boarders were seated on the high stoop upon round, flat mats like
German pancakes.
In one of the second-floor front windows Mrs. McCaskey awaited her
husband. Supper was cooling on the table. Its heat went into Mrs.
McCaskey.
At nine Mr. McCaskey came. He carried his coat on his arm and his pipe
in his teeth; and he apologised for disturbing the boarders on the steps
as he selected spots of stone between them on which to set his size 9,
width Ds.
As he opened the door of his room he received a surprise. Instead of the
usual stove-lid or potato-masher for him to dodge, came only words.
Mr. McCaskey reckoned that the benign May moon had softened the breast
of his spouse.
"I heard ye," came the oral substitutes for kitchenware. "Ye can
apollygise to riff-raff of the streets for settin' yer unhandy feet on
the tails of their frocks, but ye'd walk on the neck of yer wife the
length of a clothes-line without so much as a 'Kiss me fut,' and I'm
sure it's that long from rubberin' out the windy for ye and the victuals
cold such as there's money to buy after drinkin' up yer wages at
Gallegher's every Saturday evenin', and the gas man here twice to-day
for his."
"Woman!" said Mr. McCaskey, dashing his coat and hat upon a chair, "the
noise of ye is an insult to me appetite. When ye run down politeness ye
take the mortar from between the bricks of the foundations of society.
'Tis no more than exercisin' the acrimony of a gentleman when ye ask the
dissent of ladies blockin' the way for steppin' between them. Will ye
bring the pig's face of ye out of the windy and see to the food?"
Mrs. McCaskey arose heavily and went to the stove. There was something
in her manner that warned Mr. McCaskey. When the corners of her mouth
went down suddenly like a barometer it usually foretold a fall of
crockery and tinware.
"Pig's face, is it?" said Mrs. McCaskey, and hurled a stewpan full of
bacon and turnips at her lord.
Mr. McCaskey was no novice at repartee. He knew what should follow
the entrée. On the table was a roast sirloin of pork, garnished with
shamrocks. He retorted with this, and drew the appropriate return of
a bread pudding in an earthen dish. A hunk of Swiss cheese accurately
thrown by her husband struck Mrs. McCaskey below one eye. When she
replied with a well-aimed coffee-pot full of a hot, black, semi-fragrant
liquid the battle, according to courses, should have ended.
But Mr. McCaskey was no 50-cent _table d'hôter_. Let cheap Bohemians
consider coffee the end, if they would. Let them make that _faux pas_.
He was foxier still. Finger-bowls were not beyond the compass of his
experience. They were not to be had in the Pension Murphy; but their
equivalent was at hand. Triumphantly he sent the granite-ware wash
basin at the head of his matrimonial adversary. Mrs. McCaskey dodged in
time. She reached for a flatiron, with which, as a sort of cordial, she
hoped to bring the gastronomical duel to a close. But a loud, wailing
scream downstairs caused both her and Mr. McCaskey to pause in a sort of
involuntary armistice.
On the sidewalk at the corner of the house Policeman Cleary was standing
with one ear upturned, listening to the crash of household utensils.
"'Tis Jawn McCaskey and his missis at it again," meditated the
policeman. "I wonder shall I go up and stop the row. I will not. Married
folks they are; and few pleasures they have. 'Twill not last long. Sure,
they'll have to borrow more dishes to keep it up with."
And just then came the loud scream below-stairs, betokening fear or dire
extremity. "'Tis probably the cat," said Policeman Cleary, and walked
hastily in the other direction.
The boarders on the steps were fluttered. Mr. Toomey, an insurance
solicitor by birth and an investigator by profession, went inside
to analyse the scream. He returned with the news that Mrs. Murphy's
little boy, Mike, was lost. Following the messenger, out bounced Mrs.
Murphy - two hundred pounds in tears and hysterics, clutching the air
and howling to the sky for the loss of thirty pounds of freckles and
mischief. Bathos, truly; but Mr. Toomey sat down at the side of Miss
Purdy, millinery, and their hands came together in sympathy. The two old
maids, Misses Walsh, who complained every day about the noise in the
halls, inquired immediately if anybody had looked behind the clock.
Major Grigg, who sat by his fat wife on the top step, arose and buttoned
his coat. "The little one lost?" he exclaimed. "I will scour the city."
His wife never allowed him out after dark. But now she said: "Go,
Ludovic!" in a baritone voice. "Whoever can look upon that mother's
grief without springing to her relief has a heart of stone." "Give me
some thirty or - sixty cents, my love," said the Major. "Lost children
sometimes stray far. I may need carfares."
