Chapter IV: Part 4

"Well, you may try it for onct, but look to it you neither smash them nor make him cry; there's days he near takes fits at the sight of water. Here's his clean suit, and I'll just go and finish up that silk skirt," and Mrs. O'More pulled some clothes from a corner bureau and left Bird and Billy alone.

"Don't you worry with what she says," said O'More, in a gruff whisper, pressing Bird's shoulder with his kindly grasp. "Just you be good to the little feller and yer Uncle John 'll stand by yer, and maybe ye'll see some way to chirk things up a bit. I've been thinkin' some of puttin' a bit uv an awning out on the 'scape to keep the sun off him while he's takin' the air, only travellin' so much I've not got to it. I'd do it to-day, only I must go to the yards to unload a car o' horses. To-morrer, maybe, I'll stay around home."

"Don't you want any breakfast, Billy?" Bird asked, as her uncle clumped downstairs.

"No,--yes,--I'm hungry, but I'm tired more," he answered, laying his head on the table.

"Suppose I wash and dress you first, and then you can go out on the piazza and eat something and see if you can spy Tessie."

"Will you hurt Billy's bones when you wash him? Ma always does," he added, his lower lip beginning to quiver. He always called himself by name and often spoke in short sentences as very young children do.

"I'll try not to; and if I do, you must tell me and I'll stop right away."

Bird looked about the room to see what she could find without calling her aunt, whose very presence seemed to irritate Billy. There were two stationary wash-tubs beside the range; one of these being empty, she proceeded to fill it half full of water, making it comfortably warm by aid of the tea-kettle. Next she hunted up a piece of soap and found a towel with much difficulty, for the roller towel on the kitchen door was for general use.

"Come and play duck and go in swimming," she said to Billy, who had been watching her with interest as she overturned a pail and put it in the corner of the tub for a seat.

The idea struck the child's fancy so completely that he could hardly wait to slip out of his few clothes and be helped up on a chair and then into the tub, where he sat comfortably pouring the water over himself with a tea-cup, and chuckling in a way that would have warmed his father's heart.

Meanwhile, Bird gathered the dishes together in the sink, wiping off the plates with bits of bread,--as she had done ever since she could remember and had seen her mother do in the short "better days" when they had a pretty home and her mother had always herself washed the best china in the inside pantry,--and straightened the furniture and hung up various articles that littered the floor so that there was room to move about. By this time Billy was ready for drying, which Bird did so gently that he did not even wince, for she had ministered to her father, seen her father care for her mother, and God had given her the best gift that a girl, be she child or woman, can have,--the gift of loving touch, of doing the right thing almost unconsciously for the weak or helpless.

Billy, clean, refreshed, with his bright hair brushed into a wreath around his forehead, sitting in his little chair on the fire-escape, and being fed with bread and milk by Bird, who talked to him as he ate, was a different being from the crumpled little figure that had only a few moments before looked so pathetic sitting in his high-chair, head on table.

As Bird gave him the last morsel and wiped his mouth, he leaned backward to where she knelt behind him and, clasping his arms around her neck, pulled her head down to him, and, nestling there, whispered, "Billy loves Bird very much, and she must stay close by him forever 'n' ever, won't she?"

"See, that must be Tessie's window down there," she said, not trusting herself to answer and catching sight of a white rag hanging from the blind of a low building that stood in the rear of a shop that fronted on the next street. It was an old-fashioned, two-story, wooden house, with dormer windows in a roof that had been once shingled. There were a dozen such in Laurelville, and as Bird looked at it she wondered how it came to be there, built in on all sides, and if it didn't miss the garden that must have once surrounded it.

Then as she looked she saw the outline of a face inside the window. It was so far down and across that she could not distinguish the features, but she waved the towel she held, and Billy shook his hand. Presently something white waved back, and thus a telegraph of love and sympathy crossed the dreary waste of brick and clothes-lines, and put the three in touch, and the Bird, who had been taken from the country wilds and put in a city cage, and the two little cripples were no longer alone, for even at these back windows there was some one to wave to and respond.

Mrs. O'More was in a better mood when, an hour later, having finished the gown, she came back to the kitchen to find the dishes washed and set away, and Billy sitting contentedly in his chair throwing crumbs to try to coax some pigeons that lived in the stable next door from the roof to the fire-escape.

"I'll take him up to the doctor's now," she said to Bird, without vouchsafing any remarks upon the improved appearance of the kitchen, though she saw it all. "You can come along with me if you like, or you can stop here and look about and rest yourself a bit. There's plenty of passing to be seen from the front room."

Bird said she thought she would rather stay at home.

"Mind, now, and lock the inside hall door as soon as we've gone and don't let anybody in, for, in spite of the catch on the door below, there's always pedlers and one thing and another pushing up."

