Chapter III: Part 3

For Ardelia was growing ghastly pale before them; her eyes turned inward, her lips tightened. A blinding horror surged from her toes upward, and the memory of the liquid ice-cream and the frying onions faded before the awful reality of her present agony.

Later, as she lay limp and white on the slippery hair-cloth sofa in Mrs. Slater’s musty parlor, she heard them discussing her situation.

“There was a lot of Fresh Air children over at Mis’ Simms’s,” her hostess explained, “and they ’most all of ’em said the milk was too strong—did you ever! Two or three of ’em was sick, like this one, but they got to love it in a little while. She will, too.”

Ardelia shook her head feebly. She had learned her lesson. If success, as we are told, consists not in omitting to make mistakes, but in omitting to make the same one twice, Ardelia’s treatment of the milk question was eminently successful.

After a while Miss Forsythe went away, and at her urgent suggestion Ardelia came out and sat on the porch under the shade of a black umbrella. She sat motionless, staring into the grass, lost in the rapture of content that follows such a crisis as her recent misery, forgetful of all her earthly woes in the blessed certainty of her present calm. In a few minutes she was asleep.

When she awoke she was in a strange place. Outside the umbrella all was dusk and shadow. Only a square white mist filled the place of the barn, the tall trees loomed vaguely toward the dark sky, the stars were few. As she gazed in half-terror about her, a strange jangling came nearer and nearer, and a great animal with swinging sides, panting terribly, ran clumsily by, followed by a bare-legged boy, whose thudding feet sounded loud on the beaten path. Ardelia shrank against the wall with a cry that brought Mrs. Slater to her side.

“There, there, Delia, it’s only a cow. She won’t hurt you. She gives the milk—” Ardelia shuddered—“and the butter, too. Here’s some bread and butter for you. We’ve had our supper, but I thought the sleep would do you more good.”

Still shaken by the shock of that panting, hairy beast, Ardelia put out her hand for the bread and butter, and ate it greedily. Then she stretched her cramped limbs and looked over the umbrella. On the porch sat a bearded man in shirt-sleeves and stocking feet, his head thrown back against his chair, his mouth open. He snored audibly. Tipped back in another chair, his feet raised and pressed against one of the supports of the porch roof, sat a younger man. He was not asleep, for he was smoking a pipe, but he was as motionless as the other. Curled up on the steps was the boy who had brought them from the station. Occasionally he patted a mongrel collie beside him, and yawning, stretched himself, but he did not speak.

“That’s Mr. Slater,” said the woman softly, “and the young man is my oldest son, William. Henry brought you up with the team. They’re out in the field all day, and they get pretty tired. It gets nice an’ cool out here by evenin’, don’t it?”

She leaned back and rocked silently to and fro, and Ardelia waited for the events of the evening. There were none. She wondered why the gas was not lit in all that shadowy darkness, why the people didn’t come along. She felt scared and lonely. Now that her stomach was filled, and her nerves refreshed by her long sleep, she was in a condition to realize that aside from all bodily discomfort she was sad—very sad. A new, unknown depression weighed her down. It grew steadily, something was happening, something constant and mournful—what? Suddenly she knew. It was a steady, recurrent noise, a buzzing, monotonous click. Now it rose, now it fell, accentuating the silence dense about it.

“_Zig-a-zig! Zig-a-zig!_” then a rest.

“_Zig-a-zig! Zig-a-zig-a-zig!_”

She looked restlessly at Mrs. Slater. “Wha’s ’at?” she said.

“That? Oh, those are katydids. I s’pose you never heard ’em, that’s a fact. Kind o’ cozy, I think. Don’t you like ’em?”

“Naw,” said Ardelia.

Another long silence intervened. The rocking-chair swayed back and forth, and Mr. Slater snored. Little bright eyes glowed and disappeared, now high, now low, against the dark. It will never be known whether Ardelia thought them defective gaslights or the flashing, changing electric signs that add color to the night advertisements of her native city, for contrary to all fictional precedent, she did not inquire with interest what they were. She did not care, in fact.

After half an hour of the katydids William spoke.

“Nick Damon’s helpin’ in the south lot t’day,” he observed.

“Was he?” asked his mother, pausing a moment in her rocking.

“Yep.”

Again he smoked, and the monotonous clamor was uninterrupted.

“_Zig-a-zig! Zig-zig! Zig-a-zig-a-zig!_”

Slowly, against the background of this machine-like clicking, there grew other sounds, weird, unhappy, far away.

“_Wheep, wheep, wheep!_”

This was a high, thin crying.

“_Buroom! Brrroom! broom!_”

This was low and resonant and solemn. Ardelia scowled.

“Wha’s ’at?” she asked again.

“That’s the frogs. Bull-frogs and peepers. Never heard them, either, did ye? Well, that’s what they are.”

William took his pipe out of his mouth.

“Come here, sissy, ’n I’ll tell y’ a story,” he said lazily.

Ardelia obeyed, and glancing timorously at the shadows, slipped around to his side.

“Onc’t they was an ol’ feller comin’ ’long cross-lots, late at night, an’ he come to a pond, an’ he kinder stopped up an’ says to himself, ’Wonder how deep th’ ol’ pond is, anyhow?’ He was just a leetle—well, he’d had a drop too much, y’ see——”

“Had a what?” interrupted Ardelia.

“He was sort o’ rollin’ ’round—he didn’t know just what he _was_ doin’——”

“Oh! Jagged!” said Ardelia comprehendingly.

“I guess so. An’ he heard a voice singin’ out, ’Knee _deep_! Knee _deep_! Knee _deep_!’”

William gave a startling imitation of the peepers: his voice was a high, shrill wail.

“’Oh, well,’ s’ he, ‘’f it’s just knee deep I’ll wade through,’ an’ he starts in.

“Just then he hears a big feller singin’ out, ‘Better go _rrrround_! Better go _rrround! better-goround_!’”

