diff options
| -rw-r--r-- | .gitattributes | 3 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 9794-8.txt | 11371 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 9794-8.zip | bin | 0 -> 205594 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 9794.txt | 11371 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 9794.zip | bin | 0 -> 205569 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | LICENSE.txt | 11 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 2 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/7calv10.txt | 11336 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/7calv10.zip | bin | 0 -> 209343 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/8calv10.txt | 11336 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/8calv10.zip | bin | 0 -> 209369 bytes |
11 files changed, 45430 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/9794-8.txt b/9794-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5d39164 --- /dev/null +++ b/9794-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11371 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Calvary Alley, by Alice Hegan Rice + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Calvary Alley + +Author: Alice Hegan Rice + +Posting Date: November 15, 2011 [EBook #9794] +Release Date: January, 2006 +First Posted: October 17, 2003 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CALVARY ALLEY *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan and PG +Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + + + + + + + + CALVARY ALLEY + + BY ALICE HEGAN RICE + + 1917 + + +Author of "MRS. WIGGS OF THE CABBAGE PATCH," "LOVEY MARY," "SANDY," ETC. + +ILLUSTRATED BY WALTER BIGGS + +THIS STORY IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED TO THE SMALL BAND OF KENTUCKY +WRITERS WITH WHOM IT HAS BEEN MY HAPPY FORTUNE TO MAKE THE LITERARY +PILGRIMAGE + + + + +CONTENTS + +CHAPTER + + + I THE FIGHT + II THE SNAWDORS AT HOME + III THE CLARKES AT HOME + IV JUVENILE COURT + V ON PROBATION + VI BUTTERNUT LANE + VII AN EVICTION + VIII AMBITION STIRS + IX BUTTONS + X THE PRINCESS COMES TO GRIEF + XI THE STATE TAKES A HAND + XII CLARKE'S + XIII EIGHT TO SIX + XIV IDLENESS + XV MARKING TIME + XVI MISS BOBINET'S + XVII BEHIND THE TWINKLING LIGHTS + XVIII THE FIRST NIGHT + XIX PREPARATIONS FOR FLIGHT + XX WILD OATS + XXI DAN + XXII IN THE SIGNAL TOWER + XXIII CALVARY CATHEDRAL + XXIV BACK AT CLARKE'S + XXV MAC + XXVI BETWEEN TWO FIRES + XXVII FATE TAKES A HAND +XXVIII THE PRICE OF ENLIGHTENMENT + XXIX IN TRAINING + XXX HER FIRST CASE + XXXI MR. DEMRY + XXXII THE NEW FOREMAN +XXXIII NANCE COMES INTO HER OWN + + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + +"The boy is infatuated with that girl" + +"Her tense muscles relaxed; she forgot to cry" + +"Don't call a policeman!" she implored wildly + + + + +CALVARY ALLEY + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE FIGHT + + +You never would guess in visiting Cathedral Court, with its people's hall +and its public baths, its clean, paved street and general air of smug +propriety, that it harbors a notorious past. But those who knew it by its +maiden name, before it was married to respectability, recall Calvary +Alley as a region of swarming tenements, stale beer dives, and frequent +police raids. The sole remaining trace of those unregenerate days is the +print of a child's foot in the concrete walk just where it leaves the +court and turns into the cathedral yard. + +All the tired feet that once plodded home from factory and foundry, all +the unsteady feet that staggered in from saloon and dance-hall, all the +fleeing feet that sought a hiding place, have long since passed away and +left no record of their passing. Only that one small footprint, with its +perfect outline, still pauses on its way out of the alley into the great +world beyond. + +At the time Nance Molloy stepped into that soft concrete and thus set in +motion the series of events that was to influence her future career, she +had never been told that her inalienable rights were life, liberty, and +the pursuit of happiness. Nevertheless she had claimed them intuitively. +When at the age of one she had crawled out of the soap-box that served as +a cradle, and had eaten half a box of stove polish, she was acting in +strict accord with the Constitution. + +By the time she reached the sophisticated age of eleven her ideals had +changed, but her principles remained firm. She did not stoop to beg for +her rights, but struck out for them boldly with her small bare fists. She +was a glorious survival of that primitive Kentucky type that stood side +by side with man in the early battles and fought valiantly for herself. + +On the hot August day upon which she began to make history, she stood in +the gutter amid a crowd of yelling boys, her feet far apart, her hands +full of mud, waiting tensely to chastise the next sleek head that dared +show itself above the cathedral fence. She wore a boy's shirt and a +ragged brown skirt that flapped about her sturdy bare legs. Her matted +hair was bound in two disheveled braids around her head and secured with +a piece of shoe-string. Her dirty round face was lighted up by a pair of +dancing blue eyes, in which just now blazed the unholy light of conflict. + +The feud between the Calvary Micks and the choir boys was an ancient +one, carried on from one generation to another and gaining prestige with +age. It was apt to break out on Saturday afternoons, after rehearsal, +when the choirmaster had taken his departure. Frequently the disturbance +amounted to no more than taunts and jeers on one side and threats and +recriminations on the other, but the atmosphere that it created was of +that electrical nature that might at any moment develop a storm. + +Nance Molloy, at the beginning of the present controversy, had been +actively engaged in civil warfare in which the feminine element of the +alley was pursuing a defensive policy against the marauding masculine. +But at the first indication of an outside enemy, the herd instinct +manifested itself, and she allied herself with prompt and passionate +loyalty to the cause of the Calvary Micks. + +The present argument was raging over the possession of a spade that had +been left in the alley by the workmen who were laying a concrete pavement +into the cathedral yard. + +"Aw, leave 'em have it!" urged a philosophical alleyite from the top of a +barrel. "Them ole avenoo kids ain't nothin'!--We could lick daylight +outen 'em if we wanted to." + +"Ye-e-e-s you could!" came in a chorus of jeers from the fence top, and a +brown-eyed youth in a white-frilled shirt, with a blue Windsor tie +knotted under his sailor collar, added imperiously, "You get too fresh +down there, and I'll call the janitor!" + +This gross breach of military etiquette evoked a retort from Nance that +was too inelegant to chronicle. + +"Tomboy! tomboy!" jeered the brown-eyed youth from above. "Why don't you +borrow some girls' clothes?" + +"All right, Sissy," said Nance, "lend me yours." + +The Micks shrieked their approval, while Nance rolled a mud ball and, +with the deadly aim of a sharpshooter, let it fly straight at the +white-frilled bosom of her tormentor. + +"Soak it to her, Mac," yelled the boy next to him, "the kid's got no +business butting in! Make her get out of the way!" + +"Go on and make me!" implored Nance. + +"I will if you don't stand back," threatened the boy called Mac. + +Nance promptly stepped up to the alley gate and wiggled her fingers in a +way peculiarly provocative to a juvenile enemy. + +"Poor white trash!" he jeered. "You stay where you belong! Don't you step +on our concrete!" + +"Will if I want to. It's my foot. I'll put it where I like." + +"Bet you don't. You're afraid to." + +"I ain't either." + +"Well, _do_ it then. I dare you! Anybody that would take a--" + +In a second Nance had thrust her leg as far as possible between the +boards that warned the public to keep out, and had planted a small alien +foot firmly in the center of the soft cement. + +This audacious act was the signal for instant battle. With yells of +indignation the choir boys hurled themselves from the fence, and +descended upon their foes. Mud gave place to rocks, sticks clashed, the +air resounded with war cries. Ash barrels were overturned, straying cats +made flying leaps for safety, heads appeared at doorways and windows, and +frantic mothers made futile efforts to quell the riot. + +Thus began the greatest fight ever enjoyed in Calvary Alley. It went down +in neighborhood annals as the decisive clash between the classes, in +which the despised swells "was learnt to know their places onct an' fer +all!" For ten minutes it raged with unabated fury, then when the tide of +battle began to set unmistakably in favor of the alley, parental +authority waned and threats changed to cheers. Old and young united in +the conviction that the Monroe Doctrine must be maintained at any cost! + +In and out of the subsiding pandemonium darted Nance Molloy, covered with +mud from the shoestring on her hair to the rag about her toe, giving and +taking blows with the best, and emitting yells of frenzied victory over +every vanquished foe. Suddenly her transports were checked by a +disturbing sight. At the end of the alley, locked in mortal combat, she +beheld her arch-enemy, he of the brown eyes and the frilled shirt, whom +the boys called Mac, sitting astride the hitherto invincible Dan Lewis, +the former philosopher of the ash barrel and one of the acknowledged +leaders of the Calvary Micks. + +It was a moment of intense chagrin for Nance, untempered by the fact that +Dan's adversary was much the bigger boy. Up to this time, the whole +affair had been a glorious game, but at the sight of the valiant Dan +lying helpless on his back, his mouth bloody from the blows of the boy +above him, the comedy changed suddenly to tragedy. With a swift charge +from the rear, she flung herself upon the victor, clapping her mud-daubed +hands about his eyes and dragging him backward with a force that sent +them both rolling in the gutter. + +Blind with fury, the boy scrambled to his feet, and, seizing a rock, +hurled it with all his strength after the retreating Dan. The missile +flew wide of its mark and, whizzing high over the fence, crashed through +the great rose window that was the special pride of Calvary Cathedral. + +The din of breaking glass, the simultaneous appearance of a cross-eyed +policeman, and of Mason, the outraged janitor, together with the +horrified realization of what had happened, brought the frenzied +combatants to their senses. Amid a clamor of accusations and denials, the +policeman seized upon two culprits and indicated a third. + +"You let me go!" shrieked Mac. "My father'll make it all right! Tell him +who I am, Mason! Make him let me go!" + +But Mason was bent upon bringing all the criminals to justice. + +"I'm going to have you all up before the juvenile court, rich and poor!" +he declared excitedly. "You been deviling the life out of me long enough! +If the vestry had 'a' listened at me and had you up before now, that +window wouldn't be smashed. I told the bishop something was going to +happen, and he says, 'The next time there's trouble, you find the leaders +and swear out a warrant. Don't wait to ask anybody!'" + +By this time every window in the tenement at the blind end of the alley +had been converted into a proscenium box, and suggestions, advice, and +incriminating evidence were being freely volunteered. + +"Who started this here racket, anyhow?" asked the policeman, in the bored +tone of one who is rehearsing an oft-repeated scene. + +"I did," declared Nance Molloy, with something of the feminine +gratification Helen of Troy must have felt when she "launched a thousand +ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium." + +"You Nance!" screamed a woman from a third-story window. "You know you +never done no such a thing! I was settin' here an' seen ever'thing that +happened; it was them there boys." + +"So it was you, Dan Lewis, was it?" said the policeman, recognizing one +of his panting victims, the one whose ragged shirt had been torn +completely off, leaving his heaving chest and brown shoulders bare. "An' +it ain't surprised, I am. Who is this other little dude?" + +"None of your business!" cried Mac furiously, trying to wrench himself +free. "I tell you my father will pay for the darned old window." + +"Aisy there," said the policeman. "Does anybody know him?" + +"It's Mr. Clarke's son, up at the bottle works," said Mason. + +"You let me go," shrieked the now half-frantic boy. "My father 'll make +you pay for this. You see if he don't!" + +"None o' your guff," said the policeman. "I ain't wantin' to keep you now +I got your name. Onny more out o' the boonch, Mr. Mason?" + +Mason swept a gleaning eye over the group, and as he did so he spied the +footprint, in the concrete. + +"Who did that?" he demanded in a fresh burst of wrath. + +Those choir boys who had not fled the scene gave prompt and incriminating +testimony. + +"No! she never!" shouted the woman from the third floor, now suspended +half-way out of the window. "Nance Molloy was up here a-washin' dishes +with me. Don't you listen at them pasty-faced cowards a-puttin' it off on +a innercent little girl!" + +But the innocent little girl had no idea of seeking refuge in her sex. +Hers had been a glorious and determining part in the day's battle, and +the distinction of having her name taken down with those of the great +leaders was one not to be foregone. + +"I did do it," she declared excitedly. "That there boy dared me to. Ketch +me takin' a dare offen a avenoo kid!" + +"What's your name, Sis?" asked the policeman. + +"Nance Molloy." + +"Where do you live?" + +"Up there at Snawdor's. That there was Mis' Snawdor a-yellin' at me." + +"Is she yer mother?" + +"Nope. She's me step." + +"And yer father?" + +"He's me step too. I'm a two-step," she added with an impudent toss of +the head to show her contempt for the servant of the law, a blue-coated, +brass-buttoned interloper who swooped down on you from around corners, +and reported you at all times and seasons. + +By this time Mrs. Snawdor had gotten herself down the two flights of +stairs, and was emerging from the door of the tenement, taking down her +curl papers as she came. She was a plump, perspiring person who might +have boasted good looks had it not been for two eye-teeth that completely +dominated her facial landscape. + +"You surely ain't fixin' to report her?" she asked ingratiatingly +of Mason. "A little 'leven-year-ole orphin that never done no harm +to nobody?" + +"It's no use arguing," interrupted Mason firmly. "I'm going to file out a +warrant against them three children if it's the last act of my mortal +life. There ain't a boy in the alley that gives me any more trouble than +that there little girl, a-throwin' mud over the fence and climbing round +the coping and sneaking into the cathedral to look under the pews for +nickels, if I so much as turn my back!" + +"He wants the nickels hisself!" cried Nance shrilly, pushing her nose +flat and pursing her lips in such a clever imitation of the irate janitor +that the alley shrieked with joy. + +"You limb o' Satan!" cried Mrs. Snawdor, making a futile pass at her. +"It's a God's mericle you ain't been took up before this! And it's me as +'ll have the brunt to bear, a-stoppin' my work to go to court, a-lying to +yer good character, an' a-payin' the fine. It's a pity able-bodied men +like policemens an' janitors can't be tendin' their own business 'stid +of comin' interferin' with the family of a hard-workin' woman like me. If +there's any justice in this world it ain't never flowed in my +direction!" + +And Mrs. Snawdor, half dragging, half pushing Nance, disappeared into the +dark entrance of the tenement, breathing maledictions first against her +charge, then against the tyranny of the law. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE SNAWDORS AT HOME + + +If ever a place had a down-at-heel, out-of-elbow sort of look, it was +Calvary Alley. At its open end and two feet above it the city went +rushing and roaring past like a great river, quite oblivious of this +unhealthy bit of backwater into which some of its flotsam and jetsam had +been caught and held, generating crime and disease and sending them out +again into the main current. + +For despite the fact that the alley rested under the very wing of the +great cathedral from which it took its name, despite the fact that it +echoed daily to the chimes in the belfry and at times could even hear the +murmured prayers of the congregation, it concerned itself not in the +least with matters of the spirit. Heaven was too remote and mysterious, +Hell too present and prosaic, to be of the least interest. And the +cathedral itself, holding out welcoming arms to all the noble avenues +that stretched in leafy luxury to the south, forgot entirely to glance +over its shoulder at the sordid little neighbor that lay under the very +shadow of its cross. + +At the blind end of the alley, wedged in between two towering +warehouses, was Number One, a ramshackle tenement which in some forgotten +day had been a fine old colonial residence. The city had long since +hemmed it in completely, and all that remained of its former grandeur +were a flight of broad steps that once boasted a portico and the +imposing, fan-shaped arch above the doorway. + +In the third floor of Number One, on the side next the cathedral, dwelt +the Snawdor family, a social unit of somewhat complex character. The +complication came about by the paterfamilias having missed his calling. +Mr. Snawdor was by instinct and inclination a bachelor. He had early in +life found a modest rut in which he planned to run undisturbed into +eternity, but he had been discovered by a widow, who was possessed of an +initiative which, to a man of Snawdor's retiring nature, was destiny. + +At the time she met him she had already led two reluctant captives to the +hymeneal altar, and was wont to boast, when twitted about the fact, that +"the Lord only knew what she might 'a' done if it hadn't been fer them +eye-teeth!" Her first husband had been Bud Molloy, a genial young +Irishman who good-naturedly allowed himself to be married out of +gratitude for her care of his motherless little Nance. Bud had not lived +to repent the act; in less than a month he heroically went over an +embankment with his engine, in one of those fortunate accidents in which +"only the engineer is killed." + +The bereft widow lost no time in seeking consolation. Naturally the first +person to present himself on terms of sympathetic intimacy was the +undertaker who officiated at poor Bud's funeral. At the end of six months +she married him, and was just beginning to enjoy the prestige which his +profession gave her, when Mr. Yager also passed away, becoming, as it +were, his own customer. Her legacy from him consisted of a complete +embalming outfit and a feeble little Yager who inherited her father's +tendency to spells. + +Thus encumbered with two small girls, a less sanguine person would have +retired from the matrimonial market. But Mrs. Yager was not easily +discouraged; she was of a marrying nature, and evidently resolved that +neither man nor Providence should stand in her way. Again casting a +speculative eye over the field, she discerned a new shop in the alley, +the sign of which announced that the owner dealt in "Bungs and Fawcetts." +On the evening of the same day the chronic ailment from which the kitchen +sink had suffered for two years was declared to be acute, and Mr. Snawdor +was called in for consultation. + +He was a timid, dejected person with a small pointed chin that trembled +when he spoke. Despite the easy conventions of the alley, he kept his +clothes neatly brushed and his shoes polished, and wore a collar on week +days. These signs of prosperity were his undoing. Before he had time to +realize what was happening to him, he had been skilfully jolted out of +his rut by the widow's experienced hand, and bumped over a hurried +courtship into a sudden marriage. He returned to consciousness to find +himself possessed of a wife and two stepchildren and moved from his small +neat room over his shop to the indescribable disorder of Number One. + +The subsequent years had brought many little Snawdors in their wake, and +Mr. Snawdor, being thus held up by the highwayman Life, ignominiously +surrendered. He did not like being married; he did not enjoy being a +father; his one melancholy satisfaction lay in being a martyr. + +Mrs. Snawdor, who despite her preference for the married state derived +little joy from domestic duties, was quite content to sally forth as a +wage-earner. By night she scrubbed office buildings and by day she slept +and between times she sought diversion in the affairs of her neighbors. + +Thus it was that the household burdens fell largely upon Nance Molloy's +small shoulders, and if she wiped the dishes without washing them, and +"shook up the beds" without airing them, and fed the babies dill pickles, +it was no more than older housekeepers were doing all around her. + +Late in the afternoon of the day of the fight, when the sun, despairing +of making things any hotter than they were, dropped behind the warehouse, +Nance, carrying a box of crackers, a chunk of cheese, and a bucket of +beer, dodged in and out among the push-carts and the barrels of the alley +on her way home from Slap Jack's saloon. There was a strong temptation on +her part to linger, for a hurdy-gurdy up at the corner was playing a +favorite tune, and echoes of the fight were still heard from animated +groups in various doorways. But Nance's ears still tingled from a recent +boxing, and she resolutely kept on her way until she reached the worn +steps of Number One and scurried through its open doorway. + +The nice distinction between a flat and a tenement is that the front +door of one is always kept closed, and the other open. In this +particular instance the matter admitted of no discussion, for there was +no front door. The one that originally hung under the fan-shaped +Colonial arch had long since been kicked in during some nocturnal raid, +and had never been replaced. + +When the gas neglected to get itself lighted before dark at Number One, +you had to feel your way along the hall in complete darkness, until your +foot struck something; then you knew you had reached the stairs and you +began to climb. It was just as well to feel along the damp wall as you +went, for somebody was always leaving things on the steps for people to +stumble over. + +Nance groped her way cautiously, resting her bucket every few steps and +taking a lively interest in the sounds and smells that came from behind +the various closed doors she passed. She knew from the angry voices on +the first floor that Mr. Smelts had come home "as usual"; she knew who +was having sauerkraut for supper, and whose bread was burning. + +The odor of cooking food reminded her of something. The hall was dark and +the beer can full, so she sat down at the top of the first flight and, +putting her lips to the foaming bucket was about to drink, when the door +behind her opened and a keen-faced young Jew peered out. + +"Say, Nance," he whispered curiously, "have they swore out the warrant +on you yet?" + +Nance put down the bucket and looked up at him with a fine air of +unconcern. + +"Don't know and don't keer!" she said. "Where was you hidin' at, when the +fight was goin' on?" + +"Getting my lessons. Did the cop pinch the Clarke guy?" + +"You betcher," said Nance. "You orter seen the way he took on! Begged to +beat the band. Me and Danny never. Me and him--" + +A volley of curses came from the hall below, the sound of a blow, +followed by a woman's faint scream of protest, then a door slammed. + +"If I was Mis' Smelts," said Nance darkly, with a look that was too old +for ten years, "I wouldn't stand for that. I wouldn't let no man hit me. +I'd get him sent up. I--" + +"You walk yourself up them steps, Nance Molloy!" commanded Mrs. Snawdor's +rasping voice from the floor above. "I ain't got no time to be waitin' +while you gas with Ike Lavinsky." + +Nance, thus admonished, obeyed orders, arriving on the domestic hearth in +time to prevent the soup from boiling over. Mr. Snawdor, wearing a long +apron and an expression of tragic doom, was trying to set the table, +while over and above and beneath him surged his turbulent offspring. In a +broken rocking-chair, fanning herself with a box-top, sat Mrs. Snawdor, +indulging herself in a continuous stream of conversation and apparently +undisturbed by the uproar around her. Mrs. Snawdor was not sensitive to +discord. As a necessary adjustment to their environment, her nerves had +become soundproof. + +"You certainly missed it by not being here!" she was saying to Mr. +Snawdor. "It was one of the liveliest mix-ups ever I seen! One of them +rich boys bust the cathedral window. Some say it'll cost over a thousan' +dollars to git it fixed. An' I pray to God his paw'll have to pay every +cent of it!" + +"Can't you make William J. and Rosy stop that racket?" queried Mr. +Snawdor, plaintively. The twins had been named at a time when Mrs. +Snawdor's loyalty was wavering between the President and another +distinguished statesman with whom she associated the promising phrase, +"free silver." The arrival of two babies made a choice unnecessary, and, +notwithstanding the fact that one of them was a girl, she named them +William J. and Roosevelt, reluctantly abbreviating the latter to "Rosy." + +"They ain't hurtin' nothin'," she said, impatient of the interruption to +her story. "I wisht you might 'a' seen that ole fool Mason a-lordin' it +aroun', an' that little devil Nance a-takin' him off to the life. +Everybody nearly died a-laughin' at her. But he says he's goin' to have +her up in court, an' I ain't got a blessed thing to wear 'cept that ole +hat of yours I trimmed up. Looks like a shame fer a woman never to be +fixed to go nowhere!" + +Mr. Snawdor, who had been trying ineffectually to get in a word, took +this remark personally and in muttering tones called Heaven to witness +that it was none of his fault that she didn't have the right clothes, and +that it was a pretty kind of a world that would keep a man from gettin' +on just because he was honest, and-- + +"Oh, shut up!" said Mrs. Snawdor, unfeelingly; "it ain't yer lack of +work that gits on my nerves; it's yer bein' 'round. I'd pay anybody a +quarter a week to keep yer busy!" + +Nance, during this exchange of conjugal infelicities, assisted by Lobelia +and Fidy, was rescuing sufficient dishes from the kitchen sink to serve +for the evening meal. She, too, was finding it difficult to bring her +attention to bear on domestic matters after the exciting events of the +afternoon. + +"An' he says to me,"--she was recounting with dramatic intensity to her +admiring audience--"he says, 'Keep offen that concrete.' An' I says, +'It'll take somebody bigger'n you to make me!'" + +Now, of course, we know that Nance never said that, but it was what she +wished she had said, which, at certain moments in life, seems to the best +of us to be quite the same thing. + +"Then what?" said Fidy, with a plate suspended in air. + +"Then," said Nance with sparkling eyes, "I sticks my foot right in the +middle of their old concrete, an' they comes pilin' offen the fence, an' +Dan Lewis he--" + +"You Nance!" came in warning tones from the other room, "you shet your +head an' git on with that supper. Here comes your Uncle Jed this minute!" + +At this announcement Nance dropped her dish towel, and dashing to the +door flung herself into the arms of a short, fat, baldheaded man who had +just come out of the front room across the hall. + +"Easy there!" warned the new-comer. "You ain't aimin' to butt the engine +clean offen the track, air yer?" + +Nance got his arm around her neck, and her arm around his knees, and thus +entwined they made their way to the table. + +Uncle Jed Burks, uncle by courtesy, was a boarder by day and a +gate-tender by night at the signal tower at the railroad crossing. On +that day long ago when he had found himself a widower, helpless in the +face of domestic problems, he had accepted Mrs. Snawdor's prompt offer of +hospitality and come across the hall for his meals. At the end of the +week he had been allowed to show his gratitude by paying the rent, and by +the end of the month he had become the chief prop of the family. It is +difficult to conceive of an Atlas choosing to burden himself with the +world, but there are temperaments that seek responsibilities just as +there are those, like Mr. Snawdor, who refuse them. + +Through endless discomforts, Uncle Jed had stayed on, coaxing Mr. Snawdor +into an acceptance of his lot, helping Mrs. Snawdor over financial +difficulties, and bestowing upon the little Snawdors the affection which +they failed to elicit from either the maternal or the paternal bosom. And +the amazing thing was that Uncle Jed always thought he was receiving +favors instead of conferring them. + +"What's this I hear about my little partner gittin' into trouble?" he +asked, catching Nance's chin in his palm and turning her smudged, excited +face up to his. + +Nance's eyes fell before his glance. For the first time since the fight +her pride was mingled with misgiving. But when Mrs. Snawdor plunged into +a fresh recital of the affair, with evident approval of the part she had +played, her self-esteem returned. + +"And you say Mason's fixin' to send her up to the juvenile court?" asked +Uncle Jed gravely, his fat hand closing on her small one. + +"Dan Lewis has got to go too!" said Nance, a sudden apprehension seizing +her at Uncle Jed's solemn face. + +"Oh, they won't do nothin' to 'em," said Mrs. Snawdor, pouring hot water +over the coffee grounds and shaking the pot vigorously. "Everybody knows +it was the Clarke boy that bust the window. Clarke's Bottle Works' son, +you know, up there on Zender Street." + +"Was it the Clarke boy and Dan Lewis that started the fracas?" asked +Uncle Jed. + +"No, it was me!" put in Nance. + +"Now, Nance Molloy, you lemme hear you say that one time more, an' you +know what'll happen!" said Mrs. Snawdor, impressively. "You're fixin' to +make me pay a fine." + +"I'm mighty sorry Dan Lewis is mixed up in it," said Uncle Jed, shaking +his head. "This here's his second offense. He was had up last year." + +"An' can you wonder?" asked Mrs. Snawdor, "with his mother what she is?" + +"Mrs. Lewis ain't a bad looker," Mr. Snawdor roused himself to observe +dejectedly. + +His wife turned upon him indignantly. "Well, it's a pity she ain't as +good as her looks then. Fer my part I can't see it's to any woman's +credit to look nice when she's got the right kind of a switch and a good +set of false teeth. It's the woman that keeps her good looks without none +of them luxuries that orter be praised." + +"Mrs. Lewis ain't done her part by Dan," said Uncle Jed, seating himself +at the red-clothed table. + +"I should say she ain't," Mrs. Snawdor continued. "I never seen nothin' +more pathetical than that there boy when he was no more than three years +old, a-tryin' to feed hisself outer the garbage can, an' her a comin an' +a goin' in the alley all these years with her nose in the air, too good +to speak to anybody." + +"Dan don't think his mother's bad to him," said Nance. "He saved up his +shoe-shine money an' bought her some perfumery. He lemme smell it." + +"Oh, yes!" said Mrs. Snawdor, "she's got to have her perfumery, an' her +feather in her hat, an' the whitewash on her face, no matter if Dan's +feet are on the groun', an' his naked hide shinin' through his shirt." + +"Well, I wish him an' this here little girl wasn't mixed up in this +business," repeated Uncle Jed. "Courts ain't no place fer children. Seems +like I can't stand fer our little Nance to be mixin' up with shady +characters." + +Nance shot an apprehensive glance at him and began to look anxious. She +had never seen Uncle Jed so solemn before. + +"You jes' remember this here, Nancy," went on the signalman, who could no +more refrain from pointing a moral when the chance presented itself, than +a gun can help going off when the trigger is pulled; "nothin' good ever +comes from breakin' laws. They wouldn't a-been made into laws if they +wasn't fer our good, an' even when we don't see no reason in keepin' 'em, +we ain't got no more right to break through than one of them engines up +at the crossing's got a right to come ahead when I signals it from the +tower to stop. I been handin' out laws to engines fer goin' on thirty +year, an' I never seen one yet that bust over a law that didn't come to +grief. You keep on the track, Sister, an' watch the signals an' obey +orders an' you'll find it pays in the end. An' now, buck up, an' don't be +scared. We'll see what we can do to git you off." + +"Who's skeered?" said Nance, with a defiant toss of her head. "I ain't +skeered of nothin'." + +But that night when Mrs. Snawdor and Uncle Jed had gone to work, and Mr. +Snawdor had betaken himself out of ear-shot of the wailing baby, Nance's +courage began to waver. After she had finished her work and crawled into +bed between Fidy and Lobelia, the juvenile court, with its unknown +terrors, rose before her. All the excitement of the day died out; her +pride in sharing the punishment with Dan Lewis vanished. She lay staring +up into the darkness, swallowing valiantly to keep down the sobs, +fiercely resolved not to let her bed-fellows witness the break-down of +her courage. + +"What's the matter, Nance?" asked Fidy. + +"I'm hot!" said Nance, crossly. "It feels like the inside of a +oven in here!" + +"I bet Maw forgot to open the window into the shaft," said Fidy. + +"Windows don't do no good," said Nance; "they just let in smells. Wisht I +was a man! You bet I would be up at Slap Jack's! I'd set under a 'lectric +fan, an' pour cold things down me an' listen at the 'phoney-graf ever' +night. Hush! Is that our baby?" + +A faint wail made her scramble out of bed and rush into the back room +where she gathered a hot, squirming bundle into her arms and peered +anxiously into its wizened face. She knew the trick babies had of dying +when the weather was hot! Two other beloved scraps of humanity had been +taken away from her, and she was fiercely determined to keep this one. +Lugging the baby to the window, she scrambled over the sill. + +The fire-escape was cluttered with all the paraphernalia that doubles the +casualty of a tenement fire, but she cleared a space with her foot and +sat down on the top step. Beside her loomed the blank warehouse wall, and +from the narrow passage-way below came the smell of garbage. The clanging +of cars and the rumbling of trucks mingled with the nearer sounds of +whirring sewing machines in Lavinski's sweat-shop on the floor below. +From somewhere around the corner came, at intervals, the sharp cry of a +woman in agony. With that last sound Nance was all too familiar. The +coming and going of a human life were no mystery to her. But each time +the cry of pain rang out she tried in vain to stop her ears. At last, +hot, hungry, lonesome, and afraid, she laid her dirty face against the +baby's fuzzy head and they sobbed together in undisturbed misery. + +When at last the child fell into a restless sleep, Nance sat patiently +on, her small arms stiffening under their burden, and her bare feet and +legs smarting from the stings of hungry mosquitos. + +By and by the limp garments on the clothes line overhead began to stir, +and Nance, lifting her head gratefully to the vagrant breeze, caught her +breath. There, just above the cathedral spire, white and cool among +fleecy clouds, rose the full August moon. It was the same moon that at +that moment was turning ocean waves into silver magic; that was smiling +on sleeping forests and wind-swept mountains and dancing streams. Yet +here it was actually taking the trouble to peep around the cathedral +spire and send the full flood of its radiance into the most sordid +corners of Calvary Alley, even into the unawakened soul of the dirty, +ragged, tear-stained little girl clasping the sick baby on Snawdor's +fire-escape. + +[Illustration: "Her tense muscles relaxed; she forgot to cry"] + +Something in Nance responded. Her tense muscles relaxed; she forgot to +cry. With eyes grown big and wistful, she watched the shining orb. All +the bravado, the fear, and rebellion died out of her, and in hushed +wonder she got from the great white night what God in heaven meant for +us to get. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE CLARKES AT HOME + + +While the prodigal son of the house of Clarke was engaged in breaking +stained-glass windows in Calvary Alley, his mother was at home +entertaining the bishop with a recital of his virtues and +accomplishments. Considering the fact that Bishop Bland's dislike for +children was notorious, he was bearing the present ordeal with unusual +fortitude. + +They were sitting on the spacious piazza at Hill-crest, the country +home of the Clarkes, the massive foundation of which was popularly +supposed to rest upon bottles. It was a piazza especially designed to +offset the discomforts of a Southern August afternoon and to make a +visitor, especially if he happened to be an ecclesiastical potentate +with a taste for luxury, loath to forsake its pleasant shade for the +glaring world without. + +"Yes, yes," he agreed for the fourth time, "a very fine boy. I must say I +give myself some credit for your marriage and its successful result." + +Mrs. Clarke paused in her tea-pouring and gazed absently off across the +tree tops. + +"I suppose I ought to be happy," she said, and she sighed. + +"Every heart knoweth its own--two lumps, thank you, and a dash of rum. I +was saying--Oh, yes! I was about to remark that we are all prone to +magnify our troubles. Now here you are, after all these years, still +brooding over your unfortunate father, when he is probably long since +returned to France, quite well and happy." + +"If I could only be sure. It has been so long since we heard, nearly +thirteen years! The last letter was the one you got when Mac was born." + +"Yes, and I answered him in detail, assuring him of your complete +recovery, and expressing my hope that he would never again burden you +until with God's help he had mastered the sin that had been his undoing." + +Mrs. Clarke shook her head impatiently. + +"You and Macpherson never understood about father. He came to this +country without a friend or a relation except mother and me. Then she +died, and he worked day and night to keep me in a good boarding-school, +and to give me every advantage that a girl could have. Then his health +broke, and he couldn't sleep, and he began taking drugs. Oh, I don't see +how anybody could blame him, after all he had been through!" + +"For whatever sacrifices he made, he was amply rewarded," the bishop +said. "Few fathers have the satisfaction of seeing their daughters more +successfully established in life." + +"Yes, but what has it all come to for him? Made to feel his disgrace, +aware of Macpherson's constant disapproval--I don't wonder he chose to +give me up entirely." + +"It was much the best course for all concerned," said the bishop, with +the assured tone of one who enjoys the full confidence of Providence. +"The fact that he had made shipwreck of his own life was no reason for +him to make shipwreck of yours. I remember saying those very words to +him when he told me of Mr. Clarke's attitude. Painful as was your +decision, you did quite right in yielding to our judgment in the matter +and letting him go." + +"But Macpherson ought not to have asked it of me. He's so good and kind +and good about most things, that I don't see how he could have felt the +way he did about father." + +The bishop laid a consoling hand on her arm. + +"Your husband was but protecting you and himself against untold +annoyance. Think of what it would have meant for a man of Mr. Clarke's +position to have a person of your father's habits a member of his +household!" + +"But father was perfectly gentle and harmless--more like an afflicted +child than anything else. When he was without an engagement he would go +for weeks at a time, happy with his books and his music, without +breaking over at all." + +"Ah, yes! But what about the influence of his example on your growing +son? Imagine the humiliation to your child." + +Mrs. Clarke's vulnerable spot was touched. + +"I had forgotten Mac!" she said. "He must be my first consideration, +mustn't he? I never intend for him to bear any burden that I can bear for +him. And yet, how father would have adored him, how proud he would have +been of his voice! But there, you must forgive me for bringing up this +painful subject. It is only when I think of father getting old and being +ill, possibly in want, with nobody in the world--" + +"Now, now, my dear lady," said the bishop, "you are indulging in morbid +fancies. Your father knows that with a stroke of the pen he can procure +all the financial assistance from you he may desire. As to his being +unhappy, I doubt it extremely. My recollection of him is of a very +placid, amiable man living more in his dreams than in reality." + +Mrs. Clarke smiled through her tears. + +"You are quite right. He didn't ask much of life. A book in his hand and +a child on his knee meant happiness for him." + +"And those he can have wherever he is," said her spiritual adviser. "Now +I want you to turn away from all these gloomy forebodings and leave the +matter entirely in God's hands." + +"And you think I have done my duty?" + +"Assuredly. It is your poor father who has failed to do his. You are a +model wife and an almost too devoted mother. You are zealous in your work +at the cathedral; you--" + +"There!" said Mrs. Clarke, smiling, "I know I don't deserve all those +compliments, but they do help me. Now let's talk of something else while +I give you a fresh cup of tea. Tell me what the board did yesterday about +the foreign mission fund." + +The bishop, relieved to see the conversation drifting into calmer waters, +accepted the second cup and the change of topic with equal satisfaction. +His specialty was ministering to the sorrows of the very rich, but he +preferred to confine his spiritual visits to the early part of the +afternoon, leaving the latter part free for tea-drinking and the +ecclesiastical gossip so dear to his heart. + +"Well," he said, leaning back luxuriously in his deep willow chair, +"we carried our point after some difficulty. Too many of our good +directors take refuge in the old excuse that charity should begin at +home. It should, my dear Elise, but as I have said before, it should +not end there!" + +Having delivered himself of this original observation, the bishop helped +himself to another sandwich. + +"The special object of my present visit," he said, "aside from the +pleasure it always gives me to be in your delightful home, is to interest +you and your good husband in a mission we are starting in Mukden, a most +ungodly place, I fear, in Manchuria. A thousand dollars from Mr. Clarke +at this time would be most acceptable, and I shall leave it to you, my +dear lady, to put the matter before him, with all the tact and persuasion +for which you are so justly noted." + +Mrs. Clarke smiled wearily. + +"I will do what I can, Bishop. But I hate to burden him with one more +demand. Since he has bought these two new factories, he is simply worked +to death. I get so cross with all the unreasonable demands the employees +make on him. They are never satisfied. The more he yields, the more they +demand. It's begging letters, petitions, lawsuits, strikes, until he is +driven almost crazy." + +The whirr of an approaching motor caused them both to look up. A grizzled +man of fifty got out and, after a decisive order to the chauffeur, turned +to join them. His movements were quick and nervous, and his eyes restless +under their shaggy gray brows. + +"Where's the boy?" was his first query after the greetings were over. + +"He went to choir practice. I thought surely he would come out with you. +Hadn't we better send the machine back for him?" + +"We were just speaking of that fine lad of yours," said the bishop, +helping himself to yet another sandwich. "Fine eyes, frank, engaging +manner! I suppose he is too young yet for you to be considering his +future calling?" + +"Indeed he isn't!" said Mrs. Clarke. "My heart is set on the law. Two of +his Clarke grandfathers have been on the bench." + +Mr. Clarke smiled somewhat grimly. + +"Mac hasn't evinced any burning ambition in any direction as yet." + +"Mac is only thirteen," said Mrs. Clarke with dignity; "all of his +teachers will tell you that he is wonderfully bright, but that he lacks +application. I think it is entirely their fault. They don't make the +lessons sufficiently interesting; they don't hold his attention. He has +been at three private schools, and they were all wretched. You know I am +thinking of trying a tutor this year." + +"I want her to send him to the public schools," Mr. Clarke said with the +air of detached paternity peculiar to American fathers. "I went to the +public schools. They gave me a decent start in life; that's about all you +can expect of a school." + +"True, true," said the bishop, his elbows on the arms of his chair, and +his fingers tapping each other meditatively. "I am the last person to +minimize the value of the public schools, but they were primarily +designed, Mr. Clarke, neither for your boy, nor mine. Their rules and +regulations were designed expressly for the children of the poor. I was +speaking on this subject only yesterday to Mrs. Conningsby Lee. She's +very indignant because her child was forced to submit to vaccination at +the hands of some unknown young physician appointed by the city. + +"I should feel like killing any one who vaccinated Mac without my +consent!" exclaimed Mrs. Clarke, "but I needn't worry. He wouldn't allow +it. Do you know we have never been able to persuade that child to be +vaccinated?" + +"And you don't propose for the State to do what you can't do, do you?" +Mr. Clarke said, pinching her cheek. + +"What Mrs. Clarke says is not without weight," said the bishop, gallantly +coming to her rescue. "There are few things upon which I wax more +indignant than the increasing interference of the State with the home. +This hysterical agitation against child labor, for instance; while +warranted in exceptional cases, it is in the main destructive of the +formation of the habit of industry which cannot be acquired too young. +When the State presumes to teach a mother how to feed her child, when and +where to educate it, when and where to send it to work, the State goes +too far. There is nothing more dangerous to the family than the present +paternalistic and pauperizing trend of legislation." + +"I wish you would preach that to the factory inspectors," said Mr. +Clarke, with a wry smile. "Between the poor mothers who are constantly +trying to get the children into the factory, and the inspectors who are +trying to keep them out, I have my hands full." + +"A mother's love," said the bishop, who evidently had different rules +for mothers and fathers, "a mother's intuition is the most unerring +guide for the conduct of her child; and the home, however humble, is its +safest refuge." + +Mrs. Clarke glanced anxiously down the poplar-bordered driveway. Her +mother's intuition suggested that as it was now five-thirty, Mac must +have been engaged in some more diverting pastime than praising the Lord +with psalms and thanksgiving. + +"Your theory then, Bishop," said Mr. Clarke, who was evincing an unusual +interest in the subject, "carried to its legitimate conclusion, would do +away with all state interference? No compulsory education or child-labor +laws, or houses of correction?" + +"Oh, I don't think the bishop means that at all!" said Mrs. Clarke. "But +he is perfectly right about a mother knowing what is best for her child. +Take Mac, for instance. Nobody has ever understood him, but me. What +other people call wilfulness is really sensitiveness. He can't bear to be +criticized, he--" + +The sudden appearance of a limping object skirting the bushes caused her +to break off abruptly. + +"Who on earth is that over there beyond the fountain?" she asked. "Why, +upon my word, it's Mac!--Mac!" she called anxiously. "Come here!" + +The boy shamefacedly retraced his steps and presented himself on the +piazza. His shoes and stockings were covered with mud; the frills on his +shirt were torn and dirty; one eye was closed. + +"Why, my darling child!" cried his mother, her listless, detached air +giving place to one of acute concern, "you've been in an accident!" + +She had flown to him and enveloped him, mud and all, in her gauzy +embrace--an embrace from which Mac struggled to escape. + +"I'm all right," he insisted impatiently. "Those kids back of the +cathedral got to bothering us, and we--" + +"You mean those rowdies in the alley of whom Mason is always +complaining?" demanded the bishop, sternly. + +"Yes, sir. They were throwing rocks and stepping on the new walk--" + +"And you were helping the janitor keep them out?" broke in Mrs. Clarke. +"Isn't it an outrage, Bishop, that these children can't go to their choir +practice without being attacked by those dreadful ruffians?" + +"You are quite sure you boys weren't to blame?" asked Mr. Clarke. + +"Now, Father!" protested his wife, "how can you? When Mac has just told +us he was helping the janitor?" + +"It is no new thing, Mr. Clarke," said the bishop, solemnly shaking his +head. "We have had to contend with that disreputable element back of us +for years. On two occasions I have had to complain to the city +authorities. A very bad neighborhood, I am told, very bad indeed." + +"But, Mac dearest," pursued his mother anxiously as she tried to brush +the dried mud out of his hair. "Were you the only boy who stayed to help +Mason keep them out?" + +Mac jerked his head away irritably. + +"Oh! It wasn't that way, Mother. You see--" + +"That's Mac all over," cried Mrs. Clarke. "He wouldn't claim any credit +for the world. But look at the poor child's hands! Look at his eye! We +must take some action at once. Can't we swear out a warrant or something +against those hoodlums, and have them locked up?" + +"But, Elise," suggested Mr. Clarke, quizzically, "haven't you and the +bishop just been arguing that the State ought not to interfere with a +child? That the family ties, the mother's guidance--" + +"My dear Mr. Clarke," interrupted the bishop, "this, I assure you, is an +exceptional case. These young desperados are destroying property; they +are lawbreakers, many of them doubtless, incipient criminals. Mrs. Clarke +is quite right; some action must be taken, has probably been taken +already. The janitor had instructions to swear out a warrant against the +next offender who in any way defaced the property belonging to the +cathedral." + +It was at this critical point that the telephone rang, and a maid +appeared to say that Mr. Clarke was wanted. The bishop took advantage of +the interruption to order his carriage and make his adieus. + +"You may be assured," he said at parting, "that I shall not allow this +matter to rest until the offenders are brought to justice. Good-by, +good-by, my little man. Bear in mind, my dear Elise, that Mukden +matter. Good-by." + +"And now, you poor darling!" said Mrs. Clarke in a relieved tone, as she +turned her undivided attention on her abused son, "you shall have a nice +hot bath and a compress on the poor eye, and whatever you want for your +dinner. You are as white as a sheet, and still trembling! You poor lamb!" + +Mr. Clarke met them at the drawing-room door: + +"Mac!" he demanded, and his face was stern, "did you have anything to do +with the breaking of the big window at the cathedral?" + +"No, sir," Mac faltered, kicking at the newel post. + +"You didn't even know it was broken?" + +"Oh, everybody was throwing rocks, and that old, crazy Mason--" + +"But I thought you were helping Mason?" + +"I was--that is--those alley micks--" + +"That will do!" his father said angrily. "I've just been notified to have +you at the juvenile court next Friday to answer a charge of destroying +property. This is a nice scrape for my son to get into! And you didn't +have the grit to tell the truth. You lied to me! You'll go to bed, sir, +without your dinner!" + +Mrs. Clarke's eyes were round with indignation, and she was on the point +of bursting into passionate protest when a warning glance from her +husband silenced her. With a sense of outraged maternity she flung a +protective arm about her son and swept him up the stairs. + +"Don't make a scene, Mac darling!" she whispered. "Mother knows you +didn't do it. You go up to bed like a little gentleman, and I'll slip a +tray up to you and come up myself the minute dinner is over." + +That night when the moon discovered Nance Molloy in Calvary Alley, it +also peeped through the window at Mac Clarke out at Hillcrest. Bathed, +combed, and comforted, he lay in a silk-draped bed while his mother sat +beside him fanning him. It would be pleasant to record that the prodigal +had confessed his sins and been forgiven. It would even be some comfort +to state that his guilty conscience was keeping him awake. Neither of +these facts, however, was true. Mac, lying on his back, watching the +square patch of moonlight on the floor, was planning darkest deeds of +vengeance on a certain dirty, tow-headed, bare-legged little girl, who +had twice got the better of him in the conflict of the day. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +JUVENILE COURT + + +The goddess of justice is popularly supposed to bandage her eyes in order +to maintain an impartial attitude, but it is quite possible that she does +it to keep from seeing the dreary court-rooms which are supposed to be +her abiding place. + +On the hot Friday morning following the fight, the big anteroom to the +juvenile court, which was formerly used for the police court, was just as +dirty and the air just as stale as in mid-winter, when the windows were +down and the furnace going. + +Scrub women came at dawn, to be sure, and smeared its floors with sour +mops, and occasionally a janitor brushed the cobwebs off the ceiling, but +the grime was more than surface deep, and every nook and cranny held the +foul odor of the unwashed, unkempt current of humanity that for so many +years had flowed through it. Ghosts of dead and gone criminals seemed to +hover over the place, drawn back through curiosity, to relive their own +sorry experiences in the cases of the young offenders waiting before the +bar of justice. + +On the bench at the rear of the room the delegation from Calvary Alley +had been waiting for over an hour. Mrs. Snawdor, despite her forebodings, +had achieved a costume worthy of the occasion, but Uncle Jed and Dan had +made no pretense at a toilet. As for Nance, she had washed her face as +far east and west as her ears and as far south as her chin; but the +regions beyond were unreclaimed. The shoe-string on her hair had been +replaced by a magenta ribbon, but the thick braids had not been +disturbed. Now that she had got over her fright, she was rather enjoying +the novelty and excitement of the affair. She had broken the law and +enjoyed breaking it, and the cop had pinched her. It was a game between +her and the cop, and the cop had won. She saw no reason whatever for +Uncle Jed and Dan to look so solemn. + +By and by a woman in spectacles took her into a small room across the +hall, and told her to sit on the other side of the table and not to +shuffle her feet. Nance explained about the mosquito bites, but the lady +did not listen. + +"What day is this?" asked the spectacled one, preparing to chronicle the +answers in a big book. + +"Friday," said Nance, surprised that she could furnish information to so +wise a person. + +"What day of the month?" + +"Day before rent day." + +The corner of the lady's mouth twitched, and Nance glanced at her +suspiciously. + +"Can you repeat these numbers after me? Four, seven, nine, three, ten, +six, fourteen." + +Nance was convinced now that the lady was crazy, but she rattled them +off glibly. + +"Very good! Now if the little hand of your clock was at twelve, and the +big hand at three, what time would it be?" + +Nance pondered the matter deeply. + +"Five after twelve!" she answered triumphantly. + +"No; try again." + +Nance was eager to oblige, but she had the courage of her convictions and +held her point. + +"Wouldn't it be a quarter past?" suggested the examiner. + +"No, ma'am, it wouldn't. Our clock runs ten minutes slow." + +The grave face behind the spectacles broke into a smile; then business +was resumed. + +"Shut your eyes and name as many objects as you can without stopping, +like this: trees, flowers, birds. Go ahead." + +"Trees, flowers, birds, cats, dogs, fight, barrel, slop, mud, ashes." + +"Go on, quicker--keep it up. Nuts, raisins, cake--" + +"Cake, stove, smoke, tub, wash-board, scrub, rag, tub, stove, ashes." + +"Keep it up!" + +"I dunno no more." + +"We can't get beyond ashes, eh?" said the lady. "Now suppose you tell me +what the following words mean. Charity?" + +"Is it a organization?" asked Nance doubtfully. + +"Justice?" + +"I dunno that one." + +"Do you know what God is?" + +Nance felt that she was doing badly. If her freedom depended on her +passing this test, she knew the prison bars must be already closing on +her. She no more knew what God is than you or I know, but the spectacled +lady must be answered at any cost. + +"God," she said laboriously, "God is what made us, and a cuss word." + +Many more questions followed before she was sent back to her place +between Uncle Jed and Mrs. Snawdor, and Dan was led away in turn to +receive his test. + +Meanwhile Uncle Jed was getting restless. Again and again he consulted +his large nickel-plated watch. + +"I ought to be getting to bed," he complained. "I won't get more 'n four +hours' sleep as it is." + +"Here comes the Clarke boy!" exclaimed Nance, and all eyes were turned in +the direction of the door. + +The group that presented itself at the entrance was in sharp contrast to +its surroundings. Mac Clarke, arrayed in immaculate white, was flanked on +one side by his distinguished-looking father and on the other by his +father's distinguished-looking lawyer. The only evidence that the +aristocratic youth had ever come into contact with the riffraff of +Calvary Alley was the small patch of court-plaster above his right eye. + +"Tell the judge we are here," said Mr. Clarke briskly to his lawyer. "Ask +him to get through with us as soon as possible. I have an appointment at +twelve-thirty." + +The lawyer made his way up the aisle and disappeared through the +door which all the morning had been swallowing one small offender +after another. + +Almost immediately a loud voice called from the platform: + +"Case of Mac Clarke! Nance Molloy! Dan Lewis!" And Nance with a sudden +leap of her heart, knew that her time had come. + +In the inner room, where the juvenile cases had a private hearing, the +judge sat at a big desk, scanning several pages of type-written paper. He +was a young judge with a keen, though somewhat weary, face and eyes, full +of compassionate knowledge. But Nance did not see the judge; her gaze was +riveted upon her two arch enemies: Mason, with his flat nose and +pugnacious jaw, and "Old Cock-eye," the policeman who looked strangely +unfamiliar with his helmet off. + +"Well, Mr. Mason," said the judge when the three small offenders had +been ranged in front of the desk, with the witnesses grouped behind them, +"I'll ask you to tell me just what took place last Saturday afternoon at +the cathedral." + +Mason cleared his throat and, with evident satisfaction, proceeded to set +forth his version of the story: + +"I was sweeping out the vestibule, your Honor, when I heard a lot of +yelling and knew that a fight was on. It's that away every Saturday +afternoon that I ain't on the spot to stop it. I run down through the +cathedral and out to the back gate. The alley was swarming with a mob of +fighting, yelling children. Then I see these two boys a-fighting each +other up at the end of the alley, and before I can get to 'em, this here +little girl flings herself between 'em, and the big boy picks up a rock +and heaves it straight th'u the cathedral window." + +"Well, Mac," said the judge, turning to the trim, white-clad figure +confronting him--a figure strangely different from the type that +usually stood there. "You have heard what the janitor charges you with. +Are you guilty?" + +"Yes, sir," said Mac. + +"The breaking of the window was an accident?" + +Mac glanced quickly at his father's lawyer, then back at the judge. + +"Yes, sir." + +"But you were fighting in the alley?" + +"I was keeping the alley boys out of the cathedral yard." + +"That's a lie!" came in shrill, indignant tones from the little girl at +his elbow. + +"There seems to be some difference of opinion here," said the judge, +putting his hand over his mouth to repress a smile at the vehemence of +the accusation. "Suppose we let this young lady give her version of it." + +Nance jerking her arm free from Mrs. Snawdor's restraining hand, plunged +breathlessly into her story. + +"He was settin' on the fence, along with a parcel of other guys, a-makin' +faces an' callin' names long afore we even took no notice of 'em." + +"Both sides is to blame, your Honor," interposed Mason, "there ain't a +day when the choir rehearses that I don't have to go out and stop 'em +fighting." + +"Well, in this case who started the trouble?" asked the judge. + +Mrs. Snawdor clutched at Nance, but it was too late. + +"I did," she announced. + +The judge looked puzzled. + +"Why, I thought you said the choir boys began it by sitting on the fence +and making faces and calling names." + +"Shucks," said Nance, contemptuously, "we kin beat 'em makin' faces an' +callin' names." + +"Well, how did you start the fight?" + +"That there big boy dared me to step in the concrete. Didn't you now?" + +Mac stood looking straight ahead of him and refused to acknowledge +her presence. + +"It strikes me," said the judge, "that you choir boys could be better +employed than in teasing and provoking the children in the alley. What do +you think, Mac?" + +Mac had been provided with no answer to this question, so he +offered none. + +"Unfortunately," the judge continued, "it is the fathers of boys like you +who have to take the punishment. Your father will have to pay for the +window. But I want to appeal to your common sense and your sense of +justice. Look at me, Mac. You have had advantages and opportunities +beyond most boys. You are older than these children. Don't you think, +instead of using your influence to stir up trouble and put us to this +annoyance and expense, it would be much better for you to keep on your +side of the fence and leave these people back of the cathedral alone?" + +"Yes, sir," said Mac, perfunctorily. + +"And you promise me to do this?" + +"Yes, sir." + +"We will give you a chance to make your promise good. But remember your +name is on our record; if there is any more trouble whatever, you will +hear from us. Mr. Clarke, I look to you to see that your son behaves +himself. You may step aside please. And now, boy, what is your name?" + +"Dan Lewis." + +"Oh, yes. I think we have met before. What have you to say for yourself?" + +The shoeless, capless, unwashed boy, with his ragged trousers hitched to +his shoulders by one suspender, frowned up at the judge through a fringe +of tumbled hair. + +"Nothin'," he said doggedly. + +"Where do you live?" + +"I live at home when me maw's there." + +"Where is she now?" + +This question caused considerable nudging and side-glancing on the part +of Mrs. Snawdor. + +"She's went to the country," said Dan. + +"Is your father living?" + +"I dunno." + +"Did you go to school last year?" + +"No." + +"Why not?" + +"Didn't have no shoes." + +"Does your mother work?" + +This question brought more nudges and glances from Mrs. Snawdor, none of +which were lost on the boy. + +"Me mother don't have to work," he said defiantly. "She's a lady." + +The judge cleared his throat and called Mrs. Snawdor sharply to order. + +"Well, Dan," he said, "I am sorry to see you back here again. What were +you up for before?" + +"Chuckin' dice." + +"And didn't I tell you that it would go hard with you if you came back?" + +"Yes, sir, but I never chucked no more dice." + +"And I suppose in spite of the way your mouth is bruised, you'll tell me +you weren't mixed up in this fight?" + +The boy stood staring miserably at the wall with eyes in which fear and +hurt pride struggled for mastery. + +"Yer Honor!" the policeman broke in. "It's three times lately I've found +him sleepin' in doorways after midnight. Him and the gang is a bad lot, +yer Honor, a scrappin' an' hoppin' freights an' swipin' junk, an' one +thing an' another." + +"I never swiped no junk," Dan said hopelessly, "I never swiped nothink +in my life." + +"Is there no definite charge against this boy?" + +"Well, sir," said Mason, "he is always a-climbin' up the steeple of the +cathedral." + +Dan, sullen, frightened, and utterly unable to defend himself, looked +from the officer to the janitor with the wide, distrustful eyes of a +cornered coyote. + +Suddenly a voice spoke out in his behalf, a shrill, protesting, +passionate voice. + +"He ain't no worser nor nobody else! Ast Mammy, ast Uncle Jed! He's got +to sleep somewheres when his maw fergits to come home! Ever'body goes an' +picks on Danny 'cause he ain't got nobody to take up fer him. 'T ain't +fair!" Nance ended her tirade in a burst of tears. + +"There, there," said the judge, "it's going to be fair this time. You +stop crying now and tell me your name?" + +"Nance Molloy," she gulped, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. + +"How old are you?" + +"'Leven, goin' on twelve." + +"Well, take that gum out of your mouth and stop crying." + +He consulted his papers and then looked at her over his glasses. + +"Nancy," he said, "are you in the habit of slipping into the cathedral +when the janitor is not around?" + +"Yes, sir." + +"What for?" + +"Lookin' at the pretties, an' seein' if there's any nickels under +the seats." + +"You want to buy candy, I suppose?" + +"No, sir, a bureau." + +Even the tired-looking probation officer looked up and smiled. + +"What does a little girl like you want with a bureau?" asked the judge. + +"So's I won't have to keep me duds under the bed." + +"That's a commendable ambition. But what about these other charges; +truancy from school, fighting with the boys, throwing mud, and so on?" + +"I never th'ow mud, 'ceptin' when I'm th'owin' back," explained Nance. + +"A nice distinction," said the judge. "Is this child's mother present?" + +Mrs. Snawdor, like a current that has been restrained too long, surged +eagerly forward, and overflowed her conversational banks completely. + +"Well, I ain't exactly her mother, but I'm just the same as her mother. +You ast anybody in Calvary Alley. Ast Mr. Burks here, ast Mrs. Smelts +what I been to her ever since she was a helpless infant baby. When Bud +Molloy lay dyin' he says to the brakeman, 'You tell my wife to be good +to Nance,'" + +"So she's your stepchild?" + +"Yes, sir, an' Bud Molloy was as clever a man as ever trod shoe-leather. +So was Mr. Yager. Nobody can't say I ever had no trouble with my two +first. They wasn't what you might call as smart a man as Snawdor, but +they wasn't no fool." + +It was a peculiarity of Mrs. Snawdor's that she always spoke of her +previous husbands as one, notwithstanding the fact that the virtues +which she attributed to them could easily have been distributed among +half a dozen. + +"Well, well," said the judge impatiently, "what have you to say about the +character of this little girl?" + +Mrs. Snawdor shifted her last husband's hat from the right side of her +head to the left, and began confidentially: + +"Well I'll tell you, Jedge, Nance ain't so bad as whut they make her out. +She's got her faults. I ain't claimin' she ain't. But she ain't got a +drop of meanness in her, an' that's more than I can say for some grown +folks present." Mrs. Snawdor favored Mr. Mason with such a sudden and +blighting glance that the janitor quailed visibly. + +"Do you have trouble controlling her?" asked the judge. + +"Nothin' to speak of. She's a awful good worker, Nance is, when you git +her down to it. But her trouble is runnin'. Let anything happen in the +alley, an' she's up an' out in the thick of it. I'm jes' as apt to come +home an' find her playin' ball with the baby in her arms, as not. But I +don't have to dress her down near as often as I used to." + +"Then you wouldn't say she was a bad child?" + +Mrs. Snawdor's emphatic negative was arrested in the utterance by Mr. +Mason's accusing eye. + +"Well, I never seen no child that was a angel," she compromised. + +"Does Nancy go to school?" the judge asked. + +"Well, I was threatenin' her the other day, if she didn't behave herself, +I was goin' to start her in again." + +"I ain't been sence Christmas," volunteered Nance, still sniffling. + +"You shet yer mouth," requested Mrs. Snawdor with great dignity. + +"Why hasn't she been to school since Christmas?" the judge +proceeded sternly. + +"Well, to tell you the truth, it was on account of Mr. Snawdor. He got +mad 'bout the vaccination. He don't believe in it. Says it gives you the +rheumatism. He's got a iron ring on ever' one of the childern. Show yours +to the jedge, Nance! He says ef they has to vaccinate 'em to educate 'em, +they ain't goin' to de neither one." + +"But don't you know that we have compulsory education in this State? +Hasn't the truant officer been to see you?" + +Mrs. Snawdor looked self-conscious and cast down her eyes. + +"Well, not as many times as Snawdor says he has. Snawdor's that +jealous he don't want me to have no gentlemen visitors. When I see the +truant officer or the clock-man comin', I just keep out of sight to +avoid trouble." + +The judge's eyes twinkled, then grew stern. "In the meanwhile," he said, +"Nancy is growing up in ignorance. What sort of a woman are you to let a +child go as ragged and dirty as this one and to refuse her an education?" + +"Well, schools ain't what they wuz when me an' you wuz young," Mrs. +Snawdor said argumentatively. "They no more'n git a child there than they +want to cut out their palets or put spectacles on her. But honest, Judge, +the truth of it is I can't spare Nance to go to school. I got a job +scrubbin' four nights in the week at the post-office, an' I got to have +some help in the daytime. I leave it to you if I ain't." + +"That's neither here nor there," said the judge. "It is your business to +have her at school every morning and to see that she submits to the +regulations. You are an able-bodied woman and have an able-bodied +husband. Why don't you move into a decent house in a decent +neighborhood?" + +"There ain't nothin' the matter with our neighborhood. If you'd jes' git +'em to fix the house up some. The roof leaks something scandalous." + +"Who is your landlord?" + +"Well, they tell me _he_ is," said Mrs. Snawdor, pointing a malicious +finger at Mr. Clarke. This _coup d'etat_ caused considerable diversion, +and the judge had to call the court sharply to order. + +"Is that your husband in the rear of the room?" he asked Mrs. Snawdor. + +"Law, no; that's Mr. Burks, our boarder. I begged Snawdor to come, but +he's bashful." + +"Well, Mr. Burks, will you step forward and tell us what you know of this +little girl?" + +Uncle Jed cleared his throat, made a pass at the place where his front +hair used to be, and came forward. + +"Have you known this child long?" asked the judge. + +"Eleven years, going on twelve," said Uncle Jed, with a twinkle in his +small eyes, "me an' her grandpa fought side by side in the battle of +Chickasaw Bluffs." + +"So she comes of fighting stock," said the judge. "Do you consider her +incorrigible?" + +"Sir?" + +"Do you think her stepmother is able to control her?" + +Uncle Jed looked a trifle embarrassed. + +"Well, Mrs. Snawdor ain't whut you might say regular in her method. +Sometimes she's kinder rough on Nance, and then again she's a heap sight +too easy." + +"That's a God's truth!" Mrs. Snawdor agreed fervently from the rear. + +"Then you do not consider it altogether the child's fault?" + +"No, sir, I can't say as I do. She jes' gits the signals mixed +sometimes, that's all." + +The judge smiled. + +"So you think if she understood the signals, she'd follow them?" + +Uncle Jed's face became very earnest as he laid his hand on Nance's head. + +"I believe if this here little lass was to once git it into her head that +a thing was right, she'd do it if it landed her where it landed her paw, +at the foot of a forty-foot embankment with a engine a-top of her." + +"That's a pretty good testimony to her character," said the judge. "It's +our business, then, to see that she gets more definite instructions as to +the traffic laws of life. Nance, you and Dan step up here again." + +The children stood before him, breathing hard, looking him straight +in the face. + +"You have both been breaking the law. It's a serious thing to be up in +court. It is usually the first step on the down grade. But I don't +believe either of you have been wholly to blame. I am going to give you +one more chance and put you both on probation to Mrs. Purdy, to whom you +are to report once a week. Is Mrs. Purdy in the room?" + +An elderly little lady slipped forward and stood behind them with a +hand on the shoulder of each. Nance did not dare look around, but there +was something comforting and reassuring in that fat hand that lay on +her shoulder. + +"One more complaint against either of you," cautioned the judge +impressively, "and it will be the house of reform. If your families can't +make you behave, the State can. But we don't want to leave it to the +family or the State; we want to leave it to you. I believe you can both +make good, but you'll have to fight for it." + +Nance's irregular features broke into a smile. It was a quick, wide smile +and very intimate. + +"Fight?" she repeated, with a quizzical look at the judge. "I thought +that was what we was pinched fer." + + + + +CHAPTER V + +ON PROBATION + + +For a brief period Nance Molloy walked the paths of righteousness. The +fear of being "took up" proved a salutary influence, but permanent +converts are seldom made through fear of punishment alone. She was trying +by imitation and suggestion to grope her way upward, but the light she +climbed by was a borrowed light which swung far above her head and threw +strange, misleading shadows across her path. The law that allowed a man +to sell her fire-crackers and then punished her for firing them off, that +allowed any passer-by to kick her stone off the hop-scotch square and +punished her for hurling; the stone after him, was a baffling and +difficult thing to understand. + +At school it was no better. The truant officer said she must go every +day, yet when she got there, there was no room for her. She had to sit in +the seat with two other little girls who bitterly resented the intrusion. + +"You oughtn't to be in this grade anyhow!" declared one of them. "A girl +ought to be in the primer that turns her letters the wrong way." + +"Well, my letters spell the words right," said Nance hotly, "an' that's +more'n yours do, Pie-Face!" + +Whereupon the girl stuck out her tongue, and Nance promptly shoved her +off the end of the seat, with the result that her presence was requested +in the office at the first recess. + +"If you would learn to make your letters right, the girls would not tease +you," said the principal, kindly. "Why do you persist in turning them the +wrong way?" + +Now Nance had learned to write by copying the inscriptions from the +reverse side of the cathedral windows, and she still believed the +cathedral was right. But she liked the principal and she wanted very much +to get a good report, so she gave in. + +"All right," she said good-naturedly, "I'll do 'em your way. An' ef you +ketch me fightin' agin, I hope you'll lick hell outen me!" + +The principal, while decrying its forcible expression, applauded her good +intention, and from that time on took special interest in her. + +Nance's greatest drawback these days was Mrs. Snawdor. That worthy lady, +having her chief domestic prop removed and finding the household duties +resting too heavily upon her own shoulders, conceived an overwhelming +hatred for the school, the unknown school-teacher, and the truant +officer, for whom she had hitherto harbored a slightly romantic interest. + +"I ain't got a mite of use for the whole lay-out," she announced in a +sweeping condemnation one morning when Nance was reminding her for the +fourth time that she had to have a spelling book. "They' re forever +wantin' somethin'. It ain't no use beginnin' to humor 'em. Wasn't they +after me to put specs on Fidy last week? I know their tricks, standin' in +with eye-doctors an' dentists! An' here I been fer goin' on ten years, +tryin' to save up to have my own eye-teeth drawed an' decent ones put in. +Snawdor promised when we got married that would be his first present to +me. Well, if I ever get 'em, they _will_ be his first present." + +"Teacher says you oughtn't to leave the milk settin' uncovered like that; +it gits germans in it," said Nance. + +"I'd like to know whose milk-can this is?" demanded Mrs. Snawdor +indignantly. "You tell her when she pays fer my milk, it 'll be time +enough fer her to tell me what to do with it. You needn't be scurryin' so +to git off. I'm fixin' to go to market. You'll have to stay an' 'tend to +the children 'til I git back." + +"But I'm tryin' to git a good report," urged Nance. "I don't want +to be late." + +"I'll send a excuse by Fidy, an' say you 're sick in bed. Then you kin +stay home all day an' git the house cleaned up." + +"Naw, I won't," said Nance rebelliously, "I ain't goin' to miss ag'in." + +"You're goin' to shut up this minute, you sass-box, or I'll take you back +to that there juvenile court. Git me a piece o' paper an' a pencil." + +With great effort she wrote her note while Nance stood sullenly by, +looking over her shoulder. + +"You spelled teacher's name with a little letter," Nance muttered. + +"I done it a-purpose," said Mrs. Snawdor vindictively, "I ain't goin' to +spell her with a capital; she ain't worth it." + +Nance would undoubtedly have put up a more spirited fight for her rights, +had she not been anxious to preserve peace until the afternoon. It was +the day appointed by the court for her and Dan Lewis to make their first +report to Mrs. Purdy, whose name and address had been given them on a +card. She had washed her one gingham apron for the occasion, and had +sewed up the biggest rent in her stockings. The going forth alone with +Dan on an errand of any nature was an occasion of importance. It somehow +justified those coupled initials, enclosed in a gigantic heart, that she +had surreptitiously drawn on the fence. + +After her first disappointment in being kept at home, she set about her +task of cleaning the Snawdor flat with the ardor of a young Hercules +attacking the Augean stables. First she established the twins in the hall +with a string and a bent pin and the beguiling belief that if they fished +long enough over the banister they would catch something. Next she +anchored the screaming baby to a bedpost and reduced him to subjection by +dipping his fingers in sorghum, then giving him a feather. The absorbing +occupation of plucking the feather from one sticky hand to the other +rendered him passive for an hour. + +These preliminaries being arranged, Nance turned her attention to the +work in hand. Her method consisted in starting at the kitchen, which was +in front, and driving the debris back, through the dark, little, middle +room, until she landed it all in a formidable mass in Mrs. Snawdor's +bedroom at the rear. This plan, pursued day after day, with the general +understanding that Mrs. Snawdor was going to take a day off soon and +clean up, had resulted in a condition of indescribable chaos. As Mr. +Snawdor and the three younger children slept in the rear room at night, +and Mrs. Snawdor slept in it the better part of the day, the hour for +cleaning seldom arrived. + +To-day as Nance stood in the doorway of this stronghold of dirt and +disorder, she paused, broom in hand. The floor, as usual, was littered +with papers and strings, the beds were unmade, the wash-stand and dresser +were piled high with a miscellaneous collection, and the drawers of each +stood open, disgorging their contents. On the walls hung three enlarged +crayons of bridal couples, in which the grooms were different, but the +bride the same. On the dusty window sill were bottles and empty spools, +broken glass chimneys, and the clock that ran ten minutes slow. The +debris not only filled the room, but spilled out into the fire-escape and +down the rickety iron ladders and flowed about the garbage barrels in the +passage below. + +It was not this too familiar scene, however, that made Nance pause with +her hand on the door-knob and gaze open-mouthed into the room. It was the +sight of Mr. Snawdor sitting on the side of the bed with his back toward +her, wiping his little red-rimmed eyes on a clean pocket handkerchief, +and patting his trembling mouth with the hand that was not under the +quilt. Heretofore Nance had regarded Mr. Snawdor as just one of the many +discomforts with which the family had to put up. His whining protests +against their way of living had come to be as much a matter of course as +the creaking door or the smoking chimney. Nobody ever thought of +listening to what he was saying, and everybody pushed and ordered him +about, including Nance, who enjoyed using Mrs. Snawdor's highhanded +method with him, when that lady was not present. + +But when she saw him sitting there with his back to her, crying, she was +puzzled and disturbed. As she watched, she saw him fumble for something +under the quilt, then lift a shining pistol, and place the muzzle to his +thin, bald temple. With a cry of terror, she dashed forward and knocked +the weapon from his hand. + +"You put that down!" she cried, much as she would have commanded William +J. to leave the butcher knife alone. "Do you want to kill yerself?" + +Mr. Snawdor started violently, then collapsing beside the bed, confessed +that he did. + +"What fer?" asked Nance, terror giving way to sheer amazement. + +"I want to quit!" cried Mr. Snawdor, hysterically. "I can't stand it any +longer. I'm a plumb failure and I ain't goin' to ever be anything else. +If your maw had taken care of what I had, we wouldn't have been where we +are at. Look at the way we live! Like pigs in a pen! We're nothing but +pore white trash; that's what we are!" + +Nance stood beside him with her hand on his shoulder. Poor white trash! +That was what the Clarke boy had called her. And now Mr. Snawdor, the +nominal head of the family, was acknowledging it to be true. She looked +about her in new and quick concern. + +"I'm going to clean up in here, too," she said. "I don't keer whut mammy +says. It'll look better by night; you see if it don't." + +"It ain't only that--" said Mr. Snawdor; then he pulled himself up and +looked at her appealingly. "You won't say nuthin' about this mornin', +will you, Nance?" + +"Not if you gimme the pistol," said Nance. + +When he was gone, she picked up the shining weapon and gingerly dropped +it out on the adjoining roof. Then her knees felt suddenly wobbly, and +she sat down. What if she had been a minute later and Mr. Snawdor had +pulled the trigger? She shivered as her quick imagination pictured the +scene. If Mr. Snawdor felt like that about it, there was but one thing to +do; to get things cleaned up and try to keep them so. + +Feeling very important and responsible, she swept and straightened and +dusted, while her mind worked even faster than her nimble hands. +Standards are formed by comparisons, and so far Nance's opportunity for +instituting comparisons had been decidedly limited. + +"We ain't pore white, no such a thing!" she kept saying to herself. "Our +house ain't no worser nor nobody else's. Mis' Smelts is just the same, +an' if Levinski's is cleaner, it smells a heap worse." + +Dinner was over before Mrs. Snawdor returned. She came into the kitchen +greatly ruffled as to hair and temper from having been caught by the +hook left hanging over the banisters by William J. + +"Gimme the rocker!" she demanded. "My feet hurt so bad I'd just like to +unscrew 'em an' fling 'em in the dump heap." + +"Where you been at?" asked Uncle Jed, who was cutting himself a slice of +bread from the loaf. + +"I been down helpin' the new tenant move in on the first floor." + +"Any childern?" asked Nance and Lobelia in one breath. + +"No; just a foreign-lookin' old gentleman, puttin' on as much airs as if +he was movin' into the Walderastoria. Nobody knows his name or where he +comes from. Ike Lavinski says he plays the fiddle at the theayter. Talk +about your helpless people! I had to take a hand in gettin' his things +unloaded. He liked to never got done thankin' me." + +Mr. Snawdor, who had been sitting in dejected silence before his +untouched food, pushed his plate back and sighed deeply. + +"Now, fer heaven sake, Snawdor," began his wife in tones of exasperation, +"can't I do a kind act to a neighbor without a-rufflin' yer feathers the +wrong way?" + +"I cleaned up yer room while you was gone," said Nance, eager to divert +the conversation from Mr. Snawdor. "Uncle Jed an' me carried the trash +down an' it filled the ash barrel clean up to the top." + +"Well, I hope an' pray you didn't throw away my insurance book. I was +aimin' to clean up, myself, to-morrow. What on earth's the matter with +Rosy Velt?" + +Rosy, who had been banished to the kitchen for misbehavior, had been +conducting a series of delicate experiments, with disastrous results. She +had been warned since infancy never to put a button up her nose, but +Providence having suddenly placed one in her way, and at the same time +engaged her mother's attention elsewhere, the opportunity was too +propitious to be lost. + +Nance took advantage of her stepmother's sudden departure to cheer up +Mr. Snawdor. + +"We're gittin' things cleaned up," she said, "I can't work no more to-day +though, 'cause I got to report to the lady." + +"Ain't you goin' to slick yerself up a bit?" asked Uncle Jed, making a +futile effort to smooth her hair. + +"I have," said Nance, indignantly, "Can't you see I got on a clean +apron?" + +Uncle Jed's glance was not satisfied as it traveled from the dirty dress +below the apron to the torn stockings and shabby shoes. + +"Why don't you wear the gold locket?" suggested Mrs. Snawdor, who now +returned with Rosy in one hand and the button in the other. + +The gold locket was the one piece of jewelry in the family and when it +was suspended on a black ribbon around Nance's neck, it filled her with a +sense of elegance. So pleased was she with its effect that as she went +out that afternoon, she peeped in on the new tenant in the hope that he +would notice it. She found him leaning over a violin case, and her +interest was fired at once. + +"Can you play on the fiddle?" she demanded. + +The small, elderly man in the neat, black suit lifted his head and smiled +at her over his glasses. + +"Yes, my little friend," he said in a low, refined voice, "I will play +for you to dance sometime. You would like that? Yes?" + +Nance regarded him gravely. + +"Say, are you a Polock or a Dago?" she asked. + +He gave an amused shrug. + +"I am neither. My name is Mr. Demorest. And you are my little +neighbor, perhaps?" + +"Third floor on the right," said Nance, adding in a business-like tone, +"I'll be down to dance to-night." + +She would have liked very much to stay longer, for the old gentleman was +quite unlike any one she had ever talked to before, but the card in her +hand named the hour of two, and back of the card was Mrs. Purdy, and +back of Mrs. Purdy the juvenile court, the one thing in life so far whose +authority Nance had seen fit to acknowledge. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +BUTTERNUT LANE + + +At the corner Dan Lewis stood aside like a deposed chieftain while his +companions knelt in an excited ring, engrossed in a game sanctioned by +custom and forbidden by law. Even to Nance's admiring eye he looked +dirtier and more ragged than usual, and his scowl deepened as she +approached. + +"I ain't goin'," he said. + +"Yes, you are, too. Why not?" said Nance, inconsequently. + +"Aw, it ain't no use." + +"Ain't you been to school?" + +"Yep, but I ain't goin' to that lady's house. I ain't fit." + +"You got to go to take me," said Nance, diplomatically. "I don't know +where Butternut Lane's at." + +"You could find it, couldn't you?" + +Nance didn't think she could. In fact she developed a sudden dependence +wholly out of keeping with her usual self-reliance. + +This seemed to complicate matters for Dan. He stood irresolutely kicking +his bare heels against the curb and then reluctantly agreed to take her +as far as Mrs. Purdy's gate, provided nothing more was expected of him. + +Their way led across the city to a suburb, and they were hot and tired +before half the distance was covered. But the expedition was fraught with +interest for Nance. After the first few squares of sullen silence, Dan +seemed to forget that she was merely a girl and treated her with the +royal equality usually reserved for boys. So confidential did they become +that she ventured to put a question to him that had been puzzling her +since the events of the morning. + +"Say, Dan, when anybody kills hisself, is it murder?" + +"It's kinder murder. You wouldn't ketch me doin' it as long as I could +get something to eat." + +"You kin always git a piece of bread," said Nance. + +"You bet you can't!" said Dan with conviction. "I ain't had nothin' to +eat myself since yisterday noon." + +"Yer maw didn't come in last night?" + +"I 'spec' she went on a visit somewhere," said Dan, whose lips +trembled slightly despite the stump of a cigarette that he manfully +held between them. + +"Couldn't you git in a window?" + +"Nope; the shutters was shut. Maybe I don't wisht it was December, an' I +was fourteen!" + +"Sammy Smelts works an' he ain't no older'n me," said Nance. "You kin +git a fake certificate fer a quarter." + +Dan smiled bitterly. + +"Where'm I goin' to git the quarter? They won't let me sell things on the +street, or shoot craps, or work. Gee, I wisht I was rich as that Clarke +boy. Ike Lavinski says he buys a quarter's worth of candy at a time! He's +in Ike's room at school." + +"He wasn't there yesterday," said Nance. "Uncle Jed seen him with another +boy, goin' out the railroad track." + +"I know it. He played hookey. He wrote a excuse an' signed his maw's name +to it. Ike seen him do it. An' when the principal called up his maw this +mornin' an' ast her 'bout it, she up an' said she wrote it herself." + +Nance was not sure whether she was called upon to admire the astuteness +of Mac or his mother, so she did not commit herself. But she was keenly +interested. Ever since that day in the juvenile court she had been +haunted by the memory of a trim, boyish figure arrayed in white, and by a +pair of large brown eyes which disdainfully refused to glance in her +direction. + +"Say, Dan," she asked wistfully, "have you got a girl?" + +"Naw," said Dan disdainfully, "what do I keer about girls?" + +"I don't know. I thought maybe you had. I bet that there Clarke boy's +got two or three." + +"Let him have 'em," said Dan; then, finding the subject distasteful, he +added, "what's the matter with hookin' on behind that there wagon?" And +suiting the action to the word, they both went in hot pursuit. + +After a few jolting squares during which Nance courted death with her +flying skirts brushing the revolving wheels, the wagon turned into a side +street, and they were obliged to walk again. + +"I wonder if this ain't the place?" she said, as they came in sight of a +low, white house half smothered in beech-trees, with a flower garden at +one side, at the end of which was a vine-covered summer-house. + +"Here's where I beat it!" said Dan, but before he could make good his +intention, the stout little lady on the porch had spied them and came +hurrying down the walk, holding out both hands. + +"Well, if here aren't my probationers!" she cried in a warm, comfortable +voice which seemed to suggest that probationers were what she liked best +in the world. + +"Let me see, dear, your name is Mac?" + +"No, ma'am, it's Dan," said that youth, trying to put out the lighted +cigarette stump which he had hastily thrust into his pocket. + +"Ah! to be sure! And yours is--Mary?" + +"No, ma'am, it's Nance." + +"Why, of course!" cried the little lady, beaming at them, "I remember +perfectly." + +She was scarcely taller than they were as she walked between them, with +an arm about the shoulder of each. She wore a gray dress and a wide white +collar pinned with a round blue pin that just matched her round blue +eyes. On each side of her face was a springy white curl that bobbed up +and down as she walked. + +"Now," she said, with an expectant air, when they reached the house. +"Where shall we begin? Something to eat?" + +Her question was directed to Dan, and he flushed hotly. + +"No, ma'am," he said proudly. + +"Yes, ma'am," said Nance, almost in the same breath. + +"I vote 'Yes,' too; so the ayes have it," said Mrs. Purely gaily, leading +them through a neat hall into a neat kitchen, where they solemnly took +their seats. + +"My visitors always help me with the lemonade," said the purring little +lady, giving Nance the lemons to roll, and Dan the ice to crack. Then as +she fluttered about, she began to ask them vague and seemingly futile +questions about home and school and play. Gradually their answers grew +from monosyllables into sentences, until, by the time the lemonade was +ready to serve, Nance was completely thawed out and Dan was getting soft +around the edges. Things were on the way to positive conviviality when +Mrs. Purdy suddenly turned to Nance and asked her where she went to +Sunday school. + +Now Sunday school had no charms for Nance. On the one occasion when +curiosity had induced her to follow the stream of well-dressed children +into the side door of the cathedral, she had met with disillusion. It was +a place where little girls lifted white petticoats when they sat down and +straightened pink sashes when they got up, and put nickels in a basket. +Nance had had no lace petticoat or pink sash or nickel. She showed her +discomfort by misbehaving. + +"Didn't you ever go back?" asked Mrs. Purdy. + +"Nome. They didn't want me. I was bad, an' the teacher said Sunday school +was a place for good little girls." + +"My! my!" said Mrs. Purdy, "this will never do. And how about you, Dan? +Do you go?" + +"Sometimes I've went," said Dan. "I like it." + +While this conversation was going on Nance could not keep her eyes from +the open door. There was more sky and grass out there than she had ever +seen at one time before. The one green spot with which she was familiar +was the neat plot of lawn on each side of the concrete walk leading into +the cathedral, and that had to be viewed through a chink in the fence +and was associated with the words, "Keep Out." + +When all the lemonade was gone, and only one cookie left for politeness, +Mrs. Purdy took them into the sitting-room where a delicate-looking man +sat in a wheel-chair, carving something from a piece of wood. Nance's +quick eyes took in every detail of the bright, commonplace room; its gay, +flowered carpet and chintz curtains, its "fruit pieces" in wide, gold +frames, and its crocheted tidies presented a new ideal of elegance. + +There was a music-box on the wall in which small figures moved about to a +tinkling melody; there were charm strings of bright colored buttons, and +a spinning-wheel, and a pair of bellows, all of which Mrs. Purdy +explained at length. + +"Sister," said the man in the chair, feebly, "perhaps the children would +like to see my menagerie." + +"Why, dearie, of course they would," said Mrs. Purdy, "Shall I wheel you +over to the cabinet?" + +"I'll shove him," said Dan, making his first voluntary remark. + +"There now!" said Mrs. Purdy, "see how much stronger he is than I am! And +he didn't jolt you a bit, did he, dearie?" + +If the room itself was interesting, the cabinet was nothing short of +entrancing. It was full of carved animals in all manner of grotesque +positions. And the sick gentleman knew the name of each and kept saying +such funny things about them that Nance laughed hilariously, and Dan +forgot the prints of his muddy feet on the bright carpet, and even gave +up the effort to keep his hand over the ragged knee of his pants. + +"He knows all about live animals, too," chirped Mrs. Purdy. "You'll have +to come some day and go over to the park with us and see his squirrels. +There's one he found with a broken leg, and he mended it as good as new." + +The sun was slipping behind the trees before the children even thought of +going home. + +"Next Friday at three!" said Mrs. Purdy, cheerily waving them good-by. +"And we are going to see who has the cleanest face and the best report." + +"We sure had a good time," said Nance, as they hurried away through the +dusk. "But I'll git a lickin' all right when I git home." + +"I liked that there animal man," said Dan slowly, "an' them cookies." + +"Well, whatever made you lie to the lady 'bout bein' hungry?" + +"I never lied. She ast me if I wanted her to give me somethin' to eat. I +thought she meant like a beggar. I wasn't goin' to take it that way, but +I never minded takin' it like--like--company." + +Nance pondered the matter for a while silently; then she asked suddenly: + +"Say, Dan, if folks are borned poor white trash, they don't have to go on +bein' it, do they?" + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +AN EVICTION + + +The three chief diversions in Calvary Alley, aside from fights, were +funerals, arrests, and evictions. Funerals had the advantage of novelty, +for life departed less frequently than it arrived: arrests were in high +favor on account of their dramatic appeal, but the excitement, while +intense, was usually too brief to be satisfying; for sustained interest +the alley on the whole preferred evictions. + +The week after Nance and Dan had reported to Mrs. Purdy, rumor traveled +from house to house and from room to room that the rent man was putting +the Lewises out. The piquant element in the situation lay in the absence +of the chief actor. "Mis' Lewis" herself had disappeared, and nobody knew +where she was or when she would return. + +For many years the little cottage, sandwiched between Mr. Snawdor's "Bung +and Fawcett" shop and Slap Jack's saloon had been the scandal and, it +must be confessed the romance of the alley. It stood behind closed +shutters, enveloped in mystery, and no visitor ventured beyond its +threshold. The slender, veiled lady who flitted in and out at queer +hours, and whom rumor actually accused of sometimes arriving at the +corner in "a hack," was, despite ten years' residence, a complete +stranger to her neighbors. She was quiet and well-behaved; she wore good +clothes and shamefully neglected her child. These were the meager facts +upon which gossip built a tower of conjecture. + +As for Dan, he was as familiar an object in the alley as the sparrows in +the gutter or the stray cats about the garbage cans. Ever since he could +persuade his small legs to go the way he wanted them to, he had pursued +his own course, asking nothing of anybody, fighting for his meager +rights, and becoming an adept in evading the questions that seemed to +constitute the entire conversation of the adult world. All that he asked +of life was the chance to make a living, and this the authorities sternly +forbade until he should reach that advanced age of fourteen which seemed +to recede as he approached. Like most of the boys in the gang, he had +been in business since he was six; but it was business that changed its +nature frequently and had to be transacted under great difficulty. He had +acquired proficiency as a crap-shooter only to find that the profession +was not regarded as an honorable one; he had invested heavily in pins and +pencils and tried to peddle them out on the avenue, only to find himself +sternly taken in hand by a determined lady who talked to him about minors +and street trades. Shoe-shining had been tried; so had selling papers, +but each of these required capital, and Dan's appetite was of such a +demanding character that the acquisition of capital was well nigh +impossible. + +From that first day when the truant officer had driven him into the +educational fold, his problems had increased. It was not that he disliked +school. On the contrary he was ambitious and made heroic efforts to keep +up with the class; but it was up-hill work getting an education without +text-books. The city, to be sure, furnished these to boys whose mothers +applied for them in person, but Dan's mother never had time to come. The +cause of most of his trouble, however, was clothes; seatless trousers, +elbowless coats, brimless hats, constituted a series of daily +mortifications which were little short of torture. + +Twice, through no fault of his own, he had stood alone before the bar of +justice, with no voice lifted in his behalf save the shrill, small voice +of Nance Molloy. Twice he had been acquitted and sent back to the old +hopeless environment, and admonished to try again. How hard he had tried +and against what odds, surely only the angel detailed to patrol Calvary +Alley has kept any record. + +If any doubts assailed him concerning the mother who took little heed of +his existence, he never expressed them. Her name rarely passed his lips, +but he watched for her coming as a shipwrecked mariner watches for a +sail. When a boy ponders and worries over something for which he dares +not ask an explanation, he is apt to become sullen and preoccupied. On +the day that the long-suffering landlord served notice, Dan told no one +of his mother's absence. Behind closed doors he packed what things he +could, clumsily tying the rest of the household goods in the bedclothes. +At noon the new tenant arrived and, in order to get his own things in, +obligingly assisted in moving Dan's out. It was then and then only that +the news had gone abroad. + +For three hours now the worldly possessions of the dubious Mrs. Lewis had +lain exposed on the pavement, and for three hours Dan had sat beside them +keeping guard. From every tenement window inquisitive eyes watched each +stage of the proceeding, and voluble tongues discussed every phase of the +situation. Every one who passed, from Mr. Lavinski, with a pile of pants +on his head, to little Rosy Snawdor, stopped to take a look at him and to +ask questions. + +Dan had reached a point of sullen silence. Sitting on a pile of +bedclothes, with a gilt-framed mirror under one arm and a flowered water +pitcher under the other, he scowled defiance at each newcomer. Against +the jeers of the boys he could register vows of future vengeance and +console himself with the promise of bloody retribution; but against the +endless queries and insinuations of his adult neighbors, he was utterly +defenseless. + +"Looks like she had ever'thing fer the parlor, an' nothin' fer the +kitchen," observed Mrs. Snawdor from her third-story window to Mrs. +Smelts at her window two floors below. + +"I counted five pairs of curlin' irons with my own eyes," said +Mrs. Smelts, "an' as fer bottles! If they took out one, they took +out a hunderd." + +"You don't reckon that there little alcohol stove was all she had to cook +on, do you?" called up Mrs. Gorman from the pavement below. + +"Maybe that's what she het her curlin' irons on!" was Mrs. Snawdor's +suggestion, a remark which provoked more mirth than it deserved. + +Dan gazed straight ahead with no sign that he heard. However strong the +temptation was to dart away into some friendly hiding place, he was +evidently not going to yield to it. The family possessions were in +jeopardy, and he was not one to shirk responsibilities. + +Advice was as current as criticism. Mrs. Gorman, being a chronic +recipient of civic favors, advocated an appeal to the charity +organization; Mrs. Snawdor, ever at war with foreign interference, +strongly opposed the suggestion, while Mrs. Smelts with a covetous eye on +the gilt mirror under Dan's arm, urged a sidewalk sale. As for the boy +himself, not a woman in the alley but was ready to take him in and share +whatever the family larder provided. + +But to all suggestions Dan doggedly shook his head. He was "thinkin' it +out," he said, and all he wanted was to be let alone. + +"Well, you can't set there all night," said Mrs. Snawdor, "if yer maw +don't turn up by five o'clock, us neighbors is goin' to take a hand." + +All afternoon Dan sat watching the corner round which his mother might +still appear. Not a figure had turned into the alley, that he had not +seen it, not a clanging car had stopped in the street beyond, that his +quick ear had not noted. + +About the time the small hand of the cathedral clock got around to four, +Nance Molloy came skipping home from school. She had been kept in for a +too spirited resentment of an older girl's casual observation that both +of her shoes were for the same foot. To her, as to Dan, these trying +conventions in the matter of foot-gear were intolerable. No combination +seemed to meet the fastidious demands of that exacting sixth grade. + +"Hello, Dan!" she said, coming to a halt at sight of the obstructed +pavement. "What's all this for?" + +"Put out," said Dan laconically. + +"Didn't yer maw never come back?" + +"Nope." + +Nance climbed up beside him on the bedclothes and took her seat. + +"What you goin' to do?" she asked in a business-like tone. + +"Dunno." Dan did not turn his head to look at her, but he felt a dumb +comfort in her presence. It was as if her position there beside him on +the pillory made his humiliation less acute. He shifted the water +pitcher, and jerked his thumb over his shoulder: + +"They all want to divide the things an' take keer of 'em 'til she comes," +he said, "but I ain't goin' to let 'em." + +"I wouldn't neither," agreed Nance. "Old man Smelts an' Mr. Gorman'd have +what they took in hock before mornin'. There's a coal shed over to Slap +Jack's ain't full. Why can't you put yer things in there for to-night?" + +"He wouldn't let me. He's a mean old Dutchman." + +"He ain't, neither! He's the nicest man in the alley, next to Uncle Jed +an' that there old man with the fiddle. Mr. Jack an' me's friends. He +gives me pretzels all the time. I'll go ast him." + +A faint hope stirred in Dan as she slid down from her perch and darted +into the saloon next door. She had wasted no time in conjecture or +sympathy; she had plunged at once into action. When she returned, the fat +saloonkeeper lumbered in her wake: + +"Dose tings is too many, already," he protested. "I got no place to put +my coal once de cold vedder comes." + +"It ain't come yet," said Nance. "Besides his mother'll be here +to-morrow, I 'spect." + +"Mebbe she vill, und mebbe she von't," said the saloonkeeper astutely. "I +don't want dat I should mess up myself mid dis here piziness." + +"The things ain't goin' to hurt your old coal shed none!" began Nance, +firing up; then with a sudden change of tactics, she slipped her hand +into Mr. Jack's fat, red one, and lifted a pair of coaxing blue eyes. +"Say, go on an' let him, Mr. Jack! I told him you would. I said you was +one of the nicest men in the alley. You ain't goin' to make me out a +liar, are you?" + +"Vell, I leave him put 'em in for to-night," said the saloonkeeper +grudgingly, his Teuton caution overcome by Celtic wile. + +The conclave of women assembled in the hall of Number One, to carry out +Mrs. Snawdor's threat of "taking a hand," were surprised a few minutes +later, to see the objects under discussion being passed over the fence by +Mr. Jack and Dan under the able generalship of the one feminine member of +the alley whose counsel had been heeded. + +When the last article had been transferred to the shed, and a veteran +padlock had been induced to return to active service, the windows of the +tenement were beginning to glow dully, and the smell of cabbage and +onions spoke loudly of supper. + +Nance, notwithstanding the fourth peremptory summons from aloft, to walk +herself straight home that very minute, still lingered with Dan. + +"Come on home with me," she said. "You can sleep in Uncle Jed's bed 'til +five o'clock." + +"I kin take keer of myself all right," he said. "It was the things that +pestered me." + +"But where you goin' to git yer supper?" + +"I got money," he answered, making sure that his nickel was still in his +pocket. "Besides, my mother might come while I was there." + +"Well, don't you fergit that to-morrow we go to Mis' Purdy's." + +Dan looked at her with heavy eyes. + +"Oh! I ain't got time to fool around with that business. I don't know +where I'll be at by to-morrow." + +"You'll be right here," said Nance firmly, "and I ain't goin' to budge a +step without you if I have to wait all afternoon." + +"Well, I ain't comin'," said Dan. + +"I'm goin' to wait," said Nance, "an' if I git took up fer not reportin', +it'll be your fault." + +Dan slouched up to the corner and sat on the curbstone where he could +watch the street cars. As they stopped at the crossing, he leaned forward +eagerly and scanned the passengers who descended. In and out of the +swinging door of the saloon behind him passed men, singly and in groups. +There were children, too, with buckets, but they had to go around to the +side. He wanted to go in himself and buy a sandwich, but he didn't dare. +The very car he was waiting for might come in his absence. + +At nine o'clock he was still waiting when two men came out and paused +near him to light their cigars. They were talking about Skeeter Newson, +the notorious pickpocket, who two days before had broken jail and had +not yet been found. Skeeter's exploits were a favorite topic of the +Calvary Micks, and Dan, despite the low state of his mind, pricked his +ears to listen. + +"They traced him as far as Chicago," said one of the men, "but there he +give 'em the slip." + +"Think of the nerve of him taking that Lewis woman with him," said the +other voice. "By the way, I hear she lives around here somewhere." + +"A bad lot," said the first voice as they moved away. + +Dan sat rigid with his back to the telegraph pole, his feet in the +gutter, his mouth fallen open, staring dully ahead of him. Then suddenly +he reached blindly for a rock, and staggered to his feet, but the figures +had disappeared in the darkness. He sat down again, while his breath came +in short, hard gasps. It was a lie! His mother was not bad! He knew she +was good. He wanted to shriek it to the world. But even as he +passionately defended her to himself, fears assailed him. + +Why had they always lived so differently from other people? Why was he +never allowed to ask questions or to answer them or to know where his +mother went or how they got their living? What were the parcels she +always kept locked up in the trunk in the closet? Events, little heeded +at the time of occurrence, began to fall into place, making a hideous and +convincing pattern. Dim memories of men stole out of the past and threw +distorted shadows on his troubled brain. There was Bob who had once given +him a quarter, and Uncle Dick who always came after he was in bed, and +Newt--his neck stiffened suddenly. Newt, whom his mother used always to +be talking about, and whose name he had not heard now for so long that he +had almost forgotten it. Skeeter Newson--Newt--"The Lewis Woman." He saw +it all in a blinding flash, and in that awful moment of realization he +passed out of his childhood and entered man's estate. + +Choking back his sobs, he fled from the scene of his disgrace. In one +alley and out another he stumbled, looking for a hole in which he could +crawl and pour out his pent-up grief. But privacy is a luxury reserved +for the rich, and Dan and his kind cannot even claim a place in which to +break their hearts. + +It was not until he reached the river bank and discovered an overturned +hogshead that he found a refuge. Crawling in, he buried his face in his +arms and wept, not with the tempestuous abandonment of a lonely child, +but with the dry, soul-racking sobs of a disillusioned man. His mother +had been the one beautiful thing in his life, and he had worshiped her as +some being from another world. Other boys' mothers had coarse, red hands +and loud voices; his had soft, white hands and a sweet, gentle voice that +never scolded. + +Sometimes when she stayed at home, they had no money, and then she would +lie on the bed and cry, and he would try to comfort her. Those were the +times when he would stay away from school and go forth to sell things at +the pawn shop. The happiest nights he could remember were the ones when +he had come home with money in his pocket, to a lighted lamp in the +window, and a fire on the hearth and his mother's smile of welcome. But +those times were few and far between; he was much more used to darkened +windows, a cold hearth, and an almost empty larder. In explanation of +these things he had accepted unconditionally his mother's statement that +she was a lady. + +As he fought his battle alone there in the dark, all sorts of wild plans +came to him. Across the dark river the shore lights gleamed, and down +below at the wharf, a steamboat was making ready to depart. He had heard +of boys who slipped aboard ships and beat their way to distant cities. A +fierce desire seized him to get away, anywhere, just so he would not have +to face the shame and disgrace that had come upon him. There was no one +to care now where he went or what became of him. He would run away and be +a tramp where nobody could ask questions. + +With quick decision he started up to put his plan into action when a +disturbing thought crossed his mind. Had Nance Molloy meant it when she +said she wouldn't report to the probation officer if he didn't go with +her? Would she stand there in the alley and wait for him all afternoon, +just as he had waited so often for some one who did not come? His +reflections were disturbed by a hooting noise up the bank, followed by a +shower of rocks. The next instant a mongrel pup scurried down the levee +and dropped shivering at his feet. + +The yells of the pursuers died away as Dan gathered the whimpering beast +into his arms and examined its injuries. + +"Hold still, old fellow. I ain't goin' to hurt you," he whispered, +tenderly wiping the blood from one dripping paw. "I won't let 'em git +you. I'll take care of you." + +The dog lifted a pair of agonized eyes to Dan's face and licked +his hands. + +"You lemme tie it up with a piece of my sleeve, an' I'll give you +somethin' to eat," went on Dan. "Me an' you'll buy a sandich an' I'll eat +the bread an' you can have the meat. Me an you'll be partners." + +Misery had found company, and already life seemed a little less desolate. +But the new-comer continued to yelp with pain, and Dan examined the limp +leg dubiously. + +"I b'lieve it's broke," he thought. Then he had an inspiration. + +"I know what I'll do," he said aloud, "I'll carry you out to the animal +man when me an' Nance go to report to-morrow." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +AMBITION STIRS + + +After Nance Molloy's first visit to Butternut Lane, life became a series +of thrilling discoveries. Hitherto she had been treated collectively. At +home she was "one of the Snawdor kids"; to the juvenile world beyond the +corner she was "a Calvary Alley mick"; at school she was "a pupil of the +sixth grade." It remained for little Mrs. Purdy to reveal the fact to her +that she was an individual person. + +Mrs. Purdy had the most beautiful illusions about everything. She seemed +to see her fellow-men not as they were, but as God intended them to be. +She discovered so many latent virtues and attractions in her new +probationers that they scarcely knew themselves. + +When, for instance, she made the startling observation that Nance had +wonderful hair, and that, if she washed it with an egg and brushed it +every day, it would shine like gold, Nance was interested, but +incredulous. Until now hair had meant a useless mass of tangles that at +long intervals was subjected to an agonizing process of rebraiding. The +main thing about hair was that it must never on any account be left +hanging down one's back. Feuds had been started and battles lost by +swinging braids. The idea of washing it was an entirely new one to her; +but the vision of golden locks spurred her on to try the experiment. She +carefully followed directions, but the egg had been borrowed from Mrs. +Smelts who had borrowed it some days before from Mrs. Lavinski, and the +result was not what Mrs. Purdy predicted. + +"If ever I ketch you up to sech fool tricks again," scolded Mrs. Snawdor, +who had been called to the rescue, "I'll skin yer hide off! You've no +need to take yer hair down except when I tell you. You kin smooth it up +jus' like you always done." + +Having thus failed in her efforts at personal adornment, Nance turned her +attention to beautifying her surroundings. The many new features observed +in the homely, commonplace house in Butternut Lane stirred her ambition. +Her own room, to be sure, possessed architectural defects that would have +discouraged most interior decorators. It was small and dark, with only +one narrow opening into an air-shaft. Where the plaster had fallen off, +bare laths were exposed, and in rainy weather a tin tub occupied the +center of the floor to catch the drippings from a hole in the roof. For +the rest, a slat bed, an iron wash-stand, and a three-legged chair +comprised the furniture. + +But Nance was not in the least daunted by the prospect. With +considerable ingenuity she evolved a dresser from a soap box and the +colored supplements of the Sunday papers, which she gathered into a +valance, in imitation of Mrs. Purdy's bright chintz. In the air-shaft +window she started three potato vines in bottles, but not satisfied with +the feeble results, she pinned red paper roses to the sickly white stems. +The nearest substitutes she could find for pictures were labels off +tomato cans, and these she tacked up with satisfaction, remembering Mrs. +Purdy's admired fruit pictures. + +"'Tain't half so dark in here as 'tis down in Smeltses," she bragged to +Fidy, who viewed her efforts with pessimism. "Once last summer the sun +come in here fer purty near a week. It shined down the shaft. You ast +Lobelia if it didn't." + +Nance was nailing a pin into the wall with the heel of her slipper, and +the loose plaster was dropping behind the bed. + +"Mis' Purdy says if I don't say no cuss words, an' wash meself all +over on Wednesdays and Sat'days, she's goin' to help me make myself a +new dress!" + +"Why don't she give you one done made?" asked Fidy. + +"She ain't no charity lady!" said Nance indignantly. "Me an' her's +friends. She said we was." + +"What's she goin' to give Dan?" asked Fidy, to whom personages from the +upper world were interesting only when they bore gifts in their hands. + +"She ain't givin' him nothin', Silly! She's lettin' him help her. He gits +a quarter a hour, an' his dinner fer wheelin' Mr. Walter in the park." + +"They say Mr. Jack's give him a room over the saloon 'til his maw +comes back." + +"I reckon I know it. I made him! You jus' wait 'til December when +Dan'll be fourteen. Once he gits to work he won't have to take nothin' +offen nobody!" + +School as well as home took on a new interest under Mrs. Purdy's +influence. Shoes and textbooks appeared almost miraculously, and reports +assumed a new and exciting significance. Under this new arrangement Dan +blossomed into a model of righteousness, but Nance's lapses from grace +were still frequent. The occasional glimpses she was getting of a code of +manners and morals so different from those employed by her stepmother, +were not of themselves sufficient to reclaim her. On the whole she found +being good rather stupid and only consented to conform to rules when she +saw for herself the benefit to be gained. + +For instance, when she achieved a burning desire to be on the honor roll +and failed on account of being kept at home, she took the matter into her +own small hands and reported herself to the once despised truant +officer. The result was a stormy interview between him and her stepmother +which removed all further cause of jealousy on the part of Mr. Snawdor, +and gave Nance a record for perfect attendance. + +Having attained this distinction, she was fired to further effort. She +could soon glibly say the multiplication tables backward, repeat all the +verses in her school reader, and give the names and length of the most +important rivers in the world. On two occasions she even stepped into +prominence. The first was when she electrified a visiting trustee by her +intimate knowledge of the archipelagos of the eastern hemisphere. The +fact that she had not the remotest idea of the nature of an archipelago +was mercifully not divulged. The second had been less successful. It was +during a visit of Bishop Bland's to the school. He was making a personal +investigation concerning a report, then current, that public school +children were underfed. Bishop Bland was not fond of children, but he was +sensitive to any slight put upon the stomach, and he wished very much to +be able to refute the disturbing rumor. + +"Now I cannot believe," he said to the sixth grade, clasping his plump +hands over the visible result of many good dinners, "that any one of you +nice boys and girls came here this morning hungry. I want any boy in the +room who is not properly nourished at home to stand up." + +Nobody rose, and the bishop cast an affirmative smile on the principal. + +"As I thought," he continued complacently. "Now I'm going to ask any +little girl in this room to stand up and tell us just exactly what she +had for breakfast. I shall not be in the least surprised if it was just +about what I had myself." + +There was a silence, and it began to look as if nobody was going to call +the bishop's bluff, when Nance jumped up from a rear seat and said at the +top of her voice: + +"A pretzel and a dill pickle!" + +The new-found enthusiasm for school might have been of longer duration +had it not been for a counter-attraction at home. From that first night +when old "Mr. Demry," as he had come to be called, had played for her to +dance, Nance had camped on his door-step. Whenever the scrape of his +fiddle was heard from below, she dropped whatever she held, whether it +was a hot iron or the baby, and never stopped until she reached the +ground floor. And by and by other children found their way to him, not +only the children of the tenement, but of the whole neighborhood as well. +It was soon noised abroad that he knew how to coax the fairies out of the +woods and actually into the shadows of Calvary Alley where they had never +been heard of before. With one or two children on his knees and a circle +on the floor around him, he would weave a world of dream and rainbows, +and people it with all the dear invisible deities of childhood. And while +he talked, his thin cheeks would flush, and his dim eyes shine with the +same round wonder as his listeners. + +But some nights when the children came, they found him too sleepy to tell +stories or play on the fiddle. At such times he always emptied his +pockets of small coins and sent the youngsters scampering away to find +the pop-corn man. Then he would stand unsteadily at the door and watch +them go, with a wistful, disappointed look on his tired old face. + +Nance overheard her elders whispering that "he took something," and she +greatly feared that he would meet a fate similar to that of Joe Smelts. +In Joe's case it was an overcoat, and he had been forced to accept the +hospitality of the State for thirty days. Nance's mind was greatly +relieved to find that it was only powders that Mr. Demry took--powders +that made him walk queer and talk queer and forget sometimes where he +lived. Then it was that the children accepted him as their special +charge. They would go to his rescue wherever they found him and guide his +wandering footsteps into the haven of Calvary Alley. + +"He's a has-benn," Mrs. Snawdor declared to Uncle Jed. "You an' me are +never-wases, but that old gent has seen better days. They tell me that +settin' down in the orchestry, he looks fine. That's the reason his +coat's always so much better'n his shoes an' pants; he dresses up the +part of him that shows. You can tell by the way he acts an' talks that +he's different from us." + +Perhaps that was the reason, that while Nance loved Uncle Jed quite as +much, she found Mr. Demry far more interesting. Everything about him was +different, from his ideas concerning the proper behavior of boys and +girls, to his few neatly distributed belongings. His two possessions that +most excited her curiosity and admiration, were the violin and its +handsome old rosewood case, which you were not allowed to touch, and a +miniature in a frame of gold, of a beautiful pink and white girl in a +pink and white dress, with a fair curl falling over her bare shoulder. +Nance would stand before the latter in adoring silence; then she would +invariably say: + +"Go on an' tell me about her, Mr. Demry!" + +And standing behind her, with his fine sensitive hands on her shoulders, +Mr. Demry would tell wonderful stories of the little girl who had once +been his. And as he talked, the delicate profile in the picture became an +enchanting reality to Nance, stirring her imagination and furnishing an +object for her secret dreams. + +Hitherto Birdie Smelts had been her chief admiration. Birdie was fourteen +and wore French heels and a pompadour and had beaux. She had worked in +the ten-cent store until her misplaced generosity with the glass beads +on her counter resulted in her being sent to a reformatory. But Birdie's +bold attractions suffered in comparison with the elusive charm of the +pink and white goddess with the golden curl. + +This change marked the dawn of romance in Nance's soul. Up to this time +she had demanded of Mr. Demry the most "scareful" stories he knew, but +from now on Blue Beard and Jack, the Giant-Killer had to make way for +Cinderella and the Sleeping Beauty. She went about with her head full of +dreams, and eyes that looked into an invisible world. It was not that the +juvenile politics of the alley were less interesting, or the street +fights or adventures of the gang less thrilling. It was simply that life +had become absorbingly full of other things. + +As the months passed Mrs. Snawdor spent less and less time at home. She +seemed to think that when she gave her nights on her knees for her +family, she was entitled to use the remaining waking hours for +recreation. This took the form of untiring attention to other people's +business. She canvassed the alley for delinquent husbands to admonish, +for weddings to arrange, for funerals to supervise--the last being a +specialty, owing to experience under the late Mr. Yager. + +Upon one of the occasions when she was superintending the entrance of a +neighboring baby into the world, her own made a hurried exit. A banana +and a stick of licorice proved too stimulating a diet for him, and he +closed his eyes permanently on a world that had offered few attractions. + +It was Nance who, having mothered him from his birth, worked with him +through the long night of agony; and who, when the end came, cut the +faded cotton flowers from her hat to put in the tiny claw-like hand that +had never touched a real blossom; and it was Nance's heart that broke +when they took him away. + +It is doubtful whether any abstract moral appeal could have awakened her +as did the going out of that little futile life. It stirred her deepest +sympathies and affections, and connected her for the first time with the +forces that make for moral and social progress. + +"He wouldn't a-went if we'd treated him right!" she complained +bitterly to Mr. Snawdor a week later. "He never had no sunshine, nor +fresh air, nor nothin'. You can't expect a baby to live where a +sweet-potato vine can't!" + +"He's better off than me," said Mr. Snawdor, "what with the funeral, an' +the coal out, an' the rent due, I'm at the end of my rope. I told her it +was comin'. But she would have a white coffin an' six hacks. They'll have +to set us out in the street fer all I can see!" + +Nance looked at him apprehensively. + +"Well, we better be doin' something'," she said. "Can't Uncle Jed help +us?" + +"I ain't goin' to let him. He's paid my rent fer the last time." + +This unexpected flare of independence in Mr. Snawdor was disturbing. The +Snawdor family without Uncle Jed was like a row of stitches from which +the knitting needle has been withdrawn. + +"If I was two years older, I could go to work," said Nance, thinking of +Dan, who was now on the pay-roll of Clarke's Bottle Factory. + +"It ain't right to make you stop school," said Mr. Snawdor. "It ain't +bein' fair to you." + +"I'd do it all right," said Nance, fired by his magnanimity, "only +they're on to me now I've reported myself. Ain't you makin' any money at +the shop?" + +Mr. Snawdor shook his head. + +"I might if I was willin' to buy junk. But you know where them boys gets +their stuff." + +Nance nodded wisely. + +"The gang bust into a empty house last night an' cut out all the lead +pipes. I seen 'em comin' home with it." + +Mr. Snawdor rose and went to the window. + +"There ain't no chance fer a honest man," he said miserably. "I'm sick o' +livin', that's whut I am. I am ready to quit." + +When Mrs. Snawdor arrived, she swept all domestic problems +impatiently aside. + +"Fer goodness' sake don't come tellin' me no more hard-luck tales. Ain't +I got troubles enough of my own? Nance, soon 's you git through, go git +me a bucket of beer, an' if you see any of the Gormans, say I'll stop in +this evenin' on my way to work." + +"I ain't goin' fer the beer no more," announced Nance. + +"An' will ye tell me why?" asked Mrs. Snawdor. + +"'Cause I ain't," said Nance, knowing the futility of argument. + +Mrs. Snawdor lifted her hand to strike, but changed her mind. She was +beginning to have a certain puzzled respect for her stepdaughter's +decision of character. + +After the children had been put to bed and Nance had cried over the +smallest nightgown, no longer needed, she slipped down to the second +floor and, pausing before the door behind which the sewing-machines were +always whirring, gave a peculiar whistle. It was a whistle possible only +to a person who boasted the absence of a front tooth, and it brought Ike +Lavinski promptly to the door. + +Ikey was a friend whom she regarded with mingled contempt and +admiration--contempt because he was weak and undersized, admiration +because he was the only person of her acquaintance who had ever had his +name in the newspaper. On two occasions he had been among the honor +students at the high school, and his family and neighbors regarded him as +an intellectual prodigy. + +"Say, Ikey," said Nance, "if you was me, an' had to make some money, an' +didn't want to chuck school, what would you do?" + +Ikey considered the matter. Money and education were the most important +things in the world to him, and were not to be discussed lightly. + +"If you were bigger," he said, sweeping her with a critical eye, "you +might try sewing pants." + +"Could I do it at night? How much would it pay me? Would yer pa take me +on?" Nance demanded all in a breath. + +"He would if he thought they wouldn't get on to it." + +"I'd keep it dark," Nance urged. "I could slip down every night after I +git done my work, an' put in a couple of hours, easy. I'm a awful big +child fer my age--feel my muscle! Go on an' make him take me on, Ikey, +will you?" + +And Ikey condescendingly agreed to use his influence. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +BUTTONS + + +The Lavinskis' flat on the second floor had always possessed a mysterious +fascination for Nance. In and out of the other flats she passed at will, +but she had never seen beyond the half-open door of the Lavinskis'. All +day and far into the night, the sewing-machines ran at high pressure, and +Mr. Lavinski shuffled in and out carrying huge piles of pants on his +head. The other tenants stopped on the stairs to exchange civilities or +incivilities with equal warmth; they hung out of windows or dawdled +sociably in doorways. But summer and winter alike the Lavinskis herded +behind closed doors and ran their everlasting sewing-machines. + +Mrs. Snawdor gave her ready consent to Nance trying her hand as a "home +finisher." + +"We got to git money from somewheres," she said, "an' I always did want +to know how them Polocks live. But don't you let on to your Uncle Jed +what you're doing." + +"I ain't goin' to let on to nobody," said Nance, thrilled with the +secrecy of the affair. + +The stifling room into which Ikey introduced her that night was supposed +to be the Lavinskis' kitchen, but it was evident that the poor room had +long ago abandoned all notions of domesticity. The tea-kettle had been +crowded off the stove by the pressing irons; a wash-tub full of neglected +clothes, squeezed itself into a distant corner, and the cooking utensils +had had to go climbing up the walls on hooks and nails to make way on the +shelves for sewing materials. + +On one corner of the table, between two towering piles of pants, were the +remains of the last meal, black bread, potatoes, and pickled herring. +Under two swinging kerosene lamps, six women with sleeves rolled up and +necks bared, bent over whirring machines, while Mr. Lavinski knelt on the +floor tying the finished garments into huge bundles. + +"Here's Nance Molloy, Pa" said Ikey, raising his voice above the noise of +the machines and tugging at his father's sleeve. + +Mr. Lavinski pushed his derby hat further back on his perspiring brow, +and looked up. He had a dark, sharp face, and alert black eyes, exactly +like Ikey's, and a black beard with two locks of black hair trained +down in front of his ears to meet it. Without pausing in his work he +sized Nance up. + +"I von't take childern anny more. I tried it many times already. De +inspector git me into troubles. It don't pay." + +"But I'll dodge the inspectors," urged Nance. + +"You know how to sew, eh?" + +"No; but you kin learn me. Please, Mr. Lavinski, Ikey said you would." + +Mr. Lavinski bestowed a doting glance on his son. + +"My Ikey said so, did he? He thinks he own me, that boy. I send him to +high school. I send him to Hebrew class at the synagogue at night. He +vill be big rich some day, that boy; he's got a brain on him." + +"Cut it out, Pa," said Ikey, "Nance is a smart kid; you won't lose +anything on her." + +The result was that Nance was accorded the privilege of occupying a stool +in the corner behind the hot stove and sewing buttons on knee pantaloons, +from eight until ten P.M. At first the novelty of working against time, +with a room full of grown people, and of seeing the great stacks of +unfinished garments change into great stacks of finished ones, was +stimulation in itself. She was proud of her cushion full of strong +needles and her spool of coarse thread. She was pleased with the nods of +approval gentle Mrs. Lavinski gave her work in passing, and of the slight +interest with which she was regarded by the other workers. + +But as the hours wore on, and the air became hotter and closer, and no +enlivening conversation came to relieve the strain, her interest began to +wane. By nine o'clock her hands were sore and stained, and her back +ached. By a quarter past, the buttons were slipping through her fingers, +and she could not see to thread her needle. + +"You vill do better to-morrow night," said Mrs. Lavinski kindly, in her +wheezing voice. "I tell Ikey you do verra good." + +Mrs. Lavinski looked shriveled and old. She wore a glossy black wig and +long ear-rings, and when she was not coughing, she smiled pleasantly over +her work. Once Mr. Lavinski stopped pressing long enough to put a cushion +at her back. + +"My Leah is a saint," he said. "If effra'boddy was so good as her, the +Messiah would come." + +Nance dreamed of buttons that night, and by the next evening her ambition +to become a wage-earner had died completely. + +But a family conclave at the supper table revealed such a crisis in the +family finances that she decided to keep on at the Lavinskis' for another +week. Uncle Jed was laid up with the rheumatism, and Mr. Snawdor's entire +stock in trade had been put in a wheelbarrow and dumped into the street, +and a strange sign already replaced his old one of "Bungs and Fawcetts." + +Things seemed in such a bad way that Nance had about decided to lay the +matter before Mrs. Purdy, when Dan brought the disconcerting news that +Mrs. Purdy had taken her brother south for the rest of the winter, and +that there would be no more visits to the little house in Butternut Lane. + +So Nance, not knowing anything better to do, continued to sit night +after night on her stool behind the hot stove, sewing on buttons. +Thirty-six buttons meant four cents, four cents meant a loaf of bread--a +stale loaf, that is. + +"Your little fingers vill git ofer bein' sore," Mrs. Lavinski assured +her. "I gif you alum water to put on 'em. Dat makes 'em hard." + +They not only became hard; they became quick and accurate, and Nance got +used to the heat and the smell, and she almost got used to the backache. +It was sitting still and being silent that hurt her more than anything +else. Mr. Lavinski did not encourage conversation,--it distracted the +workers,--and Nance's exuberance, which at first found vent in all sorts +of jokes and capers, soon died for lack of encouragement. She learned, +instead, to use all her energy on buttons and, being denied verbal +expression, she revolved many things in her small mind. The result of her +thinking was summed up in her speech to her stepmother at the end of the +first week. + +"Gee! I'm sick of doin' the same thing! I ain't learnin' nothin'. If +anybody was smart, they could make a machine to put on two times as many +buttons as me in half the time. I want to begin something at the +beginning and make it clean through. I'm sick an' tired of buttons. I'm +goin' to quit!" + +But Mrs. Snawdor had come to a belated realization of the depleted state +of the family treasury and she urged Nance to keep on for the present. + +"We better cut all the corners we kin," she said, "till Snawdor gits over +this fit of the dumps. Ain't a reason in the world he don't go into the +junk business. I ain't astin' him to drive aroun' an' yell 'Old iron!' I +know that's tryin' on a bashful man. All I ast him is to set still an' +let it come to him. Thank the Lord, I _have_ known husbands that wasn't +chicken-hearted!" + +So Nance kept on reluctantly, even after Mr. Snawdor got a small job +collecting. Sometimes she went to sleep over her task and had to be +shaken awake, but that was before she began to drink black coffee with +the other workers at nine o'clock. + +One thing puzzled her. When Ikey came from night school, he was never +asked to help in the work, no matter how much his help was needed. He was +always given the seat by the table nearest the lamp, and his father +himself cleared a place for his books. + +"Ikey gits the education," Mr. Lavinski would say, with a proud smile. +"The Rabbi says he is the smartest boy in the class. He takes prizes over +big boys. Ve vork fer him now, an' some day he make big money an' take +care of us!" + +Education as seen through Mr. Lavinski's eyes took on a new aspect for +Nance. It seemed that you did not get rich by going to work at fourteen, +but by staying at school and in some miraculous way skipping the factory +altogether. "I vork with my hands," said Mr. Lavinski; "my Ikey, he vorks +with his head." + +Nance fell into the way of bringing her school books downstairs at night +and getting Ike to help her with her lessons. She would prop the book in +front of her and, without lessening the speed of her flying fingers, ply +him with the questions that had puzzled her during the day. + +"I wisht I was smart as you!" she said one night. + +"I reckon you do!" said Ike. "I work for it." + +"You couldn't work no more 'n whut I do!" Nance said indignantly. + +"There's a difference between working and being worked," said Ike, +wisely. "If I were you, I'd look out for number one." + +"But who would do the cookin' an' lookin' after the kids, an' all?" + +"They are nothing to you," said Ike; "none of the bunch is kin to you. +Catch me workin' for them like you do!" + +Nance was puzzled, but not convinced. Wiser heads than hers have +struggled with a similar problem in vain. She kept steadily on, and it +was only when the squeak of Mr. Demry's fiddle came up from below that +her fingers fumbled and the buttons went rolling on the floor. Six +nights in the week, when Mr. Demry was in condition, he played at the +theater, and on Sunday nights he stayed at home and received his young +friends. On these occasions Nance became so restless that she could +scarcely keep her prancing feet on the floor. She would hook them +resolutely around the legs of the stool and even sit on them one at a +time, but despite all her efforts, they would respond to the rhythmic +notes below. + +"Them tunes just make me dance settin' down," she declared, trying to +suit the action to the words. + +Sometimes on a rainy afternoon when nobody was being born, or getting +married, or dying, Mrs. Snawdor stayed at home. At such times Nance +seized the opportunity to shift her domestic burden. + +There was a cheap theater, called "The Star," around the corner, where a +noisy crowd of boys and girls could always be found in the gallery. It +was a place where you ate peanuts and dropped the shells on the heads of +people below, where you scrapped for your seat and joined in the chorus +and shrieked over the antics of an Irishman, a darkey, or a Jew. But it +was a luxury seldom indulged in, for it cost the frightful sum of ten +cents, not including the peanuts. + +For the most part Nance's leisure half-hours were spent with Mr. Demry, +discussing a most exciting project. He was contemplating the unheard-of +festivity of a Christmas party, and the whole alley was buzzing with it. +Even the big boys in Dan's gang were going to take part. There were to +be pirates and fairies and ogres, and Nance was to be the princess and +do a fancy dance in a petticoat trimmed with silver paper, and wear a +tinsel crown. + +Scrubbing the floor, figuring on the blackboard, washing dishes, or +sewing on buttons, she was aware of that tinsel crown. For one magic +night it was going to transform her into a veritable princess, and who +knew but that a prince in doublet and hose and sweeping plume might +arrive to claim her? But when Nance's imagination was called upon to +visualize the prince, a hateful image came to her of a tall, slender boy, +clad in white, with a contemptuous look in his handsome brown eyes. + +"I don't know what ails Nance these days," Mrs. Snawdor complained to +Uncle Jed. "She sasses back if you look at her, an' fergits everything, +an' Snawdor says she mutters an' jabbers something awful in her sleep." + +"Seems to me she works too hard," said Uncle Jed, still ignorant of her +extra two hours in the sweat-shop. "A growin' girl oughtn't to be doin' +heavy washin' an' carryin' water an' coal up two flights." + +"Why, Nance is strong as a ox," Mrs. Snawdor insisted, "an' as fer +eatin'! Why it looks like she never can git filled up." + +"Well, what ails her then?" persisted Uncle Jed. + +"I bet I know!" said Mrs. Snawdor darkly. "It's that there vaccination. +Las' time I hid the other childern from the inspector she had to come out +an' argue with him fer herself. She got paid up proper fer givin' in to +him. Her arm was a plumb sight." + +"Do you suppose it's the poison still workin' on her?" Uncle Jed asked, +watching Nance in the next room as she lifted a boiler filled with the +washing water from the stove. + +"Why, of course, it is! Talk to me about yer State rules an' +regerlations! It does look like us poor people has got troubles enough +already, without rich folks layin' awake nights studyin' up what they can +do to us next." + + + + +CHAPTER X + +THE PRINCESS COMES TO GRIEF + + +And bring her rose-winged fancies, +From shadowy shoals of dream +To clothe her in the wistful hour +When girlhood steals from bud to flower; +Bring her the tunes of elfin dances, +Bring her the faery Gleam.--BURKE. + +Christmas fell on a Saturday and a payday, and this, together with Mr. +Demry's party, accounts for the fact that the holiday spirit, which +sometimes limps a trifle languidly past tenement doors, swaggered with +unusual gaiety this year in Calvary Alley. You could hear it in the +cathedral chimes which began at dawn, in the explosion of fire-crackers, +in the bursts of noisy laughter from behind swinging doors. You could +smell it in the whiffs of things frying, broiling, burning. You could +feel it in the crisp air, in the crunch of the snow under your feet, and +most of all you could see it in the happy, expectant faces of the +children, who rushed in and out in a fever of excitement. + +Early in the afternoon Nance Molloy, with a drab-colored shawl over her +head and something tightly clasped in one bare, chapped fist, rushed +forth on a mysterious mission. When she returned, she carried a +pasteboard box hugged to her heart. The thought of tripping her fairy +measure in worn-out shoes tied on with strings, had become so intolerable +to her that she had bartered her holiday for a pair of white slippers. +Mr. Lavinski had advanced the money, and she was to work six hours a day, +instead of two, until she paid the money back. + +But she was in no mood to reckon the cost, as she prepared for the +evening festivities. So great was her energy and enthusiasm, that the +contagion spread to the little Snawdors, each of whom submitted with +unprecedented meekness to a "wash all over." Nance dressed herself last, +wrapping her white feet and legs in paper to keep them clean until the +great hour should arrive. + +"Why, Nance Molloy! You look downright purty!" Mrs. Snawdor exclaimed, +when she came up after assisting Mr. Demry with his refreshments. "I +never would 'a' believed it!" + +Nance laughed happily. The effect had been achieved by much experimenting +before the little mirror over her soap box. The mirror had a wave in it +which gave the beholder two noses, but Nance had kept her pink and white +ideal steadily in mind, and the result was a golden curl over a bare +shoulder. The curl would have been longer had not half of it remained in +a burnt wisp around the poker. + +But such petty catastrophes have no place in a heart overflowing with +joy. Nance did not even try to keep her twinkling feet from dancing; +she danced through the table-setting and through the dish-washing, and +between times she pressed her face to the dirty pane of the front +window to see if the hands on the big cathedral clock were getting any +nearer to five. + +"They're goin' to have Christmas doin's over to the cathedral, too," she +cried excitedly. "The boards is off the new window, an' it's jus' like +the old one, an' ever'thing's lit up, an' it's snowin' like ever'thing!" + +Mr. Demry's party was to take place between the time he came home from +the matinee and the time he returned for the evening performance. Long +before the hour appointed, his guests began to arrive, dirty-faced and +clean, fat and thin, tidy and ragged, big and little, but all wearing in +their eyes that gift of nature to the most sordid youth, the gift of +expectancy. There were fairies and ogres and pirates and Indians in +costumes that needed only the proper imagination to make them convincing. +If by any chance a wistful urchin arrived in his rags alone, Mr. Demry +promptly evolved a cocked hat from a newspaper, and a sword from a box +top, and transformed him into a prancing knight. + +The children had been to Sunday-school entertainments where they had sat +in prim rows and watched grown people have all the fun of fixing the +tree and distributing the presents, but for most of them this was the +first Christmas that they had actually helped to make. Every link in the +colored paper garlands was a matter of pride to some one. + +What the children had left undone, Mr. Demry had finished. All the +movables had been put out of sight as if they were never to be wanted +again. From the ceiling swung two glowing paper lanterns that threw soft, +mysterious, dancing lights on things. In the big fireplace a huge fire +crackled and roared, and on the shelf above it were stacks of golden +oranges, and piles of fat, brown doughnuts. Across one corner, on a stout +cord, hung some green branches with small candles twinkling above them. +It was not exactly a Christmas tree, but it had evidently fooled Santa +Claus, for on every branch hung a trinket or a toy for somebody. + +And nobody thought, least of all Mr. Demry, of how many squeaks of the +old fiddle had gone into the making of this party, of the bread and meat +that had gone into the oranges and doughnuts, of the fires that should +have warmed Mr. Demry's chilled old bones for weeks to come, that went +roaring up the wide chimney in one glorious burst of prodigality. + +When the party was in full swing and the excitement was at its highest, +the guests were seated on the floor in a double row, and Mr. Demry took +his stand by the fireplace, with his fiddle under his chin, and began +tuning up. + +Out in the dark hall, in quivering expectancy, stood the princess, +shivering with impatience as she waited for Dan to fling open the door +for her triumphant entrance. Every twang of the violin strings +vibrated in her heart, and she could scarcely wait for the signal. It +was the magic moment when buttons ceased to exist and tinsel crowns +became a reality. + +The hall was dark and very cold, and the snow drifting in made a white +patch on the threshold. Nance, steadying her crown against the icy +draught, lifted her head suddenly and listened. From the room on the +opposite side of the hall came a woman's frightened cry, followed by the +sound of breaking furniture. The next instant the door was flung open, +and Mrs. Smelts, with her baby in her arms, rushed forth. Close behind +her rolled Mr. Smelts, his shifted ballast of Christmas cheer threatening +each moment to capsize him. + +"I'll learn ye to stop puttin' cures in my coffee!" he bellowed. +"Spoilin' me taste fer liquor, are ye? I'll learn ye!" + +"I never meant no harm, Jim," quailed Mrs. Smelts, cowering in the corner +with one arm upraised to shield the baby. "I seen the ad in the paper. It +claimed to be a whisky-cure. Don't hit me, Jim--don't--" But before she +could finish, Mr. Smelts had struck her full in the face with a brutal +fist and had raised his arm to strike again. But the blow never fell. + +The quick blood that had made Phil Molloy one of the heroes of Chickasaw +Bluffs rose in the veins of his small granddaughter, and she suddenly saw +red. Had Jim Smelts been twice the size he was, she would have sprung at +him just the same and rained blow after stinging blow upon his befuddled +head with her slender fairy wand. + +"Git up the steps!" she shrieked to Mrs. Smelts. "Fer God's sake git out +of his way! Dan! Dan Lewis! Help! Help!" + +Mr. Smelts, infuriated at the interference, had pinioned Nance's arms +behind her and was about to beat her crowned head against the wall when +Dan rushed into the hall. + +"Throw him out the front door!" screamed Nance. "Help me push him down +the steps!" + +Mr. Smelts' resistance was fierce, but brief. His legs were much drunker +than his arms, and when the two determined youngsters flung themselves +upon him and shoved him out of the door, he lost his balance and fell +headlong to the street below. + +By this time the party had swarmed into the hall and out on the steps +and Mr. Demry's gentle, frightened face could be seen peering over their +decorated heads. The uproar had brought other tenants scurrying from the +upper floors, and somebody was dispatched for a police. Dense and +denser grew the crowd, and questions, excuses, accusations were heard on +every side. + +"They've done killed him," wailed a woman's voice above the other noises. +It was Mrs. Smelts who, with all the abandonment of a bereft widow, cast +herself beside the huddled figure lying motionless in the snow. + +"What's all this row about?" demanded Cockeye, forcing his way to the +front and assuming an air of stern authority. + +"They've killed my Jim!" wailed Mrs. Smelts. "I'm goin' to have the +law on 'em!" + +The policeman, with an impolite request that she stop that there +caterwauling, knelt on the wet pavement and made a hasty diagnosis +of the case. + +"Leg's broke, and head's caved in a bit. That's all I can see is the +matter of him. Who beat him up?" + +"Him an' her!" accused Mrs. Smelts hysterically, pointing to Dan and +Nance, who stood shivering beside Mr. Demry on the top step. + +"Well, I'll be hanged if them ain't the same two that was had up last +summer!" said the policeman in profound disgust. "It's good-by fer them +all right." + +"But we was helpin' Mis' Smelts!" cried Nance in bewilderment. "He was +beatin' her. He was goin' to hit the baby--" + +"Here comes the Black Maria!" yelled an emissary from the corner, and +the crowd parted as the long, narrow, black patrol-wagon clanged noisily +into the narrow court. + +Mr. Smelts was lifted in, none too gently, and as he showed no signs of +returning consciousness, Cock-eye paused irresolute and looked at Dan. + +"You best be comin' along, too," he said with sudden decision. "The bloke +may be hurt worse 'rn I think. I'll just drop you at the detention home +'til over Sunday." + +"You shan't take Dan Lewis!" cried Nance in instant alarm. "He was +helpin' me, I tell you! He ain't done nothin' bad--" Then as Dan was +hustled down the steps and into the wagon, she lost her head completely. +Regardless of consequences, she hurled herself upon the law. She bit it +and scratched it and even spat upon it. + +Had Mrs. Snawdor or Uncle Jed been there, the catastrophe would never +have happened; but Mrs. Snawdor was at the post-office, and Uncle Jed at +the signal tower, and the feeble protests of Mr. Demry were as futile as +the twittering of a sparrow. + +"I'll fix you, you little spitfire!" cried the irate officer, holding her +hands and lifting her into the wagon. "Some of you women put a cloak +around her, and be quick about it." + +Nance, refusing to be wrapped up, continued to fight savagely. + +"I ain't goin' in the hurry-up wagon!" she screamed. "I ain't done +nothin' bad! Let go my hands!" + +But the wagon was already moving out of the alley, and Nance suddenly +ceased to struggle. An accidental combination of circumstances, too +complicated and overwhelming to be coped with, was hurrying her away to +some unknown and horrible fate. She looked at her mud-splashed white +slippers that were not yet paid for, and then back at the bright window +behind which the party was waiting. In a sudden anguish of disappointment +she flung herself face downward on the long seat and sobbed with a +passion that was entirely too great for her small body. + +Sitting opposite, his stiff, stubby hair sticking out beneath his pirate +hat, Dan Lewis, forgetting his own misfortune, watched her with dumb +compassion, and between them, on the floor, lay a drunken hulk of a man +with blood trickling across his ugly, bloated face, his muddy feet +resting on all that remained of a gorgeous, tinsel crown. + +It was at this moment that the Christmas spirit fled in despair from +Calvary Alley and took refuge in the big cathedral where, behind the +magnificent new window, a procession of white-robed choir-boys, led by +Mac Clarke, were joyously proclaiming: + +"Hark! the herald angels sing +Glory to the new-born King;" + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE STATE TAKES A HAND + + +The two reformatories to which the children, after various examinations, +were consigned, represented the worst and the best types of such +institutions. + +Dan Lewis was put behind barred windows with eight hundred other young +"foes of society." He was treated as a criminal, and when he resented it, +he was put under a cold shower and beaten with a rattan until he fainted. +Outraged, humiliated, bitterly resentful, his one idea was to escape. At +the end of a month of cruelty and injustice he was developing a hatred +against authority that would ultimately have landed him in the State +prison had not a miraculous interference from without set him free and +returned him to his work in Clarke's Bottle Factory. + +It all came about through a letter received by Mrs. Purdy, who was +wintering in Florida--a tear-stained, blotted, misspelled letter that had +been achieved with great difficulty. It ran: + +Dear Mis Purdy, me and Dan Lewis is pinched again. But I ain't a +Dellinkent. The jedge says theres a diffrunce. He says he was not puting +me in becose I was bad but becose I was not brot upright. He says for me +to be good and stay here and git a education. He says its my chanct. I +was mad at first, but now I aint. What Im writing you fer is to git Dan +Lewis out. He never done nothink what was wrong and he got sent to the +House of Refuse. Please Mis Purdy you git him off. He aint bad. You know +he aint. You ast everbody at home, and then go tell the Jedge and git him +off. I can't stan fer him to be in that ole hole becose it aint fair. +Please don't stop at nothink til you git him out. So good-by, loveingly, +NANCE. + + +This had been written a little at a time during Nance's first week at +Forest Home. She had arrived in such a burning state of indignation that +it required the combined efforts of the superintendent and the matron to +calm her. In fact her spirit did not break until she was subjected to a +thorough scrubbing from head to foot, and put to bed on a long porch +between cold, clean sheets. She was used to sleeping in her underclothes +in the hot close air of Snawdor's flat, with Fidy and Lobelia snuggled up +on each side. This icy isolation was intolerable! Her hair, still damp, +felt strange and uncomfortable; her eyes smarted from the recent +application of soap. She lay with her knees drawn up to her chin and +shivered and cried to go home. + +Hideous thoughts tormented her. Who'd git up the coal, an' do the +washin'? Would Mr. Snawdor fergit an' take off Rosy's aesophedity bag, +so she'd git the measles an' die like the baby? What did Mr. Lavinski +think of her fer not comin' to work out the slipper money? Would Dan ever +git his place back at the factory after he'd been in the House of Refuse? +Was Mr. Smelts' leg broke plum off, so's he'd have to hobble on a +peg-stick? + +She cowered under the covers. "God aint no friend of mine," she sobbed +miserably. + +When she awoke the next morning, she sat up and looked about her. The +porch in which she lay was enclosed from floor to ceiling in glass, and +there were rows of small white beds like her own, stretching away on each +side of her. The tip of her nose was very cold, but the rest of her was +surprisingly warm, and the fresh air tasted good in her mouth. It was +appallingly still and strange, and she lay down and listened for the +sounds that did not come. + +There were no factory whistles, no clanging of car bells, no lumbering of +heavy wagons. Instead of the blank wall of a warehouse upon which she was +used to opening her eyes, there were miles and miles of dim white fields. +Presently a wonderful thing happened. Something was on fire out there at +the edge of the world--something big and round and red. Nance held her +breath and for the first time in her eleven years saw the sun rise. + +When getting-up time came, she went with eighteen other girls into a big, +warm dressing-room. + +"This is your locker," said the girl in charge. + +"My whut?" asked Nance. + +"Your locker, where you put your clothes." + +Nance had no clothes except the ones she was about to put on, but the +prospect of being the sole possessor of one of those little closets +brought her the first gleam of consolation. + +The next followed swiftly. The owner of the adjoining locker proved to be +no other than Birdie Smelts. Whatever fear Nance had of Birdie's +resenting the part she had played in landing Mr. Smelts in the city +hospital was promptly banished. + +"You can't tell me nothing about paw," Birdie said at the end of Nance's +recital. "I only wish it was his neck instead of his leg that was broke." + +"But we never aimed to hurt him," explained Nance, to whom the accident +still loomed as a frightful nightmare. "They didn't have no right to send +me out here." + +"It ain't so worse," said Birdie indifferently. "You get enough to eat +and you keep warm and get away from rough-housin'; that's something." + +"But I don't belong here!" protested Nance, hotly. + +"Aw, forget it," advised Birdie, with a philosophical shrug of her +shapely shoulders. Birdie was not yet fifteen, but she had already +learned to take the course of least resistance. She was a pretty, +weak-faced girl, with a full, graceful figure and full red lips and +heavy-lidded eyes that always looked sleepy. + +"I wouldn't keer so much if it wasn't fer Dan Lewis," Nance said +miserably. "He was inside Mr. Demry's room, an' never knowed a thing +about it 'til I hollered." + +"Say, I believe you are gone on Dan!" said Birdie, lifting a +teasing finger. + +"I ain't either!" said Nance indignantly, "but I ain't goin' to quit +tryin' 'til I git him out!" + +In the bright airy dining-room where they went for breakfast, Nance sat +at a small table with five other girls and scornfully refused the glass +of milk they offered her as a substitute for the strong coffee to which +she was accustomed. She had about decided to starve herself to death, but +changed her mind when the griddle-cakes and syrup appeared. + +In fact, she changed her mind about many things during those first days. +After a few acute attacks of homesickness, she began despite herself to +take a pioneer's delight in blazing a new trail. It was the first time +she had ever come into contact for more than a passing moment, with +decent surroundings and orderly living, and her surprises were endless. + +"Say, do these guys make you put on airs like this all the time?" she +asked incredulously of her table-companion. + +"Like what?" + +"Like eatin' with a fork, an' washin' every day, an' doin' yer hair over +whether it needs it or not?" + +"If I had hair as grand as yours, they wouldn't have to make me fix it," +said the close-cropped little girl enviously. + +Nance looked at her suspiciously. Once before she had been lured by that +bait, and she was wary. But the envy in the eyes of the short-haired girl +was genuine. + +Nance took the first opportunity that presented itself to look in a +mirror. To her amazement, her tight, drab-colored braids had become +gleaming bands of gold, and there were fluffy little tendrils across her +forehead and at the back of her neck. It was unbelievable, too, how much +more becoming one nose was to the human countenance than two. + +A few days later when one of the older girls said teasingly, "Nance +Molloy is stuck on her hair!" Nance answered proudly, "Well, ain't I got +a right to be?" + +At the end of the first month word came from Mrs. Purdy that she had +succeeded in obtaining Dan's release, and that he was back at work at +Clarke's, and on probation again. This news, instead of making Nance +restless for her own freedom, had quite the opposite effect. Now that her +worry over Dan was at an end, she resigned herself cheerfully to the +business of being reformed. + +The presiding genius of Forest Home was Miss Stanley, the superintendent. +She did not believe in high fences or uniforms or bodily punishment. She +was tall, handsome, and serene, and she treated the girls with the same +grave courtesy with which she treated the directors. + +Nance regarded her with something of the worshipful awe she had once felt +before an image of the Virgin Mary. + +"She don't make you 'fraid exactly," she confided to Birdie. "She makes +you 'shamed." + +"You can tell she's a real lady the way she shines her finger-nails," +said Birdie, to whom affairs of the toilet were of great importance. + +"Another way you can tell," Nance added, trying to think the thing out +for herself, "is the way she takes slams. You an' me sass back, but a +real lady knows how to hold her jaw an' make you eat dirt just the same." + +They were standing side by side at a long table in a big, clean kitchen, +cutting out biscuit for supper. Other white-capped, white-aproned girls, +all intent upon their own tasks, were flitting about, and a teacher sat +at a desk beside the window, directing the work. The two girls had fallen +into the habit of doing their chores together and telling each other +secrets. Birdie's had mostly to do with boys, and it was not long before +Nance felt called upon to make a few tentative observations on the same +engrossing subject. + +"The prettiest boy I ever seen--" she said, "I mean I have ever +saw"--then she laughed helplessly. "Well, anyhow, he was that Clarke +feller. You know, the one that got pinched fer smashin' the window the +first time we was had up?" + +"Mac Clarke? Sure, I know him. He's fresh all right." + +Birdie did not go into particulars, but she looked important. + +"Say, Birdie," Nance asked admiringly, "when you git out of here, what +you goin' to do?" + +"I'll tell you what I _ain't_ going to do," said Birdie, impressively, in +a low voice, "I ain't going to stand in a store, and I ain't going out to +work, and I ain't going to work at Clarke's!" + +"But what else is left to do?" + +"Swear you won't tell?" + +Nance crossed her heart with a floury finger. + +"I'm going to be a actress," said Birdie. + +It was fortunate for Nance that Birdie's term at the home soon ended. She +was at that impressionable age which reflects the nearest object of +interest, and shortly after Birdie's departure she abandoned the idea of +joining her on the professional boards, and decided instead to become a +veterinary surgeon. + +This decision was reached through a growing intimacy with the lame old +soldier who presided over the Forest Home stables. "Doc" was a familiar +character in the county, and his advice about horses was sought far and +near. Next to horses he liked children, and after them dogs. Adults came +rather far down the line, excepting always Miss Stanley, whom he +regarded as infallible. + +On the red-letter Sunday when Uncle Jed had tramped the ten miles out +from town to assure himself of Nance's well-being, he discovered in Doc +an old comrade of the Civil War. They had been in the same company, Uncle +Jed as a drummer boy, and Doc in charge of the cavalry horses. + +"Why, I expect you recollict this child's grandpaw," Uncle Jed said, with +his hand on Nance's head, "Molloy, 'Fightin' Phil,' they called him. Went +down with the colors at Chickasaw Bluffs." + +Doc did remember. Fighting Phil had been one of the idols of his boyhood. + +Miss Stanley found in this friendship a solution of Nance's chief +difficulty. When a person of eleven has been doing practical housekeeping +for a family of eight, she naturally resents the suggestion that there is +anything in domestic science for her to learn. Moreover, when said person +is anemic and nervous from overwork, and has a tongue that has never +known control, it is perilously easy to get into trouble, despite heroic +efforts to be good. + +The wise superintendent saw in the girl all sorts of possibilities for +both good and evil. For unselfish service and passionate sacrifice, as +well as obstinate rebellion and hot-headed folly. + +At those unhappy times when Nance threatened to break over the bounds, +she was sent out to the stables to spend an afternoon with Doc. No +matter how sore her grievance, it vanished in the presence of the genial +old veterinarian. She never tired of hearing him tell of her fighting +Irish grandfather and the pranks he played on his messmates, of Uncle Jed +and the time he lost his drumsticks and marched barefoot in the snow, +beating his drum with the heels of his shoes. + +Most of all she liked the horses. She learned how to put on bandages and +poultices and to make a bran mash. Doc taught her how to give a sick +horse a drink out of a bottle without choking him, how to hold his tongue +with one hand and put a pill far down his throat with the other. The +nursing of sick animals seemed to come to her naturally, and she found it +much more interesting than school work and domestic science. + +"She's got a way with critters," Doc confided proudly to Miss Stanley. +"I've seen a horse eat out of her hand when it wouldn't touch food in +the manger." + +As the months slipped into years, the memory of Calvary Alley grew dim, +and Nance began to look upon herself as an integral part of this +orderly life which stretched away in a pleasant perspective of work and +play. It was the first time that she had ever been tempted to be good, +and she fell. It was not Miss Stanley's way to say "don't." Instead, +she said, "do," and the "do's" became so engrossing that the "don'ts" +were crowded out. + +At regular, intervals Mrs. Snawdor made application for her dismissal, +and just as regularly a probation officer visited the Snawdor flat and +pronounced it unfit. + +"I suppose if I had a phoneygraf an' lace curtains you'd let her come +home," Mrs. Snawdor observed caustically during one of these inspections. +"You bet I'll fix things up next time if I know you are comin'!" + +The State was doing its clumsy best to make up to Nance for what she had +missed. It was giving her free board, free tuition, and protection from +harmful influences. But that did not begin to square the State's account, +nor the account of society. They still owed her something for that early +environment of dirt and disease. The landlord in whose vile tenement she +had lived, the saloon-keeper who had sold her beer, the manufacturer who +had bought the garments she made at starvation wages, were all her +debtors. Society exists for the purpose of doing justice to its members, +and society had not begun to pay its debt to that youthful member whose +lot had been cast in Calvary Alley. + +One Saturday afternoon in the early spring of Nance's fourth year at +Forest Home, Miss Stanley stood in the school-house door, reading a +letter. It was the kind of a day when heaven and earth cannot keep away +from each other, but the fleecy clouds must come down to play in the +sparkling pools, and white and pink blossoms must go climbing up to the +sky to flaunt their sweetness against the blue. Yet Miss Stanley, reading +her letter, sighed. + +Coming toward her down the hillside, plunged a noisy group of children, +and behind them in hot pursuit came Nance Molloy, angular, long-legged, +lithe as a young sapling and half mad with the spring. + +"Such a child still!" sighed Miss Stanley, as she lifted a +beckoning hand. + +The children crowded about her, all holding out hot fists full of faded +wild flowers. + +"Look!" cried one breathlessly. "We found 'em in the hollow. And Nance +says if you'll let her, she'll take us next Saturday to the old mill +where some yellow vi'lets grow!" + +Miss Stanley looked down at the flushed, happy faces; then she put her +arm around Nance's shoulder. + +"Nancy will not be with us next Saturday," she said regretfully. "She's +going home." + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +CLARKE'S + + +Nance Molloy came out of Forest Home, an independent, efficient girl, +with clear skin, luminous blue eyes, and shining braids of fair hair. She +came full of ideals and new standards and all the terrible wisdom of +sixteen, and she dumped them in a mass on the family in Calvary Alley and +boldly announced that "what she was going to do was a-plenty!" + +But like most reformers, she reckoned too confidently on cooperation. The +rest of the Snawdor family had not been to reform school, and it had +strong objections to Nance's drastic measures. Her innovations met with +bitter opposition from William J., who indignantly declined to have the +hitherto respected privacy of his ears and nose invaded, to Mrs. Snawdor, +who refused absolutely to sleep with the windows open. + +"What's the sense in working your fingers off to buy coal to heat the +house if you go an' let out all the hot air over night?" she demanded. +"They've filled up yer head with fool notions, but I tell you right now, +you ain't goin' to work 'em off on us. You kin just tell that old maid +Stanley that when she's had three husbands and five children an' a step, +an' managed to live on less'n ten dollars a week, it'll be time enough +fer her to be learnin' me tricks!" + +"But don't all this mess ever get on your nerves? Don't you ever want to +clear out and go to the country?" asked Nance. + +"Not me!" said Mrs. Snawdor. "I been fightin' the country all my life. +It's bad enough bein' dirt pore, without goin' an' settin' down among the +stumps where there ain't nothin' to take yer mind off it." + +So whatever reforms Nance contemplated had to be carried out slowly and +with great tact. Mrs. Snawdor, having put forth one supreme effort to +make the flat sufficiently decent to warrant Nance's return, proposed for +the remainder of her life to rest on her laurels. As for the children, +they had grown old enough to have decided opinions of their own, and when +Nance threw the weight of her influence on the side of order and +cleanliness, she was regarded as a traitor in the camp. It was only Mr. +Snawdor who sought to uphold her, and Mr. Snawdor was but a broken reed. + +Meanwhile the all-important question of getting work was under +discussion. Miss Stanley had made several tentative suggestions, but none +of them met with Mrs. Snawdor's approval. + +"No, I ain't goin' to let you work out in private families!" she +declared indignantly. "She's got her cheek to ast it! Did you tell her +yer pa was a Molloy? An' Mr. Burks says yer maw was even better born than +what Bud was. I'm goin' to git you a job myself. I'm goin' to take you up +to Clarke's this very evenin'." + +"I don't want to work in a factory!" Nance said discontentedly, looking +out of the window into the dirty court below. + +"I suppose you want to run a beauty parlor," said Mrs. Snawdor, with +scornful reference to Nance's improved appearance. "You might just as +well come off them high stilts an' stop puttin' on airs, Dan Lewis has +been up to Clarke's goin' on four years now. I hear they're pushin' him +right along." + +Nance stopped drumming on the window-pane and became suddenly interested. +The one thing that had reconciled her to leaving Miss Stanley and the +girls at the home was the possibility of seeing Dan again. She wondered +what he looked like after these four years, whether he would recognize +her, whether he had a sweetheart? She had been home three days now and +had caught no glimpse of him. + +"We never see nothin' of him," her stepmother told her. "He's took up +with the Methodists, an' runs around to meetin's an' things with that +there Mis' Purdy." + +"Don't he live over Slap Jack's?" asked Nance. + +"Yes; he's got his room there still. I hear his ma died las' spring. +Flirtin' with the angels by now, I reckon." + +The prospect of seeing Dan cheered Nance amazingly. She spent the morning +washing and ironing her best shirt-waist and turning the ribbon on her +tam-o'-shanter. Every detail of her toilet received scrupulous attention. + +It was raining dismally when she and Mrs. Snawdor picked their way across +the factory yard that afternoon. The conglomerate mass of buildings known +as "Clarke's" loomed somberly against the dull sky. Beside the low +central building a huge gas-pipe towered, and the water, trickling down +it, made a puddle through which they had to wade to reach the door of the +furnace room. + +Within they could see the huge, round furnace with its belt of small +fiery doors, from which glass-blowers, with long blow-pipes were deftly +taking small lumps of moulten glass and blowing them into balls. + +"There's Dan!" cried Mrs. Snawdor, and Nance looked eagerly in the +direction indicated. + +In the red glare of the furnace, a big, awkward, bare-armed young fellow +was just turning to roll his red-hot ball on a board. There was a steady +look in the gray eyes that scowled slightly under the intense glare, a +sure movement of the hands that dropped the elongated roll into the +mold. When he saw Mrs. Snawdor's beckoning finger, he came to the door. + +"This here is Nance Molloy," said Mrs. Snawdor by way of introduction. +"She's about growed up sence you seen her. We come to see about gittin' +her a job." + +Nance, looking at the strange, stern face above her, withdrew the hand +she had held out. Dan did not seem to see her hand any more than he saw +her fresh shirt-waist and the hat she had taken so much pains to retrim. +After a casual nod he stood looking at the floor and rubbing the toe of +his heavy boot against his blow-pipe. + +"Sure," he said slowly, "but this is no fit place for a girl, Mrs. +Snawdor." + +Mrs. Snawdor bristled immediately. + +"I ain't astin' yer advice, Dan Lewis. I'm astin' yer help." + +Dan looked Nance over in troubled silence. + +"Is she sixteen yet?" he asked as impersonally as if she had not +been present. + +"Yes, an' past. I knowed they'd be scarin' up that dangerous trade +business on me next. How long before the foreman'll be here?" + +"Any time now," said Dan. "I'll take you into his office." + +With a sinking heart, Nance followed them into the crowded room. The heat +was stifling, and the air was full of stinging glass dust. All about +them boys were running with red hot bottles on big asbestos shovels. She +hated the place, and she hated Dan for not being glad to see her. + +"They are the carrying-in boys," Dan explained, continuing to address all +of his remarks to Mrs. Snawdor. "That's where I began. You wouldn't +believe that those kids often run as much as twenty-two miles a day. +Watch out there, boy! Be careful!" + +But his warning came too late. One of the smaller youngsters had stumbled +and dropped his shovel, and a hot bottle had grazed his leg, burning away +a bit of the stocking. + +"It's all right, Partner," cried Dan, springing forward, "You're not much +hurt. I'll fix you up." + +But the boy was frightened and refused to let him remove the stocking. + +"Let me do it," begged Nance. "I can get it off without hurting him." + +And while Dan held the child's leg steady, she bathed and bound it in a +way that did credit to Doc's training. Only once daring the process did +she look up, and then she was relieved to see instead of the stern face +of a strange young man, the compassionate, familiar face of the old Dan +she used to know. + +The interview with the foreman was of brief duration. He was a +thick-set, pimply-faced person whom Dan called Mr. Bean. He swept an +appraising eye over the applicant, submitted a few blunt questions to Dan +in an undertone, ignored Mrs. Snawdor's voluble comments, and ended by +telling Nance to report for work the following week. + +As Mrs. Snawdor and Nance took their departure, the former, whose +thoughts seldom traveled on a single track, said tentatively: + +"Dan Lewis has got to be real nice lookin' sence you seen him, ain't he?" + +"Nothin' to brag on," said Nance, still smarting at his indifference. But +as she turned the corner of the building, she stole a last look through +the window to where Dan was standing at his fiery post, his strong, +serious face and broad, bare chest lighted up by the radiance from the +glory-hole. + +It was with little enthusiasm that Nance presented herself at the factory +on Monday morning, ready to enlist in what Bishop Bland called "the noble +service of industry." Her work was in the finishing room where a number +of girls were crowded at machines and tables, filing, clipping, and +packing bottles. Her task was to take the screw-neck bottles that came +from the leer, and chip and file their jagged necks and shoulders until +all the roughness was removed. It was dirty work, and dangerous for +unskilled hands, and she found it difficult to learn. + +"Say, kid," said the ugly, hollow-chested girl beside her, "if I'm goin' +to be your learner, I want you to be more particular. Between you an' +this here other girl, you're fixin' to put my good eye out." + +Nance glanced up at the gaunt face with its empty eye socket and then +looked quickly away. + +"Say," said the other new girl, complainingly, "is it always hot like +this in here? I'm most choking." + +"We'll git the boss to put in a 'lectric fan fer you," suggested the +hollow-chested one, whose name was Mag Gist. + +Notwithstanding her distaste for the work, Nance threw herself into it +with characteristic vehemence. Speed seemed to be the quality above all +others that one must strive for, and speed she was determined to have, +regardless of consequences. + +"When you learn how to do this, what do you learn next?" she asked +presently. + +Mag laughed gruffly. + +"There ain't no next. If you'd started as a wrapper, you might 'a' +worked up a bit, but you never would 'a' got to be a chuck-grinder. I +been at this bench four years an' if I don't lose my job, I'll be here +four more." + +"But if you get to be awful quick, you can make money, can't you?" + +"You kin make enough to pay fer two meals a day if yer appetite ain't +too good." + +Nance's heart sank. It was a blow to find that Mag, who was the cleverest +girl in the finishing room, had been filing bottle necks for four years. +She stole a glance at her stooped shoulders and sallow skin and the +hideous, empty socket of her left eye. What was the good of becoming +expert if it only put one where Mag was? + +By eleven o'clock there was a sharp pain between her shoulder-blades, and +her feet ached so that she angrily kicked off first one shoe, then the +other. This was the signal for a general laugh. + +"They're kiddin' you fer sheddin' yer shoes," explained Mag, who had +laughed louder than anybody. "Greenhorns always do it first thing. By the +time you've stepped on a piece of glass onct or twict, you'll be glad +enough to climb back into 'em." + +After a while one of the girls started a song, and one by one the others +joined in. There were numerous verses, and a plaintive refrain that +referred to "the joy that ne'er would come again to you and I." + +When no more verses could be thought of, there were stories and doubtful +jokes which sent the girls into fits of wild laughter. + +"Oh, cheese it," said Mag after one of these sallies, "You all orter to +behave more before these kids." + +"They don't know what we are talkin' about," said a red-haired girl. + +"You bet I do," said Nance, with disgust, "but you all give me a sick +headache." + +When the foreman made his rounds, figures that had begun to droop were +galvanized into fresh effort. At Mag's bench he paused. + +"How are the fillies making it?" he asked, with a familiar hand on the +shoulder of each new girl. Nance's companion dropped her eyes with a +simpering smile, but Nance jerked away indignantly. + +The foreman looked at the back of the shining head and frowned. + +"You'll have to push up the stroke," he said. "Can't you see you lose +time by changing your position so often? What makes you fidget so?" + +Nance set her teeth resolutely and held her tongue. But her Irish +instinct always suffered from restraint and by the time the noon whistle +blew, she was in a state of sullen resentment. The thought of her beloved +Miss Stanley and what she would think of these surroundings brought a +lump into her throat. + +"Come on over here," called Mag from a group of girls at the open window. +"Don't you mind what Bean says. He's sore on any girl that won't eat +outen his dirty hand. You 're as smart again as that other kid. I can +tell right off if a girl's got gumption, an' if she's on the straight. + +"Chuck that Sunday-school dope," laughed a pretty, red-haired girl named +Gert. "You git her in wrong with Bean, an' I wouldn't give a nickel fer +her chance." + +"You ought to know," said Mag, drily. + +The talk ran largely to food and clothes, and Nance listened with growing +dismay. It seemed that most of the girls lived in rooming houses and took +their meals out. + +"Wisht I had a Hamberger," said Mag. "I ain't had a bite of meat fer a +month. I always buy my shoes with meat money." + +"I git my hats with breakfasts," said another girl. "Fourteen breakfasts +makes a dollar-forty. I kin buy a hat fer a dollar-forty-nine that's +swell enough fer anybody." + +"I gotta have my breakfast," said Mag. "Four cups of coffee ain't +nothin' to me." + +Gert got up and stretched herself impatiently. + +"I'm sick an' tired of hearin' you all talk about eatin'. Mag's idea of +Heaven is a place where you spend ten hours makin' money an' two eatin' +it up. Some of us ain't built like that. We got to have some fun as we +go along, an' we're goin' to git it, you bet your sweet life, one way or +the other." + +Soon after work was resumed, word was passed around that a big order had +come in, and nobody was to quit work until it was made up. A ripple of +sullen comment followed this announcement, but the girls bent to their +tasks with feverish energy. + +At two o'clock the other new girl standing next to Nance grew faint, and +had to be stretched on the floor in the midst of the broken glass. + +"She's a softie!" whispered Mag to Nance. "This ain't nothin' to what it +is in hot weather." + +The pain between Nance's shoulders was growing intolerable, and her cut +fingers and aching feet made her long to cast herself on the floor beside +the other girl and give up the fight. But pride held her to her task. +After what seemed to her an eternity she again looked at the big clock +over the door. It was only three. How was she ever to endure three more +hours when every minute now was an agony? + +Mag heard her sigh and turned her head long enough to say: + +"Hang yer arms down a spell; that kind of rests 'em. You ain't goin' to +flop, too, are you?" + +"Not if I can hold out." + +"I knowed you was game all right," said Mag, with grim approval. + +By six o'clock the last bottle was packed, and Nance washed the blood and +dirt off her hands and forced her swollen, aching feet into her shoes. +She jerked her jacket and tam-o'-shanter from the long row of hooks, and +half blind with weariness, joined the throng of women and girls that +jostled one another down the stairs. Every muscle of her body ached, and +her whole soul was hot with rebellion. She told herself passionately that +nothing in the world could induce her to come back; she was through with +factory work forever. + +As she limped out into the yard, a totally vanquished little soldier on +the battle-field of industry, she spied Dan Lewis standing beside the +tall gas-pipe, evidently waiting for somebody. He probably had a +sweetheart among all these trooping girls; perhaps it was the pretty, +red-haired one named Gert. The thought, dropping suddenly into a +surcharged heart, brimmed it over, and Nance had to sweep her fingers +across her eyes to brush away the tears. + +And then: + +"I thought I'd missed you," said Dan, quite as a matter of course, as he +caught step with her and raised her umbrella. + +Nance could have flung her tired arms about him and wept on his broad +shoulder for sheer gratitude. To be singled out, like that, before all +the girls on her first day, to have a beau, a big beau, pilot her through +the crowded streets and into Calvary Alley where all might see, was +sufficient to change the dullest sky to rose and lighten the heart of the +most discouraged. + +On the way home they found little to say, but Nance's aching feet fairly +tripped beside those of her tall companion, and when they turned Slap +Jack's corner and Dan asked in his slow, deliberate way, "How do you +think you are going to like the factory?" Nance answered +enthusiastically, "Oh, I like it splendid!" + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +EIGHT TO SIX + + +Through that long, wet spring Nance did her ten hours a day, six days in +the week and on the seventh washed her clothes and mended them. Her +breaking in was a hard one, for she was as quick of tongue as she was of +fingers, and her tirades against the monotony, the high speed, and the +small pay were frequent and vehement. Every other week when Dan was on +the night shift, she made up her mind definitely that she would stand it +no longer. + +But on the alternate weeks when she never failed to find him waiting at +the gas-pipe to take her home, she thought better of it. She loved to +slip in under his big cotton umbrella, when the nights were rainy, and +hold to his elbow as he shouldered a way for her through the crowd; she +liked to be a part of that endless procession of bobbing umbrellas that +flowed down the long, wet, glistening street; best of all she liked the +distinction of having a "steady" and the envious glances it brought her +from the other girls. + +Sometimes when they paused at a shop window, she caught her reflection in +a mirror, and smiled approval at the bright face under the red tam. She +wondered constantly if Dan thought she was pretty and always came to the +conclusion that he did not. + +From the time they left the factory until they saw the towering bulk of +the cathedral against the dusk, Nance's chatter never ceased. She +dramatized her experiences at the factory; she gave a lively account of +the doings of the Snawdor family; she wove tales of mystery around old +Mr. Demry. She had the rare gift of enhancing every passing moment with +something of importance and interest. + +Dan listened with the flattering homage a slow, taciturn nature often +pays a quick, vivacious one. It was only when problems concerning the +factory were touched upon that his tongue lost its stiffness. Under an +unswerving loyalty to his employers was growing a discontent with certain +existing conditions. The bad lighting system, the lack of ventilation, +the employment of children under age, were subjects that rendered him +eloquent. That cruel month spent in the reformatory had branded him so +deeply that he was supersensitive to the wrongs of others, and spent much +of his time in planning ways and means to better conditions. + +"Don't you ever want a good time, Dan?" Nance asked. "Don't you ever want +to sort of let go and do something reckless?" + +"No; but I'll tell you what I do want. I want a' education. I've a good +mind to go to night school and try to pick up some of the things I +didn't get a chance to learn when I was a kid." + +Nance scoffed the idea; school was almost invisible to her from the giddy +height of sixteen. "Let's go on a bat," she urged. "Let's go out and see +something." + +So on the four following Sundays Dan took her to see the library, the +reservoir, the city hall, and the jail. His ideas of recreation had not +been cultivated. + +The time in the week to which she always looked forward was Saturday +afternoon. Then they got out early, and if the weather was fine, they +would stop in Post-Office Square and, sitting on one of the iron benches, +watch the passing throng. There was something thrilling in the jostling +crowds, and the electric signs flashing out one by one down the long gay +thoroughfare. + +Post-Office Square, at the end of the day, was always littered with +papers and trash. In its center was a battered, weather kiosk, and facing +it, was a huge electric advertisement which indulged in the glittering +generality, that "You get what you pay for." + +It was not a place to inspire romance, yet every Saturday its benches +were crowded with boys and girls who had no place to visit except on +the street. + +Through the long spring dusks, with their tender skies and silver stars, +Nance and Dan kept company, unconcerned with the past or the future, +wholly content with the May-time of the present. At a word or touch from +Dan, Nance's inflammable nature would have taken fire but Dan, under Mrs. +Purdy's influence, was passing through an acute stage of religious +conversion, and all desires of the flesh were sternly repressed by that +new creed to which he was making such heroic efforts to conform. With the +zeal of a new convert, he considered it his duty to guard his small +companion against all love-making, including his own. + +Nance at an early age had developed a protective code that even without +Dan's forbidding looks and constant surveillance might have served its +purpose. Despite the high spirits and free speech that brought her so +many admiring glances from the boys in the factory, it was soon +understood that the "Molloy kid" was not to be trifled with. + +"Say, little Sister, I like your looks," Bean had said to her one morning +when they were alone in the hall. "It's more than I do yours," Nance had +answered coolly, with a critical glance at his pimply nose. + +As summer came on, the work, which at first was so difficult, gradually +became automatic, and while her shoulders always ached, and her feet were +always tired, she ceased for the most part to think of them. It was the +confinement that told upon her, and when the long bright days came, and +she thought of Forest Home and its woods and streams, her restlessness +increased. The stifling finishing room, the endless complaints of the +girls, and the everlasting crunching of glass under foot were at times +almost unendurable. + +One day when the blue of the sky could not be dimmed even by factory +smoke, and the air was full of enticement, Nance slipped out at the noon +hour, and, watching her chance, darted across the factory yard out +through the stables, to the road beyond. A decrepit old elm-tree, which +had evidently made heroic effort to keep tryst with the spring, was the +one touch of green in an otherwise barren landscape. Scrambling up the +bank, Nance flung herself on the ground beneath its branches, and between +the bites of a dry sandwich, proceeded to give vent to some of her +surplus vitality. + +"Arra, come in, Barney McKane, out of the rain," she sang at the top of +her voice. + + "And sit down until the moon comes out again, + Sure a cup of tay I'll brew, just enough for me and you, + We'll snuggle up together, and we'll talk about the weather, + Do you hear? Barney dear, there's a queer + Sort of feelin' round me heart, that gives me pain, + And I think the likes o' me could learn to like the likes o' ye, + Arra, come in, Barney McKane, out of the rain!" + +So absorbed was she in trying operatic effects that she did not notice +an approaching automobile until it came to a stop in the road below. + +"Hi there, Sembrich!" commanded a fresh young voice, the owner of which +emphasized his salute with his horn, "are you one of the factory kids?" + +Nance rose to a sitting posture. + +"What's it to you?" she asked, instantly on the defensive. + +"I want to know if Mr. Clarke's come in. Have you seen him?" + +"No, indeed," said Nance, to whom Mr. Clarke was as vague as the Deity; +then she added good-naturedly, "I'll go find out if you want me to." + +The young man shut off his engine and, transferring two struggling +pigeons from his left hand to his right, dismounted. + +"Never mind," he said. "I'll go myself. Road's too rotten to take the +machine in." Then he hesitated, "I say, will you hold these confounded +birds 'til I come back? Won't be gone a minute. Just want to speak to the +governor." + +Nance scrambled down the bank and accepted the fluttering charges, then +watched with liveliest interest the buoyant figure in the light suit go +swinging up the road. There was something tantalizingly familiar in his +quick, imperious manner and his brown, irresponsible eyes. In her first +confusion of mind she thought he must be the prince come to life out of +Mr. Demry's old fairy tale. Then she caught her breath. + +"I believe it's that Clarke boy!" she thought, with rising excitement, "I +wonder if he'd remember the fight? I wonder if he'd remember me?" + +She went over to the automobile and ran her fingers over the silver +initials on the door. + +"M.D.C," she repeated. "It _is_ him! It is!" + +In the excitement of her discovery she relaxed her grasp on the pigeons, +and one of them escaped. In vain she whistled and coaxed; it hopped about +in the tree overhead and then soared away to larger freedom. + +Nance was aghast at the catastrophe. She did not wait for the owner's +return, but rushed headlong down the road to meet him. + +"I let one of 'em go!" she cried in consternation, as he vaulted the +fence and came toward her. "I wouldn't 'a' done it for anything in the +world. But I'll pay you for it, a little each week. Honest I will!" + +The handsome boyish face above her clouded instantly. + +"You let it go?" he repeated furiously. "You little fool you! How did +you do it?" + +Nance looked at him for a moment; then she deliberately lifted the other +pigeon as high as she could reach and opened her hand. + +"Like that!" she cried. + +Mac Clarke watched his second bird wheel into space; then his amazed +glance dropped to the slim figure of the young girl in her short +gingham dress, with the sunlight shining on her hair and on her bright, +defiant eyes. + +"You've got your nerve!" he said with a short laugh; then he climbed into +his car and, with several backward glances of mingled anger and +amusement, drove away. + +Nance related the incident with great gusto to Dan that night on +the way home. + +"He never recognized me, but I knew him right off. Same old Smart Aleck, +calling people names." + +"I was up in the office when he come in," said Dan. "He'd been held up +for speeding and wanted his father to pay his fine."' + +"Did he do it?" + +"Of course. Mac always gets what he wants. He told Bean he wasn't going +to stay at that school in Virginia if he had to make 'em expel him. Sure +enough they did. Wouldn't I like to have his chance though!" + +"I don't blame him for not wanting to go to school," said Nance. Then she +added absently, "Say, he's got to be a awful swell-looker, hasn't he?" + +That night, for the first time, she objected to stopping in +Post-Office Square. + +"It ain't any fun to hang around there," she said impatiently. "I'm sick +of doing tame things all the time." + +The next time Nance saw Mac Clarke was toward the close of the summer. +Through the long sweltering hours of an interminable August morning she +had filed and chipped bottles with an accuracy and speed that no longer +gave cause for criticism. The months of confinement were beginning to +tell upon her; her bright color was gone, and she no longer had the +energy at the noon hour to go down the road to the elm-tree. She wanted +above all things to stretch out at full length and rest her back and +relax all those tense muscles that were so reluctantly learning to hold +one position for hours at a time. + +At the noon hour she had the unexpected diversion of a visit from Birdie +Smelts. Birdie had achieved her cherished ambition of going on the stage, +and was now a chorus girl in the "Rag Time Follies." Meager news of her +had reached the alley from time to time, but nobody was prepared for the +very pretty and sophisticated young person who condescended to accept +board and lodging from her humble parents during the interval between her +engagements. Nance was genuinely glad to see her and especially gratified +by the impression her white coat-suit and black picture hat made on the +finishing room. + +"It must be grand to be on the stage," said Gert enviously. + +"Well, it's living," said Birdie, airily. "That's more than you can +claim for this rotten grind." + +She put a high-heeled, white-shod foot on the window ledge to adjust its +bow, and every eye in the room followed the process. + +"I bet I make more money in a week," she continued dramatically, "than +you all make in a month. And look at your hands! Why, they couldn't pay +me enough to have my hands scarred up like that!" + +"It ain't my hands that's worryin' me," said another girl. "It's my feet. +Say, the destruction on your shoes is somethin' fierce! You orter see +this here room some nights at closin' time; it's that thick with glass +you don't know where to step." + +"I'd know," said Birdie. "I'd step down and out, and don't you +forget it." + +Nance had been following the conversation in troubled silence. + +"I don't mind the work so awful much," she said restlessly. "What gets me +is never having any fun. I haven't danced a step since I left Forest +Home, Birdie." + +"You'd get your fill of it if you was with me," Birdie said importantly. +"Seven nights a week and two matinées." + +"'Twouldn't be any too much for me," said Nance. "I could dance in +my sleep." + +Birdie was sitting in the window now, ostensibly examining her full red +lips in a pocket-mirror, but in reality watching the factory yard below. + +"There goes your whistle!" she said, getting up suddenly. "Say, Nance, +can't you scare up an excuse to hook off this afternoon? I'll take you to +a show if you will!" + +Nance's pulses leapt at the thought, but she shook her head and went +reluctantly back to her bench. For the next ten minutes her fingers +lagged at their task, and she grew more and more discontented. All the +youth in her clamored suddenly for freedom. She was tired of being the +slave of a whistle, a cog in a machine. With a sudden rash impulse she +threw down her tools and, slipping her hat from its peg, went in swift +pursuit of Birdie. + +At the foot of the narrow stairs she came to a sudden halt. Outside the +door, in the niche made by the gas-pipe and the adjoining wall, stood Mac +Clarke and Birdie. He had his arms about her, and there was a look in his +face that Nance had never seen in a man's face before. Of course it was +meant for the insolent eyes under the picture hat, but instead it fell on +Nance standing in the doorway. For a full minute his ardent gaze held her +captive; then he dropped his arms in sudden embarrassment, and she melted +out of the doorway and fled noiselessly up the stairway. + +On the upper landing she suffered a head-on collision with the foreman, +who demanded in no gentle tones what in the devil she was doing out there +with her hat on at that hour. + +"None of your business," said Nance, recklessly. + +Bean looked at her flashing eyes and flushed face, and laughed. She +was the youngest girl in the factory and the only one who was not +afraid of him. + +"See here," he said, "I am going to kiss you or fire you. Which'll +you have?" + +Nance dodged his outstretched hand and reached the top step. + +"You won't do neither!" she cried fiercely. "You can't fire me, because I +fired myself ten minutes ago, and I wouldn't kiss you to stay in heaven, +let alone a damned old bottle factory!" + +It was the Nance of the slums who spoke--the Nance whose small bare fists +had fought the world too long for the knuckles to be tender. She had +drifted a long way from the carefully acquired refinements of Forest +Home, but its influence, like a dragging anchor, still sought to hold her +against the oncoming gales of life. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +IDLENESS + + +When one has a famishing thirst for happiness, one is apt to gulp down +diversions wherever they are offered. The necessity of draining the +dregs of life before the wine is savored does not cultivate a +discriminating taste. Nance saw in Birdie Smelts her one chance of +escape from the deadly monotony of life, and she seized it with both +hands. Birdie might not be approved of her seniors, but she was a +disturbingly important person to her juniors. To them it seemed nothing +short of genius for a girl, born as they were in the sordid environs of +Calvary Alley, to side-step school and factory and soar away into the +paradise of stage-land. When such an authority gives counsel, it is not +to be ignored. Birdie's advice had been to quit the factory, and Nance +had taken the plunge without any idea of what she was going to put in +its place. + +For some reason best known to herself, she never mentioned that episode +in the factory yard to either Birdie or Dan Lewis. There were many things +about Birdie that she did not like, and she knew only too well what Miss +Stanley would have said. But then Miss Stanley wouldn't have approved of +Mr. Demry and his dope, or Mrs. Snawdor and her beer, or Mag Gist, with +her loud voice and coarse jokes. When one lives in Calvary Alley, one has +to compromise; it is seldom the best or the next best one can afford, +even in friends. + +When Mrs. Snawdor heard that Nance had quit work, she was furious. Who +was Nance Molloy, she wanted to know, to go and stick up her nose at a +glass factory? There wasn't a bloomin' thing the matter with Clarke's. +_She'd_ begun in a factory an' look at her! What was Nance a-goin' to do? +Run the streets with Birdie Smelts? It was bad enough, God knew, to have +Snawdor settin' around like a tombstone, an' Fidy a-havin' a fit if you +so much as looked at her, without havin' Nance eatin' 'em out of house +an' home an' not bringin' in a copper cent. If she stayed at home, she'd +have to do the work; that was all there was to it! + +"Anybody'd think jobs happened around as regerlar as the rent man," she +ended bitterly. "You'll see the day when you're glad enough to go back to +the factory." + +Before the month was over, Nance began to wonder if Mrs. Snawdor was +right. With unabating zeal she tramped the streets, answering +advertisements, applying at stores, visiting agencies. But despite the +fact that she unblushingly recommended herself in the highest terms, +nobody seemed to trust so young and inexperienced an applicant. + +Meanwhile Birdie Smelts's thrilling prospect of joining her company at +an early date threw other people's sordid possibilities into the shade. +Every night she practised gymnastics and dance steps, and there being +no room in the Smelts' flat, she got into the habit of coming up to +Nance's room. + +One of the conditions upon which Nance had been permitted to return to +Calvary Alley, was that she should not sleep in the same bed with Fidy +Yager, a condition which enraged Mrs. Snawdor more than all the rest. + +"Annybody'd think Fidy's fits was ketchin'," she complained indignantly +to Uncle Jed. + +"That there front room of mine ain't doin' anybody no good," suggested +Uncle Jed. "We might let Nance have that." + +So to Nance's great joy she was given a big room all to herself. The slat +bed, the iron wash-stand, the broken-legged chair, and the wavy mirror +were the only articles that Mrs. Snawdor was willing to part with, but +Uncle Jed donated a battered stove, which despite its rust-eaten top and +sagging door, still proclaimed itself a "Little Jewel". + +No bride, adorning her first abode, ever arranged her possessions with +more enthusiasm than did Nance. She scrubbed the rough floor, washed the +windows, and polished the "Little Jewel" until it shone. The first money +she could save out of her factory earnings had gone to settle that +four-year-old debt to Mr. Lavinski for the white slippers; the next went +for bedclothes and cheese-cloth window curtains. Her ambition was no +longer for the chintz hangings and gold-framed fruit pieces of Mrs. +Purdy's cottage, but looked instead toward the immaculate and austere +bedroom of Miss Stanley, with its "Melodonna" over the bed and a box of +blooming plants on the window-sill. + +Such an ideal of classic simplicity was foredoomed to failure. Mrs. +Snawdor, like nature, abhorred a vacuum. An additional room to her was a +sluice in the dyke, and before long discarded pots and pans, disabled +furniture, the children's dilapidated toys, and, finally, the children +themselves were allowed to overflow into Nance's room. In vain Nance got +up at daybreak to make things tidy before going to work. At night when +she returned, the washing would be hung in her room to dry, or the twins +would be playing circus in the middle of her cherished bed. + +"It's lots harder when you know how things ought to be, than when you +just go on living in the mess, and don't know the difference," she +complained bitterly to Birdie. + +"I've had my fill of it," said Birdie, "I kiss my hand to the alley for +good this time. What do you reckon the fellers would think of me if they +knew I hung out in a hole like this?" + +"Does he know?" asked Nance in an unguarded moment. + +"Who?" + +"Mac Clarke." + +Birdie shot a glance of swift suspicion at her. + +"What's he got to do with me?" she asked coldly. + +"Ain't he one of your fellers?" + +"Well, if he is, it ain't anybody's business but mine." Then evidently +repenting her harshness, she added, "I got tickets to a dance-hall +up-town to-night. I'll take you along if you want to look on. You wouldn't +catch me dancing with any of those roughnecks." + +Nance found looking on an agonizing business. Not that she wanted to +dance with the roughnecks any more than Birdie did. Their common +experience at Forest Home had given them certain standards of speech and +manner that lifted them just enough above their kind to be scornful. But +to sit against the wall watching other people dance was nothing short of +agony to one of Nance's temperament. + +"Come on and have a try with me, Birdie," she implored. "I'll pay the +dime." And Birdie, with professional disdain, condescended to circle the +room with her a few times. + +That first dance was to Nance what the taste of blood is to a young +tiger. For days after she could think of nothing else. + +"Never you mind," Birdie promised her. "When I get back on the road, I'm +going to see what I can do for you. Somebody's always falling out of the +chorus, and if you keep up this practising with me, you'll be dancing as +good as any of 'em. Ask old man Demry; he played in the orchestra last +time we was at the Gaiety." + +But when Nance threw out a few cautious remarks to Mr. Demry, she met +with prompt discouragement: + +"No, no, my dear child," he said uneasily. "You must put that idea out of +your head. The chorus is no place for a nice girl." + +"That's what Dan says about the factory, and what Mrs. Snawdor says about +housework, and what somebody says about everything I start to do. Looks +like being a nice girl don't pay!" + +Mr. Demry took her petulant little chin in his thin old hand, and turned +her face up to his. + +"Nancy," he said, "these old eyes have seen a good deal over the fiddle +strings. I would rather see you go back to the glass factory, bad as it +is, than to go into the chorus." + +"But I do dance as good as some of the girls, don't I, Mr. Demry?" she +teased, and Mr. Demry, whose pride in an old pupil was considerable, had +to acknowledge that she did. + +Uncle Jed's attitude was scarcely more encouraging. + +"No; I wouldn't be willin' to see you a playactor," he said, "walkin' +round in skin tights, with your face all painted up." + +Nance knew before asking that Dan would disapprove, but she couldn't +resist mentioning the matter to him. + +"That Birdie Smelts has been putting notions in your head," he said +sternly. "I wish you'd quit runnin' with girls older than you. Besides, +Birdie ain't your kind." + +"I'd like to know why?" Nance challenged him in instant loyalty to her +friend. "Besides, who else have I got to run with? Maybe you think it +ain't stupid drudging around home all day and never having a cent to call +my own. I want to get out and do something." + +Dan looked down at her in troubled silence. + +"Mrs. Purdy's always asking me why I don't bring you to some of the +meetings at the church. They have real nice socials." + +"I don't want to pray and sing silly old hymns!" cried Nance. "I want +to dance." + +"I don't believe in dancing," said Dan, firmly; then with a side-glance +at her unhappy face, he added, "I can't take you to the swimming school, +because they don't allow girls, but I might take you to the new +skating-rink some Saturday." + +In an instant Nance was all enthusiasm. + +"Will you, Dan? I'm just crazy about skating. We used to do it out at the +home. You ought to see Birdie and me do a Dutch roll. Say, let's take her +along. What do you say?" + +Dan was not at all in favor of it, but Nance insisted. + +"I think we ought to be nice to Birdie on account of Mr. Smelts' stiff +leg. Not that it ever did him any good when it was limber, but I always +feel mean when I see it sticking out straight when he sits down." + +This was a bit of feminine wile on Nance's part, and it had the desired +effect. Dan, always vulnerable when his sympathy was roused, reluctantly +included Birdie in the invitation. + +On the Saturday night appointed, the three of them set out for the +skating rink. Dan, with his neck rigid in a high collar and his hair +plastered close to his head, stalked somberly beside the two girls, who +walked arm in arm and giggled immoderately at each other's witticisms. + +"Wake up, Daniel!" said Birdie, giving his hat a tilt. "We engaged you +for a escort, not a pallbearer." + +The rink was in an old armory, and the musicians sat at one end of the +room on a raised platform under two drooping flags. It was dusty and +noisy, and the crowd was promiscuous, but to Nance it was Elysium. When +she and Birdie, with Dan between them, began to circle the big room to +the rhythm of music, her joy was complete. + +"Hullo! Dan Lewis is carrying two," she heard some one say as they +circled past the entrance. Glancing back, she saw it was one of the boys +from the factory. A sudden impulse seized her to stop and explain the +matter to him, but instead she followed quite a contrary purpose and +detaching herself from her companions, struck out boldly for herself. + +Before she had been on the floor ten minutes people began to watch her. +Her plain, neat dress setting off her trim figure, and her severe, black +sailor hat above the shining bands of fair hair, were in sharp contrast +to the soiled finery and draggled plumes of the other girls. But it was +not entirely her appearance that attracted attention. It was a certain +independent verve, a high-headed indifference, that made her reject even +the attentions of the rink-master, a superior person boasting a pompadour +and a turquoise ring. + +No one could have guessed that behind that nonchalant air Nance was +hiding a new and profoundly disturbing emotion. The sight of Birdie, +clinging in affected terror to Dan Lewis, filled her with rage. Couldn't +Dan see that Birdie was pretending? Didn't he know that she could skate +by herself quite as well as he could? Never once during the evening did +Dan make his escape, and never once did Nance go to his rescue. + +When they were taking off their skates to go home, Birdie +whispered to her: + +"I believe I got old slow-coach going. Watch me make him smoke up +for a treat!" + +"No, you sha'n't," Nance said. "Dan's spent enough on us for one night." + +"Another quarter won't break him," said Birdie. "I'm as dry as a piece +of chalk." + +Ten minutes later she landed the little party in a drug store and entered +into a spirited discussion with the soda-water boy as to the comparative +merits of sundry new drinks. + +"Me for a cabaret fizz," she said. "What'll you have, Nance?" + +"Nothing," said Nance, sullenly, turning and taking up her stand +at the door. + +"What do you want, Dan?" persisted Birdie, adding, with a mischievous +wink at the white-coated clerk, "Give him a ginger ale; he needs +stimulating." + +While Birdie talked for the benefit of the clerk, and Dan sat beside her, +sipping his distasteful ginger, Nance stood at the door and watched the +people pouring out of the Gaiety Theater next door. Ordinarily the +bright evening wraps, the glimpses of sparkling jewels, the gay confusion +of the scene would have excited her liveliest interest, but to-night she +was too busy hating Birdie Smelts to think of anything else. What right +had she to monopolize Dan like that and order him about and laugh at him? +What right had she to take his arm when they walked, or put her hand on +his shoulder as she was doing this minute? + +Suddenly Nance started and leaned forward. Out there in the crowded +street a tall, middle-aged man, with grizzled hair and mustache, was +somewhat imperiously making way for a pretty, delicate-looking lady +enveloped in white furs, and behind them, looking very handsome and +immaculate in his evening clothes, walked Mac Clarke. + +Nance's eager eyes followed the group to the curbing; she saw the young +man glance at her with a puzzled expression; then, as he stood aside to +allow the lady to enter the motor, he looked again. For the fraction of a +second their eyes held each other; then an expression of amused +recognition sprang into his face, and Nance met it instantly with a flash +of her white teeth. + +The next instant the limousine swallowed him; a door slammed, and the car +moved away. But Nance, utterly forgetful of her recent discomfort, still +stood in the door of the drug store, tingling with excitement as she +watched a little red light until it lost itself in the other moving +lights on the broad thoroughfare. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +MARKING TIME + + +Early in the autumn Birdie took flight from the alley, and Nance found +herself hopelessly engulfed in domestic affairs. Mr. Snawdor, who had +been doing the work during her long absence, took advantage of her return +to have malarial fever. He had been trying to have it for months, but +could never find the leisure hour in which to indulge in the preliminary +chill. Once having tasted the joys of invalidism he was loathe to forego +them, and insisted upon being regarded as a chronic convalescent. Nance +might have managed Mr. Snawdor, however, had it not been for the grave +problem of Fidy Yager. + +"Ike Lavinski says she ought to be in a hospital some place," she urged +Mrs. Snawdor. "He says she never is going to be any better. He says it's +epilepsy." + +"Wel he ain't tellin' me anything' I don't know," said Mrs. Snawdor, "but +I ain't goin' to put her away, not if she th'ows a fit a minute!" + +It was not maternal solicitude alone that prompted this declaration. The +State allowed seventy-live dollars a year to parents of epileptic +children, and Mrs. Snawdor had found Fidy a valuable asset. Just what her +being kept at home cost the other children was never reckoned. + +"Well, I'll take care of her on one condition," stipulated Nance. "You +got to keep Lobelia at school. It ain't fair for her to have to stay home +to nurse Fidy." + +"Well, if she goes to school, she's got to work at night. You was doin' +your two hours at Lavinski's long before you was her age." + +"I don't care if I was. Lobelia ain't strong like me. I tell you she +ain't goin' to do home finishing, not while I'm here." + +"Well, somebody's got to do it," said Mrs. Snawdor. "You can settle it +between you." + +Nance held out until the middle of January; then in desperation she went +back to the Lavinskis. The rooms looked just as she had left them, and +the whirring machines seemed never to have stopped. The acrid smell of +hot cloth still mingled with the odor of pickled herrings, and Mr. +Lavinski still came and went with his huge bundles of clothes. + +Nance no longer sewed on buttons. She was promoted to a place under the +swinging lamp where she was expected to make an old decrepit +sewing-machine forget its ailments and run the same race it had run in +the days of its youth. As she took her seat on the first night, she +looked up curiously. A new sound coming regularly from the inner room +made her pause. + +"Is that a type-writer?" she asked incredulously. + +Mr. Lavinski, pushing his derby from his shining brow, smiled proudly. + +"Dat's vat it is," he said. "My Ike, he's got a scholarship offen de high +school. He's vorking his vay through de medical college now. He'll be a +big doctor some day. He vill cure my Leah." + +Nance's ambition took fire at the thought of that type-writer. It +appealed to her far more than the sewing-machine. + +"Say, Ike," she said at her first opportunity, "I wish you'd teach me how +to work it." + +"What'll you give me?" asked Ike, gravely. He had grown into a tall, thin +youth, with the spectacled eyes and stooped shoulders of a student. + +"Want me to wash the dishes for your mother?" Nance suggested eagerly. "I +could do it nights before I begin sewing." + +"Very well," Ike agreed loftily. "We'll begin next Sunday morning at nine +o'clock. Mind you are on time!" + +Knowledge to Ike was sacred, and the imparting of it almost a religious +rite. He frowned down all flippancy on the part of his new pupil, and +demanded of her the same diligence and perseverance he exacted of +himself. He not only taught her to manipulate the type-writer, but put +her through an elementary course of stenography as well. + +"Certainly you can learn it," he said sternly at her first sign of +discouragement. "I got that far in my second lesson. Haven't you got +any brains?" + +Nance by this time was not at all sure she had, but she was not going to +let Ike know it. Stung by his smug superiority, she often sat up far into +the night, wrestling with the arbitrary signs until Uncle Jed, seeing her +light under the door, would pound on the wall for her to go to bed. + +She saw little of Dan Lewis these days. The weather no longer permitted +them to meet in Post-Office Square, and conditions even less inviting +kept them from trying to see each other in Snawdor's kitchen. Sometimes +she would wait at the corner for him to come home, but this had its +disadvantages, for there was always a crowd of loafers hanging about Slap +Jack's, and now that Nance was too old to stick out her tongue and call +names, she found her power of repartee seriously interfered with. + +"I ain't coming up here to meet you any more," she declared to Dan on one +of these occasions. "I don't see why we can't go to Gorman's Chili Parlor +of an evening and set down and talk to each other, right." + +"Gorman's ain't a nice place," insisted Dan. "I wish you'd come on up to +some of the church meetings with me. I could take you lots of times if +you'd go." + +But Nance refused persistently to be inveigled into the religious fold. +The very names of Epworth League, and prayer meeting made her draw a +long face. + +"You don't care whether we see each other or not!" she accused +Dan, hotly. + +"I do," he said earnestly, "but it seems like I never have time for +anything. The work at the factory gets heavier all the time. But I'm +getting on, Nance; they give me another raise last month." + +"Everybody's getting on," cried Nance bitterly, "but me! You and Ike and +Birdie! I work just as hard as you all do, and I haven't got a blooming +thing to show for it. What I make sewing pants don't pay for what I eat. +Sometimes I think I'll have to go back to the finishing room." + +"Not if I can help it!" said Dan, emphatically. "There must be decent +jobs somewhere for girls. Suppose I take you out to Mrs. Purdy's on +Sunday, and see if she knows of anything. She's all the time asking me +about you." + +The proposition met with little enthusiasm on Nance's part. It was Mrs. +Purdy who had got Dan into the church and persuaded him not to go to the +theater or learn how to dance. It was Mrs. Purdy who took him home with +her to dinner every Sunday after church and absorbed the time that used +to be hers. But the need for a job was too pressing for Nance to harbor +prejudices. Instead of sewing for the Lavinskis that night, she sewed for +herself, trying to achieve a costume from the old finery bequeathed her +by Birdie Smelts. + +You would scarcely have recognized Dan that next Sunday in his best suit, +with his hair plastered down, and a very red tie encircling a very high +collar. To be sure Dan's best was over a year old, and the brown-striped +shirt-front was not what it seemed, but his skin was clean and clear, and +there was a look in his earnest eyes that bespoke an untroubled +conscience. + +Mrs. Purdy received them in her cozy fire-lit sitting-room and made Nance +sit beside her on the sofa, while she held her hand and looked with mild +surprise at her flaring hat and cheap lace collar. + +"Dan didn't tell me," she said, "how big you had grown or--or how +pretty." + +Nance blushed and smiled and glanced consciously at Dan. She had felt +dubious about her costume, but now that she was reassured, she began to +imitate Birdie's tone and manner as she explained to Mrs. Purdy the +object of her visit. + +"Deary me!" said Mrs. Purdy, "Dan's quite right. We can't allow a nice +little girl like you to work in a glass factory! We must find some nice +genteel place for you. Let me see." + +In order to see Mrs. Purdy shut her eyes, and the next moment she opened +them and announced that she had the very thing. + +"It's Cousin Lucretia Bobinet!" she beamed. "She is looking for a +companion." + +"What's that?" asked Nance. + +"Some one to wait on her and read to her and amuse her. She's quite +advanced in years and deaf and, I'm afraid, just a little peculiar." + +"I'm awful good at taking care of sick people," said Nance complacently. + +"Cousin Lucretia isn't ill. She's the most wonderfully preserved woman +for her years. But her maid, that she's had for so long, is getting old +too. Why, Susan must be seventy. She can't see to read any more, and she +makes mistakes over cards. By the way, I wonder if you know how to play +card games." + +"Sure," said Nance. "Poker? seven-up?" + +"Isn't there another game called penuchle?" Mrs. Purdy ventured, +evidently treading unfamiliar ground. + +"Yes!" cried Nance. "That's Uncle Jed's game. We used to play it heaps +before Rosy cut up the queens for paper dolls." + +"Now isn't it too wonderful that you should happen to know that +particular game?" said Mrs. Purdy, with the gentle amazement of one who +sees the finger of Providence in everything. "Not that I approve of +playing cards, but Cousin Lucretia was always a bit worldly minded, and +playing penuchle seems to be the chief diversion of her declining years. +How old are you, my child?" + +"I'm seventeen. And I ain't a bit afraid of work, am I, Dan?" + +"I am sure you are not," said Mrs. Purdy. "Dan often tells me what a fine +girl you are. Only we wish you would come to some of our services. Dan is +getting to be one of our star members. So conscientious and regular! We +call him our model young man." + +"I expect it's time we was going," said Dan, greatly embarrassed. But +owing to the fact that he wanted very much to be a gentleman, and didn't +quite know how, he stayed on and on, until Nance informed him it was +eleven o'clock. + +At the door Mrs. Purdy gave final instructions about the new position, +adding in an undertone: + +"It might be just as well, dearie, for you to wear a plainer dress when +you apply for the place, and I believe--in fact I am quite sure--Cousin +Lucretia would rather you left off the ear-rings." + +"Ain't ear-rings stylish?" asked Nance, feeling that she had been +misinformed. + +"Not on a little companion," said Mrs. Purdy gently. + +Nance's elation over the prospect of a job was slightly dashed by +the idea of returning to the wornout childish garb in which she had +left the home. + +"Say, Dan," she said, as they made their way out of Butternut Lane, "do +you think I've changed so much--like Mrs. Purdy said?" + +"You always look just the same to me," Dan said, as he helped her on with +her coat and adjusted the collar with gentle, painstaking deference. + +She sighed. The remark to a person who ardently desired to look different +was crushing. + +"I think Mrs. Purdy's an awful old fogey!" she said petulantly by way of +venting her pique. + +Dan looked at her in surprise, and the scowl that rarely came now +darkened his face. + +"Mrs. Purdy is the best Christian that ever lived," he said shortly. + +"Well, she ain't going to be a Christian offen me!" said Nance. + +The next morning, in a clean, faded print, and a thin jacket, much too +small for her, Nance went forth to find Miss Lucretia Bobinet in Cemetery +Street. It was a staid, elderly street, full of staid, elderly houses, +and at its far end were visible the tall white shafts which gave it its +name. At the number corresponding to that on Nance's card, she rang the +bell. The door was opened by a squinting person who held one hand behind +her ear and with the other grasped the door knob as if she feared it +might be stolen. + +"Who do you want to see?" she wheezed. + +"Miss Bobinet." + +"Who?" + +"Miss Bobinet!" said Nance, lifting her voice. + +"Stop that hollering at me!" said the old woman. "Who sent you here?" + +"Mrs. Purdy." + +"What for?" + +Nance explained her mission at the top of her voice and was grudgingly +admitted into the hall. + +"You ain't going to suit her. I can tell you that," said the squint-eyed +one mournfully, "but I guess you might as well go in and wait until she +wakes up. Mind you don't bump into things." + +Nance felt her way into the room indicated and cautiously let herself +down into the nearest chair. Sitting facing her was an imposing old +lady, with eyes closed and mouth open, making the most alarming noises +in her throat. She began with a guttural inhalation that increased in +ferocity until it broke in a violent snort, then trailed away in a +prolonged and somewhat plaintive whistle. Nance watched her with +amazement. It seemed that each recurrent snort must surely send the old +wrinkled head, with its elaborately crimped gray wig, rolling away under +the stiff horse-hair sofa. + +The room was almost dark, but the light that managed to creep in showed a +gloomy black mantelpiece, with vases of immortelles, and somber walnut +chairs with crocheted tidies that made little white patches here and +there in the dusk. Everything smelled of camphor, and from one of the +corners came the slow, solemn tick of a clock. + +After Nance had recovered from her suspense about Miss Bobinet's head, +and had taken sufficient note of the vocal gymnastics to be able to +reproduce them later for the amusement of the Snawdors, she began to +experience great difficulty in keeping still. First one foot went to +sleep, then the other. The minutes stretched to an hour. She had hurried +off that morning without her breakfast, leaving everything at sixes and +sevens, and she wanted to get back and clean up before Mrs. Snawdor got +up. She stirred restlessly, and her chair creaked. + +The old lady opened one eye and regarded her suspiciously. + +"I am Nance Molloy," ventured the applicant, hopefully. "Mrs. +Purdy sent me." + +Miss Bobinet gazed at her in stony silence, then slowly closed her eye, +and took up her snore exactly where she had left it off. This took place +three times before she succeeded in getting her other eye open and +becoming aware of Nance's presence. + +"Well, well," she asked testily, in a dry cracked voice, "what are you +sitting there staring at me for?" + +Nance repeated her formula several times before she remembered that +Miss Bobinet was deaf; then she got up and shouted it close to the old +lady's ear. + +"Lida Purdy's a fool," said Miss Bobinet, crossly. "What do I want with +a chit of a girl like you?" + +"She thought I could wait on you," screamed Nance, "and read to you and +play penuchle." The only word that got past the grizzled fringe that +bordered Miss Bobinet's shriveled ear was the last one. + +"Penuchle?" she repeated. "Can you play penuchle?" + +Nance nodded. + +"Get the table," ordered the old lady, peremptorily. + +Nance tried to explain that she had not come to stay, that she would go +home, and get her things and return in the afternoon, but Miss Bobinet +would brook no delay. Without inviting Nance to remove her hat and +jacket, she ordered her to lift the shade, sit down, and deal the cards. + +They were still playing when the squinting person hobbled in with a +luncheon tray, and Miss Bobinet promptly transferred her attention from +royal marriages to oyster stew. + +"Have her come back at three," she directed Susan; then seeing Nance's +eyes rest on the well filled tray, she added impatiently, "Didn't I tell +you to stop staring? Any one would think you were watching the animals +feed in the zoo." + +Nance fled abashed. The sight of the steaming soup, the tempting bird, +and dainty salad had made her forget her manners. + +"I reckon I'm engaged," she said to Mrs. Snawdor, when she reached +home and had cut herself a slice of dry bread to eat with the +warmed-over coffee. "She never said what the pay was to be, but she +said to come back." + +"What does she look like?" asked Mrs. Snawdor, curiously. + +"A horse," said Nance. "And she's deaf as anything. If I stay with her, +she'll have to get her an ear-trumpet or a new wig before the month's +out. I swallow a curl every time I speak to her." + +"Well," said Mrs. Snawdor, "companions ain't in my line, but I got sense +enough to know that when a woman's so mean she's got to pay somebody to +keep her company, the job ain't no cinch." + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +MISS BOBINET'S + + +Nance's new duties, compared with those at the bottle factory, and the +sweat-shop seemed, at first, mere child's play. She arrived at eight +o'clock, helped Susan in the basement kitchen, until Miss Bobinet awoke, +then went aloft to officiate at the elaborate process of that lady's +toilet. For twenty years Susan had been chief priestess at this ceremony, +but her increasing deafness infuriated her mistress to such an extent +that Nance was initiated into the mysteries. The temperature of the bath, +the choice of underclothing, the method of procedure were matters of the +utmost significance, and the slightest mistake on the part of the +assistant brought about a scene. Miss Bobinet would shriek at Susan, and +Susan would shriek back; then both would indulge in scathing criticism of +the other in an undertone to Nance. + +The final rite was the most critical of all. Miss Bobinet would sit +before her dresser with a towel about her neck, and take a long breath, +holding it in her puffed-out cheeks, while rice powder was dusted over +the corrugated surface of her face. She held the theory that this opened +the pores of the skin and allowed them to absorb the powder. The sight of +the old lady puffed up like a balloon was always too much for Nance, and +when she laughed, Miss Bobinet was obliged to let her breath go in a +sharp reprimand, and the performance had to start all over again. + +"You laugh too much anyhow," she complained irritably. + +When the toilet and breakfast were over, there followed two whole hours +of pinochle. Nance came to regard the queen of spades and the jack of +diamonds with personal animosity. Whatever possible interest she might +have taken was destroyed by the fact that Miss Bobinet insisted upon +winning two out of every three games. It soon became evident that while +she would not cheat on her own behalf, she expected her opponent to cheat +for her. So Nance dutifully slipped her trump cards back in the deck and +forgot to declare while she idly watched the flash of diamonds on the +wrinkled yellow hands, and longed for the clock to strike the next hour. + +At lunch she sat in the kitchen opposite Susan and listened to a recital +of that melancholy person's woes. Susan and her mistress, being mutually +dependent, had endured each other's exclusive society for close upon +twenty years. The result was that each found the other the most +stimulating of all subjects of conversation. When Nance was not listening +to tirades against Susan up-stairs, she was listening to bitter +complaints against Miss Bobinet down-stairs. + +In the afternoon she was expected to read at the top of her voice from +"The Church Guide," until Miss Bobinet got sleepy; then it was her duty +to sit motionless in the stuffy, camphor-laden room, listening to an +endless succession of vocal gymnastics until what time the old lady saw +fit to wake up. + +If Nance had been a provident young person, she might have improved those +idle hours during that interminable winter by continuing her study of +stenography. But, instead, she crouched on the floor by the window, +holding her active young body motionless, while her thoughts like +distracted imprisoned things flew round their solid walls of facts, +frantically seeking some loophole of escape. Day after day she crouched +there, peeping out under the lowered shade with hungry eyes. The dreary +street below offered no diversion; sometimes a funeral procession dragged +its way past, but for the most part there was nothing to see save an +occasional delivery wagon or a staid pedestrian. + +She was at that critical time of transition between the romance of +childhood, when she had become vaguely aware of the desire of the spirit, +and the romance of youth, when she was to know to the full the desires +of the flesh. It was a period of sudden, intense moods, followed by +spells of languor. Something new and strange and incommunicable was +fermenting within her, and nothing was being done to direct those +mysterious forces. She was affectionate, with no outlet for her +affection; romantic, with nothing for romance to feed upon. + +The one resource lay in the bookcase that rose above the old-fashioned +secretary in Miss Bobinet's front hall. She had discovered it on the day +of her arrival and, choosing a volume at random, had become so engrossed +in the doings of one of Ouida's heroes, that she had failed to hear Miss +Bobinet's call. From that time on she was forbidden to take any books +away from the bookcase, an order which she got around by standing beside +it and eagerly devouring bits at a time. + +The monotony of the days she might have endured if there had been any +relief at the close of them. But when she returned home there was always +endless work to be done. Her four years' absence at Forest Home had +separated her from the young people she had known, and she had had no +time to make new friends. The young bar-keeper at Slap Jack's, who always +watched for her to pass in the morning, the good-looking delivery boy who +sometimes brought parcels to Cemetery Street, the various youths with +whom she carried on casual flirtations on her way to and from work, were +her nearest approach to friends. + +Dan, to be sure, still came for her every Saturday afternoon, but +Cemetery Street was across the city from Clarke's, and their time +together was short. Nance lived for these brief interviews, and then came +away from them more restless and dissatisfied than before. Dan didn't +look or talk or act like the heroes in the novels she was reading. He +never "rained fervent kisses on her pale brow," or told her that she was +"the day-star of his secret dreams." Instead he talked of eight-hour +laws, and minimum wage, and his numerous church activities. He was +sleeping at Mrs. Purdy's now, looking after the place while she was away +with her brother, and Nance was jealous of his new interests and new +opportunities. + +As the long weeks stretched into long months, her restlessness grew into +rebellion. So this was the kind of job, she told herself bitterly, that +nice girls were supposed to hold. This was what Miss Stanley and Mrs. +Purdy and Mr. Demry approved. But they were old. They had forgotten. Dan +Lewis wasn't old. Why couldn't he understand? What right had he to insist +upon her sticking it out when he knew how lonesome and unhappy she was? +Dan didn't care, that was the trouble; he thought more of his old church +and the factory than he thought of her. + +She remembered, with sudden understanding, what red-haired Gert had said +in the finishing room; some people weren't content with a good job; they +had to have a good time with it. She told herself that she was one of +these; she wanted to be good and do what was expected of her; she wanted +fervently to please Dan Lewis, but she couldn't go on like this, she +couldn't, she couldn't! + +And yet she did. With a certain dogged commonsense, she stayed at her +post, suppressing herself in a thousand ways, stifling her laughter, +smothering the song on her lips, trying to make her prancing feet keep +pace with the feeble steps of age. She lived through each day on the +meager hope that something would happen at the end of it, that elusive +"something" that always waits around the corner for youth, with adventure +in one hand and happiness in the other and limitless promise in its +shining eyes. + +Almost a year crawled by before her hope was realized. Then one Tuesday +morning as she was coming to work, she spied a bill poster announcing +the appearance of the "Rag-Time Follies." Rows upon rows of saucy girls +in crimson tights and gauzy wings smiled down upon her, smiled and +seemed to beckon. + +Since Birdie's departure from the alley, eighteen months ago, Nance had +heard no word of her. Long ago she had given up the hope of escape in +that direction. But the knowledge that she was in the city and the +possibility of seeing her, wakened all manner of vague hopes and exciting +possibilities. + +Whatever happened Nance must see the play! She must be on hand to-morrow +night when the curtain went up; perhaps she could wait outside for +Birdie, and speak to her after the performance! + +If only Dan would take her, and they could sit together and share the +fun! But the very thought of Dan in connection with those frisky girls +made her smile. No; if she went, she would have to go alone. + +The all-important question now was how to get the ticket. Miss Bobinet +could never be induced to advance a penny on the week's wages, and Susan, +while ready to accept financial favors, was adamant when it came to +extending them. + +By six o'clock Nance had exhausted every resource but one. On her way +home she visited a small shop which was all too familiar to the residents +of Calvary Alley. When she emerged, the beloved locket, which usually +dangled on the velvet ribbon around her neck, was no longer there, but +tied in the corner of her handkerchief was a much desired silver coin. + +In high spirits she rushed home only to be confronted on the threshold by +a serious domestic complication. Mrs. Snawdor, with her hat on, was +standing by the bed in the dark inside room that used to be Nance's, +futilely applying a mustard plaster to whatever portion of Fidy's +anatomy happened to be exposed. + +"How long has she been like this?" cried Nance, flinging her jacket off +and putting the tea kettle on the stove. + +"Lord knows," said Mrs. Snawdor in a tone that implied a conspiracy on +the part of poor Fidy and her Maker to interfere with her plans. "When I +come in ten minutes ago, she was tryin' to eat the sheet." + +"Didn't you give her the medicine the doctor left last time?" + +"There ain't a drop left. Mr. Snawdor took every bit of it." + +"Where's the bottle? We must get it filled." + +"What's the use? It ain't no good. I was handlin' Fidy's fits before that +there young dispensary doctor was out of knee pants. Besides I ain't got +fifty cents in the house." + +Nance stood for a moment irresolute. She looked at the writhing figure on +the bed; then she snatched up her hat and jacket. + +"Quick! Where's the bottle?" she cried. "I got the money." + +But after the medicine had been bought, and Fidy had grown quiet under +its influence, Nance went across the hall to her own cold, barren room +and flung herself across her narrow bed. The last chance of seeing the +play had vanished. The only light of hope that had shone on her horizon +for months had gone out. + +When she got up, cold and miserable, and lighted the gas, she saw on +the floor, where it had evidently been slipped under the door, a +mysterious pink envelope. Tearing it open, she found, written in a +large, loose scrawl: + +"Dear Nance. We have just struck town. Reckon you thought I was a +quitter, but I ain't. You be at the Gaiety to-morrow morning at nine A.M. +Maybe I can land you something. Don't say a word to anybody about it, and +make yourself look as pretty as you can, and don't be late. Don't tell my +folks I'm here. I got a room down-town. + +"Bye bye, +"B.S." + +Nance's breath caught in her throat. The bubble was so radiant, so +fragile, so unbelievable, that she was afraid to stir for fear of +breaking it. She waited until she heard Mrs. Snawdor's heavy feet +descending the stairs, and then she crept across the hall and sat on the +side of Fidy's bed, waiting to give her the next dose of medicine. Her +eyes were fixed on the bare lathes over the headboard where she had once +knocked the plaster off tacking up a tomato-can label. But she did not +see the hole or the wall. Calvary Alley and Cemetery Street had ceased to +exist for her. She was already transported to a region of warmth and +gaiety and song. All that was ugly and old and sordid lay behind her, +and she told herself, with a little sob of joy, that at last the +beautiful something for which she had waited so long was about to happen. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +BEHIND THE TWINKLING LIGHTS + + +The gaiety, with its flamboyant entrance, round which the lights flared +enticingly at night, had always seemed to Nance an earthly paradise into +which the financially blessed alone were privileged to enter. At the +"Star" there were acrobats and funny Jews with big noses and Irishmen who +were always falling down; but the Gaiety was different. Twice Nance had +passed that fiery portal, and she knew that once inside, you drifted into +states of beatitude, which eternity itself was too short to enjoy. The +world ceased to exist for you, until a curtain, as relentless as fate, +descended, and you reached blindly for your hat and stumbled down from +the gallery to the balcony, and from the balcony to the lobby, and thence +out into the garish world, dazed, bewildered, unreconciled to reality, +and not knowing which way to turn to go home. + +But to-day as she passed the main entrance and made her way through a +side-passage to the stage-door, she tingled with a keener thrill than she +had ever felt before. + +"Is Miss Smelts here?" she asked a man who was going in as she did. + +"Smelts?" he repeated. "What does she do?" + +"She dances." + +He shook his head. + +"Nobody here by that name," he said, and hurried on. + +Nance stood aside and waited, with a terrible sinking of the heart. She +waited a half hour, then an hour, while people came and went. Just as she +was about to give up in despair, she saw a tall, handsome girl hurry up +the steps and come toward her. She had to look twice before she could +make sure that the imposing figure was Birdie. + +"Hello, kid," was Birdie's casual greeting. "I forgot all about you. Just +as cute looking as ever, eh! Where did you get that hat?" + +"Ten-cent store," said Nance, triumphantly. + +"Can you beat that?" said Birdie. "You always did have a style about you. +But your hair's fixed wrong. Come on down to the dressing-room while I +change. I'll do it over before you see Reeser." + +Nance followed her across a barn of a place where men in shirt-sleeves +were dragging scenes this way and that. + +"Mind the steps; they are awful!" warned Birdie, as they descended into a +gas-lit region partitioned off into long, low dressing-rooms. + +"Here's where I hang out. Sit down and let me dude you up a bit. You +always did wear your hair too plain. I'll fix it so's it will make little +Peroxide Pierson green with envy." + +Nance sat before the mirror and watched Birdie's white fingers roll and +twist her shining hair into the elaborate style approved at the moment. + +"Gee! it looks like a horse-collar!" she said, laughing at her +reflection. "What you going to do to me next?" + +"Well, I haven't got much to do on," said Birdie, "but you just wait till +I get you over to my room! I could fit you out perfect if you were just a +couple of sizes bigger." + +She was putting on a pair of bloomers herself as she spoke, and slipping +her feet into her dancing slippers, and Nance watched every movement with +admiring eyes. + +"Come on now," Birdie said hurriedly. "We got to catch Reeser before +rehearsal. He's the main guy in this company. What Reeser says goes." + +At the head of the steps they encountered a gaunt, raw-boned man, with an +angular, expressive face, and an apple in his long neck that would have +embarrassed Adam himself. + +"Well! Well!" he shouted at them, impatiently, "come on or else go back! +Don't stand there in the way." + +"Mr. Reeser, please, just a minute," called Birdie, "It's a new girl +wants to get in the chorus." + +The stage-manager paused and looked her over with a critical eye. + +"Can she sing?" + +"No," said Nance, "but I can dance. Want to see me?" + +"Well, I think I can live a few minutes without it," said Reeser dryly. +"Ever been on before?" + +"No; but everybody's got to start some time." Then she added with a +smile, "I wish you'd give me a chance." + +"She's a awful cute little dancer," Birdie recommended. "She knows all +the steps in the Red-Bird chorus. I taught her when I was here before. +If you'd say a word to Mr. Pulatki he might try her out at rehearsal +this morning." + +Nance held her breath while Reeser's quizzical eyes continued to +study her. + +"All right!" he said suddenly. "She's pretty young, but we'll see what +she can do. Now clear the way. Lower that drop a little, boys. Hurry up +with the second set." + +The girls scurried away to the wings where they found a narrow space in +which Nance was put through the half-forgotten steps. + +"It's all in the team work," Birdie explained. "You do exactly what I do, +and don't let old Spagetti rattle you. He goes crazy at every rehearsal. +Keep time and grin. That's all there is to it" + +"I can do it!" cried Nance radiantly. "It's easy as breathing!" + +But it proved more difficult than she thought, when in a pair of property +bloomers she found herself one of a party of girls advancing, retreating, +and wheeling at the arbitrary command of an excitable little man in his +shirt-sleeves, who hammered out the time on a rattling piano. + +Pulatki was a nervous Italian with long black hair and a drooping black +mustache, both of which suffered harsh treatment in moments of dramatic +frenzy. His business in life was to make forty lively, mischievous girls +move and sing as one. The sin of sins to him, in a chorus girl, was +individuality. + +"You! new girl!" he screamed the moment he spied Nance, "you are out +of ze line. Hold your shoulders stiff, so! Ah, _Dio!_ Can you not move +wiz ze rest?" + +The girls started a stately number, diagonal from down-stage left toward +upper center. + +"Hold ze pose!" shouted the director. Then he scrambled up on the stage +and seized Nance roughly by the arm. "You are too quick!" he shouted. +"You are too restless. We do not want that you do a solo! Can you not +keep your person still?" + +And to Nance's untold chagrin she found that she could not. The moment +the music started, it seemed to get into her tripping feet, her swinging +arms, her nodding head; and every extra step and unnecessary gesture that +she made evoked a storm from the director. + +Just when his irritation was at his height, Reeser joined him from +the wings. + +"Here's a howdy-do!" he exclaimed. "Flossy Pierson's sprained her ankle." + +"Ze leetle bear?" shrieked Pulatki; then he clutched his hair in both +hands and raved maledictions on the absent Flossy. + +"See here," said Reeser, "this is no time for fireworks. Who in the devil +is to take her place?" + +"Zere is none," wailed Pulatki. "She make her own part. I cannot +teach it." + +"It's not the part that bothers me," said Reeser. "It's the costume. +We've got to take whoever will fit it. Who's the smallest girl in +the chorus?" + +The eyes of the two men swept the double column of girls until they +rested on the one head that, despite its high coiffure, failed to achieve +the average height. + +"Come here!" called Reeser to Nance. + +"But, no!" protested the director, throwing up his hands. "She is +impossible. A cork on ze water! A leaf in ze wind! I cannot teach her. I +vill not try!" + +"It's too late to get anybody else for to-night," said Reeser, +impatiently. "Let her walk through the part, and we'll see what can be +done in the morning." Then seeing Nance's indignant eyes on the director, +he added with a comical twist of his big mouth, "Want to be a bear?" + +"Sure!" said Nance, with spirit, "if the Dago can't teach me to dance, +maybe he can teach me to growl." + +The joke was lost upon the director, but it put Reeser into such a good +humor that he sent her down to the dressing-room to try on the costume. +Ten minutes later, a little bear, awkward but ecstatic, scrambled madly +up the steps, and an excited voice called out: + +"Look, Mr. Reeser, it fits! it fits!" + +For the rest of the morning Nance practised her part, getting used to +the clumsy suit of fur, learning to adjust her mask so that she could +see through the little, round, animal eyes, and keeping the other girls +in a titter of amusement over her surreptitious imitation of the +irascible Pulatki. + +When the rehearsal was over there was much good-natured hustling and +raillery as the girls changed into their street costumes. At Birdie's +invitation Nance went with her to the rooming-house around the corner, +where you had to ring a bell to get in, a convention which in itself +spelt elegance, and up one flight, two flights, three flights of +carpeted steps to a front-hall bedroom on the fourth floor. + +"Gee, it's a mess!" said Birdie, tossing some beribboned lingerie from a +chair into an open trunk. "There's a bag of rolls around here some place. +We can make some tea over the gas." + +Nance darted from one object to another with excited cries of admiration. +Everything was sweet and wonderful and perfectly grand! Suddenly she came +to a halt before the dresser, in the center of which stood a large, +framed photograph. + +"That's my High Particular," said Birdie, with an uneasy laugh, +"recognize him?" + +"It's Mac Clarke!" exclaimed Nance, incredulously, "how on earth did you +ever get his picture?" + +"He give it to me. How do you reckon? I hadn't laid eyes on him for a +couple of years 'til I ran across him in New York about a month ago." + +"Where'd you see him?" + +"At the theater. He come in with a bunch of other college fellows and +recognized me straight off. He stayed in New York two or three days, and +maybe we didn't have a peach of a time! Only he got fired from college +for it when he went back." + +"Where's he now?" + +"Here in town. Liable to blow in any minute. If he does, you don't want +to let on you ever saw him before. He won't remember you if you don't +remind him. He never thinks of anybody twice." + +Nance, poring over every detail of the photograph, held her own counsel. +She was thinking of the night she had stood in the drug-store door, and +he had kept the motor waiting while he smiled at her over his shoulder. +That was a smile that remembered! + +"You want to be careful what you say to anybody," Birdie continued, +"there ain't any use airing it around where you live, or what you been +doing. There ain't a girl in the chorus knows my real name, or where I +come from." + +The allusion to home stirred Nance's conscience, and reminded her that +over there beyond the cathedral spire, dimly visible from the window, lay +a certain little alley which still had claims upon her. + +"I ain't said a thing to 'em at home about this," she said. "Suppose they +don't let me do it?" + +"Let nothing!" said Birdie. "Write a note to Mrs. Snawdor, and tell her +you are spending the night down-town with me. You'll know by morning +whether Reeser is going to take you on or not. If he does, you just want +to announce the fact that you are going, and go." + +Nance looked at her with kindling eyes. This high-handed method appealed +to her. After all wasn't she past eighteen? Birdie hadn't been that old +when she struck out for herself. + +"What about Miss Bobinet?" she asked ruefully. + +"The wiggy old party up in Cemetery Street? Let her go hang. You've +swallowed her frizzes long enough." + +Nance laughed and gave the older girl's arm a rapturous squeeze. "And you +think maybe Mr. Reeser'll take me on?" she asked for the sixteenth time. + +"Well, Flossie Pierson has been shipped home, and they've got to put +somebody in her place. It's no cinch to pick up a girl on the road, +just the right size, who can dance even as good as you can. If Reeser +engages you, it's fifteen per for the rest of the season, and a good +chance for next." + +"All right, here goes!" cried Nance, recklessly, seizing paper and pen. + +When the hard rolls and strong tea which composed their lunch had been +disposed of, Nance curled herself luxuriously on the foot of the bed and +munched chocolate creams, while Birdie, in a soiled pink kimono that +displayed her round white arms and shapely throat, lay stretched beside +her. They found a great deal to talk about, and still more to laugh +about. Nance loved to laugh; all she wanted was an excuse, and everything +was an excuse to-day; Birdie's tales of stage-door Johnnies, the recent +ire of old Spagetti, her own imitation of Miss Bobinet and the ossified +Susan. Nance loved the cozy intimacy of the little room; even the heavy +odor of perfumes and cosmetics was strange and fascinating; she thought +Birdie was the prettiest girl she had ever seen. A thrilling vista of +days like this, spent with her in strange and wonderful cities, opened +before her. + +"I'll rig you up in some of my clothes, until you get your first pay," +Birdie offered, "then we can fit you out right and proper. You got the +making of an awful pretty girl in you." + +Nance shrieked her derision. Her own charms, compared with Birdie's +generous ones, seemed absurdly meager, as she watched the older girl blow +rings from the cigarette which she held daintily between her first and +second finger. + +Nance had been initiated into smoking and chewing tobacco before she was +ten, but neither appealed to her. Watching Birdie smoke, she had a sudden +desire to try it again. + +"Give us a puff, Birdie," she said. + +Birdie tossed the box over and looked at her wrist-watch. + +"We ought to be fixing something for you to wear to-night," she +said. "Like as not Mac and Monte 'll turn up and ask us to go +somewhere for supper." + +"Who is Monte?" asked Nance with breathless interest. + +"He's a fat-headed swell Mac runs with. Spends dollars like nickels. No +rarebit and beer for him; it's champagne and caviar every time. You +cotton to him, Nance; he'll give you anything you want." + +"I don't want him to give me anything," said Nance stoutly. "Time I'm +earning fifteen dollars a week, I'll be making presents myself." + +Birdie lifted her eyebrows and sighed. + +"You funny kid!" she said, "you got a heap to learn." + +During the early part of the afternoon the girls shortened one of +Birdie's dresses and tacked in its folds to fit Nance's slender figure. +Birdie worked in fits and starts; she listened every time anything +stopped in the street below, and made many trips to the window. By and by +her easy good humor gave place to irritability. At five o'clock she put +on her hat, announcing that she had to go over to the drug store to do +some telephoning. + +"Lock the door," she counseled, "and if anybody knocks while I'm gone, +don't answer." + +Nance, left alone, sewed on for a while in a flutter of happy thoughts; +then she got up and turned her chair so she would not have to crane her +neck to see the photograph on the dresser. + +"The making of an awful pretty girl!" she whispered; then she got up and +went over to the mirror. Pulling out the hairpins that held the +elaborate puffs in place, she let her shining mass of hair about her +shoulders and studied her face intently. Her mouth, she decided, was too +big, her eyes too far apart, her neck too thin. Then she made a face at +herself and laughed: + +"Who cares?" she said. + +By and by it got too dark to sew; the match box refused to be found, and +she decided it was time to stop anyhow. She opened the window and, gaily +humming the music of the Little Bear dance, leaned across the sill, while +the cool evening air fanned her hot cheeks. + +Far away in the west, over the housetops, she could see the stately spire +of the cathedral, a brown silhouette against a pale, lemon sky. Down +below, through the dull, yellow dusk, faint lights were already defining +the crisscross of streets. The whispers of the waking city came up to +her, eager, expectant, like the subdued murmur of a vast audience just +before the curtain ascends. Then suddenly, written on the twilight in +letters of fire, came the familiar words, "You get what you pay for." + +Nance's fingers ceased to drum on the window-sill. It was the big sign +facing Post-Office Square, old Post-Office Square, with its litter of +papers, its battered weather kiosk, and the old green bench where she and +Dan had sat so many evenings on their way home from the factory. Dan! A +wave of remorse swept over her. She had forgotten him as completely as if +he had never existed. And now that she remembered what was she to do? Go +to him and make a clean breast of it? And run the risk of having him +invoke the aid of Mrs. Purdy and possibly of Miss Stanley? Not that she +was afraid of their stopping her. She repeated to herself the words of +defiance with which she would meet their objections and the scorn which +she would fling at their "nice girl jobs." No; it was Dan himself she was +afraid of. Her imagination quailed before his strong, silent face, and +his deep, hurt eyes. She had always taken Dan's part in everything, and +something told her she would take it now, even against herself. + +The only safe course was to keep away from him, until the great step was +taken, and then write him a nice long letter. The nicest she had ever +written to anybody. Dear old Dan--dear, dear old Dan. + +A long, low whistle from the sidewalk opposite made her start, and look +down. At first no one was visible; then a match was struck, flared yellow +for a second, and went out, and again that low, significant whistle. +Nance dropped on her knees beside the window and watched. A man's figure +emerged from the gloom and crossed the street. A moment later she heard +the ringing of the doorbell. Could Dan have heard of her escapade and +come after her? But nobody knew where she was; the note to Mrs. Snawdor +still lay on the corner of the dresser. + +She heard a step on the stairs, then three light taps on the door. She +scrambled to her feet before she remembered Birdie's caution, then stood +motionless, listening. + +Again the taps and, "I say, Bird!" came in a vibrant whisper from +without. + +It seemed to Nance that whoever it was must surely hear the noisy +beating of her heart. Then she heard the steps move away and she sighed +with relief. + +Birdie, coming in later, dismissed the matter with gay denial. + +"One of your pipe-dreams, Nance! It must have been one of the other +boarders, or the wash woman. Stop your mooning over there by the window +and get yourself dressed; we got just thirty-five minutes to get down to +the theater." + +Nance shook off her misgivings and rushed headlong into her adventure. It +was no time to dream of Dan and the letter she was going to write him, or +to worry about a disturbing whistle in the street, or a mysterious +whisper on the other side of the door. Wasn't it enough that she, Nance +Molloy, who only yesterday was watching funerals crawl by in Cemetery +Street, was about to dance to real music, on a real stage, before a great +audience? She had taken her first mad plunge into the seething current of +life, and in these first thrilling, absorbing moments she failed to see +the danger signals that flashed across the darkness. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +THE FIRST NIGHT + + +At a quarter-past eight in the dressing-rooms of the Gaiety, pandemonium +reigned. Red birds, fairies, gnomes, will-o'-the-wisps flitted about, +begging, borrowing, stealing articles from each other in good-humored +confusion. In and out among them darted the little bear, slapping at each +passerby with her furry paws, practising steps on her cushioned toes, and +rushing back every now and then to Birdie, who stood before a mirror in +red tights, with a towel around her neck, putting the final touches on +her make-up. + +It was hot and stuffy, and the air reeked with grease paint. There was a +perpetual chatter with occasional outbursts of laughter, followed by +peremptory commands of "Less noise down there!" In the midst of the +hub-bub a call-boy gave the signal for the opening number of the chorus; +the chatter and giggling ceased, and the bright costumes settled into a +definite line as the girls filed up the stairs. + +Nance, left alone, sat on a trunk and waited for her turn in a fever of +impatience. She caught the opening strains of the orchestra as it swung +into the favorite melody of the day; she could hear the thud of dancing +feet overhead. She was like a stoker shut up in the hold of the vessel +while a lively skirmish is in progress on deck. + +As she sat there the wardrobe woman, a matronly-looking, Irish +person, came up and ordered her peremptorily to get off the trunk. +Nance not only complied, but she offered her assistance in getting it +out of the passage. + +"May ye have some one as civil as ye are to wait on ye when ye are as old +as I am!" said the woman. "It's your first night, eh?" + +"Yep. Maybe my last for all I know. They 're trying me out." + +"Good luck to ye," said the woman. "Well I mind the night I made me +first bow." + +"You!" + +"No less. I'd a waist on me ye could span wid yer two hands. And legs! +well, it ain't fer me to be braggin', but there ain't a girl in the +chorus kin stack up alongside what I oncet was! Me an' a lad named Tim +Moriarty did a turn called 'The Wearing of the Green,'--'Ryan and +Moriarty' was the team. I kin see the names on the bill-board now! We had +'em laughin' an' cryin' at the same time, 'til their tears run into their +open mouths!" + +"Wisht I could've seen you," said Nance. "I bet it was great." + +The wardrobe woman, unused to such a sympathetic listener, would have +lingered indefinitely had not a boy handed Nance a box which absorbed all +her attention. + +"Miss Birdie La Rue," was inscribed on one side of the card that dangled +from it on a silver cord, and on the other was scribbled, "Monte and I +will wait for you after the show. Bring another girl. M.D.C." + +"And I'm the other girl!" Nance told herself rapturously. + +There was a flurry in the wings above and the chorus overflowed down +the stairs. + +"It's a capacity house," gasped Birdie, "but a regular cold-storage +plant. We never got but one round. Spagetti is having spasms." + +"What's a round?" demanded Nance, but nobody had time to enlighten her. + +It was not until the end of the second act that her name was called, and +she went scampering up the stairs as fast as her clumsy suit would +permit. The stage was set for a forest scene, with gnarled trees and +hanging vines and a transparent drop that threw a midnight blue haze over +the landscape. + +"Crawl up on the stump there!" ordered Reeser, attending to half a dozen +things at once. "Put you four paws together. Head up! Hold the pose until +the gnomes go off. When I blow the whistle, get down and dance. I'll get +the will-o'-the-wisps on as quick as I can. Clear the stage everybody! +Ready for the curtain? Let her go!" + +Nance, peering excitedly through the little round holes of her mask, saw +the big curtain slowly ascend, revealing only a dazzling row of +footlights beyond. Then gradually out of the dusk loomed the vast +auditorium with its row after row of dim white faces, reaching back and +up, up further than she dared lift her head to see. From down below +somewhere sounded the weird tinkle of elfin music, and tiptoeing out from +every tree and bush came a green-clad gnome, dancing in stealthy silence +in the sleeping forest. Quite unconsciously Nance began to keep time. It +was such glorious fun playing at being animals and fairies in the woods +at night. Without realizing what she was doing, she dropped into what she +used to call in the old sweat-shop days, "dancin' settin' down." + +A ripple of amusement passed through the audience, and she looked around +to see what the gnomes were up to, but they were going off the stage, and +the suppressed titter continued. A soft whistle sounded in the wings, and +with a furiously beating heart, she slid down from her high stump and +ambled down to the footlights. + +All might have gone well, had not a sudden shaft of white light shot +toward her from the balcony opposite, making a white spot around the +place she was standing. She got out of it only to find that it followed +her, and in the bewilderment of the discovery, she lost her head +completely. All her carefully practised steps and poses were utterly +forgotten; she could think of nothing but that pursuing light, and her +mad desire to get out of it. + +Then something the director had said at the rehearsal flashed across the +confusion. "She makes her own part," he had said of Flossy Pierson, and +Nance, with grim determination, decided to do the same. A fat man in the +left hand box had laughed out when she discovered the spotlight. She +determined to make him laugh again. Simulating the dismay that at first +was genuine, she began to play tag with the shaft of light, dodging it, +jumping over it, hiding from it behind the stump, leading it a merry +chase from corner to corner. The fat man grew hysterical. The audience +laughed at him, and then it began to laugh at Nance. She threw herself +into the frolic with the same mad abandonment with which she used to +dance to the hand-organ in front of Slap Jack's saloon. She cut as many +fantastic capers as a frisky kitten playing in the twilight; she leapt +and rolled and romped, and the spectators, quick to feel the contagion of +something new and young and joyful, woke up for the first time during the +evening, and followed her pranks with round after round of applause. + +When at last the music ceased, she scampered into the wings and sank +gasping and laughing into a chair. + +"They want you back!" cried Reeser, excitedly beckoning to her. "Go on +again. Take the call." + +"The what?" said Nance, bewildered. But before she could find out, she +was thrust forward and, not being able to see where she was going, she +tripped and fell sprawling upon the very scene of her recent triumph. + +In the confusion of the moment she instinctively snatched off her mask, +and as she did so the sea of faces merged suddenly into one. In the +orchestra below, gazing at her with dropped jaw over his arrested +fiddle-bow, was old Mr. Demry, with such a comical look of paralyzed +amazement on his face that Nance burst into laughter. + +There was something in her glowing, childish face, innocent of +make-up, and in her seeming frank enjoyment of the mishap that took +the house by storm. The man in the box applauded until his face was +purple; gloved hands in the parquet tapped approval; the balcony +stormed; the gallery whistled. + +She never knew how she got off the stage, or whether the director shouted +praise or blame as she darted through the wings. It was not until she +reached the dressing-room, and the girls crowded excitedly around her +that she knew she had scored a hit. + +She came on once more at the end of the last act in the grand ballet, +where all the dancers performed intricate manoeuvers under changing +lights. Every time the wheeling figures brought her round to the +footlights, there was a greeting from the front, and, despite warnings, +she could not suppress a responsive wag of the head or a friendly wave +of the paw. + +"She is so fresh, so fresh!" groaned Pulatki from the wings. + +"She's alive," said Reeser. "She'll never make a show girl, and she's got +no voice to speak of. But she's got a personality that climbs right over +the footlights. I'm going to engage her for the rest of the season." + +When the play was over, Nance, struggling into Birdie's complicated +finery in the dressing-room below, wondered how she could ever manage to +exist until the next performance. Her one consolation was the immediate +prospect of seeing Mac Clarke and the mysterious Monte to whom Birdie had +said she must be nice. As she pinned on a saucy fur toque in place of her +own cheap millinery, she viewed herself critically in the glass. Beside +the big show girls about her, she felt ridiculously young and slender and +insignificant. + +"I believe I'll put on some paint!" she said. + +Birdie laughed. + +"What for, Silly? Your cheeks are blazing now. You'll have time enough +to paint 'em when you've been dancing a couple of years." + +They were among the last to leave the dressing-room, and when they +reached the stage entrance, Birdie spied two figures. + +"There they are!" she whispered to Nance, "the fat one is Monte, +the other--" + +Nance had an irresistible impulse to run away. Now that the time had +come, she didn't want to meet those sophisticated young men in their long +coats and high hats. She wouldn't know how to act, what to say. But +Birdie had already joined them, and was turning to say airily: + +"Shake hands with my friend Miss Millay, Mr. Clarke--and, I say, Monte, +what's your other name?" + +The older of the young men laughed good-naturedly. + +"Monte'll do," he said. "I'm that to half the girls in town." + +Mac's bright bold eyes scanned Nance curiously. "Where have I seen you +before?" he asked instantly. + +"Don't you recognize her?" said Monte. "She's the little bear! I'd know +that smile in ten thousand!" + +Nance presented him with one on the spot, out of gratitude for the +diversion. She was already sharing Birdie's wish that no reference be +made to Calvary Alley or the factory. They had no place in this +rose-colored world. + +Monte and the two girls had descended the steps to the street when the +former looked over his shoulder. + +"Why doesn't Mac come on?" he asked. "Who is the old party he is +arguing with?" + +"Oh, Lord! It's old man Demry," exclaimed Birdie in exasperation. "He +plays in the orchestra. Full of dope half of the time. Why don't Mac come +on and leave him?" + +But the old musician was not to be left. He pushed past Mac and, +staggering down the steps, laid his hand on Nance's arm. + +"You must come home with me, Nancy," he urged unsteadily. "I want to talk +to you. Want to tell you something." + +"See here!" broke in Mac Clarke, peremptorily, "is this young lady your +daughter?" + +Mr. Demry put his hand to his dazed head and looked from one to the other +in troubled uncertainty. + +"No," he said incoherently. "I had a daughter once. But she is much older +than this child. She must be nearly forty by now, and to think I haven't +seen her face for twenty-two years. I shouldn't even know her if I should +see her. I couldn't make shipwreck of her life, you know--shipwreck of +one you love best in the world!" + +"Oh, come ahead!" called Birdie from below. "He don't know what he's +babbling about." + +But the old man's wrinkled hand still clung to Nance's arm. "Don't go +with them!" he implored. "I know. I've seen. Ten years playing for girls +to dance. Stage no place for you, Nancy. Come home with me, child. Come!" +He was trembling with earnestness and his voice quavered. + +"Let go of her arm, you old fool!" cried Mac, angrily. "It's none of your +business where she goes!" + +"Nor of yours, either!" Nance flashed back instantly. "You keep your +hands off him!" + +Then she turned to Mr. Demry and patiently tried to explain that she was +spending the night with Birdie Smelts; he remembered Birdie--used to live +across the hall from him? She was coming home in the morning. She would +explain everything to Mrs. Snawdor. She promised she would. + +Mr. Demry, partly reassured, relaxed his grasp. + +"Who is this young man, Nancy?" he asked childishly. "Tell me his name." + +"It's Mr. Mac Clarke," said Nance, despite Birdie's warning glance. + +A swift look of intelligence swept the dazed old face; then terror +gathered in his eyes. + +"Not--not--Macpherson Clarke?" he stammered; then he sat down in the +doorway. "O my God!" he sobbed, dropping his head in his hands. + +"He won't go home 'til morning!" hummed Monte, catching Birdie by the +arm and skipping down the passage. Nance stood for a moment looking +down at the maudlin old figure muttering to himself on the door-step; +then she, too, turned and followed the others out into the gay +midnight throng. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +PREPARATIONS FOR FLIGHT + + +What a radically different place the world seems when one doesn't have to +begin the day with an alarm clock! There is a hateful authority in its +brassy, peremptory summons that puts one on the defensive immediately. To +be sure, Nance dreamed she heard it the following day at noon, and sprang +up in bed with the terrifying conviction that she would be late at Miss +Bobinet's. But when she saw where she was, she gave a sigh of relief, and +snuggled down against Birdie's warm shoulder, and tried to realize what +had happened to her. + +The big theater, the rows of smiling faces, the clapping hands--surely +they must have all been a dream? And Mr. Demry? Why had he sat on the +steps and cried into a big starchy handkerchief? Oh, yes; she remembered +now, but she didn't like to remember, so she hurried on. + +There was a café, big and noisy, with little tables, and a woman who +stood on a platform, with her dress dragging off one shoulder, and sang a +beautiful song, called "I'm A-wearying for You." Mr. Monte didn't think +it was pretty; he had teased her for thinking so. But then he had teased +her for not liking the raw oysters, and for saying the champagne made her +nose go to sleep. They had all teased her and laughed at everything she +said. She didn't care; she liked it. They thought she was funny and +called her "Cubby." At least Mr. Monte did. Mr. Mac didn't call her +anything. He talked most of the time to Birdie, but his eyes were all for +_her_, with a smile that sort of remembered and sort of forgot, and-- + +"Say, Birdie!" She impulsively interrupted her own confused reflections. +"Do you think they liked me--honest?" + +"Who?" said Birdie, drowsily, "the audience?" + +"No. Those fellows last night. I haven't got any looks to brag on, and +I'm as green as a string-bean!" + +"That's what tickles 'em," said Birdie. "Besides, you can't ever tell +what makes a girl take. You got a independent way of walking and talking, +and Monte's crazy 'bout your laugh. But you're a funny kid; you beckon a +feller with one hand and slap his face with the other." + +"Not unless he gets nervy!" said Nance. + +After what euphemistically might be termed a buffet breakfast, prepared +over the gas and served on the trunk, Nance departed for Calvary Alley, +to proclaim to the family her declaration of independence. She was +prepared for a battle royal with all whom it might concern, and was +therefore greatly relieved to find only her stepmother at home. That +worthy lady surrendered before a gun was fired. + +"Ain't that Irish luck fer you?" she exclaimed, almost enviously. +"Imagine one of Yager's and Snawdor's childern gittin' on the stage! If +Bud Molloy hadn't taken to railroading he could 'a' been a end man in a +minstrel show! You got a lot of his takin' ways, Nance. It's a Lord's +pity you ain't got his looks!" + +"Oh, give me time!" said Nance, whose spirits were soaring. + +"I sort 'er thought of joining the ballet onct myself," said Mrs. +Snawdor, with a conscious smile. "It was on account of a scene-shifter I +was runnin' with along about the time I met your pa." + +"You!" exclaimed Nance. "Oh! haven't I got a picture of you dancing. Wait +'til I show you!" And ably assisted by the bolster and the bedspread, she +gave a masterly imitation of her stout stepmother that made the original +limp with laughter. Then quite as suddenly, Nance collapsed into a chair +and grew very serious. + +"Say!" she demanded earnestly, "honest to goodness now! Do you think +there's any sin in me going on the stage?" + +"Sin!" repeated Mrs. Snawdor. "Why, I think it's elegant. I was sayin' +so to Mrs. Smelts only yesterday when she was takin' on about Birdie's +treatin' her so mean an' never comin' to see her or writin' to her. +'Don't lay it on the stage,' I says to her. 'Lay it on Birdie; she always +was a stuck-up piece.'" + +Nance pondered the matter, her chin on her palm. Considering the chronic +fallibility of Mrs. Snawdor's judgment, she would have been more +comfortable if she had met with some opposition. + +"Mr. Demry thinks it's wrong," said Nance, taking upon herself the role +of counsel for the prosecution. "He took on something fierce when he saw +me last night." + +"He never knowed what he was doin'," Mrs. Snawdor said. "They tell me he +can play in the orchestry, when he's full as a nut." + +"And there's Uncle Jed," continued Nance uneasily. "What you reckon he's +going to say?" + +"You leave that to me," said Mrs. Snawdor, darkly. "Mr. Burks ain't +goin' to git a inklin' 'til you've went. There ain't nobody I respect +more on the face of the world than I do Jed Burks, but some people is +so all-fired good that livin' with 'em is like wearin' new shoes the +year round." + +"'T ain't as if I was doing anything wicked," said Nance, this time +counsel for the defense. + +"Course not," agreed Mrs. Snawdor. "How much they goin' to pay you?" + +The incredible sum was mentioned, and Mrs. Snawdor's imagination took +instant flight. + +"You'll be gittin' a autymobile at that rate. Say, if I send Lobelia +round to Cemetery Street and git yer last week's pay, can I have it?" + +Nance was counting on that small sum to finish payment on her spring +suit, but in the face of imminent affluence she could ill afford to be +niggardly. + +"I'll buy Rosy V. some shoes, an' pay somethin' on the cuckoo clock," +planned Mrs. Snawdor, "an' I've half a mind to take another policy on +William J. That boy's that venturesome it wouldn't surprise me none to +see him git kilt any old time!" + +Nance, who had failed to convince herself, either as counsel for the +defense or counsel for the prosecution, assumed the prerogative of judge +and dismissed the case. If older people had such different opinions about +right and wrong, what was the use in her bothering about it? With a shrug +of her shoulders she set to work sorting her clothes and packing the ones +she needed in a box. + +"The gingham dresses go to Fidy," she said with reckless generosity, "the +blue skirt to Lobelia, and my Madonna--" Her eyes rested wistfully on her +most cherished possession. "I think I'd like Rosy to have that when she +grows up." + +"All right," agreed Mrs. Snawdor. "There ain't no danger of anybody +takin' it away from her." + +Nance was kneeling on the floor, tying a cord about her box when she +heard steps on the stairs. + +"Uncle Jed?" she asked in alarm. + +"No. Just Snawdor. He won't ast no questions. He ain't got gumption +enough to be curious." + +"I hate to go sneaking off like this without telling everybody good-by," +said Nance petulantly, "Uncle Jed, and the children, and the Levinskis, +and Mr. Demry, and--and--Dan." + +"You don't want to take no risks," said Mrs. Snawdor, importantly. +"There's a fool society for everything under the sun, an' somebody'll be +tryin' to git out a injunction. I don't mind swearin' to whatever age you +got to be, but Mr. Burks is so sensitive about them things." + +"All right," said Nance, flinging on her hat and coat, "tell 'em how it +was when I'm gone. I'll be sending you money before long." + +"That's right," whispered Mrs. Snawdor, hanging over the banister as +Nance felt her way down the stairs. "You be good to yerself an' see if +you can't git me a theayter ticket for to-morrow night. Git two, an' I'll +take Mis' Gorman." + +Never had Nance tripped so lightly down those dark, narrow stairs--the +stairs her feet had helped to wear away in her endless pilgrimages with +buckets of coal and water and beer, with finished and unfinished +garments, and omnipresent Snawdor babies. She was leaving it all +forever, along with the smell of pickled herrings and cabbage and +soapsuds. But she was not going to forget the family! Already she was +planning munificent gifts from that fabulous sum that was henceforth to +be her weekly portion. + +At Mr. Demry's closed door she paused; then hastily retracing her steps, +she slipped back to her own room and got a potted geranium, bearing one +dirty-faced blossom. This she placed on the floor outside his door and +then, picking up her big box, she slipped quickly out of the house, +through the alley and into the street. + +It was late when she got back to Birdie's room, and as she entered, she +was startled by the sound of smothered sobbing. + +"Birdie!" she cried in sudden alarm, peering into the semi-darkness, +"what's the matter? Are you fired?" + +Birdie started up hastily from the bed where she had been lying face +downward, and dried her eyes. + +"No," she said crossly. "Nothing's the matter, only I got the blues." + +"The blues!" repeated Nance, incredulously. "What for?" + +"Oh, everything. I wish I was dead." + +"Birdie Smelts, what's happened to you?" demanded Nance in alarm, sitting +by her on the bed and trying to put her arm around her. + +"Whoever said anything had happened?" asked the older girl, pushing +her away. "Stop asking fool questions and get dressed. We'll be late +as it is." + +For some time they went about their preparations in silence; then Nance, +partly to relieve the tension, and partly because the matter was of vital +interest, asked: + +"Do you reckon Mr. Mac and Mr. Monte will come again to-night?" + +"You can't tell," said Birdie. "What do they care about engagements? +We are nothing but dirt to them--just dirt under their old +patent-leather pumps!" + +This bitterness on Birdie's part was so different from her customary +superiority where men were concerned, that Nance gasped. + +"If they _do_ come," continued Birdie vindictively, "you just watch me +teach Mac Clarke a thing or two. He needn't think because his folks +happen to be swells, he can treat me any old way. I'll make it hot for +him if he don't look out, you see if I don't." + +Once back at the Gaiety, Nance forgot all about Birdie and her love +affairs. Her own small triumph completely engrossed her. A morning paper +had mentioned the fantastic dance of the little bear, and had given her +three lines all to herself. Reeser was jubilant, the director was +mollified, and even the big comedian whose name blazed in letters of +fire outside, actually stopped her in the wings to congratulate her. + +"Look here, young person," he said, lifting a warning finger, "you want +to be careful how you steal my thunder. You'll be taking my job next!" + +Whereupon Nance had the audacity to cross her eyes and strike his +most famous pose before she dodged under his arm and scampered down +the stairs. + +It seemed incredible that the marvelous events of the night before could +happen all over again; but they did. She had only to imitate her own +performance to send the audience into peals of laughter. It would have +been more fun to try new tricks, but on this point Pulatki was adamant. + +"I vant zat you do ze same act, no more, no less, see?" he demanded of +her, fiercely. + +When the encore came, and at Reeser's command she snatched off her bear's +head and made her funny, awkward, little bow, she involuntarily glanced +down at the orchestra. Mr. Demry was not there, but in the parquet she +encountered a pair of importunate eyes that set her pulses bounding. They +sought her out in the subsequent chorus and followed her every movement +in the grand march that followed. + +"Mr. Mac's down there," she whispered excitedly to Birdie as they passed +in the first figure, but Birdie tossed her head and flirted persistently +with the gallery which was quite unused to such marked attention from the +principal show girl. + +There was no supper after the play that night, and it was only after much +persuasion on Mac's part, reinforced by the belated Monte, that Birdie +was induced to come out of her sulks and go for a drive around the park. + +"Me for the front seat!" cried Nance hoydenishly, and then, as Mac jumped +in beside her and took the wheel, she saw her mistake. + +"Oh! I didn't know--" she began, but Mac caught her hand and gave it a +grateful squeeze. + +"Confess you wanted to sit by me!" he whispered. + +"But I didn't!" she protested hotly. "I never was in a automobile before +and I just wanted to see how it worked!" + +She almost persuaded herself that this was true when they reached the +long stretch of parkway, and Mac let her take the wheel. It was only when +in the course of instruction Mac's hand lingered too long on hers, or his +gay, careless face leaned too close, that she had her misgivings. + +"Say! this is great!" she cried rapturously, with her feet braced and her +eyes on the long road ahead. "When it don't get the hic-cups, it beats a +horse all hollow!" + +"What do you know about horses?" teased Mac, giving unnecessary +assistance with the wheel. + +"Enough to keep my hands off the reins when another fellow's driving!" +she said coolly--a remark that moved Mac to boisterous laughter. + +When they were on the homeward way and Mac had taken the wheel again, +they found little to say to each other. Once he got her to light a +cigarette for him, and once or twice she asked a question about the +engine. In Calvary Alley one talked or one didn't as the mood suggested, +and Nance was unversed in the fine art of making conversation. It +disturbed her not a whit that she and the handsome youth beside her had +no common topic of interest. It was quite enough for her to sit there +beside him, keenly aware that his arm was pressing hers and that every +time she glanced up she found him glancing down. + +It was a night of snow and moonshine, one of those transitorial nights +when winter is going and spring is coming. Nance held her breath as the +car plunged headlong into one mass of black shadows after another only to +emerge triumphant into the white moonlight. She loved the unexpected +revelations of the headlights, which turned the dim road to silver and +lit up the dark turf at the wayside. She loved the crystal-clear moon +that was sailing off and away across those dim fields of virgin snow. And +then she was not thinking any longer, but feeling--feeling beauty and +wonder and happiness and always the blissful thrill of that arm pressed +against her own. + +Not until they were nearing the city did she remember the couple on the +back seat. + +"Wake up there!" shouted Mac, tossing his cap over his shoulder. "Gone +to sleep?" + +"I am trying to induce Miss Birdie to go to the carnival ball with me +to-morrow night," said Monte. "It's going to be no end of a lark." + +"Take me, too, Birdie, please!" burst out Nance with such childish +vehemence that they all laughed. + +"What's the matter with us all going?" cried Mac, instantly on fire at +the suggestion. "Mother's having a dinner to-morrow night, but I can join +you after the show. What do you say, Bird?" + +But Birdie was still in the sulks, and it was not until Mac had changed +places with Monte and brought the full battery of his persuasions to bear +upon her that she agreed to the plan. + +That night when the girls were tucked comfortably in bed and the lights +were out, they discussed ways and means. + +"I'm going to see if I can't borrow a couple of red-bird costumes off +Mrs. Ryan," said Birdie, whose good humor seemed completely restored. +"We'll buy a couple of masks. I don't know what Monte's letting us in +for, but I'll try anything once." + +"Will there be dancing, Birdie?" asked Nance, her eyes shining in the +dark. + +"Of course, Silly! Nothing but. Say, what was the matter with you and Mac +to-night? You didn't seem to hit it off." + +"Oh! we got along pretty good." + +"I never heard you talking much. By the way, he's going to take me +to-morrow night, and you are going with Monte." + +"Any old way suits me!" said Nance, "just so I get there." But she lay +awake for a time staring into the dark, thinking things over. + +"Does he always call you 'Bird'?" she asked after a long silence. + +"Who, Mac? Yes. Why?" + +"Oh! Nothing," said Nance. + +The next day being Saturday, there were two performances, beside the +packing necessary for an early departure on the morrow. But +notwithstanding the full day ahead of her, Birdie spent the morning in +bed, languidly directing Nance, who emptied the wardrobe and bureau +drawers and sorted and folded the soiled finery. Toward noon she got up +and, petulantly declaring that the room was suffocating, announced that +she was going out to do some shopping. + +"I'll come, too," said Nance, to whom the purchasing of wearing apparel +was a new and exciting experience. + +"No; you finish up here," said Birdie. "I'll be back soon." + +Nance went to the window and watched for her to come out in the street +below. She was beginning to be worried about Birdie. What made her so +restless and discontented? Why wouldn't she go to see her mother? Why was +she so cross with Mac Clarke when he was with her and so miserable when +he was away? While she pondered it over, she saw Birdie cross the street +and stand irresolute for a moment, before she turned her back on the +shopping district and hastened off to the east where the tall pipes of +the factories stood like exclamation points along the sky-line. + +Already the noon whistles were blowing, and she recognized, above the +rest, the shrill voice of Clarke's Bottle Factory. How she used to +listen for that whistle, especially on Saturdays. Why, _this_ was +Saturday! In the exciting rush of events she had forgotten completely +that Dan would be waiting for her at five o'clock at the foot of +Cemetery Street. Never once in the months she had been at Miss Bobinet's +had he failed to be there on Saturday afternoon. If only she could send +him some word, make some excuse! But it was not easy to deceive Dan, and +she knew he would never rest until he got at the truth of the matter. +No; she had better take Mrs. Snawdor's advice and run no risks. And yet +that thought of Dan waiting patiently at the corner tormented her as +she finished the packing. + +When the time arrived to report at the theater, Birdie had not returned, +so Nance rushed off alone at the last minute. It was not until the first +chorus was about to be called that the principal show girl, flushed and +tired, flung herself into the dressing-room and made a lightning change +in time to take her place at the head of the line. + +There was a rehearsal between the afternoon and evening performances, and +the girls had little time for confidences. + +"Don't ask me any questions!" said Birdie crossly, as she sat before her +dressing-table, wearily washing off the make-up of the afternoon in order +to put on the make-up of the evening. "I'm so dog tired I'd lots rather +be going to bed than to that carnival thing!" + +"Don't you back out!" warned Nance, to whom it was ridiculous that any +one should be tired under such exhilarating circumstances. + +"Oh, I'll go," said Birdie, "if it's just for the sake of getting +something decent to eat. I'm sick of dancing on crackers and ice-water." + +That night Nance, for the first time, was reconciled to the final +curtain. The weather was threatening and the audience was small, but that +was not what took the keen edge off the performance. It was the absence +in the parquet of a certain pair of pursuing eyes that made all the +difference. Moreover, the prospect of the carnival ball made even the +footlights pale by comparison. + +The wardrobe woman, after much coaxing and bribing, had been induced +to lend the girls two of the property costumes, and Nance, with the +help of several giggling assistants, was being initiated into the +mysteries of the red-bird costume. When she had donned the crimson +tights, and high-heeled crimson boots, and the short-spangled slip +with its black gauze wings, she gave a half-abashed glance at herself +in the long mirror. + +"I can't do it, Birdie!" she cried, "I feel like a fool. You be a red +bird, and let me be a bear!" + +"Don't we all do it every night?" asked Birdie. "When we've got on our +masks, nobody 'll know us. We'll just be a couple of 'Rag-Time Follies' +taking a night off." + +"Don't she look cute with her cap on?" cried one of the girls. "I'd give +my head to be going!" + +Nance put on a borrowed rain-coat which was to serve as evening wrap as +well and, with a kiss all around and many parting gibes, ran up the steps +in Birdie's wake. + +The court outside the stage entrance was a bobbing mass of umbrellas. +Groups of girls, pulling their wraps on as they came, tripped noisily +down the steps, greeting waiting cavaliers, or hurrying off alone in +various directions. + +"That's Mac's horn," said Birdie, "a long toot and two short ones. I'd +know it in Halifax!" + +At the curbing the usual altercation arose between Mac and Birdie as to +how they should sit. The latter refused to sit on the front seat for fear +of getting wet, and Mac refused to let Monte drive. + +"Oh, I don't mind getting wet!" cried Nance with a fine show of +indifference. "That's what a rain-coat's for." + +When Mac had dexterously backed his machine out of its close quarters, +and was threading his way with reckless skill through the crowded +streets, he said softly, without turning his head: + +"I think I rather like you, Nance Molloy!" + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +WILD OATS + + +The tenth annual carnival ball, under the auspices of a too-well-known +political organization, was at its midnight worst. It was one of those +conglomerate gatherings, made up of the loose ends of the city--ward +politicians, girls from the department stores, Bohemians with an unsated +thirst for diversion, reporters, ostensibly looking for copy, women just +over the line of respectability, sometimes on one side, sometimes on the +other, and the inevitable sprinkling of well-born youths who regard such +occasions as golden opportunities for seeing that mysterious phantom +termed "life." + +It was all cheap and incredibly tawdry, from the festoons of paper roses +on the walls to the flash of paste jewels in make-believe crowns. The big +hall, with its stage flanked by gilded boxes, was crowded with a shifting +throng of maskers in costumes of flaunting discord. Above the noisy +laughter and popping of corks, rose the blaring strains of a brass band. +Through the odor of flowers came the strong scent of musk, which, in +turn, was routed by the fumes of beer and tobacco which were already +making the air heavy. + +On the edge of all this stood Nance Molloy, in that magic hour of her +girlhood when the bud was ready to burst into the full-blown blossom. Her +slender figure on tiptoe with excitement, her eyes star-like behind her +mask, she stood poised, waiting with all her unslaked thirst for +pleasure, to make her plunge into the gay, dancing throng. She no longer +cared if her skirts were short, and her arms and neck were bare. She no +longer thought of how she looked or how she acted. There was no Pulatki +in the wings to call her down for extra flourishes; there was no old +white face in the orchestra to disturb her conscience. Her chance for a +good time had come at last, and she was rushing to meet it with arms +outstretched. + +"They are getting ready for the grand march!" cried Monte, who, with Mac, +represented the "two _Dromios_." "We separate at the end of the hall, and +when the columns line up again, you dance with your vis-à-vis." + +"My who-tee-who?" asked Nance. + +"Vis-à-vis--fellow opposite. Come ahead!" + +Down the long hall swung the gay procession, while the floor vibrated to +the rhythm of the prancing feet. The columns marched and countermarched +and fell into two long lines facing each other. The leader of the +orchestra blew a shrill whistle, and Nance, marking time expectantly, +saw one of the _Dromios_ slip out of his place and into the one facing +her. The next moment the columns flowed together, and she found herself +in his arms, swinging in and out of the gay whirling throng with every +nerve tingling response to the summoning music. + +Suddenly a tender pressure made her glance up sharply at the white mask +of her companion. + +"Why--why, I thought it was Mr. Monte," she laughed. + +"Disappointed?" asked Mac. + +"N-no." + +"Then why are you stopping?" + +Nance could not tell him that in her world a "High Particular" was not to +be trifled with. In her vigil of the night before she had made firm +resolve to do the square thing by Birdie Smelts. + +"Where are the others?" she asked in sudden confusion. + +"In the supper room probably. Aren't you going to finish this with me?" + +"Not me. I'm going to dance with Mr. Monte." + +"Has he asked you?" + +"No; I'm going to ask him." And she darted away, leaving Mac to follow at +his leisure. + +After supper propriety, which up to now had held slack rein on the +carnival spirit, turned her loose. Masks were flung aside, hundreds of +toy balloons were set afloat and tossed from hand to hand, confetti was +showered from the balcony, boisterous song and laughter mingled with the +music. The floor resembled some gigantic kaleidoscope, one gay pattern +following another in rapid succession. And in every group the most vivid +note was struck by a flashing red bird. Even had word not gone abroad +that the girls in crimson and black were from the "Rag Time Follies", +Birdie's conspicuous charms would have created instant comment and a host +of admirers. + +Nance, with characteristic independence, soon swung out of Birdie's orbit +and made friends for herself. For her it was a night of delirium, and her +pulses hammered in rhythm to the throbbing music. In one day life had +caught her up out of an abyss of gloom and swung her to a dizzy pinnacle +of delight, where she poised in exquisite ecstasy, fearing that the next +turn of the wheel might carry her down again. Laughter had softened her +lips and hung mischievous lights in her eyes; happiness had set her +nerves tingling and set roses blooming in cheeks and lips. The smoldering +fires of self-expression, smothered so long, burst into riotous flame. +With utter abandonment she flung herself into the merriment of the +moment, romping through the dances with any one who asked her, slapping +the face of an elderly knight who went too far in his gallantries, +dancing a hornpipe with a fat clown to the accompaniment of a hundred +clapping hands. Up and down the crowded hall she raced, a hoydenish +little tom-boy, drunk with youth, with freedom, and with the pent-up +vitality of years. + +Close after her, snatching her away from the other dancers only to have +her snatched away from him in turn, was Mac Clarke, equally flushed and +excited, refusing to listen to Monte's insistent reminder that a storm +was brewing and they ought to go home. + +"Hang the storm!" cried Mac gaily. "I'm in for it with the governor, +anyhow. Let's make a night of it!" + +At the end of a dance even wilder than the rest, Nance found herself with +Mac at the entrance to one of the boxes that flanked the stage. + +"I've got you now!" he panted, catching her wrists and pulling her within +the curtained recess. "You've got to tell me why you've been running away +from me all evening." + +"I haven't," said Nance, laughing and struggling to free her hands. + +"You have, too! You've given me the slip a dozen times. Don't you know +I'm crazy about you?" + +"Much you are!" scoffed Nance. "Go tell that to Birdie." + +"I'll tell it to Birdie and every one else if you like," Mac cried. "It +was all up with me the first time I saw you." + +With his handsome, boyish face and his frilled shirt, he looked so +absurdly like the choir boy, who had once sat on the fence flinging rocks +at her, that she threw back her head and laughed. + +"You don't even know the first time you saw me," she challenged him. + +"Well, I know I've seen you somewhere before. Tell me where?" + +"Guess!" said Nance, with dancing eyes. + +"Wait! I know! It was on the street one night. You were standing in a +drug store. A red light was shining on you, and you smiled at me." + +"I smiled at you because I knew you. I'd seen you before that. Once when +you didn't want me to. In the factory yard--behind the gas-pipe--" + +"Were you the little girl that caught me kissing Bird that day?" + +"Yes! But there was another time even before that." + +He searched her face quizzically, still holding her wrists. + +Nance, no longer trying to free her hands, hummed teasingly, half under +her breath: + +"Do ye think the likes of ye +Could learn to like the likes o' me? +Arrah, come in, Barney McKane, out of the rain!" + +A puzzled look swept his face; then he cried exultantly: + +"I've got it. It was you who let my pigeons go! You little devil! I'm +going to pay you back for that!" and before she knew it, he had got both +of her hands into one of his and had caught her to him, and was kissing +her there in the shadow of the curtain, kissing her gay, defiant eyes and +her half-childish lips. + +And Nance, the independent, scoffing, high-headed Nance, who up to this +time had waged successful warfare, offensive as well as defensive, +against the invading masculine, forgot for one transcendent second +everything in the world except the touch of those ardent lips on hers and +the warm clasp of the arm about her yielding shoulders. + +In the next instant she sprang away from him, and in dire confusion fled +out of the box and down the corridor. + +At the door leading back into the ball-room a group of dancers had +gathered and were exchanging humorous remarks about a woman who was being +borne, feet foremost, into the corridor by two men in costume. + +Nance, craning her neck to see, caught a glimpse of a white face with a +sagging mouth, and staring eyes under a profusion of tumbled red hair. +With a gasp of recognition she pushed forward and impulsively seized one +of the woman's limp hands. + +"Gert!" she cried, "what's the matter? Are you hurt?" + +The monk gave a significant wink at Mac, who had joined them, and the +by-standers laughed. + +"She's drunk!" said Mac, abruptly, pulling Nance away. "Where did you +ever know that woman?" + +"Why, it's Gert, you know, at the factory! She worked at the bench +next to mine!" + +Her eyes followed the departing group somberly, and she lingered despite +Mac's persuasion. + +Poor Gert! Was this what she meant by a good time? To be limp and silly +like that, with her dress slipping off her shoulder and people staring at +her and laughing at her? + +"I don't want to dance!" she said impatiently, shaking off Mac's hand. + +The steaming hall, reeking with tobacco smoke and stale beer, the men and +women with painted faces and blackened eyes leering and languishing at +each other, the snatches of suggestive song and jest, filled her with +sudden disgust. + +"I'm going home," she announced with determination. + +"But, Nance!" pleaded Mac, "you can't go until we've had our dance." + +But for Nance the spell was broken, and her one idea was to get away. +When she found Birdie she became more insistent than ever. + +"Why not see it out?" urged Mac. "I don't want to go home." + +"You are as hoarse as a frog now," said Monte. + +"Glad of it! Let's me out of singing in the choir to-morrow--I mean +to-day! Who wants another drink?" + +Birdie did, and another ten minutes was lost while they went around to +the refreshment room. + +The storm was at its height when at four o'clock they started on that mad +drive home. The shrieking wind, the wet, slippery streets, the lightning +flashing against the blurred wind-shield, the crashes of thunder that +drowned all other sounds, were sufficient to try the nerves of the +steadiest driver. But Mac sped his car through it with reckless +disregard, singing, despite his hoarseness, with Birdie and Monte, and +shouting laughing defiance as the lightning played. + +Nance sat very straight beside him with her eyes on the road ahead. She +hated Birdie for having taken enough wine to make her silly like that; +she hated the boys for laughing at her. She saw nothing funny in the fact +that somebody had lost the latch-key and that they could only get in by +raising the landlady, who was sharp of tongue and free with her comments. + +"You girls better come on over to my rooms," urged Monte. "We'll cook +your breakfast on the chafing-dish, won't we, Mac?" + +"Me for the couch!" said Birdie. "I'm cross-eyed, I'm so sleepy." + +"I'm not going," said Nance, shortly. + +"Don't be a short-sport, Nance," urged Birdie, peevishly. "It's as good +as morning now. We can loaf around Monte's for a couple of hours and then +go over to my room and change our clothes in time to get to the station +by seven. Less time we have to answer questions, better it'll be for us." + +"I tell you I ain't going!" protested Nance, hotly. + +"Yes, you are!" whispered Mac softly. "You are going to be a good little +girl and do whatever I want you to." + +Nance grew strangely silent under his compelling look, and under the +touch of his hand as it sought hers in the darkness. Why wasn't she angry +with Mr. Mac as she was with the others? Why did she want so much to do +whatever he asked her to? After all perhaps there was no harm in going to +Mr. Monte's for a little while, perhaps-- + +She drew in her breath suddenly and shivered. For the first time in her +life she was afraid, not of the storm, or the consequences of her +escapade, but of herself. She was afraid of the quick, sweet shiver that +ran over her whenever Mac touched her, of the strange weakness that came +over her even now, as his hands claimed hers. + +"Say, I'm going to get out," she said suddenly. + +"Stop the car! Don't you hear me? I want to get out!" + +"Nonsense!" said Mac, "you don't even know where you are! You are coming +with us to Monte's; that's what you are going to do." + +But Nance knew more than he thought. In the last flash of lightning she +had seen, back of them on the left, startlingly white for the second +against the blackness, the spire of Calvary Cathedral. She knew that they +were rapidly approaching the railroad crossing where Uncle Jed's signal +tower stood, beyond which lay a region totally unfamiliar to her. + +She waited tensely until Mac had sped the car across the gleaming tracks, +just escaping the descending gates. Then she bent forward and seized the +emergency brake. The car came to a halt with a terrific jerk, plunging +them all forward, and under cover of the confusion Nance leapt out and, +darting under the lowered gate, dashed across the tracks. The next moment +a long freight train passed between her and the automobile, and when it +was done with its noisy shunting backward and forward, and had gone +ahead, the street was empty. + +Watching her chance between the lightning flashes, she darted from cover +to cover. Once beyond the signal tower she would be safe from Uncle Jed's +righteous eye, and able to dash down a short cut she knew that led into +the street back of the warehouse and thence into Calvary Alley. If she +could get to her old room for the next two hours, she could change her +clothes and be off again before any one knew of her night's adventure. + +Just as she reached the corner, a flash more blinding than the rest +ripped the heavens. A line of fire raced toward her along the steel +rails, then leapt in a ball to the big bell at the top of the signal +tower. There was a deafening crash; all the electric lights went out, and +Nance found herself cowering against the fence, apparently the one living +object in that wild, wet, storm-racked night. + +The only lights to be seen were the small red lamps suspended on the +slanting gates. Nance waited for them to lower when the freight train +that had backed into the yards five minutes before, rushed out again. But +the lamps did not move. + +She crept back across the tracks, watching with fascinated horror the +dark windows of the signal tower. Why didn't Uncle Jed light his lantern? +Why hadn't he lowered the gates? All her fear of discovery was suddenly +swallowed up in a greater fear. + +At the foot of the crude wooden stairway she no longer hesitated. + +"Uncle Jed!" she shouted against the wind, "Uncle Jed, are you there?" + +There was no answer. + +She climbed the steep steps and tried the door, which yielded grudgingly +to her pressure. It was only when she put her shoulder to it and pushed +with all her strength that she made an opening wide enough to squeeze +through. There on the floor, lying just as he had fallen, was the old +gate-tender, his unseeing eyes staring up into the semi-darkness. + +Nance looked at him in terror, then at the signal board and the levers +that controlled the gates. A terrible trembling seized her, and she +covered her eyes with her hands. + +"God tell me quick, what must I do?" she demanded, and the next instant, +as if in answer to her prayer, she heard herself gasp, "Dan!" as she +fumbled wildly for the telephone. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +DAN + + +The shrill whistle that at noon had obtruded its discord into Nance +Molloy's thoughts had a very different effect on Dan Lewis, washing his +hands under the hydrant in the factory yard. _He_ had not forgotten that +it was Saturday. Neither had Growler, who stood watching him with an +oblique look in his old eye that said as plain as words that he knew what +momentous business was brewing at five o'clock. + +It was not only Saturday for Dan, but the most important Saturday that +ever figured on the calendar. In his heroic efforts to conform to Mrs. +Purdy's standard of perfection he had studied the advice to young men in +the "Sunday Echo." There he learned that no gentleman would think of +mentioning love to a young lady until he was in a position to marry her. +To-day's pay envelope would hold the exact amount to bring his bank +account up to the three imposing figures that he had decided on as the +minimum sum to be put away. + +As he was drying his hands on his handkerchief and whistling softly +under his breath, he was summoned to the office. + +For the past year he had been a self-constituted buffer between Mr. +Clarke and the men in the furnace-room, and he wondered anxiously what +new complication had arisen. + +"He's got an awful grouch on," warned the stenographer as Dan passed +through the outer office. + +Mr. Clarke was sitting at his desk, tapping his foot impatiently. + +"Well, Lewis," he said, "you've taken your time! Sit down. I want to +talk to you." + +Dan dropped into the chair opposite and waited. + +"Is it true that you have been doing most of the new foreman's work for +the past month?" + +"Well, I've helped him some. You see, being here so long, I know the +ropes a bit better than he does." + +"That's not the point. I ought to have known sooner that he could not +handle the job. I fired him this morning, and we've got to make some +temporary arrangement until a new man is installed." + +Dan's face grew grave. + +"We can manage everything but the finishing room. Some of the girls have +been threatening to quit." + +"What's the grievance now?" + +"Same thing--ventilation. Two more girls fainted there this morning. The +air is something terrible." + +"What do they think I am running?" demanded Mr. Clarke, angrily, "a +health resort?" + +"No, sir," said Dan, "a death trap." + +Mr. Clarke set his jaw and glared at Dan, but he said nothing. The +doctor's recent verdict on the death of a certain one-eyed girl, named +Mag Gist, may have had something to do with his silence. + +"How many girls are in that room now?" he asked after a long pause. + +Dan gave the number, together with several other disturbing facts +concerning the sanitary arrangements. + +"Well, what's to be done?" demanded Mr. Clarke, fiercely. "We can't +get out the work with fewer girls, and there is no way of enlarging +that room." + +"Yes, sir, there is," said Dan. "Would you mind me showing you a way?" + +"Since you are so full of advice, go ahead." + +With crude, but sure, pencil strokes, Dan got his ideas on paper. He had +done it so often for his own satisfaction that he could have made them +with his eyes shut. Ever since those early days when he had seen that +room through Nance Molloy's eyes, he had persisted in his efforts to +better it. + +Mr. Clarke, with his fingers thrust through his scanty hair, watched him +scornfully. + +"Absolutely impractical," he declared. "The only feasible plan would be +to take out the north partition and build an extension like this." + +"That couldn't be done," said Dan, "on account of the projection." + +Whereupon, such is the power of opposition, Mr. Clarke set himself to +prove that it could. For over an hour they wrangled, going into the +questions of cost, of time, of heating, of ventilation, scarcely looking +up from the plans until a figure in a checked suit flung open the door, +letting in a draught of air that scattered the papers on the desk. + +"Hello, Dad," said the new-comer, with a friendly nod to Dan, "I'm sorry +to disturb you, but I only have a minute." + +"Which I should accept gratefully, I suppose, as my share of your busy +day?" Mr. Clarke tried to look severe, but his eyes softened. + +"Well, I just got up," said Mac, with an ingratiating smile, as he +smoothed back his shining hair before the mirror in the hat-rack. + +"Running all night, and sleeping half the day!" grumbled Mr. Clarke. "By +the way, what time did you get in last night?" + +Mac made a wry face. + +"_Et tu, Brute?_" he cried gaily. "Mother's polished me off on that +score. I have not come here to discuss the waywardness of your prodigal +son. Mr. Clarke, I have come to talk high finance. I desire to +negotiate a loan." + +"As usual," growled his father. "I venture to say that Dan Lewis here, +who earns about half what you waste a year, has something put away." + +"But Dan's the original grinder. He always had an eye for business. Used +to win my nickel every Sunday when we shot craps in the alley back of the +cathedral. Say, Dan, I see you've still got that handsome thoroughbred +cur of yours! By George, that dog could use his tail for a jumping rope!" + +Dan smiled; he couldn't afford to be sensitive about Growler's beauty. + +"Is that all, Mr. Clarke?" he asked of his employer. + +"Yes. I'll see what can be done with these plans. In the meanwhile you +try to keep the girls satisfied until the new foreman comes. By the way I +expect you'd better stay on here to-night." + +Dan paused with his hand on the door-knob. "Yes, sir," he said in evident +embarrassment, "but if you don't mind--I 'd like to get off for a couple +of hours this afternoon." + +"Who's the girl, Dan?" asked Mac, but Dan did not stop to answer. + +As he hurried down the hall, a boy appeared from around the corner and +beckoned to him with a mysterious grin. + +"Somebody's waiting for you down in the yard." + +"Who is he?" + +"'T ain't a he. It's the prettiest girl you ever seen!" + +Dan, whose thoughts for weeks had been completely filled with one +feminine image, sprang to the window. But the tall, stylish person +enveloped in a white veil, who was waiting below, in no remote way +suggested Nance Molloy. + +A call from a lady was a new experience, and a lively curiosity seized +him as he descended the steps, turning down his shirt sleeves as he went. +As he stepped into the yard, the girl turned toward him with a quick, +nervous movement. + +"Hello, Daniel!" she said, her full red lips curving into a smile. "Don't +remember me, do you?" + +"Sure, I do. It's Birdie Smelts." + +"Good boy! Only now it's Birdie La Rue. That's my stage name, you know. I +blew into town Thursday with 'The Rag Time Follies.' Say, Dan, you used +to be a good friend of mine, didn't you?" + +Dan had no recollection of ever having been noticed by Birdie, except on +that one occasion when he had taken her and Nance to the skating-rink. +She was older than he by a couple of years, and infinitely wiser in the +ways of the world. But it was beyond masculine human nature not to be +flattered by her manner, and he hastened to assure her that he had been +and was her friend. + +"Well, I wonder if you don't want to do me a favor?" she coaxed. "Find +out if Mac Clarke's been here, or is going to be here. I got to see him +on particular business." + +"He's up in the office now," said Dan; then he added bluntly "Where did +you ever know Mac Clarke?" + +Birdie's large, white lids fluttered a moment. + +"I come to see him for a friend of mine," she said. + +A silence fell between them which she tried to break with a rather shame +faced explanation. + +"This girl and Mac have had a quarrel. I'm trying to patch it up. Wish +you'd get him down here a minute." + +"It would be a lot better for the girl," said Dan, slowly, "if you didn't +patch it up." + +"What do you mean?" + +Dan looked troubled. + +"Clarke's a nice fellow all right," he said, "but when it comes to +girls--" he broke off abruptly. "Do you know him?" + +"I've seen him round the theater," she said. + +"Then you ought to know what I mean." + +Birdie looked absently across the barren yard. + +"Men are all rotten," she said bitterly, then added with feminine +inconsistency, "Go on, Dan, be a darling. Fix it so I can speak to him +without the old man catching on." + +Strategic manoeuvers were not in Dan's line, and he might have refused +outright had not Birdie laid a white hand on his and lifted a pair of +effectively pleading eyes. Being unused to feminine blandishments, he +succumbed. + +Half an hour later a white veil fluttered intimately across a broad, +checked shoulder as two stealthy young people slipped under the window of +Mr. Clarke's private office and made their way to the street. + +Dan gave the incident little further thought. He went mechanically about +his work, only pausing occasionally at his high desk behind the door to +pore over a sheet of paper. Had his employer glanced casually over his +shoulder, he might have thought he was still figuring on the plans of the +new finishing room; but a second glance would have puzzled him. Instead +of one large room there were several small ones, and across the front was +a porch with wriggly lines on a trellis, minutely labeled, "honeysuckle." + +At a quarter of five Dan made as elaborate a toilet as the washroom +permitted. He consumed both time and soap on the fractious forelock, and +spent precious moments trying to induce a limp string tie to assume the +same correct set that distinguished Mac Clarke's four-in-hand. + +Once on his way, with Growler at his heels, he gave no more thought to +his looks. He walked very straight, his lips twitching now and then into +a smile, and his gaze soaring over the heads of the ordinary people whom +he passed. For twenty-one years the book of life had proved grim +reading, but to-day he had come to that magic page whereon is written in +words grown dim to the eyes of age and experience, but perennially +shining to the eyes of youth: "And then they were married and lived +happily ever after." + +"Take care there! Look where you are going!" exclaimed an indignant +pedestrian as he turned the corner into Cemetery Street. + +"Why, hello, Bean!" he said in surprise, bringing his gaze down to a +stout man on crutches. "Glad to see you out again!" + +"I ain't out," said the ex-foreman. "I'm all in. I've got rheumatism in +every corner of me. This is what your old bottle factory did for me." + +"Tough luck," said Dan sympathetically, with what attention he could +spare from a certain doorway half up the square. "First time you've +been out?" + +"No; I've been to the park once or twice. Last night I went to a show." +He was about to limp on when he paused. "By the way, Lewis, I saw an old +friend of yours there. You remember that Molloy girl you used to run with +up at the factory?" + +Dan's mouth closed sharply. Bean's attitude toward the factory girls was +an old grievance with him and had caused words between them on more than +one occasion. + +"Well, I'll be hanged," went on Bean, undaunted, "if she ain't doing a +turn up at the Gaiety! She's a little corker all right, had the whole +house going." + +"You got another guess coming your way," said Dan, coldly, "the young +lady you're talking about's not on the stage. She's working up here in +Cemetery Street. I happen to be waiting for her now." + +Bean whistled. + +"Well, the drinks are on me. That girl at the Gaiety is a dead ringer to +her. Same classy way of handling herself, same--" Something in Dan's eyes +made him stop. "I got to be going," he said. "So long." + +Dan waited patiently for ten minutes; then he looked at his watch. What +could be keeping Nance? He whistled to Growler, who was making life +miserable for a cat in a neighboring yard, and strolled past Miss +Bobinet's door; then he returned to the corner. Bean's words had fallen +into his dream like a pebble into a tranquil pool. What business had Bean +to be remembering the way Nance walked or talked. Restlessly, Dan paced +up and down the narrow sidewalk. When he looked at his watch again, it +was five-thirty. + +Only thirty more minutes in which to transact the most important +business of his life! With a gesture of impatience he strode up to Miss +Bobinet's door and rang the bell. + +A wrinkled old woman, with one hand behind her ear, opened the door +grudgingly. + +"Nance Molloy?" she quavered in answer to his query. "What you want +with her?" + +"I'd like to speak with her a minute," said Dan. + +"Are you her brother?" + +"No." + +"Insurance man?" + +"No." + +The old woman peered at him curiously. + +"Who be you?" she asked. + +"My name's Lewis." + +"Morris?" + +"No, Lewis!" shouted Dan, with a restraining hand on Growler, who was +sniffing at the strange musty odors that issued from the half-open door. + +"Well, she ain't here," said the old woman. "Took herself off last +Wednesday, without a word to anybody." + +"Last Wednesday!" said Dan, incredulously. "Didn't she send any word?" + +"Sent for her money and said she wouldn't be back. You dog, you!" This to +Growler who had insinuated his head inside the door with the fixed +determination to run down that queer smell if possible. + +Dan went slowly down the steps, and Growler, either offended at having +had the door slammed in his face, or else sensing, dog-fashion, the +sudden change in his master's mood, trotted soberly at his heels. There +was no time now to go to Calvary Alley to find out what the trouble was. +Nothing to do but go back to the factory and worry through the night, +with all sorts of disturbing thoughts swarming in his brain. Nance had +been all right the Saturday before, a little restless and discontented +perhaps, but scarcely more so than usual. He remembered how he had +counseled patience, and how hard it had been for him to keep from telling +her then and there what was in his heart. He began to wonder uneasily if +he had done right in keeping all his plans and dreams to himself. Perhaps +if he had taken her into his confidence and told her what he was striving +and saving for, she would have understood better and been happy in +waiting and working with him. For the first time he began to entertain +dark doubts concerning those columns of advice to young men in the +"Sunday Echo." + +Once back at the factory, he plunged into his work with characteristic +thoroughness. It was strangely hot and still, and somewhere out on the +horizon was a grumbling discontent. It was raining hard at eleven o'clock +when he boarded a car for Butternut Lane, and by the time he reached the +Purdy's corner, the lightning was playing sharply in the northwest. + +He let himself in the empty house and felt his way up to his room, but he +did not go to bed. Instead, he sat at his table and with stiff awkward +fingers wrote letter after letter, each of which he tossed impatiently +into the waste-basket. They were all to Nance, and they all tried in vain +to express the pent-up emotion that had filled his heart for years. +Somewhere down-stairs a clock struck one, but he kept doggedly at his +task. Four o'clock found him still seated at the table, but his tired +head had dropped on his folded arms, and he slept. + +Outside the wind rose higher and higher, and the lightning split the +heavens in blinding flashes. Suddenly a deafening crash of thunder shook +the house, and Dan started to his feet. A moment later the telephone +bell rang. + +Half dazed, he stumbled down-stairs and took up the receiver. + +"Hello, hello! Yes, this is Dan Lewis. What? I can't hear you. Who?" Then +his back stiffened suddenly, and his voice grew tense, "Nance! Where are +you? Is he dead? Who's with you? Don't be scared, I'm coming!" and, +leaving the receiver dangling on the cord, he made one leap for the door. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +IN THE SIGNAL TOWER + + +It seemed an eternity to Dan, speeding hatless, coatless, breathless +through the storm, before he spied the red lights on the lowered gates at +the crossing. Dashing to the signal tower, he took the steps two at a +time. The small room was almost dark, but he could see Nance kneeling on +the floor beside the big gatekeeper. + +"Dan! Is it you?" she cried. "He ain't dead yet. I can feel him +breathing. If the doctor would only come!" + +"Who'd you call?" + +"The first one in the book, Dr. Adair." + +"But he's the big doctor up at the hospital; he won't come." + +"He will too! I told him he had to. And the gates, I got 'em down. Don't +stop to feel his heart, Dan. Call the doctor again!" + +"The first thing to do is to get a light," said Dan. "Ain't there a +lantern or something?" + +"Strike matches, like I did. They are on the window-sill--only +hurry--Dan, hurry!" + +Dan went about his task in his own way, taking time to find an oil lamp +on the shelf behind the door and deliberately lighting it before he took +his seat at the telephone. As he waited for the connection, his puzzled, +troubled eyes dwelt not on Uncle Jed, but on the crimson boots and +fantastic cap of Uncle Jed's companion. + +"Dr. Adair is on the way," he said quietly, when he hung up the receiver, +"and a man is coming from the yards to look after the gates. Is he still +breathing?" + +"Only when I make him!" said Nance, pressing the lungs of the injured +man. "There, Uncle Jed," she coaxed, "take another deep breath, just one +time. Go on! Do it for Nance. One time more! That's right! Once more!" + +But Uncle Jed was evidently very tired of trying to accommodate. The +gasps came at irregular intervals. + +"How long have you been doing this?" asked Dan, kneeling beside her. + +"I don't know. Ever since I came." + +"How did you happen to come?" + +"I saw the lightning strike the bell. Oh, Dan! It was awful, the noise +and the flash! Seemed like I 'd never get up the steps. And at first I +thought he was dead and--" + +"But who was with you? Where were you going?" interrupted Dan in +bewilderment. + +"I was passing--I was going home--I--" Her excited voice broke in a sob, +and she impatiently jerked the sleeve of her rain-coat across her eyes. + +In a moment Dan was all tenderness. For the first time he put his arm +around her and awkwardly patted her shoulder. + +"There," he said reassuringly, "don't try to tell me now. See! He's +breathing more regular! I expect the doctor'll pull him through." + +Nance's hands, relieved of the immediate necessity for action, were +clasping and unclasping nervously. + +"Dan," she burst out, "I got to tell you something! Birdie Smelts has got +me a place in the 'Follies.' I been on a couple of nights. I'm going away +with 'em in the morning." + +Dan looked at her as if he thought the events of the wild night had +deprived her of reason. + +"You!" he said, "going on the stage?" Then as he took it in, he drew away +from her suddenly as if he had received a lash across the face. "And you +were going off without talking it over or telling me or anything?" + +"I was going to write you, Dan. It was all so sudden." + +His eyes swept her bedraggled figure with stern disapproval. + +"Were you coming from the theater at this time in the morning?" + +Uncle Jed moaned slightly, and they both bent over him in instant +solicitude. But there was nothing to do, but wait until the doctor +should come. + +"Where had you been in those crazy clothes?" persisted Dan. + +"I'd been to the carnival ball with Birdie Smelts," Nance blurted out. "I +didn't know it was going to be like that, but I might 'a' gone anyway. I +don't know. Oh, Dan, I was sick to death of being stuck away in that dark +hole, waiting for something to turn up. I told you how it was, but you +couldn't see it. I was bound to have a good time if I died for it!" + +She dropped her head on her knees and sobbed unrestrainedly, while the +wind shrieked around the shanty, and the rain dashed against the +gradually lightening window-pane. After a while she flung back her head +defiantly. + +"_Stop_ looking at me like that, Dan. Lots of girls go on the stage and +stay good." + +"I wasn't thinking about the stage," said Dan. "I was thinking about +to-night. Who took you girls to that place?" + +Nance dried her tears. + +"I can't tell you that," she said uneasily. + +"Why not?" + +"It wouldn't be fair." + +Dan felt the hot blood surge to his head, and the muscles of his hands +tighten involuntarily. He forgot Uncle Jed; he forgot to listen for the +doctor, or to worry about traffic that would soon be held up in the +street below. The only man in the world for him at that moment was the +scoundrel who had dared to take his little Nance into that infamous +dance hall. + +Nance caught his arm and, with a quick gesture, dropped her head on it. + +"Dan," she pleaded, "don't be mad at me. I promise you I won't go to any +more places like that. I knew it wasn't right all along. But I got to go +on with the 'Follies,' It's the chance I been waiting for all these +months. Maybe it's the only one that'll ever come to me! You ain't going +to stand in my way, are you, Dan?" + +"Tell me who was with you to-night!" + +"No!" she whispered. "I can't. You mustn't ask me. I promise you I won't +do it again. I don't want to go away leaving you thinking bad of me." + +His clenched hands suddenly began to tremble so violently that he had to +clasp them tight to keep her from noticing. + +"I better get used to--to not thinking 'bout you at all," he said, +looking at her with the stern eyes of a young ascetic. + +For a time they knelt there side by side, and neither spoke. For over a +year Dan had been like one standing still on the banks of a muddy stream, +his eyes blinded to all but the shining goal opposite, while Nance was +like one who plunges headlong into the current, often losing sight of the +goal altogether, but now and again catching glimpses of it that sent her +stumbling, fighting, falling forward. + +At the sound of voices below they both scrambled to their feet. Dr. +Adair and the man from the yards came hurriedly up the steps together, +the former drawing off his gloves as he came. He was a compact, elderly +man whose keen observant eyes swept the room and its occupants at a +glance. He listened to Nance's broken recital of what had happened, cut +her short when he had obtained the main facts, and proceeded to examine +the patient. + +"The worst injury is evidently to the right arm and shoulder; you'll have +to help me get his shirt off. No--not that way!" + +Dan's hands, so eager to serve, so awkward in the service, fumbled over +their task, eliciting a groan from the unconscious man. + +"Let me do it!" cried Nance, springing forward. "You hold him up, Dan, I +can get it off." + +"It's a nasty job," warned the doctor, with a mistrustful glance at the +youthful, tear-stained face. "It may make you sick." + +"What if it does?" demanded Nance, impatiently. + +It was a long and distressing proceeding, and Dan tried not to look at +her as she bent in absorbed detachment over her work. But her steady +finger-touch, and her anticipation of the doctor's needs amazed him. It +recalled the day at the factory, when she, little more than a child +herself, had dressed the wounds of the carrying-in boy. Once she grew +suddenly white and had to hurry to the door and let the wind blow in her +face. He started up to follow her, but changed his mind. Instead he +protested with unnecessary vehemence against her resuming the work, but +she would not heed him. + +"That's right!" said the doctor, approvingly. "Stick it out this time and +next time it will not make you sick. Our next move is to get him home. +Where does he live?" + +"In Calvary Alley," said Dan, "back of the cathedral." + +"Very good," said the doctor, "I'll run him around there in my machine as +soon as that last hypodermic takes effect. Any family?" + +Dan shook his head. + +"He has, too!" cried Nance. "We're his family!" + +The doctor shot an amused glance at her over his glasses; then he laid a +kindly hand on her shoulder. + +"I congratulate him on this part of it. You make a first class +little nurse." + +"Is he going to get well?" Nance demanded. + +"It is too early to say, my dear. We will hope for the best. I will have +one of the doctors come out from the hospital every day to see him, but +everything will depend on the nursing." + +Nance cast a despairing look at the bandaged figure on the floor; then +she shot a look of entreaty at Dan. One showed as little response to her +appeal as the other. For a moment she stood irresolute; then she slipped +out of the room and closed the door behind her. + +For a moment Dan did not miss her. When he did, he left Dr. Adair in the +middle of a sentence and went plunging down the steps in hot pursuit. + +"Nance!" he called, splashing through the mud. "Aren't you going to +say good-by?" + +She wheeled on him furiously, a wild, dishevelled, little figure, strung +to the breaking point: + +"No!" she cried, "I am not going to say good-by! Do you suppose I could +go away with you acting like that? And who is there to nurse Uncle Jed, +I'd like to know, but me? But I want to tell you right now, Dan Lewis, if +ever another chance comes to get out of that alley, I'm going to take +it, and there can't anybody in the world stop me!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +CALVARY CATHEDRAL + + +"I don't take no stock in heaven havin' streets of gold," said Mrs. +Snawdor. "It'll be just my luck to have to polish 'em. You needn't tell +me if there's all that finery in heaven, they won't keep special angels +to do the dirty work!" + +She and Mrs. Smelts were scrubbing down the stairs of Number One, not as +a matter of cleanliness, but for the social benefit to be derived +therefrom. It was a Sunday morning institution with them, and served +quite the same purpose that church-going does for certain ladies in a +more exalted sphere. + +"I hope the Bible's true," said Mrs. Smelts, with a sigh. "Where it says +there ain't no marryin' nor givin' in marriage." + +"Oh, husbands ain't so worse if you pick 'em right," Mrs. Snawdor said +with the conviction of experience. "As fer me, I ain't hesitatin' to say +I like the second-handed ones best." + +"I suppose they are better broke in. But no other woman but me would 'a' +looked at Mr. Smelts." + +"You can't tell," said Mrs. Snawdor. "Think of me takin' Snawdor after +bein' used to Yager an' Molloy! Why, if you'll believe me, Mr. Burks, +lyin' there in bed fer four months now, takes more of a hand in helpin' +with the childern than Snawdor, who's up an' around." + +"Kin he handle hisself any better? Mr. Burks, I mean." + +"Improvin' right along. Nance has got him to workin' on a patent now. +It's got somethin' to do with a engine switch. Wisht you could see the +railroad yards she's rigged up on his bed. The childern are plumb crazy +'bout it." + +"Nance is gittin' awful pretty," Mrs. Smelts said. "I kinder 'lowed Dan +Lewis an' her'd be makin' a match before this." + +Mrs. Snawdor gathered her skirts higher about her ankles and transferred +her base of operations to a lower step. + +"You can't tell nothin' at all 'bout that girl. She was born with the bit +'tween her teeth, an' she keeps it there. No more 'n you git her goin' in +one direction than she turns up a alley on you. It's night school now. +There ain't a spare minute she ain't peckin' on that ole piece of a +type-writer Ike Lavinski loaned her." + +"She's got a awful lot of energy," sighed Mrs. Smelts. + +"Energy! Why it's somethin' fierce! She ain't content to let nothin' +stay the way it is. Wears the childern plumb out washin' 'em an' learnin' +'em lessons, an' harpin' on their manners. If you believe me, she's got +William J. that hacked he goes behind the door to blow his nose!" + +"It's a blessin' she didn't go off with them 'Follies,'" said Mrs. +Smelts. "Birdie lost her job over two months ago, an' the Lord knows what +she's livin' on. The last I heard of her she was sick an' stranded up in +Cincinnati, an' me without so much as a dollar bill to send her!" And +Mrs. Smelts sat down in a puddle of soap-suds and gave herself up to the +luxury of tears. + +At this moment a door on the third floor banged, and Nance Molloy, a +white figure against her grimy surroundings, picked her way gingerly down +the slippery steps. Her cheap, cotton skirt had exactly the proper flare, +and her tailor-made shirtwaist was worn with the proud distinction of one +who conforms in line, if not in material, to the mode of the day. + +"Ain't she the daisy?" exclaimed Mrs. Snawdor, gaily, and even Mrs. +Smelts dried her eyes, the better to appreciate Nance's gala attire. + +"We're too swell to be Methodist any longer!" went on Mrs. Snawdor, +teasingly. "We're turned 'Piscopal!" + +"You ain't ever got the nerve to be goin' over to the cathedral," Mrs. +Smelts asked incredulously. + +"Sure, why not?" said Nance, giving her hat a more sophisticated tilt. +"Salvation's as free there as it is anywhere." + +It was not salvation, however, that was concerning Nance Molloy as she +took her way jauntily out of the alley and, circling the square, joined +the throng of well-dressed men and women ascending the broad steps of the +cathedral. + +From that day when she had found herself back in the alley, like a bit of +driftwood that for a brief space is whirled out of its stagnant pool, +only to be cast back again, she had planned ceaselessly for a means of +escape. During the first terrible weeks of Uncle Jed's illness, her +thoughts flew for relief sometimes to Dan, sometimes to Mac. And Dan +answered her silent appeal in person, coming daily with his clumsy hands +full of necessities, his strong arms ready to lift, his slow speech +quickened to words of hope and cheer. Mac came only in dreams, with gay, +careless eyes and empty, useless hands, and lips that asked more than +they gave. Yet it was around Mac's shining head that the halo of romance +oftenest hovered. + +It was not until Uncle Jed grew better, and Dan's visits ceased, that +Nance realized what they had meant to her. To be sure her efforts to +restore things to their old familiar footing had been fruitless, for Dan +refused stubbornly to overlook the secret that stood between them, and +Nance, for reasons best known to herself, refused to explain matters. + +But youth reckons time by heart-throbs, and during Uncle Jed's +convalescence Nance found the clock of life running ridiculously slow. +Through Ike Lavinski, whose favor she had won by introducing him to Dr. +Adair, she learned of a night school where a business course could be +taken without expense. She lost no time in enrolling and, owing to her +thorough grounding of the year before, was soon making rapid progress. +Every night on her way to school, she walked three squares out of her way +on the chance of meeting Dan coming from the factory, and coming and +going, she watched the cathedral, wondering if Mac still sang there. + +One Sunday, toward the close of summer, she followed a daring impulse, +and went to the morning service. She sat in one of the rear pews and held +her breath as the procession of white-robed men and boys filed into the +choir. Mac Clarke was not among them, and she gave a little sigh of +disappointment, and wondered if she could slip out again. + +On second thought she decided to stay. Even in the old days when she had +stolen into the cathedral to look for nickels under the seats, she had +been acutely aware of "the pretties." But she had never attended a +service, or seen the tapers lighted, and the vast, cool building, with +its flickering lights and disturbing music, impressed her profoundly. + +Presently she began to make discoveries: the meek apologetic person +tip-toeing about lowering windows was no other than the pompous and +lordly Mason who had so often loomed over her as an avenging deity. In +the bishop, clad in stately robes, performing mysterious rites before +the altar, she recognized "the funny old guy" with the bald head, with +whom she had compared breakfast menus on a historical day at the +graded school. + +So absorbed was she in these revelations that she did not notice that she +was sitting down while everybody else was standing up, until a small +black book was thrust over her shoulder and a white-gloved finger pointed +to the top of the page. She rose hastily and tried to follow the service. +It seemed that the bishop was reading something which the people all +around her were beseeching the Lord to hear. She didn't wonder that the +Lord had to be begged to listen. She wasn't going to listen; that was one +thing certain. + +Then the organ pealed forth, and voices caught up the murmuring words and +lifted them and her with them to the great arched ceiling. As long as the +music lasted, she sat spell-bound, but when the bishop began to read +again, this time from a book resting on the out-stretched wings of a big +brass bird, her attention wandered to the great stained glass window +above the altar. The reverse side of it was as familiar to her as the +sign over Slap Jack's saloon. From the alley it presented opaque blocks +of glass above the legend that had been one of the mysteries of her +childhood. Now as she looked, the queer figures became shining angels +with lilies in their hands, and she made the amazing discovery that "Evol +si dog," seen from the inside, spelled "God is Love." + +She sat quite still, pondering the matter. The bishop and the music +and even Mac were for the time completely forgotten. Was the world +full of things like that, puzzling and confused from the outside, and +simple and easy from within? Within what? Her mind groped uncertainly +along a strange path. So God was love? Why hadn't the spectacled lady +told her so that time in the juvenile court instead of writing down +her foolish answer? But love had to do with sweethearts and dime +novels and plays on the stage. How could God be that? Maybe it meant +the kind of love Mr. Demry had for his little daughter, or the love +that Dan had for his mother, or the love she had for the Snawdor baby +that died. Maybe the love that was good was God, and the love that was +bad was the devil, maybe-- + +Her struggle with these wholly new and perplexing problems was +interrupted by the arrival of a belated worshiper, who glided into the +seat beside her and languidly knelt in prayer. Nance's attention +promptly leaped from moral philosophy to clothes. Her quick eyes made +instant appraisal of the lady's dainty costume, then rested in startled +surprise on her lowered profile. The straight delicate features, slightly +foreign, the fair hair rippling from the neck, were disconcertingly +familiar. But when Nance saw her full face, with the petulant mouth and +wrinkled brow, the impression vanished. + +After a long time the service came to an end, and just as Nance was +waiting to pass out, she heard some one say: + +"When do you expect your son home, Mrs. Clarke? We miss him in the +choir." + +And the fair-haired lady in front of her looked up and smiled, and all +her wrinkles vanished as she said: + +"We expect him home before next Sunday, if the naughty boy doesn't +disappoint us again!" + +Nance waited to hear no more, but fled into the sunlight and around the +corner, hugging her secret. She was not going to let Mr. Mac see her, she +assured herself; she was just going to see him, and hear him sing. + +When the next Sunday morning came, it found her once more hurrying up the +broad steps of the cathedral. She was just in time, for as she slipped +into a vacant pew, the notes of the organ began to swell, and from a side +door came the procession of choir boys, headed by Mac Clarke carrying a +great cross of gold. + +Nance, hiding behind the broad back of the man in front of her, watched +the procession move into the chancel, and saw the members of the choir +file into their places. She had no interest now in the bishop's robes or +the lighted tapers or cryptic inscriptions. Throughout the long service +her attention was riveted on the handsome, white-robed figure which sat +in a posture of bored resignation, wearing an expression of Christian +martyrdom. + +When the recessional sounded, she rose with the rest of the congregation, +still keeping behind the protecting back of the man in front. But when +she saw Mac lift the shining cross and come toward her down the chancel +steps at the head of the singing procession, something made her move +suddenly to the end of the pew, straight into the shaft of light that +streamed through the great west window. + +Mac, with his foot on the lowest step, paused for the fraction of a +second, and the cross that he held swayed slightly. Then he caught step +again and moved steadily forward. + +Nance hurried away before the benediction. She was never going to do it +again, she promised herself repeatedly. And yet, how wonderful it had +been! Straight over the heads of the congregation for their eyes to meet +like that, and for him to remember as she was remembering! + +For three weeks she kept her promise and resolutely stayed away from the +cathedral. One would have to be "goin' on nineteen" and live in Calvary +Alley to realize the heroic nature of her moral struggle. Victory might +have been hers in the end, had not Dan Lewis for the first time in years, +failed one Saturday to spend his half-holiday with her. He had come of +late, somber and grimly determined to give her no peace until he knew the +truth. But Dan, even in that mood, was infinitely better than no Dan at +all. When he sent her word that he was going with some of the men from +the factory up the river for a swim, she gave her shoulders a defiant +shrug, and set to work to launder her one white dress and stove-polish +her hat, with the pleasing results we have already witnessed through the +eyes of Mrs. Snawdor and Mrs. Smelts. + +There is no place where a flirtation takes quicker root or matures more +rapidly than in ecclesiastical soil. From the moment Nance entered the +cathedral on that third Sunday, she and Mac were as acutely aware of each +other's every move as if they had been alone together in the garden of +Eden. At first she tried to avert her eyes, tried not to see his +insistent efforts to attract her attention, affected not to know that he +was singing to her, and watching her with impatient delight. + +Then the surging notes of the organ died away, the bishop ascended the +pulpit, and the congregation settled down to hear the sermon. From +that time on Nance ceased to be discreet. There was glance for glance, +and smile for smile, and the innumerable wireless messages that youth +has exchanged since ardent eyes first sought each other across +forbidden spaces. + +It was not until the end of the sermon that Nance awoke to the fact that +it was high time for Cinderella to be speeding on her way. Seizing a +moment when the choir's back was turned to the congregation, she slipped +noiselessly out of the cathedral and was fleeing down the steps when she +came face to face with Monte Pearce. + +"Caught at last!" he exclaimed, planting himself firmly in her way. +"I've been playing watchdog for Mac for three Sundays. What are you +doing in town?" + +"In town?" + +"Yes; we thought you were on the road with the 'Follies.' When did you +get back?" + +"You're seeking information, Mr. Monte Carlo," said Nance, with a smile. +"Let me by. I've got to go home." + +"I'll go with you. Where do you live?" + +"Under my hat." + +"Well, I don't know a nicer place to be." Monte laughed and looked at +her and kept on laughing, until she felt herself blushing up to the +roots of her hair. + +"Honest, Mr. Monte, I got to go on," she said appealingly. "I'm in no +end of a hurry." + +"I can go as fast as you can," said Monte, his cane tapping each step as +he tripped briskly down beside her. "I've got my orders from Mac. I'm to +stay with you, if you won't stay with me. Which way?" + +In consternation for fear the congregation should be dismissed before she +could get away, and determined not to let him know where she lived, she +jumped aboard a passing car. + +"So be it!" said her plump companion, settling himself comfortably on the +back seat beside her. "Now tell your Uncle Monte all about it!" + +"There's nothing to tell!" declared Nance, with the blush coming back. +She was finding it distinctly agreeable to be out alone like this with a +grandly sophisticated young gentleman who wore a light linen suit with +shoes to match, and whose sole interest seemed to center upon her and +her affairs. + +"But you know there is!" he persisted. "What made you give us the shake +that night of the ball?" + +Nance refused to say; so he changed the subject. + +"How's Miss Birdie?" + +"Give it up. Haven't seen her since you have." + +"What? Didn't you go on with the show that next morning?" + +"No." + +"And you've been in town all summer?" + +She nodded, and her companion gave a low, incredulous whistle. + +"Well, I'll be darned!" he said. "And old Mac sending letters and +telegrams every few minutes and actually following the 'Follies' +to Boston!" + +"Birdie was with 'em up to two months ago," said Nance. + +"Mac wasn't after Birdie!" said Monte. "He hasn't had but one idea in his +cranium since that night of the carnival ball. I never saw him so crazy +about a girl as he is about you." + +"Yes, he is!" scoffed Nance, derisively, but she let Monte run on at +length, painting in burning terms the devastating extent of Mac's +passion, his despair at losing her, his delight at finding her again, and +his impatience for an interview. + +When Monte finished she looked at him sidewise out of her +half-closed eyes. + +"Tell him I've gone on a visit to my rich aunt out to the sea-shore +in Kansas." + +"Give him another show," coaxed Monte. "We were all a bit lit up that +night at the ball." + +"No, we weren't either!" Nance flashed. "I hadn't had a thing, but one +glass of beer, and you know it! I hate your old fizz-water!" + +"Well, make it up with Mac. He's going back to college next month, and +he's wild to see you." + +"Tell him I haven't got time. Tell him I'm studying instrumental." + +Nance was fencing for time. Her cool, keen indifference gave little +indication of the turmoil that was going on within. If she could manage +to see Mac without letting him know where she lived, without Dan's +finding it out-- + +The car compassed the loop and started on the return trip. + +"Where do we get off?" asked Monte. + +"I'm not getting off anywhere until after you do." + +"I've got lots of nickels." + +"I've got lots of time!" returned Nance, regardless of her former haste. + +At Cathedral Square, Monte rang the bell. + +"Have it your own way," he said good-naturedly. "But do send a +message to Mac." + +Nance let him get off the back platform; then she put her head out of +the window. + +"You tell him," she called, "that he can't kill two birds with one +stone!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + +BACK AT CLARKE'S + + +The promotion of Uncle Jed from the bed to a pair of crutches brought +about two important changes in the house of Snawdor. First, a financial +panic caused by the withdrawal of his insurance money, and, second, a +lightening of Nance's home duties that sent her once more into the world +to seek a living. + +By one of those little ironies in which life seems to delight, the only +opportunity that presented itself lay directly in the path of temptation. +A few days after her interview with Monte Pearce, Dan came to her with an +offer to do some office work at the bottle factory. The regular +stenographer was off on a vacation, and a substitute was wanted for the +month of September. + +"Why, I thought you'd be keen about it," said Dan, surprised at her +hesitation. + +"Oh! I'd like it all right, but--" + +"You needn't be afraid to tackle it," Dan urged. "Mr. Clarke's not as +fierce as he looks; he'd let you go a bit slow at first." + +"He wouldn't have to! I bet I've got as much speed now as the girl he's +had. It's not the work." + +"I know how you feel about the factory," said Dan, "and I wouldn't want +you to go back in the finishing room. The office is different. You take +my word for it; it's as nice a place as you could find." + +They were standing on the doorless threshold of Number One, under the +fan-shaped arch through which the light had failed to shine for twenty +years. From the room on the left came the squeak of Mr. Demry's fiddle +and the sound of pattering feet, synchronizing oddly with the lugubrious +hymn in which Mrs. Smelts, in the room opposite, was giving vent to her +melancholy. + +Nance, eager for her chance, yearning for financial independence, +obsessed by the desire to escape from the dirt and disorder and confusion +about her, still hesitated. + +"If you're afraid I'm going to worry you," said Dan, fumbling with his +cap, "I can keep out of your way all right." + +In an instant her impulsive hand was on his arm. + +"You shut up, Dan Lewis!" she said sharply. "What makes me want to take +the job most is our coming home together every night like we used to." + +Dan's eyes, averted until now, lifted with sudden hope. + +"But I got a good reason for not coming," she went on stubbornly. "It +hasn't got anything to do with you or the work." + +"Can't you tell me, Nance?" + +The flicker of hope died out of his face as she shook her head. He looked +down the alley for a moment; then he turned toward her with decision: + +"See here, Nance," he said earnestly, "I don't know what your reason is, +but I know that this is one chance in a hundred. I want you to take this +job. If I come by for you to-morrow morning, will you be ready?" + +Still she hesitated. + +"Let me decide it for you," he insisted, "will you, Nance?" + +She looked up into his earnest eyes, steadfast and serious as a collie's. + +"All right!" she said recklessly, "have it your own way!" + +The first day in Mr. Clarke's office was one of high tension. Added to +the trepidation of putting her newly acquired business knowledge to a +practical test, was the much more disturbing possibility that at any +moment Mac might happen upon the scene. Just what she was going to do and +say in such a contingency she did not know. Once when she heard the door +open cautiously, she was afraid to lift her eyes. When she did, surprise +took the place of fear. + +"Why, Mrs. Smelts!" she cried. "What on earth are you doing here?" + +Birdie's mother, faded and anxious, and looking unfamiliar in bonnet and +cape, was evidently embarrassed by Nance's unexpected presence. + +"He sent for me," she said, nervously, twitching at the fringe on her +cape. "I wrote to his wife, but he sent word fer me to come here an' see +him at ten o'clock. Is it ten yet?" + +"Mr. Clarke sent for _you_?" Nance began incredulously; then remembering +that a stenographer's first business is to attend to her own, she crossed +the room with quite a professional manner and tapped lightly on the door +of the inner office. + +For half an hour the usually inaccessible president of the bottle factory +and the scrub woman from Calvary Alley held mysterious conclave; then the +door opened again, and Mrs. Smelts melted into the outer passage as +silently as she had come. + +Nance, while frankly curious, had little time to indulge in idle +surmise. All her faculties were bent on mastering the big modern +type-writer that presented such different problems from the ancient +machine on which she had pounded out her lessons. She didn't like this +sensitive, temperamental affair that went off half-cocked at her +slightest touch, and did things on its own account that she was in the +habit of doing herself. + +Her first dictation left her numb with terror. She heard Mr. Clarke +repeating with lightning rapidity phrases which she scarcely +comprehended: "Enclose check for amount agreed upon." "Matter settled +once and for all." "Any further annoyance to be punished to full extent +of the law." + +"Shall I address an envelope?" she asked, glancing at the "Dear Madam" at +the top of the page. + +"No," said Mr. Clarke, sharply, "I'll attend to that." + +Other letters followed, and she was soon taking them with considerable +speed. When mistakes occurred they could usually be attributed to the +graded school which, during its brief chance at Nance, had been more +concerned in teaching her the names and the lengths of the rivers of +South America than in teaching her spelling. + +At the noon hour Mr. Clarke departed, and she stood by the window eating +her lunch and watching the men at work on the new wing. The old finishing +room was a thing of the past, and Dan's dream of a light, well-ventilated +workroom for the girls was already taking definite form. She could see +him now in the yard below, a blue-print in his hand, explaining to a +group of workmen some detail of the new building. One old glass-blower, +peering at the plan through heavy, steel-rimmed spectacles, had his arm +across Dan's shoulder. Nance smiled tenderly. Dear Dan! Everybody liked +him--even those older men from the furnace-room who had seen him promoted +over their heads. She leaned forward impulsively and called to him. + +"Danny!" she cried, "here's an apple. Catch!" + +He caught it dexterously in his left hand, gave her a casual nod, then +went gravely on with the business in hand. Nance sighed and turned away +from the window. + +In the afternoon the work went much easier. She was getting used to Mr. +Clarke's quick, nervous speech and abrupt manner. She was beginning to +think in sentences instead of words. All was going famously when a quick +step sounded in the passage without, followed by a gaily whistled tune, +and the next instant the door behind her was flung open. + +Mr. Clarke went steadily on with his dictation, but the new stenographer +ceased to follow. With bent head and lips caught between her teeth, she +made futile efforts to catch up, but she only succeeded in making +matters worse. + +"That will do for this afternoon," said Mr. Clarke, seeing her confusion. +"Make a clear copy of that last letter and put it on my desk." Then he +turned in his chair and glared over his shoulder. "Well, Mac!" he said, +"I've waited for you just one hour and thirty-five minutes." + +"Dead sorry, Dad. Didn't know it was so late," said the new-comer, +blithely. "How long before you are going home?" + +"Ten minutes. I've got to go over to the new building first. Don't go +until I return. There's something I want to see you about." + +Nance heard the door close as Mr. Clarke went out; then she waited in a +tremor, half trepidation, half glee, for Mac to recognize her. He was +moving about restlessly, first in one office, then in the other, and she +could feel his bright inquisitive eyes upon her from different angles. +But she kept her face averted, changing her position as he changed his. +Presently he came to a halt near her and began softly to whistle the +little-bear dance from the "Rag-Time Follies." She smiled before she knew +it, and the next instant he was perched on the corner of her desk, +demanding rapturously to know what she was doing there, and swearing that +he had recognized her the moment he entered the room. + +"Let go my hand, Mr. Mac!" she implored in laughing confusion. + +"I'm afraid to! You might give me the slip again. I've been scouring the +town for you and to think I should find you here!" + +"Look out!" warned Nance. "You're upsetting the ink-bottle!" + +"What do I care? Gee, this is luck! You ought to see my new racer, a +regular peach! Will you come out with me sometime?" + +"Will you let me run it?" + +"I'll let you do anything you like with anything I've got," he declared +with such ardor that she laughed and regretted it the next moment. + +"Now look here, Mr. Mac!" she said, severely, "you touch me again, and I +quit to-night. See?" + +"I'll be good. I'll do anything you say if you'll just stay and +play with me." + +"Play nothing! I've got work to do." + +"Work be hanged! Do you suppose when I haven't seen you for four months +that I'm not going to claim my inning?" + +"Well, I want to tell you right here," she said, shaking a warning pencil +in his face, "that I mean what I say about your behaving yourself." + +Mac caught the end of the pencil and held it while their eyes challenged +each other. + +"So be it!" he said. "I promise to be a model of discretion. Nance, I've +been mad about you! Did Monte tell you--" + +"Mr. Monte didn't tell me anything I wanted to hear," she said in her +cool, keen way, as she got the imperiled ink-well to a place of safety, +and straightened the other articles on the desk. + +"You wouldn't be so down on a fellow if you knew how hard hit I am," +persisted Mac. "Besides, I'm in for an awful row with the governor. You +may see my scalp fly past the window in less than ten minutes." + +"What's the row about?" + +"Same old thing. I am the original devil for getting found out." For +the space of a minute he gloomily contemplated a spot in the carpet; +then he shrugged his shoulders, rammed his hands in his pockets, and +began to whistle. + +"The governor'll fork out," he said. "He always does. Say, Nance, you +haven't said a word about my moustache." + +"Let's see it," said Nance in giggling derision. "Looks like a baby's +eyebrow. Does it wash off?" + +A step in the hall sent them flying in opposite directions, Nance back to +her desk, and Mac into the inner office, where his father found him a +moment later, apparently absorbed in a pamphlet on factory inspection. + +When Nance started home at six o'clock, she found Dan waiting at his old +post beside the gas-pipe. + +"It's like old times," he said happily, as he piloted her through the +out-pouring throng. "I remember the first night we walked home together. +You weren't much more than a kid. You had on a red cap with a tassel to +it. Three years ago the tenth of last May. Wouldn't think it, would you?" + +"Think what?" she asked absently. + +"Tired?" he asked anxiously. "Is the work going to be too heavy?" + +She shook her head impatiently. + +"No, the work's all right. But--but I wish you hadn't made me come +back, Dan." + +"Stick it out for a week," he urged, "and then if you want to stop, I +won't say a word." + +She looked up at him quizzically and gave a short enigmatic laugh. + +"That's my trouble," she said, "if I stick it out for a week, I won't be +wanting to quit!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + +MAC + + +Nance's prophecy regarding herself was more than fulfilled. Whatever +scruples had assailed her at the start were soon overthrown by the +on-rushing course of events. That first month in Mr. Clarke's office +proved to be a time of delightful madness. There were daily meetings with +Mac at the noon hour, stolen chats on street corners, thrilling suppers +with him and Monte at queer cafes, and rides after dark in that wonderful +racer that proved the most enticing of playthings. + +Dan was as busy as Mac was idle; Mr. Clarke was gloomy and preoccupied; +Mrs. Snawdor was in bed when Nance left home in the morning, and gone to +work when she returned in the evening. The days flashed by in a glorious +succession of forbidden joys, with nobody to interrupt the furious +progress of affairs. + +Half of her salary Nance gave to her stepmother, and the other half she +spent on clothes. She bought with taste and discrimination, measuring +everything by the standard set up by her old idol, Miss Stanley at Forest +Home. The result was that she soon began to look very much like the +well-dressed women with whom she touched elbows on the avenue. + +She had indeed got the bit between her teeth, and she ran at full tilt, +secure in the belief that she had full control of the situation. As long +as she gave satisfaction in her work, she told herself, and "behaved +right," she could go and come as she liked, and nobody would be the +worse for it. + +She did not realize that her scoffing disbelief in Mac's avowals, and her +gay indifference were the very things that kept him at fever heat. He was +not used to being thwarted, and this high-handed little working-girl, +with her challenging eyes and mocking laugh, who had never heard of the +proprieties, and yet denied him favors, was the first person he had ever +known who refused absolutely to let him have his own way. With a boy's +impetuous desire he became obsessed by the idea of her. When he was not +with her, he devised schemes to remind her of him, making love to her by +proxy in a dozen foolish, whimsical ways. When it was not flowers or +candy, it was a string of nonsense verses laid between the pages of her +type-writer paper, sometimes a clever caricature of himself or Monte, and +always it was love notes in the lining of her hat, in her gloves, in her +pocket-book. She was afraid to raise her umbrella for fear a rain of +tender missives would descend therefrom. Once he gave her a handsome +jeweled bracelet which she wore under her sleeve. But he got hard up +before the week was over and borrowed it back and pawned it. + +Of two things Nance succeeded in keeping him in ignorance. During all +their escapades he never discovered where she lived, and he never +suspected her friendship for Dan Lewis. He was not one to concern himself +with troublesome details. The pleasure of the passing moment was his sole +aim in life. + +And Nance, who ordinarily scorned subterfuge and hated a secret, +succeeded not only in keeping him in ignorance of Dan; but with even +greater strategy managed to keep Dan in complete ignorance of the whole +situation. Dan, to be sure, took his unconscious revenge. His kind, +puzzled eyes haunted her dreams, and the thought of him proved the one +disturbing element in these halcyon days. In vain she told herself that +he was an old fogy, that he had Sunday-school notions, that he wouldn't +be able to see anything but wrong in a harmless flirtation that would end +with Mac's return to college. But would it end? That was a question Nance +was beginning to ask herself with curious misgiving. + +The last of the month rolled round with incredible swiftness. It brought +to Nance not only an end to all her good times, but the disheartening +knowledge that she would soon be out of employment again with no money +saved, and under the self-imposed necessity of making a clean breast of +her misdeeds to Dan Lewis. + +On the Saturday before Mac's intended departure, as she sat at her desk +ruefully facing the situation, he rushed into the office. + +"Has a mean-looking little Jew been in here this morning?" he demanded +breathlessly. + +"Nobody's been here," said Nance. + +"Gloree!" said Mac, collapsing into a chair. "He gave me a scare! Wonder +if he 'phoned!" + +"Mr. Clarke's been out all morning. These are the people who called up." + +Mac ran his eye hurriedly down the list and sighed with relief. Then he +got up and went to the window and stood restlessly tapping the pane. + +"I've a good notion to go East to-night," he said, half to himself, "no +use waiting until Monday." + +Nance glanced at him quickly. + +"What's up?" she asked. + +"Money, as usual," said Mac in an aggrieved tone. "Just let me get ready +to leave town, and fellows I never heard of turn up with bills. I could +stand off the little fellows, but Meyers is making no end of a stew. He +holds a note of mine for five hundred and sixty dollars. It was due +yesterday, and he swore that if I didn't smoke up by noon to-day, he'd +come to the governor." + +"Won't he give you an extension?" + +"He's given me two already. It's the money I lost last spring at the +races. That's the reason I can't get it out of the governor. It looks as +if it were about time for little Willie to take to the tall timbers." + +Nance got up from her desk and joined him at the window. There was +something she had been burning to say to him for ten days, but it was +something she found it very hard to say. He might tell her it was none of +her business; he might even not like her any more. + +"See here, Mr. Mac," she said, bracing herself for the ordeal, "did it +ever strike you that you spend a lot of money that don't belong to you?" + +"It'll all be mine some day," said Mac reassuringly. "If the governor +would listen to mother, we'd never have these financial rackets. She +knows that it takes a lot for a fellow to live right." + +"It takes a lot more for him to live wrong," said Nance, stoutly. +"You get a whacking big allowance; when you get to the end of it, why +don't you do like some of the rest of us--go without the things you +can't pay for?" + +"I am going to," said Mac as if the idea was a new one. "Once I get +squared up, you bet I'll stay so. But that doesn't help me out of this +mess. The money has got to come from somewhere, and I tell you I haven't +got a sou!" + +Nance had never seen him so perturbed. He usually approached these +conflicts with his father with a passing grimace, exhibited sufficient +repentance to get what he wanted, and emerged more debonair than ever. +It was disturbing to see him so serious and preoccupied. + +"I bet your father'd help you if he thought you'd make a new +start," she said. + +Mac shook his head. + +"He would have a month ago. But he's got it in for me now. He believes an +idiotic story that was cocked up about me, and he's just waiting for my +next slip to spring a mine on me. I got to keep him from finding out +until I'm gone; that's all there is to it!" + +He fumbled in his pocket for a match and instead drew out a bank-note. + +"By George! here's a lonesome five-spot I didn't know I had! I +believe I'll play it on the races and see what it'll do for me. Maybe +it's a mascot." + +His momentary depression was gone, and he was eager to be off. But +Nance stood between him and the door, and there was a dangerous light +in her eyes. + +"Do you know," she said, "I've a good mind to tell you what I +think of you?" + +He caught her hand. "Do, Nance! And make it nice. It's going to be no end +of a grind to leave you. Say something pretty that I can live on 'til +Christmas. Tell me I'm the sweetest fellow that ever lived. Go on. Make +love to me, Nance!" + +"I think you are a short-sport!" she burst forth. "Any fellow that'll +go on making debts when he can't pay his old ones, that'll get things +in a muddle and run off and let somebody else face the racket is a +coward--I think--" + +"Help! Help!" cried Mac, throwing up an arm in pretended defense, and +laughing at her flashing eyes and blazing cheeks. "By jinks, I don't know +whether you look prettiest when you are mad or when you are glad. If you +don't stop this minute I'll have to kiss you!" + +The anger in Nance's face faded into exasperation. She felt suddenly hot +and uncomfortable and a little ashamed of her violence. She had neither +offended him nor humiliated him; she had simply amused him. Tears of +chagrin sprang to her eyes, and she turned away abruptly. + +"Nance!" Mac demanded, with quick concern, "you surely aren't crying? Why +the very idea! It makes me perfectly miserable to see girls cry. You +mustn't, you know. Look at me, Nance! Smile at me this minute!" + +But Nance's head was down on her desk, and she was past smiling. + +"I'll do anything you say!" cried Mac, dropping on his knees beside her. +"I'll 'fess up to the governor. I'll go on the water-wagon. I'll cut out +the races. I'll be a regular little tin god if you'll only promise to be +good to me." + +"Good to you nothing!" said Nance, savagely, lifting a tear-stained, +earnest face. "What right have I got to be anything to you? Haven't I +been letting you spend the money on me that wasn't yours? I've been as +bad as you have, every bit." + +"Oh, rot!" said Mac, hotly. "You've been an angel. There isn't another +girl in the world that's as much fun as you are and yet on the square +every minute." + +"It isn't on the square!" contradicted Nance, twisting her wet +handkerchief into a ball. "Sneaking around corners and doing things on +the sly. I am ashamed to tell you where I live, or who my people are, +and you are ashamed to have your family know you are going with me. +Whenever I look at your father and see him worrying about you, or think +of your mother--" + +"Yes, you think of everybody but me. You hold me at arm's length and +knock on me and say things to me that nobody else would dare to say! And +the worse you treat me, the more I want to take you in my arms and run +away with you. Can't you love me a little, Nance? Please!" + +He was close to her, with his ardent face on a level with hers. He was +never more irresistible than when he wanted something, especially a +forbidden something, and in the course of his twenty-one years he had +never wanted anything so much as he wanted Nance Molloy. + +She caught her breath and looked away. It was very hard to say what she +intended, with him so close to her. His eloquent eyes, his tremulous +lips were very disconcerting. + +"Mr. Mac," she whispered intently, "why don't you tell your father +everything, and promise him some of the things you been promising me? Why +don't you make a clean start and behave yourself and stop giving 'em all +this trouble?" + +"And if I do, Nance? Suppose I do it for you, what then?" + +For a long moment their eyes held each other. These two young, +undisciplined creatures who had started life at opposite ends of the +social ladder, one climbing up and the other climbing down, had met +midway, and the fate of each trembled in the balance. + +"And if I do?" Mac persisted, hardly above his breath. + +Nance's eyelids fluttered ever so slightly, and the next instant, Mac had +crushed her to him and smothered her protests in a passion of kisses. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + +BETWEEN TWO FIRES + + +When Mr. Clarke returned from luncheon, it was evident that he was in no +mood to encourage a prodigal's repentance. For half an hour Nance heard +his voice rising and falling in angry accusation; then a door slammed, +and there was silence. She waited tensely for the next sound, but it was +long in coming. Presently some one began talking over the telephone in +low, guarded tones, and she could not be sure which of the two it was. +Then the talking ceased; the hall door of the inner office opened and +closed quietly. + +Nance went to the window and saw Mac emerge from the passage below and +hurry across the yard to the stables. His cap was over his eyes, and his +hands were deep in his pockets. Evidently he had had it out with his +father and was going to stay over and meet his difficulties. Her eyes +grew tender as she watched him. What a spoiled boy he was, in spite of +his five feet eleven! Always getting into scrapes and letting other +people get him out! But he was going to face the music this time, and he +was doing it for her! If only she hadn't let him kiss her! A wave of +shame made her bury her hot cheeks in her palms. + +She was startled from her reverie by a noise at the door. It was Dan +Lewis, looking strangely worried and preoccupied. + +"Hello, Nance," he said, without lifting his eyes. "Did Mr. Clarke leave +a telegram for me?" + +"Not with me. Perhaps it is on his table. Want me to see?" + +"No, I'll look," Dan answered and went in and closed the door behind him. + +Nance looked at the closed door in sudden apprehension. What was the +matter with Dan? What had he found out? She heard him moving about in the +empty room; then she heard him talking over the telephone. When he came +out, he crossed over to where she was sitting. + +"Nance," he began, still with that uneasy manner, "there's something I've +got to speak to you about. You won't take it amiss?" + +"Cut loose," said Nance, with an attempt at lightness, but her heart +began to thump uncomfortably. + +"You see," Dan began laboriously. "I'm sort of worried by some talk +that's been going on 'round the factory lately. It hadn't come direct to +me until to-day, but I got wind of it every now and then. I know it's +not true, but it mustn't go on. There's one way to stop it. Do you know +what it is?" + +Nance shook her head, and he went on. + +"You and I have been making a mess of things lately. Maybe it's been my +fault, I don't know. You see a fellow gets to know a lot of things a nice +girl don't know. And the carnival ball business--well--I was scared for +you, Nance, and that's the plain truth." + +"I know, Dan," she said impatiently. "I was a fool to go that time, but I +never did it again." + +Dan fingered the papers on the desk. + +"I ain't going to rag about that any more. But I can't have 'em saying +things about you around the factory. You know how I feel about you--how I +always have felt--Nance I want you to marry me." + +Nance flashed a look at him, questioning, eager, uncertain; then her eyes +fell. How could she know that behind his halting sentences a paean of +love was threatening to burst the very confines of his inarticulate soul? +She only saw an awkward young workman in his shirt sleeves, with a smudge +across his cheek and a wistful look in his eyes, who knew no more about +making love than he knew about the other graces of life. + +"I've saved enough money," he went on earnestly, "to buy a little house +in the country somewhere. That's what you wanted, wasn't it?" + +Nance's glance wandered to the tall gas-pipe that had been their +unromantic trysting place. Then she closed her eyes and pressed her +fingers against them to keep back the stinging tears. If Dan loved her, +why didn't he say beautiful things to her, why didn't he take her in his +arms as Mac had done, and kiss away all those fears of herself and of the +future that crowded upon her? With her head on his shoulder she could +have sobbed out her whole confession and been comforted, but now-- + +"You care for me, don't you, Nance?" Dan asked with a sharp note of +anxiety in his voice. + +"Of course I care!" she said irritably. "But I don't want to get married +and settle down. I want to get out and see the world. When you talk about +a quiet little house in the country, I want to smash every window in it!" + +Dan slipped the worn drawing he had in his hand back into his pocket. It +was no time to discuss honeysuckle porches. + +"We don't have to go to the country," he said patiently. "I just thought +it was what you wanted. We can stay here, or we can go to another town if +you like. All I want is to make you happy, Nance." + +For a moment she sat with her chin on her palms, staring straight ahead; +then she turned toward him with sudden resolution. + +"What's the talk you been hearing about me?" she demanded. + +"There's no use going into that," he said. "It's a lie, and I mean to +stamp it out if I have to lick every man in the factory to do it." + +"Was it--about Mac Clarke?" + +"Who dared bring it to you?" he asked fiercely. + +"What are they saying, Dan?" + +"That you been seen out with him on the street, that you ride with +him after night, and that he comes down here every day at the noon +hour to see you." + +"Is that all?" + +"Ain't it enough?" + +"Well, it's true!" said Nance, defiantly. "Every word of it. If anybody +can find any real harm in what I've done, they are welcome to it!" + +"It's true?" gasped Dan, his hands gripping a chair-back. "And you never +told me? Has he--has he made love to you, Nance?" + +"Why, he makes love to everybody. He makes love to his mother when he +wants to get something out of her. What he says goes in one ear and +out the other with me. But I like him and I ain't ashamed to say so. +He's give me the best time I ever had in my life, and you bet I don't +forget it." + +"Will you answer me one thing more?" demanded Dan, sternly. + +"Yes; I ain't afraid to answer any question you can ask." + +"Was it Clarke that took you to the carnival ball?" + +"Him and a fellow named Monte Pearce." + +"Just you three?" + +"No; Birdie Smelts was along." + +Dan brushed his hand across his brow as if trying to recall something. + +"Birdie come here that day," he said slowly. "She wanted to see Clarke +for a friend of hers. Nance did he--did he ever ask you to kiss him?" + +"Yes." + +Dan groaned. + +"Why didn't you tell me all this before, Nance? Why didn't you give me a +chance to put you on your guard?" + +"I _was_ on my guard!" she cried, with rising anger. "I don't need +anybody to take care of me!" + +But Dan was too absorbed in his own thoughts to heed her. + +"It's a good thing he's going away in a couple of days," he said grimly. +"If ever the blackguard writes to you, or dares to speak to you again--" + +Nance had risen and was facing him. + +"Who's to stop him?" she asked furiously. "I'm the one to say the word, +and not you!" + +"And you won't let me take it up with him?" + +"No!" + +"And you mean to see him again, and to write to him?" + +Nance had a blurred vision of an unhappy prodigal crossing the factory +yard. He had kept his part of their compact; she must keep hers. + +"I will if I want to," she said rather weakly. + +Dan's face flushed crimson. + +"All right," he said, "keep it up if you like. But I tell you now, I +ain't going to stay here to see it. I'm going to clear out!" + +He turned toward the door, and she called after him anxiously: + +"Dan, come back here this minute. Where are you going?" + +He paused in the doorway, his jaw set and a steady light in his eyes. + +"I am going now," he said, "to apologize to the man I hit yesterday for +telling the truth about you!" + +That night Nance shed more tears than she had ever shed in the whole +course of her life before; but whether she wept for Mac, or Dan, or +for herself, she could not have said. She heard the sounds die out of +the alley one by one, the clanging cars at the end of the street +became less frequent; only the drip, drip, drip from a broken gutter +outside her window, and the rats in the wall kept her company. All day +Sunday she stayed in-doors, and came to the office on Monday pale and +a bit listless. + +Early as it was, Mr. Clarke was there before her, pacing the floor in +evident perturbation. + +"Come in here a moment, Miss Molloy," he said, before she had taken off +her hat. "I want a word with you." + +Nance followed him into the inner room with a quaking heart. + +"I want you to tell me," he said, waiving all preliminaries, "just who +was in this room Saturday afternoon after I left." + +"Dan Lewis. And of course, Mr. Mac. You left him here." + +"Who else?" + +"Nobody." + +"But there must have been," insisted Mr. Clarke, vehemently. "A man, +giving my name, called up our retail store between two and two-thirty +o'clock, and asked if they could cash a check for several hundred +dollars. He said it was too late to go to the bank, and he wanted the +money right away. Later a messenger brought my individual check, torn out +of this check-book, which evidently hasn't been off my desk, and received +the money. The cashier thought the signature looked queer and called me +up yesterday. I intend to leave no stone unturned until I get at the +truth of the matter. You were the only person here all afternoon. Tell +me, in detail, exactly what happened." + +Nance recalled as nearly as she could, the incidents of the afternoon, +with careful circuits around her own interviews with Mac and Dan. + +"Could any one have entered the inner office between their visits, +without your knowing it?" asked Mr. Clarke, who was following her +closely. + +"Oh, yes, sir; only there wasn't time. You see Mr. Mac was just going out +the factory yard as Dan come in here." + +"Did either of them use my telephone?" + +"Both of them used it." + +"Could you hear what was said?" + +"No; the door was shut both times." + +"Did Lewis enter through the other room, or through the hall?" + +"He come through the other room and asked me if you had left a +telegram for him." + +"Then he came in here?" + +"Yes, sir." + +Mr. Clarke's brows were knitted in perplexity. He took up the telephone. + +"Send Lewis up here to my office," he directed. "What? Hasn't come in +yet?" he repeated incredulously. "That's strange," he said grimly, half +to himself. "The first time I ever knew him to be late." + +Something seemed to tighten suddenly about Nance's heart. Could it be +possible that Mr. Clarke was suspecting Dan of signing that check? +She watched his nervous hands as they ran over the morning mail. He +had singled out one letter and, as he finished reading it, he handed +it to her. + +It was from Dan, a brief business-like resignation, expressing +appreciation of Mr. Clarke's kindness, regret at the suddenness of his +departure, and giving as his reason private affairs that took him +permanently to another city. + +When Nance lifted her startled eyes from the signature, she saw that Mr. +Clarke was closely scrutinizing the writing on the envelope. + +"It's incredible!" he said, "and yet the circumstances are most +suspicious. He gives no real reason for leaving." + +"I can," said Nance, resolutely. "He wanted me to marry him, and I +wouldn't promise. He asked me Saturday afternoon, after he come out of +here. We had a quarrel, and he said he was going away; but I didn't +believe it." + +"Did he ask you to go away with him? Out of town anywhere?" + +"Yes; he said he would go anywhere I said." + +A flash of anger burnt out the look of fear that had been lurking in Mr. +Clarke's face. + +"He's the last man I would have suspected! Of course I knew he had been +in a reformatory at one time, but--" + +The band that had been tightening around Nance's heart seemed suddenly +to burst. She sprang to her feet and stood confronting him with +blazing eyes. + +"What right have you got to think Dan did it? There were two of them in +this room. Why don't you send for Mr. Mac and ask him questions?" + +"Well, for one reason he's in New York, and for another, my son doesn't +have to resort to such means to get what money he wants." + +"Neither does Dan Lewis! He was a street kid; he was had up in court +three times before he was fourteen; he was a month at the reformatory; +and he's knocked elbows with more crooks than you ever heard of; but you +know as well as me that there ain't anybody living more honest than Dan!" + +"All he's got to do is to prove it," said Mr. Clarke, grimly. + +Nance looked at the relentless face of the man before her and thought of +the money at his command to prove whatever he wanted to prove. + +"See here, Mr. Clarke!" she said desperately, "you said a while ago that +all the facts were against Dan. Will you tell me one thing?" + +"What is it?" + +"Did you give Mr. Mac the money to pay that note last Saturday?" + +"What note?" + +"The one the Meyers fellow was after him about?" + +"Mac asked for no money, and I gave him none. In fact he told me that +aside from his debts at the club and at the garage, he owed no bills. So +you see your friend Meyers misinformed you." + +Here was Nance's chance to escape; she had spoken in Dan's defense; she +had told of the Meyers incident. To take one more step would be to +convict Mac and compromise herself. For one miserable moment conflicting +desires beat in her brain; then she heard herself saying quite calmly: + +"No, sir, it wasn't Meyers that told me; it was Mr. Mac himself." + +Mr. Clarke wheeled on her sharply. + +"How did my son happen to be discussing his private affairs with you?" + +"Mr. Mac and me are friends," she said. "He's been awful nice to me; he's +given me more good times than I ever had in my whole life before. But I +didn't know the money wasn't his or I wouldn't have gone with him." + +"And I suppose you thought it was all right for a young man in Mac's +position to be paying attention to a young woman in yours?" + +Mr. Clarke studied her face intently, but her fearless eyes did not +falter under his scrutiny. + +"Are you trying to implicate Mac in this matter to spare Lewis, is that +it?" + +"No, sir. I don't say it was Mr. Mac. I only say it wasn't Dan. There are +some people you just _know_ are straight, and Dan's one of them." + +Mr. Clarke got up and took a turn about the room, his hands locked behind +him. Her last shot had evidently taken effect. + +"Tell me exactly what Mac told you about this Meyers note," he demanded. + +Nance recounted the facts in the case, ending with the promise Mac had +made her to tell his father everything and begin anew. + +"I wish I had known this Saturday!" Mr. Clarke said, sinking heavily +into his chair. "I came down on the boy pretty severely on another score +and gave him little chance to say anything. Did he happen to mention the +exact amount of his indebtedness to Meyers?" + +"He said it was five hundred and sixty dollars." + +A sigh that was very like a groan escaped from Mr. Clarke; then he pulled +himself together with an effort. + +"You understand, Miss Molloy," he said, "that it is quite a different +thing for my son to have done this, and for Lewis to have done it. Mac +knows that what is mine will be his eventually. If he signed that check, +he was signing his own name as well as mine. Of course, he ought to have +spoken to me about it. I am not excusing him. He has been indiscreet in +this as well as in other ways. I shall probably get a letter from him in +a few days explaining the whole business. In the meanwhile the matter +must go no further. I insist upon absolute silence. You understand?" + +She nodded. + +"And one thing more," Mr. Clarke added. "I forbid any further +communication between you and Mac. He is not coming home at Christmas, +and we are thinking of sending him abroad in June. I propose to keep him +away from here for the next two or three years." + +Nance fingered the blotter on the table absently. It was all very well +for them to plan what they were going to do with Mac, but she knew in her +heart that a line from her would set at naught all their calculations. +Then her mind flew back to Dan. + +"If he comes back--Dan, I mean,--are you going to take him on again?" + +Mr. Clarke saw his chance and seized it. + +"On one condition," he said. "Will you give me your word of honor not to +communicate with Mac in any way?" + +They were both standing now, facing each other, and Nance saw no +compromise in the stern eyes of her employer. + +"I'll promise if I've got to," she said. + +"Very well," said Mr. Clarke. "That's settled." + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + +FATE TAKES A HAND + + +Some sinister fascination seems to hover about a bridge at night, +especially for unhappy souls who have grappled with fate and think +themselves worsted. Perhaps they find a melancholy pleasure in the +company of ghosts who have escaped from similar defeats; perhaps they +seek to read the riddle of the universe, as they stand, elbows on rail, +studying the turbulent waters below. + +On the third night after Dan's arrival in Cincinnati, the bridge claimed +him. He had deposited his few belongings in a cheap lodging-house on the +Kentucky side of the river, and then aimlessly paced the streets, too +miserable to eat or sleep, too desperate even to look for work. His one +desire was to get away from his tormenting thoughts, to try to forget +what had happened to him. + +A cold drizzle of rain had brought dusk on an hour before its time. +Twilight was closing in on a sodden day. From the big Ohio city to the +smaller Kentucky towns, poured a stream of tired humanity. Belated +shoppers, business men, workers of all kinds hurried through the murky +soot-laden air, each hastening to some invisible goal. + +To Dan, watching with somber eyes from his niche above the wharf, it +seemed that they were all going home to little lamp-lit cottages where +women and children awaited them. A light in the window and somebody +waiting! The old dream of his boyhood that only a few days ago had seemed +about to come true! + +Instead, he had been caught up in a hurricane and swept out to sea. His +anchors had been his love, his work, and his religion, and none of them +held. The factory, to which he had given the best of his brain and his +body, for which he had dreamed and aspired and planned, was a nightmare +to him. Mrs. Purdy and the church activities, which had loomed so large +in his life, were but fleeting, unsubstantial shadows. + +Only one thing in the wide universe mattered now to him, and that was +Nance. Over and over he rehearsed his final scene with her, searching +for some word of denial or contrition or promise for the future. She had +never lied to him, and he knew she never would. But she had stood before +him in angry defiance, refusing to defend herself, declining his help, +and letting him go out of her life without so much as lifting a finger +to stop him. + +His heavy eyes, which had been following the shore lights, came back to +the bridge, attracted by the movement of a woman leaning over one of +the embrasures near him. He had been vaguely aware for the past five +minutes of a disturbing sound that came to him from time to time; but it +was only now that he noticed the woman was crying. She was standing with +her back to him, and he could see her lift her veil every now and then +and wipe her eyes. + +With a movement of impatience, he moved further on. He had enough +troubles of his own to-night without witnessing those of others. He had +determined to stop fleeing from his thoughts and to turn and face them. A +rich young fellow, like Mac Clarke, didn't go with a girl like Nance for +nothing. Why, this thing must have been going on for months, perhaps long +before the night he had found Nance at the signal tower. They had been +meeting in secret, going out alone together; she had let him make love to +her, kiss her. + +The blood surged into his head, and doubts blacker than the waters below +assailed him, but even as he stood there with his head in his hands and +his cap pulled over his eyes, all sorts of shadowy memories came to plead +for her. Memories of a little, tow-headed, independent girl coming and +going in Calvary Alley, now lugging coal up two flights of stairs, now +rushing noisily down again with a Snawdor baby slung over her shoulder, +now to snatch her part in the play. Nance, who laughed the loudest, cried +the hardest, ran the fastest, whose hand was as quick to help a friend +as to strike a foe! He saw her sitting beside him on the mattress, +sharing his disgrace on the day of the eviction, saw her standing before +the bar of justice passionately pleading his cause. Then later and +tenderer memories came to reinforce the earlier ones--memories of her +gaily dismissing all other offers at the factory to trudge home night +after night with him; of her sitting beside him in Post-Office Square, +subdued and tender-eyed, watching the electric lights bloom through the +dusk; of her nursing Uncle Jed, forgetting herself and her disappointment +in ministering to him and helping him face the future. + +A wave of remorse swept over him! What right had he to make her stay on +and on in Cemetery Street when he knew how she hated it? Why had he +forced her to go back to the factory? She had tried to make him +understand, but he had been deaf to her need. He had expected her to +buckle down to work just as he did. He had forgotten that she was young +and pretty and wanted a good time like other girls. Of course it was +wrong for her to go with Mac, but she was good, he _knew_ she was good. + +The words reverberated in his brain like a hollow echo, frightening away +all the pleading memories. Those were the very words he had used about +his mother on that other black night when he had refused to believe the +truth. All the bitterness of his childhood's tragedy came now to poison +his present mood. If Nance was innocent, why had she kept all this from +him, why had she refused in the end to let him defend her good name? + +He thought of his own struggle to be good; of his ceaseless efforts to be +decent in every thought as well as deed for Nance's sake. Decent! His lip +curled at the irony of it! That wasn't what girls wanted? Decency made +fellows stupid and dull; it kept them too closely at work; it made them +take life too seriously. Girls wanted men like Mac Clarke--men who +snapped their fingers at religion and refused responsibilities, and +laughed in the face of duty. Laughter! That was what Nance loved above +everything! All right, let her have it! What did it matter? He would +laugh too. + +With a reckless resolve, he turned up his coat collar, rammed his hands +in his pockets, and started toward the Kentucky shore. The drizzle by +this time had turned into a sharp rain, and he realized that he was cold +and wet. He remembered a swinging door two squares away. + +As he left the bridge, he saw the woman in the blue veil hurry past him, +and with a furtive look about her, turn and go down the steep levee +toward the water. There was something so nervous and erratic in her +movements, that he stopped to watch her. + +For a few moments she wandered aimlessly along the bank, apparently +indifferent to the pelting rain; then she succeeded, after some +difficulty, in climbing out on one of the coal barges that fringed the +river bank. + +[Illustration: "Don't call a policeman!" she implored wildly] + +Dan glanced down the long length of the bridge, empty now save for a few +pedestrians and a lumbering truck in the distance. In mid-stream the +paddle of a river steamer was churning the water into foam, and +up-stream, near the dock, negro roustabouts could be heard singing. But +under the bridge all was silent, and the levee was deserted in both +directions. He strained his eyes to distinguish that vague figure on the +barge from the surrounding shadows. He saw her crawling across the +shifting coal; then he waited to see no more. + +Plunging down the bank at full speed, he scrambled out on the barge and +seized her by the arms. The struggle was brief, but fierce. With a cry +of despair, she sank face downward on the coal and burst into +hysterical weeping. + +"Don't call a policeman!" she implored wildly. "Don't let 'em take me to +a hospital!" + +"I won't. Don't try to talk 'til you get hold of yourself," said Dan. + +"But I'm chokin'! I can't breathe! Get the veil off!" + +As Dan knelt above her, fumbling with the long veil, he noticed for the +first time that she was young, and that her bare neck between the collar +and the ripple of her black hair was very white and smooth. He bent down +and looked at her with a flash of recognition. + +"Birdie!" he cried incredulously, "Birdie Smelts!" + +Her heavy white lids fluttered wildly, and she started up in terror. + +"Don't be scared!" he urged. "It's Dan Lewis from back home. How did you +ever come to be in this state?" + +With a moan of despair she covered her face with her hands. + +"I was up there on the bridge," Dan went on, almost apologetically. "I +saw you there, but I didn't know it was you. Then when you started down +to the water, I sorter thought--" + +"You oughtn't 'a' stopped me," she wailed. "I been walkin' the +streets tryin' to get up my courage all day. I'm sick, I tell you. I +want to die." + +"But it ain't right to die this way. Don't you know it's wicked?" + +"Good and bad's all the same to me. I'm done for. There ain't a soul in +this rotten old town that cares whether I live or die!" + +Dan flushed painfully. He was much more equal to saving a body than a +soul, but he did not flinch from his duty. + +"God cares," he said. "Like as not He sent me out on the bridge a-purpose +to-night to help you. You let me put you on the train, Birdie, and ship +you home to your mother." + +"Never! I ain't goin' home, and I ain't goin' to a hospital. Promise me +you won't let 'em take me, Dan!" + +"All right, all right," he said, with an anxious eye on her shivering +form and her blue lips. "Only we got to get under cover somewhere. Do you +feel up to walking yet?" + +"Where'd I walk to?" she demanded bitterly. "I tell you I've got no money +and no place to go. I been on the street since yesterday noon." + +"You can't stay out here all night!" said Dan at his wit's end. "I'll +have to get you a room somewhere." + +"Go ahead and get it. I'll wait here." + +But Dan mistrusted the look of cunning that leaped into her eyes and the +way she glanced from time to time at the oily, black water that curled +around the corner of the barge. + +"I got a room a couple of squares over," he said slowly. "You might come +over there 'til you get dried out and rested up a bit." + +"I don't want to go anywhere. I'm too sick. I don't want to have to +see people." + +"You won't have to. It's a rooming house. The old woman that looks after +things has gone by now." + +It took considerable persuasion to get her on her feet and up the bank. +Again and again she refused to go on, declaring that she didn't want to +live. But Dan's patience was limitless. Added to his compassion for her, +was the half-superstitious belief that he had been appointed by +Providence to save her. + +"It's just around the corner now," he encouraged her. "Can you make it?" + +She stumbled on blindly, without answering, clinging to his arm and. +breathing heavily. + +"Here we are!" said Dan, turning into a dark entrance, "front room on the +left. Steady there!" + +But even as he opened the door, Birdie swayed forward and would have +fallen to the floor, had he not caught her and laid her on the bed. + +Hastily lighting the lamp on the deal table by the window, he went back +to the bed and loosened the neck of her dripping coat and then looked +down at her helplessly. Her face, startlingly white in its frame of black +hair, showed dark circles under the eyes, and her full lips had lost not +only their color, but the innocent curves of childhood as well. + +Presently she opened her eyes wearily and looked about her. + +"I'm cold," she said with a shiver, "and hungry. God! I didn't know +anybody could be so hungry!" + +"I'll make a fire in the stove," cried Dan; "then I'll go out and get +you something hot to drink. You'll feel better soon." + +"Don't be long, Dan," she whispered faintly. "I'm scared to stay +by myself." + +Ten minutes later Dan hurried out of the eating-house at the corner, +balancing a bowl of steaming soup in one hand and a plate of food in the +other. He was soaked to the skin, and the rain trickled from his hair +into his eyes. As he crossed the street a gust of wind caught his cap and +hurled it away into the wet night. But he gave no thought to himself or +to the weather, for the miracle had happened. That dancing gleam in the +gutter came from a lighted lamp in a window behind which some one was +waiting for him. + +He found Birdie shaking with a violent chill, and it was only after he +had got off her wet coat and wrapped her in a blanket, and persuaded her +to drink the soup that she began to revive. + +"What time of night is it?" she asked weakly. + +"After eleven. You're going to stay where you are, and I'm going out and +find me a room somewhere. I'll come back in the morning." + +All of Birdie's alarms returned. + +"I ain't going to stay here by myself, Dan. I'll go crazy, I tell you! I +don't want to live and I am afraid to die. What sort of a God is He to +let a person suffer like this?" + +And poor old Dan, at death-grips with his own life problem, wrestled in +vain with hers; arguing, reassuring, affirming, trying with an almost +fanatic zeal to conquer his own doubts in conquering hers. + +Then Birdie, bent on keeping him with her, talked of herself, pouring +out an incoherent story of misfortune: how she had fainted on the stage +one night and incurred the ill-will of the director; how the company +went on and left her without friends and without money; how matters had +gone from bad to worse until she couldn't stand it any longer. She +painted a picture of wronged innocence that would have wrung a sterner +heart than Dan's. + +"I know," he said sympathetically. "I've seen what girls are up against +at Clarke's." + +Birdie's feverish eyes fastened upon him. + +"Have you just come from Clarke's?" + +"Yes." + +"Is Mac there?" + +Dan's face hardened. + +"I don't know anything about him." + +"No; and you don't want to! If there's one person in this world I hate, +it's Mac Clarke." + +"Same here," said Dan, drawn to her by the attraction of a common +antipathy. + +"Thinks he can do what he pleases," went on Birdie, bitterly, "with his +good looks and easy ways. He'll have a lot to answer for!" + +Dan sat with his fists locked, staring at the floor. A dozen questions +burned on his lips, but he could not bring himself to ask them. + +A fierce gust of wind rattled the window, and Birdie cried out in terror. + +"You stop being afraid and go to sleep," urged Dan, but she shook her +head. + +"I don't dare to! You'd go away, and I'd wake up and go crazy with fear. +I always was like that even when I was a kid, back home. I used to pretty +near die of nights when pa would come in drunk and get to breaking up +things. There was a man like that down where I been staying. He'd fall +against my door 'most every night. Sometimes I'd meet him out in the +street, and he'd follow me for squares." + +Dan drew the blanket about her shoulders. + +"Go to sleep," he said. "I won't leave you." + +"Yes; but to-morrow night, and next night! Oh, God! I'm smothering. +Lift me up!" + +He sat on the side of the bed and lifted her until she rested against his +shoulder. A deathly pallor had spread over her features, and she clung to +him weakly. + +Through the long hours of the stormy night he sat there, soothing and +comforting her, as he would have soothed a terror-stricken child. By +and by her clinging hands grew passive in his, her rigid, jerking limbs +relaxed, and she fell into a feverish sleep broken by fitful sobs and +smothered outcries. As Dan sat there, with her helpless weight against +him, and gently stroked the wet black hair from her brow, something +fierce and protective stirred in him, the quick instinct of the +chivalrous strong to defend the weak. Here was somebody more wretched, +more desolate, more utterly lonely than himself--a soft, fearful, +feminine somebody, ill-fitted to fight the world with those frail, +white hands. + +Hitherto he had blindly worshiped at one shrine, and now the image was +shattered, the shrine was empty--so appallingly empty that he was ready +to fill it at any cost. For the first time in three days he ceased to +think of Nance Molloy or of Mac Clarke, whose burden he was all +unconsciously bearing. He ceased, also, to think of the soul he had +been trying so earnestly to save. He thought instead of the tender +weight against his shoulder, of the heavy lashes that lay on the +tear-stained cheeks so close to his, of the soft, white brow under his +rough, brown fingers. Something older than love or religion was making +its claim on Dan. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + +THE PRICE OF ENLIGHTENMENT + + +It was November of the following year that the bird of ill-omen, +which had been flapping its wings over Calvary Alley for so long, +decided definitely to alight. A catastrophe occurred that threatened +to remove the entire population of the alley to another and, we +trust, a fairer world. + +Mrs. Snawdor insists to this day that it was the sanitary inspector who +started the trouble. On one of his infrequent rounds he had encountered a +strange odor in Number One, a suspicious, musty odor that refused to come +under the classification of krout, kerosene, or herring. The tenants, in +a united body, indignantly defended the smell. + +"It ain't nothin' at all but Mis' Smelts' garbage," Mrs. Snawdor +declared vehemently. "She often chucks it in a hole in the kitchen floor +to save steps. Anybody'd think the way you was carryin' on, it was a +murdered corpse!" + +But the inspector persisted in his investigations, forcing a way into the +belligerent Snawdor camp, where he found Fidy Yager with a well-developed +case of smallpox. She had been down with what was thought to be +chicken-pox for a week, but the other children had been sworn to secrecy +under the threat that the doctor would scrape the skin off their arms +with a knife if they as much as mentioned Fidy's name. + +It was a culmination of a battle that had raged between Mrs. Snawdor +and the health authorities for ten years, over the question of +vaccination. The epidemic that followed was the visible proof of Mrs. +Snawdor's victory. + +Calvary Alley, having offered a standing invitation to germs in general, +was loathe to regard the present one as an enemy. It resisted the +inspector, who insisted on vaccinating everybody all over again; it was +indignant at the headlines in the morning papers; it was outraged when +Number One was put in quarantine. + +Even when Fidy Yager, who "wasn't all there," and who, according to her +mother, had "a fit a minute," was carried away to the pest-house, nobody +was particularly alarmed. But when, twenty-four hours later, Mr. Snawdor +and one of the Lavinski helpers came down with it, the alley began to +look serious, and Mrs. Snawdor sent for Nance. + +For six months now Nance had been living at a young women's boarding +home, realizing a life-long ambition to get out of the alley. But on +hearing the news, she flung a few clothes into an old suitcase and rushed +to the rescue. + +Since that never-to-be-forgotten day a year ago when word had reached +her of Dan's marriage to Birdie Smelts, a hopeless apathy had possessed +her. Even in the first weeks after his departure, when Mac's impassioned +letters were pouring in and she was exerting all her will power to make +good her promise to his father, she was aware of a dull, benumbing +anxiety over Dan. She had tried to get his address from Mrs. Purdy, from +Slap Jack's, where he still kept some of his things, from the men he knew +best at the factory. Nobody could tell her where he had gone, or what he +intended to do. + +Just what she wanted to say to him she did not know. She still resented +bitterly his mistrust of her, and what she regarded as his interference +with her liberty, but she had no intention of letting matters rest as +they were. She and Dan must fight the matter out to some satisfactory +conclusion. + +Then came the news of his marriage, shattering every hope and shaking the +very foundation of her being. From her earliest remembrance Dan had been +the most dependable factor in her existence. Whirlwind enthusiasms for +other things and other people had caught her up from time to time, but +she always came back to Dan, as one comes back to solid earth after a +flight in an aeroplane. + +In her first weeks of chagrin and mortification she had sought refuge in +thoughts of Mac. She had slept with his unanswered letters under her +pillow and clung to the memory of his ardent eyes, his gay laughter, the +touch of his lips on her hands and cheeks. Had Mac come home that +Christmas, her doom would have been sealed. The light by which she +steered had suddenly gone out, and she could no longer distinguish the +warning coast lights from the harbor lights of home. + +But Mac had not come at Christmas, neither had he come in the summer, and +Nance's emotional storm was succeeded by an equally intolerable calm. +Back and forth from factory to boarding home she trudged day by day, and +on Sunday she divided her wages with Mrs. Snawdor, on the condition that +she should have a vote in the management of family affairs. By this plan +Lobelia and the twins were kept at school, and Mr. Snawdor's feeble +efforts at decent living were staunchly upheld. + +When the epidemic broke out in Calvary Alley, and Mrs. Snawdor signaled +for help, Nance responded to the cry with positive enthusiasm. Here was +something stimulating at last. There was immediate work to be done, and +she was the one to do it. + +As she hurried up the steps of Number One, she found young Dr. Isaac +Lavinski superintending the construction of a temporary door. + +"You can't come in here!" he called to her, peremptorily. "We're in +quarantine. I've got everybody out I can. But enough people have been +exposed to it already to spread the disease all over the city. Three more +cases to-night. Mrs. Smelts' symptoms are very suspicious. Dr. Adair is +coming himself at nine o'clock to give instructions. It's going to be a +tussle all right!" + +Nance looked at him in amazement. He spoke with more enthusiasm than he +had ever shown in the whole course of his life. His narrow, sallow face +was full of keen excitement. Little old Ike, who had hidden under the bed +in the old days whenever a fight was going on, was facing death with the +eagerness of a valiant soldier on the eve of his first battle. + +"I'm going to help you, Ike!" Nance cried instantly. "I've come to stay +'til it's over." + +But Isaac barred the way. + +"You can't come in, I tell you! I've cleared the decks for action. Not +another person but the doctor and nurse are going to pass over this +threshold!" + +"Look here, Ike Lavinski," cried Nance, indignantly, "you know as well as +me that there are things that ought to be done up there at the +Snawdors'!" + +"They'll have to go undone," said Isaac, firmly. + +Nance wasted no more time in futile argument. She waited for an opportune +moment when Ike's back was turned; then she slipped around the corner of +the house and threaded her way down the dark passage, until she reached +the fire-escape. There were no lights in the windows as she climbed past +them, and the place seemed ominously still. + +At the third platform she scrambled over a wash-tub and a dozen plaster +casts of Pocahontas,--Mr. Snawdor's latest venture in industry,--and +crawled through the window into the kitchen. It was evident at a glance +that Mrs. Snawdor had at last found that long-talked-of day off and had +utilized it in cleaning up. The room didn't look natural in its changed +condition. Neither did Mrs. Snawdor, sitting in the gloom in an +attitude of deep dejection. At sight of Nance at the window, she gave a +cry of relief. + +"Thank the Lord, you've come!" she said. "Can you beat this? Havin' to +climb up the outside of yer own house like a fly! They've done sent Fidy +to the pest-house, an' scattered the other childern all over the +neighborhood, an' they got me fastened up here, like a hen in a coop!" + +"How is he?" whispered Nance, glancing toward the inner room. + +"Ain't a thing the matter with him, but the lumbago. Keeps on complainin' +of a pain in his back. I never heard of such a hullabaloo about nothin' +in all my life. They'll be havin' me down with smallpox next. How long +you goin' to be here?" + +Nance, taking off her hat and coat, announced that she had come to stay. + +Mrs. Snawdor heaved a sigh of relief. + +"Well, if you'll sorter keep a eye on him, I believe I'll step down +an' set with Mis' Smelts fer a spell. I ain't been off the place fer +two days." + +"But wait a minute! Where's Uncle Jed? And Mr. Demry?" + +"They 're done bounced too! Anybody tell you 'bout yer Uncle Jed's +patent? They say he stands to make as much as a hundern dollars offen it. +They say--" + +"I don't care what they say!" cried Nance, distractedly. "Tell me, did +the children take clean clothes with 'em? Did you see if Uncle Jed had +his sweater? Have you washed the bedclothes that was on Fidy's bed?" + +Mrs. Snawdor shook her head impatiently. + +"I didn't, an' I ain't goin' to! That there Ike Lavinski ain't goin' to +run me! He took my Fidy off to that there pest-house where I bet they +operate her. He'll pay up fer this, you see if he don't!" + +She began to cry, but as Nance was too much occupied to give audience to +her grief, she betook herself to the first floor to assist in the care of +Mrs. Smelts. Illness in the abode of another has a romantic flavor that +home-grown maladies lack. + +When Dr. Adair and Isaac Lavinski made their rounds at nine o'clock, they +found Nance bending over a steaming tub, washing out a heavy comfort. + +"What are you doing here?" demanded Isaac in stern surprise. + +"Manicuring my finger-nails," she said, with an impudent grin, as she +straightened her tired shoulders. Then seeing Dr. Adair, she blushed and +wiped her hands on her apron. + +"You don't remember me, Doctor, do you? I helped you with Uncle Jed Burks +at the signal tower that time when the lightning struck him." + +He looked her over, his glance traveling from her frank, friendly face to +her strong bare arms. + +"Why, yes, I do. You and your brother had been to some fancy-dress +affair. I remember your red shoes. It isn't every girl of your age that +could have done what you did that night. Have you been vaccinated?" + +"Twice. Both took." + +"She's got no business being here, sir," Isaac broke in hotly. "I told +her to keep out." + +"Doctor! Listen at me!" pleaded Nance, her hand on his coat sleeve. +Honest to goodness, I _got_ to stay. Mrs. Snawdor don't believe it's +smallpox. She'll slip the children in when you ain't looking and go out +herself and see the neighbors. Don't you see that somebody's got to be +here that understands?" + +"The girl's right, Lavinski," said Dr. Adair. "She knows the ropes here, +and can be of great service to us. The nurse downstairs can't begin to +do it all. Now let us have a look at the patient." + +Little Mr. Snawdor was hardly worth looking at. He lay rigid, like a +dried twig, with his eyes shut tight, and his mouth shut tight, and his +hands clenched tighter still. It really seemed as if this time Mr. +Snawdor was going to make good his old-time threat to quit. + +Dr. Adair gave the necessary instructions; then he turned to go. He had +been watching Nance, as she moved about the room carrying out his orders, +and at the door he laid a hand on her shoulder. + +"How old are you, my girl?" he asked. + +"Twenty." + +"We need girls like you up at the hospital. Have you ever thought of +taking the training?" + +"Me? I haven't got enough spondulicks to take a street-car ride." + +"That part can be arranged if you really want to go into the work. +Think it over." + +Then he and the impatient Isaac continued on their rounds, and Nance went +back to her work. But the casual remark, let fall by Dr. Adair, had set +her ambition soaring. Her imagination flared to the project. Snawdor's +flat extended itself into a long ward; poor little Mr. Snawdor, who was +hardly half a man, became a dozen; and Miss Molloy, in a becoming +uniform, moved in and out among the cots, a ministering angel of mercy. + +For the first time since Dan Lewis's marriage, her old courage and zest +for life returned, and when Mrs. Snawdor came in at midnight, she found +her sitting beside her patient with shining eyes full of waking dreams. + +"Mis' Smelts is awful bad," Mrs. Snawdor reported, looking more serious +than she had heretofore. "Says she wants to see you before the nurse +wakes up. Seems like she's got somethin' on her mind." + +Nance hurried into her coat and went out into the dark, damp hall. Long +black roaches scurried out of her way as she descended the stairs. In the +hall below the single gas-jet flared in the draught, causing ghostly +shadows to leap out of corners and then skulk fearfully back again. Nance +was not afraid, but a sudden sick loathing filled her. Was she never +going to be able to get away from it all? Was that long arm of duty going +to stretch out and find her wherever she went, and drag her back to this +noisome spot? Were all her dreams and ambitions to die, as they had been +born, in Calvary Alley? + +Mrs. Smelts had been moved into an empty room across the hall from her +own crowded quarters, and as Nance pushed open the door, she lifted a +warning hand and beckoned. + +"Shut it," she said in a hoarse whisper. "I don't want nobody to hear +what I got to tell you." + +"Can't it wait, Mrs. Smelts?" asked Nance, with a pitying hand on the +feverish brow across which a long white scar extended. + +"No. They're goin' to take me away in the mornin'. I heard 'em say +so. It's about Birdie, Nance, I want to tell you. They've had to +lock her up." + +"It's the fever makes you think that, Mrs. Smelts. You let me sponge you +off a bit." + +"No, no, not yet. She's crazy, I tell you! She went out of her head last +January when the baby come. Dan's kept it to hisself all this time, but +now he's had to send her to the asylum." + +"Who told you?" + +"Dan did. He wrote me when he sent me the last money. I got his +letter here under my pillow. I want you to burn it, Nance, so no one +won't know." + +Nance went on mechanically stroking the pain-racked head, as she reached +under the pillow for Dan's letter. The sight of the neat, painstaking +writing made her heart contract. + +"You tell him fer me," begged Mrs. Smelts, weakly, "to be good to her. +She never had the right start. Her paw handled me rough before she come, +an' she was always skeery an' nervous like. But she was so purty, oh, so +purty, an' me so proud of her!" + +Nance wiped away the tears that trickled down the wrinkled cheeks, and +tried to quiet her, but the rising fever made her talk on and on. + +"I ain't laid eyes on her since a year ago this fall. She come home sick, +an' nobody knew it but me. I got out of her whut was her trouble, an' I +went to see his mother, but it never done no good. Then I went to the +bottle factory an' tried to get his father to listen--" + +"Whose father?" asked Nance, sharply. + +"The Clarke boy's. It was him that did fer her. I tell you she was a good +girl 'til then. But they wouldn't believe it. They give me some money to +sign the paper an' not to tell; but before God it's him that's the father +of her child, and poor Dan--" + +But Mrs. Smelts never finished her sentence; a violent paroxysm of pain +seized her, and at dawn the messenger that called for the patient on the +third floor, following the usual economy practised in Calvary Alley, made +one trip serve two purposes and took her also. + +By the end of the month the epidemic was routed, and the alley, cleansed +and chastened as it had never been before, was restored to its own. Mr. +Snawdor, Fidy Yager, Mrs. Smelts, and a dozen others, being the unfittest +to survive, had paid the price of enlightenment. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + +IN TRAINING + + +One sultry July night four years later Dr. Isaac Lavinski, now an +arrogant member of the staff at the Adair Hospital, paused on his last +round of the wards and cocked an inquiring ear above the steps that led +to the basement. Something that sounded very much like suppressed +laughter came up to him, and in order to confirm his suspicions, he +tiptoed down to the landing and, making an undignified syphon of himself, +peered down into the rear passage. In a circle on the floor, four nurses +in their nightgowns softly beat time, while a fifth, arrayed in pink +pajamas, with her hair flying, gave a song and dance with an abandon that +ignored the fact that the big thermometer in the entry registered +ninety-nine. + +The giggles that had so disturbed Dr. Lavinski's peace of mind increased +in volume, as the dancer executed a particularly daring _passeul_ and, +turning a double somersault, landed deftly on her bare toes. + +"Go on, do it again!" "Show us how Sheeny Ike dances the tango." "Sing +Barney McKane," came in an enthusiastic chorus. + +But before the encore could be responded to, a familiar sound in the +court without, sent the girls scampering to their respective rooms. + +Dr. Isaac, reluctantly relinquishing his chance for administering prompt +and dramatic chastisement, came down the stairs and out to the entry. + +An ambulance had just arrived, and behind it was a big private car, and +behind that Dr. Adair's own neat runabout. + +Dr. Adair met Dr. Isaac at the door. + +"It's an emergency case," he explained hastily. "I may have to operate +to-night. Prepare number sixteen, and see if Miss Molloy is off duty." + +"She is, sir," said Isaac, grimly, "and the sooner she's put on a case +the better." + +"Tell her to report at once. And send an orderly down to lend a hand with +the stretcher." + +Five minutes later an immaculate nurse, every button fastened, every fold +in place, presented herself on the third floor for duty. You would have +had to look twice to make certain that that slim, trim figure in its +white uniform was actually Nance Molloy. To be sure her eyes sparkled +with the old fire under her becoming cap, and her chin was still carried +at an angle that hinted the possession of a secret gold mine, but she had +changed amazingly for all that. Life had evidently been busy chiseling +away her rough edges, and from a certain poise of body and a +professional control of voice and gesture, it was apparent that Nance had +done a little chiseling on her own account. + +As she stood in the dim corridor awaiting orders, she could not help +overhearing a conversation between Dr. Adair and the agitated lady who +stood with her hand on the door-knob of number sixteen. + +"My dear madam," the doctor was saying in a tone that betokened the limit +of patience, "you really must leave the matter to my judgment, if we +operate--" + +"But you won't unless it's the last resort?" pleaded the lady. "You know +how frightfully sensitive to pain he is. But if you find out that you +must, then I want you to promise me not to let him suffer afterward. You +must keep him under the influence of opiates, and you will wait until his +father can get here, won't you?" + +"But that's the trouble. You've waited too long already. Appendicitis is +not a thing to take liberties with." + +"You don't mean it's too late? You don't think--" + +"We don't think anything at present. We hope everything." Then spying +Nance, he turned toward her with relief. "This is the nurse who will take +charge of the case." + +The perturbed lady uncovered one eye. + +"You are sure she is one of your very best?" + +"One of our best," said the doctor, as he and Nance exchanged a +quizzical smile. + +"Let her go in to him now. I can't bear for him to be alone a second. As +I was telling you--" + +Nance passed into the darkened room and closed the door softly. The +patient was evidently asleep; so she tiptoed over to the window and +slipped into a chair. On each side of the open space without stretched +the vine-clad wings of the hospital, gray now under the starlight. +Nance's eyes traveled reminiscently from floor to floor, from window to +window. How many memories the old building held for her! Memories of +heartaches and happiness, of bad times and good times, of bitter defeats +and dearly won triumphs. + +It had been no easy task for a girl of her limited education and +undisciplined nature to take the training course. But she had gallantly +stood to her guns and out of seeming defeat, won a victory. For the first +time in her diversified career she had worked in a congenial environment +toward a fixed goal, and in a few weeks now she would be launching her +own little boat on the professional main. + +Her eyes grew tender as she thought of leaving these protecting gray +walls that had sheltered her for four long years; yet the adventure of +the future was already calling. Where would her first case lead her? + +A cough from the bed brought her sharply back to the present. She went +forward and stooped to adjust a pillow, and the patient opened his eyes, +stared at her in bewilderment, then pulled himself up on his elbow. + +"Nance!" he cried incredulously. "Nance Molloy!" + +She started back in dismay. + +"Why, it's Mr. Mac! I didn't know! I thought I'd seen the lady +before--no, please! Stop, they're coming! Please, Mr. Mac!" + +For the patient, heretofore too absorbed in his own affliction to note +anything, was covering her imprisoned hands with kisses and calling on +Heaven to witness that he was willing to undergo any number of operations +if she would nurse him through them. + +Nance escaped from the room as Mrs. Clarke entered. With burning cheeks +she rushed to Dr. Adair's office. + +"You'll have to get somebody else on that case, Doctor," she declared +impulsively. "I used to work for Mr. Clarke up at the bottle factory, +and--and there are reasons why I don't want to take it." + +Dr. Adair looked at her over his glasses and frowned. + +"It is a nurse's duty," he said sternly, "to take the cases as they come, +irrespective of likes or dislikes. Mr. Clarke is an old friend of mine, +a man I admire and respect." + +"Yes, sir, I know, but if you'll just excuse me this once--" + +"Is Miss Rand off duty?" + +"No, sir. She's in number seven." + +"Miss Foster?" + +"No, sir." + +"Then I shall have to insist upon your taking the case. I must have +somebody I can depend upon to look after young Clarke for the next +twenty-four hours. It's not only the complication with his appendix; it's +his lungs." + +"You mean he's tubercular?" + +"Yes." + +Nance's eyes widened. + +"Does he know it?" + +"No. I shall wait and tell his father. I wouldn't undertake to break the +news to that mother of his for a house and lot! You take the case +to-night, and I'll operate in the morning--" + +"No, no, please, Doctor! Mr. Clarke wouldn't want me." + +"Mr. Clarke will be satisfied with whatever arrangement I see fit to +make. Besides another nurse will be in charge by the time he arrives." + +"But, Doctor--" + +A stern glance silenced her, and she went out, closing the door as hard +as she dared behind her. During her four years at the hospital the +memory of Mac Clarke had grown fainter and fainter like the perfume of a +fading flower. But the memory of Dan was like a thorn in her flesh, +buried deep, but never forgotten. + +To herself, her fellow-nurses, the young internes who invariably fell in +love with her, she declared gaily that she was "through with men +forever." The subject that excited her fiercest scorn was matrimony, and +she ridiculed sentiment with the superior attitude of one who has weighed +it in the balance and found it wanting. + +Nevertheless something vaguely disturbing woke in her that night when she +watched with Mrs. Clarke at Mac's bedside. Despite the havoc five years +had wrought in him, there was the old appealing charm in his voice and +manner, the old audacity in his whispered words when she bent over him, +the old eager want in his eyes as they followed her about the room. + +Toward morning he dropped into a restless sleep, and Mrs. Clarke, who +had been watching his every breath, tiptoed over to the table and sat +down by Nance. + +"My son tells me you are the Miss Molloy who used to be in the office," +she whispered. "He is so happy to find some one here he knows. He loathes +trained nurses as a rule. They make him nervous. But he has been +wonderfully good about letting you do things for him. It's a tremendous +relief to me." + +Nance made a mistake on the chart that was going to call for an +explanation later. + +"He's been losing ground ever since last winter," the doting mother went +on. "He was really quite well at Divonne-les-Bains, but he lost all he +gained when we reached Paris. You see he doesn't know how to take care of +himself; that's the trouble." + +Mac groaned and she hurried to him. + +"He wants a cigarette, Miss Molloy. I don't believe it would hurt +him," she said. + +"His throat's already irritated," said Nance, in her most professional +tone. "I am sure Dr. Adair wouldn't want him to smoke." + +"But we can't refuse him anything to-night," said Mrs. Clarke, with an +apologetic smile as she reached for the matches. + +Nance looking at her straight, delicate profile thrown into sudden relief +by the flare of the match, had the same disturbing sense of familiarity +that she had experienced long ago in the cathedral. + +But during the next twenty-four hours there was no time to analyze +subtle impressions or to indulge in sentimental reminiscence. From the +moment Mac's unconscious form was borne down from the operating room and +handed over to her care, he ceased to be a man and became a critically +ill patient. + +"We haven't much to work on," said Dr. Adair, shaking his head. "He has +no resisting power. He has burned himself out." + +But Mac's powers of resistance were stronger than he thought, and by the +time Mr. Clarke arrived the crisis was passed. Slowly and painfully he +struggled back to consciousness, and his first demand was for Nance. + +"It's the nurse he had when he first came," Mrs. Clarke explained to her +husband. "You must make Dr. Adair give her back to us. She's the only +nurse I've ever seen who could get Mac to do things. By the way, she used +to be in your office, a rather pretty, graceful girl, named Molloy." + +"I remember her," said Mr. Clarke, grimly. "You better leave things as +they are. Miss Hanna seems to know her business." + +"But Mac hates Miss Hanna! He says her hands make him think of +bedsprings. Miss Molloy makes him laugh and helps him to forget the pain. +He's taken a tremendous fancy to her." + +"Yes, he had quite a fancy for her once before." + +"Now, Macpherson, how can you?" cried Mrs. Clarke on the verge of tears. +"Just because the boy made one slip when he was little more than a +_child_, you suspect his every motive. I don't see how you can be so +cruel! If you had seen his agony, if you had been through what I have--" + +Thus it happened that instead of keeping Nance out of Mac's sight, Mrs. +Clarke left no stone unturned to get her back, and Mr. Clarke was even +persuaded to take it up personally with Dr. Adair. + +Nance might have held out to the end, had her sympathies not been +profoundly stirred by the crushing effect the news of Mac's serious +tubercular condition had upon his parents. On the day they were told Mr. +Clarke paced the corridor for hours with slow steps and bent head, +refusing to see people or to answer the numerous inquiries over the +telephone. As for Mrs. Clarke, all the fragile prettiness and girlish +grace she had carried over into maturity, seemed to fall away from her +within the hour, leaving her figure stooped and her face settled into +lines of permanent anxiety. + +The mother's chief concern now was to break the news of his condition to +Mac, who was already impatiently straining at the leash, eager to get +back to his old joyous pursuits and increasingly intolerant of +restrictions. + +"He refuses to listen to me or to his father," she confided to Nance, who +had coaxed her down to the yard for a breath of fresh air. "I'm afraid +we've lost our influence over him. And yet I can't bear for Dr. Adair to +tell him. He's so stern and says such dreadful things. Do you know he +actually was heartless enough to tell Mac that he had brought a great +deal of this trouble on himself!" + +Nance slipped her hand through Mrs. Clarke's arm, and patted it +reassuringly. She had come to have a sort of pitying regard for this +terror-stricken mother during these days of anxious waiting. + +"I wonder if you would be willing to tell him?" Mrs. Clarke asked, +looking at her appealingly. "Maybe you could make him understand without +frightening him." + +"I'll try," said Nance, with ready sympathy. + +The opportunity came one day in the following week when the regular day +nurse was off duty. She found Mac alone, propped up in bed, and +tremendously glad to see her. To a less experienced person the +brilliancy of his eyes and the color in his cheeks would have meant +returning health, but to Nance they were danger signals that nerved her +to her task. + +"I hear you are going home next week," she said, resting her crossed arms +on the foot of his bed. "Going to be good and take care of yourself?" + +"Not on your life!" cried Mac, gaily, searching under his pillow for his +cigarette case. "The lid's been on for a month, and it's coming off with +a bang. I intend to shoot the first person that mentions health to me." + +"Fire away then," said Nance. "I'm it. I've come to hand you out a nice +little bunch of advice." + +"You needn't. I've got twice as much now as I intend to use. Come on +around here and be sociable. I want to make love to you." + +Nance declined the invitation. + +"Has Dr. Adair put you wise on what he's letting you in for?" + +"Rather! Raw eggs, rest, and rust. Mother put him up to it. It's perfect +rot. I'll be feeling fit as a fiddle inside of two weeks. All I need is +to get out of this hole. They couldn't have kept me here this long if it +hadn't been for you." + +"And I reckon you're counting on going back and speeding up just as you +did before?" + +"Sure, why not?" + +"Because you can't. The sooner you soak that in, the better." + +He blew a succession of smoke rings in her direction and laughed. + +"So they've taken you into the conspiracy, have they? Going to +frighten me into the straight and narrow, eh? Suppose I tell them that +I'm lovesick? That there's only one cure for me in the world, and +that's you?" + +The ready retort with which she had learned to parry these personalities +was not forthcoming. She felt as she had that day five years ago in his +father's office, when she told him what she thought of him. He smiled up +at her with the same irresponsible light in his brown eyes, the same +eager desire to sidestep the disagreeable, the old refusal to accept life +seriously. He was such a boy despite his twenty-six years. Such a +spoiled, selfish lovable boy! + +With a sudden rush of pity, she went to him and took his hand: + +"See here, Mr. Mac," she said very gravely, "I got to tell you +something. Dr. Adair wanted to tell you from the first, but your mother +headed him off." + +He shot a swift glance at her. + +"What do you mean, Nance?" + +Then Nance sat on the side of his bed and explained to him, as gently and +as firmly as she could, the very serious nature of his illness, +emphasizing the fact that his one chance for recovery lay in complete +surrender to a long and rigorous regime of treatment. + +From scoffing incredulity, he passed to anxious skepticism and then to +agonized conviction. It was the first time he had ever faced any +disagreeable fact in life from which there was no appeal, and he cried +out in passionate protest. If he was a "lunger" he wanted to die as soon +as possible. He hated those wheezy chaps that went coughing through life, +avoiding draughts, and trying to keep their feet dry. If he was going to +die, he wanted to do it with a rush. He'd be hanged if he'd cut out +smoking, drinking, and running with the boys, just to lie on his back for +a year and perhaps die at the end of it! + +Nance faced the bitter crisis with him, whipping up his courage, +strengthening his weak will, nerving him for combat. When she left him +an hour later, with his face buried in the pillow and his hands locked +above his head, he had promised to submit to the doctor's advice on the +one condition that she would go home with him and start him on that fight +for life that was to tax all his strength and patience and self-control. + + + + +CHAPTER XXX + +HER FIRST CASE + + +October hovered over Kentucky that year in a golden halo of enchantment. +The beech-trees ran the gamut of glory, and every shrub and weed had its +hour of transient splendor. A soft haze from burning brush lent the world +a sense of mystery and immensity. Day after day on the south porch at +Hillcrest Mac Clarke lay propped with cushions on a wicker couch, while +Nance Molloy sat beside him, and all about them was a stir of whispering, +dancing, falling leaves. The hillside was carpeted with them, the brook +below the pergola was strewn with bits of color, while overhead the warm +sunshine filtered through canopies of russet and crimson and green. + +"I tell you the boy is infatuated with that girl," Mr. Clarke warned his +wife from time to time. + +"What nonsense!" Mrs. Clarke answered. "He is just amusing himself a bit. +He will forget her as soon as he gets out and about." + +"But the girl?" + +"Oh, she's too sensible to have any hopes of that kind. She really is +an exceptionally nice girl. Rather too frank in her speech, and +frequently ungrammatical and slangy, but I don't know what we should do +without her." + +But even Mrs. Clarke's complacence was a bit shaken as the weeks slipped +away, and Mac's obsession became the gossip of the household. To be sure, +so long as Nance continued to regard the whole matter as a joke and +refused to take Mac seriously, no harm would be done. But that very +indifference that assured his adoring mother, at the same time piqued her +pride. That an ordinary trained nurse, born and brought up, Heaven knew +where, should be insensible to Mac's even transient attention almost +amounted to an impertinence. Quite unconsciously she began to break down +Nance's defenses. + +"You must be very good to my boy, dear," she said one day in her gentle, +coaxing way. "I know he's a bit capricious and exacting at times. But we +can't afford to cross him now when he is just beginning to improve. He +was terribly upset last night when you teased him about leaving." + +"But I ought to go, Mrs. Clarke. He'd get along just as well now with +another nurse. Besides I only promised--" + +"Not another word!" implored Mrs. Clarke in instant alarm. "I wouldn't +answer for the consequences if you left us now. Mac goes all to pieces +when it is suggested. He has always been so used to having his own way, +you know." + +Yes, Nance knew. Between her unceasing efforts to get him well, and her +grim determination to keep the situation well in hand, she had unlimited +opportunity of finding out. The physicians agreed that his chances for +recovery were one to three. It was only by the most persistent observance +of certain regulations pertaining to rest, diet, and fresh air, that they +held out any hope of arresting the malady that had already made such +alarming headway. Nance realized from the first that it was to be a fight +against heavy odds, and she gallantly rose to the emergency. Aside from +the keen personal interest she took in Mac, and the sympathy she felt for +his stricken parents, she had an immense pride in her first private case, +on which she was determined to win her spurs. + +For three months now she had controlled the situation. With undaunted +perseverance she had made Mac submit to authority and succeeded in +successfully combatting his mother's inclination to yield to his every +whim. The gratifying result was that Mac was gradually putting on flesh +and, with the exception of a continued low fever, was showing decided +improvement. Already talk of a western flight was in the air. + +The whole matter hinged at present on Mac's refusal to go unless Nance +could be induced to accompany them. The question had been argued from +every conceivable angle, and gradually a conspiracy had been formed +between Mac and his mother to overcome her apparently absurd resistance. + +"It isn't as if she had any good reason," Mrs. Clarke complained to her +husband, with tears in her eyes. "She has no immediate family, and she +might just as well be on duty in California as in Kentucky. I don't see +how she can refuse to go when she sees how weak Mac is, and how he +depends on her." + +"The girl's got more sense than all the rest of you put together!" said +Mr. Clarke. "She sees the way things are going." + +"Well, what if Mac is in love with her?" asked Mrs. Clarke, for the first +time frankly facing the situation. "Of course it's just his sick fancy, +but he is in no condition to be argued with. The one absolutely necessary +thing is to get her to go with us. Suppose you ask her. Perhaps that's +what she is waiting for." + +"And you are willing to take the consequences?" + +"I am willing for anything on earth that will help me keep my boy," +sobbed Mrs. Clarke, resorting to a woman's surest weapon. + +So Mr. Clarke turned his ponderous batteries upon the situation, using +money as the ammunition with which he was most familiar. + +The climax was reached one night toward the end of October when the +first heavy hoar-frost of the season gave premonitory threat of coming +winter. The family was still at dinner, and Mac was having his from a +tray before the library fire. The heavy curtains had been drawn against +the chill world without, and the long room was a soft harmony of dull +reds and browns, lit up here and there by rose-shaded lamps. + +It was a luxurious room, full of trophies of foreign travel. The long +walls were hung with excellent pictures; the floors were covered with +rare rugs; the furniture was selected with perfect taste. Every detail +had been elaborately and skilfully worked out by an eminent decorator. +Only one insignificant item had been omitted. In the length and breadth +of the library, not a book was to be seen. + +Mac, letting his soup cool while he read the letter Nance had just +brought him, gave an exclamation of surprise. + +"By George! Monte Pearce is going to get married!" + +Nance laughed. + +"I've got a tintype of Mr. Monte settling down. Who's the girl?" + +"A cousin of his in Honolulu. Her father is a sugar king; no end of cash. +Think of old Monte landing a big fish like that!" + +"That's what you'll be doing when you get out to your ranch." + +"I intend to take my girl along." + +"You'll have to get her first." + +Mac turned on her with an invalid's fretfulness. "See here, Nance," +he cried, "cut that out, will you? Either you go, or I stay, do you +see? I know I'm a fool about you, but I can't help it. Nance, why +don't you love me?" + +Nance looked down at him helplessly. She had been refusing him on an +average of twice a day for the past week, and her powers of resistance +were weakening. The hardest granite yields in the end to the persistent +dropping of water. However much the clear-headed, independent side of her +might refuse him, to another side of her he was strangely appealing. +Often when she was near him, the swift remembrance of other days filled +her with sudden desire to yield, if only for a moment, to his insatiable +demands. Despite her most heroic resolution, she sometimes relaxed her +vigilance as she did to-night, and allowed her hand to rest in his. + +Mac made the most of the moment. + +"I don't ask you to promise me anything, Nance. I just ask you to come +with me!" he pleaded, with eloquent eyes, "we can get a couple of ponies +and scour the trails all over those old mountains. At Coronada there's +bully sea bathing. And the motoring--why you can go for a hundred miles +straight along the coast!" + +Nance's eyes kindled, but she shook her head. "You can do all that +without me. All I do is to jack you up and make you take care of +yourself. I should think you 'd hate me, Mr. Mac." + +"Well, I don't. Sometimes I wish I did. I love you even when you come +down on me hardest. A chap gets sick of being mollycoddled. When you fire +up and put your saucy little chin in the air, and tell me I sha'n't have +a cocktail, and call me a fool for stealing a smoke, it bucks me up more +than anything. By George, I believe I'd amount to something if you'd take +me permanently in hand." + +Nance laughed, and he pulled her down on the arm of his chair. + +"Say you'll marry me, Nance," he implored. "You'll learn to care for me +all right. You want to get out and see the world. I'll take you. We'll go +out to Honolulu and see Monte. Mother will talk the governor over; she's +promised. They'll give me anything I want, and I want you. Oh, Nance +darling, don't leave me to fight through this beastly business alone!" + +There was a haunted look of fear in his eyes as he clung to her that +appealed to her more than his former demands had ever done. Instinctively +her strong, tender hands closed over his thin, weak ones. + +"Nobody expects you to fight it through alone," she reassured him, "but +you come on down off this high horse! We'll be having another bad night +the first thing you know." + +"They'll all be bad if you don't come with me, Nance. I won't ask you to +say yes to-night, but for God's sake don't say no!" + +Nance observed the brilliancy of his eyes and the flush on his thin +cheeks, and knew that his fever was rising. + +"All right," she promised lightly. "I won't say no to-night, if you'll +stop worrying. I'm going to fix you nice and comfy on the couch and not +let you say another word." + +But when she had got him down on the couch, nothing would do but she must +sit on the hassock beside him and soothe his aching head. Sometimes he +stopped her stroking hand to kiss it, but for the most part he lay with +eyes half-closed and elaborated his latest whim. + +"We could stay awhile in Honolulu and then go on to Japan and China. I +want to see India, too, and Mandalay, + + ... somewhere east of Suez, where the best is like the worst, +And there aren't no Ten Commandments + +--you remember Kipling's Mandalay?" + +Nance couldn't remember what she had never known, but she did not say +so. Since her advent at Hillcrest she had learned to observe and listen +without comment. This was not her world, and her shrewd common-sense told +her so again and again. Even the servants who moved with such easy +familiarity about their talks were more at home than she. It had kept her +wits busy to meet the situation. But now that she had got over her first +awkwardness, she found the new order of things greatly to her liking. For +the first time in her life she was moving in a world of beautiful +objects, agreeable sounds, untroubled relations, and that starved side of +her that from the first had cried out for order and beauty and harmony +fed ravenously upon the luxury around her. + +And this was what Mac was offering her,--her, Nance Molloy of Calvary +Alley,--who up to four years ago had never known anything but bare +floors, flickering gas-jets, noise, dirt, confusion. He wanted her to +marry him; he needed her. + +She ceased to listen to his rambling talk, her eyes rested dreamily on +the glowing back-log. After all didn't every woman want to marry and have +a home of her own, and later perhaps--Twenty-four at Christmas! Almost an +old maid! And to think Mr. Mac had gone on caring for her all these +years, that he still wanted her when he had all those girls in his own +world to choose from. Not many men were constant like that, she thought, +as an old memory stabbed her. + +Then she was aware that her hand was held fast to a hot cheek, and that a +pair of burning eyes were watching her. + +"Nance!" Mac whispered eagerly, "you're giving in! You're going with me!" + +A step in the hall made Nance scramble to her feet just before Mrs. +Clarke came in from the dining-room. + +"I thought we should never get through dinner!" said that lady, with an +impatient sigh. "The bishop can talk of nothing else but his new hobby, +and do you know he's actually persuaded your father to give one of the +tenements back of the cathedral for the free clinic!" + +Nance who was starting out with the tray, put it down suddenly. + +"How splendid!" she cried. "Which house is it?" + +"I don't know, I am sure. But they are going to put a lot of money into +doing it over, and Dr. Adair has offered to take entire charge of it. For +my part I think it is a great mistake. Just think what that money would +mean to our poor mission out in Mukden! These shiftless people here at +home have every chance to live decently. It's not our fault if they +refuse to take advantage of their opportunities." + +"But they don't know how, Mrs. Clarke! If Dr. Adair could teach the +mothers--" + +Mrs. Clarke lifted her hands in laughing protest. + +"My dear girl, don't you know that mothers can't be taught? The most +ignorant mother alive has more instinctive knowledge of what is good for +her child than any man that ever lived! Mac, dearest, why didn't you eat +your grapes?" + +"Because I loathe grapes. Nance is going to work them off on an old sick +man she knows." + +"Some one at the hospital?" Mrs. Clarke asked idly. + +"No," said Nance, "it's an old gentleman who lives down in the very +place we're talking about. He's been sick for weeks. It's all right +about the grapes?" + +"Why, of course. Take some oranges, too, and tell the gardener to give +you some flowers. The dahlias are going to waste this year. Mac, you +look tired!" + +He shook off her hand impatiently. + +"No, I'm not. I feel like a two-year old. Nance thinks perhaps she may go +with us after all." + +"Of course she will!" said Mrs. Clarke, with a confident smile at the +girl. "We are going to be so good to her that she will not have the +heart to refuse." + +Mrs. Clarke with her talent for self-deception had almost convinced +herself that Nance was a fairy princess who had languished in a nether +world of obscurity until Mac's magic smile had restored her to her own. + +Nance evaded an answer by fleeing to the white and red breakfast-room +where the butler was laying the cloth for her dinner. As a rule she +enjoyed these tête-à-têtes with the butler. He was a solemn and +pretentious Englishman whom she delighted in shocking by acting and +talking in a manner that was all too natural to her. But to-night she +submitted quite meekly to his lordly condescension. + +She ate her dinner in dreamy abstraction, her thoughts on Mac and the +enticing prospects he had held out. After all what was the use in +fighting against all the kindness and affection? If they were willing to +take the risk of her going with them, why should she hesitate? They knew +she was poor and uneducated and not of their world, and they couldn't +help seeing that Mac was in love with her. And still they wanted her. + +California! Honolulu! Queer far-off lands full of queer people! Big ships +that would carry her out of the sight and sound of Calvary Alley forever! +And Mac, well and happy, making a man of himself, giving her everything +in the world she wanted. + +Across her soaring thoughts struck the voices from the adjoining +dining-room, Mr. Clarke's sharp and incisive, the bishop's suave and +unctious. Suddenly a stray sentence arrested her attention and she +listened with her glass half-way to her lips. + +"It is the labor question that concerns us more than the war," Mr. +Clarke was saying. "I have just succeeded in signing up with a man I +have been after for four years. He is a chap named Lewis, the only man +in this part of the country who seems to be able to cope with the +problem of union labor." + +"A son of General Lewis?" + +"No, no. Just a common workman who got his training at our factory. He +left me five or six years ago without rhyme or reason, and went over to +the Ohio Glass Works, where he has made quite a name for himself. I had a +tussle to get him back, but he comes to take charge next month. He is one +of those rare men you read about, but seldom find, a practical idealist." + +Nance left her ice untouched, and slipped through the back entry and up +to the dainty blue bedroom that had been hers now for three months. All +the delicious languor of the past hour was gone, and in its place was a +turmoil of hope and fear and doubt. Dan was coming back. The words beat +on her brain. He cared nothing for her, and he was married, and she would +never see him, but he was coming back. + +She opened the drawer of her dressing table and took out a small faded +photograph which she held to the silk-shaded lamp. It was a cheap +likeness of an awkward-looking working-boy in his Sunday clothes, a stiff +lock of unruly hair across his temple, and a pair of fine earnest eyes +looking out from slightly scowling brows. + +Nance looked at it long and earnestly; then she flung it back in the +drawer with a sigh and, putting out the light, went down again to +her patient. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI + +MR. DEMRY + + +The next afternoon, armed with her flowers and fruit, Nance was +setting forth for Calvary Alley, when Mrs. Clarke called to her from +an upper window. + +"If you will wait ten minutes, I will take you down in the machine." + +"But I want the walk," Nance insisted. "I need the exercise." + +"Nonsense, you are on your feet nearly all the time. I won't be long." + +Nance made a wry face at an unoffending sparrow and glanced regretfully +at the long white road that wound invitingly in and out of the woods +until it dropped sharply to the little station in the valley a mile +below. She had been looking forward to that walk all morning. She wanted +to get away from the hot-house atmosphere of the Clarke establishment, +away from Mac's incessant appeals and his mother's increasing dependence. +Aside from amusing her patient and seeing that he obeyed Dr. Adair's +orders, her duties for the past few weeks had been too light to be +interesting. The luxury that at first had so thrilled her was already +beginning to pall. She wanted to be out in the open alone, to feel the +sharp wind of reality in her face, while she thought things out. + +"I am going to the cathedral," said Mrs. Clarke, emerging from the +door, followed by a maid carrying coats and rugs. "But I can drop you +wherever you say." + +"I'll go there, too," said Nance as she took her seat in the car. "The +old gentleman I'm taking the things to lives just back of there, in the +very house Dr. Adair is trying to get for the clinic." + +"Poor soul!" said Mrs. Clarke idly, as she viewed with approval Nance's +small brown hat that so admirably set off the lights in her hair and the +warm red tints of her skin. + +"He's been up against it something fierce for over a year now," Nance +went on. "We've helped him all he'd let us since he stopped playing at +the theater." + +"Playing?" Mrs. Clarke repeated the one word that had caught her +wandering attention. "Is he an actor?" + +"No; he is a musician. He used to play in big orchestras in New York and +Boston. He plays the fiddle." + +For the rest of the way into town Mrs. Clarke was strangely preoccupied. +She sat very straight, with eyes slightly contracted, and looked absently +out of the window. Once or twice she began a sentence without finishing +it. At the cathedral steps she laid a detaining hand on Nance's arm. + +"By the way, what did you say was the name of the old man you are +going to see?" + +"I never said. It's Demry." + +"Demry--Never mind, I just missed the step. I'm quite all right. I think +I will go with you to see this--this--house they are talking about." + +"But it's in the alley. Mrs. Clarke; it's awfully dirty." + +"Yes, yes, but I'm coming. Can we go through here?" + +So impatient was she that she did not wait for Nance to lead the way, but +hurried around the bishop's study and down the concrete walk to the gate +that opened into the alley. + +"Look out for your skirt against the garbage barrel," warned Nance. It +embarrassed her profoundly to have Mrs. Clarke in these surroundings; she +hated the mud that soiled her dainty boots, the odors that must offend +her nostrils, the inevitable sights that awaited her in Number One. She +only prayed that Mrs. Snawdor's curl-papered head might not appear on the +upper landing. + +"Which way?" demanded Mrs. Clarke, impatiently. + +Nance led the way into the dark hall where a half-dozen ragged, +dirty-faced children were trying to drag a still dirtier pup up the +stairs by means of a twine string. + +"In here, Mrs. Clarke," said Nance, pushing open the door at the left + +The outside shutters of the big cold room were partly closed, but the +light from between them fell with startling effect on the white, +marble-like face of the old man who lay asleep on a cot in front of the +empty fireplace. For a moment Mrs. Clarke stood looking at him; then with +a smothered cry she bent over him. + +"Father!" she cried sharply, "Oh, God! It's my father!" + +Nance caught her breath in amazement; then her bewildered gaze fell upon +a familiar object. There, in its old place on the mantel stood the +miniature of a pink and white maiden in the pink and white dress, with +the golden curl across her shoulder. In the delicate, beautiful profile +Nance read the amazing truth. + +Mr. Demry sighed heavily, opened his eyes with an effort and, looking +past the bowed head beside him, held out a feeble hand for the flowers. + +"Listen, Mr. Demry," said Nance, breathlessly. "Here's a lady says she +knows you. Somebody you haven't seen for a long, long time. Will you look +at her and try to remember?" + +His eyes rested for the fraction of a minute on the agonized face lifted +to his, then closed wearily. + +"Can you not get the lady a chair, Nancy?" he asked feebly. "You can +borrow one from the room across the hall." + +"Father!" demanded Mrs. Clarke, "don't you know me? It is Elise. Your +daughter, Elise Demorest!" + +"Demorest," he repeated, and smiled. "How unnatural it sounds now! +Demorest!" + +"It's no use," said Nance. "His mind wanders most of the time. Let me +take you back to the cathedral, Mrs. Clarke, until we decide what's got +to be done." + +"I am going to take him home," said Mrs. Clarke, wildly. "He shall have +every comfort and luxury I can give him. Poor Father, don't you want to +come home with Elise?" + +"I live at Number One, Calvary Alley," said Mr. Demry, clinging to the +one fact he had trained his mind to remember. "If you will kindly get me +to the corner, the children will--" + +"It's too late to do anything!" cried Mrs. Clarke, wringing her hands. "I +knew something terrible would happen to him. I pleaded with them to help +me find him, but they put me off. Then I got so absorbed in Mac that he +drove everything else out of my mind. How long has he been in this awful +place? How long has he been ill? Who takes care of him?" + +Nance, with her arms about Mrs. Clarke, told her as gently as she could +of Mr. Demry's advent into the alley fourteen years before, of his +friendship with the children, his occasional lapses from grace, and the +steady decline of his fortune. + +"We must get him away from here!" cried Mrs. Clarke when she had gained +control of herself. "Go somewhere and telephone Mr. Clarke. Telephone Dr. +Adair. Tell him to bring an ambulance and another nurse and--and plenty +of blankets. Telephone to the house for them to get a room ready. But +wait--there's Mac--he mustn't know--" + +It was the old, old mother-cry! Keep it from Mac, spare Mac, don't let +Mac suffer. Nance seized on it now to further her designs. + +"You go back to Mr. Mac, Mrs. Clarke. I'll stay here and attend to +everything. You go ahead and get things ready for us." + +And Mrs. Clarke, used to taking the easiest way, allowed herself to be +persuaded, and after one agonized look at the tranquil face on the +pillow, hurried away. + +Nance, shivering with the cold, got together the few articles that +constituted Mr. Demry's worldly possessions. A few shabby garments in the +old wardrobe, the miniature on the shelf, a stack of well-worn books, and +the violin in its rose-wood case. Everything else had been sold to keep +the feeble flame alive in that wasted old form. + +Nance looked about her with swimming eyes. She recalled the one happy +Christmas that her childhood had known. The gay garlands of tissue paper, +the swinging lanterns, the shelf full of oranges and doughnuts, and the +beaming old face smiling over the swaying fiddle bow! And to think that +Mrs. Clarke's own father had hidden away here all these years, utterly +friendless except for the children, poor to the point of starvation, sick +to the point of death, grappling with his great weakness in heroic +silence, and going down to utter oblivion rather than obtrude his +misfortune upon the one he loved best. + +As the old man's fairy tales had long ago stirred Nance's imagination and +wakened her to the beauty of invisible things, so now his broken, futile +life, with its one great glory of renunciation, called out to the soul of +her and roused in her a strange, new sense of spiritual beauty. + +For one week he lived among the luxurious surroundings of his daughter's +home. Everything that skill and money could do, was done to restore him +to health and sanity. But he saw only the sordid sights he had been +seeing for the past fourteen years; he heard only the sounds to which his +old ears had become accustomed. + +"You would better move my cot, Nancy," he would say, plucking at the +silken coverlid. "They are scrubbing the floor up in the Lavinski flat. +The water always comes through." And again he would say: "It is nice and +warm in here, but I am afraid you are burning too much coal, dear. I +cannot get another bucket until Saturday." + +One day Mrs. Clarke saw him take from his tray, covered with delicacies, +a half-eaten roll and slip it under his pillow. + +"We must save it," he whispered confidentially, "save it for to-morrow." +In vain they tried to reassure him; the haunting poverty that had stalked +beside him in life refused to be banished by death. + +Mrs. Clarke remained "the lady" to him to the end. When he spoke to her, +his manner assumed a faint dignity, with a slight touch of gallantry, the +unmistakable air of a gentleman of the old school towards an attractive +stranger of the opposite sex. + +His happiest hours were those when he fancied the children were with him. + +"Gently! gently!" he would say; "there is room for everybody. This knee +is for Gussie Gorman, this one for Joe, because they are the smallest, +you know. Now are you ready?" And then he would whisper fairy stories, +smiling at the ceiling, and making feeble gestures with his wasted old +hands. + +The end came one day after he had lain for hours in a stupor. He stirred +suddenly and asked for his violin. + +"I must go--to the--theater, Nancy," he murmured. "I--do not want--to +be--a--burden." + +They laid the instrument in his arms, and his fingers groped feebly over +the strings; then his chin sank into its old accustomed place, and a +great light dawned in his eyes. Mr. Demry, who was used to seeing +invisible things, had evidently caught the final vision. + +That night, worn with nursing and full of grief for the passing of her +old friend, Nance threw a coat about her and slipped out on the terrace. +Above her, nebulous stars were already appearing, and their twinkling +was answered by responsive gleams in the city below. Against the velvety +dusk two tall objects towered in the distance, the beautiful Gothic +spire of the cathedral, and the tall, unseemly gas pipe of Clarke's +Bottle Factory. Between them, under a haze of smoke and grime, lay +Calvary Alley. + +"I don't know which is worse," thought Nance fiercely, "to be down there +in the mess, fighting and struggling and suffering to get the things you +want, or up here with the mummies who haven't got anything left to wish +for. I wish life wasn't just a choice between a little hard green apple +and a rotten big one!" + +She leaned her elbows on the railing and watched the new moon dodging +behind the tree trunks and, as she watched, she grappled with the +problem of life, at first bitterly and rebelliously, then with a dawning +comprehension of its meaning. After all was the bishop, with his +conspicuous virtues and his well-known dislike of children, any better +than old Mr. Demry, with his besetting sin and his beautiful influence on +every child with whom he came in contact? Was Mr. Clarke, working +children under age in the factory to build up a great fortune for his +son, very different from Mr. Lavinski, with his sweat-shop, hoarding +pennies for the ambitious Ikey? Was Mrs. Clarke, shirking her duty to her +father, any happier or any better than Mrs. Snawdor, shirking hers to her +children? Was Mac, adored and petted and protected, any better than +Birdie, now in the state asylum paying the penalty of their joint +misdeed? Was the tragedy in the great house back of her any more poignant +than the tragedy of Dan Lewis bound by law to an insane wife and burdened +with a child that was not his own? She seemed to see for the first time +the great illuminating truth that the things that make men alike in the +world are stronger than the things that make them different. And in this +realization an overwhelming ambition seized her. Some hidden spiritual +force rose to lift her out of the contemplation of her own interests into +something of ultimate value to her fellowmen. + +After all, those people down there in Calvary Alley were her people, and +she meant to stand by them. It had been the dream of her life to get out +and away, but in that moment she knew that wherever she went, she would +always come back. Others might help from the top, but she could help +understandingly from the bottom. With the magnificent egotism of youth, +she outlined gigantic schemes on the curtain of the night. Some day, +somehow, she would make people like the Clarkes see the life of the poor +as it really was, she would speak for the girls in the factories, in the +sweatshops, on the stage. She would be an interpreter between the rich +and the poor and make them serve each other. + +"Nance!" called an injured voice from the music room behind her, "what in +the mischief are you doing out there in the cold? Come on in here and +amuse me. I'm half dead with the dumps!" + +"All right, Mr. Mac. I'm coming," she said cheerfully, as she stepped in +through the French window and closed it against her night of dreams. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII + +THE NEW FOREMAN + + +The Dan Lewis who came back to Clarke's Bottle Factory was a very +different man from the one who had walked out of it five years before. He +had gone out a stern, unforgiving, young ascetic, accepting no +compromise, demanding perfection of himself and of his fellow-men. The +very sublimity of his dream doomed it to failure. Out of the crumbling +ideals of his boyhood he had struggled to a foothold on life that had +never been his in the old days. His marriage to Birdie Smelts had been +the fiery furnace in which his soul had been softened to receive the +final stamp of manhood. + +For his hour of indiscretion he had paid to the last ounce of his +strength and courage. After that night in the lodging-house, there seemed +to him but one right course, and he took it with unflinching promptness. +Even when Birdie, secure in the protection of his name and his support, +lapsed into her old vain, querulous self, he valiantly bore his burden, +taking any menial work that he could find to do, and getting a sort of +grim satisfaction out of what he regarded as expiation for his sin. + +But when he became aware of Birdie's condition and realized the use she +had made of him, the tragedy broke upon him in all of its horror. Then +he, too, lost sight of the shore lights, and went plunging desperately +into the stream of life with no visible and sustaining ideal to guide +his course, but only the fighting necessity to get across as decently +as possible. + +After a long struggle he secured a place in the Ohio Glass Works, where +his abilities soon began to be recognized. Instead of working now with +tingling enthusiasm for Nance and the honeysuckle cottage, he worked +doggedly and furiously to meet the increasing expense of Birdie's +wastefulness and the maintenance of her child. + +Year by year he forged ahead, gaining a reputation for sound judgment and +fair dealing that made him an invaluable spokesman between the employer +and the employed. He set himself seriously to work to get at the real +conditions that were causing the ferment of unrest among the working +classes. He made himself familiar with socialistic and labor newspapers; +he attended mass meetings; he laid awake nights reading and wrestling +with the problems of organized industrialism. His honest resentment +against the injustice shown the laboring man was always nicely balanced +by his intolerance of the haste and ignorance and misrepresentation of +the labor agitators. He was one of the few men who could be called upon +to arbitrate differences, whom both factions invariably pronounced +"square." When pressure was brought to bear upon him to return to +Clarke's, he was in a position to dictate his own terms. + +It was the second week after his reinstatement that he came up to the +office one day and unexpectedly encountered Nance Molloy. At first he did +not recognize the tall young lady in the well-cut brown suit with the bit +of fur at the neck and wrists and the jaunty brown hat with its dash of +gold. Then she looked up, and it was Nance's old smile that flashed out +at him, and Nance's old impulsive self that turned to greet him. + +For one radiant moment all that had happened since they last stood there +was swept out of the memory of each; then it came back; and they shook +hands awkwardly and could find little to say to each other in the +presence of the strange stenographer who occupied Nance's old place at +the desk by the window. + +"They told me you weren't working here," said Dan at length. + +"I'm not. I've just come on an errand for Mrs. Clarke." + +Dan's eyes searched hers in swift inquiry. + +"I'm a trained nurse now," she said, determined to take the situation +lightly. "You remember how crazy I used to be about doping people?" + +He did not answer, and she hurried on as if afraid of any silence that +might fall between them. + +"It all started with the smallpox in Calvary Alley. Been back +there, Dan?" + +"Not yet." + +"Lots of changes since the old days. Mr. Snawdor and Fidy and Mrs. Smelts +and Mr. Demry all gone. Have you heard about Mr. Demry?" + +Dan shook his head. He was not listening to her, but he was looking at +her searchingly, broodingly, with growing insistence. + +The hammering of the type-writer was the only sound that broke the +ensuing pause. + +"Tell me your news, Dan," said Nance in desperation. "Where you +living now?" + +"At Mrs. Purdy's. She's going to take care of Ted for me." + +"Ted? Oh! I forgot. How old is he now?" + +For the first time Dan's face lit up with his fine, rare smile. + +"He's four, Nance, and the smartest kid that ever lived! You'd be +crazy about him, I know. I wonder if you couldn't go out there some +day and see him?" + +Nance showed no enthusiasm over the suggestion; instead she gathered up +her muff and gloves and, leaving a message for Mr. Clarke with the +stenographer, prepared to depart. + +"I am thinking about going away," she said. "I may go out to California +next week." + +The brief enthusiasm died out of Dan's face. + +"What's taking you to California?" he asked dully, as he followed her +into the hall. + +"I may go with a patient. Have you heard of the trouble they're in at the +Clarkes'?" + +"No." + +"It's Mr. Mac. He's got tuberculosis, and they are taking him out to the +coast for a year. They want me to go along." + +Dan's face hardened. + +"So it's Mac Clarke still?" he asked bitterly. + +His tone stung Nance to the quick, and she wheeled on him indignantly. + +"See here, Dan! I've got to put you straight on a thing or two. Where can +we go to have this business out?" + +He led her across the hall to his own small office and closed the door. + +"I'm going to tell you something," she said, facing him with blazing +eyes, "and I don't care a hang whether you believe it or not. I never was +in love with Mac Clarke. From the day you left this factory I never saw +or wrote to him until he was brought to the hospital last July, and I was +put on the case. I didn't have anything more to do with him than I did +with you. I guess you know how much that was!" + +"What about now? Are you going west with him?" + +Dan confronted her with the same stern inquiry in his eyes that had shone +there the day they parted, in this very place, five years ago. + +"I don't know whether I am or not!" cried Nance, firing up. "They've done +everything for me, the Clarkes have. They think his getting well depends +on me. Of course that's rot, but that's what they think. As for Mr. Mac +himself--" + +"Is he still in love with you?" + +At this moment a boy thrust his head in the door to say that Dr. Adair +had telephoned for Miss Molloy to come by the hospital before she +returned to Hillcrest. + +Nance pulled on her gloves and, with chin in the air, was departing +without a word, when Dan stopped her. + +"I'm sorry I spoke to you like that, Nance," he said, scowling at the +floor. "I've got no right to be asking you questions, or criticizing what +you do, or where you go. I hope you'll excuse me." + +"You _have_ got the right!" declared Nance, with one of her quick changes +of mood. "You can ask me anything you like. I guess we can always be +friends, can't we?" + +"No," said Dan, slowly, "I don't think we can. I didn't count on seeing +you like this, just us two together, alone. I thought you'd be married +maybe or moved away some place." + +It was Nance's time to be silent, and she listened with wide eyes and +parted lips. + +"I mustn't see you--alone--any more, Nance," Dan went on haltingly. "But +while we are here I want to tell you about it. Just this once, Nance, if +you don't mind." + +He crossed over and stood before her, his hands gripping a chair back. + +"When I went away from here," he began, "I thought you had passed me up +for Mac Clarke. It just put me out of business, Nance. I didn't care +where I went or what I did. Then one night in Cincinnati I met Birdie, +and she was up against it, too--and--" + +After all he couldn't make a clean breast of it! Whatever he might say +would reflect on Birdie, and he gave the explanation up in despair. But +Nance came to his rescue. + +"I know, Dan," she said. "Mrs. Smelts told me everything. I don't know +another fellow in the world that would have stood by a girl like you did +Birdie. She oughtn't have let you marry her without telling you." + +"I think she meant to give me my freedom when the baby came," said Dan. +"At least that was what she promised. I couldn't have lived through +those first months of hell if I hadn't thought there was some way out. +But when the baby came, it was too late. Her mind was affected, and by +the law of the State I'm bound to her for the rest of her life." + +"Do you know--who--who the baby's father is, Dan?" + +"No. She refused from the first to tell me, and now I'm glad I don't +know. She said the baby was like him, and that made her hate it. That was +the way her trouble started. She wouldn't wash the little chap, or feed +him, or look after him when he was sick. I had to do everything. For a +year she kept getting worse and worse, until one night I caught her +trying to set fire to his crib. Of course after that she had to be sent +to the asylum, and from that time on, Ted and I fought it out together. +One of the neighbors took charge of him in the day, and I wrestled with +him at night." + +"Couldn't you put him in an orphan asylum?" + +Dan shook his head. + +"No, I couldn't go back on him when he was up against a deal like that. I +made up my mind that I'd never let him get lonesome like I used to be, +with nobody to care a hang what became of him. He's got my name now, and +he'll never know the difference if I can help it." + +"And Birdie? Does she know you when you go to see her?" + +"Not for two years now. It's easier than when she did." + +There was silence between them; then Nance said: + +"I'm glad you told me all this, Dan. I--I wish I could help you." + +"You can't," said Dan, sharply. "Don't you see I've got no right to be +with you? Do you suppose there's been a week, or a day in all these years +that I haven't wanted you with every breath I drew? The rest was just a +nightmare I was living through in order to wake up and find you. Nance--I +love you! With my heart and soul and body! You've been the one beautiful +thing in my whole life, and I wasn't worthy of you. I can't let you go! +I--Oh, God! what am I saying? What right have I--Don't let me see you +again like this, Nance, don't let me talk to you--" + +He stumbled to a chair by the desk and buried his head in his arms. His +breath came in short, hard gasps, with a long agonizing quiver between, +and his broad shoulders heaved. It was the first time he had wept since +that night, so long ago, when he had sat in the gutter in front of Slap +Jack's saloon and broken his heart over an erring mother. + +For one tremulous second Nance hovered over him, her face aflame with +sympathy and almost maternal pity; then she pulled herself together and +said brusquely: + +"It's all right, Danny. I understand. I'm going. Good-by." + +And without looking back, she fled into the hall and down the steps to +the waiting motor. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII + +NANCE COMES INTO HER OWN + + +For two hours Nance was closeted with Dr. Adair in his private office, +and when she came out she had the look of one who has been following +false trails and suddenly discovers the right one. + +"Don't make a hasty decision," warned Dr. Adair in parting. "The trip +with the Clarkes will be a wonderful experience; they may be gone a year +or more, and they'll do everything and see everything in the approved +way. What I am proposing offers no romance. It will be hard work and +plenty of it. You'd better think it over and give me your answer +to-morrow." + +"I'll give it to you now," said Nance. "It's yes." + +He scrutinized her quizzically; then he held out his hand with its short, +thick, surgeon's fingers. + +"It's a wise decision, my dear," he said. "Say nothing about it at +present. I will make it all right with the Clarkes." + +During the weeks that followed, Nance was too busy to think of herself +or her own affairs. She superintended the shopping and packing for Mrs. +Clarke; she acted as private secretary for Mr. Clarke; she went on +endless errands, and looked after the innumerable details that a family +migration entails. + +Mac, sulking on the couch, feeling grossly abused and neglected, spent +most of his time inveighing against Dr. Adair. "He's got to let you come +out by the end of next month." he threatened Nance, "or I'll take the +first train home. What's he got up his sleeve anyhow?" + +"Ask him," advised Nance, over her shoulder, as she vanished into the +hall. + +Toward the end of November the Clarkes took their departure; father, +mother, and son, two servants, and the despised, but efficient Miss +Hanna. Nance went down to see them off, hovering over the unsuspecting +Mac with feelings of mingled relief and contrition. + +"I wish you'd let me tell him," she implored Mrs. Clarke. "He's bound to +know soon. Why not get it over with now?" + +Mrs. Clarke was in instant panic. + +"Not a word, I implore you! We will break the news to him when he is +better. Be good to him now, let him go away happy. Please, dear, for my +sake!" With the strength of the weak, she carried her point. + +For the quarter of an hour before the train started, Nance resolutely +kept the situation in hand, not giving Mac a chance to speak to her +alone, and keeping up a running fire of nonsense that provoked even Mr. +Clarke to laughter. When the "All Aboard!" sounded from without, there +was scant time for good-bys. She hurried out, and when on the platform, +turned eagerly to scan the windows above her. A gust of smoke swept +between her and the slow-moving train; then as it cleared she caught her +last glimpse of a gay irresponsible face propped about with pillows and a +thin hand that threw her kisses as far as she could see. + +It was with a curious feeling of elation mingled with depression, that +she tramped back to the hospital through the gloom of that November day. +Until a month ago she had scarcely had a thought beyond Mac and the +progress of his case; even now she missed his constant demands upon her, +and her heart ached for the disappointment that awaited him. But under +these disturbing thoughts something new and strange and beautiful was +calling her. + +Half mechanically she spent the rest of the afternoon reestablishing +herself in the nurses' quarters at the hospital which she had left nearly +four months before. At six o'clock she put on the gray cape and small +gray bonnet that constituted her uniform, and leaving word that she would +report for duty at nine o'clock, went to the corner and boarded a street +car. It was a warm evening for November, and the car with its throng of +home-going workers was close and uncomfortable. But Nance, clinging to a +strap, and jostled on every side, was superbly indifferent to her +surroundings. With lifted chin and preoccupied eyes, she held counsel +with herself, sometimes moving her lips slightly as if rehearsing a part. +At Butternut Lane she got out and made her way to the old white house +midway of the square. + +A little boy was perched on the gate post, swinging a pair of fat legs +and trying to whistle. There was no lack of effort on his part, but the +whistle for some reason refused to come. He tried hooking a small finger +inside the corners of his mouth; he tried it with teeth together and +teeth apart. + +Nance, sympathizing with his thwarted ambition, smiled as she approached; +then she caught her breath. The large brown eyes that the child turned +upon her were disconcertingly familiar. + +"Is this Ted?" she asked. + +He nodded mistrustfully; then after surveying her gravely, evidently +thought better of her and volunteered the information that he was waiting +for his daddy. + +"Where is Mrs. Purdy?" Nance asked. + +"Her's making me a gingerbread man." + +"I know a story about a gingerbread man; want to hear it?" + +"Is it scareful?" asked Ted. + +"No, just funny," Nance assured. Then while he sat very still on the gate +post, with round eyes full of wonder, Nance stood in front of him with +his chubby fists in her hands and told him one of Mr. Demry's old fairy +tales. So absorbed were they both that neither of them heard an +approaching step until it was quite near. + +"Daddy!" cried Ted, in sudden rapture, scrambling down from the post and +hurling himself against the new-comer. + +But for once his daddy's first greeting was not for him. Dan seized +Nance's outstretched hand and studied her face with hungry, +inquiring eyes. + +"I've come to say good-by, Dan," she said in a matter-of-fact tone. + +His face hardened. + +"Then you are going with the Clarkes? You've decided?" + +"I've decided. Can't we go over to the summer-house for a few minutes. I +want to talk to you." + +They crossed the yard to the sheltered bower in its cluster of bare +trees, while Ted trudged behind them kicking up clouds of dead leaves +with his small square-toed boots. + +"You run in to Mother Purdy, Teddykins," said Dan, but Nance caught the +child's hand. + +"Better keep him here," she said with an unsteady laugh. "I got to get +something off my chest once and for all; then I'll skidoo." + +But Ted had already spied a squirrel and gone in pursuit, and Nance's +eyes followed him absently. + +"When I met you in the office the other day," she said, "I thought I +could bluff it through. But when I saw you all knocked up like that; and +knew that you cared--" Her eyes came back to his. "Dan we might as well +face the truth." + +"You mean--" + +"I mean I'm going to wait for you if I have to wait forever. You're not +free now, but when you are, I'll come to you." + +He made one stride toward her and swept her into his arms. + +"Do you mean it, girl?" he asked, his voice breaking with the unexpected +joy. "You are going to stand by me? You are going to wait?" + +"Let me go, Dan!" she implored. "Where's Ted? I mustn't stay--I--" + +But Dan held her as if he never meant to let her go, and suddenly she +ceased to struggle or to consider right or wrong or consequences. She +lifted her head and her lips met his in complete surrender. For the +first time in her short and stormy career she had found exactly what +she wanted. + +For a long time they stood thus; then Dan recovered himself with a +start. + +He pushed her away from him almost roughly. "Nance, I didn't mean to! I +won't again! Only I've wanted you so long, I've been so unhappy. I can't +let you leave me now! I can't let you go with the Clarkes!" + +"You don't have to. They've gone without me." + +"But you said you'd come to say good-by. I thought you were starting to +California." + +"Well, I'm not. I am going to stay right here. Dr. Adair has asked me to +take charge of the clinic--the new one they are going to open in +Calvary Alley." + +"And we're going to be near each other, able to see each other +every day--" + +But she stopped him resolutely. + +"No, Dan, no. I knew we couldn't do that before I came to-night. Now I +know it more than ever. Don't you see we got to cut it all out? Got to +keep away from each other just the same as if I was in California and you +were here?" + +Dan's big strong hands again seized hers. + +"It won't be wrong for us just to see each other," he urged hotly. "I +promise never to say a word of love or to touch you, Nance. What's +happened to-night need never happen again. We can hold on to ourselves; +we can be just good friends until--" + +But Nance pulled her hands away impatiently. + +"You might. I couldn't. I tell you I got to keep away from you, Dan. +Can't you see? Can't you understand? I counted on you to see the right of +it. I thought you was going to help me!" And with an almost angry sob, +she sat down suddenly on the leaf-strewn bench and, locking her arms +across the railing, dropped her flaming face upon them. + +For a long time he stood watching her, while, his face reflected the +conflicting emotions that were fighting within him for mastery. Then into +his eyes crept a look of dumb compassion, the same look he had once bent +on a passion-tossed little girl lying on the seat of a patrol-wagon in +the chill dusk of a Christmas night. + +He straightened his shoulders and laid a firm hand on her bowed head. + +"You must stop crying, Nance," he commanded with the stern tenderness he +would have used toward Ted. "Perhaps you are right; God knows. At any +rate we are going to do whatever you say in this matter. I promise to +keep out of your way until you say I can come." + +Nance drew a quivering breath, and smiled up at him through her tears. + +"That's not enough, Dan; you got to keep away whether I say to come or +not. You're stronger and better than what I am. You got to promise that +whatever happens you'll make me be good." + +And Dan with trembling lips and steady eyes made her the solemn promise. + +Then, sitting there in the twilight, with only the dropping of a leaf to +break the silence, they poured out their confidences, eager to reach a +complete understanding in the brief time they had allotted themselves. In +minute detail they pieced together the tangled pattern of the past; they +poured out their present aims and ambitions, coming back again and again +to the miracle of their new-found love. Of their personal future, they +dared not speak. It was locked to them, and death alone held the key. + +Darkness had closed in when the side door of the house across the yard +was flung open, and a small figure came plunging toward them through the +crackling leaves. + +"It's done, Daddy!" cried an excited voice. "It's the cutest little +gingerbread man. And supper's ready, and he's standing up by my plate." + +"All right!" said Dan, holding out one hand to him and one to Nance. +"We'll all go in together to see the gingerbread man." + +"But, Dan--" + +"Just this once; it's our good-by night, you know." + +Nance hesitated, then straightening the prim little gray bonnet that +would assume a jaunty tilt, she followed the tall figure and the short +one into the halo of light that circled the open door. + +The evening that followed was one of those rare times, insignificant in +itself, every detail of which was to stand out in after life, charged +with significance. For Nance, the warmth and glow of the homely little +house, with its flowered carpets and gay curtains, the beaming face of +old Mrs. Purdy in its frame of silver curls, the laughter of the happy +child, and above all the strong, tender presence of Dan, were things +never to be forgotten. + +At eight o'clock she rose reluctantly, saying that she had to go by the +Snawdors' before she reported at the hospital at nine o'clock. + +"Do you mind if I go that far with you?" asked Dan, wistfully. + +On their long walk across the city they said little. Their way led them +past many familiar places, the school house, the old armory, Cemetery +Street, Post-Office Square, where they used to sit and watch the +electric signs. Of the objects they passed, Dan was superbly unaware. He +saw only Nance. But she was keenly aware of every old association that +bound them together. Everything seemed strangely beautiful to her, the +glamorous shop-lights cutting through the violet gloom, the subtle +messages of lighted windows, the passing faces of her fellow-men. In +that gray world her soul burned like a brilliant flame lighting up +everything around her. + +As they turned into Calvary Alley the windows of the cathedral glowed +softly above them. + +"I never thought how pretty it was before!" said Nance, rapturously. +"Say, Dan, do you know what 'Evol si dog' means?" + +"No; is it Latin?" + +She squeezed his arm between her two hands and laughed gleefully. + +"You're as bad as me," she said, "I'm not going to tell you; you got to +go inside and find out for yourself." + +On the threshold of Number One they paused again. Even the almost +deserted old tenement, blushing under a fresh coat of red paint, took on +a hue of romance. + +"You wait 'til we get it fixed up," said Nance. "They're taking out all +the partitions in the Smelts' flat, and making a big consulting room of +it. And over here in Mr. Demry's room I'm going to have the baby clinic. +I'm going to have boxes of growing flowers in every window; and +storybooks and--" + +"Yes," cried Dan, fiercely, "you are going to be so taken up with all +this that you won't need me; you'll forget about to-night!" + +But her look silenced him. + +"Dan," she said very earnestly, "I always have needed you, and I always +will. I love you better than anything in the world, and I'm trying to +prove it." + +A wavering light on the upper landing warned them that they might be +overheard. A moment later some one demanded to know who was there. + +"Come down and see!" called Nance. + +Mrs. Snawdor, lamp in hand, cautiously descended. + +"Is that you, Nance?" she cried. "It's about time you was comin' to see +to the movin' an' help tend to things. Who's that there with you?" + +"Don't you know?" + +"Well, if it ain't Dan Lewis!" And to Dan's great embarrassment the +effusive lady enveloped him in a warm and unexpected embrace. She even +held him at arm's length and commented upon his appearance with frank +admiration. "I never seen any one improve so much an' yet go on favorin' +theirselves." + +Nance declined to go up-stairs on the score of time, promising to come on +the following Sunday and take entire charge of the moving. + +"Ain't it like her to go git mixed up in this here fool clinic business?" +Mrs. Snawdor asked of Dan. "Just when she'd got a job with rich swells +that would 'a' took her anywhere? Here she was for about ten years +stewin' an' fumin' to git outen the alley, an' here she is comin' back +again! She's tried about ever'thin' now, but gittin' married." + +Dan scenting danger, changed the direction of the conversation by asking +her where they were moving to. + +"That's some more of her doin's," said Mrs. Snawdor. "She's gittin' her +way at las' 'bout movin' us to the country. Lobelia an' Rosy V. is goin' +to keep house, an' me an' William Jennings is going to board with 'em. +You'd orter see that boy of mine, Dan. Nance got him into the 'lectric +business an' he's doin' somethin' wonderful. He's got my brains an' his +pa's manners. You can say what you please, Mr. Snawdor was a perfect +gentleman!" + +It was evident from the pride in her voice that since Mr. Snawdor's +demise he had been canonized, becoming the third member of the ghostly +firm of Molloy, Yager, and Snawdor. + +"What about Uncle Jed?" asked Nance. "Where's he going?" + +Mrs. Snawdor laughed consciously and, in doing so, exhibited to full +advantage the dazzling new teeth that were the pride of her life. + +"Oh, Mr. Burks is goin' with us," she said. "It's too soon to talk about +it yet,--but--er--Oh, you know me, Nance!" And with blushing confusion +the thrice-bereaved widow hid her face in her apron. + +The clock in the cathedral tower was nearing nine when Nance and Dan +emerged from Number One. They did not speak as they walked up to the +corner and stood waiting for the car. Their hands were clasped hard, +and she could feel his heart thumping under her wrist as he pressed it +to his side. + +Passers-by jostled them on every side, and an importunate newsboy +implored patronage, but they seemed oblivious to their surroundings. The +car turned a far corner and came toward them relentlessly. + +"God bless you, Dan," whispered Nance as he helped her on the platform; +then turning, she called back to him with one of her old flashing smiles. +"And me too, a little bit!" + +THE END + + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Calvary Alley, by Alice Hegan Rice + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CALVARY ALLEY *** + +***** This file should be named 9794-8.txt or 9794-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/9/7/9/9794/ + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan and PG +Distributed Proofreaders + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +https://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at https://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit https://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/9794-8.zip b/9794-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..c37f5d1 --- /dev/null +++ b/9794-8.zip diff --git a/9794.txt b/9794.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..16bc1e0 --- /dev/null +++ b/9794.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11371 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Calvary Alley, by Alice Hegan Rice + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Calvary Alley + +Author: Alice Hegan Rice + +Posting Date: November 15, 2011 [EBook #9794] +Release Date: January, 2006 +First Posted: October 17, 2003 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CALVARY ALLEY *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan and PG +Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + + + + + + + + CALVARY ALLEY + + BY ALICE HEGAN RICE + + 1917 + + +Author of "MRS. WIGGS OF THE CABBAGE PATCH," "LOVEY MARY," "SANDY," ETC. + +ILLUSTRATED BY WALTER BIGGS + +THIS STORY IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED TO THE SMALL BAND OF KENTUCKY +WRITERS WITH WHOM IT HAS BEEN MY HAPPY FORTUNE TO MAKE THE LITERARY +PILGRIMAGE + + + + +CONTENTS + +CHAPTER + + + I THE FIGHT + II THE SNAWDORS AT HOME + III THE CLARKES AT HOME + IV JUVENILE COURT + V ON PROBATION + VI BUTTERNUT LANE + VII AN EVICTION + VIII AMBITION STIRS + IX BUTTONS + X THE PRINCESS COMES TO GRIEF + XI THE STATE TAKES A HAND + XII CLARKE'S + XIII EIGHT TO SIX + XIV IDLENESS + XV MARKING TIME + XVI MISS BOBINET'S + XVII BEHIND THE TWINKLING LIGHTS + XVIII THE FIRST NIGHT + XIX PREPARATIONS FOR FLIGHT + XX WILD OATS + XXI DAN + XXII IN THE SIGNAL TOWER + XXIII CALVARY CATHEDRAL + XXIV BACK AT CLARKE'S + XXV MAC + XXVI BETWEEN TWO FIRES + XXVII FATE TAKES A HAND +XXVIII THE PRICE OF ENLIGHTENMENT + XXIX IN TRAINING + XXX HER FIRST CASE + XXXI MR. DEMRY + XXXII THE NEW FOREMAN +XXXIII NANCE COMES INTO HER OWN + + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + +"The boy is infatuated with that girl" + +"Her tense muscles relaxed; she forgot to cry" + +"Don't call a policeman!" she implored wildly + + + + +CALVARY ALLEY + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE FIGHT + + +You never would guess in visiting Cathedral Court, with its people's hall +and its public baths, its clean, paved street and general air of smug +propriety, that it harbors a notorious past. But those who knew it by its +maiden name, before it was married to respectability, recall Calvary +Alley as a region of swarming tenements, stale beer dives, and frequent +police raids. The sole remaining trace of those unregenerate days is the +print of a child's foot in the concrete walk just where it leaves the +court and turns into the cathedral yard. + +All the tired feet that once plodded home from factory and foundry, all +the unsteady feet that staggered in from saloon and dance-hall, all the +fleeing feet that sought a hiding place, have long since passed away and +left no record of their passing. Only that one small footprint, with its +perfect outline, still pauses on its way out of the alley into the great +world beyond. + +At the time Nance Molloy stepped into that soft concrete and thus set in +motion the series of events that was to influence her future career, she +had never been told that her inalienable rights were life, liberty, and +the pursuit of happiness. Nevertheless she had claimed them intuitively. +When at the age of one she had crawled out of the soap-box that served as +a cradle, and had eaten half a box of stove polish, she was acting in +strict accord with the Constitution. + +By the time she reached the sophisticated age of eleven her ideals had +changed, but her principles remained firm. She did not stoop to beg for +her rights, but struck out for them boldly with her small bare fists. She +was a glorious survival of that primitive Kentucky type that stood side +by side with man in the early battles and fought valiantly for herself. + +On the hot August day upon which she began to make history, she stood in +the gutter amid a crowd of yelling boys, her feet far apart, her hands +full of mud, waiting tensely to chastise the next sleek head that dared +show itself above the cathedral fence. She wore a boy's shirt and a +ragged brown skirt that flapped about her sturdy bare legs. Her matted +hair was bound in two disheveled braids around her head and secured with +a piece of shoe-string. Her dirty round face was lighted up by a pair of +dancing blue eyes, in which just now blazed the unholy light of conflict. + +The feud between the Calvary Micks and the choir boys was an ancient +one, carried on from one generation to another and gaining prestige with +age. It was apt to break out on Saturday afternoons, after rehearsal, +when the choirmaster had taken his departure. Frequently the disturbance +amounted to no more than taunts and jeers on one side and threats and +recriminations on the other, but the atmosphere that it created was of +that electrical nature that might at any moment develop a storm. + +Nance Molloy, at the beginning of the present controversy, had been +actively engaged in civil warfare in which the feminine element of the +alley was pursuing a defensive policy against the marauding masculine. +But at the first indication of an outside enemy, the herd instinct +manifested itself, and she allied herself with prompt and passionate +loyalty to the cause of the Calvary Micks. + +The present argument was raging over the possession of a spade that had +been left in the alley by the workmen who were laying a concrete pavement +into the cathedral yard. + +"Aw, leave 'em have it!" urged a philosophical alleyite from the top of a +barrel. "Them ole avenoo kids ain't nothin'!--We could lick daylight +outen 'em if we wanted to." + +"Ye-e-e-s you could!" came in a chorus of jeers from the fence top, and a +brown-eyed youth in a white-frilled shirt, with a blue Windsor tie +knotted under his sailor collar, added imperiously, "You get too fresh +down there, and I'll call the janitor!" + +This gross breach of military etiquette evoked a retort from Nance that +was too inelegant to chronicle. + +"Tomboy! tomboy!" jeered the brown-eyed youth from above. "Why don't you +borrow some girls' clothes?" + +"All right, Sissy," said Nance, "lend me yours." + +The Micks shrieked their approval, while Nance rolled a mud ball and, +with the deadly aim of a sharpshooter, let it fly straight at the +white-frilled bosom of her tormentor. + +"Soak it to her, Mac," yelled the boy next to him, "the kid's got no +business butting in! Make her get out of the way!" + +"Go on and make me!" implored Nance. + +"I will if you don't stand back," threatened the boy called Mac. + +Nance promptly stepped up to the alley gate and wiggled her fingers in a +way peculiarly provocative to a juvenile enemy. + +"Poor white trash!" he jeered. "You stay where you belong! Don't you step +on our concrete!" + +"Will if I want to. It's my foot. I'll put it where I like." + +"Bet you don't. You're afraid to." + +"I ain't either." + +"Well, _do_ it then. I dare you! Anybody that would take a--" + +In a second Nance had thrust her leg as far as possible between the +boards that warned the public to keep out, and had planted a small alien +foot firmly in the center of the soft cement. + +This audacious act was the signal for instant battle. With yells of +indignation the choir boys hurled themselves from the fence, and +descended upon their foes. Mud gave place to rocks, sticks clashed, the +air resounded with war cries. Ash barrels were overturned, straying cats +made flying leaps for safety, heads appeared at doorways and windows, and +frantic mothers made futile efforts to quell the riot. + +Thus began the greatest fight ever enjoyed in Calvary Alley. It went down +in neighborhood annals as the decisive clash between the classes, in +which the despised swells "was learnt to know their places onct an' fer +all!" For ten minutes it raged with unabated fury, then when the tide of +battle began to set unmistakably in favor of the alley, parental +authority waned and threats changed to cheers. Old and young united in +the conviction that the Monroe Doctrine must be maintained at any cost! + +In and out of the subsiding pandemonium darted Nance Molloy, covered with +mud from the shoestring on her hair to the rag about her toe, giving and +taking blows with the best, and emitting yells of frenzied victory over +every vanquished foe. Suddenly her transports were checked by a +disturbing sight. At the end of the alley, locked in mortal combat, she +beheld her arch-enemy, he of the brown eyes and the frilled shirt, whom +the boys called Mac, sitting astride the hitherto invincible Dan Lewis, +the former philosopher of the ash barrel and one of the acknowledged +leaders of the Calvary Micks. + +It was a moment of intense chagrin for Nance, untempered by the fact that +Dan's adversary was much the bigger boy. Up to this time, the whole +affair had been a glorious game, but at the sight of the valiant Dan +lying helpless on his back, his mouth bloody from the blows of the boy +above him, the comedy changed suddenly to tragedy. With a swift charge +from the rear, she flung herself upon the victor, clapping her mud-daubed +hands about his eyes and dragging him backward with a force that sent +them both rolling in the gutter. + +Blind with fury, the boy scrambled to his feet, and, seizing a rock, +hurled it with all his strength after the retreating Dan. The missile +flew wide of its mark and, whizzing high over the fence, crashed through +the great rose window that was the special pride of Calvary Cathedral. + +The din of breaking glass, the simultaneous appearance of a cross-eyed +policeman, and of Mason, the outraged janitor, together with the +horrified realization of what had happened, brought the frenzied +combatants to their senses. Amid a clamor of accusations and denials, the +policeman seized upon two culprits and indicated a third. + +"You let me go!" shrieked Mac. "My father'll make it all right! Tell him +who I am, Mason! Make him let me go!" + +But Mason was bent upon bringing all the criminals to justice. + +"I'm going to have you all up before the juvenile court, rich and poor!" +he declared excitedly. "You been deviling the life out of me long enough! +If the vestry had 'a' listened at me and had you up before now, that +window wouldn't be smashed. I told the bishop something was going to +happen, and he says, 'The next time there's trouble, you find the leaders +and swear out a warrant. Don't wait to ask anybody!'" + +By this time every window in the tenement at the blind end of the alley +had been converted into a proscenium box, and suggestions, advice, and +incriminating evidence were being freely volunteered. + +"Who started this here racket, anyhow?" asked the policeman, in the bored +tone of one who is rehearsing an oft-repeated scene. + +"I did," declared Nance Molloy, with something of the feminine +gratification Helen of Troy must have felt when she "launched a thousand +ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium." + +"You Nance!" screamed a woman from a third-story window. "You know you +never done no such a thing! I was settin' here an' seen ever'thing that +happened; it was them there boys." + +"So it was you, Dan Lewis, was it?" said the policeman, recognizing one +of his panting victims, the one whose ragged shirt had been torn +completely off, leaving his heaving chest and brown shoulders bare. "An' +it ain't surprised, I am. Who is this other little dude?" + +"None of your business!" cried Mac furiously, trying to wrench himself +free. "I tell you my father will pay for the darned old window." + +"Aisy there," said the policeman. "Does anybody know him?" + +"It's Mr. Clarke's son, up at the bottle works," said Mason. + +"You let me go," shrieked the now half-frantic boy. "My father 'll make +you pay for this. You see if he don't!" + +"None o' your guff," said the policeman. "I ain't wantin' to keep you now +I got your name. Onny more out o' the boonch, Mr. Mason?" + +Mason swept a gleaning eye over the group, and as he did so he spied the +footprint, in the concrete. + +"Who did that?" he demanded in a fresh burst of wrath. + +Those choir boys who had not fled the scene gave prompt and incriminating +testimony. + +"No! she never!" shouted the woman from the third floor, now suspended +half-way out of the window. "Nance Molloy was up here a-washin' dishes +with me. Don't you listen at them pasty-faced cowards a-puttin' it off on +a innercent little girl!" + +But the innocent little girl had no idea of seeking refuge in her sex. +Hers had been a glorious and determining part in the day's battle, and +the distinction of having her name taken down with those of the great +leaders was one not to be foregone. + +"I did do it," she declared excitedly. "That there boy dared me to. Ketch +me takin' a dare offen a avenoo kid!" + +"What's your name, Sis?" asked the policeman. + +"Nance Molloy." + +"Where do you live?" + +"Up there at Snawdor's. That there was Mis' Snawdor a-yellin' at me." + +"Is she yer mother?" + +"Nope. She's me step." + +"And yer father?" + +"He's me step too. I'm a two-step," she added with an impudent toss of +the head to show her contempt for the servant of the law, a blue-coated, +brass-buttoned interloper who swooped down on you from around corners, +and reported you at all times and seasons. + +By this time Mrs. Snawdor had gotten herself down the two flights of +stairs, and was emerging from the door of the tenement, taking down her +curl papers as she came. She was a plump, perspiring person who might +have boasted good looks had it not been for two eye-teeth that completely +dominated her facial landscape. + +"You surely ain't fixin' to report her?" she asked ingratiatingly +of Mason. "A little 'leven-year-ole orphin that never done no harm +to nobody?" + +"It's no use arguing," interrupted Mason firmly. "I'm going to file out a +warrant against them three children if it's the last act of my mortal +life. There ain't a boy in the alley that gives me any more trouble than +that there little girl, a-throwin' mud over the fence and climbing round +the coping and sneaking into the cathedral to look under the pews for +nickels, if I so much as turn my back!" + +"He wants the nickels hisself!" cried Nance shrilly, pushing her nose +flat and pursing her lips in such a clever imitation of the irate janitor +that the alley shrieked with joy. + +"You limb o' Satan!" cried Mrs. Snawdor, making a futile pass at her. +"It's a God's mericle you ain't been took up before this! And it's me as +'ll have the brunt to bear, a-stoppin' my work to go to court, a-lying to +yer good character, an' a-payin' the fine. It's a pity able-bodied men +like policemens an' janitors can't be tendin' their own business 'stid +of comin' interferin' with the family of a hard-workin' woman like me. If +there's any justice in this world it ain't never flowed in my +direction!" + +And Mrs. Snawdor, half dragging, half pushing Nance, disappeared into the +dark entrance of the tenement, breathing maledictions first against her +charge, then against the tyranny of the law. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE SNAWDORS AT HOME + + +If ever a place had a down-at-heel, out-of-elbow sort of look, it was +Calvary Alley. At its open end and two feet above it the city went +rushing and roaring past like a great river, quite oblivious of this +unhealthy bit of backwater into which some of its flotsam and jetsam had +been caught and held, generating crime and disease and sending them out +again into the main current. + +For despite the fact that the alley rested under the very wing of the +great cathedral from which it took its name, despite the fact that it +echoed daily to the chimes in the belfry and at times could even hear the +murmured prayers of the congregation, it concerned itself not in the +least with matters of the spirit. Heaven was too remote and mysterious, +Hell too present and prosaic, to be of the least interest. And the +cathedral itself, holding out welcoming arms to all the noble avenues +that stretched in leafy luxury to the south, forgot entirely to glance +over its shoulder at the sordid little neighbor that lay under the very +shadow of its cross. + +At the blind end of the alley, wedged in between two towering +warehouses, was Number One, a ramshackle tenement which in some forgotten +day had been a fine old colonial residence. The city had long since +hemmed it in completely, and all that remained of its former grandeur +were a flight of broad steps that once boasted a portico and the +imposing, fan-shaped arch above the doorway. + +In the third floor of Number One, on the side next the cathedral, dwelt +the Snawdor family, a social unit of somewhat complex character. The +complication came about by the paterfamilias having missed his calling. +Mr. Snawdor was by instinct and inclination a bachelor. He had early in +life found a modest rut in which he planned to run undisturbed into +eternity, but he had been discovered by a widow, who was possessed of an +initiative which, to a man of Snawdor's retiring nature, was destiny. + +At the time she met him she had already led two reluctant captives to the +hymeneal altar, and was wont to boast, when twitted about the fact, that +"the Lord only knew what she might 'a' done if it hadn't been fer them +eye-teeth!" Her first husband had been Bud Molloy, a genial young +Irishman who good-naturedly allowed himself to be married out of +gratitude for her care of his motherless little Nance. Bud had not lived +to repent the act; in less than a month he heroically went over an +embankment with his engine, in one of those fortunate accidents in which +"only the engineer is killed." + +The bereft widow lost no time in seeking consolation. Naturally the first +person to present himself on terms of sympathetic intimacy was the +undertaker who officiated at poor Bud's funeral. At the end of six months +she married him, and was just beginning to enjoy the prestige which his +profession gave her, when Mr. Yager also passed away, becoming, as it +were, his own customer. Her legacy from him consisted of a complete +embalming outfit and a feeble little Yager who inherited her father's +tendency to spells. + +Thus encumbered with two small girls, a less sanguine person would have +retired from the matrimonial market. But Mrs. Yager was not easily +discouraged; she was of a marrying nature, and evidently resolved that +neither man nor Providence should stand in her way. Again casting a +speculative eye over the field, she discerned a new shop in the alley, +the sign of which announced that the owner dealt in "Bungs and Fawcetts." +On the evening of the same day the chronic ailment from which the kitchen +sink had suffered for two years was declared to be acute, and Mr. Snawdor +was called in for consultation. + +He was a timid, dejected person with a small pointed chin that trembled +when he spoke. Despite the easy conventions of the alley, he kept his +clothes neatly brushed and his shoes polished, and wore a collar on week +days. These signs of prosperity were his undoing. Before he had time to +realize what was happening to him, he had been skilfully jolted out of +his rut by the widow's experienced hand, and bumped over a hurried +courtship into a sudden marriage. He returned to consciousness to find +himself possessed of a wife and two stepchildren and moved from his small +neat room over his shop to the indescribable disorder of Number One. + +The subsequent years had brought many little Snawdors in their wake, and +Mr. Snawdor, being thus held up by the highwayman Life, ignominiously +surrendered. He did not like being married; he did not enjoy being a +father; his one melancholy satisfaction lay in being a martyr. + +Mrs. Snawdor, who despite her preference for the married state derived +little joy from domestic duties, was quite content to sally forth as a +wage-earner. By night she scrubbed office buildings and by day she slept +and between times she sought diversion in the affairs of her neighbors. + +Thus it was that the household burdens fell largely upon Nance Molloy's +small shoulders, and if she wiped the dishes without washing them, and +"shook up the beds" without airing them, and fed the babies dill pickles, +it was no more than older housekeepers were doing all around her. + +Late in the afternoon of the day of the fight, when the sun, despairing +of making things any hotter than they were, dropped behind the warehouse, +Nance, carrying a box of crackers, a chunk of cheese, and a bucket of +beer, dodged in and out among the push-carts and the barrels of the alley +on her way home from Slap Jack's saloon. There was a strong temptation on +her part to linger, for a hurdy-gurdy up at the corner was playing a +favorite tune, and echoes of the fight were still heard from animated +groups in various doorways. But Nance's ears still tingled from a recent +boxing, and she resolutely kept on her way until she reached the worn +steps of Number One and scurried through its open doorway. + +The nice distinction between a flat and a tenement is that the front +door of one is always kept closed, and the other open. In this +particular instance the matter admitted of no discussion, for there was +no front door. The one that originally hung under the fan-shaped +Colonial arch had long since been kicked in during some nocturnal raid, +and had never been replaced. + +When the gas neglected to get itself lighted before dark at Number One, +you had to feel your way along the hall in complete darkness, until your +foot struck something; then you knew you had reached the stairs and you +began to climb. It was just as well to feel along the damp wall as you +went, for somebody was always leaving things on the steps for people to +stumble over. + +Nance groped her way cautiously, resting her bucket every few steps and +taking a lively interest in the sounds and smells that came from behind +the various closed doors she passed. She knew from the angry voices on +the first floor that Mr. Smelts had come home "as usual"; she knew who +was having sauerkraut for supper, and whose bread was burning. + +The odor of cooking food reminded her of something. The hall was dark and +the beer can full, so she sat down at the top of the first flight and, +putting her lips to the foaming bucket was about to drink, when the door +behind her opened and a keen-faced young Jew peered out. + +"Say, Nance," he whispered curiously, "have they swore out the warrant +on you yet?" + +Nance put down the bucket and looked up at him with a fine air of +unconcern. + +"Don't know and don't keer!" she said. "Where was you hidin' at, when the +fight was goin' on?" + +"Getting my lessons. Did the cop pinch the Clarke guy?" + +"You betcher," said Nance. "You orter seen the way he took on! Begged to +beat the band. Me and Danny never. Me and him--" + +A volley of curses came from the hall below, the sound of a blow, +followed by a woman's faint scream of protest, then a door slammed. + +"If I was Mis' Smelts," said Nance darkly, with a look that was too old +for ten years, "I wouldn't stand for that. I wouldn't let no man hit me. +I'd get him sent up. I--" + +"You walk yourself up them steps, Nance Molloy!" commanded Mrs. Snawdor's +rasping voice from the floor above. "I ain't got no time to be waitin' +while you gas with Ike Lavinsky." + +Nance, thus admonished, obeyed orders, arriving on the domestic hearth in +time to prevent the soup from boiling over. Mr. Snawdor, wearing a long +apron and an expression of tragic doom, was trying to set the table, +while over and above and beneath him surged his turbulent offspring. In a +broken rocking-chair, fanning herself with a box-top, sat Mrs. Snawdor, +indulging herself in a continuous stream of conversation and apparently +undisturbed by the uproar around her. Mrs. Snawdor was not sensitive to +discord. As a necessary adjustment to their environment, her nerves had +become soundproof. + +"You certainly missed it by not being here!" she was saying to Mr. +Snawdor. "It was one of the liveliest mix-ups ever I seen! One of them +rich boys bust the cathedral window. Some say it'll cost over a thousan' +dollars to git it fixed. An' I pray to God his paw'll have to pay every +cent of it!" + +"Can't you make William J. and Rosy stop that racket?" queried Mr. +Snawdor, plaintively. The twins had been named at a time when Mrs. +Snawdor's loyalty was wavering between the President and another +distinguished statesman with whom she associated the promising phrase, +"free silver." The arrival of two babies made a choice unnecessary, and, +notwithstanding the fact that one of them was a girl, she named them +William J. and Roosevelt, reluctantly abbreviating the latter to "Rosy." + +"They ain't hurtin' nothin'," she said, impatient of the interruption to +her story. "I wisht you might 'a' seen that ole fool Mason a-lordin' it +aroun', an' that little devil Nance a-takin' him off to the life. +Everybody nearly died a-laughin' at her. But he says he's goin' to have +her up in court, an' I ain't got a blessed thing to wear 'cept that ole +hat of yours I trimmed up. Looks like a shame fer a woman never to be +fixed to go nowhere!" + +Mr. Snawdor, who had been trying ineffectually to get in a word, took +this remark personally and in muttering tones called Heaven to witness +that it was none of his fault that she didn't have the right clothes, and +that it was a pretty kind of a world that would keep a man from gettin' +on just because he was honest, and-- + +"Oh, shut up!" said Mrs. Snawdor, unfeelingly; "it ain't yer lack of +work that gits on my nerves; it's yer bein' 'round. I'd pay anybody a +quarter a week to keep yer busy!" + +Nance, during this exchange of conjugal infelicities, assisted by Lobelia +and Fidy, was rescuing sufficient dishes from the kitchen sink to serve +for the evening meal. She, too, was finding it difficult to bring her +attention to bear on domestic matters after the exciting events of the +afternoon. + +"An' he says to me,"--she was recounting with dramatic intensity to her +admiring audience--"he says, 'Keep offen that concrete.' An' I says, +'It'll take somebody bigger'n you to make me!'" + +Now, of course, we know that Nance never said that, but it was what she +wished she had said, which, at certain moments in life, seems to the best +of us to be quite the same thing. + +"Then what?" said Fidy, with a plate suspended in air. + +"Then," said Nance with sparkling eyes, "I sticks my foot right in the +middle of their old concrete, an' they comes pilin' offen the fence, an' +Dan Lewis he--" + +"You Nance!" came in warning tones from the other room, "you shet your +head an' git on with that supper. Here comes your Uncle Jed this minute!" + +At this announcement Nance dropped her dish towel, and dashing to the +door flung herself into the arms of a short, fat, baldheaded man who had +just come out of the front room across the hall. + +"Easy there!" warned the new-comer. "You ain't aimin' to butt the engine +clean offen the track, air yer?" + +Nance got his arm around her neck, and her arm around his knees, and thus +entwined they made their way to the table. + +Uncle Jed Burks, uncle by courtesy, was a boarder by day and a +gate-tender by night at the signal tower at the railroad crossing. On +that day long ago when he had found himself a widower, helpless in the +face of domestic problems, he had accepted Mrs. Snawdor's prompt offer of +hospitality and come across the hall for his meals. At the end of the +week he had been allowed to show his gratitude by paying the rent, and by +the end of the month he had become the chief prop of the family. It is +difficult to conceive of an Atlas choosing to burden himself with the +world, but there are temperaments that seek responsibilities just as +there are those, like Mr. Snawdor, who refuse them. + +Through endless discomforts, Uncle Jed had stayed on, coaxing Mr. Snawdor +into an acceptance of his lot, helping Mrs. Snawdor over financial +difficulties, and bestowing upon the little Snawdors the affection which +they failed to elicit from either the maternal or the paternal bosom. And +the amazing thing was that Uncle Jed always thought he was receiving +favors instead of conferring them. + +"What's this I hear about my little partner gittin' into trouble?" he +asked, catching Nance's chin in his palm and turning her smudged, excited +face up to his. + +Nance's eyes fell before his glance. For the first time since the fight +her pride was mingled with misgiving. But when Mrs. Snawdor plunged into +a fresh recital of the affair, with evident approval of the part she had +played, her self-esteem returned. + +"And you say Mason's fixin' to send her up to the juvenile court?" asked +Uncle Jed gravely, his fat hand closing on her small one. + +"Dan Lewis has got to go too!" said Nance, a sudden apprehension seizing +her at Uncle Jed's solemn face. + +"Oh, they won't do nothin' to 'em," said Mrs. Snawdor, pouring hot water +over the coffee grounds and shaking the pot vigorously. "Everybody knows +it was the Clarke boy that bust the window. Clarke's Bottle Works' son, +you know, up there on Zender Street." + +"Was it the Clarke boy and Dan Lewis that started the fracas?" asked +Uncle Jed. + +"No, it was me!" put in Nance. + +"Now, Nance Molloy, you lemme hear you say that one time more, an' you +know what'll happen!" said Mrs. Snawdor, impressively. "You're fixin' to +make me pay a fine." + +"I'm mighty sorry Dan Lewis is mixed up in it," said Uncle Jed, shaking +his head. "This here's his second offense. He was had up last year." + +"An' can you wonder?" asked Mrs. Snawdor, "with his mother what she is?" + +"Mrs. Lewis ain't a bad looker," Mr. Snawdor roused himself to observe +dejectedly. + +His wife turned upon him indignantly. "Well, it's a pity she ain't as +good as her looks then. Fer my part I can't see it's to any woman's +credit to look nice when she's got the right kind of a switch and a good +set of false teeth. It's the woman that keeps her good looks without none +of them luxuries that orter be praised." + +"Mrs. Lewis ain't done her part by Dan," said Uncle Jed, seating himself +at the red-clothed table. + +"I should say she ain't," Mrs. Snawdor continued. "I never seen nothin' +more pathetical than that there boy when he was no more than three years +old, a-tryin' to feed hisself outer the garbage can, an' her a comin an' +a goin' in the alley all these years with her nose in the air, too good +to speak to anybody." + +"Dan don't think his mother's bad to him," said Nance. "He saved up his +shoe-shine money an' bought her some perfumery. He lemme smell it." + +"Oh, yes!" said Mrs. Snawdor, "she's got to have her perfumery, an' her +feather in her hat, an' the whitewash on her face, no matter if Dan's +feet are on the groun', an' his naked hide shinin' through his shirt." + +"Well, I wish him an' this here little girl wasn't mixed up in this +business," repeated Uncle Jed. "Courts ain't no place fer children. Seems +like I can't stand fer our little Nance to be mixin' up with shady +characters." + +Nance shot an apprehensive glance at him and began to look anxious. She +had never seen Uncle Jed so solemn before. + +"You jes' remember this here, Nancy," went on the signalman, who could no +more refrain from pointing a moral when the chance presented itself, than +a gun can help going off when the trigger is pulled; "nothin' good ever +comes from breakin' laws. They wouldn't a-been made into laws if they +wasn't fer our good, an' even when we don't see no reason in keepin' 'em, +we ain't got no more right to break through than one of them engines up +at the crossing's got a right to come ahead when I signals it from the +tower to stop. I been handin' out laws to engines fer goin' on thirty +year, an' I never seen one yet that bust over a law that didn't come to +grief. You keep on the track, Sister, an' watch the signals an' obey +orders an' you'll find it pays in the end. An' now, buck up, an' don't be +scared. We'll see what we can do to git you off." + +"Who's skeered?" said Nance, with a defiant toss of her head. "I ain't +skeered of nothin'." + +But that night when Mrs. Snawdor and Uncle Jed had gone to work, and Mr. +Snawdor had betaken himself out of ear-shot of the wailing baby, Nance's +courage began to waver. After she had finished her work and crawled into +bed between Fidy and Lobelia, the juvenile court, with its unknown +terrors, rose before her. All the excitement of the day died out; her +pride in sharing the punishment with Dan Lewis vanished. She lay staring +up into the darkness, swallowing valiantly to keep down the sobs, +fiercely resolved not to let her bed-fellows witness the break-down of +her courage. + +"What's the matter, Nance?" asked Fidy. + +"I'm hot!" said Nance, crossly. "It feels like the inside of a +oven in here!" + +"I bet Maw forgot to open the window into the shaft," said Fidy. + +"Windows don't do no good," said Nance; "they just let in smells. Wisht I +was a man! You bet I would be up at Slap Jack's! I'd set under a 'lectric +fan, an' pour cold things down me an' listen at the 'phoney-graf ever' +night. Hush! Is that our baby?" + +A faint wail made her scramble out of bed and rush into the back room +where she gathered a hot, squirming bundle into her arms and peered +anxiously into its wizened face. She knew the trick babies had of dying +when the weather was hot! Two other beloved scraps of humanity had been +taken away from her, and she was fiercely determined to keep this one. +Lugging the baby to the window, she scrambled over the sill. + +The fire-escape was cluttered with all the paraphernalia that doubles the +casualty of a tenement fire, but she cleared a space with her foot and +sat down on the top step. Beside her loomed the blank warehouse wall, and +from the narrow passage-way below came the smell of garbage. The clanging +of cars and the rumbling of trucks mingled with the nearer sounds of +whirring sewing machines in Lavinski's sweat-shop on the floor below. +From somewhere around the corner came, at intervals, the sharp cry of a +woman in agony. With that last sound Nance was all too familiar. The +coming and going of a human life were no mystery to her. But each time +the cry of pain rang out she tried in vain to stop her ears. At last, +hot, hungry, lonesome, and afraid, she laid her dirty face against the +baby's fuzzy head and they sobbed together in undisturbed misery. + +When at last the child fell into a restless sleep, Nance sat patiently +on, her small arms stiffening under their burden, and her bare feet and +legs smarting from the stings of hungry mosquitos. + +By and by the limp garments on the clothes line overhead began to stir, +and Nance, lifting her head gratefully to the vagrant breeze, caught her +breath. There, just above the cathedral spire, white and cool among +fleecy clouds, rose the full August moon. It was the same moon that at +that moment was turning ocean waves into silver magic; that was smiling +on sleeping forests and wind-swept mountains and dancing streams. Yet +here it was actually taking the trouble to peep around the cathedral +spire and send the full flood of its radiance into the most sordid +corners of Calvary Alley, even into the unawakened soul of the dirty, +ragged, tear-stained little girl clasping the sick baby on Snawdor's +fire-escape. + +[Illustration: "Her tense muscles relaxed; she forgot to cry"] + +Something in Nance responded. Her tense muscles relaxed; she forgot to +cry. With eyes grown big and wistful, she watched the shining orb. All +the bravado, the fear, and rebellion died out of her, and in hushed +wonder she got from the great white night what God in heaven meant for +us to get. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE CLARKES AT HOME + + +While the prodigal son of the house of Clarke was engaged in breaking +stained-glass windows in Calvary Alley, his mother was at home +entertaining the bishop with a recital of his virtues and +accomplishments. Considering the fact that Bishop Bland's dislike for +children was notorious, he was bearing the present ordeal with unusual +fortitude. + +They were sitting on the spacious piazza at Hill-crest, the country +home of the Clarkes, the massive foundation of which was popularly +supposed to rest upon bottles. It was a piazza especially designed to +offset the discomforts of a Southern August afternoon and to make a +visitor, especially if he happened to be an ecclesiastical potentate +with a taste for luxury, loath to forsake its pleasant shade for the +glaring world without. + +"Yes, yes," he agreed for the fourth time, "a very fine boy. I must say I +give myself some credit for your marriage and its successful result." + +Mrs. Clarke paused in her tea-pouring and gazed absently off across the +tree tops. + +"I suppose I ought to be happy," she said, and she sighed. + +"Every heart knoweth its own--two lumps, thank you, and a dash of rum. I +was saying--Oh, yes! I was about to remark that we are all prone to +magnify our troubles. Now here you are, after all these years, still +brooding over your unfortunate father, when he is probably long since +returned to France, quite well and happy." + +"If I could only be sure. It has been so long since we heard, nearly +thirteen years! The last letter was the one you got when Mac was born." + +"Yes, and I answered him in detail, assuring him of your complete +recovery, and expressing my hope that he would never again burden you +until with God's help he had mastered the sin that had been his undoing." + +Mrs. Clarke shook her head impatiently. + +"You and Macpherson never understood about father. He came to this +country without a friend or a relation except mother and me. Then she +died, and he worked day and night to keep me in a good boarding-school, +and to give me every advantage that a girl could have. Then his health +broke, and he couldn't sleep, and he began taking drugs. Oh, I don't see +how anybody could blame him, after all he had been through!" + +"For whatever sacrifices he made, he was amply rewarded," the bishop +said. "Few fathers have the satisfaction of seeing their daughters more +successfully established in life." + +"Yes, but what has it all come to for him? Made to feel his disgrace, +aware of Macpherson's constant disapproval--I don't wonder he chose to +give me up entirely." + +"It was much the best course for all concerned," said the bishop, with +the assured tone of one who enjoys the full confidence of Providence. +"The fact that he had made shipwreck of his own life was no reason for +him to make shipwreck of yours. I remember saying those very words to +him when he told me of Mr. Clarke's attitude. Painful as was your +decision, you did quite right in yielding to our judgment in the matter +and letting him go." + +"But Macpherson ought not to have asked it of me. He's so good and kind +and good about most things, that I don't see how he could have felt the +way he did about father." + +The bishop laid a consoling hand on her arm. + +"Your husband was but protecting you and himself against untold +annoyance. Think of what it would have meant for a man of Mr. Clarke's +position to have a person of your father's habits a member of his +household!" + +"But father was perfectly gentle and harmless--more like an afflicted +child than anything else. When he was without an engagement he would go +for weeks at a time, happy with his books and his music, without +breaking over at all." + +"Ah, yes! But what about the influence of his example on your growing +son? Imagine the humiliation to your child." + +Mrs. Clarke's vulnerable spot was touched. + +"I had forgotten Mac!" she said. "He must be my first consideration, +mustn't he? I never intend for him to bear any burden that I can bear for +him. And yet, how father would have adored him, how proud he would have +been of his voice! But there, you must forgive me for bringing up this +painful subject. It is only when I think of father getting old and being +ill, possibly in want, with nobody in the world--" + +"Now, now, my dear lady," said the bishop, "you are indulging in morbid +fancies. Your father knows that with a stroke of the pen he can procure +all the financial assistance from you he may desire. As to his being +unhappy, I doubt it extremely. My recollection of him is of a very +placid, amiable man living more in his dreams than in reality." + +Mrs. Clarke smiled through her tears. + +"You are quite right. He didn't ask much of life. A book in his hand and +a child on his knee meant happiness for him." + +"And those he can have wherever he is," said her spiritual adviser. "Now +I want you to turn away from all these gloomy forebodings and leave the +matter entirely in God's hands." + +"And you think I have done my duty?" + +"Assuredly. It is your poor father who has failed to do his. You are a +model wife and an almost too devoted mother. You are zealous in your work +at the cathedral; you--" + +"There!" said Mrs. Clarke, smiling, "I know I don't deserve all those +compliments, but they do help me. Now let's talk of something else while +I give you a fresh cup of tea. Tell me what the board did yesterday about +the foreign mission fund." + +The bishop, relieved to see the conversation drifting into calmer waters, +accepted the second cup and the change of topic with equal satisfaction. +His specialty was ministering to the sorrows of the very rich, but he +preferred to confine his spiritual visits to the early part of the +afternoon, leaving the latter part free for tea-drinking and the +ecclesiastical gossip so dear to his heart. + +"Well," he said, leaning back luxuriously in his deep willow chair, +"we carried our point after some difficulty. Too many of our good +directors take refuge in the old excuse that charity should begin at +home. It should, my dear Elise, but as I have said before, it should +not end there!" + +Having delivered himself of this original observation, the bishop helped +himself to another sandwich. + +"The special object of my present visit," he said, "aside from the +pleasure it always gives me to be in your delightful home, is to interest +you and your good husband in a mission we are starting in Mukden, a most +ungodly place, I fear, in Manchuria. A thousand dollars from Mr. Clarke +at this time would be most acceptable, and I shall leave it to you, my +dear lady, to put the matter before him, with all the tact and persuasion +for which you are so justly noted." + +Mrs. Clarke smiled wearily. + +"I will do what I can, Bishop. But I hate to burden him with one more +demand. Since he has bought these two new factories, he is simply worked +to death. I get so cross with all the unreasonable demands the employees +make on him. They are never satisfied. The more he yields, the more they +demand. It's begging letters, petitions, lawsuits, strikes, until he is +driven almost crazy." + +The whirr of an approaching motor caused them both to look up. A grizzled +man of fifty got out and, after a decisive order to the chauffeur, turned +to join them. His movements were quick and nervous, and his eyes restless +under their shaggy gray brows. + +"Where's the boy?" was his first query after the greetings were over. + +"He went to choir practice. I thought surely he would come out with you. +Hadn't we better send the machine back for him?" + +"We were just speaking of that fine lad of yours," said the bishop, +helping himself to yet another sandwich. "Fine eyes, frank, engaging +manner! I suppose he is too young yet for you to be considering his +future calling?" + +"Indeed he isn't!" said Mrs. Clarke. "My heart is set on the law. Two of +his Clarke grandfathers have been on the bench." + +Mr. Clarke smiled somewhat grimly. + +"Mac hasn't evinced any burning ambition in any direction as yet." + +"Mac is only thirteen," said Mrs. Clarke with dignity; "all of his +teachers will tell you that he is wonderfully bright, but that he lacks +application. I think it is entirely their fault. They don't make the +lessons sufficiently interesting; they don't hold his attention. He has +been at three private schools, and they were all wretched. You know I am +thinking of trying a tutor this year." + +"I want her to send him to the public schools," Mr. Clarke said with the +air of detached paternity peculiar to American fathers. "I went to the +public schools. They gave me a decent start in life; that's about all you +can expect of a school." + +"True, true," said the bishop, his elbows on the arms of his chair, and +his fingers tapping each other meditatively. "I am the last person to +minimize the value of the public schools, but they were primarily +designed, Mr. Clarke, neither for your boy, nor mine. Their rules and +regulations were designed expressly for the children of the poor. I was +speaking on this subject only yesterday to Mrs. Conningsby Lee. She's +very indignant because her child was forced to submit to vaccination at +the hands of some unknown young physician appointed by the city. + +"I should feel like killing any one who vaccinated Mac without my +consent!" exclaimed Mrs. Clarke, "but I needn't worry. He wouldn't allow +it. Do you know we have never been able to persuade that child to be +vaccinated?" + +"And you don't propose for the State to do what you can't do, do you?" +Mr. Clarke said, pinching her cheek. + +"What Mrs. Clarke says is not without weight," said the bishop, gallantly +coming to her rescue. "There are few things upon which I wax more +indignant than the increasing interference of the State with the home. +This hysterical agitation against child labor, for instance; while +warranted in exceptional cases, it is in the main destructive of the +formation of the habit of industry which cannot be acquired too young. +When the State presumes to teach a mother how to feed her child, when and +where to educate it, when and where to send it to work, the State goes +too far. There is nothing more dangerous to the family than the present +paternalistic and pauperizing trend of legislation." + +"I wish you would preach that to the factory inspectors," said Mr. +Clarke, with a wry smile. "Between the poor mothers who are constantly +trying to get the children into the factory, and the inspectors who are +trying to keep them out, I have my hands full." + +"A mother's love," said the bishop, who evidently had different rules +for mothers and fathers, "a mother's intuition is the most unerring +guide for the conduct of her child; and the home, however humble, is its +safest refuge." + +Mrs. Clarke glanced anxiously down the poplar-bordered driveway. Her +mother's intuition suggested that as it was now five-thirty, Mac must +have been engaged in some more diverting pastime than praising the Lord +with psalms and thanksgiving. + +"Your theory then, Bishop," said Mr. Clarke, who was evincing an unusual +interest in the subject, "carried to its legitimate conclusion, would do +away with all state interference? No compulsory education or child-labor +laws, or houses of correction?" + +"Oh, I don't think the bishop means that at all!" said Mrs. Clarke. "But +he is perfectly right about a mother knowing what is best for her child. +Take Mac, for instance. Nobody has ever understood him, but me. What +other people call wilfulness is really sensitiveness. He can't bear to be +criticized, he--" + +The sudden appearance of a limping object skirting the bushes caused her +to break off abruptly. + +"Who on earth is that over there beyond the fountain?" she asked. "Why, +upon my word, it's Mac!--Mac!" she called anxiously. "Come here!" + +The boy shamefacedly retraced his steps and presented himself on the +piazza. His shoes and stockings were covered with mud; the frills on his +shirt were torn and dirty; one eye was closed. + +"Why, my darling child!" cried his mother, her listless, detached air +giving place to one of acute concern, "you've been in an accident!" + +She had flown to him and enveloped him, mud and all, in her gauzy +embrace--an embrace from which Mac struggled to escape. + +"I'm all right," he insisted impatiently. "Those kids back of the +cathedral got to bothering us, and we--" + +"You mean those rowdies in the alley of whom Mason is always +complaining?" demanded the bishop, sternly. + +"Yes, sir. They were throwing rocks and stepping on the new walk--" + +"And you were helping the janitor keep them out?" broke in Mrs. Clarke. +"Isn't it an outrage, Bishop, that these children can't go to their choir +practice without being attacked by those dreadful ruffians?" + +"You are quite sure you boys weren't to blame?" asked Mr. Clarke. + +"Now, Father!" protested his wife, "how can you? When Mac has just told +us he was helping the janitor?" + +"It is no new thing, Mr. Clarke," said the bishop, solemnly shaking his +head. "We have had to contend with that disreputable element back of us +for years. On two occasions I have had to complain to the city +authorities. A very bad neighborhood, I am told, very bad indeed." + +"But, Mac dearest," pursued his mother anxiously as she tried to brush +the dried mud out of his hair. "Were you the only boy who stayed to help +Mason keep them out?" + +Mac jerked his head away irritably. + +"Oh! It wasn't that way, Mother. You see--" + +"That's Mac all over," cried Mrs. Clarke. "He wouldn't claim any credit +for the world. But look at the poor child's hands! Look at his eye! We +must take some action at once. Can't we swear out a warrant or something +against those hoodlums, and have them locked up?" + +"But, Elise," suggested Mr. Clarke, quizzically, "haven't you and the +bishop just been arguing that the State ought not to interfere with a +child? That the family ties, the mother's guidance--" + +"My dear Mr. Clarke," interrupted the bishop, "this, I assure you, is an +exceptional case. These young desperados are destroying property; they +are lawbreakers, many of them doubtless, incipient criminals. Mrs. Clarke +is quite right; some action must be taken, has probably been taken +already. The janitor had instructions to swear out a warrant against the +next offender who in any way defaced the property belonging to the +cathedral." + +It was at this critical point that the telephone rang, and a maid +appeared to say that Mr. Clarke was wanted. The bishop took advantage of +the interruption to order his carriage and make his adieus. + +"You may be assured," he said at parting, "that I shall not allow this +matter to rest until the offenders are brought to justice. Good-by, +good-by, my little man. Bear in mind, my dear Elise, that Mukden +matter. Good-by." + +"And now, you poor darling!" said Mrs. Clarke in a relieved tone, as she +turned her undivided attention on her abused son, "you shall have a nice +hot bath and a compress on the poor eye, and whatever you want for your +dinner. You are as white as a sheet, and still trembling! You poor lamb!" + +Mr. Clarke met them at the drawing-room door: + +"Mac!" he demanded, and his face was stern, "did you have anything to do +with the breaking of the big window at the cathedral?" + +"No, sir," Mac faltered, kicking at the newel post. + +"You didn't even know it was broken?" + +"Oh, everybody was throwing rocks, and that old, crazy Mason--" + +"But I thought you were helping Mason?" + +"I was--that is--those alley micks--" + +"That will do!" his father said angrily. "I've just been notified to have +you at the juvenile court next Friday to answer a charge of destroying +property. This is a nice scrape for my son to get into! And you didn't +have the grit to tell the truth. You lied to me! You'll go to bed, sir, +without your dinner!" + +Mrs. Clarke's eyes were round with indignation, and she was on the point +of bursting into passionate protest when a warning glance from her +husband silenced her. With a sense of outraged maternity she flung a +protective arm about her son and swept him up the stairs. + +"Don't make a scene, Mac darling!" she whispered. "Mother knows you +didn't do it. You go up to bed like a little gentleman, and I'll slip a +tray up to you and come up myself the minute dinner is over." + +That night when the moon discovered Nance Molloy in Calvary Alley, it +also peeped through the window at Mac Clarke out at Hillcrest. Bathed, +combed, and comforted, he lay in a silk-draped bed while his mother sat +beside him fanning him. It would be pleasant to record that the prodigal +had confessed his sins and been forgiven. It would even be some comfort +to state that his guilty conscience was keeping him awake. Neither of +these facts, however, was true. Mac, lying on his back, watching the +square patch of moonlight on the floor, was planning darkest deeds of +vengeance on a certain dirty, tow-headed, bare-legged little girl, who +had twice got the better of him in the conflict of the day. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +JUVENILE COURT + + +The goddess of justice is popularly supposed to bandage her eyes in order +to maintain an impartial attitude, but it is quite possible that she does +it to keep from seeing the dreary court-rooms which are supposed to be +her abiding place. + +On the hot Friday morning following the fight, the big anteroom to the +juvenile court, which was formerly used for the police court, was just as +dirty and the air just as stale as in mid-winter, when the windows were +down and the furnace going. + +Scrub women came at dawn, to be sure, and smeared its floors with sour +mops, and occasionally a janitor brushed the cobwebs off the ceiling, but +the grime was more than surface deep, and every nook and cranny held the +foul odor of the unwashed, unkempt current of humanity that for so many +years had flowed through it. Ghosts of dead and gone criminals seemed to +hover over the place, drawn back through curiosity, to relive their own +sorry experiences in the cases of the young offenders waiting before the +bar of justice. + +On the bench at the rear of the room the delegation from Calvary Alley +had been waiting for over an hour. Mrs. Snawdor, despite her forebodings, +had achieved a costume worthy of the occasion, but Uncle Jed and Dan had +made no pretense at a toilet. As for Nance, she had washed her face as +far east and west as her ears and as far south as her chin; but the +regions beyond were unreclaimed. The shoe-string on her hair had been +replaced by a magenta ribbon, but the thick braids had not been +disturbed. Now that she had got over her fright, she was rather enjoying +the novelty and excitement of the affair. She had broken the law and +enjoyed breaking it, and the cop had pinched her. It was a game between +her and the cop, and the cop had won. She saw no reason whatever for +Uncle Jed and Dan to look so solemn. + +By and by a woman in spectacles took her into a small room across the +hall, and told her to sit on the other side of the table and not to +shuffle her feet. Nance explained about the mosquito bites, but the lady +did not listen. + +"What day is this?" asked the spectacled one, preparing to chronicle the +answers in a big book. + +"Friday," said Nance, surprised that she could furnish information to so +wise a person. + +"What day of the month?" + +"Day before rent day." + +The corner of the lady's mouth twitched, and Nance glanced at her +suspiciously. + +"Can you repeat these numbers after me? Four, seven, nine, three, ten, +six, fourteen." + +Nance was convinced now that the lady was crazy, but she rattled them +off glibly. + +"Very good! Now if the little hand of your clock was at twelve, and the +big hand at three, what time would it be?" + +Nance pondered the matter deeply. + +"Five after twelve!" she answered triumphantly. + +"No; try again." + +Nance was eager to oblige, but she had the courage of her convictions and +held her point. + +"Wouldn't it be a quarter past?" suggested the examiner. + +"No, ma'am, it wouldn't. Our clock runs ten minutes slow." + +The grave face behind the spectacles broke into a smile; then business +was resumed. + +"Shut your eyes and name as many objects as you can without stopping, +like this: trees, flowers, birds. Go ahead." + +"Trees, flowers, birds, cats, dogs, fight, barrel, slop, mud, ashes." + +"Go on, quicker--keep it up. Nuts, raisins, cake--" + +"Cake, stove, smoke, tub, wash-board, scrub, rag, tub, stove, ashes." + +"Keep it up!" + +"I dunno no more." + +"We can't get beyond ashes, eh?" said the lady. "Now suppose you tell me +what the following words mean. Charity?" + +"Is it a organization?" asked Nance doubtfully. + +"Justice?" + +"I dunno that one." + +"Do you know what God is?" + +Nance felt that she was doing badly. If her freedom depended on her +passing this test, she knew the prison bars must be already closing on +her. She no more knew what God is than you or I know, but the spectacled +lady must be answered at any cost. + +"God," she said laboriously, "God is what made us, and a cuss word." + +Many more questions followed before she was sent back to her place +between Uncle Jed and Mrs. Snawdor, and Dan was led away in turn to +receive his test. + +Meanwhile Uncle Jed was getting restless. Again and again he consulted +his large nickel-plated watch. + +"I ought to be getting to bed," he complained. "I won't get more 'n four +hours' sleep as it is." + +"Here comes the Clarke boy!" exclaimed Nance, and all eyes were turned in +the direction of the door. + +The group that presented itself at the entrance was in sharp contrast to +its surroundings. Mac Clarke, arrayed in immaculate white, was flanked on +one side by his distinguished-looking father and on the other by his +father's distinguished-looking lawyer. The only evidence that the +aristocratic youth had ever come into contact with the riffraff of +Calvary Alley was the small patch of court-plaster above his right eye. + +"Tell the judge we are here," said Mr. Clarke briskly to his lawyer. "Ask +him to get through with us as soon as possible. I have an appointment at +twelve-thirty." + +The lawyer made his way up the aisle and disappeared through the +door which all the morning had been swallowing one small offender +after another. + +Almost immediately a loud voice called from the platform: + +"Case of Mac Clarke! Nance Molloy! Dan Lewis!" And Nance with a sudden +leap of her heart, knew that her time had come. + +In the inner room, where the juvenile cases had a private hearing, the +judge sat at a big desk, scanning several pages of type-written paper. He +was a young judge with a keen, though somewhat weary, face and eyes, full +of compassionate knowledge. But Nance did not see the judge; her gaze was +riveted upon her two arch enemies: Mason, with his flat nose and +pugnacious jaw, and "Old Cock-eye," the policeman who looked strangely +unfamiliar with his helmet off. + +"Well, Mr. Mason," said the judge when the three small offenders had +been ranged in front of the desk, with the witnesses grouped behind them, +"I'll ask you to tell me just what took place last Saturday afternoon at +the cathedral." + +Mason cleared his throat and, with evident satisfaction, proceeded to set +forth his version of the story: + +"I was sweeping out the vestibule, your Honor, when I heard a lot of +yelling and knew that a fight was on. It's that away every Saturday +afternoon that I ain't on the spot to stop it. I run down through the +cathedral and out to the back gate. The alley was swarming with a mob of +fighting, yelling children. Then I see these two boys a-fighting each +other up at the end of the alley, and before I can get to 'em, this here +little girl flings herself between 'em, and the big boy picks up a rock +and heaves it straight th'u the cathedral window." + +"Well, Mac," said the judge, turning to the trim, white-clad figure +confronting him--a figure strangely different from the type that +usually stood there. "You have heard what the janitor charges you with. +Are you guilty?" + +"Yes, sir," said Mac. + +"The breaking of the window was an accident?" + +Mac glanced quickly at his father's lawyer, then back at the judge. + +"Yes, sir." + +"But you were fighting in the alley?" + +"I was keeping the alley boys out of the cathedral yard." + +"That's a lie!" came in shrill, indignant tones from the little girl at +his elbow. + +"There seems to be some difference of opinion here," said the judge, +putting his hand over his mouth to repress a smile at the vehemence of +the accusation. "Suppose we let this young lady give her version of it." + +Nance jerking her arm free from Mrs. Snawdor's restraining hand, plunged +breathlessly into her story. + +"He was settin' on the fence, along with a parcel of other guys, a-makin' +faces an' callin' names long afore we even took no notice of 'em." + +"Both sides is to blame, your Honor," interposed Mason, "there ain't a +day when the choir rehearses that I don't have to go out and stop 'em +fighting." + +"Well, in this case who started the trouble?" asked the judge. + +Mrs. Snawdor clutched at Nance, but it was too late. + +"I did," she announced. + +The judge looked puzzled. + +"Why, I thought you said the choir boys began it by sitting on the fence +and making faces and calling names." + +"Shucks," said Nance, contemptuously, "we kin beat 'em makin' faces an' +callin' names." + +"Well, how did you start the fight?" + +"That there big boy dared me to step in the concrete. Didn't you now?" + +Mac stood looking straight ahead of him and refused to acknowledge +her presence. + +"It strikes me," said the judge, "that you choir boys could be better +employed than in teasing and provoking the children in the alley. What do +you think, Mac?" + +Mac had been provided with no answer to this question, so he +offered none. + +"Unfortunately," the judge continued, "it is the fathers of boys like you +who have to take the punishment. Your father will have to pay for the +window. But I want to appeal to your common sense and your sense of +justice. Look at me, Mac. You have had advantages and opportunities +beyond most boys. You are older than these children. Don't you think, +instead of using your influence to stir up trouble and put us to this +annoyance and expense, it would be much better for you to keep on your +side of the fence and leave these people back of the cathedral alone?" + +"Yes, sir," said Mac, perfunctorily. + +"And you promise me to do this?" + +"Yes, sir." + +"We will give you a chance to make your promise good. But remember your +name is on our record; if there is any more trouble whatever, you will +hear from us. Mr. Clarke, I look to you to see that your son behaves +himself. You may step aside please. And now, boy, what is your name?" + +"Dan Lewis." + +"Oh, yes. I think we have met before. What have you to say for yourself?" + +The shoeless, capless, unwashed boy, with his ragged trousers hitched to +his shoulders by one suspender, frowned up at the judge through a fringe +of tumbled hair. + +"Nothin'," he said doggedly. + +"Where do you live?" + +"I live at home when me maw's there." + +"Where is she now?" + +This question caused considerable nudging and side-glancing on the part +of Mrs. Snawdor. + +"She's went to the country," said Dan. + +"Is your father living?" + +"I dunno." + +"Did you go to school last year?" + +"No." + +"Why not?" + +"Didn't have no shoes." + +"Does your mother work?" + +This question brought more nudges and glances from Mrs. Snawdor, none of +which were lost on the boy. + +"Me mother don't have to work," he said defiantly. "She's a lady." + +The judge cleared his throat and called Mrs. Snawdor sharply to order. + +"Well, Dan," he said, "I am sorry to see you back here again. What were +you up for before?" + +"Chuckin' dice." + +"And didn't I tell you that it would go hard with you if you came back?" + +"Yes, sir, but I never chucked no more dice." + +"And I suppose in spite of the way your mouth is bruised, you'll tell me +you weren't mixed up in this fight?" + +The boy stood staring miserably at the wall with eyes in which fear and +hurt pride struggled for mastery. + +"Yer Honor!" the policeman broke in. "It's three times lately I've found +him sleepin' in doorways after midnight. Him and the gang is a bad lot, +yer Honor, a scrappin' an' hoppin' freights an' swipin' junk, an' one +thing an' another." + +"I never swiped no junk," Dan said hopelessly, "I never swiped nothink +in my life." + +"Is there no definite charge against this boy?" + +"Well, sir," said Mason, "he is always a-climbin' up the steeple of the +cathedral." + +Dan, sullen, frightened, and utterly unable to defend himself, looked +from the officer to the janitor with the wide, distrustful eyes of a +cornered coyote. + +Suddenly a voice spoke out in his behalf, a shrill, protesting, +passionate voice. + +"He ain't no worser nor nobody else! Ast Mammy, ast Uncle Jed! He's got +to sleep somewheres when his maw fergits to come home! Ever'body goes an' +picks on Danny 'cause he ain't got nobody to take up fer him. 'T ain't +fair!" Nance ended her tirade in a burst of tears. + +"There, there," said the judge, "it's going to be fair this time. You +stop crying now and tell me your name?" + +"Nance Molloy," she gulped, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. + +"How old are you?" + +"'Leven, goin' on twelve." + +"Well, take that gum out of your mouth and stop crying." + +He consulted his papers and then looked at her over his glasses. + +"Nancy," he said, "are you in the habit of slipping into the cathedral +when the janitor is not around?" + +"Yes, sir." + +"What for?" + +"Lookin' at the pretties, an' seein' if there's any nickels under +the seats." + +"You want to buy candy, I suppose?" + +"No, sir, a bureau." + +Even the tired-looking probation officer looked up and smiled. + +"What does a little girl like you want with a bureau?" asked the judge. + +"So's I won't have to keep me duds under the bed." + +"That's a commendable ambition. But what about these other charges; +truancy from school, fighting with the boys, throwing mud, and so on?" + +"I never th'ow mud, 'ceptin' when I'm th'owin' back," explained Nance. + +"A nice distinction," said the judge. "Is this child's mother present?" + +Mrs. Snawdor, like a current that has been restrained too long, surged +eagerly forward, and overflowed her conversational banks completely. + +"Well, I ain't exactly her mother, but I'm just the same as her mother. +You ast anybody in Calvary Alley. Ast Mr. Burks here, ast Mrs. Smelts +what I been to her ever since she was a helpless infant baby. When Bud +Molloy lay dyin' he says to the brakeman, 'You tell my wife to be good +to Nance,'" + +"So she's your stepchild?" + +"Yes, sir, an' Bud Molloy was as clever a man as ever trod shoe-leather. +So was Mr. Yager. Nobody can't say I ever had no trouble with my two +first. They wasn't what you might call as smart a man as Snawdor, but +they wasn't no fool." + +It was a peculiarity of Mrs. Snawdor's that she always spoke of her +previous husbands as one, notwithstanding the fact that the virtues +which she attributed to them could easily have been distributed among +half a dozen. + +"Well, well," said the judge impatiently, "what have you to say about the +character of this little girl?" + +Mrs. Snawdor shifted her last husband's hat from the right side of her +head to the left, and began confidentially: + +"Well I'll tell you, Jedge, Nance ain't so bad as whut they make her out. +She's got her faults. I ain't claimin' she ain't. But she ain't got a +drop of meanness in her, an' that's more than I can say for some grown +folks present." Mrs. Snawdor favored Mr. Mason with such a sudden and +blighting glance that the janitor quailed visibly. + +"Do you have trouble controlling her?" asked the judge. + +"Nothin' to speak of. She's a awful good worker, Nance is, when you git +her down to it. But her trouble is runnin'. Let anything happen in the +alley, an' she's up an' out in the thick of it. I'm jes' as apt to come +home an' find her playin' ball with the baby in her arms, as not. But I +don't have to dress her down near as often as I used to." + +"Then you wouldn't say she was a bad child?" + +Mrs. Snawdor's emphatic negative was arrested in the utterance by Mr. +Mason's accusing eye. + +"Well, I never seen no child that was a angel," she compromised. + +"Does Nancy go to school?" the judge asked. + +"Well, I was threatenin' her the other day, if she didn't behave herself, +I was goin' to start her in again." + +"I ain't been sence Christmas," volunteered Nance, still sniffling. + +"You shet yer mouth," requested Mrs. Snawdor with great dignity. + +"Why hasn't she been to school since Christmas?" the judge +proceeded sternly. + +"Well, to tell you the truth, it was on account of Mr. Snawdor. He got +mad 'bout the vaccination. He don't believe in it. Says it gives you the +rheumatism. He's got a iron ring on ever' one of the childern. Show yours +to the jedge, Nance! He says ef they has to vaccinate 'em to educate 'em, +they ain't goin' to de neither one." + +"But don't you know that we have compulsory education in this State? +Hasn't the truant officer been to see you?" + +Mrs. Snawdor looked self-conscious and cast down her eyes. + +"Well, not as many times as Snawdor says he has. Snawdor's that +jealous he don't want me to have no gentlemen visitors. When I see the +truant officer or the clock-man comin', I just keep out of sight to +avoid trouble." + +The judge's eyes twinkled, then grew stern. "In the meanwhile," he said, +"Nancy is growing up in ignorance. What sort of a woman are you to let a +child go as ragged and dirty as this one and to refuse her an education?" + +"Well, schools ain't what they wuz when me an' you wuz young," Mrs. +Snawdor said argumentatively. "They no more'n git a child there than they +want to cut out their palets or put spectacles on her. But honest, Judge, +the truth of it is I can't spare Nance to go to school. I got a job +scrubbin' four nights in the week at the post-office, an' I got to have +some help in the daytime. I leave it to you if I ain't." + +"That's neither here nor there," said the judge. "It is your business to +have her at school every morning and to see that she submits to the +regulations. You are an able-bodied woman and have an able-bodied +husband. Why don't you move into a decent house in a decent +neighborhood?" + +"There ain't nothin' the matter with our neighborhood. If you'd jes' git +'em to fix the house up some. The roof leaks something scandalous." + +"Who is your landlord?" + +"Well, they tell me _he_ is," said Mrs. Snawdor, pointing a malicious +finger at Mr. Clarke. This _coup d'etat_ caused considerable diversion, +and the judge had to call the court sharply to order. + +"Is that your husband in the rear of the room?" he asked Mrs. Snawdor. + +"Law, no; that's Mr. Burks, our boarder. I begged Snawdor to come, but +he's bashful." + +"Well, Mr. Burks, will you step forward and tell us what you know of this +little girl?" + +Uncle Jed cleared his throat, made a pass at the place where his front +hair used to be, and came forward. + +"Have you known this child long?" asked the judge. + +"Eleven years, going on twelve," said Uncle Jed, with a twinkle in his +small eyes, "me an' her grandpa fought side by side in the battle of +Chickasaw Bluffs." + +"So she comes of fighting stock," said the judge. "Do you consider her +incorrigible?" + +"Sir?" + +"Do you think her stepmother is able to control her?" + +Uncle Jed looked a trifle embarrassed. + +"Well, Mrs. Snawdor ain't whut you might say regular in her method. +Sometimes she's kinder rough on Nance, and then again she's a heap sight +too easy." + +"That's a God's truth!" Mrs. Snawdor agreed fervently from the rear. + +"Then you do not consider it altogether the child's fault?" + +"No, sir, I can't say as I do. She jes' gits the signals mixed +sometimes, that's all." + +The judge smiled. + +"So you think if she understood the signals, she'd follow them?" + +Uncle Jed's face became very earnest as he laid his hand on Nance's head. + +"I believe if this here little lass was to once git it into her head that +a thing was right, she'd do it if it landed her where it landed her paw, +at the foot of a forty-foot embankment with a engine a-top of her." + +"That's a pretty good testimony to her character," said the judge. "It's +our business, then, to see that she gets more definite instructions as to +the traffic laws of life. Nance, you and Dan step up here again." + +The children stood before him, breathing hard, looking him straight +in the face. + +"You have both been breaking the law. It's a serious thing to be up in +court. It is usually the first step on the down grade. But I don't +believe either of you have been wholly to blame. I am going to give you +one more chance and put you both on probation to Mrs. Purdy, to whom you +are to report once a week. Is Mrs. Purdy in the room?" + +An elderly little lady slipped forward and stood behind them with a +hand on the shoulder of each. Nance did not dare look around, but there +was something comforting and reassuring in that fat hand that lay on +her shoulder. + +"One more complaint against either of you," cautioned the judge +impressively, "and it will be the house of reform. If your families can't +make you behave, the State can. But we don't want to leave it to the +family or the State; we want to leave it to you. I believe you can both +make good, but you'll have to fight for it." + +Nance's irregular features broke into a smile. It was a quick, wide smile +and very intimate. + +"Fight?" she repeated, with a quizzical look at the judge. "I thought +that was what we was pinched fer." + + + + +CHAPTER V + +ON PROBATION + + +For a brief period Nance Molloy walked the paths of righteousness. The +fear of being "took up" proved a salutary influence, but permanent +converts are seldom made through fear of punishment alone. She was trying +by imitation and suggestion to grope her way upward, but the light she +climbed by was a borrowed light which swung far above her head and threw +strange, misleading shadows across her path. The law that allowed a man +to sell her fire-crackers and then punished her for firing them off, that +allowed any passer-by to kick her stone off the hop-scotch square and +punished her for hurling; the stone after him, was a baffling and +difficult thing to understand. + +At school it was no better. The truant officer said she must go every +day, yet when she got there, there was no room for her. She had to sit in +the seat with two other little girls who bitterly resented the intrusion. + +"You oughtn't to be in this grade anyhow!" declared one of them. "A girl +ought to be in the primer that turns her letters the wrong way." + +"Well, my letters spell the words right," said Nance hotly, "an' that's +more'n yours do, Pie-Face!" + +Whereupon the girl stuck out her tongue, and Nance promptly shoved her +off the end of the seat, with the result that her presence was requested +in the office at the first recess. + +"If you would learn to make your letters right, the girls would not tease +you," said the principal, kindly. "Why do you persist in turning them the +wrong way?" + +Now Nance had learned to write by copying the inscriptions from the +reverse side of the cathedral windows, and she still believed the +cathedral was right. But she liked the principal and she wanted very much +to get a good report, so she gave in. + +"All right," she said good-naturedly, "I'll do 'em your way. An' ef you +ketch me fightin' agin, I hope you'll lick hell outen me!" + +The principal, while decrying its forcible expression, applauded her good +intention, and from that time on took special interest in her. + +Nance's greatest drawback these days was Mrs. Snawdor. That worthy lady, +having her chief domestic prop removed and finding the household duties +resting too heavily upon her own shoulders, conceived an overwhelming +hatred for the school, the unknown school-teacher, and the truant +officer, for whom she had hitherto harbored a slightly romantic interest. + +"I ain't got a mite of use for the whole lay-out," she announced in a +sweeping condemnation one morning when Nance was reminding her for the +fourth time that she had to have a spelling book. "They' re forever +wantin' somethin'. It ain't no use beginnin' to humor 'em. Wasn't they +after me to put specs on Fidy last week? I know their tricks, standin' in +with eye-doctors an' dentists! An' here I been fer goin' on ten years, +tryin' to save up to have my own eye-teeth drawed an' decent ones put in. +Snawdor promised when we got married that would be his first present to +me. Well, if I ever get 'em, they _will_ be his first present." + +"Teacher says you oughtn't to leave the milk settin' uncovered like that; +it gits germans in it," said Nance. + +"I'd like to know whose milk-can this is?" demanded Mrs. Snawdor +indignantly. "You tell her when she pays fer my milk, it 'll be time +enough fer her to tell me what to do with it. You needn't be scurryin' so +to git off. I'm fixin' to go to market. You'll have to stay an' 'tend to +the children 'til I git back." + +"But I'm tryin' to git a good report," urged Nance. "I don't want +to be late." + +"I'll send a excuse by Fidy, an' say you 're sick in bed. Then you kin +stay home all day an' git the house cleaned up." + +"Naw, I won't," said Nance rebelliously, "I ain't goin' to miss ag'in." + +"You're goin' to shut up this minute, you sass-box, or I'll take you back +to that there juvenile court. Git me a piece o' paper an' a pencil." + +With great effort she wrote her note while Nance stood sullenly by, +looking over her shoulder. + +"You spelled teacher's name with a little letter," Nance muttered. + +"I done it a-purpose," said Mrs. Snawdor vindictively, "I ain't goin' to +spell her with a capital; she ain't worth it." + +Nance would undoubtedly have put up a more spirited fight for her rights, +had she not been anxious to preserve peace until the afternoon. It was +the day appointed by the court for her and Dan Lewis to make their first +report to Mrs. Purdy, whose name and address had been given them on a +card. She had washed her one gingham apron for the occasion, and had +sewed up the biggest rent in her stockings. The going forth alone with +Dan on an errand of any nature was an occasion of importance. It somehow +justified those coupled initials, enclosed in a gigantic heart, that she +had surreptitiously drawn on the fence. + +After her first disappointment in being kept at home, she set about her +task of cleaning the Snawdor flat with the ardor of a young Hercules +attacking the Augean stables. First she established the twins in the hall +with a string and a bent pin and the beguiling belief that if they fished +long enough over the banister they would catch something. Next she +anchored the screaming baby to a bedpost and reduced him to subjection by +dipping his fingers in sorghum, then giving him a feather. The absorbing +occupation of plucking the feather from one sticky hand to the other +rendered him passive for an hour. + +These preliminaries being arranged, Nance turned her attention to the +work in hand. Her method consisted in starting at the kitchen, which was +in front, and driving the debris back, through the dark, little, middle +room, until she landed it all in a formidable mass in Mrs. Snawdor's +bedroom at the rear. This plan, pursued day after day, with the general +understanding that Mrs. Snawdor was going to take a day off soon and +clean up, had resulted in a condition of indescribable chaos. As Mr. +Snawdor and the three younger children slept in the rear room at night, +and Mrs. Snawdor slept in it the better part of the day, the hour for +cleaning seldom arrived. + +To-day as Nance stood in the doorway of this stronghold of dirt and +disorder, she paused, broom in hand. The floor, as usual, was littered +with papers and strings, the beds were unmade, the wash-stand and dresser +were piled high with a miscellaneous collection, and the drawers of each +stood open, disgorging their contents. On the walls hung three enlarged +crayons of bridal couples, in which the grooms were different, but the +bride the same. On the dusty window sill were bottles and empty spools, +broken glass chimneys, and the clock that ran ten minutes slow. The +debris not only filled the room, but spilled out into the fire-escape and +down the rickety iron ladders and flowed about the garbage barrels in the +passage below. + +It was not this too familiar scene, however, that made Nance pause with +her hand on the door-knob and gaze open-mouthed into the room. It was the +sight of Mr. Snawdor sitting on the side of the bed with his back toward +her, wiping his little red-rimmed eyes on a clean pocket handkerchief, +and patting his trembling mouth with the hand that was not under the +quilt. Heretofore Nance had regarded Mr. Snawdor as just one of the many +discomforts with which the family had to put up. His whining protests +against their way of living had come to be as much a matter of course as +the creaking door or the smoking chimney. Nobody ever thought of +listening to what he was saying, and everybody pushed and ordered him +about, including Nance, who enjoyed using Mrs. Snawdor's highhanded +method with him, when that lady was not present. + +But when she saw him sitting there with his back to her, crying, she was +puzzled and disturbed. As she watched, she saw him fumble for something +under the quilt, then lift a shining pistol, and place the muzzle to his +thin, bald temple. With a cry of terror, she dashed forward and knocked +the weapon from his hand. + +"You put that down!" she cried, much as she would have commanded William +J. to leave the butcher knife alone. "Do you want to kill yerself?" + +Mr. Snawdor started violently, then collapsing beside the bed, confessed +that he did. + +"What fer?" asked Nance, terror giving way to sheer amazement. + +"I want to quit!" cried Mr. Snawdor, hysterically. "I can't stand it any +longer. I'm a plumb failure and I ain't goin' to ever be anything else. +If your maw had taken care of what I had, we wouldn't have been where we +are at. Look at the way we live! Like pigs in a pen! We're nothing but +pore white trash; that's what we are!" + +Nance stood beside him with her hand on his shoulder. Poor white trash! +That was what the Clarke boy had called her. And now Mr. Snawdor, the +nominal head of the family, was acknowledging it to be true. She looked +about her in new and quick concern. + +"I'm going to clean up in here, too," she said. "I don't keer whut mammy +says. It'll look better by night; you see if it don't." + +"It ain't only that--" said Mr. Snawdor; then he pulled himself up and +looked at her appealingly. "You won't say nuthin' about this mornin', +will you, Nance?" + +"Not if you gimme the pistol," said Nance. + +When he was gone, she picked up the shining weapon and gingerly dropped +it out on the adjoining roof. Then her knees felt suddenly wobbly, and +she sat down. What if she had been a minute later and Mr. Snawdor had +pulled the trigger? She shivered as her quick imagination pictured the +scene. If Mr. Snawdor felt like that about it, there was but one thing to +do; to get things cleaned up and try to keep them so. + +Feeling very important and responsible, she swept and straightened and +dusted, while her mind worked even faster than her nimble hands. +Standards are formed by comparisons, and so far Nance's opportunity for +instituting comparisons had been decidedly limited. + +"We ain't pore white, no such a thing!" she kept saying to herself. "Our +house ain't no worser nor nobody else's. Mis' Smelts is just the same, +an' if Levinski's is cleaner, it smells a heap worse." + +Dinner was over before Mrs. Snawdor returned. She came into the kitchen +greatly ruffled as to hair and temper from having been caught by the +hook left hanging over the banisters by William J. + +"Gimme the rocker!" she demanded. "My feet hurt so bad I'd just like to +unscrew 'em an' fling 'em in the dump heap." + +"Where you been at?" asked Uncle Jed, who was cutting himself a slice of +bread from the loaf. + +"I been down helpin' the new tenant move in on the first floor." + +"Any childern?" asked Nance and Lobelia in one breath. + +"No; just a foreign-lookin' old gentleman, puttin' on as much airs as if +he was movin' into the Walderastoria. Nobody knows his name or where he +comes from. Ike Lavinski says he plays the fiddle at the theayter. Talk +about your helpless people! I had to take a hand in gettin' his things +unloaded. He liked to never got done thankin' me." + +Mr. Snawdor, who had been sitting in dejected silence before his +untouched food, pushed his plate back and sighed deeply. + +"Now, fer heaven sake, Snawdor," began his wife in tones of exasperation, +"can't I do a kind act to a neighbor without a-rufflin' yer feathers the +wrong way?" + +"I cleaned up yer room while you was gone," said Nance, eager to divert +the conversation from Mr. Snawdor. "Uncle Jed an' me carried the trash +down an' it filled the ash barrel clean up to the top." + +"Well, I hope an' pray you didn't throw away my insurance book. I was +aimin' to clean up, myself, to-morrow. What on earth's the matter with +Rosy Velt?" + +Rosy, who had been banished to the kitchen for misbehavior, had been +conducting a series of delicate experiments, with disastrous results. She +had been warned since infancy never to put a button up her nose, but +Providence having suddenly placed one in her way, and at the same time +engaged her mother's attention elsewhere, the opportunity was too +propitious to be lost. + +Nance took advantage of her stepmother's sudden departure to cheer up +Mr. Snawdor. + +"We're gittin' things cleaned up," she said, "I can't work no more to-day +though, 'cause I got to report to the lady." + +"Ain't you goin' to slick yerself up a bit?" asked Uncle Jed, making a +futile effort to smooth her hair. + +"I have," said Nance, indignantly, "Can't you see I got on a clean +apron?" + +Uncle Jed's glance was not satisfied as it traveled from the dirty dress +below the apron to the torn stockings and shabby shoes. + +"Why don't you wear the gold locket?" suggested Mrs. Snawdor, who now +returned with Rosy in one hand and the button in the other. + +The gold locket was the one piece of jewelry in the family and when it +was suspended on a black ribbon around Nance's neck, it filled her with a +sense of elegance. So pleased was she with its effect that as she went +out that afternoon, she peeped in on the new tenant in the hope that he +would notice it. She found him leaning over a violin case, and her +interest was fired at once. + +"Can you play on the fiddle?" she demanded. + +The small, elderly man in the neat, black suit lifted his head and smiled +at her over his glasses. + +"Yes, my little friend," he said in a low, refined voice, "I will play +for you to dance sometime. You would like that? Yes?" + +Nance regarded him gravely. + +"Say, are you a Polock or a Dago?" she asked. + +He gave an amused shrug. + +"I am neither. My name is Mr. Demorest. And you are my little +neighbor, perhaps?" + +"Third floor on the right," said Nance, adding in a business-like tone, +"I'll be down to dance to-night." + +She would have liked very much to stay longer, for the old gentleman was +quite unlike any one she had ever talked to before, but the card in her +hand named the hour of two, and back of the card was Mrs. Purdy, and +back of Mrs. Purdy the juvenile court, the one thing in life so far whose +authority Nance had seen fit to acknowledge. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +BUTTERNUT LANE + + +At the corner Dan Lewis stood aside like a deposed chieftain while his +companions knelt in an excited ring, engrossed in a game sanctioned by +custom and forbidden by law. Even to Nance's admiring eye he looked +dirtier and more ragged than usual, and his scowl deepened as she +approached. + +"I ain't goin'," he said. + +"Yes, you are, too. Why not?" said Nance, inconsequently. + +"Aw, it ain't no use." + +"Ain't you been to school?" + +"Yep, but I ain't goin' to that lady's house. I ain't fit." + +"You got to go to take me," said Nance, diplomatically. "I don't know +where Butternut Lane's at." + +"You could find it, couldn't you?" + +Nance didn't think she could. In fact she developed a sudden dependence +wholly out of keeping with her usual self-reliance. + +This seemed to complicate matters for Dan. He stood irresolutely kicking +his bare heels against the curb and then reluctantly agreed to take her +as far as Mrs. Purdy's gate, provided nothing more was expected of him. + +Their way led across the city to a suburb, and they were hot and tired +before half the distance was covered. But the expedition was fraught with +interest for Nance. After the first few squares of sullen silence, Dan +seemed to forget that she was merely a girl and treated her with the +royal equality usually reserved for boys. So confidential did they become +that she ventured to put a question to him that had been puzzling her +since the events of the morning. + +"Say, Dan, when anybody kills hisself, is it murder?" + +"It's kinder murder. You wouldn't ketch me doin' it as long as I could +get something to eat." + +"You kin always git a piece of bread," said Nance. + +"You bet you can't!" said Dan with conviction. "I ain't had nothin' to +eat myself since yisterday noon." + +"Yer maw didn't come in last night?" + +"I 'spec' she went on a visit somewhere," said Dan, whose lips +trembled slightly despite the stump of a cigarette that he manfully +held between them. + +"Couldn't you git in a window?" + +"Nope; the shutters was shut. Maybe I don't wisht it was December, an' I +was fourteen!" + +"Sammy Smelts works an' he ain't no older'n me," said Nance. "You kin +git a fake certificate fer a quarter." + +Dan smiled bitterly. + +"Where'm I goin' to git the quarter? They won't let me sell things on the +street, or shoot craps, or work. Gee, I wisht I was rich as that Clarke +boy. Ike Lavinski says he buys a quarter's worth of candy at a time! He's +in Ike's room at school." + +"He wasn't there yesterday," said Nance. "Uncle Jed seen him with another +boy, goin' out the railroad track." + +"I know it. He played hookey. He wrote a excuse an' signed his maw's name +to it. Ike seen him do it. An' when the principal called up his maw this +mornin' an' ast her 'bout it, she up an' said she wrote it herself." + +Nance was not sure whether she was called upon to admire the astuteness +of Mac or his mother, so she did not commit herself. But she was keenly +interested. Ever since that day in the juvenile court she had been +haunted by the memory of a trim, boyish figure arrayed in white, and by a +pair of large brown eyes which disdainfully refused to glance in her +direction. + +"Say, Dan," she asked wistfully, "have you got a girl?" + +"Naw," said Dan disdainfully, "what do I keer about girls?" + +"I don't know. I thought maybe you had. I bet that there Clarke boy's +got two or three." + +"Let him have 'em," said Dan; then, finding the subject distasteful, he +added, "what's the matter with hookin' on behind that there wagon?" And +suiting the action to the word, they both went in hot pursuit. + +After a few jolting squares during which Nance courted death with her +flying skirts brushing the revolving wheels, the wagon turned into a side +street, and they were obliged to walk again. + +"I wonder if this ain't the place?" she said, as they came in sight of a +low, white house half smothered in beech-trees, with a flower garden at +one side, at the end of which was a vine-covered summer-house. + +"Here's where I beat it!" said Dan, but before he could make good his +intention, the stout little lady on the porch had spied them and came +hurrying down the walk, holding out both hands. + +"Well, if here aren't my probationers!" she cried in a warm, comfortable +voice which seemed to suggest that probationers were what she liked best +in the world. + +"Let me see, dear, your name is Mac?" + +"No, ma'am, it's Dan," said that youth, trying to put out the lighted +cigarette stump which he had hastily thrust into his pocket. + +"Ah! to be sure! And yours is--Mary?" + +"No, ma'am, it's Nance." + +"Why, of course!" cried the little lady, beaming at them, "I remember +perfectly." + +She was scarcely taller than they were as she walked between them, with +an arm about the shoulder of each. She wore a gray dress and a wide white +collar pinned with a round blue pin that just matched her round blue +eyes. On each side of her face was a springy white curl that bobbed up +and down as she walked. + +"Now," she said, with an expectant air, when they reached the house. +"Where shall we begin? Something to eat?" + +Her question was directed to Dan, and he flushed hotly. + +"No, ma'am," he said proudly. + +"Yes, ma'am," said Nance, almost in the same breath. + +"I vote 'Yes,' too; so the ayes have it," said Mrs. Purely gaily, leading +them through a neat hall into a neat kitchen, where they solemnly took +their seats. + +"My visitors always help me with the lemonade," said the purring little +lady, giving Nance the lemons to roll, and Dan the ice to crack. Then as +she fluttered about, she began to ask them vague and seemingly futile +questions about home and school and play. Gradually their answers grew +from monosyllables into sentences, until, by the time the lemonade was +ready to serve, Nance was completely thawed out and Dan was getting soft +around the edges. Things were on the way to positive conviviality when +Mrs. Purdy suddenly turned to Nance and asked her where she went to +Sunday school. + +Now Sunday school had no charms for Nance. On the one occasion when +curiosity had induced her to follow the stream of well-dressed children +into the side door of the cathedral, she had met with disillusion. It was +a place where little girls lifted white petticoats when they sat down and +straightened pink sashes when they got up, and put nickels in a basket. +Nance had had no lace petticoat or pink sash or nickel. She showed her +discomfort by misbehaving. + +"Didn't you ever go back?" asked Mrs. Purdy. + +"Nome. They didn't want me. I was bad, an' the teacher said Sunday school +was a place for good little girls." + +"My! my!" said Mrs. Purdy, "this will never do. And how about you, Dan? +Do you go?" + +"Sometimes I've went," said Dan. "I like it." + +While this conversation was going on Nance could not keep her eyes from +the open door. There was more sky and grass out there than she had ever +seen at one time before. The one green spot with which she was familiar +was the neat plot of lawn on each side of the concrete walk leading into +the cathedral, and that had to be viewed through a chink in the fence +and was associated with the words, "Keep Out." + +When all the lemonade was gone, and only one cookie left for politeness, +Mrs. Purdy took them into the sitting-room where a delicate-looking man +sat in a wheel-chair, carving something from a piece of wood. Nance's +quick eyes took in every detail of the bright, commonplace room; its gay, +flowered carpet and chintz curtains, its "fruit pieces" in wide, gold +frames, and its crocheted tidies presented a new ideal of elegance. + +There was a music-box on the wall in which small figures moved about to a +tinkling melody; there were charm strings of bright colored buttons, and +a spinning-wheel, and a pair of bellows, all of which Mrs. Purdy +explained at length. + +"Sister," said the man in the chair, feebly, "perhaps the children would +like to see my menagerie." + +"Why, dearie, of course they would," said Mrs. Purdy, "Shall I wheel you +over to the cabinet?" + +"I'll shove him," said Dan, making his first voluntary remark. + +"There now!" said Mrs. Purdy, "see how much stronger he is than I am! And +he didn't jolt you a bit, did he, dearie?" + +If the room itself was interesting, the cabinet was nothing short of +entrancing. It was full of carved animals in all manner of grotesque +positions. And the sick gentleman knew the name of each and kept saying +such funny things about them that Nance laughed hilariously, and Dan +forgot the prints of his muddy feet on the bright carpet, and even gave +up the effort to keep his hand over the ragged knee of his pants. + +"He knows all about live animals, too," chirped Mrs. Purdy. "You'll have +to come some day and go over to the park with us and see his squirrels. +There's one he found with a broken leg, and he mended it as good as new." + +The sun was slipping behind the trees before the children even thought of +going home. + +"Next Friday at three!" said Mrs. Purdy, cheerily waving them good-by. +"And we are going to see who has the cleanest face and the best report." + +"We sure had a good time," said Nance, as they hurried away through the +dusk. "But I'll git a lickin' all right when I git home." + +"I liked that there animal man," said Dan slowly, "an' them cookies." + +"Well, whatever made you lie to the lady 'bout bein' hungry?" + +"I never lied. She ast me if I wanted her to give me somethin' to eat. I +thought she meant like a beggar. I wasn't goin' to take it that way, but +I never minded takin' it like--like--company." + +Nance pondered the matter for a while silently; then she asked suddenly: + +"Say, Dan, if folks are borned poor white trash, they don't have to go on +bein' it, do they?" + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +AN EVICTION + + +The three chief diversions in Calvary Alley, aside from fights, were +funerals, arrests, and evictions. Funerals had the advantage of novelty, +for life departed less frequently than it arrived: arrests were in high +favor on account of their dramatic appeal, but the excitement, while +intense, was usually too brief to be satisfying; for sustained interest +the alley on the whole preferred evictions. + +The week after Nance and Dan had reported to Mrs. Purdy, rumor traveled +from house to house and from room to room that the rent man was putting +the Lewises out. The piquant element in the situation lay in the absence +of the chief actor. "Mis' Lewis" herself had disappeared, and nobody knew +where she was or when she would return. + +For many years the little cottage, sandwiched between Mr. Snawdor's "Bung +and Fawcett" shop and Slap Jack's saloon had been the scandal and, it +must be confessed the romance of the alley. It stood behind closed +shutters, enveloped in mystery, and no visitor ventured beyond its +threshold. The slender, veiled lady who flitted in and out at queer +hours, and whom rumor actually accused of sometimes arriving at the +corner in "a hack," was, despite ten years' residence, a complete +stranger to her neighbors. She was quiet and well-behaved; she wore good +clothes and shamefully neglected her child. These were the meager facts +upon which gossip built a tower of conjecture. + +As for Dan, he was as familiar an object in the alley as the sparrows in +the gutter or the stray cats about the garbage cans. Ever since he could +persuade his small legs to go the way he wanted them to, he had pursued +his own course, asking nothing of anybody, fighting for his meager +rights, and becoming an adept in evading the questions that seemed to +constitute the entire conversation of the adult world. All that he asked +of life was the chance to make a living, and this the authorities sternly +forbade until he should reach that advanced age of fourteen which seemed +to recede as he approached. Like most of the boys in the gang, he had +been in business since he was six; but it was business that changed its +nature frequently and had to be transacted under great difficulty. He had +acquired proficiency as a crap-shooter only to find that the profession +was not regarded as an honorable one; he had invested heavily in pins and +pencils and tried to peddle them out on the avenue, only to find himself +sternly taken in hand by a determined lady who talked to him about minors +and street trades. Shoe-shining had been tried; so had selling papers, +but each of these required capital, and Dan's appetite was of such a +demanding character that the acquisition of capital was well nigh +impossible. + +From that first day when the truant officer had driven him into the +educational fold, his problems had increased. It was not that he disliked +school. On the contrary he was ambitious and made heroic efforts to keep +up with the class; but it was up-hill work getting an education without +text-books. The city, to be sure, furnished these to boys whose mothers +applied for them in person, but Dan's mother never had time to come. The +cause of most of his trouble, however, was clothes; seatless trousers, +elbowless coats, brimless hats, constituted a series of daily +mortifications which were little short of torture. + +Twice, through no fault of his own, he had stood alone before the bar of +justice, with no voice lifted in his behalf save the shrill, small voice +of Nance Molloy. Twice he had been acquitted and sent back to the old +hopeless environment, and admonished to try again. How hard he had tried +and against what odds, surely only the angel detailed to patrol Calvary +Alley has kept any record. + +If any doubts assailed him concerning the mother who took little heed of +his existence, he never expressed them. Her name rarely passed his lips, +but he watched for her coming as a shipwrecked mariner watches for a +sail. When a boy ponders and worries over something for which he dares +not ask an explanation, he is apt to become sullen and preoccupied. On +the day that the long-suffering landlord served notice, Dan told no one +of his mother's absence. Behind closed doors he packed what things he +could, clumsily tying the rest of the household goods in the bedclothes. +At noon the new tenant arrived and, in order to get his own things in, +obligingly assisted in moving Dan's out. It was then and then only that +the news had gone abroad. + +For three hours now the worldly possessions of the dubious Mrs. Lewis had +lain exposed on the pavement, and for three hours Dan had sat beside them +keeping guard. From every tenement window inquisitive eyes watched each +stage of the proceeding, and voluble tongues discussed every phase of the +situation. Every one who passed, from Mr. Lavinski, with a pile of pants +on his head, to little Rosy Snawdor, stopped to take a look at him and to +ask questions. + +Dan had reached a point of sullen silence. Sitting on a pile of +bedclothes, with a gilt-framed mirror under one arm and a flowered water +pitcher under the other, he scowled defiance at each newcomer. Against +the jeers of the boys he could register vows of future vengeance and +console himself with the promise of bloody retribution; but against the +endless queries and insinuations of his adult neighbors, he was utterly +defenseless. + +"Looks like she had ever'thing fer the parlor, an' nothin' fer the +kitchen," observed Mrs. Snawdor from her third-story window to Mrs. +Smelts at her window two floors below. + +"I counted five pairs of curlin' irons with my own eyes," said +Mrs. Smelts, "an' as fer bottles! If they took out one, they took +out a hunderd." + +"You don't reckon that there little alcohol stove was all she had to cook +on, do you?" called up Mrs. Gorman from the pavement below. + +"Maybe that's what she het her curlin' irons on!" was Mrs. Snawdor's +suggestion, a remark which provoked more mirth than it deserved. + +Dan gazed straight ahead with no sign that he heard. However strong the +temptation was to dart away into some friendly hiding place, he was +evidently not going to yield to it. The family possessions were in +jeopardy, and he was not one to shirk responsibilities. + +Advice was as current as criticism. Mrs. Gorman, being a chronic +recipient of civic favors, advocated an appeal to the charity +organization; Mrs. Snawdor, ever at war with foreign interference, +strongly opposed the suggestion, while Mrs. Smelts with a covetous eye on +the gilt mirror under Dan's arm, urged a sidewalk sale. As for the boy +himself, not a woman in the alley but was ready to take him in and share +whatever the family larder provided. + +But to all suggestions Dan doggedly shook his head. He was "thinkin' it +out," he said, and all he wanted was to be let alone. + +"Well, you can't set there all night," said Mrs. Snawdor, "if yer maw +don't turn up by five o'clock, us neighbors is goin' to take a hand." + +All afternoon Dan sat watching the corner round which his mother might +still appear. Not a figure had turned into the alley, that he had not +seen it, not a clanging car had stopped in the street beyond, that his +quick ear had not noted. + +About the time the small hand of the cathedral clock got around to four, +Nance Molloy came skipping home from school. She had been kept in for a +too spirited resentment of an older girl's casual observation that both +of her shoes were for the same foot. To her, as to Dan, these trying +conventions in the matter of foot-gear were intolerable. No combination +seemed to meet the fastidious demands of that exacting sixth grade. + +"Hello, Dan!" she said, coming to a halt at sight of the obstructed +pavement. "What's all this for?" + +"Put out," said Dan laconically. + +"Didn't yer maw never come back?" + +"Nope." + +Nance climbed up beside him on the bedclothes and took her seat. + +"What you goin' to do?" she asked in a business-like tone. + +"Dunno." Dan did not turn his head to look at her, but he felt a dumb +comfort in her presence. It was as if her position there beside him on +the pillory made his humiliation less acute. He shifted the water +pitcher, and jerked his thumb over his shoulder: + +"They all want to divide the things an' take keer of 'em 'til she comes," +he said, "but I ain't goin' to let 'em." + +"I wouldn't neither," agreed Nance. "Old man Smelts an' Mr. Gorman'd have +what they took in hock before mornin'. There's a coal shed over to Slap +Jack's ain't full. Why can't you put yer things in there for to-night?" + +"He wouldn't let me. He's a mean old Dutchman." + +"He ain't, neither! He's the nicest man in the alley, next to Uncle Jed +an' that there old man with the fiddle. Mr. Jack an' me's friends. He +gives me pretzels all the time. I'll go ast him." + +A faint hope stirred in Dan as she slid down from her perch and darted +into the saloon next door. She had wasted no time in conjecture or +sympathy; she had plunged at once into action. When she returned, the fat +saloonkeeper lumbered in her wake: + +"Dose tings is too many, already," he protested. "I got no place to put +my coal once de cold vedder comes." + +"It ain't come yet," said Nance. "Besides his mother'll be here +to-morrow, I 'spect." + +"Mebbe she vill, und mebbe she von't," said the saloonkeeper astutely. "I +don't want dat I should mess up myself mid dis here piziness." + +"The things ain't goin' to hurt your old coal shed none!" began Nance, +firing up; then with a sudden change of tactics, she slipped her hand +into Mr. Jack's fat, red one, and lifted a pair of coaxing blue eyes. +"Say, go on an' let him, Mr. Jack! I told him you would. I said you was +one of the nicest men in the alley. You ain't goin' to make me out a +liar, are you?" + +"Vell, I leave him put 'em in for to-night," said the saloonkeeper +grudgingly, his Teuton caution overcome by Celtic wile. + +The conclave of women assembled in the hall of Number One, to carry out +Mrs. Snawdor's threat of "taking a hand," were surprised a few minutes +later, to see the objects under discussion being passed over the fence by +Mr. Jack and Dan under the able generalship of the one feminine member of +the alley whose counsel had been heeded. + +When the last article had been transferred to the shed, and a veteran +padlock had been induced to return to active service, the windows of the +tenement were beginning to glow dully, and the smell of cabbage and +onions spoke loudly of supper. + +Nance, notwithstanding the fourth peremptory summons from aloft, to walk +herself straight home that very minute, still lingered with Dan. + +"Come on home with me," she said. "You can sleep in Uncle Jed's bed 'til +five o'clock." + +"I kin take keer of myself all right," he said. "It was the things that +pestered me." + +"But where you goin' to git yer supper?" + +"I got money," he answered, making sure that his nickel was still in his +pocket. "Besides, my mother might come while I was there." + +"Well, don't you fergit that to-morrow we go to Mis' Purdy's." + +Dan looked at her with heavy eyes. + +"Oh! I ain't got time to fool around with that business. I don't know +where I'll be at by to-morrow." + +"You'll be right here," said Nance firmly, "and I ain't goin' to budge a +step without you if I have to wait all afternoon." + +"Well, I ain't comin'," said Dan. + +"I'm goin' to wait," said Nance, "an' if I git took up fer not reportin', +it'll be your fault." + +Dan slouched up to the corner and sat on the curbstone where he could +watch the street cars. As they stopped at the crossing, he leaned forward +eagerly and scanned the passengers who descended. In and out of the +swinging door of the saloon behind him passed men, singly and in groups. +There were children, too, with buckets, but they had to go around to the +side. He wanted to go in himself and buy a sandwich, but he didn't dare. +The very car he was waiting for might come in his absence. + +At nine o'clock he was still waiting when two men came out and paused +near him to light their cigars. They were talking about Skeeter Newson, +the notorious pickpocket, who two days before had broken jail and had +not yet been found. Skeeter's exploits were a favorite topic of the +Calvary Micks, and Dan, despite the low state of his mind, pricked his +ears to listen. + +"They traced him as far as Chicago," said one of the men, "but there he +give 'em the slip." + +"Think of the nerve of him taking that Lewis woman with him," said the +other voice. "By the way, I hear she lives around here somewhere." + +"A bad lot," said the first voice as they moved away. + +Dan sat rigid with his back to the telegraph pole, his feet in the +gutter, his mouth fallen open, staring dully ahead of him. Then suddenly +he reached blindly for a rock, and staggered to his feet, but the figures +had disappeared in the darkness. He sat down again, while his breath came +in short, hard gasps. It was a lie! His mother was not bad! He knew she +was good. He wanted to shriek it to the world. But even as he +passionately defended her to himself, fears assailed him. + +Why had they always lived so differently from other people? Why was he +never allowed to ask questions or to answer them or to know where his +mother went or how they got their living? What were the parcels she +always kept locked up in the trunk in the closet? Events, little heeded +at the time of occurrence, began to fall into place, making a hideous and +convincing pattern. Dim memories of men stole out of the past and threw +distorted shadows on his troubled brain. There was Bob who had once given +him a quarter, and Uncle Dick who always came after he was in bed, and +Newt--his neck stiffened suddenly. Newt, whom his mother used always to +be talking about, and whose name he had not heard now for so long that he +had almost forgotten it. Skeeter Newson--Newt--"The Lewis Woman." He saw +it all in a blinding flash, and in that awful moment of realization he +passed out of his childhood and entered man's estate. + +Choking back his sobs, he fled from the scene of his disgrace. In one +alley and out another he stumbled, looking for a hole in which he could +crawl and pour out his pent-up grief. But privacy is a luxury reserved +for the rich, and Dan and his kind cannot even claim a place in which to +break their hearts. + +It was not until he reached the river bank and discovered an overturned +hogshead that he found a refuge. Crawling in, he buried his face in his +arms and wept, not with the tempestuous abandonment of a lonely child, +but with the dry, soul-racking sobs of a disillusioned man. His mother +had been the one beautiful thing in his life, and he had worshiped her as +some being from another world. Other boys' mothers had coarse, red hands +and loud voices; his had soft, white hands and a sweet, gentle voice that +never scolded. + +Sometimes when she stayed at home, they had no money, and then she would +lie on the bed and cry, and he would try to comfort her. Those were the +times when he would stay away from school and go forth to sell things at +the pawn shop. The happiest nights he could remember were the ones when +he had come home with money in his pocket, to a lighted lamp in the +window, and a fire on the hearth and his mother's smile of welcome. But +those times were few and far between; he was much more used to darkened +windows, a cold hearth, and an almost empty larder. In explanation of +these things he had accepted unconditionally his mother's statement that +she was a lady. + +As he fought his battle alone there in the dark, all sorts of wild plans +came to him. Across the dark river the shore lights gleamed, and down +below at the wharf, a steamboat was making ready to depart. He had heard +of boys who slipped aboard ships and beat their way to distant cities. A +fierce desire seized him to get away, anywhere, just so he would not have +to face the shame and disgrace that had come upon him. There was no one +to care now where he went or what became of him. He would run away and be +a tramp where nobody could ask questions. + +With quick decision he started up to put his plan into action when a +disturbing thought crossed his mind. Had Nance Molloy meant it when she +said she wouldn't report to the probation officer if he didn't go with +her? Would she stand there in the alley and wait for him all afternoon, +just as he had waited so often for some one who did not come? His +reflections were disturbed by a hooting noise up the bank, followed by a +shower of rocks. The next instant a mongrel pup scurried down the levee +and dropped shivering at his feet. + +The yells of the pursuers died away as Dan gathered the whimpering beast +into his arms and examined its injuries. + +"Hold still, old fellow. I ain't goin' to hurt you," he whispered, +tenderly wiping the blood from one dripping paw. "I won't let 'em git +you. I'll take care of you." + +The dog lifted a pair of agonized eyes to Dan's face and licked +his hands. + +"You lemme tie it up with a piece of my sleeve, an' I'll give you +somethin' to eat," went on Dan. "Me an' you'll buy a sandich an' I'll eat +the bread an' you can have the meat. Me an you'll be partners." + +Misery had found company, and already life seemed a little less desolate. +But the new-comer continued to yelp with pain, and Dan examined the limp +leg dubiously. + +"I b'lieve it's broke," he thought. Then he had an inspiration. + +"I know what I'll do," he said aloud, "I'll carry you out to the animal +man when me an' Nance go to report to-morrow." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +AMBITION STIRS + + +After Nance Molloy's first visit to Butternut Lane, life became a series +of thrilling discoveries. Hitherto she had been treated collectively. At +home she was "one of the Snawdor kids"; to the juvenile world beyond the +corner she was "a Calvary Alley mick"; at school she was "a pupil of the +sixth grade." It remained for little Mrs. Purdy to reveal the fact to her +that she was an individual person. + +Mrs. Purdy had the most beautiful illusions about everything. She seemed +to see her fellow-men not as they were, but as God intended them to be. +She discovered so many latent virtues and attractions in her new +probationers that they scarcely knew themselves. + +When, for instance, she made the startling observation that Nance had +wonderful hair, and that, if she washed it with an egg and brushed it +every day, it would shine like gold, Nance was interested, but +incredulous. Until now hair had meant a useless mass of tangles that at +long intervals was subjected to an agonizing process of rebraiding. The +main thing about hair was that it must never on any account be left +hanging down one's back. Feuds had been started and battles lost by +swinging braids. The idea of washing it was an entirely new one to her; +but the vision of golden locks spurred her on to try the experiment. She +carefully followed directions, but the egg had been borrowed from Mrs. +Smelts who had borrowed it some days before from Mrs. Lavinski, and the +result was not what Mrs. Purdy predicted. + +"If ever I ketch you up to sech fool tricks again," scolded Mrs. Snawdor, +who had been called to the rescue, "I'll skin yer hide off! You've no +need to take yer hair down except when I tell you. You kin smooth it up +jus' like you always done." + +Having thus failed in her efforts at personal adornment, Nance turned her +attention to beautifying her surroundings. The many new features observed +in the homely, commonplace house in Butternut Lane stirred her ambition. +Her own room, to be sure, possessed architectural defects that would have +discouraged most interior decorators. It was small and dark, with only +one narrow opening into an air-shaft. Where the plaster had fallen off, +bare laths were exposed, and in rainy weather a tin tub occupied the +center of the floor to catch the drippings from a hole in the roof. For +the rest, a slat bed, an iron wash-stand, and a three-legged chair +comprised the furniture. + +But Nance was not in the least daunted by the prospect. With +considerable ingenuity she evolved a dresser from a soap box and the +colored supplements of the Sunday papers, which she gathered into a +valance, in imitation of Mrs. Purdy's bright chintz. In the air-shaft +window she started three potato vines in bottles, but not satisfied with +the feeble results, she pinned red paper roses to the sickly white stems. +The nearest substitutes she could find for pictures were labels off +tomato cans, and these she tacked up with satisfaction, remembering Mrs. +Purdy's admired fruit pictures. + +"'Tain't half so dark in here as 'tis down in Smeltses," she bragged to +Fidy, who viewed her efforts with pessimism. "Once last summer the sun +come in here fer purty near a week. It shined down the shaft. You ast +Lobelia if it didn't." + +Nance was nailing a pin into the wall with the heel of her slipper, and +the loose plaster was dropping behind the bed. + +"Mis' Purdy says if I don't say no cuss words, an' wash meself all +over on Wednesdays and Sat'days, she's goin' to help me make myself a +new dress!" + +"Why don't she give you one done made?" asked Fidy. + +"She ain't no charity lady!" said Nance indignantly. "Me an' her's +friends. She said we was." + +"What's she goin' to give Dan?" asked Fidy, to whom personages from the +upper world were interesting only when they bore gifts in their hands. + +"She ain't givin' him nothin', Silly! She's lettin' him help her. He gits +a quarter a hour, an' his dinner fer wheelin' Mr. Walter in the park." + +"They say Mr. Jack's give him a room over the saloon 'til his maw +comes back." + +"I reckon I know it. I made him! You jus' wait 'til December when +Dan'll be fourteen. Once he gits to work he won't have to take nothin' +offen nobody!" + +School as well as home took on a new interest under Mrs. Purdy's +influence. Shoes and textbooks appeared almost miraculously, and reports +assumed a new and exciting significance. Under this new arrangement Dan +blossomed into a model of righteousness, but Nance's lapses from grace +were still frequent. The occasional glimpses she was getting of a code of +manners and morals so different from those employed by her stepmother, +were not of themselves sufficient to reclaim her. On the whole she found +being good rather stupid and only consented to conform to rules when she +saw for herself the benefit to be gained. + +For instance, when she achieved a burning desire to be on the honor roll +and failed on account of being kept at home, she took the matter into her +own small hands and reported herself to the once despised truant +officer. The result was a stormy interview between him and her stepmother +which removed all further cause of jealousy on the part of Mr. Snawdor, +and gave Nance a record for perfect attendance. + +Having attained this distinction, she was fired to further effort. She +could soon glibly say the multiplication tables backward, repeat all the +verses in her school reader, and give the names and length of the most +important rivers in the world. On two occasions she even stepped into +prominence. The first was when she electrified a visiting trustee by her +intimate knowledge of the archipelagos of the eastern hemisphere. The +fact that she had not the remotest idea of the nature of an archipelago +was mercifully not divulged. The second had been less successful. It was +during a visit of Bishop Bland's to the school. He was making a personal +investigation concerning a report, then current, that public school +children were underfed. Bishop Bland was not fond of children, but he was +sensitive to any slight put upon the stomach, and he wished very much to +be able to refute the disturbing rumor. + +"Now I cannot believe," he said to the sixth grade, clasping his plump +hands over the visible result of many good dinners, "that any one of you +nice boys and girls came here this morning hungry. I want any boy in the +room who is not properly nourished at home to stand up." + +Nobody rose, and the bishop cast an affirmative smile on the principal. + +"As I thought," he continued complacently. "Now I'm going to ask any +little girl in this room to stand up and tell us just exactly what she +had for breakfast. I shall not be in the least surprised if it was just +about what I had myself." + +There was a silence, and it began to look as if nobody was going to call +the bishop's bluff, when Nance jumped up from a rear seat and said at the +top of her voice: + +"A pretzel and a dill pickle!" + +The new-found enthusiasm for school might have been of longer duration +had it not been for a counter-attraction at home. From that first night +when old "Mr. Demry," as he had come to be called, had played for her to +dance, Nance had camped on his door-step. Whenever the scrape of his +fiddle was heard from below, she dropped whatever she held, whether it +was a hot iron or the baby, and never stopped until she reached the +ground floor. And by and by other children found their way to him, not +only the children of the tenement, but of the whole neighborhood as well. +It was soon noised abroad that he knew how to coax the fairies out of the +woods and actually into the shadows of Calvary Alley where they had never +been heard of before. With one or two children on his knees and a circle +on the floor around him, he would weave a world of dream and rainbows, +and people it with all the dear invisible deities of childhood. And while +he talked, his thin cheeks would flush, and his dim eyes shine with the +same round wonder as his listeners. + +But some nights when the children came, they found him too sleepy to tell +stories or play on the fiddle. At such times he always emptied his +pockets of small coins and sent the youngsters scampering away to find +the pop-corn man. Then he would stand unsteadily at the door and watch +them go, with a wistful, disappointed look on his tired old face. + +Nance overheard her elders whispering that "he took something," and she +greatly feared that he would meet a fate similar to that of Joe Smelts. +In Joe's case it was an overcoat, and he had been forced to accept the +hospitality of the State for thirty days. Nance's mind was greatly +relieved to find that it was only powders that Mr. Demry took--powders +that made him walk queer and talk queer and forget sometimes where he +lived. Then it was that the children accepted him as their special +charge. They would go to his rescue wherever they found him and guide his +wandering footsteps into the haven of Calvary Alley. + +"He's a has-benn," Mrs. Snawdor declared to Uncle Jed. "You an' me are +never-wases, but that old gent has seen better days. They tell me that +settin' down in the orchestry, he looks fine. That's the reason his +coat's always so much better'n his shoes an' pants; he dresses up the +part of him that shows. You can tell by the way he acts an' talks that +he's different from us." + +Perhaps that was the reason, that while Nance loved Uncle Jed quite as +much, she found Mr. Demry far more interesting. Everything about him was +different, from his ideas concerning the proper behavior of boys and +girls, to his few neatly distributed belongings. His two possessions that +most excited her curiosity and admiration, were the violin and its +handsome old rosewood case, which you were not allowed to touch, and a +miniature in a frame of gold, of a beautiful pink and white girl in a +pink and white dress, with a fair curl falling over her bare shoulder. +Nance would stand before the latter in adoring silence; then she would +invariably say: + +"Go on an' tell me about her, Mr. Demry!" + +And standing behind her, with his fine sensitive hands on her shoulders, +Mr. Demry would tell wonderful stories of the little girl who had once +been his. And as he talked, the delicate profile in the picture became an +enchanting reality to Nance, stirring her imagination and furnishing an +object for her secret dreams. + +Hitherto Birdie Smelts had been her chief admiration. Birdie was fourteen +and wore French heels and a pompadour and had beaux. She had worked in +the ten-cent store until her misplaced generosity with the glass beads +on her counter resulted in her being sent to a reformatory. But Birdie's +bold attractions suffered in comparison with the elusive charm of the +pink and white goddess with the golden curl. + +This change marked the dawn of romance in Nance's soul. Up to this time +she had demanded of Mr. Demry the most "scareful" stories he knew, but +from now on Blue Beard and Jack, the Giant-Killer had to make way for +Cinderella and the Sleeping Beauty. She went about with her head full of +dreams, and eyes that looked into an invisible world. It was not that the +juvenile politics of the alley were less interesting, or the street +fights or adventures of the gang less thrilling. It was simply that life +had become absorbingly full of other things. + +As the months passed Mrs. Snawdor spent less and less time at home. She +seemed to think that when she gave her nights on her knees for her +family, she was entitled to use the remaining waking hours for +recreation. This took the form of untiring attention to other people's +business. She canvassed the alley for delinquent husbands to admonish, +for weddings to arrange, for funerals to supervise--the last being a +specialty, owing to experience under the late Mr. Yager. + +Upon one of the occasions when she was superintending the entrance of a +neighboring baby into the world, her own made a hurried exit. A banana +and a stick of licorice proved too stimulating a diet for him, and he +closed his eyes permanently on a world that had offered few attractions. + +It was Nance who, having mothered him from his birth, worked with him +through the long night of agony; and who, when the end came, cut the +faded cotton flowers from her hat to put in the tiny claw-like hand that +had never touched a real blossom; and it was Nance's heart that broke +when they took him away. + +It is doubtful whether any abstract moral appeal could have awakened her +as did the going out of that little futile life. It stirred her deepest +sympathies and affections, and connected her for the first time with the +forces that make for moral and social progress. + +"He wouldn't a-went if we'd treated him right!" she complained +bitterly to Mr. Snawdor a week later. "He never had no sunshine, nor +fresh air, nor nothin'. You can't expect a baby to live where a +sweet-potato vine can't!" + +"He's better off than me," said Mr. Snawdor, "what with the funeral, an' +the coal out, an' the rent due, I'm at the end of my rope. I told her it +was comin'. But she would have a white coffin an' six hacks. They'll have +to set us out in the street fer all I can see!" + +Nance looked at him apprehensively. + +"Well, we better be doin' something'," she said. "Can't Uncle Jed help +us?" + +"I ain't goin' to let him. He's paid my rent fer the last time." + +This unexpected flare of independence in Mr. Snawdor was disturbing. The +Snawdor family without Uncle Jed was like a row of stitches from which +the knitting needle has been withdrawn. + +"If I was two years older, I could go to work," said Nance, thinking of +Dan, who was now on the pay-roll of Clarke's Bottle Factory. + +"It ain't right to make you stop school," said Mr. Snawdor. "It ain't +bein' fair to you." + +"I'd do it all right," said Nance, fired by his magnanimity, "only +they're on to me now I've reported myself. Ain't you makin' any money at +the shop?" + +Mr. Snawdor shook his head. + +"I might if I was willin' to buy junk. But you know where them boys gets +their stuff." + +Nance nodded wisely. + +"The gang bust into a empty house last night an' cut out all the lead +pipes. I seen 'em comin' home with it." + +Mr. Snawdor rose and went to the window. + +"There ain't no chance fer a honest man," he said miserably. "I'm sick o' +livin', that's whut I am. I am ready to quit." + +When Mrs. Snawdor arrived, she swept all domestic problems +impatiently aside. + +"Fer goodness' sake don't come tellin' me no more hard-luck tales. Ain't +I got troubles enough of my own? Nance, soon 's you git through, go git +me a bucket of beer, an' if you see any of the Gormans, say I'll stop in +this evenin' on my way to work." + +"I ain't goin' fer the beer no more," announced Nance. + +"An' will ye tell me why?" asked Mrs. Snawdor. + +"'Cause I ain't," said Nance, knowing the futility of argument. + +Mrs. Snawdor lifted her hand to strike, but changed her mind. She was +beginning to have a certain puzzled respect for her stepdaughter's +decision of character. + +After the children had been put to bed and Nance had cried over the +smallest nightgown, no longer needed, she slipped down to the second +floor and, pausing before the door behind which the sewing-machines were +always whirring, gave a peculiar whistle. It was a whistle possible only +to a person who boasted the absence of a front tooth, and it brought Ike +Lavinski promptly to the door. + +Ikey was a friend whom she regarded with mingled contempt and +admiration--contempt because he was weak and undersized, admiration +because he was the only person of her acquaintance who had ever had his +name in the newspaper. On two occasions he had been among the honor +students at the high school, and his family and neighbors regarded him as +an intellectual prodigy. + +"Say, Ikey," said Nance, "if you was me, an' had to make some money, an' +didn't want to chuck school, what would you do?" + +Ikey considered the matter. Money and education were the most important +things in the world to him, and were not to be discussed lightly. + +"If you were bigger," he said, sweeping her with a critical eye, "you +might try sewing pants." + +"Could I do it at night? How much would it pay me? Would yer pa take me +on?" Nance demanded all in a breath. + +"He would if he thought they wouldn't get on to it." + +"I'd keep it dark," Nance urged. "I could slip down every night after I +git done my work, an' put in a couple of hours, easy. I'm a awful big +child fer my age--feel my muscle! Go on an' make him take me on, Ikey, +will you?" + +And Ikey condescendingly agreed to use his influence. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +BUTTONS + + +The Lavinskis' flat on the second floor had always possessed a mysterious +fascination for Nance. In and out of the other flats she passed at will, +but she had never seen beyond the half-open door of the Lavinskis'. All +day and far into the night, the sewing-machines ran at high pressure, and +Mr. Lavinski shuffled in and out carrying huge piles of pants on his +head. The other tenants stopped on the stairs to exchange civilities or +incivilities with equal warmth; they hung out of windows or dawdled +sociably in doorways. But summer and winter alike the Lavinskis herded +behind closed doors and ran their everlasting sewing-machines. + +Mrs. Snawdor gave her ready consent to Nance trying her hand as a "home +finisher." + +"We got to git money from somewheres," she said, "an' I always did want +to know how them Polocks live. But don't you let on to your Uncle Jed +what you're doing." + +"I ain't goin' to let on to nobody," said Nance, thrilled with the +secrecy of the affair. + +The stifling room into which Ikey introduced her that night was supposed +to be the Lavinskis' kitchen, but it was evident that the poor room had +long ago abandoned all notions of domesticity. The tea-kettle had been +crowded off the stove by the pressing irons; a wash-tub full of neglected +clothes, squeezed itself into a distant corner, and the cooking utensils +had had to go climbing up the walls on hooks and nails to make way on the +shelves for sewing materials. + +On one corner of the table, between two towering piles of pants, were the +remains of the last meal, black bread, potatoes, and pickled herring. +Under two swinging kerosene lamps, six women with sleeves rolled up and +necks bared, bent over whirring machines, while Mr. Lavinski knelt on the +floor tying the finished garments into huge bundles. + +"Here's Nance Molloy, Pa" said Ikey, raising his voice above the noise of +the machines and tugging at his father's sleeve. + +Mr. Lavinski pushed his derby hat further back on his perspiring brow, +and looked up. He had a dark, sharp face, and alert black eyes, exactly +like Ikey's, and a black beard with two locks of black hair trained +down in front of his ears to meet it. Without pausing in his work he +sized Nance up. + +"I von't take childern anny more. I tried it many times already. De +inspector git me into troubles. It don't pay." + +"But I'll dodge the inspectors," urged Nance. + +"You know how to sew, eh?" + +"No; but you kin learn me. Please, Mr. Lavinski, Ikey said you would." + +Mr. Lavinski bestowed a doting glance on his son. + +"My Ikey said so, did he? He thinks he own me, that boy. I send him to +high school. I send him to Hebrew class at the synagogue at night. He +vill be big rich some day, that boy; he's got a brain on him." + +"Cut it out, Pa," said Ikey, "Nance is a smart kid; you won't lose +anything on her." + +The result was that Nance was accorded the privilege of occupying a stool +in the corner behind the hot stove and sewing buttons on knee pantaloons, +from eight until ten P.M. At first the novelty of working against time, +with a room full of grown people, and of seeing the great stacks of +unfinished garments change into great stacks of finished ones, was +stimulation in itself. She was proud of her cushion full of strong +needles and her spool of coarse thread. She was pleased with the nods of +approval gentle Mrs. Lavinski gave her work in passing, and of the slight +interest with which she was regarded by the other workers. + +But as the hours wore on, and the air became hotter and closer, and no +enlivening conversation came to relieve the strain, her interest began to +wane. By nine o'clock her hands were sore and stained, and her back +ached. By a quarter past, the buttons were slipping through her fingers, +and she could not see to thread her needle. + +"You vill do better to-morrow night," said Mrs. Lavinski kindly, in her +wheezing voice. "I tell Ikey you do verra good." + +Mrs. Lavinski looked shriveled and old. She wore a glossy black wig and +long ear-rings, and when she was not coughing, she smiled pleasantly over +her work. Once Mr. Lavinski stopped pressing long enough to put a cushion +at her back. + +"My Leah is a saint," he said. "If effra'boddy was so good as her, the +Messiah would come." + +Nance dreamed of buttons that night, and by the next evening her ambition +to become a wage-earner had died completely. + +But a family conclave at the supper table revealed such a crisis in the +family finances that she decided to keep on at the Lavinskis' for another +week. Uncle Jed was laid up with the rheumatism, and Mr. Snawdor's entire +stock in trade had been put in a wheelbarrow and dumped into the street, +and a strange sign already replaced his old one of "Bungs and Fawcetts." + +Things seemed in such a bad way that Nance had about decided to lay the +matter before Mrs. Purdy, when Dan brought the disconcerting news that +Mrs. Purdy had taken her brother south for the rest of the winter, and +that there would be no more visits to the little house in Butternut Lane. + +So Nance, not knowing anything better to do, continued to sit night +after night on her stool behind the hot stove, sewing on buttons. +Thirty-six buttons meant four cents, four cents meant a loaf of bread--a +stale loaf, that is. + +"Your little fingers vill git ofer bein' sore," Mrs. Lavinski assured +her. "I gif you alum water to put on 'em. Dat makes 'em hard." + +They not only became hard; they became quick and accurate, and Nance got +used to the heat and the smell, and she almost got used to the backache. +It was sitting still and being silent that hurt her more than anything +else. Mr. Lavinski did not encourage conversation,--it distracted the +workers,--and Nance's exuberance, which at first found vent in all sorts +of jokes and capers, soon died for lack of encouragement. She learned, +instead, to use all her energy on buttons and, being denied verbal +expression, she revolved many things in her small mind. The result of her +thinking was summed up in her speech to her stepmother at the end of the +first week. + +"Gee! I'm sick of doin' the same thing! I ain't learnin' nothin'. If +anybody was smart, they could make a machine to put on two times as many +buttons as me in half the time. I want to begin something at the +beginning and make it clean through. I'm sick an' tired of buttons. I'm +goin' to quit!" + +But Mrs. Snawdor had come to a belated realization of the depleted state +of the family treasury and she urged Nance to keep on for the present. + +"We better cut all the corners we kin," she said, "till Snawdor gits over +this fit of the dumps. Ain't a reason in the world he don't go into the +junk business. I ain't astin' him to drive aroun' an' yell 'Old iron!' I +know that's tryin' on a bashful man. All I ast him is to set still an' +let it come to him. Thank the Lord, I _have_ known husbands that wasn't +chicken-hearted!" + +So Nance kept on reluctantly, even after Mr. Snawdor got a small job +collecting. Sometimes she went to sleep over her task and had to be +shaken awake, but that was before she began to drink black coffee with +the other workers at nine o'clock. + +One thing puzzled her. When Ikey came from night school, he was never +asked to help in the work, no matter how much his help was needed. He was +always given the seat by the table nearest the lamp, and his father +himself cleared a place for his books. + +"Ikey gits the education," Mr. Lavinski would say, with a proud smile. +"The Rabbi says he is the smartest boy in the class. He takes prizes over +big boys. Ve vork fer him now, an' some day he make big money an' take +care of us!" + +Education as seen through Mr. Lavinski's eyes took on a new aspect for +Nance. It seemed that you did not get rich by going to work at fourteen, +but by staying at school and in some miraculous way skipping the factory +altogether. "I vork with my hands," said Mr. Lavinski; "my Ikey, he vorks +with his head." + +Nance fell into the way of bringing her school books downstairs at night +and getting Ike to help her with her lessons. She would prop the book in +front of her and, without lessening the speed of her flying fingers, ply +him with the questions that had puzzled her during the day. + +"I wisht I was smart as you!" she said one night. + +"I reckon you do!" said Ike. "I work for it." + +"You couldn't work no more 'n whut I do!" Nance said indignantly. + +"There's a difference between working and being worked," said Ike, +wisely. "If I were you, I'd look out for number one." + +"But who would do the cookin' an' lookin' after the kids, an' all?" + +"They are nothing to you," said Ike; "none of the bunch is kin to you. +Catch me workin' for them like you do!" + +Nance was puzzled, but not convinced. Wiser heads than hers have +struggled with a similar problem in vain. She kept steadily on, and it +was only when the squeak of Mr. Demry's fiddle came up from below that +her fingers fumbled and the buttons went rolling on the floor. Six +nights in the week, when Mr. Demry was in condition, he played at the +theater, and on Sunday nights he stayed at home and received his young +friends. On these occasions Nance became so restless that she could +scarcely keep her prancing feet on the floor. She would hook them +resolutely around the legs of the stool and even sit on them one at a +time, but despite all her efforts, they would respond to the rhythmic +notes below. + +"Them tunes just make me dance settin' down," she declared, trying to +suit the action to the words. + +Sometimes on a rainy afternoon when nobody was being born, or getting +married, or dying, Mrs. Snawdor stayed at home. At such times Nance +seized the opportunity to shift her domestic burden. + +There was a cheap theater, called "The Star," around the corner, where a +noisy crowd of boys and girls could always be found in the gallery. It +was a place where you ate peanuts and dropped the shells on the heads of +people below, where you scrapped for your seat and joined in the chorus +and shrieked over the antics of an Irishman, a darkey, or a Jew. But it +was a luxury seldom indulged in, for it cost the frightful sum of ten +cents, not including the peanuts. + +For the most part Nance's leisure half-hours were spent with Mr. Demry, +discussing a most exciting project. He was contemplating the unheard-of +festivity of a Christmas party, and the whole alley was buzzing with it. +Even the big boys in Dan's gang were going to take part. There were to +be pirates and fairies and ogres, and Nance was to be the princess and +do a fancy dance in a petticoat trimmed with silver paper, and wear a +tinsel crown. + +Scrubbing the floor, figuring on the blackboard, washing dishes, or +sewing on buttons, she was aware of that tinsel crown. For one magic +night it was going to transform her into a veritable princess, and who +knew but that a prince in doublet and hose and sweeping plume might +arrive to claim her? But when Nance's imagination was called upon to +visualize the prince, a hateful image came to her of a tall, slender boy, +clad in white, with a contemptuous look in his handsome brown eyes. + +"I don't know what ails Nance these days," Mrs. Snawdor complained to +Uncle Jed. "She sasses back if you look at her, an' fergits everything, +an' Snawdor says she mutters an' jabbers something awful in her sleep." + +"Seems to me she works too hard," said Uncle Jed, still ignorant of her +extra two hours in the sweat-shop. "A growin' girl oughtn't to be doin' +heavy washin' an' carryin' water an' coal up two flights." + +"Why, Nance is strong as a ox," Mrs. Snawdor insisted, "an' as fer +eatin'! Why it looks like she never can git filled up." + +"Well, what ails her then?" persisted Uncle Jed. + +"I bet I know!" said Mrs. Snawdor darkly. "It's that there vaccination. +Las' time I hid the other childern from the inspector she had to come out +an' argue with him fer herself. She got paid up proper fer givin' in to +him. Her arm was a plumb sight." + +"Do you suppose it's the poison still workin' on her?" Uncle Jed asked, +watching Nance in the next room as she lifted a boiler filled with the +washing water from the stove. + +"Why, of course, it is! Talk to me about yer State rules an' +regerlations! It does look like us poor people has got troubles enough +already, without rich folks layin' awake nights studyin' up what they can +do to us next." + + + + +CHAPTER X + +THE PRINCESS COMES TO GRIEF + + +And bring her rose-winged fancies, +From shadowy shoals of dream +To clothe her in the wistful hour +When girlhood steals from bud to flower; +Bring her the tunes of elfin dances, +Bring her the faery Gleam.