After Mrs. O'More had left, Bird went through into the sitting room. Seating herself by the window with her arms on the sill, she looked down into the street. It was an intensely hot day in spite of a breeze that blew from the East River; down by the pavement the mercury was climbing up into the nineties--summer had come with a jump. Could it be only a week ago that she had been picking long-stemmed, purple violets by the brook beyond the wood lot at Laurelville? Was it only day before yesterday that Lammy had brought her the red peonies, and they had walked up the hill road together?

She had stayed by the window for some time, perhaps half an hour, watching the horses that were led out from the stable to be cooled by spray from the hose attached to the hydrant in front, when a slight noise in the kitchen caused her to turn. The light from the window opening on the fire-escape was darkened, and a man's figure showed for a second in outline against the sky and then swung noiselessly into the kitchen.

Bird's first impulse was to scream, but, checking it, she shrank trembling behind a tall rocking-chair and watched. The man glanced about the kitchen and came directly through to the room where her uncle and aunt slept. It did not seem to occur to him that there was anybody at home, though Bird did not think of this until afterward.

Pausing before the bureau, he opened the upper drawer, and, after passing his hand rapidly through the clothing it contained, drew out a long wallet, which Bird recognized as the one from which her aunt had taken some money before going to the doctor's. Without thinking of the result or counting the cost, she rushed forward and caught the wallet tight in both hands, crying, "You mustn't take it, you shan't; for it's the money to pay for mending poor Billy's leg."

The man, taken utterly by surprise, fell back, but only for a moment, and, muttering a string of such words as Bird had never before heard, seized her by the shoulder with one hand while he tried to wrench the pocket-book from her with the other; but, strong as he was, this took several minutes, for Bird hung on desperately, clinging to his arm after he had secured the wallet, until finally he picked her up bodily and threw her on to the bed, and before she could recover herself, locked the door into the sitting room, and, taking out the key, did the same to the door into the boys' room, through which he retreated, leaving her a prisoner, for the window into the air-shaft was high out of reach.

As Bird sat on the edge of the bed sobbing with fright and the thought of what the loss of the money might mean to Billy, noise of a scuffle reached her ears from the kitchen and the locked door burst open suddenly as it had closed, pushed by a strong shoulder, but it was the face of a perspiring policeman that peered through the crack.

"Catch him, oh, do catch him!" she implored; "he's got the money from Aunt Rose's drawer that's to pay for mending Billy's leg!"

"He's caught safe enough, my girl,--me mate has him in the kitchen and the money, too, though he did try to throw it over the yards when we grappled him. You see there's been a slew of these daylight thieves around these parts lately, sneaking over roofs and down escapes when folks are at work. We spotted this one goin' through the saloon on the corner and in among the skylights, and we followed but lost track, for he has another wallet lifted besides this one, and if he'd slid out a minute sooner, we'd have lost him."

"Then holding on did some good, after all," Bird gasped, still standing with tightly clasped hands as if she were holding the precious money in them.

"An' did yer grab him, now? Look at that fer pluck,--it's a wonder he didn't smash yer entirely. Come out and take a look at him; maybe ye can tell did ye see him before."

Bird looked, but the young man was a stranger to her. He did not appear to be more than twenty, and, as they led him away, handcuffed to an officer, he pulled his hat so low over his face that the crowd that gathered and followed as soon as the street was reached could not see his features, or if he was old or young.

Bird gave the officer her uncle's name, and he said: "When he comes in, tell him to come round to the station-house and he'll get his money all right. I've got to take it in as evidence." The street was hardly clear again of the curious crowd when the twelve-o'clock whistle sounded and workmen appeared from all quarters, either with pails to eat their dinners in the shade of the house fronts, or on the way to their various homes.

Mrs. O'More and her husband--for he had been watching for their car--came up the street together, little Billy between them, and it was strange that they did not meet the policemen with their prisoner. Bird was watching eagerly for them, and, after hearing their news,--that the doctor said it was possible to help the lame leg, only that Billy must grow stronger before it could be done,--told them hers.

Both listened eagerly. Her uncle said, "Yer pluck does credit to the O'Mores, but did ye mind the villain's face what it was like?"

"Oh, yes," Bird answered excitedly, "it was smooth and fair, and he had very blue eyes with a long scar over one, and his hair was quite red." Glancing at her aunt, she saw that she had turned deadly pale, and a certain resemblance struck her for the first time.

"God help us,--it's Tom come back to rob his own mother," gasped poor John O'More.

"But you'll not appear against him, John," cried his wife, throwing her arms around him as he seized his hat and turned to go out.

"I can't, woman, I can't; but maybe it'll do no good. I must go round to the station and get the wallet and see to this, anyway."

And Bird, after laying Billy on the lounge for a nap, sat by her aunt,--who, while waiting to hear the outcome, had collapsed and was crying noisily,--and tried to take off her tight waist and bathe her face, and she realized that there were even worse griefs than leaving one's home and father, for surely dear Terry was safe beyond all harm now.

