Chapter VIII: Part 8

“I wish everything were more so,” she said. “I ought to have a place to take the Special Baby and make his clothes and mend his socks and tie on his shoes and rub his little back. Also, I want to learn a lullaby, and this is so public.”

Then the Great Black Hush thought and thought, and remembered that away back on the Outermost Way and beneath the Wild Wing of Things, there was a tidy little place that might be just the thing. It was _not_ up to date, because there wasn’t any date, but still he thought it might be just the thing.

“By the welkin,” he said, “I know a place that is the place. I’ll go and sweep it out.”

“Not so fast,” said the Wind, gently. “I go also. I want to be sure that there are enough closets--” or whatever would have corresponded to that before there was any Modern at all.

So the three went away together and groped about on the Outermost Way and beneath the Wild Wing of Things, and there the Wind swept it out tidily and there they made their home. And when it was all done,--which took a great while because the Wind kept wanting additions put on,--they came out and sat at the door of the place, the Great Black Hush and the Wind and the Special Baby between.

And as they did that a wonderful thing was true. For now that the Great Black Hush had withdrawn to his new home, lo, all the swinging plaything balls were shining through space, and there was light. And the man and the woman and the child at the door of the first home looked in one another’s faces. And the man and the woman were afraid of the light and their look clung each to the other’s in that fear; but the Special Baby stretched out his little hands and tried to put the light in his mouth.

“Don’t, dear,” said the woman, and her voice sounded quite natural.

“Pay attention to me and not to the Baby,” said the man, and _his_ voice sounded quite natural, and very mighty, so that the woman obeyed--until the Special Baby wanted her again.

And that was when she made her lullaby, and it was the first song:--

WIND SONG[B]

Horn of the morning!
And the little night pipings fail.
The day is launched like a hollow ship
With the sun for a sail.
The way is wide and blue and lone
With all its miles inviolate
Save for the swinging stars we’ve sown
And a thistle of cloud remote and blown.
Oh, I passion for something nearer than these!
How shall I know that this live thing is I
With only the morning for proof and the sky?
I long for a music more soft to its keys,
For a touch that shall teach me the new sureties.
Give me some griefs and some loyalties
And a child’s mouth on my own!

Lullaby, lullaby,
Babe of the world, swing high,
Swing low.
I am a mother you never may know,
But oh
And oh, how long the wind will know you,
With lullabies for the dead night through.
Babe of the earth, as I blow ...
Swing high,
To touch at the sky,
And at last lie low.
Lullaby....

[B] Reproduced by permission of _The Craftsman_.

But meanwhile the Special Baby’s real mother--the one who had told him about running away--was hunting and hunting and _hunting_ for him and going nearly distracted and expecting every hair in her head to turn pure white. She went about among all the rest, asking and calling and wanting to know, and finally she made up her mind that she would not stay where she was, but that she would run away and hunt for him. And she did. And when all the things that were waiting to be born heard about it, there was no holding them back either. So out they came, lines and colours and musics and tops and blocks and flame and Noah’s arks and mechanical toys and mountains and planets and paints and air and water and alphabets and jumping-jacks, all, all came out in the wake of the lost Special Baby. And some came early and some came late, some hurried and some hung back. And among all these came people, and many and many of the to-be-born things were hidden in peoples’ hearts and did not appear till long after; and this was true of some things which I have not mentioned at all, and of some that have not appeared even yet. But some people did not bring anything in their hearts, and they merely observed that it was a shameful waste, so many shining balls swinging about and only the Special Baby to play with them, and _he_ evidently eternally lost.

But the Special Baby’s real mother didn’t say a word. She only ran and ran on, asking and calling and wanting to know. And at last she came to the Outermost Way and near the Wild Wing of Things, and the Special Baby heard her coming. And when he heard that, he made his choicest coo-noise in his throat and he stretched out his arms to his real mother that he was used to.

And when his real mother heard the coo-noise, she brushed aside the Wild Wing of Things and took him in her arms--and she never saw the Wind and the Great Black Hush at all, because they are that kind. So she carried the Special Baby off, kicking and crowing and catching at the swinging, shining balls--but they were too big to put in his mouth so there was no danger--and _she_ hunted up a place where she could make his clothes and mend his socks and tie on his shoes and rub his little back. But about them all things were going on, and everybody else was doing the same thing, so nobody noticed.

Then, all alone before their home on the Outermost Way and beneath the Wild Wing of Things that was all brushed aside, the Great Black Hush and the Wind looked at each other. And their look clung, as when they had first found light, and they were afraid. For now all space was glowing and shining with swinging balls, and all the things were being born and making homes, and time was rushing by so fast that it awed them who had never seen such a thing before.

“_What_ have we done?” demanded the Great Black Hush.

But the Wind was not so much concerned with that. She only grieved and grieved for the Special Baby. And the Great Black Hush comforted her, and I think he comforts her unto this day.

Only at night. Then, as you know, the Great Black Hush comes from the Outermost Way and fills the air, and with him often and often comes the Wind. And together they wander among all the shining balls--you will know this, if you listen, on many a night--and together they look for the Special Baby. But _he_ has grown up, long and long ago, only he still stretches out his hands to everything, for he is the way he was made.