Old man Denny, hall room, fourth floor back, who sat on the lowest step,
trying to read a paper by the street lamp, turned over a page to follow
up the article about the carpenters' strike. Mrs. Murphy shrieked to the
moon: "Oh, ar-r-Mike, f'r Gawd's sake, where is me little bit av a boy?"
"When'd ye see him last?" asked old man Denny, with one eye on the
report of the Building Trades League.
"Oh," wailed Mrs. Murphy, "'twas yisterday, or maybe four hours ago!
I dunno. But it's lost he is, me little boy Mike. He was playin' on
the sidewalk only this mornin' - or was it Wednesday? I'm that busy with
work, 'tis hard to keep up with dates. But I've looked the house over
from top to cellar, and it's gone he is. Oh, for the love av Hiven - "
Silent, grim, colossal, the big city has ever stood against its
revilers. They call it hard as iron; they say that no pulse of pity
beats in its bosom; they compare its streets with lonely forests and
deserts of lava. But beneath the hard crust of the lobster is found a
delectable and luscious food. Perhaps a different simile would have been
wiser. Still, nobody should take offence. We would call no one a lobster
without good and sufficient claws.
No calamity so touches the common heart of humanity as does the straying
of a little child. Their feet are so uncertain and feeble; the ways are
so steep and strange.
Major Griggs hurried down to the corner, and up the avenue into Billy's
place. "Gimme a rye-high," he said to the servitor. "Haven't seen a
bow-legged, dirty-faced little devil of a six-year-old lost kid around
here anywhere, have you?"
Mr. Toomey retained Miss Purdy's hand on the steps. "Think of that dear
little babe," said Miss Purdy, "lost from his mother's side - perhaps
already fallen beneath the iron hoofs of galloping steeds - oh, isn't it
dreadful?"
"Ain't that right?" agreed Mr. Toomey, squeezing her hand. "Say I start
out and help look for um!"
"Perhaps," said Miss Purdy, "you should. But, oh, Mr. Toomey, you are so
dashing - so reckless - suppose in your enthusiasm some accident should
befall you, then what - "
Old man Denny read on about the arbitration agreement, with one finger
on the lines.
In the second floor front Mr. and Mrs. McCaskey came to the window to
recover their second wind. Mr. McCaskey was scooping turnips out of his
vest with a crooked forefinger, and his lady was wiping an eye that the
salt of the roast pork had not benefited. They heard the outcry below,
and thrust their heads out of the window.
"'Tis little Mike is lost," said Mrs. McCaskey, in a hushed voice, "the
beautiful, little, trouble-making angel of a gossoon!"
"The bit of a boy mislaid?" said Mr. McCaskey, leaning out of the
window. "Why, now, that's bad enough, entirely. The childer, they be
different. If 'twas a woman I'd be willin', for they leave peace behind
'em when they go."
Disregarding the thrust, Mrs. McCaskey caught her husband's arm.
"Jawn," she said, sentimentally, "Missis Murphy's little bye is lost.
'Tis a great city for losing little boys. Six years old he was. Jawn,
'tis the same age our little bye would have been if we had had one six
years ago."
"We never did," said Mr. McCaskey, lingering with the fact.
"But if we had, Jawn, think what sorrow would be in our hearts this
night, with our little Phelan run away and stolen in the city nowheres
at all."
"Ye talk foolishness," said Mr. McCaskey. "'Tis Pat he would be named,
after me old father in Cantrim."
"Ye lie!" said Mrs. McCaskey, without anger. "Me brother was worth tin
dozen bog-trotting McCaskeys. After him would the bye be named." She
leaned over the window-sill and looked down at the hurrying and bustle
below.
"Jawn," said Mrs. McCaskey, softly, "I'm sorry I was hasty wid ye."
"'Twas hasty puddin', as ye say," said her husband, "and hurry-up
turnips and get-a-move-on-ye coffee. 'Twas what ye could call a quick
lunch, all right, and tell no lie."
Mrs. McCaskey slipped her arm inside her husband's and took his rough
hand in hers.
"Listen at the cryin' of poor Mrs. Murphy," she said. "'Tis an awful
thing for a bit of a bye to be lost in this great big city. If 'twas our
little Phelan, Jawn, I'd be breakin' me heart."
Awkwardly Mr. McCaskey withdrew his hand. But he laid it around the
nearing shoulder of his wife.
"'Tis foolishness, of course," said he, roughly, "but I'd be cut up
some meself if our little Pat was kidnapped or anything. But there
never was any childer for us. Sometimes I've been ugly and hard with
ye, Judy. Forget it."
They leaned together, and looked down at the heart-drama being acted
below.
