Chapter IV: Part 4

The officer looked suspiciously from one to the other, then consulted his memorandum: "Small, slender woman, yellow hair, gray eyes, answers to name of Mrs. Lura Doring. Left Chicago on June 10."

"When did she get to New York?" asked the officer.

"A week ago to-morrow, on the eleventh," said Floss.

"Then I guess I'll have to take her up," said the officer; "she answers all the requirements. I've got a warrant for her arrest."

"Arrest!" gasped Benson. "What for?"

"For forging her husband's name, and defrauding two hotels in Chicago."

"My husband--" Miss Lucinda staggered to her feet, then, catching sight of the crowd that had collected, she gave a fluttering cry and fainted away in the arms of the law.

* * * * *

When Miss Joe Hill arrived in New York, in answer to an urgent telegram, she went directly to work with her usual executive ability to unravel the mystery. After obtaining the full facts in the case, she was able to make a satisfactory explanation to the officers at headquarters. Then she sent the girls to their respective homes, and turned her full attention upon Miss Lucinda.

"The barber will be here in half an hour to cut your hair," she announced on the eve of their departure for the Catskills.

"You ought not to be so good to me!" sobbed Miss Lucinda, who was lying limply on a couch.

Miss Joe Hill took her hand firmly and said: "Lucinda, error and illness and disorder are man-made perversions. Let the past week be wiped from our memories. Once we are in the mountains we will turn the formative power of our thoughts upon things invisible, and yield ourselves to the higher harmonies."

The next morning, Miss Lucinda, shorn and penitent, was led forth from the scene of her recent profligacy. It was her final exit from a world which for a little space she had loved not wisely but too well.

CUPID GOES SLUMMING

It is a debatable question whether love is a cause or an effect, whether Adam discovered a heart in the recesses of his anatomy before or after the appearance of Eve. In the case of Joe Ridder it was distinctly the former.

At nineteen his knowledge of the tender passion consisted of dynamic impressions received across the footlights at an angle of forty-five degrees. Love was something that hovered with the calcium light about beauty in distress, something that brought the hero from the uttermost parts of the earth to hurl defiance at the villain and clasp the swooning maiden in his arms; it was something that sent a fellow down from his perch in the peanut gallery with his head hot and his hands cold, and a sort of blissful misery rioting in his soul.

Joe lived in what was known by courtesy as Rear Ninth Street. "Rear Ninth Street" has a sound of exclusive aristocracy, and the name was a matter of some pride to the dwellers in the narrow, unpaved alley that writhed its watery way between two rows of tumble-down cottages, Joe's family consisted of his father, whose vocation was plumbing, and whose avocation was driving either in the ambulance or the patrol wagon; his mother, who had discharged her entire debt to society when she bestowed nine healthy young citizens upon it; eight young Ridders, and Joe himself, who had stopped school at twelve to assume the financial responsibilities of a rapidly increasing family.

Lack of time and the limited opportunities of Rear Ninth Street, together with an uncontrollable shyness, had brought Joe to his nineteenth year of broad-shouldered, muscular manhood, with no acquaintance whatever among the girls. But where a shrine is built for Cupid and the tapers are kept burning, the devotee is seldom disappointed.

One morning in October, as Joe was guiding his rickety wheel around the mud puddles on his way to the cooper shops, he saw a new sign on the first cottage after he left the alley--"Mrs. R. Beaver, Modiste & Dress Maker." In the yard and on the steps were a confusion of household effects, and in their midst a girl with a pink shawl over her head.

So absorbed was Joe in open-mouthed wonder over the "Modiste," that he failed to see the girl, until a laughing exclamation made him look up.

"Watch out!"

"What's the matter?" asked Joe, coming to a halt.

"I thought maybe you didn't know your wheels was going 'round!" the girl said audaciously, then fled into the house and slammed the door.

All day at the shops Joe worked as in a trance. Every iron rivet that he drove into a wooden hoop was duly informed of the romantic occurrence of the morning, and as some four thousand rivets are fastened into four thousand hoops in the course of one day, it will be seen that the matter was duly considered. The stray spark from a feminine eye had kindled such a fierce fire in his heart that by the time the six o'clock whistle blew the conflagration threw a rosy glow over the entire landscape.

As he rode home, the girl was sitting on the steps, but she would not look at him. Joe had formulated a definite course of action, and though the utter boldness of it nearly cost him his balance, he adhered to it strictly. When just opposite her gate, without turning his head or his eyes, he lifted his hat, then rode at a furious pace around the corner.

"What you tidying up so fer, Joe?" asked his mother that night; "you goin' out?"

