Chapter III: Part 3

When Joshua told of the fire at the supper-table, Mrs. Lane fairly snorted with indignation, saying, "Firstly, Nellis didn't smoke last night, bein' out o' tobacco and leavin' his pipe on the chimneypiece, where it is now, and secondly he asked me for a candle; and then, the Lockwood boys comin' along, and offerin' to walk up with him, he went off while I was lookin' for the store-closet key which had fallen off its nail, and clean through the bottom of the clock"--(the inside of the long body of the tall clock being the place where the Lane family's keys lived, each on its own nail).

"This morning when he came down home to breakfast he mentioned it, and said it didn't matter because the moon was so bright he undressed by light of it, Bill Lockwood stopping up there with him for company's sake.

"A trifle of insurance indeed! and all hope of Bird bein' righted gone! Joshua Lane, do you know what I think and believe?" And Lauretta Ann jumped up so suddenly that her ample proportions struck the tea-tray edge and an avalanche of cups and saucers covered the floor.

"Your thoughts and beliefs 'll soon fill a book, big as the dictionary and doubtless be worth as much," said Joshua, pausing a second with a potato speared on his fork, while he gave his wife a stern, silencing look that was so rare that whenever she saw it, she gave heed at once, "but in this here matter I'd advise you to keep 'em good and close to yourself. We've got plenty ahead to shoulder this summer, besides which if papers had been found, 'tain't likely any lawyer hereabouts would risk taking the matter without money to back him, and 'Biram Slocum to face."

So saying, Joshua, having put himself outside of the potato, a final piece of pie, and the tea that had been cooling in his saucer, pushed back his chair and drew on his coat, saying as he went out: "The first strawberries over ter Aunt Jimmy's 'll be ready for marketing on Monday, and this is Thursday. I must look around and engage pickers. That acre bed of the new-fangled kind is a week ahead of Lockwood's earliest. Aunt Jimmy was no fool when it came to foresighted fruit raisin'."

"I never said she was, nor in other things either if her meanin' could be read. What time did you say the fire started?" she added in an unconcerned sort of way, as she stooped to pick up the scattered cups, which were so substantial that they had not been broken by their fall.

"Let me see--it must hev been close to two o'clock when I drove out of the yard; the mail carrier had just passed, and he's due at the corner at two, and at the rate I went I wasn't fifteen minutes from the fire. From the way it had holt, it must have been goin' all of half an hour. Queer 'Biram didn't scent it sooner workin' in the corn patch back of the wood lot as he appeared to be, leastways he came down the lane from there.

"Fire couldn't hev ketched before one o'clock, for the hands up at Lockwood's go up that way before and after noon as well as of mornings, and if Nellis had left anything smouldering, they'd have surely smelt it, first or last."

Joshua paused a moment, but, as Mrs. Lane asked no more questions, went out, closing the door. No sooner did she hear the latch catch than she jumped up, saying to herself: "Appeared to come from the corn patch, did he? I wonder what he was doin' there? He planted late, so the corn can't be set for hoeing; he _might_ be watchin' for crows or riggin' a scarecrow." As she pronounced the last word she had reached the dresser where hung a large square calendar that advertised one of the husky sorts of breakfast foods that taste as if they might have been the stuffing of Noah's pillow.

Lifting this down she carried it to the table, and, after hunting in the dresser drawer for the pencil with which she kept her various egg and butter accounts, she proceeded to put a series of dots about the particular day of the month (it was June 10th), and then reversing the sheet, she covered the back with a collection of curiously spelled and, to the casual observer, meaningless words.

She had barely time to replace the calendar when the boys came in for their supper, and she fell vigorously to rearranging the table and brewing fresh tea.

The elder boys spoke of the fire as a bit of "old Slocum's usual luck," for it was known that the house would need a great deal of repairing before any one but the artist, whose thoughts were always in the clouds, would be willing to hire it. Lammy alone rejoiced in the fire because, as he said, "When Bird comes back, the house won't be there for her to see and make her sorry."

"Better not say that outdoors," warned Nellis, "or Slocum 'll say you fired it on purpose--he'd like nothing better. By the way, mother," he continued, as Mrs. Lane glanced keenly at Lammy, "what do you think I heard at the shop to-day?"

"Concernin' what?"

"The Mill Farm."

"I can't think. Those Larkin folks hev worked the land these two years past, but the mill hasn't run this long while,--not since the winter Mis' O'More died and the ice bulged the dam; the fodder trade has all gone away, and I don't know what 'Biram Slocum can turn it to 'nless he can insure the water an' then let it loose somehow."

"There is a party of engineer fellows, or something of the sort, just come to camp out up by Rooster Lake,--sort of a summer school, I guess, for there are some older men along that they call professors. They scatter all over the country surveyin' and crackin' up the rocks with little hammers to see what they are made of.

"This afternoon half a dozen of them came down to the shop to see some new kind of a boring tool that our foreman has designed, and Mr. Clarke was with them,--you know he is the man who started the Art and Trade School in Northboro, and has his finger in a dozen pies. Pretty soon the superintendent called me and said, 'Here, Lane, you live out at Laurelville; these gentlemen wish to see the old Turner Mill Farm place. I'll let you off the rest of the day if you'll show them the way over.'