Long they sat thus. People surged along the sidewalk, crowding,
questioning, filling the air with rumours, and inconsequent surmises.
Mrs. Murphy ploughed back and forth in their midst, like a soft
mountain down which plunged an audible cataract of tears. Couriers
came and went.
Loud voices and a renewed uproar were raised in front of the
boarding-house.
"What's up now, Judy?" asked Mr. McCaskey.
"'Tis Missis Murphy's voice," said Mrs. McCaskey, harking. "She says
she's after finding little Mike asleep behind the roll of old linoleum
under the bed in her room."
Mr. McCaskey laughed loudly.
"That's yer Phelan," he shouted, sardonically. "Divil a bit would a Pat
have done that trick. If the bye we never had is strayed and stole, by
the powers, call him Phelan, and see him hide out under the bed like a
mangy pup."
Mrs. McCaskey arose heavily, and went toward the dish closet, with the
corners of her mouth drawn down.
Policeman Cleary came back around the corner as the crowd dispersed.
Surprised, he upturned an ear toward the McCaskey apartment, where the
crash of irons and chinaware and the ring of hurled kitchen utensils
seemed as loud as before. Policeman Cleary took out his timepiece.
"By the deported snakes!" he exclaimed, "Jawn McCaskey and his lady have
been fightin' for an hour and a quarter by the watch. The missis could
give him forty pounds weight. Strength to his arm."
Policeman Cleary strolled back around the corner.
Old man Denny folded his paper and hurried up the steps just as Mrs.
Murphy was about to lock the door for the night.
THE SKYLIGHT ROOM
First Mrs. Parker would show you the double parlours. You would not dare
to interrupt her description of their advantages and of the merits of
the gentleman who had occupied them for eight years. Then you would
manage to stammer forth the confession that you were neither a doctor
nor a dentist. Mrs. Parker's manner of receiving the admission was such
that you could never afterward entertain the same feeling toward your
parents, who had neglected to train you up in one of the professions
that fitted Mrs. Parker's parlours.
Next you ascended one flight of stairs and looked at the
second-floor-back at $8. Convinced by her second-floor manner that it
was worth the $12 that Mr. Toosenberry always paid for it until he left
to take charge of his brother's orange plantation in Florida near Palm
Beach, where Mrs. McIntyre always spent the winters that had the double
front room with private bath, you managed to babble that you wanted
something still cheaper.
If you survived Mrs. Parker's scorn, you were taken to look at Mr.
Skidder's large hall room on the third floor. Mr. Skidder's room was not
vacant. He wrote plays and smoked cigarettes in it all day long. But
every room-hunter was made to visit his room to admire the lambrequins.
After each visit, Mr. Skidder, from the fright caused by possible
eviction, would pay something on his rent.
Then - oh, then - if you still stood on one foot, with your hot hand
clutching the three moist dollars in your pocket, and hoarsely
proclaimed your hideous and culpable poverty, nevermore would Mrs.
Parker be cicerone of yours. She would honk loudly the word "Clara," she
would show you her back, and march downstairs. Then Clara, the coloured
maid, would escort you up the carpeted ladder that served for the fourth
flight, and show you the Skylight Room. It occupied 7x8 feet of floor
space at the middle of the hall. On each side of it was a dark lumber
closet or storeroom.
In it was an iron cot, a washstand and a chair. A shelf was the dresser.
Its four bare walls seemed to close in upon you like the sides of a
coffin. Your hand crept to your throat, you gasped, you looked up as
from a well - and breathed once more. Through the glass of the little
skylight you saw a square of blue infinity.
"Two dollars, suh," Clara would say in her half-contemptuous,
half-Tuskegeenial tones.
One day Miss Leeson came hunting for a room. She carried a typewriter
made to be lugged around by a much larger lady. She was a very little
girl, with eyes and hair that had kept on growing after she had stopped
and that always looked as if they were saying: "Goodness me! Why didn't
you keep up with us?"
Mrs. Parker showed her the double parlours. "In this closet," she said,
"one could keep a skeleton or anaesthetic or coal - "
"But I am neither a doctor nor a dentist," said Miss Leeson, with a
shiver.
Mrs. Parker gave her the incredulous, pitying, sneering, icy stare that
she kept for those who failed to qualify as doctors or dentists, and led
the way to the second floor back.
"Eight dollars?" said Miss Leeson. "Dear me! I'm not Hetty if I do look
green. I'm just a poor little working girl. Show me something higher and
lower."
Mr. Skidder jumped and strewed the floor with cigarette stubs at the rap
on his door.
