughed, and, just to hear what Daisy would say, asked
quizzically: “‘Go shopping?’ What in the world do you mean, Daisy?”
“Well, I think it would be a nice thing for me to do, mamma,” Daisy
explained. “You an’ grandma an’ Aunt Clara, you always keep sayin’, ‘I
believe I’ll go shopping.’ _I_ want to, too.”
“What would you do?”
“Why, I’d go shopping the way _you_ do. I’d walk in a store an’ say:
‘Have you got any unb’eached muslin? Oh, I thought _this’d_ be only six
cents a yard! Haven’t you got anything nicer?’ Everything like that. _I_
know, mamma. I know any amount o’ things to say when I go shopping.
_Can’t_ I go shopping, mamma?”
“Yes, of course,” her mother said, smiling. “You can pretend our big
walnut tree is a department store and shop all you want.”
“Well——” Daisy began, and then realizing that the recommendation of
the walnut tree was only a suggestion, and not a command, she said,
“Well, thank you, mamma,” and ran outdoors, swinging her brown straw hat
by its elastic cord. The interview had taken place in the front hall,
and Mrs. Hears watched the lively little figure for a moment as it was
silhouetted against the ardent sunshine at the open doors; then she
turned away, smiling, and for the rest of the morning her serene thought
of Daisy was the picture of a ladylike child playing quietly near the
walnut tree in the front yard.
Daisy skipped out to the gate, but upon the public sidewalk, just
beyond, she moderated her speed and looked as important as she could,
assuming at once the rôle she had selected in the little play she was
making up as she went along. In part, too, her importance was meant to
interest Elsie Threamer, who was standing in graceful idleness by the
hedge that separated the Threamers’ yard from the sidewalk.
“Where you goin’, Daisy?” the angelic neighbour inquired.
Daisy paused and tried to increase a distortion of her face, which was
her conception of a businesslike concentration upon “shopping.” “What?”
she inquired, affecting absent-mindedness.
“Where you goin’?”
“I haf to go shopping to-day, Elsie.”
Elsie laughed. “No, you don’t.”
“I do, too. I go shopping almost all the time lately. I haf to.”
“You don’t, either,” Elsie said. “You don’t either haf to.”
“I do, _too_, haf to!” Daisy retorted. “I’m almos’ worn out, I haf to go
shopping so much.”
“Where?”
“Every single place,” Daisy informed her impressively. “I haf to go
shopping all the way down-town. I’ll take you with me if you haf to go
shopping, too. D’you want to?”
Elsie glanced uneasily over her shoulder, but no one was visible at any
of the windows of her house. Obviously, she was interested in her
neighbour’s proposal, though she was a little timorous. “Well——” she
said. “Of course I _ought_ to go shopping, because the truth is I got
more shopping to do than ’most anybody. I haf to go shopping so _much_ I
just have the backache all the time! I guess——”
“Come on,” said Daisy. “I haf to go shopping in every single store
down-town, and there’s lots o’ stores on the way we can go shopping in
before we get there.”
“All right,” her friend agreed. “I guess I rilly better.”
She came out to the sidewalk, and the two turned toward the city’s
central quarter of trade, walking quickly and talking with an
accompaniment of many little gestures. “I rilly don’t know how I do it
all,” said Elsie, assuming a care-worn air. “I got so much shopping to
do an’ everything, my fam’ly all say they wonder I don’t break down an’
haf to go to a sanitanarian or somep’m because I _do_ so much.”
“Oh, it’s worse’n that with _me_, my dear!” said Daisy. “I declare I
doe’ know how I do live through it all! Every single day, it’s like
this: I haf to go shopping all day _long_, my dear!”
“Well, I haf to, too, my dear! I _never_ get time to even sit _down_, my
dear!”
Daisy shook her head ruefully. “Well, goodness knows the last time _I_
sat down, my dear!” she said. “My fam’ly say I got to take _some_ rest,
but how can I, with all this terrable shopping to do?”
“Oh, my dear!” Elsie exclaimed. “Why, my dear, _I_ haven’t sat down
since Christmus!”
Thus they enacted a little drama, improvising the dialogue, for of
course every child is both playwright and actor, and spends most of his
time acting in scenes of his own invention—which is one reason that
going to school may be painful to him; lessons are not easily made into
plays, though even the arithmetic writers do try to help a little, with
their dramas of grocers and eggs, and farmers and bushels and quarts. A
child is a player, and an actor is a player; and both “play” in almost
the same sense—the essential difference being that the child’s art is
instinctive, so that he is not so conscious of just where reality begins
and made-up drama ends. Daisy and Elsie were now representing and
exaggerating their two mothers, with a dash of aunt thrown in; they felt
that they _were_ the grown people they played they were; and the more
they developed these “secondary personalities,” the better they believed
in them.
“An’ with all my trouble an’ everything,” Daisy said, “I jus’ never get
a minute to myself. Even my shopping, it’s all for the fam’ly.”
“So’s mine,” Elsie said promptly. “Mine’s every single bit for the
fam’ly, an’ I never, never get through.”
“Well, look at _me_!” Daisy exclaimed, her hands fluttering in movements
she believed to be illustrative of the rush she lived in. “My fam’ly
keep me on the run from the minute I get up till after I go to bed. I
declare I don’t get time to say my prayers! To-day I thought I _might_
get a little rest for once in my life. But no! I haf to go shopping!”