XVIII

THE DECORATION OF INDEPENDENCE

That year we celebrated Fourth of July in the Wood Yard.

The town had decided not to have a celebration, though we did not know who had done the actual deciding, and this we used to talk about.

“How can the _town_ decide anything?” Delia asked sceptically. “When does it do it?”

“Why,” said Margaret Amelia--to whom, her father being a judge, we always turned to explain matters of state, “its principal folks say so.”

“Who are its principal folks?” I demanded.

“Why,” said Margaret Amelia, “I should think you could tell that. They have the stores and offices and live in the residence part.”

I pondered this, for most of the folk in the little town did neither of these things.

“Why don’t they have another Fourth of July for the rest, then,” I suggested, “and leave them settle on their own celebration?”

Margaret Amelia looked shocked.

“I guess you don’t know much about the Decoration of Independence,” said she.

The Decoration of Independence--we all called it this--was, then, to go by without attention because the Town said so.

“The Town,” said Mary Elizabeth, dreamily, “the Town. It sounds like somebody tall, very high, and pointed at the top, with the rest of her dark and long and flowy--don’t it?”

“City,” she and I were agreed, sounded like somebody light and sitting down with her skirts spread out.

“Village” sounded like a little soft hollow, not much of any colour, with a steeple to it.

“I like ‘Town’ best,” Mary Elizabeth said. “It sounds more like a mother-woman. ‘City’ sounds like a lady-woman. And ‘Village’ sounds like a grandma-woman. I like ‘Town’ best.”

“What I want to do,” Margaret Amelia said restlessly, “is to spend my Fourth of July dollar. I had a Fourth of July dollar ever since Christmas. It’s no fun spending it with no folks and bands and wagons.”

“I’ve got my birthday dollar yet,” I contributed. “If I spent it for Fourth of July, I’d be glad of it, but if I spend it for anything else, I’ll want it back.”

“I had a dollar,” said Calista, gloomily, “but I used a quarter of it up on the circus. Now I’m glad I did. I wish’t I’d stayed to the sideshow.”

“Stitchy Branchitt says,” Betty offered, “that the boys are all going to Poynette and spend their money there. Poynette’s got exercises.”

Oh, the boys would get a Fourth. Trust them. But what about us? We could not go to Poynette. We could not rise at three A.M. and fire off fire-crackers. No fascinating itinerant hucksters would come the way of a town that held no celebration. We had nowhere to spend our substance, and to do that was to us what Fourth of July implied.

The New Boy came wandering by, eating something. Boys were always eating something that looked better than anything we saw in the candy-shop. Where did they get it? This that he had was soft and pink and chewy, and it rapidly disappeared as he approached us.

Margaret Amelia Rodman threw back her curls and flashed a sudden radiant smile at the New Boy. She became quite another person from the judicious, somewhat haughty creature whom we knew.

“Let’s us get up a Fourth of July celebration,” she said.

We held our breath. It never would have occurred to us. But now that she suggested it, why not?

The New Boy leaped up on a gate-post and sat looking down at us, chewing.

“How?” he inquired.

“Get up a partition,” said Margaret Amelia. “Circulate it like for take-a-walk at school or teacher’s present, and all sign.”

“And take it to who?” asked the New Boy.

Margaret Amelia considered.

“My father,” she proposed.

The scope of the idea was enormous. Her father was a judge and wore very black clothes every day, and never spoke to any of us. Therefore he must be a great man. Doubtless he could do anything.

Boys, as we knew them, usually flouted everything that we said, but--possibly because of Margaret Amelia’s manner of presentation--this suggestion seemed to strike the New Boy favourably. Afterward we learned that this was probably partly owing to the fact that the fare to Poynette was going to eat distressingly into the boys’ Fourth money, unless they walked the ten miles.

By common consent we had Margaret Amelia and the New Boy draw up the “partition.” But we all spent a long time on it, and at length it read:--

* * * * *

“We the Undersigned want there should be a July 4 this year.
We the Undersigned would like a big one. But if it can’t be so
very big account of no money, We the Undersigned would like one
anyway, and hereby respectfully partition about this in the
name of the Decoration of Independence.”

There was some doubt whether or not to close this document with “Always sincerely” but we decided to add only the names, and these we set out to secure, the New Boy carrying one copy and Margaret Amelia another. I remember that, to honour the occasion, she put on a pale blue crocheted shawl of her mother’s and we all trailed in her wake, worshipfully.

The lists grew amazingly. Long before noon we had to get new papers. By night we had every child that we knew, save Stitchy Branchitt. He had a railroad pass to Poynette, and he favoured the out-of-town celebration. But the personal considerations of economic conditions were as usual sufficient to swing the event, and the next morning I suppose that twenty-five or thirty of us, bearing the names of three or four times as many, marched into Judge Rodman’s office.

On the stairs Margaret Amelia had a thought.

“Does your father pay taxes?” she inquired of Mary Elizabeth--who was with us, having been sent down town for starch.

“On his watch--he used to,” said Mary Elizabeth, doubtfully. “But he hasn’t got that any more.”