"I got in the runabout with Mr. Clarke and the others followed in a livery six-seater. The old gentleman asked me all sorts of questions about the water-power, and how low the stream fell in summer, and if the pond ever froze clear through, and one thing and another.

"When we got to the Mill Farm, there was no one at home but the dogs and hens; I suppose the folks had all gone to Northboro to the circus."

"Sure enough, it is circus day! How did I forget it?" ejaculated Mrs. Lane. "That accounts for why there were so few folks on the roads this noon!"

"Yes, everybody seems to have gone but ourselves, even Lockwood's field-hands took a day off."

"They did? Then they didn't go up and down the cemetery hill road this noon?"

"Of course not, why should they?" replied Nellis.

"You didn't remember that it was circus day, did you, and I guess it is the first time you ever forgot it," said Mrs. Lane to Lammy.

"I knew--all right, but I'm savin' up for--you know," replied Lammy, wriggling out of his chair and going to the door where he began crumbing bread and throwing it to some little chickens that had strayed up out of bounds.

"I do wish you had mentioned it, anyhow; it would hev done us all good to have a change, though to be sure I _do_ suppose some folks would have turned our going into disrespect to Aunt Jimmy,--Mis' Slocum in particular."

"She went, and Ram, and Mr. Slocum, though he came home early. I saw him down in the turnpike store back of the schoolhouse this noon; he was sayin' he'd had to come back early on account of havin' a lot of things to attend to over at the Mill Farm this afternoon," said Lammy.

"The turnpike store? He doesn't trade there--it's a mile out of his way," said Mrs. Lane, thoughtfully.

"He didn't get to the Mill Farm, anyway," said Nellis, "because I was there from after dinner until I came home just now. Where was I? You got me all off the track."

"You were sayin' that Mr. Clarke asked you all sorts of questions about the mill stream," said Mrs. Lane, who now seemed to have lost interest in Nellis's story.

"Oh, yes,--well, Mr. Clarke and that Mr. Brotherton,--that is superintendent of the engine shop in Northboro,--poked about a lot together, measuring things and figuring in a little book he had in his pocket. It looked as if they were going to make an afternoon of it, and as I saw a fishin' pole inside one of the open sheds, I thought I'd go down the sluice way and try for a mess of perch. I was lyin' quiet out along a willow stump, thinkin' the folks were in the mill, when I heard voices on the dam above. Mr. Clarke said: 'I tell you what, Brotherton, I want you to negotiate this affair for me. That Slocum is a tricky fellow. I saw him a month ago and told him I'd not touch the property until that snarl about the mortgage foreclosure was untangled, the price he asked was outrageous for two hundred acres, of course the buildings are only fit for kindling. Now I want you to either buy me the farm and water right, or else lease it for say twenty years; then I will run a spur of the Northboro Valley railroad down here, move the locomotive works and the paper-mill, and enlarge both plants. This is the right place; plenty of room to build houses for the hands, and close enough to my place to be under my eye without being annoying.

"'It will suit my daughter Marion, too. She has all sorts of ideas about building a model village. Of course this is between ourselves, for if that old Slocum rat dreamed that I was behind you, he would ask a dollar a blade for every spear of run-out wire-grass on the farm.'"

"To think of it!" sighed Mrs. Lane, sitting down so suddenly in the big rocking-chair that it nearly turned a somersault in surprise, "and it was only a scrap of a mortgage, not more'n $2500, that was the cause of workin' the O'Mores out of property that had been in her family near two hundred years. Everybody knows there was crooked business if it could only be proved. But your father can't find any papers, and now just as he was going this afternoon to search through poor O'More's furniture and things at the house, it had to go and burn down, and the hopes we had that something might be worked out for Bird hev all gone up in smoke," she said, addressing the stove solemnly.

The boys went out together to take a stroll up to the scene of the fire. Hardly had they disappeared when Mrs. Lane jumped from the chair with such a bound that it completed the somersault and stood on its head facing the wall.

"I wonder!" she ejaculated, addressing the pump by the sink, and shaking her finger at it as if the gayly painted bit of iron was her husband. "Yes, it must be it. All along I allowed 'Biram Slocum fired that house for the insurance. Now, by a new light I read he did it so in case there was any papers or letters to and fro about that mortgage that they'd get burned.

"I've noticed he and she hev made plenty of excuses to get into the house alone, but I never reckoned it was for anything else but for general meddlin', and pa's keepin' everything so close, even nailing up the cellar doors and winders, balked 'em.

"He knew the auction was ter-morrow, and that he'd rather burn the papers and furniture than risk Joshua or others finding 'em is my firm belief, and I'd like to prove it. Not that it'll do Bird any good now, but it would be a satisfaction, even though, as Joshua says, 'We've got enough business of our own to shoulder before fall and settlin' time comes.' I wonder if 'Biram 'll hev the cheek to ask for the rent now.

