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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lovey Mary, by Alice Hegan Rice
+
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+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
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+**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: Lovey Mary
+
+Author: Alice Hegan Rice
+
+Release Date: June, 2004 [EBook #5970]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on October 2, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LOVEY MARY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+LOVEY MARY
+
+BY
+
+ALICE HEGAN RICE
+
+AUTHOR OF
+"Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch"
+
+
+1903
+
+
+
+TO
+
+CALE YOUNG RICE
+WHO TAUGHT ME THE SECRET
+OF PLUCKING ROSES FROM
+A CABBAGE PATCH
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER
+
+   I  A CACTUS-PLANT
+  II  A RUNAWAY COUPLE
+ III  THE HAZY HOUSEHOLD
+  IV  AN ACCIDENT AND AN INCIDENT
+   V  THE DAWN OF A ROMANCE
+  VI  THE LOSING OF MR. STUBBINS
+ VII  NEIGHBORLY ADVICE
+VIII  A DENOMINATIONAL GARDEN
+  IX  LABOR DAY
+   X  A TIMELY VISIT
+  XI  THE CHRISTMAS PLAY
+ XII  REACTION
+XIII  AN HONORABLE RETREAT
+ XIV  THE CACTUS BLOOMS
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+"They met at the pump." ..... Frontispiece
+
+"'Now the Lord meant you to be plain.'"
+
+"'Come here, Tom, and kiss your mother.'"
+
+"''T ain't no street...; this here is the Cabbage Patch.'"
+
+"She puffed her hair at the top and sides."
+
+"'She took on mighty few airs fer a person in mournin'.'"
+
+"She sat on the door-step, white and miserable." 67
+
+"Mrs. Wiggs took pictures from her walls and chairs from her parlor to
+beautify the house of Hazy."
+
+"Mr. Stubbins, sitting in Mrs. Wiggs's most comfortable chair, with a
+large slice of pumpkin-pie in his hand."
+
+"'Stick out yer tongue.'"
+
+"Asia held out her hands, which were covered with warm red mitts."
+
+"Master Robert Redding was right side up again, sobbing himself quiet
+in Lovey Mary's arms."
+
+"'Have you ever acted any?' he asked."
+
+"Europena stepped forward."
+
+"Sang in a high, sweet voice, 'I Need Thee Every Hour.'"
+
+"'Haven't you got any place you could go to?'"
+
+Susie Smithers at the keyhole
+
+"Lovey Mary waved until she rounded a curve."
+
+
+
+
+LOVEY MARY
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+A CACTUS-PLANT
+
+
+    For life, with all it yields of joy and woe,
+    And hope and fear,...
+    Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love,--
+    How love might be, hath been indeed, and is.
+             BROWNING'S "A Death in the Desert."
+
+Everything about Lovey Mary was a contradiction, from her hands and
+feet, which seemed to have been meant for a big girl, to her high
+ideals and aspirations, that ought to have belonged to an amiable one.
+The only ingredient which might have reconciled all the conflicting
+elements in her chaotic little bosom was one which no one had ever
+taken the trouble to supply.
+
+When Miss Bell, the matron of the home, came to receive Lovey Mary's
+confession of repentance, she found her at an up-stairs window making
+hideous faces and kicking the furniture. The depth of her repentance
+could always be gaged by the violence of her conduct. Miss Bell looked
+at her as she would have looked at one of the hieroglyphs on the
+Obelisk. She had been trying to decipher her for thirteen years.
+
+Miss Bell was stout and prim, a combination which was surely never
+intended by nature. Her gray dress and tight linen collar and cuffs
+gave the uncomfortable impression of being sewed on, while her rigid
+black water-waves seemed irrevocably painted upon her high forehead.
+She was a routinist; she believed in system, she believed in order,
+and she believed that godliness was akin to cleanliness. When she
+found an exception to a rule she regarded the exception in the light
+of an error. As she stood, brush in hand, before Lovey Mary, she
+thought for the hundredth time that the child was an exception.
+
+"Stand up," she said firmly but not unkindly. "I thought you had too
+much sense to do your hair that way. Come back to the bath-room, and I
+will arrange it properly."
+
+Lovey Mary gave a farewell kick at the wall before she followed Miss
+Bell. One side of her head was covered with tight black ringlets, and
+the other bristled with curl-papers.
+
+"When I was a little girl," said Miss Bell, running the wet comb
+ruthlessly through the treasured curls, "the smoother my hair was the
+better I liked it. I used to brush it down with soap and water to make
+it stay."
+
+Lovey Mary looked at the water-waves and sighed.
+
+"If you're ugly you never can get married with anybody, can you, Miss
+Bell?" she asked in a spirit of earnest inquiry.
+
+Miss Bell's back became stiffer, if possible, than before.
+
+"Marriage isn't the only thing in the world. The homelier you are the
+better chance you have of being good. Now the Lord meant you to be
+plain"--assisting Providence by drawing the braids so tight that the
+girl's eyebrows were elevated with the strain. "If he had meant you to
+have curls he would have given them to you."
+
+[Illustration: "'Now the Lord meant you to be plain'"]
+
+"Well, didn't he want me to have a mother and father?" burst forth
+Lovey Mary, indignantly, "or clothes, or money, or nothing? Can't I
+ever get nothing at all 'cause I wasn't started out with nothing?"
+
+Miss Bell was too shocked to reply. She gave a final brush to the
+sleek, wet head and turned sorrowfully away. Lovey Mary ran after her
+and caught her hand.
+
+"I'm sorry," she cried impulsively. "I want to be good. Please--
+please--"
+
+Miss Bell drew her hand away coldly. "You needn't go to Sabbath-school
+this morning," she said in an injured tone; "you can stay here and
+think over what you have said. I am not angry with you. I never allow
+myself to get angry. I don't understand, that's all. You are such a
+good girl about some things and so unreasonable about others. With a
+good home, good clothes, and kind treatment, what else could a girl
+want?"
+
+Receiving no answer to this inquiry, Miss Bell adjusted her cuffs and
+departed with the conviction that she had done all that was possible
+to throw light upon a dark subject.
+
+Lovey Mary, left alone, shed bitter tears on her clean gingham dress.
+Thirteen years ought to reconcile a person even to gingham dresses
+with white china buttons down the back, and round straw hats bought at
+wholesale. But Lovey Mary's rebellion of spirit was something that
+time only served to increase. It had started with Kate Rider, who used
+to pinch her, and laugh at her, and tell the other girls to "get on to
+her curves." Curves had signified something dreadful to Lovey Mary;
+she would have experienced real relief could she have known that she
+did not possess any. It was not Kate Rider, however, who was causing
+the present tears; she had left the home two years before, and her
+name was not allowed to be mentioned even in whispers. Neither was it
+rebellion against the work that had cast Lovey Mary into such depths
+of gloom; fourteen beds had been made, fourteen heads had been combed,
+and fourteen wriggling little bodies had been cheerfully buttoned into
+starchy blue ginghams exactly like her own.
+
+Something deeper and more mysterious was fermenting in her soul--
+something that made her long passionately for the beautiful things of
+life, for love and sympathy and happiness; something that made her
+want to be good, yet tempted her constantly to rebel against her
+environs. It was just the world-old spirit that makes the veriest
+little weed struggle through a chink in the rock and reach upward
+toward the sun.
+
+"What's the matter with your hair, Lovey Mary? It looks so funny,"
+asked a small girl, coming up the steps.
+
+"If anybody asts you, tell 'em you don't know," snapped Lovey Mary.
+
+"Well, Miss Bell says for you to come down to the office," said the
+other, unabashed. "There's a lady down there--a lady and a baby. Me
+and Susie peeked in. Miss Bell made the lady cry; she made her wipe
+the powders off her compleshun."
+
+"And she sent for me?" asked Lovey Mary, incredulously. Such a ripple
+in the still waters of the home was sufficient to interest the most
+disconsolate.
+
+"Yes; and me and Susie's going to peek some more."
+
+Lovey Mary dried her tears and hurried down to the office. As she
+stood at the door she heard a girl's excited voice protesting and
+begging, and Miss Bell's placid tones attempting to calm her. They
+paused as she entered.
+
+"Mary," said Miss Bell, "you remember Kate Rider. She has brought her
+child for us to take care of for a while. Have you room for him in
+your division?"
+
+As Lovey Mary looked at the gaily dressed girl on the sofa, her
+animosity rekindled. It was not Kate's bold black eyes that stirred
+her wrath, nor the hard red lips that recalled the taunts of other
+days: it was the sight of the auburn curls gathered in tantalizing
+profusion under the brim of the showy hat.
+
+"Mary, answer my question!" said Miss Bell, sharply.
+
+With an involuntary shudder of repugnance Lovey Mary drew her gaze
+from Kate and murmured, "Yes, 'm."
+
+"Then you can take the baby with you," continued Miss Bell, motioning
+to the sleeping child. "But wait a moment. I think I will put Jennie
+at the head of your division and let you have entire charge of this
+little boy. He is only a year old, Kate tells me, so will need
+constant attention."
+
+Lovey Mary was about to protest, when Kate broke in:
+
+"Oh, say, Miss Bell, please get some other girl! Tommy never would
+like Lovey. He's just like me: if people ain't pretty, he don't have
+no use for 'em."
+
+"That will do, Kate," said Miss Bell, coldly. "It is only pity for the
+child that makes me take him at all. You have forfeited all claim upon
+our sympathy or patience. Mary, take the baby up-stairs and care for
+him until I come."
+
+Lovey Mary, hot with rebellion, picked him up and went out of the
+room. At the door she stumbled against two little girls who were
+listening at the keyhole.
+
+Up-stairs in the long dormitory it was very quiet. The children had
+been marched away to Sunday-school, and only Lovey Mary and the
+sleeping baby were on the second floor. The girl sat beside the little
+white bed and hated the world as far as she knew it: she hated Kate
+for adding this last insult to the old score; she hated Miss Bell for
+putting this new burden on her unwilling shoulders; she hated the
+burden itself, lying there before her so serene and unconcerned; and
+most of all she hated herself.
+
+"I wisht I was dead!" she cried passionately. "The harder I try to be
+good the meaner I get. Ever'body blames me, and ever'body makes fun of
+me. Ugly old face, and ugly old hands, and straight old rat-tail hair!
+It ain't no wonder that nobody loves me. I just wisht I was dead!"
+
+The sunshine came through the window and made a big white patch on the
+bare floor, but Lovey Mary sat in the shadow and disturbed the Sunday
+quiet by her heavy sobbing.
+
+At noon, when the children returned, the noise of their arrival woke
+Tommy. He opened his round eyes on a strange world, and began to cry
+lustily. One child after another tried to pacify him, but each
+friendly advance increased his terror.
+
+"Leave him be!" cried Lovey Mary. "Them hats is enough to skeer him
+into fits." She picked him up, and with the knack born of experience
+soothed and comforted him. The baby hid his face on her shoulder and
+held her tight. She could feel the sobs that still shook the small
+body, and his tears were on her cheek.
+
+"Never mind," she said. "I ain't a-going to let 'em hurt you. I'm
+going to take care of you. Don't cry any more. Look!"
+
+She stretched forth her long, unshapely hand and made grotesque
+snatches at the sunshine that poured in through the window. Tommy
+hesitated and was lost; a smile struggled to the surface, then broke
+through the tears.
+
+"Look! He's laughing!" cried Lovey Mary, gleefully. "He's laughing
+'cause I ketched a sunbeam for him!"
+
+Then she bent impulsively and kissed the little red lips so close to
+her own.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+A RUNAWAY COUPLE
+
+
+"Courage mounteth with occasion."
+
+For two years Lovey Mary cared for Tommy: she bathed him and dressed
+him, taught him to walk, and kissed his bumps to make them well; she
+sewed for him and nursed him by day, and slept with him in her tired
+arms at night. And Tommy, with the inscrutable philosophy of
+childhood, accepted his little foster-mother and gave her his all.
+
+One bright June afternoon the two were romping in the home yard under
+the beech-trees. Lovey Mary lay in the grass, while Tommy threw
+handfuls of leaves in her face, laughing with delight at her grimaces.
+Presently the gate clicked, and some one came toward them.
+
+"Good land! is that my kid?" said a woman's voice. "Come here, Tom,
+and kiss your mother."
+
+Lovey Mary, sitting up, found Kate Rider, in frills and ribbons,
+looking with surprise at the sturdy child before her.
+
+Tommy objected violently to this sudden overture and declined
+positively to acknowledge the relationship. In fact, when Kate
+attempted to pull him to her, he fled for protection to Lovey Mary and
+cast belligerent glances at the intruder.
+
+Kate laughed.
+
+"Oh, you needn't be so scary; you might as well get used to me, for I
+am going to take you home with me. I bet he's a corker, ain't he,
+Lovey? He used to bawl all night. Sometimes I'd have to spank him two
+or three times."
+
+Lovey Mary clasped the child closer and looked up in dumb terror. Was
+Tommy to be taken from her? Tommy to go away with Kate?
+
+"Great Scott!" exclaimed Kate, exasperated at the girl's manner. "You
+are just as ugly and foolish as you used to be. I'm going in to see
+Miss Bell."
+
+Lovey Mary waited until she was in the house, then she stole
+noiselessly around to the office window. The curtain blew out across
+her cheek, and the swaying lilacs seemed to be trying to count the
+china buttons on her back; but she stood there with staring eyes and
+parted lips, and held her breath to listen.
+
+[Illustration with caption: "'Come here, Tom, and kiss your mother.'"]
+
+"Of course," Miss Bell was saying, measuring her words with due
+precision, "if you feel that you can now support your child and that
+it is your duty to take him, we cannot object. There are many other
+children waiting to come into the home. And yet--" Miss Bell's voice
+sounded human and unnatural--"yet I wish he could stay. Have you
+thought, Kate, of your responsibility toward him, of--"
+
+"Oh! Ough!" shrieked Tommy from the playground, in tones of distress.
+
+Lovey Mary left her point of vantage and rushed to the rescue. She
+found him emitting frenzied yells, while a tiny stream of blood
+trickled down his chin.
+
+"It was my little duck," he gasped as soon as he was able to speak. "I
+was tissin' him, an' he bited me."
+
+At thought of the base ingratitude on the part of the duck, Tommy
+wailed anew. Lovey Mary led him to the hydrant and bathed the injured
+lip, while she soothed his feelings. Suddenly a wave of tenderness
+swept over her. She held his chubby face up to hers and said
+fervently:
+
+"Tommy, do you love me?"
+
+"Yes," said Tommy, with a reproachful eye on the duck. "Yes; I yuv to
+yuv. I don't yuv to tiss, though!"
+
+"But me, Tommy, me. Do you love me?"
+
+"Yes," he answered gravely, "dollar an' a half."
+
+"Whose little boy are you?"
+
+"Yuvey's 'e boy."
+
+Satisfied with this catechism, she put Tommy in care of another girl
+and went back to her post at the window. Miss Bell was talking again.
+
+"I will have him ready to-morrow afternoon when you come. His clothes
+are all in good condition. I only hope, Kate, that you will care for
+him as tenderly as Mary has. I am afraid he will miss her sadly."