“Well, I don’t know,” said Margaret Amelia, “whether we’d really ought to of put down any names that their fathers don’t pay taxes. It may make a difference. I guess you’re the only one we got that their fathers don’t--that he ain’t--”

I fancy that what Margaret Amelia had in mind was that Mary Elizabeth’s father was the only one who lived meanly; for many of the others must have gone untaxed, but they lived in trim, rented houses, and we knew no difference.

Mary Elizabeth was visibly disturbed.

“I never thought of that,” she said. “Maybe I better scratch me off.”

But there seemed to me to be something indefinably the matter with this.

“The Fourth of July is for everybody, isn’t it?” I said. “Didn’t the whole country think of it?”

“I think it’s like a town though,” said Margaret Amelia. “The principal folks decided it, I’m sure. And they _always_ pay taxes.”

We appealed to the New Boy, as authority superior even to Margaret Amelia. How was this--did the Decoration of Independence mean everybody, or not? Could Mary Elizabeth sign the partition since her father paid no taxes?

“Well,” said the New Boy, “it _says_ everybody, don’t it? But nobody ever gets to ride in the parade but distinguished citizens--it always says them, you know. I s’pose maybe it meant the folks that pays the taxes, only it didn’t like to put it in.”

“I better take my name off,” said Mary Elizabeth, decidedly. “It might hurt.”

So the New Boy produced a stump of pencil, and we found the right paper, and held it up against the wall of the stairway, and Mary Elizabeth scratched her name off.

“I won’t come up, then,” she whispered to me, and made her way down the stairs, her head held very high.

Judge Rodman was in his office--he makes, I find, my eternal picture of “judge,” short, thick, frock-coated, bearded, bald, spectacled, square-toed, and with his hands full of loose papers and his watch-chain shining.

“Bless us,” he said, too, as a judge should.

Margaret Amelia was ahead,--still in the pale blue crocheted shawl,--and she and the New Boy laid down the papers, and the judge picked them up, and read. His big pink face flushed the more, and he took off his spectacles and brushed his eyes, and he cleared his throat, and beamed down on us, and stood nodding.... I remember that he had an editorial in his paper the next night called “A Lesson to the Community,” and another, later, “Out of the Mouths of Babes”--for Judge Rodman was a very great man, and owned the newspaper and the brewery and the principal department store, and had been to the legislature; and his newspaper was always thick with editorials about honouring the flag and reverencing authority and the beauties of home life--Miss Messmore used to cut them out and read them to us at General Exercises.

So Judge Rodman called a Town meeting in the Engine House, and we all hung about the door downstairs, because they said that if children went to the meeting, they would scrape their feet on the bare floor so that nobody could hear a sound; and so we waited outside until we heard hands clapped and the Doxology sung, and then we knew that it had passed.

We were having a new Court House that year, so the Court House yard was not available for exercises: and the school grounds had been sown with grass seed in the beginning of vacation, and the market-place was nothing but a small vacant lot. So there was only one place to have the exercises: the Wood Yard. And as there was very little money to do anything with, it was voted to ask the women to take charge of the celebration and arrange something “tasty, up-to-date, and patriotic,” as Judge Rodman put it. They set themselves to do it. And none of us who were the children then will ever forget that Fourth of July celebration--yet this is not because of what the women planned, nor of anything that the committee of which Judge Rodman was chairman thought to do for the sake of the day.

Our discussion of their plans was not without pessimism.

“Of course what they get up won’t be any _real_ good,” the New Boy advanced. “They’ll stick the school organ up on the platform, and that sounds awful skimpy outdoors. And the church choirs’ll sing. And somebody’ll stand up and scold and go on about nothing. But it’ll get folks here, and balloon men, and stuff to sell, and a band; so I s’pose we can stand the other doin’s.”

“And there’s fireworks on the canal bank in the evening,” we reminded him.

Fourth of July morning began as usual before it dawned. The New Boy and the ten of his tribe assembled at half past three on the lawn between our house and that of the New Family, and, at a rough estimate, each fired off the cost of his fare to Poynette and return. Mary Elizabeth and I awoke and listened, giving occasional ecstatic pulls at our bell. Then we rose and watched the boys go ramping on toward other fields, and, we breathed the dim beauty of the hour, and, I think, wondered if it knew that it was Fourth of July, and we went back to bed, conscious that we were missing a good sixth of the day, a treasure which, as usual, the boys were sharing.

After her work was done, Mary Elizabeth and I took our bags of torpedoes and popped them off on the front bricks. Delia was allowed to have fire-crackers if she did not shoot them off by herself, and she was ardently absorbed in them on their horse-block, with her father. Calista had brothers, and had put her seventy-five cents in with their money on condition that she be allowed to stay with them through the day. Margaret Amelia and Betty always stopped at home until annual giant crackers were fired from before their piazza, with Judge Rodman officiating in his shirt-sleeves, and Mrs. Rodman watching in a starched white “wrapper” on the veranda and uttering little cries, all under the largest flag that there was in the town, floating from the highest flagpole. Mary Elizabeth and I had glimpses of them all in a general survey which we made, resulting in satisfactory proof that the expected merry-go-round, the pop-corn wagon, a chocolate cart, an ice-cream cone man, and a balloon man and woman were already posted expectantly about.

“If it wasn’t for them, though,” observed Mary Elizabeth to me, “the town wouldn’t be really acting like Fourth of July, do you think so? It just kind of lazes along, like a holiday.”