“So do I, my dear! I haf to look at—— Well, what do _you_ haf to look
at when we go in the stores?”
“Me? I haf to look at everything! There isn’t a thing left in our house.
I haf to look at doilies, an’ all kinds embrawdries, an’ some aperns for
the servants, an’ taffeta, an’ two vases for the liberry mantelpice, an’
some new towerls, an’ kitchen-stove-polish, an’ underwear, an’ oilcloth,
an’ lamp-shades, an’ some orstrich feathers for my blue vevvut hat. An’
then I got to get some——”
“Oh, my dear! _I_ got more’n that _I_ haf to look at,” Elsie
interrupted. And she, likewise, went into details; but as Daisy
continued with her own, and they both talked at the same time, the
effect was rather confused, though neither seemed to be at all disturbed
on that account. Probably they were pleased to think they were thus all
the more realistically adult.
It was while they were chattering in this way that Master Laurence Coy
came wandering along a side-street that crossed their route, and,
catching sight of them, considered the idea of joining them. He had a
weakness for Elsie, and an antipathy for Daisy, the latter feeling
sometimes not unmingled with the most virulent repulsion; but there was
a fair balance struck; in order to be with Elsie, he could bear being
with Daisy. Yet both were girls, and, regarded in that light alone, not
the company he cared to be thought of as deliberately choosing.
Nevertheless, he had found no boys at home that morning; he was at a
loss what to do with himself, and bored. Under these almost compulsory
circumstances, he felt justified in consenting to join the ladies; and,
overtaking them at the crossing, he stopped and spoke to them.
“Hay, there,” he said, taking care not to speak too graciously. “Where
you two goin’, talkin’ so much?”
They paid not the slightest attention to him, but continued busily on
their way.
“My _dear_ Mrs. Smith!” Daisy exclaimed, speaking with increased
loudness. “_I_ jus’ pozza_tiv_ely never have a _minute_ to my own
affairs! If I doe’ get a rest from my housekeepin’ pretty soon, I doe’
know what on earth’s goin’ to become o’ my nerves!”
“Oh, Mrs. Jones!” Elsie exclaimed. “It’s the same way with me, my dear.
_I_ haf to have the _doctor_ for _my_ nerves, every morning at seven or
eight o’clock. Why, my dear, I never——”
“_Hay!_” Laurence called. “I said: ‘Where you goin’, talkin’ so much?’
Di’n’chu hear me?”
But they were already at some distance from him and hurrying on as if
they had seen and heard nothing whatever. Staring after them, he caught
a dozen more “my dears” and exclamatory repetitions of “Mrs. Smith, you
don’t say so!” and “Why, _Mis-suz_ Jones!” He called again, but the two
little figures, heeding him less than they did the impalpable sunshine
about them, hastened on down the street, their voices gabbling, their
heads waggling importantly, their arms and hands incessantly lively in
airy gesticulation.
Laurence was thus granted that boon so often defined by connoisseurs of
twenty as priceless—a new experience. But he had no gratitude for it;
what he felt was indignation. He lifted up his voice and bawled:
“HAY! Di’n’chu hear what I SAID? Haven’t you got ’ny EARS?”
Well he knew they had ears, and that these ears heard him; but on the
spur of the moment he was unable to think of anything more scathing than
this inquiry. The shoppers went on, impervious, ignoring him with all
their previous airiness—with a slight accentuation of it, indeed—even
when he bellowed at them a second time and a third. Stung, he was
finally inspired to add: “_Hay!_ Are you gone _crazy_?” But they were
halfway to the next crossing.
A bitterness came upon Laurence. “What _I_ care?” he muttered. “I’ll
_show_ you what I care!” However, his action seemed to deny his words,
for instead of setting about some other business to prove his
indifference, he slowly followed the shoppers. He was driven by a
necessity he felt to make them comprehend his displeasure with their
injurious flouting of himself and of etiquette in general. “Got ’ny
politeness?” he muttered, and replied morosely: “No, they haven’t—they
haven’t got sense enough to know what politeness means! Well, _I’ll_
show ’em! They’ll _see_ before _I_ get through with ’em! _Oh_, oh! Jus’
wait a little: they’ll be beggin’ me quick enough to speak to ’em. ‘Oh,
Laur-runce, _please_!’ they’ll say. ‘_Please_ speak to us, Laur-runce.
Won’ chu _please_ speak to us, Laurunce? We’d jus’ give _anything_ to
have you speak to us, Laurunce! Won’ chu, Laurunce, pull-_lease_?’ Then
I’ll say: ‘_Yes_, I’ll speak to you, an’ you better listen if you want
to learn some sense!’ Then I’ll call ’em everything I can think of!”
It might have been supposed that he had some definite plan for bringing
them thus to their knees in supplication, but he was only solacing
himself by sketching a triumphant climax founded upon nothing. Meanwhile
he continued morbidly to follow, keeping about fifty yards behind them.
“Poot!” he sneered. “Think they’re wunnaful, don’t they? You wait!
They’ll see!”
He came to a halt, staring. “_Now_ what they doin’?”