William rolled out a vibrating bass note that startled the bull-frogs themselves.

“’Lord!’ says he, ‘is it s’deep’s that? Well, I’ll go round, then.’ ’N’ off he starts to walk around.

“’_Knee deep! Knee deep! Knee deep!_’ says the peepers.

“An’ there it was. Soon’s he’d start to do one thing, they’d tell him another. Make up his mind he couldn’t, so he stands there still, they do say, askin’ ’em every night which he better do.”

“Stands where?” Ardelia looked fearfully behind her.

“Oh, I d’know. Out in that swamp, mebbe.”

Again he smoked, and the younger boy chuckled.

Time passed by. To Ardelia it might have been minutes, hours, or generations. An unspeakable boredom, an _ennui_ that struck to the roots of her soul, possessed her. Her muscles twitched from nervousness. Her feet ached and burned in the stiff boots.

Suddenly Mr. Slater coughed and arose. “Well, guess I’ll be gettin’ to bed,” he said. “Come on, boys. Hello, little girl! Come to visit with us, hey? Mind you don’t pick poison vine.”

He shuffled into the house, and the boys followed him in silence. Mrs. Slater led Ardelia upstairs into a little hot room, and told her to get into bed quick, for the lamp drew the mosquitoes.

Ardelia kicked off her shoes and approached the bed distrustfully. It sank down with her weight and smelled hot and queer. Rolling off, she stretched herself on the floor, and lay there disconsolately. Sharp, quick stabs from the swarming mosquitoes stung her to rage; she tossed about, slapping at them with exclamations that would have shocked Mrs. Slater. The eternal chatter of the katydids maddened her. She could not sleep. Across the swamp came the wail of the peepers.

“_Knee deep! Knee deep! Knee deep!_”

At home the hurdy-gurdy was playing, the women were gossiping on every step, the lights were everywhere—the blessed fearless gaslights—the little girls were dancing in the breeze that drew in from the East River, Old Dutchy was giving Maggie Kelly an olive;—Ardelia slapped viciously at a mosquito on her hot cheek, heard a great June bug flopping into the room through the loosely waving netting, and burst into tears of pain and fright, wrapping her head tightly in her gingham skirt.

In the morning Miss Forsythe came over to inquire after her charge’s health, accompanied by another young lady.

“How do you do, my dear?” said the new lady kindly. “How terribly the mosquitoes have stung you! What makes you stay in the house, and miss the beautiful fresh air? See that great plot of daisies—does she know that she can pick all she wants, poor little thing? I suppose she never had a chance! Come out with me, Ardelia, and let’s see which can pick the biggest bunch.”

And Ardelia, fortified by ham and eggs, went stolidly forth into the grass and silently attacked the daisies.

In the middle of her bunch the new young lady paused. “Why, Ethel, she isn’t barefoot!” she cried. “Come here, Ardelia, and take off your shoes and stockings directly. Shoes and stockings in the country! _Now_ you’ll know what comfort is,” as she unlaced the boots rapidly on the porch.

“Oh, she’s been barefoot in the city,” explained Miss Forsythe, “but this will be different, of course.”

And so it was, but not in the sense she intended. To patter about bare-legged on the clear, safe pavement, was one thing; to venture unprotected into that waving, tripping tangle was another. She stepped cautiously upon the short grass near the house, and with jaw set and narrowed lids felt her way into the higher growth. The ladies clapped their hands at her happiness and freedom. Suddenly she stopped, she shrieked, she clawed the air with outspread fingers. Her face was gray with terror.

“Oh, gee! Oh, gee!” she screamed.

“What is it, Ardelia, what is it?” they cried lifting up their skirts in sympathy, “a snake?”

Mrs. Slater rushed out, seized Ardelia, half rigid with fear, and carried her to the porch. They elicited from her as she sat with her feet tucked under her and one hand convulsively clutching Mrs. Slater’s apron that something had rustled by her “down at the bottom,” that it was slippery, that she had stepped on it, and wanted to go home.

“Toad,” explained Mrs. Slater briefly. “Only a little hop-toad, Delia, that wouldn’t harm a baby, let alone a big girl nine years old, like you.”

But Ardelia, chattering with nervousness, wept for her shoes, and sat high and dry in a rocking-chair for the rest of the morning.

“She’s a queer child,” Mrs. Slater confided to the young ladies. “Not a drop of anything will she drink but cold tea. It don’t seem reasonable to give it to her all day, and I won’t do it, so she has to wait till meals. She makes a face if I say milk, and the water tastes slippery, she says, and salty-like. She won’t touch it. I tell her its good well water, but she just shakes her head. She’s stubborn’s a bronze mule, that child. Just mopes around. ’S morning she asked me when did the parades go by. I told her there wa’n’t any but the circus, an’ that had been already. I tried to cheer her up, sort of, with that Fresh Air picnic of yours to-morrow, Miss Forsythe, and s’she, ‘Oh, the Dago picnic,’ s’she, ‘will they have Tony’s band?’

“She don’t seem to take any int’rest in th’ farm, like those Fresh Air children, either. I showed her the hens an’ the eggs, an’ she said it was a lie about the hens layin’ ’em. ‘What d’you take me for?’ s’she. The idea! Then Henry milked the cow, to show her—she wouldn’t believe that, either—and with the milk streamin’ down before her, what do you s’pose she said? ‘You put it in!’ s’she. I never should ’a’ believed that, Miss Forsythe, if I hadn’t heard it.”

“Oh, she’ll get over it,” said Miss Forsythe easily, “just wait a few days. Good-by, Ardelia, eat a good supper.”