+
+"If he's like me, he'll forget about her in two or three days,"
+answered the other voice. "It always was 'out of sight, out of mind'
+with me."
+
+Miss Bell's answer was indistinct, and in a few minutes Lovey Mary
+heard the hall door close behind them. She shook her fists until the
+lilacs trembled. "She sha'n't have him!" she whispered fiercely. "She
+sha'n't let him grow up wicked like she is. I won't let him go. I'll
+hide him, I'll--"
+
+Suddenly she grew very still, and for a long time crouched motionless
+behind the bushes. The problem that faced her had but one solution,
+and Lovey Mary had found it.
+
+The next morning when the sun climbed over the tree-tops and peered
+into the dormitory windows he found that somebody else had made an
+early rise. Lovey Mary was sitting by a wardrobe making her last will
+and testament. From the neatly folded pile of linen she selected a few
+garments and tied them into a bundle. Then she took out a cigar-box
+and gravely contemplated the contents. There were two narrow hair-
+ribbons which had evidently been one wide ribbon, a bit of rock
+crystal, four paper dolls, a soiled picture-book with some other
+little girl's name scratched out on the cover, and two shining silver
+dollars. These composed Lovey Mary's worldly possessions. She tied the
+money in her handkerchief and put it in her pocket, then got up softly
+and slipped about among the little white beds, distributing her
+treasures.
+
+"I'm mad at Susie," she whispered, pausing before a tousled head; "I
+hate to give her the nicest thing I've got. But she's just crazy 'bout
+picture-books."
+
+The curious sun climbed yet a little higher and saw Lovey Mary go back
+to her own bed, and, rolling Tommy's clothes around her own bundle,
+gather the sleeping child in her arms and steal quietly out of the
+room. Then the sun got too high up in the heavens to watch little
+runaway orphan girls. Nobody saw her steal through the deserted
+playroom, down the clean bare steps, which she had helped to wear
+away, and out through the yard to the coal-shed. Here she got the
+reluctant Tommy into his clothes, and tied on his little round straw
+hat, so absurdly like her own.
+
+"Is we playin' hie-spy, Yuvey?" asked the mystified youngster.
+
+"Yes, Tommy," she whispered, "and we are going a long way to hide. You
+are my little boy now, and you must love me better than anything in
+the world. Say it, Tommy; say, 'I love you better 'n anybody in the
+whole world.'"
+
+"Will I det on de rollin' honor?" asked Tommy, thinking he was
+learning his golden text.
+
+But Lovey Mary had forgotten her question. She was taking a farewell
+look at the home, every nook and corner of which had suddenly grown
+dear. Already she seemed a thing apart, one having no right to its
+shelter and protection. She turned to where Tommy was playing with
+some sticks in the corner, and bidding him not to stir or speak until
+her return, she slipped back up the walk and into the kitchen. Swiftly
+and quietly she made a fire in the stove and filled the kettle with
+water. Then she looked about for something more she might do. On the
+table lay the grocery book with a pencil attached. She thought a
+moment, then wrote laboriously under the last order: "Miss Bell I will
+take kere Tommy pleas don't be mad." Then she softly closed the door
+behind her.
+
+A few minutes later she lifted Tommy out of the low shed window, and
+hurried him down the alley and out into the early morning streets. At
+the corner they took a car, and Tommy knelt by the window and absorbed
+the sights with rapt attention; to him the adventure was beginning
+brilliantly. Even Lovey Mary experienced a sense of exhilaration when
+she paid their fare out of one of the silver dollars. She knew the
+conductor was impressed, because he said, "You better watch Buddy's
+hat, ma'am." That "ma'am" pleased her profoundly; it caused her
+unconsciously to assume Miss Bell's tone and manner as she conversed
+with the back of Tommy's head.
+
+"We'll go out on the avenue," she said. "We'll go from house to house
+till I get work. 'Most anybody would be glad to get a handy girl that
+can cook and wash and sew, only--I ain't very big, and then there's
+you."
+
+"Ain't that a big house?" shouted Tommy, half way out of the window.
+
+"Yes; don't talk so loud. That's the court-house."
+
+"Where they make court-plaster at?" inquired Tommy shrilly.
+
+Lovey Mary glanced around uneasily. She hoped the old man in the
+corner had not heard this benighted remark. All went well until the
+car reached the terminal station. Here Tommy refused to get off. In
+vain Lovey Mary coaxed and threatened.
+
+"It'll take us right back to the home," she pleaded. "Be a good boy
+and come with Lovey. I'll buy you something nice."
+
+Tommy remained obdurate. He believed in letting well enough alone. The
+joys of a street-car ride were present and tangible; "something nice"
+was vague, unsatisfying.
+
+"Don't yer little brother want to git off?" asked the conductor,
+sympathetically.
+
+"No, sir," said Lovey Mary, trying to maintain her dignity while she
+struggled with her charge. "If you please, sir, would you mind holding
+his feet while I loosen his hands?"
+
+Tommy, shrieking indignant protests, was borne from the car and
+deposited on the sidewalk.
+
+"Don't you dare get limber!" threatened Lovey Mary. "If you do I'll
+spank you right here on the street. Stand up! Straighten out your
+legs! Tommy! do you hear me?"
+
+Tommy might have remained limp indefinitely had not a hurdy-gurdy
+opportunely arrived on the scene. It is true that he would go only in
+the direction of the music, but Lovey Mary was delighted to have him
+go at all. When at last they were headed for the avenue, Tommy caused
+another delay.
+
+"I want my ducky," he announced.
+
+The words brought consternation to Lovey Mary. She had fearfully
+anticipated them from the moment of leaving the home.
+
+"I'll buy you a 'tend-like duck," she said.
+
+"No; I want a sure-'nough ducky; I want mine."
+
+Lovey Mary was exasperated. "Well, you can't have yours. I can't get
+it for you, and you might as well hush."
+
+His lips trembled, and two large tears rolled down his round cheeks.
+When he was injured he was irresistible. Lovey Mary promptly
+surrendered.
+
+"Don't cry, baby boy! Lovey'll get you one someway."
+
+For some time the quest of the duck was fruitless. The stores they
+entered were wholesale houses for the most part, where men were
+rolling barrels about or stacking skins and hides on the sidewalk.
+
+"Do you know what sort of a store they sell ducks at?" asked Lovey
+Mary of a colored man who was sweeping out an office.
+
+"Ducks!" repeated the negro, grinning at the queerly dressed children
+in their round straw hats. "Name o' de Lawd! What do you all want wif
+ducks?"
+
+Lovey Mary explained.
+
+"Wouldn't a kitten do jes as well?" he asked kindly.
+
+"I want my ducky," whined Tommy, showing signs of returning storm.
+
+"I don' see no way 'cept'n' gwine to de mahket. Efen you tek de cah
+you kin ride plumb down dere."
+
+Recent experience had taught Lovey Mary to be wary of street-cars, so
+they walked. At the market they found some ducks. The desired objects
+were hanging in a bunch with their limp heads tied together. Further
+inquiry, however, discovered some live ones in a coop.
+
+"They're all mama ducks," objected Tommy. "I want a baby ducky. I want
+my little ducky!"
+
+When he found he could do no better, he decided to take one of the
+large ones. Then he said he was hungry, so he and Mary took turn about
+holding it while the other ate "po' man's pickle" and wienerwurst.
+
+It was two o'clock by the time they reached the avenue, and by four
+they were foot-sore and weary, but they trudged bravely along from
+house to house asking for work. As dusk came on, the houses, which a
+few squares back had been tall and imposing, seemed to be getting
+smaller and more insignificant. Lovey Mary felt secure as long as she
+was on the avenue. She did not know that the avenue extended for many
+miles and that she had reached the frayed and ragged end of it. She
+and Tommy passed under a bridge, and after that the houses all seemed
+to behave queerly. Some faced one way, some another, and crisscross
+between them, in front of them, and behind them ran a network of
+railroad tracks.
+
+"What's the name of this street?" asked Lovey Mary of a small, bare-
+footed girl.
+
+"'T ain't no street," answered the little girl, gazing with
+undisguised amazement at the strange-looking couple; "this here is the
+Cabbage Patch."
+
+[Illustration: "'T ain't no street...; this here is the Cabbage
+Patch.'"]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE HAZY HOUSEHOLD
+
+
+    "Here sovereign Dirt erects her sable throne,
+     The house, the host, the hostess all her own."
+
+Miss Hazy was the submerged tenth of the Cabbage Patch. The submersion
+was mainly one of dirt and disorder, but Miss Hazy was such a meek,
+inefficient little body that the Cabbage Patch withheld its blame and
+patiently tried to furnish a prop for the clinging vine. Miss Hazy, it
+is true, had Chris; but Chris was unstable, not only because he had
+lost one leg, but also because he was the wildest, noisiest, most
+thoughtless youngster that ever shied a rock at a lamp-post. Miss Hazy
+had "raised" Chris, and the neighbors had raised Miss Hazy.
+
+When Lovey Mary stumbled over the Hazy threshold with the sleeping
+Tommy and the duck in her arms, Miss Hazy fluttered about in dismay.
+She pushed the flour-sifter farther over on the bed and made a place
+for Tommy, then she got a chair for the exhausted girl and hovered
+about her with little chirps of consternation.
+
+"Dear sakes! You're done tuckered out, ain't you? You an' the baby got
+losted? Ain't that too bad! Must I make you some tea? Only there ain't
+no fire in the stove. Dear me! what ever will I do? Jes wait a minute;
+I'll have to go ast Mis' Wiggs."
+
+In a few minutes Miss Hazy returned. With her was a bright-faced
+little woman whose smile seemed to thaw out the frozen places in Lovey
+Mary's heart and make her burst into tears on the motherly bosom.
+
+"There now, there," said Mrs. Wiggs, hugging the girl up close and
+patting her on the back; "there ain't no hole so deep can't somebody
+pull you out. An' here's me an' Miss Hazy jes waitin' to give you a
+h'ist."
+
+There was something so heartsome in her manner that Lovey Mary dried
+her eyes and attempted to explain. "I'm tryin' to get a place," she
+began, "but nobody wants to take Tommy too. I can't carry him any
+further, and I don't know where to go, and it's 'most night--" again
+the sobs choked her.
+
+"Lawsee!" said Mrs. Wiggs, "don't you let that worry you! I can't take
+you home, 'cause Asia an' Australia an' Europeny are sleepin' in one
+bed as it is; but you kin git right in here with Miss Hazy, can't she,
+Miss Hazy?"
+
+The hostess, to whom Mrs. Wiggs was an oracle, acquiesced heartily.
+
+"All right: that's fixed. Now I'll go home an' send you all over some
+nice, hot supper by Billy, an' to-morrow mornin' will be time enough
+to think things out."
+
+Lovey Mary, too exhausted to mind the dirt, ate her supper off a
+broken plate, then climbed over behind Tommy and the flour-sifter, and
+was soon fast asleep.
+
+The business meeting next morning "to think things out" resulted
+satisfactorily. At first Mrs. Wiggs was inclined to ask questions and
+find out where the children came from, but when she saw Lovey Mary's
+evident distress and embarrassment, she accepted the statement that
+they were orphans and that the girl was seeking work in order to take
+care of herself and the boy. It had come to be an unwritten law in the
+Cabbage Patch that as few questions as possible should be asked of
+strangers. People had come there before who could not give clear
+accounts of themselves.
+
+"Now I'll tell you what I think'll be best," said Mrs. Wiggs, who
+enjoyed untangling snarls. "Asia kin take Mary up to the fact'ry with
+her to-morrow, an' see if she kin git her a job. I 'spect she kin,
+'cause she stands right in with the lady boss. Miss Hazy, me an' you
+kin keep a' eye on the baby between us. If Mary gits a place she kin
+pay you so much a week, an' that'll help us all out, 'cause then we
+won't have to send in so many outside victuals. If she could make
+three dollars an' Chris three, you all could git along right peart."
+
+Lovey Mary stayed in the house most of the day. She was almost afraid
+to look out of the little window, for fear she should see Miss Bell or
+Kate Rider coming. She sat in the only chair that had a bottom and
+diligently worked buttonholes for Miss Hazy.
+
+"Looks like there ain't never no time to clean up," said Miss Hazy,
+apologetically, as she shoved Chris's Sunday clothes and a can of
+coal-oil behind the door.
+
+Lovey Mary looked about her and sighed deeply. The room was brimful
+and spilling over: trash, tin cans, and bottles overflowed the window-
+sills; a crippled rocking-chair, with a faded quilt over it, stood
+before the stove, in the open oven of which Chris's shoe was drying;
+an old sewing-machine stood in the middle of the floor, with Miss
+Hazy's sewing on one end of it and the uncleared dinner-dishes on the
+other.
+
+Mary could not see under the bed, but she knew from the day's
+experience that it was used as a combination store-room and wardrobe.
+She thought of the home with its bare, clean rooms and its spotless
+floors. She rose abruptly and went out to the rear of the house, where
+Tommy was playing with Europena Wiggs. They were absorbed in trying to
+hitch the duck to a spool-box, and paid little attention to her.
+
+"Tommy," she said, clutching his arm, "don't you want to go back?"
+
+But Tommy had tasted freedom; he had had one blissful day unwashed,
+uncombed, and uncorrected.
+
+"No," he declared stoutly; "I'm doin' to stay to this house and play
+wiv You're-a-peanut."
+
+"Then," said Mary, with deep resignation, "the only thing for me to do
+is to try to clean things up."
+
+When she went back into the house she untied her bundle and took out
+the remaining dollar.
+
+"I'll be back soon," she said to Miss Hazy as she stepped over a
+basket of potatoes. "I'm just going over to Mrs. Wiggs's a minute."
+
+She found her neighbor alone, getting supper. "Please, ma'am,"--she
+plunged into her subject at once,--"have any of your girls a dress for
+sale? I've got a dollar to buy it."
+
+Mrs. Wiggs turned the girl around and surveyed her critically. "Well,
+I don't know as I blame you fer wantin' to git shut of that one. There
+ain't more 'n room enough fer one leg in that skirt, let alone two.
+An' what was the sense in them big shiny buttons?"
+
+"I don't know as it makes much difference," said Lovey Mary,
+disconsolately; "I'm so ugly, nothing could make me look nice."
+
+Mrs. Wiggs shook her by the shoulders good-naturedly. "Now, here," she
+said, "don't you go an' git sorry fer yerself! That's one thing I
+can't stand in nobody. There's always lots of other folks you kin be
+sorry fer 'stid of yerself. Ain't you proud you ain't got a harelip?
+Why, that one thought is enough to keep me from ever gittin' sorry fer
+myself."
+
+Mary laughed, and Mrs. Wiggs clapped her hands. "That's what yer face
+needs--smiles! I never see anything make such a difference. But now
+about the dress. Yes, indeed, Asia has got dresses to give 'way. She
+gits 'em from Mrs. Reddin'; her husband is Mr. Bob, Billy's boss. He's
+a newspaper editress an' rich as cream. Mrs. Reddin' is a fallen
+angel, if there ever was one on this earth. She sends all sorts of
+clothes to Asia, an' I warm 'em over an' boil 'em down till they're
+her size.