Elsie and Daisy had gone into a small drug-store, where Daisy
straightway approached the person in charge, an elderly man of weary
appearance. “Do you keep taffeta?” she asked importantly. Since she and
her friend were “playing” that they were shopping, of course they found
it easily consistent to “play” that the druggist was a clerk in a
department store; and no doubt, too, the puzzlement of the elderly man
gave them a profound if secret enjoyment.
He moved toward his rather shabby soda-fountain, replying: “I got
chocolate and strawb’ry and v’nilla. I don’t keep no fancy syrups.”
“Oh, my, no!” Daisy exclaimed pettishly. “I mean taffeta you wear.”
“What?”
“I mean taffeta you wear.”
“‘Wear’?” he said.
“I want to look at some _taffeta_,” Daisy said impatiently. “_Taffeta._”
“Taffy?” the man said. “I don’t keep no line of candies.”
Daisy frowned, and shook her head. “I guess he’s kind of deaf or
somep’m,” she said to Elsie; and then she shouted again at the elderly
man: “Taffe_tah_! It’s somep’m you _wear_. You wear it _on_ you!”
“What for?” he said. “I ain’t deaf. You mean some brand of porous
plaster? Mustard plaster?”
“Oh, my, _no_!” Daisy exclaimed, and turned to Elsie. “This is just the
way it is. Whenever I go shopping, they’re _always_ out of everything I
want!”
“Oh, it’s exackly the same with me, my dear,” Elsie returned. “It’s too
provoking! Rilly, the shops in this town——”
“Listen here,” the proprietor interrupted, and he regarded these
fastidious customers somewhat unfavourably. “You’re wastin’ my time on
me. Say what it is you want or go somewheres else.”
“Well, have you got some _very_ nice blue-silk lamp-shades?” Daisy
inquired, and she added: “With gold fringe an’ tassels?”
“Lamp-shades!” he said, and he had the air of a person who begins to
feel seriously annoyed. “Listen! Go on out o’ here!”
But Daisy ignored his rudeness. “Have you got any _very_ good unb’eached
muslin?” she asked.
“You go on out o’ here!” the man shouted. “You go on out o’ here or I’ll
untie my dog.”
“Well, I declare!” Elsie exclaimed as she moved toward the door. “I
never was treated like this in all my days!”
“What kind of a dog is it?” Daisy asked, for she was interested.
“It’s a _biting_ dog,” the drug-store man informed her; and she thought
best to retire with Elsie. The two came out to the sidewalk and went on
their way, giggling surreptitiously, and busier than ever with their
chatter. After a moment the injured party in the background again
followed them.
“They’ll find _out_ what’s goin’ to happen to ’em,” he muttered,
continuing his gloomy rhapsody. “‘_Please_ speak to us, Laurunce,’
they’ll say. ‘Oh, Laurunce, pull-_lease_!’ An’ then I’ll jus’ keep on
laughin’ at ’em an’ callin’ ’em everything the worst I ever heard, while
they keep hollerin’: ‘Oh, Laur-runce, pull-_lease_!’”
A passer-by, a kind-faced woman of middle age, caught the murmur from
his slightly moving lips, and halted inquiringly.
“What is it, little boy?” she asked.
“What?” he said.
“Were you speaking to me, little boy? Didn’t you say ‘Please’?”
“No, I didn’t,” he replied, colouring high; for he did not like to be
called “little boy” by anybody, and he was particularly averse to this
form of address on the lips of a total stranger. Moreover, no indignant
person who is talking to himself cares to be asked what he is saying. “I
never said a thing to you,” he added crossly. “What’s the matter of you,
anyhow?”
“Good gracious!” she exclaimed. “What a bad, rude little boy! Shame on
you!”
“I ain’t a little boy, an’ shame on your own self!” he retorted; but she
had already gone upon her way, and he was again following the busy
shoppers. As he went on his mouth was slightly in motion, though it was
careful not to open, and his slender neck was imperceptibly distended by
small explosions of sound, for he continued his dialogues, but omitted
any enunciation that might attract the impertinence of strangers. “It’s
none o’ your ole biznuss!” he said, addressing the middle-aged woman in
this internal manner. “_I’ll_ show you who you’re talkin’ to! I guess
when you get through with _me_ you’ll know somep’m! Shame on your own
self!” Then his eyes grew large as they followed the peculiar behaviour
of the two demoiselles before him. “My goodness!” he said.
Daisy was just preceding Elsie into a barber-shop.
“Do you keep taffeta or—or lamp-shades?” Daisy asked of the barber
nearest the door.
This was a fat coloured man, a mulatto. He had a towel over the jowl and
eyes of his helpless customer, and standing behind the chair, employed
his thumbs and fingers in a slow and rhythmic manipulation of the man’s
forehead. Meanwhile he continued an unctuous monologue, paying no
attention whatever to Daisy’s inquiry. “I dess turn roun’ an’ walk away
little bit,” said the barber. “’N’en I turn an’ look ’er over up an’
down from head to foot. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘You use you’ mouth full freely,’
I say, ‘but dess kinely gim me leave fer to tell you, you ain’t got
nothin’ to rouse up no int’est o’ _mine_ in you. I make mo’ money,’ I
say, ‘I make mo’ money in a day than whut Henry ever see in a full year,
an’ if you tryin’ to climb out o’ Henry’s class an’ into mine——’”
“Listen!” Daisy said, raising her voice. “Do you keep taffeta or——”
“Whut you say?” the barber asked, looking coldly upon her and her
companion.