But this Ardelia did not do. She gazed fascinated at Mr. Slater, who loaded his fork with cold green peas, shot them into his mouth, and before disposing of them ultimately added to them half a slice of rye bread and a great gulp of tea in one breath, repeating this operation at regular intervals in voracious silence. She regarded William, who consumed eight large molasses cookies and three glasses of frothy milk, as a mere afterthought to the meal, gulping furiously. He never spoke. Henry she dared not look at, for he burst into laughter whenever she did, and cried out, “You put it in! You put it in!” which irritated her exceedingly. But she knew that he was biting great round bites out of countless slices of buttered bread, and in utter silence. Now Ardelia had never in her life eaten in silence. Mrs. Fahey, when eating, gossiped and fought alternately with Mr. Fahey’s old, half-blind mother; her son Danny, in a state of chronic dismissal from his various “jobs,” sang, whistled and performed clog dances under the table during the meal; their neighbor across the narrow hall shrieked her comments, friendly or otherwise; and all around and above and below resounded the busy noise of the crowded, clattering city street. It was the breath in her nostrils, the excitement of her nervous little life, and this cold-blooded stoking took away her appetite, never large.

Through the open door the buzz of the katydids was beginning tentatively. In the intervals of William’s gulps a faint bass note warned them from the swamp:

“_Better go rrround! Better go round!_”

Mrs. Slater filled their plates in silence. Henry slapped a mosquito and chuckled interiorly at some reminiscence. A cow-bell jangled sadly out of the gathering dusk.

Ardelia’s nerves strained and snapped. Her eyes grew wild.

“Fer Gawd’s sake, _talk_!” she cried sharply. “Are youse dumbies?”

❦

The morning dawned fresh and fair; the trees and the brown turf smelled sweet, the homely barnyard noises brought a smile to Miss Forsythe’s sympathetic face, as she waited for Ardelia to join her in a drive to the station. But Ardelia did not smile. Her eyes ached with the great green glare, the strange scattered objects, the long unaccustomed vistas. Her cramped feet wearied for the smooth pavements, her ears hungered for the dear familiar din. She scowled at the winding, empty road; she shrieked at the passing oxen.

At the station Miss Forsythe shook her limp little hand.

“Good-by, dear,” she said. “I’ll bring the other little children back with me. You’ll enjoy that. Good-by.”

“I’m comin’, too,” said Ardelia.

“Why—no, dear—you wait for us. You’d only turn around and come right back, you know,” urged Miss Forsythe, secretly touched by this devotion to herself.

“Come back nothin’,” said Ardelia doggedly. “I’m goin’ home.”

“Why—why, Ardelia! Don’t you really like it?”

“Naw, it’s too hot.”

Miss Forsythe stared.

“But Ardelia, you don’t want to go back to that horrible smelly street? Not truly?”

“Betcher life I do!” said Ardelia.

The train steamed in; Miss Forsythe mounted the steps uneasily, Ardelia clinging to her hand.

“It’s so lovely and quiet,” the young lady pleaded.

Ardelia shuddered. Again she seemed to hear that fiendish, mournful wailing:

“_Knee deep! Knee deep! Knee deep!_”

“It smells so good, Ardelia! All the green things!”

Good! that hot, rustling breeze of noonday, that damp and empty evening wind!

They rode in silence. But the jar and jolt of the engine made music in Ardelia’s ears; the crying of the hot babies, the familiar jargon of the newsboy:

“N’Yawk moyning paypers! Woyld! Joynal!” were a breath from home to her little cockney heart.

They pushed through the great station, they climbed the steps of the elevated track, they jingled on a cross-town car. And at a familiar corner Ardelia slipped loose her hand, uttered a grunt of joy, and Miss Forsythe looked for her in vain. She was gone.

But late in the evening, when the great city turned out to breathe, and sat with opened shirt and loosened bodice on the dirty steps; when the hurdy-gurdy executed brassy scales and the lights flared in endless sparkling rows; when the trolley gongs at the corner pierced the air, and feet tapped cheerfully down the cool stone steps of the beer-shop, Ardelia, bare-footed and abandoned, nibbling at a section of bologna sausage, secure in the hope of an olive to come, cakewalked insolently with a band of little girls behind a severe policeman, mocking his stolid gait, to the delight of Old Dutchy, who beamed approvingly at her prancings.

“Ja, ja, you trow out your feet goot. Some day we pay to see you, no? You like to get back already?”

Ardelia performed an audacious _pas seul_ and reached for her olive.

“Ja, danky shun, Dutchy,” she said airily, and as the hurdy-gurdy moved away, and the oboe of the Italian band began to run up and down the scale, she sank upon her cool step, stretched her toes and sighed.

“Gee!” she murmured, “N’Yawk’s the place!”

EDGAR, THE CHOIR BOY UNCELESTIAL

You all know how they look in the pictures—enlarged photogravures, mostly: they have appealing violet eyes and drooping mouths and oval faces. They tip their heads back and to the side, and there is usually a broad beam of light falling across their little official nighties. People frame them in Flemish oak and hang them over the piano, and little girls long to resemble them.

But Edgar was not that kind. So greatly did he differ, in fact, that even the choirmaster, who ought to have known better, was deceived, and discovered him with difficulty. When that gentleman confronted them in the parish house, a mob of suspicious little boys, shoving, growling, snickering, and otherwise fulfilling their natures, he promptly selected Tim Mullaly, who possessed to an amazing degree the violet eyes and the drooping mouth and the oval face, as his first soprano. The choirmaster was young in years and his profession.

But Tim refused to sing the scale alone, and as the others scorned to accompany him in this exercise, Mr. Fellowes, determinedly patient, suggested in the hilarious “come-on-boys!” fashion consecrated to childhood by adults, that they should all join in some popular melody, to limber them up and dispel their uneasiness.

“What shall we sing?” he called out breezily, from the piano-stool, faintly indicating a “ragtime” rhythm with his left hand, still facing them as he searched the forbidding countenances before him for a gleam of friendship.

After all, they were human boys, and they could all sing after a fashion, or they would not have been induced by relatives who had read the qualifications for choir membership to attend this trying function.

“’Hot time!’” burst from one of the youngsters.