+
+"Asia Minor!" she called to a girl who was coming in the door, "this
+here is Mary--Lovey Mary she calls herself, Miss Hazy's boarder. Have
+you got a dress you could give her?"
+
+"I'm going to buy it," said Mary, immediately on the defensive. She
+did not want them to think for a moment that she was begging. She
+would show them that she had money, that she was just as good as they
+were.
+
+"Well, maw," the other girl was saying in a drawling voice as she
+looked earnestly at Lovey Mary, "seems to me she'd look purtiest in my
+red dress. Her hair's so nice an' black an' her teeth so white, I 'low
+the red would look best."
+
+Mrs. Wiggs gazed at her daughter with adoring eyes. "Ain't that the
+artis' stickin' out through her? Couldn't you tell she handles paints?
+Up at the fact'ry she's got a fine job, paints flowers an' wreaths on
+to bath-tubs. Yes, indeed, this here red one is what you must have.
+Keep your dollar, child; the dress never cost us a cent. Here's a
+nubia, too, you kin have; it'll look better than that little hat you
+had on last night. That little hat worried me; it looked like the
+stopper was too little fer the bottle. There now, take the things
+right home with you, an' tomorrow you an' Asia kin start off in
+style."
+
+Lovey Mary, flushed with the intoxication of her first compliment,
+went back and tried on the dress. Miss Hazy got so interested that she
+forgot to get supper.
+
+"You look so nice I never would 'a' knowed you in the world!" she
+declared. "You don't look picked, like you did in that other dress."
+
+"That Wiggs girl said I looked nice in red," said Lovey Mary
+tentatively.
+
+"You do, too," said Miss Hazy; "it keeps you from lookin' so corpsey.
+I wisht you'd do somethin' with yer hair, though; it puts me in mind
+of snakes in them long black plaits."
+
+All Lovey Mary needed was encouragement. She puffed her hair at the
+top and sides and tucked it up in the latest fashion. Tommy, coming in
+at the door, did not recognize her. She laughed delightedly.
+
+"Do I look so different?"
+
+"I should say you do," said Miss Hazy, admiringly, as she spread a
+newspaper for a table-cloth. "I never seen no one answer to primpin'
+like you do."
+
+[Illustration: "She puffed her hair at the top and sides."]
+
+When it was quite dark Lovey Mary rolled something in a bundle and
+crept out of the house. After glancing cautiously up and down the
+tracks she made her way to the pond on the commons and dropped her
+bundle into the shallow water.
+
+Next day, when Mrs. Schultz's goat died of convulsions, nobody knew it
+was due to the china buttons on Lovey Mary's gingham dress.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+AN ACCIDENT AND AN INCIDENT
+
+
+    "Our deeds still travel with us from afar,
+     And what we have been makes us what we are."
+
+Through the assistance of Asia Wiggs, Lovey Mary secured pleasant and
+profitable work at the factory; but her mind was not at peace. Of
+course it was a joy to wear the red dress and arrange her hair a
+different way each morning, but there was a queer, restless little
+feeling in her heart that spoiled even the satisfaction of looking
+like other girls and earning three dollars a week. The very fact that
+nobody took her to task, that nobody scolded or blamed her, caused her
+to ask herself disturbing questions. Secret perplexity had the same
+effect upon her that it has upon many who are older and wiser: it made
+her cross.
+
+Two days after she started to work, Asia, coming down from the
+decorating-room for lunch, found her in fiery dispute with a red-
+haired girl. There had been an accident in front of the factory, and
+the details were under discussion.
+
+"Well, I know all about it," declared the red-haired girl, excitedly,
+"'cause my sister was the first one that got to her."
+
+"Is your sister a nigger named Jim Brown?" asked Lovey Mary,
+derisively. "Ever'body says he was the first one got there."
+
+"Was there blood on her head?" asked Asia, trying to stem the tide of
+argument.
+
+"Yes, indeed," said the first speaker; "on her head an' on her hands,
+too. I hanged on the steps when they was puttin' her in the ambalance-
+wagon, an' she never knowed a bloomin' thing!"
+
+"Why didn't you go on with them to the hospital!" asked Lovey Mary. "I
+don't see how the doctors could get along without you."
+
+"Oh, you're just mad 'cause you didn't see her. She was awful pretty!
+Had on a black hat with a white feather in it, but it got in the mud.
+They say she had a letter in her pocket with her name on it."
+
+"I thought maybe she come to long enough to tell you her name," teased
+her tormentor.
+
+"Well, I do know it, Smarty," retorted the other, sharply: "it's Miss
+Kate Rider."
+
+Meanwhile in the Cabbage Patch Miss Hazy and Mrs. Wiggs were holding a
+consultation over the fence.
+
+"She come over to my house first," Mrs. Wiggs was saying, dramatically
+illustrating her remarks with two tin cans. "This is me here, an' I
+looks up an' seen the old lady standin' over there. She put me in mind
+of a graven image. She had on a sorter gray mournin', didn't she, Miss
+Hazy?"
+
+"Yes, 'm; that was the way it struck me. Bein' gray, I 'lowed it was
+fer some one she didn't keer fer pertickler."
+
+"An' gent's cuffs," continued Mrs. Wiggs; "I noticed them right off.
+''Scuse me,' says she, snappin' her mouth open an' shut like a trap--
+''scuse me, but have you seen anything of two strange children in this
+neighborhood?' I th'owed my apron over Lovey Mary's hat, that I was
+trimmin'. I wasn't goin' to tell till I found out what that widder
+woman was after. But before I was called upon to answer, Tommy come
+tearin' round the house chasin' Cusmoodle."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Cusmoodle, the duck. I named it this mornin'. Well, when the lady
+seen Tommy she started up, then she set down ag'in, holdin' her skirts
+up all the time to keep 'em from techin' the floor. 'How'd they git
+here?' she ast, so relieved-like that I thought she must be kin to
+'em. So I up an' told her all I knew. I told her if she wanted to find
+out anything about us she could ast Mrs. Reddin' over at Terrace Park.
+'Mrs. Robert Reddin'?' says she, lookin' dumfounded. 'Yes,' says I,
+'the finest lady, rich or poor, in Kentucky, unless it's her husband.'
+Then she went on an' ast me goin' on a hunderd questions 'bout all of
+us an' all of you all, an' 'bout the factory. She even ast me where we
+got our water at, an' if you kept yer house healthy. I told her Lovey
+Mary had made Chris carry out more 'n a wheelbarrow full of dirt ever'
+night since she had been here, an' I guess it would be healthy by the
+time she got through."
+
+[Illustration: "'She took on mighty few airs fer a person in
+mournin'.'"]
+
+Miss Hazy moved uneasily. "I told her I couldn't clean up much 'count
+of the rheumatism, an' phthisic, an' these here dizzy spells--"
+
+"I bet she didn't git a chance to talk much if you got started on your
+symptims," interrupted Mrs. Wiggs.
+
+"Didn't you think she was a' awful haughty talker?"
+
+'No, indeed. She took on mighty few airs fer a person in mournin'.
+When she riz to go, she says, real kind fer such a stern-faced woman,
+'Do the childern seem well an' happy?' 'Yes, 'm; they're well, all
+right,' says I. 'Tommy he's like a colt what's been stabled up all
+winter an' is let out fer the first time. As fer Mary,' I says, 'she
+seems kinder low in her mind, looks awful pestered most of the time.'
+'It won't hurt her,' says the lady. 'Keep a' eye on 'em,' says she,
+puttin' some money in my hand,' an' if you need any more, I'll leave
+it with Mrs. Reddin'.' Then she cautioned me pertickler not to say
+nothin' 'bout her havin' been here."
+
+"She told me not to tell, too," said Miss Hazy; "but I don't know what
+we're goin' to say to Mrs. Schultz. She 'most sprained her back tryin'
+to see who it was, an' Mrs. Eichorn come over twicet pertendin'-like
+she wanted to borrow a corkscrew driver."
+
+"Tell 'em she was a newfangled agent," said Mrs. Wiggs, with
+unblushing mendacity--"a' agent fer shoestrings."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE DAWN OF A ROMANCE
+
+
+     "There is in the worst of fortunes
+      The best of chances for a happy change."
+
+"Good land! you all're so clean in here I'm feared of ketchin' the
+pneumony."
+
+Mrs. Wiggs stood in Miss Hazy's kitchen and smiled approval at the
+marvelous transformation.
+
+"Well, now, I don't think it's right healthy," complained Miss Hazy,
+who was sitting at the machine, with her feet on a soap-box; "so much
+water sloppin' round is mighty apt to give a person a cold. But Lovey
+Mary says she can't stand it no other way. She's mighty set, Mis'
+Wiggs."
+
+"Yes, an' that's jes what you need, Miss Hazy. You never was set 'bout
+nothin' in yer life. Lovey Mary's jes took you an' the house an'
+ever'thing in hand, an' in four weeks got you all to livin' like white
+folks. I ain't claimin' she ain't sharp-tongued; I 'low she's sassed
+'bout ever'body in the Patch but me by now. But she's good, an' she's
+smart, an' some of her sharp corners'll git pecked off afore her hair
+grows much longer."
+
+"Oh, mercy me! here she comes now to git her lunch," said Miss Hazy,
+with chagrin. "I ain't got a thing fixed."
+
+"You go on an' sew; I'll mess up a little somethin' fer her. She'll
+stop, anyway, to talk to Tommy. Did you ever see anything to equal the
+way she takes on 'bout that child? She jes natchally analyzes him."
+
+Lovey Mary, however, did not stop as usual to play with Tommy. She
+came straight to the kitchen and sat down on the door-step, looking
+worried and preoccupied.
+
+"How comes it you ain't singin'?" asked Mrs. Wiggs. "If I had a voice
+like yourn, folks would have to stop up their years with cotton. I jes
+find myself watchin' fer you to come home, so's I can hear you singin'
+them pretty duets round the house."
+
+Lovey Mary smiled faintly; for a month past she had been unconsciously
+striving to live up to Mrs. Wiggs's opinion of her, and the constant
+praise and commendation of that "courageous captain of compliment" had
+moved her to herculean effort.
+
+But a sudden catastrophe threatened her. She sat on the door-step,
+white and miserable. Held tight in the hand that was thrust in her
+pocket was a letter; it was a blue letter addressed to Miss Hazy in
+large, dashing characters. Lovey Mary had got it from the postman as
+she went out in the morning; for five hours she had been racked with
+doubt concerning it. She felt that it could refer but to one subject,
+and that was herself. Perhaps Miss Bell had discovered her hiding-
+place, or, worse still, perhaps Kate Rider had seen her at the factory
+and was writing for Tommy. Lovey Mary crushed the letter in her hand;
+she would not give it to Miss Hazy. She would outwit Kate again.
+
+"All right, honey," called Mrs. Wiggs; "here you are. 'T ain't much of
+a lunch, but it'll fill up the gaps. Me an' Miss Hazy jes been talkin'
+'bout you."
+
+Lovey Mary glanced up furtively. Could they have suspected anything?
+
+[Illustration: "She sat on the door-step, white and miserable."]
+
+"Didn't yer years sorter burn! We was speakin' of the way you'd
+slicked things up round here. I was a-sayin' even if you was a sorter
+repeatin'-rifle when it come to answerin' back, you was a good, nice
+girl."
+
+Lovey Mary smoothed out the crumpled letter in her pocket. "I'm 'fraid
+I ain't as good as you make me out," she said despondently.
+
+"Oh, yes, she is," said Miss Hazy, with unusual animation; "she's a
+rale good girl, when she ain't sassy."
+
+This unexpected praise was too much for Lovey Mary. She snatched the
+letter from her pocket and threw it on the table, not daring to trust
+her good impulse to last beyond the minute.
+
+"'Miss Marietta Hazy, South Avenue and Railroad Crossing,'" read Mrs.
+Wiggs, in amazement.
+
+"Oh, surely it ain't got me on the back of it!" cried Miss Hazy,
+rising hurriedly from the machine and peering over her glasses. "You
+open it, Mis' Wiggs; I ain't got the nerve to."
+
+With chattering teeth and trembling hands Lovey Mary sat before her
+untasted food. She could hear Tommy's laughter through the open
+window, and the sound brought tears to her eyes. But Mrs. Wiggs's
+voice recalled her, and she nerved herself for the worst.
+
+_"Miss Hazy._
+
+"DEAR MISS [Mrs. Wiggs read from the large type-written sheet before
+her]: Why not study the planets and the heavens therein? In casting
+your future, I find that thou wilt have an active and succesful year
+for business, but beware of the law. You are prudent and amiable and
+have a lively emagination. You will have many ennemies; but fear not,
+for in love you will be faitful and sincer, and are fitted well fer
+married life."
+
+"They surely ain't meanin' me?" asked Miss Hazy, in great
+perturbation.
+
+"_Yes, ma'am_," said Mrs. Wiggs, emphatically; "it's you, plain
+as day. Let's go on:
+
+"Your star fortells you a great many lucky events. You are destined to
+a brilliant success, but you will have to earn it by good conduct. Let
+wise men lead you. Your mildness against the wretched will bring you
+the friendship of everbody. Enclosed you will find a spirit picture of
+your future pardner. If you will send twenty-five cents with the
+enclosed card, which you will fill out, we will put you in direct
+correspondance with the gentleman, and the degree ordained by the
+planets will thus be fulfilled. Please show this circuler to your
+friends, and oblige
+
+_"Astrologer."_
+
+As the reading proceeded, Lovey Mary's fears gradually diminished, and
+with a sigh of relief she applied herself to her lunch. But if the
+letter had proved of no consequence to her, such was not the case with
+the two women standing at the window. Miss Hazy was re-reading the
+letter, vainly trying to master the contents.
+
+"Mary," she said, "git up an' see if you can find my other pair of
+lookin'-glasses. Seems like I can't git the sense of it."
+
+Mrs. Wiggs meanwhile was excitedly commenting on the charms of the
+"spirit picture":
+
+"My, but he's siylish! Looks fer all the world like a' insurance
+agent. Looks like he might be a little tall to his size, but I like
+statute men better 'n dumpy ones. I bet he's got a lot of nice
+manners. Ain't his smile pleasant!"
+
+Miss Hazy seized the small picture with trembling fingers. "I don't
+seem to git on to what it's all about, Mis' Wiggs. Ain't they made a
+mistake or somethin'?"
+
+"No, indeed; there's no mistake at all," declared Mrs. Wiggs. "Yer
+name's on the back, an' it's meant fer you. Someway yer name's got out
+as bein' single an' needin' takin' keer of, an' I reckon this here
+'strologer, or conjurer, or whatever he is, seen yer good fortune in
+the stars an' jes wanted to let you know 'bout it."
+
+"Does he want to get married with her?" asked Lovey Mary, beginning to
+realize the grave importance of the subject under discussion.
+
+"Well, it may lead to that," answered Mrs. Wiggs, hopefully. Surely
+only a beneficent Providence could have offered such an unexpected
+solution to the problem of Miss Hazy's future.
+
+Miss Hazy herself uttered faint protests and expostulations, but in
+spite of herself she was becoming influenced by Mrs. Wiggs's
+enthusiasm.