"Yes, I'm going to do a little nosing on my own account,--yes I be!" she continued, adding more mysterious words to the back of the calendar and nodding determinedly at the pump as if it had contradicted. "Knowing never does come amiss, even if it is salted down for a spell. Shoo!" she cried presently, waving the dish towel at the chickens who had boldly ventured in, and then the tumult, caused by Twinkle's chasing them back to their yard with much barking and sundry nips, brought her back to the present and the work of dish-washing and tidying the kitchen for the evening.

Even then her head and hands did not work together. She hung the biscuit in a pail down the well and set away the butter in the bread-box, put sugar instead of salt into the bread sponge she was setting; and, finally, before she sat down to rest remembering that the pantry door locked hard and creaked when it opened, she poured toothache drops instead of oil upon both hinges and key, and presently began to sniff about and wonder if Dinah Lucky, who had been in that day to do the weekly laundry, was doctoring for "break-bone pains" again, and hoped she had used the laudanum outside instead of in, otherwise nobody could tell when she would turn up to do the ironing.

* * * * *

Next morning if Joshua Lane and Lammy had not been in such a hurry to get down to the fruit farm to prepare the crates and small boxes for the coming strawberry picking, they would have noticed that Lauretta Ann seemed to be quite excited and anxious to get them out of the way.

But Joshua was unusually absorbed and quiet--he was disappointed at not finding the papers--but he had a hard summer's work ahead of him with plenty of thinking in it; while as for Lammy,--he was trying to calculate how many strawberries he must pick at a cent and a half a quart to buy a round-trip ticket from Laurelville to New York, so that he might invite Bird to come up for a Fourth of July visit; also as to whether it would be possible to do this and have anything left to buy fire-crackers. Yet, after all, crackers were of small account, for Bird did not care much for noisy pleasure, and if she didn't come, he wouldn't care for even cannon crackers himself.

"I suppose 'Biram Slocum will go over to Northboro smart and early to collect his insurance," Mrs. Lane remarked, apparently looking out of the window, but stealing a side glance at her husband's face.

"Mebbe he will; but when I turned the cows out an hour ago, I saw him driving Milltown way in his ordinary clothes with a plough and a dinner-pail along, so I reckoned he was goin' to work on that patch of early corn he's got down at the Mill Farm."

At this Mrs. Lane's eyes glistened, and she plunged some dishes into the tub of suds with a splash that was an unmistakable signal that breakfast was over and all but lazy people should be out.

This morning she bustled so that a half hour did all the work of "redding" up that usually took two at the very least, and when Dinah Lucky came to do the ironing with no sniff of laudanum about her, though the kitchen was still heavy with it, Mrs. Lane looked puzzled, then much to that fat aunty's astonishment popped the batch of six plump loaves into the oven and, leaving Dinah to tend the baking,--a thing that save for illness she had never trusted to other hands in her twenty years of housekeeping,--she took a small basket, a knife, and her crisp gingham sunbonnet, and muttering something about trying to get one more mess of dandelion greens, even if it was counted late, disappeared through the woodshed door.

Dandelions grew in plenty in the moist meadow below the cow barn, but Mrs. Lane crossed the road and took a winding path through the woods. After following this for some distance and crossing several fields where she filled her basket with greens, cutting only the very youngest tufts with the greatest deliberation, she turned into the highway through the cemetery gate and walked rapidly past the "four corners," never stopping until she stood in the enclosure that had once been Bird O'More's garden. Then she set down the basket, and, seating herself on the scorched chopping-block, looked about her.

The house had burned down to the foundation; some of the heavy chestnut beams had not been wholly consumed but lay in a heap on the hard dirt floor of the cellar. Otherwise the only bits of woodwork remaining were the frames of two cellar windows that had been protected by the deep stone niches in which they rested. The great centre chimney, around which so many old houses are built, held its own, and its various openings, most of them long unused, marked the location of the different rooms; several of these, such as the smoke closet and brick oven, being closed by rusty iron doors.

Presently Mrs. Lane set out on a tour of inspection. The half dozen outbuildings were quickly explored, for, with the exception of the barn, they were quite open to the weather and as rickety as card houses. Tall weeds struggled with the straggling sweet-william and fiery, hardy poppies in the strip before the lilac bushes that Bird had called her garden, and the rusty wire of the henyard fence enclosed a crowd of nettles that stretched toward the light like ill-favoured prisoners in a pen. The grass and low bushes had been trampled by the people who had gathered to watch the fire, as well as by the cows that had strayed in through the latchless gate.

Clearly there was nothing to be discovered here. Next Mrs. Lane walked about the ruined foundation looking for a likely spot to get down into the cellar. The old chimney with its nooks and crannies was the only thing left to examine, and she had made up her mind to do it even if it meant a rough climb, bruised knees, and scratched fingers.

In some places little heaps of ashes were still smouldering, but by picking her way carefully down the stone steps that had been under the flap-door, she reached the base of the chimney and tried the first iron door. It was warped with the heat, but after some difficulty she opened it, only to find the ample closet absolutely empty. Talking to herself and saying that it was not likely that anybody, even an artist, would hide papers in a cellar, Mrs. Lane looked up to see how it would be possible to reach what had been the kitchen level, where the chances looked brighter; for there was the brick oven and a wide fireplace, closed by sheet iron through which a stove-pipe had pierced. There was no way up but to use the chinks between the big stones for stairs and climb. True, she had seen an old ladder in the barn, but Lauretta Ann was too practical a woman to trust a dozed rickety ladder--she preferred to cling with her fingers and climb, and cling and climb she presently did.