VII

SUMMER IN NEW YORK

The arrest of Tom O'More threw the matter of little Billy's leg into the background for a time. When the father had gone to the court where his son was arraigned, he found that not only was there another charge against him, but that all unknown to his family he had committed petty thefts in other places, and had already what the police call "a record," so that he had to go to the penitentiary for a year, and John O'More, feeling his disgrace keenly, for though he was a rough man and coarse in many ways he was as honest as the day, turned doubly to little Billy, and could not bear to have him out of his sight when he was at home.

The doctor's orders concerning Billy had been short and clear, but it was fully a week after the visit before his mother could pull herself together or even think of carrying them out, and then when O'More took a day at home and had leisure to ask for details, she began by saying that what the doctor had ordered to get the child in condition for treatment was nonsense, and only to be had by rich folks.

"Well, well, woman, let's hear and get to the core o' the matter," said John O'More, tired of the continual word warfare.

"He's to have a real bed and no shake-down, so's he can stretch out and roll about, and it's to be in a room opening to the light where he can lie quieter by himself an hour or so every day. Then he's to get a full bath every morning and a light meal, and fresh meat at noon, and a bite and sup between that at supper, and the between times filled in with air and a bottle o' tonic, and the saints knows what else.

"'Do yer think I keep a 'ospital to do all them things,' sez I to the doctor.

"'No,' he answers quick like, 'and for that reason I think it will pay you best to send him to the 'ospital to get him built up.'

"'His father will not hear to it,' I said.

"'Very well, then,' said he, 'you know what _I_ think; go home and talk it over.'"

So John O'More sat and thought and blinked at the ground, and thought some more, but it was Bird who first spoke, though very hesitatingly, for her aunt resented almost everything she said, and in her ignorance and prejudice seemed to owe poor Bird a grudge as being partially responsible for Tom's arrest, rather than showing any gratitude toward her for trying to prevent the theft of the money.

"Couldn't Billy have a bed in the little room that was--that is shut up?" she asked finally. "The door is close to the kitchen window, and a good deal of air would come in."

"It's packed solid full, and besides the room is off from me, so's I couldn't hear the child to tend him in the night if needs," objected Mrs. O'More, somewhat hotly.

"Couldn't the things be put in the attic or somewhere?" persisted Bird, seeing a flash of approval cross her uncle's face, "and then there would be room for two beds, and I could stay with Billy and give him his bath every morning."

"Attic! do you hear her?" mocked the aunt, "and a fine slop there'd be in me kitchen, and a nice place for folks to eat breakfast, with the bath."

"If the things were taken out of the bath-tub we could use that," continued Bird, waxing bold at the prospects, "and I'm sure, Aunt Rose, it would be much nicer for you to have the parlour to yourself, and not have to make me a bed there every night."

"That last is true; I've been greatly put out these days when company called," the company being the slipshod factory girls for whom she did sewing, but, as often happened, Bird had unconsciously said the one thing that could have appeased her aunt, for only when something was suggested that would benefit herself was she willing to have others considered.

"The tub is full of holes, and the agent he won't mend it, saying that I made them with the ice-pick, when for convenience I used that same tub for an ice-box, me own givin' out."

"If that's all, a bit o' solder is cheap," said O'More, springing to his feet, and preparing to take action.

"I've the day on me hands, and a few extry dollars in me pocket, and if something can't be worked out o' this, 'twon't be my fault; and while I recommember it, I think you'd be the better of a new hat, Rosie, and while yer out buyin' it, jest step in the store, round on Third Avenue and get two o' them light-lookin', white iron beds; they're cheap, for I saw yesterday when passin' that they be havin' a bargain sale of them," and John, with the quick-witted diplomacy of his race, handed his wife some money which she took, and, half mollified, at once prepared to go out, instructing Bird to "do up the rooms" while she was gone.

The door had not fairly closed when O'More gave a shout that almost frightened Bird, and said: "Now we'll do some hustlin'; there's no attic, me girl, but there's the coal-closet in the cellar which is empty, now that we use gas in the range. Half the stuff is but fit for the ashman, and the rest I'll bundle down there quick as I get a man from the stable to help. Now watch sharp whilst I put the truck out and see if there's aught yer can use."

When the room was finally cleared, a mirror, a chair, and a small chest of drawers were the only useful assets, and these Bird pulled into the kitchen, while she dusted and wiped away at them until they looked clean, even if somewhat shabby.

Returning from the cellar O'More (in his youth a handy man in a stable) attacked the dust in the little room with broom, mop, and finally a scrubbing-brush to such good purpose that in an hour it was quite another place, for the walls fortunately had been painted a light cream and were in fairly good condition.