+
+"Oh, shoo!" she repeated again and again. "I ain't never had no
+thought of marryin'."
+
+"Course you ain't," said Mrs. Wiggs. "Good enough reason: you ain't
+had a show before. Seems to me you'd be flyin' straight in the face of
+Providence to refuse a stylish, sweet-smilin' man like that."
+
+"He is fine-lookin'," acknowledged Miss Hazy, trying not to appear too
+pleased; "only I wisht his years didn't stick out so much."
+
+Mrs. Wiggs was exasperated.
+
+"Lawsee! Miss Hazy, what do you think he'll think of yer figger? Have
+you got so much to brag on, that you kin go to pickin' him to pieces?
+Do you suppose I'd 'a' dared to judge Mr. Wiggs that away? Why, Mr.
+Wiggs's nose was as long as a clothespin; but I would no more 'a'
+thought of his nose without him than I would 'a' thought of him
+without the nose."
+
+"Well, what do you think I'd orter do 'bout it?" asked Miss Hazy.
+
+"I ain't quite made up my mind," said her mentor. "I'll talk it over
+with the neighbors. But I 'spect, if we kin skeer up a quarter, that
+you'll answer by the mornin's mail."
+
+That night Lovey Mary sat in her little attic room and held Tommy
+close to her hungry heart. All day she worked with the thought of
+coming back to him at night; but with night came the dustman, and in
+spite of her games and stories Tommy's blue eyes would get full of the
+sleep-dust. Tonight, however, he was awake and talkative.
+
+"Ain't I dot no muvver?" he asked.
+
+"No," said Lovey Mary, after a pause.
+
+"Didn't I never had no muvver?"
+
+Lovey Mary sat him up in her lap and looked into his round, inquiring
+eyes. Her very love for him hardened her heart against the one who had
+wronged him.
+
+"Yes, darling, you had a mother once, but she was a bad mother, a
+mean, bad, wicked mother. I hate her--hate her!" Lovey Mary's voice
+broke in a sob.
+
+"Ma--ry; aw, Ma--ry!" called Miss Hazy up the stairs. "You'll have to
+come down here to Chris. He's went to sleep with all his clothes on
+'crost my bed, an' I can't git him up."
+
+Lovey Mary tucked Tommy under the cover and went to Miss Hazy's
+assistance.
+
+"One night I had to set up all night 'cause he wouldn't git up,"
+complained Miss Hazy, in hopelessly injured tones.
+
+Lovey Mary wasted no time in idle coaxing. She seized a broom and
+rapped the sleeper sharply on the legs. His peg-stick was insensible
+to this insult, but one leg kicked a feeble protest. In vain Lovey
+Mary tried violent measures; Chris simply shifted his position and
+slumbered on. Finally she resorted to strategy:
+
+"Listen, Miss Hazy! Ain't that the fire-engine?"
+
+In a moment Chris was hanging half out of the window, demanding,
+"Where at?"
+
+"You great big lazy boy!" scolded Lovey Mary, as she put Miss Hazy's
+bed in order. "I'll get you to behaving mighty different if I stay
+here long enough. What's this?" she added, pulling something from
+under Miss Hazy's pillow.
+
+"Oh, it ain't nothin'," cried Miss Hazy, reaching for it eagerly. But
+Lovey Mary had recognized the "spirit picture."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE LOSING OF MR. STUBBINS
+
+
+    "Love is not love
+     Which alters when it alteration finds,
+     Or bends with the remover to remove."
+
+If the Cabbage Patch had pinned its faith upon the efficiency of the
+matrimonial agency in regard to the disposal of Miss Hazy, it was
+doomed to disappointment. The events that led up to the final
+catastrophe were unique in that they cast no shadows before.
+
+[Illustration: "Mrs. Wiggs took pictures from her walls and chairs
+from her parlor to beautify the house of Hazy."]
+
+Miss Hazy's letters, dictated by Mrs. Wiggs and penned by Lovey Mary,
+were promptly and satisfactorily answered. The original of the spirit
+picture proved to be one Mr. Stubbins, "a prominent citizen of Bagdad
+Junction who desired to marry some one in the city. The lady must be
+of good character and without incumbrances." "That's all right," Mrs.
+Wiggs had declared; "you needn't have no incumbrances. If he'll take
+keer of you, we'll all look after Chris."
+
+The wooing had been ideally simple. Mr. Stubbins, with the impetuosity
+of a new lover, demanded an early meeting. It was a critical time, and
+the Cabbage Patch realized the necessity of making the first
+impression a favorable one. Mrs. Wiggs took pictures from her walls
+and chairs from her parlor to beautify the house of Hazy. Old Mrs.
+Schultz, who was confined to her bed, sent over her black silk dress
+for Miss Hazy to wear. Mrs. Eichorn, with deep insight into the nature
+of man, gave a pound-cake and a pumpkin-pie. Lovey Mary scrubbed, and
+dusted, and cleaned, and superintended the toilet of the bride elect.
+
+The important day had arrived, and with it Mr. Stubbins. To the many
+eyes that surveyed him from behind shutters and half-open doors he was
+something of a disappointment. Mrs. Wiggs's rosy anticipations had
+invested him with the charms of an Apollo, while Mr. Stubbins, in
+reality, was far from godlike. "My land! he's lanker 'n a bean-pole,"
+exclaimed Mrs. Eichorn, in disgust. But then Mrs. Eichorn weighed two
+hundred, and her judgment was warped. Taking everything into
+consideration, the prospects had been most flattering. Mr. Stubbins,
+sitting in Mrs. Wiggs's most comfortable chair, with a large slice of
+pumpkin-pie in his hand, and with Miss Hazy opposite arrayed in Mrs.
+Schultz's black silk, had declared himself ready to marry at once. And
+Mrs. Wiggs, believing that a groom in the hand is worth two in the
+bush, promptly precipitated the courtship into a wedding.
+
+[Illustration: "Mr. Stubbins, sitting in Mrs. Wiggs's most comfortable
+chair, with a large slice of pumpkin-pie in his hand"]
+
+The affair proved the sensation of the hour, and "Miss Hazy's husband"
+was the cynosure of all eyes. For one brief week the honeymoon shed
+its beguiling light on the neighborhood, then it suffered a sudden and
+ignominious eclipse.
+
+The groom got drunk.
+
+Mary was clearing away the supper-dishes when she was startled by a
+cry from Miss Hazy:
+
+"My sakes! Lovey Mary! Look at Mr. Stubbins a-comin' up the street! Do
+you s'pose he's had a stroke?"
+
+Lovey Mary ran to the window and beheld the "prominent citizen of
+Bagdad Junction" in a state of unmistakable intoxication. He was
+bareheaded and hilarious, and used the fence as a life-preserver. Miss
+Hazy wrung her hands and wept.
+
+"Oh, what'll I do?" she wailed. "I do b'lieve he's had somethin' to
+drink. I ain't goin' to stay an' meet him, Mary; I'm goin' to hide. I
+always was skeered of drunken men."
+
+"I'm not," said Mary, stoutly. "You go on up in my room and lock the
+door; I'm going to stay here and keep him from messing up this
+kitchen. I want to tell him what I think of him, anyhow. I just hate
+that man! I believe you do, too, Miss Hazy."
+
+Miss Hazy wept afresh. "Well, he ain't my kind, Mary. I know I'd
+hadn't orter marry him, but it 'pears like ever' woman sorter wants to
+try gittin' married oncet anyways. I never would 'a' done it, though,
+if Mrs. Wiggs hadn't 'a' sicked me on."
+
+By this time Mr. Stubbins had reached the yard, and Miss Hazy fled.
+Lovey Mary barricaded Tommy in a corner with his playthings and met
+the delinquent at the door. Her eyes blazed and her cheeks were
+aflame. This modern David had no stones and sling to slay her Goliath;
+she had only a vocabulary full of stinging words which she hurled
+forth with indignation and scorn. Mr. Stubbins had evidently been
+abused before, for he paid no attention to the girl's wrath. He passed
+jauntily to the stove and tried to pour a cup of coffee; the hot
+liquid missed the cup and streamed over his wrist and hand. Howling
+with pain and swearing vociferously, he flung the coffee-pot out of
+the window, kicked a chair across the room, then turned upon Tommy,
+who was adding shrieks of terror to the general uproar. "Stop that
+infernal yelling!" he cried savagely, as he struck the child full in
+the face with his heavy hand.
+
+Lovey Mary sprang forward and seized the poker. All the passion of her
+wild little nature was roused. She stole up behind him as he knelt
+before Tommy, and lifted the poker to strike. A pair of terrified blue
+eyes arrested her. Tommy forgot to cry, in sheer amazement at what she
+was about to do. Ashamed of herself, she threw the poker aside, and
+taking advantage of Mr. Stubbins's crouching position, she thrust him
+suddenly backward into the closet. The manoeuver was a brilliant one,
+for while Mr. Stubbins was unsteadily separating himself from the
+debris into which he had been cast, Lovey Mary slammed the door and
+locked it. Then she picked up Tommy and fled out of the house and
+across the yard.
+
+Mrs. Wiggs was sitting on her back porch pretending to knit, but in
+truth absorbed in a wild game of tag which the children were having on
+the commons. "That's right," she was calling excitedly--"that's right,
+Chris Hazy! You kin ketch as good as any of 'em, even if you have got
+a peg-stick." But when she caught sight of Mary's white, distressed
+face and Tommy's streaming eyes, she dropped her work and held out her
+arms. When Mary had finished her story Mrs. Wiggs burst forth:
+
+"An' to think I run her up ag'in' this! Ain't men deceivin'? Now I'd
+'a' risked Mr. Stubbins myself fer the askin'. It's true he was a
+widower, an' ma uster allays say, 'Don't fool with widowers, grass nor
+sod.' But Mr. Stubbins was so slick-tongued! He told me yesterday he
+had to take liquor sometime fer his war enjury."
+
+"But, Mrs. Wiggs, what must we do?" asked Lovey Mary, too absorbed in
+the present to be interested in the past.
+
+"Do? Why, we got to git Miss Hazy out of this here hole. It ain't no
+use consultin' her; I allays have said talkin' to Miss Hazy was like
+pullin' out bastin'-threads: you jes take out what you put in. Me an'
+you has got to think out a plan right here an' now, then go to work
+an' carry it out."
+
+"Couldn't we get the agency to take him back?" suggested Mary.
+
+"No, indeed; they couldn't afford to do that. Lemme see, lemme see--"
+For five minutes Mrs. Wiggs rocked meditatively, soothing Tommy to
+sleep as she rocked. When she again spoke it was with inspiration:
+
+"I've got it! It looks sometime, Lovey Mary, 's if I'd sorter caught
+some of Mr. Wiggs's brains in thinkin' things out. They ain't but one
+thing to do with Miss Hazy's husband, an' we'll do it this very
+night."
+
+"What, Mrs. Wiggs? What is it?" asked Lovey Mary, eagerly.
+
+"Why, to lose him, of course! We'll wait till Mr. Stubbins is dead
+asleep; you know men allays have to sleep off a jag like this. I've
+seen Mr. Wiggs--I mean I've heared 'em say so many a time. Well, when
+Mr. Stubbins is sound asleep, you an' me an' Billy will drag him out
+to the railroad."
+
+Mrs. Wiggs's voice had sunk to a hoarse whisper, and her eyes looked
+fierce in the twilight.
+
+Lovey Mary shuddered.
+
+"You ain't going to let the train run over him, are you?" she asked.
+
+"Lor', child, I ain't a 'sassinator! No; we'll wait till the midnight
+freight comes along, an' when it stops fer water, we'll h'ist Mr.
+Stubbins into one of them empty cars. The train goes 'way out West
+somewheres, an' by the time Mr. Stubbins wakes up, he'll be so far
+away from home he won't have no money to git back."
+
+"What'll Miss Hazy say?" asked Mary, giggling in nervous excitement.
+
+"Miss Hazy ain't got a thing to do with it," replied Mrs. Wiggs
+conclusively.
+
+At midnight, by the dark of the moon, the unconscious groom was borne
+out of the Hazy cottage. Mrs. Wiggs carried his head, while Billy
+Wiggs and Mary and Asia and Chris officiated at his arms and legs. The
+bride surveyed the scene from the chinks of the upstairs shutters.
+
+Silently the little group waited until the lumbering freight train
+slowed up to take water, then with a concerted effort they lifted the
+heavy burden into an empty car. As they shrank back into the shadow,
+Billy whispered to Lovey Mary:
+
+"Say, what was that you put 'longside of him?"
+
+Mary looked shamefaced.
+
+"It was just a little lunch-dinner," she said apologetically; "it
+seemed sorter mean to send him off without anything to eat."
+
+"Gee!" said Billy. "You're a cur'us girl!"
+
+The engine whistled, and the train moved thunderously away, bearing an
+unconscious passenger, who, as far as the Cabbage Patch was concerned,
+was henceforth submerged in the darkness of oblivion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+NEIGHBORLY ADVICE
+
+
+"It's a poor business looking at the sun with a cloudy face."
+
+The long, hot summer days that followed were full of trials for Lovey
+Mary. Day after day the great unwinking sun glared savagely down upon
+the Cabbage Patch, upon the stagnant pond, upon the gleaming rails,
+upon the puffing trains that pounded by hour after hour. Each morning
+found Lovey Mary trudging away to the factory, where she stood all day
+counting and sorting and packing tiles. At night she climbed wearily
+to her little room under the roof, and tried to sleep with a wet cloth
+over her face to keep her from smelling the stifling car smoke.
+
+But it was not the heat and discomfort alone that made her cheeks thin
+and her eyes sad and listless: it was the burden on her conscience,
+which seemed to be growing heavier all the time. One morning Mrs.
+Wiggs took her to task for her gloomy countenance. They met at the
+pump, and, while the former's bucket was being filled, Lovey Mary
+leaned against a lamp-post and waited in a dejected attitude.
+
+"What's the matter with you?" asked Mrs. Wiggs. "What you lookin' so
+wilted about?"
+
+Lovey Mary dug her shoe into the ground and said nothing. Many a time
+had she been tempted to pour forth her story to this friendly mentor,
+but the fear of discovery and her hatred of Kate deterred her.
+
+Mrs. Wiggs eyed her keenly. "Pesterin' about somethin'?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, 'm," said Lovey Mary, in a low tone.
+
+"Somethin' that's already did?"
+
+"Yes, 'm"--still lower.
+
+"Did you think you was actin' fer the best?"
+
+The girl lifted a pair of honest gray eyes. "Yes, ma'am, I did."
+
+"I bet you did!" said Mrs. Wiggs, heartily. "You ain't got a deceivin'
+bone in yer body. Now what you want to do is to brace up yer sperrits.
+The decidin'-time was the time fer worryin'. You've did what you
+thought was best; now you want to stop thinkin' 'bout it. You don't
+want to go round turnin' folks' thoughts sour jes to look at you. Most
+girls that had white teeth like you would be smilin' to show 'em, if
+fer nothin' else."
+
+"I wisht I was like you," said Lovey Mary.