To young people it seems a very small feat to climb the outside of a broad, rough, stone chimney that slopes gradually from a wide base toward the top. For Mrs. Lane--stout, thick of foot and nearer fifty than forty--it was a terrible exertion, and she paused between every step she took to catch her breath, muttering, "Lauretta Ann Lane, you are a fool if ever there was one. Suppose folks should pass by and see you creepin' up here like a squawkin' pigeon woodpecker hanging to a tree?"

She, however, did not in the least resemble even that heavy-bodied bird. Did you ever see a woodchuck mount a low tree when cornered by dogs? That was what Mrs. Lane looked like as she climbed. And did you ever see the same woodchuck scramble, slip, and flop down, flatten himself, and then amble to his hole, when he thought his pursuers had ceased their hunt? Well, that was the way in which Mrs. Lane came down to the cellar bottom, when she found that the brick oven had been used merely to hold broken crockery and such litter.

For a minute or two she sat flat on the floor, resting, nursing her bruised hands, and gazing idly at the outline of the sky through one of the window holes in the stone wall. Then, as she recovered herself, a bit of something fluttering from a broken staple in the scorched window-frame attracted her attention. She picked herself up and examined it. The glass had broken and fallen in, while the bit of metal had caught a narrow rag of woollen material some six inches in length. This was singed at the edges, but enough remained to show that it was a herring-bone pattern of brown and gray such as is often seen in men's suitings.

Mrs. Lane looked at the rag thoughtfully for a moment, then, detaching it, pinned it carefully inside the lining of her waist, picked up her basket of greens which were by this time rather withered, freshened them with water from the well, and trudged home openly by the highway, saying, as she walked, "'Tain't much, and most likely it's nothin'--still maybe it's a stitch in the knittin', and if it is, another 'll turn up sooner or later to loop on to it."

At dinner Mr. Lane gave his wife an odd look saying: "Why, mother, where've you been? You look as if you'd gone a berryin' on all fours! You're scratched on the nose and chin, let alone your hands."

"Be I?" answered "mother," so fiercely that Joshua quailed, and remembered guiltily that he had forgotten her request to clear a tangle of cat brier from over a tumble-down stone wall in the turkey pasture, where his wife passed many times a day to herd this most contrary and uncertain of the poultry tribe, so he said nothing more, but held his quarter of dried apple pie before his face like a fan, while he slowly reduced its size by taking furtive bites at the corners.

About four o'clock Mrs. Lane seated herself on the front porch to sew. She was dressed in a clean print gown, with her collar fastened by a large photograph "miniature" pin of Janey when a baby, a sign that she considered herself dressed for callers. True it was Saturday and Dinah Lucky was still pounding the ironing board, but that was because she had "disappointed" on the two first week-days sacred to such work, and not through any slackness on Mrs. Lane's part.

The weekly mending was always a knotty bit of business, and to-day doubly so, for now that Lammy was working at the fruit farm, it seemed as if he fairly moulted buttons and shed the knees and seats of his trousers as crabs do their shells. Spreading a well-worn pair of knickerbockers on the piazza floor, she trimmed the edges of the holes and dived into a big piece bag for material for the patches.

"Seems to me I can't find two bits alike and I do hate to speckle him up all colours and kinds as if he was a grab-bag. I know what I'll do--I'll put in what I've got and clip down to the store for some blue jean, and run him up a couple o' pairs of long overalls to cover him, same as his brother's and Joshua's. Wonder I didn't think of 'em before, only I can't realize that Lammy is big enough to be at work."

A man's shadow crossed the piazza. Mrs. Lane looked up quickly; she had not heard the gate click, and Twinkle, who kept both eyes open as well as ears cocked most of the time, was down at the fruit farm with Lammy.

"Buy something to-day? Nice goots, ver' cheap," said a voice in broken English, and a pedler stood on the broad step and swung two heavy packs down to the floor, while he wiped his face and asked if he might get some water from the well.

"Certainly, 'nless you'd prefer milk," said Mrs. Lane, cheerfully, for she was naturally cheerful and generous, unless she was imposed upon. The pedler, a foreigner, had a full-moon face, that looked both young and tired, two things that always appealed to her, besides which his packs were temptingly fat, and she had a weakness for pedlers. So after getting the milk, she leaned back in her rocker, folded her arms, and prepared to enjoy the exhibition, saying in the same breath: "I don't know as I care to buy. What have you got?"

The packs contained a little of everything in addition to the usual tinsel jewellery and cheap finery which she motioned aside, while she selected half a dozen gingham shirts, the overalls, which the man assured her truthfully were only what the goods would cost in the village, and some stout red handkerchiefs.

"You don'd need trouble vit him," he said, pointing to the tattered trousers. "I sells you somedings vot you can make down schmall," said the pedler, growing confidential and pulling a stout pair of long pants from a separate compartment in his pack. "Only a dollar, and I give the schentlemens ninety cents for him,--yes, I did. I keep dem for mineself if I home vas going, but I joust stard out. Only von dollar, and only von leetle place broke."