“We’re out shopping,” Daisy explained. “We want to look at some——”
“Listen me,” the barber interrupted. “Run out o’ here. Run out.”
Daisy moved nearer him. “What you doin’ to that man’s face?” she asked.
“Nem mine! Nem mine!” he said haughtily.
“What were you tellin’ him?” Daisy inquired. “I mean all about Henry’s
class an’ usin’ her mouth so full freely. Who was?”
“Run _out_!” the barber shouted. “Run _out_!”
“Well, I declare!” Daisy exclaimed, as she and Elsie followed his
suggestion and emerged from the shop. “It’s just this same way whenever
I go shopping! I never _can_ find the things I want; they act almos’
like they don’t care whether they keep ’em or not.”
“It’s dreadful!” Elsie agreed, and, greatly enjoying the air of
annoyance they were affecting, they proceeded on their way. No one would
have believed them aware that they were being followed; and neither had
spoken a word referring to Master Coy; but they must have understood
each other perfectly in the matter, for presently Daisy’s head turned
ever so slightly, and she sent a backward glance out of the very tail of
her eye. “_He’s still comin’!_” she said in a whisper that was ecstatic
with mirth. And Elsie, in the same suppressed but joyous fashion, said:
“Course he is, the ole thing!” This was the only break in their manner
of being the busiest shoppers in the world; and immediately after it
they became more flauntingly shoppers than ever.
As for Laurence, his curiosity was now almost equal to his bitterness.
The visit to the drug-store he could understand, but that to the
barber-shop astounded him; and when he came to the shop he paused to
flatten his nose upon the window. The fat mulatto barber nearest the
window was still massaging the face of the recumbent customer and
continuing his narrative; the other barbers were placidly grooming the
occupants of their chairs, while two or three waiting patrons, lounging
on a bench, read periodicals of a worn and flaccid appearance. Nothing
gave any clue to the errand of Laurence’s fair friends; on the contrary,
everything that was revealed to his staring eyes made their visit seem
all the more singular.
He went in, and addressed himself to the fat barber. “Listen,” he said.
“Listen. I want to ast you somep’m.”
“Dess ’bout when she was fixin’ to holler,” the barber continued, to his
patron, “I take an’ slap my money ri’ back in my pocket. ‘You talk ’bout
tryin’ show me some _class_,’ I say. ‘Dess lem me——’”
“Listen!” Laurence said, speaking louder. “I want to ast you somep’m.”
“‘Dess lem me tell you, if you fixin’ show me some class,’” the barber
went on; “‘if you fixin’ show me some class,’ I say. ‘Dess lem me tell
you if——’”
“_Listen!_” Laurence insisted. “I want to ast you somep’m.”
For a moment the barber ceased to manipulate his customer and gave
Laurence a look of disapproval. “Listen _me_, boy!” he said. “Nex’ time
you flatten you’ face on nat window you don’ haf to breave on nat glass,
do you? Ain’ you’ folks taught you no better’n go roun’ dirtyin’ up nice
clean window?”
“What I want to know,” Laurence said: “—What were they doin’ in here?”
“What were who doin’ in here?”
“Those two little girls that were in here just now. What did they come
here for?”
“My goo’nuss!” the barber exclaimed. “Man’d think barber got nothin’ do
but stan’ here all day ’nanswer questions! Run out, boy!”
“But, listen!” Laurence urged him. “What were they——”
“Run out, boy!” the barber said, and his appearance became formidable.
“Run _out_, boy!”
Laurence departed silently, though in his mind he added another outrage
to the revenge he owed the world for the insults and mistreatments he
was receiving that morning. “I’ll show you!” he mumbled in his throat as
he came out of the shop. “You’ll wish you had some _sense_, when I get
through with you, you ole barber, you!”
Then, as he looked before him, his curiosity again surpassed his sense
of injury. The busy shoppers were just coming out of a harness-shop,
which was making a bitter struggle to survive the automobile; and as
they emerged from the place, they had for a moment the hasty air of
ejected persons. But this was a detail that escaped Laurence’s
observation, for the gestures and chatter were instantly resumed, and
the two hurried on as before.
“My gracious!” said Laurence, and when he came to the harness-shop he
halted and looked in through the open door; but the expression of the
bearded man behind a counter was so discouraging that he thought it best
to make no inquiries.
The bearded man was as irritable as he looked. “Listen!” he called.
“Don’t block up that door, d’you hear me? Go on, get away from there and
let some air in. Gosh!”
Laurence obeyed morosely. “Well, doggone it!” he said.
He had no idea that the pair preceding him might have been received as
cavalierly, for their air of being people engaged in matters of
importance had all the effect upon him they desired, and deceived him
perfectly. Moreover, the mystery of what they had done in the
barber-shop and in the harness-shop was actually dismaying; they were
his colleagues in age and his inferiors in sex; and yet all upon a
sudden, this morning, they appeared to deal upon the adult plane and to
have business with strange grown people. Laurence was unwilling to give
them the slightest ground for a conceited supposition that he took any
interest in them, or their doings, but he made up his mind that if they
went into another shop, he would place himself in a position to observe
what they did, even at the risk of their seeing him.