"No," said Joe evasively, as he endeavoured in vain to coax back the shine to an old pair of shoes.

"Well, I'm right glad you ain't. Berney and Dick ain't got up the coal, and there's all them dishes to wash, and the baby she's got a misery in her year."

"Has paw turned up?" asked Joe.

"Yes," answered Mrs. Ridder indifferently. "He looked in 'bout three o'clock. He was tolerable full then, and I 'spec he's been took up by now. He said he was goin' to buy me a bird-cage with a bird in it, but I surely hope he won't. Them white mice he brought me on his last spree chewed a hole in Berney's stocking; besides, I never did care much for birds. Good lands! what are you goin' to wash yer head for?"

Joe was substituting a basin of water for a small girl in the nearest kitchen chair, and a howl ensued.

"Shut up, Lottie!" admonished Mrs. Ridder, "you ain't any too good to set on the floor. It's a good thing this is pay-day, Joe, for the rent's due and four of the children's got their feet on the ground. You paid up the grocery last week, didn't you!"

Joe nodded a dripping head.

"Well, I'll jes' git yer money out of yer coat while I think about it," she went on as she rummaged in his pocket and brought out nine dollars.

"Leave me a quarter," demanded Joe, gasping beneath his soap-suds.

"All right," said Mrs. Ridder accommodatingly; "now that Bob and Ike are gitting fifty cents a day, it ain't so hard to make out. I'll be gittin' a new dress first thing, you know."

"I seen one up at the corner!" said Joe.

"A new dress?"

"Naw, a dressmaker. She's got out her sign."

"What's her name?" asked Mrs. Ridder, keen with interest.

"Mrs. R. Beaver, Modiste," repeated Joe from the sign that floated in letters of gold in his memory.

"I knowed a Mrs. Beaver wunst, up on Eleventh Street--a big, fat woman that got in a fuss with the preacher and smacked his jaws."

"Did she have any children?" asked Joe.

"Seems like there was one, a pretty little tow-headed girl."

"That's her," announced Joe conclusively. "What was her name?"

"Lawsee, I don't know. I never would 'a' ricollected Mrs. Beaver 'cepten she was such a tarnashious woman, always a-tearin' up stumps, and never happy unless she was rippitin' 'bout somethin'. _What_ you want? A needle and thread to mend your coat? Why, what struck you? You been wearin' it that a-way for a month. You better leave it be 'til I git time to fix it."

But Joe had determined to work out the salvation of his own wardrobe. Late in the evening after the family had retired, he sat before the stove with back humped and knees drawn up trying to coax a coarse thread through a small needle. Surely no rich man need have any fear about entering the kingdom of heaven since Joe Ridder managed to get that particular thread through the eye of that particular needle!

But when a boy is put at a work-bench at twelve years of age and does the same thing day in and day out for seven long years, he may have lost all of the things that youth holds dear, but one thing he is apt to have learned, a dogged, plodding, unquestioning patience that shoves silently along at the appointed task until the work is done.

By midnight all the rents were mended and a large new patch adorned each elbow. The patches, to be sure, were blue, and the coat was black, but the stitches were set with mechanical regularity. Joe straightened his aching shoulders and held the garment at arm's length with a smile. It was his first votive offering at the shrine of love.

The effect of Joe's efforts were prompt and satisfactory. The next day being Sunday, he spent the major part of it in passing and repassing the house on the corner, only going home between times to remove the mud from his shoes and give an extra brush to his hair. The girl, meanwhile, was devoting her day to sweeping off the front pavement, a scant three feet of pathway from her steps to the wooden gate. Every time Joe passed she looked up and smiled, and every time she smiled Joe suffered all the symptoms of locomotor ataxia!

By afternoon his emotional nature had reached the saturation point. Without any conscious volition on his part, his feet carried him to the gate and refused to carry him farther. His voice then decided to speak for itself, and in strange, hollow tones he heard himself saying--

"Say, do you wanter go to the show with me?"

"Sure," said the pink fascinator. "When?"

"I don't care," said Joe, too much embarrassed to remember the days of the week.

"To-morrer night?" prompted the girl.

"I don't care," said Joe, and the conversation seeming to lauguish, he moved on.

After countless eons of time the next night arrived. It found Joe and his girl cosily squeezed in between two fat women in the gallery of the People's Theatre. Joe had to sit sideways and double his feet up, but he would willingly have endured a rack of torture for the privilege of looking down on that fluffy, blond pompadour under its large bow, and of receiving the sparkling glances that were flashed up at him from time to time.