"I don't like to trust to buy second-hand clothes; nobody knows what kind of folks have wore 'em," objected Mrs. Lane, yet at the same time fingering the substantial goods lovingly. "Where are they tore?"

"Here it vas, joust by der side leg ver you can schmaller make him, and so help me gracious it vas no dirdy peoples wore dem. It vas a rich mans to sell so fine a pants for ninety cents for such a break. Maybe you knows him alretty, for he live"--pointing eastward--"in a big what you call red house by the road there farther."

"Slocum's!" ejaculated Mrs. Lane, her hands trembling with excitement.

"Yes, dat vas his name. You take de pants, hein?"

For a moment Mrs. Lane was silent, examining the rent, for the trousers though bright and new were of the same brown and gray herring-bone pattern as the dingy rag she had brought from the cellar window of the burned house.

"Yes, I'll take 'em. They _could_ be cut to advantage, and you may leave me a box of that machine cotton, too; I'm clean out. Now, pack up and move on, my man; I've got to see to supper."

"She vas very glad of dose pants," thought the pedler to himself, as he trudged away, smiling at the sales he had made.

Up in the attic Mrs. Lane presently stood by a gigantic cedar chest, the lid of which she lifted with difficulty, next the top tray. In the one below she spread the pair of pants to the torn leg of which was pinned _the_ rag.

"It does seem a shame to lay away a pair of 'Biram Slocum's pants so near my weddin' shawl, but so must it be. Well, now, there's two stitches in the garter I've set up to knit for the hobbling of 'Bi Slocum's pace; the third stitch will be to show why he crawled in that cellar window before the fire for he surely didn't do it after, and why he was afeared to let his wife mend his torn pants."

VI

BIRD'S COUSINS

On the night of Bird's arrival in New York Jack and Larry O'More were late for supper. In fact they did not come in until she had gone to bed on the "extension" lounge in the parlour, where she was lying with her teeth clenched in an effort to keep her eyes shut and to choke down the nervousness to which crying would have brought the quickest relief. If Bird could only have been alone in the dark and quiet for a few hours, it would have been much easier for her to have overcome her great disappointment. But in the corner of the family sitting room, amid a litter of sewing and the smell of pipe smoke, with the glare and noise of a busy street coming in the two small windows, sleep was impossible. Finally her aunt closed the lid of the sewing-machine with a bang, tossed her work into a heap in the corner, and, turning out the gas, went into the kitchen.

There were six rooms in the flat, all quite small. The sitting room in front and the kitchen in the rear had windows that opened out, above the three bedrooms clustered round an air-shaft that was like a great chimney having small windows let into it, through which even at noon only a gray, sunless light entered, and the air had no freshness but was full of odours and noises from the flats above and below.

Mr. and Mrs. O'More occupied the room next to the sitting room, Billy sleeping beside them on a small mattress that was propped up nightly upon two chairs; for when the bed was thus made, there was no room to move about. Jack and Larry slept in the middle room which had a door into the hallway, while the third room, opening out of the kitchen, had been used by the oldest boy, Tom, before he had taken wholly to wild ways and drifted off. Now it was more than a year since he had slept there and it was tightly packed with broken furniture, old boxes, and various kinds of trash that it had been easier to throw in there than to dispose of in any other way. A small bath-room at the end of the hall was littered up in much the same way, and it was evident that no one cared for bathing, as the tub was used as a cubby hole for pails, a mop, broom, and the wash boiler and board, for which there was no room on the overloaded fire-escape. Still Mrs. O'More felt the dignity of having a bath-room, for it stamped her home as a "flat," tenements so called having no such luxuries.

Presently Bird gave up all idea of going to sleep or even of closing her eyes, and do her best she could not keep from hearing the conversation that passed between her aunt and uncle in the kitchen, for they made no effort to lower their voices, and she dared not close the door as the only breath of air that reached little Billy, who was tossing about and muttering in his sleep, came through the front windows.

After hearing herself thoroughly discussed until her cheeks burned, her uncle closed with the remark, "Well, of course Terry was all kinds of a helpless fool, but he shouldn't be blamed for it, his mother was a lady out of our class, and his wife too, judging from the looks and ways of the kid, and don't you forget it, and it must come rough to her to be shoved about, anyhow."

Then a new resolve came to Bird from the rough but well-meaning words. Her grandmother and her mother had been ladies,--she would not forget that any more than she would forget her father's wish that she should learn to paint and win the success that had been denied to him.

Presently the subject changed and she heard her aunt speak of Tom and say that it was three months since she had heard from him, and she feared he was dead.

"I hope it will be three months more, then," O'More had cried with an oath that made Bird quiver and pull the pillow over her head, but she was obliged to take it off again because of the heat. "He never minds us unless he's in a scrape, or there's something to pay. But he's not dead, if that's any comfort, for he wrote to me two weeks gone, saying he must have fifty dollars or leave his job, and I wrote him that he'd leave it for all of me."

"And you never told me! I could have sent him a trifle; God knows what he's done by this," and Mrs. O'More covered her red head with her apron and began to whimper.

