THE HAT SHOP
"Them folks you're living with must have had a change of heart, Helen,"
said Sadie Goronsky, as the two girls sallied forth--Sadie with her new
hat set jauntily on her sleek head.
"Why do you say that?"
"If they are willing to spend fourteen dollars on old Lurcher's eyes."
"Oh, it isn't a member of my uncle's family who is furnishing the money
for this charity," Helen replied. Sadie asked no further questions,
fortunately.
It was a very miserable house in which the old man lodged. Helen's heart
ached as she beheld the poverty and misery so evident all about her.
"Lurcher" lived on the top floor at the back--a squalid, badly-lighted
room--and alone.
"But a man with eyes as bad as mine don't really need light, you see,
young ladies," he whispered, when Sadie had ushered herself and Helen into
the room.
He had tried to keep it neat; but his housekeeping arrangements were most
primitive, and cold as the weather had now become, he had no stove save a
one-wick oil stove on which he cooked his meals--such as they were.
"You see," Sadie told him, "this is my friend, Helen, and she seen you the
other day when you--you lost that dollar, you know."
"Ah, yes, wonderful bright eyes you have, Miss, to find a dollar in the
street."
"Ain't they?" cried Sadie, grinning broadly at Helen. "Chee, it ain't
everybody that can pick up money in the streets of New York--though we all
believed we could before we come over here from Russia. Sure!"
"You see," said Helen, softly, "I had seen you before, Mr.--er--Lurcher. I
saw you over on the West Side that morning."
"You saw me over there?" asked the old man, yet still in a very low
voice--a sort of a faded-out voice--and he seemed not a little startled.
"You saw me over there, Miss? _Where_ did you see me?"
"On--on Bleecker Street," responded Helen, which was quite true. She saw
that the man evidently did not wish his visit to Fenwick Grimes to be
known. Perhaps he had some unpleasant connection with the money-lender.
"Yes, yes!" said Lurcher, with relief. "I--I come through there
frequently. But I have such difficulty in seeing my way about, that I
follow a beaten path--yes! a beaten path."
Helen was very curious about the old man's acquaintance with Fenwick
Grimes. The more she thought over her own interview with the money-lender
and mine-owner, the deeper became her suspicion that her father's one-time
partner was an untrustworthy man.
Anybody who seemed to know him better than _she_ did, naturally interested
Helen. Dud Stone had promised to find out all about Grimes, and Helen knew
that she would wait impatiently for his report.
But she was interested in Lurcher for his own miserable sake, too. He had
lived by himself in this wretched lodging for years. How he lived he did
not say; but it was evident that his income was both infinitesimal and
uncertain.
Nevertheless, he was not a mean-looking man, nor were his garments
unclean. They _were_ ragged. He admitted, apologetically, that he could
not see to use a needle and so "had sort o' got run down."
"I'll come some day soon and mend you up," promised Helen, when the old
man gave her the prescription he had received from the oculist at the Eye
and Ear Hospital. "And you shall have these glasses just as soon as the
lenses can be ground."
"God bless you, Miss!" said the old man, simply.
He had a quiet, "listening" face, and seldom spoke above a whisper. He was
more the shadow of a man than the substance.
"Ain't that a terrible end to look forward to, Helen?" remarked Sadie,
seriously, as they descended the stairs to the street. "He ain't got no
friends, and no family, and no way to make a decent livin'. They wouldn't
have the likes of him around in offices, writin' in books."
"Oh, you mean he is a bookkeeper?" cried Helen.
"Sure, I do. That's a business! My papa is going to be in business for
himself again. And so will I--you see! That's the only way to get on, and
lay up something for your old age. Work for yourself----"
"In a millinery store; eh?" suggested Helen, smiling.
"That's right!" declared Sadie, boldly.
"Where is the little store you spoke of? Do you suppose you can ever get
it, Sadie?"
"Don't! You make me feel bad here," said Sadie, with her hand on her
heart. "Say! I just _ache_ to try what I can do makin' lids for the East
Side Four Hundred. The wholesale houses let youse come there and work when
they're makin' up the season's pattern hats, and then you can get all the
new wrinkles. Oh, I wish I was goin' to start next season in me own store
instead of pullin' greenies into Papa Yawcob's suit shop," and the East
Side girl sighed dolefully.