Four or five blocks away, the business part of the city began to be
serious; buildings of ten or twelve stories, several of much more than
that, were piled against the sky; but here, where walked the shoppers
and their disturbed shadower, the street had fallen upon slovenly days.
Farther out, in the quarter whence they had come, it led a life of
domestic prosperity, but gradually, as it descended southward, its
character altered dismally until just before it began to be respectable
again, as a business street, it was not only shabby but had a covert air
of underhand enterprise. And the shop windows had not been arranged with
the idea of offering a view of the interiors.
Of course Elsie and Daisy did not concern themselves with the changed
character of the street; one shop was as good as another for the
purposes involved in the kind of shopping that engaged them this
morning; and they were having too glorious a time to give much
consideration to anything. Elsie had fallen under the spell of a daring
leadership; she was as excited as Daisy, as intent as she upon
preserving the illusion they maintained between them; and both of them
were delightedly aware that they must be goading their frowning follower
with a splendid series of mysteries.
“I declare!” Daisy said, affecting peevishness. “I forgot to look at
orstrich feathers an’ unb’eached muslin at both those two last places we
went. Let’s try in here.”
By “in here” she referred to a begrimed and ignoble façade once painted
dark green, but now the colour of street dust mixed with soot. Admission
was to be obtained by double doors, with the word “_Café_” upon both of
the panels. “_Café_” was also repeated upon a window, where a
sign-painter of great inexperience had added the details: “_Soft Drinks
Candys Cigars & C._” And upon three shelves in the window were
displayed, as convincing proof of the mercantile innocence of the place,
three or four corncob pipes, some fly-specked packets of tobacco,
several packages of old popcorn and a small bottle of catsup.
Daisy tugged at the greasy brass knob projecting from one of the once
green doors, and after some reluctance it yielded. “Come on,” she said.
The two then walked importantly into the place, and the door closed
behind them.
Laurence immediately hurried forward; but what he beheld was
discouraging. The glass of the double door was frankly opaque; and that
of the window was so dirty and besooted, and so obstructed by the
shelves of sparse merchandise, that he could see nothing whatever beyond
the shelves.
“Well, dog-_gone_ it!” he said.
* * * * *
Daisy and Elsie found themselves the only visible occupants of an
interior unexampled in their previous experience. Along one side of the
room, from wall to wall, there ran what they took to be a counter for
the display of goods, though it had nothing upon it except a blackened
little jar of matches and a short thick glass goblet, dimmed at the
bottom with an ancient sediment. A brass rail extended along the base of
the counter, and on the wall, behind, was a long mirror, once lustrous,
no doubt, but now coated with a white substance that had begun to suffer
from soot. Upon the wall opposite the mirror there were two old
lithographs, one of a steamboat, the other of a horse and jockey; and
there were some posters advertising cigarettes, but these decorations
completed the invoice of all that was visible to the shoppers.
“Oh, dear!” Daisy said. “Wouldn’t it be too provoking if they’d gone to
lunch or somep’m!” And she tapped as loudly as she could upon the
counter, calling: “Here! Somebody come an’ wait on us! I want to look at
some of your nicest unb’eached muslin an’ some orstrich feathers.”
There was a door at the other end of the room and it stood open,
revealing a narrow and greasy passage, with decrepit walls that showed
the laths, here and there, where areas of plaster had fallen. “I guess I
better go call in that little hallway,” said Daisy. “They don’t seem to
care _how_ long they keep their customers waitin’!”
But as she approached the door, the sound of several muffled explosions
came from the rear of the building and reached the shoppers through the
funnel of the sinister passage.
“That’s funny,” said Daisy. “I guess somebody’s shootin’ off
firecrackers back there.”
“What for?” Elsie asked.
“I guess they think it must be the Fourth o’ July,” Daisy answered; and
she called down the passageway: “Here! Come wait on us. We want to look
at some unb’eached muslin an’ _orstrich_ feathers. Can’t you hurry
_up_?”
No one replied, but voices became audible, approaching;—voices in
simultaneous outbursts, and manifesting such poignant emotion that
although there were only two of them, a man’s and a woman’s, Daisy and
Elsie at first supposed that seven or eight people were engaged in the
controversy. For a moment they also supposed the language to be foreign,
but discovered that some of the expressions used were familiar, though
they had been accustomed to hear them under more decorous circumstances.
“They’re makin’ an awful fuss,” Elsie said. “What _are_ they talkin’
about?”
“The way it sounds,” said Daisy, “it sounds like they’re talkin’ about
things in the Bible.”
Then another explosion was heard, closer; it seemed to come from a
region just beyond the passageway; and it was immediately followed by a
clatter of lumber and an increase of eloquence in the vocal argument.
“You _quit_ that!” the man’s voice bellowed plaintively. “You don’t know
what you’re doin’; you blame near croaked me that time! You _quit_ that,
Mabel!”
“I’m a-goin’ to learn you!” the woman’s voice announced. “You come out
from under them boards, and I’ll learn you whether I know what I’m doin’
or not! Come out!”
“_Please_ go on away and lea’ me alone,” the man implored. “_I_ never
done nothin’ to you. I never seen a _cent_ o’ that money! _Honest_,
George never give me a cent of it. Why’n’t you go an ast _him_? He’s
right in yonder. Oh, my goodness, whyn’t you ast _him_?”