"Look here, Rose O'More," answered her husband, while Bird judged by the jar that he had brought his fist down on the table with a bang, "that scoundrel has bled you long enough; now we are saving up to have little Billy doctored, and I'll not see you rob yourself and him for that other that we gave the best of everything, and he's turned it to the worst, even if he is the eldest born. If I were you, I'd bank the bit o' money that comes in from the sewin' and not keep it about ye."

"The top drawer of the bureau is bank enough for me. The sum is near complete to buy the frame for his leg, and it will be wanted next week when I take Billy to the doctor, for it's to his own house he shall go, and not to the thing they call the "clink" at the hospital, to be stood up and twisted before a crowd o' dunce heads."

So Billy was to go to a doctor. That was good news, and Bird began to take an interest in life again, for Billy, in a single hour had crept quickly into her sensitive, motherly little heart, and with her to love and to serve were one and the same impulse.

Presently two new voices joined the conversation, knives and forks rattled, and amid pauses she heard scraps of conversation muffled by food-filled mouths, and knew that they were talking of her. Jack and Larry had come home and were having supper. Jack, who worked in an office by day, was attending an evening school of type-writing and bookkeeping, while Larry, who was of slight build and whose ambition was to be a jockey and ride races, was kept late on the track where he was serving an apprenticeship as handy man to a well-known trainer.

"Where is she? Let's have a peek at her. I hope she's pretty if I've got to look at her steady," said Larry, who prided himself on his eye for beauty, and wore plaid clothes and wonderful pink and green neckties, the colours of the stable to which he was attached, and thought it the finest thing in the world, for jockeys are often as loyal to their racing colours as college men are to theirs.

"She isn't so handsome but what it'll keep until morning, and she's dead asleep by this. Quit yer noise, all of ye; ye'll wake little Billy, and he's been that fretful to-day that the rasp of his voice would wear through an iron bar," Mrs. O'More added, as the three burst into loud laughter over some tale of track happenings that Larry told.

Then the voices dropped to a hum, and then turned to the song of the bees in Mrs. Lane's hives, and Bird drifted away into that sleep that God sends to make our tired bodies and minds able to live together without quarrelling.

* * * * *

Bird slept heavily for many hours, yet to her it seemed only a few minutes when she awoke again, a streak of light shining directly across her face and the same noises coming from every side. This time, however, the light was from the sun, not from the gas, and the noises were fourfold, for there is nothing so varied, penetrating, and stunning as the sound of the awakening of a great city to unaccustomed ears.

For a few moments she lay quite still, gazing about, and trying to realize where she was, and whether awake or asleep, for so many things had happened during the past week, that it all seemed like a bad dream.

Not many days before, morning light brought the hope to Bird that this day her father might be better; only the day before she had waked in Mrs. Lane's big white bed, to see that kind soul watching beside her and Twinkle had come racing upstairs.

Presently it all came back to her, and, getting up, she raised the shade quietly, for no one else was awake, and looked down into the street in which wagons of all kinds were passing, while the sidewalks were already, at six o'clock, swarming with children, driven into the air as early as possible by the heat of the night. Then she looked about for her clothes and a place where she might go to bathe and dress, for the small rooms were all open through, and the lack of privacy and the sight of the flushed disordered sleepers was a fresh jar to her.

Finally she tiptoed into the kitchen where a friendly clothes-horse offered shelter, and managed to make herself neat, and arranged her hair at a mirror hung over the kitchen sink, which she afterward found was the family toilet place; then she stepped out on to the fire-escape where there was the possibility of a breeze.

At that moment she heard Billy's querulous little voice wail, "Oh, I'm so tired--tireder than last night, and I hurt all over," and she slipped back through the hallway into the front room again to meet her aunt who stood in the middle of the parlour, gazing at the empty sofa and open window in some alarm.

"Oh, so yer up and dressed betimes and not fallen out of the winder through sleep-walkin'," she said, not unkindly. "Jack has turns of it at the coming of every hot weather, and he's been down the escape to the ground, up to the roof and every place he could get, so it gave me a turn when I missed yer. Here, I'll just throw a few clothes on Billy and you can take him down to the street for a mouthful of air, while I get the breakfast. I'll fetch him to the doctor to-day if it does put back my sewin', and see if I can't get some ease for him."

"Shall I wash him first?" Bird asked quickly, as his mother began to pull and jerk at his clothes, and then stopped short as she saw a flash in her aunt's eyes that told her that she must be careful what she said.

"Wash him this time of the morning when he's scarce awake, and have him all tired before he has a bite of breakfast? I guess not. You can clean him up this noon, before I take him to the doctor's," and Billy, now hopping, now stumbling along on his little crutch, led the way down the three flights of dark stairs, moving carefully from step to step so that he should not trip in the holes in the carpet with which they were covered.