"I ain't ever gone with a feller that I didn't know his name before!" she confided before the curtain rose.

"It's Joe," he said, "Joe Ridder, What's your front name?"

"Miss Beaver," she said mischievously. "What do you think it is?"

Joe could not guess.

"Say," she went on, "I knew who you was all right even if I didn't know yer name. I seen you over to the hall when they had the boxin' match."

"The last one?"

"Yes, when you and Ben Schenk was fightin'. Say, you didn't do a thing to him!"

The surest of all antidotes to masculine shyness was not without its immediate effect. Joe straightened his shoulders and smiled complacently.

"Didn't I massacre him?" he said. "That there was a half-Nelson holt I give him. It put him out of business all right, all right. Say, I never knowed you was there!"

"You bet I was," said his companion in honest admiration; "that was when I got stuck on you!"

Before he could fully comprehend the significance of this confession, the curtain rose, and love itself had to make way for the tragic and absorbing career of "The Widowed Bride." By the end of the third act Joe's emotions were so wrought upon by the unhappy fate of the heroine, that he rose abruptly and, muttering something about "gittin' some gum," fled to the rear. When he returned and squeezed his way back to his seat he found "Miss Beaver" with red eyes and a dejected mien.

"What's the matter with you?" he asked banteringly.

"My shoe hurts me," said Miss Beaver evasively.

"What you givin' me?" asked Joe, with fine superiority. "These here kinds of play never hurts my feelin's none. Catch me cryin' at a show!"

But Miss Beaver was too much moved to recover herself at once. She sat in limp dejection and surreptitiously dabbed her eyes with her moist ball of a handkerchief.

Joe was at a loss to know how to meet the situation until his hand, quite by chance, touched hers as it lay on the arm of her chair. He withdrew it as quickly as if he had received an electric shock, but the next moment, like a lodestone following a magnet, it traveled slowly back to hers.

From that time on Joe sat staring straight ahead of him in embarrassed ecstasy, while Miss Beaver, thus comforted, was able to pass through the tragic finale of the last act with remarkable composure.

When the time came to say "Good night" at the Beavers' door, all Joe's reticence and awkwardness returned. He watched her let herself in and waited until she lit a candle. Then he found himself out on the pavement in the dark feeling as if the curtain had gone down on the best show be had ever seen. Suddenly a side window was raised cautiously and he heard his name called softly. He had turned the corner, but he went back to the fence.

"Say!" whispered the voice at the window, "I forgot to tell you--It's Mittie."

The course of true love thus auspiciously started might have flowed on to blissful fulfilment had it not encountered the inevitable barrier in the formidable person of Mrs. Beaver. Not that she disapproved of Mittie receiving attention; on the contrary, it was her oft-repeated boast that "Mittie had been keepin' company with the boys ever since she was six, and she 'spected she'd keep right on till she was sixty." It was not attention in the abstract that she objected to, it was rather the threatening of "a steady," and that steady, the big, awkward, shy Joe Ridder. With serpentine wisdom she instituted a counter-attraction.

Under her skilful manipulation, Ben Schenk, the son of the saloon-keeper, soon developed into a rival suitor. Ben was engaged at a down-town pool-room, and wore collars on a weekday without any apparent discomfort. The style of his garments, together with his easy air of sophistication, entirely captivated Mrs. Beaver, while Ben on his part found it increasingly pleasant to lounge in the Beavers' best parlour chair and recount to a credulous audience the prominent part which he was taking in all the affairs of the day.

Matters reached a climax one night when, after some close financing, Joe Ridder took Mittie to the Skating Rink. An unexpected run on the tin savings bank at the Ridders' had caused a temporary embarrassment, and by the closest calculation Joe could do no better than pay for two entrance-tickets and hire one pair of skates. He therefore found it necessary to develop a sprained ankle, which grew rapidly worse as they neared the rink.

"I don't think you orter skate on it, Joe!" said Mittie sympathetically.

"Oh, I reckon I kin manage it all O.K.," said Joe.

"But I ain't agoin' to let you!" she declared with divine authority. "We can just set down and rubber at the rest of them."

"Naw, you don't," said Joe; "you kin go on an' skate, and I'll watch you."

The arrangement proved entirely satisfactory so long as Mittie paused on every other round to rest or to get him to adjust a strap, or to hold her hat, but when Ben Schenk arrived on the scene, the situation was materially changed.

It was sufficiently irritating to see Ben go through an exhaustive exhibition of his accomplishments under the admiring glances of Mittie, but when he condescended to ask her to skate, and even offered to teach her some new figures, Joe's irritation rose to ire. In vain he tried to catch her eye; she was laughing and clinging to Ben and giving all her attention to his instructions.