"Excuse me, Mr. Skidder," said Mrs. Parker, with her demon's smile at
his pale looks. "I didn't know you were in. I asked the lady to have a
look at your lambrequins."
"They're too lovely for anything," said Miss Leeson, smiling in exactly
the way the angels do.
After they had gone Mr. Skidder got very busy erasing the tall,
black-haired heroine from his latest (unproduced) play and inserting a
small, roguish one with heavy, bright hair and vivacious features.
"Anna Held'll jump at it," said Mr. Skidder to himself, putting his feet
up against the lambrequins and disappearing in a cloud of smoke like an
aerial cuttlefish.
Presently the tocsin call of "Clara!" sounded to the world the state
of Miss Leeson's purse. A dark goblin seized her, mounted a Stygian
stairway, thrust her into a vault with a glimmer of light in its top
and muttered the menacing and cabalistic words "Two dollars!"
"I'll take it!" sighed Miss Leeson, sinking down upon the squeaky iron
bed.
Every day Miss Leeson went out to work. At night she brought home papers
with handwriting on them and made copies with her typewriter. Sometimes
she had no work at night, and then she would sit on the steps of the
high stoop with the other roomers. Miss Leeson was not intended for
a sky-light room when the plans were drawn for her creation. She was
gay-hearted and full of tender, whimsical fancies. Once she let Mr.
Skidder read to her three acts of his great (unpublished) comedy, "It's
No Kid; or, The Heir of the Subway."
There was rejoicing among the gentlemen roomers whenever Miss Leeson had
time to sit on the steps for an hour or two. But Miss Longnecker, the
tall blonde who taught in a public school and said, "Well, really!" to
everything you said, sat on the top step and sniffed. And Miss Dorn,
who shot at the moving ducks at Coney every Sunday and worked in a
department store, sat on the bottom step and sniffed. Miss Leeson sat
on the middle step and the men would quickly group around her.
Especially Mr. Skidder, who had cast her in his mind for the star part
in a private, romantic (unspoken) drama in real life. And especially Mr.
Hoover, who was forty-five, fat, flush and foolish. And especially very
young Mr. Evans, who set up a hollow cough to induce her to ask him
to leave off cigarettes. The men voted her "the funniest and jolliest
ever," but the sniffs on the top step and the lower step were
implacable.
* * * * * *
I pray you let the drama halt while Chorus stalks to the footlights and
drops an epicedian tear upon the fatness of Mr. Hoover. Tune the pipes
to the tragedy of tallow, the bane of bulk, the calamity of corpulence.
Tried out, Falstaff might have rendered more romance to the ton than
would have Romeo's rickety ribs to the ounce. A lover may sigh, but he
must not puff. To the train of Momus are the fat men remanded. In vain
beats the faithfullest heart above a 52-inch belt. Avaunt, Hoover!
Hoover, forty-five, flush and foolish, might carry off Helen herself;
Hoover, forty-five, flush, foolish and fat is meat for perdition. There
was never a chance for you, Hoover.
As Mrs. Parker's roomers sat thus one summer's evening, Miss Leeson
looked up into the firmament and cried with her little gay laugh:
"Why, there's Billy Jackson! I can see him from down here, too."
All looked up - some at the windows of skyscrapers, some casting about
for an airship, Jackson-guided.
"It's that star," explained Miss Leeson, pointing with a tiny finger.
"Not the big one that twinkles - the steady blue one near it. I can see
it every night through my skylight. I named it Billy Jackson."
"Well, really!" said Miss Longnecker. "I didn't know you were an
astronomer, Miss Leeson."
"Oh, yes," said the small star gazer, "I know as much as any of them
about the style of sleeves they're going to wear next fall in Mars."
"Well, really!" said Miss Longnecker. "The star you refer to is Gamma,
of the constellation Cassiopeia. It is nearly of the second magnitude,
and its meridian passage is - "
"Oh," said the very young Mr. Evans, "I think Billy Jackson is a much
better name for it."
"Same here," said Mr. Hoover, loudly breathing defiance to Miss
Longnecker. "I think Miss Leeson has just as much right to name stars
as any of those old astrologers had."
"Well, really!" said Miss Longnecker.
"I wonder whether it's a shooting star," remarked Miss Dorn. "I hit
nine ducks and a rabbit out of ten in the gallery at Coney Sunday."
"He doesn't show up very well from down here," said Miss Leeson. "You
ought to see him from my room. You know you can see stars even in the
daytime from the bottom of a well. At night my room is like the shaft of
a coal mine, and it makes Billy Jackson look like the big diamond pin
that Night fastens her kimono with."