Once in the street Bird was at the same time interested and confused by what was going on about her. A Jewish fish pedler, with much wagging of head and hands, was trying to sell some stale-smelling flat-fish to a woman who had preceded them downstairs. Another pedler, with a push cart, piled high with cabbages, radishes, and greens, went into one of the houses with a basketful of his wares at the very moment that a big, roan truck-horse halted with his soft, inquisitive nose dangerously near the green stuff. First he sampled a bunch of radishes, but these were too hot for his taste, so he tried a carrot or two, and mangled fully a peck of spinach before he sniffed the cabbages. At these he gave a whinny of delight and nosed among them so vigorously that half a dozen rolled into the gutter, and when the man returned, the horse had started back a yard or so in fright and looked guiltless of the mischief, and the pedler ran down the street after some suspicious-looking boys. Meanwhile the horse stepped forward and nibbled the biggest cabbage with great relish, while Billy clapped his hands, half a dozen other children cheered, and Bird herself laughed and felt glad to see the horse, who did not look overfat, have such a good breakfast.

For if Bird loved flowers and all outdoors, she loved animals still more even if she did not know it, but the other children did not think of the horse at all; they were only glad because it had outwitted the pedler, for between the people of poorer New York and the push-cart people there is everlasting war. This lesson Bird learned that morning before the various factories in the neighbourhood had blown their seven-o'clock whistles.

Another thing that struck her sensitive ear was the different languages that were spoken by the passers-by,--the various mixtures of slang and foreign idioms that the speakers used for English being almost as difficult for her to understand as the German and Italian.

At Laurelville, to be sure, people spoke in two ways. The real country folk had a vigorous, if homely, dialect, such as the Lanes spoke, while Dr. Jedd, the minister, and her father and mother used a purer speech, though her father alone had the soft, distinct way of pronouncing the words that was one of Bird's great attractions.

Little Billy, however, was quite at home with this street language, as far as understanding it went, but no word of it came from his baby lips, strangely enough, and though he was really over six years old, he had the slight frame and innocent, open-eyed gaze of a child of four, and he was entirely "different like" from the rest of his family, as his mother said, and it provoked her as if the fact of the child's being apart from her own rudeness was a personal reproach.

"Hullo, Billy," called a freckled, lanky-looking girl of perhaps fifteen,--reading by her face, though she was no taller than Bird,--who was coming across the street from a grocer's carefully carrying a bottle of milk as if it was a rare possession.

"Hello, Mattie," he answered cheerfully, hopping to the curb to meet her. "Where've you been? I thinked you moved away."

"I've been working all of two weeks, and we moved right in back of your house yesterday. We've got two fine rooms now, and I buy Tessie a bottle of milk every morning now my own self," she said proudly.

"Tessie's legs are very bad again, and I can't get her out except Sundays when mother's at home to help, but she's got a rocking-chair and she can pull it all round the room an' see up out the winder to your 'scape. We seen you sittin' up there last night. Who's the girl?" she added, dropping her voice as Bird drew near to Billy, not knowing how he went about alone and fearful lest he should fall.

"It's Bird, my cousin; she came last night from the far-away country," he answered, clinging to Bird's hand, while the two girls looked at each other, one shyly and the other--city bred and quick-witted--curiously, noticing at once the plain black gown.

"Come to visit or stop?" she asked presently.

"I've come to stay," said Bird, slowly, only half realizing the truth of the words.

"Father dead?"

"Yes."

"Mother living?"

"No."

"Any brothers and sisters?"

"No."

"Well, that's tough luck," said Mattie, her tone full of sympathy. As she set the precious bottle on a damp spot on the sidewalk, so that her hands need not heat the milk, she noticed the tears in Bird's eyes and changed the subject quickly.

"Ain't you going to work soon? I've got a good job--cash-girl--$3.50 a week, Saturday afternoons off all summer; 'n, if I'm smart in a year, I can get to be an assistant stock-girl. How old are you, anyhow? I'm fifteen and over."

"I'm thirteen and Uncle John is going to send me to school by and by; he says that it closes too soon to make it worth while this term."

"Yes, you'll have to go until you're fourteen or they'll chase you up, even if you do live in a flat with stair carpet. It's too bad, though; you'd have lots more fun working."

"But I want to go to school as long as I can," said Bird, smiling at Mattie's mistake.

"Oh, then you want to begin in an office type-writing or keeping sales books. I don't like that; it's too slow and you can't see the crowd. You'll have a daisy time this summer, though, with nothin' to do but takin' Billy riding in trolleys and seein' the town. I'll tell you all the parks where they have music. Billy's pa is free with dimes for trolley rides. Last year, before my pa's falling accident, we lived down this street, and when Tessie's legs were well enough, Mr. O'More 'd often give me a quarter to take Billy along fer a ride. You can ride near all day fer that, if you know how to work the transfers and stick up fer yer rights."

"Was your father badly hurt?" asked Bird, drawn to this stranger by a common chord.

"Yes, hurt dead," she answered, in a matter-of-fact tone without the trace of a tremble, "and then pretty soon we had to move, and we've been doin' it most ever since, so I kinder lost track o' Billy. You see mother worried sick and we all got down on our luck, but now she's got a steady job to do scrubbin' at the Police Court, and I've got a job, and we've got two rooms and everything is all hunky; that is 'cept Tessie's legs, but some's worse than her and can't even sit up."

"You say you live behind us; which house is it? Perhaps I could see your sister through the window," said Bird, somehow feeling reproached at Mattie's cheerfulness.