We looked critically at the sunswept street. The general aspect of the time was that people had seized upon it to do a little extra watering, or some postponed weeding, or to tinker at the screens.

“How could it act, though?” I inquired.

“Well,” said Mary Elizabeth, “a river flows, don’t it? And I s’pose a mountain towers. And the sea keeps a-coming in ... and they all act like themselves. Only just a Town don’t take any notice of itself--even on the Fourth.”

That afternoon we were all dressed in our white dresses--“Mine used to have a sprig in it,” said Mary Elizabeth, “but it’s so faded out anybody’d ’most say it was white, don’t you think so?”--and we children met at the Rodmans’--where Margaret Amelia and Betty appeared in white embroidered dresses and blue ribbons and blue stockings, and we marched down the hill, behind the band, to the Wood Yard. The Wood Yard had great flags and poles set at intervals, with bunting festooned between, and the platform was covered with bunting, and the great open space of the yard was laid with board benches. Place in front was reserved for us, and already the rest of the town packed the Yard and hung about the fences. Stitchy Branchitt had given up his journey to Poynette after all, and had established a lemonade stand at the Wood Yard gate--“a fool thing to do,” the New Boy observed plainly. “He knows we’ve spent all we had, and the big folks never think your stuff’s clean.” But Stitchy was enormously enjoying himself by deafeningly shouting:--

“Here’s what you get--here’s what you get--here’s what you get. Cheap--cheap--_cheap_!”

“Quit cheepin’ like some kind o’ bir-r-rd,” said the New Boy, out of one corner of his mouth, as he passed him.

Just inside the Wood Yard gate I saw, with something of a shock, Mary Elizabeth’s father standing. He was leaning against the fence, with his arms folded, and as he caught the look of Mary Elizabeth, who was walking with me, he smiled, and I was further surprised to see how kind his eyes were. They were almost like my own father’s eyes. This seemed to me somehow a very curious thing, and I turned and looked at Mary Elizabeth, and thought: “Why, it’s her _father_--just the same as mine.” It surprised me, too, to see him there. When I came to think of it, I had never before seen him where folk were. Always, unless Mary Elizabeth were with him, he had been walking alone, or sitting down where other people never sat.

Judge Rodman was on the platform, and as soon as the band and the choirs would let him--he made several false starts at rhetorical pauses in the music--he introduced a clergyman who had always lived in the town and who prayed for the continuance of peace and the safe conquest of all our enemies. Then Judge Rodman himself made the address, having generously consented to do so when it was proposed to keep the money in the town by hiring a local speaker. He began with the Norsemen and descended through Queen Isabella and Columbus and the Colonies, making a détour of Sir Walter Raleigh and his cloak, Benedict Arnold, Israel Putnam and Pocahontas, and so by way of Valley Forge and the Delaware to Faneuil Hall and the spirit of 1776. It was a grand flight, filled with what were afterward freely referred to as magnificent passages about the storm, the glory of war, and the love of our fellow-men.

(“Supposing you happen to love the enemy,” said Mary Elizabeth, afterward.

“Well, a pretty thing that would be to do,” said the New Boy, shocked.

“We had it in the Sunday school lesson,” Mary Elizabeth maintained.

“Oh, well,” said the New Boy. “I don’t mean about such things. I mean about what you _do_.”

But I remember that Mary Elizabeth still looked puzzled.)

Especially was Judge Rodman’s final sentence generally repeated for days afterward:--

“At Faneuil Hall,” said the judge, “the hour at last had struck. The hands on the face of the clock stood still. ‘The force of Nature could no further go.’ The supreme thing had been accomplished. Henceforth we were embalmed in the everlasting and unchangeable essence of freedom--freedom--_freedom_.”

Indeed, he held our attention from the first, both because he did not read what he said, and because the ice in the pitcher at his elbow had melted before he began and did not require watching.

Then came the moment when, having completed his address, he took up the Decoration of Independence, to read it; and began the hunt for his spectacles. We watched him go through his pockets, but we did so with an interest which somewhat abated when he began the second round.

“What _is_ the Decoration of Independence, anyhow?” I whispered to Mary Elizabeth, our acquaintance with it having been limited to learning it “by heart” in school.

“Why, don’t you know?” Mary Elizabeth returned. “It’s that thing Miss Messmore can say so fast. It’s when we was the British.”

“Who decorated it?” I wanted to know.

“George Washington,” replied Mary Elizabeth.

“How?” I pressed it. “How’d he do it?”

“I don’t know--but I think that’s what he wanted of the cherry blossoms,” said she.

At this point Judge Rodman gave up the search.

“I deeply regret,” said he, “that I shall be obliged to forego my reading of our national document which, next to the Constitution itself, best embodies our unchanging principles.”

And then he added something which smote the front rows suddenly breathless:--

“However, it occurs to me, since this is preeminently the children’s celebration and since I am given to understand that our public schools now bestow due and proper attention upon the teaching of civil government, that it will be a fitting thing, a moving thing even, to hear these words of our great foundation spoken in childish tones. Miss Messmore, can you, as teacher of the city schools, in the grades where the idea of our celebration so fittingly originated, among the tender young, can you recommend, madam, perhaps, one of your bright pupils to repeat for us these undying utterances whose commitment has now become, as I understand it, a part of our public school curriculum?”