There came a time after that when Miss Leeson brought no formidable
papers home to copy. And when she went out in the morning, instead of
working, she went from office to office and let her heart melt away in
the drip of cold refusals transmitted through insolent office boys. This
went on.
There came an evening when she wearily climbed Mrs. Parker's stoop at
the hour when she always returned from her dinner at the restaurant. But
she had had no dinner.
As she stepped into the hall Mr. Hoover met her and seized his chance.
He asked her to marry him, and his fatness hovered above her like an
avalanche. She dodged, and caught the balustrade. He tried for her hand,
and she raised it and smote him weakly in the face. Step by step she
went up, dragging herself by the railing. She passed Mr. Skidder's door
as he was red-inking a stage direction for Myrtle Delorme (Miss Leeson)
in his (unaccepted) comedy, to "pirouette across stage from L to the
side of the Count." Up the carpeted ladder she crawled at last and
opened the door of the skylight room.
She was too weak to light the lamp or to undress. She fell upon the iron
cot, her fragile body scarcely hollowing the worn springs. And in that
Erebus of the skylight room, she slowly raised her heavy eyelids, and
smiled.
For Billy Jackson was shining down on her, calm and bright and constant
through the skylight. There was no world about her. She was sunk in a
pit of blackness, with but that small square of pallid light framing the
star that she had so whimsically and oh, so ineffectually named. Miss
Longnecker must be right; it was Gamma, of the constellation Cassiopeia,
and not Billy Jackson. And yet she could not let it be Gamma.
As she lay on her back she tried twice to raise her arm. The third time
she got two thin fingers to her lips and blew a kiss out of the black
pit to Billy Jackson. Her arm fell back limply.
"Good-bye, Billy," she murmured faintly. "You're millions of miles away
and you won't even twinkle once. But you kept where I could see you most
of the time up there when there wasn't anything else but darkness to
look at, didn't you? . . . Millions of miles. . . . Good-bye, Billy
Jackson."
Clara, the coloured maid, found the door locked at 10 the next day,
and they forced it open. Vinegar, and the slapping of wrists and burnt
feathers proving of no avail, some one ran to 'phone for an ambulance.
In due time it backed up to the door with much gong-clanging, and the
capable young medico, in his white linen coat, ready, active, confident,
with his smooth face half debonair, half grim, danced up the steps.
"Ambulance call to 49," he said briefly. "What's the trouble?"
"Oh, yes, doctor," sniffed Mrs. Parker, as though her trouble that there
should be trouble in the house was the greater. "I can't think what can
be the matter with her. Nothing we could do would bring her to. It's a
young woman, a Miss Elsie - yes, a Miss Elsie Leeson. Never
before in my house - "
"What room?" cried the doctor in a terrible voice, to which Mrs. Parker
was a stranger.
"The skylight room. It - "
Evidently the ambulance doctor was familiar with the location of
skylight rooms. He was gone up the stairs, four at a time. Mrs. Parker
followed slowly, as her dignity demanded.
On the first landing she met him coming back bearing the astronomer in
his arms. He stopped and let loose the practised scalpel of his tongue,
not loudly. Gradually Mrs. Parker crumpled as a stiff garment that slips
down from a nail. Ever afterward there remained crumples in her mind and
body. Sometimes her curious roomers would ask her what the doctor said
to her.
"Let that be," she would answer. "If I can get forgiveness for having
heard it I will be satisfied."
The ambulance physician strode with his burden through the pack of
hounds that follow the curiosity chase, and even they fell back along
the sidewalk abashed, for his face was that of one who bears his own
dead.
They noticed that he did not lay down upon the bed prepared for it in
the ambulance the form that he carried, and all that he said was: "Drive
like h - - l, Wilson," to the driver.
That is all. Is it a story? In the next morning's paper I saw a little
news item, and the last sentence of it may help you (as it helped me)
to weld the incidents together.
It recounted the reception into Bellevue Hospital of a young woman who
had been removed from No. 49 East - - street, suffering from debility
induced by starvation. It concluded with these words:
"Dr. William Jackson, the ambulance physician who attended the case,
says the patient will recover."
A SERVICE OF LOVE
When one loves one's Art no service seems too hard.
That is our premise. This story shall draw a conclusion from it, and
show at the same time that the premise is incorrect. That will be a new
thing in logic, and a feat in story-telling somewhat older than the
great wall of China.
Joe Larrabee came out of the post-oak flats of the Middle West pulsing
with a genius for pictorial art. At six he drew a picture of the town
pump with a prominent citizen passing it hastily. This effort was framed
and hung in the drug store window by the side of the ear of corn with an
uneven number of rows. At twenty he left for New York with a flowing
necktie and a capital tied up somewhat closer.