Joe sat sullen and indignant, savagely biting his nails. He would have parted with everything he had in the world at that moment for three paltry nickels!

On and on went the skaters, and on and on went the music, and Joe turned his face to the wall and doggedly waited. When at last Mittie came to him flushed and radiant, he had no word of greeting for her.

"Did you see all the new steps Mr. Ben learnt me?" she asked.

"Naw," said Joe.

"Does yer foot hurt you, Joe?"

"Naw," said Joe.

Mittie was too versed in masculine moods to press the subject. She waited until they were out under the starlight in the clear stretch of common near home. Then she slipped her hand through his arm and said coaxingly--

"Say now, Joe, what you kickin' 'bout?"

"Him," said Joe comprehensively.

"Mr. Ben? Why, he's one of our best friends. Maw likes him better'n anybody I ever kept company with. What have all you fellers got against him?"

"He was black marveled at the hall all right," said Joe grimly.

"What for?"

"It ain't none of my business to tell what for," said Joe, though his lips ached to tell what he knew.

"Maw says all you fellows are jealous 'cause he talks so pretty and wears such stylish clothes."

"We might, too, if we got 'em like he done," Joe began, then checked himself. "Say, Mittie, why don't yer maw like me?"

"She says you haven't got any school education and don't talk good grammar."

"Don't I talk good grammar?" asked Joe anxiously.

"I don't know," said Mittie; "that's what she says. How long did you go to school?"

"Me? Oh, off and on 'bout two year. The old man was always poorly, and Maw, she had to work out, till me an' the boys done got big enough to work. 'Fore that I had to stay home and mind the kids. Don't I talk like other fellers, Mittie?"

"You talk better than some," said Mittie loyally.

After he left her, Joe reviewed the matter carefully. He thought of the few educated people he knew--the boss at the shops, the preacher up on Twelfth Street, the doctor who sewed up his head after he stopped a runaway team, even Ben Schenk, who had gone through the eighth grade. Yes, there was a difference. Being clean and wearing good clothes were not the only things.

When he got home, he tiptoed into the front room, and picking his way around the various beds and pallets, took Berney's school satchel from the top of the wardrobe. Retracing his steps, he returned to the kitchen, and with his hat still on and his coat collar turned up, he began to take an inventory of his mental stock.

One after another of the dog-eared, grimy books he pondered over, and one after another he laid aside, with a puzzled, distressed look deepening in his face.

"Berney she ain't but fourteen an' she gits on to 'em," he said to himself; "looks like I orter."

Once more he seized the nearest book, and with the courage of despair repeated the sentences again and again to himself.

"That you, Joe?" asked Mrs. Ridder from the next room an hour later. "I didn't know you'd come. Yer paw sent word by old man Jackson that he was at Hank's Exchange way down on Market Street, and fer you to come git him."

"It's twelve o'clock," remonstrated Joe.

"I know it," said Mrs. Ridder, yawning, "but I reckon you better go. The old man always gits the rheumatiz when he lays out all night, and that there rheumatiz medicine cost sixty-five cents a bottle!"

"All right," said Joe with a resignation born of experience, "but don't you go and put no more of the kids in my bed. Jack and Gus kick the stuffin' out of me now."

And with this parting injunction he went wearily out into the night, giving up his struggle with Minerva, only to begin the next round with Bacchus.

The seeds of ambition, though sown late, grew steadily, and Joe became so desirous of proving worthy of the consideration of Mrs. Beaver that he took the boss of the shops partially into his confidence.

"It's a first-rate idea, Joe," said the boss, a big, capable fellow who had worked his way up from the bottom. "I could move you right along the line if you had a better education. I have a good offer up in Chicago next year; if you can get more book sense in your head, I will take you along."

"Where can I get it at?" asked Joe, somewhat dubious of his own power of achievement.

"Night school," said the boss. "I know a man that teaches in the Settlement over on Burk Street. I'll put you in there if you like."

Now, the prospect of going to school to a man who had been head of a family for seven years, who had been the champion scrapper of the South End, who was in the midst of a critical love affair, was trebly humiliating. But Joe was game, and while he determined to keep the matter as secret as possible, he agreed to the boss's proposition.

"You're mighty stingy with yourself these days!" said Mittie Beaver one night a month later, when he stopped on his way to school.

Joe grinned somewhat foolishly. "I come every evenin'," he said.

"For 'bout ten minutes," said Mittie, with a toss of her voluminous pompadour; "there's some wants more'n ten minutes."