There was an instant’s pause, and then I heard Margaret Amelia Rodman’s name spoken. Miss Messmore had uttered it. Judge Rodman was repeating it, smiling blandly down with a pleased diffidence.

“There can be no one more fitted to do this, Judge Rodman,” Miss Messmore had promptly said, “than your daughter, Margaret Amelia, at whose suggestion this celebration, indeed, has come about.”

Poor Margaret Amelia. In spite of her embroidered gown, her blue ribbons, and her blue stockings, I have seldom seen anyone look so wretched as did she when they made her mount that platform. To give her courage her father met her, and took her hand. And then, in his pride and confidence, something else occurred to him.

“Tell us, Margaret Amelia,” he said with a gesture infinitely paternal, “how came the children to think of demanding of us wise-heads that we give observance to this day which we had already voted to let slip past unattended? What spirit moved the children to this act?”

At first Margaret Amelia merely twisted, and fingered her sash at the side. Margaret Amelia was always called on for visitors’ days, and the like. She could usually command her faculties and give a straightforward answer, not so much because of what she knew as because of her unfailing self-confidence. Of this her father was serenely aware; but, aware also that the situation made unusual demands, he concluded to help her somewhat.

“How came the children,” he encouragingly put it, “to think of making this fine effort to save our National holiday this year?”

Margaret Amelia straightened slightly. She faced her audience with something of her native confidence, and told them:--

“Why,” she said, “we all had some Fourth of July money, and there wasn’t going to be any way to spend it.”

A ripple of laughter ran round, and Judge Rodman’s placid pink turned to purple.

“I fear,” he observed gravely, “that the immediate nature of the event has somewhat obscured the real significance of the children’s most superior movement. Now, my child! Miss Messmore thinks that you should recite for us at least a portion of the Declaration of Independence. Will you do so?”

Margaret Amelia looked at him, down at us, away toward the waiting Wood Yard, and then at Miss Messmore.

“Is it that about ‘The shades of night were falling fast’?” she demanded.

In the roar of laughter that followed, Margaret Amelia ran down, poor child, and sobbed on Miss Messmore’s shoulder. I never think of that moment without something of a return of my swelling sympathy for her who suffered this species of martyrdom, and so needlessly. I have seen, out of schools and out of certain of our superstitions, many martyrdoms result, but never one that has touched me more.

I do not know whether something of this feeling was in the voice that we next heard speaking, or whether that which animated it was only its own bitterness. That voice sounded, clear and low-pitched, through the time’s confusion.

“I will read the Declaration of Independence,” it said.

And making his way through the crowd, and mounting the platform steps, we saw Mary Elizabeth’s father.

Instinctively I put out my hand to her. But he was wholly himself, and this I think that she knew from the first. He was neatly dressed, and he laid his shabby hat on the table and picked up the book with a tranquil air of command. I remember how frail he looked as he buttoned his worn coat, and began to read.

“‘We, the people of the United States--’”

It was the first time that I had ever thought of Mary Elizabeth’s father as to be classed with anybody. He had never had employment, he belonged to no business, to no church, to no class of any sort. He merely lived over across the tracks, and he went and came alone. And here he was saying “_We_, the people of the United States,” just as if he belonged.

When my vague fear had subsided lest they might stop his reading because he was not a taxpayer, I listened for the first time in my life to what he read. To be sure, I had--more or less--learned it. Now I listened.

“Free and equal,” I heard him say, and I wondered what this meant. “Free and equal.” But there were Mary Elizabeth and I, were we equal? Perhaps, though, it didn’t mean little girls--only grown-ups. But there were Mary Elizabeth’s father and mother, and all the other fathers and mothers, they were grown up, and were they equal? And what were they free from, I wondered. Perhaps, though, I didn’t know what these words meant. “Free and equal” sounded like fairies, but folks I was accustomed to think of as burdened, and as different from one another, as Judge Rodman was different from Mary Elizabeth’s father. This, however, was the first time that ever I had caught the word right: Not Decoration, but Declaration of Independence, it seemed!

Mary Elizabeth’s father finished, and closed the book, and stood for a moment looking over the Wood Yard. He was very tall and pale, and seeing him with something of dignity in his carriage I realized with astonishment that, if he were “dressed up,” he would look just like the men in the choir, just like the minister himself. Then suddenly he smiled round at us all, and even broke into a moment of soft and pleasant laughter.

“It has been a long time,” he said, “since I have had occasion to remember the Declaration of Independence. I am glad to have had it called to my attention. We are in danger of forgetting about it--some of us. May I venture to suggest that, when it is taught in the schools, it be made quite clear to whom this document refers. And for the rest, my friends, God bless us all--some day.”

“Bless us,” was what Judge Rodman had said. I remember wondering if they meant the same thing.

He turned and went down the steps, and at the foot he staggered a little, and I saw with something of pride that it was my father who went to him and led him away.