Delia Caruthers did things in six octaves so promisingly in a pine-tree
village in the South that her relatives chipped in enough in her chip
hat for her to go "North" and "finish." They could not see her f - , but
that is our story.
Joe and Delia met in an atelier where a number of art and music students
had gathered to discuss chiaroscuro, Wagner, music, Rembrandt's works,
pictures, Waldteufel, wall paper, Chopin and Oolong.
Joe and Delia became enamoured one of the other, or each of the other,
as you please, and in a short time were married - for (see above), when
one loves one's Art no service seems too hard.
Mr. and Mrs. Larrabee began housekeeping in a flat. It was a lonesome
flat - something like the A sharp way down at the left-hand end of the
keyboard. And they were happy; for they had their Art, and they had each
other. And my advice to the rich young man would be - sell all thou hast,
and give it to the poor - janitor for the privilege of living in a flat
with your Art and your Delia.
Flat-dwellers shall indorse my dictum that theirs is the only true
happiness. If a home is happy it cannot fit too close - let the dresser
collapse and become a billiard table; let the mantel turn to a rowing
machine, the escritoire to a spare bedchamber, the washstand to an
upright piano; let the four walls come together, if they will, so you
and your Delia are between. But if home be the other kind, let it be
wide and long - enter you at the Golden Gate, hang your hat on Hatteras,
your cape on Cape Horn and go out by the Labrador.
Joe was painting in the class of the great Magister - you know his fame.
His fees are high; his lessons are light - his high-lights have brought
him renown. Delia was studying under Rosenstock - you know his repute as
a disturber of the piano keys.
They were mighty happy as long as their money lasted. So is every - but
I will not be cynical. Their aims were very clear and defined. Joe was
to become capable very soon of turning out pictures that old gentlemen
with thin side-whiskers and thick pocketbooks would sandbag one another
in his studio for the privilege of buying. Delia was to become familiar
and then contemptuous with Music, so that when she saw the orchestra
seats and boxes unsold she could have sore throat and lobster in a
private dining-room and refuse to go on the stage.
But the best, in my opinion, was the home life in the little flat - the
ardent, voluble chats after the day's study; the cozy dinners and fresh,
light breakfasts; the interchange of ambitions - ambitions interwoven
each with the other's or else inconsiderable - the mutual help and
inspiration; and - overlook my artlessness - stuffed olives and cheese
sandwiches at 11 p.m.
But after a while Art flagged. It sometimes does, even if some switchman
doesn't flag it. Everything going out and nothing coming in, as
the vulgarians say. Money was lacking to pay Mr. Magister and Herr
Rosenstock their prices. When one loves one's Art no service seems too
hard. So, Delia said she must give music lessons to keep the chafing
dish bubbling.
For two or three days she went out canvassing for pupils. One evening
she came home elated.
"Joe, dear," she said, gleefully, "I've a pupil. And, oh, the loveliest
people! General - General A. B. Pinkney's daughter - on Seventy-first
street. Such a splendid house, Joe - you ought to see the front door!
Byzantine I think you would call it. And inside! Oh, Joe, I never saw
anything like it before.
"My pupil is his daughter Clementina. I dearly love her already. She's
a delicate thing - dresses always in white; and the sweetest, simplest
manners! Only eighteen years old. I'm to give three lessons a week; and,
just think, Joe! $5 a lesson. I don't mind it a bit; for when I get two
or three more pupils I can resume my lessons with Herr Rosenstock. Now,
smooth out that wrinkle between your brows, dear, and let's have a nice
supper."
"That's all right for you, Dele," said Joe, attacking a can of peas with
a carving knife and a hatchet, "but how about me? Do you think I'm going
to let you hustle for wages while I philander in the regions of high
art? Not by the bones of Benvenuto Cellini! I guess I can sell papers or
lay cobblestones, and bring in a dollar or two."
Delia came and hung about his neck.
"Joe, dear, you are silly. You must keep on at your studies. It is not
as if I had quit my music and gone to work at something else. While I
teach I learn. I am always with my music. And we can live as happily as
millionaires on $15 a week. You mustn't think of leaving Mr. Magister."
"All right," said Joe, reaching for the blue scalloped vegetable dish.
"But I hate for you to be giving lessons. It isn't Art. But you're a
trump and a dear to do it."
"When one loves one's Art no service seems too hard," said Delia.
"Magister praised the sky in that sketch I made in the park," said Joe.
"And Tinkle gave me permission to hang two of them in his window. I may
sell one if the right kind of a moneyed idiot sees them."