"Ben Schenk?" asked Joe, alert with jealousy.

"I ain't sayin'," went on Mittie. "What do you do of nights, hang around the hall?"

"Naw," said Joe indignantly. "There ain't nobody can say they've sawn me around the hall sence I've went with you!"

"Well, where do you go?"

"I'm trainin'," said Joe evasively.

"I don't believe you like me as much as you used to," said Mittie plaintively.

Joe looked at her dumbly. His one thought from the time he cooked his own early breakfast, down to the moment when he undressed in the cold and dropped into his place in bed between Gussie and Dick, was of her. The love of her made his back stop aching as he bent hour after hour over the machine; it made all the problems and hard words and new ideas at night school come straight at last; it made the whole sordid, ugly day swing round the glorious ten minutes that they spent together in the twilight.

"Yes, I like you all right," he said, twisting his big, grease-stained hands in embarrassment. "You're the onliest girl I ever could care about. Besides, I couldn't go with no other girl if I wanted to, 'cause I don't know none."

Is it small wonder that Ben Schenk's glib protestations, reinforced by Mrs. Beaver's own zealous approval, should have in time outclassed the humble Joe? The blow fell just when the second term of night school was over, and Joe was looking forward to long summer evenings of unlimited joy.

He had bought two tickets for a river excursion, and was hurrying into the Beavers' when he encountered a stolid bulwark in the form of Mrs. Beaver, whose portly person seemed permanently wedged into the narrow aperture of the front door. She sat in silent majesty, her hands just succeeding in clasping each other around her ample waist. Had she closed her eyes, she might have passed for a placid, amiable person, whose angles of disposition had also become curves. But Mrs. Beaver did not close her eyes. She opened them as widely as the geography of her face would permit, and coldly surveyed Joe Ridder.

Mrs. Beaver was a born manager; she had managed her husband into an untimely grave, she had managed her daughter from the hour she was born, she had dismissed three preachers, induced two women to leave their husbands, and now dogmatically announced herself arbiter of fashions and conduct in Rear Ninth Street.

"No, she can't see you," she said firmly in reply to Joe's question. "She's going out to a dance party with Mr. Schenk."

"Where at?" demanded Joe, who still trembled in her presence.

"Somewheres down town," said Mrs. Beaver, "to a real swell party."

"He oughtn't to take her to no down-town dance," said Joe, his indignation getting the better of his shyness. "I don't want her to go, and I'm going to tell her so."

"In-deed!" said Mrs. Beaver in scorn. "And what have you got to say about it? I guess Mr. Schenk's got the right to take her anywhere he wants to!"

"What right?" demanded Joe, getting suddenly a bit dizzy.

"'Cause he's got engaged to her. He's going to give her a real handsome turquoise ring, fourteen-carat gold."

"Didn't Mittie send me no word?" faltered Joe.

"No," said Mrs. Beaver unhesitatingly, though she had in her pocket a note for him from the unhappy Mittie.

Joe fumbled for his hat. "I guess I better be goin'," he said, a lump rising ominously in his throat. He got the gate open and made his way half dazed around the corner. As he did so, he saw a procession of small Ridders bearing joyously down upon him.

"Joe!" shrieked Lottie, arriving first, "Maw says hurry on home; we got another new baby to our house."

During the weeks that followed, Rear Ninth Street was greatly thrilled over the unusual event of a home wedding. The reticence of the groom was more than made up for by the bulletins of news issued daily by Mrs. Beaver. To use that worthy lady's own words, "she was in her elements!" She organised various committees--on decoration, on refreshment, and even on the bride's trousseau, tactfully permitting each assistant to contribute in some way to the general grandeur of the occasion.

"I am going to have this a real showy wedding," she said from her point of vantage by the parlour window, where she sat like a field-marshal and issued her orders. "Those paper fringes want to go clean across every one of the shelves, and you all must make enough paper roses to pin 'round the edges of all the curtains. Ever'thing's got to look gay and festive."

"Mittie don't look very gay," ventured one of the assistants. "I seen her in the kitchen cryin' a minute ago."

"Mittie's a fool!" announced Mrs. Beaver calmly. "She don't know a good thing when she sees it! Get them draperies up a little higher in the middle; I'm going to hang a silver horseshoe on to the loop."

The wedding night arrived, and the Beaver cottage was filled to suffocation with the _elite_ of Rear Ninth Street. The guests found it difficult to circulate freely in the room on account of the elaborate and aggressive decorations, so they stood in silent rows awaiting the approaching ceremony. As the appointed hour drew near, and none of the groom's family arrived, a few whispered comments were exchanged.