+
+"Don't take it out in wishin'. If you want to be cheerful, jes set yer
+mind on it an' do it. Can't none of us help what traits we start out
+in life with, but we kin help what we end up with. When things first
+got to goin' wrong with me, I says: 'O Lord, whatever comes, keep me
+from gittin' sour!' It wasn't fer my own sake I ast it,--some people
+'pears to enjoy bein' low-sperrited,--it was fer the childern an' Mr.
+Wiggs. Since then I've made it a practice to put all my worries down
+in the bottom of my heart, then set on the lid an' smile."
+
+"But you think ever'body's nice and good," complained Lovey Mary. "You
+never see all the meanness I do."
+
+"Don't I? I been watchin' old man Rothchild fer goin' on eleven year',
+tryin' to see some good in him, an' I never found it till the other
+day when I seen him puttin' a splint on Cusmoodle's broken leg. He's
+the savagest man I know, yit he keered fer that duck as tender as a
+woman. But it ain't jes seein' the good in folks an' sayin' nice
+things when you're feelin' good. The way to git cheerful is to smile
+when you feel bad, to think about somebody else's headache when yer
+own is 'most bustin', to keep on believin' the sun is a-shinin' when
+the clouds is thick enough to cut. Nothin' helps you to it like
+thinkin' more 'bout other folks than about yerself."
+
+"I think 'bout Tommy first," said Lovey Mary.
+
+"Yes, you certainly do yer part by him. If my childern wore stockin's
+an' got as many holes in 'em as he does, I'd work buttonholes in 'em
+at the start fer the toes to come through. But even Tommy wants
+somethin' besides darns. Why don't you let him go barefoot on Sundays,
+too, an' take the time you been mendin' fer him to play with him? I
+want to see them pretty smiles come back in yer face ag'in."
+
+In a subsequent conversation with Miss Hazy, Mrs. Wiggs took a more
+serious view of Lovey Mary's depression.
+
+"She jes makes me wanter cry, she's so subdued-like. I never see
+anybody change so in my life. It 'u'd jes be a relief to hear her sass
+some of us like she uster. She told me she never had nobody make over
+her like we all did, an' it sorter made her 'shamed. Lawsee! if
+kindness is goin' to kill her, I think we'd better fuss at her some."
+
+"'Pears to me like she's got nervous sensations," said Miss Hazy; "she
+jumps up in her sleep, an' talks 'bout folks an' things I never heared
+tell of."
+
+"That's exactly what ails her," agreed Mrs. Wiggs: "it's nerves, Miss
+Hazy. To my way of thinkin', nerves is worser than tumors an' cancers.
+Look at old Mrs. Schultz. She's got the dropsy so bad you can't tell
+whether she's settin' down or standin' up, yet she ain't got a nerve
+in her body, an' has 'most as good a time as other folks. We can't let
+Lovey Mary go on with these here nerves; no tellin' where they'll land
+her at. If it was jes springtime, I'd give her sulphur an' molasses
+an' jes a leetle cream of tartar; that, used along with egg-shell tea,
+is the outbeatenest tonic I ever seen. But I never would run ag'in'
+the seasons. Seems to me I've heared yallerroot spoke of fer killin'
+nerves."
+
+"I don't 'spect we could git no yallerroot round here."
+
+"What's the matter with Miss Viny? I bet it grows in her garden thick
+as hairs on a dog's back. Let's send Lovey Mary out there to git some,
+an' we'll jes repeat the dose on her till it takes some hold."
+
+"I ain't puttin' much stock in Miss Viny," demurred Miss Hazy. "I've
+heared she was a novelist reader, an' she ain't even a church-member."
+
+"An' do you set up to jedge her?" asked Mrs. Wiggs, in fine scorn.
+"Miss Viny's got more sense in her little finger than me an' you has
+got in our whole heads. She can doctor better with them yarbs of hers
+than any physicianner I know. As to her not bein' a member, she lives
+right an' helps other folks, an' that's more than lots of members
+does. Besides," she added conclusively, "Mr. Wiggs himself wasn't no
+church-member."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+A DENOMINATIONAL GARDBN
+
+
+    "Oh, mickle is the powerful grace that lies
+     In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities;
+     For naught so vile that on the earth doth live
+     But to the earth some special good doth give."
+
+The following Sunday being decidedly cooler, Lovey Mary was started
+off to Miss Viny's in quest of yellowroot. She had protested that she
+was not sick, but Miss Hazy, backed by Mrs. Wiggs, had insisted.
+
+"If you git down sick, it would be a' orful drain on me," was Miss
+Hazy's final argument, and the point was effective.
+
+As Lovey Mary trudged along the railroad-tracks, she was unconscious
+of the pleasant changes of scenery. The cottages became less frequent,
+and the bare, dusty commons gave place to green fields. Here and there
+a tree spread its branches to the breezes, and now and then a snatch
+of bird song broke the stillness. But Lovey Mary kept gloomily on her
+way, her eyes fixed on the cross-ties. The thoughts surging through
+her brain were dark enough to obscure even the sunshine. For three
+nights she had cried herself to sleep, and the "nervous sensations"
+were getting worse instead of better.
+
+"Just two months since Kate was hurt," she said to herself. "Soon as
+she gets out the hospital she'll be trying to find us again. I believe
+she was coming to the factory looking for me when she got run over.
+She'd just like to take Tommy away and send me to jail. Oh, I hate her
+worse all the time! I wish she was--"
+
+The wish died on her lips, for she suddenly realized that it might
+already have been fulfilled. Some one coughed near by, and she started
+guiltily.
+
+"You seem to be in a right deep steddy," said a voice on the other
+side of the fence.
+
+Lovey Mary glanced up and saw a queer-looking old woman smiling at her
+quizzically. A pair of keen eyes twinkled under bushy brows, and a
+fierce little beard bristled from her chin. When she smiled it made
+Lovey Mary think of a pebble dropped in a pool, for the wrinkles went
+rippling off from her mouth in ever-widening circles until they were
+lost in the gray hair under her broad-brimmed hat.
+
+"Are you Miss Viny?" asked Lovey Mary, glancing at the old-fashioned
+flower-garden beyond.
+
+"Well, I been that fer sixty year'; I ain't heared of no change,"
+answered the old lady.
+
+"Miss Hazy sent me after some yellowroot," said Lovey Mary,
+listlessly.
+
+"Who fer?"
+
+"Me."
+
+Miss Viny took a pair of large spectacles from her pocket, put them on
+the tip of her nose, and looked over them critically at Lovey Mary.
+
+"Stick out yer tongue."
+
+Lovey Mary obeyed.
+
+"Uh-huh. It's a good thing I looked. You don't no more need yallerroot
+than a bumblebee. You come in here on the porch an' tell me what's
+ailin' you, an' I'll do my own prescriptin'."
+
+Lovey Mary followed her up the narrow path, that ran between a mass of
+flowers. Snowy oleanders, yellow asters, and purple phlox crowded
+together in a space no larger than Miss Hazy's front yard. Lovey Mary
+forgot her troubles in sheer delight in seeing so many flowers
+together.
+
+"Do you love 'em, too?" asked Miss Viny, jerking her thumb over her
+shoulder.
+
+"I guess I would if I had a chance. I never saw them growing out of
+doors like this. I always had to look at them through the store
+windows."
+
+"Oh, law, don't talk to me 'bout caged-up flowers! I don't b'lieve in
+shuttin' a flower up in a greenhouse any more 'n I b'lieve in shuttin'
+myself up in one church."
+
+Lovey Mary remembered what Miss Hazy had told her of Miss Viny's
+pernicious religious views, and she tried to change the subject. But
+Miss Viny was started upon a favorite theme and was not to be
+diverted.
+
+"This here is a denominational garden, an' I got every congregation I
+ever heared of planted in it. I ain't got no faverite bed. I keer fer
+'em all jes alike. When you come to think of it, the same rule holds
+good in startin' a garden as does in startin' a church. You first got
+to steddy what sort of soil you goin' to work with, then you have to
+sum up all the things you have to fight ag'inst. Next you choose what
+flowers are goin' to hold the best places. That's a mighty important
+question in churches, too, ain't it? Then you go to plantin', the
+thicker the better, fer in both you got to allow fer a mighty fallin'
+off. After that you must take good keer of what you got, an' be sure
+to plant something new each year. Once in a while some of the old
+growths has to be thinned out, and the new upstarts an' suckers has to
+be pulled up. Now, if you'll come out here I'll show you round."
+
+She started down the path, and Lovey Mary, somewhat overwhelmed by
+this oration, followed obediently.
+
+"These here are the Baptists," said Miss Viny, waving her hand toward
+a bed of heliotrope and flags. "They want lots of water; like to be
+wet clean through. They sorter set off to theyselves an' tend to their
+own business; don't keer much 'bout minglin' with the other flowers."
+
+Lovey Mary did not understand very clearly what Miss Viny was talking
+about, but she was glad to follow her in the winding paths, where new
+beauties were waiting at every turn.
+
+"These is geraniums, ain't they? One of the girls had one, once, in a
+flower-pot when she was sick."
+
+"Yes," said Miss Viny; "they're Methodist. They fall from grace an'
+has to be revived; they like lots of encouragement in the way of sun
+an' water. These phlox are Methodist, too; no set color, easy to grow,
+hardy an' vigorous. Pinchin' an' cuttin' back the shoots makes it
+flower all the better; needs new soil every few years; now ain't that
+Methodist down to the ground?"
+
+"Are there any Presbyterians?" asked Lovey Mary, beginning to grasp
+Miss Viny's meaning.
+
+"Yes, indeed; they are a good, old, reliable bed. Look at all these
+roses an' tiger-lilies an' dahlias; they all knew what they was goin'
+to be afore they started to grow. They was elected to it, an' they'll
+keep on bein' what they started out to be clean to the very end."
+
+"I know about predestination," cried Lovey Mary, eagerly. "Miss Bell
+used to tell us all those things."
+
+"Who did?"
+
+Lovey Mary flushed crimson. "A lady I used to know," she said
+evasively.
+
+Miss Viny crossed the garden, and stopped before a bed of stately
+lilies and azaleas. "These are 'Piscopals," she explained. "Ain't they
+tony? Jes look like they thought their bed was the only one in the
+garden. Somebody said that a lily didn't have no pore kin among the
+flowers. It ain't no wonder they 'most die of dignity. They're like
+the 'Piscopals in more ways 'n one; both hates to be disturbed, both
+likes some shade, an'"--confidentially--"both air pretty pernickity.
+But to tell you the truth, ain't nothin' kin touch 'em when it comes
+to beauty! I think all the other beds is proud of 'em, if you'd come
+to look into it. Why, look at weddin's an' funerals! Don't all the
+churches call in the 'Piscopals an' the lilies on both them
+occasions?"
+
+Lovey Mary nodded vaguely.
+
+"An' here," continued Miss Viny, "are the Unitarians. You may be
+s'prised at me fer havin' 'em in here, 'long with the orthodox
+churches; but if the sun an' the rain don't make no distinction, I
+don't see what right I got to put 'em on the other side of the fence.
+These first is sweet-william, as rich in bloom as the Unitarian is in
+good works, a-sowin' theyselves constant, an' every little plant a-
+puttin' out a flower."
+
+"Ain't there any Catholics?" asked Lovey Mary.
+
+"Don't you see them hollyhawks an' snowballs an' laylacs? All of them
+are Catholics, takin' up lots of room an' needin' the prunin'-knife
+pretty often, but bringin' cheer and brightness to the whole garden
+when it needs it most. Yes, I guess you'd have trouble thinkin' of any
+sect I ain't got planted. Them ferns over in the corner is Quakers. I
+ain't never seen no Quakers, but they tell me that they don't b'lieve
+in flowerin' out; that they like coolness an' shade an' quiet, an' are
+jes the same the year round. These colea plants are the apes; they are
+all things to all men, take on any color that's round 'em, kin be the
+worst kind of Baptists or Presbyterians, but if left to theyselves
+they run back to good-fer-nothin's. This here everlastin' is one of
+these here Christians that's so busy thinkin' 'bout dyin' that he
+fergits to live."
+
+Miss Viny chuckled as she crumbled the dry flower in her fingers.
+
+"See how different this is," she said, plucking a sprig of lemon-
+verbena. "This an' the mint an' the sage an' the lavender is all true
+Christians; jes by bein' touched they give out a' influence that makes
+the whole world a sweeter place to live in. But, after all, they can't
+all be alike! There's all sorts of Christians: some stands fer
+sunshine, some fer shade; some fer beauty, some fer use; some up high,
+some down low. There's jes one thing all the flowers has to unite in
+fightin' ag'inst--that's the canker-worm, Hate. If it once gits in a
+plant, no matter how good an' strong that plant may be, it eats right
+down to its heart."
+
+"How do you get it out, Miss Viny?" asked Lovey Mary, earnestly.
+
+"Prayer an' perseverance. If the Christian'll do his part, God'll do
+his'n. You see, I'm tryin' to be to these flowers what God is to his
+churches. The sun, which answers to the Sperrit, has to shine on 'em
+all, an' the rain, which answers to God's mercy, has to fall on 'em
+all. I jes watch 'em, an' plan fer 'em, an' shelter 'em, an' love 'em,
+an' if they do their part they're bound to grow. Now I'm goin' to cut
+you a nice bo'quet to carry back to the Cabbage Patch."
+
+So engrossed were the two in selecting and arranging the flowers that
+neither thought of the yellowroot or its substitute. Nevertheless, as
+Lovey Mary tramped briskly back over the railroad-ties with her burden
+of blossoms, she bore a new thought in her heart which was destined to
+bring about a surer cure than any of Miss Viny's most efficient herbs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+LABOR DAY
+
+
+     "And cloudy the day, or stormy the night,
+      The sky of her heart was always bright."
+
+"It wouldn't s'prise me none if we had cyclones an' tornadoes by
+evenin', it looks so thundery outdoors."
+
+It was inconsiderate of Miss Hazy to make the above observation in the
+very face of the most elaborate preparations for a picnic, but Miss
+Hazy's evil predictions were too frequent to be effective.
+
+"I'll scurry round an' git another loaf of bread," said Mrs. Wiggs,
+briskly, as she put a tin pail into the corner of the basket. "Lovey
+Mary, you put in the eggs an' git them cookies outen the stove. I
+promised them boys a picnic on Labor Day, an' we are goin' if it
+snows."
+
+"Awful dangerous in the woods when it storms," continued Miss Hazy. "I
+heared of a man oncet that would go to a picnic in the rain, and he
+got struck so bad it burned his shoes plump off."
+
+"Must have been the same man that got drownded, when he was little,
+fer goin' in swimmin' on Sunday," answered Mrs. Wiggs, wiping her
+hands on her apron.
+
+"Mebbe 't was," said Miss Hazy.
+
+Lovey Mary vibrated between the door and the window, alternating
+between hope and despair. She had set her heart on the picnic with the
+same intensity of desire that had characterized her yearning for
+goodness and affection and curly hair.
+
+"I believe there is a tiny speck more blue," she said, scanning the
+heavens for the hundredth time.
+
+"Course there is!" cried Mrs. Wiggs, "an' even if there ain't, we'll
+have the picnic anyway. I b'lieve in havin' a good time when you start
+out to have it. If you git knocked out of one plan, you want to git
+yerself another right quick, before yer sperrits has a chance to fall.