At once the band struck gayly into a patriotic air, and the people on all the benches got to their feet, and the men took off their hats. And above the music I heard Stitchy Branchitt beginning to shout again:--

“Here’s what you get--here’s what you get--here’s what you get! Something cheap--cheap--_cheap!_”

* * * * *

When I came home from the fireworks with Delia’s family and Mary Elizabeth, my father and mother were sitting on the veranda.

“It’s we who are to blame,” I heard my father saying, “though we’re fine at glossing it over.”

I wondered what had happened, and I sat down on the top step and began to untie my last torpedo from the corner of my handkerchief. Mary Elizabeth had one left, too, and we had agreed to throw them on the stone window-sills of our rooms as a final salute.

“Let’s ask her now,” said father.

Mother leaned toward me.

“Dear,” she said, “father has been having a talk with Mary Elizabeth’s father and mother. And--when her father isn’t here any more--which may not be long now, we think ... would you like us to have Mary Elizabeth come and live here?”

“With us?” I cried. “_With us?_”

Yes, they meant with us.

“To work?” I demanded.

“To be,” mother said.

“Oh, yes, _yes!_” I welcomed it. “But her father--where will he be?”

“In a little while now,” father said, “he will be free--and perhaps even equal.”

I did not understand this wholly. Besides, there was far too much to think about. I turned toward the house of the New Family. A light glowed in Mary Elizabeth’s room. I brought down my torpedo on the brick walk, and it exploded merrily, and from Mary Elizabeth’s window came an answering pop.

“Then Mary Elizabeth will get free and equal too!” I cried joyously.

XIX

EARTH-MOTHER

And for that day and that night, and for all the days and all the nights, I should like to tell a story about the Earth, and about some of the things that it keeps expecting.

And if it were Sometime Far Away--say 1950--or 2050--or 3050--I should like to meet some Children of Then, and tell them this story about Now, and hear them all talk of what a curious place the earth must have been long ago, and of how many things it did not yet do.

And their Long Ago is our Now!

* * * * *

For ages and ages (I should say to the Children of Then) the Earth was a great round place of land and water, with trees, fields, cities, mountains, and the like dotted about on it in a pattern; and it spun and spun, out in space, like an enormous engraved ball tossed up in the air from somewhere. And many people thought that this was all there was to know about it, and after school they shut up their geographies and went about engraving new trees, fields, cities, and such things on the outside of the earth. And they truly thought that this was All, and they kept on doing it, rather tired but very independent.

Now the Earth had a friend and companion whom nobody thought much about. It was Earth’s Shadow, cast by the sun in the way that any other shadow is cast, but it was such a big shadow that of course it fell far, far out in space. And as Earth went round, naturally its Shadow went round, and if one could have looked down, one would have seen the Shadow sticking out and out, so that the Earth and its Shadow-handle would have seemed almost like a huge saucepan filled with cities and people, all being held out over the sun, to get them done.

Among the cities was one very beautiful City. She wore robes of green or of white, delicately embroidered with streets in a free and exquisite pattern, and her hair was like a flowing river, and at night she put on many glorious jewels. And she had the power to change herself at will into a woman. This was a power, however, which she had never yet used, and indeed she did not yet know wholly that she had this power, but she used to dream about it, and sometimes she used to sing about the dream, softly, to herself. Men thought that this song was the roar of the City’s traffic, but it was not so.

Now the Earth was most anxious for this City to become a woman because, although the Earth whirled like an enormous engraved ball and seemed like a saucepan held over the sun, still all the time it was really just the Earth, and it was very human and tired and discouraged, and it needed a woman to rest it and to sing to it and to work with it, in her way. But there were none, because all the ordinary women were busy with _their_ children. So the only way seemed to be for the City to be a woman, as she knew how to be; and the Earth was most anxious to have this happen. And it tried to see how it could bring this about.

I think that the Earth may have asked the Moon, because she is a woman and might be expected to know something about it. But the Moon, as usual, was asleep on the sky, with a fine mosquito-netting of mist all about her, and she said not a word. (If you look at the Moon, you can see how like a beautiful, sleeping face she seems.) I think that the Earth may have asked Mars, too, because he is so very near that it would be only polite to consult him. But he said: “I’m only a few million years old yet. Don’t expect me to understand either cities or people.” And finally the Earth asked its Shadow.

“Shadow, dear,” it said, “you are pretty deep. Can’t you tell me how to make this City turn into a woman? For I want her to work with me, in _her_ way.”

The Shadow, who did nothing but run to keep up with the Earth, let a few thousand miles sweep by, and then it said:--

“Really, I wouldn’t know. I’m not up on much but travel.”

“Well,” said the Earth, “then please just ask the Uttermost Spaces. You continually pass by that way and somebody ought to know something.”

So the Shadow swept along the Uttermost Spaces and made an abyss-to-abyss canvass.

“The Uttermost Spaces want to know,” the Shadow reported next day, “whether in all that City there is a child. They said if there is, it could probably do what you want.”

“A child,” said the Earth. “Well, sea caves and firmaments. Of course there is. What do the Uttermost Spaces think I’m in the Earth business for if it isn’t for the Children?”

“I don’t know,” said its Shadow, rather sulkily. “I’m only telling you what I heard. If you’re cross with me, I won’t keep up with you. I’m about tired of it anyway.”