"It's 'most time to begin," whispered the preacher to Mrs. Beaver, whose keen black eyes had been watching the door with growing impatience.

"Well, we won't wait on nobody," she said positively, as she rose and left the room to give the signal.

In the kitchen she found great consternation: the bride, pale and dejected in all her finery, sat on the table, all the chairs being in the parlour.

"What's the matter?" demanded Mrs. Beaver.

"He ain't come!" announced one of the women in tragic tones.

"Ben Schenk ain't here?" asked Mrs. Beaver in accents so awful that her listeners quaked. "Well, I'll see the reason why!"

Out into the night she sallied, picking her way around the puddles until she reached the saloon at the corner.

"Where's Ben Schenk?" she demanded sternly of the men around the bar.

There was an ominous silence, broken only by the embarrassed shuffling of feet.

Drawing herself up, Mrs. Beaver thumped the counter.

"Where's he at?" she repeated, glaring at the most embarrassed of the lot.

"He don't know where he's at," said the man. "I rickon he cilebrated a little too much fer the weddin'."

"Can he stand up?" demanded Mrs. Beaver.

"Not without starchin'," said the man, and amid the titter that followed, Mrs. Beaver made her exit.

On the corner she paused to reconnoitre. Across the street was her gaily lighted cottage, where all the guests were waiting. She thought of the ignominy that would follow their abrupt dismissal, she thought of the refreshments that must be used to-night or never, she thought of the little bride sitting disconsolate on the kitchen table.

With a sudden determination she decided to lead a forlorn hope. Facing about, she marched weightily around to the rear of the saloon and began laboriously to climb the steps that lead to the hall. At the door she paused and made a rapid survey of the room until she found what she was looking for.

"Joe Ridder!" she called peremptorily.

Joe, haggard and listless, put down his billiard-cue and came to the door.

Five minutes later a breathless figure presented himself at the Beaver kitchen. He had on a clean shirt and his Sunday clothes, and while he wore no collar, a clean handkerchief was neatly pinned about his neck.

"Everybody but the bride and groom come into the parlour," commanded Mrs. Beaver. "I'm a-going to make a speech, and tell 'em that the bride has done changed her mind."

Joe and Mittie, left alone, looked at each other in dazed rapture. She was the first to recover.

"Joe!" she cried, moving timidly towards him, "ain't you mad? Do you still want me?"

Joe, with both hands entangled in her veil and his feet lost in her train, looked down at her through swimming eyes.

"Want yer?" he repeated, and his lips trembled, "gee whiz! I feel like I done ribbeted a hoop round the hull world!"

The signal was given for them to enter the parlour, and without further interruption the ceremony proceeded, if not in exact accordance with the plans of Mrs. Beaver, at least in obedience to the mandate of a certain little autocrat who sometimes takes a hand in the affairs of man even in Rear Ninth Street.

THE SOUL OF O SANA SAN

O Sana San stood in the heart of a joyous world, as much a part of the radiant, throbbing, irresponsible spring as the golden butterfly which fluttered in her hand. Through the close-stemmed bamboos she could see the sparkling river racing away to the Inland Sea, while slow-moving junks, with their sixfold sails, glided with almost imperceptible motion toward a far-distant port. From below, across the rice-fields, came the shouts and laughter of naked bronze babies who played at the water's edge, and from above, high up on the ferny cliff, a mellow-throated temple bell answered the call of each vagrant breeze. Far away, shutting out the strange, big world, the luminous mountains hung in the purple mists of May.

And every note of color in the varied landscape, from the purple irises whose royal reflection stained the water below, to the rosy-tipped clover at the foot of the hill, was repeated in the kimono and _obi_ of the child who flitted about in the grasses, catching butterflies in her long-handled net.

It was in the days of the Japanese-Russian War, but the constant echo of the great conflict that sounded around her disturbed her no more than it did the birds overhead. All day long the bugles sounded from the parade-grounds, and always and always the soldiers went marching away to the front. Around the bend in the river were miniature fortifications where recruits learned to make forts and trenches, and to shoot through tiny holes in a wall at imaginary Russian troopers. Down in the town below were long white hospitals where twenty thousand sick and wounded soldiers lay. No thought of the horror of it came to trouble O Sana San. The cherry-trees gladly and freely gave up their blossoms to the wind, and so much the country give up its men for the Emperor. Her father had marched away, then one brother, then another, and she had held up her hands and shouted, "Banzai!" and smiled because her mother smiled. Everything was vague and uncertain, and no imagined catastrophe troubled her serenity. It was all the will of the Emperor, and it was well.