If John O'More had been asked to go down on his knees and scrub a room, he would have resented the work as an insult to his manhood, but love had set the task. Little Billy, sitting there in his chair, his face all eagerness, needed the room, and so he did the work as nonchalantly as he would have stepped into the stable and curried a horse in a hurry time. It was only when Bird clapped her hands in admiration and said, "Why, uncle, how nice and quick you did that; Dinah Lucky would have taken a whole day," that he became embarrassed, and, giving her an apologetic wink, said with lowered voice, "It's a job well done, but whist! 'tis not for the good of my health to be repeated," and Bird understood and wondered, as she did a hundred times during that long summer, why she always understood her uncle and he her, while life with her aunt seemed one long misunderstanding.

A plumber, living in the flat below, came up in the noon hour and soldered the holes in the tub, which O'More declared to be too black even for a pig's trough, so he sped out around one of those many "corners," of which at first Bird thought the city must be made, for a quart of boat paint and a brush.

"Yer aunt must be havin' a hard time with her tradin'," he remarked on his return, seeing that his wife had not come back to prepare dinner. But just as Bird had spread the table with various articles of cold food, whose abiding-places she very well knew, and was making Billy some little sandwiches to coax him to eat meat for which he had a distaste, Mrs. O'More came in, talkative and almost pleasant as the result of her morning's bargaining.

Before night two narrow beds were carefully fitted into opposite sides of the little room, with the chest of drawers set between, in front of the now-closed door that led to the boys' room, with the looking-glass hung above it. It was only a bit of a place and still very close and stuffy, but Billy and Bird had at least beds of their very own, if only in a niche apart, and Bird's heart took fresh courage.

The next step was to coax her uncle to fill some long boxes with earth and set them inside the outer railing of the fire-escape. There is a law against filling up these little balconies with boxes or furniture of any kind, but Bird knew nothing about it, and her uncle regarded it as a sort of tyranny that he, a free-born citizen, should disregard. All Bird thought of was that she might plant morning-glory seeds in the earth so they would climb up the strings she fastened to the next story, and later on there was, in truth, a little bower blooming above that arid waste of bricks and ashes.

After the new room was arranged, and permission given to Bird to see that Billy had what the doctor ordered that he should eat, and to take him out whenever he wanted to go, everything began to move more regularly and in some respects more comfortably, then Bird, to her dismay, saw the city summer, like a long roadway without a tree or bit of shade, stretching out before her.

There was not a book in the house and no one to tell her of the free library where she might get them, and school, where she hoped to find a sympathetic teacher for a friend, belonged to September three months away. No one who has always lived in the city can possibly understand what this change, with its confinement and lack of refined surroundings, meant to this young soul. To be poor, in the sense of having little to spend and plain food, she was accustomed,--in fact, she had much more to eat now, and through her uncle's careless kindness she was seldom without dimes for the trolley rides to Battery Park "where the fishes lived," or Central Park with the swan-boats that were to "make a man" of Billy. But to be shut away from the woods, the sky, the beauty of the sunsets, to have no flowers to gather and love, and to be brought face to face daily with all the ugliness of the life that is merely of the body, was almost too much for her courage.

How could she keep her head above the street level, how remember what her father had taught her?--already the memory of the past was becoming confused. Sometimes she was on the verge of ceasing to try and settling down into a silent drudge, content to take what came, and falling into the habits and commonplace pleasures of the girls of her cousins' acquaintance with whom she was thrown in the parks and on the stoop and streets. It would have been much easier in some respects,--her aunt would have been better pleased to see her go off with the others, to some noisy if harmless excursion, arrayed in a cheap, flower-wreathed hat and gay waist, shrieking with laughter, and chewing gum, than to see her always neat amid disorderly surroundings and ever willing to do the endless little tasks that her own mismanagement piled up, and Ladybird--Jack's name for her--strangely enough seemed a term of reproach, not compliment.

At first Bird had hoped that Sunday might bring better things; but no, Sunday in the quiet, peaceful, Protestant sense that Bird understood it,--there was none. The family straggled to early mass one by one, for Mrs. O'More and her sons were Romanists, though O'More was not, being from the north of Ireland, and the rest of the day was spent by the men either lying in bed and smoking, or standing in groups about the street.

In these hard days little Billy was Bird's only ray of light. The two, being of equally sensitive natures, clung together, and the child was so happy in his new-found friend and ceased his incessant fretting whenever he was with her, that Mrs. O'More at last gave him completely to Bird's charge with a sigh of relief, for her youngest child was as much a puzzle to her as her niece, and she felt that he also was of a different breed, as it were, and it annoyed her.

All the fierce scorching summer days Bird and Billy wandered about together, sometimes going over to Madison Square, sometimes riding in the trolley to Central Park, but more often down to the Battery where the air tasted salt and good, where the wonderful fishes lived in the round house and the big ships went past out to that unknown sea of which Bird was so fond of telling Billy stories.

Bird, too, soon learned to find her way about, for six-year-old Billy had all the New York gamin's knowledge of his whereabouts coupled with a cripple's acute senses. He hopped along with his crutch quite well, and many a lesson in human nature and life did Bird learn these days in the treeless streets of poorer New York.