+Here comes Jake an' Chris with their baskets. Suppose you rench off
+yer hands an' go gether up the rest of the childern. I 'spect Billy's
+done hitched up by this time."
+
+At the last moment Miss Hazy was still trying to make up her mind
+whether or not she would go. "Them wheels don't look none too stiddy
+fer sich a big load," she said cautiously.
+
+"Them wheels is a heap sight stiddier than your legs," declared Mrs.
+Wiggs.
+
+"An' there ain't a meeker hoss in Kentucky than Cuby. He looks like he
+might 'a' belonged to a preacher 'stid of bein' a broken-down engine-
+hoss."
+
+An unforeseen delay was occasioned by a heated controversy between
+Lovey Mary and Tommy concerning the advisability of taking Cusmoodle.
+
+"There ain't more than room enough to squeeze you in, Tommy," she
+said, "let alone that fat old duck."
+
+"'T ain't a fat old duck."
+
+"'T is, too! He sha'n't go. You'll have to stay at home yourself if
+you can't be good."
+
+"I feel like I was doin' to det limber," threatened Tommy.
+
+Mrs. Wiggs recognized a real danger. She also knew that discretion was
+the better part of valor. "Here's a nice little place up here by me,
+jes big enough fer you an' Cusmoodle. You kin set on the basket; it
+won't mash nothin'. If we're packed in good an' tight, can't none of
+us fall out."
+
+When the last basket was stored away, the party started off in glee,
+leaving Miss Hazy still irresolute in the doorway, declaring that "she
+almost wisht she had 'a' went."
+
+The destination had not been decided upon, so it was discussed as the
+wagon jolted along over the cobblestones.
+
+"Let's go out past Miss Viny's," suggested Jake; "there's a bully
+woods out there."
+
+"Aw, no! Let's go to Tick Creek an' go in wadin'."
+
+Mrs. Wiggs, seated high above the party and slapping the reins on
+Cuba's back, allowed the lively debate to continue until trouble
+threatened, then she interfered:
+
+"I think it would be nice to go over to the cemetery. We'd have to
+cross the city, but when you git out there there's plenty of grass an'
+trees, an' it runs right 'longside the river."
+
+The proximity of the river decided the matter.
+
+"I won't hardly take a swim!" said Jake, going through the motions, to
+the discomfort of the two little girls who were hanging their feet
+from the back of the wagon.
+
+"I'm afraid it's going to rain so hard that you can take your swim
+before you get there," said Lovey Mary, as the big drops began to
+fall.
+
+The picnic party huddled on the floor of the wagon in a state of great
+merriment, while Mrs. Wiggs spread an old quilt over as many of them
+as it would cover.
+
+"'T ain't nothin' but a summer shower," she said, holding her head on
+one side to keep the rain from driving in her face. "I 'spect the sun
+is shinin' at the cemetery right now."
+
+As the rickety wagon, with its drenched and shivering load, rattled
+across Main street, an ominous sound fell upon the air:
+
+_One--two--three! One--two!_
+
+Mrs. Wiggs wrapped the lines about her wrists and braced herself for
+the struggle. But Cuba had heard the summons, his heart had responded
+to the old call, and with one joyous bound he started for the fire.
+
+"Hold on tight!" yelled Mrs. Wiggs. "Don't none of you fall out. Whoa,
+Cuby! Whoa! I'll stop him in a minute. Hold tight!"
+
+Cuba kicked the stiffness out of his legs, and laying his ears back,
+raced valiantly for five squares neck and neck with the engine-horses.
+But the odds were against him; Mrs. Wiggs and Chris sawing on one
+line, and Billy and Jake pulling on the other, proved too heavy a
+handicap. Within sight of the fire he came to a sudden halt.
+
+"It's the lumber-yards!" called Chris, climbing over the wheels.
+"Looks like the whole town's on fire."
+
+"Let's unhitch Cuby an' tie him, an' stand in the wagon an' watch it,"
+cried Mrs. Wiggs, in great excitement.
+
+The boys were not content to be stationary, so they rushed away,
+leaving Mrs. Wiggs and the girls, with Tommy and the duck, to view the
+conflagration at a safe distance.
+
+For two hours the fire raged, leaping from one stack of lumber to
+another, and threatening the adjacent buildings. Every fire-engine in
+the department was called out, the commons were black with people, and
+the excitement was intense.
+
+"Ain't you glad we come!" cried Lovey Mary, dancing up and down in the
+wagon.
+
+"We never come. We was brought," said Asia.
+
+Long before the fire was under control the sun had come through the
+clouds and was shining brightly. Picnics, however, were not to be
+considered when an attraction like this was to be had. When the boys
+finally came straggling back the fire was nearly out, the crowd had
+dispersed, and only the picnic party was left on the commons.
+
+"It's too late to start to the cemetery," said Mrs. Wiggs,
+thoughtfully. "What do you all think of havin' the picnic right here
+an' now?"
+
+The suggestion was regarded as nothing short of an inspiration.
+
+"The only trouble," continued Mrs. Wiggs, "is 'bout the water. Where
+we goin' to git any to drink? I know one of the firemen, Pete Jenkins;
+if I could see him I'd ast him to pour us some outen the hose."
+
+"Gimme the pail; I'll go after him," cried Jake.
+
+"Naw, you don't; I'm a-goin'. It's my maw that knows him," said Billy.
+
+"That ain't nothin'. My uncle knows the chief of police! Can't I go,
+Mrs. Wiggs?"
+
+Meanwhile Chris had seized the hint and the bucket, and was off in
+search of Mr. Peter Jenkins, whose name would prove an open sesame to
+that small boy's paradise--the engine side of the rope.
+
+The old quilt, still damp, was spread on the ground, and around it sat
+the picnic party, partaking ravenously of dry sandwiches and cheese
+and cheer. Such laughing and crowding and romping as there was! Jake
+gave correct imitations of everybody in the Cabbage Patch, Chris did
+some marvelous stunts with his wooden leg, and Lovey Mary sang every
+funny song that she knew. Mrs. Wiggs stood in the wagon above them,
+and dispensed hospitality as long as it lasted. Cuba, hitched to a
+fence near by, needed no material nourishment. He was contentedly
+sniffing the smoke-filled air, and living over again the days of his
+youth.
+
+When the party reached home, tired and grimy, they were still
+enthusiastic over the fine time they had had.
+
+"It's jes the way I said," proclaimed Mrs. Wiggs, as she drove up with
+a flourish; "you never kin tell which way pleasure is a-comin'. Who
+ever would 'a' thought, when we aimed at the cemetery, that we'd land
+up at a first-class fire?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+A TIMELY VISIT
+
+
+     "The love of praise, howe'er concealed by art,
+      Reigns more or less, and glows in ev'ry heart."
+
+Weeks and months slipped by, and the Cabbage Patch ate breakfast and
+supper by lamplight. Those who could afford it were laying in their
+winter coal, and those who could not were providently pasting brown
+paper over broken window-panes, and preparing to keep Jack Frost at
+bay as long as possible.
+
+One Saturday, as Lovey Mary came home from the factory, she saw a
+well-dressed figure disappearing in the distance.
+
+"Who is that lady?" she demanded suspiciously of Europena Wiggs, who
+was swinging violently on the gate.
+
+"'T ain't no lady," said Europena. "It's my Sunday-school teacher."
+
+"Mrs. Redding?"
+
+"Uh-huh. She wants Asia to come over to her house this evenin'."
+
+"Wisht I could go," said Lovey Mary.
+
+"Why can't you?" asked Mrs. Wiggs, coming to the open door. "Asia
+would jes love to show Mrs. Reddin' how stylish you look in that red
+dress. I'll curl yer hair on the poker if you want me to."
+
+Any diversion from the routine of work was acceptable, so late that
+afternoon the two girls, arrayed in their best garments, started forth
+to call on the Reddings.
+
+"I wisht I had some gloves," said Lovey Mary, rubbing her blue
+fingers.
+
+"If I'd 'a' thought about it I'd 'a' made you some before we started.
+It don't take no time." Asia held out her hands, which were covered
+with warm red mitts. "I make 'em outen Billy's old socks after the
+feet's wore off."
+
+"I don't see how you know how to do so many things!" said Lovey Mary,
+admiringly.
+
+[Illustration: "Asia held out her hands, which were covered with warm
+red mitts."]
+
+"'T ain't nothin'," disclaimed Asia, modestly. "It's jes the way maw
+brought us up. Whenever we started out to do a thing she made us
+finish it someway or 'nother. Oncet when we was all little we lived in
+the country. She sent Billy out on the hoss to git two watermelon, an'
+told him fer him not to come home without 'em. When Billy got out to
+the field he found all the watermelon so big he couldn't carry one,
+let alone two. What do you think he done?"
+
+"Come home without 'em?"
+
+"No, sir, he never! He jes set on the fence an' thought awhile, then
+he took off en his jeans pants an' put a watermelon in each leg an'
+hanged 'em 'crost old Rollie's back an' come ridin' home barelegged."
+
+"I think he's the nicest boy in the Cabbage Patch," said Lovey Mary,
+laughing over the incident. "He never does tease Tommy."
+
+"That's 'cause he likes you. He says you've got grit. He likes the way
+you cleaned up Miss Hazy an' stood up to Mr. Stubbins."
+
+A deeper color than even the fresh air warranted came into Lovey
+Mary's cheeks, and she walked on for a few minutes in pleased silence.
+
+"Don't you want to wear my gloves awhile?" asked Asia.
+
+"No; my hands ain't cold any more," said Lovey Mary.
+
+As they turned into Terrace Park, with its beautiful grounds, its
+fountains and statuary, Asia stopped to explain.
+
+"Jes rich folks live over here. That there is the Reddin's' house, the
+big white one where them curbstone ladies are in the yard. I wisht you
+could git a peek in the parlor; they've got chairs made outer real
+gold, an' strandaliers that look like icicles all hitched together."
+
+"Do they set on the gold chairs?"
+
+"No, indeed; the legs is too wabbly fer that. I reckon they're jes to
+show how rich they are. This here is where the carriage drives in.
+Their hired man wears a high-style hat, an' a fur cape jes like Mrs.
+Reddin's."
+
+"I 'spect they have turkey every day, don't they, Asia?"
+
+Before Asia's veracity was tested to the limit, the girls were
+startled by the sudden appearance of an excited housemaid at the side
+door.
+
+"Simmons! Simmons!" she screamed. "Oh, where is that man? I'll have to
+go for somebody myself." And without noticing the girls, she ran
+hastily down the driveway.
+
+Asia, whose calmness was seldom ruffled, led the way into the entry.
+"That's the butter's pantry," she said, jerking her thumb over her
+shoulder.
+
+"Don't they keep nothing in it but butter?" gasped Lovey Mary.
+
+"Reckon not. They've got a great big box jes fer ice; not another
+thing goes in it."
+
+Another maid ran down the steps, calling Simmons.
+
+Asia, a frequent visitor at the house, made her way unconcernedly up
+to the nursery. On the second floor there was great confusion; the
+telephone was ringing, servants were hurrying to and fro.
+
+"He'll choke to death before the doctor gets here!" they heard the
+nurse say as she ran through the hall. From the open nursery door they
+could hear the painful gasps and coughs of a child in great distress.
+
+Asia paused on the landing, but Lovey Mary darted forward. The mother
+instinct, ever strong within her, had responded instantly to the need
+of the child. In the long, dainty room full of beautiful things, she
+only saw the terrified baby on his mother's lap, his face purple, his
+eyes distended, as he fought for his breath.
+
+[Illustration: "Master Robert Redding was right side up again, sobbing
+himself quiet in Lovey Mary's arms."]
+
+Without a word she sprang forward, and grasping the child by his feet,
+held him at arm's-length and shook him violently. Mrs. Redding
+screamed, and the nurse, who was rushing in with hot milk, dropped the
+cup in horror. But a tiny piece of hard candy lay on the floor, and
+Master Robert Redding was right side up again, sobbing himself quiet
+in Lovey Mary's arms.
+
+After the excitement had subsided, and two doctors and Mr. Redding had
+arrived breathless upon the scene, Mrs. Redding, for the dozenth time,
+lavished her gratitude upon Lovey Mary:
+
+"And to think you saved my precious baby! The doctor said it was the
+only thing that could have saved him, yet we four helpless women had
+no idea what to do. How did you know, dear? Where did you ever see it
+done!"
+
+Lovey Mary, greatly abashed, faced the radiant parents, the two portly
+doctors, and the servants in the background.
+
+"I learned on Tommy," she said in a low voice. "He swallered a penny
+once that we was going to buy candy with. I didn't have another, so I
+had to shake it out."
+
+During the laugh that followed, she and Asia escaped, but not before
+Mr. Redding had slipped a bill into her hand, and the beautiful Mrs.
+Redding had actually given her a kiss!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE CHRISTMAS PLAY
+
+
+     "Not failure, but low aim, is crime."
+
+As the holiday season approached, a rumor began to be circulated that
+the Cabbage Patch Sunday-school would have an entertainment as well as
+a Christmas tree. The instigator of this new movement was Jake
+Schultz, whose histrionic ambition had been fired during his
+apprenticeship as "super" at the opera-house.
+
+"I know a man what rents costumes, an' the promp'-books to go with
+'em," he said to several of the boys one Sunday afternoon. "If we all
+chip in we kin raise the price, an' git it back easy by chargin'
+admittance."
+
+"Aw, shucks!" said Chris. "We don't know nothin' 'bout play-actin'."
+
+"We kin learn all right," said Billy Wiggs. "I bid to be the feller
+that acts on the trapeze."
+
+The other boys approving of the plan, it was agreed that Jake should
+call on the costumer at his earliest convenience.
+
+One night a week later Lovey Mary was getting supper when she heard an
+imperative rap on the door. It was Jake Schultz. He mysteriously
+beckoned her out on the steps, and closed the door behind them.
+
+"Have you ever acted any?" he asked.
+
+"I used to say pieces at the home," said Lovey Mary, forgetting
+herself.
+
+"Well, do you think you could take leadin' lady in the entertainment?"
+
+[Illustration: "'Have you ever acted any?' he asked."]
+
+Lovey Mary had no idea what the lady was expected to lead, but she
+knew that she was being honored, and she was thrilled at the prospect.
+
+"I know some arm-exercises, and I could sing for them," she offered.
+
+"Oh, no," explained Jake; "it's a play, a reg'lar theayter play. I got
+the book and the costumes down on Market street. The man didn't have
+but this one set of costumes on hand, so I didn't have no choice. It's
+a bully play, all right, though! I seen it oncet, an' I know how it
+all ought to go. It's named 'Forst,' er somethin' like that. I'm goin'
+to be the devil, an' wear a red suit, an' have my face all streaked
+up. Billy he's goin' to be the other feller what's stuck on the girl.
+He tole me to ast you to be her. Your dress is white with cords an'
+tassels on it, an' the sleeves ain't sewed up. Reckon you could learn
+the part? We ain't goin' to give it all."