Life was a very simple matter to O Sana San. She rose when the sun climbed over the mountain, bathed her face and hands in the shallow copper basin in the garden, ate her breakfast of bean-curd and pickled fish and warm yellow tea. Then she hung the quilts over poles to sun, dusted the screens, and placed an offering of rice on the steps of the tiny shrine to Inari, where the little foxes kept guard. These simple duties being accomplished, she tied a bit of bean-cake in her gaily colored handkerchief, and stepping into her _geta_, went pattering off to school.

It was an English school, where she sat with hands folded through the long mornings, passively permitting the lessons to filter through her brain, and listening in smiling patience while the kind foreign ladies spoke incomprehensible things. Sometimes she helped pass the hours by watching the shadows of the dancing leaves outside; sometimes she told herself stories about "The Old Man Who Made Withered Trees to Blossom," or about "Momotaro, the Little Peach Boy." Again she would repeat the strange English words and phrases that she heard, and would puzzle out their meaning.

But the sum of her lore consisted in being happy; and when the shadow of the mountains began to slip across the valley, she would dance back along the homeward way, singing with the birds, laughing with the rippling water, and adding her share of brightness to the sunshine of the world.

As she stood on this particular morning with her net poised over a butterfly, she heard the tramping of many feet. A slow cavalcade was coming around the road,--a long line of coolies bearing bamboo stretchers,--and in the rear, in a jinrikisha, was a foreign man with a red cross on his sleeve.

O Sana San scrambled up the bank and watched with smiling curiosity as the men halted to rest. On the stretcher nearest her lay a young Russian prisoner with the fair skin and blond hair that are so unfamiliar to Japanese eyes. His blanket was drawn tight around his shoulders, and he lay very still, with lips set, gazing straight up through the bamboo leaves to the blue beyond.

Then it was that O Sana San, gazing in frank inquisitiveness at the soldier, saw a strange thing happen. A tear formed on his lashes and trickled slowly across his temple; then another and another, until they formed a tiny rivulet. More and more curious, she drew yet nearer, and watched the tears creep unheeded down the man's face. She was sure he was not crying, because soldiers never cry; it could not be the pain, because his face was very smooth and calm. What made the tears drop, drop on the hard pillow, and why did he not brush them away?

A vague trouble dawned in the breast of O Sana San. Running back to the field, she gathered a handful of wild flowers and returned to the soldier. The tears no longer fell, but his lips quivered and his face was distorted with pain. She looked about her in dismay. The coolies were down by the river, drinking from their hands and calling to one another; the only person to whom she could appeal was the foreigner with the red cross on his arm who was adjusting a bandage for a patient at the end of the line.

With halting steps and many misgivings, she timidly made her way to his side; then placing her hands on her knees, she bowed low before him. The embarrassment of speaking to a stranger and a foreigner almost overwhelmed her, but she mustered her bravest array of English, and pointing to the stretcher, faltered out her message:

"Soldier not happy very much is. I sink soldier heart sorry."

The Red Cross orderly looked up from his work, and his eyes followed her gesture.

"He is hurt bad," he said shortly; "no legs, no arms."

"_So--deska_?" she said politely, then repeated his words in puzzled incomprehension: "Nowarms? Nowarms?"

When she returned to the soldier she gathered up the flowers which she had dropped by the wayside, and timidly offered them to him. For a long moment she waited, then her smile faded mid her hand dropped. With a child's quick sensitiveness to rebuff, she was turning away when an exclamation recalled her.

The prisoner was looking at her in a strange, distressed way; his deep-set gray eyes glanced down first at one bandaged shoulder, then at the other, then he shook his head.

As O Sana San followed his glance, a startled look of comprehension sprang into her face. "Nowarms!" she repeated softly as the meaning dawned upon her, then with a little cry of sympathy she ran forward and gently laid her flowers on his breast.

The cavalcade moved on, under the warm spring sun, over the smooth white road, under the arching cryptomerias; but little O Sana Sun stood with her butterfly net over her shoulder and watched it with troubled eyes. A dreadful something was stirring in her breast, something clutched at her throat, and she no longer saw the sunshine and the flowers. Kneeling by the roadside, she loosened the little basket which was tied to her _obi_ and gently lifted the lid. Slowly at first, and then with eager wings, a dozen captive butterflies fluttered back to freedom.