"I'm sure you will," said Delia, sweetly. "And now let's be thankful for
Gen. Pinkney and this veal roast."
During all of the next week the Larrabees had an early breakfast. Joe
was enthusiastic about some morning-effect sketches he was doing in
Central Park, and Delia packed him off breakfasted, coddled, praised
and kissed at 7 o'clock. Art is an engaging mistress. It was most times
7 o'clock when he returned in the evening.
At the end of the week Delia, sweetly proud but languid, triumphantly
tossed three five-dollar bills on the 8x10 (inches) centre table of the
8x10 (feet) flat parlour.
"Sometimes," she said, a little wearily, "Clementina tries me. I'm
afraid she doesn't practise enough, and I have to tell her the same
things so often. And then she always dresses entirely in white, and that
does get monotonous. But Gen. Pinkney is the dearest old man! I wish you
could know him, Joe. He comes in sometimes when I am with Clementina at
the piano - he is a widower, you know - and stands there pulling his white
goatee. 'And how are the semiquavers and the demisemiquavers
progressing?' he always asks.
"I wish you could see the wainscoting in that drawing-room, Joe! And
those Astrakhan rug portières. And Clementina has such a funny little
cough. I hope she is stronger than she looks. Oh, I really am getting
attached to her, she is so gentle and high bred. Gen. Pinkney's brother
was once Minister to Bolivia."
And then Joe, with the air of a Monte Cristo, drew forth a ten, a five,
a two and a one - all legal tender notes - and laid them beside Delia's
earnings.
"Sold that watercolour of the obelisk to a man from Peoria," he
announced overwhelmingly.
"Don't joke with me," said Delia, "not from Peoria!"
"All the way. I wish you could see him, Dele. Fat man with a woollen
muffler and a quill toothpick. He saw the sketch in Tinkle's window and
thought it was a windmill at first. He was game, though, and bought it
anyhow. He ordered another - an oil sketch of the Lackawanna freight
depot - to take back with him. Music lessons! Oh, I guess Art is still in
it."
"I'm so glad you've kept on," said Delia, heartily. "You're bound to
win, dear. Thirty-three dollars! We never had so much to spend before.
We'll have oysters to-night."
"And filet mignon with champignons," said Joe. "Where is the olive
fork?"
On the next Saturday evening Joe reached home first. He spread his $18
on the parlour table and washed what seemed to be a great deal of dark
paint from his hands.
Half an hour later Delia arrived, her right hand tied up in a shapeless
bundle of wraps and bandages.
"How is this?" asked Joe after the usual greetings. Delia laughed, but
not very joyously.
"Clementina," she explained, "insisted upon a Welsh rabbit after her
lesson. She is such a queer girl. Welsh rabbits at 5 in the afternoon.
The General was there. You should have seen him run for the chafing
dish, Joe, just as if there wasn't a servant in the house. I know
Clementina isn't in good health; she is so nervous. In serving the
rabbit she spilled a great lot of it, boiling hot, over my hand and
wrist. It hurt awfully, Joe. And the dear girl was so sorry! But Gen.
Pinkney! - Joe, that old man nearly went distracted. He rushed downstairs
and sent somebody - they said the furnace man or somebody in the
basement - out to a drug store for some oil and things to bind it up
with. It doesn't hurt so much now."
"What's this?" asked Joe, taking the hand tenderly and pulling at some
white strands beneath the bandages.
"It's something soft," said Delia, "that had oil on it. Oh, Joe, did you
sell another sketch?" She had seen the money on the table.
"Did I?" said Joe; "just ask the man from Peoria. He got his depot
to-day, and he isn't sure but he thinks he wants another parkscape and
a view on the Hudson. What time this afternoon did you burn your hand,
Dele?"
"Five o'clock, I think," said Dele, plaintively. "The iron - I mean the
rabbit came off the fire about that time. You ought to have seen Gen.
Pinkney, Joe, when - "
"Sit down here a moment, Dele," said Joe. He drew her to the couch, sat
beside her and put his arm across her shoulders.
"What have you been doing for the last two weeks, Dele?" he asked.
She braved it for a moment or two with an eye full of love and
stubbornness, and murmured a phrase or two vaguely of Gen. Pinkney;
but at length down went her head and out came the truth and tears.
"I couldn't get any pupils," she confessed. "And I couldn't bear to have
you give up your lessons; and I got a place ironing shirts in that big
Twenty-fourth street laundry. And I think I did very well to make up
both General Pinkney and Clementina, don't you, Joe? And when a girl in
the laundry set down a hot iron on my hand this afternoon I was all the
way home making up that story about the Welsh rabbit. You're not angry,
are you, Joe? And if I hadn't got the work you mightn't have sold your
sketches to that man from Peoria."