“Come out from under them boards!”
The man’s voice became the more passionate in its protesting. “Oh, my
goodness! Mabel, can’t you jest ast George? He ain’t left the place;
_you_ know _that_! He can’t show his face in daytime, and he’s right
there in the bar, and so’s Limpy. Limpy’ll tell you jest the same as
what George will, if you’ll only go and ast ’em. _Why_ can’t you go and
_ast_ ’em?”
“Yes!” the woman cried. “And while I’m in there astin’ ’em, where’ll
_you_ be? Over the alley fence and a mile away! You come out from under
them boards and git croaked like you’re a-goin’ to!”
“Oh, my _good_ness!” the man wailed. “I _wish_ I had somep’m on me to
lam you with! Jest once! That’s all I’d ast—jest one little short crack
at you!”
“You come out from under them boards!”
“I won’t! I’ll lay here till——”
“We’ll _see_!” the woman cried. “I’m a-goin’ to dig you out. I’m a-goin’
to take them boards off o’ you and then I’m a-goin’ to croak you. I am!”
Elsie moved toward the outer door. “They talk so—so funny!” she said
with a little anxiety. “I doe’ b’lieve it’s about the Bible.”
“I guess she’s mad at somebody about somep’m,” Daisy said, much amused;
and stepping nearer the passageway, she called: “_Here!_ We want to look
at some unb’eached muslin an’ _orstrich_ feathers!”
But the room beyond the passage was now in turmoil: planks were
clattering again, and both voices were uproarious. The man’s became a
squawk as another explosion took place; he added an incomplete
Scriptural glossary in falsetto; and Elsie began to be nervous.
“That’s awful big firecrackers they’re usin’,” she said. “I guess we
ought to go home, Daisy.”
“Oh, they’re just kind of quarrellin’ or somep’m,” Daisy explained, not
at all disturbed. “If you listen up our alley, you can hear coloured
people talkin’ like that lots o’ times. They do this way, an’ they
settle down again, or else they’re only in fun. But I do wish these
people’d come, because I just _haf_ to finish my shopping!” And, as yet
another explosion was heard, she exclaimed complacently: “My! That’s a
big one!”
Then, beyond the passage, there seemed to be a final upheaval of lumber;
the discussion reached a climax of vociferation, and a powerful,
bald-headed man, without a coat, plunged through the passage and into
the room. His unscholarly brow and rotund jowls were beaded; his
agonized eyes saw nothing; he ran to the bar, and vaulted over it,
vanishing behind it half a second before the person looking for him
appeared in the doorway.
She was a small, rather shabby woman, who held one hand concealed in the
folds of her skirt, while with the other she hastily cleared her eyes of
some loosened strands of her reddish hair.
“I got you, Chollie!” she said. “You’re behind the bar, and I’m a-goin’
to make a good job of it, and get George and Limpy, too. I’m goin’ to
get all three of you!”
With that she darted across the room and ran behind the bar; whereupon
Daisy and Elsie were treated to a scene like a conjuror’s trick. Until
the bald-headed man’s arrival, they had supposed themselves to be quite
alone in the room, but as the little woman ran behind the counter, not
only this fugitive popped up from it, but two other panic-stricken men
besides—one with uneven whiskers all over his mottled face, the other a
well-dressed person, elderly, but just now supremely agile. The three
shot up simultaneously like three Jacks-in-the-box, and, scrambling over
the counter, dropped flat on the floor in front of it, leaving the
little woman behind.
“Crawl up to the end o’ the bar, George,” the bald-headed man said
hoarsely. “When she comes out from behind it, jump and grab her wrist.”
“Think I’m deef?” the little woman inquired raucously. “George’s got a
fat chance to grab _my_ wrist!”
Then her eyes, somewhat inflamed, fell upon Daisy and Elsie. “Well,
what—what—what——” she said.
Daisy stepped toward the counter, for she felt that she had indeed
delayed her business long enough.
“We’d like to look at some nice unb’eached muslin,” she said, “an’ some
of your _very_ best orstrich feathers.”
The subsequent commotions, as well as the preceding ones, were
indistinctly audible to the mystified person who waited upon the
sidewalk outside the place. Finding that his eyes revealed nothing of
the interior, he had placed his ear against the window, and the muffled
reports, mistaken for firecrackers by Daisy and Elsie, were similarly
interpreted by Laurence; but he supposed Daisy and Elsie to have a
direct connection with the sounds. A thought of the Fourth of July
entered his mind, as it had Daisy’s, but it solved nothing for him: the
Fourth was long past; this was not the sort of store that promised
firecrackers; and even if Daisy and Elsie had taken firecrackers with
them, how had it happened that they were allowed to explode them
indoors? As for an “ottomatick” or a “revolaver,” he knew that neither
maiden would touch such a thing, for he had heard them express their
aversion to the antics of Robert Eliot, on an occasion when Master Eliot
had surreptitiously borrowed his father’s “good ole six-shooter” to
disport himself with in the Threamers’ garage.
Nothing could have been more evident than that Daisy and Elsie had
definite affairs to transact in this café; the air with which they
entered it was a conclusive demonstration of that. But the firecrackers
made guessing at the nature of those affairs even more hopeless than
when the pair had visited the barber-shop and the harness-shop. Then, as
a closer report sounded, Laurence jumped. “_Giant_ firecracker!” he
exclaimed huskily, and his eyes still widened; for now vague noises of
tumult and altercation could be heard.