After a time she found that her uncle had seemed to forget his hatred of anything like drawing or painting, so one day she ventured to buy a good-sized pad and pencil, and then watching Bird "make pictures" became Billy's great joy, while she to her surprise found that she could draw other things besides flowers.

Oftentimes the children would go down to sit on the steps and watch the horses from the great sales stable being exercised up and down the street. Bird tried to draw these too, and one day succeeded so well that her uncle, passing in at the door, stopped and looked down, and then said, "Bully! any one would know it for a horse, sure!" After that she worked at every odd minute.

She loved horses dearly, but she and Billy were forbidden to go into the stables, which were almost underneath the flat, and Bird really had no wish to, for the men there were so rough and there was so much noise and confusion; but a few doors away was a fire-engine house where lived three great, gentle, gray horses that ran abreast, and had soft noses that quivered responsively when they saw their driver even in the distance. Bird made friends with these, taking them bits of bread or green stuff, until the firemen came to expect the daily visit and "Bird" and "Billy" became familiar names in the engine-house; and there was a little dog there that ran with the engine and reminded her of Twinkle.

Dan was the heaviest of the three horses and Bird's favourite, and one day, after many attempts, seated on the stoop of the next house, she succeeded in drawing a small head of him that was really a good likeness, at least so the firemen thought, for they put it in a frame and hung it in the engine-house, and the next day big Dave Murray, Dan's driver, gave her a small box of paints "with the boys' compliments."

Ah, if the big, bluff fellow only knew what the gift meant to poor little Ladybird struggling not to forget and to still keep the heavenly vision in sight.

Bird had written a short note to Mrs. Lane telling of her safe arrival in the city, and giving her address, but more than that she could not say. If she said that she was happy and gilded the account of her surroundings, it would have been false. If she told the truth, her Laurelville friends would be distressed, and it would seem like begging them to take her back when it evidently was not convenient, for she did not know that her Uncle John had refused to let her stay with Mrs. Lane unless she was legally adopted.

Neither was Bird worldly wise enough to act a part and simply write of her visits to the park and the little excursions with Billy which in themselves were pleasant enough. She was crystal clear, and knew of but two ways, either to speak the whole truth or keep silent. She was too loyal to those whose bread she was eating to do the first, and so she did not write.

In due time a long letter came from Lammy written with great pains and all the copy-book flourishes he could master, telling of Aunt Jimmy's strange will, of how he was going to work all summer at the fruit farm, and ended up by telling her of the preparations he had made for the Fourth, never dreaming it possible that, the matter of tickets disposed of, Bird should refuse his invitation.

At first the thought of getting away from the city, and being among friends again quite overcame her. She began to wonder if Twinkle would be glad to see her, and if the ferns met over the brook as they did last year, and if Mrs. Lane would have the white quilt on the best-room bed, or the blue-and-white patch with the rosebuds. Then she realized that if she met the Laurelville people face to face, she would surely break down, while the saying "good-by" again would be harder than not going. Then, too, there was little Billy. How could she leave him at the very time when, in spite of continued hot weather, he seemed to be gaining?

No--she sat down resolutely and wrote a short note that wrung her heart and kissed it passionately before she mailed it, for was it not going to the place that now seemed like heaven to her?

But the letter that arrived as the Lanes sat on porch after supper said no word of all this, and seemed but a stiff, offish little note to warm-hearted Mrs. Lane and Lammy who, having now quite earned the ticket money, was cut to the quick when he found that it was all in vain.

"She's gone to the city and forgotten us," he gulped in a quavering voice, as he read the letter, coming as near to letting a tear run down his nose as a sturdy New England boy of fourteen could without losing his self-respect.

"It doos _appear_ that way," said Mrs. Lane, who was gazing straight before her out of the window with an abstracted air; "but, after all, what's in appearances, Lammy Lane? Don't your copy-book say that they are deceitful? Well, that's what I think of 'em. Likely 'nough it appears to Bird that I didn't want to keep her, 'cause owing to this other mix-up, I couldn't divide the share of you boys without thinking it over, and 'dopt her then and there. But my intentions and them appearances is teetotally different.

"No, Lammy, I'm goin' straight on lovin' Bird and trustin' her and keepin' a place in my heart for her, besides havin' the best-room bed always aired and ready, and jest you keep on lovin' and trustin' her, too, and like as not the Lord will let her know it somehow, for I do believe kind feelings is as well able to travel without wires to slide on as this here telegram lightnin' that hollers to the ships that's passin' by in the dark. 'Think well and most things 'll come well,' say I."

"How about Aunt Jimmy's will? Yer always thought well enough o' her," said Joshua, who had laid down his paper and folded his spectacles to listen to the reading of the letter.

"An' I do still," Mrs. Lane averred stoutly; "it doos _appear_ disappointing, but I allers allowed that if we was only able to read her meanin', 'twould be a fair and kindly one."