“Oh, I beg your pardon,” said the Earth, “You mustn’t mind me. I’m always a little sunstruck. A thousand thanks. Come along, do.”

“A child,” thought the Earth, “a child. How could a child change a City into a woman? And _what_ child?”

But it was a very wise old Earth, and to its mind all children are valuable. So after a time it concluded that one child in that City would be as good as another, and perhaps any child could work the miracle. So it said: “I choose to work the miracle that child who is thinking about the most beautiful thing in the world.”

Then it listened.

Now, since the feet of people are pressed all day long to earth, it is true that the Earth can talk with everyone and, by listening, can know what is in each heart. When it listened this time, it chanced that it was the middle of the night, when nearly every little child was sleeping and dreaming. But there was one little girl lying wide awake and staring out her bedroom window up at the stars, and as soon as the Earth listened to her thoughts, it knew that she was the one.

Of what do you suppose she was thinking? She was thinking of her mother, who had died before she could remember her, and wondering where she was; and she was picturing what her mother had looked like, and what her mother would have said to her, and how her mother’s arms would have felt about her, and her mother’s good-night kiss; and she was wondering how it would be to wake in the night, a little frightened, and turn and stretch out her arms and find her mother breathing there beside her, ready to wake her and give her an in-the-middle-of-the-night kiss and send her back to sleep again. And she thought about it all so longingly that her little heart was like nothing in the world so much as the one word “Mother.”

“It will be you,” said the Earth.

So the Earth spoke to its Shadow who was, of course, just then fastened to that same side, it being night.

“Shadow, dear,” Earth said, like a prescription, “fold closely about her and drop out a dream or two. But do not let her forget.”

So Shadow folded about her and dropped out a dream or two. And all night Earth lapped her in its silences, but they did not let her forget. And Shadow left word with Morning, telling Morning what to do, and she kissed the little girl’s eyelids so that the first thing she thought when she waked was how wonderful it would be to be kissed awake by her mother. And her little heart beat _Mother_ in her breast.

As soon as she was dressed (“Muvvers wouldn’t pinch your feet with the button-hook, or tie your ribbon too tight, or get your laxtixs short so’s they pull,” she thought), as soon as she was dressed, and had pressed her feet to Earth, Earth began to talk to her.

“Go out and find a mother,” it said to her.

“My muvver is dead,” thought the little girl.

Earth said: “I am covered with mothers and with those who ought to be mothers. Go to them. Tell them you haven’t any mother. Wouldn’t one of those be next best?”

And the Earth said so much, and the little girl’s heart so strongly beat _Mother_, that she could not help going to see.

On the street she looked very little and she felt--oh, _much_ littler than in the house with furniture. For the street seemed to be merely a world of Skirts--skirts everywhere and also the bottoms of men’s coats with impersonal Legs below. And these said nothing. Away up above were Voices, talking very fast, and to one another, and entirely leaving her out. She was out of the conversations and out of account, and it felt far more lonely than it did with just furniture. Now and then another child would pass who would look at her as if she really were there; but everyone was hanging on its mother’s hand or her Skirt, or else, if the child were alone, a Voice from ahead or behind was saying: “Hurry, dear. Mother won’t wait. Come and see what’s in _this_ window.” Littlegirl thought how wonderful that would be, to have somebody ahead looking back for her, and she waited on purpose, by a hydrant, and pretended that she was going to hear somebody saying: “_Do_ come on, dear. Mother’ll be late for her fitting.” But nobody said anything. Only an automobile stood close by the hydrant and in it was a little yellow-haired girl, and just at that moment a lady came from a shop and got in the automobile and handed the little girl a white tissue-paper parcel and said: “Sit farther over--there’s a dear. Now, that’s for you, but don’t open it till we get home.” _What_ was in the parcel, Littlegirl wondered, and stood looking after the automobile until it was lost. One little boy passed her, holding tightly to his mother’s hand, and she stooping over him and he _crying_. Littlegirl tried to think what could be bad enough to cry about when you had hold of your mother’s hand and she was bending over you. A stone in your shoe? Or a pin in your neck? Or because you’d lost your locket? But would any of those things matter enough to cry when your mother had hold of your hand? She looked up at the place beside her where her own mother would be walking and tried to see where her face would be.

And as she looked up, she saw the tops of the high buildings across the street, and below them the windows hung thick as pictures on a wall, and thicker. The shop doors were open like doors to wonderful, mysterious palaces where you went in with your mother and she picked out your dresses and said: “Wouldn’t you like this one, dear? Mother used to have one like this when _she_ was a little girl.” And Littlegirl saw, too, one of the side streets, and how it was all lined with homes, whose doors were shut, like closed lips with nothing to say to anybody save those who lived there--the children who were promised Christmas trees--and _got_ them, too. And between shops and homes was the world of Skirts and Voices, mothers whose little girls were at home, daddys who would run up the front steps at night and cry: “Come here, Puss. Did you grow any since morning?” Or, “_Where’s my son?_” (Littlegirl knew how it went--she had heard them.) Shops and homes and crowds--a City! A City for everybody but her.

When the Earth--who all this time was listening--heard her think that, it made to flow up into her little heart the longing to belong to somebody. And Littlegirl ran straight up to a lady in blue linen, who was passing.

“Are you somebody’s muvver?” she asked.