“All right!” and the inviting melody drew them in; soon they were shouting lustily. Raucous altos, nasal sopranos, fatal attempts to compass a bass—at any rate, they were started. The verse was over, the chorus had begun, when a sudden sound sent the choirmaster’s heart to his throat, his hands left the keys. Into the medley of coarse, boyish shouting dropped a silvery thread of purest song, a very bird-note. For a moment it flowed on the level of the chorus, then suddenly, with an indescribable leap, a slurring rush, it rose to an octave above and led them all. The choirmaster twirled around on the stool.

“Who’s that? Which boy is singing up there?” he demanded excitedly. There was no reply. They grinned consciously at each other; one could imagine them all guilty.

“Come, come, boys! Don’t be silly—who was it?”

Silence, of the most sepulchral sort. Mr. Fellowes shrugged his shoulders, swung round again, and started the second verse. They dashed through it noisily; he picked out here and there a sweet little treble, one real alto. But his ears were pricked for something better, and presently it came. The rhythm was too enticing.

“_Please, oh, please, oh, don’t you let me fall——_”

“By George, he’s a human blackbird!”

“_You’re all mine, an’ I love you best of all——_”

“That’s high C!”

“_An you mus’ be my man, ’r I’ll have no man at all——_”

The choirmaster burst into a joyous if somewhat reedy tenor.

“_There’ll be a hot time in the old town to-night!_”

He whirled about, still singing, and caught the ecstatic, dreamy gaze of Tim Mullaly.

“It’s you!” he cried, pouncing on him. Tim giggled feebly.

“Yessir,” he said.

“Now sing this scale, and I’ll give you five cents.”

An envious sigh quavered through the parish hall.

Tim threw back his head and opened his drooping mouth.

“_Do, re——_”

There was a flash of blue gingham, a snarl of rage, a sound as of fifty pounds of small boy suddenly seated on the floor.

“Where’s yer fi’ cents?” a new voice inquired easily.

The choirmaster perceived with amazement that the owner of the voice, a freckled boy with an excessively _retroussé_ nose, was sitting on the prostrate Tim.

“What is the meaning of this? Get up!” he said sternly. “What’s your name? I can’t have any of this sort of thing in my choir!”

The freckled boy did not rise. In fact, he seated himself more comfortably on Master Mullaly, and demanded again:

“Where’s yer fi’ cents?”

The choirmaster stepped forward and seized the offender’s collar. As his fingers tightened, the captive burst into the chorus of the moment before—it was the blackbird voice! So obstinate was the choirmaster’s first impression that he looked instinctively at the fallen Tim to catch the notes, but Tim was struggling meekly but firmly for breath, and this free trilling came from above him. The choirmaster relaxed his hold.

“It was you all the time!” he said in a stupor of surprise.

“Yep,” replied the singer, “it was me. Did yer think it was him?” with a slight jounce to indicate his victim.

“Get up, won’t you, and sing me something else,” the choirmaster urged. The boy rose promptly.

“What’ll I sing?” he returned amicably. There had been a different tone in the choirmaster’s voice.

“Happy Home! Happy Home!” the crowd demanded. They had stood to one side in the most neutral manner during the brief struggle that had laid Tim low, and listened respectfully to the brief colloquy that followed. It was evident that past experience had suggested this attitude on their part.

The choirmaster looked relieved. He had no narrow prejudices, but he realized that a hymn like “My Happy Home” comes with good effect from the parish-hall windows.

“Where’s your mouth organ?” demanded the freckled one of a larger boy in the crowd. The latter promptly produced the instrument in question, cuddled it in both hands a moment after the fashion of the virtuoso, and drew forth the jerky and complex series of strains peculiar to it. It was evidently a prelude—a tune vaguely familiar to the choirmaster. Suddenly the boy’s voice burst into this sombre background:

“_I’d leave my yappy yome fer you,
Oo-oo-oo-oo!_”

The choirmaster sighed ecstatically. A voice so tender, so soft, so rich in appealing inflections he had never heard. The repeated vowels cooed, they caressed, they allured.

“_You’re the nices’ man n’ I ever knoo,
Oo-oo-oo-oo!_”

If you remember how Madame Melba cooes, “Edgardo! Edgardo-o-o!” when she sings the mad scene from “Lucia,” you will have an idea of the liquid, slipping notes of that snub-nosed, freckled boy.

“What’s your name?” asked the choirmaster respectfully.

It appeared at first to be Egg-nog, but resolved into Edgar Ogden under careful cross-examination, and its owner agreed to attend three weekly rehearsals and two Sunday services for the princely salary of twenty-five cents a week, the same to be increased in proportion to his progress.

Subsequent efforts proved that it was utterly hopeless to attempt to teach him to read music. When Tim Mullaly and the stupidest alto in the United States—as the choirmaster assured him—could stumble through what was considerately known as a duet at sight, and that was the work of many months, Edgar was still learning his solos by ear. It was wasted effort to insist, and the choirmaster spent long hours and nearly wore his forefinger to the bone, fixing in his pupil’s mind the succession of notes in anthems and _Te Deums_. Once learned, however, he never forgot them, and Mr. Fellowes thrilled with pride as the silver stream of his voice flowed higher, higher, above the organ, beyond the choir at his side, till the people in the church sighed and craned their necks to look at the wonderful boy.

As a matter of fact, they looked, most of them, at Tim Mullaly, who, fresh from his Saturday bath, in his little cassock and cotta, realized the dreams of the most exigent lithographer. He stood next to Edgar, and owing to a certain weakness of mind invariably followed with his lips the entire libretto, so to speak, of the work in hand. As his appealing expression and violet eyes were undetachable, he had all the effect of the soloist, and received most of the credit from that vast majority who fail to distinguish one little boy, like one Chinaman, from another, unless he possesses some such salient feature as Tim’s pleading gaze.