VIII

THE FLOWER MISSIONARY

It was the last day of June when one morning, before the sun had a chance to turn the pavements into ovens, Bird, having finished some marketing for her aunt, was leading Billy slowly in and out along the shady sides of the streets toward Madison Square, where they were watching the lotus plants in the fountain for the first sign of an open flower, for already buds were pushing their stately way through the great masses of leaves.

Chancing to glance at the window of a newly finished store that was not yet rented, Bird read the words, "Flower Mission." As she paused to look at the sign, wondering what it might mean, an express wagon stopped at the curb and several slat boxes and baskets filled with flowers, for sprays peeped from the openings, were carried into the building, a wave of moist coolness and perfume following them.

Bird's heart gave a bound of longing, for the fragrance of the flowers painted a picture of her little straggling garden and held it before her eyes for a brief moment.

"Oh, look, Bird, come quick and look; it's all full of pretty flowers in there! Do you think they would let Billy go in and smell close?" Billy was standing by the open door, and, as Bird glanced over his shoulder, she saw that one side of the store was filled by a long counter, improvised by placing boards upon packing cases, which was already heaped with flowers of every description in addition to those that the expressman had just brought.

An elderly lady, with a big, white apron tied over a cool, gray, summer gown, was sorting the flowers from the mass, while a tall, slender young girl, of not more than sixteen, dressed all in white, was making them into small bouquets and laying them in neat rows in an empty hamper.

It was the young girl who overheard Billy's question to Bird and answered it, saying, "Of course Billy may come in and smell the flowers as much as he pleases, and have as many as he can carry home."

"Oh, can we?" said Bird, clasping her hands involuntarily with her old gesture that expressed more joy than she could speak.

At the sound of the second voice, the young girl pushed back the brim of her drooping, rose-trimmed hat and looked up with clear, gray eyes. As she did so Bird recognized her as Marion Clarke, the daughter of the man who spent his summers in the stone house on the hillside beyond Northboro, and it was she who had passed Bird and Lammy on the roadside the day when she had left her old home and, carrying Twinkle, was going to Mrs. Lane's.

But if Bird recognized Marion, the memory was on one side, as it is apt to be where one sees but few faces and the other many. This however did not prevent Marion from holding out her free hand to the younger girl, as she made room for her to pass between the boxes, saying, in a charming voice, low-keyed and softly modulated, yet without a touch of affectation: "If you are fond of flowers and can spare the time, perhaps you would help us this morning; so many of our friends have left the city that we are short-handed. Here is a little box your brother can sit on if he is tired." Oh, that welcome touch of companionship, and that voice,--it made Bird almost choke, as she said:--

"Billy is my cousin, and I should love to tie the flowers, for Aunt Rose does not expect us back until noon."

It was one of Marion Clarke's strong points, young as she was, that she had insight as well as tact. She saw at a glance that these children were not of the ordinary class that play about the streets, interested in every passing novelty, merely because it is new, so she had given Bird a friendly greeting and asked her to help, instead of merely offering the children a bouquet and letting them pass on as objects of charity, no matter how light the gift.

When Bird replied in direct and courteous speech, Marion knew that she had read aright. An ordinary street child of that region would have said, "I dunno 's I will," or "What 'll ye give me 'f I do?" or perhaps declined wholly to answer and bolted off after grabbing a handful of flowers.

"Aunt Laura, will you let us have some string? There, see, it is cut in lengths, so that you can twist it around twice and tie it so. I do wish people would tie up their flowers before they send them, they would keep so much better; but as they do not, we have to manage as best we may.

"Oh, how nicely you do it," she continued, as Bird held up her first effort for approval,--a dainty bouquet of mignonette, a white rose, and some pink sweet-william, with a curved spray of honeysuckle to break the stiffness.

"So many people put the wrong colours together, and tie the flowers so tight that it seems as if it must choke the dear things,--see, like this," and Marion held up a bunch in which scarlet poppies and crimson roses were packed closely together without a leaf of green.

"Yes, I understand; those colours--hurt," Bird answered, groping for a word and finding exactly the right one.

"You must have lived in the country and been a great deal with flowers to touch them so deftly and know so well about the colours."

"I always lived in the country until this summer, and Terry taught me all about the colours and how to mix them."

"Who was Terry?" asked Marion, much interested, and not knowing that she was treading upon dangerous ground.

"He was father," and Bird, remembering where she was, stopped abruptly, and Marion, who had noticed the rusty black gown, understood that there was a story in its shabby folds and forbore to intrude.

Miss Laura Clarke, who was the lady in gray, gave Billy a pasteboard box lid of short-stemmed blossoms to play with, and he sat quite content, while the others kept on tying the flowers until only one basketful was left.

"The flowers come in every Wednesday morning, and I ask people to send them in as early as possible, so that they may be sorted and tied up by ten o'clock when the ladies come to distribute them," Marion explained as they worked. "They are Miss Vorse, the deaconess from the mission, beside two workers from the College Settlement, and half a dozen district visitors. Those two hampers go direct to hospitals, but the ladies take the flowers about to the sick in the tenements and to special cases.

