"Swearing? What about? Whom is she swearing at?"
"At me, I reckon. She says, why don't I take her home."
"Well, why doesn't she get up, then?"
"She says she won't."
"We can't carry her to the car," the daughter noted.
"Oh, why not?" the father merrily demanded.
The daughter turned to her brother. They were both very respectful to
their father, but the son agreed with his sister when she said: "Papa
would joke about anything. But this has passed a joke. We must get
this old thing up and start her off."
Upon experiment they could not get the old thing up, even with the
help of the kind colored girl. They had to let her be, and the colored
girl reported, after stooping over her again, "She says she can't
walk."
"She walked here well enough," the daughter said.
"Not _very_ well," the father amended.
His daughter did not notice him. She said to her brother: "Well, now
you must go and find a policeman. It's strange none has gone by."
It was also strange that still their group remained without attracting
the notice of the passers. Nobody stopped to speak or even stare;
perhaps the phenomena of that boarding-house had ceased to have
surprises for the public of the neighborhood, and they in their
momentary relation to it would naturally be without interest.
The brother went away, leaving his sister with their father and that
kind colored creature in charge of the old woman, now more and more
quiescent on the door-step; she had ceased to swear, or even to speak.
The brother came back after a time that seemed long, and said that he
could not find a policeman anywhere, and at the same moment, as if the
officer had been following at his heels, a policeman crossed the
street from just behind him.
The daughter ran after him, and asked if he would not come and look at
the old woman who had so steadfastly remained in their charge, and she
rapidly explained.
"Sure, lady," the policeman said, and he turned from crossing the
street and went up to the old woman. He laid his hand on her shoulder,
and his touch seemed magical. "What's the matter? Can't you stand up?"
She stood up as if at something familiar in the voice of authority.
"Where do you live?" She gave an address altogether different from
that she had given before--a place on the next avenue, within a block
or two. "You'd better go home. You can walk, can't you?"
"I can walk well enough," she answered in a tone of vexation, and she
made her word good by walking quite actively away in the direction she
had given.
The kind colored girl became a part of the prevalent dark after
refusing the thanks of the others. The daughter then fervently offered
them to the policeman.
"That's all right, lady," he said, and the incident had closed except
for her emotion at seeing him enter a police-station precisely across
the street, where they could have got a dozen policemen in a moment.
"Well," the father said, "we might as well go to our French _table
d'hôte_ now."
"Oh," the son said, as if that reminded him, "the place seems to be
shut."
"Well, then, we might as well go back to the hotel," the father
decided. "I dare say we shall do quite as well there."
On the way the young people laughed over the affair and their escape
from it, especially at the strange appearance and disappearance of the
kind colored girl, with her tag of sentiment, and at the instant
compliance of the old woman with the suggestion of the policeman.
The father followed, turning the matter over in his mind. Did mere
motherhood hallow that old thing to the colored girl and her sort and
condition? Was there a superstition of motherhood among such people
which would endear this disreputable old thing to their affection and
reverence? Did such people hold mothers in tenderer regard than people
of larger means? Would a mother in distress or merely embarrassment
instantly appeal to their better nature as a case of want or sickness
in the neighborhood always appealed to their compassion? Would her
family now welcome the old thing home from her aberration more fondly
than the friends of one who had arrived in a carriage among them in a
good street? But, after all, how little one knew of other people! How
little one knew of one self, for that matter! How next to nothing one
knew of Somebody's Mother! It did not necessarily follow from anything
they knew of her that she was a mother at all. Her motherhood might be
the mere figment of that kind colored girl's emotional fancy. She
might be Nobody's Mother.
When it came to this the father laughed, too. Why, anyhow, were
mothers more sacred than fathers? If they had found an old man in that
old woman's condition on those steps, would that kind colored girl
have appealed to them in his behalf as Somebody's Father?