This little apprehension was mercifully unsuspected by Edgar, otherwise it is to be feared that the services of a physician would have been required in the Mullaly household. Not that Edgar had any professional pride in his voice. He possessed, according to his own ideas, many more valuable and decorative qualities. His power of song was entirely hereditary, and came to him from his father, who was of English descent. The elder Mr. Ogden, whom rumor reported to run frequent risks of being bitten like a serpent and stung like an adder at the last, had mounted to a dizzy height in the Knights of Pythias entirely through his voice, a sweet and powerful tenor, and was accustomed to spend the greater part of his time in committing to memory and practising dramatic songs of a highly moral variety with choruses on this order:

“_‘You lie! I saw you steal that ace!’
A crashing blow right in the face—
A pistol shot and death’s disgrace
Was in that pack of cards!_”

At the proper point, a friend in another room would shoot off a blank cartridge to a stormy accompaniment on the Pythian piano, and the Knights would become so appreciative that the soloist, to borrow a classical phrase, rarely got home until morning. What time Mr. Ogden found himself able to spare from getting up his repertoire was judiciously employed in borrowing money for the purchase of new articles of regalia, for with the Pythians to rise was to shine.

His elder son Samuel, familiarly known as Squealer, inherited both his father’s tendencies, and was in great demand among the saloons and pool-rooms, where he sang ballads of a tender and moral nature, dealing mostly with the Home, and the sanctity of the family relation in general. One of these in especial, in which Squealer assumed a hortatory attitude and besought an imaginary parent to “take her back, Dad,” adding in a melting baritone,

“_She’s my mother and your wife!_”

so affected a certain bar-room _habitué_, whose habit of chasing his family through the tenement with a carving-knife had led them to move out of town, that he had been known to lay his head on the bar and weep audibly.

It was a moot point among his friends as to which was Squealer’s real _chef d’œuvre_, the song just mentioned or another which ran,

“_You’ll only have one mother, boy,
You can’t treat her too well!_”

Very often after singing this Squealer would become too affected to endure the thought of what the song described as “the old home, empty now,” and would repair to some scene which drew less heavily on the emotions, thus assuring a sleepless if wrathful night to Mrs. Ogden, and fluent altercation on his return to the old home.

Mrs. Ogden was not musical herself, and devoted most of her energies to fine laundry work, a less emotional but more lucrative occupation. Edgar’s professional duties interested her chiefly by reason of the weekly salary, now grown to fifty cents, of which one-tenth was allowed him for his private purse, the remainder being applied to the very obvious necessities of the household. His consequent position as wage-earner was firmly established, and his mother, though she cherished a natural contempt for the mental calibre of any young man who considered Edgar’s voice worth fifty cents a week, saw to it that so remunerative an organ received all the consideration it deserved.

To Mr. Ogden’s undisguised horror, two new suits of under flannels were purchased at the beginning of the winter, and shiny storm rubbers were urged upon the artist’s reluctant feet on every slushy day. The most unconvincing cough was rewarded with black licorice, purchased from the general household fund, and when Edgar had the measles, the Prince of Wales, to use Mr. Ogden’s irritated phrase, might have been glad to taste the mutton broth and cocoa that fattened that impudent kid.

Nor was her system limited to this soft indulgence, as the occasion of one of the choirmaster’s visits proved. Fearful lest the purpose of his call should become evident too abruptly, he began by one of his customary eulogies of his first soprano’s voice. She received his enthusiasm coldly, indicated forcibly her own lack of musical ability, and boasted, with a pride inexplicable to one who has not been accustomed to consider this gift synonymous with penitentiary qualifications, that she could not carry a tune. On his mentioning somewhat diffidently that Edgar’s fines for tardiness, absence, etc., must in the nature of things make appreciable inroads upon his salary, the interview assumed a different aspect.

Wiping her hands on her apron, Mrs. Ogden assured the choirmaster that if Edgar wasn’t earning his wages she’d attend to that part of it, all right. So intent was her expression that he felt obliged to put in a plea for gentleness, on the ground that such a delicate mechanism as the human throat could not be too carefully treated. Mrs. Ogden assured him that she was not in the habit of applying her disciplinary measures to the throat, and the audience was at an end. The day happened to be Saturday, and at the evening rehearsal it seemed to the choirmaster that things had never gone so smoothly. After all, he thought, it needed a mother to reason with the boys—he had made several calls of the same nature that week—a mother knew best how to influence them. And he was abundantly justified in his conclusions.

On Sunday afternoon Edgar marched into the church, impassive and uninteresting to the outward vision, with Tim beside him, rapt and effective. Edgar stared vacantly into space, his feet marked the time at the proper distance from the crucifer, a mild and stolid youth, who could never understand why it was that just as he turned the corner and began to climb the steps to the choir-stalls his cassock should suddenly tighten below the knees and almost throw him. Edgar’s partner in the column could have informed him, but prudence rendered him uncommunicative.

“_The brightest hopes we cherish here,
How fast they tire and faint!_”

Edgar’s brows met, he took a longer stride in reaching for his B flat, and the crucifer grasped his pole nervously and broke step a moment—his cassock had caught again.

“_How many a spot defiles the robe
That wraps an earthly saint!_”

“He sings like an angel,” the rector mused. “How clumsy that Waters boy is!”

Once through with the Psalter, which he loathed because he was not always certain of his pointing, and could not endure Tim’s look of horror at his occasional slips, Edgar, having hunched his shoulders at just the angle to prevent the tenor behind him from looking across into the transept, and ostentatiously opened his service at the _Nunc dimittis_, so that Tim might by his innocent nudging and indications of his own _Magnificat_ page call a frown and a fine from the choirmaster, devoted himself to a study of the rose-window over the transept.

The decoration of this window was a standing subject of quarrel between him and the first alto, Howard Potter. Edgar had advanced the somewhat untenable proposition that the various figures in the stained-glass windows represented the successive rectors and choirmasters of St. Mark’s. Howard had objected that the dedications under the windows referred (as he had discovered by adroit questions that gave his informants no idea whatever of what he was driving at) to persons who had never held office of any kind in the church.