+
+"I can learn anything!" cried Lovey Mary, recklessly. "Already know
+the alphabet and the Lord's Prayer backward. Is the dress short-
+sleeve? And does it drag in the back when you walk?"
+
+"Yep," said Jake, "an' the man said you was to plait your hair in two
+parts an' let 'em hang over your shoulders. I don't see why it
+wouldn't be pretty for you to sing somethin', too. Ever'body is so
+stuck on yer singin'."
+
+"All right," said Lovey Mary, enthusiastically; "you bring the book
+over and show me where my part's at. And, Jake," she called as he
+started off, "you tell Billy I'll be glad to."
+
+For the next ten days Lovey Mary dwelt in Elysium. The prompt-book,
+the rehearsals, the consultations, filled the spare moments and threw
+a glamour over the busy ones. Jake, with his vast experience and
+unlimited knowledge of stage-craft, appealed to her in everything. He
+sat on a barrel and told how they did things "up to the opery-house,"
+and Lovey Mary, seizing his suggestions with burning zeal, refitted
+the costumes, constructed scenery, hammered her own nails as well as
+the iron ones, and finally succeeded in putting into practice his
+rather vague theories. For the first time in her life she was a person
+of importance.
+
+Besides her numerous other duties she prepared an elaborate costume
+for Tommy. This had caused her some trouble, for Miss Hazy, who was
+sent to buy the goods for the trousers, exercised unwise economy in
+buying two remnants which did not match in color or pattern.
+
+"Why didn't you put your mind on it, Miss Hazy?" asked Lovey Mary,
+making a heroic effort to keep her temper. "You might have known I
+couldn't take Tommy to the show with one blue leg and one brown one.
+What must I do?"
+
+Miss Hazy sat dejectedly in the corner, wiping her eyes on her apron.
+"You might go ast Mis' Wiggs," she suggested as a forlorn hope.
+
+When Mrs. Wiggs was told the trouble she smiled reassuringly.
+Emergencies were to her the spice of life; they furnished
+opportunities for the expression of her genius.
+
+"Hush cryin', Miss Hazy; there ain't a speck of harm did. Mary kin
+make the front outen one piece an' the back outen the other. Nobody
+won't never know the difference, 'cause Tommy can't be goin' an'
+comin' at the same time."
+
+The result was highly satisfactory, that is, to everybody but Tommy.
+He complained that there "wasn't no room to set down."
+
+On Christmas night the aristocracy of the Cabbage Patch assembled in
+the school-house to enjoy the double attraction of a Christmas tree
+and an entertainment. Mr. Rothchild, who had arranged the tree for the
+last ten years, refused to have it moved from its accustomed place,
+which was almost in the center of the platform. He had been earnestly
+remonstrated with, but he and the tree remained firm. Mrs. Rothchild
+and all the little Rothchildren had climbed in by the window before
+the doors were open in order to secure the front seats. Immediately
+behind them sat the Hazys and the Wiggses.
+
+"That there is the seminary student gittin' up now," whispered Mrs.
+Wiggs. "He's goin' to call out the pieces. My land! ain't he washed
+out? Looks like he'd go into a trance fer fifty cents. Hush,
+Australia! don't you see he is goin' to pray?"
+
+After the opening prayer, the young preacher suggested that, as long
+as the speakers were not quite ready, the audience should "raise a
+hymn."
+
+"He's got a fine voice," whispered Miss Hazy; "I heared 'em say he was
+the gentleman soprano at a down-town church."
+
+When the religious exercises were completed, the audience settled into
+a state of pleasurable anticipation.
+
+"The first feature of the entertainment," announced the preacher,
+"will be a song by Miss Europena Wiggs."
+
+[Illustration: "Europena stepped forward."]
+
+Europena stepped forward and, with hands close to her sides and
+anguished eyes on the ceiling, gasped forth the agonized query:
+
+      "Can she make a cheery-pie,
+         Billy boy, Billy boy?
+       Can she make a cheery-pie,
+         Charming Billy?"
+
+Notwithstanding the fact that there were eight verses, an encore was
+demanded. Mrs. Wiggs rose in her seat and beckoned vehemently to
+Europena. "Come on back!" she motioned violently with her lips. "They
+want you to come back."
+
+Europena, in a state of utter bewilderment, returned to the stage.
+
+"Say another speech!" whispered Mrs. Wiggs, leaning over so far that
+she knocked Mrs. Rothchild's bonnet awry. Still Europena stood there,
+an evident victim of lockjaw.
+
+"'I have a little finger,'" prompted her mother frantically from the
+second row front.
+
+A single ray of intelligence flickered for a moment over the child's
+face, and with a supreme effort she said:
+
+     "I have a little finger,
+        An' I have a little beau;
+     When I get a little bigger
+        I'll have a little toe."
+
+"Well, she got it all in," said Mrs. Wiggs, in a relieved tone, as
+Europena was lifted down.
+
+After this, other little girls came forward and made some
+unintelligible remarks concerning Santa Claus. It was with some
+difficulty that they went through their parts, for Mr. Rothchild kept
+getting in the way as he calmly and uncompromisingly continued to hang
+cornucopias on the tree. Songs and recitations followed, but even the
+youngest spectator realized that these were only preliminary
+skirmishes.
+
+At last a bell rang. Two bedspreads. which served as curtains were
+majestically withdrawn. A sigh of admiration swept the room. "Ain't he
+cute!" whispered a girl in the rear, as Billy rose resplendent in pink
+tights and crimson doublet, and folding his arms high on his breast,
+recited in a deep voice:
+
+    "I have, alas! philosophy,
+        Medicine, jurisprudence too,
+     And, to my cost, theology
+        With ardent labor studied through."
+
+"I don't see no sense in what he's sayin' at all," whispered Miss
+Hazy.
+
+"It's jes what was in the book," answered Mrs. Wiggs, "'cause I heared
+him repeat it off before supper."
+
+The entrance of Jake awakened the flagging interest. Nobody understood
+what he said either, but he made horrible faces, and waved his red
+arms, and caused a pleasant diversion.
+
+"Maw, what's John Bagby a-handin' round in that little saucer?" asked
+Australia.
+
+"Fer the mercy sake! I don't know," answered her mother, craning her
+neck to see.
+
+John, with creaking footsteps, tiptoed to the front of the stage, and
+stooping down, began to mix a concoction in a plate. Many stood up to
+see what he was doing, and conjecture was rife. _Mephisto_ and _Faust_
+were forgotten until Jake struck a heroic pose, and grasping Billy's
+arm, said hoarsely:
+
+"Gaze, Faustis, gaze into pairdition!"
+
+John put a match to the powder, a bright red light filled the room,
+and the audience, following the index-finger of the impassioned
+_Mephisto_, gazed into the placid, stupid faces of four meek little
+boys on the mourners' bench.
+
+[Illustration: "Sang in a high, sweet voice, 'I Need Thee Every
+Hour'"]
+
+Before the violent coughing caused by the calcium fumes had ceased, a
+vision in white squeezed past Mr. Rothchild and came slowly down to
+the edge of the platform. It was Lovey Mary as _Marguerite_. Her long
+dress swept about her feet, her heavy hair hung in thick braids over
+both shoulders, and a burning red spot glowed on each cheek. For a
+moment she stood as Jake had directed, with head thrown back and eyes
+cast heavenward, then she began to recite. The words poured from her
+lips with a volubility that would have shamed an auctioneer. It was a
+long part, full of hard words, but she knew it perfectly and was
+determined to show how fast she could say it without making a mistake.
+It was only when she finished that she paused for breath. Then she
+turned slowly, and stretching forth appealing arms to _Faust_, sang in
+a high, sweet voice, "I Need Thee Every Hour."
+
+The effect was electrical. At last the Cabbage Patch understood what
+was going on. The roof rang with applause. Even Mr. Rothchild held
+aside his strings of pop-corn to let _Marguerite_ pass out.
+
+"S' more! S' more!" was the cry. "Sing it ag'in!"
+
+Jake stepped before the curtain. "If our friends is willin'," he said,
+"we'll repeat over the last ak."
+
+Again Lovey Mary scored a triumph. John Bagby burned the rest of the
+calcium powder during the last verse, and the entertainment concluded
+in a prolonged cheer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+REACTION
+
+
+"Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie."
+
+When the paint and powder had been washed off, and Tommy had with
+difficulty been extracted from his new trousers and put to bed, Lovey
+Mary sat before the little stove and thought it all over. It had been
+the very happiest time of her whole life. How nice it was to be
+praised and made much of! Mrs. Wiggs had started it by calling
+everybody's attention to her good points; then Mrs. Redding had sought
+her out and shown her continued attention; to-night was the great
+climax. Her name had been on every tongue, her praises sung on every
+side, and Billy Wiggs had given her everything he got off the
+Christmas tree.
+
+"I wisht I deserved it all," she said, as she got up to pull the
+blanket closer about Tommy. "I've tried to be good. I guess I am
+better in some ways, but not in all--not in all." She knelt by the bed
+and held Tommy's hand to her cheek. "Sometimes he looks like Kate when
+he's asleep like this. I wonder if she's got well? I wonder if she
+ever misses him?"
+
+For a long time she knelt there, holding the warm little hand in hers.
+The play, the success, the applause, were all forgotten, and in their
+place was a shame, a humiliation, that brought the hot tears to her
+eyes.
+
+"I ain't what they think I am," she whispered brokenly. "I'm a mean,
+bad girl after all. The canker-worm's there. Miss Viny said there
+never would be a sure-'nough beautiful flower till the canker-worm was
+killed. But I want to be good; I want to be what they think I am!"
+
+Again and again the old thoughts of Kate rose to taunt and madden her.
+But a new power was at work; it brought new thoughts of Kate, of Kate
+sick and helpless, of Kate without friends and lonely, calling for her
+baby. Through the night the battle raged within her. When the first
+gray streaks showed through the shutters, Lovey Mary cleaned her room
+and put on her Sunday dress. "I'll be a little late to the factory,"
+she explained to Miss Hazy at breakfast, "for I've got to go on a'
+errand."
+
+It was an early hour for visitors at the city hospital, but when Lovey
+Mary stated her business she was shown to Kate's ward. At the far end
+of the long room, with her bandaged head turned to the wall, lay Kate.
+When the nurse spoke to her she turned her head painfully, and looked
+at them listlessly with great black eyes that stared forth from a face
+wasted and wan from suffering.
+
+"Kate!" said Lovey Mary, leaning across the bed and touching her hand.
+"Kate, don't you know me?"
+
+The pale lips tightened over the prominent white teeth. "Well, I swan,
+Lovey Mary, where'd you come from?" Not waiting for an answer, she
+continued querulously: "Say, can't you get me out of this hole
+someway? But even if I had the strength to crawl, I wouldn't have no
+place to go. Can't you take me away? Anywhere would do."
+
+Lovey Mary's spirits fell; she had nerved herself for a great
+sacrifice, had decided to do her duty at any cost; but thinking of it
+beforehand in her little garret room, with Tommy's hand in hers, and
+Kate Rider a mere abstraction, was very different from facing the real
+issue, with the old, selfish, heartless Kate in flesh and blood before
+her. She let go of Kate's hand.
+
+"Don't you want to know about Tommy?" she asked. "I've come to say I
+was sorry I run off with him."
+
+"It was mighty nervy in you. I knew you'd take good care of him,
+though. But say! you can get me away from this, can't you? I ain't got
+a friend in the world nor a cent of money. But I ain't going to stay
+here, where there ain't nothing to do, and I get so lonesome I 'most
+die. I'd rather set on a street corner and run a hand-organ. Where are
+you and Tommy at?"
+
+"We are in the Cabbage Patch," said Lovey Mary, with the old repulsion
+strong upon her.
+
+"Where?"
+
+"The Cabbage Patch. It ain't your sort of a place, Kate. The folks are
+good and honest, but they are poor and plain. You'd laugh at 'em."
+
+Kate turned her eyes to the window and was silent a moment before she
+said slowly:
+
+"I ain't got much right to laugh at nobody. I'd be sorter glad to get
+with good people again. The other sort's all right when you're out for
+fun, but when you're down on your luck they ain't there."
+
+Lovey Mary, perplexed and troubled, looked at her gravely.
+
+"Haven't you got any place you could go to?"
+
+[Illustration: "'Haven't you got any place you could go to?'"]
+
+Kate shook her head. "Nobody would be willing to look after me and
+nurse me. Lovey,"--she stretched her thin hand across to her
+entreatingly,--"take me home with you! I heard the doctor tell the
+nurse he couldn't do nothing more for me. I can't die here shut up
+with all these sick people. Take me wherever you are at. I'll try not
+to be no trouble, and--I want to keep straight."
+
+Tears were in her eyes, and her lips trembled. There was a queer
+little spasm at Lovey Mary's heart. The canker-worm was dead.
+
+When a carriage drove up to Miss Hazy's door and the driver carried in
+a pale girl with a bandaged head, it caused untold commotion.
+
+"Do you s'pose Mary's a-bringin' home a smallpox patient?" asked Miss
+Hazy, who was ever prone to look upon the tragic side.
+
+"Naw!" said Chris, who was peeping under the window-curtain; "it looks
+more like she's busted her crust."
+
+In less than an hour every neighbor had been in to find out what was
+going on. Mrs. Wiggs constituted herself mistress of ceremonies. She
+had heard the whole story from the overburdened Mary, and was now
+prepared to direct public opinion in the way it should go.
+
+"Jes another boarder for Miss Hazy," she explained airily to Mrs.
+Eichorn. "Lovey Mary was so well pleased with her boardin'-house, she
+drummed it up among her friends. This here lady has been at the
+hospittal. She got knocked over by a wagon out there near the factory,
+an' it run into celebrated concussion. The nurse told Lovey Mary this
+mornin' it was somethin' like information of the brain. What we're all
+goin' to do is to try to get her well. I'm a-goin' home now to git her
+a nice dinner, an' I jes bet some of you'll see to it that she gits a
+good supper. You kin jes bank on us knowin' how to give a stranger a
+welcome!"
+
+It was easy to establish a precedent in the Cabbage Patch. When a
+certain course of action was once understood to be the proper thing,
+every resident promptly fell in line. The victim of "celebrated
+concussion" was overwhelmed with attention. She lay in a pink wrapper
+in Miss Hazy's kitchen, and received the homage of the neighborhood.
+Meanwhile Lovey Mary worked extra hours at the factory and did sewing
+at night to pay for Kate's board.
+
+In spite, however, of the kind treatment and the regular
+administration of Miss Viny's herbs and Mrs. Wiggs's yellowroot, Kate
+grew weaker day by day. One stormy night when Lovey Mary came home
+from the factory she found her burning with fever and talking
+excitedly. Miss Hazy had gotten her up-stairs, and now stood
+helplessly wringing her hands in the doorway.
+
+"Lor', Lovey Mary! she's cuttin' up scandalous," complained the old
+lady. "I done ever'thing I knowed how; I ironed the sheets to make 'em
+warm, an' I tried my best to git her to swallow a mustard cocktail. I
+wanted her to lemme put a fly-blister on to her head, too, but she
+won't do nothin'."