“Well, my go-o-od-_nuss_!” he said.
Two pedestrians halted near him.
“Say, listen,” one of them said. “What’s goin’ on in there?”
“Golly!” the other exclaimed, adding: “I happen to know it’s a blind
tiger.”
Laurence’s jaw dropped, and he stared at the man incredulously.
“Wha-wha’d you say?”
“Listen,” the man returned. “How long’s all this been goin’ on in
there?”
“Just since _they_ went in there. It was just a little while ago. Wha’d
you say about——”
But he was interrupted. Several other passers-by had paused, and they
began to make interested inquiries of the first two.
“What’s the trouble in there? What’s going on here? What’s all the
shooting? What’s——”
“There’s _something_ pretty queer goin’ on,” said the man who had spoken
to Laurence; and he added: “It’s a blind tiger.”
“Yes, _I_ know that,” another said. “I was in there once, and I know
from my own eyes it’s a blind tiger.”
Laurence began to be disconcerted.
“‘A blind tiger’?” he gasped. “A blind tiger?” What caused his emotion
was not anxiety for the safety of his friends; the confident importance
with which they had entered the place convinced him that if there
actually was a blind tiger within, they were perfectly aware of the
circumstance and knew what they were doing when they entered the
animal’s presence. His feeling about them was indefinite and hazy; yet
it was certainly a feeling incredulous but awed, such as any one might
have about people well known to him, who suddenly appear to be possessed
of supernatural powers. “Honest, d’you b’lieve there’s a blind tiger in
there?” he asked of the man who had confirmed the strange information.
“Sure!”
“Honest, is one in there? Do you _honest_——”
But no one paid him any further attention. By this time a dozen or more
people had gathered; others were arriving; and as the tumult behind the
formerly green door increased, hurried discussion became general on the
sidewalk. Several men said that somebody ought to go in and see what the
matter was; others said that they themselves would be willing to go in,
but they didn’t like to do it without a warrant; and two or three
declared that nobody ought to go in just at that time. One of these was
emphatic, especially upon the duty men owe to themselves. “A man owes
_something_ to himself,” he said. “A man owes it to himself not to git
no forty-four in his gizzard by takin’ and pushin’ into a place where
somebody’s _usin’_ a forty-four. A man owes it to himself to keep out o’
trouble unless he’s got some call to take and go bullin’ into it;
_that’s_ what he owes to himself!”
Another seemed to be depressed by the scandal involved. He was an
unshaven person of a general appearance naïvely villainous, and, without
a hat or coat, he had hurried across the street from an establishment
not essentially unlike that under discussion—precisely like it, in
fact, in declaring itself (though without the accent) to be a place
where coffee in the French manner might be expected. “What worries _me_
is,” he said gloomily, and he repeated this over and over, “what worries
_me_ is, it gives the neighbourhood kind of a poor name. What worries
_me_, it’s gittin’ the neighbourhood all talked about and everything,
the way you wouldn’t want it to, yourself.”
Laurence took a fancy to this man, whose dejection had a quality of
pathos that seemed to imply a sympathetic nature.
“_Is_ there one—honestly?” Laurence asked him. “Cross your _heart_
there is one?”
The gloomy man continued to address his lament to the one or two
acquaintances who were listening to him. “It’s just like this—what
worries _me_ is——”
But Laurence tugged at his soiled shirt-sleeve. “Is there _honest_ one
in there?”
“Is there one _what_ in there?” the man asked with unexpected gruffness.
“A blind tiger!”
The gloomy man instantly became of a terrifying aspect. He roared:
“Git away f’m here!”
Then, as Laurence hastily retreated, the man shook his head, and added
to his grown listeners: “Ain’t that jest what I says? It gits everybody
to talkin’—even a lot of awnry dressed-up little boys! It ain’t
_right_, and Chollie and Mabel ought to have some consideration. Other
folks has got to live as well as them! Why, I tell you——”
He stopped, and with a woeful exclamation pointed to the street-corner
south of them. “Look there! It’s that blame sister-in-law o’ George’s. I
reckon _she_ must of run out through the alley. Now they _have_ done
it!”
His allusion was to a most blonde young woman, whose toilet, evidently
of the hastiest, had called upon one or two garments for the street as
an emergency supplement to others eloquent of the intimate boudoir. She
came hurrying, her blue crocheted slippers scurrying in and out of
variegated draperies; and all the while she talked incessantly, and with
agitation, to a patrolman in uniform who hastened beside her. Naturally,
they brought behind them an almost magically increasing throng of
citizens, aliens and minors.
They hurried to the once green doors; the patrolman swung these open,
and he and the blonde young woman went in. So did the crowd, thus headed
and protected by the law’s very symbol; and Laurence went with them.
Carried along, jostled and stepped upon, he could see nothing; and
inside the solidly filled room he found himself jammed against a woman
who surged in front of him. She was a fat woman, and tall, with a great,
bulbous, black cotton cloth back; and just behind Laurence there pressed
a short and muscular man who never for an instant relaxed the most
passionate efforts to see over the big woman. He stood on tiptoe,
stretching himself and pushing hard down on Laurence’s shoulders; and he
constantly shoved forward, inclosing Laurence’s head between himself and
the big woman’s waist, so that Laurence found breathing difficult and
uncomfortable. The black cotton cloth, against which his nose was pushed
out of shape, smelled as if it had been in the rain—at least that was
the impression obtained by means of his left nostril, which remained
partially unobstructed; and he did not like it.