The lady looked down in the little face and stood still.

“No,” she said soberly.

Littlegirl slipped her hand in her white glove.

“I aren’t anybody’s little girl,” she said. “Let’s trade each other.”

And the Earth, who was listening, made to flow in the lady’s heart an old longing.

“Let’s go in here, at any rate,” said the Lady, “and talk it over.”

So they went in a wonderful place, all made of mirrors, and jars of bonbons, and long trays, as big as doll cradles, and filled with bonbons too. And they sat at a cool table, under a whirry fan, and had before them thick, foamy, frozen chocolate. And the Blue Linen Lady said:--

“But whose little girl are you, really?”

“I’m _my_ little girl, I think,” said Littlegirl. “I don’t know who else’s.”

“With whom do you live?” asked the Lady.

“Some peoples,” said Littlegirl, “that’s other people’s muvvers. Don’t let’s say about them.”

“What shall we say about?” asked the Lady, smiling.

“Let’s pretend you was my muvver,” said Littlegirl.

The lady looked startled, but she nodded slowly.

“Very well,” she said. “I’ll play that. How do you play it?”

Littlegirl hesitated and looked down in her chocolate.

“I don’t know berry well,” she said soberly. “_You_ say how.”

“Well,” said the Lady, “if you were my little girl, I should probably be saying to you, ‘Do you like this, dear? Don’t eat it fast. And take little bits of bites.’ And you would say, ‘Yes, mother.’ And then what?”

Littlegirl looked deep down her chocolate. She was making a cave in one side of it, with the foamy part on top for snow. And while she looked the snow suddenly seemed to melt and brim over, and she looked at the lady mutely.

“I don’t know how,” she said; “I don’t know how!”

“Never mind!” said the Lady, very quickly and a little unsteadily, “I’ll tell you a story instead--shall I?”

So the Blue Linen Lady told her a really wonderful story. It was about a dwarf who was made of gold, all but his heart, and about what a terrible time he had trying to pretend that he was a truly, flesh and blood person. It made him so unhappy to have to pretend all the time that he got _scandalous_ cross to everybody, and nothing could please him. His gold kept getting harder and harder till he could move only with the greatest difficulty, and it looked as if his heart were going golden too. And if it did, of course he would die. But one night, just as the soft outside edges of his heart began to take on a shining tinge, a little boy ran out in the road where the dwarf was passing, and in the dark mistook him for his father, and jumped up and threw his arms about the dwarf’s neck and hugged him. And of a sudden the dwarf’s heart began to beat, and when he got in the house, he saw that he wasn’t gold any more, and he wasn’t a dwarf--but he was straight and strong and real. “And so,” the Lady ended it, “you must love every grown-up you can, because maybe their hearts are turning into gold and you can stop it that way.”

“An’ must _you_ love every children?” asked Littlegirl, very low.

“Yes,” said the Lady, “I must.”

“An’ will you love me an’ be my muvver?” asked Littlegirl.

The Blue Linen Lady sighed.

“You dear little thing,” she said, “I’d love it--I’d love it. But I truly haven’t any place for you to live--or any time to give you. Come now--I’m going to get you some candy and take you back where you belong--_in an automobile_. Won’t that be fun?”

But when she turned for the candy, Littlegirl slipped out the door and ran and ran as fast as she could. (She had thanked the lady, first thing, for the thick, frozen, foamy chocolate, so _that_ part was all right.) And Littlegirl went round a corner and lost herself in a crowd--in which it is far easier to lose yourself than in the woods. And there she was again, worse off than before, because she had felt how it would feel to feel that she had a mother.

The Earth--who would have shaken its head if it could without disarranging everything on it--said things instead to its Shadow--who was by now on the other side of the world from the City.

“Shadow, dear,” said the Earth, “what _do_ you think of that?”

“The very Uttermost Spaces are ashamed for her,” said the Shadow.

But of course the Blue Linen Lady had no idea that the Earth and its Shadow and the Uttermost Spaces had been watching to see what she did.

Littlegirl ran on, many a weary block, and though she met mother-looking women she dared speak to none of them for fear they would offer to take her back in an automobile, with some candy, to the people with whom she lived-without-belonging. And of late, these people had said things in her presence about the many mouths to feed, and she had heard, and had understood, and it had made her heart beat _Mother_, as it had when she wakened that day.

At last, when she was most particularly tired, she came to the park where it was large and cool and woodsy and wonderful. But in the park the un-motherness of things was worse than ever. To be sure, there were no mothers there, only nurse-maids. But the nurse-maids and the children and the covers-to-baby-carriages were all so ruffly or lacy or embroidery or starchy and so white that _mother_ was written all over them. Nobody else could have cared to have them like that. How wonderful it would be, Littlegirl thought, to be paid attention to as if you were a really person and not just hanging on the edges. Even the squirrels were coaxed and beckoned. She sat down on the edge of a bench on which an old gentleman was feeding peanuts to a squirrel perched on his knee, and she thought it would be next best to having a Christmas tree to be a squirrel and have somebody taking pains like that to keep her near by.

“Where’s your nurse, my dear?” the old gentleman asked her finally, and she ran away so that he should not guess that she was her own little girl and nobody else’s.