+
+"All right, Miss Hazy," said Lovey Mary, hanging her dripping coat on
+a nail. "I'll stay with her now. Don't talk, Kate! Try to be still."
+
+"But I can't, Lovey. I'm going to die, and I ain't fit to die. I've
+been so bad and wicked, I'm 'fraid to go, Lovey. What'll I do? What'll
+I do?"
+
+In vain the girl tried to soothe her. Her hysteria increased; she
+cried and raved and threw herself from side to side.
+
+"Kate! Kate!" pleaded Lovey Mary, trying to hold her arms, "don't cry
+so. God'll forgive you. He will, if you are sorry."
+
+"But I'm afraid," shuddered Kate. "I've been so bad. Heaven knows I'm
+sorry, but it's too late! Too late!" Another paroxysm seized her, and
+her cries burst forth afresh.
+
+Mary, in desperation, rushed from the room. "Tommy!" she called softly
+down the steps.
+
+The small boy was sitting on the stairs, in round-eyed wonder at what
+was going on.
+
+"Tommy," said Lovey Mary, picking him up, "the sick lady feels so bad!
+Go in and give her a love, darling. Pet her cheeks and hug her like
+you do me. Tell her she's a pretty mama. Tell her you love her."
+
+Tommy trotted obediently into the low room and climbed on the bed. He
+put his plump cheek against the thin one, and whispered words of baby-
+love. Kate's muscles relaxed as her arms folded about him. Gradually
+her sobs ceased and her pulse grew faint and fainter. Outside, the
+rain and sleet beat on the cracked window-pane, but a peace had
+entered the dingy little room. Kate received the great summons with a
+smile, for in one fleeting moment she had felt for the first and last
+time the blessed sanctity of motherhood.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+AN HONORABLE RETREAT
+
+
+    "For I will ease my heart
+     Although, it be with hazard
+     Of my head."
+
+Miss Bell sat in her neat little office, with the evening paper in her
+hand. The hour before tea was the one time of the day she reserved for
+herself. Susie Smithers declared that she sat before the fire at such
+times and took naps, but Susie's knowledge was not always trustworthy
+--it depended entirely on the position of the keyhole.
+
+At any rate, Miss Bell was not sleeping to-night; she moved about
+restlessly, brushing imaginary ashes from the spotless hearth, staring
+absently into the fire, then recurring again and again to an item in
+the paper which she held:
+
+DIED. Kate Rider, in her twenty-fourth year, from injuries received in
+an accident.
+
+Miss Bell seemed to cringe before the words. Her face looked old and
+drawn. "And to think I kept her from having her child!" she said to
+herself as she paced up and down the narrow room. "No matter what else
+Kate was, she was his mother and had the first right to him. But I
+acted for the best; I could see no other way. If I had only known!"
+
+[Illustration: "Susie Smithers at the keyhole."]
+
+There were steps on the pavement without; she went to the window, and
+shading her eyes with her hands, gazed into the gathering dusk. Some
+one was coming up the walk, some one very short and fat. No; it was a
+girl carrying a child. Miss Bell reached the door just in time to
+catch Tommy in her arms as Lovey Mary staggered into the hall. They
+were covered with sleet and almost numb from the cold.
+
+"Kate's dead!" cried Lovey Mary, as Miss Bell hurried them into the
+office. "I didn't know she was going to die. Oh, I've been so wicked
+to you and to Kate and to God! I want to be arrested! I don't care
+what they do to me."
+
+She threw herself on the floor, and beat her fists on the carpet.
+Tommy stood near and wept in sympathy; he wore his remnant trousers,
+and his little straw hat, round which Mrs. Wiggs had sewn a broad band
+of black.
+
+Miss Bell hovered over Lovey Mary and patted her nervously on the
+back. "Don't, my dear, don't cry so. It's very sad--dear me, yes, very
+sad. You aren't alone to blame, though; I have been at fault, too. I--
+I--feel dreadfully about it."
+
+Miss Bell's face was undergoing such painful contortions that Lovey
+Mary stopped crying in alarm, and Tommy got behind a chair.
+
+"Of course," continued Miss Bell, gaining control of herself, "it was
+very wrong of you to run away, Mary. When I discovered that you had
+gone I never stopped until I found you."
+
+"Till you found me?" gasped Lovey Mary.
+
+"Yes, child; I knew where you were all the time."
+
+Again Miss Bell's features were convulsed, and Mary and Tommy looked
+on in awed silence. "You see," she went on presently, "I am just as
+much at fault as you. I was worried and distressed over having to let
+Tommy go with Kate, yet there seemed no way out of it. When I found
+you had hidden him away in a safe place, that you were both well and
+happy, I determined to keep your secret. But oh, Mary, we hadn't the
+right to keep him from her! Perhaps the child would have been her
+salvation; perhaps she would have died a good girl."
+
+"But she did, Miss Bell," said Lovey Mary, earnestly. "She said she
+was sorry again and again, and when she went to sleep Tommy's arms was
+round her neck."
+
+"Mary!" cried Miss Bell, seizing the girl's hand eagerly, "did you
+find her and take him to her?"
+
+"No, ma'am. I brought her to him. She didn't have no place to go, and
+I wanted to make up to her for hating her so. I did ever'thing I could
+to make her well. We all did. I never thought she was going to die."
+
+Then, at Miss Bell's request, Lovey Mary told her story, with many
+sobs and tears, but some smiles in between, over the good times in the
+Cabbage Patch; and when she had finished, Miss Bell led her over to
+the sofa and put her arms about her. They had lived under the same
+roof for fifteen years, and she had never before given her a caress.
+
+"Mary," she said, "you did for Kate what nobody else could have done.
+I thank God that it all happened as it did."
+
+"But you'd orter scold me and punish me," said Lovey Mary. "I'd feel
+better if you did."
+
+Tommy, realizing in some vague way that a love-feast was in progress,
+and always ready to echo Lovey Mary's sentiments, laid his chubby hand
+on Miss Bell's knee.
+
+"When my little sled drows up I'm doin' to take you ridin'," he said
+confidingly.
+
+Miss Bell laughed a hearty laugh, for the first time in many months.
+The knotty problem which had caused her many sleepless nights had at
+last found its own solution.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE CACTUS BLOOMS
+
+
+    "I tell thee love is nature's second sun,
+     Causing a spring of virtues where he shines."
+
+It was June again, and once more Lovey Mary stood at an up-stairs
+window at the home. On the ledge grew a row of bright flowers, brought
+from Miss Viny's garden, but they were no brighter than the face that
+smiled across them at the small boy in the playground below. Lovey
+Mary's sleeves were rolled above her elbows, and a dust-cloth was tied
+about her head. As she returned to her sweeping she sang joyfully,
+contentedly:
+
+      "Can she sweep a kitchen floor,
+         Billy boy, Billy boy?
+       Can she sweep a kitchen floor,
+         Charming Billy?"
+
+"Miss Bell says for you to come down to the office," announced a
+little girl, coming up the steps. "There's a lady there and a baby."
+
+Lovey Mary paused in her work, and a shadow passed over her face. Just
+three years ago the same summons had come, and with it such heartaches
+and anxiety. She pulled down her sleeves and went thoughtfully down
+the steps. At the office door she found Mrs. Redding talking to Miss
+Bell.
+
+"We leave Saturday afternoon," she was saying. "It's rather sooner
+than we expected, but we want to get the baby to Canada before the hot
+weather overtakes us. Last summer I asked two children from the
+Toronto home to spend two weeks with me at our summer place, but this
+year I have set my heart on taking Lovey Mary and Tommy. They will see
+Niagara Falls and Buffalo, where we stop over a day, besides the
+little outing at the lake. Will you come, Mary? You know Robert might
+get choked again!"
+
+Lovey Mary leaned against the door for support. A half-hour visit to
+Mrs. Redding was excitement for a week, and only to think of going
+away with her, and riding on a steam-car, and seeing a lake, and
+taking Tommy, and being ever so small a part of that gorgeous Redding
+household! She could not speak; she just looked up and smiled, but the
+smile seemed to mean more than words, for it brought the sudden tears
+to Mrs. Redding's eyes. She gave Mary's hand a quick, understanding
+little squeeze, then hurried out to her carriage.
+
+That very afternoon Lovey Mary went to the Cabbage Patch. As she
+hurried along over the familiar ground, she felt as if she must sing
+aloud the happy song that was humming in her heart. She wanted to stop
+at each cottage and tell the good news; but her time was limited, so
+she kept on her way to Miss Hazy's, merely calling out a greeting as
+she passed. When she reached the door she heard Mrs. Wiggs's voice in
+animated conversation.
+
+"Well, I wish you'd look! There she is, this very minute! I never was
+so glad to see anybody in my life! My goodness, child, you don't know
+how we miss you down here! We talk 'bout you all the time, jes like a
+person puts their tongue in the empty place after a tooth's done
+pulled out."
+
+"I'm awful glad to be back," said Lovey Mary, too happy to be cast
+down by the reversion to the original state of the Hazy household.
+
+"Me an' Chris ain't had a comfortable day sence you left," complained
+Miss Hazy. "I'd 'a' almost rather you wouldn't 'a' came than to have
+went away ag'in."
+
+"But listen!" cried Lovey Mary, unable to keep her news another
+minute. "I'm a-going on a railroad trip with Mrs. Redding, and she's
+going to take Tommy, too, and we are going to see Niag'ra and a lake
+and a buffalo!"
+
+"Ain't that the grandest thing fer her to go and do!" exclaimed Mrs.
+Wiggs. "I told you she was a' angel!"
+
+"I'm right skeered of these here long trips," said Miss Hazy, "so many
+accidents these days."
+
+"My sakes!" answered Mrs. Wiggs, "I'd think you'd be 'fraid to step
+over a crack in the floor fer fear you'd fall through. Why, Lovey
+Mary, it's the nicest thing I ever heared tell of! An' Niag'ry Fall,
+too. I went on a trip once when I was little. Maw took me through the
+mountains. I never had seen mountains before, an' I cried at first an'
+begged her to make 'em sit down. A trip is something you never will
+fergit in all yer life. It was jes like Mrs. Reddin' to think about
+it; but I don't wonder she feels good to you. Asia says she never
+expects to see anything like the way you shook that candy outen little
+Robert. But see here, if you go 'way off there you mustn't fergit us."
+
+"I never could forget you all, wherever I went," said Lovey Mary. "I
+was awful mean when I come to the Cabbage Patch; somehow you all just
+bluffed me into being better. I wasn't used to being bragged on, and
+it made me want to be good more than anything in the world."
+
+"That's so," said Mrs. Wiggs. "You can coax a' elephant with a little
+sugar. The worser Mr. Wiggs used to act, the harder I'd pat him on the
+back. When he'd git bilin' mad, I'd say: 'Now, Mr. Wiggs, why don't
+you go right out in the woodshed an' swear off that cuss? I hate to
+think of it rampantin' round inside of a good-lookin' man like you.'
+He'd often take my advice, an' it always done him good an' never hurt
+the woodshed. As fer the childern, I always did use compelments on
+them 'stid of switches."
+
+Lovey Mary untied the bundle which she carried, and spread the
+contents on the kitchen table. "I've been saving up to get you all
+some presents," she said. "I wanted to get something for every one
+that had been good to me, but that took in the whole Patch! These are
+some new kind of seed for Miss Viny; she learned me a lot out of her
+garden. This is goods for a waist for you, Miss Hazy."
+
+"It's rale pretty," said Miss Hazy, measuring its length. "If you'd
+'a' brought me enough fer a skirt, too, I'd never 'a' got through
+prayin' fer you."
+
+Mrs. Wiggs was indignant. "I declare, Miss Hazy! You ain't got a
+manner in the world, sometimes. It's beautiful goods, Lovey Mary. I'm
+goin' to make it up fer her by a fancy new pattern Asia bought; it's
+got a sailor collar."
+
+"This here is for Chris," continued Lovey Mary, slightly depressed by
+Miss Hazy's lack of appreciation, "and this is for Mrs. Schultz. I
+bought you a book, Mrs. Wiggs. I don't know what it's about, but it's
+an awful pretty cover. I knew you'd like to have it on the parlor
+table."
+
+It was the "Iliad"!
+
+Mrs. Wiggs held it at arm's-length and, squinting her eyes, read:
+"Home of an Island."
+
+"That ain't what the man called it," said Lovey Mary.
+
+"Oh, it don't matter 'bout the name. It's a beautiful book, jes
+matches my new tidy. You couldn't 'a' pleased me better."
+
+"I didn't have money enough to go round," explained Lovey Mary,
+apologetically, "but I bought a dozen lead-pencils and thought I'd
+give them round among the children."
+
+"Ever'thing'll be terrible wrote over," said Miss Hazy.
+
+The last bundle was done up in tissue-paper and tied with a silver
+string. Lovey Mary gave it to Mrs. Wiggs when Miss Hazy was not
+looking.
+
+"It's a red necktie," she whispered, "for Billy."
+
+When the train for the North pulled out of the station one Saturday
+afternoon it bore an excited passenger. Lovey Mary, in a new dress and
+hat, sat on the edge of a seat, with little Robert on one side and
+Tommy on the other. When her nervousness grew unbearable she leaned
+forward and touched Mrs. Redding on the shoulder:
+
+"Will you please, ma'am, tell me when we get there?"
+
+Mrs. Redding laughed. "Get there, dear? Why, we have just started!"
+
+"I mean to the Cabbage Patch. They're all going to be watching for me
+as we go through."
+
+"Is that it?" said Mr. Redding. "Well, I will take the boys, and you
+can go out and stand on the platform and watch for your friends."
+
+Lovey Mary hesitated. "Please, sir, can't I take Tommy, too? If it
+hadn't 'a' been for him I never would have been here."
+
+So Mr. Redding took them to the rear car, and attaching Lovey Mary
+firmly to the railing, and Tommy firmly to Mary, returned to his
+family.
+
+"There's Miss Viny's!" cried Lovey Mary, excitedly, as the train
+whizzed past. "We're getting there. Hold on to your hat, Tommy, and
+get your pocket-handkerchief ready to wave."
+
+The bell began to ring, and the train slowed up at the great water-
+tank.
+
+"There they are! All of 'em. Hello, Miss Hazy! And there's Asia and
+Chris and ever'body!"
+
+Mrs. Wiggs pushed through the little group and held an empty bottle
+toward Lovey Mary. "I want you to fill it fer me," she cried
+breathlessly. "Fill it full of Niag'ry water. I want to see how them
+falls look."
+
+[Illustration: "Lovey Mary waved until she rounded a curve."]
+
+The train began to move. Miss Hazy threw her apron over her head and
+wept. Mrs. Wiggs and Mrs. Eichorn waved their arms and smiled. The
+Cabbage Patch, with its crowd of friendly faces, became a blur to the
+girl on the platform. Suddenly a figure on a telegraph pole attracted
+her attention; it wore a red necktie and it was throwing kisses. Lovey
+Mary waved until the train rounded a curve, then she gave Tommy an
+impulsive hug.
+
+"It ain't hard to be good when folks love you," she said, with a
+little catch in her voice. "I'll make 'em all proud of me yet!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Lovey Mary, by Alice Hegan Rice
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LOVEY MARY ***
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