"I have come here from the country place where I live every week all through May and June, but this is my last day this season, because I'm going to Europe next week with my aunt, and Miss Vorse will take my place."

Another disappointment for Bird. At last she had met some one to whom she had felt drawn, and whom she thought she might see occasionally, and almost in the same breath learned that she was going away.

"Do you know of any children who would like some flowers, or any one who is ill?" she added, as she noticed that Bird was silent and loath to go, even though all the bouquets were ready and Miss Laura was packing them in the baskets and boxes for distribution.

"There's Tessie; oh, I know that Tessie would love to have some!" cried Bird, eagerly; "she has not waved to us for nearly a week, and I was going to see her this afternoon when Billy takes his nap, if Aunt Rose will let me," and Bird told what she knew of the little cripple who "kept house" by herself while her mother and sister worked.

Then a happy idea came to Marion Clarke. Handing out a flat wicker basket, that held perhaps twenty-five bouquets, to Bird, she said: "Would you like to be one of the Flower Missionaries this summer and carry bouquets? Yes?" as she saw the glad look in her eyes; "then you may fill this basket, and here is a big bouquet for you and something extra sweet to add to the basket,--see, a bunch of real wallflowers, such as grow over seas, some foreign-born body will go wild with joy over it, and here is a fruit bouquet a youngster has evidently put together,--big strawberries on their stalks set in their own leaves.

"Miss Vorse is coming now. I will introduce you and tell her to give you the flowers. What is your name? Bird O'More. I'm glad of that; it seems to fit you. I should have been disappointed if it had been Jane Jones," she continued, as a sweet-faced, tall young woman, dressed in a dark blue gown and bonnet, entered, saying: "I'm afraid that I am late, but there is so much illness among the little children in the district now that I could not get away. A new Flower Missionary! That is good; children can reach those whom we cannot."

Presently Bird found herself walking along the street, Billy's hand in one of hers, and the basket of flowers in the other. Billy was prattling happily, but for once she scarcely heard what he said, the flower voices were whispering so gently and saying such beautiful things.

"Take us to Tessie," whispered one. "God lets us bring sunlight to dark places," said another--"You can do the same." "Be happy, you have something to give away," breathed another, and this flower was a spray of cheerful honeysuckle that blooms freely for every one alike.

Yes, Bird was happy, for Marion Clarke had held her by the hand and called her a Flower Missionary; she had flowers to give away and flowers to take home. Oh, joy! she could try to paint them, and she pushed the bouquet that held the old garden flowers, the mignonette, sweet brier and honeysuckle under the others to keep for her own.

If she waited to go home first, the flowers might fade, so an impulse seized her to give Tessie her flowers first, and then turned into the street below their own, trying to remember Mattie's directions--"Count six houses from the butcher's, and then go through the arch, and up two pairs of stairs to the top."

Before she had gone a block, two little girls had begged her for flowers, one rosy and sturdy chose red and yellow zenias; the other, who, like Billy, had a "bad leg" and hopped, chose delicate-hued sweet peas. Bird had never seen a lame child in Laurelville, but now she met them daily, for such little cripples are one of the frequent sights of poorer New York.

At the first corner a blind woman, selling the mats she herself crocheted, begged for "a posy that she could tell by the smell was passing." To her Bird gave the bunch of mignonette. A burly truckman, who thought she was selling the flowers, threw her a dime and asked for a "good-smellin' bokay for the missis who was done up with the heat," so she tossed him back the coin and a bouquet of spicy garden pinks and roses together, while Billy called in his piping voice, "We're a Flower Mission--we gives 'em away," so that the man drove off laughing, his fat face buried in the flowers.

When Bird had counted the "six houses from the butcher's" and found the archway, which was really the entrance to a dismal alley, her basket was almost empty. She hesitated about taking Billy into such a place, and in fact but for her great desire to give Tessie the flowers, she would have turned back herself. As she looked up and down the street, a policeman passing noticed her hesitation and stopped.

"Sure it's the plucky girl from Johnny O'More's beyond that tried to catch the thief,--and what do you be wantin' here?"

Bird recognized the policeman and explained, and he said, "Ye do right not to be pokin' in back buildings heedless; it's not fit fer girls like you, but this same is a dacent place, though poor, and as I'm not on me beat, only passin' by chance, I'll go through to the buildin' with ye, and the kid can stay below with me while ye go up, for stairs isn't the easiest fer the loikes av him."

So through they went, the big policeman leading the way, and entering the back building Bird began to grope upward. When the house had stood by itself in the middle of an old garden, the sun had shone through and through it, but now the windows on two sides were closed, and the halls were dark, and the bannister rails half gone.