* * * * *

Along the banks of the Upper Flowing River, in a rudely improvised hospital, lay the wounded Russian prisoners. To one of the small rooms at the end of the ward reserved for fatally wounded patients a self-appointed nurse came daily, and rendered her tiny service in the only way she knew.

O Sana San's heart had been so wrought upon by the sad plight of her soldier friend that she had begged to be taken to see him and to be allowed to carry him flowers with her own hand. Her mother, in whom smoldered the fires of dead samurai, was quick to be gracious to a fallen foe, and it was with her consent that O Sana San went day after day to the hospital.

The nurses humored her childish whim, thinking each day would be the last; but as the days grew into weeks and the weeks into months, her visits became a matter of course.

And the young Russian, lying on his rack of pain, learned to watch for her coming as the one hour of brightness in an interminable night of gloom. He made a sort of sun-dial of the cracks in the floor, and when the shadows reached a certain spot his tired eyes grew eager, and he turned his head to listen for the patter of the little _tabi_ that was sure to sound along the hall.

Sometimes she would bring her picture-books and read him wonderful stories in words he did not understand, and show him the pictures of Momotaro, who was born out of a peach and who grew up to be so strong and brave that he went to the Ogres' Island and carried off all their treasures,--caps and coats that made their wearers invisible, jewels which made the tide come or go, coral and amber and tortoise-shell,--and all these things the little Peach Boy took back to his kind old foster mother and father, and they all lived happily forever after. And in the telling O Sana Man's voice would thrill, and her almond eyes grow bright, while her slender brown finger pointed out the figures on the gaily colored pages.

Sometimes she would sing to him, in soft minor strains, of the beauty of the snow on the pine-trees, or the wonders of Fuji-San.

And he would pucker his white lips and try to whistle the accompaniment, to her great amusement and delight.

Many were the treasures she brought forth from the depths of her long sleeves, and many were the devices she contrived to amuse him. The most ambitious achievement was a miniature garden in a wooden box--a wonderful garden where grasses stood for tall bamboo, and a saucer of water, surrounded by moss and pebbles, made a shining lake across which a bridge led through a _torii_ to a diminutive shrine above.

He would watch her deft fingers fashioning the minute objects, and listen to her endless prattle in her soft, unknown tongue, and for a little space the pain-racked body would relax and the cruel furrows vanish from between his brows.

But there were days in which the story and the song and the play had no part. At such times O Sana San slipped in on tiptoe and took her place at the head of the cot where he could not see her. Sitting on her heels, with hand folded in hand, she watched patiently for hours, alert to adjust the covers or smooth the pillow, but turning her eyes away when the spasms of pain contorted his face. All the latent maternity in the child rose to succor his helplessness. The same instinct that had prompted her to strap her doll upon her back when yet a mere baby herself, made her accept the burden of his suffering, and mother him with a very passion of tenderness.

Longer and sultrier grew the days; the wistaria, hanging in feathery festoons from many a trellis, gave way to the flaming azalea, and the azalea in turn vanished with the coming of the lotus that floated sleepily in the old castle moat.

Still the soul of the young Russian was held a prisoner in his shattered body, and the spirit in him grew restive at the delay. Months passed before the doctor told him his release was at hand. It was early in the morning, and the sun fell in long, level rays across his cot. He turned his head and looked wistfully at the distance it would have to travel before it would be afternoon.

The nurse brought the screen and placed it about the bed--the last service she could render. For hours the end was expected, but moment by moment he held death at bay, refusing to accept the freedom that he so earnestly longed for. At noon the sky became overcast and the slow falling of rain was heard on the low wooden roof. But still his fervent eyes watched the sun-dial.

At last the sound of _geta_ was heard without, and in a moment O Sana San slipped past the screen and dropped on her knees beside him. Under one arm was tightly held a small white kitten, her final offering at the shrine of love.

When he saw her quaint little figure, a look of peace came over his face and he closed his eyes. An interpreter, knowing that a prisoner was about to die, came to the bedside and asked if he wanted to leave any message. He stirred slightly then, in a scarcely audible voice, asked in Russian what the Japanese word was for "good-by." A long pause followed, during which the spirit seemed to hover irresolute upon the brink of eternity.

O Sana San sat motionless, her lips parted, her face full of the awe and mystery of death. Presently he stirred and turned his head slowly until his eyes were on a level with her own.

"_Sayonara_," he whispered faintly, and tried to smile; and O Sana San, summoning all her courage to restrain the tears, smiled bravely back and whispered, "Sayonara."

It was scarcely said before the spirit of the prisoner started forth upon his final journey, but he went not alone. The soul of a child went with him, leaving in its place the tender, newborn soul of a woman.