"Let's go see the shop you want," suggested Helen.
"Oh, dear! It don't do no good," said Sadie. "But I often go out of my way
to take a peek at it."
They went a little farther uptown and Helen was shown the tiny little
store which Sadie had picked out as just the situation for a millinery
shop.
"Ye see, there's other stores all around; but no millinery. Women come
here to buy other things, and if I had that little winder full of tasty
hats--Chee! wouldn't it pull 'em in?"
They stood there some minutes, while the young East Side girl, so wise in
the ways of earning a living, so sharp of apprehension in most things,
told her whole heart to the girl who had never had to worry about money
matters at all--told it with no suspicion that My Lady Bountiful stood by
her side.
She pointed out to Helen just where she would have her little counter, and
the glass-fronted wall cases for the trimmed hats, and the deep drawers
for "shapes," and the little case in which to show the flowers and
buckles, and the chair and table and mirror for the particular customers
to sit at while they were being fitted.
"And I'd take that hunchback girl--Rosie Seldt--away from the millinery
store on my block--she _hates_ to work on the sidewalk the way they make
her--she could help me lots. Rosie is a smart girl with some ideas of her
own. And I'd curtain off the end of the store down there for a workroom,
and for stock--Chee, but I'd make this place look swell!"
Helen, who had noted the name and address of the rental agent on the card
in the window, cut her visit with Sadie short, so afraid was she that she
would be tempted to tell her friend of the good fortune that was going to
overtake her. For the girl from Sunset Ranch knew just what she was going
to do.
Dud Stone had given her the address of the law firm where he was to be
found, and the very next morning she went to the offices of Larribee &
Polk and saw Dud. In his hands she put a sum of money and told him what
she wished done. But when Dud learned that the girl had the better part of
eight hundred dollars in cash with her, he took her to a bank and made her
open an account at once.
"Where do you think you are--still in the wild and woolly West where
pretty near everybody you meet is honest?" demanded Dud. "You ought to be
shaken! That money here in the big city is a temptation to half the people
you pass on the street. Suppose one of the servants at your uncle's house
should see it? You have no right to put temptation in people's way."
Helen accepted his scolding meekly as long as he did not refuse to carry
out her plan for Sadie Goronsky. When Dud heard the full particulars of
the Western girl's acquaintanceship with Sadie, he had no criticism to
offer. That very day Dud engaged the store, paid three months' rent, and
bought the furnishings. Sadie was not to be told until the store was ready
for occupancy. There was still time enough. Helen knew that the millinery
season did not open until February.
Meanwhile, although Helen's goings and comings were quite ignored by Uncle
Starkweather and the girls, some incidents connected with Helen Morrell
had begun to stir to its depth the fountain of the family's wrath against
the girl from Sunset Ranch.
Twice May Van Ramsden had come to call on Helen. Once she had brought Ruth
and Mercy De Vorne with her. And on each occasion she had demanded that
Gregson take their cards to Helen.
Gregson had taken the cards up one flight and then had sent on the cards
by Maggie to Helen's room. Gregson said below stairs that he would "give
notice" if he were obliged to take cards to anybody who roomed in the
attic.
May and her friends trooped up the stairs in the wake of their cards,
however--for so it had been arranged with Helen, who expected them on both
occasions.
The anger of the Starkweather family would have been greater had they
known that these calls of their own most treasured social acquaintances
were really upon the little old lady who had been shut away into the front
attic suite, and whose existence even was not known to some of the
servants in the Starkweather mansion.
May, as she had promised, was bringing, one or two at a time, her friends
who, as children when Cornelius Starkweather was alive, had haunted this
old house because they loved old Mary Boyle. And May was proving, too, to
the Western girl, that all New York people of wealth were neither
heartless or ungrateful. Yet the crime of forgetfulness these young women
must plead to.
The visits delighted Mary Boyle. Helen knew that she slept better--after
these little excitements of the calls--and did not go pattering up and
down the halls with her crutch in the dead of night.
So the days passed, each one bringing so much of interest into the life of
Helen Morrell that she forgot to be lonely, or to bewail her lot. She was
still homesick for the ranch--when she stopped to think about it. But she
was willing to wait a while longer before she flitted homeward to Big Hen
and the boys.