Edgar had then fallen back on the theory that the figures were portraits of the persons whom the windows commemorated. Howard triumphantly queried why, then, should the legend, “Sacred to the memory of Walter, beloved husband of Mary Bird Ferris,” appear under a tall woman in dark green glass with a most feminine amount of hair and a long red sash? Edgar was staggered, but suddenly recalled his father’s glowing account of a costume ball given by the Knights of Pythias, in which many of the Knights appeared in women’s clothes, one in particular, the proprietor of a fish market, having rented a long and flowing wig the better to deceive his fellow-Knights and their delighted guests. This had impressed Edgar as intensely humorous; he greatly enjoyed picturing the scene to his imagination, and he strengthened his wavering infallibility by declaring that the beloved husband of Mary Bird Ferris was beyond doubt a Pythian in costume.

This had silenced Howard for a week, but one afternoon at evensong, just before the electric bell sounded in the robing-room to summon them to the hall, he had rapidly inquired in a hissing whisper, “Who that white puppy carryin’ the flag in the round window on the side, where the bird was, was a picture of?”

The bird was the lectern-eagle, and neither of the antagonists had ever seen a lamb. Edgar had recognized the fact that it was a poorly drawn puppy, and he did not believe that it could possibly have balanced in one crooked-up knee and at that perilous angle any such banner as the artist had given it. It was also crushingly apparent to him that no Knight of Pythias, with all the assistance in the world, could transform himself into such a woolly, curly, four-legged object as that.

Then why should the brass plate beneath it declare that this rose-window was placed in “loving memory of Alice Helen Worden, who departed this life June nineteenth, eighteen hundred and ninety”? That was no name for a puppy, to begin with. The whole affair irritated Edgar exceedingly. He saw no explanation whatever. He perceived that he should have to fight the first alto. This was not only a great responsibility in itself, but the necessity of evading the parental eye added to the nervous strain, and the consciousness that on this particular Sunday afternoon Mr. Ogden occupied one of the rear pews, with the idea of seeing how he behaved during service, and subsequently accompanying him home, so weighed upon the spirits of the first soprano that William Waters accomplished the choir steps, in the recessional, without a stumble.

Throughout the service Edgar was as one in a dream. His vision was turned inward, and he even forgot his effective trick of frightening the choirmaster into cold chills by looking vacantly uncertain of the proper moment to take up the choir’s share of the responses. The fact that he invariably came in at the precise beat had never fortified Mr. Fellowes against that nervous shudder as he saw his first soprano’s mouth open hesitatingly two seconds before the time. To-day he was spared all anxiety. Edgar’s voice and Tim’s eyes were the perfection of tuneful devotion.

“_And blèss thine in-hèr-i-tànce!_”

they implored softly. Neither of them had the remotest idea what inheritance meant—they would have besought as willingly a blessing for irrelevance or inelegance; but to the assistant clergyman, whose nervous scratching of his nose, while waiting for the alms-basin to reach him, was to Edgar and Tim as definite and eagerly awaited a part of the service as any other detail, the slow-syllabled Gregorian cadence brought the word in a sudden new light and he made it the text for a sermon so successful as to get him, a little later, a parish of his own. This leads us to many interesting conclusions, musical and other.

The rector noticed with pleasure the seedy-looking man in the back of the church: he was just then smarting a little under the accusation of “aristocratic tendencies”: a body of conservatives had never approved of the boy-choir. He hoped to get the man into the Brotherhood of St. Andrew, if he were allied to no other organization.

Mr. Ogden, as we know, was on business of his own—business that kept him glaring fixedly in the rector’s direction, which encouraged that good man still further. It is to be doubted if the Brotherhood would have appealed to him, however. Not that he would have been hindered by any narrow sectarian tendencies. Mrs. Ogden, who did up the shirt-waists of the Presbyterian minister’s daughter, was by her presented regularly with a missionary bank in the form of a _papier-maché_ cottage with a chimney imitating red brick; and Edgar, employing a Napoleonic strategy, triumphantly attended the Methodist Christmas festivals and the Baptist Sunday-school picnics, the latter society offering a merry-go-round on a larger scale, the former providing the infant faithful with more practicable presents and larger candy-bags. Squealer, moreover, had sung “The Holy City” more than once for the Congregational Christian Endeavor Society, so that Mr. Ogden felt, with a certain justice, that his church connection did him credit on the whole, and excused himself from any undue energy in that direction.

He watched his son keenly, but Edgar’s ecclesiastical demeanor was without a flaw. Moreover, his plans were gradually maturing. He sang _Amen_ at proper intervals and by a process of unconscious cerebration managed to get between the organist and the tenor, who depended on Mr. Fellowes to mark the time for him with his left hand, and in consequence of being unable to see him, bungled his offertory solo; but his thoughts were otherwhere. He had decided to slip out of the south transept door, thus eluding parental pursuit, and fight Howard Potter in his own back yard before he slept. He would practise upon his victim a recent scientific acquisition proudly styled by him “the upper-cut,” which he had learned from an acquaintance at the cost of ten cents and three sugar-cookies.

At this point the anthem-prelude drew him to his feet. He had saved his voice, according to directions, for his solo, and in the waiting hush every word flowed, soft and pure, to the end of the church.

“_Mercy and truth, mercy and truth, mercy—_” Ah, that exquisite soft swoop downward! The organ rippled on contentedly, a continuation of Edgar’s flutelike tones—“_and truth are me-et together_!” There was all the richness of a woman’s voice, all the passionless clearness of a boy’s, all the morning innocence of a child’s.

It occurred to him suddenly that the north transept would be safer—it was on the side farthest from home.

“_Righteousness and peace, righteousness and peace have kissèd each other!_”

He wondered if Howard had learned the upper-cut since their last encounter.