At the first floor landing she paused a moment. What was that tap, tapping? It came from a small room made by boarding off one end of the broad, old-fashioned hallway. The door was open and a single ray of sun shot across from an oval window that had originally lighted the stairs and was high in the wall.

In the streak of sun was a cobbler's bench and on it sat a man busily at work fastening a sole to a shoe, so old that it scarcely seemed worth the mending.

Then she went on again and, after knocking at two wrong doors, finally found the right one.

"Come in," piped a shrill, cheery voice; "I can't come to open it," and in Bird went.

"I hoped that you would come to-day," said the small figure, sitting bolstered up in a wooden rocking-chair with her feet on a box covered with an end of rag carpet, by way of greeting. No introduction was necessary, for the two girls knew each other perfectly well, although their previous acquaintance had merely been by waving rags across the yards.

"My legs haven't felt as if they had bones in 'em in a week," Tessie continued, "so's I couldn't reach up high enough to wave, and it seemed real lonesome, but I've got a new pattern for lace, and there's a man in the store where Mattie works who says he'll give me half-a-dollar for every yard I make of it,--what do you think of that?" and she spread out proudly a handsome bit of Irish crocheted lace upon which she was working. It was four inches wide, a combination of clover leaves, and very elaborate, of the kind that is so much sought now and costs many dollars a yard in the shops.

"It is beautiful," explained Bird; "how do you know how to do it?"

"My mother learned long ago in the Convent in the old country, but her hands are too stiff to make it now, and besides she says it wouldn't pay her. So she showed me the stitch and some of the old patterns, and one night last week, when I couldn't sleep very good, I was thinkin' of the lace work, and I guess I must have dreamed the new pattern, for the next morning I worked it right out. Those leaves is like some that came in a pocketful of grass Mattie fetched me home; one day they were cutting it over in the square, and the man let her take it. I just love the smell o' grass, don't you? And now's I can't get out, Mattie brings me some in her pocket every time she can. I guess she will to-night if they've cut it to-day."

All this time Bird held her basket behind her, but now she wheeled about and rested it on the arm of Tessie's chair. The joy of the child was wonderful, almost startling. Her dark eyes dilated and she looked first at Bird and then at the flowers, as she almost whispered in the excitement of her surprise, "Ye ain't got 'em to keep, have ye?" Then as Bird tipped them into her lap, "They ain't fer me, fer sure?"

"Yes, they are, and I'm going to bring you some every Wednesday," said Bird, joyfully, and then she told about Marion Clarke and the Flower Mission.

"Ain't it jest heavenly to think of,--me with a whole winder to myself that opens out and the crochet to do and real flowers, new ones that ain't been used at all," and Tessie leaned back and closed her eyes in perfect content.

Then suddenly Bird's sorrow seemed to grow lighter and life a little brighter, and the sunlight as it were crept in to sweeten them both--she had something to give away, and lo, it was good.

Tessie was down handling the blossoms again and discovered the berry bouquet beneath. "Oh, but here's growing strawberries on a bush like! Well, I never, never! But they're handsome! Maybe I could make a pattern from them, too. Oh, surely there's angels about somewhere doin' things. You know Father John, he says I've got a Guardian Angel looking out after me, and St. Theresa my name saint chose her, and that everybody has, though for a long spell I didn't know it. You see it's been easier for her to look after me since we've got a room with an opened-out winder. I reckon if I was an angel, I wouldn't care to poke around air-shafts much. Oh, what's these browny-yeller flowers that smell so elegant?" and Tessie held up the wallflowers.

When Bird told their name, Tessie gave a little cry and said, "They're what mother talks about that grew up in the wall below the big house at home where her father was a keeper, and the smell of them came in the cottage windows in the night air right to her, and she's often said she'd cross the sea again to smell them if she had the price, and now she won't have to take that trouble. That angel has found our winder for sure. Would you get me the little pitcher and some water in it yonder?"

The larger of the two rooms, the one with the window, had two clean beds in it, over which a newspaper picture of the Madonna and Child was pinned to the wall, two chairs, and an old bureau, while the smaller room, little more than a closet, held a table, a few dishes, and an oil cooking-stove, all as neat as wax. A pail of water stood on the table, from which Bird filled the pitcher, and set it on a chair by Tessie that she might herself arrange the flowers. Then, remembering that the policeman and Billy were waiting, she picked up her basket and her own flowers, and, promising to come the next week, groped her way downstairs again.

Bird did not see the tired mother, when she returned from her day's scrubbing, enter the dark room and drawing a quick breath say, in an awe-struck voice, "I smell them--I smell the wallflowers! Sure, am I dreaming or dying?" or see the way in which she buried her face in the mass, laughing and crying together, when the lamp was lit and Tessie had told her the how and why of it.

There were dreary days often after this, when her uncle was away on long trips and her aunt was cross, but though Bird did not yet give up all hope of going back some day among her friends, or studying, as she had promised her father, she was learning the lesson of patience, which, after all, is the first and last one to know by heart.