"He wasn't from Peoria," said Joe, slowly.
"Well, it doesn't matter where he was from. How clever you are,
Joe - and - kiss me, Joe - and what made you ever suspect that I wasn't
giving music lessons to Clementina?"
"I didn't," said Joe, "until to-night. And I wouldn't have then, only I
sent up this cotton waste and oil from the engine-room this afternoon
for a girl upstairs who had her hand burned with a smoothing-iron. I've
been firing the engine in that laundry for the last two weeks."
"And then you didn't - "
"My purchaser from Peoria," said Joe, "and Gen. Pinkney are both
creations of the same art - but you wouldn't call it either painting or
music."
And then they both laughed, and Joe began:
"When one loves one's Art no service seems - "
But Delia stopped him with her hand on his lips. "No," she said - "just
'When one loves.'"
THE COMING-OUT OF MAGGIE
Every Saturday night the Clover Leaf Social Club gave a hop in the
hall of the Give and Take Athletic Association on the East Side. In
order to attend one of these dances you must be a member of the Give
and Take - or, if you belong to the division that starts off with the
right foot in waltzing, you must work in Rhinegold's paper-box
factory. Still, any Clover Leaf was privileged to escort or be
escorted by an outsider to a single dance. But mostly each Give and
Take brought the paper-box girl that he affected; and few strangers
could boast of having shaken a foot at the regular hops.
Maggie Toole, on account of her dull eyes, broad mouth and left-handed
style of footwork in the two-step, went to the dances with Anna McCarty
and her "fellow." Anna and Maggie worked side by side in the factory,
and were the greatest chums ever. So Anna always made Jimmy Burns take
her by Maggie's house every Saturday night so that her friend could go
to the dance with them.
The Give and Take Athletic Association lived up to its name. The hall
of the association in Orchard street was fitted out with muscle-making
inventions. With the fibres thus builded up the members were wont to
engage the police and rival social and athletic organisations in joyous
combat. Between these more serious occupations the Saturday night hop
with the paper-box factory girls came as a refining influence and as an
efficient screen. For sometimes the tip went 'round, and if you were
among the elect that tiptoed up the dark back stairway you might see as
neat and satisfying a little welter-weight affair to a finish as ever
happened inside the ropes.
On Saturdays Rhinegold's paper-box factory closed at 3 P. M. On one such
afternoon Anna and Maggie walked homeward together. At Maggie's door
Anna said, as usual: "Be ready at seven, sharp, Mag; and Jimmy and me'll
come by for you."
But what was this? Instead of the customary humble and grateful thanks
from the non-escorted one there was to be perceived a high-poised head,
a prideful dimpling at the corners of a broad mouth, and almost a
sparkle in a dull brown eye.
"Thanks, Anna," said Maggie; "but you and Jimmy needn't bother to-night.
I've a gentleman friend that's coming 'round to escort me to the hop."
The comely Anna pounced upon her friend, shook her, chided and beseeched
her. Maggie Toole catch a fellow! Plain, dear, loyal, unattractive
Maggie, so sweet as a chum, so unsought for a two-step or a moonlit
bench in the little park. How was it? When did it happen? Who was it?
"You'll see to-night," said Maggie, flushed with the wine of the first
grapes she had gathered in Cupid's vineyard. "He's swell all right. He's
two inches taller than Jimmy, and an up-to-date dresser. I'll introduce
him, Anna, just as soon as we get to the hall."
Anna and Jimmy were among the first Clover Leafs to arrive that evening.
Anna's eyes were brightly fixed upon the door of the hall to catch the
first glimpse of her friend's "catch."
At 8:30 Miss Toole swept into the hall with her escort. Quickly her
triumphant eye discovered her chum under the wing of her faithful Jimmy.
"Oh, gee!" cried Anna, "Mag ain't made a hit - oh, no! Swell fellow?
well, I guess! Style? Look at 'um."
"Go as far as you like," said Jimmy, with sandpaper in his voice. "Cop
him out if you want him. These new guys always win out with the push.
Don't mind me. He don't squeeze all the limes, I guess. Huh!"
"Shut up, Jimmy. You know what I mean. I'm glad for Mag. First fellow
she ever had. Oh, here they come."
Across the floor Maggie sailed like a coquettish yacht convoyed by a
stately cruiser. And truly, her companion justified the encomiums of the
faithful chum. He stood two inches taller than the average Give and Take
athlete; his dark hair curled; his eyes and his teeth flashed whenever
he bestowed his frequent smiles. The young men of the Clover Leaf Club