Tim’s face was as the face of an angel; a long slanting ray from the rose-window fell across his curls.

“_Have kissèd each other_,” Edgar sighed softly. “_Have kissèd each other_—” the caressing tones melted into the organ’s, whispered once more, “_each other_,” and died lingeringly. A long breath, an audible “Ah-h-h!” drifted through the church. The choirmaster kicked his feet together under the organ for joy. He little knew that at that very moment the future of his vested choir was swinging lightly in the balance.

But such was the fact. Fate, who links together events seemingly isolated, smoothed Edgar’s way to his fight, but allowed him to be beaten. If this had not happened, his wrath would not have vented itself in hectoring a bad-tempered bass at the Wednesday rehearsal, by scampering in front of him and mimicking with wonderful accuracy his gruff, staccato voice.

“_He taketh up the isles—as a ver-ry—little thing!_” mocked Edgar.

“Shut up!” growled the bass.

“_A ver-ry lit-tle thing!_” Edgar continued malignantly, slipping across his victim’s path.

“Oh, all right, young feller!” called the bass, enraged at the grins and applause of the other men, “all right! Just you wait till Sunday, that’s all!” If Edgar had not teased him so, he would not have added: “I know what’ll happen then, if you don’t.”

“What?” Edgar inquired derisively, catching up with him.

“You’re going to be bounced, that’s what,” said the bass irritably.

“Aw, come off! I ain’t either!”

“Well, you ought to be, the whole pack of you,” the bass continued decidedly. “Bag and baggage! And a good riddance, too. No choirboy camping-out _this_ summer!”

Edgar dropped behind and mused. “Who told yer?” he called.

“Ask Fellowes—and if he don’t lick you, I will!” retorted the bass, making a quick grab, which Edgar easily evaded.

He summoned his mates immediately; the question was laid before them. Had they heard that they were to be bounced? Did they believe that the two weeks’ camping-out, the object of all their endurance and loyalty, the prize of their high calling, was to be discontinued? Tim was deputed to inquire on Saturday afternoon. He returned disconsolate; they shoved each other significantly.

“What’d he say? What’d he say?”

“He says mos’ prob’ly not. Says it costs too much. Says maybe a picnic——”

“Aw! old chump! Goin’ to bounce us, too?”

“I dunno. I guess so. I didn’t ask him that. I just says to him, ‘Aw, say, Mr. Fellowes, ain’t us boys goin’ campin’?’ An’ he says, ‘I guess not this year, Tim, mos’ prob’ly. Maybe a picnic——”

“Well, I bet he don’t bounce me! I betcher that, I betcher, now!”

Edgar strutted before them. They regarded him with interest.

“Whatcher goin’ to do?” they asked respectfully.

“What’ll I do? I’ll—I’ll bounce myself!” he called over his shoulder, as he strode home.

His moody air during supper convinced Mr. Ogden that something was up. Ever since he had discovered Edgar’s demand for an additional ten cents a Sunday, on the ground that his mother thought him worth more, and his later daring strike for five cents further salary, which the choirmaster had innocently considered abundantly justified and paid out of his own pocket, Mr. Ogden, who, having heard rumors of wild dissipations in the peanut and root-beer line, had pounced upon his son returning plethoric from pay day, and promptly annexed the extra fifteen cents, was convinced of the necessity of surveillance for this wily wage-earner, and formed the habit of escorting him regularly on pay nights, alone at first, later assisted by Mrs. Ogden, who accompanied the family group as a self-constituted and final auditor. It has frequently been remarked that a great grief may bind together once disunited members of a family; it is extremely improbable that any affliction whatever could have produced among the Ogdens such a gratifying _esprit de corps_ as resulted from their unfeigned interest in pay day. But when Mr. Ogden had shadowed his son to no more secluded and dangerous spot than the church-yard, and saw him in earnest conclave with his attentive mates, he went, relieved, about his own business, reassured by the words “campin’ out” and “Sunday afternoon,” that he caught from behind a convenient tombstone. He was utterly unconscious that the scene he had left was far more menacing to his household than even the most disfiguring fight of his warlike son’s varied repertoire. But so it was. Haranguing, promising, taunting, threatening, Edgar led them, finally subdued, into one of the most satisfactory rehearsals of the year.

❦

They waited till quarter of eleven on Sunday, and finally the men marched in alone, somewhat conscious and ill at ease, followed by a red-faced, determined rector, and a puzzled visiting clergyman. They sang “_O happy band of pilgrims_,” but it was remarked by the wondering congregation that they did not look happy themselves. There was no music but the hymns, which, as they had been altered to well-known numbers, were chanted lustily by the inhabitants of the pews, thus winning the sincere admiration of the visiting clergyman.

“Really, such well-trained congregational singing is quite rare,” he remarked afterward to the rector, and was somewhat surprised at the short answer: “It shall certainly never occur again.”

It had gone hard with the vested choir but for Mrs. Ogden. Mr. Fellowes pleaded in vain; in vain the Ladies’ Auxiliary passed resolutions; the rector was firm. It was only when Mrs. Ogden swept in upon him in his study, a chastened, still apprehensive boy under one arm, followed by half a dozen women similarly equipped, and made a speech that will adorn the parish annals for many a year, that he yielded, respectfully convinced.

Edgar had met his Waterloo, and lived, so to speak, under a consequent military surveillance, with much of his prestige gone, his pay docked for a month, and the certainty of approaching warm weather, when it would be impossible to take cold, and nothing but a summons to the choir invisible could excuse him from rehearsals here, to render the future all too clear to him. In the words of the processional,

“_His tongue could never tire
Of singing with the choir._”

To-day, if you should attend evensong at St. Mark’s, you will beyond a doubt be delighted with a silver voice that appears to proceed from a violet-eyed boy with a sweet expression.