"It's the little low house down in the yard, back of yours, that's got winders that stick out of the roof. Ours is the top middle and it's got blinds to it,--all the winders haven't,--and they're fine to draw-to if it rains, 'cause you don't have to shut the window. It's a rear building, and some don't like 'em, and of course Tessie would rather see out to the street, but rents come so high and rear buildings are stiller at night; that is, when there's not too many cats. Were rents high a month where you came from?"

"I don't exactly know," said Bird, trying to remember. "I think we paid ten dollars, but we had a whole house, though it was old, and a garden, and a woodshed, and a barn, and chickens. Everybody lived in whole houses in Laurelville, even though some had only two or three rooms."

"Ten dollars for all that, and we pay eight for two rooms!" ejaculated Mattie, looking hard at Bird to see if she was in earnest, and, seeing that she was, quickly grew confidential, and, coming close, whispered: "Would you, may be, sometime come in and tell Tessie about it and the garden and chickens? She's read about the country in a book she's got,--oh, yes, she can read; she's twelve and went to school up to last year, for all she isn't much bigger 'n Billy--but she can't seem to understand what it's just like and she's cracked after flowers; the man in the corner market gave her one in a pot last year, but it didn't live long because we hadn't a real window that opened out then. Maybe your aunt won't let you come 'cause we live in a rear; my mother says she's awful proud; but then, most anybody would be, living in a whole flat with bells and a stair carpet.

"Say, Bird," she continued, after a moment's silence,--during which the pedler had given up chasing the boys, rearranged his scattered wares, and plodded patiently on,--this time dropping her voice to a whisper and putting her lips to the other's ear, "if yer aunt won't let yer come over, maybe you'd wave to Tessie when you and Billy's takin' the air on the 'scape. I'll tie a rag to our blind so's you'll know the winder. It would be an awful lot of company fer her daytimes when we're out to have somebody to wave to. Yer will? I believe ye; somehow I could tell in a minute ye'd be different from the rest," and giving Bird a thump on the back expressive of gratitude, Mattie picked up her milk bottle and hurried round the corner.

A shout from above next attracted Bird, and looking up she saw her uncle leaning out of the window and calling to them to come up for breakfast. Billy could hop downstairs quite easily, but in going up he was obliged to crawl, baby fashion, on his hands and knees, so Bird followed, slowly carrying his crutch.

Her uncle and cousins were already seated at the table when the pair came up, both rather out of breath. Of the two boys, Larry made no attempt to rise and shake hands, but stared hard at Bird's pale, clear-cut face and neatly brushed almost blue-black hair and lashes that made her violet-black eyes darker yet, then gave a quick nod in which recognition and approval were combined, and continued his meal; while Jack got up, came forward pleasantly, if with the very flourishy sort of manner that somehow always reminds one of the pigeon wings and squirrels in old fashioned writing-books, and waved her to a seat between himself and his father and began to collect the dishes about her plate.

"Go on with yer eatin'," said Mrs. O'More, rather sharply, as if resenting the attention. "Bird can wait on herself,--she's got all day to do it in and it's time you were off. Come round this side by Billy's chair so's you can spread his bread; he's always cuttin' himself," she added.

The food was plentiful enough, if rather coarse in quality,--a dish of oatmeal, slices of head-cheese and corn-beef on the same dish, potatoes sliced cold with pickled cabbage, a bowl of hard-boiled eggs, a huge plate of bread with a big pot of coffee, still further heating the close room from its perch on the gas range. But the table-cloth was soiled and tumbled, and Bird saw with horror that her uncle wiped his mouth on the edge of it, using it as a napkin, while the dishes seemed to have been thrown on without any sort of arrangement.

Not feeling hungry herself, she began to cut up some meat for Billy, who fed himself awkwardly using his knife instead of a fork; but Bird did not dare say anything, and in a few minutes his appetite failed and he sat picking holes in a piece of bread, while Bird looked at the heaped-up plate her uncle pushed toward her with dismay, yet forced herself to eat from inbred politeness.

Larry and Jack, having finished, pushed back their chairs, and hastily filling their lunch-boxes with bread, meat, and eggs, took their coats from the rack in the narrow hall and went out, Larry calling, "So long," as he went downstairs, but Jack turned back and said pleasantly to Bird, "Good-by till night, and don't get homesick, Ladybird!"

"Ladybird, indeed," snapped Mrs. O'More, "you needn't bother; she can't well sicken long over what she ain't got," at which unnecessarily cruel remark, that made Bird stoop lower over her plate and swallow some coffee so quickly that coughing hid her tears, O'More looked up and said: "What's wrong with yer to-day, Rosy? You've no call to hit out when nobody's touchin' yer."

"What's wrong? What's right, I'd like you to tell me?" she flashed; "me with a lot uv sewin' to do, and to get Billy up-town to the doctor's by ten."

"You don't do that tomfool dressmakin' with my leave and consent. I can keep my family and well, too, if you weren't so set on robbin' yerself fer Tom, who'll land himself in prison yet for all of you, if, please God, he doesn't drag the rest of us along with him."

"I can wash the dishes and dress Billy if I may," said Bird, timidly, feeling the tension of a bitter quarrel in the air.