In a somewhat dazed and hazy way he had expected to see Daisy and Elsie
and a blind tiger, but naturally, under these circumstances, no such
expectation could be realized. Nor did he hear anything said about
either the tiger or the little girls; the room was a chaos of voices,
though bits of shrill protestation, and gruffer interruptions from the
central group, detached themselves.
“I _never_!” cried the shrillest voice. “I never even _pointed_ it at
_any_ of ’em! So help me——”
“Now look _here_——” Laurence somehow got an idea that this was the
policeman’s voice. “Now look _here_——” it said loudly, over and over,
but was never able to get any further; for the shrill woman and the
plaintive but insistent voices of three men interrupted at that point,
and persisted in interrupting as long as Laurence was in the room.
He could bear the black cotton back no longer, and, squirming, he made
his elbow uncomfortable to the aggressive man who tortured him.
“_Here!_” this person said indignantly. “Take your elbow out o’ my
stomach and stand still. How d’you expect anybody to see what’s going on
with _you_ making all this fuss? Be quiet!”
“I won’t,” said Laurence thickly. “You lea’ me out o’ here!”
“Well, for heaven’s sakes!” the oppressive little man exclaimed. “Make
some _more_ trouble for people that want to see something! Go on and
_get_ out, then! _Oh_, Lordy!”
This last was a petulant wail as Laurence squirmed round him; then the
pressure of the crowd filled the gap by throwing the little man against
the fat woman’s back. “Dam _boy_!” he raved, putting all his troubles
under one head.
But Laurence heard him not; he was writhing his way to the wall; and,
once he reached it, he struggled toward the open doors, using his
shoulder as a wedge between spectators and the wall. Thus he won free of
the press and presently got himself out to the sidewalk, panting. And
then, looking about him, he glanced up the street.
At the next crossing to the north two busy little figures were walking
rapidly homeward. They were gesturing importantly; their heads were
waggling to confirm these gestures; and they were chattering
incessantly.
“Well—dog-_gone_ it!” Laurence whispered.
He followed them; but now his lips moved not at all, and there was no
mumbling in his throat. He stared at them amazedly, in a great mental
silence.
* * * * *
“What wears _me_ out the _most_,” Daisy said, as they came into their
own purlieus again, “it’s this shopping, shopping, shopping, and they
never have one single thing!”
“No, they don’t,” Elsie agreed. “Not a thing! It just wears me _out_!”
“F’instance,” Daisy continued, “look at how they acted in that las’
place when I wanted to see some orstrich feathers. Just said ‘What!’
about seven hundred times! An’ then that ole pleeceman came in!”
For a moment Elsie dropped her rôle as a tired shopper, and giggled
nervously. “I was scared!” she said.
But Daisy tossed her head. “It’s no use goin’ shopping in a store like
that; they never _have_ anything, and I’ll never waste my time on ’em
again. Crazy things!”
“They did act crazy,” Elsie said thoughtfully, as they paused at her
gate. “I guess we better not tell about it to our mothers, maybe.”
“No,” Daisy agreed; and then with an elaborate gesture of fatigue she
said: “_Well_, my dear, I hope you’re not as worn out as _I_ am! My
nerves are jus’ comp’etely _gone_, my dear!”
“So’re mine!” said Elsie; and then, after a quick glance to the south,
she giggled. “There’s that ole _thing_, still comin’ along;—no, he’s
stopped, an’ lookin’ at us!” She went into the yard. “Well, my dear, I
must go in an’ lay down an’ rest myself. We’ll go shopping again just as
soon as my nerves get better, my dear!”
She skipped into the house, and Daisy, humming to herself, walked to her
own gate, went in, and sat in a wicker rocking-chair under the walnut
tree. She rocked herself and sang a wordless song, but becoming aware of
a presence that lingered upon the sidewalk near the gate, she checked
both her song and the motion of the chair and looked that way. Master
Coy was staring over the gate at her; and she had never known that he
had such large eyes.
He was full of formless questions, but he had no vocabulary; in truth,
his whole being was one intensified interrogation.
“What you want?” Daisy called.
“I was there,” he announced solemnly. “I was there, too. I was in that
place where the pleeceman was.”
“_I_ doe’ care,” Daisy said, and began to sing and to rock the chair
again. “_I_ doe’ care where you went,” she said.
“I was there,” said Laurence. “_I_ saw that ole bline tiger. That’s
nothin’!”
Daisy had no idea of what he meant, but she remained undisturbed. “I
doe’ care,” she sang. “I doe’ care, I doe’ care, I doe’ care what you
saw.”
“Well, I did!” said Laurence, and he moved away, walking backward and
staring at her.
She went on singing, “I doe’ care,” and rocking, and Laurence continued
to walk backward and stare at her. He walked backward, still staring,
all the way to the next corner. There, as it was necessary for him to
turn toward his own home, he adopted a more customary and convenient
manner of walking—but his eyes continued to be of unnatural dimensions.