“_It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord!_” the voice declares melodiously, but it is doubtful if its owner is in a thankful frame of mind. He would in all probability prefer to be with his brother Samuel, who is at present touring the West triumphantly with a Methodist revivalist, rendering “_Where is my wandering boy to-night?_” to weeping congregations for ten dollars a week and his traveling expenses. And even this success leaves Squealer dissatisfied; he would far rather be in his father’s position—first tenor in the Denman Thompson Old Homestead Quartette—and sing “The Palms” behind the scenes, when the stereopticon vision of the repentant prodigal thrills the audience.

It would seem that your artistic temperament is doomed to discontent. Whereas Mrs. Ogden, who cannot carry a tune, is perfectly satisfied with fine laundry work.

THE LITTLE GOD AND DICKY

“Where are you going?” said somebody, as he slunk out toward the hatrack.

“Oh, out,” he returned, with what a vaudeville artist would call a good imitation of a person wishing to appear blamelessly forgetful of something he remembered quite distinctly.

“Well, see that you don’t stay long. Remember what it is this afternoon.”

He turned like a stag at bay.

“_What_ is it this afternoon?” he demanded viciously.

“You know very well.”

“_What?_”

“See that you’re here, that’s all. You’ve got to get dressed.”

“I will not go to that old dancing-school again, and I tell you that I won’t, and I won’t. And I won’t!”

“Now, Dick, don’t begin that all over again. It’s so silly of you. You’ve got to go.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s the thing to do.”

“Why?”

“Because you must learn to dance.”

“Why?”

“Every nice boy learns.”

“Why?”

“That will do, Richard. Go and find your pumps. Now, get right up from the floor, and if you scratch the Morris chair I shall speak to your father. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Get right up—you must expect to be hurt, if you pull so. Come, Richard! Now, stop crying—a great boy like you! I am sorry I hurt your elbow, but you know very well you aren’t crying for that at all. Come along!”

His sister flitted by the door in an engaging _déshabillé_, her accordeon-pleated skirt held carefully from the floor, her hair in two glistening blue-knotted pigtails. A trail of rose-scented soap floated through the hall.

“Hurry up, Dick, or we’ll be late,” she called back sweetly, secure in the knowledge that if such virtuous accents maddened him still further, no one could blame her. His rage justified her faith.

“Oh, you shut up, will you!” he snarled.

She looked meek, and listened to his deprivation of dessert for the rest of the week with an air of love for the sinner and hatred for the sin that deceived even her older sister, who was dressing her.

A desperately patient monologue from the next room indicated the course of events there.

“Your necktie is on the bed. No, I don’t know where the blue one is—it doesn’t matter; that is just as good. Yes, it is. No, you can _not_. You will have to wear one. Because no one ever goes without. I don’t know why.

“Many a boy would be thankful and glad to have silk stockings. Nonsense—your legs are warm enough. I don’t believe you. Now, Richard, how perfectly ridiculous! There is no left and right to stockings. You have no time to change. Shoes are a different thing. Well, hurry up, then. Because they are made so, I suppose. I don’t know why.

“Brush it more on that side—no, you can’t go to the barber’s. You went last week. It looks perfectly well. I cut it? Why, I don’t know how to trim hair. Anyway, there isn’t time now. It will have to do. Stop your scowling, for goodness’ sake, Dick. Have you a handkerchief? It makes no difference, you must carry one. You _ought_ to want to use it. Well, you should. Yes, they always do, whether they have colds or not. I don’t know why.

“Your Golden Text! The idea! No, you cannot. You can learn that Sunday before church. This is not the time to learn Golden Texts. I never saw such a child. Now take your pumps and find the plush bag. Why not? Put them right with Ruth’s. That’s what the bag was made for. Well, how do you want to carry them? Why, I never heard of anything so silly! You will knot the strings. I don’t care if they do carry skates that way—skates are not slippers. You’d lose them. Very well, then, only hurry up. I should think you’d be ashamed to have them dangling around your neck that way. Because people never _do_ carry them so. I don’t know why.

“Now, here’s your coat. Well, I can’t help it, you have no time to hunt for them. Put your hands in your pockets—it’s not far. And mind you don’t run for Ruth every time. You don’t take any pains with her, and you hustle her about, Miss Dorothy says. Take another little girl. Yes, you must. I shall speak to your father if you answer me in that way, Richard. Men don’t dance with their sisters. Because they don’t. I don’t know why.”

He slammed the door till the piazza shook, and strode along beside his scandalized sister, the pumps flopping noisily on his shoulders. She tripped along contentedly—she liked to go. The personality capable of extracting pleasure from the hour before them baffled his comprehension, and he scowled fiercely at her, rubbing his silk stockings together at every step, to enjoy the strange smooth sensation thus produced. This gave him a bow-legged gait that distressed his sister beyond words.

“I think you might stop. Everybody’s looking at you! Please stop, Dick Pendleton; you’re a mean old thing. I should think you’d be ashamed to carry your slippers that way. If you jump in that wet place and spatter me I shall tell papa—you _will_ care, when I tell him, just the same! You’re just as bad as you can be. I shan’t speak with you to-day!”

She pursed up her lips and maintained a determined silence. He rubbed his legs together with renewed emphasis. Acquaintances met them and passed, unconscious of anything but the sweet picture of a sister and a brother and a plush bag going daintily and dutifully to dancing-school; but his heart was hot at the injustice of the world and the hypocritical cant of girls, and her thoughts were busy with her indictment of him before the family tribunal—she hoped he would be sent to bed. Life is full and running over with just such rosy deceits.

He jumped over the threshold of the long room and aimed his cap at the head of a boy he knew, who was standing on one foot to put on a slipper. This destroyed his friend’s balance, and a cheering scuffle followed. Life assumed a more hopeful aspect. In the other dressing-room his sister had fluttered into a whispering, giggling, many-colored throng; buzzing and chuckling with the rest, she adjusted her slippers, and perked out her bows, her braids quivering with sociability.

A shrill whistle called them out in two crowding bunches to the polished floor.