--BURKE. + +Christmas fell on a Saturday and a payday, and this, together with Mr. +Demry's party, accounts for the fact that the holiday spirit, which +sometimes limps a trifle languidly past tenement doors, swaggered with +unusual gaiety this year in Calvary Alley. You could hear it in the +cathedral chimes which began at dawn, in the explosion of fire-crackers, +in the bursts of noisy laughter from behind swinging doors. You could +smell it in the whiffs of things frying, broiling, burning. You could +feel it in the crisp air, in the crunch of the snow under your feet, and +most of all you could see it in the happy, expectant faces of the +children, who rushed in and out in a fever of excitement. + +Early in the afternoon Nance Molloy, with a drab-colored shawl over her +head and something tightly clasped in one bare, chapped fist, rushed +forth on a mysterious mission. When she returned, she carried a +pasteboard box hugged to her heart. The thought of tripping her fairy +measure in worn-out shoes tied on with strings, had become so intolerable +to her that she had bartered her holiday for a pair of white slippers. +Mr. Lavinski had advanced the money, and she was to work six hours a day, +instead of two, until she paid the money back. + +But she was in no mood to reckon the cost, as she prepared for the +evening festivities. So great was her energy and enthusiasm, that the +contagion spread to the little Snawdors, each of whom submitted with +unprecedented meekness to a "wash all over." Nance dressed herself last, +wrapping her white feet and legs in paper to keep them clean until the +great hour should arrive. + +"Why, Nance Molloy! You look downright purty!" Mrs. Snawdor exclaimed, +when she came up after assisting Mr. Demry with his refreshments. "I +never would 'a' believed it!" + +Nance laughed happily. The effect had been achieved by much experimenting +before the little mirror over her soap box. The mirror had a wave in it +which gave the beholder two noses, but Nance had kept her pink and white +ideal steadily in mind, and the result was a golden curl over a bare +shoulder. The curl would have been longer had not half of it remained in +a burnt wisp around the poker. + +But such petty catastrophes have no place in a heart overflowing with +joy. Nance did not even try to keep her twinkling feet from dancing; +she danced through the table-setting and through the dish-washing, and +between times she pressed her face to the dirty pane of the front +window to see if the hands on the big cathedral clock were getting any +nearer to five. + +"They're goin' to have Christmas doin's over to the cathedral, too," she +cried excitedly. "The boards is off the new window, an' it's jus' like +the old one, an' ever'thing's lit up, an' it's snowin' like ever'thing!" + +Mr. Demry's party was to take place between the time he came home from +the matinee and the time he returned for the evening performance. Long +before the hour appointed, his guests began to arrive, dirty-faced and +clean, fat and thin, tidy and ragged, big and little, but all wearing in +their eyes that gift of nature to the most sordid youth, the gift of +expectancy. There were fairies and ogres and pirates and Indians in +costumes that needed only the proper imagination to make them convincing. +If by any chance a wistful urchin arrived in his rags alone, Mr. Demry +promptly evolved a cocked hat from a newspaper, and a sword from a box +top, and transformed him into a prancing knight. + +The children had been to Sunday-school entertainments where they had sat +in prim rows and watched grown people have all the fun of fixing the +tree and distributing the presents, but for most of them this was the +first Christmas that they had actually helped to make. Every link in the +colored paper garlands was a matter of pride to some one. + +What the children had left undone, Mr. Demry had finished. All the +movables had been put out of sight as if they were never to be wanted +again. From the ceiling swung two glowing paper lanterns that threw soft, +mysterious, dancing lights on things. In the big fireplace a huge fire +crackled and roared, and on the shelf above it were stacks of golden +oranges, and piles of fat, brown doughnuts. Across one corner, on a stout +cord, hung some green branches with small candles twinkling above them. +It was not exactly a Christmas tree, but it had evidently fooled Santa +Claus, for on every branch hung a trinket or a toy for somebody. + +And nobody thought, least of all Mr. Demry, of how many squeaks of the +old fiddle had gone into the making of this party, of the bread and meat +that had gone into the oranges and doughnuts, of the fires that should +have warmed Mr. Demry's chilled old bones for weeks to come, that went +roaring up the wide chimney in one glorious burst of prodigality. + +When the party was in full swing and the excitement was at its highest, +the guests were seated on the floor in a double row, and Mr. Demry took +his stand by the fireplace, with his fiddle under his chin, and began +tuning up. + +Out in the dark hall, in quivering expectancy, stood the princess, +shivering with impatience as she waited for Dan to fling open the door +for her triumphant entrance. Every twang of the violin strings +vibrated in her heart, and she could scarcely wait for the signal. It +was the magic moment when buttons ceased to exist and tinsel crowns +became a reality. + +The hall was dark and very cold, and the snow drifting in made a white +patch on the threshold. Nance, steadying her crown against the icy +draught, lifted her head suddenly and listened. From the room on the +opposite side of the hall came a woman's frightened cry, followed by the +sound of breaking furniture. The next instant the door was flung open, +and Mrs. Smelts, with her baby in her arms, rushed forth. Close behind +her rolled Mr. Smelts, his shifted ballast of Christmas cheer threatening +each moment to capsize him. + +"I'll learn ye to stop puttin' cures in my coffee!" he bellowed. +"Spoilin' me taste fer liquor, are ye? I'll learn ye!" + +"I never meant no harm, Jim," quailed Mrs. Smelts, cowering in the corner +with one arm upraised to shield the baby. "I seen the ad in the paper. It +claimed to be a whisky-cure. Don't hit me, Jim--don't--" But before she +could finish, Mr. Smelts had struck her full in the face with a brutal +fist and had raised his arm to strike again. But the blow never fell. + +The quick blood that had made Phil Molloy one of the heroes of Chickasaw +Bluffs rose in the veins of his small granddaughter, and she suddenly saw +red. Had Jim Smelts been twice the size he was, she would have sprung at +him just the same and rained blow after stinging blow upon his befuddled +head with her slender fairy wand. + +"Git up the steps!" she shrieked to Mrs. Smelts. "Fer God's sake git out +of his way! Dan! Dan Lewis! Help! Help!" + +Mr. Smelts, infuriated at the interference, had pinioned Nance's arms +behind her and was about to beat her crowned head against the wall when +Dan rushed into the hall. + +"Throw him out the front door!" screamed Nance. "Help me push him down +the steps!" + +Mr. Smelts' resistance was fierce, but brief. His legs were much drunker +than his arms, and when the two determined youngsters flung themselves +upon him and shoved him out of the door, he lost his balance and fell +headlong to the street below. + +By this time the party had swarmed into the hall and out on the steps +and Mr. Demry's gentle, frightened face could be seen peering over their +decorated heads. The uproar had brought other tenants scurrying from the +upper floors, and somebody was dispatched for a police. Dense and +denser grew the crowd, and questions, excuses, accusations were heard on +every side. + +"They've done killed him," wailed a woman's voice above the other noises. +It was Mrs. Smelts who, with all the abandonment of a bereft widow, cast +herself beside the huddled figure lying motionless in the snow. + +"What's all this row about?" demanded Cockeye, forcing his way to the +front and assuming an air of stern authority. + +"They've killed my Jim!" wailed Mrs. Smelts. "I'm goin' to have the +law on 'em!" + +The policeman, with an impolite request that she stop that there +caterwauling, knelt on the wet pavement and made a hasty diagnosis +of the case. + +"Leg's broke, and head's caved in a bit. That's all I can see is the +matter of him. Who beat him up?" + +"Him an' her!" accused Mrs. Smelts hysterically, pointing to Dan and +Nance, who stood shivering beside Mr. Demry on the top step. + +"Well, I'll be hanged if them ain't the same two that was had up last +summer!" said the policeman in profound disgust. "It's good-by fer them +all right." + +"But we was helpin' Mis' Smelts!" cried Nance in bewilderment. "He was +beatin' her. He was goin' to hit the baby--" + +"Here comes the Black Maria!" yelled an emissary from the corner, and +the crowd parted as the long, narrow, black patrol-wagon clanged noisily +into the narrow court. + +Mr. Smelts was lifted in, none too gently, and as he showed no signs of +returning consciousness, Cock-eye paused irresolute and looked at Dan. + +"You best be comin' along, too," he said with sudden decision. "The bloke +may be hurt worse 'rn I think. I'll just drop you at the detention home +'til over Sunday." + +"You shan't take Dan Lewis!" cried Nance in instant alarm. "He was +helpin' me, I tell you! He ain't done nothin' bad--" Then as Dan was +hustled down the steps and into the wagon, she lost her head completely. +Regardless of consequences, she hurled herself upon the law. She bit it +and scratched it and even spat upon it. + +Had Mrs. Snawdor or Uncle Jed been there, the catastrophe would never +have happened; but Mrs. Snawdor was at the post-office, and Uncle Jed at +the signal tower, and the feeble protests of Mr. Demry were as futile as +the twittering of a sparrow. + +"I'll fix you, you little spitfire!" cried the irate officer, holding her +hands and lifting her into the wagon. "Some of you women put a cloak +around her, and be quick about it." + +Nance, refusing to be wrapped up, continued to fight savagely. + +"I ain't goin' in the hurry-up wagon!" she screamed. "I ain't done +nothin' bad! Let go my hands!" + +But the wagon was already moving out of the alley, and Nance suddenly +ceased to struggle. An accidental combination of circumstances, too +complicated and overwhelming to be coped with, was hurrying her away to +some unknown and horrible fate. She looked at her mud-splashed white +slippers that were not yet paid for, and then back at the bright window +behind which the party was waiting. In a sudden anguish of disappointment +she flung herself face downward on the long seat and sobbed with a +passion that was entirely too great for her small body. + +Sitting opposite, his stiff, stubby hair sticking out beneath his pirate +hat, Dan Lewis, forgetting his own misfortune, watched her with dumb +compassion, and between them, on the floor, lay a drunken hulk of a man +with blood trickling across his ugly, bloated face, his muddy feet +resting on all that remained of a gorgeous, tinsel crown. + +It was at this moment that the Christmas spirit fled in despair from +Calvary Alley and took refuge in the big cathedral where, behind the +magnificent new window, a procession of white-robed choir-boys, led by +Mac Clarke, were joyously proclaiming: + +"Hark! the herald angels sing +Glory to the new-born King;" + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE STATE TAKES A HAND + + +The two reformatories to which the children, after various examinations, +were consigned, represented the worst and the best types of such +institutions. + +Dan Lewis was put behind barred windows with eight hundred other young +"foes of society." He was treated as a criminal, and when he resented it, +he was put under a cold shower and beaten with a rattan until he fainted. +Outraged, humiliated, bitterly resentful, his one idea was to escape. At +the end of a month of cruelty and injustice he was developing a hatred +against authority that would ultimately have landed him in the State +prison had not a miraculous interference from without set him free and +returned him to his work in Clarke's Bottle Factory. + +It all came about through a letter received by Mrs. Purdy, who was +wintering in Florida--a tear-stained, blotted, misspelled letter that had +been achieved with great difficulty. It ran: + +Dear Mis Purdy, me and Dan Lewis is pinched again. But I ain't a +Dellinkent. The jedge says theres a diffrunce. He says he was not puting +me in becose I was bad but becose I was not brot upright. He says for me +to be good and stay here and git a education. He says its my chanct. I +was mad at first, but now I aint. What Im writing you fer is to git Dan +Lewis out. He never done nothink what was wrong and he got sent to the +House of Refuse. Please Mis Purdy you git him off. He aint bad. You know +he aint. You ast everbody at home, and then go tell the Jedge and git him +off. I can't stan fer him to be in that ole hole becose it aint fair. +Please don't stop at nothink til you git him out. So good-by, loveingly, +NANCE. + + +This had been written a little at a time during Nance's first week at +Forest Home. She had arrived in such a burning state of indignation that +it required the combined efforts of the superintendent and the matron to +calm her. In fact her spirit did not break until she was subjected to a +thorough scrubbing from head to foot, and put to bed on a long porch +between cold, clean sheets. She was used to sleeping in her underclothes +in the hot close air of Snawdor's flat, with Fidy and Lobelia snuggled up +on each side. This icy isolation was intolerable! Her hair, still damp, +felt strange and uncomfortable; her eyes smarted from the recent +application of soap. She lay with her knees drawn up to her chin and +shivered and cried to go home. + +Hideous thoughts tormented her. Who'd git up the coal, an' do the +washin'? Would Mr. Snawdor fergit an' take off Rosy's aesophedity bag, +so she'd git the measles an' die like the baby? What did Mr. Lavinski +think of her fer not comin' to work out the slipper money? Would Dan ever +git his place back at the factory after he'd been in the House of Refuse? +Was Mr. Smelts' leg broke plum off, so's he'd have to hobble on a +peg-stick? + +She cowered under the covers. "God aint no friend of mine," she sobbed +miserably. + +When she awoke the next morning, she sat up and looked about her. The +porch in which she lay was enclosed from floor to ceiling in glass, and +there were rows of small white beds like her own, stretching away on each +side of her. The tip of her nose was very cold, but the rest of her was +surprisingly warm, and the fresh air tasted good in her mouth. It was +appallingly still and strange, and she lay down and listened for the +sounds that did not come. + +There were no factory whistles, no clanging of car bells, no lumbering of +heavy wagons. Instead of the blank wall of a warehouse upon which she was +used to opening her eyes, there were miles and miles of dim white fields. +Presently a wonderful thing happened. Something was on fire out there at +the edge of the world--something big and round and red. Nance held her +breath and for the first time in her eleven years saw the sun rise. + +When getting-up time came, she went with eighteen other girls into a big, +warm dressing-room. + +"This is your locker," said the girl in charge. + +"My whut?" asked Nance. + +"Your locker, where you put your clothes." + +Nance had no clothes except the ones she was about to put on, but the +prospect of being the sole possessor of one of those little closets +brought her the first gleam of consolation. + +The next followed swiftly. The owner of the adjoining locker proved to be +no other than Birdie Smelts. Whatever fear Nance had of Birdie's +resenting the part she had played in landing Mr. Smelts in the city +hospital was promptly banished. + +"You can't tell me nothing about paw," Birdie said at the end of Nance's +recital. "I only wish it was his neck instead of his leg that was broke." + +"But we never aimed to hurt him," explained Nance, to whom the accident +still loomed as a frightful nightmare. "They didn't have no right to send +me out here." + +"It ain't so worse," said Birdie indifferently. "You get enough to eat +and you keep warm and get away from rough-housin'; that's something." + +"But I don't belong here!" protested Nance, hotly. + +"Aw, forget it," advised Birdie, with a philosophical shrug of her +shapely shoulders. Birdie was not yet fifteen, but she had already +learned to take the course of least resistance. She was a pretty, +weak-faced girl, with a full, graceful figure and full red lips and +heavy-lidded eyes that always looked sleepy. + +"I wouldn't keer so much if it wasn't fer Dan Lewis," Nance said +miserably. "He was inside Mr. Demry's room, an' never knowed a thing +about it 'til I hollered." + +"Say, I believe you are gone on Dan!" said Birdie, lifting a +teasing finger. + +"I ain't either!" said Nance indignantly, "but I ain't goin' to quit +tryin' 'til I git him out!" + +In the bright airy dining-room where they went for breakfast, Nance sat +at a small table with five other girls and scornfully refused the glass +of milk they offered her as a substitute for the strong coffee to which +she was accustomed. She had about decided to starve herself to death, but +changed her mind when the griddle-cakes and syrup appeared. + +In fact, she changed her mind about many things during those first days. +After a few acute attacks of homesickness, she began despite herself to +take a pioneer's delight in blazing a new trail. It was the first time +she had ever come into contact for more than a passing moment, with +decent surroundings and orderly living, and her surprises were endless. + +"Say, do these guys make you put on airs like this all the time?" she +asked incredulously of her table-companion. + +"Like what?" + +"Like eatin' with a fork, an' washin' every day, an' doin' yer hair over +whether it needs it or not?" + +"If I had hair as grand as yours, they wouldn't have to make me fix it," +said the close-cropped little girl enviously. + +Nance looked at her suspiciously. Once before she had been lured by that +bait, and she was wary. But the envy in the eyes of the short-haired girl +was genuine. + +Nance took the first opportunity that presented itself to look in a +mirror. To her amazement, her tight, drab-colored braids had become +gleaming bands of gold, and there were fluffy little tendrils across her +forehead and at the back of her neck. It was unbelievable, too, how much +more becoming one nose was to the human countenance than two. + +A few days later when one of the older girls said teasingly, "Nance +Molloy is stuck on her hair!" Nance answered proudly, "Well, ain't I got +a right to be?" + +At the end of the first month word came from Mrs. Purdy that she had +succeeded in obtaining Dan's release, and that he was back at work at +Clarke's, and on probation again. This news, instead of making Nance +restless for her own freedom, had quite the opposite effect. Now that her +worry over Dan was at an end, she resigned herself cheerfully to the +business of being reformed. + +The presiding genius of Forest Home was Miss Stanley, the superintendent. +She did not believe in high fences or uniforms or bodily punishment. She +was tall, handsome, and serene, and she treated the girls with the same +grave courtesy with which she treated the directors. + +Nance regarded her with something of the worshipful awe she had once felt +before an image of the Virgin Mary. + +"She don't make you 'fraid exactly," she confided to Birdie. "She makes +you 'shamed." + +"You can tell she's a real lady the way she shines her finger-nails," +said Birdie, to whom affairs of the toilet were of great importance. + +"Another way you can tell," Nance added, trying to think the thing out +for herself, "is the way she takes slams. You an' me sass back, but a +real lady knows how to hold her jaw an' make you eat dirt just the same." + +They were standing side by side at a long table in a big, clean kitchen, +cutting out biscuit for supper. Other white-capped, white-aproned girls, +all intent upon their own tasks, were flitting about, and a teacher sat +at a desk beside the window, directing the work. The two girls had fallen +into the habit of doing their chores together and telling each other +secrets. Birdie's had mostly to do with boys, and it was not long before +Nance felt called upon to make a few tentative observations on the same +engrossing subject. + +"The prettiest boy I ever seen--" she said, "I mean I have ever +saw"--then she laughed helplessly. "Well, anyhow, he was that Clarke +feller. You know, the one that got pinched fer smashin' the window the +first time we was had up?" + +"Mac Clarke? Sure, I know him. He's fresh all right." + +Birdie did not go into particulars, but she looked important. + +"Say, Birdie," Nance asked admiringly, "when you git out of here, what +you goin' to do?" + +"I'll tell you what I _ain't_ going to do," said Birdie, impressively, in +a low voice, "I ain't going to stand in a store, and I ain't going out to +work, and I ain't going to work at Clarke's!" + +"But what else is left to do?" + +"Swear you won't tell?" + +Nance crossed her heart with a floury finger. + +"I'm going to be a actress," said Birdie. + +It was fortunate for Nance that Birdie's term at the home soon ended. She +was at that impressionable age which reflects the nearest object of +interest, and shortly after Birdie's departure she abandoned the idea of +joining her on the professional boards, and decided instead to become a +veterinary surgeon. + +This decision was reached through a growing intimacy with the lame old +soldier who presided over the Forest Home stables. "Doc" was a familiar +character in the county, and his advice about horses was sought far and +near. Next to horses he liked children, and after them dogs. Adults came +rather far down the line, excepting always Miss Stanley, whom he +regarded as infallible. + +On the red-letter Sunday when Uncle Jed had tramped the ten miles out +from town to assure himself of Nance's well-being, he discovered in Doc +an old comrade of the Civil War. They had been in the same company, Uncle +Jed as a drummer boy, and Doc in charge of the cavalry horses. + +"Why, I expect you recollict this child's grandpaw," Uncle Jed said, with +his hand on Nance's head, "Molloy, 'Fightin' Phil,' they called him. Went +down with the colors at Chickasaw Bluffs." + +Doc did remember. Fighting Phil had been one of the idols of his boyhood. + +Miss Stanley found in this friendship a solution of Nance's chief +difficulty. When a person of eleven has been doing practical housekeeping +for a family of eight, she naturally resents the suggestion that there is +anything in domestic science for her to learn. Moreover, when said person +is anemic and nervous from overwork, and has a tongue that has never +known control, it is perilously easy to get into trouble, despite heroic +efforts to be good. + +The wise superintendent saw in the girl all sorts of possibilities for +both good and evil. For unselfish service and passionate sacrifice, as +well as obstinate rebellion and hot-headed folly. + +At those unhappy times when Nance threatened to break over the bounds, +she was sent out to the stables to spend an afternoon with Doc. No +matter how sore her grievance, it vanished in the presence of the genial +old veterinarian. She never tired of hearing him tell of her fighting +Irish grandfather and the pranks he played on his messmates, of Uncle Jed +and the time he lost his drumsticks and marched barefoot in the snow, +beating his drum with the heels of his shoes. + +Most of all she liked the horses. She learned how to put on bandages and +poultices and to make a bran mash. Doc taught her how to give a sick +horse a drink out of a bottle without choking him, how to hold his tongue +with one hand and put a pill far down his throat with the other. The +nursing of sick animals seemed to come to her naturally, and she found it +much more interesting than school work and domestic science. + +"She's got a way with critters," Doc confided proudly to Miss Stanley. +"I've seen a horse eat out of her hand when it wouldn't touch food in +the manger." + +As the months slipped into years, the memory of Calvary Alley grew dim, +and Nance began to look upon herself as an integral part of this +orderly life which stretched away in a pleasant perspective of work and +play. It was the first time that she had ever been tempted to be good, +and she fell. It was not Miss Stanley's way to say "don't." Instead, +she said, "do," and the "do's" became so engrossing that the "don'ts" +were crowded out. + +At regular, intervals Mrs. Snawdor made application for her dismissal, +and just as regularly a probation officer visited the Snawdor flat and +pronounced it unfit. + +"I suppose if I had a phoneygraf an' lace curtains you'd let her come +home," Mrs. Snawdor observed caustically during one of these inspections. +"You bet I'll fix things up next time if I know you are comin'!" + +The State was doing its clumsy best to make up to Nance for what she had +missed. It was giving her free board, free tuition, and protection from +harmful influences. But that did not begin to square the State's account, +nor the account of society. They still owed her something for that early +environment of dirt and disease. The landlord in whose vile tenement she +had lived, the saloon-keeper who had sold her beer, the manufacturer who +had bought the garments she made at starvation wages, were all her +debtors. Society exists for the purpose of doing justice to its members, +and society had not begun to pay its debt to that youthful member whose +lot had been cast in Calvary Alley. + +One Saturday afternoon in the early spring of Nance's fourth year at +Forest Home, Miss Stanley stood in the school-house door, reading a +letter. It was the kind of a day when heaven and earth cannot keep away +from each other, but the fleecy clouds must come down to play in the +sparkling pools, and white and pink blossoms must go climbing up to the +sky to flaunt their sweetness against the blue. Yet Miss Stanley, reading +her letter, sighed. + +Coming toward her down the hillside, plunged a noisy group of children, +and behind them in hot pursuit came Nance Molloy, angular, long-legged, +lithe as a young sapling and half mad with the spring. + +"Such a child still!" sighed Miss Stanley, as she lifted a +beckoning hand. + +The children crowded about her, all holding out hot fists full of faded +wild flowers. + +"Look!" cried one breathlessly. "We found 'em in the hollow. And Nance +says if you'll let her, she'll take us next Saturday to the old mill +where some yellow vi'lets grow!" + +Miss Stanley looked down at the flushed, happy faces; then she put her +arm around Nance's shoulder. + +"Nancy will not be with us next Saturday," she said regretfully. "She's +going home." + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +CLARKE'S + + +Nance Molloy came out of Forest Home, an independent, efficient girl, +with clear skin, luminous blue eyes, and shining braids of fair hair. She +came full of ideals and new standards and all the terrible wisdom of +sixteen, and she dumped them in a mass on the family in Calvary Alley and +boldly announced that "what she was going to do was a-plenty!" + +But like most reformers, she reckoned too confidently on cooperation. The +rest of the Snawdor family had not been to reform school, and it had +strong objections to Nance's drastic measures. Her innovations met with +bitter opposition from William J., who indignantly declined to have the +hitherto respected privacy of his ears and nose invaded, to Mrs. Snawdor, +who refused absolutely to sleep with the windows open. + +"What's the sense in working your fingers off to buy coal to heat the +house if you go an' let out all the hot air over night?" she demanded. +"They've filled up yer head with fool notions, but I tell you right now, +you ain't goin' to work 'em off on us. You kin just tell that old maid +Stanley that when she's had three husbands and five children an' a step, +an' managed to live on less'n ten dollars a week, it'll be time enough +fer her to be learnin' me tricks!" + +"But don't all this mess ever get on your nerves? Don't you ever want to +clear out and go to the country?" asked Nance. + +"Not me!" said Mrs. Snawdor. "I been fightin' the country all my life. +It's bad enough bein' dirt pore, without goin' an' settin' down among the +stumps where there ain't nothin' to take yer mind off it." + +So whatever reforms Nance contemplated had to be carried out slowly and +with great tact. Mrs. Snawdor, having put forth one supreme effort to +make the flat sufficiently decent to warrant Nance's return, proposed for +the remainder of her life to rest on her laurels. As for the children, +they had grown old enough to have decided opinions of their own, and when +Nance threw the weight of her influence on the side of order and +cleanliness, she was regarded as a traitor in the camp. It was only Mr. +Snawdor who sought to uphold her, and Mr. Snawdor was but a broken reed. + +Meanwhile the all-important question of getting work was under +discussion. Miss Stanley had made several tentative suggestions, but none +of them met with Mrs. Snawdor's approval. + +"No, I ain't goin' to let you work out in private families!" she +declared indignantly. "She's got her cheek to ast it! Did you tell her +yer pa was a Molloy? An' Mr. Burks says yer maw was even better born than +what Bud was. I'm goin' to git you a job myself. I'm goin' to take you up +to Clarke's this very evenin'." + +"I don't want to work in a factory!" Nance said discontentedly, looking +out of the window into the dirty court below. + +"I suppose you want to run a beauty parlor," said Mrs. Snawdor, with +scornful reference to Nance's improved appearance. "You might just as +well come off them high stilts an' stop puttin' on airs, Dan Lewis has +been up to Clarke's goin' on four years now. I hear they're pushin' him +right along." + +Nance stopped drumming on the window-pane and became suddenly interested. +The one thing that had reconciled her to leaving Miss Stanley and the +girls at the home was the possibility of seeing Dan again. She wondered +what he looked like after these four years, whether he would recognize +her, whether he had a sweetheart? She had been home three days now and +had caught no glimpse of him. + +"We never see nothin' of him," her stepmother told her. "He's took up +with the Methodists, an' runs around to meetin's an' things with that +there Mis' Purdy." + +"Don't he live over Slap Jack's?" asked Nance. + +"Yes; he's got his room there still. I hear his ma died las' spring. +Flirtin' with the angels by now, I reckon." + +The prospect of seeing Dan cheered Nance amazingly. She spent the morning +washing and ironing her best shirt-waist and turning the ribbon on her +tam-o'-shanter. Every detail of her toilet received scrupulous attention. + +It was raining dismally when she and Mrs. Snawdor picked their way across +the factory yard that afternoon. The conglomerate mass of buildings known +as "Clarke's" loomed somberly against the dull sky. Beside the low +central building a huge gas-pipe towered, and the water, trickling down +it, made a puddle through which they had to wade to reach the door of the +furnace room. + +Within they could see the huge, round furnace with its belt of small +fiery doors, from which glass-blowers, with long blow-pipes were deftly +taking small lumps of moulten glass and blowing them into balls. + +"There's Dan!" cried Mrs. Snawdor, and Nance looked eagerly in the +direction indicated. + +In the red glare of the furnace, a big, awkward, bare-armed young fellow +was just turning to roll his red-hot ball on a board. There was a steady +look in the gray eyes that scowled slightly under the intense glare, a +sure movement of the hands that dropped the elongated roll into the +mold. When he saw Mrs. Snawdor's beckoning finger, he came to the door. + +"This here is Nance Molloy," said Mrs. Snawdor by way of introduction. +"She's about growed up sence you seen her. We come to see about gittin' +her a job." + +Nance, looking at the strange, stern face above her, withdrew the hand +she had held out. Dan did not seem to see her hand any more than he saw +her fresh shirt-waist and the hat she had taken so much pains to retrim. +After a casual nod he stood looking at the floor and rubbing the toe of +his heavy boot against his blow-pipe. + +"Sure," he said slowly, "but this is no fit place for a girl, Mrs. +Snawdor." + +Mrs. Snawdor bristled immediately. + +"I ain't astin' yer advice, Dan Lewis. I'm astin' yer help." + +Dan looked Nance over in troubled silence. + +"Is she sixteen yet?" he asked as impersonally as if she had not +been present. + +"Yes, an' past. I knowed they'd be scarin' up that dangerous trade +business on me next. How long before the foreman'll be here?" + +"Any time now," said Dan. "I'll take you into his office." + +With a sinking heart, Nance followed them into the crowded room. The heat +was stifling, and the air was full of stinging glass dust. All about +them boys were running with red hot bottles on big asbestos shovels. She +hated the place, and she hated Dan for not being glad to see her. + +"They are the carrying-in boys," Dan explained, continuing to address all +of his remarks to Mrs. Snawdor. "That's where I began. You wouldn't +believe that those kids often run as much as twenty-two miles a day. +Watch out there, boy! Be careful!" + +But his warning came too late. One of the smaller youngsters had stumbled +and dropped his shovel, and a hot bottle had grazed his leg, burning away +a bit of the stocking. + +"It's all right, Partner," cried Dan, springing forward, "You're not much +hurt. I'll fix you up." + +But the boy was frightened and refused to let him remove the stocking. + +"Let me do it," begged Nance. "I can get it off without hurting him." + +And while Dan held the child's leg steady, she bathed and bound it in a +way that did credit to Doc's training. Only once daring the process did +she look up, and then she was relieved to see instead of the stern face +of a strange young man, the compassionate, familiar face of the old Dan +she used to know. + +The interview with the foreman was of brief duration. He was a +thick-set, pimply-faced person whom Dan called Mr. Bean. He swept an +appraising eye over the applicant, submitted a few blunt questions to Dan +in an undertone, ignored Mrs. Snawdor's voluble comments, and ended by +telling Nance to report for work the following week. + +As Mrs. Snawdor and Nance took their departure, the former, whose +thoughts seldom traveled on a single track, said tentatively: + +"Dan Lewis has got to be real nice lookin' sence you seen him, ain't he?" + +"Nothin' to brag on," said Nance, still smarting at his indifference. But +as she turned the corner of the building, she stole a last look through +the window to where Dan was standing at his fiery post, his strong, +serious face and broad, bare chest lighted up by the radiance from the +glory-hole. + +It was with little enthusiasm that Nance presented herself at the factory +on Monday morning, ready to enlist in what Bishop Bland called "the noble +service of industry." Her work was in the finishing room where a number +of girls were crowded at machines and tables, filing, clipping, and +packing bottles. Her task was to take the screw-neck bottles that came +from the leer, and chip and file their jagged necks and shoulders until +all the roughness was removed. It was dirty work, and dangerous for +unskilled hands, and she found it difficult to learn. + +"Say, kid," said the ugly, hollow-chested girl beside her, "if I'm goin' +to be your learner, I want you to be more particular. Between you an' +this here other girl, you're fixin' to put my good eye out." + +Nance glanced up at the gaunt face with its empty eye socket and then +looked quickly away. + +"Say," said the other new girl, complainingly, "is it always hot like +this in here? I'm most choking." + +"We'll git the boss to put in a 'lectric fan fer you," suggested the +hollow-chested one, whose name was Mag Gist. + +Notwithstanding her distaste for the work, Nance threw herself into it +with characteristic vehemence. Speed seemed to be the quality above all +others that one must strive for, and speed she was determined to have, +regardless of consequences. + +"When you learn how to do this, what do you learn next?" she asked +presently. + +Mag laughed gruffly. + +"There ain't no next. If you'd started as a wrapper, you might 'a' +worked up a bit, but you never would 'a' got to be a chuck-grinder. I +been at this bench four years an' if I don't lose my job, I'll be here +four more." + +"But if you get to be awful quick, you can make money, can't you?" + +"You kin make enough to pay fer two meals a day if yer appetite ain't +too good." + +Nance's heart sank. It was a blow to find that Mag, who was the cleverest +girl in the finishing room, had been filing bottle necks for four years. +She stole a glance at her stooped shoulders and sallow skin and the +hideous, empty socket of her left eye. What was the good of becoming +expert if it only put one where Mag was? + +By eleven o'clock there was a sharp pain between her shoulder-blades, and +her feet ached so that she angrily kicked off first one shoe, then the +other. This was the signal for a general laugh. + +"They're kiddin' you fer sheddin' yer shoes," explained Mag, who had +laughed louder than anybody. "Greenhorns always do it first thing. By the +time you've stepped on a piece of glass onct or twict, you'll be glad +enough to climb back into 'em." + +After a while one of the girls started a song, and one by one the others +joined in. There were numerous verses, and a plaintive refrain that +referred to "the joy that ne'er would come again to you and I." + +When no more verses could be thought of, there were stories and doubtful +jokes which sent the girls into fits of wild laughter. + +"Oh, cheese it," said Mag after one of these sallies, "You all orter to +behave more before these kids." + +"They don't know what we are talkin' about," said a red-haired girl. + +"You bet I do," said Nance, with disgust, "but you all give me a sick +headache." + +When the foreman made his rounds, figures that had begun to droop were +galvanized into fresh effort. At Mag's bench he paused. + +"How are the fillies making it?" he asked, with a familiar hand on the +shoulder of each new girl. Nance's companion dropped her eyes with a +simpering smile, but Nance jerked away indignantly. + +The foreman looked at the back of the shining head and frowned. + +"You'll have to push up the stroke," he said. "Can't you see you lose +time by changing your position so often? What makes you fidget so?" + +Nance set her teeth resolutely and held her tongue. But her Irish +instinct always suffered from restraint and by the time the noon whistle +blew, she was in a state of sullen resentment. The thought of her beloved +Miss Stanley and what she would think of these surroundings brought a +lump into her throat. + +"Come on over here," called Mag from a group of girls at the open window. +"Don't you mind what Bean says. He's sore on any girl that won't eat +outen his dirty hand. You 're as smart again as that other kid. I can +tell right off if a girl's got gumption, an' if she's on the straight. + +"Chuck that Sunday-school dope," laughed a pretty, red-haired girl named +Gert. "You git her in wrong with Bean, an' I wouldn't give a nickel fer +her chance." + +"You ought to know," said Mag, drily. + +The talk ran largely to food and clothes, and Nance listened with growing +dismay. It seemed that most of the girls lived in rooming houses and took +their meals out. + +"Wisht I had a Hamberger," said Mag. "I ain't had a bite of meat fer a +month. I always buy my shoes with meat money." + +"I git my hats with breakfasts," said another girl. "Fourteen breakfasts +makes a dollar-forty. I kin buy a hat fer a dollar-forty-nine that's +swell enough fer anybody." + +"I gotta have my breakfast," said Mag. "Four cups of coffee ain't +nothin' to me." + +Gert got up and stretched herself impatiently. + +"I'm sick an' tired of hearin' you all talk about eatin'. Mag's idea of +Heaven is a place where you spend ten hours makin' money an' two eatin' +it up. Some of us ain't built like that. We got to have some fun as we +go along, an' we're goin' to git it, you bet your sweet life, one way or +the other." + +Soon after work was resumed, word was passed around that a big order had +come in, and nobody was to quit work until it was made up. A ripple of +sullen comment followed this announcement, but the girls bent to their +tasks with feverish energy. + +At two o'clock the other new girl standing next to Nance grew faint, and +had to be stretched on the floor in the midst of the broken glass. + +"She's a softie!" whispered Mag to Nance. "This ain't nothin' to what it +is in hot weather." + +The pain between Nance's shoulders was growing intolerable, and her cut +fingers and aching feet made her long to cast herself on the floor beside +the other girl and give up the fight. But pride held her to her task. +After what seemed to her an eternity she again looked at the big clock +over the door. It was only three. How was she ever to endure three more +hours when every minute now was an agony? + +Mag heard her sigh and turned her head long enough to say: + +"Hang yer arms down a spell; that kind of rests 'em. You ain't goin' to +flop, too, are you?" + +"Not if I can hold out." + +"I knowed you was game all right," said Mag, with grim approval. + +By six o'clock the last bottle was packed, and Nance washed the blood and +dirt off her hands and forced her swollen, aching feet into her shoes. +She jerked her jacket and tam-o'-shanter from the long row of hooks, and +half blind with weariness, joined the throng of women and girls that +jostled one another down the stairs. Every muscle of her body ached, and +her whole soul was hot with rebellion. She told herself passionately that +nothing in the world could induce her to come back; she was through with +factory work forever. + +As she limped out into the yard, a totally vanquished little soldier on +the battle-field of industry, she spied Dan Lewis standing beside the +tall gas-pipe, evidently waiting for somebody. He probably had a +sweetheart among all these trooping girls; perhaps it was the pretty, +red-haired one named Gert. The thought, dropping suddenly into a +surcharged heart, brimmed it over, and Nance had to sweep her fingers +across her eyes to brush away the tears. + +And then: + +"I thought I'd missed you," said Dan, quite as a matter of course, as he +caught step with her and raised her umbrella. + +Nance could have flung her tired arms about him and wept on his broad +shoulder for sheer gratitude. To be singled out, like that, before all +the girls on her first day, to have a beau, a big beau, pilot her through +the crowded streets and into Calvary Alley where all might see, was +sufficient to change the dullest sky to rose and lighten the heart of the +most discouraged. + +On the way home they found little to say, but Nance's aching feet fairly +tripped beside those of her tall companion, and when they turned Slap +Jack's corner and Dan asked in his slow, deliberate way, "How do you +think you are going to like the factory?" Nance answered +enthusiastically, "Oh, I like it splendid!" + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +EIGHT TO SIX + + +Through that long, wet spring Nance did her ten hours a day, six days in +the week and on the seventh washed her clothes and mended them. Her +breaking in was a hard one, for she was as quick of tongue as she was of +fingers, and her tirades against the monotony, the high speed, and the +small pay were frequent and vehement. Every other week when Dan was on +the night shift, she made up her mind definitely that she would stand it +no longer. + +But on the alternate weeks when she never failed to find him waiting at +the gas-pipe to take her home, she thought better of it. She loved to +slip in under his big cotton umbrella, when the nights were rainy, and +hold to his elbow as he shouldered a way for her through the crowd; she +liked to be a part of that endless procession of bobbing umbrellas that +flowed down the long, wet, glistening street; best of all she liked the +distinction of having a "steady" and the envious glances it brought her +from the other girls. + +Sometimes when they paused at a shop window, she caught her reflection in +a mirror, and smiled approval at the bright face under the red tam. She +wondered constantly if Dan thought she was pretty and always came to the +conclusion that he did not. + +From the time they left the factory until they saw the towering bulk of +the cathedral against the dusk, Nance's chatter never ceased. She +dramatized her experiences at the factory; she gave a lively account of +the doings of the Snawdor family; she wove tales of mystery around old +Mr. Demry. She had the rare gift of enhancing every passing moment with +something of importance and interest. + +Dan listened with the flattering homage a slow, taciturn nature often +pays a quick, vivacious one. It was only when problems concerning the +factory were touched upon that his tongue lost its stiffness. Under an +unswerving loyalty to his employers was growing a discontent with certain +existing conditions. The bad lighting system, the lack of ventilation, +the employment of children under age, were subjects that rendered him +eloquent. That cruel month spent in the reformatory had branded him so +deeply that he was supersensitive to the wrongs of others, and spent much +of his time in planning ways and means to better conditions. + +"Don't you ever want a good time, Dan?" Nance asked. "Don't you ever want +to sort of let go and do something reckless?" + +"No; but I'll tell you what I do want. I want a' education. I've a good +mind to go to night school and try to pick up some of the things I +didn't get a chance to learn when I was a kid." + +Nance scoffed the idea; school was almost invisible to her from the giddy +height of sixteen. "Let's go on a bat," she urged. "Let's go out and see +something." + +So on the four following Sundays Dan took her to see the library, the +reservoir, the city hall, and the jail. His ideas of recreation had not +been cultivated. + +The time in the week to which she always looked forward was Saturday +afternoon. Then they got out early, and if the weather was fine, they +would stop in Post-Office Square and, sitting on one of the iron benches, +watch the passing throng. There was something thrilling in the jostling +crowds, and the electric signs flashing out one by one down the long gay +thoroughfare. + +Post-Office Square, at the end of the day, was always littered with +papers and trash. In its center was a battered, weather kiosk, and facing +it, was a huge electric advertisement which indulged in the glittering +generality, that "You get what you pay for." + +It was not a place to inspire romance, yet every Saturday its benches +were crowded with boys and girls who had no place to visit except on +the street. + +Through the long spring dusks, with their tender skies and silver stars, +Nance and Dan kept company, unconcerned with the past or the future, +wholly content with the May-time of the present. At a word or touch from +Dan, Nance's inflammable nature would have taken fire but Dan, under Mrs. +Purdy's influence, was passing through an acute stage of religious +conversion, and all desires of the flesh were sternly repressed by that +new creed to which he was making such heroic efforts to conform. With the +zeal of a new convert, he considered it his duty to guard his small +companion against all love-making, including his own. + +Nance at an early age had developed a protective code that even without +Dan's forbidding looks and constant surveillance might have served its +purpose. Despite the high spirits and free speech that brought her so +many admiring glances from the boys in the factory, it was soon +understood that the "Molloy kid" was not to be trifled with. + +"Say, little Sister, I like your looks," Bean had said to her one morning +when they were alone in the hall. "It's more than I do yours," Nance had +answered coolly, with a critical glance at his pimply nose. + +As summer came on, the work, which at first was so difficult, gradually +became automatic, and while her shoulders always ached, and her feet were +always tired, she ceased for the most part to think of them. It was the +confinement that told upon her, and when the long bright days came, and +she thought of Forest Home and its woods and streams, her restlessness +increased. The stifling finishing room, the endless complaints of the +girls, and the everlasting crunching of glass under foot were at times +almost unendurable. + +One day when the blue of the sky could not be dimmed even by factory +smoke, and the air was full of enticement, Nance slipped out at the noon +hour, and, watching her chance, darted across the factory yard out +through the stables, to the road beyond. A decrepit old elm-tree, which +had evidently made heroic effort to keep tryst with the spring, was the +one touch of green in an otherwise barren landscape. Scrambling up the +bank, Nance flung herself on the ground beneath its branches, and between +the bites of a dry sandwich, proceeded to give vent to some of her +surplus vitality. + +"Arra, come in, Barney McKane, out of the rain," she sang at the top of +her voice. + + "And sit down until the moon comes out again, + Sure a cup of tay I'll brew, just enough for me and you, + We'll snuggle up together, and we'll talk about the weather, + Do you hear? Barney dear, there's a queer + Sort of feelin' round me heart, that gives me pain, + And I think the likes o' me could learn to like the likes o' ye, + Arra, come in, Barney McKane, out of the rain!" + +So absorbed was she in trying operatic effects that she did not notice +an approaching automobile until it came to a stop in the road below. + +"Hi there, Sembrich!" commanded a fresh young voice, the owner of which +emphasized his salute with his horn, "are you one of the factory kids?" + +Nance rose to a sitting posture. + +"What's it to you?" she asked, instantly on the defensive. + +"I want to know if Mr. Clarke's come in. Have you seen him?" + +"No, indeed," said Nance, to whom Mr. Clarke was as vague as the Deity; +then she added good-naturedly, "I'll go find out if you want me to." + +The young man shut off his engine and, transferring two struggling +pigeons from his left hand to his right, dismounted. + +"Never mind," he said. "I'll go myself. Road's too rotten to take the +machine in." Then he hesitated, "I say, will you hold these confounded +birds 'til I come back? Won't be gone a minute. Just want to speak to the +governor." + +Nance scrambled down the bank and accepted the fluttering charges, then +watched with liveliest interest the buoyant figure in the light suit go +swinging up the road. There was something tantalizingly familiar in his +quick, imperious manner and his brown, irresponsible eyes. In her first +confusion of mind she thought he must be the prince come to life out of +Mr. Demry's old fairy tale. Then she caught her breath. + +"I believe it's that Clarke boy!" she thought, with rising excitement, "I +wonder if he'd remember the fight? I wonder if he'd remember me?" + +She went over to the automobile and ran her fingers over the silver +initials on the door. + +"M.D.C," she repeated. "It _is_ him! It is!" + +In the excitement of her discovery she relaxed her grasp on the pigeons, +and one of them escaped. In vain she whistled and coaxed; it hopped about +in the tree overhead and then soared away to larger freedom. + +Nance was aghast at the catastrophe. She did not wait for the owner's +return, but rushed headlong down the road to meet him. + +"I let one of 'em go!" she cried in consternation, as he vaulted the +fence and came toward her. "I wouldn't 'a' done it for anything in the +world. But I'll pay you for it, a little each week. Honest I will!" + +The handsome boyish face above her clouded instantly. + +"You let it go?" he repeated furiously. "You little fool you! How did +you do it?" + +Nance looked at him for a moment; then she deliberately lifted the other +pigeon as high as she could reach and opened her hand. + +"Like that!" she cried. + +Mac Clarke watched his second bird wheel into space; then his amazed +glance dropped to the slim figure of the young girl in her short +gingham dress, with the sunlight shining on her hair and on her bright, +defiant eyes. + +"You've got your nerve!" he said with a short laugh; then he climbed into +his car and, with several backward glances of mingled anger and +amusement, drove away. + +Nance related the incident with great gusto to Dan that night on +the way home. + +"He never recognized me, but I knew him right off. Same old Smart Aleck, +calling people names." + +"I was up in the office when he come in," said Dan. "He'd been held up +for speeding and wanted his father to pay his fine."' + +"Did he do it?" + +"Of course. Mac always gets what he wants. He told Bean he wasn't going +to stay at that school in Virginia if he had to make 'em expel him. Sure +enough they did. Wouldn't I like to have his chance though!" + +"I don't blame him for not wanting to go to school," said Nance. Then she +added absently, "Say, he's got to be a awful swell-looker, hasn't he?" + +That night, for the first time, she objected to stopping in +Post-Office Square. + +"It ain't any fun to hang around there," she said impatiently. "I'm sick +of doing tame things all the time." + +The next time Nance saw Mac Clarke was toward the close of the summer. +Through the long sweltering hours of an interminable August morning she +had filed and chipped bottles with an accuracy and speed that no longer +gave cause for criticism. The months of confinement were beginning to +tell upon her; her bright color was gone, and she no longer had the +energy at the noon hour to go down the road to the elm-tree. She wanted +above all things to stretch out at full length and rest her back and +relax all those tense muscles that were so reluctantly learning to hold +one position for hours at a time. + +At the noon hour she had the unexpected diversion of a visit from Birdie +Smelts. Birdie had achieved her cherished ambition of going on the stage, +and was now a chorus girl in the "Rag Time Follies." Meager news of her +had reached the alley from time to time, but nobody was prepared for the +very pretty and sophisticated young person who condescended to accept +board and lodging from her humble parents during the interval between her +engagements. Nance was genuinely glad to see her and especially gratified +by the impression her white coat-suit and black picture hat made on the +finishing room. + +"It must be grand to be on the stage," said Gert enviously. + +"Well, it's living," said Birdie, airily. "That's more than you can +claim for this rotten grind." + +She put a high-heeled, white-shod foot on the window ledge to adjust its +bow, and every eye in the room followed the process. + +"I bet I make more money in a week," she continued dramatically, "than +you all make in a month. And look at your hands! Why, they couldn't pay +me enough to have my hands scarred up like that!" + +"It ain't my hands that's worryin' me," said another girl. "It's my feet. +Say, the destruction on your shoes is somethin' fierce! You orter see +this here room some nights at closin' time; it's that thick with glass +you don't know where to step." + +"I'd know," said Birdie. "I'd step down and out, and don't you +forget it." + +Nance had been following the conversation in troubled silence. + +"I don't mind the work so awful much," she said restlessly. "What gets me +is never having any fun. I haven't danced a step since I left Forest +Home, Birdie." + +"You'd get your fill of it if you was with me," Birdie said importantly. +"Seven nights a week and two matinees." + +"'Twouldn't be any too much for me," said Nance. "I could dance in +my sleep." + +Birdie was sitting in the window now, ostensibly examining her full red +lips in a pocket-mirror, but in reality watching the factory yard below. + +"There goes your whistle!" she said, getting up suddenly. "Say, Nance, +can't you scare up an excuse to hook off this afternoon? I'll take you to +a show if you will!" + +Nance's pulses leapt at the thought, but she shook her head and went +reluctantly back to her bench. For the next ten minutes her fingers +lagged at their task, and she grew more and more discontented. All the +youth in her clamored suddenly for freedom. She was tired of being the +slave of a whistle, a cog in a machine. With a sudden rash impulse she +threw down her tools and, slipping her hat from its peg, went in swift +pursuit of Birdie. + +At the foot of the narrow stairs she came to a sudden halt. Outside the +door, in the niche made by the gas-pipe and the adjoining wall, stood Mac +Clarke and Birdie. He had his arms about her, and there was a look in his +face that Nance had never seen in a man's face before. Of course it was +meant for the insolent eyes under the picture hat, but instead it fell on +Nance standing in the doorway. For a full minute his ardent gaze held her +captive; then he dropped his arms in sudden embarrassment, and she melted +out of the doorway and fled noiselessly up the stairway. + +On the upper landing she suffered a head-on collision with the foreman, +who demanded in no gentle tones what in the devil she was doing out there +with her hat on at that hour. + +"None of your business," said Nance, recklessly. + +Bean looked at her flashing eyes and flushed face, and laughed. She +was the youngest girl in the factory and the only one who was not +afraid of him. + +"See here," he said, "I am going to kiss you or fire you. Which'll +you have?" + +Nance dodged his outstretched hand and reached the top step. + +"You won't do neither!" she cried fiercely. "You can't fire me, because I +fired myself ten minutes ago, and I wouldn't kiss you to stay in heaven, +let alone a damned old bottle factory!" + +It was the Nance of the slums who spoke--the Nance whose small bare fists +had fought the world too long for the knuckles to be tender. She had +drifted a long way from the carefully acquired refinements of Forest +Home, but its influence, like a dragging anchor, still sought to hold her +against the oncoming gales of life. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +IDLENESS + + +When one has a famishing thirst for happiness, one is apt to gulp down +diversions wherever they are offered. The necessity of draining the +dregs of life before the wine is savored does not cultivate a +discriminating taste. Nance saw in Birdie Smelts her one chance of +escape from the deadly monotony of life, and she seized it with both +hands. Birdie might not be approved of her seniors, but she was a +disturbingly important person to her juniors. To them it seemed nothing +short of genius for a girl, born as they were in the sordid environs of +Calvary Alley, to side-step school and factory and soar away into the +paradise of stage-land. When such an authority gives counsel, it is not +to be ignored. Birdie's advice had been to quit the factory, and Nance +had taken the plunge without any idea of what she was going to put in +its place. + +For some reason best known to herself, she never mentioned that episode +in the factory yard to either Birdie or Dan Lewis. There were many things +about Birdie that she did not like, and she knew only too well what Miss +Stanley would have said. But then Miss Stanley wouldn't have approved of +Mr. Demry and his dope, or Mrs. Snawdor and her beer, or Mag Gist, with +her loud voice and coarse jokes. When one lives in Calvary Alley, one has +to compromise; it is seldom the best or the next best one can afford, +even in friends. + +When Mrs. Snawdor heard that Nance had quit work, she was furious. Who +was Nance Molloy, she wanted to know, to go and stick up her nose at a +glass factory? There wasn't a bloomin' thing the matter with Clarke's. +_She'd_ begun in a factory an' look at her! What was Nance a-goin' to do? +Run the streets with Birdie Smelts? It was bad enough, God knew, to have +Snawdor settin' around like a tombstone, an' Fidy a-havin' a fit if you +so much as looked at her, without havin' Nance eatin' 'em out of house +an' home an' not bringin' in a copper cent. If she stayed at home, she'd +have to do the work; that was all there was to it! + +"Anybody'd think jobs happened around as regerlar as the rent man," she +ended bitterly. "You'll see the day when you're glad enough to go back to +the factory." + +Before the month was over, Nance began to wonder if Mrs. Snawdor was +right. With unabating zeal she tramped the streets, answering +advertisements, applying at stores, visiting agencies. But despite the +fact that she unblushingly recommended herself in the highest terms, +nobody seemed to trust so young and inexperienced an applicant. + +Meanwhile Birdie Smelts's thrilling prospect of joining her company at +an early date threw other people's sordid possibilities into the shade. +Every night she practised gymnastics and dance steps, and there being +no room in the Smelts' flat, she got into the habit of coming up to +Nance's room. + +One of the conditions upon which Nance had been permitted to return to +Calvary Alley, was that she should not sleep in the same bed with Fidy +Yager, a condition which enraged Mrs. Snawdor more than all the rest. + +"Annybody'd think Fidy's fits was ketchin'," she complained indignantly +to Uncle Jed. + +"That there front room of mine ain't doin' anybody no good," suggested +Uncle Jed. "We might let Nance have that." + +So to Nance's great joy she was given a big room all to herself. The slat +bed, the iron wash-stand, the broken-legged chair, and the wavy mirror +were the only articles that Mrs. Snawdor was willing to part with, but +Uncle Jed donated a battered stove, which despite its rust-eaten top and +sagging door, still proclaimed itself a "Little Jewel". + +No bride, adorning her first abode, ever arranged her possessions with +more enthusiasm than did Nance. She scrubbed the rough floor, washed the +windows, and polished the "Little Jewel" until it shone. The first money +she could save out of her factory earnings had gone to settle that +four-year-old debt to Mr. Lavinski for the white slippers; the next went +for bedclothes and cheese-cloth window curtains. Her ambition was no +longer for the chintz hangings and gold-framed fruit pieces of Mrs. +Purdy's cottage, but looked instead toward the immaculate and austere +bedroom of Miss Stanley, with its "Melodonna" over the bed and a box of +blooming plants on the window-sill. + +Such an ideal of classic simplicity was foredoomed to failure. Mrs. +Snawdor, like nature, abhorred a vacuum. An additional room to her was a +sluice in the dyke, and before long discarded pots and pans, disabled +furniture, the children's dilapidated toys, and, finally, the children +themselves were allowed to overflow into Nance's room. In vain Nance got +up at daybreak to make things tidy before going to work. At night when +she returned, the washing would be hung in her room to dry, or the twins +would be playing circus in the middle of her cherished bed. + +"It's lots harder when you know how things ought to be, than when you +just go on living in the mess, and don't know the difference," she +complained bitterly to Birdie. + +"I've had my fill of it," said Birdie, "I kiss my hand to the alley for +good this time. What do you reckon the fellers would think of me if they +knew I hung out in a hole like this?" + +"Does he know?" asked Nance in an unguarded moment. + +"Who?" + +"Mac Clarke." + +Birdie shot a glance of swift suspicion at her. + +"What's he got to do with me?" she asked coldly. + +"Ain't he one of your fellers?" + +"Well, if he is, it ain't anybody's business but mine." Then evidently +repenting her harshness, she added, "I got tickets to a dance-hall +up-town to-night. I'll take you along if you want to look on. You wouldn't +catch me dancing with any of those roughnecks." + +Nance found looking on an agonizing business. Not that she wanted to +dance with the roughnecks any more than Birdie did. Their common +experience at Forest Home had given them certain standards of speech and +manner that lifted them just enough above their kind to be scornful. But +to sit against the wall watching other people dance was nothing short of +agony to one of Nance's temperament. + +"Come on and have a try with me, Birdie," she implored. "I'll pay the +dime." And Birdie, with professional disdain, condescended to circle the +room with her a few times. + +That first dance was to Nance what the taste of blood is to a young +tiger. For days after she could think of nothing else. + +"Never you mind," Birdie promised her. "When I get back on the road, I'm +going to see what I can do for you. Somebody's always falling out of the +chorus, and if you keep up this practising with me, you'll be dancing as +good as any of 'em. Ask old man Demry; he played in the orchestra last +time we was at the Gaiety." + +But when Nance threw out a few cautious remarks to Mr. Demry, she met +with prompt discouragement: + +"No, no, my dear child," he said uneasily. "You must put that idea out of +your head. The chorus is no place for a nice girl." + +"That's what Dan says about the factory, and what Mrs. Snawdor says about +housework, and what somebody says about everything I start to do. Looks +like being a nice girl don't pay!" + +Mr. Demry took her petulant little chin in his thin old hand, and turned +her face up to his. + +"Nancy," he said, "these old eyes have seen a good deal over the fiddle +strings. I would rather see you go back to the glass factory, bad as it +is, than to go into the chorus." + +"But I do dance as good as some of the girls, don't I, Mr. Demry?" she +teased, and Mr. Demry, whose pride in an old pupil was considerable, had +to acknowledge that she did. + +Uncle Jed's attitude was scarcely more encouraging. + +"No; I wouldn't be willin' to see you a playactor," he said, "walkin' +round in skin tights, with your face all painted up." + +Nance knew before asking that Dan would disapprove, but she couldn't +resist mentioning the matter to him. + +"That Birdie Smelts has been putting notions in your head," he said +sternly. "I wish you'd quit runnin' with girls older than you. Besides, +Birdie ain't your kind." + +"I'd like to know why?" Nance challenged him in instant loyalty to her +friend. "Besides, who else have I got to run with? Maybe you think it +ain't stupid drudging around home all day and never having a cent to call +my own. I want to get out and do something." + +Dan looked down at her in troubled silence. + +"Mrs. Purdy's always asking me why I don't bring you to some of the +meetings at the church. They have real nice socials." + +"I don't want to pray and sing silly old hymns!" cried Nance. "I want +to dance." + +"I don't believe in dancing," said Dan, firmly; then with a side-glance +at her unhappy face, he added, "I can't take you to the swimming school, +because they don't allow girls, but I might take you to the new +skating-rink some Saturday." + +In an instant Nance was all enthusiasm. + +"Will you, Dan? I'm just crazy about skating. We used to do it out at the +home. You ought to see Birdie and me do a Dutch roll. Say, let's take her +along. What do you say?" + +Dan was not at all in favor of it, but Nance insisted. + +"I think we ought to be nice to Birdie on account of Mr. Smelts' stiff +leg. Not that it ever did him any good when it was limber, but I always +feel mean when I see it sticking out straight when he sits down." + +This was a bit of feminine wile on Nance's part, and it had the desired +effect. Dan, always vulnerable when his sympathy was roused, reluctantly +included Birdie in the invitation. + +On the Saturday night appointed, the three of them set out for the +skating rink. Dan, with his neck rigid in a high collar and his hair +plastered close to his head, stalked somberly beside the two girls, who +walked arm in arm and giggled immoderately at each other's witticisms. + +"Wake up, Daniel!" said Birdie, giving his hat a tilt. "We engaged you +for a escort, not a pallbearer." + +The rink was in an old armory, and the musicians sat at one end of the +room on a raised platform under two drooping flags. It was dusty and +noisy, and the crowd was promiscuous, but to Nance it was Elysium. When +she and Birdie, with Dan between them, began to circle the big room to +the rhythm of music, her joy was complete. + +"Hullo! Dan Lewis is carrying two," she heard some one say as they +circled past the entrance. Glancing back, she saw it was one of the boys +from the factory. A sudden impulse seized her to stop and explain the +matter to him, but instead she followed quite a contrary purpose and +detaching herself from her companions, struck out boldly for herself. + +Before she had been on the floor ten minutes people began to watch her. +Her plain, neat dress setting off her trim figure, and her severe, black +sailor hat above the shining bands of fair hair, were in sharp contrast +to the soiled finery and draggled plumes of the other girls. But it was +not entirely her appearance that attracted attention. It was a certain +independent verve, a high-headed indifference, that made her reject even +the attentions of the rink-master, a superior person boasting a pompadour +and a turquoise ring. + +No one could have guessed that behind that nonchalant air Nance was +hiding a new and profoundly disturbing emotion. The sight of Birdie, +clinging in affected terror to Dan Lewis, filled her with rage. Couldn't +Dan see that Birdie was pretending? Didn't he know that she could skate +by herself quite as well as he could? Never once during the evening did +Dan make his escape, and never once did Nance go to his rescue. + +When they were taking off their skates to go home, Birdie +whispered to her: + +"I believe I got old slow-coach going. Watch me make him smoke up +for a treat!" + +"No, you sha'n't," Nance said. "Dan's spent enough on us for one night." + +"Another quarter won't break him," said Birdie. "I'm as dry as a piece +of chalk." + +Ten minutes later she landed the little party in a drug store and entered +into a spirited discussion with the soda-water boy as to the comparative +merits of sundry new drinks. + +"Me for a cabaret fizz," she said. "What'll you have, Nance?" + +"Nothing," said Nance, sullenly, turning and taking up her stand +at the door. + +"What do you want, Dan?" persisted Birdie, adding, with a mischievous +wink at the white-coated clerk, "Give him a ginger ale; he needs +stimulating." + +While Birdie talked for the benefit of the clerk, and Dan sat beside her, +sipping his distasteful ginger, Nance stood at the door and watched the +people pouring out of the Gaiety Theater next door. Ordinarily the +bright evening wraps, the glimpses of sparkling jewels, the gay confusion +of the scene would have excited her liveliest interest, but to-night she +was too busy hating Birdie Smelts to think of anything else. What right +had she to monopolize Dan like that and order him about and laugh at him? +What right had she to take his arm when they walked, or put her hand on +his shoulder as she was doing this minute? + +Suddenly Nance started and leaned forward. Out there in the crowded +street a tall, middle-aged man, with grizzled hair and mustache, was +somewhat imperiously making way for a pretty, delicate-looking lady +enveloped in white furs, and behind them, looking very handsome and +immaculate in his evening clothes, walked Mac Clarke. + +Nance's eager eyes followed the group to the curbing; she saw the young +man glance at her with a puzzled expression; then, as he stood aside to +allow the lady to enter the motor, he looked again. For the fraction of a +second their eyes held each other; then an expression of amused +recognition sprang into his face, and Nance met it instantly with a flash +of her white teeth. + +The next instant the limousine swallowed him; a door slammed, and the car +moved away. But Nance, utterly forgetful of her recent discomfort, still +stood in the door of the drug store, tingling with excitement as she +watched a little red light until it lost itself in the other moving +lights on the broad thoroughfare. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +MARKING TIME + + +Early in the autumn Birdie took flight from the alley, and Nance found +herself hopelessly engulfed in domestic affairs. Mr. Snawdor, who had +been doing the work during her long absence, took advantage of her return +to have malarial fever. He had been trying to have it for months, but +could never find the leisure hour in which to indulge in the preliminary +chill. Once having tasted the joys of invalidism he was loathe to forego +them, and insisted upon being regarded as a chronic convalescent. Nance +might have managed Mr. Snawdor, however, had it not been for the grave +problem of Fidy Yager. + +"Ike Lavinski says she ought to be in a hospital some place," she urged +Mrs. Snawdor. "He says she never is going to be any better. He says it's +epilepsy." + +"Wel he ain't tellin' me anything' I don't know," said Mrs. Snawdor, "but +I ain't goin' to put her away, not if she th'ows a fit a minute!" + +It was not maternal solicitude alone that prompted this declaration. The +State allowed seventy-live dollars a year to parents of epileptic +children, and Mrs. Snawdor had found Fidy a valuable asset. Just what her +being kept at home cost the other children was never reckoned. + +"Well, I'll take care of her on one condition," stipulated Nance. "You +got to keep Lobelia at school. It ain't fair for her to have to stay home +to nurse Fidy." + +"Well, if she goes to school, she's got to work at night. You was doin' +your two hours at Lavinski's long before you was her age." + +"I don't care if I was. Lobelia ain't strong like me. I tell you she +ain't goin' to do home finishing, not while I'm here." + +"Well, somebody's got to do it," said Mrs. Snawdor. "You can settle it +between you." + +Nance held out until the middle of January; then in desperation she went +back to the Lavinskis. The rooms looked just as she had left them, and +the whirring machines seemed never to have stopped. The acrid smell of +hot cloth still mingled with the odor of pickled herrings, and Mr. +Lavinski still came and went with his huge bundles of clothes. + +Nance no longer sewed on buttons. She was promoted to a place under the +swinging lamp where she was expected to make an old decrepit +sewing-machine forget its ailments and run the same race it had run in +the days of its youth. As she took her seat on the first night, she +looked up curiously. A new sound coming regularly from the inner room +made her pause. + +"Is that a type-writer?" she asked incredulously. + +Mr. Lavinski, pushing his derby from his shining brow, smiled proudly. + +"Dat's vat it is," he said. "My Ike, he's got a scholarship offen de high +school. He's vorking his vay through de medical college now. He'll be a +big doctor some day. He vill cure my Leah." + +Nance's ambition took fire at the thought of that type-writer. It +appealed to her far more than the sewing-machine. + +"Say, Ike," she said at her first opportunity, "I wish you'd teach me how +to work it." + +"What'll you give me?" asked Ike, gravely. He had grown into a tall, thin +youth, with the spectacled eyes and stooped shoulders of a student. + +"Want me to wash the dishes for your mother?" Nance suggested eagerly. "I +could do it nights before I begin sewing." + +"Very well," Ike agreed loftily. "We'll begin next Sunday morning at nine +o'clock. Mind you are on time!" + +Knowledge to Ike was sacred, and the imparting of it almost a religious +rite. He frowned down all flippancy on the part of his new pupil, and +demanded of her the same diligence and perseverance he exacted of +himself. He not only taught her to manipulate the type-writer, but put +her through an elementary course of stenography as well. + +"Certainly you can learn it," he said sternly at her first sign of +discouragement. "I got that far in my second lesson. Haven't you got +any brains?" + +Nance by this time was not at all sure she had, but she was not going to +let Ike know it. Stung by his smug superiority, she often sat up far into +the night, wrestling with the arbitrary signs until Uncle Jed, seeing her +light under the door, would pound on the wall for her to go to bed. + +She saw little of Dan Lewis these days. The weather no longer permitted +them to meet in Post-Office Square, and conditions even less inviting +kept them from trying to see each other in Snawdor's kitchen. Sometimes +she would wait at the corner for him to come home, but this had its +disadvantages, for there was always a crowd of loafers hanging about Slap +Jack's, and now that Nance was too old to stick out her tongue and call +names, she found her power of repartee seriously interfered with. + +"I ain't coming up here to meet you any more," she declared to Dan on one +of these occasions. "I don't see why we can't go to Gorman's Chili Parlor +of an evening and set down and talk to each other, right." + +"Gorman's ain't a nice place," insisted Dan. "I wish you'd come on up to +some of the church meetings with me. I could take you lots of times if +you'd go." + +But Nance refused persistently to be inveigled into the religious fold. +The very names of Epworth League, and prayer meeting made her draw a +long face. + +"You don't care whether we see each other or not!" she accused +Dan, hotly. + +"I do," he said earnestly, "but it seems like I never have time for +anything. The work at the factory gets heavier all the time. But I'm +getting on, Nance; they give me another raise last month." + +"Everybody's getting on," cried Nance bitterly, "but me! You and Ike and +Birdie! I work just as hard as you all do, and I haven't got a blooming +thing to show for it. What I make sewing pants don't pay for what I eat. +Sometimes I think I'll have to go back to the finishing room." + +"Not if I can help it!" said Dan, emphatically. "There must be decent +jobs somewhere for girls. Suppose I take you out to Mrs. Purdy's on +Sunday, and see if she knows of anything. She's all the time asking me +about you." + +The proposition met with little enthusiasm on Nance's part. It was Mrs. +Purdy who had got Dan into the church and persuaded him not to go to the +theater or learn how to dance. It was Mrs. Purdy who took him home with +her to dinner every Sunday after church and absorbed the time that used +to be hers. But the need for a job was too pressing for Nance to harbor +prejudices. Instead of sewing for the Lavinskis that night, she sewed for +herself, trying to achieve a costume from the old finery bequeathed her +by Birdie Smelts. + +You would scarcely have recognized Dan that next Sunday in his best suit, +with his hair plastered down, and a very red tie encircling a very high +collar. To be sure Dan's best was over a year old, and the brown-striped +shirt-front was not what it seemed, but his skin was clean and clear, and +there was a look in his earnest eyes that bespoke an untroubled +conscience. + +Mrs. Purdy received them in her cozy fire-lit sitting-room and made Nance +sit beside her on the sofa, while she held her hand and looked with mild +surprise at her flaring hat and cheap lace collar. + +"Dan didn't tell me," she said, "how big you had grown or--or how +pretty." + +Nance blushed and smiled and glanced consciously at Dan. She had felt +dubious about her costume, but now that she was reassured, she began to +imitate Birdie's tone and manner as she explained to Mrs. Purdy the +object of her visit. + +"Deary me!" said Mrs. Purdy, "Dan's quite right. We can't allow a nice +little girl like you to work in a glass factory! We must find some nice +genteel place for you. Let me see." + +In order to see Mrs. Purdy shut her eyes, and the next moment she opened +them and announced that she had the very thing. + +"It's Cousin Lucretia Bobinet!" she beamed. "She is looking for a +companion." + +"What's that?" asked Nance. + +"Some one to wait on her and read to her and amuse her. She's quite +advanced in years and deaf and, I'm afraid, just a little peculiar." + +"I'm awful good at taking care of sick people," said Nance complacently. + +"Cousin Lucretia isn't ill. She's the most wonderfully preserved woman +for her years. But her maid, that she's had for so long, is getting old +too. Why, Susan must be seventy. She can't see to read any more, and she +makes mistakes over cards. By the way, I wonder if you know how to play +card games." + +"Sure," said Nance. "Poker? seven-up?" + +"Isn't there another game called penuchle?" Mrs. Purdy ventured, +evidently treading unfamiliar ground. + +"Yes!" cried Nance. "That's Uncle Jed's game. We used to play it heaps +before Rosy cut up the queens for paper dolls." + +"Now isn't it too wonderful that you should happen to know that +particular game?" said Mrs. Purdy, with the gentle amazement of one who +sees the finger of Providence in everything. "Not that I approve of +playing cards, but Cousin Lucretia was always a bit worldly minded, and +playing penuchle seems to be the chief diversion of her declining years. +How old are you, my child?" + +"I'm seventeen. And I ain't a bit afraid of work, am I, Dan?" + +"I am sure you are not," said Mrs. Purdy. "Dan often tells me what a fine +girl you are. Only we wish you would come to some of our services. Dan is +getting to be one of our star members. So conscientious and regular! We +call him our model young man." + +"I expect it's time we was going," said Dan, greatly embarrassed. But +owing to the fact that he wanted very much to be a gentleman, and didn't +quite know how, he stayed on and on, until Nance informed him it was +eleven o'clock. + +At the door Mrs. Purdy gave final instructions about the new position, +adding in an undertone: + +"It might be just as well, dearie, for you to wear a plainer dress when +you apply for the place, and I believe--in fact I am quite sure--Cousin +Lucretia would rather you left off the ear-rings." + +"Ain't ear-rings stylish?" asked Nance, feeling that she had been +misinformed. + +"Not on a little companion," said Mrs. Purdy gently. + +Nance's elation over the prospect of a job was slightly dashed by +the idea of returning to the wornout childish garb in which she had +left the home. + +"Say, Dan," she said, as they made their way out of Butternut Lane, "do +you think I've changed so much--like Mrs. Purdy said?" + +"You always look just the same to me," Dan said, as he helped her on with +her coat and adjusted the collar with gentle, painstaking deference. + +She sighed. The remark to a person who ardently desired to look different +was crushing. + +"I think Mrs. Purdy's an awful old fogey!" she said petulantly by way of +venting her pique. + +Dan looked at her in surprise, and the scowl that rarely came now +darkened his face. + +"Mrs. Purdy is the best Christian that ever lived," he said shortly. + +"Well, she ain't going to be a Christian offen me!" said Nance. + +The next morning, in a clean, faded print, and a thin jacket, much too +small for her, Nance went forth to find Miss Lucretia Bobinet in Cemetery +Street. It was a staid, elderly street, full of staid, elderly houses, +and at its far end were visible the tall white shafts which gave it its +name. At the number corresponding to that on Nance's card, she rang the +bell. The door was opened by a squinting person who held one hand behind +her ear and with the other grasped the door knob as if she feared it +might be stolen. + +"Who do you want to see?" she wheezed. + +"Miss Bobinet." + +"Who?" + +"Miss Bobinet!" said Nance, lifting her voice. + +"Stop that hollering at me!" said the old woman. "Who sent you here?" + +"Mrs. Purdy." + +"What for?" + +Nance explained her mission at the top of her voice and was grudgingly +admitted into the hall. + +"You ain't going to suit her. I can tell you that," said the squint-eyed +one mournfully, "but I guess you might as well go in and wait until she +wakes up. Mind you don't bump into things." + +Nance felt her way into the room indicated and cautiously let herself +down into the nearest chair. Sitting facing her was an imposing old +lady, with eyes closed and mouth open, making the most alarming noises +in her throat. She began with a guttural inhalation that increased in +ferocity until it broke in a violent snort, then trailed away in a +prolonged and somewhat plaintive whistle. Nance watched her with +amazement. It seemed that each recurrent snort must surely send the old +wrinkled head, with its elaborately crimped gray wig, rolling away under +the stiff horse-hair sofa. + +The room was almost dark, but the light that managed to creep in showed a +gloomy black mantelpiece, with vases of immortelles, and somber walnut +chairs with crocheted tidies that made little white patches here and +there in the dusk. Everything smelled of camphor, and from one of the +corners came the slow, solemn tick of a clock. + +After Nance had recovered from her suspense about Miss Bobinet's head, +and had taken sufficient note of the vocal gymnastics to be able to +reproduce them later for the amusement of the Snawdors, she began to +experience great difficulty in keeping still. First one foot went to +sleep, then the other. The minutes stretched to an hour. She had hurried +off that morning without her breakfast, leaving everything at sixes and +sevens, and she wanted to get back and clean up before Mrs. Snawdor got +up. She stirred restlessly, and her chair creaked. + +The old lady opened one eye and regarded her suspiciously. + +"I am Nance Molloy," ventured the applicant, hopefully. "Mrs. +Purdy sent me." + +Miss Bobinet gazed at her in stony silence, then slowly closed her eye, +and took up her snore exactly where she had left it off. This took place +three times before she succeeded in getting her other eye open and +becoming aware of Nance's presence. + +"Well, well," she asked testily, in a dry cracked voice, "what are you +sitting there staring at me for?" + +Nance repeated her formula several times before she remembered that +Miss Bobinet was deaf; then she got up and shouted it close to the old +lady's ear. + +"Lida Purdy's a fool," said Miss Bobinet, crossly. "What do I want with +a chit of a girl like you?" + +"She thought I could wait on you," screamed Nance, "and read to you and +play penuchle." The only word that got past the grizzled fringe that +bordered Miss Bobinet's shriveled ear was the last one. + +"Penuchle?" she repeated. "Can you play penuchle?" + +Nance nodded. + +"Get the table," ordered the old lady, peremptorily. + +Nance tried to explain that she had not come to stay, that she would go +home, and get her things and return in the afternoon, but Miss Bobinet +would brook no delay. Without inviting Nance to remove her hat and +jacket, she ordered her to lift the shade, sit down, and deal the cards. + +They were still playing when the squinting person hobbled in with a +luncheon tray, and Miss Bobinet promptly transferred her attention from +royal marriages to oyster stew. + +"Have her come back at three," she directed Susan; then seeing Nance's +eyes rest on the well filled tray, she added impatiently, "Didn't I tell +you to stop staring? Any one would think you were watching the animals +feed in the zoo." + +Nance fled abashed. The sight of the steaming soup, the tempting bird, +and dainty salad had made her forget her manners. + +"I reckon I'm engaged," she said to Mrs. Snawdor, when she reached +home and had cut herself a slice of dry bread to eat with the +warmed-over coffee. "She never said what the pay was to be, but she +said to come back." + +"What does she look like?" asked Mrs. Snawdor, curiously. + +"A horse," said Nance. "And she's deaf as anything. If I stay with her, +she'll have to get her an ear-trumpet or a new wig before the month's +out. I swallow a curl every time I speak to her." + +"Well," said Mrs. Snawdor, "companions ain't in my line, but I got sense +enough to know that when a woman's so mean she's got to pay somebody to +keep her company, the job ain't no cinch." + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +MISS BOBINET'S + + +Nance's new duties, compared with those at the bottle factory, and the +sweat-shop seemed, at first, mere child's play. She arrived at eight +o'clock, helped Susan in the basement kitchen, until Miss Bobinet awoke, +then went aloft to officiate at the elaborate process of that lady's +toilet. For twenty years Susan had been chief priestess at this ceremony, +but her increasing deafness infuriated her mistress to such an extent +that Nance was initiated into the mysteries. The temperature of the bath, +the choice of underclothing, the method of procedure were matters of the +utmost significance, and the slightest mistake on the part of the +assistant brought about a scene. Miss Bobinet would shriek at Susan, and +Susan would shriek back; then both would indulge in scathing criticism of +the other in an undertone to Nance. + +The final rite was the most critical of all. Miss Bobinet would sit +before her dresser with a towel about her neck, and take a long breath, +holding it in her puffed-out cheeks, while rice powder was dusted over +the corrugated surface of her face. She held the theory that this opened +the pores of the skin and allowed them to absorb the powder. The sight of +the old lady puffed up like a balloon was always too much for Nance, and +when she laughed, Miss Bobinet was obliged to let her breath go in a +sharp reprimand, and the performance had to start all over again. + +"You laugh too much anyhow," she complained irritably. + +When the toilet and breakfast were over, there followed two whole hours +of pinochle. Nance came to regard the queen of spades and the jack of +diamonds with personal animosity. Whatever possible interest she might +have taken was destroyed by the fact that Miss Bobinet insisted upon +winning two out of every three games. It soon became evident that while +she would not cheat on her own behalf, she expected her opponent to cheat +for her. So Nance dutifully slipped her trump cards back in the deck and +forgot to declare while she idly watched the flash of diamonds on the +wrinkled yellow hands, and longed for the clock to strike the next hour. + +At lunch she sat in the kitchen opposite Susan and listened to a recital +of that melancholy person's woes. Susan and her mistress, being mutually +dependent, had endured each other's exclusive society for close upon +twenty years. The result was that each found the other the most +stimulating of all subjects of conversation. When Nance was not listening +to tirades against Susan up-stairs, she was listening to bitter +complaints against Miss Bobinet down-stairs. + +In the afternoon she was expected to read at the top of her voice from +"The Church Guide," until Miss Bobinet got sleepy; then it was her duty +to sit motionless in the stuffy, camphor-laden room, listening to an +endless succession of vocal gymnastics until what time the old lady saw +fit to wake up. + +If Nance had been a provident young person, she might have improved those +idle hours during that interminable winter by continuing her study of +stenography. But, instead, she crouched on the floor by the window, +holding her active young body motionless, while her thoughts like +distracted imprisoned things flew round their solid walls of facts, +frantically seeking some loophole of escape. Day after day she crouched +there, peeping out under the lowered shade with hungry eyes. The dreary +street below offered no diversion; sometimes a funeral procession dragged +its way past, but for the most part there was nothing to see save an +occasional delivery wagon or a staid pedestrian. + +She was at that critical time of transition between the romance of +childhood, when she had become vaguely aware of the desire of the spirit, +and the romance of youth, when she was to know to the full the desires +of the flesh. It was a period of sudden, intense moods, followed by +spells of languor. Something new and strange and incommunicable was +fermenting within her, and nothing was being done to direct those +mysterious forces. She was affectionate, with no outlet for her +affection; romantic, with nothing for romance to feed upon. + +The one resource lay in the bookcase that rose above the old-fashioned +secretary in Miss Bobinet's front hall. She had discovered it on the day +of her arrival and, choosing a volume at random, had become so engrossed +in the doings of one of Ouida's heroes, that she had failed to hear Miss +Bobinet's call. From that time on she was forbidden to take any books +away from the bookcase, an order which she got around by standing beside +it and eagerly devouring bits at a time. + +The monotony of the days she might have endured if there had been any +relief at the close of them. But when she returned home there was always +endless work to be done. Her four years' absence at Forest Home had +separated her from the young people she had known, and she had had no +time to make new friends. The young bar-keeper at Slap Jack's, who always +watched for her to pass in the morning, the good-looking delivery boy who +sometimes brought parcels to Cemetery Street, the various youths with +whom she carried on casual flirtations on her way to and from work, were +her nearest approach to friends. + +Dan, to be sure, still came for her every Saturday afternoon, but +Cemetery Street was across the city from Clarke's, and their time +together was short. Nance lived for these brief interviews, and then came +away from them more restless and dissatisfied than before. Dan didn't +look or talk or act like the heroes in the novels she was reading. He +never "rained fervent kisses on her pale brow," or told her that she was +"the day-star of his secret dreams." Instead he talked of eight-hour +laws, and minimum wage, and his numerous church activities. He was +sleeping at Mrs. Purdy's now, looking after the place while she was away +with her brother, and Nance was jealous of his new interests and new +opportunities. + +As the long weeks stretched into long months, her restlessness grew into +rebellion. So this was the kind of job, she told herself bitterly, that +nice girls were supposed to hold. This was what Miss Stanley and Mrs. +Purdy and Mr. Demry approved. But they were old. They had forgotten. Dan +Lewis wasn't old. Why couldn't he understand? What right had he to insist +upon her sticking it out when he knew how lonesome and unhappy she was? +Dan didn't care, that was the trouble; he thought more of his old church +and the factory than he thought of her. + +She remembered, with sudden understanding, what red-haired Gert had said +in the finishing room; some people weren't content with a good job; they +had to have a good time with it. She told herself that she was one of +these; she wanted to be good and do what was expected of her; she wanted +fervently to please Dan Lewis, but she couldn't go on like this, she +couldn't, she couldn't! + +And yet she did. With a certain dogged commonsense, she stayed at her +post, suppressing herself in a thousand ways, stifling her laughter, +smothering the song on her lips, trying to make her prancing feet keep +pace with the feeble steps of age. She lived through each day on the +meager hope that something would happen at the end of it, that elusive +"something" that always waits around the corner for youth, with adventure +in one hand and happiness in the other and limitless promise in its +shining eyes. + +Almost a year crawled by before her hope was realized. Then one Tuesday +morning as she was coming to work, she spied a bill poster announcing +the appearance of the "Rag-Time Follies." Rows upon rows of saucy girls +in crimson tights and gauzy wings smiled down upon her, smiled and +seemed to beckon. + +Since Birdie's departure from the alley, eighteen months ago, Nance had +heard no word of her. Long ago she had given up the hope of escape in +that direction. But the knowledge that she was in the city and the +possibility of seeing her, wakened all manner of vague hopes and exciting +possibilities. + +Whatever happened Nance must see the play! She must be on hand to-morrow +night when the curtain went up; perhaps she could wait outside for +Birdie, and speak to her after the performance! + +If only Dan would take her, and they could sit together and share the +fun! But the very thought of Dan in connection with those frisky girls +made her smile. No; if she went, she would have to go alone. + +The all-important question now was how to get the ticket. Miss Bobinet +could never be induced to advance a penny on the week's wages, and Susan, +while ready to accept financial favors, was adamant when it came to +extending them. + +By six o'clock Nance had exhausted every resource but one. On her way +home she visited a small shop which was all too familiar to the residents +of Calvary Alley. When she emerged, the beloved locket, which usually +dangled on the velvet ribbon around her neck, was no longer there, but +tied in the corner of her handkerchief was a much desired silver coin. + +In high spirits she rushed home only to be confronted on the threshold by +a serious domestic complication. Mrs. Snawdor, with her hat on, was +standing by the bed in the dark inside room that used to be Nance's, +futilely applying a mustard plaster to whatever portion of Fidy's +anatomy happened to be exposed. + +"How long has she been like this?" cried Nance, flinging her jacket off +and putting the tea kettle on the stove. + +"Lord knows," said Mrs. Snawdor in a tone that implied a conspiracy on +the part of poor Fidy and her Maker to interfere with her plans. "When I +come in ten minutes ago, she was tryin' to eat the sheet." + +"Didn't you give her the medicine the doctor left last time?" + +"There ain't a drop left. Mr. Snawdor took every bit of it." + +"Where's the bottle? We must get it filled." + +"What's the use? It ain't no good. I was handlin' Fidy's fits before that +there young dispensary doctor was out of knee pants. Besides I ain't got +fifty cents in the house." + +Nance stood for a moment irresolute. She looked at the writhing figure on +the bed; then she snatched up her hat and jacket. + +"Quick! Where's the bottle?" she cried. "I got the money." + +But after the medicine had been bought, and Fidy had grown quiet under +its influence, Nance went across the hall to her own cold, barren room +and flung herself across her narrow bed. The last chance of seeing the +play had vanished. The only light of hope that had shone on her horizon +for months had gone out. + +When she got up, cold and miserable, and lighted the gas, she saw on +the floor, where it had evidently been slipped under the door, a +mysterious pink envelope. Tearing it open, she found, written in a +large, loose scrawl: + +"Dear Nance. We have just struck town. Reckon you thought I was a +quitter, but I ain't. You be at the Gaiety to-morrow morning at nine A.M. +Maybe I can land you something. Don't say a word to anybody about it, and +make yourself look as pretty as you can, and don't be late. Don't tell my +folks I'm here. I got a room down-town. + +"Bye bye, +"B.S." + +Nance's breath caught in her throat. The bubble was so radiant, so +fragile, so unbelievable, that she was afraid to stir for fear of +breaking it. She waited until she heard Mrs. Snawdor's heavy feet +descending the stairs, and then she crept across the hall and sat on the +side of Fidy's bed, waiting to give her the next dose of medicine. Her +eyes were fixed on the bare lathes over the headboard where she had once +knocked the plaster off tacking up a tomato-can label. But she did not +see the hole or the wall. Calvary Alley and Cemetery Street had ceased to +exist for her. She was already transported to a region of warmth and +gaiety and song. All that was ugly and old and sordid lay behind her, +and she told herself, with a little sob of joy, that at last the +beautiful something for which she had waited so long was about to happen. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +BEHIND THE TWINKLING LIGHTS + + +The gaiety, with its flamboyant entrance, round which the lights flared +enticingly at night, had always seemed to Nance an earthly paradise into +which the financially blessed alone were privileged to enter. At the +"Star" there were acrobats and funny Jews with big noses and Irishmen who +were always falling down; but the Gaiety was different. Twice Nance had +passed that fiery portal, and she knew that once inside, you drifted into +states of beatitude, which eternity itself was too short to enjoy. The +world ceased to exist for you, until a curtain, as relentless as fate, +descended, and you reached blindly for your hat and stumbled down from +the gallery to the balcony, and from the balcony to the lobby, and thence +out into the garish world, dazed, bewildered, unreconciled to reality, +and not knowing which way to turn to go home. + +But to-day as she passed the main entrance and made her way through a +side-passage to the stage-door, she tingled with a keener thrill than she +had ever felt before. + +"Is Miss Smelts here?" she asked a man who was going in as she did. + +"Smelts?" he repeated. "What does she do?" + +"She dances." + +He shook his head. + +"Nobody here by that name," he said, and hurried on. + +Nance stood aside and waited, with a terrible sinking of the heart. She +waited a half hour, then an hour, while people came and went. Just as she +was about to give up in despair, she saw a tall, handsome girl hurry up +the steps and come toward her. She had to look twice before she could +make sure that the imposing figure was Birdie. + +"Hello, kid," was Birdie's casual greeting. "I forgot all about you. Just +as cute looking as ever, eh! Where did you get that hat?" + +"Ten-cent store," said Nance, triumphantly. + +"Can you beat that?" said Birdie. "You always did have a style about you. +But your hair's fixed wrong. Come on down to the dressing-room while I +change. I'll do it over before you see Reeser." + +Nance followed her across a barn of a place where men in shirt-sleeves +were dragging scenes this way and that. + +"Mind the steps; they are awful!" warned Birdie, as they descended into a +gas-lit region partitioned off into long, low dressing-rooms. + +"Here's where I hang out. Sit down and let me dude you up a bit. You +always did wear your hair too plain. I'll fix it so's it will make little +Peroxide Pierson green with envy." + +Nance sat before the mirror and watched Birdie's white fingers roll and +twist her shining hair into the elaborate style approved at the moment. + +"Gee! it looks like a horse-collar!" she said, laughing at her +reflection. "What you going to do to me next?" + +"Well, I haven't got much to do on," said Birdie, "but you just wait till +I get you over to my room! I could fit you out perfect if you were just a +couple of sizes bigger." + +She was putting on a pair of bloomers herself as she spoke, and slipping +her feet into her dancing slippers, and Nance watched every movement with +admiring eyes. + +"Come on now," Birdie said hurriedly. "We got to catch Reeser before +rehearsal. He's the main guy in this company. What Reeser says goes." + +At the head of the steps they encountered a gaunt, raw-boned man, with an +angular, expressive face, and an apple in his long neck that would have +embarrassed Adam himself. + +"Well! Well!" he shouted at them, impatiently, "come on or else go back! +Don't stand there in the way." + +"Mr. Reeser, please, just a minute," called Birdie, "It's a new girl +wants to get in the chorus." + +The stage-manager paused and looked her over with a critical eye. + +"Can she sing?" + +"No," said Nance, "but I can dance. Want to see me?" + +"Well, I think I can live a few minutes without it," said Reeser dryly. +"Ever been on before?" + +"No; but everybody's got to start some time." Then she added with a +smile, "I wish you'd give me a chance." + +"She's a awful cute little dancer," Birdie recommended. "She knows all +the steps in the Red-Bird chorus. I taught her when I was here before. +If you'd say a word to Mr. Pulatki he might try her out at rehearsal +this morning." + +Nance held her breath while Reeser's quizzical eyes continued to +study her. + +"All right!" he said suddenly. "She's pretty young, but we'll see what +she can do. Now clear the way. Lower that drop a little, boys. Hurry up +with the second set." + +The girls scurried away to the wings where they found a narrow space in +which Nance was put through the half-forgotten steps. + +"It's all in the team work," Birdie explained. "You do exactly what I do, +and don't let old Spagetti rattle you. He goes crazy at every rehearsal. +Keep time and grin. That's all there is to it" + +"I can do it!" cried Nance radiantly. "It's easy as breathing!" + +But it proved more difficult than she thought, when in a pair of property +bloomers she found herself one of a party of girls advancing, retreating, +and wheeling at the arbitrary command of an excitable little man in his +shirt-sleeves, who hammered out the time on a rattling piano. + +Pulatki was a nervous Italian with long black hair and a drooping black +mustache, both of which suffered harsh treatment in moments of dramatic +frenzy. His business in life was to make forty lively, mischievous girls +move and sing as one. The sin of sins to him, in a chorus girl, was +individuality. + +"You! new girl!" he screamed the moment he spied Nance, "you are out +of ze line. Hold your shoulders stiff, so! Ah, _Dio!_ Can you not move +wiz ze rest?" + +The girls started a stately number, diagonal from down-stage left toward +upper center. + +"Hold ze pose!" shouted the director. Then he scrambled up on the stage +and seized Nance roughly by the arm. "You are too quick!" he shouted. +"You are too restless. We do not want that you do a solo! Can you not +keep your person still?" + +And to Nance's untold chagrin she found that she could not. The moment +the music started, it seemed to get into her tripping feet, her swinging +arms, her nodding head; and every extra step and unnecessary gesture that +she made evoked a storm from the director. + +Just when his irritation was at his height, Reeser joined him from +the wings. + +"Here's a howdy-do!" he exclaimed. "Flossy Pierson's sprained her ankle." + +"Ze leetle bear?" shrieked Pulatki; then he clutched his hair in both +hands and raved maledictions on the absent Flossy. + +"See here," said Reeser, "this is no time for fireworks. Who in the devil +is to take her place?" + +"Zere is none," wailed Pulatki. "She make her own part. I cannot +teach it." + +"It's not the part that bothers me," said Reeser. "It's the costume. +We've got to take whoever will fit it. Who's the smallest girl in +the chorus?" + +The eyes of the two men swept the double column of girls until they +rested on the one head that, despite its high coiffure, failed to achieve +the average height. + +"Come here!" called Reeser to Nance. + +"But, no!" protested the director, throwing up his hands. "She is +impossible. A cork on ze water! A leaf in ze wind! I cannot teach her. I +vill not try!" + +"It's too late to get anybody else for to-night," said Reeser, +impatiently. "Let her walk through the part, and we'll see what can be +done in the morning." Then seeing Nance's indignant eyes on the director, +he added with a comical twist of his big mouth, "Want to be a bear?" + +"Sure!" said Nance, with spirit, "if the Dago can't teach me to dance, +maybe he can teach me to growl." + +The joke was lost upon the director, but it put Reeser into such a good +humor that he sent her down to the dressing-room to try on the costume. +Ten minutes later, a little bear, awkward but ecstatic, scrambled madly +up the steps, and an excited voice called out: + +"Look, Mr. Reeser, it fits! it fits!" + +For the rest of the morning Nance practised her part, getting used to +the clumsy suit of fur, learning to adjust her mask so that she could +see through the little, round, animal eyes, and keeping the other girls +in a titter of amusement over her surreptitious imitation of the +irascible Pulatki. + +When the rehearsal was over there was much good-natured hustling and +raillery as the girls changed into their street costumes. At Birdie's +invitation Nance went with her to the rooming-house around the corner, +where you had to ring a bell to get in, a convention which in itself +spelt elegance, and up one flight, two flights, three flights of +carpeted steps to a front-hall bedroom on the fourth floor. + +"Gee, it's a mess!" said Birdie, tossing some beribboned lingerie from a +chair into an open trunk. "There's a bag of rolls around here some place. +We can make some tea over the gas." + +Nance darted from one object to another with excited cries of admiration. +Everything was sweet and wonderful and perfectly grand! Suddenly she came +to a halt before the dresser, in the center of which stood a large, +framed photograph. + +"That's my High Particular," said Birdie, with an uneasy laugh, +"recognize him?" + +"It's Mac Clarke!" exclaimed Nance, incredulously, "how on earth did you +ever get his picture?" + +"He give it to me. How do you reckon? I hadn't laid eyes on him for a +couple of years 'til I ran across him in New York about a month ago." + +"Where'd you see him?" + +"At the theater. He come in with a bunch of other college fellows and +recognized me straight off. He stayed in New York two or three days, and +maybe we didn't have a peach of a time! Only he got fired from college +for it when he went back." + +"Where's he now?" + +"Here in town. Liable to blow in any minute. If he does, you don't want +to let on you ever saw him before. He won't remember you if you don't +remind him. He never thinks of anybody twice." + +Nance, poring over every detail of the photograph, held her own counsel. +She was thinking of the night she had stood in the drug-store door, and +he had kept the motor waiting while he smiled at her over his shoulder. +That was a smile that remembered! + +"You want to be careful what you say to anybody," Birdie continued, +"there ain't any use airing it around where you live, or what you been +doing. There ain't a girl in the chorus knows my real name, or where I +come from." + +The allusion to home stirred Nance's conscience, and reminded her that +over there beyond the cathedral spire, dimly visible from the window, lay +a certain little alley which still had claims upon her. + +"I ain't said a thing to 'em at home about this," she said. "Suppose they +don't let me do it?" + +"Let nothing!" said Birdie. "Write a note to Mrs. Snawdor, and tell her +you are spending the night down-town with me. You'll know by morning +whether Reeser is going to take you on or not. If he does, you just want +to announce the fact that you are going, and go." + +Nance looked at her with kindling eyes. This high-handed method appealed +to her. After all wasn't she past eighteen? Birdie hadn't been that old +when she struck out for herself. + +"What about Miss Bobinet?" she asked ruefully. + +"The wiggy old party up in Cemetery Street? Let her go hang. You've +swallowed her frizzes long enough." + +Nance laughed and gave the older girl's arm a rapturous squeeze. "And you +think maybe Mr. Reeser'll take me on?" she asked for the sixteenth time. + +"Well, Flossie Pierson has been shipped home, and they've got to put +somebody in her place. It's no cinch to pick up a girl on the road, +just the right size, who can dance even as good as you can. If Reeser +engages you, it's fifteen per for the rest of the season, and a good +chance for next." + +"All right, here goes!" cried Nance, recklessly, seizing paper and pen. + +When the hard rolls and strong tea which composed their lunch had been +disposed of, Nance curled herself luxuriously on the foot of the bed and +munched chocolate creams, while Birdie, in a soiled pink kimono that +displayed her round white arms and shapely throat, lay stretched beside +her. They found a great deal to talk about, and still more to laugh +about. Nance loved to laugh; all she wanted was an excuse, and everything +was an excuse to-day; Birdie's tales of stage-door Johnnies, the recent +ire of old Spagetti, her own imitation of Miss Bobinet and the ossified +Susan. Nance loved the cozy intimacy of the little room; even the heavy +odor of perfumes and cosmetics was strange and fascinating; she thought +Birdie was the prettiest girl she had ever seen. A thrilling vista of +days like this, spent with her in strange and wonderful cities, opened +before her. + +"I'll rig you up in some of my clothes, until you get your first pay," +Birdie offered, "then we can fit you out right and proper. You got the +making of an awful pretty girl in you." + +Nance shrieked her derision. Her own charms, compared with Birdie's +generous ones, seemed absurdly meager, as she watched the older girl blow +rings from the cigarette which she held daintily between her first and +second finger. + +Nance had been initiated into smoking and chewing tobacco before she was +ten, but neither appealed to her. Watching Birdie smoke, she had a sudden +desire to try it again. + +"Give us a puff, Birdie," she said. + +Birdie tossed the box over and looked at her wrist-watch. + +"We ought to be fixing something for you to wear to-night," she +said. "Like as not Mac and Monte 'll turn up and ask us to go +somewhere for supper." + +"Who is Monte?" asked Nance with breathless interest. + +"He's a fat-headed swell Mac runs with. Spends dollars like nickels. No +rarebit and beer for him; it's champagne and caviar every time. You +cotton to him, Nance; he'll give you anything you want." + +"I don't want him to give me anything," said Nance stoutly. "Time I'm +earning fifteen dollars a week, I'll be making presents myself." + +Birdie lifted her eyebrows and sighed. + +"You funny kid!" she said, "you got a heap to learn." + +During the early part of the afternoon the girls shortened one of +Birdie's dresses and tacked in its folds to fit Nance's slender figure. +Birdie worked in fits and starts; she listened every time anything +stopped in the street below, and made many trips to the window. By and by +her easy good humor gave place to irritability. At five o'clock she put +on her hat, announcing that she had to go over to the drug store to do +some telephoning. + +"Lock the door," she counseled, "and if anybody knocks while I'm gone, +don't answer." + +Nance, left alone, sewed on for a while in a flutter of happy thoughts; +then she got up and turned her chair so she would not have to crane her +neck to see the photograph on the dresser. + +"The making of an awful pretty girl!" she whispered; then she got up and +went over to the mirror. Pulling out the hairpins that held the +elaborate puffs in place, she let her shining mass of hair about her +shoulders and studied her face intently. Her mouth, she decided, was too +big, her eyes too far apart, her neck too thin. Then she made a face at +herself and laughed: + +"Who cares?" she said. + +By and by it got too dark to sew; the match box refused to be found, and +she decided it was time to stop anyhow. She opened the window and, gaily +humming the music of the Little Bear dance, leaned across the sill, while +the cool evening air fanned her hot cheeks. + +Far away in the west, over the housetops, she could see the stately spire +of the cathedral, a brown silhouette against a pale, lemon sky. Down +below, through the dull, yellow dusk, faint lights were already defining +the crisscross of streets. The whispers of the waking city came up to +her, eager, expectant, like the subdued murmur of a vast audience just +before the curtain ascends. Then suddenly, written on the twilight in +letters of fire, came the familiar words, "You get what you pay for." + +Nance's fingers ceased to drum on the window-sill. It was the big sign +facing Post-Office Square, old Post-Office Square, with its litter of +papers, its battered weather kiosk, and the old green bench where she and +Dan had sat so many evenings on their way home from the factory. Dan! A +wave of remorse swept over her. She had forgotten him as completely as if +he had never existed. And now that she remembered what was she to do? Go +to him and make a clean breast of it? And run the risk of having him +invoke the aid of Mrs. Purdy and possibly of Miss Stanley? Not that she +was afraid of their stopping her. She repeated to herself the words of +defiance with which she would meet their objections and the scorn which +she would fling at their "nice girl jobs." No; it was Dan himself she was +afraid of. Her imagination quailed before his strong, silent face, and +his deep, hurt eyes. She had always taken Dan's part in everything, and +something told her she would take it now, even against herself. + +The only safe course was to keep away from him, until the great step was +taken, and then write him a nice long letter. The nicest she had ever +written to anybody. Dear old Dan--dear, dear old Dan. + +A long, low whistle from the sidewalk opposite made her start, and look +down. At first no one was visible; then a match was struck, flared yellow +for a second, and went out, and again that low, significant whistle. +Nance dropped on her knees beside the window and watched. A man's figure +emerged from the gloom and crossed the street. A moment later she heard +the ringing of the doorbell. Could Dan have heard of her escapade and +come after her? But nobody knew where she was; the note to Mrs. Snawdor +still lay on the corner of the dresser. + +She heard a step on the stairs, then three light taps on the door. She +scrambled to her feet before she remembered Birdie's caution, then stood +motionless, listening. + +Again the taps and, "I say, Bird!" came in a vibrant whisper from +without. + +It seemed to Nance that whoever it was must surely hear the noisy +beating of her heart. Then she heard the steps move away and she sighed +with relief. + +Birdie, coming in later, dismissed the matter with gay denial. + +"One of your pipe-dreams, Nance! It must have been one of the other +boarders, or the wash woman. Stop your mooning over there by the window +and get yourself dressed; we got just thirty-five minutes to get down to +the theater." + +Nance shook off her misgivings and rushed headlong into her adventure. It +was no time to dream of Dan and the letter she was going to write him, or +to worry about a disturbing whistle in the street, or a mysterious +whisper on the other side of the door. Wasn't it enough that she, Nance +Molloy, who only yesterday was watching funerals crawl by in Cemetery +Street, was about to dance to real music, on a real stage, before a great +audience? She had taken her first mad plunge into the seething current of +life, and in these first thrilling, absorbing moments she failed to see +the danger signals that flashed across the darkness. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +THE FIRST NIGHT + + +At a quarter-past eight in the dressing-rooms of the Gaiety, pandemonium +reigned. Red birds, fairies, gnomes, will-o'-the-wisps flitted about, +begging, borrowing, stealing articles from each other in good-humored +confusion. In and out among them darted the little bear, slapping at each +passerby with her furry paws, practising steps on her cushioned toes, and +rushing back every now and then to Birdie, who stood before a mirror in +red tights, with a towel around her neck, putting the final touches on +her make-up. + +It was hot and stuffy, and the air reeked with grease paint. There was a +perpetual chatter with occasional outbursts of laughter, followed by +peremptory commands of "Less noise down there!" In the midst of the +hub-bub a call-boy gave the signal for the opening number of the chorus; +the chatter and giggling ceased, and the bright costumes settled into a +definite line as the girls filed up the stairs. + +Nance, left alone, sat on a trunk and waited for her turn in a fever of +impatience. She caught the opening strains of the orchestra as it swung +into the favorite melody of the day; she could hear the thud of dancing +feet overhead. She was like a stoker shut up in the hold of the vessel +while a lively skirmish is in progress on deck. + +As she sat there the wardrobe woman, a matronly-looking, Irish +person, came up and ordered her peremptorily to get off the trunk. +Nance not only complied, but she offered her assistance in getting it +out of the passage. + +"May ye have some one as civil as ye are to wait on ye when ye are as old +as I am!" said the woman. "It's your first night, eh?" + +"Yep. Maybe my last for all I know. They 're trying me out." + +"Good luck to ye," said the woman. "Well I mind the night I made me +first bow." + +"You!" + +"No less. I'd a waist on me ye could span wid yer two hands. And legs! +well, it ain't fer me to be braggin', but there ain't a girl in the +chorus kin stack up alongside what I oncet was! Me an' a lad named Tim +Moriarty did a turn called 'The Wearing of the Green,'--'Ryan and +Moriarty' was the team. I kin see the names on the bill-board now! We had +'em laughin' an' cryin' at the same time, 'til their tears run into their +open mouths!" + +"Wisht I could've seen you," said Nance. "I bet it was great." + +The wardrobe woman, unused to such a sympathetic listener, would have +lingered indefinitely had not a boy handed Nance a box which absorbed all +her attention. + +"Miss Birdie La Rue," was inscribed on one side of the card that dangled +from it on a silver cord, and on the other was scribbled, "Monte and I +will wait for you after the show. Bring another girl. M.D.C." + +"And I'm the other girl!" Nance told herself rapturously. + +There was a flurry in the wings above and the chorus overflowed down +the stairs. + +"It's a capacity house," gasped Birdie, "but a regular cold-storage +plant. We never got but one round. Spagetti is having spasms." + +"What's a round?" demanded Nance, but nobody had time to enlighten her. + +It was not until the end of the second act that her name was called, and +she went scampering up the stairs as fast as her clumsy suit would +permit. The stage was set for a forest scene, with gnarled trees and +hanging vines and a transparent drop that threw a midnight blue haze over +the landscape. + +"Crawl up on the stump there!" ordered Reeser, attending to half a dozen +things at once. "Put you four paws together. Head up! Hold the pose until +the gnomes go off. When I blow the whistle, get down and dance. I'll get +the will-o'-the-wisps on as quick as I can. Clear the stage everybody! +Ready for the curtain? Let her go!" + +Nance, peering excitedly through the little round holes of her mask, saw +the big curtain slowly ascend, revealing only a dazzling row of +footlights beyond. Then gradually out of the dusk loomed the vast +auditorium with its row after row of dim white faces, reaching back and +up, up further than she dared lift her head to see. From down below +somewhere sounded the weird tinkle of elfin music, and tiptoeing out from +every tree and bush came a green-clad gnome, dancing in stealthy silence +in the sleeping forest. Quite unconsciously Nance began to keep time. It +was such glorious fun playing at being animals and fairies in the woods +at night. Without realizing what she was doing, she dropped into what she +used to call in the old sweat-shop days, "dancin' settin' down." + +A ripple of amusement passed through the audience, and she looked around +to see what the gnomes were up to, but they were going off the stage, and +the suppressed titter continued. A soft whistle sounded in the wings, and +with a furiously beating heart, she slid down from her high stump and +ambled down to the footlights. + +All might have gone well, had not a sudden shaft of white light shot +toward her from the balcony opposite, making a white spot around the +place she was standing. She got out of it only to find that it followed +her, and in the bewilderment of the discovery, she lost her head +completely. All her carefully practised steps and poses were utterly +forgotten; she could think of nothing but that pursuing light, and her +mad desire to get out of it. + +Then something the director had said at the rehearsal flashed across the +confusion. "She makes her own part," he had said of Flossy Pierson, and +Nance, with grim determination, decided to do the same. A fat man in the +left hand box had laughed out when she discovered the spotlight. She +determined to make him laugh again. Simulating the dismay that at first +was genuine, she began to play tag with the shaft of light, dodging it, +jumping over it, hiding from it behind the stump, leading it a merry +chase from corner to corner. The fat man grew hysterical. The audience +laughed at him, and then it began to laugh at Nance. She threw herself +into the frolic with the same mad abandonment with which she used to +dance to the hand-organ in front of Slap Jack's saloon. She cut as many +fantastic capers as a frisky kitten playing in the twilight; she leapt +and rolled and romped, and the spectators, quick to feel the contagion of +something new and young and joyful, woke up for the first time during the +evening, and followed her pranks with round after round of applause. + +When at last the music ceased, she scampered into the wings and sank +gasping and laughing into a chair. + +"They want you back!" cried Reeser, excitedly beckoning to her. "Go on +again. Take the call." + +"The what?" said Nance, bewildered. But before she could find out, she +was thrust forward and, not being able to see where she was going, she +tripped and fell sprawling upon the very scene of her recent triumph. + +In the confusion of the moment she instinctively snatched off her mask, +and as she did so the sea of faces merged suddenly into one. In the +orchestra below, gazing at her with dropped jaw over his arrested +fiddle-bow, was old Mr. Demry, with such a comical look of paralyzed +amazement on his face that Nance burst into laughter. + +There was something in her glowing, childish face, innocent of +make-up, and in her seeming frank enjoyment of the mishap that took +the house by storm. The man in the box applauded until his face was +purple; gloved hands in the parquet tapped approval; the balcony +stormed; the gallery whistled. + +She never knew how she got off the stage, or whether the director shouted +praise or blame as she darted through the wings. It was not until she +reached the dressing-room, and the girls crowded excitedly around her +that she knew she had scored a hit. + +She came on once more at the end of the last act in the grand ballet, +where all the dancers performed intricate manoeuvers under changing +lights. Every time the wheeling figures brought her round to the +footlights, there was a greeting from the front, and, despite warnings, +she could not suppress a responsive wag of the head or a friendly wave +of the paw. + +"She is so fresh, so fresh!" groaned Pulatki from the wings. + +"She's alive," said Reeser. "She'll never make a show girl, and she's got +no voice to speak of. But she's got a personality that climbs right over +the footlights. I'm going to engage her for the rest of the season." + +When the play was over, Nance, struggling into Birdie's complicated +finery in the dressing-room below, wondered how she could ever manage to +exist until the next performance. Her one consolation was the immediate +prospect of seeing Mac Clarke and the mysterious Monte to whom Birdie had +said she must be nice. As she pinned on a saucy fur toque in place of her +own cheap millinery, she viewed herself critically in the glass. Beside +the big show girls about her, she felt ridiculously young and slender and +insignificant. + +"I believe I'll put on some paint!" she said. + +Birdie laughed. + +"What for, Silly? Your cheeks are blazing now. You'll have time enough +to paint 'em when you've been dancing a couple of years." + +They were among the last to leave the dressing-room, and when they +reached the stage entrance, Birdie spied two figures. + +"There they are!" she whispered to Nance, "the fat one is Monte, +the other--" + +Nance had an irresistible impulse to run away. Now that the time had +come, she didn't want to meet those sophisticated young men in their long +coats and high hats. She wouldn't know how to act, what to say. But +Birdie had already joined them, and was turning to say airily: + +"Shake hands with my friend Miss Millay, Mr. Clarke--and, I say, Monte, +what's your other name?" + +The older of the young men laughed good-naturedly. + +"Monte'll do," he said. "I'm that to half the girls in town." + +Mac's bright bold eyes scanned Nance curiously. "Where have I seen you +before?" he asked instantly. + +"Don't you recognize her?" said Monte. "She's the little bear! I'd know +that smile in ten thousand!" + +Nance presented him with one on the spot, out of gratitude for the +diversion. She was already sharing Birdie's wish that no reference be +made to Calvary Alley or the factory. They had no place in this +rose-colored world. + +Monte and the two girls had descended the steps to the street when the +former looked over his shoulder. + +"Why doesn't Mac come on?" he asked. "Who is the old party he is +arguing with?" + +"Oh, Lord! It's old man Demry," exclaimed Birdie in exasperation. "He +plays in the orchestra. Full of dope half of the time. Why don't Mac come +on and leave him?" + +But the old musician was not to be left. He pushed past Mac and, +staggering down the steps, laid his hand on Nance's arm. + +"You must come home with me, Nancy," he urged unsteadily. "I want to talk +to you. Want to tell you something." + +"See here!" broke in Mac Clarke, peremptorily, "is this young lady your +daughter?" + +Mr. Demry put his hand to his dazed head and looked from one to the other +in troubled uncertainty. + +"No," he said incoherently. "I had a daughter once. But she is much older +than this child. She must be nearly forty by now, and to think I haven't +seen her face for twenty-two years. I shouldn't even know her if I should +see her. I couldn't make shipwreck of her life, you know--shipwreck of +one you love best in the world!" + +"Oh, come ahead!" called Birdie from below. "He don't know what he's +babbling about." + +But the old man's wrinkled hand still clung to Nance's arm. "Don't go +with them!" he implored. "I know. I've seen. Ten years playing for girls +to dance. Stage no place for you, Nancy. Come home with me, child. Come!" +He was trembling with earnestness and his voice quavered. + +"Let go of her arm, you old fool!" cried Mac, angrily. "It's none of your +business where she goes!" + +"Nor of yours, either!" Nance flashed back instantly. "You keep your +hands off him!" + +Then she turned to Mr. Demry and patiently tried to explain that she was +spending the night with Birdie Smelts; he remembered Birdie--used to live +across the hall from him? She was coming home in the morning. She would +explain everything to Mrs. Snawdor. She promised she would. + +Mr. Demry, partly reassured, relaxed his grasp. + +"Who is this young man, Nancy?" he asked childishly. "Tell me his name." + +"It's Mr. Mac Clarke," said Nance, despite Birdie's warning glance. + +A swift look of intelligence swept the dazed old face; then terror +gathered in his eyes. + +"Not--not--Macpherson Clarke?" he stammered; then he sat down in the +doorway. "O my God!" he sobbed, dropping his head in his hands. + +"He won't go home 'til morning!" hummed Monte, catching Birdie by the +arm and skipping down the passage. Nance stood for a moment looking +down at the maudlin old figure muttering to himself on the door-step; +then she, too, turned and followed the others out into the gay +midnight throng. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +PREPARATIONS FOR FLIGHT + + +What a radically different place the world seems when one doesn't have to +begin the day with an alarm clock! There is a hateful authority in its +brassy, peremptory summons that puts one on the defensive immediately. To +be sure, Nance dreamed she heard it the following day at noon, and sprang +up in bed with the terrifying conviction that she would be late at Miss +Bobinet's. But when she saw where she was, she gave a sigh of relief, and +snuggled down against Birdie's warm shoulder, and tried to realize what +had happened to her. + +The big theater, the rows of smiling faces, the clapping hands--surely +they must have all been a dream? And Mr. Demry? Why had he sat on the +steps and cried into a big starchy handkerchief? Oh, yes; she remembered +now, but she didn't like to remember, so she hurried on. + +There was a cafe, big and noisy, with little tables, and a woman who +stood on a platform, with her dress dragging off one shoulder, and sang a +beautiful song, called "I'm A-wearying for You." Mr. Monte didn't think +it was pretty; he had teased her for thinking so. But then he had teased +her for not liking the raw oysters, and for saying the champagne made her +nose go to sleep. They had all teased her and laughed at everything she +said. She didn't care; she liked it. They thought she was funny and +called her "Cubby." At least Mr. Monte did. Mr. Mac didn't call her +anything. He talked most of the time to Birdie, but his eyes were all for +_her_, with a smile that sort of remembered and sort of forgot, and-- + +"Say, Birdie!" She impulsively interrupted her own confused reflections. +"Do you think they liked me--honest?" + +"Who?" said Birdie, drowsily, "the audience?" + +"No. Those fellows last night. I haven't got any looks to brag on, and +I'm as green as a string-bean!" + +"That's what tickles 'em," said Birdie. "Besides, you can't ever tell +what makes a girl take. You got a independent way of walking and talking, +and Monte's crazy 'bout your laugh. But you're a funny kid; you beckon a +feller with one hand and slap his face with the other." + +"Not unless he gets nervy!" said Nance. + +After what euphemistically might be termed a buffet breakfast, prepared +over the gas and served on the trunk, Nance departed for Calvary Alley, +to proclaim to the family her declaration of independence. She was +prepared for a battle royal with all whom it might concern, and was +therefore greatly relieved to find only her stepmother at home. That +worthy lady surrendered before a gun was fired. + +"Ain't that Irish luck fer you?" she exclaimed, almost enviously. +"Imagine one of Yager's and Snawdor's childern gittin' on the stage! If +Bud Molloy hadn't taken to railroading he could 'a' been a end man in a +minstrel show! You got a lot of his takin' ways, Nance. It's a Lord's +pity you ain't got his looks!" + +"Oh, give me time!" said Nance, whose spirits were soaring. + +"I sort 'er thought of joining the ballet onct myself," said Mrs. +Snawdor, with a conscious smile. "It was on account of a scene-shifter I +was runnin' with along about the time I met your pa." + +"You!" exclaimed Nance. "Oh! haven't I got a picture of you dancing. Wait +'til I show you!" And ably assisted by the bolster and the bedspread, she +gave a masterly imitation of her stout stepmother that made the original +limp with laughter. Then quite as suddenly, Nance collapsed into a chair +and grew very serious. + +"Say!" she demanded earnestly, "honest to goodness now! Do you think +there's any sin in me going on the stage?" + +"Sin!" repeated Mrs. Snawdor. "Why, I think it's elegant. I was sayin' +so to Mrs. Smelts only yesterday when she was takin' on about Birdie's +treatin' her so mean an' never comin' to see her or writin' to her. +'Don't lay it on the stage,' I says to her. 'Lay it on Birdie; she always +was a stuck-up piece.'" + +Nance pondered the matter, her chin on her palm. Considering the chronic +fallibility of Mrs. Snawdor's judgment, she would have been more +comfortable if she had met with some opposition. + +"Mr. Demry thinks it's wrong," said Nance, taking upon herself the role +of counsel for the prosecution. "He took on something fierce when he saw +me last night." + +"He never knowed what he was doin'," Mrs. Snawdor said. "They tell me he +can play in the orchestry, when he's full as a nut." + +"And there's Uncle Jed," continued Nance uneasily. "What you reckon he's +going to say?" + +"You leave that to me," said Mrs. Snawdor, darkly. "Mr. Burks ain't +goin' to git a inklin' 'til you've went. There ain't nobody I respect +more on the face of the world than I do Jed Burks, but some people is +so all-fired good that livin' with 'em is like wearin' new shoes the +year round." + +"'T ain't as if I was doing anything wicked," said Nance, this time +counsel for the defense. + +"Course not," agreed Mrs. Snawdor. "How much they goin' to pay you?" + +The incredible sum was mentioned, and Mrs. Snawdor's imagination took +instant flight. + +"You'll be gittin' a autymobile at that rate. Say, if I send Lobelia +round to Cemetery Street and git yer last week's pay, can I have it?" + +Nance was counting on that small sum to finish payment on her spring +suit, but in the face of imminent affluence she could ill afford to be +niggardly. + +"I'll buy Rosy V. some shoes, an' pay somethin' on the cuckoo clock," +planned Mrs. Snawdor, "an' I've half a mind to take another policy on +William J. That boy's that venturesome it wouldn't surprise me none to +see him git kilt any old time!" + +Nance, who had failed to convince herself, either as counsel for the +defense or counsel for the prosecution, assumed the prerogative of judge +and dismissed the case. If older people had such different opinions about +right and wrong, what was the use in her bothering about it? With a shrug +of her shoulders she set to work sorting her clothes and packing the ones +she needed in a box. + +"The gingham dresses go to Fidy," she said with reckless generosity, "the +blue skirt to Lobelia, and my Madonna--" Her eyes rested wistfully on her +most cherished possession. "I think I'd like Rosy to have that when she +grows up." + +"All right," agreed Mrs. Snawdor. "There ain't no danger of anybody +takin' it away from her." + +Nance was kneeling on the floor, tying a cord about her box when she +heard steps on the stairs. + +"Uncle Jed?" she asked in alarm. + +"No. Just Snawdor. He won't ast no questions. He ain't got gumption +enough to be curious." + +"I hate to go sneaking off like this without telling everybody good-by," +said Nance petulantly, "Uncle Jed, and the children, and the Levinskis, +and Mr. Demry, and--and--Dan." + +"You don't want to take no risks," said Mrs. Snawdor, importantly. +"There's a fool society for everything under the sun, an' somebody'll be +tryin' to git out a injunction. I don't mind swearin' to whatever age you +got to be, but Mr. Burks is so sensitive about them things." + +"All right," said Nance, flinging on her hat and coat, "tell 'em how it +was when I'm gone. I'll be sending you money before long." + +"That's right," whispered Mrs. Snawdor, hanging over the banister as +Nance felt her way down the stairs. "You be good to yerself an' see if +you can't git me a theayter ticket for to-morrow night. Git two, an' I'll +take Mis' Gorman." + +Never had Nance tripped so lightly down those dark, narrow stairs--the +stairs her feet had helped to wear away in her endless pilgrimages with +buckets of coal and water and beer, with finished and unfinished +garments, and omnipresent Snawdor babies. She was leaving it all +forever, along with the smell of pickled herrings and cabbage and +soapsuds. But she was not going to forget the family! Already she was +planning munificent gifts from that fabulous sum that was henceforth to +be her weekly portion. + +At Mr. Demry's closed door she paused; then hastily retracing her steps, +she slipped back to her own room and got a potted geranium, bearing one +dirty-faced blossom. This she placed on the floor outside his door and +then, picking up her big box, she slipped quickly out of the house, +through the alley and into the street. + +It was late when she got back to Birdie's room, and as she entered, she +was startled by the sound of smothered sobbing. + +"Birdie!" she cried in sudden alarm, peering into the semi-darkness, +"what's the matter? Are you fired?" + +Birdie started up hastily from the bed where she had been lying face +downward, and dried her eyes. + +"No," she said crossly. "Nothing's the matter, only I got the blues." + +"The blues!" repeated Nance, incredulously. "What for?" + +"Oh, everything. I wish I was dead." + +"Birdie Smelts, what's happened to you?" demanded Nance in alarm, sitting +by her on the bed and trying to put her arm around her. + +"Whoever said anything had happened?" asked the older girl, pushing +her away. "Stop asking fool questions and get dressed. We'll be late +as it is." + +For some time they went about their preparations in silence; then Nance, +partly to relieve the tension, and partly because the matter was of vital +interest, asked: + +"Do you reckon Mr. Mac and Mr. Monte will come again to-night?" + +"You can't tell," said Birdie. "What do they care about engagements? +We are nothing but dirt to them--just dirt under their old +patent-leather pumps!" + +This bitterness on Birdie's part was so different from her customary +superiority where men were concerned, that Nance gasped. + +"If they _do_ come," continued Birdie vindictively, "you just watch me +teach Mac Clarke a thing or two. He needn't think because his folks +happen to be swells, he can treat me any old way. I'll make it hot for +him if he don't look out, you see if I don't." + +Once back at the Gaiety, Nance forgot all about Birdie and her love +affairs. Her own small triumph completely engrossed her. A morning paper +had mentioned the fantastic dance of the little bear, and had given her +three lines all to herself. Reeser was jubilant, the director was +mollified, and even the big comedian whose name blazed in letters of +fire outside, actually stopped her in the wings to congratulate her. + +"Look here, young person," he said, lifting a warning finger, "you want +to be careful how you steal my thunder. You'll be taking my job next!" + +Whereupon Nance had the audacity to cross her eyes and strike his +most famous pose before she dodged under his arm and scampered down +the stairs. + +It seemed incredible that the marvelous events of the night before could +happen all over again; but they did. She had only to imitate her own +performance to send the audience into peals of laughter. It would have +been more fun to try new tricks, but on this point Pulatki was adamant. + +"I vant zat you do ze same act, no more, no less, see?" he demanded of +her, fiercely. + +When the encore came, and at Reeser's command she snatched off her bear's +head and made her funny, awkward, little bow, she involuntarily glanced +down at the orchestra. Mr. Demry was not there, but in the parquet she +encountered a pair of importunate eyes that set her pulses bounding. They +sought her out in the subsequent chorus and followed her every movement +in the grand march that followed. + +"Mr. Mac's down there," she whispered excitedly to Birdie as they passed +in the first figure, but Birdie tossed her head and flirted persistently +with the gallery which was quite unused to such marked attention from the +principal show girl. + +There was no supper after the play that night, and it was only after much +persuasion on Mac's part, reinforced by the belated Monte, that Birdie +was induced to come out of her sulks and go for a drive around the park. + +"Me for the front seat!" cried Nance hoydenishly, and then, as Mac jumped +in beside her and took the wheel, she saw her mistake. + +"Oh! I didn't know--" she began, but Mac caught her hand and gave it a +grateful squeeze. + +"Confess you wanted to sit by me!" he whispered. + +"But I didn't!" she protested hotly. "I never was in a automobile before +and I just wanted to see how it worked!" + +She almost persuaded herself that this was true when they reached the +long stretch of parkway, and Mac let her take the wheel. It was only when +in the course of instruction Mac's hand lingered too long on hers, or his +gay, careless face leaned too close, that she had her misgivings. + +"Say! this is great!" she cried rapturously, with her feet braced and her +eyes on the long road ahead. "When it don't get the hic-cups, it beats a +horse all hollow!" + +"What do you know about horses?" teased Mac, giving unnecessary +assistance with the wheel. + +"Enough to keep my hands off the reins when another fellow's driving!" +she said coolly--a remark that moved Mac to boisterous laughter. + +When they were on the homeward way and Mac had taken the wheel again, +they found little to say to each other. Once he got her to light a +cigarette for him, and once or twice she asked a question about the +engine. In Calvary Alley one talked or one didn't as the mood suggested, +and Nance was unversed in the fine art of making conversation. It +disturbed her not a whit that she and the handsome youth beside her had +no common topic of interest. It was quite enough for her to sit there +beside him, keenly aware that his arm was pressing hers and that every +time she glanced up she found him glancing down. + +It was a night of snow and moonshine, one of those transitorial nights +when winter is going and spring is coming. Nance held her breath as the +car plunged headlong into one mass of black shadows after another only to +emerge triumphant into the white moonlight. She loved the unexpected +revelations of the headlights, which turned the dim road to silver and +lit up the dark turf at the wayside. She loved the crystal-clear moon +that was sailing off and away across those dim fields of virgin snow. And +then she was not thinking any longer, but feeling--feeling beauty and +wonder and happiness and always the blissful thrill of that arm pressed +against her own. + +Not until they were nearing the city did she remember the couple on the +back seat. + +"Wake up there!" shouted Mac, tossing his cap over his shoulder. "Gone +to sleep?" + +"I am trying to induce Miss Birdie to go to the carnival ball with me +to-morrow night," said Monte. "It's going to be no end of a lark." + +"Take me, too, Birdie, please!" burst out Nance with such childish +vehemence that they all laughed. + +"What's the matter with us all going?" cried Mac, instantly on fire at +the suggestion. "Mother's having a dinner to-morrow night, but I can join +you after the show. What do you say, Bird?" + +But Birdie was still in the sulks, and it was not until Mac had changed +places with Monte and brought the full battery of his persuasions to bear +upon her that she agreed to the plan. + +That night when the girls were tucked comfortably in bed and the lights +were out, they discussed ways and means. + +"I'm going to see if I can't borrow a couple of red-bird costumes off +Mrs. Ryan," said Birdie, whose good humor seemed completely restored. +"We'll buy a couple of masks. I don't know what Monte's letting us in +for, but I'll try anything once." + +"Will there be dancing, Birdie?" asked Nance, her eyes shining in the +dark. + +"Of course, Silly! Nothing but. Say, what was the matter with you and Mac +to-night? You didn't seem to hit it off." + +"Oh! we got along pretty good." + +"I never heard you talking much. By the way, he's going to take me +to-morrow night, and you are going with Monte." + +"Any old way suits me!" said Nance, "just so I get there." But she lay +awake for a time staring into the dark, thinking things over. + +"Does he always call you 'Bird'?" she asked after a long silence. + +"Who, Mac? Yes. Why?" + +"Oh! Nothing," said Nance. + +The next day being Saturday, there were two performances, beside the +packing necessary for an early departure on the morrow. But +notwithstanding the full day ahead of her, Birdie spent the morning in +bed, languidly directing Nance, who emptied the wardrobe and bureau +drawers and sorted and folded the soiled finery. Toward noon she got up +and, petulantly declaring that the room was suffocating, announced that +she was going out to do some shopping. + +"I'll come, too," said Nance, to whom the purchasing of wearing apparel +was a new and exciting experience. + +"No; you finish up here," said Birdie. "I'll be back soon." + +Nance went to the window and watched for her to come out in the street +below. She was beginning to be worried about Birdie. What made her so +restless and discontented? Why wouldn't she go to see her mother? Why was +she so cross with Mac Clarke when he was with her and so miserable when +he was away? While she pondered it over, she saw Birdie cross the street +and stand irresolute for a moment, before she turned her back on the +shopping district and hastened off to the east where the tall pipes of +the factories stood like exclamation points along the sky-line. + +Already the noon whistles were blowing, and she recognized, above the +rest, the shrill voice of Clarke's Bottle Factory. How she used to +listen for that whistle, especially on Saturdays. Why, _this_ was +Saturday! In the exciting rush of events she had forgotten completely +that Dan would be waiting for her at five o'clock at the foot of +Cemetery Street. Never once in the months she had been at Miss Bobinet's +had he failed to be there on Saturday afternoon. If only she could send +him some word, make some excuse! But it was not easy to deceive Dan, and +she knew he would never rest until he got at the truth of the matter. +No; she had better take Mrs. Snawdor's advice and run no risks. And yet +that thought of Dan waiting patiently at the corner tormented her as +she finished the packing. + +When the time arrived to report at the theater, Birdie had not returned, +so Nance rushed off alone at the last minute. It was not until the first +chorus was about to be called that the principal show girl, flushed and +tired, flung herself into the dressing-room and made a lightning change +in time to take her place at the head of the line. + +There was a rehearsal between the afternoon and evening performances, and +the girls had little time for confidences. + +"Don't ask me any questions!" said Birdie crossly, as she sat before her +dressing-table, wearily washing off the make-up of the afternoon in order +to put on the make-up of the evening. "I'm so dog tired I'd lots rather +be going to bed than to that carnival thing!" + +"Don't you back out!" warned Nance, to whom it was ridiculous that any +one should be tired under such exhilarating circumstances. + +"Oh, I'll go," said Birdie, "if it's just for the sake of getting +something decent to eat. I'm sick of dancing on crackers and ice-water." + +That night Nance, for the first time, was reconciled to the final +curtain. The weather was threatening and the audience was small, but that +was not what took the keen edge off the performance. It was the absence +in the parquet of a certain pair of pursuing eyes that made all the +difference. Moreover, the prospect of the carnival ball made even the +footlights pale by comparison. + +The wardrobe woman, after much coaxing and bribing, had been induced +to lend the girls two of the property costumes, and Nance, with the +help of several giggling assistants, was being initiated into the +mysteries of the red-bird costume. When she had donned the crimson +tights, and high-heeled crimson boots, and the short-spangled slip +with its black gauze wings, she gave a half-abashed glance at herself +in the long mirror. + +"I can't do it, Birdie!" she cried, "I feel like a fool. You be a red +bird, and let me be a bear!" + +"Don't we all do it every night?" asked Birdie. "When we've got on our +masks, nobody 'll know us. We'll just be a couple of 'Rag-Time Follies' +taking a night off." + +"Don't she look cute with her cap on?" cried one of the girls. "I'd give +my head to be going!" + +Nance put on a borrowed rain-coat which was to serve as evening wrap as +well and, with a kiss all around and many parting gibes, ran up the steps +in Birdie's wake. + +The court outside the stage entrance was a bobbing mass of umbrellas. +Groups of girls, pulling their wraps on as they came, tripped noisily +down the steps, greeting waiting cavaliers, or hurrying off alone in +various directions. + +"That's Mac's horn," said Birdie, "a long toot and two short ones. I'd +know it in Halifax!" + +At the curbing the usual altercation arose between Mac and Birdie as to +how they should sit. The latter refused to sit on the front seat for fear +of getting wet, and Mac refused to let Monte drive. + +"Oh, I don't mind getting wet!" cried Nance with a fine show of +indifference. "That's what a rain-coat's for." + +When Mac had dexterously backed his machine out of its close quarters, +and was threading his way with reckless skill through the crowded +streets, he said softly, without turning his head: + +"I think I rather like you, Nance Molloy!" + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +WILD OATS + + +The tenth annual carnival ball, under the auspices of a too-well-known +political organization, was at its midnight worst. It was one of those +conglomerate gatherings, made up of the loose ends of the city--ward +politicians, girls from the department stores, Bohemians with an unsated +thirst for diversion, reporters, ostensibly looking for copy, women just +over the line of respectability, sometimes on one side, sometimes on the +other, and the inevitable sprinkling of well-born youths who regard such +occasions as golden opportunities for seeing that mysterious phantom +termed "life." + +It was all cheap and incredibly tawdry, from the festoons of paper roses +on the walls to the flash of paste jewels in make-believe crowns. The big +hall, with its stage flanked by gilded boxes, was crowded with a shifting +throng of maskers in costumes of flaunting discord. Above the noisy +laughter and popping of corks, rose the blaring strains of a brass band. +Through the odor of flowers came the strong scent of musk, which, in +turn, was routed by the fumes of beer and tobacco which were already +making the air heavy. + +On the edge of all this stood Nance Molloy, in that magic hour of her +girlhood when the bud was ready to burst into the full-blown blossom. Her +slender figure on tiptoe with excitement, her eyes star-like behind her +mask, she stood poised, waiting with all her unslaked thirst for +pleasure, to make her plunge into the gay, dancing throng. She no longer +cared if her skirts were short, and her arms and neck were bare. She no +longer thought of how she looked or how she acted. There was no Pulatki +in the wings to call her down for extra flourishes; there was no old +white face in the orchestra to disturb her conscience. Her chance for a +good time had come at last, and she was rushing to meet it with arms +outstretched. + +"They are getting ready for the grand march!" cried Monte, who, with Mac, +represented the "two _Dromios_." "We separate at the end of the hall, and +when the columns line up again, you dance with your vis-a-vis." + +"My who-tee-who?" asked Nance. + +"Vis-a-vis--fellow opposite. Come ahead!" + +Down the long hall swung the gay procession, while the floor vibrated to +the rhythm of the prancing feet. The columns marched and countermarched +and fell into two long lines facing each other. The leader of the +orchestra blew a shrill whistle, and Nance, marking time expectantly, +saw one of the _Dromios_ slip out of his place and into the one facing +her. The next moment the columns flowed together, and she found herself +in his arms, swinging in and out of the gay whirling throng with every +nerve tingling response to the summoning music. + +Suddenly a tender pressure made her glance up sharply at the white mask +of her companion. + +"Why--why, I thought it was Mr. Monte," she laughed. + +"Disappointed?" asked Mac. + +"N-no." + +"Then why are you stopping?" + +Nance could not tell him that in her world a "High Particular" was not to +be trifled with. In her vigil of the night before she had made firm +resolve to do the square thing by Birdie Smelts. + +"Where are the others?" she asked in sudden confusion. + +"In the supper room probably. Aren't you going to finish this with me?" + +"Not me. I'm going to dance with Mr. Monte." + +"Has he asked you?" + +"No; I'm going to ask him." And she darted away, leaving Mac to follow at +his leisure. + +After supper propriety, which up to now had held slack rein on the +carnival spirit, turned her loose. Masks were flung aside, hundreds of +toy balloons were set afloat and tossed from hand to hand, confetti was +showered from the balcony, boisterous song and laughter mingled with the +music. The floor resembled some gigantic kaleidoscope, one gay pattern +following another in rapid succession. And in every group the most vivid +note was struck by a flashing red bird. Even had word not gone abroad +that the girls in crimson and black were from the "Rag Time Follies", +Birdie's conspicuous charms would have created instant comment and a host +of admirers. + +Nance, with characteristic independence, soon swung out of Birdie's orbit +and made friends for herself. For her it was a night of delirium, and her +pulses hammered in rhythm to the throbbing music. In one day life had +caught her up out of an abyss of gloom and swung her to a dizzy pinnacle +of delight, where she poised in exquisite ecstasy, fearing that the next +turn of the wheel might carry her down again. Laughter had softened her +lips and hung mischievous lights in her eyes; happiness had set her +nerves tingling and set roses blooming in cheeks and lips. The smoldering +fires of self-expression, smothered so long, burst into riotous flame. +With utter abandonment she flung herself into the merriment of the +moment, romping through the dances with any one who asked her, slapping +the face of an elderly knight who went too far in his gallantries, +dancing a hornpipe with a fat clown to the accompaniment of a hundred +clapping hands. Up and down the crowded hall she raced, a hoydenish +little tom-boy, drunk with youth, with freedom, and with the pent-up +vitality of years. + +Close after her, snatching her away from the other dancers only to have +her snatched away from him in turn, was Mac Clarke, equally flushed and +excited, refusing to listen to Monte's insistent reminder that a storm +was brewing and they ought to go home. + +"Hang the storm!" cried Mac gaily. "I'm in for it with the governor, +anyhow. Let's make a night of it!" + +At the end of a dance even wilder than the rest, Nance found herself with +Mac at the entrance to one of the boxes that flanked the stage. + +"I've got you now!" he panted, catching her wrists and pulling her within +the curtained recess. "You've got to tell me why you've been running away +from me all evening." + +"I haven't," said Nance, laughing and struggling to free her hands. + +"You have, too! You've given me the slip a dozen times. Don't you know +I'm crazy about you?" + +"Much you are!" scoffed Nance. "Go tell that to Birdie." + +"I'll tell it to Birdie and every one else if you like," Mac cried. "It +was all up with me the first time I saw you." + +With his handsome, boyish face and his frilled shirt, he looked so +absurdly like the choir boy, who had once sat on the fence flinging rocks +at her, that she threw back her head and laughed. + +"You don't even know the first time you saw me," she challenged him. + +"Well, I know I've seen you somewhere before. Tell me where?" + +"Guess!" said Nance, with dancing eyes. + +"Wait! I know! It was on the street one night. You were standing in a +drug store. A red light was shining on you, and you smiled at me." + +"I smiled at you because I knew you. I'd seen you before that. Once when +you didn't want me to. In the factory yard--behind the gas-pipe--" + +"Were you the little girl that caught me kissing Bird that day?" + +"Yes! But there was another time even before that." + +He searched her face quizzically, still holding her wrists. + +Nance, no longer trying to free her hands, hummed teasingly, half under +her breath: + +"Do ye think the likes of ye +Could learn to like the likes o' me? +Arrah, come in, Barney McKane, out of the rain!" + +A puzzled look swept his face; then he cried exultantly: + +"I've got it. It was you who let my pigeons go! You little devil! I'm +going to pay you back for that!" and before she knew it, he had got both +of her hands into one of his and had caught her to him, and was kissing +her there in the shadow of the curtain, kissing her gay, defiant eyes and +her half-childish lips. + +And Nance, the independent, scoffing, high-headed Nance, who up to this +time had waged successful warfare, offensive as well as defensive, +against the invading masculine, forgot for one transcendent second +everything in the world except the touch of those ardent lips on hers and +the warm clasp of the arm about her yielding shoulders. + +In the next instant she sprang away from him, and in dire confusion fled +out of the box and down the corridor. + +At the door leading back into the ball-room a group of dancers had +gathered and were exchanging humorous remarks about a woman who was being +borne, feet foremost, into the corridor by two men in costume. + +Nance, craning her neck to see, caught a glimpse of a white face with a +sagging mouth, and staring eyes under a profusion of tumbled red hair. +With a gasp of recognition she pushed forward and impulsively seized one +of the woman's limp hands. + +"Gert!" she cried, "what's the matter? Are you hurt?" + +The monk gave a significant wink at Mac, who had joined them, and the +by-standers laughed. + +"She's drunk!" said Mac, abruptly, pulling Nance away. "Where did you +ever know that woman?" + +"Why, it's Gert, you know, at the factory! She worked at the bench +next to mine!" + +Her eyes followed the departing group somberly, and she lingered despite +Mac's persuasion. + +Poor Gert! Was this what she meant by a good time? To be limp and silly +like that, with her dress slipping off her shoulder and people staring at +her and laughing at her? + +"I don't want to dance!" she said impatiently, shaking off Mac's hand. + +The steaming hall, reeking with tobacco smoke and stale beer, the men and +women with painted faces and blackened eyes leering and languishing at +each other, the snatches of suggestive song and jest, filled her with +sudden disgust. + +"I'm going home," she announced with determination. + +"But, Nance!" pleaded Mac, "you can't go until we've had our dance." + +But for Nance the spell was broken, and her one idea was to get away. +When she found Birdie she became more insistent than ever. + +"Why not see it out?" urged Mac. "I don't want to go home." + +"You are as hoarse as a frog now," said Monte. + +"Glad of it! Let's me out of singing in the choir to-morrow--I mean +to-day! Who wants another drink?" + +Birdie did, and another ten minutes was lost while they went around to +the refreshment room. + +The storm was at its height when at four o'clock they started on that mad +drive home. The shrieking wind, the wet, slippery streets, the lightning +flashing against the blurred wind-shield, the crashes of thunder that +drowned all other sounds, were sufficient to try the nerves of the +steadiest driver. But Mac sped his car through it with reckless +disregard, singing, despite his hoarseness, with Birdie and Monte, and +shouting laughing defiance as the lightning played. + +Nance sat very straight beside him with her eyes on the road ahead. She +hated Birdie for having taken enough wine to make her silly like that; +she hated the boys for laughing at her. She saw nothing funny in the fact +that somebody had lost the latch-key and that they could only get in by +raising the landlady, who was sharp of tongue and free with her comments. + +"You girls better come on over to my rooms," urged Monte. "We'll cook +your breakfast on the chafing-dish, won't we, Mac?" + +"Me for the couch!" said Birdie. "I'm cross-eyed, I'm so sleepy." + +"I'm not going," said Nance, shortly. + +"Don't be a short-sport, Nance," urged Birdie, peevishly. "It's as good +as morning now. We can loaf around Monte's for a couple of hours and then +go over to my room and change our clothes in time to get to the station +by seven. Less time we have to answer questions, better it'll be for us." + +"I tell you I ain't going!" protested Nance, hotly. + +"Yes, you are!" whispered Mac softly. "You are going to be a good little +girl and do whatever I want you to." + +Nance grew strangely silent under his compelling look, and under the +touch of his hand as it sought hers in the darkness. Why wasn't she angry +with Mr. Mac as she was with the others? Why did she want so much to do +whatever he asked her to? After all perhaps there was no harm in going to +Mr. Monte's for a little while, perhaps-- + +She drew in her breath suddenly and shivered. For the first time in her +life she was afraid, not of the storm, or the consequences of her +escapade, but of herself. She was afraid of the quick, sweet shiver that +ran over her whenever Mac touched her, of the strange weakness that came +over her even now, as his hands claimed hers. + +"Say, I'm going to get out," she said suddenly. + +"Stop the car! Don't you hear me? I want to get out!" + +"Nonsense!" said Mac, "you don't even know where you are! You are coming +with us to Monte's; that's what you are going to do." + +But Nance knew more than he thought. In the last flash of lightning she +had seen, back of them on the left, startlingly white for the second +against the blackness, the spire of Calvary Cathedral. She knew that they +were rapidly approaching the railroad crossing where Uncle Jed's signal +tower stood, beyond which lay a region totally unfamiliar to her. + +She waited tensely until Mac had sped the car across the gleaming tracks, +just escaping the descending gates. Then she bent forward and seized the +emergency brake. The car came to a halt with a terrific jerk, plunging +them all forward, and under cover of the confusion Nance leapt out and, +darting under the lowered gate, dashed across the tracks. The next moment +a long freight train passed between her and the automobile, and when it +was done with its noisy shunting backward and forward, and had gone +ahead, the street was empty. + +Watching her chance between the lightning flashes, she darted from cover +to cover. Once beyond the signal tower she would be safe from Uncle Jed's +righteous eye, and able to dash down a short cut she knew that led into +the street back of the warehouse and thence into Calvary Alley. If she +could get to her old room for the next two hours, she could change her +clothes and be off again before any one knew of her night's adventure. + +Just as she reached the corner, a flash more blinding than the rest +ripped the heavens. A line of fire raced toward her along the steel +rails, then leapt in a ball to the big bell at the top of the signal +tower. There was a deafening crash; all the electric lights went out, and +Nance found herself cowering against the fence, apparently the one living +object in that wild, wet, storm-racked night. + +The only lights to be seen were the small red lamps suspended on the +slanting gates. Nance waited for them to lower when the freight train +that had backed into the yards five minutes before, rushed out again. But +the lamps did not move. + +She crept back across the tracks, watching with fascinated horror the +dark windows of the signal tower. Why didn't Uncle Jed light his lantern? +Why hadn't he lowered the gates? All her fear of discovery was suddenly +swallowed up in a greater fear. + +At the foot of the crude wooden stairway she no longer hesitated. + +"Uncle Jed!" she shouted against the wind, "Uncle Jed, are you there?" + +There was no answer. + +She climbed the steep steps and tried the door, which yielded grudgingly +to her pressure. It was only when she put her shoulder to it and pushed +with all her strength that she made an opening wide enough to squeeze +through. There on the floor, lying just as he had fallen, was the old +gate-tender, his unseeing eyes staring up into the semi-darkness. + +Nance looked at him in terror, then at the signal board and the levers +that controlled the gates. A terrible trembling seized her, and she +covered her eyes with her hands. + +"God tell me quick, what must I do?" she demanded, and the next instant, +as if in answer to her prayer, she heard herself gasp, "Dan!" as she +fumbled wildly for the telephone. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +DAN + + +The shrill whistle that at noon had obtruded its discord into Nance +Molloy's thoughts had a very different effect on Dan Lewis, washing his +hands under the hydrant in the factory yard. _He_ had not forgotten that +it was Saturday. Neither had Growler, who stood watching him with an +oblique look in his old eye that said as plain as words that he knew what +momentous business was brewing at five o'clock. + +It was not only Saturday for Dan, but the most important Saturday that +ever figured on the calendar. In his heroic efforts to conform to Mrs. +Purdy's standard of perfection he had studied the advice to young men in +the "Sunday Echo." There he learned that no gentleman would think of +mentioning love to a young lady until he was in a position to marry her. +To-day's pay envelope would hold the exact amount to bring his bank +account up to the three imposing figures that he had decided on as the +minimum sum to be put away. + +As he was drying his hands on his handkerchief and whistling softly +under his breath, he was summoned to the office. + +For the past year he had been a self-constituted buffer between Mr. +Clarke and the men in the furnace-room, and he wondered anxiously what +new complication had arisen. + +"He's got an awful grouch on," warned the stenographer as Dan passed +through the outer office. + +Mr. Clarke was sitting at his desk, tapping his foot impatiently. + +"Well, Lewis," he said, "you've taken your time! Sit down. I want to +talk to you." + +Dan dropped into the chair opposite and waited. + +"Is it true that you have been doing most of the new foreman's work for +the past month?" + +"Well, I've helped him some. You see, being here so long, I know the +ropes a bit better than he does." + +"That's not the point. I ought to have known sooner that he could not +handle the job. I fired him this morning, and we've got to make some +temporary arrangement until a new man is installed." + +Dan's face grew grave. + +"We can manage everything but the finishing room. Some of the girls have +been threatening to quit." + +"What's the grievance now?" + +"Same thing--ventilation. Two more girls fainted there this morning. The +air is something terrible." + +"What do they think I am running?" demanded Mr. Clarke, angrily, "a +health resort?" + +"No, sir," said Dan, "a death trap." + +Mr. Clarke set his jaw and glared at Dan, but he said nothing. The +doctor's recent verdict on the death of a certain one-eyed girl, named +Mag Gist, may have had something to do with his silence. + +"How many girls are in that room now?" he asked after a long pause. + +Dan gave the number, together with several other disturbing facts +concerning the sanitary arrangements. + +"Well, what's to be done?" demanded Mr. Clarke, fiercely. "We can't +get out the work with fewer girls, and there is no way of enlarging +that room." + +"Yes, sir, there is," said Dan. "Would you mind me showing you a way?" + +"Since you are so full of advice, go ahead." + +With crude, but sure, pencil strokes, Dan got his ideas on paper. He had +done it so often for his own satisfaction that he could have made them +with his eyes shut. Ever since those early days when he had seen that +room through Nance Molloy's eyes, he had persisted in his efforts to +better it. + +Mr. Clarke, with his fingers thrust through his scanty hair, watched him +scornfully. + +"Absolutely impractical," he declared. "The only feasible plan would be +to take out the north partition and build an extension like this." + +"That couldn't be done," said Dan, "on account of the projection." + +Whereupon, such is the power of opposition, Mr. Clarke set himself to +prove that it could. For over an hour they wrangled, going into the +questions of cost, of time, of heating, of ventilation, scarcely looking +up from the plans until a figure in a checked suit flung open the door, +letting in a draught of air that scattered the papers on the desk. + +"Hello, Dad," said the new-comer, with a friendly nod to Dan, "I'm sorry +to disturb you, but I only have a minute." + +"Which I should accept gratefully, I suppose, as my share of your busy +day?" Mr. Clarke tried to look severe, but his eyes softened. + +"Well, I just got up," said Mac, with an ingratiating smile, as he +smoothed back his shining hair before the mirror in the hat-rack. + +"Running all night, and sleeping half the day!" grumbled Mr. Clarke. "By +the way, what time did you get in last night?" + +Mac made a wry face. + +"_Et tu, Brute?_" he cried gaily. "Mother's polished me off on that +score. I have not come here to discuss the waywardness of your prodigal +son. Mr. Clarke, I have come to talk high finance. I desire to +negotiate a loan." + +"As usual," growled his father. "I venture to say that Dan Lewis here, +who earns about half what you waste a year, has something put away." + +"But Dan's the original grinder. He always had an eye for business. Used +to win my nickel every Sunday when we shot craps in the alley back of the +cathedral. Say, Dan, I see you've still got that handsome thoroughbred +cur of yours! By George, that dog could use his tail for a jumping rope!" + +Dan smiled; he couldn't afford to be sensitive about Growler's beauty. + +"Is that all, Mr. Clarke?" he asked of his employer. + +"Yes. I'll see what can be done with these plans. In the meanwhile you +try to keep the girls satisfied until the new foreman comes. By the way I +expect you'd better stay on here to-night." + +Dan paused with his hand on the door-knob. "Yes, sir," he said in evident +embarrassment, "but if you don't mind--I 'd like to get off for a couple +of hours this afternoon." + +"Who's the girl, Dan?" asked Mac, but Dan did not stop to answer. + +As he hurried down the hall, a boy appeared from around the corner and +beckoned to him with a mysterious grin. + +"Somebody's waiting for you down in the yard." + +"Who is he?" + +"'T ain't a he. It's the prettiest girl you ever seen!" + +Dan, whose thoughts for weeks had been completely filled with one +feminine image, sprang to the window. But the tall, stylish person +enveloped in a white veil, who was waiting below, in no remote way +suggested Nance Molloy. + +A call from a lady was a new experience, and a lively curiosity seized +him as he descended the steps, turning down his shirt sleeves as he went. +As he stepped into the yard, the girl turned toward him with a quick, +nervous movement. + +"Hello, Daniel!" she said, her full red lips curving into a smile. "Don't +remember me, do you?" + +"Sure, I do. It's Birdie Smelts." + +"Good boy! Only now it's Birdie La Rue. That's my stage name, you know. I +blew into town Thursday with 'The Rag Time Follies.' Say, Dan, you used +to be a good friend of mine, didn't you?" + +Dan had no recollection of ever having been noticed by Birdie, except on +that one occasion when he had taken her and Nance to the skating-rink. +She was older than he by a couple of years, and infinitely wiser in the +ways of the world. But it was beyond masculine human nature not to be +flattered by her manner, and he hastened to assure her that he had been +and was her friend. + +"Well, I wonder if you don't want to do me a favor?" she coaxed. "Find +out if Mac Clarke's been here, or is going to be here. I got to see him +on particular business." + +"He's up in the office now," said Dan; then he added bluntly "Where did +you ever know Mac Clarke?" + +Birdie's large, white lids fluttered a moment. + +"I come to see him for a friend of mine," she said. + +A silence fell between them which she tried to break with a rather shame +faced explanation. + +"This girl and Mac have had a quarrel. I'm trying to patch it up. Wish +you'd get him down here a minute." + +"It would be a lot better for the girl," said Dan, slowly, "if you didn't +patch it up." + +"What do you mean?" + +Dan looked troubled. + +"Clarke's a nice fellow all right," he said, "but when it comes to +girls--" he broke off abruptly. "Do you know him?" + +"I've seen him round the theater," she said. + +"Then you ought to know what I mean." + +Birdie looked absently across the barren yard. + +"Men are all rotten," she said bitterly, then added with feminine +inconsistency, "Go on, Dan, be a darling. Fix it so I can speak to him +without the old man catching on." + +Strategic manoeuvers were not in Dan's line, and he might have refused +outright had not Birdie laid a white hand on his and lifted a pair of +effectively pleading eyes. Being unused to feminine blandishments, he +succumbed. + +Half an hour later a white veil fluttered intimately across a broad, +checked shoulder as two stealthy young people slipped under the window of +Mr. Clarke's private office and made their way to the street. + +Dan gave the incident little further thought. He went mechanically about +his work, only pausing occasionally at his high desk behind the door to +pore over a sheet of paper. Had his employer glanced casually over his +shoulder, he might have thought he was still figuring on the plans of the +new finishing room; but a second glance would have puzzled him. Instead +of one large room there were several small ones, and across the front was +a porch with wriggly lines on a trellis, minutely labeled, "honeysuckle." + +At a quarter of five Dan made as elaborate a toilet as the washroom +permitted. He consumed both time and soap on the fractious forelock, and +spent precious moments trying to induce a limp string tie to assume the +same correct set that distinguished Mac Clarke's four-in-hand. + +Once on his way, with Growler at his heels, he gave no more thought to +his looks. He walked very straight, his lips twitching now and then into +a smile, and his gaze soaring over the heads of the ordinary people whom +he passed. For twenty-one years the book of life had proved grim +reading, but to-day he had come to that magic page whereon is written in +words grown dim to the eyes of age and experience, but perennially +shining to the eyes of youth: "And then they were married and lived +happily ever after." + +"Take care there! Look where you are going!" exclaimed an indignant +pedestrian as he turned the corner into Cemetery Street. + +"Why, hello, Bean!" he said in surprise, bringing his gaze down to a +stout man on crutches. "Glad to see you out again!" + +"I ain't out," said the ex-foreman. "I'm all in. I've got rheumatism in +every corner of me. This is what your old bottle factory did for me." + +"Tough luck," said Dan sympathetically, with what attention he could +spare from a certain doorway half up the square. "First time you've +been out?" + +"No; I've been to the park once or twice. Last night I went to a show." +He was about to limp on when he paused. "By the way, Lewis, I saw an old +friend of yours there. You remember that Molloy girl you used to run with +up at the factory?" + +Dan's mouth closed sharply. Bean's attitude toward the factory girls was +an old grievance with him and had caused words between them on more than +one occasion. + +"Well, I'll be hanged," went on Bean, undaunted, "if she ain't doing a +turn up at the Gaiety! She's a little corker all right, had the whole +house going." + +"You got another guess coming your way," said Dan, coldly, "the young +lady you're talking about's not on the stage. She's working up here in +Cemetery Street. I happen to be waiting for her now." + +Bean whistled. + +"Well, the drinks are on me. That girl at the Gaiety is a dead ringer to +her. Same classy way of handling herself, same--" Something in Dan's eyes +made him stop. "I got to be going," he said. "So long." + +Dan waited patiently for ten minutes; then he looked at his watch. What +could be keeping Nance? He whistled to Growler, who was making life +miserable for a cat in a neighboring yard, and strolled past Miss +Bobinet's door; then he returned to the corner. Bean's words had fallen +into his dream like a pebble into a tranquil pool. What business had Bean +to be remembering the way Nance walked or talked. Restlessly, Dan paced +up and down the narrow sidewalk. When he looked at his watch again, it +was five-thirty. + +Only thirty more minutes in which to transact the most important +business of his life! With a gesture of impatience he strode up to Miss +Bobinet's door and rang the bell. + +A wrinkled old woman, with one hand behind her ear, opened the door +grudgingly. + +"Nance Molloy?" she quavered in answer to his query. "What you want +with her?" + +"I'd like to speak with her a minute," said Dan. + +"Are you her brother?" + +"No." + +"Insurance man?" + +"No." + +The old woman peered at him curiously. + +"Who be you?" she asked. + +"My name's Lewis." + +"Morris?" + +"No, Lewis!" shouted Dan, with a restraining hand on Growler, who was +sniffing at the strange musty odors that issued from the half-open door. + +"Well, she ain't here," said the old woman. "Took herself off last +Wednesday, without a word to anybody." + +"Last Wednesday!" said Dan, incredulously. "Didn't she send any word?" + +"Sent for her money and said she wouldn't be back. You dog, you!" This to +Growler who had insinuated his head inside the door with the fixed +determination to run down that queer smell if possible. + +Dan went slowly down the steps, and Growler, either offended at having +had the door slammed in his face, or else sensing, dog-fashion, the +sudden change in his master's mood, trotted soberly at his heels. There +was no time now to go to Calvary Alley to find out what the trouble was. +Nothing to do but go back to the factory and worry through the night, +with all sorts of disturbing thoughts swarming in his brain. Nance had +been all right the Saturday before, a little restless and discontented +perhaps, but scarcely more so than usual. He remembered how he had +counseled patience, and how hard it had been for him to keep from telling +her then and there what was in his heart. He began to wonder uneasily if +he had done right in keeping all his plans and dreams to himself. Perhaps +if he had taken her into his confidence and told her what he was striving +and saving for, she would have understood better and been happy in +waiting and working with him. For the first time he began to entertain +dark doubts concerning those columns of advice to young men in the +"Sunday Echo." + +Once back at the factory, he plunged into his work with characteristic +thoroughness. It was strangely hot and still, and somewhere out on the +horizon was a grumbling discontent. It was raining hard at eleven o'clock +when he boarded a car for Butternut Lane, and by the time he reached the +Purdy's corner, the lightning was playing sharply in the northwest. + +He let himself in the empty house and felt his way up to his room, but he +did not go to bed. Instead, he sat at his table and with stiff awkward +fingers wrote letter after letter, each of which he tossed impatiently +into the waste-basket. They were all to Nance, and they all tried in vain +to express the pent-up emotion that had filled his heart for years. +Somewhere down-stairs a clock struck one, but he kept doggedly at his +task. Four o'clock found him still seated at the table, but his tired +head had dropped on his folded arms, and he slept. + +Outside the wind rose higher and higher, and the lightning split the +heavens in blinding flashes. Suddenly a deafening crash of thunder shook +the house, and Dan started to his feet. A moment later the telephone +bell rang. + +Half dazed, he stumbled down-stairs and took up the receiver. + +"Hello, hello! Yes, this is Dan Lewis. What? I can't hear you. Who?" Then +his back stiffened suddenly, and his voice grew tense, "Nance! Where are +you? Is he dead? Who's with you? Don't be scared, I'm coming!" and, +leaving the receiver dangling on the cord, he made one leap for the door. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +IN THE SIGNAL TOWER + + +It seemed an eternity to Dan, speeding hatless, coatless, breathless +through the storm, before he spied the red lights on the lowered gates at +the crossing. Dashing to the signal tower, he took the steps two at a +time. The small room was almost dark, but he could see Nance kneeling on +the floor beside the big gatekeeper. + +"Dan! Is it you?" she cried. "He ain't dead yet. I can feel him +breathing. If the doctor would only come!" + +"Who'd you call?" + +"The first one in the book, Dr. Adair." + +"But he's the big doctor up at the hospital; he won't come." + +"He will too! I told him he had to. And the gates, I got 'em down. Don't +stop to feel his heart, Dan. Call the doctor again!" + +"The first thing to do is to get a light," said Dan. "Ain't there a +lantern or something?" + +"Strike matches, like I did. They are on the window-sill--only +hurry--Dan, hurry!" + +Dan went about his task in his own way, taking time to find an oil lamp +on the shelf behind the door and deliberately lighting it before he took +his seat at the telephone. As he waited for the connection, his puzzled, +troubled eyes dwelt not on Uncle Jed, but on the crimson boots and +fantastic cap of Uncle Jed's companion. + +"Dr. Adair is on the way," he said quietly, when he hung up the receiver, +"and a man is coming from the yards to look after the gates. Is he still +breathing?" + +"Only when I make him!" said Nance, pressing the lungs of the injured +man. "There, Uncle Jed," she coaxed, "take another deep breath, just one +time. Go on! Do it for Nance. One time more! That's right! Once more!" + +But Uncle Jed was evidently very tired of trying to accommodate. The +gasps came at irregular intervals. + +"How long have you been doing this?" asked Dan, kneeling beside her. + +"I don't know. Ever since I came." + +"How did you happen to come?" + +"I saw the lightning strike the bell. Oh, Dan! It was awful, the noise +and the flash! Seemed like I 'd never get up the steps. And at first I +thought he was dead and--" + +"But who was with you? Where were you going?" interrupted Dan in +bewilderment. + +"I was passing--I was going home--I--" Her excited voice broke in a sob, +and she impatiently jerked the sleeve of her rain-coat across her eyes. + +In a moment Dan was all tenderness. For the first time he put his arm +around her and awkwardly patted her shoulder. + +"There," he said reassuringly, "don't try to tell me now. See! He's +breathing more regular! I expect the doctor'll pull him through." + +Nance's hands, relieved of the immediate necessity for action, were +clasping and unclasping nervously. + +"Dan," she burst out, "I got to tell you something! Birdie Smelts has got +me a place in the 'Follies.' I been on a couple of nights. I'm going away +with 'em in the morning." + +Dan looked at her as if he thought the events of the wild night had +deprived her of reason. + +"You!" he said, "going on the stage?" Then as he took it in, he drew away +from her suddenly as if he had received a lash across the face. "And you +were going off without talking it over or telling me or anything?" + +"I was going to write you, Dan. It was all so sudden." + +His eyes swept her bedraggled figure with stern disapproval. + +"Were you coming from the theater at this time in the morning?" + +Uncle Jed moaned slightly, and they both bent over him in instant +solicitude. But there was nothing to do, but wait until the doctor +should come. + +"Where had you been in those crazy clothes?" persisted Dan. + +"I'd been to the carnival ball with Birdie Smelts," Nance blurted out. "I +didn't know it was going to be like that, but I might 'a' gone anyway. I +don't know. Oh, Dan, I was sick to death of being stuck away in that dark +hole, waiting for something to turn up. I told you how it was, but you +couldn't see it. I was bound to have a good time if I died for it!" + +She dropped her head on her knees and sobbed unrestrainedly, while the +wind shrieked around the shanty, and the rain dashed against the +gradually lightening window-pane. After a while she flung back her head +defiantly. + +"_Stop_ looking at me like that, Dan. Lots of girls go on the stage and +stay good." + +"I wasn't thinking about the stage," said Dan. "I was thinking about +to-night. Who took you girls to that place?" + +Nance dried her tears. + +"I can't tell you that," she said uneasily. + +"Why not?" + +"It wouldn't be fair." + +Dan felt the hot blood surge to his head, and the muscles of his hands +tighten involuntarily. He forgot Uncle Jed; he forgot to listen for the +doctor, or to worry about traffic that would soon be held up in the +street below. The only man in the world for him at that moment was the +scoundrel who had dared to take his little Nance into that infamous +dance hall. + +Nance caught his arm and, with a quick gesture, dropped her head on it. + +"Dan," she pleaded, "don't be mad at me. I promise you I won't go to any +more places like that. I knew it wasn't right all along. But I got to go +on with the 'Follies,' It's the chance I been waiting for all these +months. Maybe it's the only one that'll ever come to me! You ain't going +to stand in my way, are you, Dan?" + +"Tell me who was with you to-night!" + +"No!" she whispered. "I can't. You mustn't ask me. I promise you I won't +do it again. I don't want to go away leaving you thinking bad of me." + +His clenched hands suddenly began to tremble so violently that he had to +clasp them tight to keep her from noticing. + +"I better get used to--to not thinking 'bout you at all," he said, +looking at her with the stern eyes of a young ascetic. + +For a time they knelt there side by side, and neither spoke. For over a +year Dan had been like one standing still on the banks of a muddy stream, +his eyes blinded to all but the shining goal opposite, while Nance was +like one who plunges headlong into the current, often losing sight of the +goal altogether, but now and again catching glimpses of it that sent her +stumbling, fighting, falling forward. + +At the sound of voices below they both scrambled to their feet. Dr. +Adair and the man from the yards came hurriedly up the steps together, +the former drawing off his gloves as he came. He was a compact, elderly +man whose keen observant eyes swept the room and its occupants at a +glance. He listened to Nance's broken recital of what had happened, cut +her short when he had obtained the main facts, and proceeded to examine +the patient. + +"The worst injury is evidently to the right arm and shoulder; you'll have +to help me get his shirt off. No--not that way!" + +Dan's hands, so eager to serve, so awkward in the service, fumbled over +their task, eliciting a groan from the unconscious man. + +"Let me do it!" cried Nance, springing forward. "You hold him up, Dan, I +can get it off." + +"It's a nasty job," warned the doctor, with a mistrustful glance at the +youthful, tear-stained face. "It may make you sick." + +"What if it does?" demanded Nance, impatiently. + +It was a long and distressing proceeding, and Dan tried not to look at +her as she bent in absorbed detachment over her work. But her steady +finger-touch, and her anticipation of the doctor's needs amazed him. It +recalled the day at the factory, when she, little more than a child +herself, had dressed the wounds of the carrying-in boy. Once she grew +suddenly white and had to hurry to the door and let the wind blow in her +face. He started up to follow her, but changed his mind. Instead he +protested with unnecessary vehemence against her resuming the work, but +she would not heed him. + +"That's right!" said the doctor, approvingly. "Stick it out this time and +next time it will not make you sick. Our next move is to get him home. +Where does he live?" + +"In Calvary Alley," said Dan, "back of the cathedral." + +"Very good," said the doctor, "I'll run him around there in my machine as +soon as that last hypodermic takes effect. Any family?" + +Dan shook his head. + +"He has, too!" cried Nance. "We're his family!" + +The doctor shot an amused glance at her over his glasses; then he laid a +kindly hand on her shoulder. + +"I congratulate him on this part of it. You make a first class +little nurse." + +"Is he going to get well?" Nance demanded. + +"It is too early to say, my dear. We will hope for the best. I will have +one of the doctors come out from the hospital every day to see him, but +everything will depend on the nursing." + +Nance cast a despairing look at the bandaged figure on the floor; then +she shot a look of entreaty at Dan. One showed as little response to her +appeal as the other. For a moment she stood irresolute; then she slipped +out of the room and closed the door behind her. + +For a moment Dan did not miss her. When he did, he left Dr. Adair in the +middle of a sentence and went plunging down the steps in hot pursuit. + +"Nance!" he called, splashing through the mud. "Aren't you going to +say good-by?" + +She wheeled on him furiously, a wild, dishevelled, little figure, strung +to the breaking point: + +"No!" she cried, "I am not going to say good-by! Do you suppose I could +go away with you acting like that? And who is there to nurse Uncle Jed, +I'd like to know, but me? But I want to tell you right now, Dan Lewis, if +ever another chance comes to get out of that alley, I'm going to take +it, and there can't anybody in the world stop me!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +CALVARY CATHEDRAL + + +"I don't take no stock in heaven havin' streets of gold," said Mrs. +Snawdor. "It'll be just my luck to have to polish 'em. You needn't tell +me if there's all that finery in heaven, they won't keep special angels +to do the dirty work!" + +She and Mrs. Smelts were scrubbing down the stairs of Number One, not as +a matter of cleanliness, but for the social benefit to be derived +therefrom. It was a Sunday morning institution with them, and served +quite the same purpose that church-going does for certain ladies in a +more exalted sphere. + +"I hope the Bible's true," said Mrs. Smelts, with a sigh. "Where it says +there ain't no marryin' nor givin' in marriage." + +"Oh, husbands ain't so worse if you pick 'em right," Mrs. Snawdor said +with the conviction of experience. "As fer me, I ain't hesitatin' to say +I like the second-handed ones best." + +"I suppose they are better broke in. But no other woman but me would 'a' +looked at Mr. Smelts." + +"You can't tell," said Mrs. Snawdor. "Think of me takin' Snawdor after +bein' used to Yager an' Molloy! Why, if you'll believe me, Mr. Burks, +lyin' there in bed fer four months now, takes more of a hand in helpin' +with the childern than Snawdor, who's up an' around." + +"Kin he handle hisself any better? Mr. Burks, I mean." + +"Improvin' right along. Nance has got him to workin' on a patent now. +It's got somethin' to do with a engine switch. Wisht you could see the +railroad yards she's rigged up on his bed. The childern are plumb crazy +'bout it." + +"Nance is gittin' awful pretty," Mrs. Smelts said. "I kinder 'lowed Dan +Lewis an' her'd be makin' a match before this." + +Mrs. Snawdor gathered her skirts higher about her ankles and transferred +her base of operations to a lower step. + +"You can't tell nothin' at all 'bout that girl. She was born with the bit +'tween her teeth, an' she keeps it there. No more 'n you git her goin' in +one direction than she turns up a alley on you. It's night school now. +There ain't a spare minute she ain't peckin' on that ole piece of a +type-writer Ike Lavinski loaned her." + +"She's got a awful lot of energy," sighed Mrs. Smelts. + +"Energy! Why it's somethin' fierce! She ain't content to let nothin' +stay the way it is. Wears the childern plumb out washin' 'em an' learnin' +'em lessons, an' harpin' on their manners. If you believe me, she's got +William J. that hacked he goes behind the door to blow his nose!" + +"It's a blessin' she didn't go off with them 'Follies,'" said Mrs. +Smelts. "Birdie lost her job over two months ago, an' the Lord knows what +she's livin' on. The last I heard of her she was sick an' stranded up in +Cincinnati, an' me without so much as a dollar bill to send her!" And +Mrs. Smelts sat down in a puddle of soap-suds and gave herself up to the +luxury of tears. + +At this moment a door on the third floor banged, and Nance Molloy, a +white figure against her grimy surroundings, picked her way gingerly down +the slippery steps. Her cheap, cotton skirt had exactly the proper flare, +and her tailor-made shirtwaist was worn with the proud distinction of one +who conforms in line, if not in material, to the mode of the day. + +"Ain't she the daisy?" exclaimed Mrs. Snawdor, gaily, and even Mrs. +Smelts dried her eyes, the better to appreciate Nance's gala attire. + +"We're too swell to be Methodist any longer!" went on Mrs. Snawdor, +teasingly. "We're turned 'Piscopal!" + +"You ain't ever got the nerve to be goin' over to the cathedral," Mrs. +Smelts asked incredulously. + +"Sure, why not?" said Nance, giving her hat a more sophisticated tilt. +"Salvation's as free there as it is anywhere." + +It was not salvation, however, that was concerning Nance Molloy as she +took her way jauntily out of the alley and, circling the square, joined +the throng of well-dressed men and women ascending the broad steps of the +cathedral. + +From that day when she had found herself back in the alley, like a bit of +driftwood that for a brief space is whirled out of its stagnant pool, +only to be cast back again, she had planned ceaselessly for a means of +escape. During the first terrible weeks of Uncle Jed's illness, her +thoughts flew for relief sometimes to Dan, sometimes to Mac. And Dan +answered her silent appeal in person, coming daily with his clumsy hands +full of necessities, his strong arms ready to lift, his slow speech +quickened to words of hope and cheer. Mac came only in dreams, with gay, +careless eyes and empty, useless hands, and lips that asked more than +they gave. Yet it was around Mac's shining head that the halo of romance +oftenest hovered. + +It was not until Uncle Jed grew better, and Dan's visits ceased, that +Nance realized what they had meant to her. To be sure her efforts to +restore things to their old familiar footing had been fruitless, for Dan +refused stubbornly to overlook the secret that stood between them, and +Nance, for reasons best known to herself, refused to explain matters. + +But youth reckons time by heart-throbs, and during Uncle Jed's +convalescence Nance found the clock of life running ridiculously slow. +Through Ike Lavinski, whose favor she had won by introducing him to Dr. +Adair, she learned of a night school where a business course could be +taken without expense. She lost no time in enrolling and, owing to her +thorough grounding of the year before, was soon making rapid progress. +Every night on her way to school, she walked three squares out of her way +on the chance of meeting Dan coming from the factory, and coming and +going, she watched the cathedral, wondering if Mac still sang there. + +One Sunday, toward the close of summer, she followed a daring impulse, +and went to the morning service. She sat in one of the rear pews and held +her breath as the procession of white-robed men and boys filed into the +choir. Mac Clarke was not among them, and she gave a little sigh of +disappointment, and wondered if she could slip out again. + +On second thought she decided to stay. Even in the old days when she had +stolen into the cathedral to look for nickels under the seats, she had +been acutely aware of "the pretties." But she had never attended a +service, or seen the tapers lighted, and the vast, cool building, with +its flickering lights and disturbing music, impressed her profoundly. + +Presently she began to make discoveries: the meek apologetic person +tip-toeing about lowering windows was no other than the pompous and +lordly Mason who had so often loomed over her as an avenging deity. In +the bishop, clad in stately robes, performing mysterious rites before +the altar, she recognized "the funny old guy" with the bald head, with +whom she had compared breakfast menus on a historical day at the +graded school. + +So absorbed was she in these revelations that she did not notice that she +was sitting down while everybody else was standing up, until a small +black book was thrust over her shoulder and a white-gloved finger pointed +to the top of the page. She rose hastily and tried to follow the service. +It seemed that the bishop was reading something which the people all +around her were beseeching the Lord to hear. She didn't wonder that the +Lord had to be begged to listen. She wasn't going to listen; that was one +thing certain. + +Then the organ pealed forth, and voices caught up the murmuring words and +lifted them and her with them to the great arched ceiling. As long as the +music lasted, she sat spell-bound, but when the bishop began to read +again, this time from a book resting on the out-stretched wings of a big +brass bird, her attention wandered to the great stained glass window +above the altar. The reverse side of it was as familiar to her as the +sign over Slap Jack's saloon. From the alley it presented opaque blocks +of glass above the legend that had been one of the mysteries of her +childhood. Now as she looked, the queer figures became shining angels +with lilies in their hands, and she made the amazing discovery that "Evol +si dog," seen from the inside, spelled "God is Love." + +She sat quite still, pondering the matter. The bishop and the music +and even Mac were for the time completely forgotten. Was the world +full of things like that, puzzling and confused from the outside, and +simple and easy from within? Within what? Her mind groped uncertainly +along a strange path. So God was love? Why hadn't the spectacled lady +told her so that time in the juvenile court instead of writing down +her foolish answer? But love had to do with sweethearts and dime +novels and plays on the stage. How could God be that? Maybe it meant +the kind of love Mr. Demry had for his little daughter, or the love +that Dan had for his mother, or the love she had for the Snawdor baby +that died. Maybe the love that was good was God, and the love that was +bad was the devil, maybe-- + +Her struggle with these wholly new and perplexing problems was +interrupted by the arrival of a belated worshiper, who glided into the +seat beside her and languidly knelt in prayer. Nance's attention +promptly leaped from moral philosophy to clothes. Her quick eyes made +instant appraisal of the lady's dainty costume, then rested in startled +surprise on her lowered profile. The straight delicate features, slightly +foreign, the fair hair rippling from the neck, were disconcertingly +familiar. But when Nance saw her full face, with the petulant mouth and +wrinkled brow, the impression vanished. + +After a long time the service came to an end, and just as Nance was +waiting to pass out, she heard some one say: + +"When do you expect your son home, Mrs. Clarke? We miss him in the +choir." + +And the fair-haired lady in front of her looked up and smiled, and all +her wrinkles vanished as she said: + +"We expect him home before next Sunday, if the naughty boy doesn't +disappoint us again!" + +Nance waited to hear no more, but fled into the sunlight and around the +corner, hugging her secret. She was not going to let Mr. Mac see her, she +assured herself; she was just going to see him, and hear him sing. + +When the next Sunday morning came, it found her once more hurrying up the +broad steps of the cathedral. She was just in time, for as she slipped +into a vacant pew, the notes of the organ began to swell, and from a side +door came the procession of choir boys, headed by Mac Clarke carrying a +great cross of gold. + +Nance, hiding behind the broad back of the man in front of her, watched +the procession move into the chancel, and saw the members of the choir +file into their places. She had no interest now in the bishop's robes or +the lighted tapers or cryptic inscriptions. Throughout the long service +her attention was riveted on the handsome, white-robed figure which sat +in a posture of bored resignation, wearing an expression of Christian +martyrdom. + +When the recessional sounded, she rose with the rest of the congregation, +still keeping behind the protecting back of the man in front. But when +she saw Mac lift the shining cross and come toward her down the chancel +steps at the head of the singing procession, something made her move +suddenly to the end of the pew, straight into the shaft of light that +streamed through the great west window. + +Mac, with his foot on the lowest step, paused for the fraction of a +second, and the cross that he held swayed slightly. Then he caught step +again and moved steadily forward. + +Nance hurried away before the benediction. She was never going to do it +again, she promised herself repeatedly. And yet, how wonderful it had +been! Straight over the heads of the congregation for their eyes to meet +like that, and for him to remember as she was remembering! + +For three weeks she kept her promise and resolutely stayed away from the +cathedral. One would have to be "goin' on nineteen" and live in Calvary +Alley to realize the heroic nature of her moral struggle. Victory might +have been hers in the end, had not Dan Lewis for the first time in years, +failed one Saturday to spend his half-holiday with her. He had come of +late, somber and grimly determined to give her no peace until he knew the +truth. But Dan, even in that mood, was infinitely better than no Dan at +all. When he sent her word that he was going with some of the men from +the factory up the river for a swim, she gave her shoulders a defiant +shrug, and set to work to launder her one white dress and stove-polish +her hat, with the pleasing results we have already witnessed through the +eyes of Mrs. Snawdor and Mrs. Smelts. + +There is no place where a flirtation takes quicker root or matures more +rapidly than in ecclesiastical soil. From the moment Nance entered the +cathedral on that third Sunday, she and Mac were as acutely aware of each +other's every move as if they had been alone together in the garden of +Eden. At first she tried to avert her eyes, tried not to see his +insistent efforts to attract her attention, affected not to know that he +was singing to her, and watching her with impatient delight. + +Then the surging notes of the organ died away, the bishop ascended the +pulpit, and the congregation settled down to hear the sermon. From +that time on Nance ceased to be discreet. There was glance for glance, +and smile for smile, and the innumerable wireless messages that youth +has exchanged since ardent eyes first sought each other across +forbidden spaces. + +It was not until the end of the sermon that Nance awoke to the fact that +it was high time for Cinderella to be speeding on her way. Seizing a +moment when the choir's back was turned to the congregation, she slipped +noiselessly out of the cathedral and was fleeing down the steps when she +came face to face with Monte Pearce. + +"Caught at last!" he exclaimed, planting himself firmly in her way. +"I've been playing watchdog for Mac for three Sundays. What are you +doing in town?" + +"In town?" + +"Yes; we thought you were on the road with the 'Follies.' When did you +get back?" + +"You're seeking information, Mr. Monte Carlo," said Nance, with a smile. +"Let me by. I've got to go home." + +"I'll go with you. Where do you live?" + +"Under my hat." + +"Well, I don't know a nicer place to be." Monte laughed and looked at +her and kept on laughing, until she felt herself blushing up to the +roots of her hair. + +"Honest, Mr. Monte, I got to go on," she said appealingly. "I'm in no +end of a hurry." + +"I can go as fast as you can," said Monte, his cane tapping each step as +he tripped briskly down beside her. "I've got my orders from Mac. I'm to +stay with you, if you won't stay with me. Which way?" + +In consternation for fear the congregation should be dismissed before she +could get away, and determined not to let him know where she lived, she +jumped aboard a passing car. + +"So be it!" said her plump companion, settling himself comfortably on the +back seat beside her. "Now tell your Uncle Monte all about it!" + +"There's nothing to tell!" declared Nance, with the blush coming back. +She was finding it distinctly agreeable to be out alone like this with a +grandly sophisticated young gentleman who wore a light linen suit with +shoes to match, and whose sole interest seemed to center upon her and +her affairs. + +"But you know there is!" he persisted. "What made you give us the shake +that night of the ball?" + +Nance refused to say; so he changed the subject. + +"How's Miss Birdie?" + +"Give it up. Haven't seen her since you have." + +"What? Didn't you go on with the show that next morning?" + +"No." + +"And you've been in town all summer?" + +She nodded, and her companion gave a low, incredulous whistle. + +"Well, I'll be darned!" he said. "And old Mac sending letters and +telegrams every few minutes and actually following the 'Follies' +to Boston!" + +"Birdie was with 'em up to two months ago," said Nance. + +"Mac wasn't after Birdie!" said Monte. "He hasn't had but one idea in his +cranium since that night of the carnival ball. I never saw him so crazy +about a girl as he is about you." + +"Yes, he is!" scoffed Nance, derisively, but she let Monte run on at +length, painting in burning terms the devastating extent of Mac's +passion, his despair at losing her, his delight at finding her again, and +his impatience for an interview. + +When Monte finished she looked at him sidewise out of her +half-closed eyes. + +"Tell him I've gone on a visit to my rich aunt out to the sea-shore +in Kansas." + +"Give him another show," coaxed Monte. "We were all a bit lit up that +night at the ball." + +"No, we weren't either!" Nance flashed. "I hadn't had a thing, but one +glass of beer, and you know it! I hate your old fizz-water!" + +"Well, make it up with Mac. He's going back to college next month, and +he's wild to see you." + +"Tell him I haven't got time. Tell him I'm studying instrumental." + +Nance was fencing for time. Her cool, keen indifference gave little +indication of the turmoil that was going on within. If she could manage +to see Mac without letting him know where she lived, without Dan's +finding it out-- + +The car compassed the loop and started on the return trip. + +"Where do we get off?" asked Monte. + +"I'm not getting off anywhere until after you do." + +"I've got lots of nickels." + +"I've got lots of time!" returned Nance, regardless of her former haste. + +At Cathedral Square, Monte rang the bell. + +"Have it your own way," he said good-naturedly. "But do send a +message to Mac." + +Nance let him get off the back platform; then she put her head out of +the window. + +"You tell him," she called, "that he can't kill two birds with one +stone!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + +BACK AT CLARKE'S + + +The promotion of Uncle Jed from the bed to a pair of crutches brought +about two important changes in the house of Snawdor. First, a financial +panic caused by the withdrawal of his insurance money, and, second, a +lightening of Nance's home duties that sent her once more into the world +to seek a living. + +By one of those little ironies in which life seems to delight, the only +opportunity that presented itself lay directly in the path of temptation. +A few days after her interview with Monte Pearce, Dan came to her with an +offer to do some office work at the bottle factory. The regular +stenographer was off on a vacation, and a substitute was wanted for the +month of September. + +"Why, I thought you'd be keen about it," said Dan, surprised at her +hesitation. + +"Oh! I'd like it all right, but--" + +"You needn't be afraid to tackle it," Dan urged. "Mr. Clarke's not as +fierce as he looks; he'd let you go a bit slow at first." + +"He wouldn't have to! I bet I've got as much speed now as the girl he's +had. It's not the work." + +"I know how you feel about the factory," said Dan, "and I wouldn't want +you to go back in the finishing room. The office is different. You take +my word for it; it's as nice a place as you could find." + +They were standing on the doorless threshold of Number One, under the +fan-shaped arch through which the light had failed to shine for twenty +years. From the room on the left came the squeak of Mr. Demry's fiddle +and the sound of pattering feet, synchronizing oddly with the lugubrious +hymn in which Mrs. Smelts, in the room opposite, was giving vent to her +melancholy. + +Nance, eager for her chance, yearning for financial independence, +obsessed by the desire to escape from the dirt and disorder and confusion +about her, still hesitated. + +"If you're afraid I'm going to worry you," said Dan, fumbling with his +cap, "I can keep out of your way all right." + +In an instant her impulsive hand was on his arm. + +"You shut up, Dan Lewis!" she said sharply. "What makes me want to take +the job most is our coming home together every night like we used to." + +Dan's eyes, averted until now, lifted with sudden hope. + +"But I got a good reason for not coming," she went on stubbornly. "It +hasn't got anything to do with you or the work." + +"Can't you tell me, Nance?" + +The flicker of hope died out of his face as she shook her head. He looked +down the alley for a moment; then he turned toward her with decision: + +"See here, Nance," he said earnestly, "I don't know what your reason is, +but I know that this is one chance in a hundred. I want you to take this +job. If I come by for you to-morrow morning, will you be ready?" + +Still she hesitated. + +"Let me decide it for you," he insisted, "will you, Nance?" + +She looked up into his earnest eyes, steadfast and serious as a collie's. + +"All right!" she said recklessly, "have it your own way!" + +The first day in Mr. Clarke's office was one of high tension. Added to +the trepidation of putting her newly acquired business knowledge to a +practical test, was the much more disturbing possibility that at any +moment Mac might happen upon the scene. Just what she was going to do and +say in such a contingency she did not know. Once when she heard the door +open cautiously, she was afraid to lift her eyes. When she did, surprise +took the place of fear. + +"Why, Mrs. Smelts!" she cried. "What on earth are you doing here?" + +Birdie's mother, faded and anxious, and looking unfamiliar in bonnet and +cape, was evidently embarrassed by Nance's unexpected presence. + +"He sent for me," she said, nervously, twitching at the fringe on her +cape. "I wrote to his wife, but he sent word fer me to come here an' see +him at ten o'clock. Is it ten yet?" + +"Mr. Clarke sent for _you_?" Nance began incredulously; then remembering +that a stenographer's first business is to attend to her own, she crossed +the room with quite a professional manner and tapped lightly on the door +of the inner office. + +For half an hour the usually inaccessible president of the bottle factory +and the scrub woman from Calvary Alley held mysterious conclave; then the +door opened again, and Mrs. Smelts melted into the outer passage as +silently as she had come. + +Nance, while frankly curious, had little time to indulge in idle +surmise. All her faculties were bent on mastering the big modern +type-writer that presented such different problems from the ancient +machine on which she had pounded out her lessons. She didn't like this +sensitive, temperamental affair that went off half-cocked at her +slightest touch, and did things on its own account that she was in the +habit of doing herself. + +Her first dictation left her numb with terror. She heard Mr. Clarke +repeating with lightning rapidity phrases which she scarcely +comprehended: "Enclose check for amount agreed upon." "Matter settled +once and for all." "Any further annoyance to be punished to full extent +of the law." + +"Shall I address an envelope?" she asked, glancing at the "Dear Madam" at +the top of the page. + +"No," said Mr. Clarke, sharply, "I'll attend to that." + +Other letters followed, and she was soon taking them with considerable +speed. When mistakes occurred they could usually be attributed to the +graded school which, during its brief chance at Nance, had been more +concerned in teaching her the names and the lengths of the rivers of +South America than in teaching her spelling. + +At the noon hour Mr. Clarke departed, and she stood by the window eating +her lunch and watching the men at work on the new wing. The old finishing +room was a thing of the past, and Dan's dream of a light, well-ventilated +workroom for the girls was already taking definite form. She could see +him now in the yard below, a blue-print in his hand, explaining to a +group of workmen some detail of the new building. One old glass-blower, +peering at the plan through heavy, steel-rimmed spectacles, had his arm +across Dan's shoulder. Nance smiled tenderly. Dear Dan! Everybody liked +him--even those older men from the furnace-room who had seen him promoted +over their heads. She leaned forward impulsively and called to him. + +"Danny!" she cried, "here's an apple. Catch!" + +He caught it dexterously in his left hand, gave her a casual nod, then +went gravely on with the business in hand. Nance sighed and turned away +from the window. + +In the afternoon the work went much easier. She was getting used to Mr. +Clarke's quick, nervous speech and abrupt manner. She was beginning to +think in sentences instead of words. All was going famously when a quick +step sounded in the passage without, followed by a gaily whistled tune, +and the next instant the door behind her was flung open. + +Mr. Clarke went steadily on with his dictation, but the new stenographer +ceased to follow. With bent head and lips caught between her teeth, she +made futile efforts to catch up, but she only succeeded in making +matters worse. + +"That will do for this afternoon," said Mr. Clarke, seeing her confusion. +"Make a clear copy of that last letter and put it on my desk." Then he +turned in his chair and glared over his shoulder. "Well, Mac!" he said, +"I've waited for you just one hour and thirty-five minutes." + +"Dead sorry, Dad. Didn't know it was so late," said the new-comer, +blithely. "How long before you are going home?" + +"Ten minutes. I've got to go over to the new building first. Don't go +until I return. There's something I want to see you about." + +Nance heard the door close as Mr. Clarke went out; then she waited in a +tremor, half trepidation, half glee, for Mac to recognize her. He was +moving about restlessly, first in one office, then in the other, and she +could feel his bright inquisitive eyes upon her from different angles. +But she kept her face averted, changing her position as he changed his. +Presently he came to a halt near her and began softly to whistle the +little-bear dance from the "Rag-Time Follies." She smiled before she knew +it, and the next instant he was perched on the corner of her desk, +demanding rapturously to know what she was doing there, and swearing that +he had recognized her the moment he entered the room. + +"Let go my hand, Mr. Mac!" she implored in laughing confusion. + +"I'm afraid to! You might give me the slip again. I've been scouring the +town for you and to think I should find you here!" + +"Look out!" warned Nance. "You're upsetting the ink-bottle!" + +"What do I care? Gee, this is luck! You ought to see my new racer, a +regular peach! Will you come out with me sometime?" + +"Will you let me run it?" + +"I'll let you do anything you like with anything I've got," he declared +with such ardor that she laughed and regretted it the next moment. + +"Now look here, Mr. Mac!" she said, severely, "you touch me again, and I +quit to-night. See?" + +"I'll be good. I'll do anything you say if you'll just stay and +play with me." + +"Play nothing! I've got work to do." + +"Work be hanged! Do you suppose when I haven't seen you for four months +that I'm not going to claim my inning?" + +"Well, I want to tell you right here," she said, shaking a warning pencil +in his face, "that I mean what I say about your behaving yourself." + +Mac caught the end of the pencil and held it while their eyes challenged +each other. + +"So be it!" he said. "I promise to be a model of discretion. Nance, I've +been mad about you! Did Monte tell you--" + +"Mr. Monte didn't tell me anything I wanted to hear," she said in her +cool, keen way, as she got the imperiled ink-well to a place of safety, +and straightened the other articles on the desk. + +"You wouldn't be so down on a fellow if you knew how hard hit I am," +persisted Mac. "Besides, I'm in for an awful row with the governor. You +may see my scalp fly past the window in less than ten minutes." + +"What's the row about?" + +"Same old thing. I am the original devil for getting found out." For +the space of a minute he gloomily contemplated a spot in the carpet; +then he shrugged his shoulders, rammed his hands in his pockets, and +began to whistle. + +"The governor'll fork out," he said. "He always does. Say, Nance, you +haven't said a word about my moustache." + +"Let's see it," said Nance in giggling derision. "Looks like a baby's +eyebrow. Does it wash off?" + +A step in the hall sent them flying in opposite directions, Nance back to +her desk, and Mac into the inner office, where his father found him a +moment later, apparently absorbed in a pamphlet on factory inspection. + +When Nance started home at six o'clock, she found Dan waiting at his old +post beside the gas-pipe. + +"It's like old times," he said happily, as he piloted her through the +out-pouring throng. "I remember the first night we walked home together. +You weren't much more than a kid. You had on a red cap with a tassel to +it. Three years ago the tenth of last May. Wouldn't think it, would you?" + +"Think what?" she asked absently. + +"Tired?" he asked anxiously. "Is the work going to be too heavy?" + +She shook her head impatiently. + +"No, the work's all right. But--but I wish you hadn't made me come +back, Dan." + +"Stick it out for a week," he urged, "and then if you want to stop, I +won't say a word." + +She looked up at him quizzically and gave a short enigmatic laugh. + +"That's my trouble," she said, "if I stick it out for a week, I won't be +wanting to quit!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + +MAC + + +Nance's prophecy regarding herself was more than fulfilled. Whatever +scruples had assailed her at the start were soon overthrown by the +on-rushing course of events. That first month in Mr. Clarke's office +proved to be a time of delightful madness. There were daily meetings with +Mac at the noon hour, stolen chats on street corners, thrilling suppers +with him and Monte at queer cafes, and rides after dark in that wonderful +racer that proved the most enticing of playthings. + +Dan was as busy as Mac was idle; Mr. Clarke was gloomy and preoccupied; +Mrs. Snawdor was in bed when Nance left home in the morning, and gone to +work when she returned in the evening. The days flashed by in a glorious +succession of forbidden joys, with nobody to interrupt the furious +progress of affairs. + +Half of her salary Nance gave to her stepmother, and the other half she +spent on clothes. She bought with taste and discrimination, measuring +everything by the standard set up by her old idol, Miss Stanley at Forest +Home. The result was that she soon began to look very much like the +well-dressed women with whom she touched elbows on the avenue. + +She had indeed got the bit between her teeth, and she ran at full tilt, +secure in the belief that she had full control of the situation. As long +as she gave satisfaction in her work, she told herself, and "behaved +right," she could go and come as she liked, and nobody would be the +worse for it. + +She did not realize that her scoffing disbelief in Mac's avowals, and her +gay indifference were the very things that kept him at fever heat. He was +not used to being thwarted, and this high-handed little working-girl, +with her challenging eyes and mocking laugh, who had never heard of the +proprieties, and yet denied him favors, was the first person he had ever +known who refused absolutely to let him have his own way. With a boy's +impetuous desire he became obsessed by the idea of her. When he was not +with her, he devised schemes to remind her of him, making love to her by +proxy in a dozen foolish, whimsical ways. When it was not flowers or +candy, it was a string of nonsense verses laid between the pages of her +type-writer paper, sometimes a clever caricature of himself or Monte, and +always it was love notes in the lining of her hat, in her gloves, in her +pocket-book. She was afraid to raise her umbrella for fear a rain of +tender missives would descend therefrom. Once he gave her a handsome +jeweled bracelet which she wore under her sleeve. But he got hard up +before the week was over and borrowed it back and pawned it. + +Of two things Nance succeeded in keeping him in ignorance. During all +their escapades he never discovered where she lived, and he never +suspected her friendship for Dan Lewis. He was not one to concern himself +with troublesome details. The pleasure of the passing moment was his sole +aim in life. + +And Nance, who ordinarily scorned subterfuge and hated a secret, +succeeded not only in keeping him in ignorance of Dan; but with even +greater strategy managed to keep Dan in complete ignorance of the whole +situation. Dan, to be sure, took his unconscious revenge. His kind, +puzzled eyes haunted her dreams, and the thought of him proved the one +disturbing element in these halcyon days. In vain she told herself that +he was an old fogy, that he had Sunday-school notions, that he wouldn't +be able to see anything but wrong in a harmless flirtation that would end +with Mac's return to college. But would it end? That was a question Nance +was beginning to ask herself with curious misgiving. + +The last of the month rolled round with incredible swiftness. It brought +to Nance not only an end to all her good times, but the disheartening +knowledge that she would soon be out of employment again with no money +saved, and under the self-imposed necessity of making a clean breast of +her misdeeds to Dan Lewis. + +On the Saturday before Mac's intended departure, as she sat at her desk +ruefully facing the situation, he rushed into the office. + +"Has a mean-looking little Jew been in here this morning?" he demanded +breathlessly. + +"Nobody's been here," said Nance. + +"Gloree!" said Mac, collapsing into a chair. "He gave me a scare! Wonder +if he 'phoned!" + +"Mr. Clarke's been out all morning. These are the people who called up." + +Mac ran his eye hurriedly down the list and sighed with relief. Then he +got up and went to the window and stood restlessly tapping the pane. + +"I've a good notion to go East to-night," he said, half to himself, "no +use waiting until Monday." + +Nance glanced at him quickly. + +"What's up?" she asked. + +"Money, as usual," said Mac in an aggrieved tone. "Just let me get ready +to leave town, and fellows I never heard of turn up with bills. I could +stand off the little fellows, but Meyers is making no end of a stew. He +holds a note of mine for five hundred and sixty dollars. It was due +yesterday, and he swore that if I didn't smoke up by noon to-day, he'd +come to the governor." + +"Won't he give you an extension?" + +"He's given me two already. It's the money I lost last spring at the +races. That's the reason I can't get it out of the governor. It looks as +if it were about time for little Willie to take to the tall timbers." + +Nance got up from her desk and joined him at the window. There was +something she had been burning to say to him for ten days, but it was +something she found it very hard to say. He might tell her it was none of +her business; he might even not like her any more. + +"See here, Mr. Mac," she said, bracing herself for the ordeal, "did it +ever strike you that you spend a lot of money that don't belong to you?" + +"It'll all be mine some day," said Mac reassuringly. "If the governor +would listen to mother, we'd never have these financial rackets. She +knows that it takes a lot for a fellow to live right." + +"It takes a lot more for him to live wrong," said Nance, stoutly. +"You get a whacking big allowance; when you get to the end of it, why +don't you do like some of the rest of us--go without the things you +can't pay for?" + +"I am going to," said Mac as if the idea was a new one. "Once I get +squared up, you bet I'll stay so. But that doesn't help me out of this +mess. The money has got to come from somewhere, and I tell you I haven't +got a sou!" + +Nance had never seen him so perturbed. He usually approached these +conflicts with his father with a passing grimace, exhibited sufficient +repentance to get what he wanted, and emerged more debonair than ever. +It was disturbing to see him so serious and preoccupied. + +"I bet your father'd help you if he thought you'd make a new +start," she said. + +Mac shook his head. + +"He would have a month ago. But he's got it in for me now. He believes an +idiotic story that was cocked up about me, and he's just waiting for my +next slip to spring a mine on me. I got to keep him from finding out +until I'm gone; that's all there is to it!" + +He fumbled in his pocket for a match and instead drew out a bank-note. + +"By George! here's a lonesome five-spot I didn't know I had! I +believe I'll play it on the races and see what it'll do for me. Maybe +it's a mascot." + +His momentary depression was gone, and he was eager to be off. But +Nance stood between him and the door, and there was a dangerous light +in her eyes. + +"Do you know," she said, "I've a good mind to tell you what I +think of you?" + +He caught her hand. "Do, Nance! And make it nice. It's going to be no end +of a grind to leave you. Say something pretty that I can live on 'til +Christmas. Tell me I'm the sweetest fellow that ever lived. Go on. Make +love to me, Nance!" + +"I think you are a short-sport!" she burst forth. "Any fellow that'll +go on making debts when he can't pay his old ones, that'll get things +in a muddle and run off and let somebody else face the racket is a +coward--I think--" + +"Help! Help!" cried Mac, throwing up an arm in pretended defense, and +laughing at her flashing eyes and blazing cheeks. "By jinks, I don't know +whether you look prettiest when you are mad or when you are glad. If you +don't stop this minute I'll have to kiss you!" + +The anger in Nance's face faded into exasperation. She felt suddenly hot +and uncomfortable and a little ashamed of her violence. She had neither +offended him nor humiliated him; she had simply amused him. Tears of +chagrin sprang to her eyes, and she turned away abruptly. + +"Nance!" Mac demanded, with quick concern, "you surely aren't crying? Why +the very idea! It makes me perfectly miserable to see girls cry. You +mustn't, you know. Look at me, Nance! Smile at me this minute!" + +But Nance's head was down on her desk, and she was past smiling. + +"I'll do anything you say!" cried Mac, dropping on his knees beside her. +"I'll 'fess up to the governor. I'll go on the water-wagon. I'll cut out +the races. I'll be a regular little tin god if you'll only promise to be +good to me." + +"Good to you nothing!" said Nance, savagely, lifting a tear-stained, +earnest face. "What right have I got to be anything to you? Haven't I +been letting you spend the money on me that wasn't yours? I've been as +bad as you have, every bit." + +"Oh, rot!" said Mac, hotly. "You've been an angel. There isn't another +girl in the world that's as much fun as you are and yet on the square +every minute." + +"It isn't on the square!" contradicted Nance, twisting her wet +handkerchief into a ball. "Sneaking around corners and doing things on +the sly. I am ashamed to tell you where I live, or who my people are, +and you are ashamed to have your family know you are going with me. +Whenever I look at your father and see him worrying about you, or think +of your mother--" + +"Yes, you think of everybody but me. You hold me at arm's length and +knock on me and say things to me that nobody else would dare to say! And +the worse you treat me, the more I want to take you in my arms and run +away with you. Can't you love me a little, Nance? Please!" + +He was close to her, with his ardent face on a level with hers. He was +never more irresistible than when he wanted something, especially a +forbidden something, and in the course of his twenty-one years he had +never wanted anything so much as he wanted Nance Molloy. + +She caught her breath and looked away. It was very hard to say what she +intended, with him so close to her. His eloquent eyes, his tremulous +lips were very disconcerting. + +"Mr. Mac," she whispered intently, "why don't you tell your father +everything, and promise him some of the things you been promising me? Why +don't you make a clean start and behave yourself and stop giving 'em all +this trouble?" + +"And if I do, Nance? Suppose I do it for you, what then?" + +For a long moment their eyes held each other. These two young, +undisciplined creatures who had started life at opposite ends of the +social ladder, one climbing up and the other climbing down, had met +midway, and the fate of each trembled in the balance. + +"And if I do?" Mac persisted, hardly above his breath. + +Nance's eyelids fluttered ever so slightly, and the next instant, Mac had +crushed her to him and smothered her protests in a passion of kisses. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + +BETWEEN TWO FIRES + + +When Mr. Clarke returned from luncheon, it was evident that he was in no +mood to encourage a prodigal's repentance. For half an hour Nance heard +his voice rising and falling in angry accusation; then a door slammed, +and there was silence. She waited tensely for the next sound, but it was +long in coming. Presently some one began talking over the telephone in +low, guarded tones, and she could not be sure which of the two it was. +Then the talking ceased; the hall door of the inner office opened and +closed quietly. + +Nance went to the window and saw Mac emerge from the passage below and +hurry across the yard to the stables. His cap was over his eyes, and his +hands were deep in his pockets. Evidently he had had it out with his +father and was going to stay over and meet his difficulties. Her eyes +grew tender as she watched him. What a spoiled boy he was, in spite of +his five feet eleven! Always getting into scrapes and letting other +people get him out! But he was going to face the music this time, and he +was doing it for her! If only she hadn't let him kiss her! A wave of +shame made her bury her hot cheeks in her palms. + +She was startled from her reverie by a noise at the door. It was Dan +Lewis, looking strangely worried and preoccupied. + +"Hello, Nance," he said, without lifting his eyes. "Did Mr. Clarke leave +a telegram for me?" + +"Not with me. Perhaps it is on his table. Want me to see?" + +"No, I'll look," Dan answered and went in and closed the door behind him. + +Nance looked at the closed door in sudden apprehension. What was the +matter with Dan? What had he found out? She heard him moving about in the +empty room; then she heard him talking over the telephone. When he came +out, he crossed over to where she was sitting. + +"Nance," he began, still with that uneasy manner, "there's something I've +got to speak to you about. You won't take it amiss?" + +"Cut loose," said Nance, with an attempt at lightness, but her heart +began to thump uncomfortably. + +"You see," Dan began laboriously. "I'm sort of worried by some talk +that's been going on 'round the factory lately. It hadn't come direct to +me until to-day, but I got wind of it every now and then. I know it's +not true, but it mustn't go on. There's one way to stop it. Do you know +what it is?" + +Nance shook her head, and he went on. + +"You and I have been making a mess of things lately. Maybe it's been my +fault, I don't know. You see a fellow gets to know a lot of things a nice +girl don't know. And the carnival ball business--well--I was scared for +you, Nance, and that's the plain truth." + +"I know, Dan," she said impatiently. "I was a fool to go that time, but I +never did it again." + +Dan fingered the papers on the desk. + +"I ain't going to rag about that any more. But I can't have 'em saying +things about you around the factory. You know how I feel about you--how I +always have felt--Nance I want you to marry me." + +Nance flashed a look at him, questioning, eager, uncertain; then her eyes +fell. How could she know that behind his halting sentences a paean of +love was threatening to burst the very confines of his inarticulate soul? +She only saw an awkward young workman in his shirt sleeves, with a smudge +across his cheek and a wistful look in his eyes, who knew no more about +making love than he knew about the other graces of life. + +"I've saved enough money," he went on earnestly, "to buy a little house +in the country somewhere. That's what you wanted, wasn't it?" + +Nance's glance wandered to the tall gas-pipe that had been their +unromantic trysting place. Then she closed her eyes and pressed her +fingers against them to keep back the stinging tears. If Dan loved her, +why didn't he say beautiful things to her, why didn't he take her in his +arms as Mac had done, and kiss away all those fears of herself and of the +future that crowded upon her? With her head on his shoulder she could +have sobbed out her whole confession and been comforted, but now-- + +"You care for me, don't you, Nance?" Dan asked with a sharp note of +anxiety in his voice. + +"Of course I care!" she said irritably. "But I don't want to get married +and settle down. I want to get out and see the world. When you talk about +a quiet little house in the country, I want to smash every window in it!" + +Dan slipped the worn drawing he had in his hand back into his pocket. It +was no time to discuss honeysuckle porches. + +"We don't have to go to the country," he said patiently. "I just thought +it was what you wanted. We can stay here, or we can go to another town if +you like. All I want is to make you happy, Nance." + +For a moment she sat with her chin on her palms, staring straight ahead; +then she turned toward him with sudden resolution. + +"What's the talk you been hearing about me?" she demanded. + +"There's no use going into that," he said. "It's a lie, and I mean to +stamp it out if I have to lick every man in the factory to do it." + +"Was it--about Mac Clarke?" + +"Who dared bring it to you?" he asked fiercely. + +"What are they saying, Dan?" + +"That you been seen out with him on the street, that you ride with +him after night, and that he comes down here every day at the noon +hour to see you." + +"Is that all?" + +"Ain't it enough?" + +"Well, it's true!" said Nance, defiantly. "Every word of it. If anybody +can find any real harm in what I've done, they are welcome to it!" + +"It's true?" gasped Dan, his hands gripping a chair-back. "And you never +told me? Has he--has he made love to you, Nance?" + +"Why, he makes love to everybody. He makes love to his mother when he +wants to get something out of her. What he says goes in one ear and +out the other with me. But I like him and I ain't ashamed to say so. +He's give me the best time I ever had in my life, and you bet I don't +forget it." + +"Will you answer me one thing more?" demanded Dan, sternly. + +"Yes; I ain't afraid to answer any question you can ask." + +"Was it Clarke that took you to the carnival ball?" + +"Him and a fellow named Monte Pearce." + +"Just you three?" + +"No; Birdie Smelts was along." + +Dan brushed his hand across his brow as if trying to recall something. + +"Birdie come here that day," he said slowly. "She wanted to see Clarke +for a friend of hers. Nance did he--did he ever ask you to kiss him?" + +"Yes." + +Dan groaned. + +"Why didn't you tell me all this before, Nance? Why didn't you give me a +chance to put you on your guard?" + +"I _was_ on my guard!" she cried, with rising anger. "I don't need +anybody to take care of me!" + +But Dan was too absorbed in his own thoughts to heed her. + +"It's a good thing he's going away in a couple of days," he said grimly. +"If ever the blackguard writes to you, or dares to speak to you again--" + +Nance had risen and was facing him. + +"Who's to stop him?" she asked furiously. "I'm the one to say the word, +and not you!" + +"And you won't let me take it up with him?" + +"No!" + +"And you mean to see him again, and to write to him?" + +Nance had a blurred vision of an unhappy prodigal crossing the factory +yard. He had kept his part of their compact; she must keep hers. + +"I will if I want to," she said rather weakly. + +Dan's face flushed crimson. + +"All right," he said, "keep it up if you like. But I tell you now, I +ain't going to stay here to see it. I'm going to clear out!" + +He turned toward the door, and she called after him anxiously: + +"Dan, come back here this minute. Where are you going?" + +He paused in the doorway, his jaw set and a steady light in his eyes. + +"I am going now," he said, "to apologize to the man I hit yesterday for +telling the truth about you!" + +That night Nance shed more tears than she had ever shed in the whole +course of her life before; but whether she wept for Mac, or Dan, or +for herself, she could not have said. She heard the sounds die out of +the alley one by one, the clanging cars at the end of the street +became less frequent; only the drip, drip, drip from a broken gutter +outside her window, and the rats in the wall kept her company. All day +Sunday she stayed in-doors, and came to the office on Monday pale and +a bit listless. + +Early as it was, Mr. Clarke was there before her, pacing the floor in +evident perturbation. + +"Come in here a moment, Miss Molloy," he said, before she had taken off +her hat. "I want a word with you." + +Nance followed him into the inner room with a quaking heart. + +"I want you to tell me," he said, waiving all preliminaries, "just who +was in this room Saturday afternoon after I left." + +"Dan Lewis. And of course, Mr. Mac. You left him here." + +"Who else?" + +"Nobody." + +"But there must have been," insisted Mr. Clarke, vehemently. "A man, +giving my name, called up our retail store between two and two-thirty +o'clock, and asked if they could cash a check for several hundred +dollars. He said it was too late to go to the bank, and he wanted the +money right away. Later a messenger brought my individual check, torn out +of this check-book, which evidently hasn't been off my desk, and received +the money. The cashier thought the signature looked queer and called me +up yesterday. I intend to leave no stone unturned until I get at the +truth of the matter. You were the only person here all afternoon. Tell +me, in detail, exactly what happened." + +Nance recalled as nearly as she could, the incidents of the afternoon, +with careful circuits around her own interviews with Mac and Dan. + +"Could any one have entered the inner office between their visits, +without your knowing it?" asked Mr. Clarke, who was following her +closely. + +"Oh, yes, sir; only there wasn't time. You see Mr. Mac was just going out +the factory yard as Dan come in here." + +"Did either of them use my telephone?" + +"Both of them used it." + +"Could you hear what was said?" + +"No; the door was shut both times." + +"Did Lewis enter through the other room, or through the hall?" + +"He come through the other room and asked me if you had left a +telegram for him." + +"Then he came in here?" + +"Yes, sir." + +Mr. Clarke's brows were knitted in perplexity. He took up the telephone. + +"Send Lewis up here to my office," he directed. "What? Hasn't come in +yet?" he repeated incredulously. "That's strange," he said grimly, half +to himself. "The first time I ever knew him to be late." + +Something seemed to tighten suddenly about Nance's heart. Could it be +possible that Mr. Clarke was suspecting Dan of signing that check? +She watched his nervous hands as they ran over the morning mail. He +had singled out one letter and, as he finished reading it, he handed +it to her. + +It was from Dan, a brief business-like resignation, expressing +appreciation of Mr. Clarke's kindness, regret at the suddenness of his +departure, and giving as his reason private affairs that took him +permanently to another city. + +When Nance lifted her startled eyes from the signature, she saw that Mr. +Clarke was closely scrutinizing the writing on the envelope. + +"It's incredible!" he said, "and yet the circumstances are most +suspicious. He gives no real reason for leaving." + +"I can," said Nance, resolutely. "He wanted me to marry him, and I +wouldn't promise. He asked me Saturday afternoon, after he come out of +here. We had a quarrel, and he said he was going away; but I didn't +believe it." + +"Did he ask you to go away with him? Out of town anywhere?" + +"Yes; he said he would go anywhere I said." + +A flash of anger burnt out the look of fear that had been lurking in Mr. +Clarke's face. + +"He's the last man I would have suspected! Of course I knew he had been +in a reformatory at one time, but--" + +The band that had been tightening around Nance's heart seemed suddenly +to burst. She sprang to her feet and stood confronting him with +blazing eyes. + +"What right have you got to think Dan did it? There were two of them in +this room. Why don't you send for Mr. Mac and ask him questions?" + +"Well, for one reason he's in New York, and for another, my son doesn't +have to resort to such means to get what money he wants." + +"Neither does Dan Lewis! He was a street kid; he was had up in court +three times before he was fourteen; he was a month at the reformatory; +and he's knocked elbows with more crooks than you ever heard of; but you +know as well as me that there ain't anybody living more honest than Dan!" + +"All he's got to do is to prove it," said Mr. Clarke, grimly. + +Nance looked at the relentless face of the man before her and thought of +the money at his command to prove whatever he wanted to prove. + +"See here, Mr. Clarke!" she said desperately, "you said a while ago that +all the facts were against Dan. Will you tell me one thing?" + +"What is it?" + +"Did you give Mr. Mac the money to pay that note last Saturday?" + +"What note?" + +"The one the Meyers fellow was after him about?" + +"Mac asked for no money, and I gave him none. In fact he told me that +aside from his debts at the club and at the garage, he owed no bills. So +you see your friend Meyers misinformed you." + +Here was Nance's chance to escape; she had spoken in Dan's defense; she +had told of the Meyers incident. To take one more step would be to +convict Mac and compromise herself. For one miserable moment conflicting +desires beat in her brain; then she heard herself saying quite calmly: + +"No, sir, it wasn't Meyers that told me; it was Mr. Mac himself." + +Mr. Clarke wheeled on her sharply. + +"How did my son happen to be discussing his private affairs with you?" + +"Mr. Mac and me are friends," she said. "He's been awful nice to me; he's +given me more good times than I ever had in my whole life before. But I +didn't know the money wasn't his or I wouldn't have gone with him." + +"And I suppose you thought it was all right for a young man in Mac's +position to be paying attention to a young woman in yours?" + +Mr. Clarke studied her face intently, but her fearless eyes did not +falter under his scrutiny. + +"Are you trying to implicate Mac in this matter to spare Lewis, is that +it?" + +"No, sir. I don't say it was Mr. Mac. I only say it wasn't Dan. There are +some people you just _know_ are straight, and Dan's one of them." + +Mr. Clarke got up and took a turn about the room, his hands locked behind +him. Her last shot had evidently taken effect. + +"Tell me exactly what Mac told you about this Meyers note," he demanded. + +Nance recounted the facts in the case, ending with the promise Mac had +made her to tell his father everything and begin anew. + +"I wish I had known this Saturday!" Mr. Clarke said, sinking heavily +into his chair. "I came down on the boy pretty severely on another score +and gave him little chance to say anything. Did he happen to mention the +exact amount of his indebtedness to Meyers?" + +"He said it was five hundred and sixty dollars." + +A sigh that was very like a groan escaped from Mr. Clarke; then he pulled +himself together with an effort. + +"You understand, Miss Molloy," he said, "that it is quite a different +thing for my son to have done this, and for Lewis to have done it. Mac +knows that what is mine will be his eventually. If he signed that check, +he was signing his own name as well as mine. Of course, he ought to have +spoken to me about it. I am not excusing him. He has been indiscreet in +this as well as in other ways. I shall probably get a letter from him in +a few days explaining the whole business. In the meanwhile the matter +must go no further. I insist upon absolute silence. You understand?" + +She nodded. + +"And one thing more," Mr. Clarke added. "I forbid any further +communication between you and Mac. He is not coming home at Christmas, +and we are thinking of sending him abroad in June. I propose to keep him +away from here for the next two or three years." + +Nance fingered the blotter on the table absently. It was all very well +for them to plan what they were going to do with Mac, but she knew in her +heart that a line from her would set at naught all their calculations. +Then her mind flew back to Dan. + +"If he comes back--Dan, I mean,--are you going to take him on again?" + +Mr. Clarke saw his chance and seized it. + +"On one condition," he said. "Will you give me your word of honor not to +communicate with Mac in any way?" + +They were both standing now, facing each other, and Nance saw no +compromise in the stern eyes of her employer. + +"I'll promise if I've got to," she said. + +"Very well," said Mr. Clarke. "That's settled." + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + +FATE TAKES A HAND + + +Some sinister fascination seems to hover about a bridge at night, +especially for unhappy souls who have grappled with fate and think +themselves worsted. Perhaps they find a melancholy pleasure in the +company of ghosts who have escaped from similar defeats; perhaps they +seek to read the riddle of the universe, as they stand, elbows on rail, +studying the turbulent waters below. + +On the third night after Dan's arrival in Cincinnati, the bridge claimed +him. He had deposited his few belongings in a cheap lodging-house on the +Kentucky side of the river, and then aimlessly paced the streets, too +miserable to eat or sleep, too desperate even to look for work. His one +desire was to get away from his tormenting thoughts, to try to forget +what had happened to him. + +A cold drizzle of rain had brought dusk on an hour before its time. +Twilight was closing in on a sodden day. From the big Ohio city to the +smaller Kentucky towns, poured a stream of tired humanity. Belated +shoppers, business men, workers of all kinds hurried through the murky +soot-laden air, each hastening to some invisible goal. + +To Dan, watching with somber eyes from his niche above the wharf, it +seemed that they were all going home to little lamp-lit cottages where +women and children awaited them. A light in the window and somebody +waiting! The old dream of his boyhood that only a few days ago had seemed +about to come true! + +Instead, he had been caught up in a hurricane and swept out to sea. His +anchors had been his love, his work, and his religion, and none of them +held. The factory, to which he had given the best of his brain and his +body, for which he had dreamed and aspired and planned, was a nightmare +to him. Mrs. Purdy and the church activities, which had loomed so large +in his life, were but fleeting, unsubstantial shadows. + +Only one thing in the wide universe mattered now to him, and that was +Nance. Over and over he rehearsed his final scene with her, searching +for some word of denial or contrition or promise for the future. She had +never lied to him, and he knew she never would. But she had stood before +him in angry defiance, refusing to defend herself, declining his help, +and letting him go out of her life without so much as lifting a finger +to stop him. + +His heavy eyes, which had been following the shore lights, came back to +the bridge, attracted by the movement of a woman leaning over one of +the embrasures near him. He had been vaguely aware for the past five +minutes of a disturbing sound that came to him from time to time; but it +was only now that he noticed the woman was crying. She was standing with +her back to him, and he could see her lift her veil every now and then +and wipe her eyes. + +With a movement of impatience, he moved further on. He had enough +troubles of his own to-night without witnessing those of others. He had +determined to stop fleeing from his thoughts and to turn and face them. A +rich young fellow, like Mac Clarke, didn't go with a girl like Nance for +nothing. Why, this thing must have been going on for months, perhaps long +before the night he had found Nance at the signal tower. They had been +meeting in secret, going out alone together; she had let him make love to +her, kiss her. + +The blood surged into his head, and doubts blacker than the waters below +assailed him, but even as he stood there with his head in his hands and +his cap pulled over his eyes, all sorts of shadowy memories came to plead +for her. Memories of a little, tow-headed, independent girl coming and +going in Calvary Alley, now lugging coal up two flights of stairs, now +rushing noisily down again with a Snawdor baby slung over her shoulder, +now to snatch her part in the play. Nance, who laughed the loudest, cried +the hardest, ran the fastest, whose hand was as quick to help a friend +as to strike a foe! He saw her sitting beside him on the mattress, +sharing his disgrace on the day of the eviction, saw her standing before +the bar of justice passionately pleading his cause. Then later and +tenderer memories came to reinforce the earlier ones--memories of her +gaily dismissing all other offers at the factory to trudge home night +after night with him; of her sitting beside him in Post-Office Square, +subdued and tender-eyed, watching the electric lights bloom through the +dusk; of her nursing Uncle Jed, forgetting herself and her disappointment +in ministering to him and helping him face the future. + +A wave of remorse swept over him! What right had he to make her stay on +and on in Cemetery Street when he knew how she hated it? Why had he +forced her to go back to the factory? She had tried to make him +understand, but he had been deaf to her need. He had expected her to +buckle down to work just as he did. He had forgotten that she was young +and pretty and wanted a good time like other girls. Of course it was +wrong for her to go with Mac, but she was good, he _knew_ she was good. + +The words reverberated in his brain like a hollow echo, frightening away +all the pleading memories. Those were the very words he had used about +his mother on that other black night when he had refused to believe the +truth. All the bitterness of his childhood's tragedy came now to poison +his present mood. If Nance was innocent, why had she kept all this from +him, why had she refused in the end to let him defend her good name? + +He thought of his own struggle to be good; of his ceaseless efforts to be +decent in every thought as well as deed for Nance's sake. Decent! His lip +curled at the irony of it! That wasn't what girls wanted? Decency made +fellows stupid and dull; it kept them too closely at work; it made them +take life too seriously. Girls wanted men like Mac Clarke--men who +snapped their fingers at religion and refused responsibilities, and +laughed in the face of duty. Laughter! That was what Nance loved above +everything! All right, let her have it! What did it matter? He would +laugh too. + +With a reckless resolve, he turned up his coat collar, rammed his hands +in his pockets, and started toward the Kentucky shore. The drizzle by +this time had turned into a sharp rain, and he realized that he was cold +and wet. He remembered a swinging door two squares away. + +As he left the bridge, he saw the woman in the blue veil hurry past him, +and with a furtive look about her, turn and go down the steep levee +toward the water. There was something so nervous and erratic in her +movements, that he stopped to watch her. + +For a few moments she wandered aimlessly along the bank, apparently +indifferent to the pelting rain; then she succeeded, after some +difficulty, in climbing out on one of the coal barges that fringed the +river bank. + +[Illustration: "Don't call a policeman!" she implored wildly] + +Dan glanced down the long length of the bridge, empty now save for a few +pedestrians and a lumbering truck in the distance. In mid-stream the +paddle of a river steamer was churning the water into foam, and +up-stream, near the dock, negro roustabouts could be heard singing. But +under the bridge all was silent, and the levee was deserted in both +directions. He strained his eyes to distinguish that vague figure on the +barge from the surrounding shadows. He saw her crawling across the +shifting coal; then he waited to see no more. + +Plunging down the bank at full speed, he scrambled out on the barge and +seized her by the arms. The struggle was brief, but fierce. With a cry +of despair, she sank face downward on the coal and burst into +hysterical weeping. + +"Don't call a policeman!" she implored wildly. "Don't let 'em take me to +a hospital!" + +"I won't. Don't try to talk 'til you get hold of yourself," said Dan. + +"But I'm chokin'! I can't breathe! Get the veil off!" + +As Dan knelt above her, fumbling with the long veil, he noticed for the +first time that she was young, and that her bare neck between the collar +and the ripple of her black hair was very white and smooth. He bent down +and looked at her with a flash of recognition. + +"Birdie!" he cried incredulously, "Birdie Smelts!" + +Her heavy white lids fluttered wildly, and she started up in terror. + +"Don't be scared!" he urged. "It's Dan Lewis from back home. How did you +ever come to be in this state?" + +With a moan of despair she covered her face with her hands. + +"I was up there on the bridge," Dan went on, almost apologetically. "I +saw you there, but I didn't know it was you. Then when you started down +to the water, I sorter thought--" + +"You oughtn't 'a' stopped me," she wailed. "I been walkin' the +streets tryin' to get up my courage all day. I'm sick, I tell you. I +want to die." + +"But it ain't right to die this way. Don't you know it's wicked?" + +"Good and bad's all the same to me. I'm done for. There ain't a soul in +this rotten old town that cares whether I live or die!" + +Dan flushed painfully. He was much more equal to saving a body than a +soul, but he did not flinch from his duty. + +"God cares," he said. "Like as not He sent me out on the bridge a-purpose +to-night to help you. You let me put you on the train, Birdie, and ship +you home to your mother." + +"Never! I ain't goin' home, and I ain't goin' to a hospital. Promise me +you won't let 'em take me, Dan!" + +"All right, all right," he said, with an anxious eye on her shivering +form and her blue lips. "Only we got to get under cover somewhere. Do you +feel up to walking yet?" + +"Where'd I walk to?" she demanded bitterly. "I tell you I've got no money +and no place to go. I been on the street since yesterday noon." + +"You can't stay out here all night!" said Dan at his wit's end. "I'll +have to get you a room somewhere." + +"Go ahead and get it. I'll wait here." + +But Dan mistrusted the look of cunning that leaped into her eyes and the +way she glanced from time to time at the oily, black water that curled +around the corner of the barge. + +"I got a room a couple of squares over," he said slowly. "You might come +over there 'til you get dried out and rested up a bit." + +"I don't want to go anywhere. I'm too sick. I don't want to have to +see people." + +"You won't have to. It's a rooming house. The old woman that looks after +things has gone by now." + +It took considerable persuasion to get her on her feet and up the bank. +Again and again she refused to go on, declaring that she didn't want to +live. But Dan's patience was limitless. Added to his compassion for her, +was the half-superstitious belief that he had been appointed by +Providence to save her. + +"It's just around the corner now," he encouraged her. "Can you make it?" + +She stumbled on blindly, without answering, clinging to his arm and. +breathing heavily. + +"Here we are!" said Dan, turning into a dark entrance, "front room on the +left. Steady there!" + +But even as he opened the door, Birdie swayed forward and would have +fallen to the floor, had he not caught her and laid her on the bed. + +Hastily lighting the lamp on the deal table by the window, he went back +to the bed and loosened the neck of her dripping coat and then looked +down at her helplessly. Her face, startlingly white in its frame of black +hair, showed dark circles under the eyes, and her full lips had lost not +only their color, but the innocent curves of childhood as well. + +Presently she opened her eyes wearily and looked about her. + +"I'm cold," she said with a shiver, "and hungry. God! I didn't know +anybody could be so hungry!" + +"I'll make a fire in the stove," cried Dan; "then I'll go out and get +you something hot to drink. You'll feel better soon." + +"Don't be long, Dan," she whispered faintly. "I'm scared to stay +by myself." + +Ten minutes later Dan hurried out of the eating-house at the corner, +balancing a bowl of steaming soup in one hand and a plate of food in the +other. He was soaked to the skin, and the rain trickled from his hair +into his eyes. As he crossed the street a gust of wind caught his cap and +hurled it away into the wet night. But he gave no thought to himself or +to the weather, for the miracle had happened. That dancing gleam in the +gutter came from a lighted lamp in a window behind which some one was +waiting for him. + +He found Birdie shaking with a violent chill, and it was only after he +had got off her wet coat and wrapped her in a blanket, and persuaded her +to drink the soup that she began to revive. + +"What time of night is it?" she asked weakly. + +"After eleven. You're going to stay where you are, and I'm going out and +find me a room somewhere. I'll come back in the morning." + +All of Birdie's alarms returned. + +"I ain't going to stay here by myself, Dan. I'll go crazy, I tell you! I +don't want to live and I am afraid to die. What sort of a God is He to +let a person suffer like this?" + +And poor old Dan, at death-grips with his own life problem, wrestled in +vain with hers; arguing, reassuring, affirming, trying with an almost +fanatic zeal to conquer his own doubts in conquering hers. + +Then Birdie, bent on keeping him with her, talked of herself, pouring +out an incoherent story of misfortune: how she had fainted on the stage +one night and incurred the ill-will of the director; how the company +went on and left her without friends and without money; how matters had +gone from bad to worse until she couldn't stand it any longer. She +painted a picture of wronged innocence that would have wrung a sterner +heart than Dan's. + +"I know," he said sympathetically. "I've seen what girls are up against +at Clarke's." + +Birdie's feverish eyes fastened upon him. + +"Have you just come from Clarke's?" + +"Yes." + +"Is Mac there?" + +Dan's face hardened. + +"I don't know anything about him." + +"No; and you don't want to! If there's one person in this world I hate, +it's Mac Clarke." + +"Same here," said Dan, drawn to her by the attraction of a common +antipathy. + +"Thinks he can do what he pleases," went on Birdie, bitterly, "with his +good looks and easy ways. He'll have a lot to answer for!" + +Dan sat with his fists locked, staring at the floor. A dozen questions +burned on his lips, but he could not bring himself to ask them. + +A fierce gust of wind rattled the window, and Birdie cried out in terror. + +"You stop being afraid and go to sleep," urged Dan, but she shook her +head. + +"I don't dare to! You'd go away, and I'd wake up and go crazy with fear. +I always was like that even when I was a kid, back home. I used to pretty +near die of nights when pa would come in drunk and get to breaking up +things. There was a man like that down where I been staying. He'd fall +against my door 'most every night. Sometimes I'd meet him out in the +street, and he'd follow me for squares." + +Dan drew the blanket about her shoulders. + +"Go to sleep," he said. "I won't leave you." + +"Yes; but to-morrow night, and next night! Oh, God! I'm smothering. +Lift me up!" + +He sat on the side of the bed and lifted her until she rested against his +shoulder. A deathly pallor had spread over her features, and she clung to +him weakly. + +Through the long hours of the stormy night he sat there, soothing and +comforting her, as he would have soothed a terror-stricken child. By +and by her clinging hands grew passive in his, her rigid, jerking limbs +relaxed, and she fell into a feverish sleep broken by fitful sobs and +smothered outcries. As Dan sat there, with her helpless weight against +him, and gently stroked the wet black hair from her brow, something +fierce and protective stirred in him, the quick instinct of the +chivalrous strong to defend the weak. Here was somebody more wretched, +more desolate, more utterly lonely than himself--a soft, fearful, +feminine somebody, ill-fitted to fight the world with those frail, +white hands. + +Hitherto he had blindly worshiped at one shrine, and now the image was +shattered, the shrine was empty--so appallingly empty that he was ready +to fill it at any cost. For the first time in three days he ceased to +think of Nance Molloy or of Mac Clarke, whose burden he was all +unconsciously bearing. He ceased, also, to think of the soul he had +been trying so earnestly to save. He thought instead of the tender +weight against his shoulder, of the heavy lashes that lay on the +tear-stained cheeks so close to his, of the soft, white brow under his +rough, brown fingers. Something older than love or religion was making +its claim on Dan. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + +THE PRICE OF ENLIGHTENMENT + + +It was November of the following year that the bird of ill-omen, +which had been flapping its wings over Calvary Alley for so long, +decided definitely to alight. A catastrophe occurred that threatened +to remove the entire population of the alley to another and, we +trust, a fairer world. + +Mrs. Snawdor insists to this day that it was the sanitary inspector who +started the trouble. On one of his infrequent rounds he had encountered a +strange odor in Number One, a suspicious, musty odor that refused to come +under the classification of krout, kerosene, or herring. The tenants, in +a united body, indignantly defended the smell. + +"It ain't nothin' at all but Mis' Smelts' garbage," Mrs. Snawdor +declared vehemently. "She often chucks it in a hole in the kitchen floor +to save steps. Anybody'd think the way you was carryin' on, it was a +murdered corpse!" + +But the inspector persisted in his investigations, forcing a way into the +belligerent Snawdor camp, where he found Fidy Yager with a well-developed +case of smallpox. She had been down with what was thought to be +chicken-pox for a week, but the other children had been sworn to secrecy +under the threat that the doctor would scrape the skin off their arms +with a knife if they as much as mentioned Fidy's name. + +It was a culmination of a battle that had raged between Mrs. Snawdor +and the health authorities for ten years, over the question of +vaccination. The epidemic that followed was the visible proof of Mrs. +Snawdor's victory. + +Calvary Alley, having offered a standing invitation to germs in general, +was loathe to regard the present one as an enemy. It resisted the +inspector, who insisted on vaccinating everybody all over again; it was +indignant at the headlines in the morning papers; it was outraged when +Number One was put in quarantine. + +Even when Fidy Yager, who "wasn't all there," and who, according to her +mother, had "a fit a minute," was carried away to the pest-house, nobody +was particularly alarmed. But when, twenty-four hours later, Mr. Snawdor +and one of the Lavinski helpers came down with it, the alley began to +look serious, and Mrs. Snawdor sent for Nance. + +For six months now Nance had been living at a young women's boarding +home, realizing a life-long ambition to get out of the alley. But on +hearing the news, she flung a few clothes into an old suitcase and rushed +to the rescue. + +Since that never-to-be-forgotten day a year ago when word had reached +her of Dan's marriage to Birdie Smelts, a hopeless apathy had possessed +her. Even in the first weeks after his departure, when Mac's impassioned +letters were pouring in and she was exerting all her will power to make +good her promise to his father, she was aware of a dull, benumbing +anxiety over Dan. She had tried to get his address from Mrs. Purdy, from +Slap Jack's, where he still kept some of his things, from the men he knew +best at the factory. Nobody could tell her where he had gone, or what he +intended to do. + +Just what she wanted to say to him she did not know. She still resented +bitterly his mistrust of her, and what she regarded as his interference +with her liberty, but she had no intention of letting matters rest as +they were. She and Dan must fight the matter out to some satisfactory +conclusion. + +Then came the news of his marriage, shattering every hope and shaking the +very foundation of her being. From her earliest remembrance Dan had been +the most dependable factor in her existence. Whirlwind enthusiasms for +other things and other people had caught her up from time to time, but +she always came back to Dan, as one comes back to solid earth after a +flight in an aeroplane. + +In her first weeks of chagrin and mortification she had sought refuge in +thoughts of Mac. She had slept with his unanswered letters under her +pillow and clung to the memory of his ardent eyes, his gay laughter, the +touch of his lips on her hands and cheeks. Had Mac come home that +Christmas, her doom would have been sealed. The light by which she +steered had suddenly gone out, and she could no longer distinguish the +warning coast lights from the harbor lights of home. + +But Mac had not come at Christmas, neither had he come in the summer, and +Nance's emotional storm was succeeded by an equally intolerable calm. +Back and forth from factory to boarding home she trudged day by day, and +on Sunday she divided her wages with Mrs. Snawdor, on the condition that +she should have a vote in the management of family affairs. By this plan +Lobelia and the twins were kept at school, and Mr. Snawdor's feeble +efforts at decent living were staunchly upheld. + +When the epidemic broke out in Calvary Alley, and Mrs. Snawdor signaled +for help, Nance responded to the cry with positive enthusiasm. Here was +something stimulating at last. There was immediate work to be done, and +she was the one to do it. + +As she hurried up the steps of Number One, she found young Dr. Isaac +Lavinski superintending the construction of a temporary door. + +"You can't come in here!" he called to her, peremptorily. "We're in +quarantine. I've got everybody out I can. But enough people have been +exposed to it already to spread the disease all over the city. Three more +cases to-night. Mrs. Smelts' symptoms are very suspicious. Dr. Adair is +coming himself at nine o'clock to give instructions. It's going to be a +tussle all right!" + +Nance looked at him in amazement. He spoke with more enthusiasm than he +had ever shown in the whole course of his life. His narrow, sallow face +was full of keen excitement. Little old Ike, who had hidden under the bed +in the old days whenever a fight was going on, was facing death with the +eagerness of a valiant soldier on the eve of his first battle. + +"I'm going to help you, Ike!" Nance cried instantly. "I've come to stay +'til it's over." + +But Isaac barred the way. + +"You can't come in, I tell you! I've cleared the decks for action. Not +another person but the doctor and nurse are going to pass over this +threshold!" + +"Look here, Ike Lavinski," cried Nance, indignantly, "you know as well as +me that there are things that ought to be done up there at the +Snawdors'!" + +"They'll have to go undone," said Isaac, firmly. + +Nance wasted no more time in futile argument. She waited for an opportune +moment when Ike's back was turned; then she slipped around the corner of +the house and threaded her way down the dark passage, until she reached +the fire-escape. There were no lights in the windows as she climbed past +them, and the place seemed ominously still. + +At the third platform she scrambled over a wash-tub and a dozen plaster +casts of Pocahontas,--Mr. Snawdor's latest venture in industry,--and +crawled through the window into the kitchen. It was evident at a glance +that Mrs. Snawdor had at last found that long-talked-of day off and had +utilized it in cleaning up. The room didn't look natural in its changed +condition. Neither did Mrs. Snawdor, sitting in the gloom in an +attitude of deep dejection. At sight of Nance at the window, she gave a +cry of relief. + +"Thank the Lord, you've come!" she said. "Can you beat this? Havin' to +climb up the outside of yer own house like a fly! They've done sent Fidy +to the pest-house, an' scattered the other childern all over the +neighborhood, an' they got me fastened up here, like a hen in a coop!" + +"How is he?" whispered Nance, glancing toward the inner room. + +"Ain't a thing the matter with him, but the lumbago. Keeps on complainin' +of a pain in his back. I never heard of such a hullabaloo about nothin' +in all my life. They'll be havin' me down with smallpox next. How long +you goin' to be here?" + +Nance, taking off her hat and coat, announced that she had come to stay. + +Mrs. Snawdor heaved a sigh of relief. + +"Well, if you'll sorter keep a eye on him, I believe I'll step down +an' set with Mis' Smelts fer a spell. I ain't been off the place fer +two days." + +"But wait a minute! Where's Uncle Jed? And Mr. Demry?" + +"They 're done bounced too! Anybody tell you 'bout yer Uncle Jed's +patent? They say he stands to make as much as a hundern dollars offen it. +They say--" + +"I don't care what they say!" cried Nance, distractedly. "Tell me, did +the children take clean clothes with 'em? Did you see if Uncle Jed had +his sweater? Have you washed the bedclothes that was on Fidy's bed?" + +Mrs. Snawdor shook her head impatiently. + +"I didn't, an' I ain't goin' to! That there Ike Lavinski ain't goin' to +run me! He took my Fidy off to that there pest-house where I bet they +operate her. He'll pay up fer this, you see if he don't!" + +She began to cry, but as Nance was too much occupied to give audience to +her grief, she betook herself to the first floor to assist in the care of +Mrs. Smelts. Illness in the abode of another has a romantic flavor that +home-grown maladies lack. + +When Dr. Adair and Isaac Lavinski made their rounds at nine o'clock, they +found Nance bending over a steaming tub, washing out a heavy comfort. + +"What are you doing here?" demanded Isaac in stern surprise. + +"Manicuring my finger-nails," she said, with an impudent grin, as she +straightened her tired shoulders. Then seeing Dr. Adair, she blushed and +wiped her hands on her apron. + +"You don't remember me, Doctor, do you? I helped you with Uncle Jed Burks +at the signal tower that time when the lightning struck him." + +He looked her over, his glance traveling from her frank, friendly face to +her strong bare arms. + +"Why, yes, I do. You and your brother had been to some fancy-dress +affair. I remember your red shoes. It isn't every girl of your age that +could have done what you did that night. Have you been vaccinated?" + +"Twice. Both took." + +"She's got no business being here, sir," Isaac broke in hotly. "I told +her to keep out." + +"Doctor! Listen at me!" pleaded Nance, her hand on his coat sleeve. +Honest to goodness, I _got_ to stay. Mrs. Snawdor don't believe it's +smallpox. She'll slip the children in when you ain't looking and go out +herself and see the neighbors. Don't you see that somebody's got to be +here that understands?" + +"The girl's right, Lavinski," said Dr. Adair. "She knows the ropes here, +and can be of great service to us. The nurse downstairs can't begin to +do it all. Now let us have a look at the patient." + +Little Mr. Snawdor was hardly worth looking at. He lay rigid, like a +dried twig, with his eyes shut tight, and his mouth shut tight, and his +hands clenched tighter still. It really seemed as if this time Mr. +Snawdor was going to make good his old-time threat to quit. + +Dr. Adair gave the necessary instructions; then he turned to go. He had +been watching Nance, as she moved about the room carrying out his orders, +and at the door he laid a hand on her shoulder. + +"How old are you, my girl?" he asked. + +"Twenty." + +"We need girls like you up at the hospital. Have you ever thought of +taking the training?" + +"Me? I haven't got enough spondulicks to take a street-car ride." + +"That part can be arranged if you really want to go into the work. +Think it over." + +Then he and the impatient Isaac continued on their rounds, and Nance went +back to her work. But the casual remark, let fall by Dr. Adair, had set +her ambition soaring. Her imagination flared to the project. Snawdor's +flat extended itself into a long ward; poor little Mr. Snawdor, who was +hardly half a man, became a dozen; and Miss Molloy, in a becoming +uniform, moved in and out among the cots, a ministering angel of mercy. + +For the first time since Dan Lewis's marriage, her old courage and zest +for life returned, and when Mrs. Snawdor came in at midnight, she found +her sitting beside her patient with shining eyes full of waking dreams. + +"Mis' Smelts is awful bad," Mrs. Snawdor reported, looking more serious +than she had heretofore. "Says she wants to see you before the nurse +wakes up. Seems like she's got somethin' on her mind." + +Nance hurried into her coat and went out into the dark, damp hall. Long +black roaches scurried out of her way as she descended the stairs. In the +hall below the single gas-jet flared in the draught, causing ghostly +shadows to leap out of corners and then skulk fearfully back again. Nance +was not afraid, but a sudden sick loathing filled her. Was she never +going to be able to get away from it all? Was that long arm of duty going +to stretch out and find her wherever she went, and drag her back to this +noisome spot? Were all her dreams and ambitions to die, as they had been +born, in Calvary Alley? + +Mrs. Smelts had been moved into an empty room across the hall from her +own crowded quarters, and as Nance pushed open the door, she lifted a +warning hand and beckoned. + +"Shut it," she said in a hoarse whisper. "I don't want nobody to hear +what I got to tell you." + +"Can't it wait, Mrs. Smelts?" asked Nance, with a pitying hand on the +feverish brow across which a long white scar extended. + +"No. They're goin' to take me away in the mornin'. I heard 'em say +so. It's about Birdie, Nance, I want to tell you. They've had to +lock her up." + +"It's the fever makes you think that, Mrs. Smelts. You let me sponge you +off a bit." + +"No, no, not yet. She's crazy, I tell you! She went out of her head last +January when the baby come. Dan's kept it to hisself all this time, but +now he's had to send her to the asylum." + +"Who told you?" + +"Dan did. He wrote me when he sent me the last money. I got his +letter here under my pillow. I want you to burn it, Nance, so no one +won't know." + +Nance went on mechanically stroking the pain-racked head, as she reached +under the pillow for Dan's letter. The sight of the neat, painstaking +writing made her heart contract. + +"You tell him fer me," begged Mrs. Smelts, weakly, "to be good to her. +She never had the right start. Her paw handled me rough before she come, +an' she was always skeery an' nervous like. But she was so purty, oh, so +purty, an' me so proud of her!" + +Nance wiped away the tears that trickled down the wrinkled cheeks, and +tried to quiet her, but the rising fever made her talk on and on. + +"I ain't laid eyes on her since a year ago this fall. She come home sick, +an' nobody knew it but me. I got out of her whut was her trouble, an' I +went to see his mother, but it never done no good. Then I went to the +bottle factory an' tried to get his father to listen--" + +"Whose father?" asked Nance, sharply. + +"The Clarke boy's. It was him that did fer her. I tell you she was a good +girl 'til then. But they wouldn't believe it. They give me some money to +sign the paper an' not to tell; but before God it's him that's the father +of her child, and poor Dan--" + +But Mrs. Smelts never finished her sentence; a violent paroxysm of pain +seized her, and at dawn the messenger that called for the patient on the +third floor, following the usual economy practised in Calvary Alley, made +one trip serve two purposes and took her also. + +By the end of the month the epidemic was routed, and the alley, cleansed +and chastened as it had never been before, was restored to its own. Mr. +Snawdor, Fidy Yager, Mrs. Smelts, and a dozen others, being the unfittest +to survive, had paid the price of enlightenment. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + +IN TRAINING + + +One sultry July night four years later Dr. Isaac Lavinski, now an +arrogant member of the staff at the Adair Hospital, paused on his last +round of the wards and cocked an inquiring ear above the steps that led +to the basement. Something that sounded very much like suppressed +laughter came up to him, and in order to confirm his suspicions, he +tiptoed down to the landing and, making an undignified syphon of himself, +peered down into the rear passage. In a circle on the floor, four nurses +in their nightgowns softly beat time, while a fifth, arrayed in pink +pajamas, with her hair flying, gave a song and dance with an abandon that +ignored the fact that the big thermometer in the entry registered +ninety-nine. + +The giggles that had so disturbed Dr. Lavinski's peace of mind increased +in volume, as the dancer executed a particularly daring _passeul_ and, +turning a double somersault, landed deftly on her bare toes. + +"Go on, do it again!" "Show us how Sheeny Ike dances the tango." "Sing +Barney McKane," came in an enthusiastic chorus. + +But before the encore could be responded to, a familiar sound in the +court without, sent the girls scampering to their respective rooms. + +Dr. Isaac, reluctantly relinquishing his chance for administering prompt +and dramatic chastisement, came down the stairs and out to the entry. + +An ambulance had just arrived, and behind it was a big private car, and +behind that Dr. Adair's own neat runabout. + +Dr. Adair met Dr. Isaac at the door. + +"It's an emergency case," he explained hastily. "I may have to operate +to-night. Prepare number sixteen, and see if Miss Molloy is off duty." + +"She is, sir," said Isaac, grimly, "and the sooner she's put on a case +the better." + +"Tell her to report at once. And send an orderly down to lend a hand with +the stretcher." + +Five minutes later an immaculate nurse, every button fastened, every fold +in place, presented herself on the third floor for duty. You would have +had to look twice to make certain that that slim, trim figure in its +white uniform was actually Nance Molloy. To be sure her eyes sparkled +with the old fire under her becoming cap, and her chin was still carried +at an angle that hinted the possession of a secret gold mine, but she had +changed amazingly for all that. Life had evidently been busy chiseling +away her rough edges, and from a certain poise of body and a +professional control of voice and gesture, it was apparent that Nance had +done a little chiseling on her own account. + +As she stood in the dim corridor awaiting orders, she could not help +overhearing a conversation between Dr. Adair and the agitated lady who +stood with her hand on the door-knob of number sixteen. + +"My dear madam," the doctor was saying in a tone that betokened the limit +of patience, "you really must leave the matter to my judgment, if we +operate--" + +"But you won't unless it's the last resort?" pleaded the lady. "You know +how frightfully sensitive to pain he is. But if you find out that you +must, then I want you to promise me not to let him suffer afterward. You +must keep him under the influence of opiates, and you will wait until his +father can get here, won't you?" + +"But that's the trouble. You've waited too long already. Appendicitis is +not a thing to take liberties with." + +"You don't mean it's too late? You don't think--" + +"We don't think anything at present. We hope everything." Then spying +Nance, he turned toward her with relief. "This is the nurse who will take +charge of the case." + +The perturbed lady uncovered one eye. + +"You are sure she is one of your very best?" + +"One of our best," said the doctor, as he and Nance exchanged a +quizzical smile. + +"Let her go in to him now. I can't bear for him to be alone a second. As +I was telling you--" + +Nance passed into the darkened room and closed the door softly. The +patient was evidently asleep; so she tiptoed over to the window and +slipped into a chair. On each side of the open space without stretched +the vine-clad wings of the hospital, gray now under the starlight. +Nance's eyes traveled reminiscently from floor to floor, from window to +window. How many memories the old building held for her! Memories of +heartaches and happiness, of bad times and good times, of bitter defeats +and dearly won triumphs. + +It had been no easy task for a girl of her limited education and +undisciplined nature to take the training course. But she had gallantly +stood to her guns and out of seeming defeat, won a victory. For the first +time in her diversified career she had worked in a congenial environment +toward a fixed goal, and in a few weeks now she would be launching her +own little boat on the professional main. + +Her eyes grew tender as she thought of leaving these protecting gray +walls that had sheltered her for four long years; yet the adventure of +the future was already calling. Where would her first case lead her? + +A cough from the bed brought her sharply back to the present. She went +forward and stooped to adjust a pillow, and the patient opened his eyes, +stared at her in bewilderment, then pulled himself up on his elbow. + +"Nance!" he cried incredulously. "Nance Molloy!" + +She started back in dismay. + +"Why, it's Mr. Mac! I didn't know! I thought I'd seen the lady +before--no, please! Stop, they're coming! Please, Mr. Mac!" + +For the patient, heretofore too absorbed in his own affliction to note +anything, was covering her imprisoned hands with kisses and calling on +Heaven to witness that he was willing to undergo any number of operations +if she would nurse him through them. + +Nance escaped from the room as Mrs. Clarke entered. With burning cheeks +she rushed to Dr. Adair's office. + +"You'll have to get somebody else on that case, Doctor," she declared +impulsively. "I used to work for Mr. Clarke up at the bottle factory, +and--and there are reasons why I don't want to take it." + +Dr. Adair looked at her over his glasses and frowned. + +"It is a nurse's duty," he said sternly, "to take the cases as they come, +irrespective of likes or dislikes. Mr. Clarke is an old friend of mine, +a man I admire and respect." + +"Yes, sir, I know, but if you'll just excuse me this once--" + +"Is Miss Rand off duty?" + +"No, sir. She's in number seven." + +"Miss Foster?" + +"No, sir." + +"Then I shall have to insist upon your taking the case. I must have +somebody I can depend upon to look after young Clarke for the next +twenty-four hours. It's not only the complication with his appendix; it's +his lungs." + +"You mean he's tubercular?" + +"Yes." + +Nance's eyes widened. + +"Does he know it?" + +"No. I shall wait and tell his father. I wouldn't undertake to break the +news to that mother of his for a house and lot! You take the case +to-night, and I'll operate in the morning--" + +"No, no, please, Doctor! Mr. Clarke wouldn't want me." + +"Mr. Clarke will be satisfied with whatever arrangement I see fit to +make. Besides another nurse will be in charge by the time he arrives." + +"But, Doctor--" + +A stern glance silenced her, and she went out, closing the door as hard +as she dared behind her. During her four years at the hospital the +memory of Mac Clarke had grown fainter and fainter like the perfume of a +fading flower. But the memory of Dan was like a thorn in her flesh, +buried deep, but never forgotten. + +To herself, her fellow-nurses, the young internes who invariably fell in +love with her, she declared gaily that she was "through with men +forever." The subject that excited her fiercest scorn was matrimony, and +she ridiculed sentiment with the superior attitude of one who has weighed +it in the balance and found it wanting. + +Nevertheless something vaguely disturbing woke in her that night when she +watched with Mrs. Clarke at Mac's bedside. Despite the havoc five years +had wrought in him, there was the old appealing charm in his voice and +manner, the old audacity in his whispered words when she bent over him, +the old eager want in his eyes as they followed her about the room. + +Toward morning he dropped into a restless sleep, and Mrs. Clarke, who +had been watching his every breath, tiptoed over to the table and sat +down by Nance. + +"My son tells me you are the Miss Molloy who used to be in the office," +she whispered. "He is so happy to find some one here he knows. He loathes +trained nurses as a rule. They make him nervous. But he has been +wonderfully good about letting you do things for him. It's a tremendous +relief to me." + +Nance made a mistake on the chart that was going to call for an +explanation later. + +"He's been losing ground ever since last winter," the doting mother went +on. "He was really quite well at Divonne-les-Bains, but he lost all he +gained when we reached Paris. You see he doesn't know how to take care of +himself; that's the trouble." + +Mac groaned and she hurried to him. + +"He wants a cigarette, Miss Molloy. I don't believe it would hurt +him," she said. + +"His throat's already irritated," said Nance, in her most professional +tone. "I am sure Dr. Adair wouldn't want him to smoke." + +"But we can't refuse him anything to-night," said Mrs. Clarke, with an +apologetic smile as she reached for the matches. + +Nance looking at her straight, delicate profile thrown into sudden relief +by the flare of the match, had the same disturbing sense of familiarity +that she had experienced long ago in the cathedral. + +But during the next twenty-four hours there was no time to analyze +subtle impressions or to indulge in sentimental reminiscence. From the +moment Mac's unconscious form was borne down from the operating room and +handed over to her care, he ceased to be a man and became a critically +ill patient. + +"We haven't much to work on," said Dr. Adair, shaking his head. "He has +no resisting power. He has burned himself out." + +But Mac's powers of resistance were stronger than he thought, and by the +time Mr. Clarke arrived the crisis was passed. Slowly and painfully he +struggled back to consciousness, and his first demand was for Nance. + +"It's the nurse he had when he first came," Mrs. Clarke explained to her +husband. "You must make Dr. Adair give her back to us. She's the only +nurse I've ever seen who could get Mac to do things. By the way, she used +to be in your office, a rather pretty, graceful girl, named Molloy." + +"I remember her," said Mr. Clarke, grimly. "You better leave things as +they are. Miss Hanna seems to know her business." + +"But Mac hates Miss Hanna! He says her hands make him think of +bedsprings. Miss Molloy makes him laugh and helps him to forget the pain. +He's taken a tremendous fancy to her." + +"Yes, he had quite a fancy for her once before." + +"Now, Macpherson, how can you?" cried Mrs. Clarke on the verge of tears. +"Just because the boy made one slip when he was little more than a +_child_, you suspect his every motive. I don't see how you can be so +cruel! If you had seen his agony, if you had been through what I have--" + +Thus it happened that instead of keeping Nance out of Mac's sight, Mrs. +Clarke left no stone unturned to get her back, and Mr. Clarke was even +persuaded to take it up personally with Dr. Adair. + +Nance might have held out to the end, had her sympathies not been +profoundly stirred by the crushing effect the news of Mac's serious +tubercular condition had upon his parents. On the day they were told Mr. +Clarke paced the corridor for hours with slow steps and bent head, +refusing to see people or to answer the numerous inquiries over the +telephone. As for Mrs. Clarke, all the fragile prettiness and girlish +grace she had carried over into maturity, seemed to fall away from her +within the hour, leaving her figure stooped and her face settled into +lines of permanent anxiety. + +The mother's chief concern now was to break the news of his condition to +Mac, who was already impatiently straining at the leash, eager to get +back to his old joyous pursuits and increasingly intolerant of +restrictions. + +"He refuses to listen to me or to his father," she confided to Nance, who +had coaxed her down to the yard for a breath of fresh air. "I'm afraid +we've lost our influence over him. And yet I can't bear for Dr. Adair to +tell him. He's so stern and says such dreadful things. Do you know he +actually was heartless enough to tell Mac that he had brought a great +deal of this trouble on himself!" + +Nance slipped her hand through Mrs. Clarke's arm, and patted it +reassuringly. She had come to have a sort of pitying regard for this +terror-stricken mother during these days of anxious waiting. + +"I wonder if you would be willing to tell him?" Mrs. Clarke asked, +looking at her appealingly. "Maybe you could make him understand without +frightening him." + +"I'll try," said Nance, with ready sympathy. + +The opportunity came one day in the following week when the regular day +nurse was off duty. She found Mac alone, propped up in bed, and +tremendously glad to see her. To a less experienced person the +brilliancy of his eyes and the color in his cheeks would have meant +returning health, but to Nance they were danger signals that nerved her +to her task. + +"I hear you are going home next week," she said, resting her crossed arms +on the foot of his bed. "Going to be good and take care of yourself?" + +"Not on your life!" cried Mac, gaily, searching under his pillow for his +cigarette case. "The lid's been on for a month, and it's coming off with +a bang. I intend to shoot the first person that mentions health to me." + +"Fire away then," said Nance. "I'm it. I've come to hand you out a nice +little bunch of advice." + +"You needn't. I've got twice as much now as I intend to use. Come on +around here and be sociable. I want to make love to you." + +Nance declined the invitation. + +"Has Dr. Adair put you wise on what he's letting you in for?" + +"Rather! Raw eggs, rest, and rust. Mother put him up to it. It's perfect +rot. I'll be feeling fit as a fiddle inside of two weeks. All I need is +to get out of this hole. They couldn't have kept me here this long if it +hadn't been for you." + +"And I reckon you're counting on going back and speeding up just as you +did before?" + +"Sure, why not?" + +"Because you can't. The sooner you soak that in, the better." + +He blew a succession of smoke rings in her direction and laughed. + +"So they've taken you into the conspiracy, have they? Going to +frighten me into the straight and narrow, eh? Suppose I tell them that +I'm lovesick? That there's only one cure for me in the world, and +that's you?" + +The ready retort with which she had learned to parry these personalities +was not forthcoming. She felt as she had that day five years ago in his +father's office, when she told him what she thought of him. He smiled up +at her with the same irresponsible light in his brown eyes, the same +eager desire to sidestep the disagreeable, the old refusal to accept life +seriously. He was such a boy despite his twenty-six years. Such a +spoiled, selfish lovable boy! + +With a sudden rush of pity, she went to him and took his hand: + +"See here, Mr. Mac," she said very gravely, "I got to tell you +something. Dr. Adair wanted to tell you from the first, but your mother +headed him off." + +He shot a swift glance at her. + +"What do you mean, Nance?" + +Then Nance sat on the side of his bed and explained to him, as gently and +as firmly as she could, the very serious nature of his illness, +emphasizing the fact that his one chance for recovery lay in complete +surrender to a long and rigorous regime of treatment. + +From scoffing incredulity, he passed to anxious skepticism and then to +agonized conviction. It was the first time he had ever faced any +disagreeable fact in life from which there was no appeal, and he cried +out in passionate protest. If he was a "lunger" he wanted to die as soon +as possible. He hated those wheezy chaps that went coughing through life, +avoiding draughts, and trying to keep their feet dry. If he was going to +die, he wanted to do it with a rush. He'd be hanged if he'd cut out +smoking, drinking, and running with the boys, just to lie on his back for +a year and perhaps die at the end of it! + +Nance faced the bitter crisis with him, whipping up his courage, +strengthening his weak will, nerving him for combat. When she left him +an hour later, with his face buried in the pillow and his hands locked +above his head, he had promised to submit to the doctor's advice on the +one condition that she would go home with him and start him on that fight +for life that was to tax all his strength and patience and self-control. + + + + +CHAPTER XXX + +HER FIRST CASE + + +October hovered over Kentucky that year in a golden halo of enchantment. +The beech-trees ran the gamut of glory, and every shrub and weed had its +hour of transient splendor. A soft haze from burning brush lent the world +a sense of mystery and immensity. Day after day on the south porch at +Hillcrest Mac Clarke lay propped with cushions on a wicker couch, while +Nance Molloy sat beside him, and all about them was a stir of whispering, +dancing, falling leaves. The hillside was carpeted with them, the brook +below the pergola was strewn with bits of color, while overhead the warm +sunshine filtered through canopies of russet and crimson and green. + +"I tell you the boy is infatuated with that girl," Mr. Clarke warned his +wife from time to time. + +"What nonsense!" Mrs. Clarke answered. "He is just amusing himself a bit. +He will forget her as soon as he gets out and about." + +"But the girl?" + +"Oh, she's too sensible to have any hopes of that kind. She really is +an exceptionally nice girl. Rather too frank in her speech, and +frequently ungrammatical and slangy, but I don't know what we should do +without her." + +But even Mrs. Clarke's complacence was a bit shaken as the weeks slipped +away, and Mac's obsession became the gossip of the household. To be sure, +so long as Nance continued to regard the whole matter as a joke and +refused to take Mac seriously, no harm would be done. But that very +indifference that assured his adoring mother, at the same time piqued her +pride. That an ordinary trained nurse, born and brought up, Heaven knew +where, should be insensible to Mac's even transient attention almost +amounted to an impertinence. Quite unconsciously she began to break down +Nance's defenses. + +"You must be very good to my boy, dear," she said one day in her gentle, +coaxing way. "I know he's a bit capricious and exacting at times. But we +can't afford to cross him now when he is just beginning to improve. He +was terribly upset last night when you teased him about leaving." + +"But I ought to go, Mrs. Clarke. He'd get along just as well now with +another nurse. Besides I only promised--" + +"Not another word!" implored Mrs. Clarke in instant alarm. "I wouldn't +answer for the consequences if you left us now. Mac goes all to pieces +when it is suggested. He has always been so used to having his own way, +you know." + +Yes, Nance knew. Between her unceasing efforts to get him well, and her +grim determination to keep the situation well in hand, she had unlimited +opportunity of finding out. The physicians agreed that his chances for +recovery were one to three. It was only by the most persistent observance +of certain regulations pertaining to rest, diet, and fresh air, that they +held out any hope of arresting the malady that had already made such +alarming headway. Nance realized from the first that it was to be a fight +against heavy odds, and she gallantly rose to the emergency. Aside from +the keen personal interest she took in Mac, and the sympathy she felt for +his stricken parents, she had an immense pride in her first private case, +on which she was determined to win her spurs. + +For three months now she had controlled the situation. With undaunted +perseverance she had made Mac submit to authority and succeeded in +successfully combatting his mother's inclination to yield to his every +whim. The gratifying result was that Mac was gradually putting on flesh +and, with the exception of a continued low fever, was showing decided +improvement. Already talk of a western flight was in the air. + +The whole matter hinged at present on Mac's refusal to go unless Nance +could be induced to accompany them. The question had been argued from +every conceivable angle, and gradually a conspiracy had been formed +between Mac and his mother to overcome her apparently absurd resistance. + +"It isn't as if she had any good reason," Mrs. Clarke complained to her +husband, with tears in her eyes. "She has no immediate family, and she +might just as well be on duty in California as in Kentucky. I don't see +how she can refuse to go when she sees how weak Mac is, and how he +depends on her." + +"The girl's got more sense than all the rest of you put together!" said +Mr. Clarke. "She sees the way things are going." + +"Well, what if Mac is in love with her?" asked Mrs. Clarke, for the first +time frankly facing the situation. "Of course it's just his sick fancy, +but he is in no condition to be argued with. The one absolutely necessary +thing is to get her to go with us. Suppose you ask her. Perhaps that's +what she is waiting for." + +"And you are willing to take the consequences?" + +"I am willing for anything on earth that will help me keep my boy," +sobbed Mrs. Clarke, resorting to a woman's surest weapon. + +So Mr. Clarke turned his ponderous batteries upon the situation, using +money as the ammunition with which he was most familiar. + +The climax was reached one night toward the end of October when the +first heavy hoar-frost of the season gave premonitory threat of coming +winter. The family was still at dinner, and Mac was having his from a +tray before the library fire. The heavy curtains had been drawn against +the chill world without, and the long room was a soft harmony of dull +reds and browns, lit up here and there by rose-shaded lamps. + +It was a luxurious room, full of trophies of foreign travel. The long +walls were hung with excellent pictures; the floors were covered with +rare rugs; the furniture was selected with perfect taste. Every detail +had been elaborately and skilfully worked out by an eminent decorator. +Only one insignificant item had been omitted. In the length and breadth +of the library, not a book was to be seen. + +Mac, letting his soup cool while he read the letter Nance had just +brought him, gave an exclamation of surprise. + +"By George! Monte Pearce is going to get married!" + +Nance laughed. + +"I've got a tintype of Mr. Monte settling down. Who's the girl?" + +"A cousin of his in Honolulu. Her father is a sugar king; no end of cash. +Think of old Monte landing a big fish like that!" + +"That's what you'll be doing when you get out to your ranch." + +"I intend to take my girl along." + +"You'll have to get her first." + +Mac turned on her with an invalid's fretfulness. "See here, Nance," +he cried, "cut that out, will you? Either you go, or I stay, do you +see? I know I'm a fool about you, but I can't help it. Nance, why +don't you love me?" + +Nance looked down at him helplessly. She had been refusing him on an +average of twice a day for the past week, and her powers of resistance +were weakening. The hardest granite yields in the end to the persistent +dropping of water. However much the clear-headed, independent side of her +might refuse him, to another side of her he was strangely appealing. +Often when she was near him, the swift remembrance of other days filled +her with sudden desire to yield, if only for a moment, to his insatiable +demands. Despite her most heroic resolution, she sometimes relaxed her +vigilance as she did to-night, and allowed her hand to rest in his. + +Mac made the most of the moment. + +"I don't ask you to promise me anything, Nance. I just ask you to come +with me!" he pleaded, with eloquent eyes, "we can get a couple of ponies +and scour the trails all over those old mountains. At Coronada there's +bully sea bathing. And the motoring--why you can go for a hundred miles +straight along the coast!" + +Nance's eyes kindled, but she shook her head. "You can do all that +without me. All I do is to jack you up and make you take care of +yourself. I should think you 'd hate me, Mr. Mac." + +"Well, I don't. Sometimes I wish I did. I love you even when you come +down on me hardest. A chap gets sick of being mollycoddled. When you fire +up and put your saucy little chin in the air, and tell me I sha'n't have +a cocktail, and call me a fool for stealing a smoke, it bucks me up more +than anything. By George, I believe I'd amount to something if you'd take +me permanently in hand." + +Nance laughed, and he pulled her down on the arm of his chair. + +"Say you'll marry me, Nance," he implored. "You'll learn to care for me +all right. You want to get out and see the world. I'll take you. We'll go +out to Honolulu and see Monte. Mother will talk the governor over; she's +promised. They'll give me anything I want, and I want you. Oh, Nance +darling, don't leave me to fight through this beastly business alone!" + +There was a haunted look of fear in his eyes as he clung to her that +appealed to her more than his former demands had ever done. Instinctively +her strong, tender hands closed over his thin, weak ones. + +"Nobody expects you to fight it through alone," she reassured him, "but +you come on down off this high horse! We'll be having another bad night +the first thing you know." + +"They'll all be bad if you don't come with me, Nance. I won't ask you to +say yes to-night, but for God's sake don't say no!" + +Nance observed the brilliancy of his eyes and the flush on his thin +cheeks, and knew that his fever was rising. + +"All right," she promised lightly. "I won't say no to-night, if you'll +stop worrying. I'm going to fix you nice and comfy on the couch and not +let you say another word." + +But when she had got him down on the couch, nothing would do but she must +sit on the hassock beside him and soothe his aching head. Sometimes he +stopped her stroking hand to kiss it, but for the most part he lay with +eyes half-closed and elaborated his latest whim. + +"We could stay awhile in Honolulu and then go on to Japan and China. I +want to see India, too, and Mandalay, + + ... somewhere east of Suez, where the best is like the worst, +And there aren't no Ten Commandments + +--you remember Kipling's Mandalay?" + +Nance couldn't remember what she had never known, but she did not say +so. Since her advent at Hillcrest she had learned to observe and listen +without comment. This was not her world, and her shrewd common-sense told +her so again and again. Even the servants who moved with such easy +familiarity about their talks were more at home than she. It had kept her +wits busy to meet the situation. But now that she had got over her first +awkwardness, she found the new order of things greatly to her liking. For +the first time in her life she was moving in a world of beautiful +objects, agreeable sounds, untroubled relations, and that starved side of +her that from the first had cried out for order and beauty and harmony +fed ravenously upon the luxury around her. + +And this was what Mac was offering her,--her, Nance Molloy of Calvary +Alley,--who up to four years ago had never known anything but bare +floors, flickering gas-jets, noise, dirt, confusion. He wanted her to +marry him; he needed her. + +She ceased to listen to his rambling talk, her eyes rested dreamily on +the glowing back-log. After all didn't every woman want to marry and have +a home of her own, and later perhaps--Twenty-four at Christmas! Almost an +old maid! And to think Mr. Mac had gone on caring for her all these +years, that he still wanted her when he had all those girls in his own +world to choose from. Not many men were constant like that, she thought, +as an old memory stabbed her. + +Then she was aware that her hand was held fast to a hot cheek, and that a +pair of burning eyes were watching her. + +"Nance!" Mac whispered eagerly, "you're giving in! You're going with me!" + +A step in the hall made Nance scramble to her feet just before Mrs. +Clarke came in from the dining-room. + +"I thought we should never get through dinner!" said that lady, with an +impatient sigh. "The bishop can talk of nothing else but his new hobby, +and do you know he's actually persuaded your father to give one of the +tenements back of the cathedral for the free clinic!" + +Nance who was starting out with the tray, put it down suddenly. + +"How splendid!" she cried. "Which house is it?" + +"I don't know, I am sure. But they are going to put a lot of money into +doing it over, and Dr. Adair has offered to take entire charge of it. For +my part I think it is a great mistake. Just think what that money would +mean to our poor mission out in Mukden! These shiftless people here at +home have every chance to live decently. It's not our fault if they +refuse to take advantage of their opportunities." + +"But they don't know how, Mrs. Clarke! If Dr. Adair could teach the +mothers--" + +Mrs. Clarke lifted her hands in laughing protest. + +"My dear girl, don't you know that mothers can't be taught? The most +ignorant mother alive has more instinctive knowledge of what is good for +her child than any man that ever lived! Mac, dearest, why didn't you eat +your grapes?" + +"Because I loathe grapes. Nance is going to work them off on an old sick +man she knows." + +"Some one at the hospital?" Mrs. Clarke asked idly. + +"No," said Nance, "it's an old gentleman who lives down in the very +place we're talking about. He's been sick for weeks. It's all right +about the grapes?" + +"Why, of course. Take some oranges, too, and tell the gardener to give +you some flowers. The dahlias are going to waste this year. Mac, you +look tired!" + +He shook off her hand impatiently. + +"No, I'm not. I feel like a two-year old. Nance thinks perhaps she may go +with us after all." + +"Of course she will!" said Mrs. Clarke, with a confident smile at the +girl. "We are going to be so good to her that she will not have the +heart to refuse." + +Mrs. Clarke with her talent for self-deception had almost convinced +herself that Nance was a fairy princess who had languished in a nether +world of obscurity until Mac's magic smile had restored her to her own. + +Nance evaded an answer by fleeing to the white and red breakfast-room +where the butler was laying the cloth for her dinner. As a rule she +enjoyed these tete-a-tetes with the butler. He was a solemn and +pretentious Englishman whom she delighted in shocking by acting and +talking in a manner that was all too natural to her. But to-night she +submitted quite meekly to his lordly condescension. + +She ate her dinner in dreamy abstraction, her thoughts on Mac and the +enticing prospects he had held out. After all what was the use in +fighting against all the kindness and affection? If they were willing to +take the risk of her going with them, why should she hesitate? They knew +she was poor and uneducated and not of their world, and they couldn't +help seeing that Mac was in love with her. And still they wanted her. + +California! Honolulu! Queer far-off lands full of queer people! Big ships +that would carry her out of the sight and sound of Calvary Alley forever! +And Mac, well and happy, making a man of himself, giving her everything +in the world she wanted. + +Across her soaring thoughts struck the voices from the adjoining +dining-room, Mr. Clarke's sharp and incisive, the bishop's suave and +unctious. Suddenly a stray sentence arrested her attention and she +listened with her glass half-way to her lips. + +"It is the labor question that concerns us more than the war," Mr. +Clarke was saying. "I have just succeeded in signing up with a man I +have been after for four years. He is a chap named Lewis, the only man +in this part of the country who seems to be able to cope with the +problem of union labor." + +"A son of General Lewis?" + +"No, no. Just a common workman who got his training at our factory. He +left me five or six years ago without rhyme or reason, and went over to +the Ohio Glass Works, where he has made quite a name for himself. I had a +tussle to get him back, but he comes to take charge next month. He is one +of those rare men you read about, but seldom find, a practical idealist." + +Nance left her ice untouched, and slipped through the back entry and up +to the dainty blue bedroom that had been hers now for three months. All +the delicious languor of the past hour was gone, and in its place was a +turmoil of hope and fear and doubt. Dan was coming back. The words beat +on her brain. He cared nothing for her, and he was married, and she would +never see him, but he was coming back. + +She opened the drawer of her dressing table and took out a small faded +photograph which she held to the silk-shaded lamp. It was a cheap +likeness of an awkward-looking working-boy in his Sunday clothes, a stiff +lock of unruly hair across his temple, and a pair of fine earnest eyes +looking out from slightly scowling brows. + +Nance looked at it long and earnestly; then she flung it back in the +drawer with a sigh and, putting out the light, went down again to +her patient. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI + +MR. DEMRY + + +The next afternoon, armed with her flowers and fruit, Nance was +setting forth for Calvary Alley, when Mrs. Clarke called to her from +an upper window. + +"If you will wait ten minutes, I will take you down in the machine." + +"But I want the walk," Nance insisted. "I need the exercise." + +"Nonsense, you are on your feet nearly all the time. I won't be long." + +Nance made a wry face at an unoffending sparrow and glanced regretfully +at the long white road that wound invitingly in and out of the woods +until it dropped sharply to the little station in the valley a mile +below. She had been looking forward to that walk all morning. She wanted +to get away from the hot-house atmosphere of the Clarke establishment, +away from Mac's incessant appeals and his mother's increasing dependence. +Aside from amusing her patient and seeing that he obeyed Dr. Adair's +orders, her duties for the past few weeks had been too light to be +interesting. The luxury that at first had so thrilled her was already +beginning to pall. She wanted to be out in the open alone, to feel the +sharp wind of reality in her face, while she thought things out. + +"I am going to the cathedral," said Mrs. Clarke, emerging from the +door, followed by a maid carrying coats and rugs. "But I can drop you +wherever you say." + +"I'll go there, too," said Nance as she took her seat in the car. "The +old gentleman I'm taking the things to lives just back of there, in the +very house Dr. Adair is trying to get for the clinic." + +"Poor soul!" said Mrs. Clarke idly, as she viewed with approval Nance's +small brown hat that so admirably set off the lights in her hair and the +warm red tints of her skin. + +"He's been up against it something fierce for over a year now," Nance +went on. "We've helped him all he'd let us since he stopped playing at +the theater." + +"Playing?" Mrs. Clarke repeated the one word that had caught her +wandering attention. "Is he an actor?" + +"No; he is a musician. He used to play in big orchestras in New York and +Boston. He plays the fiddle." + +For the rest of the way into town Mrs. Clarke was strangely preoccupied. +She sat very straight, with eyes slightly contracted, and looked absently +out of the window. Once or twice she began a sentence without finishing +it. At the cathedral steps she laid a detaining hand on Nance's arm. + +"By the way, what did you say was the name of the old man you are +going to see?" + +"I never said. It's Demry." + +"Demry--Never mind, I just missed the step. I'm quite all right. I think +I will go with you to see this--this--house they are talking about." + +"But it's in the alley. Mrs. Clarke; it's awfully dirty." + +"Yes, yes, but I'm coming. Can we go through here?" + +So impatient was she that she did not wait for Nance to lead the way, but +hurried around the bishop's study and down the concrete walk to the gate +that opened into the alley. + +"Look out for your skirt against the garbage barrel," warned Nance. It +embarrassed her profoundly to have Mrs. Clarke in these surroundings; she +hated the mud that soiled her dainty boots, the odors that must offend +her nostrils, the inevitable sights that awaited her in Number One. She +only prayed that Mrs. Snawdor's curl-papered head might not appear on the +upper landing. + +"Which way?" demanded Mrs. Clarke, impatiently. + +Nance led the way into the dark hall where a half-dozen ragged, +dirty-faced children were trying to drag a still dirtier pup up the +stairs by means of a twine string. + +"In here, Mrs. Clarke," said Nance, pushing open the door at the left + +The outside shutters of the big cold room were partly closed, but the +light from between them fell with startling effect on the white, +marble-like face of the old man who lay asleep on a cot in front of the +empty fireplace. For a moment Mrs. Clarke stood looking at him; then with +a smothered cry she bent over him. + +"Father!" she cried sharply, "Oh, God! It's my father!" + +Nance caught her breath in amazement; then her bewildered gaze fell upon +a familiar object. There, in its old place on the mantel stood the +miniature of a pink and white maiden in the pink and white dress, with +the golden curl across her shoulder. In the delicate, beautiful profile +Nance read the amazing truth. + +Mr. Demry sighed heavily, opened his eyes with an effort and, looking +past the bowed head beside him, held out a feeble hand for the flowers. + +"Listen, Mr. Demry," said Nance, breathlessly. "Here's a lady says she +knows you. Somebody you haven't seen for a long, long time. Will you look +at her and try to remember?" + +His eyes rested for the fraction of a minute on the agonized face lifted +to his, then closed wearily. + +"Can you not get the lady a chair, Nancy?" he asked feebly. "You can +borrow one from the room across the hall." + +"Father!" demanded Mrs. Clarke, "don't you know me? It is Elise. Your +daughter, Elise Demorest!" + +"Demorest," he repeated, and smiled. "How unnatural it sounds now! +Demorest!" + +"It's no use," said Nance. "His mind wanders most of the time. Let me +take you back to the cathedral, Mrs. Clarke, until we decide what's got +to be done." + +"I am going to take him home," said Mrs. Clarke, wildly. "He shall have +every comfort and luxury I can give him. Poor Father, don't you want to +come home with Elise?" + +"I live at Number One, Calvary Alley," said Mr. Demry, clinging to the +one fact he had trained his mind to remember. "If you will kindly get me +to the corner, the children will--" + +"It's too late to do anything!" cried Mrs. Clarke, wringing her hands. "I +knew something terrible would happen to him. I pleaded with them to help +me find him, but they put me off. Then I got so absorbed in Mac that he +drove everything else out of my mind. How long has he been in this awful +place? How long has he been ill? Who takes care of him?" + +Nance, with her arms about Mrs. Clarke, told her as gently as she could +of Mr. Demry's advent into the alley fourteen years before, of his +friendship with the children, his occasional lapses from grace, and the +steady decline of his fortune. + +"We must get him away from here!" cried Mrs. Clarke when she had gained +control of herself. "Go somewhere and telephone Mr. Clarke. Telephone Dr. +Adair. Tell him to bring an ambulance and another nurse and--and plenty +of blankets. Telephone to the house for them to get a room ready. But +wait--there's Mac--he mustn't know--" + +It was the old, old mother-cry! Keep it from Mac, spare Mac, don't let +Mac suffer. Nance seized on it now to further her designs. + +"You go back to Mr. Mac, Mrs. Clarke. I'll stay here and attend to +everything. You go ahead and get things ready for us." + +And Mrs. Clarke, used to taking the easiest way, allowed herself to be +persuaded, and after one agonized look at the tranquil face on the +pillow, hurried away. + +Nance, shivering with the cold, got together the few articles that +constituted Mr. Demry's worldly possessions. A few shabby garments in the +old wardrobe, the miniature on the shelf, a stack of well-worn books, and +the violin in its rose-wood case. Everything else had been sold to keep +the feeble flame alive in that wasted old form. + +Nance looked about her with swimming eyes. She recalled the one happy +Christmas that her childhood had known. The gay garlands of tissue paper, +the swinging lanterns, the shelf full of oranges and doughnuts, and the +beaming old face smiling over the swaying fiddle bow! And to think that +Mrs. Clarke's own father had hidden away here all these years, utterly +friendless except for the children, poor to the point of starvation, sick +to the point of death, grappling with his great weakness in heroic +silence, and going down to utter oblivion rather than obtrude his +misfortune upon the one he loved best. + +As the old man's fairy tales had long ago stirred Nance's imagination and +wakened her to the beauty of invisible things, so now his broken, futile +life, with its one great glory of renunciation, called out to the soul of +her and roused in her a strange, new sense of spiritual beauty. + +For one week he lived among the luxurious surroundings of his daughter's +home. Everything that skill and money could do, was done to restore him +to health and sanity. But he saw only the sordid sights he had been +seeing for the past fourteen years; he heard only the sounds to which his +old ears had become accustomed. + +"You would better move my cot, Nancy," he would say, plucking at the +silken coverlid. "They are scrubbing the floor up in the Lavinski flat. +The water always comes through." And again he would say: "It is nice and +warm in here, but I am afraid you are burning too much coal, dear. I +cannot get another bucket until Saturday." + +One day Mrs. Clarke saw him take from his tray, covered with delicacies, +a half-eaten roll and slip it under his pillow. + +"We must save it," he whispered confidentially, "save it for to-morrow." +In vain they tried to reassure him; the haunting poverty that had stalked +beside him in life refused to be banished by death. + +Mrs. Clarke remained "the lady" to him to the end. When he spoke to her, +his manner assumed a faint dignity, with a slight touch of gallantry, the +unmistakable air of a gentleman of the old school towards an attractive +stranger of the opposite sex. + +His happiest hours were those when he fancied the children were with him. + +"Gently! gently!" he would say; "there is room for everybody. This knee +is for Gussie Gorman, this one for Joe, because they are the smallest, +you know. Now are you ready?" And then he would whisper fairy stories, +smiling at the ceiling, and making feeble gestures with his wasted old +hands. + +The end came one day after he had lain for hours in a stupor. He stirred +suddenly and asked for his violin. + +"I must go--to the--theater, Nancy," he murmured. "I--do not want--to +be--a--burden." + +They laid the instrument in his arms, and his fingers groped feebly over +the strings; then his chin sank into its old accustomed place, and a +great light dawned in his eyes. Mr. Demry, who was used to seeing +invisible things, had evidently caught the final vision. + +That night, worn with nursing and full of grief for the passing of her +old friend, Nance threw a coat about her and slipped out on the terrace. +Above her, nebulous stars were already appearing, and their twinkling +was answered by responsive gleams in the city below. Against the velvety +dusk two tall objects towered in the distance, the beautiful Gothic +spire of the cathedral, and the tall, unseemly gas pipe of Clarke's +Bottle Factory. Between them, under a haze of smoke and grime, lay +Calvary Alley. + +"I don't know which is worse," thought Nance fiercely, "to be down there +in the mess, fighting and struggling and suffering to get the things you +want, or up here with the mummies who haven't got anything left to wish +for. I wish life wasn't just a choice between a little hard green apple +and a rotten big one!" + +She leaned her elbows on the railing and watched the new moon dodging +behind the tree trunks and, as she watched, she grappled with the +problem of life, at first bitterly and rebelliously, then with a dawning +comprehension of its meaning. After all was the bishop, with his +conspicuous virtues and his well-known dislike of children, any better +than old Mr. Demry, with his besetting sin and his beautiful influence on +every child with whom he came in contact? Was Mr. Clarke, working +children under age in the factory to build up a great fortune for his +son, very different from Mr. Lavinski, with his sweat-shop, hoarding +pennies for the ambitious Ikey? Was Mrs. Clarke, shirking her duty to her +father, any happier or any better than Mrs. Snawdor, shirking hers to her +children? Was Mac, adored and petted and protected, any better than +Birdie, now in the state asylum paying the penalty of their joint +misdeed? Was the tragedy in the great house back of her any more poignant +than the tragedy of Dan Lewis bound by law to an insane wife and burdened +with a child that was not his own? She seemed to see for the first time +the great illuminating truth that the things that make men alike in the +world are stronger than the things that make them different. And in this +realization an overwhelming ambition seized her. Some hidden spiritual +force rose to lift her out of the contemplation of her own interests into +something of ultimate value to her fellowmen. + +After all, those people down there in Calvary Alley were her people, and +she meant to stand by them. It had been the dream of her life to get out +and away, but in that moment she knew that wherever she went, she would +always come back. Others might help from the top, but she could help +understandingly from the bottom. With the magnificent egotism of youth, +she outlined gigantic schemes on the curtain of the night. Some day, +somehow, she would make people like the Clarkes see the life of the poor +as it really was, she would speak for the girls in the factories, in the +sweatshops, on the stage. She would be an interpreter between the rich +and the poor and make them serve each other. + +"Nance!" called an injured voice from the music room behind her, "what in +the mischief are you doing out there in the cold? Come on in here and +amuse me. I'm half dead with the dumps!" + +"All right, Mr. Mac. I'm coming," she said cheerfully, as she stepped in +through the French window and closed it against her night of dreams. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII + +THE NEW FOREMAN + + +The Dan Lewis who came back to Clarke's Bottle Factory was a very +different man from the one who had walked out of it five years before. He +had gone out a stern, unforgiving, young ascetic, accepting no +compromise, demanding perfection of himself and of his fellow-men. The +very sublimity of his dream doomed it to failure. Out of the crumbling +ideals of his boyhood he had struggled to a foothold on life that had +never been his in the old days. His marriage to Birdie Smelts had been +the fiery furnace in which his soul had been softened to receive the +final stamp of manhood. + +For his hour of indiscretion he had paid to the last ounce of his +strength and courage. After that night in the lodging-house, there seemed +to him but one right course, and he took it with unflinching promptness. +Even when Birdie, secure in the protection of his name and his support, +lapsed into her old vain, querulous self, he valiantly bore his burden, +taking any menial work that he could find to do, and getting a sort of +grim satisfaction out of what he regarded as expiation for his sin. + +But when he became aware of Birdie's condition and realized the use she +had made of him, the tragedy broke upon him in all of its horror. Then +he, too, lost sight of the shore lights, and went plunging desperately +into the stream of life with no visible and sustaining ideal to guide +his course, but only the fighting necessity to get across as decently +as possible. + +After a long struggle he secured a place in the Ohio Glass Works, where +his abilities soon began to be recognized. Instead of working now with +tingling enthusiasm for Nance and the honeysuckle cottage, he worked +doggedly and furiously to meet the increasing expense of Birdie's +wastefulness and the maintenance of her child. + +Year by year he forged ahead, gaining a reputation for sound judgment and +fair dealing that made him an invaluable spokesman between the employer +and the employed. He set himself seriously to work to get at the real +conditions that were causing the ferment of unrest among the working +classes. He made himself familiar with socialistic and labor newspapers; +he attended mass meetings; he laid awake nights reading and wrestling +with the problems of organized industrialism. His honest resentment +against the injustice shown the laboring man was always nicely balanced +by his intolerance of the haste and ignorance and misrepresentation of +the labor agitators. He was one of the few men who could be called upon +to arbitrate differences, whom both factions invariably pronounced +"square." When pressure was brought to bear upon him to return to +Clarke's, he was in a position to dictate his own terms. + +It was the second week after his reinstatement that he came up to the +office one day and unexpectedly encountered Nance Molloy. At first he did +not recognize the tall young lady in the well-cut brown suit with the bit +of fur at the neck and wrists and the jaunty brown hat with its dash of +gold. Then she looked up, and it was Nance's old smile that flashed out +at him, and Nance's old impulsive self that turned to greet him. + +For one radiant moment all that had happened since they last stood there +was swept out of the memory of each; then it came back; and they shook +hands awkwardly and could find little to say to each other in the +presence of the strange stenographer who occupied Nance's old place at +the desk by the window. + +"They told me you weren't working here," said Dan at length. + +"I'm not. I've just come on an errand for Mrs. Clarke." + +Dan's eyes searched hers in swift inquiry. + +"I'm a trained nurse now," she said, determined to take the situation +lightly. "You remember how crazy I used to be about doping people?" + +He did not answer, and she hurried on as if afraid of any silence that +might fall between them. + +"It all started with the smallpox in Calvary Alley. Been back +there, Dan?" + +"Not yet." + +"Lots of changes since the old days. Mr. Snawdor and Fidy and Mrs. Smelts +and Mr. Demry all gone. Have you heard about Mr. Demry?" + +Dan shook his head. He was not listening to her, but he was looking at +her searchingly, broodingly, with growing insistence. + +The hammering of the type-writer was the only sound that broke the +ensuing pause. + +"Tell me your news, Dan," said Nance in desperation. "Where you +living now?" + +"At Mrs. Purdy's. She's going to take care of Ted for me." + +"Ted? Oh! I forgot. How old is he now?" + +For the first time Dan's face lit up with his fine, rare smile. + +"He's four, Nance, and the smartest kid that ever lived! You'd be +crazy about him, I know. I wonder if you couldn't go out there some +day and see him?" + +Nance showed no enthusiasm over the suggestion; instead she gathered up +her muff and gloves and, leaving a message for Mr. Clarke with the +stenographer, prepared to depart. + +"I am thinking about going away," she said. "I may go out to California +next week." + +The brief enthusiasm died out of Dan's face. + +"What's taking you to California?" he asked dully, as he followed her +into the hall. + +"I may go with a patient. Have you heard of the trouble they're in at the +Clarkes'?" + +"No." + +"It's Mr. Mac. He's got tuberculosis, and they are taking him out to the +coast for a year. They want me to go along." + +Dan's face hardened. + +"So it's Mac Clarke still?" he asked bitterly. + +His tone stung Nance to the quick, and she wheeled on him indignantly. + +"See here, Dan! I've got to put you straight on a thing or two. Where can +we go to have this business out?" + +He led her across the hall to his own small office and closed the door. + +"I'm going to tell you something," she said, facing him with blazing +eyes, "and I don't care a hang whether you believe it or not. I never was +in love with Mac Clarke. From the day you left this factory I never saw +or wrote to him until he was brought to the hospital last July, and I was +put on the case. I didn't have anything more to do with him than I did +with you. I guess you know how much that was!" + +"What about now? Are you going west with him?" + +Dan confronted her with the same stern inquiry in his eyes that had shone +there the day they parted, in this very place, five years ago. + +"I don't know whether I am or not!" cried Nance, firing up. "They've done +everything for me, the Clarkes have. They think his getting well depends +on me. Of course that's rot, but that's what they think. As for Mr. Mac +himself--" + +"Is he still in love with you?" + +At this moment a boy thrust his head in the door to say that Dr. Adair +had telephoned for Miss Molloy to come by the hospital before she +returned to Hillcrest. + +Nance pulled on her gloves and, with chin in the air, was departing +without a word, when Dan stopped her. + +"I'm sorry I spoke to you like that, Nance," he said, scowling at the +floor. "I've got no right to be asking you questions, or criticizing what +you do, or where you go. I hope you'll excuse me." + +"You _have_ got the right!" declared Nance, with one of her quick changes +of mood. "You can ask me anything you like. I guess we can always be +friends, can't we?" + +"No," said Dan, slowly, "I don't think we can. I didn't count on seeing +you like this, just us two together, alone. I thought you'd be married +maybe or moved away some place." + +It was Nance's time to be silent, and she listened with wide eyes and +parted lips. + +"I mustn't see you--alone--any more, Nance," Dan went on haltingly. "But +while we are here I want to tell you about it. Just this once, Nance, if +you don't mind." + +He crossed over and stood before her, his hands gripping a chair back. + +"When I went away from here," he began, "I thought you had passed me up +for Mac Clarke. It just put me out of business, Nance. I didn't care +where I went or what I did. Then one night in Cincinnati I met Birdie, +and she was up against it, too--and--" + +After all he couldn't make a clean breast of it! Whatever he might say +would reflect on Birdie, and he gave the explanation up in despair. But +Nance came to his rescue. + +"I know, Dan," she said. "Mrs. Smelts told me everything. I don't know +another fellow in the world that would have stood by a girl like you did +Birdie. She oughtn't have let you marry her without telling you." + +"I think she meant to give me my freedom when the baby came," said Dan. +"At least that was what she promised. I couldn't have lived through +those first months of hell if I hadn't thought there was some way out. +But when the baby came, it was too late. Her mind was affected, and by +the law of the State I'm bound to her for the rest of her life." + +"Do you know--who--who the baby's father is, Dan?" + +"No. She refused from the first to tell me, and now I'm glad I don't +know. She said the baby was like him, and that made her hate it. That was +the way her trouble started. She wouldn't wash the little chap, or feed +him, or look after him when he was sick. I had to do everything. For a +year she kept getting worse and worse, until one night I caught her +trying to set fire to his crib. Of course after that she had to be sent +to the asylum, and from that time on, Ted and I fought it out together. +One of the neighbors took charge of him in the day, and I wrestled with +him at night." + +"Couldn't you put him in an orphan asylum?" + +Dan shook his head. + +"No, I couldn't go back on him when he was up against a deal like that. I +made up my mind that I'd never let him get lonesome like I used to be, +with nobody to care a hang what became of him. He's got my name now, and +he'll never know the difference if I can help it." + +"And Birdie? Does she know you when you go to see her?" + +"Not for two years now. It's easier than when she did." + +There was silence between them; then Nance said: + +"I'm glad you told me all this, Dan. I--I wish I could help you." + +"You can't," said Dan, sharply. "Don't you see I've got no right to be +with you? Do you suppose there's been a week, or a day in all these years +that I haven't wanted you with every breath I drew? The rest was just a +nightmare I was living through in order to wake up and find you. Nance--I +love you! With my heart and soul and body! You've been the one beautiful +thing in my whole life, and I wasn't worthy of you. I can't let you go! +I--Oh, God! what am I saying? What right have I--Don't let me see you +again like this, Nance, don't let me talk to you--" + +He stumbled to a chair by the desk and buried his head in his arms. His +breath came in short, hard gasps, with a long agonizing quiver between, +and his broad shoulders heaved. It was the first time he had wept since +that night, so long ago, when he had sat in the gutter in front of Slap +Jack's saloon and broken his heart over an erring mother. + +For one tremulous second Nance hovered over him, her face aflame with +sympathy and almost maternal pity; then she pulled herself together and +said brusquely: + +"It's all right, Danny. I understand. I'm going. Good-by." + +And without looking back, she fled into the hall and down the steps to +the waiting motor. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII + +NANCE COMES INTO HER OWN + + +For two hours Nance was closeted with Dr. Adair in his private office, +and when she came out she had the look of one who has been following +false trails and suddenly discovers the right one. + +"Don't make a hasty decision," warned Dr. Adair in parting. "The trip +with the Clarkes will be a wonderful experience; they may be gone a year +or more, and they'll do everything and see everything in the approved +way. What I am proposing offers no romance. It will be hard work and +plenty of it. You'd better think it over and give me your answer +to-morrow." + +"I'll give it to you now," said Nance. "It's yes." + +He scrutinized her quizzically; then he held out his hand with its short, +thick, surgeon's fingers. + +"It's a wise decision, my dear," he said. "Say nothing about it at +present. I will make it all right with the Clarkes." + +During the weeks that followed, Nance was too busy to think of herself +or her own affairs. She superintended the shopping and packing for Mrs. +Clarke; she acted as private secretary for Mr. Clarke; she went on +endless errands, and looked after the innumerable details that a family +migration entails. + +Mac, sulking on the couch, feeling grossly abused and neglected, spent +most of his time inveighing against Dr. Adair. "He's got to let you come +out by the end of next month." he threatened Nance, "or I'll take the +first train home. What's he got up his sleeve anyhow?" + +"Ask him," advised Nance, over her shoulder, as she vanished into the +hall. + +Toward the end of November the Clarkes took their departure; father, +mother, and son, two servants, and the despised, but efficient Miss +Hanna. Nance went down to see them off, hovering over the unsuspecting +Mac with feelings of mingled relief and contrition. + +"I wish you'd let me tell him," she implored Mrs. Clarke. "He's bound to +know soon. Why not get it over with now?" + +Mrs. Clarke was in instant panic. + +"Not a word, I implore you! We will break the news to him when he is +better. Be good to him now, let him go away happy. Please, dear, for my +sake!" With the strength of the weak, she carried her point. + +For the quarter of an hour before the train started, Nance resolutely +kept the situation in hand, not giving Mac a chance to speak to her +alone, and keeping up a running fire of nonsense that provoked even Mr. +Clarke to laughter. When the "All Aboard!" sounded from without, there +was scant time for good-bys. She hurried out, and when on the platform, +turned eagerly to scan the windows above her. A gust of smoke swept +between her and the slow-moving train; then as it cleared she caught her +last glimpse of a gay irresponsible face propped about with pillows and a +thin hand that threw her kisses as far as she could see. + +It was with a curious feeling of elation mingled with depression, that +she tramped back to the hospital through the gloom of that November day. +Until a month ago she had scarcely had a thought beyond Mac and the +progress of his case; even now she missed his constant demands upon her, +and her heart ached for the disappointment that awaited him. But under +these disturbing thoughts something new and strange and beautiful was +calling her. + +Half mechanically she spent the rest of the afternoon reestablishing +herself in the nurses' quarters at the hospital which she had left nearly +four months before. At six o'clock she put on the gray cape and small +gray bonnet that constituted her uniform, and leaving word that she would +report for duty at nine o'clock, went to the corner and boarded a street +car. It was a warm evening for November, and the car with its throng of +home-going workers was close and uncomfortable. But Nance, clinging to a +strap, and jostled on every side, was superbly indifferent to her +surroundings. With lifted chin and preoccupied eyes, she held counsel +with herself, sometimes moving her lips slightly as if rehearsing a part. +At Butternut Lane she got out and made her way to the old white house +midway of the square. + +A little boy was perched on the gate post, swinging a pair of fat legs +and trying to whistle. There was no lack of effort on his part, but the +whistle for some reason refused to come. He tried hooking a small finger +inside the corners of his mouth; he tried it with teeth together and +teeth apart. + +Nance, sympathizing with his thwarted ambition, smiled as she approached; +then she caught her breath. The large brown eyes that the child turned +upon her were disconcertingly familiar. + +"Is this Ted?" she asked. + +He nodded mistrustfully; then after surveying her gravely, evidently +thought better of her and volunteered the information that he was waiting +for his daddy. + +"Where is Mrs. Purdy?" Nance asked. + +"Her's making me a gingerbread man." + +"I know a story about a gingerbread man; want to hear it?" + +"Is it scareful?" asked Ted. + +"No, just funny," Nance assured. Then while he sat very still on the gate +post, with round eyes full of wonder, Nance stood in front of him with +his chubby fists in her hands and told him one of Mr. Demry's old fairy +tales. So absorbed were they both that neither of them heard an +approaching step until it was quite near. + +"Daddy!" cried Ted, in sudden rapture, scrambling down from the post and +hurling himself against the new-comer. + +But for once his daddy's first greeting was not for him. Dan seized +Nance's outstretched hand and studied her face with hungry, +inquiring eyes. + +"I've come to say good-by, Dan," she said in a matter-of-fact tone. + +His face hardened. + +"Then you are going with the Clarkes? You've decided?" + +"I've decided. Can't we go over to the summer-house for a few minutes. I +want to talk to you." + +They crossed the yard to the sheltered bower in its cluster of bare +trees, while Ted trudged behind them kicking up clouds of dead leaves +with his small square-toed boots. + +"You run in to Mother Purdy, Teddykins," said Dan, but Nance caught the +child's hand. + +"Better keep him here," she said with an unsteady laugh. "I got to get +something off my chest once and for all; then I'll skidoo." + +But Ted had already spied a squirrel and gone in pursuit, and Nance's +eyes followed him absently. + +"When I met you in the office the other day," she said, "I thought I +could bluff it through. But when I saw you all knocked up like that; and +knew that you cared--" Her eyes came back to his. "Dan we might as well +face the truth." + +"You mean--" + +"I mean I'm going to wait for you if I have to wait forever. You're not +free now, but when you are, I'll come to you." + +He made one stride toward her and swept her into his arms. + +"Do you mean it, girl?" he asked, his voice breaking with the unexpected +joy. "You are going to stand by me? You are going to wait?" + +"Let me go, Dan!" she implored. "Where's Ted? I mustn't stay--I--" + +But Dan held her as if he never meant to let her go, and suddenly she +ceased to struggle or to consider right or wrong or consequences. She +lifted her head and her lips met his in complete surrender. For the +first time in her short and stormy career she had found exactly what +she wanted. + +For a long time they stood thus; then Dan recovered himself with a +start. + +He pushed her away from him almost roughly. "Nance, I didn't mean to! I +won't again! Only I've wanted you so long, I've been so unhappy. I can't +let you leave me now! I can't let you go with the Clarkes!" + +"You don't have to. They've gone without me." + +"But you said you'd come to say good-by. I thought you were starting to +California." + +"Well, I'm not. I am going to stay right here. Dr. Adair has asked me to +take charge of the clinic--the new one they are going to open in +Calvary Alley." + +"And we're going to be near each other, able to see each other +every day--" + +But she stopped him resolutely. + +"No, Dan, no. I knew we couldn't do that before I came to-night. Now I +know it more than ever. Don't you see we got to cut it all out? Got to +keep away from each other just the same as if I was in California and you +were here?" + +Dan's big strong hands again seized hers. + +"It won't be wrong for us just to see each other," he urged hotly. "I +promise never to say a word of love or to touch you, Nance. What's +happened to-night need never happen again. We can hold on to ourselves; +we can be just good friends until--" + +But Nance pulled her hands away impatiently. + +"You might. I couldn't. I tell you I got to keep away from you, Dan. +Can't you see? Can't you understand? I counted on you to see the right of +it. I thought you was going to help me!" And with an almost angry sob, +she sat down suddenly on the leaf-strewn bench and, locking her arms +across the railing, dropped her flaming face upon them. + +For a long time he stood watching her, while, his face reflected the +conflicting emotions that were fighting within him for mastery. Then into +his eyes crept a look of dumb compassion, the same look he had once bent +on a passion-tossed little girl lying on the seat of a patrol-wagon in +the chill dusk of a Christmas night. + +He straightened his shoulders and laid a firm hand on her bowed head. + +"You must stop crying, Nance," he commanded with the stern tenderness he +would have used toward Ted. "Perhaps you are right; God knows. At any +rate we are going to do whatever you say in this matter. I promise to +keep out of your way until you say I can come." + +Nance drew a quivering breath, and smiled up at him through her tears. + +"That's not enough, Dan; you got to keep away whether I say to come or +not. You're stronger and better than what I am. You got to promise that +whatever happens you'll make me be good." + +And Dan with trembling lips and steady eyes made her the solemn promise. + +Then, sitting there in the twilight, with only the dropping of a leaf to +break the silence, they poured out their confidences, eager to reach a +complete understanding in the brief time they had allotted themselves. In +minute detail they pieced together the tangled pattern of the past; they +poured out their present aims and ambitions, coming back again and again +to the miracle of their new-found love. Of their personal future, they +dared not speak. It was locked to them, and death alone held the key. + +Darkness had closed in when the side door of the house across the yard +was flung open, and a small figure came plunging toward them through the +crackling leaves. + +"It's done, Daddy!" cried an excited voice. "It's the cutest little +gingerbread man. And supper's ready, and he's standing up by my plate." + +"All right!" said Dan, holding out one hand to him and one to Nance. +"We'll all go in together to see the gingerbread man." + +"But, Dan--" + +"Just this once; it's our good-by night, you know." + +Nance hesitated, then straightening the prim little gray bonnet that +would assume a jaunty tilt, she followed the tall figure and the short +one into the halo of light that circled the open door. + +The evening that followed was one of those rare times, insignificant in +itself, every detail of which was to stand out in after life, charged +with significance. For Nance, the warmth and glow of the homely little +house, with its flowered carpets and gay curtains, the beaming face of +old Mrs. Purdy in its frame of silver curls, the laughter of the happy +child, and above all the strong, tender presence of Dan, were things +never to be forgotten. + +At eight o'clock she rose reluctantly, saying that she had to go by the +Snawdors' before she reported at the hospital at nine o'clock. + +"Do you mind if I go that far with you?" asked Dan, wistfully. + +On their long walk across the city they said little. Their way led them +past many familiar places, the school house, the old armory, Cemetery +Street, Post-Office Square, where they used to sit and watch the +electric signs. Of the objects they passed, Dan was superbly unaware. He +saw only Nance. But she was keenly aware of every old association that +bound them together. Everything seemed strangely beautiful to her, the +glamorous shop-lights cutting through the violet gloom, the subtle +messages of lighted windows, the passing faces of her fellow-men. In +that gray world her soul burned like a brilliant flame lighting up +everything around her. + +As they turned into Calvary Alley the windows of the cathedral glowed +softly above them. + +"I never thought how pretty it was before!" said Nance, rapturously. +"Say, Dan, do you know what 'Evol si dog' means?" + +"No; is it Latin?" + +She squeezed his arm between her two hands and laughed gleefully. + +"You're as bad as me," she said, "I'm not going to tell you; you got to +go inside and find out for yourself." + +On the threshold of Number One they paused again. Even the almost +deserted old tenement, blushing under a fresh coat of red paint, took on +a hue of romance. + +"You wait 'til we get it fixed up," said Nance. "They're taking out all +the partitions in the Smelts' flat, and making a big consulting room of +it. And over here in Mr. Demry's room I'm going to have the baby clinic. +I'm going to have boxes of growing flowers in every window; and +storybooks and--" + +"Yes," cried Dan, fiercely, "you are going to be so taken up with all +this that you won't need me; you'll forget about to-night!" + +But her look silenced him. + +"Dan," she said very earnestly, "I always have needed you, and I always +will. I love you better than anything in the world, and I'm trying to +prove it." + +A wavering light on the upper landing warned them that they might be +overheard. A moment later some one demanded to know who was there. + +"Come down and see!" called Nance. + +Mrs. Snawdor, lamp in hand, cautiously descended. + +"Is that you, Nance?" she cried. "It's about time you was comin' to see +to the movin' an' help tend to things. Who's that there with you?" + +"Don't you know?" + +"Well, if it ain't Dan Lewis!" And to Dan's great embarrassment the +effusive lady enveloped him in a warm and unexpected embrace. She even +held him at arm's length and commented upon his appearance with frank +admiration. "I never seen any one improve so much an' yet go on favorin' +theirselves." + +Nance declined to go up-stairs on the score of time, promising to come on +the following Sunday and take entire charge of the moving. + +"Ain't it like her to go git mixed up in this here fool clinic business?" +Mrs. Snawdor asked of Dan. "Just when she'd got a job with rich swells +that would 'a' took her anywhere? Here she was for about ten years +stewin' an' fumin' to git outen the alley, an' here she is comin' back +again! She's tried about ever'thin' now, but gittin' married." + +Dan scenting danger, changed the direction of the conversation by asking +her where they were moving to. + +"That's some more of her doin's," said Mrs. Snawdor. "She's gittin' her +way at las' 'bout movin' us to the country. Lobelia an' Rosy V. is goin' +to keep house, an' me an' William Jennings is going to board with 'em. +You'd orter see that boy of mine, Dan. Nance got him into the 'lectric +business an' he's doin' somethin' wonderful. He's got my brains an' his +pa's manners. You can say what you please, Mr. Snawdor was a perfect +gentleman!" + +It was evident from the pride in her voice that since Mr. Snawdor's +demise he had been canonized, becoming the third member of the ghostly +firm of Molloy, Yager, and Snawdor. + +"What about Uncle Jed?" asked Nance. "Where's he going?" + +Mrs. Snawdor laughed consciously and, in doing so, exhibited to full +advantage the dazzling new teeth that were the pride of her life. + +"Oh, Mr. Burks is goin' with us," she said. "It's too soon to talk about +it yet,--but--er--Oh, you know me, Nance!" And with blushing confusion +the thrice-bereaved widow hid her face in her apron. + +The clock in the cathedral tower was nearing nine when Nance and Dan +emerged from Number One. They did not speak as they walked up to the +corner and stood waiting for the car. Their hands were clasped hard, +and she could feel his heart thumping under her wrist as he pressed it +to his side. + +Passers-by jostled them on every side, and an importunate newsboy +implored patronage, but they seemed oblivious to their surroundings. The +car turned a far corner and came toward them relentlessly. + +"God bless you, Dan," whispered Nance as he helped her on the platform; +then turning, she called back to him with one of her old flashing smiles. +"And me too, a little bit!" + +THE END + + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Calvary Alley, by Alice Hegan Rice + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CALVARY ALLEY *** + +***** This file should be named 9794.txt or 9794.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/9/7/9/9794/ + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan and PG +Distributed Proofreaders + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +https://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at https://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit https://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/9794.zip b/9794.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..6a9c130 --- /dev/null +++ b/9794.zip diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1f23187 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #9794 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9794) diff --git a/old/7calv10.txt b/old/7calv10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5b56c54 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/7calv10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11336 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Calvary Alley, by Alice Hegan Rice + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: Calvary Alley + +Author: Alice Hegan Rice + +Release Date: January, 2006 [EBook #9794] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on October 17, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CALVARY ALLEY *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan +and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + CALVARY ALLEY + + BY ALICE HEGAN RICE + + 1917 + + +Author of "MRS. WIGGS OF THE CABBAGE PATCH," "LOVEY MARY," "SANDY," ETC. + +ILLUSTRATED BY WALTER BIGGS + +THIS STORY IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED TO THE SMALL BAND OF KENTUCKY +WRITERS WITH WHOM IT HAS BEEN MY HAPPY FORTUNE TO MAKE THE LITERARY +PILGRIMAGE + + + + +CONTENTS + +CHAPTER + + + I THE FIGHT + II THE SNAWDORS AT HOME + III THE CLARKES AT HOME + IV JUVENILE COURT + V ON PROBATION + VI BUTTERNUT LANE + VII AN EVICTION + VIII AMBITION STIRS + IX BUTTONS + X THE PRINCESS COMES TO GRIEF + XI THE STATE TAKES A HAND + XII CLARKE'S + XIII EIGHT TO SIX + XIV IDLENESS + XV MARKING TIME + XVI MISS BOBINET'S + XVII BEHIND THE TWINKLING LIGHTS + XVIII THE FIRST NIGHT + XIX PREPARATIONS FOR FLIGHT + XX WILD OATS + XXI DAN + XXII IN THE SIGNAL TOWER + XXIII CALVARY CATHEDRAL + XXIV BACK AT CLARKE'S + XXV MAC + XXVI BETWEEN TWO FIRES + XXVII FATE TAKES A HAND +XXVIII THE PRICE OF ENLIGHTENMENT + XXIX IN TRAINING + XXX HER FIRST CASE + XXXI MR. DEMRY + XXXII THE NEW FOREMAN +XXXIII NANCE COMES INTO HER OWN + + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + +"The boy is infatuated with that girl" + +"Her tense muscles relaxed; she forgot to cry" + +"Don't call a policeman!" she implored wildly + + + + +CALVARY ALLEY + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE FIGHT + + +You never would guess in visiting Cathedral Court, with its people's hall +and its public baths, its clean, paved street and general air of smug +propriety, that it harbors a notorious past. But those who knew it by its +maiden name, before it was married to respectability, recall Calvary +Alley as a region of swarming tenements, stale beer dives, and frequent +police raids. The sole remaining trace of those unregenerate days is the +print of a child's foot in the concrete walk just where it leaves the +court and turns into the cathedral yard. + +All the tired feet that once plodded home from factory and foundry, all +the unsteady feet that staggered in from saloon and dance-hall, all the +fleeing feet that sought a hiding place, have long since passed away and +left no record of their passing. Only that one small footprint, with its +perfect outline, still pauses on its way out of the alley into the great +world beyond. + +At the time Nance Molloy stepped into that soft concrete and thus set in +motion the series of events that was to influence her future career, she +had never been told that her inalienable rights were life, liberty, and +the pursuit of happiness. Nevertheless she had claimed them intuitively. +When at the age of one she had crawled out of the soap-box that served as +a cradle, and had eaten half a box of stove polish, she was acting in +strict accord with the Constitution. + +By the time she reached the sophisticated age of eleven her ideals had +changed, but her principles remained firm. She did not stoop to beg for +her rights, but struck out for them boldly with her small bare fists. She +was a glorious survival of that primitive Kentucky type that stood side +by side with man in the early battles and fought valiantly for herself. + +On the hot August day upon which she began to make history, she stood in +the gutter amid a crowd of yelling boys, her feet far apart, her hands +full of mud, waiting tensely to chastise the next sleek head that dared +show itself above the cathedral fence. She wore a boy's shirt and a +ragged brown skirt that flapped about her sturdy bare legs. Her matted +hair was bound in two disheveled braids around her head and secured with +a piece of shoe-string. Her dirty round face was lighted up by a pair of +dancing blue eyes, in which just now blazed the unholy light of conflict. + +The feud between the Calvary Micks and the choir boys was an ancient +one, carried on from one generation to another and gaining prestige with +age. It was apt to break out on Saturday afternoons, after rehearsal, +when the choirmaster had taken his departure. Frequently the disturbance +amounted to no more than taunts and jeers on one side and threats and +recriminations on the other, but the atmosphere that it created was of +that electrical nature that might at any moment develop a storm. + +Nance Molloy, at the beginning of the present controversy, had been +actively engaged in civil warfare in which the feminine element of the +alley was pursuing a defensive policy against the marauding masculine. +But at the first indication of an outside enemy, the herd instinct +manifested itself, and she allied herself with prompt and passionate +loyalty to the cause of the Calvary Micks. + +The present argument was raging over the possession of a spade that had +been left in the alley by the workmen who were laying a concrete pavement +into the cathedral yard. + +"Aw, leave 'em have it!" urged a philosophical alleyite from the top of a +barrel. "Them ole avenoo kids ain't nothin'!--We could lick daylight +outen 'em if we wanted to." + +"Ye-e-e-s you could!" came in a chorus of jeers from the fence top, and a +brown-eyed youth in a white-frilled shirt, with a blue Windsor tie +knotted under his sailor collar, added imperiously, "You get too fresh +down there, and I'll call the janitor!" + +This gross breach of military etiquette evoked a retort from Nance that +was too inelegant to chronicle. + +"Tomboy! tomboy!" jeered the brown-eyed youth from above. "Why don't you +borrow some girls' clothes?" + +"All right, Sissy," said Nance, "lend me yours." + +The Micks shrieked their approval, while Nance rolled a mud ball and, +with the deadly aim of a sharpshooter, let it fly straight at the +white-frilled bosom of her tormentor. + +"Soak it to her, Mac," yelled the boy next to him, "the kid's got no +business butting in! Make her get out of the way!" + +"Go on and make me!" implored Nance. + +"I will if you don't stand back," threatened the boy called Mac. + +Nance promptly stepped up to the alley gate and wiggled her fingers in a +way peculiarly provocative to a juvenile enemy. + +"Poor white trash!" he jeered. "You stay where you belong! Don't you step +on our concrete!" + +"Will if I want to. It's my foot. I'll put it where I like." + +"Bet you don't. You're afraid to." + +"I ain't either." + +"Well, _do_ it then. I dare you! Anybody that would take a--" + +In a second Nance had thrust her leg as far as possible between the +boards that warned the public to keep out, and had planted a small alien +foot firmly in the center of the soft cement. + +This audacious act was the signal for instant battle. With yells of +indignation the choir boys hurled themselves from the fence, and +descended upon their foes. Mud gave place to rocks, sticks clashed, the +air resounded with war cries. Ash barrels were overturned, straying cats +made flying leaps for safety, heads appeared at doorways and windows, and +frantic mothers made futile efforts to quell the riot. + +Thus began the greatest fight ever enjoyed in Calvary Alley. It went down +in neighborhood annals as the decisive clash between the classes, in +which the despised swells "was learnt to know their places onct an' fer +all!" For ten minutes it raged with unabated fury, then when the tide of +battle began to set unmistakably in favor of the alley, parental +authority waned and threats changed to cheers. Old and young united in +the conviction that the Monroe Doctrine must be maintained at any cost! + +In and out of the subsiding pandemonium darted Nance Molloy, covered with +mud from the shoestring on her hair to the rag about her toe, giving and +taking blows with the best, and emitting yells of frenzied victory over +every vanquished foe. Suddenly her transports were checked by a +disturbing sight. At the end of the alley, locked in mortal combat, she +beheld her arch-enemy, he of the brown eyes and the frilled shirt, whom +the boys called Mac, sitting astride the hitherto invincible Dan Lewis, +the former philosopher of the ash barrel and one of the acknowledged +leaders of the Calvary Micks. + +It was a moment of intense chagrin for Nance, untempered by the fact that +Dan's adversary was much the bigger boy. Up to this time, the whole +affair had been a glorious game, but at the sight of the valiant Dan +lying helpless on his back, his mouth bloody from the blows of the boy +above him, the comedy changed suddenly to tragedy. With a swift charge +from the rear, she flung herself upon the victor, clapping her mud-daubed +hands about his eyes and dragging him backward with a force that sent +them both rolling in the gutter. + +Blind with fury, the boy scrambled to his feet, and, seizing a rock, +hurled it with all his strength after the retreating Dan. The missile +flew wide of its mark and, whizzing high over the fence, crashed through +the great rose window that was the special pride of Calvary Cathedral. + +The din of breaking glass, the simultaneous appearance of a cross-eyed +policeman, and of Mason, the outraged janitor, together with the +horrified realization of what had happened, brought the frenzied +combatants to their senses. Amid a clamor of accusations and denials, the +policeman seized upon two culprits and indicated a third. + +"You let me go!" shrieked Mac. "My father'll make it all right! Tell him +who I am, Mason! Make him let me go!" + +But Mason was bent upon bringing all the criminals to justice. + +"I'm going to have you all up before the juvenile court, rich and poor!" +he declared excitedly. "You been deviling the life out of me long enough! +If the vestry had 'a' listened at me and had you up before now, that +window wouldn't be smashed. I told the bishop something was going to +happen, and he says, 'The next time there's trouble, you find the leaders +and swear out a warrant. Don't wait to ask anybody!'" + +By this time every window in the tenement at the blind end of the alley +had been converted into a proscenium box, and suggestions, advice, and +incriminating evidence were being freely volunteered. + +"Who started this here racket, anyhow?" asked the policeman, in the bored +tone of one who is rehearsing an oft-repeated scene. + +"I did," declared Nance Molloy, with something of the feminine +gratification Helen of Troy must have felt when she "launched a thousand +ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium." + +"You Nance!" screamed a woman from a third-story window. "You know you +never done no such a thing! I was settin' here an' seen ever'thing that +happened; it was them there boys." + +"So it was you, Dan Lewis, was it?" said the policeman, recognizing one +of his panting victims, the one whose ragged shirt had been torn +completely off, leaving his heaving chest and brown shoulders bare. "An' +it ain't surprised, I am. Who is this other little dude?" + +"None of your business!" cried Mac furiously, trying to wrench himself +free. "I tell you my father will pay for the darned old window." + +"Aisy there," said the policeman. "Does anybody know him?" + +"It's Mr. Clarke's son, up at the bottle works," said Mason. + +"You let me go," shrieked the now half-frantic boy. "My father 'll make +you pay for this. You see if he don't!" + +"None o' your guff," said the policeman. "I ain't wantin' to keep you now +I got your name. Onny more out o' the boonch, Mr. Mason?" + +Mason swept a gleaning eye over the group, and as he did so he spied the +footprint, in the concrete. + +"Who did that?" he demanded in a fresh burst of wrath. + +Those choir boys who had not fled the scene gave prompt and incriminating +testimony. + +"No! she never!" shouted the woman from the third floor, now suspended +half-way out of the window. "Nance Molloy was up here a-washin' dishes +with me. Don't you listen at them pasty-faced cowards a-puttin' it off on +a innercent little girl!" + +But the innocent little girl had no idea of seeking refuge in her sex. +Hers had been a glorious and determining part in the day's battle, and +the distinction of having her name taken down with those of the great +leaders was one not to be foregone. + +"I did do it," she declared excitedly. "That there boy dared me to. Ketch +me takin' a dare offen a avenoo kid!" + +"What's your name, Sis?" asked the policeman. + +"Nance Molloy." + +"Where do you live?" + +"Up there at Snawdor's. That there was Mis' Snawdor a-yellin' at me." + +"Is she yer mother?" + +"Nope. She's me step." + +"And yer father?" + +"He's me step too. I'm a two-step," she added with an impudent toss of +the head to show her contempt for the servant of the law, a blue-coated, +brass-buttoned interloper who swooped down on you from around corners, +and reported you at all times and seasons. + +By this time Mrs. Snawdor had gotten herself down the two flights of +stairs, and was emerging from the door of the tenement, taking down her +curl papers as she came. She was a plump, perspiring person who might +have boasted good looks had it not been for two eye-teeth that completely +dominated her facial landscape. + +"You surely ain't fixin' to report her?" she asked ingratiatingly +of Mason. "A little 'leven-year-ole orphin that never done no harm +to nobody?" + +"It's no use arguing," interrupted Mason firmly. "I'm going to file out a +warrant against them three children if it's the last act of my mortal +life. There ain't a boy in the alley that gives me any more trouble than +that there little girl, a-throwin' mud over the fence and climbing round +the coping and sneaking into the cathedral to look under the pews for +nickels, if I so much as turn my back!" + +"He wants the nickels hisself!" cried Nance shrilly, pushing her nose +flat and pursing her lips in such a clever imitation of the irate janitor +that the alley shrieked with joy. + +"You limb o' Satan!" cried Mrs. Snawdor, making a futile pass at her. +"It's a God's mericle you ain't been took up before this! And it's me as +'ll have the brunt to bear, a-stoppin' my work to go to court, a-lying to +yer good character, an' a-payin' the fine. It's a pity able-bodied men +like policemens an' janitors can't be tendin' their own business 'stid +of comin' interferin' with the family of a hard-workin' woman like me. If +there's any justice in this world it ain't never flowed in my +direction!" + +And Mrs. Snawdor, half dragging, half pushing Nance, disappeared into the +dark entrance of the tenement, breathing maledictions first against her +charge, then against the tyranny of the law. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE SNAWDORS AT HOME + + +If ever a place had a down-at-heel, out-of-elbow sort of look, it was +Calvary Alley. At its open end and two feet above it the city went +rushing and roaring past like a great river, quite oblivious of this +unhealthy bit of backwater into which some of its flotsam and jetsam had +been caught and held, generating crime and disease and sending them out +again into the main current. + +For despite the fact that the alley rested under the very wing of the +great cathedral from which it took its name, despite the fact that it +echoed daily to the chimes in the belfry and at times could even hear the +murmured prayers of the congregation, it concerned itself not in the +least with matters of the spirit. Heaven was too remote and mysterious, +Hell too present and prosaic, to be of the least interest. And the +cathedral itself, holding out welcoming arms to all the noble avenues +that stretched in leafy luxury to the south, forgot entirely to glance +over its shoulder at the sordid little neighbor that lay under the very +shadow of its cross. + +At the blind end of the alley, wedged in between two towering +warehouses, was Number One, a ramshackle tenement which in some forgotten +day had been a fine old colonial residence. The city had long since +hemmed it in completely, and all that remained of its former grandeur +were a flight of broad steps that once boasted a portico and the +imposing, fan-shaped arch above the doorway. + +In the third floor of Number One, on the side next the cathedral, dwelt +the Snawdor family, a social unit of somewhat complex character. The +complication came about by the paterfamilias having missed his calling. +Mr. Snawdor was by instinct and inclination a bachelor. He had early in +life found a modest rut in which he planned to run undisturbed into +eternity, but he had been discovered by a widow, who was possessed of an +initiative which, to a man of Snawdor's retiring nature, was destiny. + +At the time she met him she had already led two reluctant captives to the +hymeneal altar, and was wont to boast, when twitted about the fact, that +"the Lord only knew what she might 'a' done if it hadn't been fer them +eye-teeth!" Her first husband had been Bud Molloy, a genial young +Irishman who good-naturedly allowed himself to be married out of +gratitude for her care of his motherless little Nance. Bud had not lived +to repent the act; in less than a month he heroically went over an +embankment with his engine, in one of those fortunate accidents in which +"only the engineer is killed." + +The bereft widow lost no time in seeking consolation. Naturally the first +person to present himself on terms of sympathetic intimacy was the +undertaker who officiated at poor Bud's funeral. At the end of six months +she married him, and was just beginning to enjoy the prestige which his +profession gave her, when Mr. Yager also passed away, becoming, as it +were, his own customer. Her legacy from him consisted of a complete +embalming outfit and a feeble little Yager who inherited her father's +tendency to spells. + +Thus encumbered with two small girls, a less sanguine person would have +retired from the matrimonial market. But Mrs. Yager was not easily +discouraged; she was of a marrying nature, and evidently resolved that +neither man nor Providence should stand in her way. Again casting a +speculative eye over the field, she discerned a new shop in the alley, +the sign of which announced that the owner dealt in "Bungs and Fawcetts." +On the evening of the same day the chronic ailment from which the kitchen +sink had suffered for two years was declared to be acute, and Mr. Snawdor +was called in for consultation. + +He was a timid, dejected person with a small pointed chin that trembled +when he spoke. Despite the easy conventions of the alley, he kept his +clothes neatly brushed and his shoes polished, and wore a collar on week +days. These signs of prosperity were his undoing. Before he had time to +realize what was happening to him, he had been skilfully jolted out of +his rut by the widow's experienced hand, and bumped over a hurried +courtship into a sudden marriage. He returned to consciousness to find +himself possessed of a wife and two stepchildren and moved from his small +neat room over his shop to the indescribable disorder of Number One. + +The subsequent years had brought many little Snawdors in their wake, and +Mr. Snawdor, being thus held up by the highwayman Life, ignominiously +surrendered. He did not like being married; he did not enjoy being a +father; his one melancholy satisfaction lay in being a martyr. + +Mrs. Snawdor, who despite her preference for the married state derived +little joy from domestic duties, was quite content to sally forth as a +wage-earner. By night she scrubbed office buildings and by day she slept +and between times she sought diversion in the affairs of her neighbors. + +Thus it was that the household burdens fell largely upon Nance Molloy's +small shoulders, and if she wiped the dishes without washing them, and +"shook up the beds" without airing them, and fed the babies dill pickles, +it was no more than older housekeepers were doing all around her. + +Late in the afternoon of the day of the fight, when the sun, despairing +of making things any hotter than they were, dropped behind the warehouse, +Nance, carrying a box of crackers, a chunk of cheese, and a bucket of +beer, dodged in and out among the push-carts and the barrels of the alley +on her way home from Slap Jack's saloon. There was a strong temptation on +her part to linger, for a hurdy-gurdy up at the corner was playing a +favorite tune, and echoes of the fight were still heard from animated +groups in various doorways. But Nance's ears still tingled from a recent +boxing, and she resolutely kept on her way until she reached the worn +steps of Number One and scurried through its open doorway. + +The nice distinction between a flat and a tenement is that the front +door of one is always kept closed, and the other open. In this +particular instance the matter admitted of no discussion, for there was +no front door. The one that originally hung under the fan-shaped +Colonial arch had long since been kicked in during some nocturnal raid, +and had never been replaced. + +When the gas neglected to get itself lighted before dark at Number One, +you had to feel your way along the hall in complete darkness, until your +foot struck something; then you knew you had reached the stairs and you +began to climb. It was just as well to feel along the damp wall as you +went, for somebody was always leaving things on the steps for people to +stumble over. + +Nance groped her way cautiously, resting her bucket every few steps and +taking a lively interest in the sounds and smells that came from behind +the various closed doors she passed. She knew from the angry voices on +the first floor that Mr. Smelts had come home "as usual"; she knew who +was having sauerkraut for supper, and whose bread was burning. + +The odor of cooking food reminded her of something. The hall was dark and +the beer can full, so she sat down at the top of the first flight and, +putting her lips to the foaming bucket was about to drink, when the door +behind her opened and a keen-faced young Jew peered out. + +"Say, Nance," he whispered curiously, "have they swore out the warrant +on you yet?" + +Nance put down the bucket and looked up at him with a fine air of +unconcern. + +"Don't know and don't keer!" she said. "Where was you hidin' at, when the +fight was goin' on?" + +"Getting my lessons. Did the cop pinch the Clarke guy?" + +"You betcher," said Nance. "You orter seen the way he took on! Begged to +beat the band. Me and Danny never. Me and him--" + +A volley of curses came from the hall below, the sound of a blow, +followed by a woman's faint scream of protest, then a door slammed. + +"If I was Mis' Smelts," said Nance darkly, with a look that was too old +for ten years, "I wouldn't stand for that. I wouldn't let no man hit me. +I'd get him sent up. I--" + +"You walk yourself up them steps, Nance Molloy!" commanded Mrs. Snawdor's +rasping voice from the floor above. "I ain't got no time to be waitin' +while you gas with Ike Lavinsky." + +Nance, thus admonished, obeyed orders, arriving on the domestic hearth in +time to prevent the soup from boiling over. Mr. Snawdor, wearing a long +apron and an expression of tragic doom, was trying to set the table, +while over and above and beneath him surged his turbulent offspring. In a +broken rocking-chair, fanning herself with a box-top, sat Mrs. Snawdor, +indulging herself in a continuous stream of conversation and apparently +undisturbed by the uproar around her. Mrs. Snawdor was not sensitive to +discord. As a necessary adjustment to their environment, her nerves had +become soundproof. + +"You certainly missed it by not being here!" she was saying to Mr. +Snawdor. "It was one of the liveliest mix-ups ever I seen! One of them +rich boys bust the cathedral window. Some say it'll cost over a thousan' +dollars to git it fixed. An' I pray to God his paw'll have to pay every +cent of it!" + +"Can't you make William J. and Rosy stop that racket?" queried Mr. +Snawdor, plaintively. The twins had been named at a time when Mrs. +Snawdor's loyalty was wavering between the President and another +distinguished statesman with whom she associated the promising phrase, +"free silver." The arrival of two babies made a choice unnecessary, and, +notwithstanding the fact that one of them was a girl, she named them +William J. and Roosevelt, reluctantly abbreviating the latter to "Rosy." + +"They ain't hurtin' nothin'," she said, impatient of the interruption to +her story. "I wisht you might 'a' seen that ole fool Mason a-lordin' it +aroun', an' that little devil Nance a-takin' him off to the life. +Everybody nearly died a-laughin' at her. But he says he's goin' to have +her up in court, an' I ain't got a blessed thing to wear 'cept that ole +hat of yours I trimmed up. Looks like a shame fer a woman never to be +fixed to go nowhere!" + +Mr. Snawdor, who had been trying ineffectually to get in a word, took +this remark personally and in muttering tones called Heaven to witness +that it was none of his fault that she didn't have the right clothes, and +that it was a pretty kind of a world that would keep a man from gettin' +on just because he was honest, and-- + +"Oh, shut up!" said Mrs. Snawdor, unfeelingly; "it ain't yer lack of +work that gits on my nerves; it's yer bein' 'round. I'd pay anybody a +quarter a week to keep yer busy!" + +Nance, during this exchange of conjugal infelicities, assisted by Lobelia +and Fidy, was rescuing sufficient dishes from the kitchen sink to serve +for the evening meal. She, too, was finding it difficult to bring her +attention to bear on domestic matters after the exciting events of the +afternoon. + +"An' he says to me,"--she was recounting with dramatic intensity to her +admiring audience--"he says, 'Keep offen that concrete.' An' I says, +'It'll take somebody bigger'n you to make me!'" + +Now, of course, we know that Nance never said that, but it was what she +wished she had said, which, at certain moments in life, seems to the best +of us to be quite the same thing. + +"Then what?" said Fidy, with a plate suspended in air. + +"Then," said Nance with sparkling eyes, "I sticks my foot right in the +middle of their old concrete, an' they comes pilin' offen the fence, an' +Dan Lewis he--" + +"You Nance!" came in warning tones from the other room, "you shet your +head an' git on with that supper. Here comes your Uncle Jed this minute!" + +At this announcement Nance dropped her dish towel, and dashing to the +door flung herself into the arms of a short, fat, baldheaded man who had +just come out of the front room across the hall. + +"Easy there!" warned the new-comer. "You ain't aimin' to butt the engine +clean offen the track, air yer?" + +Nance got his arm around her neck, and her arm around his knees, and thus +entwined they made their way to the table. + +Uncle Jed Burks, uncle by courtesy, was a boarder by day and a +gate-tender by night at the signal tower at the railroad crossing. On +that day long ago when he had found himself a widower, helpless in the +face of domestic problems, he had accepted Mrs. Snawdor's prompt offer of +hospitality and come across the hall for his meals. At the end of the +week he had been allowed to show his gratitude by paying the rent, and by +the end of the month he had become the chief prop of the family. It is +difficult to conceive of an Atlas choosing to burden himself with the +world, but there are temperaments that seek responsibilities just as +there are those, like Mr. Snawdor, who refuse them. + +Through endless discomforts, Uncle Jed had stayed on, coaxing Mr. Snawdor +into an acceptance of his lot, helping Mrs. Snawdor over financial +difficulties, and bestowing upon the little Snawdors the affection which +they failed to elicit from either the maternal or the paternal bosom. And +the amazing thing was that Uncle Jed always thought he was receiving +favors instead of conferring them. + +"What's this I hear about my little partner gittin' into trouble?" he +asked, catching Nance's chin in his palm and turning her smudged, excited +face up to his. + +Nance's eyes fell before his glance. For the first time since the fight +her pride was mingled with misgiving. But when Mrs. Snawdor plunged into +a fresh recital of the affair, with evident approval of the part she had +played, her self-esteem returned. + +"And you say Mason's fixin' to send her up to the juvenile court?" asked +Uncle Jed gravely, his fat hand closing on her small one. + +"Dan Lewis has got to go too!" said Nance, a sudden apprehension seizing +her at Uncle Jed's solemn face. + +"Oh, they won't do nothin' to 'em," said Mrs. Snawdor, pouring hot water +over the coffee grounds and shaking the pot vigorously. "Everybody knows +it was the Clarke boy that bust the window. Clarke's Bottle Works' son, +you know, up there on Zender Street." + +"Was it the Clarke boy and Dan Lewis that started the fracas?" asked +Uncle Jed. + +"No, it was me!" put in Nance. + +"Now, Nance Molloy, you lemme hear you say that one time more, an' you +know what'll happen!" said Mrs. Snawdor, impressively. "You're fixin' to +make me pay a fine." + +"I'm mighty sorry Dan Lewis is mixed up in it," said Uncle Jed, shaking +his head. "This here's his second offense. He was had up last year." + +"An' can you wonder?" asked Mrs. Snawdor, "with his mother what she is?" + +"Mrs. Lewis ain't a bad looker," Mr. Snawdor roused himself to observe +dejectedly. + +His wife turned upon him indignantly. "Well, it's a pity she ain't as +good as her looks then. Fer my part I can't see it's to any woman's +credit to look nice when she's got the right kind of a switch and a good +set of false teeth. It's the woman that keeps her good looks without none +of them luxuries that orter be praised." + +"Mrs. Lewis ain't done her part by Dan," said Uncle Jed, seating himself +at the red-clothed table. + +"I should say she ain't," Mrs. Snawdor continued. "I never seen nothin' +more pathetical than that there boy when he was no more than three years +old, a-tryin' to feed hisself outer the garbage can, an' her a comin an' +a goin' in the alley all these years with her nose in the air, too good +to speak to anybody." + +"Dan don't think his mother's bad to him," said Nance. "He saved up his +shoe-shine money an' bought her some perfumery. He lemme smell it." + +"Oh, yes!" said Mrs. Snawdor, "she's got to have her perfumery, an' her +feather in her hat, an' the whitewash on her face, no matter if Dan's +feet are on the groun', an' his naked hide shinin' through his shirt." + +"Well, I wish him an' this here little girl wasn't mixed up in this +business," repeated Uncle Jed. "Courts ain't no place fer children. Seems +like I can't stand fer our little Nance to be mixin' up with shady +characters." + +Nance shot an apprehensive glance at him and began to look anxious. She +had never seen Uncle Jed so solemn before. + +"You jes' remember this here, Nancy," went on the signalman, who could no +more refrain from pointing a moral when the chance presented itself, than +a gun can help going off when the trigger is pulled; "nothin' good ever +comes from breakin' laws. They wouldn't a-been made into laws if they +wasn't fer our good, an' even when we don't see no reason in keepin' 'em, +we ain't got no more right to break through than one of them engines up +at the crossing's got a right to come ahead when I signals it from the +tower to stop. I been handin' out laws to engines fer goin' on thirty +year, an' I never seen one yet that bust over a law that didn't come to +grief. You keep on the track, Sister, an' watch the signals an' obey +orders an' you'll find it pays in the end. An' now, buck up, an' don't be +scared. We'll see what we can do to git you off." + +"Who's skeered?" said Nance, with a defiant toss of her head. "I ain't +skeered of nothin'." + +But that night when Mrs. Snawdor and Uncle Jed had gone to work, and Mr. +Snawdor had betaken himself out of ear-shot of the wailing baby, Nance's +courage began to waver. After she had finished her work and crawled into +bed between Fidy and Lobelia, the juvenile court, with its unknown +terrors, rose before her. All the excitement of the day died out; her +pride in sharing the punishment with Dan Lewis vanished. She lay staring +up into the darkness, swallowing valiantly to keep down the sobs, +fiercely resolved not to let her bed-fellows witness the break-down of +her courage. + +"What's the matter, Nance?" asked Fidy. + +"I'm hot!" said Nance, crossly. "It feels like the inside of a +oven in here!" + +"I bet Maw forgot to open the window into the shaft," said Fidy. + +"Windows don't do no good," said Nance; "they just let in smells. Wisht I +was a man! You bet I would be up at Slap Jack's! I'd set under a 'lectric +fan, an' pour cold things down me an' listen at the 'phoney-graf ever' +night. Hush! Is that our baby?" + +A faint wail made her scramble out of bed and rush into the back room +where she gathered a hot, squirming bundle into her arms and peered +anxiously into its wizened face. She knew the trick babies had of dying +when the weather was hot! Two other beloved scraps of humanity had been +taken away from her, and she was fiercely determined to keep this one. +Lugging the baby to the window, she scrambled over the sill. + +The fire-escape was cluttered with all the paraphernalia that doubles the +casualty of a tenement fire, but she cleared a space with her foot and +sat down on the top step. Beside her loomed the blank warehouse wall, and +from the narrow passage-way below came the smell of garbage. The clanging +of cars and the rumbling of trucks mingled with the nearer sounds of +whirring sewing machines in Lavinski's sweat-shop on the floor below. +From somewhere around the corner came, at intervals, the sharp cry of a +woman in agony. With that last sound Nance was all too familiar. The +coming and going of a human life were no mystery to her. But each time +the cry of pain rang out she tried in vain to stop her ears. At last, +hot, hungry, lonesome, and afraid, she laid her dirty face against the +baby's fuzzy head and they sobbed together in undisturbed misery. + +When at last the child fell into a restless sleep, Nance sat patiently +on, her small arms stiffening under their burden, and her bare feet and +legs smarting from the stings of hungry mosquitos. + +By and by the limp garments on the clothes line overhead began to stir, +and Nance, lifting her head gratefully to the vagrant breeze, caught her +breath. There, just above the cathedral spire, white and cool among +fleecy clouds, rose the full August moon. It was the same moon that at +that moment was turning ocean waves into silver magic; that was smiling +on sleeping forests and wind-swept mountains and dancing streams. Yet +here it was actually taking the trouble to peep around the cathedral +spire and send the full flood of its radiance into the most sordid +corners of Calvary Alley, even into the unawakened soul of the dirty, +ragged, tear-stained little girl clasping the sick baby on Snawdor's +fire-escape. + +[Illustration: "Her tense muscles relaxed; she forgot to cry"] + +Something in Nance responded. Her tense muscles relaxed; she forgot to +cry. With eyes grown big and wistful, she watched the shining orb. All +the bravado, the fear, and rebellion died out of her, and in hushed +wonder she got from the great white night what God in heaven meant for +us to get. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE CLARKES AT HOME + + +While the prodigal son of the house of Clarke was engaged in breaking +stained-glass windows in Calvary Alley, his mother was at home +entertaining the bishop with a recital of his virtues and +accomplishments. Considering the fact that Bishop Bland's dislike for +children was notorious, he was bearing the present ordeal with unusual +fortitude. + +They were sitting on the spacious piazza at Hill-crest, the country +home of the Clarkes, the massive foundation of which was popularly +supposed to rest upon bottles. It was a piazza especially designed to +offset the discomforts of a Southern August afternoon and to make a +visitor, especially if he happened to be an ecclesiastical potentate +with a taste for luxury, loath to forsake its pleasant shade for the +glaring world without. + +"Yes, yes," he agreed for the fourth time, "a very fine boy. I must say I +give myself some credit for your marriage and its successful result." + +Mrs. Clarke paused in her tea-pouring and gazed absently off across the +tree tops. + +"I suppose I ought to be happy," she said, and she sighed. + +"Every heart knoweth its own--two lumps, thank you, and a dash of rum. I +was saying--Oh, yes! I was about to remark that we are all prone to +magnify our troubles. Now here you are, after all these years, still +brooding over your unfortunate father, when he is probably long since +returned to France, quite well and happy." + +"If I could only be sure. It has been so long since we heard, nearly +thirteen years! The last letter was the one you got when Mac was born." + +"Yes, and I answered him in detail, assuring him of your complete +recovery, and expressing my hope that he would never again burden you +until with God's help he had mastered the sin that had been his undoing." + +Mrs. Clarke shook her head impatiently. + +"You and Macpherson never understood about father. He came to this +country without a friend or a relation except mother and me. Then she +died, and he worked day and night to keep me in a good boarding-school, +and to give me every advantage that a girl could have. Then his health +broke, and he couldn't sleep, and he began taking drugs. Oh, I don't see +how anybody could blame him, after all he had been through!" + +"For whatever sacrifices he made, he was amply rewarded," the bishop +said. "Few fathers have the satisfaction of seeing their daughters more +successfully established in life." + +"Yes, but what has it all come to for him? Made to feel his disgrace, +aware of Macpherson's constant disapproval--I don't wonder he chose to +give me up entirely." + +"It was much the best course for all concerned," said the bishop, with +the assured tone of one who enjoys the full confidence of Providence. +"The fact that he had made shipwreck of his own life was no reason for +him to make shipwreck of yours. I remember saying those very words to +him when he told me of Mr. Clarke's attitude. Painful as was your +decision, you did quite right in yielding to our judgment in the matter +and letting him go." + +"But Macpherson ought not to have asked it of me. He's so good and kind +and good about most things, that I don't see how he could have felt the +way he did about father." + +The bishop laid a consoling hand on her arm. + +"Your husband was but protecting you and himself against untold +annoyance. Think of what it would have meant for a man of Mr. Clarke's +position to have a person of your father's habits a member of his +household!" + +"But father was perfectly gentle and harmless--more like an afflicted +child than anything else. When he was without an engagement he would go +for weeks at a time, happy with his books and his music, without +breaking over at all." + +"Ah, yes! But what about the influence of his example on your growing +son? Imagine the humiliation to your child." + +Mrs. Clarke's vulnerable spot was touched. + +"I had forgotten Mac!" she said. "He must be my first consideration, +mustn't he? I never intend for him to bear any burden that I can bear for +him. And yet, how father would have adored him, how proud he would have +been of his voice! But there, you must forgive me for bringing up this +painful subject. It is only when I think of father getting old and being +ill, possibly in want, with nobody in the world--" + +"Now, now, my dear lady," said the bishop, "you are indulging in morbid +fancies. Your father knows that with a stroke of the pen he can procure +all the financial assistance from you he may desire. As to his being +unhappy, I doubt it extremely. My recollection of him is of a very +placid, amiable man living more in his dreams than in reality." + +Mrs. Clarke smiled through her tears. + +"You are quite right. He didn't ask much of life. A book in his hand and +a child on his knee meant happiness for him." + +"And those he can have wherever he is," said her spiritual adviser. "Now +I want you to turn away from all these gloomy forebodings and leave the +matter entirely in God's hands." + +"And you think I have done my duty?" + +"Assuredly. It is your poor father who has failed to do his. You are a +model wife and an almost too devoted mother. You are zealous in your work +at the cathedral; you--" + +"There!" said Mrs. Clarke, smiling, "I know I don't deserve all those +compliments, but they do help me. Now let's talk of something else while +I give you a fresh cup of tea. Tell me what the board did yesterday about +the foreign mission fund." + +The bishop, relieved to see the conversation drifting into calmer waters, +accepted the second cup and the change of topic with equal satisfaction. +His specialty was ministering to the sorrows of the very rich, but he +preferred to confine his spiritual visits to the early part of the +afternoon, leaving the latter part free for tea-drinking and the +ecclesiastical gossip so dear to his heart. + +"Well," he said, leaning back luxuriously in his deep willow chair, +"we carried our point after some difficulty. Too many of our good +directors take refuge in the old excuse that charity should begin at +home. It should, my dear Elise, but as I have said before, it should +not end there!" + +Having delivered himself of this original observation, the bishop helped +himself to another sandwich. + +"The special object of my present visit," he said, "aside from the +pleasure it always gives me to be in your delightful home, is to interest +you and your good husband in a mission we are starting in Mukden, a most +ungodly place, I fear, in Manchuria. A thousand dollars from Mr. Clarke +at this time would be most acceptable, and I shall leave it to you, my +dear lady, to put the matter before him, with all the tact and persuasion +for which you are so justly noted." + +Mrs. Clarke smiled wearily. + +"I will do what I can, Bishop. But I hate to burden him with one more +demand. Since he has bought these two new factories, he is simply worked +to death. I get so cross with all the unreasonable demands the employees +make on him. They are never satisfied. The more he yields, the more they +demand. It's begging letters, petitions, lawsuits, strikes, until he is +driven almost crazy." + +The whirr of an approaching motor caused them both to look up. A grizzled +man of fifty got out and, after a decisive order to the chauffeur, turned +to join them. His movements were quick and nervous, and his eyes restless +under their shaggy gray brows. + +"Where's the boy?" was his first query after the greetings were over. + +"He went to choir practice. I thought surely he would come out with you. +Hadn't we better send the machine back for him?" + +"We were just speaking of that fine lad of yours," said the bishop, +helping himself to yet another sandwich. "Fine eyes, frank, engaging +manner! I suppose he is too young yet for you to be considering his +future calling?" + +"Indeed he isn't!" said Mrs. Clarke. "My heart is set on the law. Two of +his Clarke grandfathers have been on the bench." + +Mr. Clarke smiled somewhat grimly. + +"Mac hasn't evinced any burning ambition in any direction as yet." + +"Mac is only thirteen," said Mrs. Clarke with dignity; "all of his +teachers will tell you that he is wonderfully bright, but that he lacks +application. I think it is entirely their fault. They don't make the +lessons sufficiently interesting; they don't hold his attention. He has +been at three private schools, and they were all wretched. You know I am +thinking of trying a tutor this year." + +"I want her to send him to the public schools," Mr. Clarke said with the +air of detached paternity peculiar to American fathers. "I went to the +public schools. They gave me a decent start in life; that's about all you +can expect of a school." + +"True, true," said the bishop, his elbows on the arms of his chair, and +his fingers tapping each other meditatively. "I am the last person to +minimize the value of the public schools, but they were primarily +designed, Mr. Clarke, neither for your boy, nor mine. Their rules and +regulations were designed expressly for the children of the poor. I was +speaking on this subject only yesterday to Mrs. Conningsby Lee. She's +very indignant because her child was forced to submit to vaccination at +the hands of some unknown young physician appointed by the city. + +"I should feel like killing any one who vaccinated Mac without my +consent!" exclaimed Mrs. Clarke, "but I needn't worry. He wouldn't allow +it. Do you know we have never been able to persuade that child to be +vaccinated?" + +"And you don't propose for the State to do what you can't do, do you?" +Mr. Clarke said, pinching her cheek. + +"What Mrs. Clarke says is not without weight," said the bishop, gallantly +coming to her rescue. "There are few things upon which I wax more +indignant than the increasing interference of the State with the home. +This hysterical agitation against child labor, for instance; while +warranted in exceptional cases, it is in the main destructive of the +formation of the habit of industry which cannot be acquired too young. +When the State presumes to teach a mother how to feed her child, when and +where to educate it, when and where to send it to work, the State goes +too far. There is nothing more dangerous to the family than the present +paternalistic and pauperizing trend of legislation." + +"I wish you would preach that to the factory inspectors," said Mr. +Clarke, with a wry smile. "Between the poor mothers who are constantly +trying to get the children into the factory, and the inspectors who are +trying to keep them out, I have my hands full." + +"A mother's love," said the bishop, who evidently had different rules +for mothers and fathers, "a mother's intuition is the most unerring +guide for the conduct of her child; and the home, however humble, is its +safest refuge." + +Mrs. Clarke glanced anxiously down the poplar-bordered driveway. Her +mother's intuition suggested that as it was now five-thirty, Mac must +have been engaged in some more diverting pastime than praising the Lord +with psalms and thanksgiving. + +"Your theory then, Bishop," said Mr. Clarke, who was evincing an unusual +interest in the subject, "carried to its legitimate conclusion, would do +away with all state interference? No compulsory education or child-labor +laws, or houses of correction?" + +"Oh, I don't think the bishop means that at all!" said Mrs. Clarke. "But +he is perfectly right about a mother knowing what is best for her child. +Take Mac, for instance. Nobody has ever understood him, but me. What +other people call wilfulness is really sensitiveness. He can't bear to be +criticized, he--" + +The sudden appearance of a limping object skirting the bushes caused her +to break off abruptly. + +"Who on earth is that over there beyond the fountain?" she asked. "Why, +upon my word, it's Mac!--Mac!" she called anxiously. "Come here!" + +The boy shamefacedly retraced his steps and presented himself on the +piazza. His shoes and stockings were covered with mud; the frills on his +shirt were torn and dirty; one eye was closed. + +"Why, my darling child!" cried his mother, her listless, detached air +giving place to one of acute concern, "you've been in an accident!" + +She had flown to him and enveloped him, mud and all, in her gauzy +embrace--an embrace from which Mac struggled to escape. + +"I'm all right," he insisted impatiently. "Those kids back of the +cathedral got to bothering us, and we--" + +"You mean those rowdies in the alley of whom Mason is always +complaining?" demanded the bishop, sternly. + +"Yes, sir. They were throwing rocks and stepping on the new walk--" + +"And you were helping the janitor keep them out?" broke in Mrs. Clarke. +"Isn't it an outrage, Bishop, that these children can't go to their choir +practice without being attacked by those dreadful ruffians?" + +"You are quite sure you boys weren't to blame?" asked Mr. Clarke. + +"Now, Father!" protested his wife, "how can you? When Mac has just told +us he was helping the janitor?" + +"It is no new thing, Mr. Clarke," said the bishop, solemnly shaking his +head. "We have had to contend with that disreputable element back of us +for years. On two occasions I have had to complain to the city +authorities. A very bad neighborhood, I am told, very bad indeed." + +"But, Mac dearest," pursued his mother anxiously as she tried to brush +the dried mud out of his hair. "Were you the only boy who stayed to help +Mason keep them out?" + +Mac jerked his head away irritably. + +"Oh! It wasn't that way, Mother. You see--" + +"That's Mac all over," cried Mrs. Clarke. "He wouldn't claim any credit +for the world. But look at the poor child's hands! Look at his eye! We +must take some action at once. Can't we swear out a warrant or something +against those hoodlums, and have them locked up?" + +"But, Elise," suggested Mr. Clarke, quizzically, "haven't you and the +bishop just been arguing that the State ought not to interfere with a +child? That the family ties, the mother's guidance--" + +"My dear Mr. Clarke," interrupted the bishop, "this, I assure you, is an +exceptional case. These young desperados are destroying property; they +are lawbreakers, many of them doubtless, incipient criminals. Mrs. Clarke +is quite right; some action must be taken, has probably been taken +already. The janitor had instructions to swear out a warrant against the +next offender who in any way defaced the property belonging to the +cathedral." + +It was at this critical point that the telephone rang, and a maid +appeared to say that Mr. Clarke was wanted. The bishop took advantage of +the interruption to order his carriage and make his adieus. + +"You may be assured," he said at parting, "that I shall not allow this +matter to rest until the offenders are brought to justice. Good-by, +good-by, my little man. Bear in mind, my dear Elise, that Mukden +matter. Good-by." + +"And now, you poor darling!" said Mrs. Clarke in a relieved tone, as she +turned her undivided attention on her abused son, "you shall have a nice +hot bath and a compress on the poor eye, and whatever you want for your +dinner. You are as white as a sheet, and still trembling! You poor lamb!" + +Mr. Clarke met them at the drawing-room door: + +"Mac!" he demanded, and his face was stern, "did you have anything to do +with the breaking of the big window at the cathedral?" + +"No, sir," Mac faltered, kicking at the newel post. + +"You didn't even know it was broken?" + +"Oh, everybody was throwing rocks, and that old, crazy Mason--" + +"But I thought you were helping Mason?" + +"I was--that is--those alley micks--" + +"That will do!" his father said angrily. "I've just been notified to have +you at the juvenile court next Friday to answer a charge of destroying +property. This is a nice scrape for my son to get into! And you didn't +have the grit to tell the truth. You lied to me! You'll go to bed, sir, +without your dinner!" + +Mrs. Clarke's eyes were round with indignation, and she was on the point +of bursting into passionate protest when a warning glance from her +husband silenced her. With a sense of outraged maternity she flung a +protective arm about her son and swept him up the stairs. + +"Don't make a scene, Mac darling!" she whispered. "Mother knows you +didn't do it. You go up to bed like a little gentleman, and I'll slip a +tray up to you and come up myself the minute dinner is over." + +That night when the moon discovered Nance Molloy in Calvary Alley, it +also peeped through the window at Mac Clarke out at Hillcrest. Bathed, +combed, and comforted, he lay in a silk-draped bed while his mother sat +beside him fanning him. It would be pleasant to record that the prodigal +had confessed his sins and been forgiven. It would even be some comfort +to state that his guilty conscience was keeping him awake. Neither of +these facts, however, was true. Mac, lying on his back, watching the +square patch of moonlight on the floor, was planning darkest deeds of +vengeance on a certain dirty, tow-headed, bare-legged little girl, who +had twice got the better of him in the conflict of the day. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +JUVENILE COURT + + +The goddess of justice is popularly supposed to bandage her eyes in order +to maintain an impartial attitude, but it is quite possible that she does +it to keep from seeing the dreary court-rooms which are supposed to be +her abiding place. + +On the hot Friday morning following the fight, the big anteroom to the +juvenile court, which was formerly used for the police court, was just as +dirty and the air just as stale as in mid-winter, when the windows were +down and the furnace going. + +Scrub women came at dawn, to be sure, and smeared its floors with sour +mops, and occasionally a janitor brushed the cobwebs off the ceiling, but +the grime was more than surface deep, and every nook and cranny held the +foul odor of the unwashed, unkempt current of humanity that for so many +years had flowed through it. Ghosts of dead and gone criminals seemed to +hover over the place, drawn back through curiosity, to relive their own +sorry experiences in the cases of the young offenders waiting before the +bar of justice. + +On the bench at the rear of the room the delegation from Calvary Alley +had been waiting for over an hour. Mrs. Snawdor, despite her forebodings, +had achieved a costume worthy of the occasion, but Uncle Jed and Dan had +made no pretense at a toilet. As for Nance, she had washed her face as +far east and west as her ears and as far south as her chin; but the +regions beyond were unreclaimed. The shoe-string on her hair had been +replaced by a magenta ribbon, but the thick braids had not been +disturbed. Now that she had got over her fright, she was rather enjoying +the novelty and excitement of the affair. She had broken the law and +enjoyed breaking it, and the cop had pinched her. It was a game between +her and the cop, and the cop had won. She saw no reason whatever for +Uncle Jed and Dan to look so solemn. + +By and by a woman in spectacles took her into a small room across the +hall, and told her to sit on the other side of the table and not to +shuffle her feet. Nance explained about the mosquito bites, but the lady +did not listen. + +"What day is this?" asked the spectacled one, preparing to chronicle the +answers in a big book. + +"Friday," said Nance, surprised that she could furnish information to so +wise a person. + +"What day of the month?" + +"Day before rent day." + +The corner of the lady's mouth twitched, and Nance glanced at her +suspiciously. + +"Can you repeat these numbers after me? Four, seven, nine, three, ten, +six, fourteen." + +Nance was convinced now that the lady was crazy, but she rattled them +off glibly. + +"Very good! Now if the little hand of your clock was at twelve, and the +big hand at three, what time would it be?" + +Nance pondered the matter deeply. + +"Five after twelve!" she answered triumphantly. + +"No; try again." + +Nance was eager to oblige, but she had the courage of her convictions and +held her point. + +"Wouldn't it be a quarter past?" suggested the examiner. + +"No, ma'am, it wouldn't. Our clock runs ten minutes slow." + +The grave face behind the spectacles broke into a smile; then business +was resumed. + +"Shut your eyes and name as many objects as you can without stopping, +like this: trees, flowers, birds. Go ahead." + +"Trees, flowers, birds, cats, dogs, fight, barrel, slop, mud, ashes." + +"Go on, quicker--keep it up. Nuts, raisins, cake--" + +"Cake, stove, smoke, tub, wash-board, scrub, rag, tub, stove, ashes." + +"Keep it up!" + +"I dunno no more." + +"We can't get beyond ashes, eh?" said the lady. "Now suppose you tell me +what the following words mean. Charity?" + +"Is it a organization?" asked Nance doubtfully. + +"Justice?" + +"I dunno that one." + +"Do you know what God is?" + +Nance felt that she was doing badly. If her freedom depended on her +passing this test, she knew the prison bars must be already closing on +her. She no more knew what God is than you or I know, but the spectacled +lady must be answered at any cost. + +"God," she said laboriously, "God is what made us, and a cuss word." + +Many more questions followed before she was sent back to her place +between Uncle Jed and Mrs. Snawdor, and Dan was led away in turn to +receive his test. + +Meanwhile Uncle Jed was getting restless. Again and again he consulted +his large nickel-plated watch. + +"I ought to be getting to bed," he complained. "I won't get more 'n four +hours' sleep as it is." + +"Here comes the Clarke boy!" exclaimed Nance, and all eyes were turned in +the direction of the door. + +The group that presented itself at the entrance was in sharp contrast to +its surroundings. Mac Clarke, arrayed in immaculate white, was flanked on +one side by his distinguished-looking father and on the other by his +father's distinguished-looking lawyer. The only evidence that the +aristocratic youth had ever come into contact with the riffraff of +Calvary Alley was the small patch of court-plaster above his right eye. + +"Tell the judge we are here," said Mr. Clarke briskly to his lawyer. "Ask +him to get through with us as soon as possible. I have an appointment at +twelve-thirty." + +The lawyer made his way up the aisle and disappeared through the +door which all the morning had been swallowing one small offender +after another. + +Almost immediately a loud voice called from the platform: + +"Case of Mac Clarke! Nance Molloy! Dan Lewis!" And Nance with a sudden +leap of her heart, knew that her time had come. + +In the inner room, where the juvenile cases had a private hearing, the +judge sat at a big desk, scanning several pages of type-written paper. He +was a young judge with a keen, though somewhat weary, face and eyes, full +of compassionate knowledge. But Nance did not see the judge; her gaze was +riveted upon her two arch enemies: Mason, with his flat nose and +pugnacious jaw, and "Old Cock-eye," the policeman who looked strangely +unfamiliar with his helmet off. + +"Well, Mr. Mason," said the judge when the three small offenders had +been ranged in front of the desk, with the witnesses grouped behind them, +"I'll ask you to tell me just what took place last Saturday afternoon at +the cathedral." + +Mason cleared his throat and, with evident satisfaction, proceeded to set +forth his version of the story: + +"I was sweeping out the vestibule, your Honor, when I heard a lot of +yelling and knew that a fight was on. It's that away every Saturday +afternoon that I ain't on the spot to stop it. I run down through the +cathedral and out to the back gate. The alley was swarming with a mob of +fighting, yelling children. Then I see these two boys a-fighting each +other up at the end of the alley, and before I can get to 'em, this here +little girl flings herself between 'em, and the big boy picks up a rock +and heaves it straight th'u the cathedral window." + +"Well, Mac," said the judge, turning to the trim, white-clad figure +confronting him--a figure strangely different from the type that +usually stood there. "You have heard what the janitor charges you with. +Are you guilty?" + +"Yes, sir," said Mac. + +"The breaking of the window was an accident?" + +Mac glanced quickly at his father's lawyer, then back at the judge. + +"Yes, sir." + +"But you were fighting in the alley?" + +"I was keeping the alley boys out of the cathedral yard." + +"That's a lie!" came in shrill, indignant tones from the little girl at +his elbow. + +"There seems to be some difference of opinion here," said the judge, +putting his hand over his mouth to repress a smile at the vehemence of +the accusation. "Suppose we let this young lady give her version of it." + +Nance jerking her arm free from Mrs. Snawdor's restraining hand, plunged +breathlessly into her story. + +"He was settin' on the fence, along with a parcel of other guys, a-makin' +faces an' callin' names long afore we even took no notice of 'em." + +"Both sides is to blame, your Honor," interposed Mason, "there ain't a +day when the choir rehearses that I don't have to go out and stop 'em +fighting." + +"Well, in this case who started the trouble?" asked the judge. + +Mrs. Snawdor clutched at Nance, but it was too late. + +"I did," she announced. + +The judge looked puzzled. + +"Why, I thought you said the choir boys began it by sitting on the fence +and making faces and calling names." + +"Shucks," said Nance, contemptuously, "we kin beat 'em makin' faces an' +callin' names." + +"Well, how did you start the fight?" + +"That there big boy dared me to step in the concrete. Didn't you now?" + +Mac stood looking straight ahead of him and refused to acknowledge +her presence. + +"It strikes me," said the judge, "that you choir boys could be better +employed than in teasing and provoking the children in the alley. What do +you think, Mac?" + +Mac had been provided with no answer to this question, so he +offered none. + +"Unfortunately," the judge continued, "it is the fathers of boys like you +who have to take the punishment. Your father will have to pay for the +window. But I want to appeal to your common sense and your sense of +justice. Look at me, Mac. You have had advantages and opportunities +beyond most boys. You are older than these children. Don't you think, +instead of using your influence to stir up trouble and put us to this +annoyance and expense, it would be much better for you to keep on your +side of the fence and leave these people back of the cathedral alone?" + +"Yes, sir," said Mac, perfunctorily. + +"And you promise me to do this?" + +"Yes, sir." + +"We will give you a chance to make your promise good. But remember your +name is on our record; if there is any more trouble whatever, you will +hear from us. Mr. Clarke, I look to you to see that your son behaves +himself. You may step aside please. And now, boy, what is your name?" + +"Dan Lewis." + +"Oh, yes. I think we have met before. What have you to say for yourself?" + +The shoeless, capless, unwashed boy, with his ragged trousers hitched to +his shoulders by one suspender, frowned up at the judge through a fringe +of tumbled hair. + +"Nothin'," he said doggedly. + +"Where do you live?" + +"I live at home when me maw's there." + +"Where is she now?" + +This question caused considerable nudging and side-glancing on the part +of Mrs. Snawdor. + +"She's went to the country," said Dan. + +"Is your father living?" + +"I dunno." + +"Did you go to school last year?" + +"No." + +"Why not?" + +"Didn't have no shoes." + +"Does your mother work?" + +This question brought more nudges and glances from Mrs. Snawdor, none of +which were lost on the boy. + +"Me mother don't have to work," he said defiantly. "She's a lady." + +The judge cleared his throat and called Mrs. Snawdor sharply to order. + +"Well, Dan," he said, "I am sorry to see you back here again. What were +you up for before?" + +"Chuckin' dice." + +"And didn't I tell you that it would go hard with you if you came back?" + +"Yes, sir, but I never chucked no more dice." + +"And I suppose in spite of the way your mouth is bruised, you'll tell me +you weren't mixed up in this fight?" + +The boy stood staring miserably at the wall with eyes in which fear and +hurt pride struggled for mastery. + +"Yer Honor!" the policeman broke in. "It's three times lately I've found +him sleepin' in doorways after midnight. Him and the gang is a bad lot, +yer Honor, a scrappin' an' hoppin' freights an' swipin' junk, an' one +thing an' another." + +"I never swiped no junk," Dan said hopelessly, "I never swiped nothink +in my life." + +"Is there no definite charge against this boy?" + +"Well, sir," said Mason, "he is always a-climbin' up the steeple of the +cathedral." + +Dan, sullen, frightened, and utterly unable to defend himself, looked +from the officer to the janitor with the wide, distrustful eyes of a +cornered coyote. + +Suddenly a voice spoke out in his behalf, a shrill, protesting, +passionate voice. + +"He ain't no worser nor nobody else! Ast Mammy, ast Uncle Jed! He's got +to sleep somewheres when his maw fergits to come home! Ever'body goes an' +picks on Danny 'cause he ain't got nobody to take up fer him. 'T ain't +fair!" Nance ended her tirade in a burst of tears. + +"There, there," said the judge, "it's going to be fair this time. You +stop crying now and tell me your name?" + +"Nance Molloy," she gulped, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. + +"How old are you?" + +"'Leven, goin' on twelve." + +"Well, take that gum out of your mouth and stop crying." + +He consulted his papers and then looked at her over his glasses. + +"Nancy," he said, "are you in the habit of slipping into the cathedral +when the janitor is not around?" + +"Yes, sir." + +"What for?" + +"Lookin' at the pretties, an' seein' if there's any nickels under +the seats." + +"You want to buy candy, I suppose?" + +"No, sir, a bureau." + +Even the tired-looking probation officer looked up and smiled. + +"What does a little girl like you want with a bureau?" asked the judge. + +"So's I won't have to keep me duds under the bed." + +"That's a commendable ambition. But what about these other charges; +truancy from school, fighting with the boys, throwing mud, and so on?" + +"I never th'ow mud, 'ceptin' when I'm th'owin' back," explained Nance. + +"A nice distinction," said the judge. "Is this child's mother present?" + +Mrs. Snawdor, like a current that has been restrained too long, surged +eagerly forward, and overflowed her conversational banks completely. + +"Well, I ain't exactly her mother, but I'm just the same as her mother. +You ast anybody in Calvary Alley. Ast Mr. Burks here, ast Mrs. Smelts +what I been to her ever since she was a helpless infant baby. When Bud +Molloy lay dyin' he says to the brakeman, 'You tell my wife to be good +to Nance,'" + +"So she's your stepchild?" + +"Yes, sir, an' Bud Molloy was as clever a man as ever trod shoe-leather. +So was Mr. Yager. Nobody can't say I ever had no trouble with my two +first. They wasn't what you might call as smart a man as Snawdor, but +they wasn't no fool." + +It was a peculiarity of Mrs. Snawdor's that she always spoke of her +previous husbands as one, notwithstanding the fact that the virtues +which she attributed to them could easily have been distributed among +half a dozen. + +"Well, well," said the judge impatiently, "what have you to say about the +character of this little girl?" + +Mrs. Snawdor shifted her last husband's hat from the right side of her +head to the left, and began confidentially: + +"Well I'll tell you, Jedge, Nance ain't so bad as whut they make her out. +She's got her faults. I ain't claimin' she ain't. But she ain't got a +drop of meanness in her, an' that's more than I can say for some grown +folks present." Mrs. Snawdor favored Mr. Mason with such a sudden and +blighting glance that the janitor quailed visibly. + +"Do you have trouble controlling her?" asked the judge. + +"Nothin' to speak of. She's a awful good worker, Nance is, when you git +her down to it. But her trouble is runnin'. Let anything happen in the +alley, an' she's up an' out in the thick of it. I'm jes' as apt to come +home an' find her playin' ball with the baby in her arms, as not. But I +don't have to dress her down near as often as I used to." + +"Then you wouldn't say she was a bad child?" + +Mrs. Snawdor's emphatic negative was arrested in the utterance by Mr. +Mason's accusing eye. + +"Well, I never seen no child that was a angel," she compromised. + +"Does Nancy go to school?" the judge asked. + +"Well, I was threatenin' her the other day, if she didn't behave herself, +I was goin' to start her in again." + +"I ain't been sence Christmas," volunteered Nance, still sniffling. + +"You shet yer mouth," requested Mrs. Snawdor with great dignity. + +"Why hasn't she been to school since Christmas?" the judge +proceeded sternly. + +"Well, to tell you the truth, it was on account of Mr. Snawdor. He got +mad 'bout the vaccination. He don't believe in it. Says it gives you the +rheumatism. He's got a iron ring on ever' one of the childern. Show yours +to the jedge, Nance! He says ef they has to vaccinate 'em to educate 'em, +they ain't goin' to de neither one." + +"But don't you know that we have compulsory education in this State? +Hasn't the truant officer been to see you?" + +Mrs. Snawdor looked self-conscious and cast down her eyes. + +"Well, not as many times as Snawdor says he has. Snawdor's that +jealous he don't want me to have no gentlemen visitors. When I see the +truant officer or the clock-man comin', I just keep out of sight to +avoid trouble." + +The judge's eyes twinkled, then grew stern. "In the meanwhile," he said, +"Nancy is growing up in ignorance. What sort of a woman are you to let a +child go as ragged and dirty as this one and to refuse her an education?" + +"Well, schools ain't what they wuz when me an' you wuz young," Mrs. +Snawdor said argumentatively. "They no more'n git a child there than they +want to cut out their palets or put spectacles on her. But honest, Judge, +the truth of it is I can't spare Nance to go to school. I got a job +scrubbin' four nights in the week at the post-office, an' I got to have +some help in the daytime. I leave it to you if I ain't." + +"That's neither here nor there," said the judge. "It is your business to +have her at school every morning and to see that she submits to the +regulations. You are an able-bodied woman and have an able-bodied +husband. Why don't you move into a decent house in a decent +neighborhood?" + +"There ain't nothin' the matter with our neighborhood. If you'd jes' git +'em to fix the house up some. The roof leaks something scandalous." + +"Who is your landlord?" + +"Well, they tell me _he_ is," said Mrs. Snawdor, pointing a malicious +finger at Mr. Clarke. This _coup d'etat_ caused considerable diversion, +and the judge had to call the court sharply to order. + +"Is that your husband in the rear of the room?" he asked Mrs. Snawdor. + +"Law, no; that's Mr. Burks, our boarder. I begged Snawdor to come, but +he's bashful." + +"Well, Mr. Burks, will you step forward and tell us what you know of this +little girl?" + +Uncle Jed cleared his throat, made a pass at the place where his front +hair used to be, and came forward. + +"Have you known this child long?" asked the judge. + +"Eleven years, going on twelve," said Uncle Jed, with a twinkle in his +small eyes, "me an' her grandpa fought side by side in the battle of +Chickasaw Bluffs." + +"So she comes of fighting stock," said the judge. "Do you consider her +incorrigible?" + +"Sir?" + +"Do you think her stepmother is able to control her?" + +Uncle Jed looked a trifle embarrassed. + +"Well, Mrs. Snawdor ain't whut you might say regular in her method. +Sometimes she's kinder rough on Nance, and then again she's a heap sight +too easy." + +"That's a God's truth!" Mrs. Snawdor agreed fervently from the rear. + +"Then you do not consider it altogether the child's fault?" + +"No, sir, I can't say as I do. She jes' gits the signals mixed +sometimes, that's all." + +The judge smiled. + +"So you think if she understood the signals, she'd follow them?" + +Uncle Jed's face became very earnest as he laid his hand on Nance's head. + +"I believe if this here little lass was to once git it into her head that +a thing was right, she'd do it if it landed her where it landed her paw, +at the foot of a forty-foot embankment with a engine a-top of her." + +"That's a pretty good testimony to her character," said the judge. "It's +our business, then, to see that she gets more definite instructions as to +the traffic laws of life. Nance, you and Dan step up here again." + +The children stood before him, breathing hard, looking him straight +in the face. + +"You have both been breaking the law. It's a serious thing to be up in +court. It is usually the first step on the down grade. But I don't +believe either of you have been wholly to blame. I am going to give you +one more chance and put you both on probation to Mrs. Purdy, to whom you +are to report once a week. Is Mrs. Purdy in the room?" + +An elderly little lady slipped forward and stood behind them with a +hand on the shoulder of each. Nance did not dare look around, but there +was something comforting and reassuring in that fat hand that lay on +her shoulder. + +"One more complaint against either of you," cautioned the judge +impressively, "and it will be the house of reform. If your families can't +make you behave, the State can. But we don't want to leave it to the +family or the State; we want to leave it to you. I believe you can both +make good, but you'll have to fight for it." + +Nance's irregular features broke into a smile. It was a quick, wide smile +and very intimate. + +"Fight?" she repeated, with a quizzical look at the judge. "I thought +that was what we was pinched fer." + + + + +CHAPTER V + +ON PROBATION + + +For a brief period Nance Molloy walked the paths of righteousness. The +fear of being "took up" proved a salutary influence, but permanent +converts are seldom made through fear of punishment alone. She was trying +by imitation and suggestion to grope her way upward, but the light she +climbed by was a borrowed light which swung far above her head and threw +strange, misleading shadows across her path. The law that allowed a man +to sell her fire-crackers and then punished her for firing them off, that +allowed any passer-by to kick her stone off the hop-scotch square and +punished her for hurling; the stone after him, was a baffling and +difficult thing to understand. + +At school it was no better. The truant officer said she must go every +day, yet when she got there, there was no room for her. She had to sit in +the seat with two other little girls who bitterly resented the intrusion. + +"You oughtn't to be in this grade anyhow!" declared one of them. "A girl +ought to be in the primer that turns her letters the wrong way." + +"Well, my letters spell the words right," said Nance hotly, "an' that's +more'n yours do, Pie-Face!" + +Whereupon the girl stuck out her tongue, and Nance promptly shoved her +off the end of the seat, with the result that her presence was requested +in the office at the first recess. + +"If you would learn to make your letters right, the girls would not tease +you," said the principal, kindly. "Why do you persist in turning them the +wrong way?" + +Now Nance had learned to write by copying the inscriptions from the +reverse side of the cathedral windows, and she still believed the +cathedral was right. But she liked the principal and she wanted very much +to get a good report, so she gave in. + +"All right," she said good-naturedly, "I'll do 'em your way. An' ef you +ketch me fightin' agin, I hope you'll lick hell outen me!" + +The principal, while decrying its forcible expression, applauded her good +intention, and from that time on took special interest in her. + +Nance's greatest drawback these days was Mrs. Snawdor. That worthy lady, +having her chief domestic prop removed and finding the household duties +resting too heavily upon her own shoulders, conceived an overwhelming +hatred for the school, the unknown school-teacher, and the truant +officer, for whom she had hitherto harbored a slightly romantic interest. + +"I ain't got a mite of use for the whole lay-out," she announced in a +sweeping condemnation one morning when Nance was reminding her for the +fourth time that she had to have a spelling book. "They' re forever +wantin' somethin'. It ain't no use beginnin' to humor 'em. Wasn't they +after me to put specs on Fidy last week? I know their tricks, standin' in +with eye-doctors an' dentists! An' here I been fer goin' on ten years, +tryin' to save up to have my own eye-teeth drawed an' decent ones put in. +Snawdor promised when we got married that would be his first present to +me. Well, if I ever get 'em, they _will_ be his first present." + +"Teacher says you oughtn't to leave the milk settin' uncovered like that; +it gits germans in it," said Nance. + +"I'd like to know whose milk-can this is?" demanded Mrs. Snawdor +indignantly. "You tell her when she pays fer my milk, it 'll be time +enough fer her to tell me what to do with it. You needn't be scurryin' so +to git off. I'm fixin' to go to market. You'll have to stay an' 'tend to +the children 'til I git back." + +"But I'm tryin' to git a good report," urged Nance. "I don't want +to be late." + +"I'll send a excuse by Fidy, an' say you 're sick in bed. Then you kin +stay home all day an' git the house cleaned up." + +"Naw, I won't," said Nance rebelliously, "I ain't goin' to miss ag'in." + +"You're goin' to shut up this minute, you sass-box, or I'll take you back +to that there juvenile court. Git me a piece o' paper an' a pencil." + +With great effort she wrote her note while Nance stood sullenly by, +looking over her shoulder. + +"You spelled teacher's name with a little letter," Nance muttered. + +"I done it a-purpose," said Mrs. Snawdor vindictively, "I ain't goin' to +spell her with a capital; she ain't worth it." + +Nance would undoubtedly have put up a more spirited fight for her rights, +had she not been anxious to preserve peace until the afternoon. It was +the day appointed by the court for her and Dan Lewis to make their first +report to Mrs. Purdy, whose name and address had been given them on a +card. She had washed her one gingham apron for the occasion, and had +sewed up the biggest rent in her stockings. The going forth alone with +Dan on an errand of any nature was an occasion of importance. It somehow +justified those coupled initials, enclosed in a gigantic heart, that she +had surreptitiously drawn on the fence. + +After her first disappointment in being kept at home, she set about her +task of cleaning the Snawdor flat with the ardor of a young Hercules +attacking the Augean stables. First she established the twins in the hall +with a string and a bent pin and the beguiling belief that if they fished +long enough over the banister they would catch something. Next she +anchored the screaming baby to a bedpost and reduced him to subjection by +dipping his fingers in sorghum, then giving him a feather. The absorbing +occupation of plucking the feather from one sticky hand to the other +rendered him passive for an hour. + +These preliminaries being arranged, Nance turned her attention to the +work in hand. Her method consisted in starting at the kitchen, which was +in front, and driving the debris back, through the dark, little, middle +room, until she landed it all in a formidable mass in Mrs. Snawdor's +bedroom at the rear. This plan, pursued day after day, with the general +understanding that Mrs. Snawdor was going to take a day off soon and +clean up, had resulted in a condition of indescribable chaos. As Mr. +Snawdor and the three younger children slept in the rear room at night, +and Mrs. Snawdor slept in it the better part of the day, the hour for +cleaning seldom arrived. + +To-day as Nance stood in the doorway of this stronghold of dirt and +disorder, she paused, broom in hand. The floor, as usual, was littered +with papers and strings, the beds were unmade, the wash-stand and dresser +were piled high with a miscellaneous collection, and the drawers of each +stood open, disgorging their contents. On the walls hung three enlarged +crayons of bridal couples, in which the grooms were different, but the +bride the same. On the dusty window sill were bottles and empty spools, +broken glass chimneys, and the clock that ran ten minutes slow. The +debris not only filled the room, but spilled out into the fire-escape and +down the rickety iron ladders and flowed about the garbage barrels in the +passage below. + +It was not this too familiar scene, however, that made Nance pause with +her hand on the door-knob and gaze open-mouthed into the room. It was the +sight of Mr. Snawdor sitting on the side of the bed with his back toward +her, wiping his little red-rimmed eyes on a clean pocket handkerchief, +and patting his trembling mouth with the hand that was not under the +quilt. Heretofore Nance had regarded Mr. Snawdor as just one of the many +discomforts with which the family had to put up. His whining protests +against their way of living had come to be as much a matter of course as +the creaking door or the smoking chimney. Nobody ever thought of +listening to what he was saying, and everybody pushed and ordered him +about, including Nance, who enjoyed using Mrs. Snawdor's highhanded +method with him, when that lady was not present. + +But when she saw him sitting there with his back to her, crying, she was +puzzled and disturbed. As she watched, she saw him fumble for something +under the quilt, then lift a shining pistol, and place the muzzle to his +thin, bald temple. With a cry of terror, she dashed forward and knocked +the weapon from his hand. + +"You put that down!" she cried, much as she would have commanded William +J. to leave the butcher knife alone. "Do you want to kill yerself?" + +Mr. Snawdor started violently, then collapsing beside the bed, confessed +that he did. + +"What fer?" asked Nance, terror giving way to sheer amazement. + +"I want to quit!" cried Mr. Snawdor, hysterically. "I can't stand it any +longer. I'm a plumb failure and I ain't goin' to ever be anything else. +If your maw had taken care of what I had, we wouldn't have been where we +are at. Look at the way we live! Like pigs in a pen! We're nothing but +pore white trash; that's what we are!" + +Nance stood beside him with her hand on his shoulder. Poor white trash! +That was what the Clarke boy had called her. And now Mr. Snawdor, the +nominal head of the family, was acknowledging it to be true. She looked +about her in new and quick concern. + +"I'm going to clean up in here, too," she said. "I don't keer whut mammy +says. It'll look better by night; you see if it don't." + +"It ain't only that--" said Mr. Snawdor; then he pulled himself up and +looked at her appealingly. "You won't say nuthin' about this mornin', +will you, Nance?" + +"Not if you gimme the pistol," said Nance. + +When he was gone, she picked up the shining weapon and gingerly dropped +it out on the adjoining roof. Then her knees felt suddenly wobbly, and +she sat down. What if she had been a minute later and Mr. Snawdor had +pulled the trigger? She shivered as her quick imagination pictured the +scene. If Mr. Snawdor felt like that about it, there was but one thing to +do; to get things cleaned up and try to keep them so. + +Feeling very important and responsible, she swept and straightened and +dusted, while her mind worked even faster than her nimble hands. +Standards are formed by comparisons, and so far Nance's opportunity for +instituting comparisons had been decidedly limited. + +"We ain't pore white, no such a thing!" she kept saying to herself. "Our +house ain't no worser nor nobody else's. Mis' Smelts is just the same, +an' if Levinski's is cleaner, it smells a heap worse." + +Dinner was over before Mrs. Snawdor returned. She came into the kitchen +greatly ruffled as to hair and temper from having been caught by the +hook left hanging over the banisters by William J. + +"Gimme the rocker!" she demanded. "My feet hurt so bad I'd just like to +unscrew 'em an' fling 'em in the dump heap." + +"Where you been at?" asked Uncle Jed, who was cutting himself a slice of +bread from the loaf. + +"I been down helpin' the new tenant move in on the first floor." + +"Any childern?" asked Nance and Lobelia in one breath. + +"No; just a foreign-lookin' old gentleman, puttin' on as much airs as if +he was movin' into the Walderastoria. Nobody knows his name or where he +comes from. Ike Lavinski says he plays the fiddle at the theayter. Talk +about your helpless people! I had to take a hand in gettin' his things +unloaded. He liked to never got done thankin' me." + +Mr. Snawdor, who had been sitting in dejected silence before his +untouched food, pushed his plate back and sighed deeply. + +"Now, fer heaven sake, Snawdor," began his wife in tones of exasperation, +"can't I do a kind act to a neighbor without a-rufflin' yer feathers the +wrong way?" + +"I cleaned up yer room while you was gone," said Nance, eager to divert +the conversation from Mr. Snawdor. "Uncle Jed an' me carried the trash +down an' it filled the ash barrel clean up to the top." + +"Well, I hope an' pray you didn't throw away my insurance book. I was +aimin' to clean up, myself, to-morrow. What on earth's the matter with +Rosy Velt?" + +Rosy, who had been banished to the kitchen for misbehavior, had been +conducting a series of delicate experiments, with disastrous results. She +had been warned since infancy never to put a button up her nose, but +Providence having suddenly placed one in her way, and at the same time +engaged her mother's attention elsewhere, the opportunity was too +propitious to be lost. + +Nance took advantage of her stepmother's sudden departure to cheer up +Mr. Snawdor. + +"We're gittin' things cleaned up," she said, "I can't work no more to-day +though, 'cause I got to report to the lady." + +"Ain't you goin' to slick yerself up a bit?" asked Uncle Jed, making a +futile effort to smooth her hair. + +"I have," said Nance, indignantly, "Can't you see I got on a clean +apron?" + +Uncle Jed's glance was not satisfied as it traveled from the dirty dress +below the apron to the torn stockings and shabby shoes. + +"Why don't you wear the gold locket?" suggested Mrs. Snawdor, who now +returned with Rosy in one hand and the button in the other. + +The gold locket was the one piece of jewelry in the family and when it +was suspended on a black ribbon around Nance's neck, it filled her with a +sense of elegance. So pleased was she with its effect that as she went +out that afternoon, she peeped in on the new tenant in the hope that he +would notice it. She found him leaning over a violin case, and her +interest was fired at once. + +"Can you play on the fiddle?" she demanded. + +The small, elderly man in the neat, black suit lifted his head and smiled +at her over his glasses. + +"Yes, my little friend," he said in a low, refined voice, "I will play +for you to dance sometime. You would like that? Yes?" + +Nance regarded him gravely. + +"Say, are you a Polock or a Dago?" she asked. + +He gave an amused shrug. + +"I am neither. My name is Mr. Demorest. And you are my little +neighbor, perhaps?" + +"Third floor on the right," said Nance, adding in a business-like tone, +"I'll be down to dance to-night." + +She would have liked very much to stay longer, for the old gentleman was +quite unlike any one she had ever talked to before, but the card in her +hand named the hour of two, and back of the card was Mrs. Purdy, and +back of Mrs. Purdy the juvenile court, the one thing in life so far whose +authority Nance had seen fit to acknowledge. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +BUTTERNUT LANE + + +At the corner Dan Lewis stood aside like a deposed chieftain while his +companions knelt in an excited ring, engrossed in a game sanctioned by +custom and forbidden by law. Even to Nance's admiring eye he looked +dirtier and more ragged than usual, and his scowl deepened as she +approached. + +"I ain't goin'," he said. + +"Yes, you are, too. Why not?" said Nance, inconsequently. + +"Aw, it ain't no use." + +"Ain't you been to school?" + +"Yep, but I ain't goin' to that lady's house. I ain't fit." + +"You got to go to take me," said Nance, diplomatically. "I don't know +where Butternut Lane's at." + +"You could find it, couldn't you?" + +Nance didn't think she could. In fact she developed a sudden dependence +wholly out of keeping with her usual self-reliance. + +This seemed to complicate matters for Dan. He stood irresolutely kicking +his bare heels against the curb and then reluctantly agreed to take her +as far as Mrs. Purdy's gate, provided nothing more was expected of him. + +Their way led across the city to a suburb, and they were hot and tired +before half the distance was covered. But the expedition was fraught with +interest for Nance. After the first few squares of sullen silence, Dan +seemed to forget that she was merely a girl and treated her with the +royal equality usually reserved for boys. So confidential did they become +that she ventured to put a question to him that had been puzzling her +since the events of the morning. + +"Say, Dan, when anybody kills hisself, is it murder?" + +"It's kinder murder. You wouldn't ketch me doin' it as long as I could +get something to eat." + +"You kin always git a piece of bread," said Nance. + +"You bet you can't!" said Dan with conviction. "I ain't had nothin' to +eat myself since yisterday noon." + +"Yer maw didn't come in last night?" + +"I 'spec' she went on a visit somewhere," said Dan, whose lips +trembled slightly despite the stump of a cigarette that he manfully +held between them. + +"Couldn't you git in a window?" + +"Nope; the shutters was shut. Maybe I don't wisht it was December, an' I +was fourteen!" + +"Sammy Smelts works an' he ain't no older'n me," said Nance. "You kin +git a fake certificate fer a quarter." + +Dan smiled bitterly. + +"Where'm I goin' to git the quarter? They won't let me sell things on the +street, or shoot craps, or work. Gee, I wisht I was rich as that Clarke +boy. Ike Lavinski says he buys a quarter's worth of candy at a time! He's +in Ike's room at school." + +"He wasn't there yesterday," said Nance. "Uncle Jed seen him with another +boy, goin' out the railroad track." + +"I know it. He played hookey. He wrote a excuse an' signed his maw's name +to it. Ike seen him do it. An' when the principal called up his maw this +mornin' an' ast her 'bout it, she up an' said she wrote it herself." + +Nance was not sure whether she was called upon to admire the astuteness +of Mac or his mother, so she did not commit herself. But she was keenly +interested. Ever since that day in the juvenile court she had been +haunted by the memory of a trim, boyish figure arrayed in white, and by a +pair of large brown eyes which disdainfully refused to glance in her +direction. + +"Say, Dan," she asked wistfully, "have you got a girl?" + +"Naw," said Dan disdainfully, "what do I keer about girls?" + +"I don't know. I thought maybe you had. I bet that there Clarke boy's +got two or three." + +"Let him have 'em," said Dan; then, finding the subject distasteful, he +added, "what's the matter with hookin' on behind that there wagon?" And +suiting the action to the word, they both went in hot pursuit. + +After a few jolting squares during which Nance courted death with her +flying skirts brushing the revolving wheels, the wagon turned into a side +street, and they were obliged to walk again. + +"I wonder if this ain't the place?" she said, as they came in sight of a +low, white house half smothered in beech-trees, with a flower garden at +one side, at the end of which was a vine-covered summer-house. + +"Here's where I beat it!" said Dan, but before he could make good his +intention, the stout little lady on the porch had spied them and came +hurrying down the walk, holding out both hands. + +"Well, if here aren't my probationers!" she cried in a warm, comfortable +voice which seemed to suggest that probationers were what she liked best +in the world. + +"Let me see, dear, your name is Mac?" + +"No, ma'am, it's Dan," said that youth, trying to put out the lighted +cigarette stump which he had hastily thrust into his pocket. + +"Ah! to be sure! And yours is--Mary?" + +"No, ma'am, it's Nance." + +"Why, of course!" cried the little lady, beaming at them, "I remember +perfectly." + +She was scarcely taller than they were as she walked between them, with +an arm about the shoulder of each. She wore a gray dress and a wide white +collar pinned with a round blue pin that just matched her round blue +eyes. On each side of her face was a springy white curl that bobbed up +and down as she walked. + +"Now," she said, with an expectant air, when they reached the house. +"Where shall we begin? Something to eat?" + +Her question was directed to Dan, and he flushed hotly. + +"No, ma'am," he said proudly. + +"Yes, ma'am," said Nance, almost in the same breath. + +"I vote 'Yes,' too; so the ayes have it," said Mrs. Purely gaily, leading +them through a neat hall into a neat kitchen, where they solemnly took +their seats. + +"My visitors always help me with the lemonade," said the purring little +lady, giving Nance the lemons to roll, and Dan the ice to crack. Then as +she fluttered about, she began to ask them vague and seemingly futile +questions about home and school and play. Gradually their answers grew +from monosyllables into sentences, until, by the time the lemonade was +ready to serve, Nance was completely thawed out and Dan was getting soft +around the edges. Things were on the way to positive conviviality when +Mrs. Purdy suddenly turned to Nance and asked her where she went to +Sunday school. + +Now Sunday school had no charms for Nance. On the one occasion when +curiosity had induced her to follow the stream of well-dressed children +into the side door of the cathedral, she had met with disillusion. It was +a place where little girls lifted white petticoats when they sat down and +straightened pink sashes when they got up, and put nickels in a basket. +Nance had had no lace petticoat or pink sash or nickel. She showed her +discomfort by misbehaving. + +"Didn't you ever go back?" asked Mrs. Purdy. + +"Nome. They didn't want me. I was bad, an' the teacher said Sunday school +was a place for good little girls." + +"My! my!" said Mrs. Purdy, "this will never do. And how about you, Dan? +Do you go?" + +"Sometimes I've went," said Dan. "I like it." + +While this conversation was going on Nance could not keep her eyes from +the open door. There was more sky and grass out there than she had ever +seen at one time before. The one green spot with which she was familiar +was the neat plot of lawn on each side of the concrete walk leading into +the cathedral, and that had to be viewed through a chink in the fence +and was associated with the words, "Keep Out." + +When all the lemonade was gone, and only one cookie left for politeness, +Mrs. Purdy took them into the sitting-room where a delicate-looking man +sat in a wheel-chair, carving something from a piece of wood. Nance's +quick eyes took in every detail of the bright, commonplace room; its gay, +flowered carpet and chintz curtains, its "fruit pieces" in wide, gold +frames, and its crocheted tidies presented a new ideal of elegance. + +There was a music-box on the wall in which small figures moved about to a +tinkling melody; there were charm strings of bright colored buttons, and +a spinning-wheel, and a pair of bellows, all of which Mrs. Purdy +explained at length. + +"Sister," said the man in the chair, feebly, "perhaps the children would +like to see my menagerie." + +"Why, dearie, of course they would," said Mrs. Purdy, "Shall I wheel you +over to the cabinet?" + +"I'll shove him," said Dan, making his first voluntary remark. + +"There now!" said Mrs. Purdy, "see how much stronger he is than I am! And +he didn't jolt you a bit, did he, dearie?" + +If the room itself was interesting, the cabinet was nothing short of +entrancing. It was full of carved animals in all manner of grotesque +positions. And the sick gentleman knew the name of each and kept saying +such funny things about them that Nance laughed hilariously, and Dan +forgot the prints of his muddy feet on the bright carpet, and even gave +up the effort to keep his hand over the ragged knee of his pants. + +"He knows all about live animals, too," chirped Mrs. Purdy. "You'll have +to come some day and go over to the park with us and see his squirrels. +There's one he found with a broken leg, and he mended it as good as new." + +The sun was slipping behind the trees before the children even thought of +going home. + +"Next Friday at three!" said Mrs. Purdy, cheerily waving them good-by. +"And we are going to see who has the cleanest face and the best report." + +"We sure had a good time," said Nance, as they hurried away through the +dusk. "But I'll git a lickin' all right when I git home." + +"I liked that there animal man," said Dan slowly, "an' them cookies." + +"Well, whatever made you lie to the lady 'bout bein' hungry?" + +"I never lied. She ast me if I wanted her to give me somethin' to eat. I +thought she meant like a beggar. I wasn't goin' to take it that way, but +I never minded takin' it like--like--company." + +Nance pondered the matter for a while silently; then she asked suddenly: + +"Say, Dan, if folks are borned poor white trash, they don't have to go on +bein' it, do they?" + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +AN EVICTION + + +The three chief diversions in Calvary Alley, aside from fights, were +funerals, arrests, and evictions. Funerals had the advantage of novelty, +for life departed less frequently than it arrived: arrests were in high +favor on account of their dramatic appeal, but the excitement, while +intense, was usually too brief to be satisfying; for sustained interest +the alley on the whole preferred evictions. + +The week after Nance and Dan had reported to Mrs. Purdy, rumor traveled +from house to house and from room to room that the rent man was putting +the Lewises out. The piquant element in the situation lay in the absence +of the chief actor. "Mis' Lewis" herself had disappeared, and nobody knew +where she was or when she would return. + +For many years the little cottage, sandwiched between Mr. Snawdor's "Bung +and Fawcett" shop and Slap Jack's saloon had been the scandal and, it +must be confessed the romance of the alley. It stood behind closed +shutters, enveloped in mystery, and no visitor ventured beyond its +threshold. The slender, veiled lady who flitted in and out at queer +hours, and whom rumor actually accused of sometimes arriving at the +corner in "a hack," was, despite ten years' residence, a complete +stranger to her neighbors. She was quiet and well-behaved; she wore good +clothes and shamefully neglected her child. These were the meager facts +upon which gossip built a tower of conjecture. + +As for Dan, he was as familiar an object in the alley as the sparrows in +the gutter or the stray cats about the garbage cans. Ever since he could +persuade his small legs to go the way he wanted them to, he had pursued +his own course, asking nothing of anybody, fighting for his meager +rights, and becoming an adept in evading the questions that seemed to +constitute the entire conversation of the adult world. All that he asked +of life was the chance to make a living, and this the authorities sternly +forbade until he should reach that advanced age of fourteen which seemed +to recede as he approached. Like most of the boys in the gang, he had +been in business since he was six; but it was business that changed its +nature frequently and had to be transacted under great difficulty. He had +acquired proficiency as a crap-shooter only to find that the profession +was not regarded as an honorable one; he had invested heavily in pins and +pencils and tried to peddle them out on the avenue, only to find himself +sternly taken in hand by a determined lady who talked to him about minors +and street trades. Shoe-shining had been tried; so had selling papers, +but each of these required capital, and Dan's appetite was of such a +demanding character that the acquisition of capital was well nigh +impossible. + +From that first day when the truant officer had driven him into the +educational fold, his problems had increased. It was not that he disliked +school. On the contrary he was ambitious and made heroic efforts to keep +up with the class; but it was up-hill work getting an education without +text-books. The city, to be sure, furnished these to boys whose mothers +applied for them in person, but Dan's mother never had time to come. The +cause of most of his trouble, however, was clothes; seatless trousers, +elbowless coats, brimless hats, constituted a series of daily +mortifications which were little short of torture. + +Twice, through no fault of his own, he had stood alone before the bar of +justice, with no voice lifted in his behalf save the shrill, small voice +of Nance Molloy. Twice he had been acquitted and sent back to the old +hopeless environment, and admonished to try again. How hard he had tried +and against what odds, surely only the angel detailed to patrol Calvary +Alley has kept any record. + +If any doubts assailed him concerning the mother who took little heed of +his existence, he never expressed them. Her name rarely passed his lips, +but he watched for her coming as a shipwrecked mariner watches for a +sail. When a boy ponders and worries over something for which he dares +not ask an explanation, he is apt to become sullen and preoccupied. On +the day that the long-suffering landlord served notice, Dan told no one +of his mother's absence. Behind closed doors he packed what things he +could, clumsily tying the rest of the household goods in the bedclothes. +At noon the new tenant arrived and, in order to get his own things in, +obligingly assisted in moving Dan's out. It was then and then only that +the news had gone abroad. + +For three hours now the worldly possessions of the dubious Mrs. Lewis had +lain exposed on the pavement, and for three hours Dan had sat beside them +keeping guard. From every tenement window inquisitive eyes watched each +stage of the proceeding, and voluble tongues discussed every phase of the +situation. Every one who passed, from Mr. Lavinski, with a pile of pants +on his head, to little Rosy Snawdor, stopped to take a look at him and to +ask questions. + +Dan had reached a point of sullen silence. Sitting on a pile of +bedclothes, with a gilt-framed mirror under one arm and a flowered water +pitcher under the other, he scowled defiance at each newcomer. Against +the jeers of the boys he could register vows of future vengeance and +console himself with the promise of bloody retribution; but against the +endless queries and insinuations of his adult neighbors, he was utterly +defenseless. + +"Looks like she had ever'thing fer the parlor, an' nothin' fer the +kitchen," observed Mrs. Snawdor from her third-story window to Mrs. +Smelts at her window two floors below. + +"I counted five pairs of curlin' irons with my own eyes," said +Mrs. Smelts, "an' as fer bottles! If they took out one, they took +out a hunderd." + +"You don't reckon that there little alcohol stove was all she had to cook +on, do you?" called up Mrs. Gorman from the pavement below. + +"Maybe that's what she het her curlin' irons on!" was Mrs. Snawdor's +suggestion, a remark which provoked more mirth than it deserved. + +Dan gazed straight ahead with no sign that he heard. However strong the +temptation was to dart away into some friendly hiding place, he was +evidently not going to yield to it. The family possessions were in +jeopardy, and he was not one to shirk responsibilities. + +Advice was as current as criticism. Mrs. Gorman, being a chronic +recipient of civic favors, advocated an appeal to the charity +organization; Mrs. Snawdor, ever at war with foreign interference, +strongly opposed the suggestion, while Mrs. Smelts with a covetous eye on +the gilt mirror under Dan's arm, urged a sidewalk sale. As for the boy +himself, not a woman in the alley but was ready to take him in and share +whatever the family larder provided. + +But to all suggestions Dan doggedly shook his head. He was "thinkin' it +out," he said, and all he wanted was to be let alone. + +"Well, you can't set there all night," said Mrs. Snawdor, "if yer maw +don't turn up by five o'clock, us neighbors is goin' to take a hand." + +All afternoon Dan sat watching the corner round which his mother might +still appear. Not a figure had turned into the alley, that he had not +seen it, not a clanging car had stopped in the street beyond, that his +quick ear had not noted. + +About the time the small hand of the cathedral clock got around to four, +Nance Molloy came skipping home from school. She had been kept in for a +too spirited resentment of an older girl's casual observation that both +of her shoes were for the same foot. To her, as to Dan, these trying +conventions in the matter of foot-gear were intolerable. No combination +seemed to meet the fastidious demands of that exacting sixth grade. + +"Hello, Dan!" she said, coming to a halt at sight of the obstructed +pavement. "What's all this for?" + +"Put out," said Dan laconically. + +"Didn't yer maw never come back?" + +"Nope." + +Nance climbed up beside him on the bedclothes and took her seat. + +"What you goin' to do?" she asked in a business-like tone. + +"Dunno." Dan did not turn his head to look at her, but he felt a dumb +comfort in her presence. It was as if her position there beside him on +the pillory made his humiliation less acute. He shifted the water +pitcher, and jerked his thumb over his shoulder: + +"They all want to divide the things an' take keer of 'em 'til she comes," +he said, "but I ain't goin' to let 'em." + +"I wouldn't neither," agreed Nance. "Old man Smelts an' Mr. Gorman'd have +what they took in hock before mornin'. There's a coal shed over to Slap +Jack's ain't full. Why can't you put yer things in there for to-night?" + +"He wouldn't let me. He's a mean old Dutchman." + +"He ain't, neither! He's the nicest man in the alley, next to Uncle Jed +an' that there old man with the fiddle. Mr. Jack an' me's friends. He +gives me pretzels all the time. I'll go ast him." + +A faint hope stirred in Dan as she slid down from her perch and darted +into the saloon next door. She had wasted no time in conjecture or +sympathy; she had plunged at once into action. When she returned, the fat +saloonkeeper lumbered in her wake: + +"Dose tings is too many, already," he protested. "I got no place to put +my coal once de cold vedder comes." + +"It ain't come yet," said Nance. "Besides his mother'll be here +to-morrow, I 'spect." + +"Mebbe she vill, und mebbe she von't," said the saloonkeeper astutely. "I +don't want dat I should mess up myself mid dis here piziness." + +"The things ain't goin' to hurt your old coal shed none!" began Nance, +firing up; then with a sudden change of tactics, she slipped her hand +into Mr. Jack's fat, red one, and lifted a pair of coaxing blue eyes. +"Say, go on an' let him, Mr. Jack! I told him you would. I said you was +one of the nicest men in the alley. You ain't goin' to make me out a +liar, are you?" + +"Vell, I leave him put 'em in for to-night," said the saloonkeeper +grudgingly, his Teuton caution overcome by Celtic wile. + +The conclave of women assembled in the hall of Number One, to carry out +Mrs. Snawdor's threat of "taking a hand," were surprised a few minutes +later, to see the objects under discussion being passed over the fence by +Mr. Jack and Dan under the able generalship of the one feminine member of +the alley whose counsel had been heeded. + +When the last article had been transferred to the shed, and a veteran +padlock had been induced to return to active service, the windows of the +tenement were beginning to glow dully, and the smell of cabbage and +onions spoke loudly of supper. + +Nance, notwithstanding the fourth peremptory summons from aloft, to walk +herself straight home that very minute, still lingered with Dan. + +"Come on home with me," she said. "You can sleep in Uncle Jed's bed 'til +five o'clock." + +"I kin take keer of myself all right," he said. "It was the things that +pestered me." + +"But where you goin' to git yer supper?" + +"I got money," he answered, making sure that his nickel was still in his +pocket. "Besides, my mother might come while I was there." + +"Well, don't you fergit that to-morrow we go to Mis' Purdy's." + +Dan looked at her with heavy eyes. + +"Oh! I ain't got time to fool around with that business. I don't know +where I'll be at by to-morrow." + +"You'll be right here," said Nance firmly, "and I ain't goin' to budge a +step without you if I have to wait all afternoon." + +"Well, I ain't comin'," said Dan. + +"I'm goin' to wait," said Nance, "an' if I git took up fer not reportin', +it'll be your fault." + +Dan slouched up to the corner and sat on the curbstone where he could +watch the street cars. As they stopped at the crossing, he leaned forward +eagerly and scanned the passengers who descended. In and out of the +swinging door of the saloon behind him passed men, singly and in groups. +There were children, too, with buckets, but they had to go around to the +side. He wanted to go in himself and buy a sandwich, but he didn't dare. +The very car he was waiting for might come in his absence. + +At nine o'clock he was still waiting when two men came out and paused +near him to light their cigars. They were talking about Skeeter Newson, +the notorious pickpocket, who two days before had broken jail and had +not yet been found. Skeeter's exploits were a favorite topic of the +Calvary Micks, and Dan, despite the low state of his mind, pricked his +ears to listen. + +"They traced him as far as Chicago," said one of the men, "but there he +give 'em the slip." + +"Think of the nerve of him taking that Lewis woman with him," said the +other voice. "By the way, I hear she lives around here somewhere." + +"A bad lot," said the first voice as they moved away. + +Dan sat rigid with his back to the telegraph pole, his feet in the +gutter, his mouth fallen open, staring dully ahead of him. Then suddenly +he reached blindly for a rock, and staggered to his feet, but the figures +had disappeared in the darkness. He sat down again, while his breath came +in short, hard gasps. It was a lie! His mother was not bad! He knew she +was good. He wanted to shriek it to the world. But even as he +passionately defended her to himself, fears assailed him. + +Why had they always lived so differently from other people? Why was he +never allowed to ask questions or to answer them or to know where his +mother went or how they got their living? What were the parcels she +always kept locked up in the trunk in the closet? Events, little heeded +at the time of occurrence, began to fall into place, making a hideous and +convincing pattern. Dim memories of men stole out of the past and threw +distorted shadows on his troubled brain. There was Bob who had once given +him a quarter, and Uncle Dick who always came after he was in bed, and +Newt--his neck stiffened suddenly. Newt, whom his mother used always to +be talking about, and whose name he had not heard now for so long that he +had almost forgotten it. Skeeter Newson--Newt--"The Lewis Woman." He saw +it all in a blinding flash, and in that awful moment of realization he +passed out of his childhood and entered man's estate. + +Choking back his sobs, he fled from the scene of his disgrace. In one +alley and out another he stumbled, looking for a hole in which he could +crawl and pour out his pent-up grief. But privacy is a luxury reserved +for the rich, and Dan and his kind cannot even claim a place in which to +break their hearts. + +It was not until he reached the river bank and discovered an overturned +hogshead that he found a refuge. Crawling in, he buried his face in his +arms and wept, not with the tempestuous abandonment of a lonely child, +but with the dry, soul-racking sobs of a disillusioned man. His mother +had been the one beautiful thing in his life, and he had worshiped her as +some being from another world. Other boys' mothers had coarse, red hands +and loud voices; his had soft, white hands and a sweet, gentle voice that +never scolded. + +Sometimes when she stayed at home, they had no money, and then she would +lie on the bed and cry, and he would try to comfort her. Those were the +times when he would stay away from school and go forth to sell things at +the pawn shop. The happiest nights he could remember were the ones when +he had come home with money in his pocket, to a lighted lamp in the +window, and a fire on the hearth and his mother's smile of welcome. But +those times were few and far between; he was much more used to darkened +windows, a cold hearth, and an almost empty larder. In explanation of +these things he had accepted unconditionally his mother's statement that +she was a lady. + +As he fought his battle alone there in the dark, all sorts of wild plans +came to him. Across the dark river the shore lights gleamed, and down +below at the wharf, a steamboat was making ready to depart. He had heard +of boys who slipped aboard ships and beat their way to distant cities. A +fierce desire seized him to get away, anywhere, just so he would not have +to face the shame and disgrace that had come upon him. There was no one +to care now where he went or what became of him. He would run away and be +a tramp where nobody could ask questions. + +With quick decision he started up to put his plan into action when a +disturbing thought crossed his mind. Had Nance Molloy meant it when she +said she wouldn't report to the probation officer if he didn't go with +her? Would she stand there in the alley and wait for him all afternoon, +just as he had waited so often for some one who did not come? His +reflections were disturbed by a hooting noise up the bank, followed by a +shower of rocks. The next instant a mongrel pup scurried down the levee +and dropped shivering at his feet. + +The yells of the pursuers died away as Dan gathered the whimpering beast +into his arms and examined its injuries. + +"Hold still, old fellow. I ain't goin' to hurt you," he whispered, +tenderly wiping the blood from one dripping paw. "I won't let 'em git +you. I'll take care of you." + +The dog lifted a pair of agonized eyes to Dan's face and licked +his hands. + +"You lemme tie it up with a piece of my sleeve, an' I'll give you +somethin' to eat," went on Dan. "Me an' you'll buy a sandich an' I'll eat +the bread an' you can have the meat. Me an you'll be partners." + +Misery had found company, and already life seemed a little less desolate. +But the new-comer continued to yelp with pain, and Dan examined the limp +leg dubiously. + +"I b'lieve it's broke," he thought. Then he had an inspiration. + +"I know what I'll do," he said aloud, "I'll carry you out to the animal +man when me an' Nance go to report to-morrow." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +AMBITION STIRS + + +After Nance Molloy's first visit to Butternut Lane, life became a series +of thrilling discoveries. Hitherto she had been treated collectively. At +home she was "one of the Snawdor kids"; to the juvenile world beyond the +corner she was "a Calvary Alley mick"; at school she was "a pupil of the +sixth grade." It remained for little Mrs. Purdy to reveal the fact to her +that she was an individual person. + +Mrs. Purdy had the most beautiful illusions about everything. She seemed +to see her fellow-men not as they were, but as God intended them to be. +She discovered so many latent virtues and attractions in her new +probationers that they scarcely knew themselves. + +When, for instance, she made the startling observation that Nance had +wonderful hair, and that, if she washed it with an egg and brushed it +every day, it would shine like gold, Nance was interested, but +incredulous. Until now hair had meant a useless mass of tangles that at +long intervals was subjected to an agonizing process of rebraiding. The +main thing about hair was that it must never on any account be left +hanging down one's back. Feuds had been started and battles lost by +swinging braids. The idea of washing it was an entirely new one to her; +but the vision of golden locks spurred her on to try the experiment. She +carefully followed directions, but the egg had been borrowed from Mrs. +Smelts who had borrowed it some days before from Mrs. Lavinski, and the +result was not what Mrs. Purdy predicted. + +"If ever I ketch you up to sech fool tricks again," scolded Mrs. Snawdor, +who had been called to the rescue, "I'll skin yer hide off! You've no +need to take yer hair down except when I tell you. You kin smooth it up +jus' like you always done." + +Having thus failed in her efforts at personal adornment, Nance turned her +attention to beautifying her surroundings. The many new features observed +in the homely, commonplace house in Butternut Lane stirred her ambition. +Her own room, to be sure, possessed architectural defects that would have +discouraged most interior decorators. It was small and dark, with only +one narrow opening into an air-shaft. Where the plaster had fallen off, +bare laths were exposed, and in rainy weather a tin tub occupied the +center of the floor to catch the drippings from a hole in the roof. For +the rest, a slat bed, an iron wash-stand, and a three-legged chair +comprised the furniture. + +But Nance was not in the least daunted by the prospect. With +considerable ingenuity she evolved a dresser from a soap box and the +colored supplements of the Sunday papers, which she gathered into a +valance, in imitation of Mrs. Purdy's bright chintz. In the air-shaft +window she started three potato vines in bottles, but not satisfied with +the feeble results, she pinned red paper roses to the sickly white stems. +The nearest substitutes she could find for pictures were labels off +tomato cans, and these she tacked up with satisfaction, remembering Mrs. +Purdy's admired fruit pictures. + +"'Tain't half so dark in here as 'tis down in Smeltses," she bragged to +Fidy, who viewed her efforts with pessimism. "Once last summer the sun +come in here fer purty near a week. It shined down the shaft. You ast +Lobelia if it didn't." + +Nance was nailing a pin into the wall with the heel of her slipper, and +the loose plaster was dropping behind the bed. + +"Mis' Purdy says if I don't say no cuss words, an' wash meself all +over on Wednesdays and Sat'days, she's goin' to help me make myself a +new dress!" + +"Why don't she give you one done made?" asked Fidy. + +"She ain't no charity lady!" said Nance indignantly. "Me an' her's +friends. She said we was." + +"What's she goin' to give Dan?" asked Fidy, to whom personages from the +upper world were interesting only when they bore gifts in their hands. + +"She ain't givin' him nothin', Silly! She's lettin' him help her. He gits +a quarter a hour, an' his dinner fer wheelin' Mr. Walter in the park." + +"They say Mr. Jack's give him a room over the saloon 'til his maw +comes back." + +"I reckon I know it. I made him! You jus' wait 'til December when +Dan'll be fourteen. Once he gits to work he won't have to take nothin' +offen nobody!" + +School as well as home took on a new interest under Mrs. Purdy's +influence. Shoes and textbooks appeared almost miraculously, and reports +assumed a new and exciting significance. Under this new arrangement Dan +blossomed into a model of righteousness, but Nance's lapses from grace +were still frequent. The occasional glimpses she was getting of a code of +manners and morals so different from those employed by her stepmother, +were not of themselves sufficient to reclaim her. On the whole she found +being good rather stupid and only consented to conform to rules when she +saw for herself the benefit to be gained. + +For instance, when she achieved a burning desire to be on the honor roll +and failed on account of being kept at home, she took the matter into her +own small hands and reported herself to the once despised truant +officer. The result was a stormy interview between him and her stepmother +which removed all further cause of jealousy on the part of Mr. Snawdor, +and gave Nance a record for perfect attendance. + +Having attained this distinction, she was fired to further effort. She +could soon glibly say the multiplication tables backward, repeat all the +verses in her school reader, and give the names and length of the most +important rivers in the world. On two occasions she even stepped into +prominence. The first was when she electrified a visiting trustee by her +intimate knowledge of the archipelagos of the eastern hemisphere. The +fact that she had not the remotest idea of the nature of an archipelago +was mercifully not divulged. The second had been less successful. It was +during a visit of Bishop Bland's to the school. He was making a personal +investigation concerning a report, then current, that public school +children were underfed. Bishop Bland was not fond of children, but he was +sensitive to any slight put upon the stomach, and he wished very much to +be able to refute the disturbing rumor. + +"Now I cannot believe," he said to the sixth grade, clasping his plump +hands over the visible result of many good dinners, "that any one of you +nice boys and girls came here this morning hungry. I want any boy in the +room who is not properly nourished at home to stand up." + +Nobody rose, and the bishop cast an affirmative smile on the principal. + +"As I thought," he continued complacently. "Now I'm going to ask any +little girl in this room to stand up and tell us just exactly what she +had for breakfast. I shall not be in the least surprised if it was just +about what I had myself." + +There was a silence, and it began to look as if nobody was going to call +the bishop's bluff, when Nance jumped up from a rear seat and said at the +top of her voice: + +"A pretzel and a dill pickle!" + +The new-found enthusiasm for school might have been of longer duration +had it not been for a counter-attraction at home. From that first night +when old "Mr. Demry," as he had come to be called, had played for her to +dance, Nance had camped on his door-step. Whenever the scrape of his +fiddle was heard from below, she dropped whatever she held, whether it +was a hot iron or the baby, and never stopped until she reached the +ground floor. And by and by other children found their way to him, not +only the children of the tenement, but of the whole neighborhood as well. +It was soon noised abroad that he knew how to coax the fairies out of the +woods and actually into the shadows of Calvary Alley where they had never +been heard of before. With one or two children on his knees and a circle +on the floor around him, he would weave a world of dream and rainbows, +and people it with all the dear invisible deities of childhood. And while +he talked, his thin cheeks would flush, and his dim eyes shine with the +same round wonder as his listeners. + +But some nights when the children came, they found him too sleepy to tell +stories or play on the fiddle. At such times he always emptied his +pockets of small coins and sent the youngsters scampering away to find +the pop-corn man. Then he would stand unsteadily at the door and watch +them go, with a wistful, disappointed look on his tired old face. + +Nance overheard her elders whispering that "he took something," and she +greatly feared that he would meet a fate similar to that of Joe Smelts. +In Joe's case it was an overcoat, and he had been forced to accept the +hospitality of the State for thirty days. Nance's mind was greatly +relieved to find that it was only powders that Mr. Demry took--powders +that made him walk queer and talk queer and forget sometimes where he +lived. Then it was that the children accepted him as their special +charge. They would go to his rescue wherever they found him and guide his +wandering footsteps into the haven of Calvary Alley. + +"He's a has-benn," Mrs. Snawdor declared to Uncle Jed. "You an' me are +never-wases, but that old gent has seen better days. They tell me that +settin' down in the orchestry, he looks fine. That's the reason his +coat's always so much better'n his shoes an' pants; he dresses up the +part of him that shows. You can tell by the way he acts an' talks that +he's different from us." + +Perhaps that was the reason, that while Nance loved Uncle Jed quite as +much, she found Mr. Demry far more interesting. Everything about him was +different, from his ideas concerning the proper behavior of boys and +girls, to his few neatly distributed belongings. His two possessions that +most excited her curiosity and admiration, were the violin and its +handsome old rosewood case, which you were not allowed to touch, and a +miniature in a frame of gold, of a beautiful pink and white girl in a +pink and white dress, with a fair curl falling over her bare shoulder. +Nance would stand before the latter in adoring silence; then she would +invariably say: + +"Go on an' tell me about her, Mr. Demry!" + +And standing behind her, with his fine sensitive hands on her shoulders, +Mr. Demry would tell wonderful stories of the little girl who had once +been his. And as he talked, the delicate profile in the picture became an +enchanting reality to Nance, stirring her imagination and furnishing an +object for her secret dreams. + +Hitherto Birdie Smelts had been her chief admiration. Birdie was fourteen +and wore French heels and a pompadour and had beaux. She had worked in +the ten-cent store until her misplaced generosity with the glass beads +on her counter resulted in her being sent to a reformatory. But Birdie's +bold attractions suffered in comparison with the elusive charm of the +pink and white goddess with the golden curl. + +This change marked the dawn of romance in Nance's soul. Up to this time +she had demanded of Mr. Demry the most "scareful" stories he knew, but +from now on Blue Beard and Jack, the Giant-Killer had to make way for +Cinderella and the Sleeping Beauty. She went about with her head full of +dreams, and eyes that looked into an invisible world. It was not that the +juvenile politics of the alley were less interesting, or the street +fights or adventures of the gang less thrilling. It was simply that life +had become absorbingly full of other things. + +As the months passed Mrs. Snawdor spent less and less time at home. She +seemed to think that when she gave her nights on her knees for her +family, she was entitled to use the remaining waking hours for +recreation. This took the form of untiring attention to other people's +business. She canvassed the alley for delinquent husbands to admonish, +for weddings to arrange, for funerals to supervise--the last being a +specialty, owing to experience under the late Mr. Yager. + +Upon one of the occasions when she was superintending the entrance of a +neighboring baby into the world, her own made a hurried exit. A banana +and a stick of licorice proved too stimulating a diet for him, and he +closed his eyes permanently on a world that had offered few attractions. + +It was Nance who, having mothered him from his birth, worked with him +through the long night of agony; and who, when the end came, cut the +faded cotton flowers from her hat to put in the tiny claw-like hand that +had never touched a real blossom; and it was Nance's heart that broke +when they took him away. + +It is doubtful whether any abstract moral appeal could have awakened her +as did the going out of that little futile life. It stirred her deepest +sympathies and affections, and connected her for the first time with the +forces that make for moral and social progress. + +"He wouldn't a-went if we'd treated him right!" she complained +bitterly to Mr. Snawdor a week later. "He never had no sunshine, nor +fresh air, nor nothin'. You can't expect a baby to live where a +sweet-potato vine can't!" + +"He's better off than me," said Mr. Snawdor, "what with the funeral, an' +the coal out, an' the rent due, I'm at the end of my rope. I told her it +was comin'. But she would have a white coffin an' six hacks. They'll have +to set us out in the street fer all I can see!" + +Nance looked at him apprehensively. + +"Well, we better be doin' something'," she said. "Can't Uncle Jed help +us?" + +"I ain't goin' to let him. He's paid my rent fer the last time." + +This unexpected flare of independence in Mr. Snawdor was disturbing. The +Snawdor family without Uncle Jed was like a row of stitches from which +the knitting needle has been withdrawn. + +"If I was two years older, I could go to work," said Nance, thinking of +Dan, who was now on the pay-roll of Clarke's Bottle Factory. + +"It ain't right to make you stop school," said Mr. Snawdor. "It ain't +bein' fair to you." + +"I'd do it all right," said Nance, fired by his magnanimity, "only +they're on to me now I've reported myself. Ain't you makin' any money at +the shop?" + +Mr. Snawdor shook his head. + +"I might if I was willin' to buy junk. But you know where them boys gets +their stuff." + +Nance nodded wisely. + +"The gang bust into a empty house last night an' cut out all the lead +pipes. I seen 'em comin' home with it." + +Mr. Snawdor rose and went to the window. + +"There ain't no chance fer a honest man," he said miserably. "I'm sick o' +livin', that's whut I am. I am ready to quit." + +When Mrs. Snawdor arrived, she swept all domestic problems +impatiently aside. + +"Fer goodness' sake don't come tellin' me no more hard-luck tales. Ain't +I got troubles enough of my own? Nance, soon 's you git through, go git +me a bucket of beer, an' if you see any of the Gormans, say I'll stop in +this evenin' on my way to work." + +"I ain't goin' fer the beer no more," announced Nance. + +"An' will ye tell me why?" asked Mrs. Snawdor. + +"'Cause I ain't," said Nance, knowing the futility of argument. + +Mrs. Snawdor lifted her hand to strike, but changed her mind. She was +beginning to have a certain puzzled respect for her stepdaughter's +decision of character. + +After the children had been put to bed and Nance had cried over the +smallest nightgown, no longer needed, she slipped down to the second +floor and, pausing before the door behind which the sewing-machines were +always whirring, gave a peculiar whistle. It was a whistle possible only +to a person who boasted the absence of a front tooth, and it brought Ike +Lavinski promptly to the door. + +Ikey was a friend whom she regarded with mingled contempt and +admiration--contempt because he was weak and undersized, admiration +because he was the only person of her acquaintance who had ever had his +name in the newspaper. On two occasions he had been among the honor +students at the high school, and his family and neighbors regarded him as +an intellectual prodigy. + +"Say, Ikey," said Nance, "if you was me, an' had to make some money, an' +didn't want to chuck school, what would you do?" + +Ikey considered the matter. Money and education were the most important +things in the world to him, and were not to be discussed lightly. + +"If you were bigger," he said, sweeping her with a critical eye, "you +might try sewing pants." + +"Could I do it at night? How much would it pay me? Would yer pa take me +on?" Nance demanded all in a breath. + +"He would if he thought they wouldn't get on to it." + +"I'd keep it dark," Nance urged. "I could slip down every night after I +git done my work, an' put in a couple of hours, easy. I'm a awful big +child fer my age--feel my muscle! Go on an' make him take me on, Ikey, +will you?" + +And Ikey condescendingly agreed to use his influence. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +BUTTONS + + +The Lavinskis' flat on the second floor had always possessed a mysterious +fascination for Nance. In and out of the other flats she passed at will, +but she had never seen beyond the half-open door of the Lavinskis'. All +day and far into the night, the sewing-machines ran at high pressure, and +Mr. Lavinski shuffled in and out carrying huge piles of pants on his +head. The other tenants stopped on the stairs to exchange civilities or +incivilities with equal warmth; they hung out of windows or dawdled +sociably in doorways. But summer and winter alike the Lavinskis herded +behind closed doors and ran their everlasting sewing-machines. + +Mrs. Snawdor gave her ready consent to Nance trying her hand as a "home +finisher." + +"We got to git money from somewheres," she said, "an' I always did want +to know how them Polocks live. But don't you let on to your Uncle Jed +what you're doing." + +"I ain't goin' to let on to nobody," said Nance, thrilled with the +secrecy of the affair. + +The stifling room into which Ikey introduced her that night was supposed +to be the Lavinskis' kitchen, but it was evident that the poor room had +long ago abandoned all notions of domesticity. The tea-kettle had been +crowded off the stove by the pressing irons; a wash-tub full of neglected +clothes, squeezed itself into a distant corner, and the cooking utensils +had had to go climbing up the walls on hooks and nails to make way on the +shelves for sewing materials. + +On one corner of the table, between two towering piles of pants, were the +remains of the last meal, black bread, potatoes, and pickled herring. +Under two swinging kerosene lamps, six women with sleeves rolled up and +necks bared, bent over whirring machines, while Mr. Lavinski knelt on the +floor tying the finished garments into huge bundles. + +"Here's Nance Molloy, Pa" said Ikey, raising his voice above the noise of +the machines and tugging at his father's sleeve. + +Mr. Lavinski pushed his derby hat further back on his perspiring brow, +and looked up. He had a dark, sharp face, and alert black eyes, exactly +like Ikey's, and a black beard with two locks of black hair trained +down in front of his ears to meet it. Without pausing in his work he +sized Nance up. + +"I von't take childern anny more. I tried it many times already. De +inspector git me into troubles. It don't pay." + +"But I'll dodge the inspectors," urged Nance. + +"You know how to sew, eh?" + +"No; but you kin learn me. Please, Mr. Lavinski, Ikey said you would." + +Mr. Lavinski bestowed a doting glance on his son. + +"My Ikey said so, did he? He thinks he own me, that boy. I send him to +high school. I send him to Hebrew class at the synagogue at night. He +vill be big rich some day, that boy; he's got a brain on him." + +"Cut it out, Pa," said Ikey, "Nance is a smart kid; you won't lose +anything on her." + +The result was that Nance was accorded the privilege of occupying a stool +in the corner behind the hot stove and sewing buttons on knee pantaloons, +from eight until ten P.M. At first the novelty of working against time, +with a room full of grown people, and of seeing the great stacks of +unfinished garments change into great stacks of finished ones, was +stimulation in itself. She was proud of her cushion full of strong +needles and her spool of coarse thread. She was pleased with the nods of +approval gentle Mrs. Lavinski gave her work in passing, and of the slight +interest with which she was regarded by the other workers. + +But as the hours wore on, and the air became hotter and closer, and no +enlivening conversation came to relieve the strain, her interest began to +wane. By nine o'clock her hands were sore and stained, and her back +ached. By a quarter past, the buttons were slipping through her fingers, +and she could not see to thread her needle. + +"You vill do better to-morrow night," said Mrs. Lavinski kindly, in her +wheezing voice. "I tell Ikey you do verra good." + +Mrs. Lavinski looked shriveled and old. She wore a glossy black wig and +long ear-rings, and when she was not coughing, she smiled pleasantly over +her work. Once Mr. Lavinski stopped pressing long enough to put a cushion +at her back. + +"My Leah is a saint," he said. "If effra'boddy was so good as her, the +Messiah would come." + +Nance dreamed of buttons that night, and by the next evening her ambition +to become a wage-earner had died completely. + +But a family conclave at the supper table revealed such a crisis in the +family finances that she decided to keep on at the Lavinskis' for another +week. Uncle Jed was laid up with the rheumatism, and Mr. Snawdor's entire +stock in trade had been put in a wheelbarrow and dumped into the street, +and a strange sign already replaced his old one of "Bungs and Fawcetts." + +Things seemed in such a bad way that Nance had about decided to lay the +matter before Mrs. Purdy, when Dan brought the disconcerting news that +Mrs. Purdy had taken her brother south for the rest of the winter, and +that there would be no more visits to the little house in Butternut Lane. + +So Nance, not knowing anything better to do, continued to sit night +after night on her stool behind the hot stove, sewing on buttons. +Thirty-six buttons meant four cents, four cents meant a loaf of bread--a +stale loaf, that is. + +"Your little fingers vill git ofer bein' sore," Mrs. Lavinski assured +her. "I gif you alum water to put on 'em. Dat makes 'em hard." + +They not only became hard; they became quick and accurate, and Nance got +used to the heat and the smell, and she almost got used to the backache. +It was sitting still and being silent that hurt her more than anything +else. Mr. Lavinski did not encourage conversation,--it distracted the +workers,--and Nance's exuberance, which at first found vent in all sorts +of jokes and capers, soon died for lack of encouragement. She learned, +instead, to use all her energy on buttons and, being denied verbal +expression, she revolved many things in her small mind. The result of her +thinking was summed up in her speech to her stepmother at the end of the +first week. + +"Gee! I'm sick of doin' the same thing! I ain't learnin' nothin'. If +anybody was smart, they could make a machine to put on two times as many +buttons as me in half the time. I want to begin something at the +beginning and make it clean through. I'm sick an' tired of buttons. I'm +goin' to quit!" + +But Mrs. Snawdor had come to a belated realization of the depleted state +of the family treasury and she urged Nance to keep on for the present. + +"We better cut all the corners we kin," she said, "till Snawdor gits over +this fit of the dumps. Ain't a reason in the world he don't go into the +junk business. I ain't astin' him to drive aroun' an' yell 'Old iron!' I +know that's tryin' on a bashful man. All I ast him is to set still an' +let it come to him. Thank the Lord, I _have_ known husbands that wasn't +chicken-hearted!" + +So Nance kept on reluctantly, even after Mr. Snawdor got a small job +collecting. Sometimes she went to sleep over her task and had to be +shaken awake, but that was before she began to drink black coffee with +the other workers at nine o'clock. + +One thing puzzled her. When Ikey came from night school, he was never +asked to help in the work, no matter how much his help was needed. He was +always given the seat by the table nearest the lamp, and his father +himself cleared a place for his books. + +"Ikey gits the education," Mr. Lavinski would say, with a proud smile. +"The Rabbi says he is the smartest boy in the class. He takes prizes over +big boys. Ve vork fer him now, an' some day he make big money an' take +care of us!" + +Education as seen through Mr. Lavinski's eyes took on a new aspect for +Nance. It seemed that you did not get rich by going to work at fourteen, +but by staying at school and in some miraculous way skipping the factory +altogether. "I vork with my hands," said Mr. Lavinski; "my Ikey, he vorks +with his head." + +Nance fell into the way of bringing her school books downstairs at night +and getting Ike to help her with her lessons. She would prop the book in +front of her and, without lessening the speed of her flying fingers, ply +him with the questions that had puzzled her during the day. + +"I wisht I was smart as you!" she said one night. + +"I reckon you do!" said Ike. "I work for it." + +"You couldn't work no more 'n whut I do!" Nance said indignantly. + +"There's a difference between working and being worked," said Ike, +wisely. "If I were you, I'd look out for number one." + +"But who would do the cookin' an' lookin' after the kids, an' all?" + +"They are nothing to you," said Ike; "none of the bunch is kin to you. +Catch me workin' for them like you do!" + +Nance was puzzled, but not convinced. Wiser heads than hers have +struggled with a similar problem in vain. She kept steadily on, and it +was only when the squeak of Mr. Demry's fiddle came up from below that +her fingers fumbled and the buttons went rolling on the floor. Six +nights in the week, when Mr. Demry was in condition, he played at the +theater, and on Sunday nights he stayed at home and received his young +friends. On these occasions Nance became so restless that she could +scarcely keep her prancing feet on the floor. She would hook them +resolutely around the legs of the stool and even sit on them one at a +time, but despite all her efforts, they would respond to the rhythmic +notes below. + +"Them tunes just make me dance settin' down," she declared, trying to +suit the action to the words. + +Sometimes on a rainy afternoon when nobody was being born, or getting +married, or dying, Mrs. Snawdor stayed at home. At such times Nance +seized the opportunity to shift her domestic burden. + +There was a cheap theater, called "The Star," around the corner, where a +noisy crowd of boys and girls could always be found in the gallery. It +was a place where you ate peanuts and dropped the shells on the heads of +people below, where you scrapped for your seat and joined in the chorus +and shrieked over the antics of an Irishman, a darkey, or a Jew. But it +was a luxury seldom indulged in, for it cost the frightful sum of ten +cents, not including the peanuts. + +For the most part Nance's leisure half-hours were spent with Mr. Demry, +discussing a most exciting project. He was contemplating the unheard-of +festivity of a Christmas party, and the whole alley was buzzing with it. +Even the big boys in Dan's gang were going to take part. There were to +be pirates and fairies and ogres, and Nance was to be the princess and +do a fancy dance in a petticoat trimmed with silver paper, and wear a +tinsel crown. + +Scrubbing the floor, figuring on the blackboard, washing dishes, or +sewing on buttons, she was aware of that tinsel crown. For one magic +night it was going to transform her into a veritable princess, and who +knew but that a prince in doublet and hose and sweeping plume might +arrive to claim her? But when Nance's imagination was called upon to +visualize the prince, a hateful image came to her of a tall, slender boy, +clad in white, with a contemptuous look in his handsome brown eyes. + +"I don't know what ails Nance these days," Mrs. Snawdor complained to +Uncle Jed. "She sasses back if you look at her, an' fergits everything, +an' Snawdor says she mutters an' jabbers something awful in her sleep." + +"Seems to me she works too hard," said Uncle Jed, still ignorant of her +extra two hours in the sweat-shop. "A growin' girl oughtn't to be doin' +heavy washin' an' carryin' water an' coal up two flights." + +"Why, Nance is strong as a ox," Mrs. Snawdor insisted, "an' as fer +eatin'! Why it looks like she never can git filled up." + +"Well, what ails her then?" persisted Uncle Jed. + +"I bet I know!" said Mrs. Snawdor darkly. "It's that there vaccination. +Las' time I hid the other childern from the inspector she had to come out +an' argue with him fer herself. She got paid up proper fer givin' in to +him. Her arm was a plumb sight." + +"Do you suppose it's the poison still workin' on her?" Uncle Jed asked, +watching Nance in the next room as she lifted a boiler filled with the +washing water from the stove. + +"Why, of course, it is! Talk to me about yer State rules an' +regerlations! It does look like us poor people has got troubles enough +already, without rich folks layin' awake nights studyin' up what they can +do to us next." + + + + +CHAPTER X + +THE PRINCESS COMES TO GRIEF + + +And bring her rose-winged fancies, +From shadowy shoals of dream +To clothe her in the wistful hour +When girlhood steals from bud to flower; +Bring her the tunes of elfin dances, +Bring her the faery Gleam.--BURKE. + +Christmas fell on a Saturday and a payday, and this, together with Mr. +Demry's party, accounts for the fact that the holiday spirit, which +sometimes limps a trifle languidly past tenement doors, swaggered with +unusual gaiety this year in Calvary Alley. You could hear it in the +cathedral chimes which began at dawn, in the explosion of fire-crackers, +in the bursts of noisy laughter from behind swinging doors. You could +smell it in the whiffs of things frying, broiling, burning. You could +feel it in the crisp air, in the crunch of the snow under your feet, and +most of all you could see it in the happy, expectant faces of the +children, who rushed in and out in a fever of excitement. + +Early in the afternoon Nance Molloy, with a drab-colored shawl over her +head and something tightly clasped in one bare, chapped fist, rushed +forth on a mysterious mission. When she returned, she carried a +pasteboard box hugged to her heart. The thought of tripping her fairy +measure in worn-out shoes tied on with strings, had become so intolerable +to her that she had bartered her holiday for a pair of white slippers. +Mr. Lavinski had advanced the money, and she was to work six hours a day, +instead of two, until she paid the money back. + +But she was in no mood to reckon the cost, as she prepared for the +evening festivities. So great was her energy and enthusiasm, that the +contagion spread to the little Snawdors, each of whom submitted with +unprecedented meekness to a "wash all over." Nance dressed herself last, +wrapping her white feet and legs in paper to keep them clean until the +great hour should arrive. + +"Why, Nance Molloy! You look downright purty!" Mrs. Snawdor exclaimed, +when she came up after assisting Mr. Demry with his refreshments. "I +never would 'a' believed it!" + +Nance laughed happily. The effect had been achieved by much experimenting +before the little mirror over her soap box. The mirror had a wave in it +which gave the beholder two noses, but Nance had kept her pink and white +ideal steadily in mind, and the result was a golden curl over a bare +shoulder. The curl would have been longer had not half of it remained in +a burnt wisp around the poker. + +But such petty catastrophes have no place in a heart overflowing with +joy. Nance did not even try to keep her twinkling feet from dancing; +she danced through the table-setting and through the dish-washing, and +between times she pressed her face to the dirty pane of the front +window to see if the hands on the big cathedral clock were getting any +nearer to five. + +"They're goin' to have Christmas doin's over to the cathedral, too," she +cried excitedly. "The boards is off the new window, an' it's jus' like +the old one, an' ever'thing's lit up, an' it's snowin' like ever'thing!" + +Mr. Demry's party was to take place between the time he came home from +the matinee and the time he returned for the evening performance. Long +before the hour appointed, his guests began to arrive, dirty-faced and +clean, fat and thin, tidy and ragged, big and little, but all wearing in +their eyes that gift of nature to the most sordid youth, the gift of +expectancy. There were fairies and ogres and pirates and Indians in +costumes that needed only the proper imagination to make them convincing. +If by any chance a wistful urchin arrived in his rags alone, Mr. Demry +promptly evolved a cocked hat from a newspaper, and a sword from a box +top, and transformed him into a prancing knight. + +The children had been to Sunday-school entertainments where they had sat +in prim rows and watched grown people have all the fun of fixing the +tree and distributing the presents, but for most of them this was the +first Christmas that they had actually helped to make. Every link in the +colored paper garlands was a matter of pride to some one. + +What the children had left undone, Mr. Demry had finished. All the +movables had been put out of sight as if they were never to be wanted +again. From the ceiling swung two glowing paper lanterns that threw soft, +mysterious, dancing lights on things. In the big fireplace a huge fire +crackled and roared, and on the shelf above it were stacks of golden +oranges, and piles of fat, brown doughnuts. Across one corner, on a stout +cord, hung some green branches with small candles twinkling above them. +It was not exactly a Christmas tree, but it had evidently fooled Santa +Claus, for on every branch hung a trinket or a toy for somebody. + +And nobody thought, least of all Mr. Demry, of how many squeaks of the +old fiddle had gone into the making of this party, of the bread and meat +that had gone into the oranges and doughnuts, of the fires that should +have warmed Mr. Demry's chilled old bones for weeks to come, that went +roaring up the wide chimney in one glorious burst of prodigality. + +When the party was in full swing and the excitement was at its highest, +the guests were seated on the floor in a double row, and Mr. Demry took +his stand by the fireplace, with his fiddle under his chin, and began +tuning up. + +Out in the dark hall, in quivering expectancy, stood the princess, +shivering with impatience as she waited for Dan to fling open the door +for her triumphant entrance. Every twang of the violin strings +vibrated in her heart, and she could scarcely wait for the signal. It +was the magic moment when buttons ceased to exist and tinsel crowns +became a reality. + +The hall was dark and very cold, and the snow drifting in made a white +patch on the threshold. Nance, steadying her crown against the icy +draught, lifted her head suddenly and listened. From the room on the +opposite side of the hall came a woman's frightened cry, followed by the +sound of breaking furniture. The next instant the door was flung open, +and Mrs. Smelts, with her baby in her arms, rushed forth. Close behind +her rolled Mr. Smelts, his shifted ballast of Christmas cheer threatening +each moment to capsize him. + +"I'll learn ye to stop puttin' cures in my coffee!" he bellowed. +"Spoilin' me taste fer liquor, are ye? I'll learn ye!" + +"I never meant no harm, Jim," quailed Mrs. Smelts, cowering in the corner +with one arm upraised to shield the baby. "I seen the ad in the paper. It +claimed to be a whisky-cure. Don't hit me, Jim--don't--" But before she +could finish, Mr. Smelts had struck her full in the face with a brutal +fist and had raised his arm to strike again. But the blow never fell. + +The quick blood that had made Phil Molloy one of the heroes of Chickasaw +Bluffs rose in the veins of his small granddaughter, and she suddenly saw +red. Had Jim Smelts been twice the size he was, she would have sprung at +him just the same and rained blow after stinging blow upon his befuddled +head with her slender fairy wand. + +"Git up the steps!" she shrieked to Mrs. Smelts. "Fer God's sake git out +of his way! Dan! Dan Lewis! Help! Help!" + +Mr. Smelts, infuriated at the interference, had pinioned Nance's arms +behind her and was about to beat her crowned head against the wall when +Dan rushed into the hall. + +"Throw him out the front door!" screamed Nance. "Help me push him down +the steps!" + +Mr. Smelts' resistance was fierce, but brief. His legs were much drunker +than his arms, and when the two determined youngsters flung themselves +upon him and shoved him out of the door, he lost his balance and fell +headlong to the street below. + +By this time the party had swarmed into the hall and out on the steps +and Mr. Demry's gentle, frightened face could be seen peering over their +decorated heads. The uproar had brought other tenants scurrying from the +upper floors, and somebody was dispatched for a police. Dense and +denser grew the crowd, and questions, excuses, accusations were heard on +every side. + +"They've done killed him," wailed a woman's voice above the other noises. +It was Mrs. Smelts who, with all the abandonment of a bereft widow, cast +herself beside the huddled figure lying motionless in the snow. + +"What's all this row about?" demanded Cockeye, forcing his way to the +front and assuming an air of stern authority. + +"They've killed my Jim!" wailed Mrs. Smelts. "I'm goin' to have the +law on 'em!" + +The policeman, with an impolite request that she stop that there +caterwauling, knelt on the wet pavement and made a hasty diagnosis +of the case. + +"Leg's broke, and head's caved in a bit. That's all I can see is the +matter of him. Who beat him up?" + +"Him an' her!" accused Mrs. Smelts hysterically, pointing to Dan and +Nance, who stood shivering beside Mr. Demry on the top step. + +"Well, I'll be hanged if them ain't the same two that was had up last +summer!" said the policeman in profound disgust. "It's good-by fer them +all right." + +"But we was helpin' Mis' Smelts!" cried Nance in bewilderment. "He was +beatin' her. He was goin' to hit the baby--" + +"Here comes the Black Maria!" yelled an emissary from the corner, and +the crowd parted as the long, narrow, black patrol-wagon clanged noisily +into the narrow court. + +Mr. Smelts was lifted in, none too gently, and as he showed no signs of +returning consciousness, Cock-eye paused irresolute and looked at Dan. + +"You best be comin' along, too," he said with sudden decision. "The bloke +may be hurt worse 'rn I think. I'll just drop you at the detention home +'til over Sunday." + +"You shan't take Dan Lewis!" cried Nance in instant alarm. "He was +helpin' me, I tell you! He ain't done nothin' bad--" Then as Dan was +hustled down the steps and into the wagon, she lost her head completely. +Regardless of consequences, she hurled herself upon the law. She bit it +and scratched it and even spat upon it. + +Had Mrs. Snawdor or Uncle Jed been there, the catastrophe would never +have happened; but Mrs. Snawdor was at the post-office, and Uncle Jed at +the signal tower, and the feeble protests of Mr. Demry were as futile as +the twittering of a sparrow. + +"I'll fix you, you little spitfire!" cried the irate officer, holding her +hands and lifting her into the wagon. "Some of you women put a cloak +around her, and be quick about it." + +Nance, refusing to be wrapped up, continued to fight savagely. + +"I ain't goin' in the hurry-up wagon!" she screamed. "I ain't done +nothin' bad! Let go my hands!" + +But the wagon was already moving out of the alley, and Nance suddenly +ceased to struggle. An accidental combination of circumstances, too +complicated and overwhelming to be coped with, was hurrying her away to +some unknown and horrible fate. She looked at her mud-splashed white +slippers that were not yet paid for, and then back at the bright window +behind which the party was waiting. In a sudden anguish of disappointment +she flung herself face downward on the long seat and sobbed with a +passion that was entirely too great for her small body. + +Sitting opposite, his stiff, stubby hair sticking out beneath his pirate +hat, Dan Lewis, forgetting his own misfortune, watched her with dumb +compassion, and between them, on the floor, lay a drunken hulk of a man +with blood trickling across his ugly, bloated face, his muddy feet +resting on all that remained of a gorgeous, tinsel crown. + +It was at this moment that the Christmas spirit fled in despair from +Calvary Alley and took refuge in the big cathedral where, behind the +magnificent new window, a procession of white-robed choir-boys, led by +Mac Clarke, were joyously proclaiming: + +"Hark! the herald angels sing +Glory to the new-born King;" + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE STATE TAKES A HAND + + +The two reformatories to which the children, after various examinations, +were consigned, represented the worst and the best types of such +institutions. + +Dan Lewis was put behind barred windows with eight hundred other young +"foes of society." He was treated as a criminal, and when he resented it, +he was put under a cold shower and beaten with a rattan until he fainted. +Outraged, humiliated, bitterly resentful, his one idea was to escape. At +the end of a month of cruelty and injustice he was developing a hatred +against authority that would ultimately have landed him in the State +prison had not a miraculous interference from without set him free and +returned him to his work in Clarke's Bottle Factory. + +It all came about through a letter received by Mrs. Purdy, who was +wintering in Florida--a tear-stained, blotted, misspelled letter that had +been achieved with great difficulty. It ran: + +Dear Mis Purdy, me and Dan Lewis is pinched again. But I ain't a +Dellinkent. The jedge says theres a diffrunce. He says he was not puting +me in becose I was bad but becose I was not brot upright. He says for me +to be good and stay here and git a education. He says its my chanct. I +was mad at first, but now I aint. What Im writing you fer is to git Dan +Lewis out. He never done nothink what was wrong and he got sent to the +House of Refuse. Please Mis Purdy you git him off. He aint bad. You know +he aint. You ast everbody at home, and then go tell the Jedge and git him +off. I can't stan fer him to be in that ole hole becose it aint fair. +Please don't stop at nothink til you git him out. So good-by, loveingly, +NANCE. + + +This had been written a little at a time during Nance's first week at +Forest Home. She had arrived in such a burning state of indignation that +it required the combined efforts of the superintendent and the matron to +calm her. In fact her spirit did not break until she was subjected to a +thorough scrubbing from head to foot, and put to bed on a long porch +between cold, clean sheets. She was used to sleeping in her underclothes +in the hot close air of Snawdor's flat, with Fidy and Lobelia snuggled up +on each side. This icy isolation was intolerable! Her hair, still damp, +felt strange and uncomfortable; her eyes smarted from the recent +application of soap. She lay with her knees drawn up to her chin and +shivered and cried to go home. + +Hideous thoughts tormented her. Who'd git up the coal, an' do the +washin'? Would Mr. Snawdor fergit an' take off Rosy's aesophedity bag, +so she'd git the measles an' die like the baby? What did Mr. Lavinski +think of her fer not comin' to work out the slipper money? Would Dan ever +git his place back at the factory after he'd been in the House of Refuse? +Was Mr. Smelts' leg broke plum off, so's he'd have to hobble on a +peg-stick? + +She cowered under the covers. "God aint no friend of mine," she sobbed +miserably. + +When she awoke the next morning, she sat up and looked about her. The +porch in which she lay was enclosed from floor to ceiling in glass, and +there were rows of small white beds like her own, stretching away on each +side of her. The tip of her nose was very cold, but the rest of her was +surprisingly warm, and the fresh air tasted good in her mouth. It was +appallingly still and strange, and she lay down and listened for the +sounds that did not come. + +There were no factory whistles, no clanging of car bells, no lumbering of +heavy wagons. Instead of the blank wall of a warehouse upon which she was +used to opening her eyes, there were miles and miles of dim white fields. +Presently a wonderful thing happened. Something was on fire out there at +the edge of the world--something big and round and red. Nance held her +breath and for the first time in her eleven years saw the sun rise. + +When getting-up time came, she went with eighteen other girls into a big, +warm dressing-room. + +"This is your locker," said the girl in charge. + +"My whut?" asked Nance. + +"Your locker, where you put your clothes." + +Nance had no clothes except the ones she was about to put on, but the +prospect of being the sole possessor of one of those little closets +brought her the first gleam of consolation. + +The next followed swiftly. The owner of the adjoining locker proved to be +no other than Birdie Smelts. Whatever fear Nance had of Birdie's +resenting the part she had played in landing Mr. Smelts in the city +hospital was promptly banished. + +"You can't tell me nothing about paw," Birdie said at the end of Nance's +recital. "I only wish it was his neck instead of his leg that was broke." + +"But we never aimed to hurt him," explained Nance, to whom the accident +still loomed as a frightful nightmare. "They didn't have no right to send +me out here." + +"It ain't so worse," said Birdie indifferently. "You get enough to eat +and you keep warm and get away from rough-housin'; that's something." + +"But I don't belong here!" protested Nance, hotly. + +"Aw, forget it," advised Birdie, with a philosophical shrug of her +shapely shoulders. Birdie was not yet fifteen, but she had already +learned to take the course of least resistance. She was a pretty, +weak-faced girl, with a full, graceful figure and full red lips and +heavy-lidded eyes that always looked sleepy. + +"I wouldn't keer so much if it wasn't fer Dan Lewis," Nance said +miserably. "He was inside Mr. Demry's room, an' never knowed a thing +about it 'til I hollered." + +"Say, I believe you are gone on Dan!" said Birdie, lifting a +teasing finger. + +"I ain't either!" said Nance indignantly, "but I ain't goin' to quit +tryin' 'til I git him out!" + +In the bright airy dining-room where they went for breakfast, Nance sat +at a small table with five other girls and scornfully refused the glass +of milk they offered her as a substitute for the strong coffee to which +she was accustomed. She had about decided to starve herself to death, but +changed her mind when the griddle-cakes and syrup appeared. + +In fact, she changed her mind about many things during those first days. +After a few acute attacks of homesickness, she began despite herself to +take a pioneer's delight in blazing a new trail. It was the first time +she had ever come into contact for more than a passing moment, with +decent surroundings and orderly living, and her surprises were endless. + +"Say, do these guys make you put on airs like this all the time?" she +asked incredulously of her table-companion. + +"Like what?" + +"Like eatin' with a fork, an' washin' every day, an' doin' yer hair over +whether it needs it or not?" + +"If I had hair as grand as yours, they wouldn't have to make me fix it," +said the close-cropped little girl enviously. + +Nance looked at her suspiciously. Once before she had been lured by that +bait, and she was wary. But the envy in the eyes of the short-haired girl +was genuine. + +Nance took the first opportunity that presented itself to look in a +mirror. To her amazement, her tight, drab-colored braids had become +gleaming bands of gold, and there were fluffy little tendrils across her +forehead and at the back of her neck. It was unbelievable, too, how much +more becoming one nose was to the human countenance than two. + +A few days later when one of the older girls said teasingly, "Nance +Molloy is stuck on her hair!" Nance answered proudly, "Well, ain't I got +a right to be?" + +At the end of the first month word came from Mrs. Purdy that she had +succeeded in obtaining Dan's release, and that he was back at work at +Clarke's, and on probation again. This news, instead of making Nance +restless for her own freedom, had quite the opposite effect. Now that her +worry over Dan was at an end, she resigned herself cheerfully to the +business of being reformed. + +The presiding genius of Forest Home was Miss Stanley, the superintendent. +She did not believe in high fences or uniforms or bodily punishment. She +was tall, handsome, and serene, and she treated the girls with the same +grave courtesy with which she treated the directors. + +Nance regarded her with something of the worshipful awe she had once felt +before an image of the Virgin Mary. + +"She don't make you 'fraid exactly," she confided to Birdie. "She makes +you 'shamed." + +"You can tell she's a real lady the way she shines her finger-nails," +said Birdie, to whom affairs of the toilet were of great importance. + +"Another way you can tell," Nance added, trying to think the thing out +for herself, "is the way she takes slams. You an' me sass back, but a +real lady knows how to hold her jaw an' make you eat dirt just the same." + +They were standing side by side at a long table in a big, clean kitchen, +cutting out biscuit for supper. Other white-capped, white-aproned girls, +all intent upon their own tasks, were flitting about, and a teacher sat +at a desk beside the window, directing the work. The two girls had fallen +into the habit of doing their chores together and telling each other +secrets. Birdie's had mostly to do with boys, and it was not long before +Nance felt called upon to make a few tentative observations on the same +engrossing subject. + +"The prettiest boy I ever seen--" she said, "I mean I have ever +saw"--then she laughed helplessly. "Well, anyhow, he was that Clarke +feller. You know, the one that got pinched fer smashin' the window the +first time we was had up?" + +"Mac Clarke? Sure, I know him. He's fresh all right." + +Birdie did not go into particulars, but she looked important. + +"Say, Birdie," Nance asked admiringly, "when you git out of here, what +you goin' to do?" + +"I'll tell you what I _ain't_ going to do," said Birdie, impressively, in +a low voice, "I ain't going to stand in a store, and I ain't going out to +work, and I ain't going to work at Clarke's!" + +"But what else is left to do?" + +"Swear you won't tell?" + +Nance crossed her heart with a floury finger. + +"I'm going to be a actress," said Birdie. + +It was fortunate for Nance that Birdie's term at the home soon ended. She +was at that impressionable age which reflects the nearest object of +interest, and shortly after Birdie's departure she abandoned the idea of +joining her on the professional boards, and decided instead to become a +veterinary surgeon. + +This decision was reached through a growing intimacy with the lame old +soldier who presided over the Forest Home stables. "Doc" was a familiar +character in the county, and his advice about horses was sought far and +near. Next to horses he liked children, and after them dogs. Adults came +rather far down the line, excepting always Miss Stanley, whom he +regarded as infallible. + +On the red-letter Sunday when Uncle Jed had tramped the ten miles out +from town to assure himself of Nance's well-being, he discovered in Doc +an old comrade of the Civil War. They had been in the same company, Uncle +Jed as a drummer boy, and Doc in charge of the cavalry horses. + +"Why, I expect you recollict this child's grandpaw," Uncle Jed said, with +his hand on Nance's head, "Molloy, 'Fightin' Phil,' they called him. Went +down with the colors at Chickasaw Bluffs." + +Doc did remember. Fighting Phil had been one of the idols of his boyhood. + +Miss Stanley found in this friendship a solution of Nance's chief +difficulty. When a person of eleven has been doing practical housekeeping +for a family of eight, she naturally resents the suggestion that there is +anything in domestic science for her to learn. Moreover, when said person +is anemic and nervous from overwork, and has a tongue that has never +known control, it is perilously easy to get into trouble, despite heroic +efforts to be good. + +The wise superintendent saw in the girl all sorts of possibilities for +both good and evil. For unselfish service and passionate sacrifice, as +well as obstinate rebellion and hot-headed folly. + +At those unhappy times when Nance threatened to break over the bounds, +she was sent out to the stables to spend an afternoon with Doc. No +matter how sore her grievance, it vanished in the presence of the genial +old veterinarian. She never tired of hearing him tell of her fighting +Irish grandfather and the pranks he played on his messmates, of Uncle Jed +and the time he lost his drumsticks and marched barefoot in the snow, +beating his drum with the heels of his shoes. + +Most of all she liked the horses. She learned how to put on bandages and +poultices and to make a bran mash. Doc taught her how to give a sick +horse a drink out of a bottle without choking him, how to hold his tongue +with one hand and put a pill far down his throat with the other. The +nursing of sick animals seemed to come to her naturally, and she found it +much more interesting than school work and domestic science. + +"She's got a way with critters," Doc confided proudly to Miss Stanley. +"I've seen a horse eat out of her hand when it wouldn't touch food in +the manger." + +As the months slipped into years, the memory of Calvary Alley grew dim, +and Nance began to look upon herself as an integral part of this +orderly life which stretched away in a pleasant perspective of work and +play. It was the first time that she had ever been tempted to be good, +and she fell. It was not Miss Stanley's way to say "don't." Instead, +she said, "do," and the "do's" became so engrossing that the "don'ts" +were crowded out. + +At regular, intervals Mrs. Snawdor made application for her dismissal, +and just as regularly a probation officer visited the Snawdor flat and +pronounced it unfit. + +"I suppose if I had a phoneygraf an' lace curtains you'd let her come +home," Mrs. Snawdor observed caustically during one of these inspections. +"You bet I'll fix things up next time if I know you are comin'!" + +The State was doing its clumsy best to make up to Nance for what she had +missed. It was giving her free board, free tuition, and protection from +harmful influences. But that did not begin to square the State's account, +nor the account of society. They still owed her something for that early +environment of dirt and disease. The landlord in whose vile tenement she +had lived, the saloon-keeper who had sold her beer, the manufacturer who +had bought the garments she made at starvation wages, were all her +debtors. Society exists for the purpose of doing justice to its members, +and society had not begun to pay its debt to that youthful member whose +lot had been cast in Calvary Alley. + +One Saturday afternoon in the early spring of Nance's fourth year at +Forest Home, Miss Stanley stood in the school-house door, reading a +letter. It was the kind of a day when heaven and earth cannot keep away +from each other, but the fleecy clouds must come down to play in the +sparkling pools, and white and pink blossoms must go climbing up to the +sky to flaunt their sweetness against the blue. Yet Miss Stanley, reading +her letter, sighed. + +Coming toward her down the hillside, plunged a noisy group of children, +and behind them in hot pursuit came Nance Molloy, angular, long-legged, +lithe as a young sapling and half mad with the spring. + +"Such a child still!" sighed Miss Stanley, as she lifted a +beckoning hand. + +The children crowded about her, all holding out hot fists full of faded +wild flowers. + +"Look!" cried one breathlessly. "We found 'em in the hollow. And Nance +says if you'll let her, she'll take us next Saturday to the old mill +where some yellow vi'lets grow!" + +Miss Stanley looked down at the flushed, happy faces; then she put her +arm around Nance's shoulder. + +"Nancy will not be with us next Saturday," she said regretfully. "She's +going home." + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +CLARKE'S + + +Nance Molloy came out of Forest Home, an independent, efficient girl, +with clear skin, luminous blue eyes, and shining braids of fair hair. She +came full of ideals and new standards and all the terrible wisdom of +sixteen, and she dumped them in a mass on the family in Calvary Alley and +boldly announced that "what she was going to do was a-plenty!" + +But like most reformers, she reckoned too confidently on cooperation. The +rest of the Snawdor family had not been to reform school, and it had +strong objections to Nance's drastic measures. Her innovations met with +bitter opposition from William J., who indignantly declined to have the +hitherto respected privacy of his ears and nose invaded, to Mrs. Snawdor, +who refused absolutely to sleep with the windows open. + +"What's the sense in working your fingers off to buy coal to heat the +house if you go an' let out all the hot air over night?" she demanded. +"They've filled up yer head with fool notions, but I tell you right now, +you ain't goin' to work 'em off on us. You kin just tell that old maid +Stanley that when she's had three husbands and five children an' a step, +an' managed to live on less'n ten dollars a week, it'll be time enough +fer her to be learnin' me tricks!" + +"But don't all this mess ever get on your nerves? Don't you ever want to +clear out and go to the country?" asked Nance. + +"Not me!" said Mrs. Snawdor. "I been fightin' the country all my life. +It's bad enough bein' dirt pore, without goin' an' settin' down among the +stumps where there ain't nothin' to take yer mind off it." + +So whatever reforms Nance contemplated had to be carried out slowly and +with great tact. Mrs. Snawdor, having put forth one supreme effort to +make the flat sufficiently decent to warrant Nance's return, proposed for +the remainder of her life to rest on her laurels. As for the children, +they had grown old enough to have decided opinions of their own, and when +Nance threw the weight of her influence on the side of order and +cleanliness, she was regarded as a traitor in the camp. It was only Mr. +Snawdor who sought to uphold her, and Mr. Snawdor was but a broken reed. + +Meanwhile the all-important question of getting work was under +discussion. Miss Stanley had made several tentative suggestions, but none +of them met with Mrs. Snawdor's approval. + +"No, I ain't goin' to let you work out in private families!" she +declared indignantly. "She's got her cheek to ast it! Did you tell her +yer pa was a Molloy? An' Mr. Burks says yer maw was even better born than +what Bud was. I'm goin' to git you a job myself. I'm goin' to take you up +to Clarke's this very evenin'." + +"I don't want to work in a factory!" Nance said discontentedly, looking +out of the window into the dirty court below. + +"I suppose you want to run a beauty parlor," said Mrs. Snawdor, with +scornful reference to Nance's improved appearance. "You might just as +well come off them high stilts an' stop puttin' on airs, Dan Lewis has +been up to Clarke's goin' on four years now. I hear they're pushin' him +right along." + +Nance stopped drumming on the window-pane and became suddenly interested. +The one thing that had reconciled her to leaving Miss Stanley and the +girls at the home was the possibility of seeing Dan again. She wondered +what he looked like after these four years, whether he would recognize +her, whether he had a sweetheart? She had been home three days now and +had caught no glimpse of him. + +"We never see nothin' of him," her stepmother told her. "He's took up +with the Methodists, an' runs around to meetin's an' things with that +there Mis' Purdy." + +"Don't he live over Slap Jack's?" asked Nance. + +"Yes; he's got his room there still. I hear his ma died las' spring. +Flirtin' with the angels by now, I reckon." + +The prospect of seeing Dan cheered Nance amazingly. She spent the morning +washing and ironing her best shirt-waist and turning the ribbon on her +tam-o'-shanter. Every detail of her toilet received scrupulous attention. + +It was raining dismally when she and Mrs. Snawdor picked their way across +the factory yard that afternoon. The conglomerate mass of buildings known +as "Clarke's" loomed somberly against the dull sky. Beside the low +central building a huge gas-pipe towered, and the water, trickling down +it, made a puddle through which they had to wade to reach the door of the +furnace room. + +Within they could see the huge, round furnace with its belt of small +fiery doors, from which glass-blowers, with long blow-pipes were deftly +taking small lumps of moulten glass and blowing them into balls. + +"There's Dan!" cried Mrs. Snawdor, and Nance looked eagerly in the +direction indicated. + +In the red glare of the furnace, a big, awkward, bare-armed young fellow +was just turning to roll his red-hot ball on a board. There was a steady +look in the gray eyes that scowled slightly under the intense glare, a +sure movement of the hands that dropped the elongated roll into the +mold. When he saw Mrs. Snawdor's beckoning finger, he came to the door. + +"This here is Nance Molloy," said Mrs. Snawdor by way of introduction. +"She's about growed up sence you seen her. We come to see about gittin' +her a job." + +Nance, looking at the strange, stern face above her, withdrew the hand +she had held out. Dan did not seem to see her hand any more than he saw +her fresh shirt-waist and the hat she had taken so much pains to retrim. +After a casual nod he stood looking at the floor and rubbing the toe of +his heavy boot against his blow-pipe. + +"Sure," he said slowly, "but this is no fit place for a girl, Mrs. +Snawdor." + +Mrs. Snawdor bristled immediately. + +"I ain't astin' yer advice, Dan Lewis. I'm astin' yer help." + +Dan looked Nance over in troubled silence. + +"Is she sixteen yet?" he asked as impersonally as if she had not +been present. + +"Yes, an' past. I knowed they'd be scarin' up that dangerous trade +business on me next. How long before the foreman'll be here?" + +"Any time now," said Dan. "I'll take you into his office." + +With a sinking heart, Nance followed them into the crowded room. The heat +was stifling, and the air was full of stinging glass dust. All about +them boys were running with red hot bottles on big asbestos shovels. She +hated the place, and she hated Dan for not being glad to see her. + +"They are the carrying-in boys," Dan explained, continuing to address all +of his remarks to Mrs. Snawdor. "That's where I began. You wouldn't +believe that those kids often run as much as twenty-two miles a day. +Watch out there, boy! Be careful!" + +But his warning came too late. One of the smaller youngsters had stumbled +and dropped his shovel, and a hot bottle had grazed his leg, burning away +a bit of the stocking. + +"It's all right, Partner," cried Dan, springing forward, "You're not much +hurt. I'll fix you up." + +But the boy was frightened and refused to let him remove the stocking. + +"Let me do it," begged Nance. "I can get it off without hurting him." + +And while Dan held the child's leg steady, she bathed and bound it in a +way that did credit to Doc's training. Only once daring the process did +she look up, and then she was relieved to see instead of the stern face +of a strange young man, the compassionate, familiar face of the old Dan +she used to know. + +The interview with the foreman was of brief duration. He was a +thick-set, pimply-faced person whom Dan called Mr. Bean. He swept an +appraising eye over the applicant, submitted a few blunt questions to Dan +in an undertone, ignored Mrs. Snawdor's voluble comments, and ended by +telling Nance to report for work the following week. + +As Mrs. Snawdor and Nance took their departure, the former, whose +thoughts seldom traveled on a single track, said tentatively: + +"Dan Lewis has got to be real nice lookin' sence you seen him, ain't he?" + +"Nothin' to brag on," said Nance, still smarting at his indifference. But +as she turned the corner of the building, she stole a last look through +the window to where Dan was standing at his fiery post, his strong, +serious face and broad, bare chest lighted up by the radiance from the +glory-hole. + +It was with little enthusiasm that Nance presented herself at the factory +on Monday morning, ready to enlist in what Bishop Bland called "the noble +service of industry." Her work was in the finishing room where a number +of girls were crowded at machines and tables, filing, clipping, and +packing bottles. Her task was to take the screw-neck bottles that came +from the leer, and chip and file their jagged necks and shoulders until +all the roughness was removed. It was dirty work, and dangerous for +unskilled hands, and she found it difficult to learn. + +"Say, kid," said the ugly, hollow-chested girl beside her, "if I'm goin' +to be your learner, I want you to be more particular. Between you an' +this here other girl, you're fixin' to put my good eye out." + +Nance glanced up at the gaunt face with its empty eye socket and then +looked quickly away. + +"Say," said the other new girl, complainingly, "is it always hot like +this in here? I'm most choking." + +"We'll git the boss to put in a 'lectric fan fer you," suggested the +hollow-chested one, whose name was Mag Gist. + +Notwithstanding her distaste for the work, Nance threw herself into it +with characteristic vehemence. Speed seemed to be the quality above all +others that one must strive for, and speed she was determined to have, +regardless of consequences. + +"When you learn how to do this, what do you learn next?" she asked +presently. + +Mag laughed gruffly. + +"There ain't no next. If you'd started as a wrapper, you might 'a' +worked up a bit, but you never would 'a' got to be a chuck-grinder. I +been at this bench four years an' if I don't lose my job, I'll be here +four more." + +"But if you get to be awful quick, you can make money, can't you?" + +"You kin make enough to pay fer two meals a day if yer appetite ain't +too good." + +Nance's heart sank. It was a blow to find that Mag, who was the cleverest +girl in the finishing room, had been filing bottle necks for four years. +She stole a glance at her stooped shoulders and sallow skin and the +hideous, empty socket of her left eye. What was the good of becoming +expert if it only put one where Mag was? + +By eleven o'clock there was a sharp pain between her shoulder-blades, and +her feet ached so that she angrily kicked off first one shoe, then the +other. This was the signal for a general laugh. + +"They're kiddin' you fer sheddin' yer shoes," explained Mag, who had +laughed louder than anybody. "Greenhorns always do it first thing. By the +time you've stepped on a piece of glass onct or twict, you'll be glad +enough to climb back into 'em." + +After a while one of the girls started a song, and one by one the others +joined in. There were numerous verses, and a plaintive refrain that +referred to "the joy that ne'er would come again to you and I." + +When no more verses could be thought of, there were stories and doubtful +jokes which sent the girls into fits of wild laughter. + +"Oh, cheese it," said Mag after one of these sallies, "You all orter to +behave more before these kids." + +"They don't know what we are talkin' about," said a red-haired girl. + +"You bet I do," said Nance, with disgust, "but you all give me a sick +headache." + +When the foreman made his rounds, figures that had begun to droop were +galvanized into fresh effort. At Mag's bench he paused. + +"How are the fillies making it?" he asked, with a familiar hand on the +shoulder of each new girl. Nance's companion dropped her eyes with a +simpering smile, but Nance jerked away indignantly. + +The foreman looked at the back of the shining head and frowned. + +"You'll have to push up the stroke," he said. "Can't you see you lose +time by changing your position so often? What makes you fidget so?" + +Nance set her teeth resolutely and held her tongue. But her Irish +instinct always suffered from restraint and by the time the noon whistle +blew, she was in a state of sullen resentment. The thought of her beloved +Miss Stanley and what she would think of these surroundings brought a +lump into her throat. + +"Come on over here," called Mag from a group of girls at the open window. +"Don't you mind what Bean says. He's sore on any girl that won't eat +outen his dirty hand. You 're as smart again as that other kid. I can +tell right off if a girl's got gumption, an' if she's on the straight. + +"Chuck that Sunday-school dope," laughed a pretty, red-haired girl named +Gert. "You git her in wrong with Bean, an' I wouldn't give a nickel fer +her chance." + +"You ought to know," said Mag, drily. + +The talk ran largely to food and clothes, and Nance listened with growing +dismay. It seemed that most of the girls lived in rooming houses and took +their meals out. + +"Wisht I had a Hamberger," said Mag. "I ain't had a bite of meat fer a +month. I always buy my shoes with meat money." + +"I git my hats with breakfasts," said another girl. "Fourteen breakfasts +makes a dollar-forty. I kin buy a hat fer a dollar-forty-nine that's +swell enough fer anybody." + +"I gotta have my breakfast," said Mag. "Four cups of coffee ain't +nothin' to me." + +Gert got up and stretched herself impatiently. + +"I'm sick an' tired of hearin' you all talk about eatin'. Mag's idea of +Heaven is a place where you spend ten hours makin' money an' two eatin' +it up. Some of us ain't built like that. We got to have some fun as we +go along, an' we're goin' to git it, you bet your sweet life, one way or +the other." + +Soon after work was resumed, word was passed around that a big order had +come in, and nobody was to quit work until it was made up. A ripple of +sullen comment followed this announcement, but the girls bent to their +tasks with feverish energy. + +At two o'clock the other new girl standing next to Nance grew faint, and +had to be stretched on the floor in the midst of the broken glass. + +"She's a softie!" whispered Mag to Nance. "This ain't nothin' to what it +is in hot weather." + +The pain between Nance's shoulders was growing intolerable, and her cut +fingers and aching feet made her long to cast herself on the floor beside +the other girl and give up the fight. But pride held her to her task. +After what seemed to her an eternity she again looked at the big clock +over the door. It was only three. How was she ever to endure three more +hours when every minute now was an agony? + +Mag heard her sigh and turned her head long enough to say: + +"Hang yer arms down a spell; that kind of rests 'em. You ain't goin' to +flop, too, are you?" + +"Not if I can hold out." + +"I knowed you was game all right," said Mag, with grim approval. + +By six o'clock the last bottle was packed, and Nance washed the blood and +dirt off her hands and forced her swollen, aching feet into her shoes. +She jerked her jacket and tam-o'-shanter from the long row of hooks, and +half blind with weariness, joined the throng of women and girls that +jostled one another down the stairs. Every muscle of her body ached, and +her whole soul was hot with rebellion. She told herself passionately that +nothing in the world could induce her to come back; she was through with +factory work forever. + +As she limped out into the yard, a totally vanquished little soldier on +the battle-field of industry, she spied Dan Lewis standing beside the +tall gas-pipe, evidently waiting for somebody. He probably had a +sweetheart among all these trooping girls; perhaps it was the pretty, +red-haired one named Gert. The thought, dropping suddenly into a +surcharged heart, brimmed it over, and Nance had to sweep her fingers +across her eyes to brush away the tears. + +And then: + +"I thought I'd missed you," said Dan, quite as a matter of course, as he +caught step with her and raised her umbrella. + +Nance could have flung her tired arms about him and wept on his broad +shoulder for sheer gratitude. To be singled out, like that, before all +the girls on her first day, to have a beau, a big beau, pilot her through +the crowded streets and into Calvary Alley where all might see, was +sufficient to change the dullest sky to rose and lighten the heart of the +most discouraged. + +On the way home they found little to say, but Nance's aching feet fairly +tripped beside those of her tall companion, and when they turned Slap +Jack's corner and Dan asked in his slow, deliberate way, "How do you +think you are going to like the factory?" Nance answered +enthusiastically, "Oh, I like it splendid!" + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +EIGHT TO SIX + + +Through that long, wet spring Nance did her ten hours a day, six days in +the week and on the seventh washed her clothes and mended them. Her +breaking in was a hard one, for she was as quick of tongue as she was of +fingers, and her tirades against the monotony, the high speed, and the +small pay were frequent and vehement. Every other week when Dan was on +the night shift, she made up her mind definitely that she would stand it +no longer. + +But on the alternate weeks when she never failed to find him waiting at +the gas-pipe to take her home, she thought better of it. She loved to +slip in under his big cotton umbrella, when the nights were rainy, and +hold to his elbow as he shouldered a way for her through the crowd; she +liked to be a part of that endless procession of bobbing umbrellas that +flowed down the long, wet, glistening street; best of all she liked the +distinction of having a "steady" and the envious glances it brought her +from the other girls. + +Sometimes when they paused at a shop window, she caught her reflection in +a mirror, and smiled approval at the bright face under the red tam. She +wondered constantly if Dan thought she was pretty and always came to the +conclusion that he did not. + +From the time they left the factory until they saw the towering bulk of +the cathedral against the dusk, Nance's chatter never ceased. She +dramatized her experiences at the factory; she gave a lively account of +the doings of the Snawdor family; she wove tales of mystery around old +Mr. Demry. She had the rare gift of enhancing every passing moment with +something of importance and interest. + +Dan listened with the flattering homage a slow, taciturn nature often +pays a quick, vivacious one. It was only when problems concerning the +factory were touched upon that his tongue lost its stiffness. Under an +unswerving loyalty to his employers was growing a discontent with certain +existing conditions. The bad lighting system, the lack of ventilation, +the employment of children under age, were subjects that rendered him +eloquent. That cruel month spent in the reformatory had branded him so +deeply that he was supersensitive to the wrongs of others, and spent much +of his time in planning ways and means to better conditions. + +"Don't you ever want a good time, Dan?" Nance asked. "Don't you ever want +to sort of let go and do something reckless?" + +"No; but I'll tell you what I do want. I want a' education. I've a good +mind to go to night school and try to pick up some of the things I +didn't get a chance to learn when I was a kid." + +Nance scoffed the idea; school was almost invisible to her from the giddy +height of sixteen. "Let's go on a bat," she urged. "Let's go out and see +something." + +So on the four following Sundays Dan took her to see the library, the +reservoir, the city hall, and the jail. His ideas of recreation had not +been cultivated. + +The time in the week to which she always looked forward was Saturday +afternoon. Then they got out early, and if the weather was fine, they +would stop in Post-Office Square and, sitting on one of the iron benches, +watch the passing throng. There was something thrilling in the jostling +crowds, and the electric signs flashing out one by one down the long gay +thoroughfare. + +Post-Office Square, at the end of the day, was always littered with +papers and trash. In its center was a battered, weather kiosk, and facing +it, was a huge electric advertisement which indulged in the glittering +generality, that "You get what you pay for." + +It was not a place to inspire romance, yet every Saturday its benches +were crowded with boys and girls who had no place to visit except on +the street. + +Through the long spring dusks, with their tender skies and silver stars, +Nance and Dan kept company, unconcerned with the past or the future, +wholly content with the May-time of the present. At a word or touch from +Dan, Nance's inflammable nature would have taken fire but Dan, under Mrs. +Purdy's influence, was passing through an acute stage of religious +conversion, and all desires of the flesh were sternly repressed by that +new creed to which he was making such heroic efforts to conform. With the +zeal of a new convert, he considered it his duty to guard his small +companion against all love-making, including his own. + +Nance at an early age had developed a protective code that even without +Dan's forbidding looks and constant surveillance might have served its +purpose. Despite the high spirits and free speech that brought her so +many admiring glances from the boys in the factory, it was soon +understood that the "Molloy kid" was not to be trifled with. + +"Say, little Sister, I like your looks," Bean had said to her one morning +when they were alone in the hall. "It's more than I do yours," Nance had +answered coolly, with a critical glance at his pimply nose. + +As summer came on, the work, which at first was so difficult, gradually +became automatic, and while her shoulders always ached, and her feet were +always tired, she ceased for the most part to think of them. It was the +confinement that told upon her, and when the long bright days came, and +she thought of Forest Home and its woods and streams, her restlessness +increased. The stifling finishing room, the endless complaints of the +girls, and the everlasting crunching of glass under foot were at times +almost unendurable. + +One day when the blue of the sky could not be dimmed even by factory +smoke, and the air was full of enticement, Nance slipped out at the noon +hour, and, watching her chance, darted across the factory yard out +through the stables, to the road beyond. A decrepit old elm-tree, which +had evidently made heroic effort to keep tryst with the spring, was the +one touch of green in an otherwise barren landscape. Scrambling up the +bank, Nance flung herself on the ground beneath its branches, and between +the bites of a dry sandwich, proceeded to give vent to some of her +surplus vitality. + +"Arra, come in, Barney McKane, out of the rain," she sang at the top of +her voice. + + "And sit down until the moon comes out again, + Sure a cup of tay I'll brew, just enough for me and you, + We'll snuggle up together, and we'll talk about the weather, + Do you hear? Barney dear, there's a queer + Sort of feelin' round me heart, that gives me pain, + And I think the likes o' me could learn to like the likes o' ye, + Arra, come in, Barney McKane, out of the rain!" + +So absorbed was she in trying operatic effects that she did not notice +an approaching automobile until it came to a stop in the road below. + +"Hi there, Sembrich!" commanded a fresh young voice, the owner of which +emphasized his salute with his horn, "are you one of the factory kids?" + +Nance rose to a sitting posture. + +"What's it to you?" she asked, instantly on the defensive. + +"I want to know if Mr. Clarke's come in. Have you seen him?" + +"No, indeed," said Nance, to whom Mr. Clarke was as vague as the Deity; +then she added good-naturedly, "I'll go find out if you want me to." + +The young man shut off his engine and, transferring two struggling +pigeons from his left hand to his right, dismounted. + +"Never mind," he said. "I'll go myself. Road's too rotten to take the +machine in." Then he hesitated, "I say, will you hold these confounded +birds 'til I come back? Won't be gone a minute. Just want to speak to the +governor." + +Nance scrambled down the bank and accepted the fluttering charges, then +watched with liveliest interest the buoyant figure in the light suit go +swinging up the road. There was something tantalizingly familiar in his +quick, imperious manner and his brown, irresponsible eyes. In her first +confusion of mind she thought he must be the prince come to life out of +Mr. Demry's old fairy tale. Then she caught her breath. + +"I believe it's that Clarke boy!" she thought, with rising excitement, "I +wonder if he'd remember the fight? I wonder if he'd remember me?" + +She went over to the automobile and ran her fingers over the silver +initials on the door. + +"M.D.C," she repeated. "It _is_ him! It is!" + +In the excitement of her discovery she relaxed her grasp on the pigeons, +and one of them escaped. In vain she whistled and coaxed; it hopped about +in the tree overhead and then soared away to larger freedom. + +Nance was aghast at the catastrophe. She did not wait for the owner's +return, but rushed headlong down the road to meet him. + +"I let one of 'em go!" she cried in consternation, as he vaulted the +fence and came toward her. "I wouldn't 'a' done it for anything in the +world. But I'll pay you for it, a little each week. Honest I will!" + +The handsome boyish face above her clouded instantly. + +"You let it go?" he repeated furiously. "You little fool you! How did +you do it?" + +Nance looked at him for a moment; then she deliberately lifted the other +pigeon as high as she could reach and opened her hand. + +"Like that!" she cried. + +Mac Clarke watched his second bird wheel into space; then his amazed +glance dropped to the slim figure of the young girl in her short +gingham dress, with the sunlight shining on her hair and on her bright, +defiant eyes. + +"You've got your nerve!" he said with a short laugh; then he climbed into +his car and, with several backward glances of mingled anger and +amusement, drove away. + +Nance related the incident with great gusto to Dan that night on +the way home. + +"He never recognized me, but I knew him right off. Same old Smart Aleck, +calling people names." + +"I was up in the office when he come in," said Dan. "He'd been held up +for speeding and wanted his father to pay his fine."' + +"Did he do it?" + +"Of course. Mac always gets what he wants. He told Bean he wasn't going +to stay at that school in Virginia if he had to make 'em expel him. Sure +enough they did. Wouldn't I like to have his chance though!" + +"I don't blame him for not wanting to go to school," said Nance. Then she +added absently, "Say, he's got to be a awful swell-looker, hasn't he?" + +That night, for the first time, she objected to stopping in +Post-Office Square. + +"It ain't any fun to hang around there," she said impatiently. "I'm sick +of doing tame things all the time." + +The next time Nance saw Mac Clarke was toward the close of the summer. +Through the long sweltering hours of an interminable August morning she +had filed and chipped bottles with an accuracy and speed that no longer +gave cause for criticism. The months of confinement were beginning to +tell upon her; her bright color was gone, and she no longer had the +energy at the noon hour to go down the road to the elm-tree. She wanted +above all things to stretch out at full length and rest her back and +relax all those tense muscles that were so reluctantly learning to hold +one position for hours at a time. + +At the noon hour she had the unexpected diversion of a visit from Birdie +Smelts. Birdie had achieved her cherished ambition of going on the stage, +and was now a chorus girl in the "Rag Time Follies." Meager news of her +had reached the alley from time to time, but nobody was prepared for the +very pretty and sophisticated young person who condescended to accept +board and lodging from her humble parents during the interval between her +engagements. Nance was genuinely glad to see her and especially gratified +by the impression her white coat-suit and black picture hat made on the +finishing room. + +"It must be grand to be on the stage," said Gert enviously. + +"Well, it's living," said Birdie, airily. "That's more than you can +claim for this rotten grind." + +She put a high-heeled, white-shod foot on the window ledge to adjust its +bow, and every eye in the room followed the process. + +"I bet I make more money in a week," she continued dramatically, "than +you all make in a month. And look at your hands! Why, they couldn't pay +me enough to have my hands scarred up like that!" + +"It ain't my hands that's worryin' me," said another girl. "It's my feet. +Say, the destruction on your shoes is somethin' fierce! You orter see +this here room some nights at closin' time; it's that thick with glass +you don't know where to step." + +"I'd know," said Birdie. "I'd step down and out, and don't you +forget it." + +Nance had been following the conversation in troubled silence. + +"I don't mind the work so awful much," she said restlessly. "What gets me +is never having any fun. I haven't danced a step since I left Forest +Home, Birdie." + +"You'd get your fill of it if you was with me," Birdie said importantly. +"Seven nights a week and two matinees." + +"'Twouldn't be any too much for me," said Nance. "I could dance in +my sleep." + +Birdie was sitting in the window now, ostensibly examining her full red +lips in a pocket-mirror, but in reality watching the factory yard below. + +"There goes your whistle!" she said, getting up suddenly. "Say, Nance, +can't you scare up an excuse to hook off this afternoon? I'll take you to +a show if you will!" + +Nance's pulses leapt at the thought, but she shook her head and went +reluctantly back to her bench. For the next ten minutes her fingers +lagged at their task, and she grew more and more discontented. All the +youth in her clamored suddenly for freedom. She was tired of being the +slave of a whistle, a cog in a machine. With a sudden rash impulse she +threw down her tools and, slipping her hat from its peg, went in swift +pursuit of Birdie. + +At the foot of the narrow stairs she came to a sudden halt. Outside the +door, in the niche made by the gas-pipe and the adjoining wall, stood Mac +Clarke and Birdie. He had his arms about her, and there was a look in his +face that Nance had never seen in a man's face before. Of course it was +meant for the insolent eyes under the picture hat, but instead it fell on +Nance standing in the doorway. For a full minute his ardent gaze held her +captive; then he dropped his arms in sudden embarrassment, and she melted +out of the doorway and fled noiselessly up the stairway. + +On the upper landing she suffered a head-on collision with the foreman, +who demanded in no gentle tones what in the devil she was doing out there +with her hat on at that hour. + +"None of your business," said Nance, recklessly. + +Bean looked at her flashing eyes and flushed face, and laughed. She +was the youngest girl in the factory and the only one who was not +afraid of him. + +"See here," he said, "I am going to kiss you or fire you. Which'll +you have?" + +Nance dodged his outstretched hand and reached the top step. + +"You won't do neither!" she cried fiercely. "You can't fire me, because I +fired myself ten minutes ago, and I wouldn't kiss you to stay in heaven, +let alone a damned old bottle factory!" + +It was the Nance of the slums who spoke--the Nance whose small bare fists +had fought the world too long for the knuckles to be tender. She had +drifted a long way from the carefully acquired refinements of Forest +Home, but its influence, like a dragging anchor, still sought to hold her +against the oncoming gales of life. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +IDLENESS + + +When one has a famishing thirst for happiness, one is apt to gulp down +diversions wherever they are offered. The necessity of draining the +dregs of life before the wine is savored does not cultivate a +discriminating taste. Nance saw in Birdie Smelts her one chance of +escape from the deadly monotony of life, and she seized it with both +hands. Birdie might not be approved of her seniors, but she was a +disturbingly important person to her juniors. To them it seemed nothing +short of genius for a girl, born as they were in the sordid environs of +Calvary Alley, to side-step school and factory and soar away into the +paradise of stage-land. When such an authority gives counsel, it is not +to be ignored. Birdie's advice had been to quit the factory, and Nance +had taken the plunge without any idea of what she was going to put in +its place. + +For some reason best known to herself, she never mentioned that episode +in the factory yard to either Birdie or Dan Lewis. There were many things +about Birdie that she did not like, and she knew only too well what Miss +Stanley would have said. But then Miss Stanley wouldn't have approved of +Mr. Demry and his dope, or Mrs. Snawdor and her beer, or Mag Gist, with +her loud voice and coarse jokes. When one lives in Calvary Alley, one has +to compromise; it is seldom the best or the next best one can afford, +even in friends. + +When Mrs. Snawdor heard that Nance had quit work, she was furious. Who +was Nance Molloy, she wanted to know, to go and stick up her nose at a +glass factory? There wasn't a bloomin' thing the matter with Clarke's. +_She'd_ begun in a factory an' look at her! What was Nance a-goin' to do? +Run the streets with Birdie Smelts? It was bad enough, God knew, to have +Snawdor settin' around like a tombstone, an' Fidy a-havin' a fit if you +so much as looked at her, without havin' Nance eatin' 'em out of house +an' home an' not bringin' in a copper cent. If she stayed at home, she'd +have to do the work; that was all there was to it! + +"Anybody'd think jobs happened around as regerlar as the rent man," she +ended bitterly. "You'll see the day when you're glad enough to go back to +the factory." + +Before the month was over, Nance began to wonder if Mrs. Snawdor was +right. With unabating zeal she tramped the streets, answering +advertisements, applying at stores, visiting agencies. But despite the +fact that she unblushingly recommended herself in the highest terms, +nobody seemed to trust so young and inexperienced an applicant. + +Meanwhile Birdie Smelts's thrilling prospect of joining her company at +an early date threw other people's sordid possibilities into the shade. +Every night she practised gymnastics and dance steps, and there being +no room in the Smelts' flat, she got into the habit of coming up to +Nance's room. + +One of the conditions upon which Nance had been permitted to return to +Calvary Alley, was that she should not sleep in the same bed with Fidy +Yager, a condition which enraged Mrs. Snawdor more than all the rest. + +"Annybody'd think Fidy's fits was ketchin'," she complained indignantly +to Uncle Jed. + +"That there front room of mine ain't doin' anybody no good," suggested +Uncle Jed. "We might let Nance have that." + +So to Nance's great joy she was given a big room all to herself. The slat +bed, the iron wash-stand, the broken-legged chair, and the wavy mirror +were the only articles that Mrs. Snawdor was willing to part with, but +Uncle Jed donated a battered stove, which despite its rust-eaten top and +sagging door, still proclaimed itself a "Little Jewel". + +No bride, adorning her first abode, ever arranged her possessions with +more enthusiasm than did Nance. She scrubbed the rough floor, washed the +windows, and polished the "Little Jewel" until it shone. The first money +she could save out of her factory earnings had gone to settle that +four-year-old debt to Mr. Lavinski for the white slippers; the next went +for bedclothes and cheese-cloth window curtains. Her ambition was no +longer for the chintz hangings and gold-framed fruit pieces of Mrs. +Purdy's cottage, but looked instead toward the immaculate and austere +bedroom of Miss Stanley, with its "Melodonna" over the bed and a box of +blooming plants on the window-sill. + +Such an ideal of classic simplicity was foredoomed to failure. Mrs. +Snawdor, like nature, abhorred a vacuum. An additional room to her was a +sluice in the dyke, and before long discarded pots and pans, disabled +furniture, the children's dilapidated toys, and, finally, the children +themselves were allowed to overflow into Nance's room. In vain Nance got +up at daybreak to make things tidy before going to work. At night when +she returned, the washing would be hung in her room to dry, or the twins +would be playing circus in the middle of her cherished bed. + +"It's lots harder when you know how things ought to be, than when you +just go on living in the mess, and don't know the difference," she +complained bitterly to Birdie. + +"I've had my fill of it," said Birdie, "I kiss my hand to the alley for +good this time. What do you reckon the fellers would think of me if they +knew I hung out in a hole like this?" + +"Does he know?" asked Nance in an unguarded moment. + +"Who?" + +"Mac Clarke." + +Birdie shot a glance of swift suspicion at her. + +"What's he got to do with me?" she asked coldly. + +"Ain't he one of your fellers?" + +"Well, if he is, it ain't anybody's business but mine." Then evidently +repenting her harshness, she added, "I got tickets to a dance-hall +up-town to-night. I'll take you along if you want to look on. You wouldn't +catch me dancing with any of those roughnecks." + +Nance found looking on an agonizing business. Not that she wanted to +dance with the roughnecks any more than Birdie did. Their common +experience at Forest Home had given them certain standards of speech and +manner that lifted them just enough above their kind to be scornful. But +to sit against the wall watching other people dance was nothing short of +agony to one of Nance's temperament. + +"Come on and have a try with me, Birdie," she implored. "I'll pay the +dime." And Birdie, with professional disdain, condescended to circle the +room with her a few times. + +That first dance was to Nance what the taste of blood is to a young +tiger. For days after she could think of nothing else. + +"Never you mind," Birdie promised her. "When I get back on the road, I'm +going to see what I can do for you. Somebody's always falling out of the +chorus, and if you keep up this practising with me, you'll be dancing as +good as any of 'em. Ask old man Demry; he played in the orchestra last +time we was at the Gaiety." + +But when Nance threw out a few cautious remarks to Mr. Demry, she met +with prompt discouragement: + +"No, no, my dear child," he said uneasily. "You must put that idea out of +your head. The chorus is no place for a nice girl." + +"That's what Dan says about the factory, and what Mrs. Snawdor says about +housework, and what somebody says about everything I start to do. Looks +like being a nice girl don't pay!" + +Mr. Demry took her petulant little chin in his thin old hand, and turned +her face up to his. + +"Nancy," he said, "these old eyes have seen a good deal over the fiddle +strings. I would rather see you go back to the glass factory, bad as it +is, than to go into the chorus." + +"But I do dance as good as some of the girls, don't I, Mr. Demry?" she +teased, and Mr. Demry, whose pride in an old pupil was considerable, had +to acknowledge that she did. + +Uncle Jed's attitude was scarcely more encouraging. + +"No; I wouldn't be willin' to see you a playactor," he said, "walkin' +round in skin tights, with your face all painted up." + +Nance knew before asking that Dan would disapprove, but she couldn't +resist mentioning the matter to him. + +"That Birdie Smelts has been putting notions in your head," he said +sternly. "I wish you'd quit runnin' with girls older than you. Besides, +Birdie ain't your kind." + +"I'd like to know why?" Nance challenged him in instant loyalty to her +friend. "Besides, who else have I got to run with? Maybe you think it +ain't stupid drudging around home all day and never having a cent to call +my own. I want to get out and do something." + +Dan looked down at her in troubled silence. + +"Mrs. Purdy's always asking me why I don't bring you to some of the +meetings at the church. They have real nice socials." + +"I don't want to pray and sing silly old hymns!" cried Nance. "I want +to dance." + +"I don't believe in dancing," said Dan, firmly; then with a side-glance +at her unhappy face, he added, "I can't take you to the swimming school, +because they don't allow girls, but I might take you to the new +skating-rink some Saturday." + +In an instant Nance was all enthusiasm. + +"Will you, Dan? I'm just crazy about skating. We used to do it out at the +home. You ought to see Birdie and me do a Dutch roll. Say, let's take her +along. What do you say?" + +Dan was not at all in favor of it, but Nance insisted. + +"I think we ought to be nice to Birdie on account of Mr. Smelts' stiff +leg. Not that it ever did him any good when it was limber, but I always +feel mean when I see it sticking out straight when he sits down." + +This was a bit of feminine wile on Nance's part, and it had the desired +effect. Dan, always vulnerable when his sympathy was roused, reluctantly +included Birdie in the invitation. + +On the Saturday night appointed, the three of them set out for the +skating rink. Dan, with his neck rigid in a high collar and his hair +plastered close to his head, stalked somberly beside the two girls, who +walked arm in arm and giggled immoderately at each other's witticisms. + +"Wake up, Daniel!" said Birdie, giving his hat a tilt. "We engaged you +for a escort, not a pallbearer." + +The rink was in an old armory, and the musicians sat at one end of the +room on a raised platform under two drooping flags. It was dusty and +noisy, and the crowd was promiscuous, but to Nance it was Elysium. When +she and Birdie, with Dan between them, began to circle the big room to +the rhythm of music, her joy was complete. + +"Hullo! Dan Lewis is carrying two," she heard some one say as they +circled past the entrance. Glancing back, she saw it was one of the boys +from the factory. A sudden impulse seized her to stop and explain the +matter to him, but instead she followed quite a contrary purpose and +detaching herself from her companions, struck out boldly for herself. + +Before she had been on the floor ten minutes people began to watch her. +Her plain, neat dress setting off her trim figure, and her severe, black +sailor hat above the shining bands of fair hair, were in sharp contrast +to the soiled finery and draggled plumes of the other girls. But it was +not entirely her appearance that attracted attention. It was a certain +independent verve, a high-headed indifference, that made her reject even +the attentions of the rink-master, a superior person boasting a pompadour +and a turquoise ring. + +No one could have guessed that behind that nonchalant air Nance was +hiding a new and profoundly disturbing emotion. The sight of Birdie, +clinging in affected terror to Dan Lewis, filled her with rage. Couldn't +Dan see that Birdie was pretending? Didn't he know that she could skate +by herself quite as well as he could? Never once during the evening did +Dan make his escape, and never once did Nance go to his rescue. + +When they were taking off their skates to go home, Birdie +whispered to her: + +"I believe I got old slow-coach going. Watch me make him smoke up +for a treat!" + +"No, you sha'n't," Nance said. "Dan's spent enough on us for one night." + +"Another quarter won't break him," said Birdie. "I'm as dry as a piece +of chalk." + +Ten minutes later she landed the little party in a drug store and entered +into a spirited discussion with the soda-water boy as to the comparative +merits of sundry new drinks. + +"Me for a cabaret fizz," she said. "What'll you have, Nance?" + +"Nothing," said Nance, sullenly, turning and taking up her stand +at the door. + +"What do you want, Dan?" persisted Birdie, adding, with a mischievous +wink at the white-coated clerk, "Give him a ginger ale; he needs +stimulating." + +While Birdie talked for the benefit of the clerk, and Dan sat beside her, +sipping his distasteful ginger, Nance stood at the door and watched the +people pouring out of the Gaiety Theater next door. Ordinarily the +bright evening wraps, the glimpses of sparkling jewels, the gay confusion +of the scene would have excited her liveliest interest, but to-night she +was too busy hating Birdie Smelts to think of anything else. What right +had she to monopolize Dan like that and order him about and laugh at him? +What right had she to take his arm when they walked, or put her hand on +his shoulder as she was doing this minute? + +Suddenly Nance started and leaned forward. Out there in the crowded +street a tall, middle-aged man, with grizzled hair and mustache, was +somewhat imperiously making way for a pretty, delicate-looking lady +enveloped in white furs, and behind them, looking very handsome and +immaculate in his evening clothes, walked Mac Clarke. + +Nance's eager eyes followed the group to the curbing; she saw the young +man glance at her with a puzzled expression; then, as he stood aside to +allow the lady to enter the motor, he looked again. For the fraction of a +second their eyes held each other; then an expression of amused +recognition sprang into his face, and Nance met it instantly with a flash +of her white teeth. + +The next instant the limousine swallowed him; a door slammed, and the car +moved away. But Nance, utterly forgetful of her recent discomfort, still +stood in the door of the drug store, tingling with excitement as she +watched a little red light until it lost itself in the other moving +lights on the broad thoroughfare. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +MARKING TIME + + +Early in the autumn Birdie took flight from the alley, and Nance found +herself hopelessly engulfed in domestic affairs. Mr. Snawdor, who had +been doing the work during her long absence, took advantage of her return +to have malarial fever. He had been trying to have it for months, but +could never find the leisure hour in which to indulge in the preliminary +chill. Once having tasted the joys of invalidism he was loathe to forego +them, and insisted upon being regarded as a chronic convalescent. Nance +might have managed Mr. Snawdor, however, had it not been for the grave +problem of Fidy Yager. + +"Ike Lavinski says she ought to be in a hospital some place," she urged +Mrs. Snawdor. "He says she never is going to be any better. He says it's +epilepsy." + +"Wel he ain't tellin' me anything' I don't know," said Mrs. Snawdor, "but +I ain't goin' to put her away, not if she th'ows a fit a minute!" + +It was not maternal solicitude alone that prompted this declaration. The +State allowed seventy-live dollars a year to parents of epileptic +children, and Mrs. Snawdor had found Fidy a valuable asset. Just what her +being kept at home cost the other children was never reckoned. + +"Well, I'll take care of her on one condition," stipulated Nance. "You +got to keep Lobelia at school. It ain't fair for her to have to stay home +to nurse Fidy." + +"Well, if she goes to school, she's got to work at night. You was doin' +your two hours at Lavinski's long before you was her age." + +"I don't care if I was. Lobelia ain't strong like me. I tell you she +ain't goin' to do home finishing, not while I'm here." + +"Well, somebody's got to do it," said Mrs. Snawdor. "You can settle it +between you." + +Nance held out until the middle of January; then in desperation she went +back to the Lavinskis. The rooms looked just as she had left them, and +the whirring machines seemed never to have stopped. The acrid smell of +hot cloth still mingled with the odor of pickled herrings, and Mr. +Lavinski still came and went with his huge bundles of clothes. + +Nance no longer sewed on buttons. She was promoted to a place under the +swinging lamp where she was expected to make an old decrepit +sewing-machine forget its ailments and run the same race it had run in +the days of its youth. As she took her seat on the first night, she +looked up curiously. A new sound coming regularly from the inner room +made her pause. + +"Is that a type-writer?" she asked incredulously. + +Mr. Lavinski, pushing his derby from his shining brow, smiled proudly. + +"Dat's vat it is," he said. "My Ike, he's got a scholarship offen de high +school. He's vorking his vay through de medical college now. He'll be a +big doctor some day. He vill cure my Leah." + +Nance's ambition took fire at the thought of that type-writer. It +appealed to her far more than the sewing-machine. + +"Say, Ike," she said at her first opportunity, "I wish you'd teach me how +to work it." + +"What'll you give me?" asked Ike, gravely. He had grown into a tall, thin +youth, with the spectacled eyes and stooped shoulders of a student. + +"Want me to wash the dishes for your mother?" Nance suggested eagerly. "I +could do it nights before I begin sewing." + +"Very well," Ike agreed loftily. "We'll begin next Sunday morning at nine +o'clock. Mind you are on time!" + +Knowledge to Ike was sacred, and the imparting of it almost a religious +rite. He frowned down all flippancy on the part of his new pupil, and +demanded of her the same diligence and perseverance he exacted of +himself. He not only taught her to manipulate the type-writer, but put +her through an elementary course of stenography as well. + +"Certainly you can learn it," he said sternly at her first sign of +discouragement. "I got that far in my second lesson. Haven't you got +any brains?" + +Nance by this time was not at all sure she had, but she was not going to +let Ike know it. Stung by his smug superiority, she often sat up far into +the night, wrestling with the arbitrary signs until Uncle Jed, seeing her +light under the door, would pound on the wall for her to go to bed. + +She saw little of Dan Lewis these days. The weather no longer permitted +them to meet in Post-Office Square, and conditions even less inviting +kept them from trying to see each other in Snawdor's kitchen. Sometimes +she would wait at the corner for him to come home, but this had its +disadvantages, for there was always a crowd of loafers hanging about Slap +Jack's, and now that Nance was too old to stick out her tongue and call +names, she found her power of repartee seriously interfered with. + +"I ain't coming up here to meet you any more," she declared to Dan on one +of these occasions. "I don't see why we can't go to Gorman's Chili Parlor +of an evening and set down and talk to each other, right." + +"Gorman's ain't a nice place," insisted Dan. "I wish you'd come on up to +some of the church meetings with me. I could take you lots of times if +you'd go." + +But Nance refused persistently to be inveigled into the religious fold. +The very names of Epworth League, and prayer meeting made her draw a +long face. + +"You don't care whether we see each other or not!" she accused +Dan, hotly. + +"I do," he said earnestly, "but it seems like I never have time for +anything. The work at the factory gets heavier all the time. But I'm +getting on, Nance; they give me another raise last month." + +"Everybody's getting on," cried Nance bitterly, "but me! You and Ike and +Birdie! I work just as hard as you all do, and I haven't got a blooming +thing to show for it. What I make sewing pants don't pay for what I eat. +Sometimes I think I'll have to go back to the finishing room." + +"Not if I can help it!" said Dan, emphatically. "There must be decent +jobs somewhere for girls. Suppose I take you out to Mrs. Purdy's on +Sunday, and see if she knows of anything. She's all the time asking me +about you." + +The proposition met with little enthusiasm on Nance's part. It was Mrs. +Purdy who had got Dan into the church and persuaded him not to go to the +theater or learn how to dance. It was Mrs. Purdy who took him home with +her to dinner every Sunday after church and absorbed the time that used +to be hers. But the need for a job was too pressing for Nance to harbor +prejudices. Instead of sewing for the Lavinskis that night, she sewed for +herself, trying to achieve a costume from the old finery bequeathed her +by Birdie Smelts. + +You would scarcely have recognized Dan that next Sunday in his best suit, +with his hair plastered down, and a very red tie encircling a very high +collar. To be sure Dan's best was over a year old, and the brown-striped +shirt-front was not what it seemed, but his skin was clean and clear, and +there was a look in his earnest eyes that bespoke an untroubled +conscience. + +Mrs. Purdy received them in her cozy fire-lit sitting-room and made Nance +sit beside her on the sofa, while she held her hand and looked with mild +surprise at her flaring hat and cheap lace collar. + +"Dan didn't tell me," she said, "how big you had grown or--or how +pretty." + +Nance blushed and smiled and glanced consciously at Dan. She had felt +dubious about her costume, but now that she was reassured, she began to +imitate Birdie's tone and manner as she explained to Mrs. Purdy the +object of her visit. + +"Deary me!" said Mrs. Purdy, "Dan's quite right. We can't allow a nice +little girl like you to work in a glass factory! We must find some nice +genteel place for you. Let me see." + +In order to see Mrs. Purdy shut her eyes, and the next moment she opened +them and announced that she had the very thing. + +"It's Cousin Lucretia Bobinet!" she beamed. "She is looking for a +companion." + +"What's that?" asked Nance. + +"Some one to wait on her and read to her and amuse her. She's quite +advanced in years and deaf and, I'm afraid, just a little peculiar." + +"I'm awful good at taking care of sick people," said Nance complacently. + +"Cousin Lucretia isn't ill. She's the most wonderfully preserved woman +for her years. But her maid, that she's had for so long, is getting old +too. Why, Susan must be seventy. She can't see to read any more, and she +makes mistakes over cards. By the way, I wonder if you know how to play +card games." + +"Sure," said Nance. "Poker? seven-up?" + +"Isn't there another game called penuchle?" Mrs. Purdy ventured, +evidently treading unfamiliar ground. + +"Yes!" cried Nance. "That's Uncle Jed's game. We used to play it heaps +before Rosy cut up the queens for paper dolls." + +"Now isn't it too wonderful that you should happen to know that +particular game?" said Mrs. Purdy, with the gentle amazement of one who +sees the finger of Providence in everything. "Not that I approve of +playing cards, but Cousin Lucretia was always a bit worldly minded, and +playing penuchle seems to be the chief diversion of her declining years. +How old are you, my child?" + +"I'm seventeen. And I ain't a bit afraid of work, am I, Dan?" + +"I am sure you are not," said Mrs. Purdy. "Dan often tells me what a fine +girl you are. Only we wish you would come to some of our services. Dan is +getting to be one of our star members. So conscientious and regular! We +call him our model young man." + +"I expect it's time we was going," said Dan, greatly embarrassed. But +owing to the fact that he wanted very much to be a gentleman, and didn't +quite know how, he stayed on and on, until Nance informed him it was +eleven o'clock. + +At the door Mrs. Purdy gave final instructions about the new position, +adding in an undertone: + +"It might be just as well, dearie, for you to wear a plainer dress when +you apply for the place, and I believe--in fact I am quite sure--Cousin +Lucretia would rather you left off the ear-rings." + +"Ain't ear-rings stylish?" asked Nance, feeling that she had been +misinformed. + +"Not on a little companion," said Mrs. Purdy gently. + +Nance's elation over the prospect of a job was slightly dashed by +the idea of returning to the wornout childish garb in which she had +left the home. + +"Say, Dan," she said, as they made their way out of Butternut Lane, "do +you think I've changed so much--like Mrs. Purdy said?" + +"You always look just the same to me," Dan said, as he helped her on with +her coat and adjusted the collar with gentle, painstaking deference. + +She sighed. The remark to a person who ardently desired to look different +was crushing. + +"I think Mrs. Purdy's an awful old fogey!" she said petulantly by way of +venting her pique. + +Dan looked at her in surprise, and the scowl that rarely came now +darkened his face. + +"Mrs. Purdy is the best Christian that ever lived," he said shortly. + +"Well, she ain't going to be a Christian offen me!" said Nance. + +The next morning, in a clean, faded print, and a thin jacket, much too +small for her, Nance went forth to find Miss Lucretia Bobinet in Cemetery +Street. It was a staid, elderly street, full of staid, elderly houses, +and at its far end were visible the tall white shafts which gave it its +name. At the number corresponding to that on Nance's card, she rang the +bell. The door was opened by a squinting person who held one hand behind +her ear and with the other grasped the door knob as if she feared it +might be stolen. + +"Who do you want to see?" she wheezed. + +"Miss Bobinet." + +"Who?" + +"Miss Bobinet!" said Nance, lifting her voice. + +"Stop that hollering at me!" said the old woman. "Who sent you here?" + +"Mrs. Purdy." + +"What for?" + +Nance explained her mission at the top of her voice and was grudgingly +admitted into the hall. + +"You ain't going to suit her. I can tell you that," said the squint-eyed +one mournfully, "but I guess you might as well go in and wait until she +wakes up. Mind you don't bump into things." + +Nance felt her way into the room indicated and cautiously let herself +down into the nearest chair. Sitting facing her was an imposing old +lady, with eyes closed and mouth open, making the most alarming noises +in her throat. She began with a guttural inhalation that increased in +ferocity until it broke in a violent snort, then trailed away in a +prolonged and somewhat plaintive whistle. Nance watched her with +amazement. It seemed that each recurrent snort must surely send the old +wrinkled head, with its elaborately crimped gray wig, rolling away under +the stiff horse-hair sofa. + +The room was almost dark, but the light that managed to creep in showed a +gloomy black mantelpiece, with vases of immortelles, and somber walnut +chairs with crocheted tidies that made little white patches here and +there in the dusk. Everything smelled of camphor, and from one of the +corners came the slow, solemn tick of a clock. + +After Nance had recovered from her suspense about Miss Bobinet's head, +and had taken sufficient note of the vocal gymnastics to be able to +reproduce them later for the amusement of the Snawdors, she began to +experience great difficulty in keeping still. First one foot went to +sleep, then the other. The minutes stretched to an hour. She had hurried +off that morning without her breakfast, leaving everything at sixes and +sevens, and she wanted to get back and clean up before Mrs. Snawdor got +up. She stirred restlessly, and her chair creaked. + +The old lady opened one eye and regarded her suspiciously. + +"I am Nance Molloy," ventured the applicant, hopefully. "Mrs. +Purdy sent me." + +Miss Bobinet gazed at her in stony silence, then slowly closed her eye, +and took up her snore exactly where she had left it off. This took place +three times before she succeeded in getting her other eye open and +becoming aware of Nance's presence. + +"Well, well," she asked testily, in a dry cracked voice, "what are you +sitting there staring at me for?" + +Nance repeated her formula several times before she remembered that +Miss Bobinet was deaf; then she got up and shouted it close to the old +lady's ear. + +"Lida Purdy's a fool," said Miss Bobinet, crossly. "What do I want with +a chit of a girl like you?" + +"She thought I could wait on you," screamed Nance, "and read to you and +play penuchle." The only word that got past the grizzled fringe that +bordered Miss Bobinet's shriveled ear was the last one. + +"Penuchle?" she repeated. "Can you play penuchle?" + +Nance nodded. + +"Get the table," ordered the old lady, peremptorily. + +Nance tried to explain that she had not come to stay, that she would go +home, and get her things and return in the afternoon, but Miss Bobinet +would brook no delay. Without inviting Nance to remove her hat and +jacket, she ordered her to lift the shade, sit down, and deal the cards. + +They were still playing when the squinting person hobbled in with a +luncheon tray, and Miss Bobinet promptly transferred her attention from +royal marriages to oyster stew. + +"Have her come back at three," she directed Susan; then seeing Nance's +eyes rest on the well filled tray, she added impatiently, "Didn't I tell +you to stop staring? Any one would think you were watching the animals +feed in the zoo." + +Nance fled abashed. The sight of the steaming soup, the tempting bird, +and dainty salad had made her forget her manners. + +"I reckon I'm engaged," she said to Mrs. Snawdor, when she reached +home and had cut herself a slice of dry bread to eat with the +warmed-over coffee. "She never said what the pay was to be, but she +said to come back." + +"What does she look like?" asked Mrs. Snawdor, curiously. + +"A horse," said Nance. "And she's deaf as anything. If I stay with her, +she'll have to get her an ear-trumpet or a new wig before the month's +out. I swallow a curl every time I speak to her." + +"Well," said Mrs. Snawdor, "companions ain't in my line, but I got sense +enough to know that when a woman's so mean she's got to pay somebody to +keep her company, the job ain't no cinch." + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +MISS BOBINET'S + + +Nance's new duties, compared with those at the bottle factory, and the +sweat-shop seemed, at first, mere child's play. She arrived at eight +o'clock, helped Susan in the basement kitchen, until Miss Bobinet awoke, +then went aloft to officiate at the elaborate process of that lady's +toilet. For twenty years Susan had been chief priestess at this ceremony, +but her increasing deafness infuriated her mistress to such an extent +that Nance was initiated into the mysteries. The temperature of the bath, +the choice of underclothing, the method of procedure were matters of the +utmost significance, and the slightest mistake on the part of the +assistant brought about a scene. Miss Bobinet would shriek at Susan, and +Susan would shriek back; then both would indulge in scathing criticism of +the other in an undertone to Nance. + +The final rite was the most critical of all. Miss Bobinet would sit +before her dresser with a towel about her neck, and take a long breath, +holding it in her puffed-out cheeks, while rice powder was dusted over +the corrugated surface of her face. She held the theory that this opened +the pores of the skin and allowed them to absorb the powder. The sight of +the old lady puffed up like a balloon was always too much for Nance, and +when she laughed, Miss Bobinet was obliged to let her breath go in a +sharp reprimand, and the performance had to start all over again. + +"You laugh too much anyhow," she complained irritably. + +When the toilet and breakfast were over, there followed two whole hours +of pinochle. Nance came to regard the queen of spades and the jack of +diamonds with personal animosity. Whatever possible interest she might +have taken was destroyed by the fact that Miss Bobinet insisted upon +winning two out of every three games. It soon became evident that while +she would not cheat on her own behalf, she expected her opponent to cheat +for her. So Nance dutifully slipped her trump cards back in the deck and +forgot to declare while she idly watched the flash of diamonds on the +wrinkled yellow hands, and longed for the clock to strike the next hour. + +At lunch she sat in the kitchen opposite Susan and listened to a recital +of that melancholy person's woes. Susan and her mistress, being mutually +dependent, had endured each other's exclusive society for close upon +twenty years. The result was that each found the other the most +stimulating of all subjects of conversation. When Nance was not listening +to tirades against Susan up-stairs, she was listening to bitter +complaints against Miss Bobinet down-stairs. + +In the afternoon she was expected to read at the top of her voice from +"The Church Guide," until Miss Bobinet got sleepy; then it was her duty +to sit motionless in the stuffy, camphor-laden room, listening to an +endless succession of vocal gymnastics until what time the old lady saw +fit to wake up. + +If Nance had been a provident young person, she might have improved those +idle hours during that interminable winter by continuing her study of +stenography. But, instead, she crouched on the floor by the window, +holding her active young body motionless, while her thoughts like +distracted imprisoned things flew round their solid walls of facts, +frantically seeking some loophole of escape. Day after day she crouched +there, peeping out under the lowered shade with hungry eyes. The dreary +street below offered no diversion; sometimes a funeral procession dragged +its way past, but for the most part there was nothing to see save an +occasional delivery wagon or a staid pedestrian. + +She was at that critical time of transition between the romance of +childhood, when she had become vaguely aware of the desire of the spirit, +and the romance of youth, when she was to know to the full the desires +of the flesh. It was a period of sudden, intense moods, followed by +spells of languor. Something new and strange and incommunicable was +fermenting within her, and nothing was being done to direct those +mysterious forces. She was affectionate, with no outlet for her +affection; romantic, with nothing for romance to feed upon. + +The one resource lay in the bookcase that rose above the old-fashioned +secretary in Miss Bobinet's front hall. She had discovered it on the day +of her arrival and, choosing a volume at random, had become so engrossed +in the doings of one of Ouida's heroes, that she had failed to hear Miss +Bobinet's call. From that time on she was forbidden to take any books +away from the bookcase, an order which she got around by standing beside +it and eagerly devouring bits at a time. + +The monotony of the days she might have endured if there had been any +relief at the close of them. But when she returned home there was always +endless work to be done. Her four years' absence at Forest Home had +separated her from the young people she had known, and she had had no +time to make new friends. The young bar-keeper at Slap Jack's, who always +watched for her to pass in the morning, the good-looking delivery boy who +sometimes brought parcels to Cemetery Street, the various youths with +whom she carried on casual flirtations on her way to and from work, were +her nearest approach to friends. + +Dan, to be sure, still came for her every Saturday afternoon, but +Cemetery Street was across the city from Clarke's, and their time +together was short. Nance lived for these brief interviews, and then came +away from them more restless and dissatisfied than before. Dan didn't +look or talk or act like the heroes in the novels she was reading. He +never "rained fervent kisses on her pale brow," or told her that she was +"the day-star of his secret dreams." Instead he talked of eight-hour +laws, and minimum wage, and his numerous church activities. He was +sleeping at Mrs. Purdy's now, looking after the place while she was away +with her brother, and Nance was jealous of his new interests and new +opportunities. + +As the long weeks stretched into long months, her restlessness grew into +rebellion. So this was the kind of job, she told herself bitterly, that +nice girls were supposed to hold. This was what Miss Stanley and Mrs. +Purdy and Mr. Demry approved. But they were old. They had forgotten. Dan +Lewis wasn't old. Why couldn't he understand? What right had he to insist +upon her sticking it out when he knew how lonesome and unhappy she was? +Dan didn't care, that was the trouble; he thought more of his old church +and the factory than he thought of her. + +She remembered, with sudden understanding, what red-haired Gert had said +in the finishing room; some people weren't content with a good job; they +had to have a good time with it. She told herself that she was one of +these; she wanted to be good and do what was expected of her; she wanted +fervently to please Dan Lewis, but she couldn't go on like this, she +couldn't, she couldn't! + +And yet she did. With a certain dogged commonsense, she stayed at her +post, suppressing herself in a thousand ways, stifling her laughter, +smothering the song on her lips, trying to make her prancing feet keep +pace with the feeble steps of age. She lived through each day on the +meager hope that something would happen at the end of it, that elusive +"something" that always waits around the corner for youth, with adventure +in one hand and happiness in the other and limitless promise in its +shining eyes. + +Almost a year crawled by before her hope was realized. Then one Tuesday +morning as she was coming to work, she spied a bill poster announcing +the appearance of the "Rag-Time Follies." Rows upon rows of saucy girls +in crimson tights and gauzy wings smiled down upon her, smiled and +seemed to beckon. + +Since Birdie's departure from the alley, eighteen months ago, Nance had +heard no word of her. Long ago she had given up the hope of escape in +that direction. But the knowledge that she was in the city and the +possibility of seeing her, wakened all manner of vague hopes and exciting +possibilities. + +Whatever happened Nance must see the play! She must be on hand to-morrow +night when the curtain went up; perhaps she could wait outside for +Birdie, and speak to her after the performance! + +If only Dan would take her, and they could sit together and share the +fun! But the very thought of Dan in connection with those frisky girls +made her smile. No; if she went, she would have to go alone. + +The all-important question now was how to get the ticket. Miss Bobinet +could never be induced to advance a penny on the week's wages, and Susan, +while ready to accept financial favors, was adamant when it came to +extending them. + +By six o'clock Nance had exhausted every resource but one. On her way +home she visited a small shop which was all too familiar to the residents +of Calvary Alley. When she emerged, the beloved locket, which usually +dangled on the velvet ribbon around her neck, was no longer there, but +tied in the corner of her handkerchief was a much desired silver coin. + +In high spirits she rushed home only to be confronted on the threshold by +a serious domestic complication. Mrs. Snawdor, with her hat on, was +standing by the bed in the dark inside room that used to be Nance's, +futilely applying a mustard plaster to whatever portion of Fidy's +anatomy happened to be exposed. + +"How long has she been like this?" cried Nance, flinging her jacket off +and putting the tea kettle on the stove. + +"Lord knows," said Mrs. Snawdor in a tone that implied a conspiracy on +the part of poor Fidy and her Maker to interfere with her plans. "When I +come in ten minutes ago, she was tryin' to eat the sheet." + +"Didn't you give her the medicine the doctor left last time?" + +"There ain't a drop left. Mr. Snawdor took every bit of it." + +"Where's the bottle? We must get it filled." + +"What's the use? It ain't no good. I was handlin' Fidy's fits before that +there young dispensary doctor was out of knee pants. Besides I ain't got +fifty cents in the house." + +Nance stood for a moment irresolute. She looked at the writhing figure on +the bed; then she snatched up her hat and jacket. + +"Quick! Where's the bottle?" she cried. "I got the money." + +But after the medicine had been bought, and Fidy had grown quiet under +its influence, Nance went across the hall to her own cold, barren room +and flung herself across her narrow bed. The last chance of seeing the +play had vanished. The only light of hope that had shone on her horizon +for months had gone out. + +When she got up, cold and miserable, and lighted the gas, she saw on +the floor, where it had evidently been slipped under the door, a +mysterious pink envelope. Tearing it open, she found, written in a +large, loose scrawl: + +"Dear Nance. We have just struck town. Reckon you thought I was a +quitter, but I ain't. You be at the Gaiety to-morrow morning at nine A.M. +Maybe I can land you something. Don't say a word to anybody about it, and +make yourself look as pretty as you can, and don't be late. Don't tell my +folks I'm here. I got a room down-town. + +"Bye bye, +"B.S." + +Nance's breath caught in her throat. The bubble was so radiant, so +fragile, so unbelievable, that she was afraid to stir for fear of +breaking it. She waited until she heard Mrs. Snawdor's heavy feet +descending the stairs, and then she crept across the hall and sat on the +side of Fidy's bed, waiting to give her the next dose of medicine. Her +eyes were fixed on the bare lathes over the headboard where she had once +knocked the plaster off tacking up a tomato-can label. But she did not +see the hole or the wall. Calvary Alley and Cemetery Street had ceased to +exist for her. She was already transported to a region of warmth and +gaiety and song. All that was ugly and old and sordid lay behind her, +and she told herself, with a little sob of joy, that at last the +beautiful something for which she had waited so long was about to happen. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +BEHIND THE TWINKLING LIGHTS + + +The gaiety, with its flamboyant entrance, round which the lights flared +enticingly at night, had always seemed to Nance an earthly paradise into +which the financially blessed alone were privileged to enter. At the +"Star" there were acrobats and funny Jews with big noses and Irishmen who +were always falling down; but the Gaiety was different. Twice Nance had +passed that fiery portal, and she knew that once inside, you drifted into +states of beatitude, which eternity itself was too short to enjoy. The +world ceased to exist for you, until a curtain, as relentless as fate, +descended, and you reached blindly for your hat and stumbled down from +the gallery to the balcony, and from the balcony to the lobby, and thence +out into the garish world, dazed, bewildered, unreconciled to reality, +and not knowing which way to turn to go home. + +But to-day as she passed the main entrance and made her way through a +side-passage to the stage-door, she tingled with a keener thrill than she +had ever felt before. + +"Is Miss Smelts here?" she asked a man who was going in as she did. + +"Smelts?" he repeated. "What does she do?" + +"She dances." + +He shook his head. + +"Nobody here by that name," he said, and hurried on. + +Nance stood aside and waited, with a terrible sinking of the heart. She +waited a half hour, then an hour, while people came and went. Just as she +was about to give up in despair, she saw a tall, handsome girl hurry up +the steps and come toward her. She had to look twice before she could +make sure that the imposing figure was Birdie. + +"Hello, kid," was Birdie's casual greeting. "I forgot all about you. Just +as cute looking as ever, eh! Where did you get that hat?" + +"Ten-cent store," said Nance, triumphantly. + +"Can you beat that?" said Birdie. "You always did have a style about you. +But your hair's fixed wrong. Come on down to the dressing-room while I +change. I'll do it over before you see Reeser." + +Nance followed her across a barn of a place where men in shirt-sleeves +were dragging scenes this way and that. + +"Mind the steps; they are awful!" warned Birdie, as they descended into a +gas-lit region partitioned off into long, low dressing-rooms. + +"Here's where I hang out. Sit down and let me dude you up a bit. You +always did wear your hair too plain. I'll fix it so's it will make little +Peroxide Pierson green with envy." + +Nance sat before the mirror and watched Birdie's white fingers roll and +twist her shining hair into the elaborate style approved at the moment. + +"Gee! it looks like a horse-collar!" she said, laughing at her +reflection. "What you going to do to me next?" + +"Well, I haven't got much to do on," said Birdie, "but you just wait till +I get you over to my room! I could fit you out perfect if you were just a +couple of sizes bigger." + +She was putting on a pair of bloomers herself as she spoke, and slipping +her feet into her dancing slippers, and Nance watched every movement with +admiring eyes. + +"Come on now," Birdie said hurriedly. "We got to catch Reeser before +rehearsal. He's the main guy in this company. What Reeser says goes." + +At the head of the steps they encountered a gaunt, raw-boned man, with an +angular, expressive face, and an apple in his long neck that would have +embarrassed Adam himself. + +"Well! Well!" he shouted at them, impatiently, "come on or else go back! +Don't stand there in the way." + +"Mr. Reeser, please, just a minute," called Birdie, "It's a new girl +wants to get in the chorus." + +The stage-manager paused and looked her over with a critical eye. + +"Can she sing?" + +"No," said Nance, "but I can dance. Want to see me?" + +"Well, I think I can live a few minutes without it," said Reeser dryly. +"Ever been on before?" + +"No; but everybody's got to start some time." Then she added with a +smile, "I wish you'd give me a chance." + +"She's a awful cute little dancer," Birdie recommended. "She knows all +the steps in the Red-Bird chorus. I taught her when I was here before. +If you'd say a word to Mr. Pulatki he might try her out at rehearsal +this morning." + +Nance held her breath while Reeser's quizzical eyes continued to +study her. + +"All right!" he said suddenly. "She's pretty young, but we'll see what +she can do. Now clear the way. Lower that drop a little, boys. Hurry up +with the second set." + +The girls scurried away to the wings where they found a narrow space in +which Nance was put through the half-forgotten steps. + +"It's all in the team work," Birdie explained. "You do exactly what I do, +and don't let old Spagetti rattle you. He goes crazy at every rehearsal. +Keep time and grin. That's all there is to it" + +"I can do it!" cried Nance radiantly. "It's easy as breathing!" + +But it proved more difficult than she thought, when in a pair of property +bloomers she found herself one of a party of girls advancing, retreating, +and wheeling at the arbitrary command of an excitable little man in his +shirt-sleeves, who hammered out the time on a rattling piano. + +Pulatki was a nervous Italian with long black hair and a drooping black +mustache, both of which suffered harsh treatment in moments of dramatic +frenzy. His business in life was to make forty lively, mischievous girls +move and sing as one. The sin of sins to him, in a chorus girl, was +individuality. + +"You! new girl!" he screamed the moment he spied Nance, "you are out +of ze line. Hold your shoulders stiff, so! Ah, _Dio!_ Can you not move +wiz ze rest?" + +The girls started a stately number, diagonal from down-stage left toward +upper center. + +"Hold ze pose!" shouted the director. Then he scrambled up on the stage +and seized Nance roughly by the arm. "You are too quick!" he shouted. +"You are too restless. We do not want that you do a solo! Can you not +keep your person still?" + +And to Nance's untold chagrin she found that she could not. The moment +the music started, it seemed to get into her tripping feet, her swinging +arms, her nodding head; and every extra step and unnecessary gesture that +she made evoked a storm from the director. + +Just when his irritation was at his height, Reeser joined him from +the wings. + +"Here's a howdy-do!" he exclaimed. "Flossy Pierson's sprained her ankle." + +"Ze leetle bear?" shrieked Pulatki; then he clutched his hair in both +hands and raved maledictions on the absent Flossy. + +"See here," said Reeser, "this is no time for fireworks. Who in the devil +is to take her place?" + +"Zere is none," wailed Pulatki. "She make her own part. I cannot +teach it." + +"It's not the part that bothers me," said Reeser. "It's the costume. +We've got to take whoever will fit it. Who's the smallest girl in +the chorus?" + +The eyes of the two men swept the double column of girls until they +rested on the one head that, despite its high coiffure, failed to achieve +the average height. + +"Come here!" called Reeser to Nance. + +"But, no!" protested the director, throwing up his hands. "She is +impossible. A cork on ze water! A leaf in ze wind! I cannot teach her. I +vill not try!" + +"It's too late to get anybody else for to-night," said Reeser, +impatiently. "Let her walk through the part, and we'll see what can be +done in the morning." Then seeing Nance's indignant eyes on the director, +he added with a comical twist of his big mouth, "Want to be a bear?" + +"Sure!" said Nance, with spirit, "if the Dago can't teach me to dance, +maybe he can teach me to growl." + +The joke was lost upon the director, but it put Reeser into such a good +humor that he sent her down to the dressing-room to try on the costume. +Ten minutes later, a little bear, awkward but ecstatic, scrambled madly +up the steps, and an excited voice called out: + +"Look, Mr. Reeser, it fits! it fits!" + +For the rest of the morning Nance practised her part, getting used to +the clumsy suit of fur, learning to adjust her mask so that she could +see through the little, round, animal eyes, and keeping the other girls +in a titter of amusement over her surreptitious imitation of the +irascible Pulatki. + +When the rehearsal was over there was much good-natured hustling and +raillery as the girls changed into their street costumes. At Birdie's +invitation Nance went with her to the rooming-house around the corner, +where you had to ring a bell to get in, a convention which in itself +spelt elegance, and up one flight, two flights, three flights of +carpeted steps to a front-hall bedroom on the fourth floor. + +"Gee, it's a mess!" said Birdie, tossing some beribboned lingerie from a +chair into an open trunk. "There's a bag of rolls around here some place. +We can make some tea over the gas." + +Nance darted from one object to another with excited cries of admiration. +Everything was sweet and wonderful and perfectly grand! Suddenly she came +to a halt before the dresser, in the center of which stood a large, +framed photograph. + +"That's my High Particular," said Birdie, with an uneasy laugh, +"recognize him?" + +"It's Mac Clarke!" exclaimed Nance, incredulously, "how on earth did you +ever get his picture?" + +"He give it to me. How do you reckon? I hadn't laid eyes on him for a +couple of years 'til I ran across him in New York about a month ago." + +"Where'd you see him?" + +"At the theater. He come in with a bunch of other college fellows and +recognized me straight off. He stayed in New York two or three days, and +maybe we didn't have a peach of a time! Only he got fired from college +for it when he went back." + +"Where's he now?" + +"Here in town. Liable to blow in any minute. If he does, you don't want +to let on you ever saw him before. He won't remember you if you don't +remind him. He never thinks of anybody twice." + +Nance, poring over every detail of the photograph, held her own counsel. +She was thinking of the night she had stood in the drug-store door, and +he had kept the motor waiting while he smiled at her over his shoulder. +That was a smile that remembered! + +"You want to be careful what you say to anybody," Birdie continued, +"there ain't any use airing it around where you live, or what you been +doing. There ain't a girl in the chorus knows my real name, or where I +come from." + +The allusion to home stirred Nance's conscience, and reminded her that +over there beyond the cathedral spire, dimly visible from the window, lay +a certain little alley which still had claims upon her. + +"I ain't said a thing to 'em at home about this," she said. "Suppose they +don't let me do it?" + +"Let nothing!" said Birdie. "Write a note to Mrs. Snawdor, and tell her +you are spending the night down-town with me. You'll know by morning +whether Reeser is going to take you on or not. If he does, you just want +to announce the fact that you are going, and go." + +Nance looked at her with kindling eyes. This high-handed method appealed +to her. After all wasn't she past eighteen? Birdie hadn't been that old +when she struck out for herself. + +"What about Miss Bobinet?" she asked ruefully. + +"The wiggy old party up in Cemetery Street? Let her go hang. You've +swallowed her frizzes long enough." + +Nance laughed and gave the older girl's arm a rapturous squeeze. "And you +think maybe Mr. Reeser'll take me on?" she asked for the sixteenth time. + +"Well, Flossie Pierson has been shipped home, and they've got to put +somebody in her place. It's no cinch to pick up a girl on the road, +just the right size, who can dance even as good as you can. If Reeser +engages you, it's fifteen per for the rest of the season, and a good +chance for next." + +"All right, here goes!" cried Nance, recklessly, seizing paper and pen. + +When the hard rolls and strong tea which composed their lunch had been +disposed of, Nance curled herself luxuriously on the foot of the bed and +munched chocolate creams, while Birdie, in a soiled pink kimono that +displayed her round white arms and shapely throat, lay stretched beside +her. They found a great deal to talk about, and still more to laugh +about. Nance loved to laugh; all she wanted was an excuse, and everything +was an excuse to-day; Birdie's tales of stage-door Johnnies, the recent +ire of old Spagetti, her own imitation of Miss Bobinet and the ossified +Susan. Nance loved the cozy intimacy of the little room; even the heavy +odor of perfumes and cosmetics was strange and fascinating; she thought +Birdie was the prettiest girl she had ever seen. A thrilling vista of +days like this, spent with her in strange and wonderful cities, opened +before her. + +"I'll rig you up in some of my clothes, until you get your first pay," +Birdie offered, "then we can fit you out right and proper. You got the +making of an awful pretty girl in you." + +Nance shrieked her derision. Her own charms, compared with Birdie's +generous ones, seemed absurdly meager, as she watched the older girl blow +rings from the cigarette which she held daintily between her first and +second finger. + +Nance had been initiated into smoking and chewing tobacco before she was +ten, but neither appealed to her. Watching Birdie smoke, she had a sudden +desire to try it again. + +"Give us a puff, Birdie," she said. + +Birdie tossed the box over and looked at her wrist-watch. + +"We ought to be fixing something for you to wear to-night," she +said. "Like as not Mac and Monte 'll turn up and ask us to go +somewhere for supper." + +"Who is Monte?" asked Nance with breathless interest. + +"He's a fat-headed swell Mac runs with. Spends dollars like nickels. No +rarebit and beer for him; it's champagne and caviar every time. You +cotton to him, Nance; he'll give you anything you want." + +"I don't want him to give me anything," said Nance stoutly. "Time I'm +earning fifteen dollars a week, I'll be making presents myself." + +Birdie lifted her eyebrows and sighed. + +"You funny kid!" she said, "you got a heap to learn." + +During the early part of the afternoon the girls shortened one of +Birdie's dresses and tacked in its folds to fit Nance's slender figure. +Birdie worked in fits and starts; she listened every time anything +stopped in the street below, and made many trips to the window. By and by +her easy good humor gave place to irritability. At five o'clock she put +on her hat, announcing that she had to go over to the drug store to do +some telephoning. + +"Lock the door," she counseled, "and if anybody knocks while I'm gone, +don't answer." + +Nance, left alone, sewed on for a while in a flutter of happy thoughts; +then she got up and turned her chair so she would not have to crane her +neck to see the photograph on the dresser. + +"The making of an awful pretty girl!" she whispered; then she got up and +went over to the mirror. Pulling out the hairpins that held the +elaborate puffs in place, she let her shining mass of hair about her +shoulders and studied her face intently. Her mouth, she decided, was too +big, her eyes too far apart, her neck too thin. Then she made a face at +herself and laughed: + +"Who cares?" she said. + +By and by it got too dark to sew; the match box refused to be found, and +she decided it was time to stop anyhow. She opened the window and, gaily +humming the music of the Little Bear dance, leaned across the sill, while +the cool evening air fanned her hot cheeks. + +Far away in the west, over the housetops, she could see the stately spire +of the cathedral, a brown silhouette against a pale, lemon sky. Down +below, through the dull, yellow dusk, faint lights were already defining +the crisscross of streets. The whispers of the waking city came up to +her, eager, expectant, like the subdued murmur of a vast audience just +before the curtain ascends. Then suddenly, written on the twilight in +letters of fire, came the familiar words, "You get what you pay for." + +Nance's fingers ceased to drum on the window-sill. It was the big sign +facing Post-Office Square, old Post-Office Square, with its litter of +papers, its battered weather kiosk, and the old green bench where she and +Dan had sat so many evenings on their way home from the factory. Dan! A +wave of remorse swept over her. She had forgotten him as completely as if +he had never existed. And now that she remembered what was she to do? Go +to him and make a clean breast of it? And run the risk of having him +invoke the aid of Mrs. Purdy and possibly of Miss Stanley? Not that she +was afraid of their stopping her. She repeated to herself the words of +defiance with which she would meet their objections and the scorn which +she would fling at their "nice girl jobs." No; it was Dan himself she was +afraid of. Her imagination quailed before his strong, silent face, and +his deep, hurt eyes. She had always taken Dan's part in everything, and +something told her she would take it now, even against herself. + +The only safe course was to keep away from him, until the great step was +taken, and then write him a nice long letter. The nicest she had ever +written to anybody. Dear old Dan--dear, dear old Dan. + +A long, low whistle from the sidewalk opposite made her start, and look +down. At first no one was visible; then a match was struck, flared yellow +for a second, and went out, and again that low, significant whistle. +Nance dropped on her knees beside the window and watched. A man's figure +emerged from the gloom and crossed the street. A moment later she heard +the ringing of the doorbell. Could Dan have heard of her escapade and +come after her? But nobody knew where she was; the note to Mrs. Snawdor +still lay on the corner of the dresser. + +She heard a step on the stairs, then three light taps on the door. She +scrambled to her feet before she remembered Birdie's caution, then stood +motionless, listening. + +Again the taps and, "I say, Bird!" came in a vibrant whisper from +without. + +It seemed to Nance that whoever it was must surely hear the noisy +beating of her heart. Then she heard the steps move away and she sighed +with relief. + +Birdie, coming in later, dismissed the matter with gay denial. + +"One of your pipe-dreams, Nance! It must have been one of the other +boarders, or the wash woman. Stop your mooning over there by the window +and get yourself dressed; we got just thirty-five minutes to get down to +the theater." + +Nance shook off her misgivings and rushed headlong into her adventure. It +was no time to dream of Dan and the letter she was going to write him, or +to worry about a disturbing whistle in the street, or a mysterious +whisper on the other side of the door. Wasn't it enough that she, Nance +Molloy, who only yesterday was watching funerals crawl by in Cemetery +Street, was about to dance to real music, on a real stage, before a great +audience? She had taken her first mad plunge into the seething current of +life, and in these first thrilling, absorbing moments she failed to see +the danger signals that flashed across the darkness. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +THE FIRST NIGHT + + +At a quarter-past eight in the dressing-rooms of the Gaiety, pandemonium +reigned. Red birds, fairies, gnomes, will-o'-the-wisps flitted about, +begging, borrowing, stealing articles from each other in good-humored +confusion. In and out among them darted the little bear, slapping at each +passerby with her furry paws, practising steps on her cushioned toes, and +rushing back every now and then to Birdie, who stood before a mirror in +red tights, with a towel around her neck, putting the final touches on +her make-up. + +It was hot and stuffy, and the air reeked with grease paint. There was a +perpetual chatter with occasional outbursts of laughter, followed by +peremptory commands of "Less noise down there!" In the midst of the +hub-bub a call-boy gave the signal for the opening number of the chorus; +the chatter and giggling ceased, and the bright costumes settled into a +definite line as the girls filed up the stairs. + +Nance, left alone, sat on a trunk and waited for her turn in a fever of +impatience. She caught the opening strains of the orchestra as it swung +into the favorite melody of the day; she could hear the thud of dancing +feet overhead. She was like a stoker shut up in the hold of the vessel +while a lively skirmish is in progress on deck. + +As she sat there the wardrobe woman, a matronly-looking, Irish +person, came up and ordered her peremptorily to get off the trunk. +Nance not only complied, but she offered her assistance in getting it +out of the passage. + +"May ye have some one as civil as ye are to wait on ye when ye are as old +as I am!" said the woman. "It's your first night, eh?" + +"Yep. Maybe my last for all I know. They 're trying me out." + +"Good luck to ye," said the woman. "Well I mind the night I made me +first bow." + +"You!" + +"No less. I'd a waist on me ye could span wid yer two hands. And legs! +well, it ain't fer me to be braggin', but there ain't a girl in the +chorus kin stack up alongside what I oncet was! Me an' a lad named Tim +Moriarty did a turn called 'The Wearing of the Green,'--'Ryan and +Moriarty' was the team. I kin see the names on the bill-board now! We had +'em laughin' an' cryin' at the same time, 'til their tears run into their +open mouths!" + +"Wisht I could've seen you," said Nance. "I bet it was great." + +The wardrobe woman, unused to such a sympathetic listener, would have +lingered indefinitely had not a boy handed Nance a box which absorbed all +her attention. + +"Miss Birdie La Rue," was inscribed on one side of the card that dangled +from it on a silver cord, and on the other was scribbled, "Monte and I +will wait for you after the show. Bring another girl. M.D.C." + +"And I'm the other girl!" Nance told herself rapturously. + +There was a flurry in the wings above and the chorus overflowed down +the stairs. + +"It's a capacity house," gasped Birdie, "but a regular cold-storage +plant. We never got but one round. Spagetti is having spasms." + +"What's a round?" demanded Nance, but nobody had time to enlighten her. + +It was not until the end of the second act that her name was called, and +she went scampering up the stairs as fast as her clumsy suit would +permit. The stage was set for a forest scene, with gnarled trees and +hanging vines and a transparent drop that threw a midnight blue haze over +the landscape. + +"Crawl up on the stump there!" ordered Reeser, attending to half a dozen +things at once. "Put you four paws together. Head up! Hold the pose until +the gnomes go off. When I blow the whistle, get down and dance. I'll get +the will-o'-the-wisps on as quick as I can. Clear the stage everybody! +Ready for the curtain? Let her go!" + +Nance, peering excitedly through the little round holes of her mask, saw +the big curtain slowly ascend, revealing only a dazzling row of +footlights beyond. Then gradually out of the dusk loomed the vast +auditorium with its row after row of dim white faces, reaching back and +up, up further than she dared lift her head to see. From down below +somewhere sounded the weird tinkle of elfin music, and tiptoeing out from +every tree and bush came a green-clad gnome, dancing in stealthy silence +in the sleeping forest. Quite unconsciously Nance began to keep time. It +was such glorious fun playing at being animals and fairies in the woods +at night. Without realizing what she was doing, she dropped into what she +used to call in the old sweat-shop days, "dancin' settin' down." + +A ripple of amusement passed through the audience, and she looked around +to see what the gnomes were up to, but they were going off the stage, and +the suppressed titter continued. A soft whistle sounded in the wings, and +with a furiously beating heart, she slid down from her high stump and +ambled down to the footlights. + +All might have gone well, had not a sudden shaft of white light shot +toward her from the balcony opposite, making a white spot around the +place she was standing. She got out of it only to find that it followed +her, and in the bewilderment of the discovery, she lost her head +completely. All her carefully practised steps and poses were utterly +forgotten; she could think of nothing but that pursuing light, and her +mad desire to get out of it. + +Then something the director had said at the rehearsal flashed across the +confusion. "She makes her own part," he had said of Flossy Pierson, and +Nance, with grim determination, decided to do the same. A fat man in the +left hand box had laughed out when she discovered the spotlight. She +determined to make him laugh again. Simulating the dismay that at first +was genuine, she began to play tag with the shaft of light, dodging it, +jumping over it, hiding from it behind the stump, leading it a merry +chase from corner to corner. The fat man grew hysterical. The audience +laughed at him, and then it began to laugh at Nance. She threw herself +into the frolic with the same mad abandonment with which she used to +dance to the hand-organ in front of Slap Jack's saloon. She cut as many +fantastic capers as a frisky kitten playing in the twilight; she leapt +and rolled and romped, and the spectators, quick to feel the contagion of +something new and young and joyful, woke up for the first time during the +evening, and followed her pranks with round after round of applause. + +When at last the music ceased, she scampered into the wings and sank +gasping and laughing into a chair. + +"They want you back!" cried Reeser, excitedly beckoning to her. "Go on +again. Take the call." + +"The what?" said Nance, bewildered. But before she could find out, she +was thrust forward and, not being able to see where she was going, she +tripped and fell sprawling upon the very scene of her recent triumph. + +In the confusion of the moment she instinctively snatched off her mask, +and as she did so the sea of faces merged suddenly into one. In the +orchestra below, gazing at her with dropped jaw over his arrested +fiddle-bow, was old Mr. Demry, with such a comical look of paralyzed +amazement on his face that Nance burst into laughter. + +There was something in her glowing, childish face, innocent of +make-up, and in her seeming frank enjoyment of the mishap that took +the house by storm. The man in the box applauded until his face was +purple; gloved hands in the parquet tapped approval; the balcony +stormed; the gallery whistled. + +She never knew how she got off the stage, or whether the director shouted +praise or blame as she darted through the wings. It was not until she +reached the dressing-room, and the girls crowded excitedly around her +that she knew she had scored a hit. + +She came on once more at the end of the last act in the grand ballet, +where all the dancers performed intricate manoeuvers under changing +lights. Every time the wheeling figures brought her round to the +footlights, there was a greeting from the front, and, despite warnings, +she could not suppress a responsive wag of the head or a friendly wave +of the paw. + +"She is so fresh, so fresh!" groaned Pulatki from the wings. + +"She's alive," said Reeser. "She'll never make a show girl, and she's got +no voice to speak of. But she's got a personality that climbs right over +the footlights. I'm going to engage her for the rest of the season." + +When the play was over, Nance, struggling into Birdie's complicated +finery in the dressing-room below, wondered how she could ever manage to +exist until the next performance. Her one consolation was the immediate +prospect of seeing Mac Clarke and the mysterious Monte to whom Birdie had +said she must be nice. As she pinned on a saucy fur toque in place of her +own cheap millinery, she viewed herself critically in the glass. Beside +the big show girls about her, she felt ridiculously young and slender and +insignificant. + +"I believe I'll put on some paint!" she said. + +Birdie laughed. + +"What for, Silly? Your cheeks are blazing now. You'll have time enough +to paint 'em when you've been dancing a couple of years." + +They were among the last to leave the dressing-room, and when they +reached the stage entrance, Birdie spied two figures. + +"There they are!" she whispered to Nance, "the fat one is Monte, +the other--" + +Nance had an irresistible impulse to run away. Now that the time had +come, she didn't want to meet those sophisticated young men in their long +coats and high hats. She wouldn't know how to act, what to say. But +Birdie had already joined them, and was turning to say airily: + +"Shake hands with my friend Miss Millay, Mr. Clarke--and, I say, Monte, +what's your other name?" + +The older of the young men laughed good-naturedly. + +"Monte'll do," he said. "I'm that to half the girls in town." + +Mac's bright bold eyes scanned Nance curiously. "Where have I seen you +before?" he asked instantly. + +"Don't you recognize her?" said Monte. "She's the little bear! I'd know +that smile in ten thousand!" + +Nance presented him with one on the spot, out of gratitude for the +diversion. She was already sharing Birdie's wish that no reference be +made to Calvary Alley or the factory. They had no place in this +rose-colored world. + +Monte and the two girls had descended the steps to the street when the +former looked over his shoulder. + +"Why doesn't Mac come on?" he asked. "Who is the old party he is +arguing with?" + +"Oh, Lord! It's old man Demry," exclaimed Birdie in exasperation. "He +plays in the orchestra. Full of dope half of the time. Why don't Mac come +on and leave him?" + +But the old musician was not to be left. He pushed past Mac and, +staggering down the steps, laid his hand on Nance's arm. + +"You must come home with me, Nancy," he urged unsteadily. "I want to talk +to you. Want to tell you something." + +"See here!" broke in Mac Clarke, peremptorily, "is this young lady your +daughter?" + +Mr. Demry put his hand to his dazed head and looked from one to the other +in troubled uncertainty. + +"No," he said incoherently. "I had a daughter once. But she is much older +than this child. She must be nearly forty by now, and to think I haven't +seen her face for twenty-two years. I shouldn't even know her if I should +see her. I couldn't make shipwreck of her life, you know--shipwreck of +one you love best in the world!" + +"Oh, come ahead!" called Birdie from below. "He don't know what he's +babbling about." + +But the old man's wrinkled hand still clung to Nance's arm. "Don't go +with them!" he implored. "I know. I've seen. Ten years playing for girls +to dance. Stage no place for you, Nancy. Come home with me, child. Come!" +He was trembling with earnestness and his voice quavered. + +"Let go of her arm, you old fool!" cried Mac, angrily. "It's none of your +business where she goes!" + +"Nor of yours, either!" Nance flashed back instantly. "You keep your +hands off him!" + +Then she turned to Mr. Demry and patiently tried to explain that she was +spending the night with Birdie Smelts; he remembered Birdie--used to live +across the hall from him? She was coming home in the morning. She would +explain everything to Mrs. Snawdor. She promised she would. + +Mr. Demry, partly reassured, relaxed his grasp. + +"Who is this young man, Nancy?" he asked childishly. "Tell me his name." + +"It's Mr. Mac Clarke," said Nance, despite Birdie's warning glance. + +A swift look of intelligence swept the dazed old face; then terror +gathered in his eyes. + +"Not--not--Macpherson Clarke?" he stammered; then he sat down in the +doorway. "O my God!" he sobbed, dropping his head in his hands. + +"He won't go home 'til morning!" hummed Monte, catching Birdie by the +arm and skipping down the passage. Nance stood for a moment looking +down at the maudlin old figure muttering to himself on the door-step; +then she, too, turned and followed the others out into the gay +midnight throng. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +PREPARATIONS FOR FLIGHT + + +What a radically different place the world seems when one doesn't have to +begin the day with an alarm clock! There is a hateful authority in its +brassy, peremptory summons that puts one on the defensive immediately. To +be sure, Nance dreamed she heard it the following day at noon, and sprang +up in bed with the terrifying conviction that she would be late at Miss +Bobinet's. But when she saw where she was, she gave a sigh of relief, and +snuggled down against Birdie's warm shoulder, and tried to realize what +had happened to her. + +The big theater, the rows of smiling faces, the clapping hands--surely +they must have all been a dream? And Mr. Demry? Why had he sat on the +steps and cried into a big starchy handkerchief? Oh, yes; she remembered +now, but she didn't like to remember, so she hurried on. + +There was a cafe, big and noisy, with little tables, and a woman who +stood on a platform, with her dress dragging off one shoulder, and sang a +beautiful song, called "I'm A-wearying for You." Mr. Monte didn't think +it was pretty; he had teased her for thinking so. But then he had teased +her for not liking the raw oysters, and for saying the champagne made her +nose go to sleep. They had all teased her and laughed at everything she +said. She didn't care; she liked it. They thought she was funny and +called her "Cubby." At least Mr. Monte did. Mr. Mac didn't call her +anything. He talked most of the time to Birdie, but his eyes were all for +_her_, with a smile that sort of remembered and sort of forgot, and-- + +"Say, Birdie!" She impulsively interrupted her own confused reflections. +"Do you think they liked me--honest?" + +"Who?" said Birdie, drowsily, "the audience?" + +"No. Those fellows last night. I haven't got any looks to brag on, and +I'm as green as a string-bean!" + +"That's what tickles 'em," said Birdie. "Besides, you can't ever tell +what makes a girl take. You got a independent way of walking and talking, +and Monte's crazy 'bout your laugh. But you're a funny kid; you beckon a +feller with one hand and slap his face with the other." + +"Not unless he gets nervy!" said Nance. + +After what euphemistically might be termed a buffet breakfast, prepared +over the gas and served on the trunk, Nance departed for Calvary Alley, +to proclaim to the family her declaration of independence. She was +prepared for a battle royal with all whom it might concern, and was +therefore greatly relieved to find only her stepmother at home. That +worthy lady surrendered before a gun was fired. + +"Ain't that Irish luck fer you?" she exclaimed, almost enviously. +"Imagine one of Yager's and Snawdor's childern gittin' on the stage! If +Bud Molloy hadn't taken to railroading he could 'a' been a end man in a +minstrel show! You got a lot of his takin' ways, Nance. It's a Lord's +pity you ain't got his looks!" + +"Oh, give me time!" said Nance, whose spirits were soaring. + +"I sort 'er thought of joining the ballet onct myself," said Mrs. +Snawdor, with a conscious smile. "It was on account of a scene-shifter I +was runnin' with along about the time I met your pa." + +"You!" exclaimed Nance. "Oh! haven't I got a picture of you dancing. Wait +'til I show you!" And ably assisted by the bolster and the bedspread, she +gave a masterly imitation of her stout stepmother that made the original +limp with laughter. Then quite as suddenly, Nance collapsed into a chair +and grew very serious. + +"Say!" she demanded earnestly, "honest to goodness now! Do you think +there's any sin in me going on the stage?" + +"Sin!" repeated Mrs. Snawdor. "Why, I think it's elegant. I was sayin' +so to Mrs. Smelts only yesterday when she was takin' on about Birdie's +treatin' her so mean an' never comin' to see her or writin' to her. +'Don't lay it on the stage,' I says to her. 'Lay it on Birdie; she always +was a stuck-up piece.'" + +Nance pondered the matter, her chin on her palm. Considering the chronic +fallibility of Mrs. Snawdor's judgment, she would have been more +comfortable if she had met with some opposition. + +"Mr. Demry thinks it's wrong," said Nance, taking upon herself the role +of counsel for the prosecution. "He took on something fierce when he saw +me last night." + +"He never knowed what he was doin'," Mrs. Snawdor said. "They tell me he +can play in the orchestry, when he's full as a nut." + +"And there's Uncle Jed," continued Nance uneasily. "What you reckon he's +going to say?" + +"You leave that to me," said Mrs. Snawdor, darkly. "Mr. Burks ain't +goin' to git a inklin' 'til you've went. There ain't nobody I respect +more on the face of the world than I do Jed Burks, but some people is +so all-fired good that livin' with 'em is like wearin' new shoes the +year round." + +"'T ain't as if I was doing anything wicked," said Nance, this time +counsel for the defense. + +"Course not," agreed Mrs. Snawdor. "How much they goin' to pay you?" + +The incredible sum was mentioned, and Mrs. Snawdor's imagination took +instant flight. + +"You'll be gittin' a autymobile at that rate. Say, if I send Lobelia +round to Cemetery Street and git yer last week's pay, can I have it?" + +Nance was counting on that small sum to finish payment on her spring +suit, but in the face of imminent affluence she could ill afford to be +niggardly. + +"I'll buy Rosy V. some shoes, an' pay somethin' on the cuckoo clock," +planned Mrs. Snawdor, "an' I've half a mind to take another policy on +William J. That boy's that venturesome it wouldn't surprise me none to +see him git kilt any old time!" + +Nance, who had failed to convince herself, either as counsel for the +defense or counsel for the prosecution, assumed the prerogative of judge +and dismissed the case. If older people had such different opinions about +right and wrong, what was the use in her bothering about it? With a shrug +of her shoulders she set to work sorting her clothes and packing the ones +she needed in a box. + +"The gingham dresses go to Fidy," she said with reckless generosity, "the +blue skirt to Lobelia, and my Madonna--" Her eyes rested wistfully on her +most cherished possession. "I think I'd like Rosy to have that when she +grows up." + +"All right," agreed Mrs. Snawdor. "There ain't no danger of anybody +takin' it away from her." + +Nance was kneeling on the floor, tying a cord about her box when she +heard steps on the stairs. + +"Uncle Jed?" she asked in alarm. + +"No. Just Snawdor. He won't ast no questions. He ain't got gumption +enough to be curious." + +"I hate to go sneaking off like this without telling everybody good-by," +said Nance petulantly, "Uncle Jed, and the children, and the Levinskis, +and Mr. Demry, and--and--Dan." + +"You don't want to take no risks," said Mrs. Snawdor, importantly. +"There's a fool society for everything under the sun, an' somebody'll be +tryin' to git out a injunction. I don't mind swearin' to whatever age you +got to be, but Mr. Burks is so sensitive about them things." + +"All right," said Nance, flinging on her hat and coat, "tell 'em how it +was when I'm gone. I'll be sending you money before long." + +"That's right," whispered Mrs. Snawdor, hanging over the banister as +Nance felt her way down the stairs. "You be good to yerself an' see if +you can't git me a theayter ticket for to-morrow night. Git two, an' I'll +take Mis' Gorman." + +Never had Nance tripped so lightly down those dark, narrow stairs--the +stairs her feet had helped to wear away in her endless pilgrimages with +buckets of coal and water and beer, with finished and unfinished +garments, and omnipresent Snawdor babies. She was leaving it all +forever, along with the smell of pickled herrings and cabbage and +soapsuds. But she was not going to forget the family! Already she was +planning munificent gifts from that fabulous sum that was henceforth to +be her weekly portion. + +At Mr. Demry's closed door she paused; then hastily retracing her steps, +she slipped back to her own room and got a potted geranium, bearing one +dirty-faced blossom. This she placed on the floor outside his door and +then, picking up her big box, she slipped quickly out of the house, +through the alley and into the street. + +It was late when she got back to Birdie's room, and as she entered, she +was startled by the sound of smothered sobbing. + +"Birdie!" she cried in sudden alarm, peering into the semi-darkness, +"what's the matter? Are you fired?" + +Birdie started up hastily from the bed where she had been lying face +downward, and dried her eyes. + +"No," she said crossly. "Nothing's the matter, only I got the blues." + +"The blues!" repeated Nance, incredulously. "What for?" + +"Oh, everything. I wish I was dead." + +"Birdie Smelts, what's happened to you?" demanded Nance in alarm, sitting +by her on the bed and trying to put her arm around her. + +"Whoever said anything had happened?" asked the older girl, pushing +her away. "Stop asking fool questions and get dressed. We'll be late +as it is." + +For some time they went about their preparations in silence; then Nance, +partly to relieve the tension, and partly because the matter was of vital +interest, asked: + +"Do you reckon Mr. Mac and Mr. Monte will come again to-night?" + +"You can't tell," said Birdie. "What do they care about engagements? +We are nothing but dirt to them--just dirt under their old +patent-leather pumps!" + +This bitterness on Birdie's part was so different from her customary +superiority where men were concerned, that Nance gasped. + +"If they _do_ come," continued Birdie vindictively, "you just watch me +teach Mac Clarke a thing or two. He needn't think because his folks +happen to be swells, he can treat me any old way. I'll make it hot for +him if he don't look out, you see if I don't." + +Once back at the Gaiety, Nance forgot all about Birdie and her love +affairs. Her own small triumph completely engrossed her. A morning paper +had mentioned the fantastic dance of the little bear, and had given her +three lines all to herself. Reeser was jubilant, the director was +mollified, and even the big comedian whose name blazed in letters of +fire outside, actually stopped her in the wings to congratulate her. + +"Look here, young person," he said, lifting a warning finger, "you want +to be careful how you steal my thunder. You'll be taking my job next!" + +Whereupon Nance had the audacity to cross her eyes and strike his +most famous pose before she dodged under his arm and scampered down +the stairs. + +It seemed incredible that the marvelous events of the night before could +happen all over again; but they did. She had only to imitate her own +performance to send the audience into peals of laughter. It would have +been more fun to try new tricks, but on this point Pulatki was adamant. + +"I vant zat you do ze same act, no more, no less, see?" he demanded of +her, fiercely. + +When the encore came, and at Reeser's command she snatched off her bear's +head and made her funny, awkward, little bow, she involuntarily glanced +down at the orchestra. Mr. Demry was not there, but in the parquet she +encountered a pair of importunate eyes that set her pulses bounding. They +sought her out in the subsequent chorus and followed her every movement +in the grand march that followed. + +"Mr. Mac's down there," she whispered excitedly to Birdie as they passed +in the first figure, but Birdie tossed her head and flirted persistently +with the gallery which was quite unused to such marked attention from the +principal show girl. + +There was no supper after the play that night, and it was only after much +persuasion on Mac's part, reinforced by the belated Monte, that Birdie +was induced to come out of her sulks and go for a drive around the park. + +"Me for the front seat!" cried Nance hoydenishly, and then, as Mac jumped +in beside her and took the wheel, she saw her mistake. + +"Oh! I didn't know--" she began, but Mac caught her hand and gave it a +grateful squeeze. + +"Confess you wanted to sit by me!" he whispered. + +"But I didn't!" she protested hotly. "I never was in a automobile before +and I just wanted to see how it worked!" + +She almost persuaded herself that this was true when they reached the +long stretch of parkway, and Mac let her take the wheel. It was only when +in the course of instruction Mac's hand lingered too long on hers, or his +gay, careless face leaned too close, that she had her misgivings. + +"Say! this is great!" she cried rapturously, with her feet braced and her +eyes on the long road ahead. "When it don't get the hic-cups, it beats a +horse all hollow!" + +"What do you know about horses?" teased Mac, giving unnecessary +assistance with the wheel. + +"Enough to keep my hands off the reins when another fellow's driving!" +she said coolly--a remark that moved Mac to boisterous laughter. + +When they were on the homeward way and Mac had taken the wheel again, +they found little to say to each other. Once he got her to light a +cigarette for him, and once or twice she asked a question about the +engine. In Calvary Alley one talked or one didn't as the mood suggested, +and Nance was unversed in the fine art of making conversation. It +disturbed her not a whit that she and the handsome youth beside her had +no common topic of interest. It was quite enough for her to sit there +beside him, keenly aware that his arm was pressing hers and that every +time she glanced up she found him glancing down. + +It was a night of snow and moonshine, one of those transitorial nights +when winter is going and spring is coming. Nance held her breath as the +car plunged headlong into one mass of black shadows after another only to +emerge triumphant into the white moonlight. She loved the unexpected +revelations of the headlights, which turned the dim road to silver and +lit up the dark turf at the wayside. She loved the crystal-clear moon +that was sailing off and away across those dim fields of virgin snow. And +then she was not thinking any longer, but feeling--feeling beauty and +wonder and happiness and always the blissful thrill of that arm pressed +against her own. + +Not until they were nearing the city did she remember the couple on the +back seat. + +"Wake up there!" shouted Mac, tossing his cap over his shoulder. "Gone +to sleep?" + +"I am trying to induce Miss Birdie to go to the carnival ball with me +to-morrow night," said Monte. "It's going to be no end of a lark." + +"Take me, too, Birdie, please!" burst out Nance with such childish +vehemence that they all laughed. + +"What's the matter with us all going?" cried Mac, instantly on fire at +the suggestion. "Mother's having a dinner to-morrow night, but I can join +you after the show. What do you say, Bird?" + +But Birdie was still in the sulks, and it was not until Mac had changed +places with Monte and brought the full battery of his persuasions to bear +upon her that she agreed to the plan. + +That night when the girls were tucked comfortably in bed and the lights +were out, they discussed ways and means. + +"I'm going to see if I can't borrow a couple of red-bird costumes off +Mrs. Ryan," said Birdie, whose good humor seemed completely restored. +"We'll buy a couple of masks. I don't know what Monte's letting us in +for, but I'll try anything once." + +"Will there be dancing, Birdie?" asked Nance, her eyes shining in the +dark. + +"Of course, Silly! Nothing but. Say, what was the matter with you and Mac +to-night? You didn't seem to hit it off." + +"Oh! we got along pretty good." + +"I never heard you talking much. By the way, he's going to take me +to-morrow night, and you are going with Monte." + +"Any old way suits me!" said Nance, "just so I get there." But she lay +awake for a time staring into the dark, thinking things over. + +"Does he always call you 'Bird'?" she asked after a long silence. + +"Who, Mac? Yes. Why?" + +"Oh! Nothing," said Nance. + +The next day being Saturday, there were two performances, beside the +packing necessary for an early departure on the morrow. But +notwithstanding the full day ahead of her, Birdie spent the morning in +bed, languidly directing Nance, who emptied the wardrobe and bureau +drawers and sorted and folded the soiled finery. Toward noon she got up +and, petulantly declaring that the room was suffocating, announced that +she was going out to do some shopping. + +"I'll come, too," said Nance, to whom the purchasing of wearing apparel +was a new and exciting experience. + +"No; you finish up here," said Birdie. "I'll be back soon." + +Nance went to the window and watched for her to come out in the street +below. She was beginning to be worried about Birdie. What made her so +restless and discontented? Why wouldn't she go to see her mother? Why was +she so cross with Mac Clarke when he was with her and so miserable when +he was away? While she pondered it over, she saw Birdie cross the street +and stand irresolute for a moment, before she turned her back on the +shopping district and hastened off to the east where the tall pipes of +the factories stood like exclamation points along the sky-line. + +Already the noon whistles were blowing, and she recognized, above the +rest, the shrill voice of Clarke's Bottle Factory. How she used to +listen for that whistle, especially on Saturdays. Why, _this_ was +Saturday! In the exciting rush of events she had forgotten completely +that Dan would be waiting for her at five o'clock at the foot of +Cemetery Street. Never once in the months she had been at Miss Bobinet's +had he failed to be there on Saturday afternoon. If only she could send +him some word, make some excuse! But it was not easy to deceive Dan, and +she knew he would never rest until he got at the truth of the matter. +No; she had better take Mrs. Snawdor's advice and run no risks. And yet +that thought of Dan waiting patiently at the corner tormented her as +she finished the packing. + +When the time arrived to report at the theater, Birdie had not returned, +so Nance rushed off alone at the last minute. It was not until the first +chorus was about to be called that the principal show girl, flushed and +tired, flung herself into the dressing-room and made a lightning change +in time to take her place at the head of the line. + +There was a rehearsal between the afternoon and evening performances, and +the girls had little time for confidences. + +"Don't ask me any questions!" said Birdie crossly, as she sat before her +dressing-table, wearily washing off the make-up of the afternoon in order +to put on the make-up of the evening. "I'm so dog tired I'd lots rather +be going to bed than to that carnival thing!" + +"Don't you back out!" warned Nance, to whom it was ridiculous that any +one should be tired under such exhilarating circumstances. + +"Oh, I'll go," said Birdie, "if it's just for the sake of getting +something decent to eat. I'm sick of dancing on crackers and ice-water." + +That night Nance, for the first time, was reconciled to the final +curtain. The weather was threatening and the audience was small, but that +was not what took the keen edge off the performance. It was the absence +in the parquet of a certain pair of pursuing eyes that made all the +difference. Moreover, the prospect of the carnival ball made even the +footlights pale by comparison. + +The wardrobe woman, after much coaxing and bribing, had been induced +to lend the girls two of the property costumes, and Nance, with the +help of several giggling assistants, was being initiated into the +mysteries of the red-bird costume. When she had donned the crimson +tights, and high-heeled crimson boots, and the short-spangled slip +with its black gauze wings, she gave a half-abashed glance at herself +in the long mirror. + +"I can't do it, Birdie!" she cried, "I feel like a fool. You be a red +bird, and let me be a bear!" + +"Don't we all do it every night?" asked Birdie. "When we've got on our +masks, nobody 'll know us. We'll just be a couple of 'Rag-Time Follies' +taking a night off." + +"Don't she look cute with her cap on?" cried one of the girls. "I'd give +my head to be going!" + +Nance put on a borrowed rain-coat which was to serve as evening wrap as +well and, with a kiss all around and many parting gibes, ran up the steps +in Birdie's wake. + +The court outside the stage entrance was a bobbing mass of umbrellas. +Groups of girls, pulling their wraps on as they came, tripped noisily +down the steps, greeting waiting cavaliers, or hurrying off alone in +various directions. + +"That's Mac's horn," said Birdie, "a long toot and two short ones. I'd +know it in Halifax!" + +At the curbing the usual altercation arose between Mac and Birdie as to +how they should sit. The latter refused to sit on the front seat for fear +of getting wet, and Mac refused to let Monte drive. + +"Oh, I don't mind getting wet!" cried Nance with a fine show of +indifference. "That's what a rain-coat's for." + +When Mac had dexterously backed his machine out of its close quarters, +and was threading his way with reckless skill through the crowded +streets, he said softly, without turning his head: + +"I think I rather like you, Nance Molloy!" + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +WILD OATS + + +The tenth annual carnival ball, under the auspices of a too-well-known +political organization, was at its midnight worst. It was one of those +conglomerate gatherings, made up of the loose ends of the city--ward +politicians, girls from the department stores, Bohemians with an unsated +thirst for diversion, reporters, ostensibly looking for copy, women just +over the line of respectability, sometimes on one side, sometimes on the +other, and the inevitable sprinkling of well-born youths who regard such +occasions as golden opportunities for seeing that mysterious phantom +termed "life." + +It was all cheap and incredibly tawdry, from the festoons of paper roses +on the walls to the flash of paste jewels in make-believe crowns. The big +hall, with its stage flanked by gilded boxes, was crowded with a shifting +throng of maskers in costumes of flaunting discord. Above the noisy +laughter and popping of corks, rose the blaring strains of a brass band. +Through the odor of flowers came the strong scent of musk, which, in +turn, was routed by the fumes of beer and tobacco which were already +making the air heavy. + +On the edge of all this stood Nance Molloy, in that magic hour of her +girlhood when the bud was ready to burst into the full-blown blossom. Her +slender figure on tiptoe with excitement, her eyes star-like behind her +mask, she stood poised, waiting with all her unslaked thirst for +pleasure, to make her plunge into the gay, dancing throng. She no longer +cared if her skirts were short, and her arms and neck were bare. She no +longer thought of how she looked or how she acted. There was no Pulatki +in the wings to call her down for extra flourishes; there was no old +white face in the orchestra to disturb her conscience. Her chance for a +good time had come at last, and she was rushing to meet it with arms +outstretched. + +"They are getting ready for the grand march!" cried Monte, who, with Mac, +represented the "two _Dromios_." "We separate at the end of the hall, and +when the columns line up again, you dance with your vis-a-vis." + +"My who-tee-who?" asked Nance. + +"Vis-a-vis--fellow opposite. Come ahead!" + +Down the long hall swung the gay procession, while the floor vibrated to +the rhythm of the prancing feet. The columns marched and countermarched +and fell into two long lines facing each other. The leader of the +orchestra blew a shrill whistle, and Nance, marking time expectantly, +saw one of the _Dromios_ slip out of his place and into the one facing +her. The next moment the columns flowed together, and she found herself +in his arms, swinging in and out of the gay whirling throng with every +nerve tingling response to the summoning music. + +Suddenly a tender pressure made her glance up sharply at the white mask +of her companion. + +"Why--why, I thought it was Mr. Monte," she laughed. + +"Disappointed?" asked Mac. + +"N-no." + +"Then why are you stopping?" + +Nance could not tell him that in her world a "High Particular" was not to +be trifled with. In her vigil of the night before she had made firm +resolve to do the square thing by Birdie Smelts. + +"Where are the others?" she asked in sudden confusion. + +"In the supper room probably. Aren't you going to finish this with me?" + +"Not me. I'm going to dance with Mr. Monte." + +"Has he asked you?" + +"No; I'm going to ask him." And she darted away, leaving Mac to follow at +his leisure. + +After supper propriety, which up to now had held slack rein on the +carnival spirit, turned her loose. Masks were flung aside, hundreds of +toy balloons were set afloat and tossed from hand to hand, confetti was +showered from the balcony, boisterous song and laughter mingled with the +music. The floor resembled some gigantic kaleidoscope, one gay pattern +following another in rapid succession. And in every group the most vivid +note was struck by a flashing red bird. Even had word not gone abroad +that the girls in crimson and black were from the "Rag Time Follies", +Birdie's conspicuous charms would have created instant comment and a host +of admirers. + +Nance, with characteristic independence, soon swung out of Birdie's orbit +and made friends for herself. For her it was a night of delirium, and her +pulses hammered in rhythm to the throbbing music. In one day life had +caught her up out of an abyss of gloom and swung her to a dizzy pinnacle +of delight, where she poised in exquisite ecstasy, fearing that the next +turn of the wheel might carry her down again. Laughter had softened her +lips and hung mischievous lights in her eyes; happiness had set her +nerves tingling and set roses blooming in cheeks and lips. The smoldering +fires of self-expression, smothered so long, burst into riotous flame. +With utter abandonment she flung herself into the merriment of the +moment, romping through the dances with any one who asked her, slapping +the face of an elderly knight who went too far in his gallantries, +dancing a hornpipe with a fat clown to the accompaniment of a hundred +clapping hands. Up and down the crowded hall she raced, a hoydenish +little tom-boy, drunk with youth, with freedom, and with the pent-up +vitality of years. + +Close after her, snatching her away from the other dancers only to have +her snatched away from him in turn, was Mac Clarke, equally flushed and +excited, refusing to listen to Monte's insistent reminder that a storm +was brewing and they ought to go home. + +"Hang the storm!" cried Mac gaily. "I'm in for it with the governor, +anyhow. Let's make a night of it!" + +At the end of a dance even wilder than the rest, Nance found herself with +Mac at the entrance to one of the boxes that flanked the stage. + +"I've got you now!" he panted, catching her wrists and pulling her within +the curtained recess. "You've got to tell me why you've been running away +from me all evening." + +"I haven't," said Nance, laughing and struggling to free her hands. + +"You have, too! You've given me the slip a dozen times. Don't you know +I'm crazy about you?" + +"Much you are!" scoffed Nance. "Go tell that to Birdie." + +"I'll tell it to Birdie and every one else if you like," Mac cried. "It +was all up with me the first time I saw you." + +With his handsome, boyish face and his frilled shirt, he looked so +absurdly like the choir boy, who had once sat on the fence flinging rocks +at her, that she threw back her head and laughed. + +"You don't even know the first time you saw me," she challenged him. + +"Well, I know I've seen you somewhere before. Tell me where?" + +"Guess!" said Nance, with dancing eyes. + +"Wait! I know! It was on the street one night. You were standing in a +drug store. A red light was shining on you, and you smiled at me." + +"I smiled at you because I knew you. I'd seen you before that. Once when +you didn't want me to. In the factory yard--behind the gas-pipe--" + +"Were you the little girl that caught me kissing Bird that day?" + +"Yes! But there was another time even before that." + +He searched her face quizzically, still holding her wrists. + +Nance, no longer trying to free her hands, hummed teasingly, half under +her breath: + +"Do ye think the likes of ye +Could learn to like the likes o' me? +Arrah, come in, Barney McKane, out of the rain!" + +A puzzled look swept his face; then he cried exultantly: + +"I've got it. It was you who let my pigeons go! You little devil! I'm +going to pay you back for that!" and before she knew it, he had got both +of her hands into one of his and had caught her to him, and was kissing +her there in the shadow of the curtain, kissing her gay, defiant eyes and +her half-childish lips. + +And Nance, the independent, scoffing, high-headed Nance, who up to this +time had waged successful warfare, offensive as well as defensive, +against the invading masculine, forgot for one transcendent second +everything in the world except the touch of those ardent lips on hers and +the warm clasp of the arm about her yielding shoulders. + +In the next instant she sprang away from him, and in dire confusion fled +out of the box and down the corridor. + +At the door leading back into the ball-room a group of dancers had +gathered and were exchanging humorous remarks about a woman who was being +borne, feet foremost, into the corridor by two men in costume. + +Nance, craning her neck to see, caught a glimpse of a white face with a +sagging mouth, and staring eyes under a profusion of tumbled red hair. +With a gasp of recognition she pushed forward and impulsively seized one +of the woman's limp hands. + +"Gert!" she cried, "what's the matter? Are you hurt?" + +The monk gave a significant wink at Mac, who had joined them, and the +by-standers laughed. + +"She's drunk!" said Mac, abruptly, pulling Nance away. "Where did you +ever know that woman?" + +"Why, it's Gert, you know, at the factory! She worked at the bench +next to mine!" + +Her eyes followed the departing group somberly, and she lingered despite +Mac's persuasion. + +Poor Gert! Was this what she meant by a good time? To be limp and silly +like that, with her dress slipping off her shoulder and people staring at +her and laughing at her? + +"I don't want to dance!" she said impatiently, shaking off Mac's hand. + +The steaming hall, reeking with tobacco smoke and stale beer, the men and +women with painted faces and blackened eyes leering and languishing at +each other, the snatches of suggestive song and jest, filled her with +sudden disgust. + +"I'm going home," she announced with determination. + +"But, Nance!" pleaded Mac, "you can't go until we've had our dance." + +But for Nance the spell was broken, and her one idea was to get away. +When she found Birdie she became more insistent than ever. + +"Why not see it out?" urged Mac. "I don't want to go home." + +"You are as hoarse as a frog now," said Monte. + +"Glad of it! Let's me out of singing in the choir to-morrow--I mean +to-day! Who wants another drink?" + +Birdie did, and another ten minutes was lost while they went around to +the refreshment room. + +The storm was at its height when at four o'clock they started on that mad +drive home. The shrieking wind, the wet, slippery streets, the lightning +flashing against the blurred wind-shield, the crashes of thunder that +drowned all other sounds, were sufficient to try the nerves of the +steadiest driver. But Mac sped his car through it with reckless +disregard, singing, despite his hoarseness, with Birdie and Monte, and +shouting laughing defiance as the lightning played. + +Nance sat very straight beside him with her eyes on the road ahead. She +hated Birdie for having taken enough wine to make her silly like that; +she hated the boys for laughing at her. She saw nothing funny in the fact +that somebody had lost the latch-key and that they could only get in by +raising the landlady, who was sharp of tongue and free with her comments. + +"You girls better come on over to my rooms," urged Monte. "We'll cook +your breakfast on the chafing-dish, won't we, Mac?" + +"Me for the couch!" said Birdie. "I'm cross-eyed, I'm so sleepy." + +"I'm not going," said Nance, shortly. + +"Don't be a short-sport, Nance," urged Birdie, peevishly. "It's as good +as morning now. We can loaf around Monte's for a couple of hours and then +go over to my room and change our clothes in time to get to the station +by seven. Less time we have to answer questions, better it'll be for us." + +"I tell you I ain't going!" protested Nance, hotly. + +"Yes, you are!" whispered Mac softly. "You are going to be a good little +girl and do whatever I want you to." + +Nance grew strangely silent under his compelling look, and under the +touch of his hand as it sought hers in the darkness. Why wasn't she angry +with Mr. Mac as she was with the others? Why did she want so much to do +whatever he asked her to? After all perhaps there was no harm in going to +Mr. Monte's for a little while, perhaps-- + +She drew in her breath suddenly and shivered. For the first time in her +life she was afraid, not of the storm, or the consequences of her +escapade, but of herself. She was afraid of the quick, sweet shiver that +ran over her whenever Mac touched her, of the strange weakness that came +over her even now, as his hands claimed hers. + +"Say, I'm going to get out," she said suddenly. + +"Stop the car! Don't you hear me? I want to get out!" + +"Nonsense!" said Mac, "you don't even know where you are! You are coming +with us to Monte's; that's what you are going to do." + +But Nance knew more than he thought. In the last flash of lightning she +had seen, back of them on the left, startlingly white for the second +against the blackness, the spire of Calvary Cathedral. She knew that they +were rapidly approaching the railroad crossing where Uncle Jed's signal +tower stood, beyond which lay a region totally unfamiliar to her. + +She waited tensely until Mac had sped the car across the gleaming tracks, +just escaping the descending gates. Then she bent forward and seized the +emergency brake. The car came to a halt with a terrific jerk, plunging +them all forward, and under cover of the confusion Nance leapt out and, +darting under the lowered gate, dashed across the tracks. The next moment +a long freight train passed between her and the automobile, and when it +was done with its noisy shunting backward and forward, and had gone +ahead, the street was empty. + +Watching her chance between the lightning flashes, she darted from cover +to cover. Once beyond the signal tower she would be safe from Uncle Jed's +righteous eye, and able to dash down a short cut she knew that led into +the street back of the warehouse and thence into Calvary Alley. If she +could get to her old room for the next two hours, she could change her +clothes and be off again before any one knew of her night's adventure. + +Just as she reached the corner, a flash more blinding than the rest +ripped the heavens. A line of fire raced toward her along the steel +rails, then leapt in a ball to the big bell at the top of the signal +tower. There was a deafening crash; all the electric lights went out, and +Nance found herself cowering against the fence, apparently the one living +object in that wild, wet, storm-racked night. + +The only lights to be seen were the small red lamps suspended on the +slanting gates. Nance waited for them to lower when the freight train +that had backed into the yards five minutes before, rushed out again. But +the lamps did not move. + +She crept back across the tracks, watching with fascinated horror the +dark windows of the signal tower. Why didn't Uncle Jed light his lantern? +Why hadn't he lowered the gates? All her fear of discovery was suddenly +swallowed up in a greater fear. + +At the foot of the crude wooden stairway she no longer hesitated. + +"Uncle Jed!" she shouted against the wind, "Uncle Jed, are you there?" + +There was no answer. + +She climbed the steep steps and tried the door, which yielded grudgingly +to her pressure. It was only when she put her shoulder to it and pushed +with all her strength that she made an opening wide enough to squeeze +through. There on the floor, lying just as he had fallen, was the old +gate-tender, his unseeing eyes staring up into the semi-darkness. + +Nance looked at him in terror, then at the signal board and the levers +that controlled the gates. A terrible trembling seized her, and she +covered her eyes with her hands. + +"God tell me quick, what must I do?" she demanded, and the next instant, +as if in answer to her prayer, she heard herself gasp, "Dan!" as she +fumbled wildly for the telephone. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +DAN + + +The shrill whistle that at noon had obtruded its discord into Nance +Molloy's thoughts had a very different effect on Dan Lewis, washing his +hands under the hydrant in the factory yard. _He_ had not forgotten that +it was Saturday. Neither had Growler, who stood watching him with an +oblique look in his old eye that said as plain as words that he knew what +momentous business was brewing at five o'clock. + +It was not only Saturday for Dan, but the most important Saturday that +ever figured on the calendar. In his heroic efforts to conform to Mrs. +Purdy's standard of perfection he had studied the advice to young men in +the "Sunday Echo." There he learned that no gentleman would think of +mentioning love to a young lady until he was in a position to marry her. +To-day's pay envelope would hold the exact amount to bring his bank +account up to the three imposing figures that he had decided on as the +minimum sum to be put away. + +As he was drying his hands on his handkerchief and whistling softly +under his breath, he was summoned to the office. + +For the past year he had been a self-constituted buffer between Mr. +Clarke and the men in the furnace-room, and he wondered anxiously what +new complication had arisen. + +"He's got an awful grouch on," warned the stenographer as Dan passed +through the outer office. + +Mr. Clarke was sitting at his desk, tapping his foot impatiently. + +"Well, Lewis," he said, "you've taken your time! Sit down. I want to +talk to you." + +Dan dropped into the chair opposite and waited. + +"Is it true that you have been doing most of the new foreman's work for +the past month?" + +"Well, I've helped him some. You see, being here so long, I know the +ropes a bit better than he does." + +"That's not the point. I ought to have known sooner that he could not +handle the job. I fired him this morning, and we've got to make some +temporary arrangement until a new man is installed." + +Dan's face grew grave. + +"We can manage everything but the finishing room. Some of the girls have +been threatening to quit." + +"What's the grievance now?" + +"Same thing--ventilation. Two more girls fainted there this morning. The +air is something terrible." + +"What do they think I am running?" demanded Mr. Clarke, angrily, "a +health resort?" + +"No, sir," said Dan, "a death trap." + +Mr. Clarke set his jaw and glared at Dan, but he said nothing. The +doctor's recent verdict on the death of a certain one-eyed girl, named +Mag Gist, may have had something to do with his silence. + +"How many girls are in that room now?" he asked after a long pause. + +Dan gave the number, together with several other disturbing facts +concerning the sanitary arrangements. + +"Well, what's to be done?" demanded Mr. Clarke, fiercely. "We can't +get out the work with fewer girls, and there is no way of enlarging +that room." + +"Yes, sir, there is," said Dan. "Would you mind me showing you a way?" + +"Since you are so full of advice, go ahead." + +With crude, but sure, pencil strokes, Dan got his ideas on paper. He had +done it so often for his own satisfaction that he could have made them +with his eyes shut. Ever since those early days when he had seen that +room through Nance Molloy's eyes, he had persisted in his efforts to +better it. + +Mr. Clarke, with his fingers thrust through his scanty hair, watched him +scornfully. + +"Absolutely impractical," he declared. "The only feasible plan would be +to take out the north partition and build an extension like this." + +"That couldn't be done," said Dan, "on account of the projection." + +Whereupon, such is the power of opposition, Mr. Clarke set himself to +prove that it could. For over an hour they wrangled, going into the +questions of cost, of time, of heating, of ventilation, scarcely looking +up from the plans until a figure in a checked suit flung open the door, +letting in a draught of air that scattered the papers on the desk. + +"Hello, Dad," said the new-comer, with a friendly nod to Dan, "I'm sorry +to disturb you, but I only have a minute." + +"Which I should accept gratefully, I suppose, as my share of your busy +day?" Mr. Clarke tried to look severe, but his eyes softened. + +"Well, I just got up," said Mac, with an ingratiating smile, as he +smoothed back his shining hair before the mirror in the hat-rack. + +"Running all night, and sleeping half the day!" grumbled Mr. Clarke. "By +the way, what time did you get in last night?" + +Mac made a wry face. + +"_Et tu, Brute?_" he cried gaily. "Mother's polished me off on that +score. I have not come here to discuss the waywardness of your prodigal +son. Mr. Clarke, I have come to talk high finance. I desire to +negotiate a loan." + +"As usual," growled his father. "I venture to say that Dan Lewis here, +who earns about half what you waste a year, has something put away." + +"But Dan's the original grinder. He always had an eye for business. Used +to win my nickel every Sunday when we shot craps in the alley back of the +cathedral. Say, Dan, I see you've still got that handsome thoroughbred +cur of yours! By George, that dog could use his tail for a jumping rope!" + +Dan smiled; he couldn't afford to be sensitive about Growler's beauty. + +"Is that all, Mr. Clarke?" he asked of his employer. + +"Yes. I'll see what can be done with these plans. In the meanwhile you +try to keep the girls satisfied until the new foreman comes. By the way I +expect you'd better stay on here to-night." + +Dan paused with his hand on the door-knob. "Yes, sir," he said in evident +embarrassment, "but if you don't mind--I 'd like to get off for a couple +of hours this afternoon." + +"Who's the girl, Dan?" asked Mac, but Dan did not stop to answer. + +As he hurried down the hall, a boy appeared from around the corner and +beckoned to him with a mysterious grin. + +"Somebody's waiting for you down in the yard." + +"Who is he?" + +"'T ain't a he. It's the prettiest girl you ever seen!" + +Dan, whose thoughts for weeks had been completely filled with one +feminine image, sprang to the window. But the tall, stylish person +enveloped in a white veil, who was waiting below, in no remote way +suggested Nance Molloy. + +A call from a lady was a new experience, and a lively curiosity seized +him as he descended the steps, turning down his shirt sleeves as he went. +As he stepped into the yard, the girl turned toward him with a quick, +nervous movement. + +"Hello, Daniel!" she said, her full red lips curving into a smile. "Don't +remember me, do you?" + +"Sure, I do. It's Birdie Smelts." + +"Good boy! Only now it's Birdie La Rue. That's my stage name, you know. I +blew into town Thursday with 'The Rag Time Follies.' Say, Dan, you used +to be a good friend of mine, didn't you?" + +Dan had no recollection of ever having been noticed by Birdie, except on +that one occasion when he had taken her and Nance to the skating-rink. +She was older than he by a couple of years, and infinitely wiser in the +ways of the world. But it was beyond masculine human nature not to be +flattered by her manner, and he hastened to assure her that he had been +and was her friend. + +"Well, I wonder if you don't want to do me a favor?" she coaxed. "Find +out if Mac Clarke's been here, or is going to be here. I got to see him +on particular business." + +"He's up in the office now," said Dan; then he added bluntly "Where did +you ever know Mac Clarke?" + +Birdie's large, white lids fluttered a moment. + +"I come to see him for a friend of mine," she said. + +A silence fell between them which she tried to break with a rather shame +faced explanation. + +"This girl and Mac have had a quarrel. I'm trying to patch it up. Wish +you'd get him down here a minute." + +"It would be a lot better for the girl," said Dan, slowly, "if you didn't +patch it up." + +"What do you mean?" + +Dan looked troubled. + +"Clarke's a nice fellow all right," he said, "but when it comes to +girls--" he broke off abruptly. "Do you know him?" + +"I've seen him round the theater," she said. + +"Then you ought to know what I mean." + +Birdie looked absently across the barren yard. + +"Men are all rotten," she said bitterly, then added with feminine +inconsistency, "Go on, Dan, be a darling. Fix it so I can speak to him +without the old man catching on." + +Strategic manoeuvers were not in Dan's line, and he might have refused +outright had not Birdie laid a white hand on his and lifted a pair of +effectively pleading eyes. Being unused to feminine blandishments, he +succumbed. + +Half an hour later a white veil fluttered intimately across a broad, +checked shoulder as two stealthy young people slipped under the window of +Mr. Clarke's private office and made their way to the street. + +Dan gave the incident little further thought. He went mechanically about +his work, only pausing occasionally at his high desk behind the door to +pore over a sheet of paper. Had his employer glanced casually over his +shoulder, he might have thought he was still figuring on the plans of the +new finishing room; but a second glance would have puzzled him. Instead +of one large room there were several small ones, and across the front was +a porch with wriggly lines on a trellis, minutely labeled, "honeysuckle." + +At a quarter of five Dan made as elaborate a toilet as the washroom +permitted. He consumed both time and soap on the fractious forelock, and +spent precious moments trying to induce a limp string tie to assume the +same correct set that distinguished Mac Clarke's four-in-hand. + +Once on his way, with Growler at his heels, he gave no more thought to +his looks. He walked very straight, his lips twitching now and then into +a smile, and his gaze soaring over the heads of the ordinary people whom +he passed. For twenty-one years the book of life had proved grim +reading, but to-day he had come to that magic page whereon is written in +words grown dim to the eyes of age and experience, but perennially +shining to the eyes of youth: "And then they were married and lived +happily ever after." + +"Take care there! Look where you are going!" exclaimed an indignant +pedestrian as he turned the corner into Cemetery Street. + +"Why, hello, Bean!" he said in surprise, bringing his gaze down to a +stout man on crutches. "Glad to see you out again!" + +"I ain't out," said the ex-foreman. "I'm all in. I've got rheumatism in +every corner of me. This is what your old bottle factory did for me." + +"Tough luck," said Dan sympathetically, with what attention he could +spare from a certain doorway half up the square. "First time you've +been out?" + +"No; I've been to the park once or twice. Last night I went to a show." +He was about to limp on when he paused. "By the way, Lewis, I saw an old +friend of yours there. You remember that Molloy girl you used to run with +up at the factory?" + +Dan's mouth closed sharply. Bean's attitude toward the factory girls was +an old grievance with him and had caused words between them on more than +one occasion. + +"Well, I'll be hanged," went on Bean, undaunted, "if she ain't doing a +turn up at the Gaiety! She's a little corker all right, had the whole +house going." + +"You got another guess coming your way," said Dan, coldly, "the young +lady you're talking about's not on the stage. She's working up here in +Cemetery Street. I happen to be waiting for her now." + +Bean whistled. + +"Well, the drinks are on me. That girl at the Gaiety is a dead ringer to +her. Same classy way of handling herself, same--" Something in Dan's eyes +made him stop. "I got to be going," he said. "So long." + +Dan waited patiently for ten minutes; then he looked at his watch. What +could be keeping Nance? He whistled to Growler, who was making life +miserable for a cat in a neighboring yard, and strolled past Miss +Bobinet's door; then he returned to the corner. Bean's words had fallen +into his dream like a pebble into a tranquil pool. What business had Bean +to be remembering the way Nance walked or talked. Restlessly, Dan paced +up and down the narrow sidewalk. When he looked at his watch again, it +was five-thirty. + +Only thirty more minutes in which to transact the most important +business of his life! With a gesture of impatience he strode up to Miss +Bobinet's door and rang the bell. + +A wrinkled old woman, with one hand behind her ear, opened the door +grudgingly. + +"Nance Molloy?" she quavered in answer to his query. "What you want +with her?" + +"I'd like to speak with her a minute," said Dan. + +"Are you her brother?" + +"No." + +"Insurance man?" + +"No." + +The old woman peered at him curiously. + +"Who be you?" she asked. + +"My name's Lewis." + +"Morris?" + +"No, Lewis!" shouted Dan, with a restraining hand on Growler, who was +sniffing at the strange musty odors that issued from the half-open door. + +"Well, she ain't here," said the old woman. "Took herself off last +Wednesday, without a word to anybody." + +"Last Wednesday!" said Dan, incredulously. "Didn't she send any word?" + +"Sent for her money and said she wouldn't be back. You dog, you!" This to +Growler who had insinuated his head inside the door with the fixed +determination to run down that queer smell if possible. + +Dan went slowly down the steps, and Growler, either offended at having +had the door slammed in his face, or else sensing, dog-fashion, the +sudden change in his master's mood, trotted soberly at his heels. There +was no time now to go to Calvary Alley to find out what the trouble was. +Nothing to do but go back to the factory and worry through the night, +with all sorts of disturbing thoughts swarming in his brain. Nance had +been all right the Saturday before, a little restless and discontented +perhaps, but scarcely more so than usual. He remembered how he had +counseled patience, and how hard it had been for him to keep from telling +her then and there what was in his heart. He began to wonder uneasily if +he had done right in keeping all his plans and dreams to himself. Perhaps +if he had taken her into his confidence and told her what he was striving +and saving for, she would have understood better and been happy in +waiting and working with him. For the first time he began to entertain +dark doubts concerning those columns of advice to young men in the +"Sunday Echo." + +Once back at the factory, he plunged into his work with characteristic +thoroughness. It was strangely hot and still, and somewhere out on the +horizon was a grumbling discontent. It was raining hard at eleven o'clock +when he boarded a car for Butternut Lane, and by the time he reached the +Purdy's corner, the lightning was playing sharply in the northwest. + +He let himself in the empty house and felt his way up to his room, but he +did not go to bed. Instead, he sat at his table and with stiff awkward +fingers wrote letter after letter, each of which he tossed impatiently +into the waste-basket. They were all to Nance, and they all tried in vain +to express the pent-up emotion that had filled his heart for years. +Somewhere down-stairs a clock struck one, but he kept doggedly at his +task. Four o'clock found him still seated at the table, but his tired +head had dropped on his folded arms, and he slept. + +Outside the wind rose higher and higher, and the lightning split the +heavens in blinding flashes. Suddenly a deafening crash of thunder shook +the house, and Dan started to his feet. A moment later the telephone +bell rang. + +Half dazed, he stumbled down-stairs and took up the receiver. + +"Hello, hello! Yes, this is Dan Lewis. What? I can't hear you. Who?" Then +his back stiffened suddenly, and his voice grew tense, "Nance! Where are +you? Is he dead? Who's with you? Don't be scared, I'm coming!" and, +leaving the receiver dangling on the cord, he made one leap for the door. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +IN THE SIGNAL TOWER + + +It seemed an eternity to Dan, speeding hatless, coatless, breathless +through the storm, before he spied the red lights on the lowered gates at +the crossing. Dashing to the signal tower, he took the steps two at a +time. The small room was almost dark, but he could see Nance kneeling on +the floor beside the big gatekeeper. + +"Dan! Is it you?" she cried. "He ain't dead yet. I can feel him +breathing. If the doctor would only come!" + +"Who'd you call?" + +"The first one in the book, Dr. Adair." + +"But he's the big doctor up at the hospital; he won't come." + +"He will too! I told him he had to. And the gates, I got 'em down. Don't +stop to feel his heart, Dan. Call the doctor again!" + +"The first thing to do is to get a light," said Dan. "Ain't there a +lantern or something?" + +"Strike matches, like I did. They are on the window-sill--only +hurry--Dan, hurry!" + +Dan went about his task in his own way, taking time to find an oil lamp +on the shelf behind the door and deliberately lighting it before he took +his seat at the telephone. As he waited for the connection, his puzzled, +troubled eyes dwelt not on Uncle Jed, but on the crimson boots and +fantastic cap of Uncle Jed's companion. + +"Dr. Adair is on the way," he said quietly, when he hung up the receiver, +"and a man is coming from the yards to look after the gates. Is he still +breathing?" + +"Only when I make him!" said Nance, pressing the lungs of the injured +man. "There, Uncle Jed," she coaxed, "take another deep breath, just one +time. Go on! Do it for Nance. One time more! That's right! Once more!" + +But Uncle Jed was evidently very tired of trying to accommodate. The +gasps came at irregular intervals. + +"How long have you been doing this?" asked Dan, kneeling beside her. + +"I don't know. Ever since I came." + +"How did you happen to come?" + +"I saw the lightning strike the bell. Oh, Dan! It was awful, the noise +and the flash! Seemed like I 'd never get up the steps. And at first I +thought he was dead and--" + +"But who was with you? Where were you going?" interrupted Dan in +bewilderment. + +"I was passing--I was going home--I--" Her excited voice broke in a sob, +and she impatiently jerked the sleeve of her rain-coat across her eyes. + +In a moment Dan was all tenderness. For the first time he put his arm +around her and awkwardly patted her shoulder. + +"There," he said reassuringly, "don't try to tell me now. See! He's +breathing more regular! I expect the doctor'll pull him through." + +Nance's hands, relieved of the immediate necessity for action, were +clasping and unclasping nervously. + +"Dan," she burst out, "I got to tell you something! Birdie Smelts has got +me a place in the 'Follies.' I been on a couple of nights. I'm going away +with 'em in the morning." + +Dan looked at her as if he thought the events of the wild night had +deprived her of reason. + +"You!" he said, "going on the stage?" Then as he took it in, he drew away +from her suddenly as if he had received a lash across the face. "And you +were going off without talking it over or telling me or anything?" + +"I was going to write you, Dan. It was all so sudden." + +His eyes swept her bedraggled figure with stern disapproval. + +"Were you coming from the theater at this time in the morning?" + +Uncle Jed moaned slightly, and they both bent over him in instant +solicitude. But there was nothing to do, but wait until the doctor +should come. + +"Where had you been in those crazy clothes?" persisted Dan. + +"I'd been to the carnival ball with Birdie Smelts," Nance blurted out. "I +didn't know it was going to be like that, but I might 'a' gone anyway. I +don't know. Oh, Dan, I was sick to death of being stuck away in that dark +hole, waiting for something to turn up. I told you how it was, but you +couldn't see it. I was bound to have a good time if I died for it!" + +She dropped her head on her knees and sobbed unrestrainedly, while the +wind shrieked around the shanty, and the rain dashed against the +gradually lightening window-pane. After a while she flung back her head +defiantly. + +"_Stop_ looking at me like that, Dan. Lots of girls go on the stage and +stay good." + +"I wasn't thinking about the stage," said Dan. "I was thinking about +to-night. Who took you girls to that place?" + +Nance dried her tears. + +"I can't tell you that," she said uneasily. + +"Why not?" + +"It wouldn't be fair." + +Dan felt the hot blood surge to his head, and the muscles of his hands +tighten involuntarily. He forgot Uncle Jed; he forgot to listen for the +doctor, or to worry about traffic that would soon be held up in the +street below. The only man in the world for him at that moment was the +scoundrel who had dared to take his little Nance into that infamous +dance hall. + +Nance caught his arm and, with a quick gesture, dropped her head on it. + +"Dan," she pleaded, "don't be mad at me. I promise you I won't go to any +more places like that. I knew it wasn't right all along. But I got to go +on with the 'Follies,' It's the chance I been waiting for all these +months. Maybe it's the only one that'll ever come to me! You ain't going +to stand in my way, are you, Dan?" + +"Tell me who was with you to-night!" + +"No!" she whispered. "I can't. You mustn't ask me. I promise you I won't +do it again. I don't want to go away leaving you thinking bad of me." + +His clenched hands suddenly began to tremble so violently that he had to +clasp them tight to keep her from noticing. + +"I better get used to--to not thinking 'bout you at all," he said, +looking at her with the stern eyes of a young ascetic. + +For a time they knelt there side by side, and neither spoke. For over a +year Dan had been like one standing still on the banks of a muddy stream, +his eyes blinded to all but the shining goal opposite, while Nance was +like one who plunges headlong into the current, often losing sight of the +goal altogether, but now and again catching glimpses of it that sent her +stumbling, fighting, falling forward. + +At the sound of voices below they both scrambled to their feet. Dr. +Adair and the man from the yards came hurriedly up the steps together, +the former drawing off his gloves as he came. He was a compact, elderly +man whose keen observant eyes swept the room and its occupants at a +glance. He listened to Nance's broken recital of what had happened, cut +her short when he had obtained the main facts, and proceeded to examine +the patient. + +"The worst injury is evidently to the right arm and shoulder; you'll have +to help me get his shirt off. No--not that way!" + +Dan's hands, so eager to serve, so awkward in the service, fumbled over +their task, eliciting a groan from the unconscious man. + +"Let me do it!" cried Nance, springing forward. "You hold him up, Dan, I +can get it off." + +"It's a nasty job," warned the doctor, with a mistrustful glance at the +youthful, tear-stained face. "It may make you sick." + +"What if it does?" demanded Nance, impatiently. + +It was a long and distressing proceeding, and Dan tried not to look at +her as she bent in absorbed detachment over her work. But her steady +finger-touch, and her anticipation of the doctor's needs amazed him. It +recalled the day at the factory, when she, little more than a child +herself, had dressed the wounds of the carrying-in boy. Once she grew +suddenly white and had to hurry to the door and let the wind blow in her +face. He started up to follow her, but changed his mind. Instead he +protested with unnecessary vehemence against her resuming the work, but +she would not heed him. + +"That's right!" said the doctor, approvingly. "Stick it out this time and +next time it will not make you sick. Our next move is to get him home. +Where does he live?" + +"In Calvary Alley," said Dan, "back of the cathedral." + +"Very good," said the doctor, "I'll run him around there in my machine as +soon as that last hypodermic takes effect. Any family?" + +Dan shook his head. + +"He has, too!" cried Nance. "We're his family!" + +The doctor shot an amused glance at her over his glasses; then he laid a +kindly hand on her shoulder. + +"I congratulate him on this part of it. You make a first class +little nurse." + +"Is he going to get well?" Nance demanded. + +"It is too early to say, my dear. We will hope for the best. I will have +one of the doctors come out from the hospital every day to see him, but +everything will depend on the nursing." + +Nance cast a despairing look at the bandaged figure on the floor; then +she shot a look of entreaty at Dan. One showed as little response to her +appeal as the other. For a moment she stood irresolute; then she slipped +out of the room and closed the door behind her. + +For a moment Dan did not miss her. When he did, he left Dr. Adair in the +middle of a sentence and went plunging down the steps in hot pursuit. + +"Nance!" he called, splashing through the mud. "Aren't you going to +say good-by?" + +She wheeled on him furiously, a wild, dishevelled, little figure, strung +to the breaking point: + +"No!" she cried, "I am not going to say good-by! Do you suppose I could +go away with you acting like that? And who is there to nurse Uncle Jed, +I'd like to know, but me? But I want to tell you right now, Dan Lewis, if +ever another chance comes to get out of that alley, I'm going to take +it, and there can't anybody in the world stop me!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +CALVARY CATHEDRAL + + +"I don't take no stock in heaven havin' streets of gold," said Mrs. +Snawdor. "It'll be just my luck to have to polish 'em. You needn't tell +me if there's all that finery in heaven, they won't keep special angels +to do the dirty work!" + +She and Mrs. Smelts were scrubbing down the stairs of Number One, not as +a matter of cleanliness, but for the social benefit to be derived +therefrom. It was a Sunday morning institution with them, and served +quite the same purpose that church-going does for certain ladies in a +more exalted sphere. + +"I hope the Bible's true," said Mrs. Smelts, with a sigh. "Where it says +there ain't no marryin' nor givin' in marriage." + +"Oh, husbands ain't so worse if you pick 'em right," Mrs. Snawdor said +with the conviction of experience. "As fer me, I ain't hesitatin' to say +I like the second-handed ones best." + +"I suppose they are better broke in. But no other woman but me would 'a' +looked at Mr. Smelts." + +"You can't tell," said Mrs. Snawdor. "Think of me takin' Snawdor after +bein' used to Yager an' Molloy! Why, if you'll believe me, Mr. Burks, +lyin' there in bed fer four months now, takes more of a hand in helpin' +with the childern than Snawdor, who's up an' around." + +"Kin he handle hisself any better? Mr. Burks, I mean." + +"Improvin' right along. Nance has got him to workin' on a patent now. +It's got somethin' to do with a engine switch. Wisht you could see the +railroad yards she's rigged up on his bed. The childern are plumb crazy +'bout it." + +"Nance is gittin' awful pretty," Mrs. Smelts said. "I kinder 'lowed Dan +Lewis an' her'd be makin' a match before this." + +Mrs. Snawdor gathered her skirts higher about her ankles and transferred +her base of operations to a lower step. + +"You can't tell nothin' at all 'bout that girl. She was born with the bit +'tween her teeth, an' she keeps it there. No more 'n you git her goin' in +one direction than she turns up a alley on you. It's night school now. +There ain't a spare minute she ain't peckin' on that ole piece of a +type-writer Ike Lavinski loaned her." + +"She's got a awful lot of energy," sighed Mrs. Smelts. + +"Energy! Why it's somethin' fierce! She ain't content to let nothin' +stay the way it is. Wears the childern plumb out washin' 'em an' learnin' +'em lessons, an' harpin' on their manners. If you believe me, she's got +William J. that hacked he goes behind the door to blow his nose!" + +"It's a blessin' she didn't go off with them 'Follies,'" said Mrs. +Smelts. "Birdie lost her job over two months ago, an' the Lord knows what +she's livin' on. The last I heard of her she was sick an' stranded up in +Cincinnati, an' me without so much as a dollar bill to send her!" And +Mrs. Smelts sat down in a puddle of soap-suds and gave herself up to the +luxury of tears. + +At this moment a door on the third floor banged, and Nance Molloy, a +white figure against her grimy surroundings, picked her way gingerly down +the slippery steps. Her cheap, cotton skirt had exactly the proper flare, +and her tailor-made shirtwaist was worn with the proud distinction of one +who conforms in line, if not in material, to the mode of the day. + +"Ain't she the daisy?" exclaimed Mrs. Snawdor, gaily, and even Mrs. +Smelts dried her eyes, the better to appreciate Nance's gala attire. + +"We're too swell to be Methodist any longer!" went on Mrs. Snawdor, +teasingly. "We're turned 'Piscopal!" + +"You ain't ever got the nerve to be goin' over to the cathedral," Mrs. +Smelts asked incredulously. + +"Sure, why not?" said Nance, giving her hat a more sophisticated tilt. +"Salvation's as free there as it is anywhere." + +It was not salvation, however, that was concerning Nance Molloy as she +took her way jauntily out of the alley and, circling the square, joined +the throng of well-dressed men and women ascending the broad steps of the +cathedral. + +From that day when she had found herself back in the alley, like a bit of +driftwood that for a brief space is whirled out of its stagnant pool, +only to be cast back again, she had planned ceaselessly for a means of +escape. During the first terrible weeks of Uncle Jed's illness, her +thoughts flew for relief sometimes to Dan, sometimes to Mac. And Dan +answered her silent appeal in person, coming daily with his clumsy hands +full of necessities, his strong arms ready to lift, his slow speech +quickened to words of hope and cheer. Mac came only in dreams, with gay, +careless eyes and empty, useless hands, and lips that asked more than +they gave. Yet it was around Mac's shining head that the halo of romance +oftenest hovered. + +It was not until Uncle Jed grew better, and Dan's visits ceased, that +Nance realized what they had meant to her. To be sure her efforts to +restore things to their old familiar footing had been fruitless, for Dan +refused stubbornly to overlook the secret that stood between them, and +Nance, for reasons best known to herself, refused to explain matters. + +But youth reckons time by heart-throbs, and during Uncle Jed's +convalescence Nance found the clock of life running ridiculously slow. +Through Ike Lavinski, whose favor she had won by introducing him to Dr. +Adair, she learned of a night school where a business course could be +taken without expense. She lost no time in enrolling and, owing to her +thorough grounding of the year before, was soon making rapid progress. +Every night on her way to school, she walked three squares out of her way +on the chance of meeting Dan coming from the factory, and coming and +going, she watched the cathedral, wondering if Mac still sang there. + +One Sunday, toward the close of summer, she followed a daring impulse, +and went to the morning service. She sat in one of the rear pews and held +her breath as the procession of white-robed men and boys filed into the +choir. Mac Clarke was not among them, and she gave a little sigh of +disappointment, and wondered if she could slip out again. + +On second thought she decided to stay. Even in the old days when she had +stolen into the cathedral to look for nickels under the seats, she had +been acutely aware of "the pretties." But she had never attended a +service, or seen the tapers lighted, and the vast, cool building, with +its flickering lights and disturbing music, impressed her profoundly. + +Presently she began to make discoveries: the meek apologetic person +tip-toeing about lowering windows was no other than the pompous and +lordly Mason who had so often loomed over her as an avenging deity. In +the bishop, clad in stately robes, performing mysterious rites before +the altar, she recognized "the funny old guy" with the bald head, with +whom she had compared breakfast menus on a historical day at the +graded school. + +So absorbed was she in these revelations that she did not notice that she +was sitting down while everybody else was standing up, until a small +black book was thrust over her shoulder and a white-gloved finger pointed +to the top of the page. She rose hastily and tried to follow the service. +It seemed that the bishop was reading something which the people all +around her were beseeching the Lord to hear. She didn't wonder that the +Lord had to be begged to listen. She wasn't going to listen; that was one +thing certain. + +Then the organ pealed forth, and voices caught up the murmuring words and +lifted them and her with them to the great arched ceiling. As long as the +music lasted, she sat spell-bound, but when the bishop began to read +again, this time from a book resting on the out-stretched wings of a big +brass bird, her attention wandered to the great stained glass window +above the altar. The reverse side of it was as familiar to her as the +sign over Slap Jack's saloon. From the alley it presented opaque blocks +of glass above the legend that had been one of the mysteries of her +childhood. Now as she looked, the queer figures became shining angels +with lilies in their hands, and she made the amazing discovery that "Evol +si dog," seen from the inside, spelled "God is Love." + +She sat quite still, pondering the matter. The bishop and the music +and even Mac were for the time completely forgotten. Was the world +full of things like that, puzzling and confused from the outside, and +simple and easy from within? Within what? Her mind groped uncertainly +along a strange path. So God was love? Why hadn't the spectacled lady +told her so that time in the juvenile court instead of writing down +her foolish answer? But love had to do with sweethearts and dime +novels and plays on the stage. How could God be that? Maybe it meant +the kind of love Mr. Demry had for his little daughter, or the love +that Dan had for his mother, or the love she had for the Snawdor baby +that died. Maybe the love that was good was God, and the love that was +bad was the devil, maybe-- + +Her struggle with these wholly new and perplexing problems was +interrupted by the arrival of a belated worshiper, who glided into the +seat beside her and languidly knelt in prayer. Nance's attention +promptly leaped from moral philosophy to clothes. Her quick eyes made +instant appraisal of the lady's dainty costume, then rested in startled +surprise on her lowered profile. The straight delicate features, slightly +foreign, the fair hair rippling from the neck, were disconcertingly +familiar. But when Nance saw her full face, with the petulant mouth and +wrinkled brow, the impression vanished. + +After a long time the service came to an end, and just as Nance was +waiting to pass out, she heard some one say: + +"When do you expect your son home, Mrs. Clarke? We miss him in the +choir." + +And the fair-haired lady in front of her looked up and smiled, and all +her wrinkles vanished as she said: + +"We expect him home before next Sunday, if the naughty boy doesn't +disappoint us again!" + +Nance waited to hear no more, but fled into the sunlight and around the +corner, hugging her secret. She was not going to let Mr. Mac see her, she +assured herself; she was just going to see him, and hear him sing. + +When the next Sunday morning came, it found her once more hurrying up the +broad steps of the cathedral. She was just in time, for as she slipped +into a vacant pew, the notes of the organ began to swell, and from a side +door came the procession of choir boys, headed by Mac Clarke carrying a +great cross of gold. + +Nance, hiding behind the broad back of the man in front of her, watched +the procession move into the chancel, and saw the members of the choir +file into their places. She had no interest now in the bishop's robes or +the lighted tapers or cryptic inscriptions. Throughout the long service +her attention was riveted on the handsome, white-robed figure which sat +in a posture of bored resignation, wearing an expression of Christian +martyrdom. + +When the recessional sounded, she rose with the rest of the congregation, +still keeping behind the protecting back of the man in front. But when +she saw Mac lift the shining cross and come toward her down the chancel +steps at the head of the singing procession, something made her move +suddenly to the end of the pew, straight into the shaft of light that +streamed through the great west window. + +Mac, with his foot on the lowest step, paused for the fraction of a +second, and the cross that he held swayed slightly. Then he caught step +again and moved steadily forward. + +Nance hurried away before the benediction. She was never going to do it +again, she promised herself repeatedly. And yet, how wonderful it had +been! Straight over the heads of the congregation for their eyes to meet +like that, and for him to remember as she was remembering! + +For three weeks she kept her promise and resolutely stayed away from the +cathedral. One would have to be "goin' on nineteen" and live in Calvary +Alley to realize the heroic nature of her moral struggle. Victory might +have been hers in the end, had not Dan Lewis for the first time in years, +failed one Saturday to spend his half-holiday with her. He had come of +late, somber and grimly determined to give her no peace until he knew the +truth. But Dan, even in that mood, was infinitely better than no Dan at +all. When he sent her word that he was going with some of the men from +the factory up the river for a swim, she gave her shoulders a defiant +shrug, and set to work to launder her one white dress and stove-polish +her hat, with the pleasing results we have already witnessed through the +eyes of Mrs. Snawdor and Mrs. Smelts. + +There is no place where a flirtation takes quicker root or matures more +rapidly than in ecclesiastical soil. From the moment Nance entered the +cathedral on that third Sunday, she and Mac were as acutely aware of each +other's every move as if they had been alone together in the garden of +Eden. At first she tried to avert her eyes, tried not to see his +insistent efforts to attract her attention, affected not to know that he +was singing to her, and watching her with impatient delight. + +Then the surging notes of the organ died away, the bishop ascended the +pulpit, and the congregation settled down to hear the sermon. From +that time on Nance ceased to be discreet. There was glance for glance, +and smile for smile, and the innumerable wireless messages that youth +has exchanged since ardent eyes first sought each other across +forbidden spaces. + +It was not until the end of the sermon that Nance awoke to the fact that +it was high time for Cinderella to be speeding on her way. Seizing a +moment when the choir's back was turned to the congregation, she slipped +noiselessly out of the cathedral and was fleeing down the steps when she +came face to face with Monte Pearce. + +"Caught at last!" he exclaimed, planting himself firmly in her way. +"I've been playing watchdog for Mac for three Sundays. What are you +doing in town?" + +"In town?" + +"Yes; we thought you were on the road with the 'Follies.' When did you +get back?" + +"You're seeking information, Mr. Monte Carlo," said Nance, with a smile. +"Let me by. I've got to go home." + +"I'll go with you. Where do you live?" + +"Under my hat." + +"Well, I don't know a nicer place to be." Monte laughed and looked at +her and kept on laughing, until she felt herself blushing up to the +roots of her hair. + +"Honest, Mr. Monte, I got to go on," she said appealingly. "I'm in no +end of a hurry." + +"I can go as fast as you can," said Monte, his cane tapping each step as +he tripped briskly down beside her. "I've got my orders from Mac. I'm to +stay with you, if you won't stay with me. Which way?" + +In consternation for fear the congregation should be dismissed before she +could get away, and determined not to let him know where she lived, she +jumped aboard a passing car. + +"So be it!" said her plump companion, settling himself comfortably on the +back seat beside her. "Now tell your Uncle Monte all about it!" + +"There's nothing to tell!" declared Nance, with the blush coming back. +She was finding it distinctly agreeable to be out alone like this with a +grandly sophisticated young gentleman who wore a light linen suit with +shoes to match, and whose sole interest seemed to center upon her and +her affairs. + +"But you know there is!" he persisted. "What made you give us the shake +that night of the ball?" + +Nance refused to say; so he changed the subject. + +"How's Miss Birdie?" + +"Give it up. Haven't seen her since you have." + +"What? Didn't you go on with the show that next morning?" + +"No." + +"And you've been in town all summer?" + +She nodded, and her companion gave a low, incredulous whistle. + +"Well, I'll be darned!" he said. "And old Mac sending letters and +telegrams every few minutes and actually following the 'Follies' +to Boston!" + +"Birdie was with 'em up to two months ago," said Nance. + +"Mac wasn't after Birdie!" said Monte. "He hasn't had but one idea in his +cranium since that night of the carnival ball. I never saw him so crazy +about a girl as he is about you." + +"Yes, he is!" scoffed Nance, derisively, but she let Monte run on at +length, painting in burning terms the devastating extent of Mac's +passion, his despair at losing her, his delight at finding her again, and +his impatience for an interview. + +When Monte finished she looked at him sidewise out of her +half-closed eyes. + +"Tell him I've gone on a visit to my rich aunt out to the sea-shore +in Kansas." + +"Give him another show," coaxed Monte. "We were all a bit lit up that +night at the ball." + +"No, we weren't either!" Nance flashed. "I hadn't had a thing, but one +glass of beer, and you know it! I hate your old fizz-water!" + +"Well, make it up with Mac. He's going back to college next month, and +he's wild to see you." + +"Tell him I haven't got time. Tell him I'm studying instrumental." + +Nance was fencing for time. Her cool, keen indifference gave little +indication of the turmoil that was going on within. If she could manage +to see Mac without letting him know where she lived, without Dan's +finding it out-- + +The car compassed the loop and started on the return trip. + +"Where do we get off?" asked Monte. + +"I'm not getting off anywhere until after you do." + +"I've got lots of nickels." + +"I've got lots of time!" returned Nance, regardless of her former haste. + +At Cathedral Square, Monte rang the bell. + +"Have it your own way," he said good-naturedly. "But do send a +message to Mac." + +Nance let him get off the back platform; then she put her head out of +the window. + +"You tell him," she called, "that he can't kill two birds with one +stone!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + +BACK AT CLARKE'S + + +The promotion of Uncle Jed from the bed to a pair of crutches brought +about two important changes in the house of Snawdor. First, a financial +panic caused by the withdrawal of his insurance money, and, second, a +lightening of Nance's home duties that sent her once more into the world +to seek a living. + +By one of those little ironies in which life seems to delight, the only +opportunity that presented itself lay directly in the path of temptation. +A few days after her interview with Monte Pearce, Dan came to her with an +offer to do some office work at the bottle factory. The regular +stenographer was off on a vacation, and a substitute was wanted for the +month of September. + +"Why, I thought you'd be keen about it," said Dan, surprised at her +hesitation. + +"Oh! I'd like it all right, but--" + +"You needn't be afraid to tackle it," Dan urged. "Mr. Clarke's not as +fierce as he looks; he'd let you go a bit slow at first." + +"He wouldn't have to! I bet I've got as much speed now as the girl he's +had. It's not the work." + +"I know how you feel about the factory," said Dan, "and I wouldn't want +you to go back in the finishing room. The office is different. You take +my word for it; it's as nice a place as you could find." + +They were standing on the doorless threshold of Number One, under the +fan-shaped arch through which the light had failed to shine for twenty +years. From the room on the left came the squeak of Mr. Demry's fiddle +and the sound of pattering feet, synchronizing oddly with the lugubrious +hymn in which Mrs. Smelts, in the room opposite, was giving vent to her +melancholy. + +Nance, eager for her chance, yearning for financial independence, +obsessed by the desire to escape from the dirt and disorder and confusion +about her, still hesitated. + +"If you're afraid I'm going to worry you," said Dan, fumbling with his +cap, "I can keep out of your way all right." + +In an instant her impulsive hand was on his arm. + +"You shut up, Dan Lewis!" she said sharply. "What makes me want to take +the job most is our coming home together every night like we used to." + +Dan's eyes, averted until now, lifted with sudden hope. + +"But I got a good reason for not coming," she went on stubbornly. "It +hasn't got anything to do with you or the work." + +"Can't you tell me, Nance?" + +The flicker of hope died out of his face as she shook her head. He looked +down the alley for a moment; then he turned toward her with decision: + +"See here, Nance," he said earnestly, "I don't know what your reason is, +but I know that this is one chance in a hundred. I want you to take this +job. If I come by for you to-morrow morning, will you be ready?" + +Still she hesitated. + +"Let me decide it for you," he insisted, "will you, Nance?" + +She looked up into his earnest eyes, steadfast and serious as a collie's. + +"All right!" she said recklessly, "have it your own way!" + +The first day in Mr. Clarke's office was one of high tension. Added to +the trepidation of putting her newly acquired business knowledge to a +practical test, was the much more disturbing possibility that at any +moment Mac might happen upon the scene. Just what she was going to do and +say in such a contingency she did not know. Once when she heard the door +open cautiously, she was afraid to lift her eyes. When she did, surprise +took the place of fear. + +"Why, Mrs. Smelts!" she cried. "What on earth are you doing here?" + +Birdie's mother, faded and anxious, and looking unfamiliar in bonnet and +cape, was evidently embarrassed by Nance's unexpected presence. + +"He sent for me," she said, nervously, twitching at the fringe on her +cape. "I wrote to his wife, but he sent word fer me to come here an' see +him at ten o'clock. Is it ten yet?" + +"Mr. Clarke sent for _you_?" Nance began incredulously; then remembering +that a stenographer's first business is to attend to her own, she crossed +the room with quite a professional manner and tapped lightly on the door +of the inner office. + +For half an hour the usually inaccessible president of the bottle factory +and the scrub woman from Calvary Alley held mysterious conclave; then the +door opened again, and Mrs. Smelts melted into the outer passage as +silently as she had come. + +Nance, while frankly curious, had little time to indulge in idle +surmise. All her faculties were bent on mastering the big modern +type-writer that presented such different problems from the ancient +machine on which she had pounded out her lessons. She didn't like this +sensitive, temperamental affair that went off half-cocked at her +slightest touch, and did things on its own account that she was in the +habit of doing herself. + +Her first dictation left her numb with terror. She heard Mr. Clarke +repeating with lightning rapidity phrases which she scarcely +comprehended: "Enclose check for amount agreed upon." "Matter settled +once and for all." "Any further annoyance to be punished to full extent +of the law." + +"Shall I address an envelope?" she asked, glancing at the "Dear Madam" at +the top of the page. + +"No," said Mr. Clarke, sharply, "I'll attend to that." + +Other letters followed, and she was soon taking them with considerable +speed. When mistakes occurred they could usually be attributed to the +graded school which, during its brief chance at Nance, had been more +concerned in teaching her the names and the lengths of the rivers of +South America than in teaching her spelling. + +At the noon hour Mr. Clarke departed, and she stood by the window eating +her lunch and watching the men at work on the new wing. The old finishing +room was a thing of the past, and Dan's dream of a light, well-ventilated +workroom for the girls was already taking definite form. She could see +him now in the yard below, a blue-print in his hand, explaining to a +group of workmen some detail of the new building. One old glass-blower, +peering at the plan through heavy, steel-rimmed spectacles, had his arm +across Dan's shoulder. Nance smiled tenderly. Dear Dan! Everybody liked +him--even those older men from the furnace-room who had seen him promoted +over their heads. She leaned forward impulsively and called to him. + +"Danny!" she cried, "here's an apple. Catch!" + +He caught it dexterously in his left hand, gave her a casual nod, then +went gravely on with the business in hand. Nance sighed and turned away +from the window. + +In the afternoon the work went much easier. She was getting used to Mr. +Clarke's quick, nervous speech and abrupt manner. She was beginning to +think in sentences instead of words. All was going famously when a quick +step sounded in the passage without, followed by a gaily whistled tune, +and the next instant the door behind her was flung open. + +Mr. Clarke went steadily on with his dictation, but the new stenographer +ceased to follow. With bent head and lips caught between her teeth, she +made futile efforts to catch up, but she only succeeded in making +matters worse. + +"That will do for this afternoon," said Mr. Clarke, seeing her confusion. +"Make a clear copy of that last letter and put it on my desk." Then he +turned in his chair and glared over his shoulder. "Well, Mac!" he said, +"I've waited for you just one hour and thirty-five minutes." + +"Dead sorry, Dad. Didn't know it was so late," said the new-comer, +blithely. "How long before you are going home?" + +"Ten minutes. I've got to go over to the new building first. Don't go +until I return. There's something I want to see you about." + +Nance heard the door close as Mr. Clarke went out; then she waited in a +tremor, half trepidation, half glee, for Mac to recognize her. He was +moving about restlessly, first in one office, then in the other, and she +could feel his bright inquisitive eyes upon her from different angles. +But she kept her face averted, changing her position as he changed his. +Presently he came to a halt near her and began softly to whistle the +little-bear dance from the "Rag-Time Follies." She smiled before she knew +it, and the next instant he was perched on the corner of her desk, +demanding rapturously to know what she was doing there, and swearing that +he had recognized her the moment he entered the room. + +"Let go my hand, Mr. Mac!" she implored in laughing confusion. + +"I'm afraid to! You might give me the slip again. I've been scouring the +town for you and to think I should find you here!" + +"Look out!" warned Nance. "You're upsetting the ink-bottle!" + +"What do I care? Gee, this is luck! You ought to see my new racer, a +regular peach! Will you come out with me sometime?" + +"Will you let me run it?" + +"I'll let you do anything you like with anything I've got," he declared +with such ardor that she laughed and regretted it the next moment. + +"Now look here, Mr. Mac!" she said, severely, "you touch me again, and I +quit to-night. See?" + +"I'll be good. I'll do anything you say if you'll just stay and +play with me." + +"Play nothing! I've got work to do." + +"Work be hanged! Do you suppose when I haven't seen you for four months +that I'm not going to claim my inning?" + +"Well, I want to tell you right here," she said, shaking a warning pencil +in his face, "that I mean what I say about your behaving yourself." + +Mac caught the end of the pencil and held it while their eyes challenged +each other. + +"So be it!" he said. "I promise to be a model of discretion. Nance, I've +been mad about you! Did Monte tell you--" + +"Mr. Monte didn't tell me anything I wanted to hear," she said in her +cool, keen way, as she got the imperiled ink-well to a place of safety, +and straightened the other articles on the desk. + +"You wouldn't be so down on a fellow if you knew how hard hit I am," +persisted Mac. "Besides, I'm in for an awful row with the governor. You +may see my scalp fly past the window in less than ten minutes." + +"What's the row about?" + +"Same old thing. I am the original devil for getting found out." For +the space of a minute he gloomily contemplated a spot in the carpet; +then he shrugged his shoulders, rammed his hands in his pockets, and +began to whistle. + +"The governor'll fork out," he said. "He always does. Say, Nance, you +haven't said a word about my moustache." + +"Let's see it," said Nance in giggling derision. "Looks like a baby's +eyebrow. Does it wash off?" + +A step in the hall sent them flying in opposite directions, Nance back to +her desk, and Mac into the inner office, where his father found him a +moment later, apparently absorbed in a pamphlet on factory inspection. + +When Nance started home at six o'clock, she found Dan waiting at his old +post beside the gas-pipe. + +"It's like old times," he said happily, as he piloted her through the +out-pouring throng. "I remember the first night we walked home together. +You weren't much more than a kid. You had on a red cap with a tassel to +it. Three years ago the tenth of last May. Wouldn't think it, would you?" + +"Think what?" she asked absently. + +"Tired?" he asked anxiously. "Is the work going to be too heavy?" + +She shook her head impatiently. + +"No, the work's all right. But--but I wish you hadn't made me come +back, Dan." + +"Stick it out for a week," he urged, "and then if you want to stop, I +won't say a word." + +She looked up at him quizzically and gave a short enigmatic laugh. + +"That's my trouble," she said, "if I stick it out for a week, I won't be +wanting to quit!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + +MAC + + +Nance's prophecy regarding herself was more than fulfilled. Whatever +scruples had assailed her at the start were soon overthrown by the +on-rushing course of events. That first month in Mr. Clarke's office +proved to be a time of delightful madness. There were daily meetings with +Mac at the noon hour, stolen chats on street corners, thrilling suppers +with him and Monte at queer cafes, and rides after dark in that wonderful +racer that proved the most enticing of playthings. + +Dan was as busy as Mac was idle; Mr. Clarke was gloomy and preoccupied; +Mrs. Snawdor was in bed when Nance left home in the morning, and gone to +work when she returned in the evening. The days flashed by in a glorious +succession of forbidden joys, with nobody to interrupt the furious +progress of affairs. + +Half of her salary Nance gave to her stepmother, and the other half she +spent on clothes. She bought with taste and discrimination, measuring +everything by the standard set up by her old idol, Miss Stanley at Forest +Home. The result was that she soon began to look very much like the +well-dressed women with whom she touched elbows on the avenue. + +She had indeed got the bit between her teeth, and she ran at full tilt, +secure in the belief that she had full control of the situation. As long +as she gave satisfaction in her work, she told herself, and "behaved +right," she could go and come as she liked, and nobody would be the +worse for it. + +She did not realize that her scoffing disbelief in Mac's avowals, and her +gay indifference were the very things that kept him at fever heat. He was +not used to being thwarted, and this high-handed little working-girl, +with her challenging eyes and mocking laugh, who had never heard of the +proprieties, and yet denied him favors, was the first person he had ever +known who refused absolutely to let him have his own way. With a boy's +impetuous desire he became obsessed by the idea of her. When he was not +with her, he devised schemes to remind her of him, making love to her by +proxy in a dozen foolish, whimsical ways. When it was not flowers or +candy, it was a string of nonsense verses laid between the pages of her +type-writer paper, sometimes a clever caricature of himself or Monte, and +always it was love notes in the lining of her hat, in her gloves, in her +pocket-book. She was afraid to raise her umbrella for fear a rain of +tender missives would descend therefrom. Once he gave her a handsome +jeweled bracelet which she wore under her sleeve. But he got hard up +before the week was over and borrowed it back and pawned it. + +Of two things Nance succeeded in keeping him in ignorance. During all +their escapades he never discovered where she lived, and he never +suspected her friendship for Dan Lewis. He was not one to concern himself +with troublesome details. The pleasure of the passing moment was his sole +aim in life. + +And Nance, who ordinarily scorned subterfuge and hated a secret, +succeeded not only in keeping him in ignorance of Dan; but with even +greater strategy managed to keep Dan in complete ignorance of the whole +situation. Dan, to be sure, took his unconscious revenge. His kind, +puzzled eyes haunted her dreams, and the thought of him proved the one +disturbing element in these halcyon days. In vain she told herself that +he was an old fogy, that he had Sunday-school notions, that he wouldn't +be able to see anything but wrong in a harmless flirtation that would end +with Mac's return to college. But would it end? That was a question Nance +was beginning to ask herself with curious misgiving. + +The last of the month rolled round with incredible swiftness. It brought +to Nance not only an end to all her good times, but the disheartening +knowledge that she would soon be out of employment again with no money +saved, and under the self-imposed necessity of making a clean breast of +her misdeeds to Dan Lewis. + +On the Saturday before Mac's intended departure, as she sat at her desk +ruefully facing the situation, he rushed into the office. + +"Has a mean-looking little Jew been in here this morning?" he demanded +breathlessly. + +"Nobody's been here," said Nance. + +"Gloree!" said Mac, collapsing into a chair. "He gave me a scare! Wonder +if he 'phoned!" + +"Mr. Clarke's been out all morning. These are the people who called up." + +Mac ran his eye hurriedly down the list and sighed with relief. Then he +got up and went to the window and stood restlessly tapping the pane. + +"I've a good notion to go East to-night," he said, half to himself, "no +use waiting until Monday." + +Nance glanced at him quickly. + +"What's up?" she asked. + +"Money, as usual," said Mac in an aggrieved tone. "Just let me get ready +to leave town, and fellows I never heard of turn up with bills. I could +stand off the little fellows, but Meyers is making no end of a stew. He +holds a note of mine for five hundred and sixty dollars. It was due +yesterday, and he swore that if I didn't smoke up by noon to-day, he'd +come to the governor." + +"Won't he give you an extension?" + +"He's given me two already. It's the money I lost last spring at the +races. That's the reason I can't get it out of the governor. It looks as +if it were about time for little Willie to take to the tall timbers." + +Nance got up from her desk and joined him at the window. There was +something she had been burning to say to him for ten days, but it was +something she found it very hard to say. He might tell her it was none of +her business; he might even not like her any more. + +"See here, Mr. Mac," she said, bracing herself for the ordeal, "did it +ever strike you that you spend a lot of money that don't belong to you?" + +"It'll all be mine some day," said Mac reassuringly. "If the governor +would listen to mother, we'd never have these financial rackets. She +knows that it takes a lot for a fellow to live right." + +"It takes a lot more for him to live wrong," said Nance, stoutly. +"You get a whacking big allowance; when you get to the end of it, why +don't you do like some of the rest of us--go without the things you +can't pay for?" + +"I am going to," said Mac as if the idea was a new one. "Once I get +squared up, you bet I'll stay so. But that doesn't help me out of this +mess. The money has got to come from somewhere, and I tell you I haven't +got a sou!" + +Nance had never seen him so perturbed. He usually approached these +conflicts with his father with a passing grimace, exhibited sufficient +repentance to get what he wanted, and emerged more debonair than ever. +It was disturbing to see him so serious and preoccupied. + +"I bet your father'd help you if he thought you'd make a new +start," she said. + +Mac shook his head. + +"He would have a month ago. But he's got it in for me now. He believes an +idiotic story that was cocked up about me, and he's just waiting for my +next slip to spring a mine on me. I got to keep him from finding out +until I'm gone; that's all there is to it!" + +He fumbled in his pocket for a match and instead drew out a bank-note. + +"By George! here's a lonesome five-spot I didn't know I had! I +believe I'll play it on the races and see what it'll do for me. Maybe +it's a mascot." + +His momentary depression was gone, and he was eager to be off. But +Nance stood between him and the door, and there was a dangerous light +in her eyes. + +"Do you know," she said, "I've a good mind to tell you what I +think of you?" + +He caught her hand. "Do, Nance! And make it nice. It's going to be no end +of a grind to leave you. Say something pretty that I can live on 'til +Christmas. Tell me I'm the sweetest fellow that ever lived. Go on. Make +love to me, Nance!" + +"I think you are a short-sport!" she burst forth. "Any fellow that'll +go on making debts when he can't pay his old ones, that'll get things +in a muddle and run off and let somebody else face the racket is a +coward--I think--" + +"Help! Help!" cried Mac, throwing up an arm in pretended defense, and +laughing at her flashing eyes and blazing cheeks. "By jinks, I don't know +whether you look prettiest when you are mad or when you are glad. If you +don't stop this minute I'll have to kiss you!" + +The anger in Nance's face faded into exasperation. She felt suddenly hot +and uncomfortable and a little ashamed of her violence. She had neither +offended him nor humiliated him; she had simply amused him. Tears of +chagrin sprang to her eyes, and she turned away abruptly. + +"Nance!" Mac demanded, with quick concern, "you surely aren't crying? Why +the very idea! It makes me perfectly miserable to see girls cry. You +mustn't, you know. Look at me, Nance! Smile at me this minute!" + +But Nance's head was down on her desk, and she was past smiling. + +"I'll do anything you say!" cried Mac, dropping on his knees beside her. +"I'll 'fess up to the governor. I'll go on the water-wagon. I'll cut out +the races. I'll be a regular little tin god if you'll only promise to be +good to me." + +"Good to you nothing!" said Nance, savagely, lifting a tear-stained, +earnest face. "What right have I got to be anything to you? Haven't I +been letting you spend the money on me that wasn't yours? I've been as +bad as you have, every bit." + +"Oh, rot!" said Mac, hotly. "You've been an angel. There isn't another +girl in the world that's as much fun as you are and yet on the square +every minute." + +"It isn't on the square!" contradicted Nance, twisting her wet +handkerchief into a ball. "Sneaking around corners and doing things on +the sly. I am ashamed to tell you where I live, or who my people are, +and you are ashamed to have your family know you are going with me. +Whenever I look at your father and see him worrying about you, or think +of your mother--" + +"Yes, you think of everybody but me. You hold me at arm's length and +knock on me and say things to me that nobody else would dare to say! And +the worse you treat me, the more I want to take you in my arms and run +away with you. Can't you love me a little, Nance? Please!" + +He was close to her, with his ardent face on a level with hers. He was +never more irresistible than when he wanted something, especially a +forbidden something, and in the course of his twenty-one years he had +never wanted anything so much as he wanted Nance Molloy. + +She caught her breath and looked away. It was very hard to say what she +intended, with him so close to her. His eloquent eyes, his tremulous +lips were very disconcerting. + +"Mr. Mac," she whispered intently, "why don't you tell your father +everything, and promise him some of the things you been promising me? Why +don't you make a clean start and behave yourself and stop giving 'em all +this trouble?" + +"And if I do, Nance? Suppose I do it for you, what then?" + +For a long moment their eyes held each other. These two young, +undisciplined creatures who had started life at opposite ends of the +social ladder, one climbing up and the other climbing down, had met +midway, and the fate of each trembled in the balance. + +"And if I do?" Mac persisted, hardly above his breath. + +Nance's eyelids fluttered ever so slightly, and the next instant, Mac had +crushed her to him and smothered her protests in a passion of kisses. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + +BETWEEN TWO FIRES + + +When Mr. Clarke returned from luncheon, it was evident that he was in no +mood to encourage a prodigal's repentance. For half an hour Nance heard +his voice rising and falling in angry accusation; then a door slammed, +and there was silence. She waited tensely for the next sound, but it was +long in coming. Presently some one began talking over the telephone in +low, guarded tones, and she could not be sure which of the two it was. +Then the talking ceased; the hall door of the inner office opened and +closed quietly. + +Nance went to the window and saw Mac emerge from the passage below and +hurry across the yard to the stables. His cap was over his eyes, and his +hands were deep in his pockets. Evidently he had had it out with his +father and was going to stay over and meet his difficulties. Her eyes +grew tender as she watched him. What a spoiled boy he was, in spite of +his five feet eleven! Always getting into scrapes and letting other +people get him out! But he was going to face the music this time, and he +was doing it for her! If only she hadn't let him kiss her! A wave of +shame made her bury her hot cheeks in her palms. + +She was startled from her reverie by a noise at the door. It was Dan +Lewis, looking strangely worried and preoccupied. + +"Hello, Nance," he said, without lifting his eyes. "Did Mr. Clarke leave +a telegram for me?" + +"Not with me. Perhaps it is on his table. Want me to see?" + +"No, I'll look," Dan answered and went in and closed the door behind him. + +Nance looked at the closed door in sudden apprehension. What was the +matter with Dan? What had he found out? She heard him moving about in the +empty room; then she heard him talking over the telephone. When he came +out, he crossed over to where she was sitting. + +"Nance," he began, still with that uneasy manner, "there's something I've +got to speak to you about. You won't take it amiss?" + +"Cut loose," said Nance, with an attempt at lightness, but her heart +began to thump uncomfortably. + +"You see," Dan began laboriously. "I'm sort of worried by some talk +that's been going on 'round the factory lately. It hadn't come direct to +me until to-day, but I got wind of it every now and then. I know it's +not true, but it mustn't go on. There's one way to stop it. Do you know +what it is?" + +Nance shook her head, and he went on. + +"You and I have been making a mess of things lately. Maybe it's been my +fault, I don't know. You see a fellow gets to know a lot of things a nice +girl don't know. And the carnival ball business--well--I was scared for +you, Nance, and that's the plain truth." + +"I know, Dan," she said impatiently. "I was a fool to go that time, but I +never did it again." + +Dan fingered the papers on the desk. + +"I ain't going to rag about that any more. But I can't have 'em saying +things about you around the factory. You know how I feel about you--how I +always have felt--Nance I want you to marry me." + +Nance flashed a look at him, questioning, eager, uncertain; then her eyes +fell. How could she know that behind his halting sentences a paean of +love was threatening to burst the very confines of his inarticulate soul? +She only saw an awkward young workman in his shirt sleeves, with a smudge +across his cheek and a wistful look in his eyes, who knew no more about +making love than he knew about the other graces of life. + +"I've saved enough money," he went on earnestly, "to buy a little house +in the country somewhere. That's what you wanted, wasn't it?" + +Nance's glance wandered to the tall gas-pipe that had been their +unromantic trysting place. Then she closed her eyes and pressed her +fingers against them to keep back the stinging tears. If Dan loved her, +why didn't he say beautiful things to her, why didn't he take her in his +arms as Mac had done, and kiss away all those fears of herself and of the +future that crowded upon her? With her head on his shoulder she could +have sobbed out her whole confession and been comforted, but now-- + +"You care for me, don't you, Nance?" Dan asked with a sharp note of +anxiety in his voice. + +"Of course I care!" she said irritably. "But I don't want to get married +and settle down. I want to get out and see the world. When you talk about +a quiet little house in the country, I want to smash every window in it!" + +Dan slipped the worn drawing he had in his hand back into his pocket. It +was no time to discuss honeysuckle porches. + +"We don't have to go to the country," he said patiently. "I just thought +it was what you wanted. We can stay here, or we can go to another town if +you like. All I want is to make you happy, Nance." + +For a moment she sat with her chin on her palms, staring straight ahead; +then she turned toward him with sudden resolution. + +"What's the talk you been hearing about me?" she demanded. + +"There's no use going into that," he said. "It's a lie, and I mean to +stamp it out if I have to lick every man in the factory to do it." + +"Was it--about Mac Clarke?" + +"Who dared bring it to you?" he asked fiercely. + +"What are they saying, Dan?" + +"That you been seen out with him on the street, that you ride with +him after night, and that he comes down here every day at the noon +hour to see you." + +"Is that all?" + +"Ain't it enough?" + +"Well, it's true!" said Nance, defiantly. "Every word of it. If anybody +can find any real harm in what I've done, they are welcome to it!" + +"It's true?" gasped Dan, his hands gripping a chair-back. "And you never +told me? Has he--has he made love to you, Nance?" + +"Why, he makes love to everybody. He makes love to his mother when he +wants to get something out of her. What he says goes in one ear and +out the other with me. But I like him and I ain't ashamed to say so. +He's give me the best time I ever had in my life, and you bet I don't +forget it." + +"Will you answer me one thing more?" demanded Dan, sternly. + +"Yes; I ain't afraid to answer any question you can ask." + +"Was it Clarke that took you to the carnival ball?" + +"Him and a fellow named Monte Pearce." + +"Just you three?" + +"No; Birdie Smelts was along." + +Dan brushed his hand across his brow as if trying to recall something. + +"Birdie come here that day," he said slowly. "She wanted to see Clarke +for a friend of hers. Nance did he--did he ever ask you to kiss him?" + +"Yes." + +Dan groaned. + +"Why didn't you tell me all this before, Nance? Why didn't you give me a +chance to put you on your guard?" + +"I _was_ on my guard!" she cried, with rising anger. "I don't need +anybody to take care of me!" + +But Dan was too absorbed in his own thoughts to heed her. + +"It's a good thing he's going away in a couple of days," he said grimly. +"If ever the blackguard writes to you, or dares to speak to you again--" + +Nance had risen and was facing him. + +"Who's to stop him?" she asked furiously. "I'm the one to say the word, +and not you!" + +"And you won't let me take it up with him?" + +"No!" + +"And you mean to see him again, and to write to him?" + +Nance had a blurred vision of an unhappy prodigal crossing the factory +yard. He had kept his part of their compact; she must keep hers. + +"I will if I want to," she said rather weakly. + +Dan's face flushed crimson. + +"All right," he said, "keep it up if you like. But I tell you now, I +ain't going to stay here to see it. I'm going to clear out!" + +He turned toward the door, and she called after him anxiously: + +"Dan, come back here this minute. Where are you going?" + +He paused in the doorway, his jaw set and a steady light in his eyes. + +"I am going now," he said, "to apologize to the man I hit yesterday for +telling the truth about you!" + +That night Nance shed more tears than she had ever shed in the whole +course of her life before; but whether she wept for Mac, or Dan, or +for herself, she could not have said. She heard the sounds die out of +the alley one by one, the clanging cars at the end of the street +became less frequent; only the drip, drip, drip from a broken gutter +outside her window, and the rats in the wall kept her company. All day +Sunday she stayed in-doors, and came to the office on Monday pale and +a bit listless. + +Early as it was, Mr. Clarke was there before her, pacing the floor in +evident perturbation. + +"Come in here a moment, Miss Molloy," he said, before she had taken off +her hat. "I want a word with you." + +Nance followed him into the inner room with a quaking heart. + +"I want you to tell me," he said, waiving all preliminaries, "just who +was in this room Saturday afternoon after I left." + +"Dan Lewis. And of course, Mr. Mac. You left him here." + +"Who else?" + +"Nobody." + +"But there must have been," insisted Mr. Clarke, vehemently. "A man, +giving my name, called up our retail store between two and two-thirty +o'clock, and asked if they could cash a check for several hundred +dollars. He said it was too late to go to the bank, and he wanted the +money right away. Later a messenger brought my individual check, torn out +of this check-book, which evidently hasn't been off my desk, and received +the money. The cashier thought the signature looked queer and called me +up yesterday. I intend to leave no stone unturned until I get at the +truth of the matter. You were the only person here all afternoon. Tell +me, in detail, exactly what happened." + +Nance recalled as nearly as she could, the incidents of the afternoon, +with careful circuits around her own interviews with Mac and Dan. + +"Could any one have entered the inner office between their visits, +without your knowing it?" asked Mr. Clarke, who was following her +closely. + +"Oh, yes, sir; only there wasn't time. You see Mr. Mac was just going out +the factory yard as Dan come in here." + +"Did either of them use my telephone?" + +"Both of them used it." + +"Could you hear what was said?" + +"No; the door was shut both times." + +"Did Lewis enter through the other room, or through the hall?" + +"He come through the other room and asked me if you had left a +telegram for him." + +"Then he came in here?" + +"Yes, sir." + +Mr. Clarke's brows were knitted in perplexity. He took up the telephone. + +"Send Lewis up here to my office," he directed. "What? Hasn't come in +yet?" he repeated incredulously. "That's strange," he said grimly, half +to himself. "The first time I ever knew him to be late." + +Something seemed to tighten suddenly about Nance's heart. Could it be +possible that Mr. Clarke was suspecting Dan of signing that check? +She watched his nervous hands as they ran over the morning mail. He +had singled out one letter and, as he finished reading it, he handed +it to her. + +It was from Dan, a brief business-like resignation, expressing +appreciation of Mr. Clarke's kindness, regret at the suddenness of his +departure, and giving as his reason private affairs that took him +permanently to another city. + +When Nance lifted her startled eyes from the signature, she saw that Mr. +Clarke was closely scrutinizing the writing on the envelope. + +"It's incredible!" he said, "and yet the circumstances are most +suspicious. He gives no real reason for leaving." + +"I can," said Nance, resolutely. "He wanted me to marry him, and I +wouldn't promise. He asked me Saturday afternoon, after he come out of +here. We had a quarrel, and he said he was going away; but I didn't +believe it." + +"Did he ask you to go away with him? Out of town anywhere?" + +"Yes; he said he would go anywhere I said." + +A flash of anger burnt out the look of fear that had been lurking in Mr. +Clarke's face. + +"He's the last man I would have suspected! Of course I knew he had been +in a reformatory at one time, but--" + +The band that had been tightening around Nance's heart seemed suddenly +to burst. She sprang to her feet and stood confronting him with +blazing eyes. + +"What right have you got to think Dan did it? There were two of them in +this room. Why don't you send for Mr. Mac and ask him questions?" + +"Well, for one reason he's in New York, and for another, my son doesn't +have to resort to such means to get what money he wants." + +"Neither does Dan Lewis! He was a street kid; he was had up in court +three times before he was fourteen; he was a month at the reformatory; +and he's knocked elbows with more crooks than you ever heard of; but you +know as well as me that there ain't anybody living more honest than Dan!" + +"All he's got to do is to prove it," said Mr. Clarke, grimly. + +Nance looked at the relentless face of the man before her and thought of +the money at his command to prove whatever he wanted to prove. + +"See here, Mr. Clarke!" she said desperately, "you said a while ago that +all the facts were against Dan. Will you tell me one thing?" + +"What is it?" + +"Did you give Mr. Mac the money to pay that note last Saturday?" + +"What note?" + +"The one the Meyers fellow was after him about?" + +"Mac asked for no money, and I gave him none. In fact he told me that +aside from his debts at the club and at the garage, he owed no bills. So +you see your friend Meyers misinformed you." + +Here was Nance's chance to escape; she had spoken in Dan's defense; she +had told of the Meyers incident. To take one more step would be to +convict Mac and compromise herself. For one miserable moment conflicting +desires beat in her brain; then she heard herself saying quite calmly: + +"No, sir, it wasn't Meyers that told me; it was Mr. Mac himself." + +Mr. Clarke wheeled on her sharply. + +"How did my son happen to be discussing his private affairs with you?" + +"Mr. Mac and me are friends," she said. "He's been awful nice to me; he's +given me more good times than I ever had in my whole life before. But I +didn't know the money wasn't his or I wouldn't have gone with him." + +"And I suppose you thought it was all right for a young man in Mac's +position to be paying attention to a young woman in yours?" + +Mr. Clarke studied her face intently, but her fearless eyes did not +falter under his scrutiny. + +"Are you trying to implicate Mac in this matter to spare Lewis, is that +it?" + +"No, sir. I don't say it was Mr. Mac. I only say it wasn't Dan. There are +some people you just _know_ are straight, and Dan's one of them." + +Mr. Clarke got up and took a turn about the room, his hands locked behind +him. Her last shot had evidently taken effect. + +"Tell me exactly what Mac told you about this Meyers note," he demanded. + +Nance recounted the facts in the case, ending with the promise Mac had +made her to tell his father everything and begin anew. + +"I wish I had known this Saturday!" Mr. Clarke said, sinking heavily +into his chair. "I came down on the boy pretty severely on another score +and gave him little chance to say anything. Did he happen to mention the +exact amount of his indebtedness to Meyers?" + +"He said it was five hundred and sixty dollars." + +A sigh that was very like a groan escaped from Mr. Clarke; then he pulled +himself together with an effort. + +"You understand, Miss Molloy," he said, "that it is quite a different +thing for my son to have done this, and for Lewis to have done it. Mac +knows that what is mine will be his eventually. If he signed that check, +he was signing his own name as well as mine. Of course, he ought to have +spoken to me about it. I am not excusing him. He has been indiscreet in +this as well as in other ways. I shall probably get a letter from him in +a few days explaining the whole business. In the meanwhile the matter +must go no further. I insist upon absolute silence. You understand?" + +She nodded. + +"And one thing more," Mr. Clarke added. "I forbid any further +communication between you and Mac. He is not coming home at Christmas, +and we are thinking of sending him abroad in June. I propose to keep him +away from here for the next two or three years." + +Nance fingered the blotter on the table absently. It was all very well +for them to plan what they were going to do with Mac, but she knew in her +heart that a line from her would set at naught all their calculations. +Then her mind flew back to Dan. + +"If he comes back--Dan, I mean,--are you going to take him on again?" + +Mr. Clarke saw his chance and seized it. + +"On one condition," he said. "Will you give me your word of honor not to +communicate with Mac in any way?" + +They were both standing now, facing each other, and Nance saw no +compromise in the stern eyes of her employer. + +"I'll promise if I've got to," she said. + +"Very well," said Mr. Clarke. "That's settled." + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + +FATE TAKES A HAND + + +Some sinister fascination seems to hover about a bridge at night, +especially for unhappy souls who have grappled with fate and think +themselves worsted. Perhaps they find a melancholy pleasure in the +company of ghosts who have escaped from similar defeats; perhaps they +seek to read the riddle of the universe, as they stand, elbows on rail, +studying the turbulent waters below. + +On the third night after Dan's arrival in Cincinnati, the bridge claimed +him. He had deposited his few belongings in a cheap lodging-house on the +Kentucky side of the river, and then aimlessly paced the streets, too +miserable to eat or sleep, too desperate even to look for work. His one +desire was to get away from his tormenting thoughts, to try to forget +what had happened to him. + +A cold drizzle of rain had brought dusk on an hour before its time. +Twilight was closing in on a sodden day. From the big Ohio city to the +smaller Kentucky towns, poured a stream of tired humanity. Belated +shoppers, business men, workers of all kinds hurried through the murky +soot-laden air, each hastening to some invisible goal. + +To Dan, watching with somber eyes from his niche above the wharf, it +seemed that they were all going home to little lamp-lit cottages where +women and children awaited them. A light in the window and somebody +waiting! The old dream of his boyhood that only a few days ago had seemed +about to come true! + +Instead, he had been caught up in a hurricane and swept out to sea. His +anchors had been his love, his work, and his religion, and none of them +held. The factory, to which he had given the best of his brain and his +body, for which he had dreamed and aspired and planned, was a nightmare +to him. Mrs. Purdy and the church activities, which had loomed so large +in his life, were but fleeting, unsubstantial shadows. + +Only one thing in the wide universe mattered now to him, and that was +Nance. Over and over he rehearsed his final scene with her, searching +for some word of denial or contrition or promise for the future. She had +never lied to him, and he knew she never would. But she had stood before +him in angry defiance, refusing to defend herself, declining his help, +and letting him go out of her life without so much as lifting a finger +to stop him. + +His heavy eyes, which had been following the shore lights, came back to +the bridge, attracted by the movement of a woman leaning over one of +the embrasures near him. He had been vaguely aware for the past five +minutes of a disturbing sound that came to him from time to time; but it +was only now that he noticed the woman was crying. She was standing with +her back to him, and he could see her lift her veil every now and then +and wipe her eyes. + +With a movement of impatience, he moved further on. He had enough +troubles of his own to-night without witnessing those of others. He had +determined to stop fleeing from his thoughts and to turn and face them. A +rich young fellow, like Mac Clarke, didn't go with a girl like Nance for +nothing. Why, this thing must have been going on for months, perhaps long +before the night he had found Nance at the signal tower. They had been +meeting in secret, going out alone together; she had let him make love to +her, kiss her. + +The blood surged into his head, and doubts blacker than the waters below +assailed him, but even as he stood there with his head in his hands and +his cap pulled over his eyes, all sorts of shadowy memories came to plead +for her. Memories of a little, tow-headed, independent girl coming and +going in Calvary Alley, now lugging coal up two flights of stairs, now +rushing noisily down again with a Snawdor baby slung over her shoulder, +now to snatch her part in the play. Nance, who laughed the loudest, cried +the hardest, ran the fastest, whose hand was as quick to help a friend +as to strike a foe! He saw her sitting beside him on the mattress, +sharing his disgrace on the day of the eviction, saw her standing before +the bar of justice passionately pleading his cause. Then later and +tenderer memories came to reinforce the earlier ones--memories of her +gaily dismissing all other offers at the factory to trudge home night +after night with him; of her sitting beside him in Post-Office Square, +subdued and tender-eyed, watching the electric lights bloom through the +dusk; of her nursing Uncle Jed, forgetting herself and her disappointment +in ministering to him and helping him face the future. + +A wave of remorse swept over him! What right had he to make her stay on +and on in Cemetery Street when he knew how she hated it? Why had he +forced her to go back to the factory? She had tried to make him +understand, but he had been deaf to her need. He had expected her to +buckle down to work just as he did. He had forgotten that she was young +and pretty and wanted a good time like other girls. Of course it was +wrong for her to go with Mac, but she was good, he _knew_ she was good. + +The words reverberated in his brain like a hollow echo, frightening away +all the pleading memories. Those were the very words he had used about +his mother on that other black night when he had refused to believe the +truth. All the bitterness of his childhood's tragedy came now to poison +his present mood. If Nance was innocent, why had she kept all this from +him, why had she refused in the end to let him defend her good name? + +He thought of his own struggle to be good; of his ceaseless efforts to be +decent in every thought as well as deed for Nance's sake. Decent! His lip +curled at the irony of it! That wasn't what girls wanted? Decency made +fellows stupid and dull; it kept them too closely at work; it made them +take life too seriously. Girls wanted men like Mac Clarke--men who +snapped their fingers at religion and refused responsibilities, and +laughed in the face of duty. Laughter! That was what Nance loved above +everything! All right, let her have it! What did it matter? He would +laugh too. + +With a reckless resolve, he turned up his coat collar, rammed his hands +in his pockets, and started toward the Kentucky shore. The drizzle by +this time had turned into a sharp rain, and he realized that he was cold +and wet. He remembered a swinging door two squares away. + +As he left the bridge, he saw the woman in the blue veil hurry past him, +and with a furtive look about her, turn and go down the steep levee +toward the water. There was something so nervous and erratic in her +movements, that he stopped to watch her. + +For a few moments she wandered aimlessly along the bank, apparently +indifferent to the pelting rain; then she succeeded, after some +difficulty, in climbing out on one of the coal barges that fringed the +river bank. + +[Illustration: "Don't call a policeman!" she implored wildly] + +Dan glanced down the long length of the bridge, empty now save for a few +pedestrians and a lumbering truck in the distance. In mid-stream the +paddle of a river steamer was churning the water into foam, and +up-stream, near the dock, negro roustabouts could be heard singing. But +under the bridge all was silent, and the levee was deserted in both +directions. He strained his eyes to distinguish that vague figure on the +barge from the surrounding shadows. He saw her crawling across the +shifting coal; then he waited to see no more. + +Plunging down the bank at full speed, he scrambled out on the barge and +seized her by the arms. The struggle was brief, but fierce. With a cry +of despair, she sank face downward on the coal and burst into +hysterical weeping. + +"Don't call a policeman!" she implored wildly. "Don't let 'em take me to +a hospital!" + +"I won't. Don't try to talk 'til you get hold of yourself," said Dan. + +"But I'm chokin'! I can't breathe! Get the veil off!" + +As Dan knelt above her, fumbling with the long veil, he noticed for the +first time that she was young, and that her bare neck between the collar +and the ripple of her black hair was very white and smooth. He bent down +and looked at her with a flash of recognition. + +"Birdie!" he cried incredulously, "Birdie Smelts!" + +Her heavy white lids fluttered wildly, and she started up in terror. + +"Don't be scared!" he urged. "It's Dan Lewis from back home. How did you +ever come to be in this state?" + +With a moan of despair she covered her face with her hands. + +"I was up there on the bridge," Dan went on, almost apologetically. "I +saw you there, but I didn't know it was you. Then when you started down +to the water, I sorter thought--" + +"You oughtn't 'a' stopped me," she wailed. "I been walkin' the +streets tryin' to get up my courage all day. I'm sick, I tell you. I +want to die." + +"But it ain't right to die this way. Don't you know it's wicked?" + +"Good and bad's all the same to me. I'm done for. There ain't a soul in +this rotten old town that cares whether I live or die!" + +Dan flushed painfully. He was much more equal to saving a body than a +soul, but he did not flinch from his duty. + +"God cares," he said. "Like as not He sent me out on the bridge a-purpose +to-night to help you. You let me put you on the train, Birdie, and ship +you home to your mother." + +"Never! I ain't goin' home, and I ain't goin' to a hospital. Promise me +you won't let 'em take me, Dan!" + +"All right, all right," he said, with an anxious eye on her shivering +form and her blue lips. "Only we got to get under cover somewhere. Do you +feel up to walking yet?" + +"Where'd I walk to?" she demanded bitterly. "I tell you I've got no money +and no place to go. I been on the street since yesterday noon." + +"You can't stay out here all night!" said Dan at his wit's end. "I'll +have to get you a room somewhere." + +"Go ahead and get it. I'll wait here." + +But Dan mistrusted the look of cunning that leaped into her eyes and the +way she glanced from time to time at the oily, black water that curled +around the corner of the barge. + +"I got a room a couple of squares over," he said slowly. "You might come +over there 'til you get dried out and rested up a bit." + +"I don't want to go anywhere. I'm too sick. I don't want to have to +see people." + +"You won't have to. It's a rooming house. The old woman that looks after +things has gone by now." + +It took considerable persuasion to get her on her feet and up the bank. +Again and again she refused to go on, declaring that she didn't want to +live. But Dan's patience was limitless. Added to his compassion for her, +was the half-superstitious belief that he had been appointed by +Providence to save her. + +"It's just around the corner now," he encouraged her. "Can you make it?" + +She stumbled on blindly, without answering, clinging to his arm and. +breathing heavily. + +"Here we are!" said Dan, turning into a dark entrance, "front room on the +left. Steady there!" + +But even as he opened the door, Birdie swayed forward and would have +fallen to the floor, had he not caught her and laid her on the bed. + +Hastily lighting the lamp on the deal table by the window, he went back +to the bed and loosened the neck of her dripping coat and then looked +down at her helplessly. Her face, startlingly white in its frame of black +hair, showed dark circles under the eyes, and her full lips had lost not +only their color, but the innocent curves of childhood as well. + +Presently she opened her eyes wearily and looked about her. + +"I'm cold," she said with a shiver, "and hungry. God! I didn't know +anybody could be so hungry!" + +"I'll make a fire in the stove," cried Dan; "then I'll go out and get +you something hot to drink. You'll feel better soon." + +"Don't be long, Dan," she whispered faintly. "I'm scared to stay +by myself." + +Ten minutes later Dan hurried out of the eating-house at the corner, +balancing a bowl of steaming soup in one hand and a plate of food in the +other. He was soaked to the skin, and the rain trickled from his hair +into his eyes. As he crossed the street a gust of wind caught his cap and +hurled it away into the wet night. But he gave no thought to himself or +to the weather, for the miracle had happened. That dancing gleam in the +gutter came from a lighted lamp in a window behind which some one was +waiting for him. + +He found Birdie shaking with a violent chill, and it was only after he +had got off her wet coat and wrapped her in a blanket, and persuaded her +to drink the soup that she began to revive. + +"What time of night is it?" she asked weakly. + +"After eleven. You're going to stay where you are, and I'm going out and +find me a room somewhere. I'll come back in the morning." + +All of Birdie's alarms returned. + +"I ain't going to stay here by myself, Dan. I'll go crazy, I tell you! I +don't want to live and I am afraid to die. What sort of a God is He to +let a person suffer like this?" + +And poor old Dan, at death-grips with his own life problem, wrestled in +vain with hers; arguing, reassuring, affirming, trying with an almost +fanatic zeal to conquer his own doubts in conquering hers. + +Then Birdie, bent on keeping him with her, talked of herself, pouring +out an incoherent story of misfortune: how she had fainted on the stage +one night and incurred the ill-will of the director; how the company +went on and left her without friends and without money; how matters had +gone from bad to worse until she couldn't stand it any longer. She +painted a picture of wronged innocence that would have wrung a sterner +heart than Dan's. + +"I know," he said sympathetically. "I've seen what girls are up against +at Clarke's." + +Birdie's feverish eyes fastened upon him. + +"Have you just come from Clarke's?" + +"Yes." + +"Is Mac there?" + +Dan's face hardened. + +"I don't know anything about him." + +"No; and you don't want to! If there's one person in this world I hate, +it's Mac Clarke." + +"Same here," said Dan, drawn to her by the attraction of a common +antipathy. + +"Thinks he can do what he pleases," went on Birdie, bitterly, "with his +good looks and easy ways. He'll have a lot to answer for!" + +Dan sat with his fists locked, staring at the floor. A dozen questions +burned on his lips, but he could not bring himself to ask them. + +A fierce gust of wind rattled the window, and Birdie cried out in terror. + +"You stop being afraid and go to sleep," urged Dan, but she shook her +head. + +"I don't dare to! You'd go away, and I'd wake up and go crazy with fear. +I always was like that even when I was a kid, back home. I used to pretty +near die of nights when pa would come in drunk and get to breaking up +things. There was a man like that down where I been staying. He'd fall +against my door 'most every night. Sometimes I'd meet him out in the +street, and he'd follow me for squares." + +Dan drew the blanket about her shoulders. + +"Go to sleep," he said. "I won't leave you." + +"Yes; but to-morrow night, and next night! Oh, God! I'm smothering. +Lift me up!" + +He sat on the side of the bed and lifted her until she rested against his +shoulder. A deathly pallor had spread over her features, and she clung to +him weakly. + +Through the long hours of the stormy night he sat there, soothing and +comforting her, as he would have soothed a terror-stricken child. By +and by her clinging hands grew passive in his, her rigid, jerking limbs +relaxed, and she fell into a feverish sleep broken by fitful sobs and +smothered outcries. As Dan sat there, with her helpless weight against +him, and gently stroked the wet black hair from her brow, something +fierce and protective stirred in him, the quick instinct of the +chivalrous strong to defend the weak. Here was somebody more wretched, +more desolate, more utterly lonely than himself--a soft, fearful, +feminine somebody, ill-fitted to fight the world with those frail, +white hands. + +Hitherto he had blindly worshiped at one shrine, and now the image was +shattered, the shrine was empty--so appallingly empty that he was ready +to fill it at any cost. For the first time in three days he ceased to +think of Nance Molloy or of Mac Clarke, whose burden he was all +unconsciously bearing. He ceased, also, to think of the soul he had +been trying so earnestly to save. He thought instead of the tender +weight against his shoulder, of the heavy lashes that lay on the +tear-stained cheeks so close to his, of the soft, white brow under his +rough, brown fingers. Something older than love or religion was making +its claim on Dan. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + +THE PRICE OF ENLIGHTENMENT + + +It was November of the following year that the bird of ill-omen, +which had been flapping its wings over Calvary Alley for so long, +decided definitely to alight. A catastrophe occurred that threatened +to remove the entire population of the alley to another and, we +trust, a fairer world. + +Mrs. Snawdor insists to this day that it was the sanitary inspector who +started the trouble. On one of his infrequent rounds he had encountered a +strange odor in Number One, a suspicious, musty odor that refused to come +under the classification of krout, kerosene, or herring. The tenants, in +a united body, indignantly defended the smell. + +"It ain't nothin' at all but Mis' Smelts' garbage," Mrs. Snawdor +declared vehemently. "She often chucks it in a hole in the kitchen floor +to save steps. Anybody'd think the way you was carryin' on, it was a +murdered corpse!" + +But the inspector persisted in his investigations, forcing a way into the +belligerent Snawdor camp, where he found Fidy Yager with a well-developed +case of smallpox. She had been down with what was thought to be +chicken-pox for a week, but the other children had been sworn to secrecy +under the threat that the doctor would scrape the skin off their arms +with a knife if they as much as mentioned Fidy's name. + +It was a culmination of a battle that had raged between Mrs. Snawdor +and the health authorities for ten years, over the question of +vaccination. The epidemic that followed was the visible proof of Mrs. +Snawdor's victory. + +Calvary Alley, having offered a standing invitation to germs in general, +was loathe to regard the present one as an enemy. It resisted the +inspector, who insisted on vaccinating everybody all over again; it was +indignant at the headlines in the morning papers; it was outraged when +Number One was put in quarantine. + +Even when Fidy Yager, who "wasn't all there," and who, according to her +mother, had "a fit a minute," was carried away to the pest-house, nobody +was particularly alarmed. But when, twenty-four hours later, Mr. Snawdor +and one of the Lavinski helpers came down with it, the alley began to +look serious, and Mrs. Snawdor sent for Nance. + +For six months now Nance had been living at a young women's boarding +home, realizing a life-long ambition to get out of the alley. But on +hearing the news, she flung a few clothes into an old suitcase and rushed +to the rescue. + +Since that never-to-be-forgotten day a year ago when word had reached +her of Dan's marriage to Birdie Smelts, a hopeless apathy had possessed +her. Even in the first weeks after his departure, when Mac's impassioned +letters were pouring in and she was exerting all her will power to make +good her promise to his father, she was aware of a dull, benumbing +anxiety over Dan. She had tried to get his address from Mrs. Purdy, from +Slap Jack's, where he still kept some of his things, from the men he knew +best at the factory. Nobody could tell her where he had gone, or what he +intended to do. + +Just what she wanted to say to him she did not know. She still resented +bitterly his mistrust of her, and what she regarded as his interference +with her liberty, but she had no intention of letting matters rest as +they were. She and Dan must fight the matter out to some satisfactory +conclusion. + +Then came the news of his marriage, shattering every hope and shaking the +very foundation of her being. From her earliest remembrance Dan had been +the most dependable factor in her existence. Whirlwind enthusiasms for +other things and other people had caught her up from time to time, but +she always came back to Dan, as one comes back to solid earth after a +flight in an aeroplane. + +In her first weeks of chagrin and mortification she had sought refuge in +thoughts of Mac. She had slept with his unanswered letters under her +pillow and clung to the memory of his ardent eyes, his gay laughter, the +touch of his lips on her hands and cheeks. Had Mac come home that +Christmas, her doom would have been sealed. The light by which she +steered had suddenly gone out, and she could no longer distinguish the +warning coast lights from the harbor lights of home. + +But Mac had not come at Christmas, neither had he come in the summer, and +Nance's emotional storm was succeeded by an equally intolerable calm. +Back and forth from factory to boarding home she trudged day by day, and +on Sunday she divided her wages with Mrs. Snawdor, on the condition that +she should have a vote in the management of family affairs. By this plan +Lobelia and the twins were kept at school, and Mr. Snawdor's feeble +efforts at decent living were staunchly upheld. + +When the epidemic broke out in Calvary Alley, and Mrs. Snawdor signaled +for help, Nance responded to the cry with positive enthusiasm. Here was +something stimulating at last. There was immediate work to be done, and +she was the one to do it. + +As she hurried up the steps of Number One, she found young Dr. Isaac +Lavinski superintending the construction of a temporary door. + +"You can't come in here!" he called to her, peremptorily. "We're in +quarantine. I've got everybody out I can. But enough people have been +exposed to it already to spread the disease all over the city. Three more +cases to-night. Mrs. Smelts' symptoms are very suspicious. Dr. Adair is +coming himself at nine o'clock to give instructions. It's going to be a +tussle all right!" + +Nance looked at him in amazement. He spoke with more enthusiasm than he +had ever shown in the whole course of his life. His narrow, sallow face +was full of keen excitement. Little old Ike, who had hidden under the bed +in the old days whenever a fight was going on, was facing death with the +eagerness of a valiant soldier on the eve of his first battle. + +"I'm going to help you, Ike!" Nance cried instantly. "I've come to stay +'til it's over." + +But Isaac barred the way. + +"You can't come in, I tell you! I've cleared the decks for action. Not +another person but the doctor and nurse are going to pass over this +threshold!" + +"Look here, Ike Lavinski," cried Nance, indignantly, "you know as well as +me that there are things that ought to be done up there at the +Snawdors'!" + +"They'll have to go undone," said Isaac, firmly. + +Nance wasted no more time in futile argument. She waited for an opportune +moment when Ike's back was turned; then she slipped around the corner of +the house and threaded her way down the dark passage, until she reached +the fire-escape. There were no lights in the windows as she climbed past +them, and the place seemed ominously still. + +At the third platform she scrambled over a wash-tub and a dozen plaster +casts of Pocahontas,--Mr. Snawdor's latest venture in industry,--and +crawled through the window into the kitchen. It was evident at a glance +that Mrs. Snawdor had at last found that long-talked-of day off and had +utilized it in cleaning up. The room didn't look natural in its changed +condition. Neither did Mrs. Snawdor, sitting in the gloom in an +attitude of deep dejection. At sight of Nance at the window, she gave a +cry of relief. + +"Thank the Lord, you've come!" she said. "Can you beat this? Havin' to +climb up the outside of yer own house like a fly! They've done sent Fidy +to the pest-house, an' scattered the other childern all over the +neighborhood, an' they got me fastened up here, like a hen in a coop!" + +"How is he?" whispered Nance, glancing toward the inner room. + +"Ain't a thing the matter with him, but the lumbago. Keeps on complainin' +of a pain in his back. I never heard of such a hullabaloo about nothin' +in all my life. They'll be havin' me down with smallpox next. How long +you goin' to be here?" + +Nance, taking off her hat and coat, announced that she had come to stay. + +Mrs. Snawdor heaved a sigh of relief. + +"Well, if you'll sorter keep a eye on him, I believe I'll step down +an' set with Mis' Smelts fer a spell. I ain't been off the place fer +two days." + +"But wait a minute! Where's Uncle Jed? And Mr. Demry?" + +"They 're done bounced too! Anybody tell you 'bout yer Uncle Jed's +patent? They say he stands to make as much as a hundern dollars offen it. +They say--" + +"I don't care what they say!" cried Nance, distractedly. "Tell me, did +the children take clean clothes with 'em? Did you see if Uncle Jed had +his sweater? Have you washed the bedclothes that was on Fidy's bed?" + +Mrs. Snawdor shook her head impatiently. + +"I didn't, an' I ain't goin' to! That there Ike Lavinski ain't goin' to +run me! He took my Fidy off to that there pest-house where I bet they +operate her. He'll pay up fer this, you see if he don't!" + +She began to cry, but as Nance was too much occupied to give audience to +her grief, she betook herself to the first floor to assist in the care of +Mrs. Smelts. Illness in the abode of another has a romantic flavor that +home-grown maladies lack. + +When Dr. Adair and Isaac Lavinski made their rounds at nine o'clock, they +found Nance bending over a steaming tub, washing out a heavy comfort. + +"What are you doing here?" demanded Isaac in stern surprise. + +"Manicuring my finger-nails," she said, with an impudent grin, as she +straightened her tired shoulders. Then seeing Dr. Adair, she blushed and +wiped her hands on her apron. + +"You don't remember me, Doctor, do you? I helped you with Uncle Jed Burks +at the signal tower that time when the lightning struck him." + +He looked her over, his glance traveling from her frank, friendly face to +her strong bare arms. + +"Why, yes, I do. You and your brother had been to some fancy-dress +affair. I remember your red shoes. It isn't every girl of your age that +could have done what you did that night. Have you been vaccinated?" + +"Twice. Both took." + +"She's got no business being here, sir," Isaac broke in hotly. "I told +her to keep out." + +"Doctor! Listen at me!" pleaded Nance, her hand on his coat sleeve. +Honest to goodness, I _got_ to stay. Mrs. Snawdor don't believe it's +smallpox. She'll slip the children in when you ain't looking and go out +herself and see the neighbors. Don't you see that somebody's got to be +here that understands?" + +"The girl's right, Lavinski," said Dr. Adair. "She knows the ropes here, +and can be of great service to us. The nurse downstairs can't begin to +do it all. Now let us have a look at the patient." + +Little Mr. Snawdor was hardly worth looking at. He lay rigid, like a +dried twig, with his eyes shut tight, and his mouth shut tight, and his +hands clenched tighter still. It really seemed as if this time Mr. +Snawdor was going to make good his old-time threat to quit. + +Dr. Adair gave the necessary instructions; then he turned to go. He had +been watching Nance, as she moved about the room carrying out his orders, +and at the door he laid a hand on her shoulder. + +"How old are you, my girl?" he asked. + +"Twenty." + +"We need girls like you up at the hospital. Have you ever thought of +taking the training?" + +"Me? I haven't got enough spondulicks to take a street-car ride." + +"That part can be arranged if you really want to go into the work. +Think it over." + +Then he and the impatient Isaac continued on their rounds, and Nance went +back to her work. But the casual remark, let fall by Dr. Adair, had set +her ambition soaring. Her imagination flared to the project. Snawdor's +flat extended itself into a long ward; poor little Mr. Snawdor, who was +hardly half a man, became a dozen; and Miss Molloy, in a becoming +uniform, moved in and out among the cots, a ministering angel of mercy. + +For the first time since Dan Lewis's marriage, her old courage and zest +for life returned, and when Mrs. Snawdor came in at midnight, she found +her sitting beside her patient with shining eyes full of waking dreams. + +"Mis' Smelts is awful bad," Mrs. Snawdor reported, looking more serious +than she had heretofore. "Says she wants to see you before the nurse +wakes up. Seems like she's got somethin' on her mind." + +Nance hurried into her coat and went out into the dark, damp hall. Long +black roaches scurried out of her way as she descended the stairs. In the +hall below the single gas-jet flared in the draught, causing ghostly +shadows to leap out of corners and then skulk fearfully back again. Nance +was not afraid, but a sudden sick loathing filled her. Was she never +going to be able to get away from it all? Was that long arm of duty going +to stretch out and find her wherever she went, and drag her back to this +noisome spot? Were all her dreams and ambitions to die, as they had been +born, in Calvary Alley? + +Mrs. Smelts had been moved into an empty room across the hall from her +own crowded quarters, and as Nance pushed open the door, she lifted a +warning hand and beckoned. + +"Shut it," she said in a hoarse whisper. "I don't want nobody to hear +what I got to tell you." + +"Can't it wait, Mrs. Smelts?" asked Nance, with a pitying hand on the +feverish brow across which a long white scar extended. + +"No. They're goin' to take me away in the mornin'. I heard 'em say +so. It's about Birdie, Nance, I want to tell you. They've had to +lock her up." + +"It's the fever makes you think that, Mrs. Smelts. You let me sponge you +off a bit." + +"No, no, not yet. She's crazy, I tell you! She went out of her head last +January when the baby come. Dan's kept it to hisself all this time, but +now he's had to send her to the asylum." + +"Who told you?" + +"Dan did. He wrote me when he sent me the last money. I got his +letter here under my pillow. I want you to burn it, Nance, so no one +won't know." + +Nance went on mechanically stroking the pain-racked head, as she reached +under the pillow for Dan's letter. The sight of the neat, painstaking +writing made her heart contract. + +"You tell him fer me," begged Mrs. Smelts, weakly, "to be good to her. +She never had the right start. Her paw handled me rough before she come, +an' she was always skeery an' nervous like. But she was so purty, oh, so +purty, an' me so proud of her!" + +Nance wiped away the tears that trickled down the wrinkled cheeks, and +tried to quiet her, but the rising fever made her talk on and on. + +"I ain't laid eyes on her since a year ago this fall. She come home sick, +an' nobody knew it but me. I got out of her whut was her trouble, an' I +went to see his mother, but it never done no good. Then I went to the +bottle factory an' tried to get his father to listen--" + +"Whose father?" asked Nance, sharply. + +"The Clarke boy's. It was him that did fer her. I tell you she was a good +girl 'til then. But they wouldn't believe it. They give me some money to +sign the paper an' not to tell; but before God it's him that's the father +of her child, and poor Dan--" + +But Mrs. Smelts never finished her sentence; a violent paroxysm of pain +seized her, and at dawn the messenger that called for the patient on the +third floor, following the usual economy practised in Calvary Alley, made +one trip serve two purposes and took her also. + +By the end of the month the epidemic was routed, and the alley, cleansed +and chastened as it had never been before, was restored to its own. Mr. +Snawdor, Fidy Yager, Mrs. Smelts, and a dozen others, being the unfittest +to survive, had paid the price of enlightenment. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + +IN TRAINING + + +One sultry July night four years later Dr. Isaac Lavinski, now an +arrogant member of the staff at the Adair Hospital, paused on his last +round of the wards and cocked an inquiring ear above the steps that led +to the basement. Something that sounded very much like suppressed +laughter came up to him, and in order to confirm his suspicions, he +tiptoed down to the landing and, making an undignified syphon of himself, +peered down into the rear passage. In a circle on the floor, four nurses +in their nightgowns softly beat time, while a fifth, arrayed in pink +pajamas, with her hair flying, gave a song and dance with an abandon that +ignored the fact that the big thermometer in the entry registered +ninety-nine. + +The giggles that had so disturbed Dr. Lavinski's peace of mind increased +in volume, as the dancer executed a particularly daring _passeul_ and, +turning a double somersault, landed deftly on her bare toes. + +"Go on, do it again!" "Show us how Sheeny Ike dances the tango." "Sing +Barney McKane," came in an enthusiastic chorus. + +But before the encore could be responded to, a familiar sound in the +court without, sent the girls scampering to their respective rooms. + +Dr. Isaac, reluctantly relinquishing his chance for administering prompt +and dramatic chastisement, came down the stairs and out to the entry. + +An ambulance had just arrived, and behind it was a big private car, and +behind that Dr. Adair's own neat runabout. + +Dr. Adair met Dr. Isaac at the door. + +"It's an emergency case," he explained hastily. "I may have to operate +to-night. Prepare number sixteen, and see if Miss Molloy is off duty." + +"She is, sir," said Isaac, grimly, "and the sooner she's put on a case +the better." + +"Tell her to report at once. And send an orderly down to lend a hand with +the stretcher." + +Five minutes later an immaculate nurse, every button fastened, every fold +in place, presented herself on the third floor for duty. You would have +had to look twice to make certain that that slim, trim figure in its +white uniform was actually Nance Molloy. To be sure her eyes sparkled +with the old fire under her becoming cap, and her chin was still carried +at an angle that hinted the possession of a secret gold mine, but she had +changed amazingly for all that. Life had evidently been busy chiseling +away her rough edges, and from a certain poise of body and a +professional control of voice and gesture, it was apparent that Nance had +done a little chiseling on her own account. + +As she stood in the dim corridor awaiting orders, she could not help +overhearing a conversation between Dr. Adair and the agitated lady who +stood with her hand on the door-knob of number sixteen. + +"My dear madam," the doctor was saying in a tone that betokened the limit +of patience, "you really must leave the matter to my judgment, if we +operate--" + +"But you won't unless it's the last resort?" pleaded the lady. "You know +how frightfully sensitive to pain he is. But if you find out that you +must, then I want you to promise me not to let him suffer afterward. You +must keep him under the influence of opiates, and you will wait until his +father can get here, won't you?" + +"But that's the trouble. You've waited too long already. Appendicitis is +not a thing to take liberties with." + +"You don't mean it's too late? You don't think--" + +"We don't think anything at present. We hope everything." Then spying +Nance, he turned toward her with relief. "This is the nurse who will take +charge of the case." + +The perturbed lady uncovered one eye. + +"You are sure she is one of your very best?" + +"One of our best," said the doctor, as he and Nance exchanged a +quizzical smile. + +"Let her go in to him now. I can't bear for him to be alone a second. As +I was telling you--" + +Nance passed into the darkened room and closed the door softly. The +patient was evidently asleep; so she tiptoed over to the window and +slipped into a chair. On each side of the open space without stretched +the vine-clad wings of the hospital, gray now under the starlight. +Nance's eyes traveled reminiscently from floor to floor, from window to +window. How many memories the old building held for her! Memories of +heartaches and happiness, of bad times and good times, of bitter defeats +and dearly won triumphs. + +It had been no easy task for a girl of her limited education and +undisciplined nature to take the training course. But she had gallantly +stood to her guns and out of seeming defeat, won a victory. For the first +time in her diversified career she had worked in a congenial environment +toward a fixed goal, and in a few weeks now she would be launching her +own little boat on the professional main. + +Her eyes grew tender as she thought of leaving these protecting gray +walls that had sheltered her for four long years; yet the adventure of +the future was already calling. Where would her first case lead her? + +A cough from the bed brought her sharply back to the present. She went +forward and stooped to adjust a pillow, and the patient opened his eyes, +stared at her in bewilderment, then pulled himself up on his elbow. + +"Nance!" he cried incredulously. "Nance Molloy!" + +She started back in dismay. + +"Why, it's Mr. Mac! I didn't know! I thought I'd seen the lady +before--no, please! Stop, they're coming! Please, Mr. Mac!" + +For the patient, heretofore too absorbed in his own affliction to note +anything, was covering her imprisoned hands with kisses and calling on +Heaven to witness that he was willing to undergo any number of operations +if she would nurse him through them. + +Nance escaped from the room as Mrs. Clarke entered. With burning cheeks +she rushed to Dr. Adair's office. + +"You'll have to get somebody else on that case, Doctor," she declared +impulsively. "I used to work for Mr. Clarke up at the bottle factory, +and--and there are reasons why I don't want to take it." + +Dr. Adair looked at her over his glasses and frowned. + +"It is a nurse's duty," he said sternly, "to take the cases as they come, +irrespective of likes or dislikes. Mr. Clarke is an old friend of mine, +a man I admire and respect." + +"Yes, sir, I know, but if you'll just excuse me this once--" + +"Is Miss Rand off duty?" + +"No, sir. She's in number seven." + +"Miss Foster?" + +"No, sir." + +"Then I shall have to insist upon your taking the case. I must have +somebody I can depend upon to look after young Clarke for the next +twenty-four hours. It's not only the complication with his appendix; it's +his lungs." + +"You mean he's tubercular?" + +"Yes." + +Nance's eyes widened. + +"Does he know it?" + +"No. I shall wait and tell his father. I wouldn't undertake to break the +news to that mother of his for a house and lot! You take the case +to-night, and I'll operate in the morning--" + +"No, no, please, Doctor! Mr. Clarke wouldn't want me." + +"Mr. Clarke will be satisfied with whatever arrangement I see fit to +make. Besides another nurse will be in charge by the time he arrives." + +"But, Doctor--" + +A stern glance silenced her, and she went out, closing the door as hard +as she dared behind her. During her four years at the hospital the +memory of Mac Clarke had grown fainter and fainter like the perfume of a +fading flower. But the memory of Dan was like a thorn in her flesh, +buried deep, but never forgotten. + +To herself, her fellow-nurses, the young internes who invariably fell in +love with her, she declared gaily that she was "through with men +forever." The subject that excited her fiercest scorn was matrimony, and +she ridiculed sentiment with the superior attitude of one who has weighed +it in the balance and found it wanting. + +Nevertheless something vaguely disturbing woke in her that night when she +watched with Mrs. Clarke at Mac's bedside. Despite the havoc five years +had wrought in him, there was the old appealing charm in his voice and +manner, the old audacity in his whispered words when she bent over him, +the old eager want in his eyes as they followed her about the room. + +Toward morning he dropped into a restless sleep, and Mrs. Clarke, who +had been watching his every breath, tiptoed over to the table and sat +down by Nance. + +"My son tells me you are the Miss Molloy who used to be in the office," +she whispered. "He is so happy to find some one here he knows. He loathes +trained nurses as a rule. They make him nervous. But he has been +wonderfully good about letting you do things for him. It's a tremendous +relief to me." + +Nance made a mistake on the chart that was going to call for an +explanation later. + +"He's been losing ground ever since last winter," the doting mother went +on. "He was really quite well at Divonne-les-Bains, but he lost all he +gained when we reached Paris. You see he doesn't know how to take care of +himself; that's the trouble." + +Mac groaned and she hurried to him. + +"He wants a cigarette, Miss Molloy. I don't believe it would hurt +him," she said. + +"His throat's already irritated," said Nance, in her most professional +tone. "I am sure Dr. Adair wouldn't want him to smoke." + +"But we can't refuse him anything to-night," said Mrs. Clarke, with an +apologetic smile as she reached for the matches. + +Nance looking at her straight, delicate profile thrown into sudden relief +by the flare of the match, had the same disturbing sense of familiarity +that she had experienced long ago in the cathedral. + +But during the next twenty-four hours there was no time to analyze +subtle impressions or to indulge in sentimental reminiscence. From the +moment Mac's unconscious form was borne down from the operating room and +handed over to her care, he ceased to be a man and became a critically +ill patient. + +"We haven't much to work on," said Dr. Adair, shaking his head. "He has +no resisting power. He has burned himself out." + +But Mac's powers of resistance were stronger than he thought, and by the +time Mr. Clarke arrived the crisis was passed. Slowly and painfully he +struggled back to consciousness, and his first demand was for Nance. + +"It's the nurse he had when he first came," Mrs. Clarke explained to her +husband. "You must make Dr. Adair give her back to us. She's the only +nurse I've ever seen who could get Mac to do things. By the way, she used +to be in your office, a rather pretty, graceful girl, named Molloy." + +"I remember her," said Mr. Clarke, grimly. "You better leave things as +they are. Miss Hanna seems to know her business." + +"But Mac hates Miss Hanna! He says her hands make him think of +bedsprings. Miss Molloy makes him laugh and helps him to forget the pain. +He's taken a tremendous fancy to her." + +"Yes, he had quite a fancy for her once before." + +"Now, Macpherson, how can you?" cried Mrs. Clarke on the verge of tears. +"Just because the boy made one slip when he was little more than a +_child_, you suspect his every motive. I don't see how you can be so +cruel! If you had seen his agony, if you had been through what I have--" + +Thus it happened that instead of keeping Nance out of Mac's sight, Mrs. +Clarke left no stone unturned to get her back, and Mr. Clarke was even +persuaded to take it up personally with Dr. Adair. + +Nance might have held out to the end, had her sympathies not been +profoundly stirred by the crushing effect the news of Mac's serious +tubercular condition had upon his parents. On the day they were told Mr. +Clarke paced the corridor for hours with slow steps and bent head, +refusing to see people or to answer the numerous inquiries over the +telephone. As for Mrs. Clarke, all the fragile prettiness and girlish +grace she had carried over into maturity, seemed to fall away from her +within the hour, leaving her figure stooped and her face settled into +lines of permanent anxiety. + +The mother's chief concern now was to break the news of his condition to +Mac, who was already impatiently straining at the leash, eager to get +back to his old joyous pursuits and increasingly intolerant of +restrictions. + +"He refuses to listen to me or to his father," she confided to Nance, who +had coaxed her down to the yard for a breath of fresh air. "I'm afraid +we've lost our influence over him. And yet I can't bear for Dr. Adair to +tell him. He's so stern and says such dreadful things. Do you know he +actually was heartless enough to tell Mac that he had brought a great +deal of this trouble on himself!" + +Nance slipped her hand through Mrs. Clarke's arm, and patted it +reassuringly. She had come to have a sort of pitying regard for this +terror-stricken mother during these days of anxious waiting. + +"I wonder if you would be willing to tell him?" Mrs. Clarke asked, +looking at her appealingly. "Maybe you could make him understand without +frightening him." + +"I'll try," said Nance, with ready sympathy. + +The opportunity came one day in the following week when the regular day +nurse was off duty. She found Mac alone, propped up in bed, and +tremendously glad to see her. To a less experienced person the +brilliancy of his eyes and the color in his cheeks would have meant +returning health, but to Nance they were danger signals that nerved her +to her task. + +"I hear you are going home next week," she said, resting her crossed arms +on the foot of his bed. "Going to be good and take care of yourself?" + +"Not on your life!" cried Mac, gaily, searching under his pillow for his +cigarette case. "The lid's been on for a month, and it's coming off with +a bang. I intend to shoot the first person that mentions health to me." + +"Fire away then," said Nance. "I'm it. I've come to hand you out a nice +little bunch of advice." + +"You needn't. I've got twice as much now as I intend to use. Come on +around here and be sociable. I want to make love to you." + +Nance declined the invitation. + +"Has Dr. Adair put you wise on what he's letting you in for?" + +"Rather! Raw eggs, rest, and rust. Mother put him up to it. It's perfect +rot. I'll be feeling fit as a fiddle inside of two weeks. All I need is +to get out of this hole. They couldn't have kept me here this long if it +hadn't been for you." + +"And I reckon you're counting on going back and speeding up just as you +did before?" + +"Sure, why not?" + +"Because you can't. The sooner you soak that in, the better." + +He blew a succession of smoke rings in her direction and laughed. + +"So they've taken you into the conspiracy, have they? Going to +frighten me into the straight and narrow, eh? Suppose I tell them that +I'm lovesick? That there's only one cure for me in the world, and +that's you?" + +The ready retort with which she had learned to parry these personalities +was not forthcoming. She felt as she had that day five years ago in his +father's office, when she told him what she thought of him. He smiled up +at her with the same irresponsible light in his brown eyes, the same +eager desire to sidestep the disagreeable, the old refusal to accept life +seriously. He was such a boy despite his twenty-six years. Such a +spoiled, selfish lovable boy! + +With a sudden rush of pity, she went to him and took his hand: + +"See here, Mr. Mac," she said very gravely, "I got to tell you +something. Dr. Adair wanted to tell you from the first, but your mother +headed him off." + +He shot a swift glance at her. + +"What do you mean, Nance?" + +Then Nance sat on the side of his bed and explained to him, as gently and +as firmly as she could, the very serious nature of his illness, +emphasizing the fact that his one chance for recovery lay in complete +surrender to a long and rigorous regime of treatment. + +From scoffing incredulity, he passed to anxious skepticism and then to +agonized conviction. It was the first time he had ever faced any +disagreeable fact in life from which there was no appeal, and he cried +out in passionate protest. If he was a "lunger" he wanted to die as soon +as possible. He hated those wheezy chaps that went coughing through life, +avoiding draughts, and trying to keep their feet dry. If he was going to +die, he wanted to do it with a rush. He'd be hanged if he'd cut out +smoking, drinking, and running with the boys, just to lie on his back for +a year and perhaps die at the end of it! + +Nance faced the bitter crisis with him, whipping up his courage, +strengthening his weak will, nerving him for combat. When she left him +an hour later, with his face buried in the pillow and his hands locked +above his head, he had promised to submit to the doctor's advice on the +one condition that she would go home with him and start him on that fight +for life that was to tax all his strength and patience and self-control. + + + + +CHAPTER XXX + +HER FIRST CASE + + +October hovered over Kentucky that year in a golden halo of enchantment. +The beech-trees ran the gamut of glory, and every shrub and weed had its +hour of transient splendor. A soft haze from burning brush lent the world +a sense of mystery and immensity. Day after day on the south porch at +Hillcrest Mac Clarke lay propped with cushions on a wicker couch, while +Nance Molloy sat beside him, and all about them was a stir of whispering, +dancing, falling leaves. The hillside was carpeted with them, the brook +below the pergola was strewn with bits of color, while overhead the warm +sunshine filtered through canopies of russet and crimson and green. + +"I tell you the boy is infatuated with that girl," Mr. Clarke warned his +wife from time to time. + +"What nonsense!" Mrs. Clarke answered. "He is just amusing himself a bit. +He will forget her as soon as he gets out and about." + +"But the girl?" + +"Oh, she's too sensible to have any hopes of that kind. She really is +an exceptionally nice girl. Rather too frank in her speech, and +frequently ungrammatical and slangy, but I don't know what we should do +without her." + +But even Mrs. Clarke's complacence was a bit shaken as the weeks slipped +away, and Mac's obsession became the gossip of the household. To be sure, +so long as Nance continued to regard the whole matter as a joke and +refused to take Mac seriously, no harm would be done. But that very +indifference that assured his adoring mother, at the same time piqued her +pride. That an ordinary trained nurse, born and brought up, Heaven knew +where, should be insensible to Mac's even transient attention almost +amounted to an impertinence. Quite unconsciously she began to break down +Nance's defenses. + +"You must be very good to my boy, dear," she said one day in her gentle, +coaxing way. "I know he's a bit capricious and exacting at times. But we +can't afford to cross him now when he is just beginning to improve. He +was terribly upset last night when you teased him about leaving." + +"But I ought to go, Mrs. Clarke. He'd get along just as well now with +another nurse. Besides I only promised--" + +"Not another word!" implored Mrs. Clarke in instant alarm. "I wouldn't +answer for the consequences if you left us now. Mac goes all to pieces +when it is suggested. He has always been so used to having his own way, +you know." + +Yes, Nance knew. Between her unceasing efforts to get him well, and her +grim determination to keep the situation well in hand, she had unlimited +opportunity of finding out. The physicians agreed that his chances for +recovery were one to three. It was only by the most persistent observance +of certain regulations pertaining to rest, diet, and fresh air, that they +held out any hope of arresting the malady that had already made such +alarming headway. Nance realized from the first that it was to be a fight +against heavy odds, and she gallantly rose to the emergency. Aside from +the keen personal interest she took in Mac, and the sympathy she felt for +his stricken parents, she had an immense pride in her first private case, +on which she was determined to win her spurs. + +For three months now she had controlled the situation. With undaunted +perseverance she had made Mac submit to authority and succeeded in +successfully combatting his mother's inclination to yield to his every +whim. The gratifying result was that Mac was gradually putting on flesh +and, with the exception of a continued low fever, was showing decided +improvement. Already talk of a western flight was in the air. + +The whole matter hinged at present on Mac's refusal to go unless Nance +could be induced to accompany them. The question had been argued from +every conceivable angle, and gradually a conspiracy had been formed +between Mac and his mother to overcome her apparently absurd resistance. + +"It isn't as if she had any good reason," Mrs. Clarke complained to her +husband, with tears in her eyes. "She has no immediate family, and she +might just as well be on duty in California as in Kentucky. I don't see +how she can refuse to go when she sees how weak Mac is, and how he +depends on her." + +"The girl's got more sense than all the rest of you put together!" said +Mr. Clarke. "She sees the way things are going." + +"Well, what if Mac is in love with her?" asked Mrs. Clarke, for the first +time frankly facing the situation. "Of course it's just his sick fancy, +but he is in no condition to be argued with. The one absolutely necessary +thing is to get her to go with us. Suppose you ask her. Perhaps that's +what she is waiting for." + +"And you are willing to take the consequences?" + +"I am willing for anything on earth that will help me keep my boy," +sobbed Mrs. Clarke, resorting to a woman's surest weapon. + +So Mr. Clarke turned his ponderous batteries upon the situation, using +money as the ammunition with which he was most familiar. + +The climax was reached one night toward the end of October when the +first heavy hoar-frost of the season gave premonitory threat of coming +winter. The family was still at dinner, and Mac was having his from a +tray before the library fire. The heavy curtains had been drawn against +the chill world without, and the long room was a soft harmony of dull +reds and browns, lit up here and there by rose-shaded lamps. + +It was a luxurious room, full of trophies of foreign travel. The long +walls were hung with excellent pictures; the floors were covered with +rare rugs; the furniture was selected with perfect taste. Every detail +had been elaborately and skilfully worked out by an eminent decorator. +Only one insignificant item had been omitted. In the length and breadth +of the library, not a book was to be seen. + +Mac, letting his soup cool while he read the letter Nance had just +brought him, gave an exclamation of surprise. + +"By George! Monte Pearce is going to get married!" + +Nance laughed. + +"I've got a tintype of Mr. Monte settling down. Who's the girl?" + +"A cousin of his in Honolulu. Her father is a sugar king; no end of cash. +Think of old Monte landing a big fish like that!" + +"That's what you'll be doing when you get out to your ranch." + +"I intend to take my girl along." + +"You'll have to get her first." + +Mac turned on her with an invalid's fretfulness. "See here, Nance," +he cried, "cut that out, will you? Either you go, or I stay, do you +see? I know I'm a fool about you, but I can't help it. Nance, why +don't you love me?" + +Nance looked down at him helplessly. She had been refusing him on an +average of twice a day for the past week, and her powers of resistance +were weakening. The hardest granite yields in the end to the persistent +dropping of water. However much the clear-headed, independent side of her +might refuse him, to another side of her he was strangely appealing. +Often when she was near him, the swift remembrance of other days filled +her with sudden desire to yield, if only for a moment, to his insatiable +demands. Despite her most heroic resolution, she sometimes relaxed her +vigilance as she did to-night, and allowed her hand to rest in his. + +Mac made the most of the moment. + +"I don't ask you to promise me anything, Nance. I just ask you to come +with me!" he pleaded, with eloquent eyes, "we can get a couple of ponies +and scour the trails all over those old mountains. At Coronada there's +bully sea bathing. And the motoring--why you can go for a hundred miles +straight along the coast!" + +Nance's eyes kindled, but she shook her head. "You can do all that +without me. All I do is to jack you up and make you take care of +yourself. I should think you 'd hate me, Mr. Mac." + +"Well, I don't. Sometimes I wish I did. I love you even when you come +down on me hardest. A chap gets sick of being mollycoddled. When you fire +up and put your saucy little chin in the air, and tell me I sha'n't have +a cocktail, and call me a fool for stealing a smoke, it bucks me up more +than anything. By George, I believe I'd amount to something if you'd take +me permanently in hand." + +Nance laughed, and he pulled her down on the arm of his chair. + +"Say you'll marry me, Nance," he implored. "You'll learn to care for me +all right. You want to get out and see the world. I'll take you. We'll go +out to Honolulu and see Monte. Mother will talk the governor over; she's +promised. They'll give me anything I want, and I want you. Oh, Nance +darling, don't leave me to fight through this beastly business alone!" + +There was a haunted look of fear in his eyes as he clung to her that +appealed to her more than his former demands had ever done. Instinctively +her strong, tender hands closed over his thin, weak ones. + +"Nobody expects you to fight it through alone," she reassured him, "but +you come on down off this high horse! We'll be having another bad night +the first thing you know." + +"They'll all be bad if you don't come with me, Nance. I won't ask you to +say yes to-night, but for God's sake don't say no!" + +Nance observed the brilliancy of his eyes and the flush on his thin +cheeks, and knew that his fever was rising. + +"All right," she promised lightly. "I won't say no to-night, if you'll +stop worrying. I'm going to fix you nice and comfy on the couch and not +let you say another word." + +But when she had got him down on the couch, nothing would do but she must +sit on the hassock beside him and soothe his aching head. Sometimes he +stopped her stroking hand to kiss it, but for the most part he lay with +eyes half-closed and elaborated his latest whim. + +"We could stay awhile in Honolulu and then go on to Japan and China. I +want to see India, too, and Mandalay, + + ... somewhere east of Suez, where the best is like the worst, +And there aren't no Ten Commandments + +--you remember Kipling's Mandalay?" + +Nance couldn't remember what she had never known, but she did not say +so. Since her advent at Hillcrest she had learned to observe and listen +without comment. This was not her world, and her shrewd common-sense told +her so again and again. Even the servants who moved with such easy +familiarity about their talks were more at home than she. It had kept her +wits busy to meet the situation. But now that she had got over her first +awkwardness, she found the new order of things greatly to her liking. For +the first time in her life she was moving in a world of beautiful +objects, agreeable sounds, untroubled relations, and that starved side of +her that from the first had cried out for order and beauty and harmony +fed ravenously upon the luxury around her. + +And this was what Mac was offering her,--her, Nance Molloy of Calvary +Alley,--who up to four years ago had never known anything but bare +floors, flickering gas-jets, noise, dirt, confusion. He wanted her to +marry him; he needed her. + +She ceased to listen to his rambling talk, her eyes rested dreamily on +the glowing back-log. After all didn't every woman want to marry and have +a home of her own, and later perhaps--Twenty-four at Christmas! Almost an +old maid! And to think Mr. Mac had gone on caring for her all these +years, that he still wanted her when he had all those girls in his own +world to choose from. Not many men were constant like that, she thought, +as an old memory stabbed her. + +Then she was aware that her hand was held fast to a hot cheek, and that a +pair of burning eyes were watching her. + +"Nance!" Mac whispered eagerly, "you're giving in! You're going with me!" + +A step in the hall made Nance scramble to her feet just before Mrs. +Clarke came in from the dining-room. + +"I thought we should never get through dinner!" said that lady, with an +impatient sigh. "The bishop can talk of nothing else but his new hobby, +and do you know he's actually persuaded your father to give one of the +tenements back of the cathedral for the free clinic!" + +Nance who was starting out with the tray, put it down suddenly. + +"How splendid!" she cried. "Which house is it?" + +"I don't know, I am sure. But they are going to put a lot of money into +doing it over, and Dr. Adair has offered to take entire charge of it. For +my part I think it is a great mistake. Just think what that money would +mean to our poor mission out in Mukden! These shiftless people here at +home have every chance to live decently. It's not our fault if they +refuse to take advantage of their opportunities." + +"But they don't know how, Mrs. Clarke! If Dr. Adair could teach the +mothers--" + +Mrs. Clarke lifted her hands in laughing protest. + +"My dear girl, don't you know that mothers can't be taught? The most +ignorant mother alive has more instinctive knowledge of what is good for +her child than any man that ever lived! Mac, dearest, why didn't you eat +your grapes?" + +"Because I loathe grapes. Nance is going to work them off on an old sick +man she knows." + +"Some one at the hospital?" Mrs. Clarke asked idly. + +"No," said Nance, "it's an old gentleman who lives down in the very +place we're talking about. He's been sick for weeks. It's all right +about the grapes?" + +"Why, of course. Take some oranges, too, and tell the gardener to give +you some flowers. The dahlias are going to waste this year. Mac, you +look tired!" + +He shook off her hand impatiently. + +"No, I'm not. I feel like a two-year old. Nance thinks perhaps she may go +with us after all." + +"Of course she will!" said Mrs. Clarke, with a confident smile at the +girl. "We are going to be so good to her that she will not have the +heart to refuse." + +Mrs. Clarke with her talent for self-deception had almost convinced +herself that Nance was a fairy princess who had languished in a nether +world of obscurity until Mac's magic smile had restored her to her own. + +Nance evaded an answer by fleeing to the white and red breakfast-room +where the butler was laying the cloth for her dinner. As a rule she +enjoyed these tete-a-tetes with the butler. He was a solemn and +pretentious Englishman whom she delighted in shocking by acting and +talking in a manner that was all too natural to her. But to-night she +submitted quite meekly to his lordly condescension. + +She ate her dinner in dreamy abstraction, her thoughts on Mac and the +enticing prospects he had held out. After all what was the use in +fighting against all the kindness and affection? If they were willing to +take the risk of her going with them, why should she hesitate? They knew +she was poor and uneducated and not of their world, and they couldn't +help seeing that Mac was in love with her. And still they wanted her. + +California! Honolulu! Queer far-off lands full of queer people! Big ships +that would carry her out of the sight and sound of Calvary Alley forever! +And Mac, well and happy, making a man of himself, giving her everything +in the world she wanted. + +Across her soaring thoughts struck the voices from the adjoining +dining-room, Mr. Clarke's sharp and incisive, the bishop's suave and +unctious. Suddenly a stray sentence arrested her attention and she +listened with her glass half-way to her lips. + +"It is the labor question that concerns us more than the war," Mr. +Clarke was saying. "I have just succeeded in signing up with a man I +have been after for four years. He is a chap named Lewis, the only man +in this part of the country who seems to be able to cope with the +problem of union labor." + +"A son of General Lewis?" + +"No, no. Just a common workman who got his training at our factory. He +left me five or six years ago without rhyme or reason, and went over to +the Ohio Glass Works, where he has made quite a name for himself. I had a +tussle to get him back, but he comes to take charge next month. He is one +of those rare men you read about, but seldom find, a practical idealist." + +Nance left her ice untouched, and slipped through the back entry and up +to the dainty blue bedroom that had been hers now for three months. All +the delicious languor of the past hour was gone, and in its place was a +turmoil of hope and fear and doubt. Dan was coming back. The words beat +on her brain. He cared nothing for her, and he was married, and she would +never see him, but he was coming back. + +She opened the drawer of her dressing table and took out a small faded +photograph which she held to the silk-shaded lamp. It was a cheap +likeness of an awkward-looking working-boy in his Sunday clothes, a stiff +lock of unruly hair across his temple, and a pair of fine earnest eyes +looking out from slightly scowling brows. + +Nance looked at it long and earnestly; then she flung it back in the +drawer with a sigh and, putting out the light, went down again to +her patient. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI + +MR. DEMRY + + +The next afternoon, armed with her flowers and fruit, Nance was +setting forth for Calvary Alley, when Mrs. Clarke called to her from +an upper window. + +"If you will wait ten minutes, I will take you down in the machine." + +"But I want the walk," Nance insisted. "I need the exercise." + +"Nonsense, you are on your feet nearly all the time. I won't be long." + +Nance made a wry face at an unoffending sparrow and glanced regretfully +at the long white road that wound invitingly in and out of the woods +until it dropped sharply to the little station in the valley a mile +below. She had been looking forward to that walk all morning. She wanted +to get away from the hot-house atmosphere of the Clarke establishment, +away from Mac's incessant appeals and his mother's increasing dependence. +Aside from amusing her patient and seeing that he obeyed Dr. Adair's +orders, her duties for the past few weeks had been too light to be +interesting. The luxury that at first had so thrilled her was already +beginning to pall. She wanted to be out in the open alone, to feel the +sharp wind of reality in her face, while she thought things out. + +"I am going to the cathedral," said Mrs. Clarke, emerging from the +door, followed by a maid carrying coats and rugs. "But I can drop you +wherever you say." + +"I'll go there, too," said Nance as she took her seat in the car. "The +old gentleman I'm taking the things to lives just back of there, in the +very house Dr. Adair is trying to get for the clinic." + +"Poor soul!" said Mrs. Clarke idly, as she viewed with approval Nance's +small brown hat that so admirably set off the lights in her hair and the +warm red tints of her skin. + +"He's been up against it something fierce for over a year now," Nance +went on. "We've helped him all he'd let us since he stopped playing at +the theater." + +"Playing?" Mrs. Clarke repeated the one word that had caught her +wandering attention. "Is he an actor?" + +"No; he is a musician. He used to play in big orchestras in New York and +Boston. He plays the fiddle." + +For the rest of the way into town Mrs. Clarke was strangely preoccupied. +She sat very straight, with eyes slightly contracted, and looked absently +out of the window. Once or twice she began a sentence without finishing +it. At the cathedral steps she laid a detaining hand on Nance's arm. + +"By the way, what did you say was the name of the old man you are +going to see?" + +"I never said. It's Demry." + +"Demry--Never mind, I just missed the step. I'm quite all right. I think +I will go with you to see this--this--house they are talking about." + +"But it's in the alley. Mrs. Clarke; it's awfully dirty." + +"Yes, yes, but I'm coming. Can we go through here?" + +So impatient was she that she did not wait for Nance to lead the way, but +hurried around the bishop's study and down the concrete walk to the gate +that opened into the alley. + +"Look out for your skirt against the garbage barrel," warned Nance. It +embarrassed her profoundly to have Mrs. Clarke in these surroundings; she +hated the mud that soiled her dainty boots, the odors that must offend +her nostrils, the inevitable sights that awaited her in Number One. She +only prayed that Mrs. Snawdor's curl-papered head might not appear on the +upper landing. + +"Which way?" demanded Mrs. Clarke, impatiently. + +Nance led the way into the dark hall where a half-dozen ragged, +dirty-faced children were trying to drag a still dirtier pup up the +stairs by means of a twine string. + +"In here, Mrs. Clarke," said Nance, pushing open the door at the left + +The outside shutters of the big cold room were partly closed, but the +light from between them fell with startling effect on the white, +marble-like face of the old man who lay asleep on a cot in front of the +empty fireplace. For a moment Mrs. Clarke stood looking at him; then with +a smothered cry she bent over him. + +"Father!" she cried sharply, "Oh, God! It's my father!" + +Nance caught her breath in amazement; then her bewildered gaze fell upon +a familiar object. There, in its old place on the mantel stood the +miniature of a pink and white maiden in the pink and white dress, with +the golden curl across her shoulder. In the delicate, beautiful profile +Nance read the amazing truth. + +Mr. Demry sighed heavily, opened his eyes with an effort and, looking +past the bowed head beside him, held out a feeble hand for the flowers. + +"Listen, Mr. Demry," said Nance, breathlessly. "Here's a lady says she +knows you. Somebody you haven't seen for a long, long time. Will you look +at her and try to remember?" + +His eyes rested for the fraction of a minute on the agonized face lifted +to his, then closed wearily. + +"Can you not get the lady a chair, Nancy?" he asked feebly. "You can +borrow one from the room across the hall." + +"Father!" demanded Mrs. Clarke, "don't you know me? It is Elise. Your +daughter, Elise Demorest!" + +"Demorest," he repeated, and smiled. "How unnatural it sounds now! +Demorest!" + +"It's no use," said Nance. "His mind wanders most of the time. Let me +take you back to the cathedral, Mrs. Clarke, until we decide what's got +to be done." + +"I am going to take him home," said Mrs. Clarke, wildly. "He shall have +every comfort and luxury I can give him. Poor Father, don't you want to +come home with Elise?" + +"I live at Number One, Calvary Alley," said Mr. Demry, clinging to the +one fact he had trained his mind to remember. "If you will kindly get me +to the corner, the children will--" + +"It's too late to do anything!" cried Mrs. Clarke, wringing her hands. "I +knew something terrible would happen to him. I pleaded with them to help +me find him, but they put me off. Then I got so absorbed in Mac that he +drove everything else out of my mind. How long has he been in this awful +place? How long has he been ill? Who takes care of him?" + +Nance, with her arms about Mrs. Clarke, told her as gently as she could +of Mr. Demry's advent into the alley fourteen years before, of his +friendship with the children, his occasional lapses from grace, and the +steady decline of his fortune. + +"We must get him away from here!" cried Mrs. Clarke when she had gained +control of herself. "Go somewhere and telephone Mr. Clarke. Telephone Dr. +Adair. Tell him to bring an ambulance and another nurse and--and plenty +of blankets. Telephone to the house for them to get a room ready. But +wait--there's Mac--he mustn't know--" + +It was the old, old mother-cry! Keep it from Mac, spare Mac, don't let +Mac suffer. Nance seized on it now to further her designs. + +"You go back to Mr. Mac, Mrs. Clarke. I'll stay here and attend to +everything. You go ahead and get things ready for us." + +And Mrs. Clarke, used to taking the easiest way, allowed herself to be +persuaded, and after one agonized look at the tranquil face on the +pillow, hurried away. + +Nance, shivering with the cold, got together the few articles that +constituted Mr. Demry's worldly possessions. A few shabby garments in the +old wardrobe, the miniature on the shelf, a stack of well-worn books, and +the violin in its rose-wood case. Everything else had been sold to keep +the feeble flame alive in that wasted old form. + +Nance looked about her with swimming eyes. She recalled the one happy +Christmas that her childhood had known. The gay garlands of tissue paper, +the swinging lanterns, the shelf full of oranges and doughnuts, and the +beaming old face smiling over the swaying fiddle bow! And to think that +Mrs. Clarke's own father had hidden away here all these years, utterly +friendless except for the children, poor to the point of starvation, sick +to the point of death, grappling with his great weakness in heroic +silence, and going down to utter oblivion rather than obtrude his +misfortune upon the one he loved best. + +As the old man's fairy tales had long ago stirred Nance's imagination and +wakened her to the beauty of invisible things, so now his broken, futile +life, with its one great glory of renunciation, called out to the soul of +her and roused in her a strange, new sense of spiritual beauty. + +For one week he lived among the luxurious surroundings of his daughter's +home. Everything that skill and money could do, was done to restore him +to health and sanity. But he saw only the sordid sights he had been +seeing for the past fourteen years; he heard only the sounds to which his +old ears had become accustomed. + +"You would better move my cot, Nancy," he would say, plucking at the +silken coverlid. "They are scrubbing the floor up in the Lavinski flat. +The water always comes through." And again he would say: "It is nice and +warm in here, but I am afraid you are burning too much coal, dear. I +cannot get another bucket until Saturday." + +One day Mrs. Clarke saw him take from his tray, covered with delicacies, +a half-eaten roll and slip it under his pillow. + +"We must save it," he whispered confidentially, "save it for to-morrow." +In vain they tried to reassure him; the haunting poverty that had stalked +beside him in life refused to be banished by death. + +Mrs. Clarke remained "the lady" to him to the end. When he spoke to her, +his manner assumed a faint dignity, with a slight touch of gallantry, the +unmistakable air of a gentleman of the old school towards an attractive +stranger of the opposite sex. + +His happiest hours were those when he fancied the children were with him. + +"Gently! gently!" he would say; "there is room for everybody. This knee +is for Gussie Gorman, this one for Joe, because they are the smallest, +you know. Now are you ready?" And then he would whisper fairy stories, +smiling at the ceiling, and making feeble gestures with his wasted old +hands. + +The end came one day after he had lain for hours in a stupor. He stirred +suddenly and asked for his violin. + +"I must go--to the--theater, Nancy," he murmured. "I--do not want--to +be--a--burden." + +They laid the instrument in his arms, and his fingers groped feebly over +the strings; then his chin sank into its old accustomed place, and a +great light dawned in his eyes. Mr. Demry, who was used to seeing +invisible things, had evidently caught the final vision. + +That night, worn with nursing and full of grief for the passing of her +old friend, Nance threw a coat about her and slipped out on the terrace. +Above her, nebulous stars were already appearing, and their twinkling +was answered by responsive gleams in the city below. Against the velvety +dusk two tall objects towered in the distance, the beautiful Gothic +spire of the cathedral, and the tall, unseemly gas pipe of Clarke's +Bottle Factory. Between them, under a haze of smoke and grime, lay +Calvary Alley. + +"I don't know which is worse," thought Nance fiercely, "to be down there +in the mess, fighting and struggling and suffering to get the things you +want, or up here with the mummies who haven't got anything left to wish +for. I wish life wasn't just a choice between a little hard green apple +and a rotten big one!" + +She leaned her elbows on the railing and watched the new moon dodging +behind the tree trunks and, as she watched, she grappled with the +problem of life, at first bitterly and rebelliously, then with a dawning +comprehension of its meaning. After all was the bishop, with his +conspicuous virtues and his well-known dislike of children, any better +than old Mr. Demry, with his besetting sin and his beautiful influence on +every child with whom he came in contact? Was Mr. Clarke, working +children under age in the factory to build up a great fortune for his +son, very different from Mr. Lavinski, with his sweat-shop, hoarding +pennies for the ambitious Ikey? Was Mrs. Clarke, shirking her duty to her +father, any happier or any better than Mrs. Snawdor, shirking hers to her +children? Was Mac, adored and petted and protected, any better than +Birdie, now in the state asylum paying the penalty of their joint +misdeed? Was the tragedy in the great house back of her any more poignant +than the tragedy of Dan Lewis bound by law to an insane wife and burdened +with a child that was not his own? She seemed to see for the first time +the great illuminating truth that the things that make men alike in the +world are stronger than the things that make them different. And in this +realization an overwhelming ambition seized her. Some hidden spiritual +force rose to lift her out of the contemplation of her own interests into +something of ultimate value to her fellowmen. + +After all, those people down there in Calvary Alley were her people, and +she meant to stand by them. It had been the dream of her life to get out +and away, but in that moment she knew that wherever she went, she would +always come back. Others might help from the top, but she could help +understandingly from the bottom. With the magnificent egotism of youth, +she outlined gigantic schemes on the curtain of the night. Some day, +somehow, she would make people like the Clarkes see the life of the poor +as it really was, she would speak for the girls in the factories, in the +sweatshops, on the stage. She would be an interpreter between the rich +and the poor and make them serve each other. + +"Nance!" called an injured voice from the music room behind her, "what in +the mischief are you doing out there in the cold? Come on in here and +amuse me. I'm half dead with the dumps!" + +"All right, Mr. Mac. I'm coming," she said cheerfully, as she stepped in +through the French window and closed it against her night of dreams. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII + +THE NEW FOREMAN + + +The Dan Lewis who came back to Clarke's Bottle Factory was a very +different man from the one who had walked out of it five years before. He +had gone out a stern, unforgiving, young ascetic, accepting no +compromise, demanding perfection of himself and of his fellow-men. The +very sublimity of his dream doomed it to failure. Out of the crumbling +ideals of his boyhood he had struggled to a foothold on life that had +never been his in the old days. His marriage to Birdie Smelts had been +the fiery furnace in which his soul had been softened to receive the +final stamp of manhood. + +For his hour of indiscretion he had paid to the last ounce of his +strength and courage. After that night in the lodging-house, there seemed +to him but one right course, and he took it with unflinching promptness. +Even when Birdie, secure in the protection of his name and his support, +lapsed into her old vain, querulous self, he valiantly bore his burden, +taking any menial work that he could find to do, and getting a sort of +grim satisfaction out of what he regarded as expiation for his sin. + +But when he became aware of Birdie's condition and realized the use she +had made of him, the tragedy broke upon him in all of its horror. Then +he, too, lost sight of the shore lights, and went plunging desperately +into the stream of life with no visible and sustaining ideal to guide +his course, but only the fighting necessity to get across as decently +as possible. + +After a long struggle he secured a place in the Ohio Glass Works, where +his abilities soon began to be recognized. Instead of working now with +tingling enthusiasm for Nance and the honeysuckle cottage, he worked +doggedly and furiously to meet the increasing expense of Birdie's +wastefulness and the maintenance of her child. + +Year by year he forged ahead, gaining a reputation for sound judgment and +fair dealing that made him an invaluable spokesman between the employer +and the employed. He set himself seriously to work to get at the real +conditions that were causing the ferment of unrest among the working +classes. He made himself familiar with socialistic and labor newspapers; +he attended mass meetings; he laid awake nights reading and wrestling +with the problems of organized industrialism. His honest resentment +against the injustice shown the laboring man was always nicely balanced +by his intolerance of the haste and ignorance and misrepresentation of +the labor agitators. He was one of the few men who could be called upon +to arbitrate differences, whom both factions invariably pronounced +"square." When pressure was brought to bear upon him to return to +Clarke's, he was in a position to dictate his own terms. + +It was the second week after his reinstatement that he came up to the +office one day and unexpectedly encountered Nance Molloy. At first he did +not recognize the tall young lady in the well-cut brown suit with the bit +of fur at the neck and wrists and the jaunty brown hat with its dash of +gold. Then she looked up, and it was Nance's old smile that flashed out +at him, and Nance's old impulsive self that turned to greet him. + +For one radiant moment all that had happened since they last stood there +was swept out of the memory of each; then it came back; and they shook +hands awkwardly and could find little to say to each other in the +presence of the strange stenographer who occupied Nance's old place at +the desk by the window. + +"They told me you weren't working here," said Dan at length. + +"I'm not. I've just come on an errand for Mrs. Clarke." + +Dan's eyes searched hers in swift inquiry. + +"I'm a trained nurse now," she said, determined to take the situation +lightly. "You remember how crazy I used to be about doping people?" + +He did not answer, and she hurried on as if afraid of any silence that +might fall between them. + +"It all started with the smallpox in Calvary Alley. Been back +there, Dan?" + +"Not yet." + +"Lots of changes since the old days. Mr. Snawdor and Fidy and Mrs. Smelts +and Mr. Demry all gone. Have you heard about Mr. Demry?" + +Dan shook his head. He was not listening to her, but he was looking at +her searchingly, broodingly, with growing insistence. + +The hammering of the type-writer was the only sound that broke the +ensuing pause. + +"Tell me your news, Dan," said Nance in desperation. "Where you +living now?" + +"At Mrs. Purdy's. She's going to take care of Ted for me." + +"Ted? Oh! I forgot. How old is he now?" + +For the first time Dan's face lit up with his fine, rare smile. + +"He's four, Nance, and the smartest kid that ever lived! You'd be +crazy about him, I know. I wonder if you couldn't go out there some +day and see him?" + +Nance showed no enthusiasm over the suggestion; instead she gathered up +her muff and gloves and, leaving a message for Mr. Clarke with the +stenographer, prepared to depart. + +"I am thinking about going away," she said. "I may go out to California +next week." + +The brief enthusiasm died out of Dan's face. + +"What's taking you to California?" he asked dully, as he followed her +into the hall. + +"I may go with a patient. Have you heard of the trouble they're in at the +Clarkes'?" + +"No." + +"It's Mr. Mac. He's got tuberculosis, and they are taking him out to the +coast for a year. They want me to go along." + +Dan's face hardened. + +"So it's Mac Clarke still?" he asked bitterly. + +His tone stung Nance to the quick, and she wheeled on him indignantly. + +"See here, Dan! I've got to put you straight on a thing or two. Where can +we go to have this business out?" + +He led her across the hall to his own small office and closed the door. + +"I'm going to tell you something," she said, facing him with blazing +eyes, "and I don't care a hang whether you believe it or not. I never was +in love with Mac Clarke. From the day you left this factory I never saw +or wrote to him until he was brought to the hospital last July, and I was +put on the case. I didn't have anything more to do with him than I did +with you. I guess you know how much that was!" + +"What about now? Are you going west with him?" + +Dan confronted her with the same stern inquiry in his eyes that had shone +there the day they parted, in this very place, five years ago. + +"I don't know whether I am or not!" cried Nance, firing up. "They've done +everything for me, the Clarkes have. They think his getting well depends +on me. Of course that's rot, but that's what they think. As for Mr. Mac +himself--" + +"Is he still in love with you?" + +At this moment a boy thrust his head in the door to say that Dr. Adair +had telephoned for Miss Molloy to come by the hospital before she +returned to Hillcrest. + +Nance pulled on her gloves and, with chin in the air, was departing +without a word, when Dan stopped her. + +"I'm sorry I spoke to you like that, Nance," he said, scowling at the +floor. "I've got no right to be asking you questions, or criticizing what +you do, or where you go. I hope you'll excuse me." + +"You _have_ got the right!" declared Nance, with one of her quick changes +of mood. "You can ask me anything you like. I guess we can always be +friends, can't we?" + +"No," said Dan, slowly, "I don't think we can. I didn't count on seeing +you like this, just us two together, alone. I thought you'd be married +maybe or moved away some place." + +It was Nance's time to be silent, and she listened with wide eyes and +parted lips. + +"I mustn't see you--alone--any more, Nance," Dan went on haltingly. "But +while we are here I want to tell you about it. Just this once, Nance, if +you don't mind." + +He crossed over and stood before her, his hands gripping a chair back. + +"When I went away from here," he began, "I thought you had passed me up +for Mac Clarke. It just put me out of business, Nance. I didn't care +where I went or what I did. Then one night in Cincinnati I met Birdie, +and she was up against it, too--and--" + +After all he couldn't make a clean breast of it! Whatever he might say +would reflect on Birdie, and he gave the explanation up in despair. But +Nance came to his rescue. + +"I know, Dan," she said. "Mrs. Smelts told me everything. I don't know +another fellow in the world that would have stood by a girl like you did +Birdie. She oughtn't have let you marry her without telling you." + +"I think she meant to give me my freedom when the baby came," said Dan. +"At least that was what she promised. I couldn't have lived through +those first months of hell if I hadn't thought there was some way out. +But when the baby came, it was too late. Her mind was affected, and by +the law of the State I'm bound to her for the rest of her life." + +"Do you know--who--who the baby's father is, Dan?" + +"No. She refused from the first to tell me, and now I'm glad I don't +know. She said the baby was like him, and that made her hate it. That was +the way her trouble started. She wouldn't wash the little chap, or feed +him, or look after him when he was sick. I had to do everything. For a +year she kept getting worse and worse, until one night I caught her +trying to set fire to his crib. Of course after that she had to be sent +to the asylum, and from that time on, Ted and I fought it out together. +One of the neighbors took charge of him in the day, and I wrestled with +him at night." + +"Couldn't you put him in an orphan asylum?" + +Dan shook his head. + +"No, I couldn't go back on him when he was up against a deal like that. I +made up my mind that I'd never let him get lonesome like I used to be, +with nobody to care a hang what became of him. He's got my name now, and +he'll never know the difference if I can help it." + +"And Birdie? Does she know you when you go to see her?" + +"Not for two years now. It's easier than when she did." + +There was silence between them; then Nance said: + +"I'm glad you told me all this, Dan. I--I wish I could help you." + +"You can't," said Dan, sharply. "Don't you see I've got no right to be +with you? Do you suppose there's been a week, or a day in all these years +that I haven't wanted you with every breath I drew? The rest was just a +nightmare I was living through in order to wake up and find you. Nance--I +love you! With my heart and soul and body! You've been the one beautiful +thing in my whole life, and I wasn't worthy of you. I can't let you go! +I--Oh, God! what am I saying? What right have I--Don't let me see you +again like this, Nance, don't let me talk to you--" + +He stumbled to a chair by the desk and buried his head in his arms. His +breath came in short, hard gasps, with a long agonizing quiver between, +and his broad shoulders heaved. It was the first time he had wept since +that night, so long ago, when he had sat in the gutter in front of Slap +Jack's saloon and broken his heart over an erring mother. + +For one tremulous second Nance hovered over him, her face aflame with +sympathy and almost maternal pity; then she pulled herself together and +said brusquely: + +"It's all right, Danny. I understand. I'm going. Good-by." + +And without looking back, she fled into the hall and down the steps to +the waiting motor. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII + +NANCE COMES INTO HER OWN + + +For two hours Nance was closeted with Dr. Adair in his private office, +and when she came out she had the look of one who has been following +false trails and suddenly discovers the right one. + +"Don't make a hasty decision," warned Dr. Adair in parting. "The trip +with the Clarkes will be a wonderful experience; they may be gone a year +or more, and they'll do everything and see everything in the approved +way. What I am proposing offers no romance. It will be hard work and +plenty of it. You'd better think it over and give me your answer +to-morrow." + +"I'll give it to you now," said Nance. "It's yes." + +He scrutinized her quizzically; then he held out his hand with its short, +thick, surgeon's fingers. + +"It's a wise decision, my dear," he said. "Say nothing about it at +present. I will make it all right with the Clarkes." + +During the weeks that followed, Nance was too busy to think of herself +or her own affairs. She superintended the shopping and packing for Mrs. +Clarke; she acted as private secretary for Mr. Clarke; she went on +endless errands, and looked after the innumerable details that a family +migration entails. + +Mac, sulking on the couch, feeling grossly abused and neglected, spent +most of his time inveighing against Dr. Adair. "He's got to let you come +out by the end of next month." he threatened Nance, "or I'll take the +first train home. What's he got up his sleeve anyhow?" + +"Ask him," advised Nance, over her shoulder, as she vanished into the +hall. + +Toward the end of November the Clarkes took their departure; father, +mother, and son, two servants, and the despised, but efficient Miss +Hanna. Nance went down to see them off, hovering over the unsuspecting +Mac with feelings of mingled relief and contrition. + +"I wish you'd let me tell him," she implored Mrs. Clarke. "He's bound to +know soon. Why not get it over with now?" + +Mrs. Clarke was in instant panic. + +"Not a word, I implore you! We will break the news to him when he is +better. Be good to him now, let him go away happy. Please, dear, for my +sake!" With the strength of the weak, she carried her point. + +For the quarter of an hour before the train started, Nance resolutely +kept the situation in hand, not giving Mac a chance to speak to her +alone, and keeping up a running fire of nonsense that provoked even Mr. +Clarke to laughter. When the "All Aboard!" sounded from without, there +was scant time for good-bys. She hurried out, and when on the platform, +turned eagerly to scan the windows above her. A gust of smoke swept +between her and the slow-moving train; then as it cleared she caught her +last glimpse of a gay irresponsible face propped about with pillows and a +thin hand that threw her kisses as far as she could see. + +It was with a curious feeling of elation mingled with depression, that +she tramped back to the hospital through the gloom of that November day. +Until a month ago she had scarcely had a thought beyond Mac and the +progress of his case; even now she missed his constant demands upon her, +and her heart ached for the disappointment that awaited him. But under +these disturbing thoughts something new and strange and beautiful was +calling her. + +Half mechanically she spent the rest of the afternoon reestablishing +herself in the nurses' quarters at the hospital which she had left nearly +four months before. At six o'clock she put on the gray cape and small +gray bonnet that constituted her uniform, and leaving word that she would +report for duty at nine o'clock, went to the corner and boarded a street +car. It was a warm evening for November, and the car with its throng of +home-going workers was close and uncomfortable. But Nance, clinging to a +strap, and jostled on every side, was superbly indifferent to her +surroundings. With lifted chin and preoccupied eyes, she held counsel +with herself, sometimes moving her lips slightly as if rehearsing a part. +At Butternut Lane she got out and made her way to the old white house +midway of the square. + +A little boy was perched on the gate post, swinging a pair of fat legs +and trying to whistle. There was no lack of effort on his part, but the +whistle for some reason refused to come. He tried hooking a small finger +inside the corners of his mouth; he tried it with teeth together and +teeth apart. + +Nance, sympathizing with his thwarted ambition, smiled as she approached; +then she caught her breath. The large brown eyes that the child turned +upon her were disconcertingly familiar. + +"Is this Ted?" she asked. + +He nodded mistrustfully; then after surveying her gravely, evidently +thought better of her and volunteered the information that he was waiting +for his daddy. + +"Where is Mrs. Purdy?" Nance asked. + +"Her's making me a gingerbread man." + +"I know a story about a gingerbread man; want to hear it?" + +"Is it scareful?" asked Ted. + +"No, just funny," Nance assured. Then while he sat very still on the gate +post, with round eyes full of wonder, Nance stood in front of him with +his chubby fists in her hands and told him one of Mr. Demry's old fairy +tales. So absorbed were they both that neither of them heard an +approaching step until it was quite near. + +"Daddy!" cried Ted, in sudden rapture, scrambling down from the post and +hurling himself against the new-comer. + +But for once his daddy's first greeting was not for him. Dan seized +Nance's outstretched hand and studied her face with hungry, +inquiring eyes. + +"I've come to say good-by, Dan," she said in a matter-of-fact tone. + +His face hardened. + +"Then you are going with the Clarkes? You've decided?" + +"I've decided. Can't we go over to the summer-house for a few minutes. I +want to talk to you." + +They crossed the yard to the sheltered bower in its cluster of bare +trees, while Ted trudged behind them kicking up clouds of dead leaves +with his small square-toed boots. + +"You run in to Mother Purdy, Teddykins," said Dan, but Nance caught the +child's hand. + +"Better keep him here," she said with an unsteady laugh. "I got to get +something off my chest once and for all; then I'll skidoo." + +But Ted had already spied a squirrel and gone in pursuit, and Nance's +eyes followed him absently. + +"When I met you in the office the other day," she said, "I thought I +could bluff it through. But when I saw you all knocked up like that; and +knew that you cared--" Her eyes came back to his. "Dan we might as well +face the truth." + +"You mean--" + +"I mean I'm going to wait for you if I have to wait forever. You're not +free now, but when you are, I'll come to you." + +He made one stride toward her and swept her into his arms. + +"Do you mean it, girl?" he asked, his voice breaking with the unexpected +joy. "You are going to stand by me? You are going to wait?" + +"Let me go, Dan!" she implored. "Where's Ted? I mustn't stay--I--" + +But Dan held her as if he never meant to let her go, and suddenly she +ceased to struggle or to consider right or wrong or consequences. She +lifted her head and her lips met his in complete surrender. For the +first time in her short and stormy career she had found exactly what +she wanted. + +For a long time they stood thus; then Dan recovered himself with a +start. + +He pushed her away from him almost roughly. "Nance, I didn't mean to! I +won't again! Only I've wanted you so long, I've been so unhappy. I can't +let you leave me now! I can't let you go with the Clarkes!" + +"You don't have to. They've gone without me." + +"But you said you'd come to say good-by. I thought you were starting to +California." + +"Well, I'm not. I am going to stay right here. Dr. Adair has asked me to +take charge of the clinic--the new one they are going to open in +Calvary Alley." + +"And we're going to be near each other, able to see each other +every day--" + +But she stopped him resolutely. + +"No, Dan, no. I knew we couldn't do that before I came to-night. Now I +know it more than ever. Don't you see we got to cut it all out? Got to +keep away from each other just the same as if I was in California and you +were here?" + +Dan's big strong hands again seized hers. + +"It won't be wrong for us just to see each other," he urged hotly. "I +promise never to say a word of love or to touch you, Nance. What's +happened to-night need never happen again. We can hold on to ourselves; +we can be just good friends until--" + +But Nance pulled her hands away impatiently. + +"You might. I couldn't. I tell you I got to keep away from you, Dan. +Can't you see? Can't you understand? I counted on you to see the right of +it. I thought you was going to help me!" And with an almost angry sob, +she sat down suddenly on the leaf-strewn bench and, locking her arms +across the railing, dropped her flaming face upon them. + +For a long time he stood watching her, while, his face reflected the +conflicting emotions that were fighting within him for mastery. Then into +his eyes crept a look of dumb compassion, the same look he had once bent +on a passion-tossed little girl lying on the seat of a patrol-wagon in +the chill dusk of a Christmas night. + +He straightened his shoulders and laid a firm hand on her bowed head. + +"You must stop crying, Nance," he commanded with the stern tenderness he +would have used toward Ted. "Perhaps you are right; God knows. At any +rate we are going to do whatever you say in this matter. I promise to +keep out of your way until you say I can come." + +Nance drew a quivering breath, and smiled up at him through her tears. + +"That's not enough, Dan; you got to keep away whether I say to come or +not. You're stronger and better than what I am. You got to promise that +whatever happens you'll make me be good." + +And Dan with trembling lips and steady eyes made her the solemn promise. + +Then, sitting there in the twilight, with only the dropping of a leaf to +break the silence, they poured out their confidences, eager to reach a +complete understanding in the brief time they had allotted themselves. In +minute detail they pieced together the tangled pattern of the past; they +poured out their present aims and ambitions, coming back again and again +to the miracle of their new-found love. Of their personal future, they +dared not speak. It was locked to them, and death alone held the key. + +Darkness had closed in when the side door of the house across the yard +was flung open, and a small figure came plunging toward them through the +crackling leaves. + +"It's done, Daddy!" cried an excited voice. "It's the cutest little +gingerbread man. And supper's ready, and he's standing up by my plate." + +"All right!" said Dan, holding out one hand to him and one to Nance. +"We'll all go in together to see the gingerbread man." + +"But, Dan--" + +"Just this once; it's our good-by night, you know." + +Nance hesitated, then straightening the prim little gray bonnet that +would assume a jaunty tilt, she followed the tall figure and the short +one into the halo of light that circled the open door. + +The evening that followed was one of those rare times, insignificant in +itself, every detail of which was to stand out in after life, charged +with significance. For Nance, the warmth and glow of the homely little +house, with its flowered carpets and gay curtains, the beaming face of +old Mrs. Purdy in its frame of silver curls, the laughter of the happy +child, and above all the strong, tender presence of Dan, were things +never to be forgotten. + +At eight o'clock she rose reluctantly, saying that she had to go by the +Snawdors' before she reported at the hospital at nine o'clock. + +"Do you mind if I go that far with you?" asked Dan, wistfully. + +On their long walk across the city they said little. Their way led them +past many familiar places, the school house, the old armory, Cemetery +Street, Post-Office Square, where they used to sit and watch the +electric signs. Of the objects they passed, Dan was superbly unaware. He +saw only Nance. But she was keenly aware of every old association that +bound them together. Everything seemed strangely beautiful to her, the +glamorous shop-lights cutting through the violet gloom, the subtle +messages of lighted windows, the passing faces of her fellow-men. In +that gray world her soul burned like a brilliant flame lighting up +everything around her. + +As they turned into Calvary Alley the windows of the cathedral glowed +softly above them. + +"I never thought how pretty it was before!" said Nance, rapturously. +"Say, Dan, do you know what 'Evol si dog' means?" + +"No; is it Latin?" + +She squeezed his arm between her two hands and laughed gleefully. + +"You're as bad as me," she said, "I'm not going to tell you; you got to +go inside and find out for yourself." + +On the threshold of Number One they paused again. Even the almost +deserted old tenement, blushing under a fresh coat of red paint, took on +a hue of romance. + +"You wait 'til we get it fixed up," said Nance. "They're taking out all +the partitions in the Smelts' flat, and making a big consulting room of +it. And over here in Mr. Demry's room I'm going to have the baby clinic. +I'm going to have boxes of growing flowers in every window; and +storybooks and--" + +"Yes," cried Dan, fiercely, "you are going to be so taken up with all +this that you won't need me; you'll forget about to-night!" + +But her look silenced him. + +"Dan," she said very earnestly, "I always have needed you, and I always +will. I love you better than anything in the world, and I'm trying to +prove it." + +A wavering light on the upper landing warned them that they might be +overheard. A moment later some one demanded to know who was there. + +"Come down and see!" called Nance. + +Mrs. Snawdor, lamp in hand, cautiously descended. + +"Is that you, Nance?" she cried. "It's about time you was comin' to see +to the movin' an' help tend to things. Who's that there with you?" + +"Don't you know?" + +"Well, if it ain't Dan Lewis!" And to Dan's great embarrassment the +effusive lady enveloped him in a warm and unexpected embrace. She even +held him at arm's length and commented upon his appearance with frank +admiration. "I never seen any one improve so much an' yet go on favorin' +theirselves." + +Nance declined to go up-stairs on the score of time, promising to come on +the following Sunday and take entire charge of the moving. + +"Ain't it like her to go git mixed up in this here fool clinic business?" +Mrs. Snawdor asked of Dan. "Just when she'd got a job with rich swells +that would 'a' took her anywhere? Here she was for about ten years +stewin' an' fumin' to git outen the alley, an' here she is comin' back +again! She's tried about ever'thin' now, but gittin' married." + +Dan scenting danger, changed the direction of the conversation by asking +her where they were moving to. + +"That's some more of her doin's," said Mrs. Snawdor. "She's gittin' her +way at las' 'bout movin' us to the country. Lobelia an' Rosy V. is goin' +to keep house, an' me an' William Jennings is going to board with 'em. +You'd orter see that boy of mine, Dan. Nance got him into the 'lectric +business an' he's doin' somethin' wonderful. He's got my brains an' his +pa's manners. You can say what you please, Mr. Snawdor was a perfect +gentleman!" + +It was evident from the pride in her voice that since Mr. Snawdor's +demise he had been canonized, becoming the third member of the ghostly +firm of Molloy, Yager, and Snawdor. + +"What about Uncle Jed?" asked Nance. "Where's he going?" + +Mrs. Snawdor laughed consciously and, in doing so, exhibited to full +advantage the dazzling new teeth that were the pride of her life. + +"Oh, Mr. Burks is goin' with us," she said. "It's too soon to talk about +it yet,--but--er--Oh, you know me, Nance!" And with blushing confusion +the thrice-bereaved widow hid her face in her apron. + +The clock in the cathedral tower was nearing nine when Nance and Dan +emerged from Number One. They did not speak as they walked up to the +corner and stood waiting for the car. Their hands were clasped hard, +and she could feel his heart thumping under her wrist as he pressed it +to his side. + +Passers-by jostled them on every side, and an importunate newsboy +implored patronage, but they seemed oblivious to their surroundings. The +car turned a far corner and came toward them relentlessly. + +"God bless you, Dan," whispered Nance as he helped her on the platform; +then turning, she called back to him with one of her old flashing smiles. +"And me too, a little bit!" + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Calvary Alley, by Alice Hegan Rice + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CALVARY ALLEY *** + +This file should be named 7calv10.txt or 7calv10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 7calv11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 7calv10a.txt + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan +and PG Distributed Proofreaders + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we usually do not +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance +of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing. +Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections, +even years after the official publication date. + +Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til +midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. +The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at +Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A +preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment +and editing by those who wish to do so. + +Most people start at our Web sites at: +http://gutenberg.net or +http://promo.net/pg + +These Web sites include award-winning information about Project +Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new +eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!). + + +Those of you who want to download any eBook before announcement +can get to them as follows, and just download by date. This is +also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the +indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an +announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter. + +http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03 or +ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext03 + +Or /etext02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90 + +Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want, +as it appears in our Newsletters. + + +Information about Project Gutenberg (one page) + +We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The +time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours +to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright +searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. Our +projected audience is one hundred million readers. If the value +per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 +million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text +files per month: 1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+ +We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002 +If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total +will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year's end. + +The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away 1 Trillion eBooks! +This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers, +which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users. + +Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated): + +eBooks Year Month + + 1 1971 July + 10 1991 January + 100 1994 January + 1000 1997 August + 1500 1998 October + 2000 1999 December + 2500 2000 December + 3000 2001 November + 4000 2001 October/November + 6000 2002 December* + 9000 2003 November* +10000 2004 January* + + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created +to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium. + +We need your donations more than ever! + +As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people +and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, +Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, +Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, +Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New +Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, +Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South +Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West +Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. + +We have filed in all 50 states now, but these are the only ones +that have responded. + +As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list +will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states. +Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state. + +In answer to various questions we have received on this: + +We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally +request donations in all 50 states. If your state is not listed and +you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have, +just ask. + +While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are +not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting +donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to +donate. + +International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about +how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made +deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are +ways. + +Donations by check or money order may be sent to: + +Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +PMB 113 +1739 University Ave. +Oxford, MS 38655-4109 + +Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment +method other than by check or money order. + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by +the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN +[Employee Identification Number] 64-622154. Donations are +tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law. As fund-raising +requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be +made and fund-raising will begin in the additional states. + +We need your donations more than ever! + +You can get up to date donation information online at: + +http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html + + +*** + +If you can't reach Project Gutenberg, +you can always email directly to: + +Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com> + +Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message. + +We would prefer to send you information by email. + + +**The Legal Small Print** + + +(Three Pages) + +***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS**START*** +Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers. +They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with +your copy of this eBook, even if you got it for free from +someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our +fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement +disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how +you may distribute copies of this eBook if you want to. + +*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS EBOOK +By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +eBook, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept +this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive +a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this eBook by +sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person +you got it from. If you received this eBook on a physical +medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request. + +ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM EBOOKS +This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBooks, +is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart +through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project"). +Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright +on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and +distribute it in the United States without permission and +without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth +below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this eBook +under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark. + +Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market +any commercial products without permission. + +To create these eBooks, the Project expends considerable +efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain +works. Despite these efforts, the Project's eBooks and any +medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other +things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged +disk or other eBook medium, a computer virus, or computer +codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment. + +LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES +But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below, +[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may +receive this eBook from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook) disclaims +all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including +legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR +UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT, +INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE +OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE +POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. + +If you discover a Defect in this eBook within 90 days of +receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) +you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that +time to the person you received it from. If you received it +on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and +such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement +copy. If you received it electronically, such person may +choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to +receive it electronically. + +THIS EBOOK IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS +TO THE EBOOK OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A +PARTICULAR PURPOSE. + +Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or +the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the +above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you +may have other legal rights. + +INDEMNITY +You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation, +and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated +with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm +texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including +legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the +following that you do or cause: [1] distribution of this eBook, +[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the eBook, +or [3] any Defect. + +DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm" +You may distribute copies of this eBook electronically, or by +disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this +"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg, +or: + +[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this + requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the + eBook or this "small print!" statement. You may however, + if you wish, distribute this eBook in machine readable + binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form, + including any form resulting from conversion by word + processing or hypertext software, but only so long as + *EITHER*: + + [*] The eBook, when displayed, is clearly readable, and + does *not* contain characters other than those + intended by the author of the work, although tilde + (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may + be used to convey punctuation intended by the + author, and additional characters may be used to + indicate hypertext links; OR + + [*] The eBook may be readily converted by the reader at + no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent + form by the program that displays the eBook (as is + the case, for instance, with most word processors); + OR + + [*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at + no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the + eBook in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC + or other equivalent proprietary form). + +[2] Honor the eBook refund and replacement provisions of this + "Small Print!" statement. + +[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the + gross profits you derive calculated using the method you + already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you + don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are + payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation" + the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were + legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent + periodic) tax return. Please contact us beforehand to + let us know your plans and to work out the details. + +WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO? +Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of +public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed +in machine readable form. + +The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time, +public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses. +Money should be paid to the: +"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or +software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at: +hart@pobox.com + +[Portions of this eBook's header and trailer may be reprinted only +when distributed free of all fees. Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 by +Michael S. Hart. Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be +used in any sales of Project Gutenberg eBooks or other materials be +they hardware or software or any other related product without +express permission.] + +*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END* + diff --git a/old/7calv10.zip b/old/7calv10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..0ae723e --- /dev/null +++ b/old/7calv10.zip diff --git a/old/8calv10.txt b/old/8calv10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a66fc10 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/8calv10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11336 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Calvary Alley, by Alice Hegan Rice + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: Calvary Alley + +Author: Alice Hegan Rice + +Release Date: January, 2006 [EBook #9794] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on October 17, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CALVARY ALLEY *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan +and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + CALVARY ALLEY + + BY ALICE HEGAN RICE + + 1917 + + +Author of "MRS. WIGGS OF THE CABBAGE PATCH," "LOVEY MARY," "SANDY," ETC. + +ILLUSTRATED BY WALTER BIGGS + +THIS STORY IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED TO THE SMALL BAND OF KENTUCKY +WRITERS WITH WHOM IT HAS BEEN MY HAPPY FORTUNE TO MAKE THE LITERARY +PILGRIMAGE + + + + +CONTENTS + +CHAPTER + + + I THE FIGHT + II THE SNAWDORS AT HOME + III THE CLARKES AT HOME + IV JUVENILE COURT + V ON PROBATION + VI BUTTERNUT LANE + VII AN EVICTION + VIII AMBITION STIRS + IX BUTTONS + X THE PRINCESS COMES TO GRIEF + XI THE STATE TAKES A HAND + XII CLARKE'S + XIII EIGHT TO SIX + XIV IDLENESS + XV MARKING TIME + XVI MISS BOBINET'S + XVII BEHIND THE TWINKLING LIGHTS + XVIII THE FIRST NIGHT + XIX PREPARATIONS FOR FLIGHT + XX WILD OATS + XXI DAN + XXII IN THE SIGNAL TOWER + XXIII CALVARY CATHEDRAL + XXIV BACK AT CLARKE'S + XXV MAC + XXVI BETWEEN TWO FIRES + XXVII FATE TAKES A HAND +XXVIII THE PRICE OF ENLIGHTENMENT + XXIX IN TRAINING + XXX HER FIRST CASE + XXXI MR. DEMRY + XXXII THE NEW FOREMAN +XXXIII NANCE COMES INTO HER OWN + + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + +"The boy is infatuated with that girl" + +"Her tense muscles relaxed; she forgot to cry" + +"Don't call a policeman!" she implored wildly + + + + +CALVARY ALLEY + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE FIGHT + + +You never would guess in visiting Cathedral Court, with its people's hall +and its public baths, its clean, paved street and general air of smug +propriety, that it harbors a notorious past. But those who knew it by its +maiden name, before it was married to respectability, recall Calvary +Alley as a region of swarming tenements, stale beer dives, and frequent +police raids. The sole remaining trace of those unregenerate days is the +print of a child's foot in the concrete walk just where it leaves the +court and turns into the cathedral yard. + +All the tired feet that once plodded home from factory and foundry, all +the unsteady feet that staggered in from saloon and dance-hall, all the +fleeing feet that sought a hiding place, have long since passed away and +left no record of their passing. Only that one small footprint, with its +perfect outline, still pauses on its way out of the alley into the great +world beyond. + +At the time Nance Molloy stepped into that soft concrete and thus set in +motion the series of events that was to influence her future career, she +had never been told that her inalienable rights were life, liberty, and +the pursuit of happiness. Nevertheless she had claimed them intuitively. +When at the age of one she had crawled out of the soap-box that served as +a cradle, and had eaten half a box of stove polish, she was acting in +strict accord with the Constitution. + +By the time she reached the sophisticated age of eleven her ideals had +changed, but her principles remained firm. She did not stoop to beg for +her rights, but struck out for them boldly with her small bare fists. She +was a glorious survival of that primitive Kentucky type that stood side +by side with man in the early battles and fought valiantly for herself. + +On the hot August day upon which she began to make history, she stood in +the gutter amid a crowd of yelling boys, her feet far apart, her hands +full of mud, waiting tensely to chastise the next sleek head that dared +show itself above the cathedral fence. She wore a boy's shirt and a +ragged brown skirt that flapped about her sturdy bare legs. Her matted +hair was bound in two disheveled braids around her head and secured with +a piece of shoe-string. Her dirty round face was lighted up by a pair of +dancing blue eyes, in which just now blazed the unholy light of conflict. + +The feud between the Calvary Micks and the choir boys was an ancient +one, carried on from one generation to another and gaining prestige with +age. It was apt to break out on Saturday afternoons, after rehearsal, +when the choirmaster had taken his departure. Frequently the disturbance +amounted to no more than taunts and jeers on one side and threats and +recriminations on the other, but the atmosphere that it created was of +that electrical nature that might at any moment develop a storm. + +Nance Molloy, at the beginning of the present controversy, had been +actively engaged in civil warfare in which the feminine element of the +alley was pursuing a defensive policy against the marauding masculine. +But at the first indication of an outside enemy, the herd instinct +manifested itself, and she allied herself with prompt and passionate +loyalty to the cause of the Calvary Micks. + +The present argument was raging over the possession of a spade that had +been left in the alley by the workmen who were laying a concrete pavement +into the cathedral yard. + +"Aw, leave 'em have it!" urged a philosophical alleyite from the top of a +barrel. "Them ole avenoo kids ain't nothin'!--We could lick daylight +outen 'em if we wanted to." + +"Ye-e-e-s you could!" came in a chorus of jeers from the fence top, and a +brown-eyed youth in a white-frilled shirt, with a blue Windsor tie +knotted under his sailor collar, added imperiously, "You get too fresh +down there, and I'll call the janitor!" + +This gross breach of military etiquette evoked a retort from Nance that +was too inelegant to chronicle. + +"Tomboy! tomboy!" jeered the brown-eyed youth from above. "Why don't you +borrow some girls' clothes?" + +"All right, Sissy," said Nance, "lend me yours." + +The Micks shrieked their approval, while Nance rolled a mud ball and, +with the deadly aim of a sharpshooter, let it fly straight at the +white-frilled bosom of her tormentor. + +"Soak it to her, Mac," yelled the boy next to him, "the kid's got no +business butting in! Make her get out of the way!" + +"Go on and make me!" implored Nance. + +"I will if you don't stand back," threatened the boy called Mac. + +Nance promptly stepped up to the alley gate and wiggled her fingers in a +way peculiarly provocative to a juvenile enemy. + +"Poor white trash!" he jeered. "You stay where you belong! Don't you step +on our concrete!" + +"Will if I want to. It's my foot. I'll put it where I like." + +"Bet you don't. You're afraid to." + +"I ain't either." + +"Well, _do_ it then. I dare you! Anybody that would take a--" + +In a second Nance had thrust her leg as far as possible between the +boards that warned the public to keep out, and had planted a small alien +foot firmly in the center of the soft cement. + +This audacious act was the signal for instant battle. With yells of +indignation the choir boys hurled themselves from the fence, and +descended upon their foes. Mud gave place to rocks, sticks clashed, the +air resounded with war cries. Ash barrels were overturned, straying cats +made flying leaps for safety, heads appeared at doorways and windows, and +frantic mothers made futile efforts to quell the riot. + +Thus began the greatest fight ever enjoyed in Calvary Alley. It went down +in neighborhood annals as the decisive clash between the classes, in +which the despised swells "was learnt to know their places onct an' fer +all!" For ten minutes it raged with unabated fury, then when the tide of +battle began to set unmistakably in favor of the alley, parental +authority waned and threats changed to cheers. Old and young united in +the conviction that the Monroe Doctrine must be maintained at any cost! + +In and out of the subsiding pandemonium darted Nance Molloy, covered with +mud from the shoestring on her hair to the rag about her toe, giving and +taking blows with the best, and emitting yells of frenzied victory over +every vanquished foe. Suddenly her transports were checked by a +disturbing sight. At the end of the alley, locked in mortal combat, she +beheld her arch-enemy, he of the brown eyes and the frilled shirt, whom +the boys called Mac, sitting astride the hitherto invincible Dan Lewis, +the former philosopher of the ash barrel and one of the acknowledged +leaders of the Calvary Micks. + +It was a moment of intense chagrin for Nance, untempered by the fact that +Dan's adversary was much the bigger boy. Up to this time, the whole +affair had been a glorious game, but at the sight of the valiant Dan +lying helpless on his back, his mouth bloody from the blows of the boy +above him, the comedy changed suddenly to tragedy. With a swift charge +from the rear, she flung herself upon the victor, clapping her mud-daubed +hands about his eyes and dragging him backward with a force that sent +them both rolling in the gutter. + +Blind with fury, the boy scrambled to his feet, and, seizing a rock, +hurled it with all his strength after the retreating Dan. The missile +flew wide of its mark and, whizzing high over the fence, crashed through +the great rose window that was the special pride of Calvary Cathedral. + +The din of breaking glass, the simultaneous appearance of a cross-eyed +policeman, and of Mason, the outraged janitor, together with the +horrified realization of what had happened, brought the frenzied +combatants to their senses. Amid a clamor of accusations and denials, the +policeman seized upon two culprits and indicated a third. + +"You let me go!" shrieked Mac. "My father'll make it all right! Tell him +who I am, Mason! Make him let me go!" + +But Mason was bent upon bringing all the criminals to justice. + +"I'm going to have you all up before the juvenile court, rich and poor!" +he declared excitedly. "You been deviling the life out of me long enough! +If the vestry had 'a' listened at me and had you up before now, that +window wouldn't be smashed. I told the bishop something was going to +happen, and he says, 'The next time there's trouble, you find the leaders +and swear out a warrant. Don't wait to ask anybody!'" + +By this time every window in the tenement at the blind end of the alley +had been converted into a proscenium box, and suggestions, advice, and +incriminating evidence were being freely volunteered. + +"Who started this here racket, anyhow?" asked the policeman, in the bored +tone of one who is rehearsing an oft-repeated scene. + +"I did," declared Nance Molloy, with something of the feminine +gratification Helen of Troy must have felt when she "launched a thousand +ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium." + +"You Nance!" screamed a woman from a third-story window. "You know you +never done no such a thing! I was settin' here an' seen ever'thing that +happened; it was them there boys." + +"So it was you, Dan Lewis, was it?" said the policeman, recognizing one +of his panting victims, the one whose ragged shirt had been torn +completely off, leaving his heaving chest and brown shoulders bare. "An' +it ain't surprised, I am. Who is this other little dude?" + +"None of your business!" cried Mac furiously, trying to wrench himself +free. "I tell you my father will pay for the darned old window." + +"Aisy there," said the policeman. "Does anybody know him?" + +"It's Mr. Clarke's son, up at the bottle works," said Mason. + +"You let me go," shrieked the now half-frantic boy. "My father 'll make +you pay for this. You see if he don't!" + +"None o' your guff," said the policeman. "I ain't wantin' to keep you now +I got your name. Onny more out o' the boonch, Mr. Mason?" + +Mason swept a gleaning eye over the group, and as he did so he spied the +footprint, in the concrete. + +"Who did that?" he demanded in a fresh burst of wrath. + +Those choir boys who had not fled the scene gave prompt and incriminating +testimony. + +"No! she never!" shouted the woman from the third floor, now suspended +half-way out of the window. "Nance Molloy was up here a-washin' dishes +with me. Don't you listen at them pasty-faced cowards a-puttin' it off on +a innercent little girl!" + +But the innocent little girl had no idea of seeking refuge in her sex. +Hers had been a glorious and determining part in the day's battle, and +the distinction of having her name taken down with those of the great +leaders was one not to be foregone. + +"I did do it," she declared excitedly. "That there boy dared me to. Ketch +me takin' a dare offen a avenoo kid!" + +"What's your name, Sis?" asked the policeman. + +"Nance Molloy." + +"Where do you live?" + +"Up there at Snawdor's. That there was Mis' Snawdor a-yellin' at me." + +"Is she yer mother?" + +"Nope. She's me step." + +"And yer father?" + +"He's me step too. I'm a two-step," she added with an impudent toss of +the head to show her contempt for the servant of the law, a blue-coated, +brass-buttoned interloper who swooped down on you from around corners, +and reported you at all times and seasons. + +By this time Mrs. Snawdor had gotten herself down the two flights of +stairs, and was emerging from the door of the tenement, taking down her +curl papers as she came. She was a plump, perspiring person who might +have boasted good looks had it not been for two eye-teeth that completely +dominated her facial landscape. + +"You surely ain't fixin' to report her?" she asked ingratiatingly +of Mason. "A little 'leven-year-ole orphin that never done no harm +to nobody?" + +"It's no use arguing," interrupted Mason firmly. "I'm going to file out a +warrant against them three children if it's the last act of my mortal +life. There ain't a boy in the alley that gives me any more trouble than +that there little girl, a-throwin' mud over the fence and climbing round +the coping and sneaking into the cathedral to look under the pews for +nickels, if I so much as turn my back!" + +"He wants the nickels hisself!" cried Nance shrilly, pushing her nose +flat and pursing her lips in such a clever imitation of the irate janitor +that the alley shrieked with joy. + +"You limb o' Satan!" cried Mrs. Snawdor, making a futile pass at her. +"It's a God's mericle you ain't been took up before this! And it's me as +'ll have the brunt to bear, a-stoppin' my work to go to court, a-lying to +yer good character, an' a-payin' the fine. It's a pity able-bodied men +like policemens an' janitors can't be tendin' their own business 'stid +of comin' interferin' with the family of a hard-workin' woman like me. If +there's any justice in this world it ain't never flowed in my +direction!" + +And Mrs. Snawdor, half dragging, half pushing Nance, disappeared into the +dark entrance of the tenement, breathing maledictions first against her +charge, then against the tyranny of the law. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE SNAWDORS AT HOME + + +If ever a place had a down-at-heel, out-of-elbow sort of look, it was +Calvary Alley. At its open end and two feet above it the city went +rushing and roaring past like a great river, quite oblivious of this +unhealthy bit of backwater into which some of its flotsam and jetsam had +been caught and held, generating crime and disease and sending them out +again into the main current. + +For despite the fact that the alley rested under the very wing of the +great cathedral from which it took its name, despite the fact that it +echoed daily to the chimes in the belfry and at times could even hear the +murmured prayers of the congregation, it concerned itself not in the +least with matters of the spirit. Heaven was too remote and mysterious, +Hell too present and prosaic, to be of the least interest. And the +cathedral itself, holding out welcoming arms to all the noble avenues +that stretched in leafy luxury to the south, forgot entirely to glance +over its shoulder at the sordid little neighbor that lay under the very +shadow of its cross. + +At the blind end of the alley, wedged in between two towering +warehouses, was Number One, a ramshackle tenement which in some forgotten +day had been a fine old colonial residence. The city had long since +hemmed it in completely, and all that remained of its former grandeur +were a flight of broad steps that once boasted a portico and the +imposing, fan-shaped arch above the doorway. + +In the third floor of Number One, on the side next the cathedral, dwelt +the Snawdor family, a social unit of somewhat complex character. The +complication came about by the paterfamilias having missed his calling. +Mr. Snawdor was by instinct and inclination a bachelor. He had early in +life found a modest rut in which he planned to run undisturbed into +eternity, but he had been discovered by a widow, who was possessed of an +initiative which, to a man of Snawdor's retiring nature, was destiny. + +At the time she met him she had already led two reluctant captives to the +hymeneal altar, and was wont to boast, when twitted about the fact, that +"the Lord only knew what she might 'a' done if it hadn't been fer them +eye-teeth!" Her first husband had been Bud Molloy, a genial young +Irishman who good-naturedly allowed himself to be married out of +gratitude for her care of his motherless little Nance. Bud had not lived +to repent the act; in less than a month he heroically went over an +embankment with his engine, in one of those fortunate accidents in which +"only the engineer is killed." + +The bereft widow lost no time in seeking consolation. Naturally the first +person to present himself on terms of sympathetic intimacy was the +undertaker who officiated at poor Bud's funeral. At the end of six months +she married him, and was just beginning to enjoy the prestige which his +profession gave her, when Mr. Yager also passed away, becoming, as it +were, his own customer. Her legacy from him consisted of a complete +embalming outfit and a feeble little Yager who inherited her father's +tendency to spells. + +Thus encumbered with two small girls, a less sanguine person would have +retired from the matrimonial market. But Mrs. Yager was not easily +discouraged; she was of a marrying nature, and evidently resolved that +neither man nor Providence should stand in her way. Again casting a +speculative eye over the field, she discerned a new shop in the alley, +the sign of which announced that the owner dealt in "Bungs and Fawcetts." +On the evening of the same day the chronic ailment from which the kitchen +sink had suffered for two years was declared to be acute, and Mr. Snawdor +was called in for consultation. + +He was a timid, dejected person with a small pointed chin that trembled +when he spoke. Despite the easy conventions of the alley, he kept his +clothes neatly brushed and his shoes polished, and wore a collar on week +days. These signs of prosperity were his undoing. Before he had time to +realize what was happening to him, he had been skilfully jolted out of +his rut by the widow's experienced hand, and bumped over a hurried +courtship into a sudden marriage. He returned to consciousness to find +himself possessed of a wife and two stepchildren and moved from his small +neat room over his shop to the indescribable disorder of Number One. + +The subsequent years had brought many little Snawdors in their wake, and +Mr. Snawdor, being thus held up by the highwayman Life, ignominiously +surrendered. He did not like being married; he did not enjoy being a +father; his one melancholy satisfaction lay in being a martyr. + +Mrs. Snawdor, who despite her preference for the married state derived +little joy from domestic duties, was quite content to sally forth as a +wage-earner. By night she scrubbed office buildings and by day she slept +and between times she sought diversion in the affairs of her neighbors. + +Thus it was that the household burdens fell largely upon Nance Molloy's +small shoulders, and if she wiped the dishes without washing them, and +"shook up the beds" without airing them, and fed the babies dill pickles, +it was no more than older housekeepers were doing all around her. + +Late in the afternoon of the day of the fight, when the sun, despairing +of making things any hotter than they were, dropped behind the warehouse, +Nance, carrying a box of crackers, a chunk of cheese, and a bucket of +beer, dodged in and out among the push-carts and the barrels of the alley +on her way home from Slap Jack's saloon. There was a strong temptation on +her part to linger, for a hurdy-gurdy up at the corner was playing a +favorite tune, and echoes of the fight were still heard from animated +groups in various doorways. But Nance's ears still tingled from a recent +boxing, and she resolutely kept on her way until she reached the worn +steps of Number One and scurried through its open doorway. + +The nice distinction between a flat and a tenement is that the front +door of one is always kept closed, and the other open. In this +particular instance the matter admitted of no discussion, for there was +no front door. The one that originally hung under the fan-shaped +Colonial arch had long since been kicked in during some nocturnal raid, +and had never been replaced. + +When the gas neglected to get itself lighted before dark at Number One, +you had to feel your way along the hall in complete darkness, until your +foot struck something; then you knew you had reached the stairs and you +began to climb. It was just as well to feel along the damp wall as you +went, for somebody was always leaving things on the steps for people to +stumble over. + +Nance groped her way cautiously, resting her bucket every few steps and +taking a lively interest in the sounds and smells that came from behind +the various closed doors she passed. She knew from the angry voices on +the first floor that Mr. Smelts had come home "as usual"; she knew who +was having sauerkraut for supper, and whose bread was burning. + +The odor of cooking food reminded her of something. The hall was dark and +the beer can full, so she sat down at the top of the first flight and, +putting her lips to the foaming bucket was about to drink, when the door +behind her opened and a keen-faced young Jew peered out. + +"Say, Nance," he whispered curiously, "have they swore out the warrant +on you yet?" + +Nance put down the bucket and looked up at him with a fine air of +unconcern. + +"Don't know and don't keer!" she said. "Where was you hidin' at, when the +fight was goin' on?" + +"Getting my lessons. Did the cop pinch the Clarke guy?" + +"You betcher," said Nance. "You orter seen the way he took on! Begged to +beat the band. Me and Danny never. Me and him--" + +A volley of curses came from the hall below, the sound of a blow, +followed by a woman's faint scream of protest, then a door slammed. + +"If I was Mis' Smelts," said Nance darkly, with a look that was too old +for ten years, "I wouldn't stand for that. I wouldn't let no man hit me. +I'd get him sent up. I--" + +"You walk yourself up them steps, Nance Molloy!" commanded Mrs. Snawdor's +rasping voice from the floor above. "I ain't got no time to be waitin' +while you gas with Ike Lavinsky." + +Nance, thus admonished, obeyed orders, arriving on the domestic hearth in +time to prevent the soup from boiling over. Mr. Snawdor, wearing a long +apron and an expression of tragic doom, was trying to set the table, +while over and above and beneath him surged his turbulent offspring. In a +broken rocking-chair, fanning herself with a box-top, sat Mrs. Snawdor, +indulging herself in a continuous stream of conversation and apparently +undisturbed by the uproar around her. Mrs. Snawdor was not sensitive to +discord. As a necessary adjustment to their environment, her nerves had +become soundproof. + +"You certainly missed it by not being here!" she was saying to Mr. +Snawdor. "It was one of the liveliest mix-ups ever I seen! One of them +rich boys bust the cathedral window. Some say it'll cost over a thousan' +dollars to git it fixed. An' I pray to God his paw'll have to pay every +cent of it!" + +"Can't you make William J. and Rosy stop that racket?" queried Mr. +Snawdor, plaintively. The twins had been named at a time when Mrs. +Snawdor's loyalty was wavering between the President and another +distinguished statesman with whom she associated the promising phrase, +"free silver." The arrival of two babies made a choice unnecessary, and, +notwithstanding the fact that one of them was a girl, she named them +William J. and Roosevelt, reluctantly abbreviating the latter to "Rosy." + +"They ain't hurtin' nothin'," she said, impatient of the interruption to +her story. "I wisht you might 'a' seen that ole fool Mason a-lordin' it +aroun', an' that little devil Nance a-takin' him off to the life. +Everybody nearly died a-laughin' at her. But he says he's goin' to have +her up in court, an' I ain't got a blessed thing to wear 'cept that ole +hat of yours I trimmed up. Looks like a shame fer a woman never to be +fixed to go nowhere!" + +Mr. Snawdor, who had been trying ineffectually to get in a word, took +this remark personally and in muttering tones called Heaven to witness +that it was none of his fault that she didn't have the right clothes, and +that it was a pretty kind of a world that would keep a man from gettin' +on just because he was honest, and-- + +"Oh, shut up!" said Mrs. Snawdor, unfeelingly; "it ain't yer lack of +work that gits on my nerves; it's yer bein' 'round. I'd pay anybody a +quarter a week to keep yer busy!" + +Nance, during this exchange of conjugal infelicities, assisted by Lobelia +and Fidy, was rescuing sufficient dishes from the kitchen sink to serve +for the evening meal. She, too, was finding it difficult to bring her +attention to bear on domestic matters after the exciting events of the +afternoon. + +"An' he says to me,"--she was recounting with dramatic intensity to her +admiring audience--"he says, 'Keep offen that concrete.' An' I says, +'It'll take somebody bigger'n you to make me!'" + +Now, of course, we know that Nance never said that, but it was what she +wished she had said, which, at certain moments in life, seems to the best +of us to be quite the same thing. + +"Then what?" said Fidy, with a plate suspended in air. + +"Then," said Nance with sparkling eyes, "I sticks my foot right in the +middle of their old concrete, an' they comes pilin' offen the fence, an' +Dan Lewis he--" + +"You Nance!" came in warning tones from the other room, "you shet your +head an' git on with that supper. Here comes your Uncle Jed this minute!" + +At this announcement Nance dropped her dish towel, and dashing to the +door flung herself into the arms of a short, fat, baldheaded man who had +just come out of the front room across the hall. + +"Easy there!" warned the new-comer. "You ain't aimin' to butt the engine +clean offen the track, air yer?" + +Nance got his arm around her neck, and her arm around his knees, and thus +entwined they made their way to the table. + +Uncle Jed Burks, uncle by courtesy, was a boarder by day and a +gate-tender by night at the signal tower at the railroad crossing. On +that day long ago when he had found himself a widower, helpless in the +face of domestic problems, he had accepted Mrs. Snawdor's prompt offer of +hospitality and come across the hall for his meals. At the end of the +week he had been allowed to show his gratitude by paying the rent, and by +the end of the month he had become the chief prop of the family. It is +difficult to conceive of an Atlas choosing to burden himself with the +world, but there are temperaments that seek responsibilities just as +there are those, like Mr. Snawdor, who refuse them. + +Through endless discomforts, Uncle Jed had stayed on, coaxing Mr. Snawdor +into an acceptance of his lot, helping Mrs. Snawdor over financial +difficulties, and bestowing upon the little Snawdors the affection which +they failed to elicit from either the maternal or the paternal bosom. And +the amazing thing was that Uncle Jed always thought he was receiving +favors instead of conferring them. + +"What's this I hear about my little partner gittin' into trouble?" he +asked, catching Nance's chin in his palm and turning her smudged, excited +face up to his. + +Nance's eyes fell before his glance. For the first time since the fight +her pride was mingled with misgiving. But when Mrs. Snawdor plunged into +a fresh recital of the affair, with evident approval of the part she had +played, her self-esteem returned. + +"And you say Mason's fixin' to send her up to the juvenile court?" asked +Uncle Jed gravely, his fat hand closing on her small one. + +"Dan Lewis has got to go too!" said Nance, a sudden apprehension seizing +her at Uncle Jed's solemn face. + +"Oh, they won't do nothin' to 'em," said Mrs. Snawdor, pouring hot water +over the coffee grounds and shaking the pot vigorously. "Everybody knows +it was the Clarke boy that bust the window. Clarke's Bottle Works' son, +you know, up there on Zender Street." + +"Was it the Clarke boy and Dan Lewis that started the fracas?" asked +Uncle Jed. + +"No, it was me!" put in Nance. + +"Now, Nance Molloy, you lemme hear you say that one time more, an' you +know what'll happen!" said Mrs. Snawdor, impressively. "You're fixin' to +make me pay a fine." + +"I'm mighty sorry Dan Lewis is mixed up in it," said Uncle Jed, shaking +his head. "This here's his second offense. He was had up last year." + +"An' can you wonder?" asked Mrs. Snawdor, "with his mother what she is?" + +"Mrs. Lewis ain't a bad looker," Mr. Snawdor roused himself to observe +dejectedly. + +His wife turned upon him indignantly. "Well, it's a pity she ain't as +good as her looks then. Fer my part I can't see it's to any woman's +credit to look nice when she's got the right kind of a switch and a good +set of false teeth. It's the woman that keeps her good looks without none +of them luxuries that orter be praised." + +"Mrs. Lewis ain't done her part by Dan," said Uncle Jed, seating himself +at the red-clothed table. + +"I should say she ain't," Mrs. Snawdor continued. "I never seen nothin' +more pathetical than that there boy when he was no more than three years +old, a-tryin' to feed hisself outer the garbage can, an' her a comin an' +a goin' in the alley all these years with her nose in the air, too good +to speak to anybody." + +"Dan don't think his mother's bad to him," said Nance. "He saved up his +shoe-shine money an' bought her some perfumery. He lemme smell it." + +"Oh, yes!" said Mrs. Snawdor, "she's got to have her perfumery, an' her +feather in her hat, an' the whitewash on her face, no matter if Dan's +feet are on the groun', an' his naked hide shinin' through his shirt." + +"Well, I wish him an' this here little girl wasn't mixed up in this +business," repeated Uncle Jed. "Courts ain't no place fer children. Seems +like I can't stand fer our little Nance to be mixin' up with shady +characters." + +Nance shot an apprehensive glance at him and began to look anxious. She +had never seen Uncle Jed so solemn before. + +"You jes' remember this here, Nancy," went on the signalman, who could no +more refrain from pointing a moral when the chance presented itself, than +a gun can help going off when the trigger is pulled; "nothin' good ever +comes from breakin' laws. They wouldn't a-been made into laws if they +wasn't fer our good, an' even when we don't see no reason in keepin' 'em, +we ain't got no more right to break through than one of them engines up +at the crossing's got a right to come ahead when I signals it from the +tower to stop. I been handin' out laws to engines fer goin' on thirty +year, an' I never seen one yet that bust over a law that didn't come to +grief. You keep on the track, Sister, an' watch the signals an' obey +orders an' you'll find it pays in the end. An' now, buck up, an' don't be +scared. We'll see what we can do to git you off." + +"Who's skeered?" said Nance, with a defiant toss of her head. "I ain't +skeered of nothin'." + +But that night when Mrs. Snawdor and Uncle Jed had gone to work, and Mr. +Snawdor had betaken himself out of ear-shot of the wailing baby, Nance's +courage began to waver. After she had finished her work and crawled into +bed between Fidy and Lobelia, the juvenile court, with its unknown +terrors, rose before her. All the excitement of the day died out; her +pride in sharing the punishment with Dan Lewis vanished. She lay staring +up into the darkness, swallowing valiantly to keep down the sobs, +fiercely resolved not to let her bed-fellows witness the break-down of +her courage. + +"What's the matter, Nance?" asked Fidy. + +"I'm hot!" said Nance, crossly. "It feels like the inside of a +oven in here!" + +"I bet Maw forgot to open the window into the shaft," said Fidy. + +"Windows don't do no good," said Nance; "they just let in smells. Wisht I +was a man! You bet I would be up at Slap Jack's! I'd set under a 'lectric +fan, an' pour cold things down me an' listen at the 'phoney-graf ever' +night. Hush! Is that our baby?" + +A faint wail made her scramble out of bed and rush into the back room +where she gathered a hot, squirming bundle into her arms and peered +anxiously into its wizened face. She knew the trick babies had of dying +when the weather was hot! Two other beloved scraps of humanity had been +taken away from her, and she was fiercely determined to keep this one. +Lugging the baby to the window, she scrambled over the sill. + +The fire-escape was cluttered with all the paraphernalia that doubles the +casualty of a tenement fire, but she cleared a space with her foot and +sat down on the top step. Beside her loomed the blank warehouse wall, and +from the narrow passage-way below came the smell of garbage. The clanging +of cars and the rumbling of trucks mingled with the nearer sounds of +whirring sewing machines in Lavinski's sweat-shop on the floor below. +From somewhere around the corner came, at intervals, the sharp cry of a +woman in agony. With that last sound Nance was all too familiar. The +coming and going of a human life were no mystery to her. But each time +the cry of pain rang out she tried in vain to stop her ears. At last, +hot, hungry, lonesome, and afraid, she laid her dirty face against the +baby's fuzzy head and they sobbed together in undisturbed misery. + +When at last the child fell into a restless sleep, Nance sat patiently +on, her small arms stiffening under their burden, and her bare feet and +legs smarting from the stings of hungry mosquitos. + +By and by the limp garments on the clothes line overhead began to stir, +and Nance, lifting her head gratefully to the vagrant breeze, caught her +breath. There, just above the cathedral spire, white and cool among +fleecy clouds, rose the full August moon. It was the same moon that at +that moment was turning ocean waves into silver magic; that was smiling +on sleeping forests and wind-swept mountains and dancing streams. Yet +here it was actually taking the trouble to peep around the cathedral +spire and send the full flood of its radiance into the most sordid +corners of Calvary Alley, even into the unawakened soul of the dirty, +ragged, tear-stained little girl clasping the sick baby on Snawdor's +fire-escape. + +[Illustration: "Her tense muscles relaxed; she forgot to cry"] + +Something in Nance responded. Her tense muscles relaxed; she forgot to +cry. With eyes grown big and wistful, she watched the shining orb. All +the bravado, the fear, and rebellion died out of her, and in hushed +wonder she got from the great white night what God in heaven meant for +us to get. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE CLARKES AT HOME + + +While the prodigal son of the house of Clarke was engaged in breaking +stained-glass windows in Calvary Alley, his mother was at home +entertaining the bishop with a recital of his virtues and +accomplishments. Considering the fact that Bishop Bland's dislike for +children was notorious, he was bearing the present ordeal with unusual +fortitude. + +They were sitting on the spacious piazza at Hill-crest, the country +home of the Clarkes, the massive foundation of which was popularly +supposed to rest upon bottles. It was a piazza especially designed to +offset the discomforts of a Southern August afternoon and to make a +visitor, especially if he happened to be an ecclesiastical potentate +with a taste for luxury, loath to forsake its pleasant shade for the +glaring world without. + +"Yes, yes," he agreed for the fourth time, "a very fine boy. I must say I +give myself some credit for your marriage and its successful result." + +Mrs. Clarke paused in her tea-pouring and gazed absently off across the +tree tops. + +"I suppose I ought to be happy," she said, and she sighed. + +"Every heart knoweth its own--two lumps, thank you, and a dash of rum. I +was saying--Oh, yes! I was about to remark that we are all prone to +magnify our troubles. Now here you are, after all these years, still +brooding over your unfortunate father, when he is probably long since +returned to France, quite well and happy." + +"If I could only be sure. It has been so long since we heard, nearly +thirteen years! The last letter was the one you got when Mac was born." + +"Yes, and I answered him in detail, assuring him of your complete +recovery, and expressing my hope that he would never again burden you +until with God's help he had mastered the sin that had been his undoing." + +Mrs. Clarke shook her head impatiently. + +"You and Macpherson never understood about father. He came to this +country without a friend or a relation except mother and me. Then she +died, and he worked day and night to keep me in a good boarding-school, +and to give me every advantage that a girl could have. Then his health +broke, and he couldn't sleep, and he began taking drugs. Oh, I don't see +how anybody could blame him, after all he had been through!" + +"For whatever sacrifices he made, he was amply rewarded," the bishop +said. "Few fathers have the satisfaction of seeing their daughters more +successfully established in life." + +"Yes, but what has it all come to for him? Made to feel his disgrace, +aware of Macpherson's constant disapproval--I don't wonder he chose to +give me up entirely." + +"It was much the best course for all concerned," said the bishop, with +the assured tone of one who enjoys the full confidence of Providence. +"The fact that he had made shipwreck of his own life was no reason for +him to make shipwreck of yours. I remember saying those very words to +him when he told me of Mr. Clarke's attitude. Painful as was your +decision, you did quite right in yielding to our judgment in the matter +and letting him go." + +"But Macpherson ought not to have asked it of me. He's so good and kind +and good about most things, that I don't see how he could have felt the +way he did about father." + +The bishop laid a consoling hand on her arm. + +"Your husband was but protecting you and himself against untold +annoyance. Think of what it would have meant for a man of Mr. Clarke's +position to have a person of your father's habits a member of his +household!" + +"But father was perfectly gentle and harmless--more like an afflicted +child than anything else. When he was without an engagement he would go +for weeks at a time, happy with his books and his music, without +breaking over at all." + +"Ah, yes! But what about the influence of his example on your growing +son? Imagine the humiliation to your child." + +Mrs. Clarke's vulnerable spot was touched. + +"I had forgotten Mac!" she said. "He must be my first consideration, +mustn't he? I never intend for him to bear any burden that I can bear for +him. And yet, how father would have adored him, how proud he would have +been of his voice! But there, you must forgive me for bringing up this +painful subject. It is only when I think of father getting old and being +ill, possibly in want, with nobody in the world--" + +"Now, now, my dear lady," said the bishop, "you are indulging in morbid +fancies. Your father knows that with a stroke of the pen he can procure +all the financial assistance from you he may desire. As to his being +unhappy, I doubt it extremely. My recollection of him is of a very +placid, amiable man living more in his dreams than in reality." + +Mrs. Clarke smiled through her tears. + +"You are quite right. He didn't ask much of life. A book in his hand and +a child on his knee meant happiness for him." + +"And those he can have wherever he is," said her spiritual adviser. "Now +I want you to turn away from all these gloomy forebodings and leave the +matter entirely in God's hands." + +"And you think I have done my duty?" + +"Assuredly. It is your poor father who has failed to do his. You are a +model wife and an almost too devoted mother. You are zealous in your work +at the cathedral; you--" + +"There!" said Mrs. Clarke, smiling, "I know I don't deserve all those +compliments, but they do help me. Now let's talk of something else while +I give you a fresh cup of tea. Tell me what the board did yesterday about +the foreign mission fund." + +The bishop, relieved to see the conversation drifting into calmer waters, +accepted the second cup and the change of topic with equal satisfaction. +His specialty was ministering to the sorrows of the very rich, but he +preferred to confine his spiritual visits to the early part of the +afternoon, leaving the latter part free for tea-drinking and the +ecclesiastical gossip so dear to his heart. + +"Well," he said, leaning back luxuriously in his deep willow chair, +"we carried our point after some difficulty. Too many of our good +directors take refuge in the old excuse that charity should begin at +home. It should, my dear Elise, but as I have said before, it should +not end there!" + +Having delivered himself of this original observation, the bishop helped +himself to another sandwich. + +"The special object of my present visit," he said, "aside from the +pleasure it always gives me to be in your delightful home, is to interest +you and your good husband in a mission we are starting in Mukden, a most +ungodly place, I fear, in Manchuria. A thousand dollars from Mr. Clarke +at this time would be most acceptable, and I shall leave it to you, my +dear lady, to put the matter before him, with all the tact and persuasion +for which you are so justly noted." + +Mrs. Clarke smiled wearily. + +"I will do what I can, Bishop. But I hate to burden him with one more +demand. Since he has bought these two new factories, he is simply worked +to death. I get so cross with all the unreasonable demands the employees +make on him. They are never satisfied. The more he yields, the more they +demand. It's begging letters, petitions, lawsuits, strikes, until he is +driven almost crazy." + +The whirr of an approaching motor caused them both to look up. A grizzled +man of fifty got out and, after a decisive order to the chauffeur, turned +to join them. His movements were quick and nervous, and his eyes restless +under their shaggy gray brows. + +"Where's the boy?" was his first query after the greetings were over. + +"He went to choir practice. I thought surely he would come out with you. +Hadn't we better send the machine back for him?" + +"We were just speaking of that fine lad of yours," said the bishop, +helping himself to yet another sandwich. "Fine eyes, frank, engaging +manner! I suppose he is too young yet for you to be considering his +future calling?" + +"Indeed he isn't!" said Mrs. Clarke. "My heart is set on the law. Two of +his Clarke grandfathers have been on the bench." + +Mr. Clarke smiled somewhat grimly. + +"Mac hasn't evinced any burning ambition in any direction as yet." + +"Mac is only thirteen," said Mrs. Clarke with dignity; "all of his +teachers will tell you that he is wonderfully bright, but that he lacks +application. I think it is entirely their fault. They don't make the +lessons sufficiently interesting; they don't hold his attention. He has +been at three private schools, and they were all wretched. You know I am +thinking of trying a tutor this year." + +"I want her to send him to the public schools," Mr. Clarke said with the +air of detached paternity peculiar to American fathers. "I went to the +public schools. They gave me a decent start in life; that's about all you +can expect of a school." + +"True, true," said the bishop, his elbows on the arms of his chair, and +his fingers tapping each other meditatively. "I am the last person to +minimize the value of the public schools, but they were primarily +designed, Mr. Clarke, neither for your boy, nor mine. Their rules and +regulations were designed expressly for the children of the poor. I was +speaking on this subject only yesterday to Mrs. Conningsby Lee. She's +very indignant because her child was forced to submit to vaccination at +the hands of some unknown young physician appointed by the city. + +"I should feel like killing any one who vaccinated Mac without my +consent!" exclaimed Mrs. Clarke, "but I needn't worry. He wouldn't allow +it. Do you know we have never been able to persuade that child to be +vaccinated?" + +"And you don't propose for the State to do what you can't do, do you?" +Mr. Clarke said, pinching her cheek. + +"What Mrs. Clarke says is not without weight," said the bishop, gallantly +coming to her rescue. "There are few things upon which I wax more +indignant than the increasing interference of the State with the home. +This hysterical agitation against child labor, for instance; while +warranted in exceptional cases, it is in the main destructive of the +formation of the habit of industry which cannot be acquired too young. +When the State presumes to teach a mother how to feed her child, when and +where to educate it, when and where to send it to work, the State goes +too far. There is nothing more dangerous to the family than the present +paternalistic and pauperizing trend of legislation." + +"I wish you would preach that to the factory inspectors," said Mr. +Clarke, with a wry smile. "Between the poor mothers who are constantly +trying to get the children into the factory, and the inspectors who are +trying to keep them out, I have my hands full." + +"A mother's love," said the bishop, who evidently had different rules +for mothers and fathers, "a mother's intuition is the most unerring +guide for the conduct of her child; and the home, however humble, is its +safest refuge." + +Mrs. Clarke glanced anxiously down the poplar-bordered driveway. Her +mother's intuition suggested that as it was now five-thirty, Mac must +have been engaged in some more diverting pastime than praising the Lord +with psalms and thanksgiving. + +"Your theory then, Bishop," said Mr. Clarke, who was evincing an unusual +interest in the subject, "carried to its legitimate conclusion, would do +away with all state interference? No compulsory education or child-labor +laws, or houses of correction?" + +"Oh, I don't think the bishop means that at all!" said Mrs. Clarke. "But +he is perfectly right about a mother knowing what is best for her child. +Take Mac, for instance. Nobody has ever understood him, but me. What +other people call wilfulness is really sensitiveness. He can't bear to be +criticized, he--" + +The sudden appearance of a limping object skirting the bushes caused her +to break off abruptly. + +"Who on earth is that over there beyond the fountain?" she asked. "Why, +upon my word, it's Mac!--Mac!" she called anxiously. "Come here!" + +The boy shamefacedly retraced his steps and presented himself on the +piazza. His shoes and stockings were covered with mud; the frills on his +shirt were torn and dirty; one eye was closed. + +"Why, my darling child!" cried his mother, her listless, detached air +giving place to one of acute concern, "you've been in an accident!" + +She had flown to him and enveloped him, mud and all, in her gauzy +embrace--an embrace from which Mac struggled to escape. + +"I'm all right," he insisted impatiently. "Those kids back of the +cathedral got to bothering us, and we--" + +"You mean those rowdies in the alley of whom Mason is always +complaining?" demanded the bishop, sternly. + +"Yes, sir. They were throwing rocks and stepping on the new walk--" + +"And you were helping the janitor keep them out?" broke in Mrs. Clarke. +"Isn't it an outrage, Bishop, that these children can't go to their choir +practice without being attacked by those dreadful ruffians?" + +"You are quite sure you boys weren't to blame?" asked Mr. Clarke. + +"Now, Father!" protested his wife, "how can you? When Mac has just told +us he was helping the janitor?" + +"It is no new thing, Mr. Clarke," said the bishop, solemnly shaking his +head. "We have had to contend with that disreputable element back of us +for years. On two occasions I have had to complain to the city +authorities. A very bad neighborhood, I am told, very bad indeed." + +"But, Mac dearest," pursued his mother anxiously as she tried to brush +the dried mud out of his hair. "Were you the only boy who stayed to help +Mason keep them out?" + +Mac jerked his head away irritably. + +"Oh! It wasn't that way, Mother. You see--" + +"That's Mac all over," cried Mrs. Clarke. "He wouldn't claim any credit +for the world. But look at the poor child's hands! Look at his eye! We +must take some action at once. Can't we swear out a warrant or something +against those hoodlums, and have them locked up?" + +"But, Elise," suggested Mr. Clarke, quizzically, "haven't you and the +bishop just been arguing that the State ought not to interfere with a +child? That the family ties, the mother's guidance--" + +"My dear Mr. Clarke," interrupted the bishop, "this, I assure you, is an +exceptional case. These young desperados are destroying property; they +are lawbreakers, many of them doubtless, incipient criminals. Mrs. Clarke +is quite right; some action must be taken, has probably been taken +already. The janitor had instructions to swear out a warrant against the +next offender who in any way defaced the property belonging to the +cathedral." + +It was at this critical point that the telephone rang, and a maid +appeared to say that Mr. Clarke was wanted. The bishop took advantage of +the interruption to order his carriage and make his adieus. + +"You may be assured," he said at parting, "that I shall not allow this +matter to rest until the offenders are brought to justice. Good-by, +good-by, my little man. Bear in mind, my dear Elise, that Mukden +matter. Good-by." + +"And now, you poor darling!" said Mrs. Clarke in a relieved tone, as she +turned her undivided attention on her abused son, "you shall have a nice +hot bath and a compress on the poor eye, and whatever you want for your +dinner. You are as white as a sheet, and still trembling! You poor lamb!" + +Mr. Clarke met them at the drawing-room door: + +"Mac!" he demanded, and his face was stern, "did you have anything to do +with the breaking of the big window at the cathedral?" + +"No, sir," Mac faltered, kicking at the newel post. + +"You didn't even know it was broken?" + +"Oh, everybody was throwing rocks, and that old, crazy Mason--" + +"But I thought you were helping Mason?" + +"I was--that is--those alley micks--" + +"That will do!" his father said angrily. "I've just been notified to have +you at the juvenile court next Friday to answer a charge of destroying +property. This is a nice scrape for my son to get into! And you didn't +have the grit to tell the truth. You lied to me! You'll go to bed, sir, +without your dinner!" + +Mrs. Clarke's eyes were round with indignation, and she was on the point +of bursting into passionate protest when a warning glance from her +husband silenced her. With a sense of outraged maternity she flung a +protective arm about her son and swept him up the stairs. + +"Don't make a scene, Mac darling!" she whispered. "Mother knows you +didn't do it. You go up to bed like a little gentleman, and I'll slip a +tray up to you and come up myself the minute dinner is over." + +That night when the moon discovered Nance Molloy in Calvary Alley, it +also peeped through the window at Mac Clarke out at Hillcrest. Bathed, +combed, and comforted, he lay in a silk-draped bed while his mother sat +beside him fanning him. It would be pleasant to record that the prodigal +had confessed his sins and been forgiven. It would even be some comfort +to state that his guilty conscience was keeping him awake. Neither of +these facts, however, was true. Mac, lying on his back, watching the +square patch of moonlight on the floor, was planning darkest deeds of +vengeance on a certain dirty, tow-headed, bare-legged little girl, who +had twice got the better of him in the conflict of the day. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +JUVENILE COURT + + +The goddess of justice is popularly supposed to bandage her eyes in order +to maintain an impartial attitude, but it is quite possible that she does +it to keep from seeing the dreary court-rooms which are supposed to be +her abiding place. + +On the hot Friday morning following the fight, the big anteroom to the +juvenile court, which was formerly used for the police court, was just as +dirty and the air just as stale as in mid-winter, when the windows were +down and the furnace going. + +Scrub women came at dawn, to be sure, and smeared its floors with sour +mops, and occasionally a janitor brushed the cobwebs off the ceiling, but +the grime was more than surface deep, and every nook and cranny held the +foul odor of the unwashed, unkempt current of humanity that for so many +years had flowed through it. Ghosts of dead and gone criminals seemed to +hover over the place, drawn back through curiosity, to relive their own +sorry experiences in the cases of the young offenders waiting before the +bar of justice. + +On the bench at the rear of the room the delegation from Calvary Alley +had been waiting for over an hour. Mrs. Snawdor, despite her forebodings, +had achieved a costume worthy of the occasion, but Uncle Jed and Dan had +made no pretense at a toilet. As for Nance, she had washed her face as +far east and west as her ears and as far south as her chin; but the +regions beyond were unreclaimed. The shoe-string on her hair had been +replaced by a magenta ribbon, but the thick braids had not been +disturbed. Now that she had got over her fright, she was rather enjoying +the novelty and excitement of the affair. She had broken the law and +enjoyed breaking it, and the cop had pinched her. It was a game between +her and the cop, and the cop had won. She saw no reason whatever for +Uncle Jed and Dan to look so solemn. + +By and by a woman in spectacles took her into a small room across the +hall, and told her to sit on the other side of the table and not to +shuffle her feet. Nance explained about the mosquito bites, but the lady +did not listen. + +"What day is this?" asked the spectacled one, preparing to chronicle the +answers in a big book. + +"Friday," said Nance, surprised that she could furnish information to so +wise a person. + +"What day of the month?" + +"Day before rent day." + +The corner of the lady's mouth twitched, and Nance glanced at her +suspiciously. + +"Can you repeat these numbers after me? Four, seven, nine, three, ten, +six, fourteen." + +Nance was convinced now that the lady was crazy, but she rattled them +off glibly. + +"Very good! Now if the little hand of your clock was at twelve, and the +big hand at three, what time would it be?" + +Nance pondered the matter deeply. + +"Five after twelve!" she answered triumphantly. + +"No; try again." + +Nance was eager to oblige, but she had the courage of her convictions and +held her point. + +"Wouldn't it be a quarter past?" suggested the examiner. + +"No, ma'am, it wouldn't. Our clock runs ten minutes slow." + +The grave face behind the spectacles broke into a smile; then business +was resumed. + +"Shut your eyes and name as many objects as you can without stopping, +like this: trees, flowers, birds. Go ahead." + +"Trees, flowers, birds, cats, dogs, fight, barrel, slop, mud, ashes." + +"Go on, quicker--keep it up. Nuts, raisins, cake--" + +"Cake, stove, smoke, tub, wash-board, scrub, rag, tub, stove, ashes." + +"Keep it up!" + +"I dunno no more." + +"We can't get beyond ashes, eh?" said the lady. "Now suppose you tell me +what the following words mean. Charity?" + +"Is it a organization?" asked Nance doubtfully. + +"Justice?" + +"I dunno that one." + +"Do you know what God is?" + +Nance felt that she was doing badly. If her freedom depended on her +passing this test, she knew the prison bars must be already closing on +her. She no more knew what God is than you or I know, but the spectacled +lady must be answered at any cost. + +"God," she said laboriously, "God is what made us, and a cuss word." + +Many more questions followed before she was sent back to her place +between Uncle Jed and Mrs. Snawdor, and Dan was led away in turn to +receive his test. + +Meanwhile Uncle Jed was getting restless. Again and again he consulted +his large nickel-plated watch. + +"I ought to be getting to bed," he complained. "I won't get more 'n four +hours' sleep as it is." + +"Here comes the Clarke boy!" exclaimed Nance, and all eyes were turned in +the direction of the door. + +The group that presented itself at the entrance was in sharp contrast to +its surroundings. Mac Clarke, arrayed in immaculate white, was flanked on +one side by his distinguished-looking father and on the other by his +father's distinguished-looking lawyer. The only evidence that the +aristocratic youth had ever come into contact with the riffraff of +Calvary Alley was the small patch of court-plaster above his right eye. + +"Tell the judge we are here," said Mr. Clarke briskly to his lawyer. "Ask +him to get through with us as soon as possible. I have an appointment at +twelve-thirty." + +The lawyer made his way up the aisle and disappeared through the +door which all the morning had been swallowing one small offender +after another. + +Almost immediately a loud voice called from the platform: + +"Case of Mac Clarke! Nance Molloy! Dan Lewis!" And Nance with a sudden +leap of her heart, knew that her time had come. + +In the inner room, where the juvenile cases had a private hearing, the +judge sat at a big desk, scanning several pages of type-written paper. He +was a young judge with a keen, though somewhat weary, face and eyes, full +of compassionate knowledge. But Nance did not see the judge; her gaze was +riveted upon her two arch enemies: Mason, with his flat nose and +pugnacious jaw, and "Old Cock-eye," the policeman who looked strangely +unfamiliar with his helmet off. + +"Well, Mr. Mason," said the judge when the three small offenders had +been ranged in front of the desk, with the witnesses grouped behind them, +"I'll ask you to tell me just what took place last Saturday afternoon at +the cathedral." + +Mason cleared his throat and, with evident satisfaction, proceeded to set +forth his version of the story: + +"I was sweeping out the vestibule, your Honor, when I heard a lot of +yelling and knew that a fight was on. It's that away every Saturday +afternoon that I ain't on the spot to stop it. I run down through the +cathedral and out to the back gate. The alley was swarming with a mob of +fighting, yelling children. Then I see these two boys a-fighting each +other up at the end of the alley, and before I can get to 'em, this here +little girl flings herself between 'em, and the big boy picks up a rock +and heaves it straight th'u the cathedral window." + +"Well, Mac," said the judge, turning to the trim, white-clad figure +confronting him--a figure strangely different from the type that +usually stood there. "You have heard what the janitor charges you with. +Are you guilty?" + +"Yes, sir," said Mac. + +"The breaking of the window was an accident?" + +Mac glanced quickly at his father's lawyer, then back at the judge. + +"Yes, sir." + +"But you were fighting in the alley?" + +"I was keeping the alley boys out of the cathedral yard." + +"That's a lie!" came in shrill, indignant tones from the little girl at +his elbow. + +"There seems to be some difference of opinion here," said the judge, +putting his hand over his mouth to repress a smile at the vehemence of +the accusation. "Suppose we let this young lady give her version of it." + +Nance jerking her arm free from Mrs. Snawdor's restraining hand, plunged +breathlessly into her story. + +"He was settin' on the fence, along with a parcel of other guys, a-makin' +faces an' callin' names long afore we even took no notice of 'em." + +"Both sides is to blame, your Honor," interposed Mason, "there ain't a +day when the choir rehearses that I don't have to go out and stop 'em +fighting." + +"Well, in this case who started the trouble?" asked the judge. + +Mrs. Snawdor clutched at Nance, but it was too late. + +"I did," she announced. + +The judge looked puzzled. + +"Why, I thought you said the choir boys began it by sitting on the fence +and making faces and calling names." + +"Shucks," said Nance, contemptuously, "we kin beat 'em makin' faces an' +callin' names." + +"Well, how did you start the fight?" + +"That there big boy dared me to step in the concrete. Didn't you now?" + +Mac stood looking straight ahead of him and refused to acknowledge +her presence. + +"It strikes me," said the judge, "that you choir boys could be better +employed than in teasing and provoking the children in the alley. What do +you think, Mac?" + +Mac had been provided with no answer to this question, so he +offered none. + +"Unfortunately," the judge continued, "it is the fathers of boys like you +who have to take the punishment. Your father will have to pay for the +window. But I want to appeal to your common sense and your sense of +justice. Look at me, Mac. You have had advantages and opportunities +beyond most boys. You are older than these children. Don't you think, +instead of using your influence to stir up trouble and put us to this +annoyance and expense, it would be much better for you to keep on your +side of the fence and leave these people back of the cathedral alone?" + +"Yes, sir," said Mac, perfunctorily. + +"And you promise me to do this?" + +"Yes, sir." + +"We will give you a chance to make your promise good. But remember your +name is on our record; if there is any more trouble whatever, you will +hear from us. Mr. Clarke, I look to you to see that your son behaves +himself. You may step aside please. And now, boy, what is your name?" + +"Dan Lewis." + +"Oh, yes. I think we have met before. What have you to say for yourself?" + +The shoeless, capless, unwashed boy, with his ragged trousers hitched to +his shoulders by one suspender, frowned up at the judge through a fringe +of tumbled hair. + +"Nothin'," he said doggedly. + +"Where do you live?" + +"I live at home when me maw's there." + +"Where is she now?" + +This question caused considerable nudging and side-glancing on the part +of Mrs. Snawdor. + +"She's went to the country," said Dan. + +"Is your father living?" + +"I dunno." + +"Did you go to school last year?" + +"No." + +"Why not?" + +"Didn't have no shoes." + +"Does your mother work?" + +This question brought more nudges and glances from Mrs. Snawdor, none of +which were lost on the boy. + +"Me mother don't have to work," he said defiantly. "She's a lady." + +The judge cleared his throat and called Mrs. Snawdor sharply to order. + +"Well, Dan," he said, "I am sorry to see you back here again. What were +you up for before?" + +"Chuckin' dice." + +"And didn't I tell you that it would go hard with you if you came back?" + +"Yes, sir, but I never chucked no more dice." + +"And I suppose in spite of the way your mouth is bruised, you'll tell me +you weren't mixed up in this fight?" + +The boy stood staring miserably at the wall with eyes in which fear and +hurt pride struggled for mastery. + +"Yer Honor!" the policeman broke in. "It's three times lately I've found +him sleepin' in doorways after midnight. Him and the gang is a bad lot, +yer Honor, a scrappin' an' hoppin' freights an' swipin' junk, an' one +thing an' another." + +"I never swiped no junk," Dan said hopelessly, "I never swiped nothink +in my life." + +"Is there no definite charge against this boy?" + +"Well, sir," said Mason, "he is always a-climbin' up the steeple of the +cathedral." + +Dan, sullen, frightened, and utterly unable to defend himself, looked +from the officer to the janitor with the wide, distrustful eyes of a +cornered coyote. + +Suddenly a voice spoke out in his behalf, a shrill, protesting, +passionate voice. + +"He ain't no worser nor nobody else! Ast Mammy, ast Uncle Jed! He's got +to sleep somewheres when his maw fergits to come home! Ever'body goes an' +picks on Danny 'cause he ain't got nobody to take up fer him. 'T ain't +fair!" Nance ended her tirade in a burst of tears. + +"There, there," said the judge, "it's going to be fair this time. You +stop crying now and tell me your name?" + +"Nance Molloy," she gulped, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. + +"How old are you?" + +"'Leven, goin' on twelve." + +"Well, take that gum out of your mouth and stop crying." + +He consulted his papers and then looked at her over his glasses. + +"Nancy," he said, "are you in the habit of slipping into the cathedral +when the janitor is not around?" + +"Yes, sir." + +"What for?" + +"Lookin' at the pretties, an' seein' if there's any nickels under +the seats." + +"You want to buy candy, I suppose?" + +"No, sir, a bureau." + +Even the tired-looking probation officer looked up and smiled. + +"What does a little girl like you want with a bureau?" asked the judge. + +"So's I won't have to keep me duds under the bed." + +"That's a commendable ambition. But what about these other charges; +truancy from school, fighting with the boys, throwing mud, and so on?" + +"I never th'ow mud, 'ceptin' when I'm th'owin' back," explained Nance. + +"A nice distinction," said the judge. "Is this child's mother present?" + +Mrs. Snawdor, like a current that has been restrained too long, surged +eagerly forward, and overflowed her conversational banks completely. + +"Well, I ain't exactly her mother, but I'm just the same as her mother. +You ast anybody in Calvary Alley. Ast Mr. Burks here, ast Mrs. Smelts +what I been to her ever since she was a helpless infant baby. When Bud +Molloy lay dyin' he says to the brakeman, 'You tell my wife to be good +to Nance,'" + +"So she's your stepchild?" + +"Yes, sir, an' Bud Molloy was as clever a man as ever trod shoe-leather. +So was Mr. Yager. Nobody can't say I ever had no trouble with my two +first. They wasn't what you might call as smart a man as Snawdor, but +they wasn't no fool." + +It was a peculiarity of Mrs. Snawdor's that she always spoke of her +previous husbands as one, notwithstanding the fact that the virtues +which she attributed to them could easily have been distributed among +half a dozen. + +"Well, well," said the judge impatiently, "what have you to say about the +character of this little girl?" + +Mrs. Snawdor shifted her last husband's hat from the right side of her +head to the left, and began confidentially: + +"Well I'll tell you, Jedge, Nance ain't so bad as whut they make her out. +She's got her faults. I ain't claimin' she ain't. But she ain't got a +drop of meanness in her, an' that's more than I can say for some grown +folks present." Mrs. Snawdor favored Mr. Mason with such a sudden and +blighting glance that the janitor quailed visibly. + +"Do you have trouble controlling her?" asked the judge. + +"Nothin' to speak of. She's a awful good worker, Nance is, when you git +her down to it. But her trouble is runnin'. Let anything happen in the +alley, an' she's up an' out in the thick of it. I'm jes' as apt to come +home an' find her playin' ball with the baby in her arms, as not. But I +don't have to dress her down near as often as I used to." + +"Then you wouldn't say she was a bad child?" + +Mrs. Snawdor's emphatic negative was arrested in the utterance by Mr. +Mason's accusing eye. + +"Well, I never seen no child that was a angel," she compromised. + +"Does Nancy go to school?" the judge asked. + +"Well, I was threatenin' her the other day, if she didn't behave herself, +I was goin' to start her in again." + +"I ain't been sence Christmas," volunteered Nance, still sniffling. + +"You shet yer mouth," requested Mrs. Snawdor with great dignity. + +"Why hasn't she been to school since Christmas?" the judge +proceeded sternly. + +"Well, to tell you the truth, it was on account of Mr. Snawdor. He got +mad 'bout the vaccination. He don't believe in it. Says it gives you the +rheumatism. He's got a iron ring on ever' one of the childern. Show yours +to the jedge, Nance! He says ef they has to vaccinate 'em to educate 'em, +they ain't goin' to de neither one." + +"But don't you know that we have compulsory education in this State? +Hasn't the truant officer been to see you?" + +Mrs. Snawdor looked self-conscious and cast down her eyes. + +"Well, not as many times as Snawdor says he has. Snawdor's that +jealous he don't want me to have no gentlemen visitors. When I see the +truant officer or the clock-man comin', I just keep out of sight to +avoid trouble." + +The judge's eyes twinkled, then grew stern. "In the meanwhile," he said, +"Nancy is growing up in ignorance. What sort of a woman are you to let a +child go as ragged and dirty as this one and to refuse her an education?" + +"Well, schools ain't what they wuz when me an' you wuz young," Mrs. +Snawdor said argumentatively. "They no more'n git a child there than they +want to cut out their palets or put spectacles on her. But honest, Judge, +the truth of it is I can't spare Nance to go to school. I got a job +scrubbin' four nights in the week at the post-office, an' I got to have +some help in the daytime. I leave it to you if I ain't." + +"That's neither here nor there," said the judge. "It is your business to +have her at school every morning and to see that she submits to the +regulations. You are an able-bodied woman and have an able-bodied +husband. Why don't you move into a decent house in a decent +neighborhood?" + +"There ain't nothin' the matter with our neighborhood. If you'd jes' git +'em to fix the house up some. The roof leaks something scandalous." + +"Who is your landlord?" + +"Well, they tell me _he_ is," said Mrs. Snawdor, pointing a malicious +finger at Mr. Clarke. This _coup d'etat_ caused considerable diversion, +and the judge had to call the court sharply to order. + +"Is that your husband in the rear of the room?" he asked Mrs. Snawdor. + +"Law, no; that's Mr. Burks, our boarder. I begged Snawdor to come, but +he's bashful." + +"Well, Mr. Burks, will you step forward and tell us what you know of this +little girl?" + +Uncle Jed cleared his throat, made a pass at the place where his front +hair used to be, and came forward. + +"Have you known this child long?" asked the judge. + +"Eleven years, going on twelve," said Uncle Jed, with a twinkle in his +small eyes, "me an' her grandpa fought side by side in the battle of +Chickasaw Bluffs." + +"So she comes of fighting stock," said the judge. "Do you consider her +incorrigible?" + +"Sir?" + +"Do you think her stepmother is able to control her?" + +Uncle Jed looked a trifle embarrassed. + +"Well, Mrs. Snawdor ain't whut you might say regular in her method. +Sometimes she's kinder rough on Nance, and then again she's a heap sight +too easy." + +"That's a God's truth!" Mrs. Snawdor agreed fervently from the rear. + +"Then you do not consider it altogether the child's fault?" + +"No, sir, I can't say as I do. She jes' gits the signals mixed +sometimes, that's all." + +The judge smiled. + +"So you think if she understood the signals, she'd follow them?" + +Uncle Jed's face became very earnest as he laid his hand on Nance's head. + +"I believe if this here little lass was to once git it into her head that +a thing was right, she'd do it if it landed her where it landed her paw, +at the foot of a forty-foot embankment with a engine a-top of her." + +"That's a pretty good testimony to her character," said the judge. "It's +our business, then, to see that she gets more definite instructions as to +the traffic laws of life. Nance, you and Dan step up here again." + +The children stood before him, breathing hard, looking him straight +in the face. + +"You have both been breaking the law. It's a serious thing to be up in +court. It is usually the first step on the down grade. But I don't +believe either of you have been wholly to blame. I am going to give you +one more chance and put you both on probation to Mrs. Purdy, to whom you +are to report once a week. Is Mrs. Purdy in the room?" + +An elderly little lady slipped forward and stood behind them with a +hand on the shoulder of each. Nance did not dare look around, but there +was something comforting and reassuring in that fat hand that lay on +her shoulder. + +"One more complaint against either of you," cautioned the judge +impressively, "and it will be the house of reform. If your families can't +make you behave, the State can. But we don't want to leave it to the +family or the State; we want to leave it to you. I believe you can both +make good, but you'll have to fight for it." + +Nance's irregular features broke into a smile. It was a quick, wide smile +and very intimate. + +"Fight?" she repeated, with a quizzical look at the judge. "I thought +that was what we was pinched fer." + + + + +CHAPTER V + +ON PROBATION + + +For a brief period Nance Molloy walked the paths of righteousness. The +fear of being "took up" proved a salutary influence, but permanent +converts are seldom made through fear of punishment alone. She was trying +by imitation and suggestion to grope her way upward, but the light she +climbed by was a borrowed light which swung far above her head and threw +strange, misleading shadows across her path. The law that allowed a man +to sell her fire-crackers and then punished her for firing them off, that +allowed any passer-by to kick her stone off the hop-scotch square and +punished her for hurling; the stone after him, was a baffling and +difficult thing to understand. + +At school it was no better. The truant officer said she must go every +day, yet when she got there, there was no room for her. She had to sit in +the seat with two other little girls who bitterly resented the intrusion. + +"You oughtn't to be in this grade anyhow!" declared one of them. "A girl +ought to be in the primer that turns her letters the wrong way." + +"Well, my letters spell the words right," said Nance hotly, "an' that's +more'n yours do, Pie-Face!" + +Whereupon the girl stuck out her tongue, and Nance promptly shoved her +off the end of the seat, with the result that her presence was requested +in the office at the first recess. + +"If you would learn to make your letters right, the girls would not tease +you," said the principal, kindly. "Why do you persist in turning them the +wrong way?" + +Now Nance had learned to write by copying the inscriptions from the +reverse side of the cathedral windows, and she still believed the +cathedral was right. But she liked the principal and she wanted very much +to get a good report, so she gave in. + +"All right," she said good-naturedly, "I'll do 'em your way. An' ef you +ketch me fightin' agin, I hope you'll lick hell outen me!" + +The principal, while decrying its forcible expression, applauded her good +intention, and from that time on took special interest in her. + +Nance's greatest drawback these days was Mrs. Snawdor. That worthy lady, +having her chief domestic prop removed and finding the household duties +resting too heavily upon her own shoulders, conceived an overwhelming +hatred for the school, the unknown school-teacher, and the truant +officer, for whom she had hitherto harbored a slightly romantic interest. + +"I ain't got a mite of use for the whole lay-out," she announced in a +sweeping condemnation one morning when Nance was reminding her for the +fourth time that she had to have a spelling book. "They' re forever +wantin' somethin'. It ain't no use beginnin' to humor 'em. Wasn't they +after me to put specs on Fidy last week? I know their tricks, standin' in +with eye-doctors an' dentists! An' here I been fer goin' on ten years, +tryin' to save up to have my own eye-teeth drawed an' decent ones put in. +Snawdor promised when we got married that would be his first present to +me. Well, if I ever get 'em, they _will_ be his first present." + +"Teacher says you oughtn't to leave the milk settin' uncovered like that; +it gits germans in it," said Nance. + +"I'd like to know whose milk-can this is?" demanded Mrs. Snawdor +indignantly. "You tell her when she pays fer my milk, it 'll be time +enough fer her to tell me what to do with it. You needn't be scurryin' so +to git off. I'm fixin' to go to market. You'll have to stay an' 'tend to +the children 'til I git back." + +"But I'm tryin' to git a good report," urged Nance. "I don't want +to be late." + +"I'll send a excuse by Fidy, an' say you 're sick in bed. Then you kin +stay home all day an' git the house cleaned up." + +"Naw, I won't," said Nance rebelliously, "I ain't goin' to miss ag'in." + +"You're goin' to shut up this minute, you sass-box, or I'll take you back +to that there juvenile court. Git me a piece o' paper an' a pencil." + +With great effort she wrote her note while Nance stood sullenly by, +looking over her shoulder. + +"You spelled teacher's name with a little letter," Nance muttered. + +"I done it a-purpose," said Mrs. Snawdor vindictively, "I ain't goin' to +spell her with a capital; she ain't worth it." + +Nance would undoubtedly have put up a more spirited fight for her rights, +had she not been anxious to preserve peace until the afternoon. It was +the day appointed by the court for her and Dan Lewis to make their first +report to Mrs. Purdy, whose name and address had been given them on a +card. She had washed her one gingham apron for the occasion, and had +sewed up the biggest rent in her stockings. The going forth alone with +Dan on an errand of any nature was an occasion of importance. It somehow +justified those coupled initials, enclosed in a gigantic heart, that she +had surreptitiously drawn on the fence. + +After her first disappointment in being kept at home, she set about her +task of cleaning the Snawdor flat with the ardor of a young Hercules +attacking the Augean stables. First she established the twins in the hall +with a string and a bent pin and the beguiling belief that if they fished +long enough over the banister they would catch something. Next she +anchored the screaming baby to a bedpost and reduced him to subjection by +dipping his fingers in sorghum, then giving him a feather. The absorbing +occupation of plucking the feather from one sticky hand to the other +rendered him passive for an hour. + +These preliminaries being arranged, Nance turned her attention to the +work in hand. Her method consisted in starting at the kitchen, which was +in front, and driving the debris back, through the dark, little, middle +room, until she landed it all in a formidable mass in Mrs. Snawdor's +bedroom at the rear. This plan, pursued day after day, with the general +understanding that Mrs. Snawdor was going to take a day off soon and +clean up, had resulted in a condition of indescribable chaos. As Mr. +Snawdor and the three younger children slept in the rear room at night, +and Mrs. Snawdor slept in it the better part of the day, the hour for +cleaning seldom arrived. + +To-day as Nance stood in the doorway of this stronghold of dirt and +disorder, she paused, broom in hand. The floor, as usual, was littered +with papers and strings, the beds were unmade, the wash-stand and dresser +were piled high with a miscellaneous collection, and the drawers of each +stood open, disgorging their contents. On the walls hung three enlarged +crayons of bridal couples, in which the grooms were different, but the +bride the same. On the dusty window sill were bottles and empty spools, +broken glass chimneys, and the clock that ran ten minutes slow. The +debris not only filled the room, but spilled out into the fire-escape and +down the rickety iron ladders and flowed about the garbage barrels in the +passage below. + +It was not this too familiar scene, however, that made Nance pause with +her hand on the door-knob and gaze open-mouthed into the room. It was the +sight of Mr. Snawdor sitting on the side of the bed with his back toward +her, wiping his little red-rimmed eyes on a clean pocket handkerchief, +and patting his trembling mouth with the hand that was not under the +quilt. Heretofore Nance had regarded Mr. Snawdor as just one of the many +discomforts with which the family had to put up. His whining protests +against their way of living had come to be as much a matter of course as +the creaking door or the smoking chimney. Nobody ever thought of +listening to what he was saying, and everybody pushed and ordered him +about, including Nance, who enjoyed using Mrs. Snawdor's highhanded +method with him, when that lady was not present. + +But when she saw him sitting there with his back to her, crying, she was +puzzled and disturbed. As she watched, she saw him fumble for something +under the quilt, then lift a shining pistol, and place the muzzle to his +thin, bald temple. With a cry of terror, she dashed forward and knocked +the weapon from his hand. + +"You put that down!" she cried, much as she would have commanded William +J. to leave the butcher knife alone. "Do you want to kill yerself?" + +Mr. Snawdor started violently, then collapsing beside the bed, confessed +that he did. + +"What fer?" asked Nance, terror giving way to sheer amazement. + +"I want to quit!" cried Mr. Snawdor, hysterically. "I can't stand it any +longer. I'm a plumb failure and I ain't goin' to ever be anything else. +If your maw had taken care of what I had, we wouldn't have been where we +are at. Look at the way we live! Like pigs in a pen! We're nothing but +pore white trash; that's what we are!" + +Nance stood beside him with her hand on his shoulder. Poor white trash! +That was what the Clarke boy had called her. And now Mr. Snawdor, the +nominal head of the family, was acknowledging it to be true. She looked +about her in new and quick concern. + +"I'm going to clean up in here, too," she said. "I don't keer whut mammy +says. It'll look better by night; you see if it don't." + +"It ain't only that--" said Mr. Snawdor; then he pulled himself up and +looked at her appealingly. "You won't say nuthin' about this mornin', +will you, Nance?" + +"Not if you gimme the pistol," said Nance. + +When he was gone, she picked up the shining weapon and gingerly dropped +it out on the adjoining roof. Then her knees felt suddenly wobbly, and +she sat down. What if she had been a minute later and Mr. Snawdor had +pulled the trigger? She shivered as her quick imagination pictured the +scene. If Mr. Snawdor felt like that about it, there was but one thing to +do; to get things cleaned up and try to keep them so. + +Feeling very important and responsible, she swept and straightened and +dusted, while her mind worked even faster than her nimble hands. +Standards are formed by comparisons, and so far Nance's opportunity for +instituting comparisons had been decidedly limited. + +"We ain't pore white, no such a thing!" she kept saying to herself. "Our +house ain't no worser nor nobody else's. Mis' Smelts is just the same, +an' if Levinski's is cleaner, it smells a heap worse." + +Dinner was over before Mrs. Snawdor returned. She came into the kitchen +greatly ruffled as to hair and temper from having been caught by the +hook left hanging over the banisters by William J. + +"Gimme the rocker!" she demanded. "My feet hurt so bad I'd just like to +unscrew 'em an' fling 'em in the dump heap." + +"Where you been at?" asked Uncle Jed, who was cutting himself a slice of +bread from the loaf. + +"I been down helpin' the new tenant move in on the first floor." + +"Any childern?" asked Nance and Lobelia in one breath. + +"No; just a foreign-lookin' old gentleman, puttin' on as much airs as if +he was movin' into the Walderastoria. Nobody knows his name or where he +comes from. Ike Lavinski says he plays the fiddle at the theayter. Talk +about your helpless people! I had to take a hand in gettin' his things +unloaded. He liked to never got done thankin' me." + +Mr. Snawdor, who had been sitting in dejected silence before his +untouched food, pushed his plate back and sighed deeply. + +"Now, fer heaven sake, Snawdor," began his wife in tones of exasperation, +"can't I do a kind act to a neighbor without a-rufflin' yer feathers the +wrong way?" + +"I cleaned up yer room while you was gone," said Nance, eager to divert +the conversation from Mr. Snawdor. "Uncle Jed an' me carried the trash +down an' it filled the ash barrel clean up to the top." + +"Well, I hope an' pray you didn't throw away my insurance book. I was +aimin' to clean up, myself, to-morrow. What on earth's the matter with +Rosy Velt?" + +Rosy, who had been banished to the kitchen for misbehavior, had been +conducting a series of delicate experiments, with disastrous results. She +had been warned since infancy never to put a button up her nose, but +Providence having suddenly placed one in her way, and at the same time +engaged her mother's attention elsewhere, the opportunity was too +propitious to be lost. + +Nance took advantage of her stepmother's sudden departure to cheer up +Mr. Snawdor. + +"We're gittin' things cleaned up," she said, "I can't work no more to-day +though, 'cause I got to report to the lady." + +"Ain't you goin' to slick yerself up a bit?" asked Uncle Jed, making a +futile effort to smooth her hair. + +"I have," said Nance, indignantly, "Can't you see I got on a clean +apron?" + +Uncle Jed's glance was not satisfied as it traveled from the dirty dress +below the apron to the torn stockings and shabby shoes. + +"Why don't you wear the gold locket?" suggested Mrs. Snawdor, who now +returned with Rosy in one hand and the button in the other. + +The gold locket was the one piece of jewelry in the family and when it +was suspended on a black ribbon around Nance's neck, it filled her with a +sense of elegance. So pleased was she with its effect that as she went +out that afternoon, she peeped in on the new tenant in the hope that he +would notice it. She found him leaning over a violin case, and her +interest was fired at once. + +"Can you play on the fiddle?" she demanded. + +The small, elderly man in the neat, black suit lifted his head and smiled +at her over his glasses. + +"Yes, my little friend," he said in a low, refined voice, "I will play +for you to dance sometime. You would like that? Yes?" + +Nance regarded him gravely. + +"Say, are you a Polock or a Dago?" she asked. + +He gave an amused shrug. + +"I am neither. My name is Mr. Demorest. And you are my little +neighbor, perhaps?" + +"Third floor on the right," said Nance, adding in a business-like tone, +"I'll be down to dance to-night." + +She would have liked very much to stay longer, for the old gentleman was +quite unlike any one she had ever talked to before, but the card in her +hand named the hour of two, and back of the card was Mrs. Purdy, and +back of Mrs. Purdy the juvenile court, the one thing in life so far whose +authority Nance had seen fit to acknowledge. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +BUTTERNUT LANE + + +At the corner Dan Lewis stood aside like a deposed chieftain while his +companions knelt in an excited ring, engrossed in a game sanctioned by +custom and forbidden by law. Even to Nance's admiring eye he looked +dirtier and more ragged than usual, and his scowl deepened as she +approached. + +"I ain't goin'," he said. + +"Yes, you are, too. Why not?" said Nance, inconsequently. + +"Aw, it ain't no use." + +"Ain't you been to school?" + +"Yep, but I ain't goin' to that lady's house. I ain't fit." + +"You got to go to take me," said Nance, diplomatically. "I don't know +where Butternut Lane's at." + +"You could find it, couldn't you?" + +Nance didn't think she could. In fact she developed a sudden dependence +wholly out of keeping with her usual self-reliance. + +This seemed to complicate matters for Dan. He stood irresolutely kicking +his bare heels against the curb and then reluctantly agreed to take her +as far as Mrs. Purdy's gate, provided nothing more was expected of him. + +Their way led across the city to a suburb, and they were hot and tired +before half the distance was covered. But the expedition was fraught with +interest for Nance. After the first few squares of sullen silence, Dan +seemed to forget that she was merely a girl and treated her with the +royal equality usually reserved for boys. So confidential did they become +that she ventured to put a question to him that had been puzzling her +since the events of the morning. + +"Say, Dan, when anybody kills hisself, is it murder?" + +"It's kinder murder. You wouldn't ketch me doin' it as long as I could +get something to eat." + +"You kin always git a piece of bread," said Nance. + +"You bet you can't!" said Dan with conviction. "I ain't had nothin' to +eat myself since yisterday noon." + +"Yer maw didn't come in last night?" + +"I 'spec' she went on a visit somewhere," said Dan, whose lips +trembled slightly despite the stump of a cigarette that he manfully +held between them. + +"Couldn't you git in a window?" + +"Nope; the shutters was shut. Maybe I don't wisht it was December, an' I +was fourteen!" + +"Sammy Smelts works an' he ain't no older'n me," said Nance. "You kin +git a fake certificate fer a quarter." + +Dan smiled bitterly. + +"Where'm I goin' to git the quarter? They won't let me sell things on the +street, or shoot craps, or work. Gee, I wisht I was rich as that Clarke +boy. Ike Lavinski says he buys a quarter's worth of candy at a time! He's +in Ike's room at school." + +"He wasn't there yesterday," said Nance. "Uncle Jed seen him with another +boy, goin' out the railroad track." + +"I know it. He played hookey. He wrote a excuse an' signed his maw's name +to it. Ike seen him do it. An' when the principal called up his maw this +mornin' an' ast her 'bout it, she up an' said she wrote it herself." + +Nance was not sure whether she was called upon to admire the astuteness +of Mac or his mother, so she did not commit herself. But she was keenly +interested. Ever since that day in the juvenile court she had been +haunted by the memory of a trim, boyish figure arrayed in white, and by a +pair of large brown eyes which disdainfully refused to glance in her +direction. + +"Say, Dan," she asked wistfully, "have you got a girl?" + +"Naw," said Dan disdainfully, "what do I keer about girls?" + +"I don't know. I thought maybe you had. I bet that there Clarke boy's +got two or three." + +"Let him have 'em," said Dan; then, finding the subject distasteful, he +added, "what's the matter with hookin' on behind that there wagon?" And +suiting the action to the word, they both went in hot pursuit. + +After a few jolting squares during which Nance courted death with her +flying skirts brushing the revolving wheels, the wagon turned into a side +street, and they were obliged to walk again. + +"I wonder if this ain't the place?" she said, as they came in sight of a +low, white house half smothered in beech-trees, with a flower garden at +one side, at the end of which was a vine-covered summer-house. + +"Here's where I beat it!" said Dan, but before he could make good his +intention, the stout little lady on the porch had spied them and came +hurrying down the walk, holding out both hands. + +"Well, if here aren't my probationers!" she cried in a warm, comfortable +voice which seemed to suggest that probationers were what she liked best +in the world. + +"Let me see, dear, your name is Mac?" + +"No, ma'am, it's Dan," said that youth, trying to put out the lighted +cigarette stump which he had hastily thrust into his pocket. + +"Ah! to be sure! And yours is--Mary?" + +"No, ma'am, it's Nance." + +"Why, of course!" cried the little lady, beaming at them, "I remember +perfectly." + +She was scarcely taller than they were as she walked between them, with +an arm about the shoulder of each. She wore a gray dress and a wide white +collar pinned with a round blue pin that just matched her round blue +eyes. On each side of her face was a springy white curl that bobbed up +and down as she walked. + +"Now," she said, with an expectant air, when they reached the house. +"Where shall we begin? Something to eat?" + +Her question was directed to Dan, and he flushed hotly. + +"No, ma'am," he said proudly. + +"Yes, ma'am," said Nance, almost in the same breath. + +"I vote 'Yes,' too; so the ayes have it," said Mrs. Purely gaily, leading +them through a neat hall into a neat kitchen, where they solemnly took +their seats. + +"My visitors always help me with the lemonade," said the purring little +lady, giving Nance the lemons to roll, and Dan the ice to crack. Then as +she fluttered about, she began to ask them vague and seemingly futile +questions about home and school and play. Gradually their answers grew +from monosyllables into sentences, until, by the time the lemonade was +ready to serve, Nance was completely thawed out and Dan was getting soft +around the edges. Things were on the way to positive conviviality when +Mrs. Purdy suddenly turned to Nance and asked her where she went to +Sunday school. + +Now Sunday school had no charms for Nance. On the one occasion when +curiosity had induced her to follow the stream of well-dressed children +into the side door of the cathedral, she had met with disillusion. It was +a place where little girls lifted white petticoats when they sat down and +straightened pink sashes when they got up, and put nickels in a basket. +Nance had had no lace petticoat or pink sash or nickel. She showed her +discomfort by misbehaving. + +"Didn't you ever go back?" asked Mrs. Purdy. + +"Nome. They didn't want me. I was bad, an' the teacher said Sunday school +was a place for good little girls." + +"My! my!" said Mrs. Purdy, "this will never do. And how about you, Dan? +Do you go?" + +"Sometimes I've went," said Dan. "I like it." + +While this conversation was going on Nance could not keep her eyes from +the open door. There was more sky and grass out there than she had ever +seen at one time before. The one green spot with which she was familiar +was the neat plot of lawn on each side of the concrete walk leading into +the cathedral, and that had to be viewed through a chink in the fence +and was associated with the words, "Keep Out." + +When all the lemonade was gone, and only one cookie left for politeness, +Mrs. Purdy took them into the sitting-room where a delicate-looking man +sat in a wheel-chair, carving something from a piece of wood. Nance's +quick eyes took in every detail of the bright, commonplace room; its gay, +flowered carpet and chintz curtains, its "fruit pieces" in wide, gold +frames, and its crocheted tidies presented a new ideal of elegance. + +There was a music-box on the wall in which small figures moved about to a +tinkling melody; there were charm strings of bright colored buttons, and +a spinning-wheel, and a pair of bellows, all of which Mrs. Purdy +explained at length. + +"Sister," said the man in the chair, feebly, "perhaps the children would +like to see my menagerie." + +"Why, dearie, of course they would," said Mrs. Purdy, "Shall I wheel you +over to the cabinet?" + +"I'll shove him," said Dan, making his first voluntary remark. + +"There now!" said Mrs. Purdy, "see how much stronger he is than I am! And +he didn't jolt you a bit, did he, dearie?" + +If the room itself was interesting, the cabinet was nothing short of +entrancing. It was full of carved animals in all manner of grotesque +positions. And the sick gentleman knew the name of each and kept saying +such funny things about them that Nance laughed hilariously, and Dan +forgot the prints of his muddy feet on the bright carpet, and even gave +up the effort to keep his hand over the ragged knee of his pants. + +"He knows all about live animals, too," chirped Mrs. Purdy. "You'll have +to come some day and go over to the park with us and see his squirrels. +There's one he found with a broken leg, and he mended it as good as new." + +The sun was slipping behind the trees before the children even thought of +going home. + +"Next Friday at three!" said Mrs. Purdy, cheerily waving them good-by. +"And we are going to see who has the cleanest face and the best report." + +"We sure had a good time," said Nance, as they hurried away through the +dusk. "But I'll git a lickin' all right when I git home." + +"I liked that there animal man," said Dan slowly, "an' them cookies." + +"Well, whatever made you lie to the lady 'bout bein' hungry?" + +"I never lied. She ast me if I wanted her to give me somethin' to eat. I +thought she meant like a beggar. I wasn't goin' to take it that way, but +I never minded takin' it like--like--company." + +Nance pondered the matter for a while silently; then she asked suddenly: + +"Say, Dan, if folks are borned poor white trash, they don't have to go on +bein' it, do they?" + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +AN EVICTION + + +The three chief diversions in Calvary Alley, aside from fights, were +funerals, arrests, and evictions. Funerals had the advantage of novelty, +for life departed less frequently than it arrived: arrests were in high +favor on account of their dramatic appeal, but the excitement, while +intense, was usually too brief to be satisfying; for sustained interest +the alley on the whole preferred evictions. + +The week after Nance and Dan had reported to Mrs. Purdy, rumor traveled +from house to house and from room to room that the rent man was putting +the Lewises out. The piquant element in the situation lay in the absence +of the chief actor. "Mis' Lewis" herself had disappeared, and nobody knew +where she was or when she would return. + +For many years the little cottage, sandwiched between Mr. Snawdor's "Bung +and Fawcett" shop and Slap Jack's saloon had been the scandal and, it +must be confessed the romance of the alley. It stood behind closed +shutters, enveloped in mystery, and no visitor ventured beyond its +threshold. The slender, veiled lady who flitted in and out at queer +hours, and whom rumor actually accused of sometimes arriving at the +corner in "a hack," was, despite ten years' residence, a complete +stranger to her neighbors. She was quiet and well-behaved; she wore good +clothes and shamefully neglected her child. These were the meager facts +upon which gossip built a tower of conjecture. + +As for Dan, he was as familiar an object in the alley as the sparrows in +the gutter or the stray cats about the garbage cans. Ever since he could +persuade his small legs to go the way he wanted them to, he had pursued +his own course, asking nothing of anybody, fighting for his meager +rights, and becoming an adept in evading the questions that seemed to +constitute the entire conversation of the adult world. All that he asked +of life was the chance to make a living, and this the authorities sternly +forbade until he should reach that advanced age of fourteen which seemed +to recede as he approached. Like most of the boys in the gang, he had +been in business since he was six; but it was business that changed its +nature frequently and had to be transacted under great difficulty. He had +acquired proficiency as a crap-shooter only to find that the profession +was not regarded as an honorable one; he had invested heavily in pins and +pencils and tried to peddle them out on the avenue, only to find himself +sternly taken in hand by a determined lady who talked to him about minors +and street trades. Shoe-shining had been tried; so had selling papers, +but each of these required capital, and Dan's appetite was of such a +demanding character that the acquisition of capital was well nigh +impossible. + +From that first day when the truant officer had driven him into the +educational fold, his problems had increased. It was not that he disliked +school. On the contrary he was ambitious and made heroic efforts to keep +up with the class; but it was up-hill work getting an education without +text-books. The city, to be sure, furnished these to boys whose mothers +applied for them in person, but Dan's mother never had time to come. The +cause of most of his trouble, however, was clothes; seatless trousers, +elbowless coats, brimless hats, constituted a series of daily +mortifications which were little short of torture. + +Twice, through no fault of his own, he had stood alone before the bar of +justice, with no voice lifted in his behalf save the shrill, small voice +of Nance Molloy. Twice he had been acquitted and sent back to the old +hopeless environment, and admonished to try again. How hard he had tried +and against what odds, surely only the angel detailed to patrol Calvary +Alley has kept any record. + +If any doubts assailed him concerning the mother who took little heed of +his existence, he never expressed them. Her name rarely passed his lips, +but he watched for her coming as a shipwrecked mariner watches for a +sail. When a boy ponders and worries over something for which he dares +not ask an explanation, he is apt to become sullen and preoccupied. On +the day that the long-suffering landlord served notice, Dan told no one +of his mother's absence. Behind closed doors he packed what things he +could, clumsily tying the rest of the household goods in the bedclothes. +At noon the new tenant arrived and, in order to get his own things in, +obligingly assisted in moving Dan's out. It was then and then only that +the news had gone abroad. + +For three hours now the worldly possessions of the dubious Mrs. Lewis had +lain exposed on the pavement, and for three hours Dan had sat beside them +keeping guard. From every tenement window inquisitive eyes watched each +stage of the proceeding, and voluble tongues discussed every phase of the +situation. Every one who passed, from Mr. Lavinski, with a pile of pants +on his head, to little Rosy Snawdor, stopped to take a look at him and to +ask questions. + +Dan had reached a point of sullen silence. Sitting on a pile of +bedclothes, with a gilt-framed mirror under one arm and a flowered water +pitcher under the other, he scowled defiance at each newcomer. Against +the jeers of the boys he could register vows of future vengeance and +console himself with the promise of bloody retribution; but against the +endless queries and insinuations of his adult neighbors, he was utterly +defenseless. + +"Looks like she had ever'thing fer the parlor, an' nothin' fer the +kitchen," observed Mrs. Snawdor from her third-story window to Mrs. +Smelts at her window two floors below. + +"I counted five pairs of curlin' irons with my own eyes," said +Mrs. Smelts, "an' as fer bottles! If they took out one, they took +out a hunderd." + +"You don't reckon that there little alcohol stove was all she had to cook +on, do you?" called up Mrs. Gorman from the pavement below. + +"Maybe that's what she het her curlin' irons on!" was Mrs. Snawdor's +suggestion, a remark which provoked more mirth than it deserved. + +Dan gazed straight ahead with no sign that he heard. However strong the +temptation was to dart away into some friendly hiding place, he was +evidently not going to yield to it. The family possessions were in +jeopardy, and he was not one to shirk responsibilities. + +Advice was as current as criticism. Mrs. Gorman, being a chronic +recipient of civic favors, advocated an appeal to the charity +organization; Mrs. Snawdor, ever at war with foreign interference, +strongly opposed the suggestion, while Mrs. Smelts with a covetous eye on +the gilt mirror under Dan's arm, urged a sidewalk sale. As for the boy +himself, not a woman in the alley but was ready to take him in and share +whatever the family larder provided. + +But to all suggestions Dan doggedly shook his head. He was "thinkin' it +out," he said, and all he wanted was to be let alone. + +"Well, you can't set there all night," said Mrs. Snawdor, "if yer maw +don't turn up by five o'clock, us neighbors is goin' to take a hand." + +All afternoon Dan sat watching the corner round which his mother might +still appear. Not a figure had turned into the alley, that he had not +seen it, not a clanging car had stopped in the street beyond, that his +quick ear had not noted. + +About the time the small hand of the cathedral clock got around to four, +Nance Molloy came skipping home from school. She had been kept in for a +too spirited resentment of an older girl's casual observation that both +of her shoes were for the same foot. To her, as to Dan, these trying +conventions in the matter of foot-gear were intolerable. No combination +seemed to meet the fastidious demands of that exacting sixth grade. + +"Hello, Dan!" she said, coming to a halt at sight of the obstructed +pavement. "What's all this for?" + +"Put out," said Dan laconically. + +"Didn't yer maw never come back?" + +"Nope." + +Nance climbed up beside him on the bedclothes and took her seat. + +"What you goin' to do?" she asked in a business-like tone. + +"Dunno." Dan did not turn his head to look at her, but he felt a dumb +comfort in her presence. It was as if her position there beside him on +the pillory made his humiliation less acute. He shifted the water +pitcher, and jerked his thumb over his shoulder: + +"They all want to divide the things an' take keer of 'em 'til she comes," +he said, "but I ain't goin' to let 'em." + +"I wouldn't neither," agreed Nance. "Old man Smelts an' Mr. Gorman'd have +what they took in hock before mornin'. There's a coal shed over to Slap +Jack's ain't full. Why can't you put yer things in there for to-night?" + +"He wouldn't let me. He's a mean old Dutchman." + +"He ain't, neither! He's the nicest man in the alley, next to Uncle Jed +an' that there old man with the fiddle. Mr. Jack an' me's friends. He +gives me pretzels all the time. I'll go ast him." + +A faint hope stirred in Dan as she slid down from her perch and darted +into the saloon next door. She had wasted no time in conjecture or +sympathy; she had plunged at once into action. When she returned, the fat +saloonkeeper lumbered in her wake: + +"Dose tings is too many, already," he protested. "I got no place to put +my coal once de cold vedder comes." + +"It ain't come yet," said Nance. "Besides his mother'll be here +to-morrow, I 'spect." + +"Mebbe she vill, und mebbe she von't," said the saloonkeeper astutely. "I +don't want dat I should mess up myself mid dis here piziness." + +"The things ain't goin' to hurt your old coal shed none!" began Nance, +firing up; then with a sudden change of tactics, she slipped her hand +into Mr. Jack's fat, red one, and lifted a pair of coaxing blue eyes. +"Say, go on an' let him, Mr. Jack! I told him you would. I said you was +one of the nicest men in the alley. You ain't goin' to make me out a +liar, are you?" + +"Vell, I leave him put 'em in for to-night," said the saloonkeeper +grudgingly, his Teuton caution overcome by Celtic wile. + +The conclave of women assembled in the hall of Number One, to carry out +Mrs. Snawdor's threat of "taking a hand," were surprised a few minutes +later, to see the objects under discussion being passed over the fence by +Mr. Jack and Dan under the able generalship of the one feminine member of +the alley whose counsel had been heeded. + +When the last article had been transferred to the shed, and a veteran +padlock had been induced to return to active service, the windows of the +tenement were beginning to glow dully, and the smell of cabbage and +onions spoke loudly of supper. + +Nance, notwithstanding the fourth peremptory summons from aloft, to walk +herself straight home that very minute, still lingered with Dan. + +"Come on home with me," she said. "You can sleep in Uncle Jed's bed 'til +five o'clock." + +"I kin take keer of myself all right," he said. "It was the things that +pestered me." + +"But where you goin' to git yer supper?" + +"I got money," he answered, making sure that his nickel was still in his +pocket. "Besides, my mother might come while I was there." + +"Well, don't you fergit that to-morrow we go to Mis' Purdy's." + +Dan looked at her with heavy eyes. + +"Oh! I ain't got time to fool around with that business. I don't know +where I'll be at by to-morrow." + +"You'll be right here," said Nance firmly, "and I ain't goin' to budge a +step without you if I have to wait all afternoon." + +"Well, I ain't comin'," said Dan. + +"I'm goin' to wait," said Nance, "an' if I git took up fer not reportin', +it'll be your fault." + +Dan slouched up to the corner and sat on the curbstone where he could +watch the street cars. As they stopped at the crossing, he leaned forward +eagerly and scanned the passengers who descended. In and out of the +swinging door of the saloon behind him passed men, singly and in groups. +There were children, too, with buckets, but they had to go around to the +side. He wanted to go in himself and buy a sandwich, but he didn't dare. +The very car he was waiting for might come in his absence. + +At nine o'clock he was still waiting when two men came out and paused +near him to light their cigars. They were talking about Skeeter Newson, +the notorious pickpocket, who two days before had broken jail and had +not yet been found. Skeeter's exploits were a favorite topic of the +Calvary Micks, and Dan, despite the low state of his mind, pricked his +ears to listen. + +"They traced him as far as Chicago," said one of the men, "but there he +give 'em the slip." + +"Think of the nerve of him taking that Lewis woman with him," said the +other voice. "By the way, I hear she lives around here somewhere." + +"A bad lot," said the first voice as they moved away. + +Dan sat rigid with his back to the telegraph pole, his feet in the +gutter, his mouth fallen open, staring dully ahead of him. Then suddenly +he reached blindly for a rock, and staggered to his feet, but the figures +had disappeared in the darkness. He sat down again, while his breath came +in short, hard gasps. It was a lie! His mother was not bad! He knew she +was good. He wanted to shriek it to the world. But even as he +passionately defended her to himself, fears assailed him. + +Why had they always lived so differently from other people? Why was he +never allowed to ask questions or to answer them or to know where his +mother went or how they got their living? What were the parcels she +always kept locked up in the trunk in the closet? Events, little heeded +at the time of occurrence, began to fall into place, making a hideous and +convincing pattern. Dim memories of men stole out of the past and threw +distorted shadows on his troubled brain. There was Bob who had once given +him a quarter, and Uncle Dick who always came after he was in bed, and +Newt--his neck stiffened suddenly. Newt, whom his mother used always to +be talking about, and whose name he had not heard now for so long that he +had almost forgotten it. Skeeter Newson--Newt--"The Lewis Woman." He saw +it all in a blinding flash, and in that awful moment of realization he +passed out of his childhood and entered man's estate. + +Choking back his sobs, he fled from the scene of his disgrace. In one +alley and out another he stumbled, looking for a hole in which he could +crawl and pour out his pent-up grief. But privacy is a luxury reserved +for the rich, and Dan and his kind cannot even claim a place in which to +break their hearts. + +It was not until he reached the river bank and discovered an overturned +hogshead that he found a refuge. Crawling in, he buried his face in his +arms and wept, not with the tempestuous abandonment of a lonely child, +but with the dry, soul-racking sobs of a disillusioned man. His mother +had been the one beautiful thing in his life, and he had worshiped her as +some being from another world. Other boys' mothers had coarse, red hands +and loud voices; his had soft, white hands and a sweet, gentle voice that +never scolded. + +Sometimes when she stayed at home, they had no money, and then she would +lie on the bed and cry, and he would try to comfort her. Those were the +times when he would stay away from school and go forth to sell things at +the pawn shop. The happiest nights he could remember were the ones when +he had come home with money in his pocket, to a lighted lamp in the +window, and a fire on the hearth and his mother's smile of welcome. But +those times were few and far between; he was much more used to darkened +windows, a cold hearth, and an almost empty larder. In explanation of +these things he had accepted unconditionally his mother's statement that +she was a lady. + +As he fought his battle alone there in the dark, all sorts of wild plans +came to him. Across the dark river the shore lights gleamed, and down +below at the wharf, a steamboat was making ready to depart. He had heard +of boys who slipped aboard ships and beat their way to distant cities. A +fierce desire seized him to get away, anywhere, just so he would not have +to face the shame and disgrace that had come upon him. There was no one +to care now where he went or what became of him. He would run away and be +a tramp where nobody could ask questions. + +With quick decision he started up to put his plan into action when a +disturbing thought crossed his mind. Had Nance Molloy meant it when she +said she wouldn't report to the probation officer if he didn't go with +her? Would she stand there in the alley and wait for him all afternoon, +just as he had waited so often for some one who did not come? His +reflections were disturbed by a hooting noise up the bank, followed by a +shower of rocks. The next instant a mongrel pup scurried down the levee +and dropped shivering at his feet. + +The yells of the pursuers died away as Dan gathered the whimpering beast +into his arms and examined its injuries. + +"Hold still, old fellow. I ain't goin' to hurt you," he whispered, +tenderly wiping the blood from one dripping paw. "I won't let 'em git +you. I'll take care of you." + +The dog lifted a pair of agonized eyes to Dan's face and licked +his hands. + +"You lemme tie it up with a piece of my sleeve, an' I'll give you +somethin' to eat," went on Dan. "Me an' you'll buy a sandich an' I'll eat +the bread an' you can have the meat. Me an you'll be partners." + +Misery had found company, and already life seemed a little less desolate. +But the new-comer continued to yelp with pain, and Dan examined the limp +leg dubiously. + +"I b'lieve it's broke," he thought. Then he had an inspiration. + +"I know what I'll do," he said aloud, "I'll carry you out to the animal +man when me an' Nance go to report to-morrow." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +AMBITION STIRS + + +After Nance Molloy's first visit to Butternut Lane, life became a series +of thrilling discoveries. Hitherto she had been treated collectively. At +home she was "one of the Snawdor kids"; to the juvenile world beyond the +corner she was "a Calvary Alley mick"; at school she was "a pupil of the +sixth grade." It remained for little Mrs. Purdy to reveal the fact to her +that she was an individual person. + +Mrs. Purdy had the most beautiful illusions about everything. She seemed +to see her fellow-men not as they were, but as God intended them to be. +She discovered so many latent virtues and attractions in her new +probationers that they scarcely knew themselves. + +When, for instance, she made the startling observation that Nance had +wonderful hair, and that, if she washed it with an egg and brushed it +every day, it would shine like gold, Nance was interested, but +incredulous. Until now hair had meant a useless mass of tangles that at +long intervals was subjected to an agonizing process of rebraiding. The +main thing about hair was that it must never on any account be left +hanging down one's back. Feuds had been started and battles lost by +swinging braids. The idea of washing it was an entirely new one to her; +but the vision of golden locks spurred her on to try the experiment. She +carefully followed directions, but the egg had been borrowed from Mrs. +Smelts who had borrowed it some days before from Mrs. Lavinski, and the +result was not what Mrs. Purdy predicted. + +"If ever I ketch you up to sech fool tricks again," scolded Mrs. Snawdor, +who had been called to the rescue, "I'll skin yer hide off! You've no +need to take yer hair down except when I tell you. You kin smooth it up +jus' like you always done." + +Having thus failed in her efforts at personal adornment, Nance turned her +attention to beautifying her surroundings. The many new features observed +in the homely, commonplace house in Butternut Lane stirred her ambition. +Her own room, to be sure, possessed architectural defects that would have +discouraged most interior decorators. It was small and dark, with only +one narrow opening into an air-shaft. Where the plaster had fallen off, +bare laths were exposed, and in rainy weather a tin tub occupied the +center of the floor to catch the drippings from a hole in the roof. For +the rest, a slat bed, an iron wash-stand, and a three-legged chair +comprised the furniture. + +But Nance was not in the least daunted by the prospect. With +considerable ingenuity she evolved a dresser from a soap box and the +colored supplements of the Sunday papers, which she gathered into a +valance, in imitation of Mrs. Purdy's bright chintz. In the air-shaft +window she started three potato vines in bottles, but not satisfied with +the feeble results, she pinned red paper roses to the sickly white stems. +The nearest substitutes she could find for pictures were labels off +tomato cans, and these she tacked up with satisfaction, remembering Mrs. +Purdy's admired fruit pictures. + +"'Tain't half so dark in here as 'tis down in Smeltses," she bragged to +Fidy, who viewed her efforts with pessimism. "Once last summer the sun +come in here fer purty near a week. It shined down the shaft. You ast +Lobelia if it didn't." + +Nance was nailing a pin into the wall with the heel of her slipper, and +the loose plaster was dropping behind the bed. + +"Mis' Purdy says if I don't say no cuss words, an' wash meself all +over on Wednesdays and Sat'days, she's goin' to help me make myself a +new dress!" + +"Why don't she give you one done made?" asked Fidy. + +"She ain't no charity lady!" said Nance indignantly. "Me an' her's +friends. She said we was." + +"What's she goin' to give Dan?" asked Fidy, to whom personages from the +upper world were interesting only when they bore gifts in their hands. + +"She ain't givin' him nothin', Silly! She's lettin' him help her. He gits +a quarter a hour, an' his dinner fer wheelin' Mr. Walter in the park." + +"They say Mr. Jack's give him a room over the saloon 'til his maw +comes back." + +"I reckon I know it. I made him! You jus' wait 'til December when +Dan'll be fourteen. Once he gits to work he won't have to take nothin' +offen nobody!" + +School as well as home took on a new interest under Mrs. Purdy's +influence. Shoes and textbooks appeared almost miraculously, and reports +assumed a new and exciting significance. Under this new arrangement Dan +blossomed into a model of righteousness, but Nance's lapses from grace +were still frequent. The occasional glimpses she was getting of a code of +manners and morals so different from those employed by her stepmother, +were not of themselves sufficient to reclaim her. On the whole she found +being good rather stupid and only consented to conform to rules when she +saw for herself the benefit to be gained. + +For instance, when she achieved a burning desire to be on the honor roll +and failed on account of being kept at home, she took the matter into her +own small hands and reported herself to the once despised truant +officer. The result was a stormy interview between him and her stepmother +which removed all further cause of jealousy on the part of Mr. Snawdor, +and gave Nance a record for perfect attendance. + +Having attained this distinction, she was fired to further effort. She +could soon glibly say the multiplication tables backward, repeat all the +verses in her school reader, and give the names and length of the most +important rivers in the world. On two occasions she even stepped into +prominence. The first was when she electrified a visiting trustee by her +intimate knowledge of the archipelagos of the eastern hemisphere. The +fact that she had not the remotest idea of the nature of an archipelago +was mercifully not divulged. The second had been less successful. It was +during a visit of Bishop Bland's to the school. He was making a personal +investigation concerning a report, then current, that public school +children were underfed. Bishop Bland was not fond of children, but he was +sensitive to any slight put upon the stomach, and he wished very much to +be able to refute the disturbing rumor. + +"Now I cannot believe," he said to the sixth grade, clasping his plump +hands over the visible result of many good dinners, "that any one of you +nice boys and girls came here this morning hungry. I want any boy in the +room who is not properly nourished at home to stand up." + +Nobody rose, and the bishop cast an affirmative smile on the principal. + +"As I thought," he continued complacently. "Now I'm going to ask any +little girl in this room to stand up and tell us just exactly what she +had for breakfast. I shall not be in the least surprised if it was just +about what I had myself." + +There was a silence, and it began to look as if nobody was going to call +the bishop's bluff, when Nance jumped up from a rear seat and said at the +top of her voice: + +"A pretzel and a dill pickle!" + +The new-found enthusiasm for school might have been of longer duration +had it not been for a counter-attraction at home. From that first night +when old "Mr. Demry," as he had come to be called, had played for her to +dance, Nance had camped on his door-step. Whenever the scrape of his +fiddle was heard from below, she dropped whatever she held, whether it +was a hot iron or the baby, and never stopped until she reached the +ground floor. And by and by other children found their way to him, not +only the children of the tenement, but of the whole neighborhood as well. +It was soon noised abroad that he knew how to coax the fairies out of the +woods and actually into the shadows of Calvary Alley where they had never +been heard of before. With one or two children on his knees and a circle +on the floor around him, he would weave a world of dream and rainbows, +and people it with all the dear invisible deities of childhood. And while +he talked, his thin cheeks would flush, and his dim eyes shine with the +same round wonder as his listeners. + +But some nights when the children came, they found him too sleepy to tell +stories or play on the fiddle. At such times he always emptied his +pockets of small coins and sent the youngsters scampering away to find +the pop-corn man. Then he would stand unsteadily at the door and watch +them go, with a wistful, disappointed look on his tired old face. + +Nance overheard her elders whispering that "he took something," and she +greatly feared that he would meet a fate similar to that of Joe Smelts. +In Joe's case it was an overcoat, and he had been forced to accept the +hospitality of the State for thirty days. Nance's mind was greatly +relieved to find that it was only powders that Mr. Demry took--powders +that made him walk queer and talk queer and forget sometimes where he +lived. Then it was that the children accepted him as their special +charge. They would go to his rescue wherever they found him and guide his +wandering footsteps into the haven of Calvary Alley. + +"He's a has-benn," Mrs. Snawdor declared to Uncle Jed. "You an' me are +never-wases, but that old gent has seen better days. They tell me that +settin' down in the orchestry, he looks fine. That's the reason his +coat's always so much better'n his shoes an' pants; he dresses up the +part of him that shows. You can tell by the way he acts an' talks that +he's different from us." + +Perhaps that was the reason, that while Nance loved Uncle Jed quite as +much, she found Mr. Demry far more interesting. Everything about him was +different, from his ideas concerning the proper behavior of boys and +girls, to his few neatly distributed belongings. His two possessions that +most excited her curiosity and admiration, were the violin and its +handsome old rosewood case, which you were not allowed to touch, and a +miniature in a frame of gold, of a beautiful pink and white girl in a +pink and white dress, with a fair curl falling over her bare shoulder. +Nance would stand before the latter in adoring silence; then she would +invariably say: + +"Go on an' tell me about her, Mr. Demry!" + +And standing behind her, with his fine sensitive hands on her shoulders, +Mr. Demry would tell wonderful stories of the little girl who had once +been his. And as he talked, the delicate profile in the picture became an +enchanting reality to Nance, stirring her imagination and furnishing an +object for her secret dreams. + +Hitherto Birdie Smelts had been her chief admiration. Birdie was fourteen +and wore French heels and a pompadour and had beaux. She had worked in +the ten-cent store until her misplaced generosity with the glass beads +on her counter resulted in her being sent to a reformatory. But Birdie's +bold attractions suffered in comparison with the elusive charm of the +pink and white goddess with the golden curl. + +This change marked the dawn of romance in Nance's soul. Up to this time +she had demanded of Mr. Demry the most "scareful" stories he knew, but +from now on Blue Beard and Jack, the Giant-Killer had to make way for +Cinderella and the Sleeping Beauty. She went about with her head full of +dreams, and eyes that looked into an invisible world. It was not that the +juvenile politics of the alley were less interesting, or the street +fights or adventures of the gang less thrilling. It was simply that life +had become absorbingly full of other things. + +As the months passed Mrs. Snawdor spent less and less time at home. She +seemed to think that when she gave her nights on her knees for her +family, she was entitled to use the remaining waking hours for +recreation. This took the form of untiring attention to other people's +business. She canvassed the alley for delinquent husbands to admonish, +for weddings to arrange, for funerals to supervise--the last being a +specialty, owing to experience under the late Mr. Yager. + +Upon one of the occasions when she was superintending the entrance of a +neighboring baby into the world, her own made a hurried exit. A banana +and a stick of licorice proved too stimulating a diet for him, and he +closed his eyes permanently on a world that had offered few attractions. + +It was Nance who, having mothered him from his birth, worked with him +through the long night of agony; and who, when the end came, cut the +faded cotton flowers from her hat to put in the tiny claw-like hand that +had never touched a real blossom; and it was Nance's heart that broke +when they took him away. + +It is doubtful whether any abstract moral appeal could have awakened her +as did the going out of that little futile life. It stirred her deepest +sympathies and affections, and connected her for the first time with the +forces that make for moral and social progress. + +"He wouldn't a-went if we'd treated him right!" she complained +bitterly to Mr. Snawdor a week later. "He never had no sunshine, nor +fresh air, nor nothin'. You can't expect a baby to live where a +sweet-potato vine can't!" + +"He's better off than me," said Mr. Snawdor, "what with the funeral, an' +the coal out, an' the rent due, I'm at the end of my rope. I told her it +was comin'. But she would have a white coffin an' six hacks. They'll have +to set us out in the street fer all I can see!" + +Nance looked at him apprehensively. + +"Well, we better be doin' something'," she said. "Can't Uncle Jed help +us?" + +"I ain't goin' to let him. He's paid my rent fer the last time." + +This unexpected flare of independence in Mr. Snawdor was disturbing. The +Snawdor family without Uncle Jed was like a row of stitches from which +the knitting needle has been withdrawn. + +"If I was two years older, I could go to work," said Nance, thinking of +Dan, who was now on the pay-roll of Clarke's Bottle Factory. + +"It ain't right to make you stop school," said Mr. Snawdor. "It ain't +bein' fair to you." + +"I'd do it all right," said Nance, fired by his magnanimity, "only +they're on to me now I've reported myself. Ain't you makin' any money at +the shop?" + +Mr. Snawdor shook his head. + +"I might if I was willin' to buy junk. But you know where them boys gets +their stuff." + +Nance nodded wisely. + +"The gang bust into a empty house last night an' cut out all the lead +pipes. I seen 'em comin' home with it." + +Mr. Snawdor rose and went to the window. + +"There ain't no chance fer a honest man," he said miserably. "I'm sick o' +livin', that's whut I am. I am ready to quit." + +When Mrs. Snawdor arrived, she swept all domestic problems +impatiently aside. + +"Fer goodness' sake don't come tellin' me no more hard-luck tales. Ain't +I got troubles enough of my own? Nance, soon 's you git through, go git +me a bucket of beer, an' if you see any of the Gormans, say I'll stop in +this evenin' on my way to work." + +"I ain't goin' fer the beer no more," announced Nance. + +"An' will ye tell me why?" asked Mrs. Snawdor. + +"'Cause I ain't," said Nance, knowing the futility of argument. + +Mrs. Snawdor lifted her hand to strike, but changed her mind. She was +beginning to have a certain puzzled respect for her stepdaughter's +decision of character. + +After the children had been put to bed and Nance had cried over the +smallest nightgown, no longer needed, she slipped down to the second +floor and, pausing before the door behind which the sewing-machines were +always whirring, gave a peculiar whistle. It was a whistle possible only +to a person who boasted the absence of a front tooth, and it brought Ike +Lavinski promptly to the door. + +Ikey was a friend whom she regarded with mingled contempt and +admiration--contempt because he was weak and undersized, admiration +because he was the only person of her acquaintance who had ever had his +name in the newspaper. On two occasions he had been among the honor +students at the high school, and his family and neighbors regarded him as +an intellectual prodigy. + +"Say, Ikey," said Nance, "if you was me, an' had to make some money, an' +didn't want to chuck school, what would you do?" + +Ikey considered the matter. Money and education were the most important +things in the world to him, and were not to be discussed lightly. + +"If you were bigger," he said, sweeping her with a critical eye, "you +might try sewing pants." + +"Could I do it at night? How much would it pay me? Would yer pa take me +on?" Nance demanded all in a breath. + +"He would if he thought they wouldn't get on to it." + +"I'd keep it dark," Nance urged. "I could slip down every night after I +git done my work, an' put in a couple of hours, easy. I'm a awful big +child fer my age--feel my muscle! Go on an' make him take me on, Ikey, +will you?" + +And Ikey condescendingly agreed to use his influence. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +BUTTONS + + +The Lavinskis' flat on the second floor had always possessed a mysterious +fascination for Nance. In and out of the other flats she passed at will, +but she had never seen beyond the half-open door of the Lavinskis'. All +day and far into the night, the sewing-machines ran at high pressure, and +Mr. Lavinski shuffled in and out carrying huge piles of pants on his +head. The other tenants stopped on the stairs to exchange civilities or +incivilities with equal warmth; they hung out of windows or dawdled +sociably in doorways. But summer and winter alike the Lavinskis herded +behind closed doors and ran their everlasting sewing-machines. + +Mrs. Snawdor gave her ready consent to Nance trying her hand as a "home +finisher." + +"We got to git money from somewheres," she said, "an' I always did want +to know how them Polocks live. But don't you let on to your Uncle Jed +what you're doing." + +"I ain't goin' to let on to nobody," said Nance, thrilled with the +secrecy of the affair. + +The stifling room into which Ikey introduced her that night was supposed +to be the Lavinskis' kitchen, but it was evident that the poor room had +long ago abandoned all notions of domesticity. The tea-kettle had been +crowded off the stove by the pressing irons; a wash-tub full of neglected +clothes, squeezed itself into a distant corner, and the cooking utensils +had had to go climbing up the walls on hooks and nails to make way on the +shelves for sewing materials. + +On one corner of the table, between two towering piles of pants, were the +remains of the last meal, black bread, potatoes, and pickled herring. +Under two swinging kerosene lamps, six women with sleeves rolled up and +necks bared, bent over whirring machines, while Mr. Lavinski knelt on the +floor tying the finished garments into huge bundles. + +"Here's Nance Molloy, Pa" said Ikey, raising his voice above the noise of +the machines and tugging at his father's sleeve. + +Mr. Lavinski pushed his derby hat further back on his perspiring brow, +and looked up. He had a dark, sharp face, and alert black eyes, exactly +like Ikey's, and a black beard with two locks of black hair trained +down in front of his ears to meet it. Without pausing in his work he +sized Nance up. + +"I von't take childern anny more. I tried it many times already. De +inspector git me into troubles. It don't pay." + +"But I'll dodge the inspectors," urged Nance. + +"You know how to sew, eh?" + +"No; but you kin learn me. Please, Mr. Lavinski, Ikey said you would." + +Mr. Lavinski bestowed a doting glance on his son. + +"My Ikey said so, did he? He thinks he own me, that boy. I send him to +high school. I send him to Hebrew class at the synagogue at night. He +vill be big rich some day, that boy; he's got a brain on him." + +"Cut it out, Pa," said Ikey, "Nance is a smart kid; you won't lose +anything on her." + +The result was that Nance was accorded the privilege of occupying a stool +in the corner behind the hot stove and sewing buttons on knee pantaloons, +from eight until ten P.M. At first the novelty of working against time, +with a room full of grown people, and of seeing the great stacks of +unfinished garments change into great stacks of finished ones, was +stimulation in itself. She was proud of her cushion full of strong +needles and her spool of coarse thread. She was pleased with the nods of +approval gentle Mrs. Lavinski gave her work in passing, and of the slight +interest with which she was regarded by the other workers. + +But as the hours wore on, and the air became hotter and closer, and no +enlivening conversation came to relieve the strain, her interest began to +wane. By nine o'clock her hands were sore and stained, and her back +ached. By a quarter past, the buttons were slipping through her fingers, +and she could not see to thread her needle. + +"You vill do better to-morrow night," said Mrs. Lavinski kindly, in her +wheezing voice. "I tell Ikey you do verra good." + +Mrs. Lavinski looked shriveled and old. She wore a glossy black wig and +long ear-rings, and when she was not coughing, she smiled pleasantly over +her work. Once Mr. Lavinski stopped pressing long enough to put a cushion +at her back. + +"My Leah is a saint," he said. "If effra'boddy was so good as her, the +Messiah would come." + +Nance dreamed of buttons that night, and by the next evening her ambition +to become a wage-earner had died completely. + +But a family conclave at the supper table revealed such a crisis in the +family finances that she decided to keep on at the Lavinskis' for another +week. Uncle Jed was laid up with the rheumatism, and Mr. Snawdor's entire +stock in trade had been put in a wheelbarrow and dumped into the street, +and a strange sign already replaced his old one of "Bungs and Fawcetts." + +Things seemed in such a bad way that Nance had about decided to lay the +matter before Mrs. Purdy, when Dan brought the disconcerting news that +Mrs. Purdy had taken her brother south for the rest of the winter, and +that there would be no more visits to the little house in Butternut Lane. + +So Nance, not knowing anything better to do, continued to sit night +after night on her stool behind the hot stove, sewing on buttons. +Thirty-six buttons meant four cents, four cents meant a loaf of bread--a +stale loaf, that is. + +"Your little fingers vill git ofer bein' sore," Mrs. Lavinski assured +her. "I gif you alum water to put on 'em. Dat makes 'em hard." + +They not only became hard; they became quick and accurate, and Nance got +used to the heat and the smell, and she almost got used to the backache. +It was sitting still and being silent that hurt her more than anything +else. Mr. Lavinski did not encourage conversation,--it distracted the +workers,--and Nance's exuberance, which at first found vent in all sorts +of jokes and capers, soon died for lack of encouragement. She learned, +instead, to use all her energy on buttons and, being denied verbal +expression, she revolved many things in her small mind. The result of her +thinking was summed up in her speech to her stepmother at the end of the +first week. + +"Gee! I'm sick of doin' the same thing! I ain't learnin' nothin'. If +anybody was smart, they could make a machine to put on two times as many +buttons as me in half the time. I want to begin something at the +beginning and make it clean through. I'm sick an' tired of buttons. I'm +goin' to quit!" + +But Mrs. Snawdor had come to a belated realization of the depleted state +of the family treasury and she urged Nance to keep on for the present. + +"We better cut all the corners we kin," she said, "till Snawdor gits over +this fit of the dumps. Ain't a reason in the world he don't go into the +junk business. I ain't astin' him to drive aroun' an' yell 'Old iron!' I +know that's tryin' on a bashful man. All I ast him is to set still an' +let it come to him. Thank the Lord, I _have_ known husbands that wasn't +chicken-hearted!" + +So Nance kept on reluctantly, even after Mr. Snawdor got a small job +collecting. Sometimes she went to sleep over her task and had to be +shaken awake, but that was before she began to drink black coffee with +the other workers at nine o'clock. + +One thing puzzled her. When Ikey came from night school, he was never +asked to help in the work, no matter how much his help was needed. He was +always given the seat by the table nearest the lamp, and his father +himself cleared a place for his books. + +"Ikey gits the education," Mr. Lavinski would say, with a proud smile. +"The Rabbi says he is the smartest boy in the class. He takes prizes over +big boys. Ve vork fer him now, an' some day he make big money an' take +care of us!" + +Education as seen through Mr. Lavinski's eyes took on a new aspect for +Nance. It seemed that you did not get rich by going to work at fourteen, +but by staying at school and in some miraculous way skipping the factory +altogether. "I vork with my hands," said Mr. Lavinski; "my Ikey, he vorks +with his head." + +Nance fell into the way of bringing her school books downstairs at night +and getting Ike to help her with her lessons. She would prop the book in +front of her and, without lessening the speed of her flying fingers, ply +him with the questions that had puzzled her during the day. + +"I wisht I was smart as you!" she said one night. + +"I reckon you do!" said Ike. "I work for it." + +"You couldn't work no more 'n whut I do!" Nance said indignantly. + +"There's a difference between working and being worked," said Ike, +wisely. "If I were you, I'd look out for number one." + +"But who would do the cookin' an' lookin' after the kids, an' all?" + +"They are nothing to you," said Ike; "none of the bunch is kin to you. +Catch me workin' for them like you do!" + +Nance was puzzled, but not convinced. Wiser heads than hers have +struggled with a similar problem in vain. She kept steadily on, and it +was only when the squeak of Mr. Demry's fiddle came up from below that +her fingers fumbled and the buttons went rolling on the floor. Six +nights in the week, when Mr. Demry was in condition, he played at the +theater, and on Sunday nights he stayed at home and received his young +friends. On these occasions Nance became so restless that she could +scarcely keep her prancing feet on the floor. She would hook them +resolutely around the legs of the stool and even sit on them one at a +time, but despite all her efforts, they would respond to the rhythmic +notes below. + +"Them tunes just make me dance settin' down," she declared, trying to +suit the action to the words. + +Sometimes on a rainy afternoon when nobody was being born, or getting +married, or dying, Mrs. Snawdor stayed at home. At such times Nance +seized the opportunity to shift her domestic burden. + +There was a cheap theater, called "The Star," around the corner, where a +noisy crowd of boys and girls could always be found in the gallery. It +was a place where you ate peanuts and dropped the shells on the heads of +people below, where you scrapped for your seat and joined in the chorus +and shrieked over the antics of an Irishman, a darkey, or a Jew. But it +was a luxury seldom indulged in, for it cost the frightful sum of ten +cents, not including the peanuts. + +For the most part Nance's leisure half-hours were spent with Mr. Demry, +discussing a most exciting project. He was contemplating the unheard-of +festivity of a Christmas party, and the whole alley was buzzing with it. +Even the big boys in Dan's gang were going to take part. There were to +be pirates and fairies and ogres, and Nance was to be the princess and +do a fancy dance in a petticoat trimmed with silver paper, and wear a +tinsel crown. + +Scrubbing the floor, figuring on the blackboard, washing dishes, or +sewing on buttons, she was aware of that tinsel crown. For one magic +night it was going to transform her into a veritable princess, and who +knew but that a prince in doublet and hose and sweeping plume might +arrive to claim her? But when Nance's imagination was called upon to +visualize the prince, a hateful image came to her of a tall, slender boy, +clad in white, with a contemptuous look in his handsome brown eyes. + +"I don't know what ails Nance these days," Mrs. Snawdor complained to +Uncle Jed. "She sasses back if you look at her, an' fergits everything, +an' Snawdor says she mutters an' jabbers something awful in her sleep." + +"Seems to me she works too hard," said Uncle Jed, still ignorant of her +extra two hours in the sweat-shop. "A growin' girl oughtn't to be doin' +heavy washin' an' carryin' water an' coal up two flights." + +"Why, Nance is strong as a ox," Mrs. Snawdor insisted, "an' as fer +eatin'! Why it looks like she never can git filled up." + +"Well, what ails her then?" persisted Uncle Jed. + +"I bet I know!" said Mrs. Snawdor darkly. "It's that there vaccination. +Las' time I hid the other childern from the inspector she had to come out +an' argue with him fer herself. She got paid up proper fer givin' in to +him. Her arm was a plumb sight." + +"Do you suppose it's the poison still workin' on her?" Uncle Jed asked, +watching Nance in the next room as she lifted a boiler filled with the +washing water from the stove. + +"Why, of course, it is! Talk to me about yer State rules an' +regerlations! It does look like us poor people has got troubles enough +already, without rich folks layin' awake nights studyin' up what they can +do to us next." + + + + +CHAPTER X + +THE PRINCESS COMES TO GRIEF + + +And bring her rose-winged fancies, +From shadowy shoals of dream +To clothe her in the wistful hour +When girlhood steals from bud to flower; +Bring her the tunes of elfin dances, +Bring her the faery Gleam.--BURKE. + +Christmas fell on a Saturday and a payday, and this, together with Mr. +Demry's party, accounts for the fact that the holiday spirit, which +sometimes limps a trifle languidly past tenement doors, swaggered with +unusual gaiety this year in Calvary Alley. You could hear it in the +cathedral chimes which began at dawn, in the explosion of fire-crackers, +in the bursts of noisy laughter from behind swinging doors. You could +smell it in the whiffs of things frying, broiling, burning. You could +feel it in the crisp air, in the crunch of the snow under your feet, and +most of all you could see it in the happy, expectant faces of the +children, who rushed in and out in a fever of excitement. + +Early in the afternoon Nance Molloy, with a drab-colored shawl over her +head and something tightly clasped in one bare, chapped fist, rushed +forth on a mysterious mission. When she returned, she carried a +pasteboard box hugged to her heart. The thought of tripping her fairy +measure in worn-out shoes tied on with strings, had become so intolerable +to her that she had bartered her holiday for a pair of white slippers. +Mr. Lavinski had advanced the money, and she was to work six hours a day, +instead of two, until she paid the money back. + +But she was in no mood to reckon the cost, as she prepared for the +evening festivities. So great was her energy and enthusiasm, that the +contagion spread to the little Snawdors, each of whom submitted with +unprecedented meekness to a "wash all over." Nance dressed herself last, +wrapping her white feet and legs in paper to keep them clean until the +great hour should arrive. + +"Why, Nance Molloy! You look downright purty!" Mrs. Snawdor exclaimed, +when she came up after assisting Mr. Demry with his refreshments. "I +never would 'a' believed it!" + +Nance laughed happily. The effect had been achieved by much experimenting +before the little mirror over her soap box. The mirror had a wave in it +which gave the beholder two noses, but Nance had kept her pink and white +ideal steadily in mind, and the result was a golden curl over a bare +shoulder. The curl would have been longer had not half of it remained in +a burnt wisp around the poker. + +But such petty catastrophes have no place in a heart overflowing with +joy. Nance did not even try to keep her twinkling feet from dancing; +she danced through the table-setting and through the dish-washing, and +between times she pressed her face to the dirty pane of the front +window to see if the hands on the big cathedral clock were getting any +nearer to five. + +"They're goin' to have Christmas doin's over to the cathedral, too," she +cried excitedly. "The boards is off the new window, an' it's jus' like +the old one, an' ever'thing's lit up, an' it's snowin' like ever'thing!" + +Mr. Demry's party was to take place between the time he came home from +the matinee and the time he returned for the evening performance. Long +before the hour appointed, his guests began to arrive, dirty-faced and +clean, fat and thin, tidy and ragged, big and little, but all wearing in +their eyes that gift of nature to the most sordid youth, the gift of +expectancy. There were fairies and ogres and pirates and Indians in +costumes that needed only the proper imagination to make them convincing. +If by any chance a wistful urchin arrived in his rags alone, Mr. Demry +promptly evolved a cocked hat from a newspaper, and a sword from a box +top, and transformed him into a prancing knight. + +The children had been to Sunday-school entertainments where they had sat +in prim rows and watched grown people have all the fun of fixing the +tree and distributing the presents, but for most of them this was the +first Christmas that they had actually helped to make. Every link in the +colored paper garlands was a matter of pride to some one. + +What the children had left undone, Mr. Demry had finished. All the +movables had been put out of sight as if they were never to be wanted +again. From the ceiling swung two glowing paper lanterns that threw soft, +mysterious, dancing lights on things. In the big fireplace a huge fire +crackled and roared, and on the shelf above it were stacks of golden +oranges, and piles of fat, brown doughnuts. Across one corner, on a stout +cord, hung some green branches with small candles twinkling above them. +It was not exactly a Christmas tree, but it had evidently fooled Santa +Claus, for on every branch hung a trinket or a toy for somebody. + +And nobody thought, least of all Mr. Demry, of how many squeaks of the +old fiddle had gone into the making of this party, of the bread and meat +that had gone into the oranges and doughnuts, of the fires that should +have warmed Mr. Demry's chilled old bones for weeks to come, that went +roaring up the wide chimney in one glorious burst of prodigality. + +When the party was in full swing and the excitement was at its highest, +the guests were seated on the floor in a double row, and Mr. Demry took +his stand by the fireplace, with his fiddle under his chin, and began +tuning up. + +Out in the dark hall, in quivering expectancy, stood the princess, +shivering with impatience as she waited for Dan to fling open the door +for her triumphant entrance. Every twang of the violin strings +vibrated in her heart, and she could scarcely wait for the signal. It +was the magic moment when buttons ceased to exist and tinsel crowns +became a reality. + +The hall was dark and very cold, and the snow drifting in made a white +patch on the threshold. Nance, steadying her crown against the icy +draught, lifted her head suddenly and listened. From the room on the +opposite side of the hall came a woman's frightened cry, followed by the +sound of breaking furniture. The next instant the door was flung open, +and Mrs. Smelts, with her baby in her arms, rushed forth. Close behind +her rolled Mr. Smelts, his shifted ballast of Christmas cheer threatening +each moment to capsize him. + +"I'll learn ye to stop puttin' cures in my coffee!" he bellowed. +"Spoilin' me taste fer liquor, are ye? I'll learn ye!" + +"I never meant no harm, Jim," quailed Mrs. Smelts, cowering in the corner +with one arm upraised to shield the baby. "I seen the ad in the paper. It +claimed to be a whisky-cure. Don't hit me, Jim--don't--" But before she +could finish, Mr. Smelts had struck her full in the face with a brutal +fist and had raised his arm to strike again. But the blow never fell. + +The quick blood that had made Phil Molloy one of the heroes of Chickasaw +Bluffs rose in the veins of his small granddaughter, and she suddenly saw +red. Had Jim Smelts been twice the size he was, she would have sprung at +him just the same and rained blow after stinging blow upon his befuddled +head with her slender fairy wand. + +"Git up the steps!" she shrieked to Mrs. Smelts. "Fer God's sake git out +of his way! Dan! Dan Lewis! Help! Help!" + +Mr. Smelts, infuriated at the interference, had pinioned Nance's arms +behind her and was about to beat her crowned head against the wall when +Dan rushed into the hall. + +"Throw him out the front door!" screamed Nance. "Help me push him down +the steps!" + +Mr. Smelts' resistance was fierce, but brief. His legs were much drunker +than his arms, and when the two determined youngsters flung themselves +upon him and shoved him out of the door, he lost his balance and fell +headlong to the street below. + +By this time the party had swarmed into the hall and out on the steps +and Mr. Demry's gentle, frightened face could be seen peering over their +decorated heads. The uproar had brought other tenants scurrying from the +upper floors, and somebody was dispatched for a police. Dense and +denser grew the crowd, and questions, excuses, accusations were heard on +every side. + +"They've done killed him," wailed a woman's voice above the other noises. +It was Mrs. Smelts who, with all the abandonment of a bereft widow, cast +herself beside the huddled figure lying motionless in the snow. + +"What's all this row about?" demanded Cockeye, forcing his way to the +front and assuming an air of stern authority. + +"They've killed my Jim!" wailed Mrs. Smelts. "I'm goin' to have the +law on 'em!" + +The policeman, with an impolite request that she stop that there +caterwauling, knelt on the wet pavement and made a hasty diagnosis +of the case. + +"Leg's broke, and head's caved in a bit. That's all I can see is the +matter of him. Who beat him up?" + +"Him an' her!" accused Mrs. Smelts hysterically, pointing to Dan and +Nance, who stood shivering beside Mr. Demry on the top step. + +"Well, I'll be hanged if them ain't the same two that was had up last +summer!" said the policeman in profound disgust. "It's good-by fer them +all right." + +"But we was helpin' Mis' Smelts!" cried Nance in bewilderment. "He was +beatin' her. He was goin' to hit the baby--" + +"Here comes the Black Maria!" yelled an emissary from the corner, and +the crowd parted as the long, narrow, black patrol-wagon clanged noisily +into the narrow court. + +Mr. Smelts was lifted in, none too gently, and as he showed no signs of +returning consciousness, Cock-eye paused irresolute and looked at Dan. + +"You best be comin' along, too," he said with sudden decision. "The bloke +may be hurt worse 'rn I think. I'll just drop you at the detention home +'til over Sunday." + +"You shan't take Dan Lewis!" cried Nance in instant alarm. "He was +helpin' me, I tell you! He ain't done nothin' bad--" Then as Dan was +hustled down the steps and into the wagon, she lost her head completely. +Regardless of consequences, she hurled herself upon the law. She bit it +and scratched it and even spat upon it. + +Had Mrs. Snawdor or Uncle Jed been there, the catastrophe would never +have happened; but Mrs. Snawdor was at the post-office, and Uncle Jed at +the signal tower, and the feeble protests of Mr. Demry were as futile as +the twittering of a sparrow. + +"I'll fix you, you little spitfire!" cried the irate officer, holding her +hands and lifting her into the wagon. "Some of you women put a cloak +around her, and be quick about it." + +Nance, refusing to be wrapped up, continued to fight savagely. + +"I ain't goin' in the hurry-up wagon!" she screamed. "I ain't done +nothin' bad! Let go my hands!" + +But the wagon was already moving out of the alley, and Nance suddenly +ceased to struggle. An accidental combination of circumstances, too +complicated and overwhelming to be coped with, was hurrying her away to +some unknown and horrible fate. She looked at her mud-splashed white +slippers that were not yet paid for, and then back at the bright window +behind which the party was waiting. In a sudden anguish of disappointment +she flung herself face downward on the long seat and sobbed with a +passion that was entirely too great for her small body. + +Sitting opposite, his stiff, stubby hair sticking out beneath his pirate +hat, Dan Lewis, forgetting his own misfortune, watched her with dumb +compassion, and between them, on the floor, lay a drunken hulk of a man +with blood trickling across his ugly, bloated face, his muddy feet +resting on all that remained of a gorgeous, tinsel crown. + +It was at this moment that the Christmas spirit fled in despair from +Calvary Alley and took refuge in the big cathedral where, behind the +magnificent new window, a procession of white-robed choir-boys, led by +Mac Clarke, were joyously proclaiming: + +"Hark! the herald angels sing +Glory to the new-born King;" + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE STATE TAKES A HAND + + +The two reformatories to which the children, after various examinations, +were consigned, represented the worst and the best types of such +institutions. + +Dan Lewis was put behind barred windows with eight hundred other young +"foes of society." He was treated as a criminal, and when he resented it, +he was put under a cold shower and beaten with a rattan until he fainted. +Outraged, humiliated, bitterly resentful, his one idea was to escape. At +the end of a month of cruelty and injustice he was developing a hatred +against authority that would ultimately have landed him in the State +prison had not a miraculous interference from without set him free and +returned him to his work in Clarke's Bottle Factory. + +It all came about through a letter received by Mrs. Purdy, who was +wintering in Florida--a tear-stained, blotted, misspelled letter that had +been achieved with great difficulty. It ran: + +Dear Mis Purdy, me and Dan Lewis is pinched again. But I ain't a +Dellinkent. The jedge says theres a diffrunce. He says he was not puting +me in becose I was bad but becose I was not brot upright. He says for me +to be good and stay here and git a education. He says its my chanct. I +was mad at first, but now I aint. What Im writing you fer is to git Dan +Lewis out. He never done nothink what was wrong and he got sent to the +House of Refuse. Please Mis Purdy you git him off. He aint bad. You know +he aint. You ast everbody at home, and then go tell the Jedge and git him +off. I can't stan fer him to be in that ole hole becose it aint fair. +Please don't stop at nothink til you git him out. So good-by, loveingly, +NANCE. + + +This had been written a little at a time during Nance's first week at +Forest Home. She had arrived in such a burning state of indignation that +it required the combined efforts of the superintendent and the matron to +calm her. In fact her spirit did not break until she was subjected to a +thorough scrubbing from head to foot, and put to bed on a long porch +between cold, clean sheets. She was used to sleeping in her underclothes +in the hot close air of Snawdor's flat, with Fidy and Lobelia snuggled up +on each side. This icy isolation was intolerable! Her hair, still damp, +felt strange and uncomfortable; her eyes smarted from the recent +application of soap. She lay with her knees drawn up to her chin and +shivered and cried to go home. + +Hideous thoughts tormented her. Who'd git up the coal, an' do the +washin'? Would Mr. Snawdor fergit an' take off Rosy's aesophedity bag, +so she'd git the measles an' die like the baby? What did Mr. Lavinski +think of her fer not comin' to work out the slipper money? Would Dan ever +git his place back at the factory after he'd been in the House of Refuse? +Was Mr. Smelts' leg broke plum off, so's he'd have to hobble on a +peg-stick? + +She cowered under the covers. "God aint no friend of mine," she sobbed +miserably. + +When she awoke the next morning, she sat up and looked about her. The +porch in which she lay was enclosed from floor to ceiling in glass, and +there were rows of small white beds like her own, stretching away on each +side of her. The tip of her nose was very cold, but the rest of her was +surprisingly warm, and the fresh air tasted good in her mouth. It was +appallingly still and strange, and she lay down and listened for the +sounds that did not come. + +There were no factory whistles, no clanging of car bells, no lumbering of +heavy wagons. Instead of the blank wall of a warehouse upon which she was +used to opening her eyes, there were miles and miles of dim white fields. +Presently a wonderful thing happened. Something was on fire out there at +the edge of the world--something big and round and red. Nance held her +breath and for the first time in her eleven years saw the sun rise. + +When getting-up time came, she went with eighteen other girls into a big, +warm dressing-room. + +"This is your locker," said the girl in charge. + +"My whut?" asked Nance. + +"Your locker, where you put your clothes." + +Nance had no clothes except the ones she was about to put on, but the +prospect of being the sole possessor of one of those little closets +brought her the first gleam of consolation. + +The next followed swiftly. The owner of the adjoining locker proved to be +no other than Birdie Smelts. Whatever fear Nance had of Birdie's +resenting the part she had played in landing Mr. Smelts in the city +hospital was promptly banished. + +"You can't tell me nothing about paw," Birdie said at the end of Nance's +recital. "I only wish it was his neck instead of his leg that was broke." + +"But we never aimed to hurt him," explained Nance, to whom the accident +still loomed as a frightful nightmare. "They didn't have no right to send +me out here." + +"It ain't so worse," said Birdie indifferently. "You get enough to eat +and you keep warm and get away from rough-housin'; that's something." + +"But I don't belong here!" protested Nance, hotly. + +"Aw, forget it," advised Birdie, with a philosophical shrug of her +shapely shoulders. Birdie was not yet fifteen, but she had already +learned to take the course of least resistance. She was a pretty, +weak-faced girl, with a full, graceful figure and full red lips and +heavy-lidded eyes that always looked sleepy. + +"I wouldn't keer so much if it wasn't fer Dan Lewis," Nance said +miserably. "He was inside Mr. Demry's room, an' never knowed a thing +about it 'til I hollered." + +"Say, I believe you are gone on Dan!" said Birdie, lifting a +teasing finger. + +"I ain't either!" said Nance indignantly, "but I ain't goin' to quit +tryin' 'til I git him out!" + +In the bright airy dining-room where they went for breakfast, Nance sat +at a small table with five other girls and scornfully refused the glass +of milk they offered her as a substitute for the strong coffee to which +she was accustomed. She had about decided to starve herself to death, but +changed her mind when the griddle-cakes and syrup appeared. + +In fact, she changed her mind about many things during those first days. +After a few acute attacks of homesickness, she began despite herself to +take a pioneer's delight in blazing a new trail. It was the first time +she had ever come into contact for more than a passing moment, with +decent surroundings and orderly living, and her surprises were endless. + +"Say, do these guys make you put on airs like this all the time?" she +asked incredulously of her table-companion. + +"Like what?" + +"Like eatin' with a fork, an' washin' every day, an' doin' yer hair over +whether it needs it or not?" + +"If I had hair as grand as yours, they wouldn't have to make me fix it," +said the close-cropped little girl enviously. + +Nance looked at her suspiciously. Once before she had been lured by that +bait, and she was wary. But the envy in the eyes of the short-haired girl +was genuine. + +Nance took the first opportunity that presented itself to look in a +mirror. To her amazement, her tight, drab-colored braids had become +gleaming bands of gold, and there were fluffy little tendrils across her +forehead and at the back of her neck. It was unbelievable, too, how much +more becoming one nose was to the human countenance than two. + +A few days later when one of the older girls said teasingly, "Nance +Molloy is stuck on her hair!" Nance answered proudly, "Well, ain't I got +a right to be?" + +At the end of the first month word came from Mrs. Purdy that she had +succeeded in obtaining Dan's release, and that he was back at work at +Clarke's, and on probation again. This news, instead of making Nance +restless for her own freedom, had quite the opposite effect. Now that her +worry over Dan was at an end, she resigned herself cheerfully to the +business of being reformed. + +The presiding genius of Forest Home was Miss Stanley, the superintendent. +She did not believe in high fences or uniforms or bodily punishment. She +was tall, handsome, and serene, and she treated the girls with the same +grave courtesy with which she treated the directors. + +Nance regarded her with something of the worshipful awe she had once felt +before an image of the Virgin Mary. + +"She don't make you 'fraid exactly," she confided to Birdie. "She makes +you 'shamed." + +"You can tell she's a real lady the way she shines her finger-nails," +said Birdie, to whom affairs of the toilet were of great importance. + +"Another way you can tell," Nance added, trying to think the thing out +for herself, "is the way she takes slams. You an' me sass back, but a +real lady knows how to hold her jaw an' make you eat dirt just the same." + +They were standing side by side at a long table in a big, clean kitchen, +cutting out biscuit for supper. Other white-capped, white-aproned girls, +all intent upon their own tasks, were flitting about, and a teacher sat +at a desk beside the window, directing the work. The two girls had fallen +into the habit of doing their chores together and telling each other +secrets. Birdie's had mostly to do with boys, and it was not long before +Nance felt called upon to make a few tentative observations on the same +engrossing subject. + +"The prettiest boy I ever seen--" she said, "I mean I have ever +saw"--then she laughed helplessly. "Well, anyhow, he was that Clarke +feller. You know, the one that got pinched fer smashin' the window the +first time we was had up?" + +"Mac Clarke? Sure, I know him. He's fresh all right." + +Birdie did not go into particulars, but she looked important. + +"Say, Birdie," Nance asked admiringly, "when you git out of here, what +you goin' to do?" + +"I'll tell you what I _ain't_ going to do," said Birdie, impressively, in +a low voice, "I ain't going to stand in a store, and I ain't going out to +work, and I ain't going to work at Clarke's!" + +"But what else is left to do?" + +"Swear you won't tell?" + +Nance crossed her heart with a floury finger. + +"I'm going to be a actress," said Birdie. + +It was fortunate for Nance that Birdie's term at the home soon ended. She +was at that impressionable age which reflects the nearest object of +interest, and shortly after Birdie's departure she abandoned the idea of +joining her on the professional boards, and decided instead to become a +veterinary surgeon. + +This decision was reached through a growing intimacy with the lame old +soldier who presided over the Forest Home stables. "Doc" was a familiar +character in the county, and his advice about horses was sought far and +near. Next to horses he liked children, and after them dogs. Adults came +rather far down the line, excepting always Miss Stanley, whom he +regarded as infallible. + +On the red-letter Sunday when Uncle Jed had tramped the ten miles out +from town to assure himself of Nance's well-being, he discovered in Doc +an old comrade of the Civil War. They had been in the same company, Uncle +Jed as a drummer boy, and Doc in charge of the cavalry horses. + +"Why, I expect you recollict this child's grandpaw," Uncle Jed said, with +his hand on Nance's head, "Molloy, 'Fightin' Phil,' they called him. Went +down with the colors at Chickasaw Bluffs." + +Doc did remember. Fighting Phil had been one of the idols of his boyhood. + +Miss Stanley found in this friendship a solution of Nance's chief +difficulty. When a person of eleven has been doing practical housekeeping +for a family of eight, she naturally resents the suggestion that there is +anything in domestic science for her to learn. Moreover, when said person +is anemic and nervous from overwork, and has a tongue that has never +known control, it is perilously easy to get into trouble, despite heroic +efforts to be good. + +The wise superintendent saw in the girl all sorts of possibilities for +both good and evil. For unselfish service and passionate sacrifice, as +well as obstinate rebellion and hot-headed folly. + +At those unhappy times when Nance threatened to break over the bounds, +she was sent out to the stables to spend an afternoon with Doc. No +matter how sore her grievance, it vanished in the presence of the genial +old veterinarian. She never tired of hearing him tell of her fighting +Irish grandfather and the pranks he played on his messmates, of Uncle Jed +and the time he lost his drumsticks and marched barefoot in the snow, +beating his drum with the heels of his shoes. + +Most of all she liked the horses. She learned how to put on bandages and +poultices and to make a bran mash. Doc taught her how to give a sick +horse a drink out of a bottle without choking him, how to hold his tongue +with one hand and put a pill far down his throat with the other. The +nursing of sick animals seemed to come to her naturally, and she found it +much more interesting than school work and domestic science. + +"She's got a way with critters," Doc confided proudly to Miss Stanley. +"I've seen a horse eat out of her hand when it wouldn't touch food in +the manger." + +As the months slipped into years, the memory of Calvary Alley grew dim, +and Nance began to look upon herself as an integral part of this +orderly life which stretched away in a pleasant perspective of work and +play. It was the first time that she had ever been tempted to be good, +and she fell. It was not Miss Stanley's way to say "don't." Instead, +she said, "do," and the "do's" became so engrossing that the "don'ts" +were crowded out. + +At regular, intervals Mrs. Snawdor made application for her dismissal, +and just as regularly a probation officer visited the Snawdor flat and +pronounced it unfit. + +"I suppose if I had a phoneygraf an' lace curtains you'd let her come +home," Mrs. Snawdor observed caustically during one of these inspections. +"You bet I'll fix things up next time if I know you are comin'!" + +The State was doing its clumsy best to make up to Nance for what she had +missed. It was giving her free board, free tuition, and protection from +harmful influences. But that did not begin to square the State's account, +nor the account of society. They still owed her something for that early +environment of dirt and disease. The landlord in whose vile tenement she +had lived, the saloon-keeper who had sold her beer, the manufacturer who +had bought the garments she made at starvation wages, were all her +debtors. Society exists for the purpose of doing justice to its members, +and society had not begun to pay its debt to that youthful member whose +lot had been cast in Calvary Alley. + +One Saturday afternoon in the early spring of Nance's fourth year at +Forest Home, Miss Stanley stood in the school-house door, reading a +letter. It was the kind of a day when heaven and earth cannot keep away +from each other, but the fleecy clouds must come down to play in the +sparkling pools, and white and pink blossoms must go climbing up to the +sky to flaunt their sweetness against the blue. Yet Miss Stanley, reading +her letter, sighed. + +Coming toward her down the hillside, plunged a noisy group of children, +and behind them in hot pursuit came Nance Molloy, angular, long-legged, +lithe as a young sapling and half mad with the spring. + +"Such a child still!" sighed Miss Stanley, as she lifted a +beckoning hand. + +The children crowded about her, all holding out hot fists full of faded +wild flowers. + +"Look!" cried one breathlessly. "We found 'em in the hollow. And Nance +says if you'll let her, she'll take us next Saturday to the old mill +where some yellow vi'lets grow!" + +Miss Stanley looked down at the flushed, happy faces; then she put her +arm around Nance's shoulder. + +"Nancy will not be with us next Saturday," she said regretfully. "She's +going home." + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +CLARKE'S + + +Nance Molloy came out of Forest Home, an independent, efficient girl, +with clear skin, luminous blue eyes, and shining braids of fair hair. She +came full of ideals and new standards and all the terrible wisdom of +sixteen, and she dumped them in a mass on the family in Calvary Alley and +boldly announced that "what she was going to do was a-plenty!" + +But like most reformers, she reckoned too confidently on cooperation. The +rest of the Snawdor family had not been to reform school, and it had +strong objections to Nance's drastic measures. Her innovations met with +bitter opposition from William J., who indignantly declined to have the +hitherto respected privacy of his ears and nose invaded, to Mrs. Snawdor, +who refused absolutely to sleep with the windows open. + +"What's the sense in working your fingers off to buy coal to heat the +house if you go an' let out all the hot air over night?" she demanded. +"They've filled up yer head with fool notions, but I tell you right now, +you ain't goin' to work 'em off on us. You kin just tell that old maid +Stanley that when she's had three husbands and five children an' a step, +an' managed to live on less'n ten dollars a week, it'll be time enough +fer her to be learnin' me tricks!" + +"But don't all this mess ever get on your nerves? Don't you ever want to +clear out and go to the country?" asked Nance. + +"Not me!" said Mrs. Snawdor. "I been fightin' the country all my life. +It's bad enough bein' dirt pore, without goin' an' settin' down among the +stumps where there ain't nothin' to take yer mind off it." + +So whatever reforms Nance contemplated had to be carried out slowly and +with great tact. Mrs. Snawdor, having put forth one supreme effort to +make the flat sufficiently decent to warrant Nance's return, proposed for +the remainder of her life to rest on her laurels. As for the children, +they had grown old enough to have decided opinions of their own, and when +Nance threw the weight of her influence on the side of order and +cleanliness, she was regarded as a traitor in the camp. It was only Mr. +Snawdor who sought to uphold her, and Mr. Snawdor was but a broken reed. + +Meanwhile the all-important question of getting work was under +discussion. Miss Stanley had made several tentative suggestions, but none +of them met with Mrs. Snawdor's approval. + +"No, I ain't goin' to let you work out in private families!" she +declared indignantly. "She's got her cheek to ast it! Did you tell her +yer pa was a Molloy? An' Mr. Burks says yer maw was even better born than +what Bud was. I'm goin' to git you a job myself. I'm goin' to take you up +to Clarke's this very evenin'." + +"I don't want to work in a factory!" Nance said discontentedly, looking +out of the window into the dirty court below. + +"I suppose you want to run a beauty parlor," said Mrs. Snawdor, with +scornful reference to Nance's improved appearance. "You might just as +well come off them high stilts an' stop puttin' on airs, Dan Lewis has +been up to Clarke's goin' on four years now. I hear they're pushin' him +right along." + +Nance stopped drumming on the window-pane and became suddenly interested. +The one thing that had reconciled her to leaving Miss Stanley and the +girls at the home was the possibility of seeing Dan again. She wondered +what he looked like after these four years, whether he would recognize +her, whether he had a sweetheart? She had been home three days now and +had caught no glimpse of him. + +"We never see nothin' of him," her stepmother told her. "He's took up +with the Methodists, an' runs around to meetin's an' things with that +there Mis' Purdy." + +"Don't he live over Slap Jack's?" asked Nance. + +"Yes; he's got his room there still. I hear his ma died las' spring. +Flirtin' with the angels by now, I reckon." + +The prospect of seeing Dan cheered Nance amazingly. She spent the morning +washing and ironing her best shirt-waist and turning the ribbon on her +tam-o'-shanter. Every detail of her toilet received scrupulous attention. + +It was raining dismally when she and Mrs. Snawdor picked their way across +the factory yard that afternoon. The conglomerate mass of buildings known +as "Clarke's" loomed somberly against the dull sky. Beside the low +central building a huge gas-pipe towered, and the water, trickling down +it, made a puddle through which they had to wade to reach the door of the +furnace room. + +Within they could see the huge, round furnace with its belt of small +fiery doors, from which glass-blowers, with long blow-pipes were deftly +taking small lumps of moulten glass and blowing them into balls. + +"There's Dan!" cried Mrs. Snawdor, and Nance looked eagerly in the +direction indicated. + +In the red glare of the furnace, a big, awkward, bare-armed young fellow +was just turning to roll his red-hot ball on a board. There was a steady +look in the gray eyes that scowled slightly under the intense glare, a +sure movement of the hands that dropped the elongated roll into the +mold. When he saw Mrs. Snawdor's beckoning finger, he came to the door. + +"This here is Nance Molloy," said Mrs. Snawdor by way of introduction. +"She's about growed up sence you seen her. We come to see about gittin' +her a job." + +Nance, looking at the strange, stern face above her, withdrew the hand +she had held out. Dan did not seem to see her hand any more than he saw +her fresh shirt-waist and the hat she had taken so much pains to retrim. +After a casual nod he stood looking at the floor and rubbing the toe of +his heavy boot against his blow-pipe. + +"Sure," he said slowly, "but this is no fit place for a girl, Mrs. +Snawdor." + +Mrs. Snawdor bristled immediately. + +"I ain't astin' yer advice, Dan Lewis. I'm astin' yer help." + +Dan looked Nance over in troubled silence. + +"Is she sixteen yet?" he asked as impersonally as if she had not +been present. + +"Yes, an' past. I knowed they'd be scarin' up that dangerous trade +business on me next. How long before the foreman'll be here?" + +"Any time now," said Dan. "I'll take you into his office." + +With a sinking heart, Nance followed them into the crowded room. The heat +was stifling, and the air was full of stinging glass dust. All about +them boys were running with red hot bottles on big asbestos shovels. She +hated the place, and she hated Dan for not being glad to see her. + +"They are the carrying-in boys," Dan explained, continuing to address all +of his remarks to Mrs. Snawdor. "That's where I began. You wouldn't +believe that those kids often run as much as twenty-two miles a day. +Watch out there, boy! Be careful!" + +But his warning came too late. One of the smaller youngsters had stumbled +and dropped his shovel, and a hot bottle had grazed his leg, burning away +a bit of the stocking. + +"It's all right, Partner," cried Dan, springing forward, "You're not much +hurt. I'll fix you up." + +But the boy was frightened and refused to let him remove the stocking. + +"Let me do it," begged Nance. "I can get it off without hurting him." + +And while Dan held the child's leg steady, she bathed and bound it in a +way that did credit to Doc's training. Only once daring the process did +she look up, and then she was relieved to see instead of the stern face +of a strange young man, the compassionate, familiar face of the old Dan +she used to know. + +The interview with the foreman was of brief duration. He was a +thick-set, pimply-faced person whom Dan called Mr. Bean. He swept an +appraising eye over the applicant, submitted a few blunt questions to Dan +in an undertone, ignored Mrs. Snawdor's voluble comments, and ended by +telling Nance to report for work the following week. + +As Mrs. Snawdor and Nance took their departure, the former, whose +thoughts seldom traveled on a single track, said tentatively: + +"Dan Lewis has got to be real nice lookin' sence you seen him, ain't he?" + +"Nothin' to brag on," said Nance, still smarting at his indifference. But +as she turned the corner of the building, she stole a last look through +the window to where Dan was standing at his fiery post, his strong, +serious face and broad, bare chest lighted up by the radiance from the +glory-hole. + +It was with little enthusiasm that Nance presented herself at the factory +on Monday morning, ready to enlist in what Bishop Bland called "the noble +service of industry." Her work was in the finishing room where a number +of girls were crowded at machines and tables, filing, clipping, and +packing bottles. Her task was to take the screw-neck bottles that came +from the leer, and chip and file their jagged necks and shoulders until +all the roughness was removed. It was dirty work, and dangerous for +unskilled hands, and she found it difficult to learn. + +"Say, kid," said the ugly, hollow-chested girl beside her, "if I'm goin' +to be your learner, I want you to be more particular. Between you an' +this here other girl, you're fixin' to put my good eye out." + +Nance glanced up at the gaunt face with its empty eye socket and then +looked quickly away. + +"Say," said the other new girl, complainingly, "is it always hot like +this in here? I'm most choking." + +"We'll git the boss to put in a 'lectric fan fer you," suggested the +hollow-chested one, whose name was Mag Gist. + +Notwithstanding her distaste for the work, Nance threw herself into it +with characteristic vehemence. Speed seemed to be the quality above all +others that one must strive for, and speed she was determined to have, +regardless of consequences. + +"When you learn how to do this, what do you learn next?" she asked +presently. + +Mag laughed gruffly. + +"There ain't no next. If you'd started as a wrapper, you might 'a' +worked up a bit, but you never would 'a' got to be a chuck-grinder. I +been at this bench four years an' if I don't lose my job, I'll be here +four more." + +"But if you get to be awful quick, you can make money, can't you?" + +"You kin make enough to pay fer two meals a day if yer appetite ain't +too good." + +Nance's heart sank. It was a blow to find that Mag, who was the cleverest +girl in the finishing room, had been filing bottle necks for four years. +She stole a glance at her stooped shoulders and sallow skin and the +hideous, empty socket of her left eye. What was the good of becoming +expert if it only put one where Mag was? + +By eleven o'clock there was a sharp pain between her shoulder-blades, and +her feet ached so that she angrily kicked off first one shoe, then the +other. This was the signal for a general laugh. + +"They're kiddin' you fer sheddin' yer shoes," explained Mag, who had +laughed louder than anybody. "Greenhorns always do it first thing. By the +time you've stepped on a piece of glass onct or twict, you'll be glad +enough to climb back into 'em." + +After a while one of the girls started a song, and one by one the others +joined in. There were numerous verses, and a plaintive refrain that +referred to "the joy that ne'er would come again to you and I." + +When no more verses could be thought of, there were stories and doubtful +jokes which sent the girls into fits of wild laughter. + +"Oh, cheese it," said Mag after one of these sallies, "You all orter to +behave more before these kids." + +"They don't know what we are talkin' about," said a red-haired girl. + +"You bet I do," said Nance, with disgust, "but you all give me a sick +headache." + +When the foreman made his rounds, figures that had begun to droop were +galvanized into fresh effort. At Mag's bench he paused. + +"How are the fillies making it?" he asked, with a familiar hand on the +shoulder of each new girl. Nance's companion dropped her eyes with a +simpering smile, but Nance jerked away indignantly. + +The foreman looked at the back of the shining head and frowned. + +"You'll have to push up the stroke," he said. "Can't you see you lose +time by changing your position so often? What makes you fidget so?" + +Nance set her teeth resolutely and held her tongue. But her Irish +instinct always suffered from restraint and by the time the noon whistle +blew, she was in a state of sullen resentment. The thought of her beloved +Miss Stanley and what she would think of these surroundings brought a +lump into her throat. + +"Come on over here," called Mag from a group of girls at the open window. +"Don't you mind what Bean says. He's sore on any girl that won't eat +outen his dirty hand. You 're as smart again as that other kid. I can +tell right off if a girl's got gumption, an' if she's on the straight. + +"Chuck that Sunday-school dope," laughed a pretty, red-haired girl named +Gert. "You git her in wrong with Bean, an' I wouldn't give a nickel fer +her chance." + +"You ought to know," said Mag, drily. + +The talk ran largely to food and clothes, and Nance listened with growing +dismay. It seemed that most of the girls lived in rooming houses and took +their meals out. + +"Wisht I had a Hamberger," said Mag. "I ain't had a bite of meat fer a +month. I always buy my shoes with meat money." + +"I git my hats with breakfasts," said another girl. "Fourteen breakfasts +makes a dollar-forty. I kin buy a hat fer a dollar-forty-nine that's +swell enough fer anybody." + +"I gotta have my breakfast," said Mag. "Four cups of coffee ain't +nothin' to me." + +Gert got up and stretched herself impatiently. + +"I'm sick an' tired of hearin' you all talk about eatin'. Mag's idea of +Heaven is a place where you spend ten hours makin' money an' two eatin' +it up. Some of us ain't built like that. We got to have some fun as we +go along, an' we're goin' to git it, you bet your sweet life, one way or +the other." + +Soon after work was resumed, word was passed around that a big order had +come in, and nobody was to quit work until it was made up. A ripple of +sullen comment followed this announcement, but the girls bent to their +tasks with feverish energy. + +At two o'clock the other new girl standing next to Nance grew faint, and +had to be stretched on the floor in the midst of the broken glass. + +"She's a softie!" whispered Mag to Nance. "This ain't nothin' to what it +is in hot weather." + +The pain between Nance's shoulders was growing intolerable, and her cut +fingers and aching feet made her long to cast herself on the floor beside +the other girl and give up the fight. But pride held her to her task. +After what seemed to her an eternity she again looked at the big clock +over the door. It was only three. How was she ever to endure three more +hours when every minute now was an agony? + +Mag heard her sigh and turned her head long enough to say: + +"Hang yer arms down a spell; that kind of rests 'em. You ain't goin' to +flop, too, are you?" + +"Not if I can hold out." + +"I knowed you was game all right," said Mag, with grim approval. + +By six o'clock the last bottle was packed, and Nance washed the blood and +dirt off her hands and forced her swollen, aching feet into her shoes. +She jerked her jacket and tam-o'-shanter from the long row of hooks, and +half blind with weariness, joined the throng of women and girls that +jostled one another down the stairs. Every muscle of her body ached, and +her whole soul was hot with rebellion. She told herself passionately that +nothing in the world could induce her to come back; she was through with +factory work forever. + +As she limped out into the yard, a totally vanquished little soldier on +the battle-field of industry, she spied Dan Lewis standing beside the +tall gas-pipe, evidently waiting for somebody. He probably had a +sweetheart among all these trooping girls; perhaps it was the pretty, +red-haired one named Gert. The thought, dropping suddenly into a +surcharged heart, brimmed it over, and Nance had to sweep her fingers +across her eyes to brush away the tears. + +And then: + +"I thought I'd missed you," said Dan, quite as a matter of course, as he +caught step with her and raised her umbrella. + +Nance could have flung her tired arms about him and wept on his broad +shoulder for sheer gratitude. To be singled out, like that, before all +the girls on her first day, to have a beau, a big beau, pilot her through +the crowded streets and into Calvary Alley where all might see, was +sufficient to change the dullest sky to rose and lighten the heart of the +most discouraged. + +On the way home they found little to say, but Nance's aching feet fairly +tripped beside those of her tall companion, and when they turned Slap +Jack's corner and Dan asked in his slow, deliberate way, "How do you +think you are going to like the factory?" Nance answered +enthusiastically, "Oh, I like it splendid!" + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +EIGHT TO SIX + + +Through that long, wet spring Nance did her ten hours a day, six days in +the week and on the seventh washed her clothes and mended them. Her +breaking in was a hard one, for she was as quick of tongue as she was of +fingers, and her tirades against the monotony, the high speed, and the +small pay were frequent and vehement. Every other week when Dan was on +the night shift, she made up her mind definitely that she would stand it +no longer. + +But on the alternate weeks when she never failed to find him waiting at +the gas-pipe to take her home, she thought better of it. She loved to +slip in under his big cotton umbrella, when the nights were rainy, and +hold to his elbow as he shouldered a way for her through the crowd; she +liked to be a part of that endless procession of bobbing umbrellas that +flowed down the long, wet, glistening street; best of all she liked the +distinction of having a "steady" and the envious glances it brought her +from the other girls. + +Sometimes when they paused at a shop window, she caught her reflection in +a mirror, and smiled approval at the bright face under the red tam. She +wondered constantly if Dan thought she was pretty and always came to the +conclusion that he did not. + +From the time they left the factory until they saw the towering bulk of +the cathedral against the dusk, Nance's chatter never ceased. She +dramatized her experiences at the factory; she gave a lively account of +the doings of the Snawdor family; she wove tales of mystery around old +Mr. Demry. She had the rare gift of enhancing every passing moment with +something of importance and interest. + +Dan listened with the flattering homage a slow, taciturn nature often +pays a quick, vivacious one. It was only when problems concerning the +factory were touched upon that his tongue lost its stiffness. Under an +unswerving loyalty to his employers was growing a discontent with certain +existing conditions. The bad lighting system, the lack of ventilation, +the employment of children under age, were subjects that rendered him +eloquent. That cruel month spent in the reformatory had branded him so +deeply that he was supersensitive to the wrongs of others, and spent much +of his time in planning ways and means to better conditions. + +"Don't you ever want a good time, Dan?" Nance asked. "Don't you ever want +to sort of let go and do something reckless?" + +"No; but I'll tell you what I do want. I want a' education. I've a good +mind to go to night school and try to pick up some of the things I +didn't get a chance to learn when I was a kid." + +Nance scoffed the idea; school was almost invisible to her from the giddy +height of sixteen. "Let's go on a bat," she urged. "Let's go out and see +something." + +So on the four following Sundays Dan took her to see the library, the +reservoir, the city hall, and the jail. His ideas of recreation had not +been cultivated. + +The time in the week to which she always looked forward was Saturday +afternoon. Then they got out early, and if the weather was fine, they +would stop in Post-Office Square and, sitting on one of the iron benches, +watch the passing throng. There was something thrilling in the jostling +crowds, and the electric signs flashing out one by one down the long gay +thoroughfare. + +Post-Office Square, at the end of the day, was always littered with +papers and trash. In its center was a battered, weather kiosk, and facing +it, was a huge electric advertisement which indulged in the glittering +generality, that "You get what you pay for." + +It was not a place to inspire romance, yet every Saturday its benches +were crowded with boys and girls who had no place to visit except on +the street. + +Through the long spring dusks, with their tender skies and silver stars, +Nance and Dan kept company, unconcerned with the past or the future, +wholly content with the May-time of the present. At a word or touch from +Dan, Nance's inflammable nature would have taken fire but Dan, under Mrs. +Purdy's influence, was passing through an acute stage of religious +conversion, and all desires of the flesh were sternly repressed by that +new creed to which he was making such heroic efforts to conform. With the +zeal of a new convert, he considered it his duty to guard his small +companion against all love-making, including his own. + +Nance at an early age had developed a protective code that even without +Dan's forbidding looks and constant surveillance might have served its +purpose. Despite the high spirits and free speech that brought her so +many admiring glances from the boys in the factory, it was soon +understood that the "Molloy kid" was not to be trifled with. + +"Say, little Sister, I like your looks," Bean had said to her one morning +when they were alone in the hall. "It's more than I do yours," Nance had +answered coolly, with a critical glance at his pimply nose. + +As summer came on, the work, which at first was so difficult, gradually +became automatic, and while her shoulders always ached, and her feet were +always tired, she ceased for the most part to think of them. It was the +confinement that told upon her, and when the long bright days came, and +she thought of Forest Home and its woods and streams, her restlessness +increased. The stifling finishing room, the endless complaints of the +girls, and the everlasting crunching of glass under foot were at times +almost unendurable. + +One day when the blue of the sky could not be dimmed even by factory +smoke, and the air was full of enticement, Nance slipped out at the noon +hour, and, watching her chance, darted across the factory yard out +through the stables, to the road beyond. A decrepit old elm-tree, which +had evidently made heroic effort to keep tryst with the spring, was the +one touch of green in an otherwise barren landscape. Scrambling up the +bank, Nance flung herself on the ground beneath its branches, and between +the bites of a dry sandwich, proceeded to give vent to some of her +surplus vitality. + +"Arra, come in, Barney McKane, out of the rain," she sang at the top of +her voice. + + "And sit down until the moon comes out again, + Sure a cup of tay I'll brew, just enough for me and you, + We'll snuggle up together, and we'll talk about the weather, + Do you hear? Barney dear, there's a queer + Sort of feelin' round me heart, that gives me pain, + And I think the likes o' me could learn to like the likes o' ye, + Arra, come in, Barney McKane, out of the rain!" + +So absorbed was she in trying operatic effects that she did not notice +an approaching automobile until it came to a stop in the road below. + +"Hi there, Sembrich!" commanded a fresh young voice, the owner of which +emphasized his salute with his horn, "are you one of the factory kids?" + +Nance rose to a sitting posture. + +"What's it to you?" she asked, instantly on the defensive. + +"I want to know if Mr. Clarke's come in. Have you seen him?" + +"No, indeed," said Nance, to whom Mr. Clarke was as vague as the Deity; +then she added good-naturedly, "I'll go find out if you want me to." + +The young man shut off his engine and, transferring two struggling +pigeons from his left hand to his right, dismounted. + +"Never mind," he said. "I'll go myself. Road's too rotten to take the +machine in." Then he hesitated, "I say, will you hold these confounded +birds 'til I come back? Won't be gone a minute. Just want to speak to the +governor." + +Nance scrambled down the bank and accepted the fluttering charges, then +watched with liveliest interest the buoyant figure in the light suit go +swinging up the road. There was something tantalizingly familiar in his +quick, imperious manner and his brown, irresponsible eyes. In her first +confusion of mind she thought he must be the prince come to life out of +Mr. Demry's old fairy tale. Then she caught her breath. + +"I believe it's that Clarke boy!" she thought, with rising excitement, "I +wonder if he'd remember the fight? I wonder if he'd remember me?" + +She went over to the automobile and ran her fingers over the silver +initials on the door. + +"M.D.C," she repeated. "It _is_ him! It is!" + +In the excitement of her discovery she relaxed her grasp on the pigeons, +and one of them escaped. In vain she whistled and coaxed; it hopped about +in the tree overhead and then soared away to larger freedom. + +Nance was aghast at the catastrophe. She did not wait for the owner's +return, but rushed headlong down the road to meet him. + +"I let one of 'em go!" she cried in consternation, as he vaulted the +fence and came toward her. "I wouldn't 'a' done it for anything in the +world. But I'll pay you for it, a little each week. Honest I will!" + +The handsome boyish face above her clouded instantly. + +"You let it go?" he repeated furiously. "You little fool you! How did +you do it?" + +Nance looked at him for a moment; then she deliberately lifted the other +pigeon as high as she could reach and opened her hand. + +"Like that!" she cried. + +Mac Clarke watched his second bird wheel into space; then his amazed +glance dropped to the slim figure of the young girl in her short +gingham dress, with the sunlight shining on her hair and on her bright, +defiant eyes. + +"You've got your nerve!" he said with a short laugh; then he climbed into +his car and, with several backward glances of mingled anger and +amusement, drove away. + +Nance related the incident with great gusto to Dan that night on +the way home. + +"He never recognized me, but I knew him right off. Same old Smart Aleck, +calling people names." + +"I was up in the office when he come in," said Dan. "He'd been held up +for speeding and wanted his father to pay his fine."' + +"Did he do it?" + +"Of course. Mac always gets what he wants. He told Bean he wasn't going +to stay at that school in Virginia if he had to make 'em expel him. Sure +enough they did. Wouldn't I like to have his chance though!" + +"I don't blame him for not wanting to go to school," said Nance. Then she +added absently, "Say, he's got to be a awful swell-looker, hasn't he?" + +That night, for the first time, she objected to stopping in +Post-Office Square. + +"It ain't any fun to hang around there," she said impatiently. "I'm sick +of doing tame things all the time." + +The next time Nance saw Mac Clarke was toward the close of the summer. +Through the long sweltering hours of an interminable August morning she +had filed and chipped bottles with an accuracy and speed that no longer +gave cause for criticism. The months of confinement were beginning to +tell upon her; her bright color was gone, and she no longer had the +energy at the noon hour to go down the road to the elm-tree. She wanted +above all things to stretch out at full length and rest her back and +relax all those tense muscles that were so reluctantly learning to hold +one position for hours at a time. + +At the noon hour she had the unexpected diversion of a visit from Birdie +Smelts. Birdie had achieved her cherished ambition of going on the stage, +and was now a chorus girl in the "Rag Time Follies." Meager news of her +had reached the alley from time to time, but nobody was prepared for the +very pretty and sophisticated young person who condescended to accept +board and lodging from her humble parents during the interval between her +engagements. Nance was genuinely glad to see her and especially gratified +by the impression her white coat-suit and black picture hat made on the +finishing room. + +"It must be grand to be on the stage," said Gert enviously. + +"Well, it's living," said Birdie, airily. "That's more than you can +claim for this rotten grind." + +She put a high-heeled, white-shod foot on the window ledge to adjust its +bow, and every eye in the room followed the process. + +"I bet I make more money in a week," she continued dramatically, "than +you all make in a month. And look at your hands! Why, they couldn't pay +me enough to have my hands scarred up like that!" + +"It ain't my hands that's worryin' me," said another girl. "It's my feet. +Say, the destruction on your shoes is somethin' fierce! You orter see +this here room some nights at closin' time; it's that thick with glass +you don't know where to step." + +"I'd know," said Birdie. "I'd step down and out, and don't you +forget it." + +Nance had been following the conversation in troubled silence. + +"I don't mind the work so awful much," she said restlessly. "What gets me +is never having any fun. I haven't danced a step since I left Forest +Home, Birdie." + +"You'd get your fill of it if you was with me," Birdie said importantly. +"Seven nights a week and two matinées." + +"'Twouldn't be any too much for me," said Nance. "I could dance in +my sleep." + +Birdie was sitting in the window now, ostensibly examining her full red +lips in a pocket-mirror, but in reality watching the factory yard below. + +"There goes your whistle!" she said, getting up suddenly. "Say, Nance, +can't you scare up an excuse to hook off this afternoon? I'll take you to +a show if you will!" + +Nance's pulses leapt at the thought, but she shook her head and went +reluctantly back to her bench. For the next ten minutes her fingers +lagged at their task, and she grew more and more discontented. All the +youth in her clamored suddenly for freedom. She was tired of being the +slave of a whistle, a cog in a machine. With a sudden rash impulse she +threw down her tools and, slipping her hat from its peg, went in swift +pursuit of Birdie. + +At the foot of the narrow stairs she came to a sudden halt. Outside the +door, in the niche made by the gas-pipe and the adjoining wall, stood Mac +Clarke and Birdie. He had his arms about her, and there was a look in his +face that Nance had never seen in a man's face before. Of course it was +meant for the insolent eyes under the picture hat, but instead it fell on +Nance standing in the doorway. For a full minute his ardent gaze held her +captive; then he dropped his arms in sudden embarrassment, and she melted +out of the doorway and fled noiselessly up the stairway. + +On the upper landing she suffered a head-on collision with the foreman, +who demanded in no gentle tones what in the devil she was doing out there +with her hat on at that hour. + +"None of your business," said Nance, recklessly. + +Bean looked at her flashing eyes and flushed face, and laughed. She +was the youngest girl in the factory and the only one who was not +afraid of him. + +"See here," he said, "I am going to kiss you or fire you. Which'll +you have?" + +Nance dodged his outstretched hand and reached the top step. + +"You won't do neither!" she cried fiercely. "You can't fire me, because I +fired myself ten minutes ago, and I wouldn't kiss you to stay in heaven, +let alone a damned old bottle factory!" + +It was the Nance of the slums who spoke--the Nance whose small bare fists +had fought the world too long for the knuckles to be tender. She had +drifted a long way from the carefully acquired refinements of Forest +Home, but its influence, like a dragging anchor, still sought to hold her +against the oncoming gales of life. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +IDLENESS + + +When one has a famishing thirst for happiness, one is apt to gulp down +diversions wherever they are offered. The necessity of draining the +dregs of life before the wine is savored does not cultivate a +discriminating taste. Nance saw in Birdie Smelts her one chance of +escape from the deadly monotony of life, and she seized it with both +hands. Birdie might not be approved of her seniors, but she was a +disturbingly important person to her juniors. To them it seemed nothing +short of genius for a girl, born as they were in the sordid environs of +Calvary Alley, to side-step school and factory and soar away into the +paradise of stage-land. When such an authority gives counsel, it is not +to be ignored. Birdie's advice had been to quit the factory, and Nance +had taken the plunge without any idea of what she was going to put in +its place. + +For some reason best known to herself, she never mentioned that episode +in the factory yard to either Birdie or Dan Lewis. There were many things +about Birdie that she did not like, and she knew only too well what Miss +Stanley would have said. But then Miss Stanley wouldn't have approved of +Mr. Demry and his dope, or Mrs. Snawdor and her beer, or Mag Gist, with +her loud voice and coarse jokes. When one lives in Calvary Alley, one has +to compromise; it is seldom the best or the next best one can afford, +even in friends. + +When Mrs. Snawdor heard that Nance had quit work, she was furious. Who +was Nance Molloy, she wanted to know, to go and stick up her nose at a +glass factory? There wasn't a bloomin' thing the matter with Clarke's. +_She'd_ begun in a factory an' look at her! What was Nance a-goin' to do? +Run the streets with Birdie Smelts? It was bad enough, God knew, to have +Snawdor settin' around like a tombstone, an' Fidy a-havin' a fit if you +so much as looked at her, without havin' Nance eatin' 'em out of house +an' home an' not bringin' in a copper cent. If she stayed at home, she'd +have to do the work; that was all there was to it! + +"Anybody'd think jobs happened around as regerlar as the rent man," she +ended bitterly. "You'll see the day when you're glad enough to go back to +the factory." + +Before the month was over, Nance began to wonder if Mrs. Snawdor was +right. With unabating zeal she tramped the streets, answering +advertisements, applying at stores, visiting agencies. But despite the +fact that she unblushingly recommended herself in the highest terms, +nobody seemed to trust so young and inexperienced an applicant. + +Meanwhile Birdie Smelts's thrilling prospect of joining her company at +an early date threw other people's sordid possibilities into the shade. +Every night she practised gymnastics and dance steps, and there being +no room in the Smelts' flat, she got into the habit of coming up to +Nance's room. + +One of the conditions upon which Nance had been permitted to return to +Calvary Alley, was that she should not sleep in the same bed with Fidy +Yager, a condition which enraged Mrs. Snawdor more than all the rest. + +"Annybody'd think Fidy's fits was ketchin'," she complained indignantly +to Uncle Jed. + +"That there front room of mine ain't doin' anybody no good," suggested +Uncle Jed. "We might let Nance have that." + +So to Nance's great joy she was given a big room all to herself. The slat +bed, the iron wash-stand, the broken-legged chair, and the wavy mirror +were the only articles that Mrs. Snawdor was willing to part with, but +Uncle Jed donated a battered stove, which despite its rust-eaten top and +sagging door, still proclaimed itself a "Little Jewel". + +No bride, adorning her first abode, ever arranged her possessions with +more enthusiasm than did Nance. She scrubbed the rough floor, washed the +windows, and polished the "Little Jewel" until it shone. The first money +she could save out of her factory earnings had gone to settle that +four-year-old debt to Mr. Lavinski for the white slippers; the next went +for bedclothes and cheese-cloth window curtains. Her ambition was no +longer for the chintz hangings and gold-framed fruit pieces of Mrs. +Purdy's cottage, but looked instead toward the immaculate and austere +bedroom of Miss Stanley, with its "Melodonna" over the bed and a box of +blooming plants on the window-sill. + +Such an ideal of classic simplicity was foredoomed to failure. Mrs. +Snawdor, like nature, abhorred a vacuum. An additional room to her was a +sluice in the dyke, and before long discarded pots and pans, disabled +furniture, the children's dilapidated toys, and, finally, the children +themselves were allowed to overflow into Nance's room. In vain Nance got +up at daybreak to make things tidy before going to work. At night when +she returned, the washing would be hung in her room to dry, or the twins +would be playing circus in the middle of her cherished bed. + +"It's lots harder when you know how things ought to be, than when you +just go on living in the mess, and don't know the difference," she +complained bitterly to Birdie. + +"I've had my fill of it," said Birdie, "I kiss my hand to the alley for +good this time. What do you reckon the fellers would think of me if they +knew I hung out in a hole like this?" + +"Does he know?" asked Nance in an unguarded moment. + +"Who?" + +"Mac Clarke." + +Birdie shot a glance of swift suspicion at her. + +"What's he got to do with me?" she asked coldly. + +"Ain't he one of your fellers?" + +"Well, if he is, it ain't anybody's business but mine." Then evidently +repenting her harshness, she added, "I got tickets to a dance-hall +up-town to-night. I'll take you along if you want to look on. You wouldn't +catch me dancing with any of those roughnecks." + +Nance found looking on an agonizing business. Not that she wanted to +dance with the roughnecks any more than Birdie did. Their common +experience at Forest Home had given them certain standards of speech and +manner that lifted them just enough above their kind to be scornful. But +to sit against the wall watching other people dance was nothing short of +agony to one of Nance's temperament. + +"Come on and have a try with me, Birdie," she implored. "I'll pay the +dime." And Birdie, with professional disdain, condescended to circle the +room with her a few times. + +That first dance was to Nance what the taste of blood is to a young +tiger. For days after she could think of nothing else. + +"Never you mind," Birdie promised her. "When I get back on the road, I'm +going to see what I can do for you. Somebody's always falling out of the +chorus, and if you keep up this practising with me, you'll be dancing as +good as any of 'em. Ask old man Demry; he played in the orchestra last +time we was at the Gaiety." + +But when Nance threw out a few cautious remarks to Mr. Demry, she met +with prompt discouragement: + +"No, no, my dear child," he said uneasily. "You must put that idea out of +your head. The chorus is no place for a nice girl." + +"That's what Dan says about the factory, and what Mrs. Snawdor says about +housework, and what somebody says about everything I start to do. Looks +like being a nice girl don't pay!" + +Mr. Demry took her petulant little chin in his thin old hand, and turned +her face up to his. + +"Nancy," he said, "these old eyes have seen a good deal over the fiddle +strings. I would rather see you go back to the glass factory, bad as it +is, than to go into the chorus." + +"But I do dance as good as some of the girls, don't I, Mr. Demry?" she +teased, and Mr. Demry, whose pride in an old pupil was considerable, had +to acknowledge that she did. + +Uncle Jed's attitude was scarcely more encouraging. + +"No; I wouldn't be willin' to see you a playactor," he said, "walkin' +round in skin tights, with your face all painted up." + +Nance knew before asking that Dan would disapprove, but she couldn't +resist mentioning the matter to him. + +"That Birdie Smelts has been putting notions in your head," he said +sternly. "I wish you'd quit runnin' with girls older than you. Besides, +Birdie ain't your kind." + +"I'd like to know why?" Nance challenged him in instant loyalty to her +friend. "Besides, who else have I got to run with? Maybe you think it +ain't stupid drudging around home all day and never having a cent to call +my own. I want to get out and do something." + +Dan looked down at her in troubled silence. + +"Mrs. Purdy's always asking me why I don't bring you to some of the +meetings at the church. They have real nice socials." + +"I don't want to pray and sing silly old hymns!" cried Nance. "I want +to dance." + +"I don't believe in dancing," said Dan, firmly; then with a side-glance +at her unhappy face, he added, "I can't take you to the swimming school, +because they don't allow girls, but I might take you to the new +skating-rink some Saturday." + +In an instant Nance was all enthusiasm. + +"Will you, Dan? I'm just crazy about skating. We used to do it out at the +home. You ought to see Birdie and me do a Dutch roll. Say, let's take her +along. What do you say?" + +Dan was not at all in favor of it, but Nance insisted. + +"I think we ought to be nice to Birdie on account of Mr. Smelts' stiff +leg. Not that it ever did him any good when it was limber, but I always +feel mean when I see it sticking out straight when he sits down." + +This was a bit of feminine wile on Nance's part, and it had the desired +effect. Dan, always vulnerable when his sympathy was roused, reluctantly +included Birdie in the invitation. + +On the Saturday night appointed, the three of them set out for the +skating rink. Dan, with his neck rigid in a high collar and his hair +plastered close to his head, stalked somberly beside the two girls, who +walked arm in arm and giggled immoderately at each other's witticisms. + +"Wake up, Daniel!" said Birdie, giving his hat a tilt. "We engaged you +for a escort, not a pallbearer." + +The rink was in an old armory, and the musicians sat at one end of the +room on a raised platform under two drooping flags. It was dusty and +noisy, and the crowd was promiscuous, but to Nance it was Elysium. When +she and Birdie, with Dan between them, began to circle the big room to +the rhythm of music, her joy was complete. + +"Hullo! Dan Lewis is carrying two," she heard some one say as they +circled past the entrance. Glancing back, she saw it was one of the boys +from the factory. A sudden impulse seized her to stop and explain the +matter to him, but instead she followed quite a contrary purpose and +detaching herself from her companions, struck out boldly for herself. + +Before she had been on the floor ten minutes people began to watch her. +Her plain, neat dress setting off her trim figure, and her severe, black +sailor hat above the shining bands of fair hair, were in sharp contrast +to the soiled finery and draggled plumes of the other girls. But it was +not entirely her appearance that attracted attention. It was a certain +independent verve, a high-headed indifference, that made her reject even +the attentions of the rink-master, a superior person boasting a pompadour +and a turquoise ring. + +No one could have guessed that behind that nonchalant air Nance was +hiding a new and profoundly disturbing emotion. The sight of Birdie, +clinging in affected terror to Dan Lewis, filled her with rage. Couldn't +Dan see that Birdie was pretending? Didn't he know that she could skate +by herself quite as well as he could? Never once during the evening did +Dan make his escape, and never once did Nance go to his rescue. + +When they were taking off their skates to go home, Birdie +whispered to her: + +"I believe I got old slow-coach going. Watch me make him smoke up +for a treat!" + +"No, you sha'n't," Nance said. "Dan's spent enough on us for one night." + +"Another quarter won't break him," said Birdie. "I'm as dry as a piece +of chalk." + +Ten minutes later she landed the little party in a drug store and entered +into a spirited discussion with the soda-water boy as to the comparative +merits of sundry new drinks. + +"Me for a cabaret fizz," she said. "What'll you have, Nance?" + +"Nothing," said Nance, sullenly, turning and taking up her stand +at the door. + +"What do you want, Dan?" persisted Birdie, adding, with a mischievous +wink at the white-coated clerk, "Give him a ginger ale; he needs +stimulating." + +While Birdie talked for the benefit of the clerk, and Dan sat beside her, +sipping his distasteful ginger, Nance stood at the door and watched the +people pouring out of the Gaiety Theater next door. Ordinarily the +bright evening wraps, the glimpses of sparkling jewels, the gay confusion +of the scene would have excited her liveliest interest, but to-night she +was too busy hating Birdie Smelts to think of anything else. What right +had she to monopolize Dan like that and order him about and laugh at him? +What right had she to take his arm when they walked, or put her hand on +his shoulder as she was doing this minute? + +Suddenly Nance started and leaned forward. Out there in the crowded +street a tall, middle-aged man, with grizzled hair and mustache, was +somewhat imperiously making way for a pretty, delicate-looking lady +enveloped in white furs, and behind them, looking very handsome and +immaculate in his evening clothes, walked Mac Clarke. + +Nance's eager eyes followed the group to the curbing; she saw the young +man glance at her with a puzzled expression; then, as he stood aside to +allow the lady to enter the motor, he looked again. For the fraction of a +second their eyes held each other; then an expression of amused +recognition sprang into his face, and Nance met it instantly with a flash +of her white teeth. + +The next instant the limousine swallowed him; a door slammed, and the car +moved away. But Nance, utterly forgetful of her recent discomfort, still +stood in the door of the drug store, tingling with excitement as she +watched a little red light until it lost itself in the other moving +lights on the broad thoroughfare. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +MARKING TIME + + +Early in the autumn Birdie took flight from the alley, and Nance found +herself hopelessly engulfed in domestic affairs. Mr. Snawdor, who had +been doing the work during her long absence, took advantage of her return +to have malarial fever. He had been trying to have it for months, but +could never find the leisure hour in which to indulge in the preliminary +chill. Once having tasted the joys of invalidism he was loathe to forego +them, and insisted upon being regarded as a chronic convalescent. Nance +might have managed Mr. Snawdor, however, had it not been for the grave +problem of Fidy Yager. + +"Ike Lavinski says she ought to be in a hospital some place," she urged +Mrs. Snawdor. "He says she never is going to be any better. He says it's +epilepsy." + +"Wel he ain't tellin' me anything' I don't know," said Mrs. Snawdor, "but +I ain't goin' to put her away, not if she th'ows a fit a minute!" + +It was not maternal solicitude alone that prompted this declaration. The +State allowed seventy-live dollars a year to parents of epileptic +children, and Mrs. Snawdor had found Fidy a valuable asset. Just what her +being kept at home cost the other children was never reckoned. + +"Well, I'll take care of her on one condition," stipulated Nance. "You +got to keep Lobelia at school. It ain't fair for her to have to stay home +to nurse Fidy." + +"Well, if she goes to school, she's got to work at night. You was doin' +your two hours at Lavinski's long before you was her age." + +"I don't care if I was. Lobelia ain't strong like me. I tell you she +ain't goin' to do home finishing, not while I'm here." + +"Well, somebody's got to do it," said Mrs. Snawdor. "You can settle it +between you." + +Nance held out until the middle of January; then in desperation she went +back to the Lavinskis. The rooms looked just as she had left them, and +the whirring machines seemed never to have stopped. The acrid smell of +hot cloth still mingled with the odor of pickled herrings, and Mr. +Lavinski still came and went with his huge bundles of clothes. + +Nance no longer sewed on buttons. She was promoted to a place under the +swinging lamp where she was expected to make an old decrepit +sewing-machine forget its ailments and run the same race it had run in +the days of its youth. As she took her seat on the first night, she +looked up curiously. A new sound coming regularly from the inner room +made her pause. + +"Is that a type-writer?" she asked incredulously. + +Mr. Lavinski, pushing his derby from his shining brow, smiled proudly. + +"Dat's vat it is," he said. "My Ike, he's got a scholarship offen de high +school. He's vorking his vay through de medical college now. He'll be a +big doctor some day. He vill cure my Leah." + +Nance's ambition took fire at the thought of that type-writer. It +appealed to her far more than the sewing-machine. + +"Say, Ike," she said at her first opportunity, "I wish you'd teach me how +to work it." + +"What'll you give me?" asked Ike, gravely. He had grown into a tall, thin +youth, with the spectacled eyes and stooped shoulders of a student. + +"Want me to wash the dishes for your mother?" Nance suggested eagerly. "I +could do it nights before I begin sewing." + +"Very well," Ike agreed loftily. "We'll begin next Sunday morning at nine +o'clock. Mind you are on time!" + +Knowledge to Ike was sacred, and the imparting of it almost a religious +rite. He frowned down all flippancy on the part of his new pupil, and +demanded of her the same diligence and perseverance he exacted of +himself. He not only taught her to manipulate the type-writer, but put +her through an elementary course of stenography as well. + +"Certainly you can learn it," he said sternly at her first sign of +discouragement. "I got that far in my second lesson. Haven't you got +any brains?" + +Nance by this time was not at all sure she had, but she was not going to +let Ike know it. Stung by his smug superiority, she often sat up far into +the night, wrestling with the arbitrary signs until Uncle Jed, seeing her +light under the door, would pound on the wall for her to go to bed. + +She saw little of Dan Lewis these days. The weather no longer permitted +them to meet in Post-Office Square, and conditions even less inviting +kept them from trying to see each other in Snawdor's kitchen. Sometimes +she would wait at the corner for him to come home, but this had its +disadvantages, for there was always a crowd of loafers hanging about Slap +Jack's, and now that Nance was too old to stick out her tongue and call +names, she found her power of repartee seriously interfered with. + +"I ain't coming up here to meet you any more," she declared to Dan on one +of these occasions. "I don't see why we can't go to Gorman's Chili Parlor +of an evening and set down and talk to each other, right." + +"Gorman's ain't a nice place," insisted Dan. "I wish you'd come on up to +some of the church meetings with me. I could take you lots of times if +you'd go." + +But Nance refused persistently to be inveigled into the religious fold. +The very names of Epworth League, and prayer meeting made her draw a +long face. + +"You don't care whether we see each other or not!" she accused +Dan, hotly. + +"I do," he said earnestly, "but it seems like I never have time for +anything. The work at the factory gets heavier all the time. But I'm +getting on, Nance; they give me another raise last month." + +"Everybody's getting on," cried Nance bitterly, "but me! You and Ike and +Birdie! I work just as hard as you all do, and I haven't got a blooming +thing to show for it. What I make sewing pants don't pay for what I eat. +Sometimes I think I'll have to go back to the finishing room." + +"Not if I can help it!" said Dan, emphatically. "There must be decent +jobs somewhere for girls. Suppose I take you out to Mrs. Purdy's on +Sunday, and see if she knows of anything. She's all the time asking me +about you." + +The proposition met with little enthusiasm on Nance's part. It was Mrs. +Purdy who had got Dan into the church and persuaded him not to go to the +theater or learn how to dance. It was Mrs. Purdy who took him home with +her to dinner every Sunday after church and absorbed the time that used +to be hers. But the need for a job was too pressing for Nance to harbor +prejudices. Instead of sewing for the Lavinskis that night, she sewed for +herself, trying to achieve a costume from the old finery bequeathed her +by Birdie Smelts. + +You would scarcely have recognized Dan that next Sunday in his best suit, +with his hair plastered down, and a very red tie encircling a very high +collar. To be sure Dan's best was over a year old, and the brown-striped +shirt-front was not what it seemed, but his skin was clean and clear, and +there was a look in his earnest eyes that bespoke an untroubled +conscience. + +Mrs. Purdy received them in her cozy fire-lit sitting-room and made Nance +sit beside her on the sofa, while she held her hand and looked with mild +surprise at her flaring hat and cheap lace collar. + +"Dan didn't tell me," she said, "how big you had grown or--or how +pretty." + +Nance blushed and smiled and glanced consciously at Dan. She had felt +dubious about her costume, but now that she was reassured, she began to +imitate Birdie's tone and manner as she explained to Mrs. Purdy the +object of her visit. + +"Deary me!" said Mrs. Purdy, "Dan's quite right. We can't allow a nice +little girl like you to work in a glass factory! We must find some nice +genteel place for you. Let me see." + +In order to see Mrs. Purdy shut her eyes, and the next moment she opened +them and announced that she had the very thing. + +"It's Cousin Lucretia Bobinet!" she beamed. "She is looking for a +companion." + +"What's that?" asked Nance. + +"Some one to wait on her and read to her and amuse her. She's quite +advanced in years and deaf and, I'm afraid, just a little peculiar." + +"I'm awful good at taking care of sick people," said Nance complacently. + +"Cousin Lucretia isn't ill. She's the most wonderfully preserved woman +for her years. But her maid, that she's had for so long, is getting old +too. Why, Susan must be seventy. She can't see to read any more, and she +makes mistakes over cards. By the way, I wonder if you know how to play +card games." + +"Sure," said Nance. "Poker? seven-up?" + +"Isn't there another game called penuchle?" Mrs. Purdy ventured, +evidently treading unfamiliar ground. + +"Yes!" cried Nance. "That's Uncle Jed's game. We used to play it heaps +before Rosy cut up the queens for paper dolls." + +"Now isn't it too wonderful that you should happen to know that +particular game?" said Mrs. Purdy, with the gentle amazement of one who +sees the finger of Providence in everything. "Not that I approve of +playing cards, but Cousin Lucretia was always a bit worldly minded, and +playing penuchle seems to be the chief diversion of her declining years. +How old are you, my child?" + +"I'm seventeen. And I ain't a bit afraid of work, am I, Dan?" + +"I am sure you are not," said Mrs. Purdy. "Dan often tells me what a fine +girl you are. Only we wish you would come to some of our services. Dan is +getting to be one of our star members. So conscientious and regular! We +call him our model young man." + +"I expect it's time we was going," said Dan, greatly embarrassed. But +owing to the fact that he wanted very much to be a gentleman, and didn't +quite know how, he stayed on and on, until Nance informed him it was +eleven o'clock. + +At the door Mrs. Purdy gave final instructions about the new position, +adding in an undertone: + +"It might be just as well, dearie, for you to wear a plainer dress when +you apply for the place, and I believe--in fact I am quite sure--Cousin +Lucretia would rather you left off the ear-rings." + +"Ain't ear-rings stylish?" asked Nance, feeling that she had been +misinformed. + +"Not on a little companion," said Mrs. Purdy gently. + +Nance's elation over the prospect of a job was slightly dashed by +the idea of returning to the wornout childish garb in which she had +left the home. + +"Say, Dan," she said, as they made their way out of Butternut Lane, "do +you think I've changed so much--like Mrs. Purdy said?" + +"You always look just the same to me," Dan said, as he helped her on with +her coat and adjusted the collar with gentle, painstaking deference. + +She sighed. The remark to a person who ardently desired to look different +was crushing. + +"I think Mrs. Purdy's an awful old fogey!" she said petulantly by way of +venting her pique. + +Dan looked at her in surprise, and the scowl that rarely came now +darkened his face. + +"Mrs. Purdy is the best Christian that ever lived," he said shortly. + +"Well, she ain't going to be a Christian offen me!" said Nance. + +The next morning, in a clean, faded print, and a thin jacket, much too +small for her, Nance went forth to find Miss Lucretia Bobinet in Cemetery +Street. It was a staid, elderly street, full of staid, elderly houses, +and at its far end were visible the tall white shafts which gave it its +name. At the number corresponding to that on Nance's card, she rang the +bell. The door was opened by a squinting person who held one hand behind +her ear and with the other grasped the door knob as if she feared it +might be stolen. + +"Who do you want to see?" she wheezed. + +"Miss Bobinet." + +"Who?" + +"Miss Bobinet!" said Nance, lifting her voice. + +"Stop that hollering at me!" said the old woman. "Who sent you here?" + +"Mrs. Purdy." + +"What for?" + +Nance explained her mission at the top of her voice and was grudgingly +admitted into the hall. + +"You ain't going to suit her. I can tell you that," said the squint-eyed +one mournfully, "but I guess you might as well go in and wait until she +wakes up. Mind you don't bump into things." + +Nance felt her way into the room indicated and cautiously let herself +down into the nearest chair. Sitting facing her was an imposing old +lady, with eyes closed and mouth open, making the most alarming noises +in her throat. She began with a guttural inhalation that increased in +ferocity until it broke in a violent snort, then trailed away in a +prolonged and somewhat plaintive whistle. Nance watched her with +amazement. It seemed that each recurrent snort must surely send the old +wrinkled head, with its elaborately crimped gray wig, rolling away under +the stiff horse-hair sofa. + +The room was almost dark, but the light that managed to creep in showed a +gloomy black mantelpiece, with vases of immortelles, and somber walnut +chairs with crocheted tidies that made little white patches here and +there in the dusk. Everything smelled of camphor, and from one of the +corners came the slow, solemn tick of a clock. + +After Nance had recovered from her suspense about Miss Bobinet's head, +and had taken sufficient note of the vocal gymnastics to be able to +reproduce them later for the amusement of the Snawdors, she began to +experience great difficulty in keeping still. First one foot went to +sleep, then the other. The minutes stretched to an hour. She had hurried +off that morning without her breakfast, leaving everything at sixes and +sevens, and she wanted to get back and clean up before Mrs. Snawdor got +up. She stirred restlessly, and her chair creaked. + +The old lady opened one eye and regarded her suspiciously. + +"I am Nance Molloy," ventured the applicant, hopefully. "Mrs. +Purdy sent me." + +Miss Bobinet gazed at her in stony silence, then slowly closed her eye, +and took up her snore exactly where she had left it off. This took place +three times before she succeeded in getting her other eye open and +becoming aware of Nance's presence. + +"Well, well," she asked testily, in a dry cracked voice, "what are you +sitting there staring at me for?" + +Nance repeated her formula several times before she remembered that +Miss Bobinet was deaf; then she got up and shouted it close to the old +lady's ear. + +"Lida Purdy's a fool," said Miss Bobinet, crossly. "What do I want with +a chit of a girl like you?" + +"She thought I could wait on you," screamed Nance, "and read to you and +play penuchle." The only word that got past the grizzled fringe that +bordered Miss Bobinet's shriveled ear was the last one. + +"Penuchle?" she repeated. "Can you play penuchle?" + +Nance nodded. + +"Get the table," ordered the old lady, peremptorily. + +Nance tried to explain that she had not come to stay, that she would go +home, and get her things and return in the afternoon, but Miss Bobinet +would brook no delay. Without inviting Nance to remove her hat and +jacket, she ordered her to lift the shade, sit down, and deal the cards. + +They were still playing when the squinting person hobbled in with a +luncheon tray, and Miss Bobinet promptly transferred her attention from +royal marriages to oyster stew. + +"Have her come back at three," she directed Susan; then seeing Nance's +eyes rest on the well filled tray, she added impatiently, "Didn't I tell +you to stop staring? Any one would think you were watching the animals +feed in the zoo." + +Nance fled abashed. The sight of the steaming soup, the tempting bird, +and dainty salad had made her forget her manners. + +"I reckon I'm engaged," she said to Mrs. Snawdor, when she reached +home and had cut herself a slice of dry bread to eat with the +warmed-over coffee. "She never said what the pay was to be, but she +said to come back." + +"What does she look like?" asked Mrs. Snawdor, curiously. + +"A horse," said Nance. "And she's deaf as anything. If I stay with her, +she'll have to get her an ear-trumpet or a new wig before the month's +out. I swallow a curl every time I speak to her." + +"Well," said Mrs. Snawdor, "companions ain't in my line, but I got sense +enough to know that when a woman's so mean she's got to pay somebody to +keep her company, the job ain't no cinch." + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +MISS BOBINET'S + + +Nance's new duties, compared with those at the bottle factory, and the +sweat-shop seemed, at first, mere child's play. She arrived at eight +o'clock, helped Susan in the basement kitchen, until Miss Bobinet awoke, +then went aloft to officiate at the elaborate process of that lady's +toilet. For twenty years Susan had been chief priestess at this ceremony, +but her increasing deafness infuriated her mistress to such an extent +that Nance was initiated into the mysteries. The temperature of the bath, +the choice of underclothing, the method of procedure were matters of the +utmost significance, and the slightest mistake on the part of the +assistant brought about a scene. Miss Bobinet would shriek at Susan, and +Susan would shriek back; then both would indulge in scathing criticism of +the other in an undertone to Nance. + +The final rite was the most critical of all. Miss Bobinet would sit +before her dresser with a towel about her neck, and take a long breath, +holding it in her puffed-out cheeks, while rice powder was dusted over +the corrugated surface of her face. She held the theory that this opened +the pores of the skin and allowed them to absorb the powder. The sight of +the old lady puffed up like a balloon was always too much for Nance, and +when she laughed, Miss Bobinet was obliged to let her breath go in a +sharp reprimand, and the performance had to start all over again. + +"You laugh too much anyhow," she complained irritably. + +When the toilet and breakfast were over, there followed two whole hours +of pinochle. Nance came to regard the queen of spades and the jack of +diamonds with personal animosity. Whatever possible interest she might +have taken was destroyed by the fact that Miss Bobinet insisted upon +winning two out of every three games. It soon became evident that while +she would not cheat on her own behalf, she expected her opponent to cheat +for her. So Nance dutifully slipped her trump cards back in the deck and +forgot to declare while she idly watched the flash of diamonds on the +wrinkled yellow hands, and longed for the clock to strike the next hour. + +At lunch she sat in the kitchen opposite Susan and listened to a recital +of that melancholy person's woes. Susan and her mistress, being mutually +dependent, had endured each other's exclusive society for close upon +twenty years. The result was that each found the other the most +stimulating of all subjects of conversation. When Nance was not listening +to tirades against Susan up-stairs, she was listening to bitter +complaints against Miss Bobinet down-stairs. + +In the afternoon she was expected to read at the top of her voice from +"The Church Guide," until Miss Bobinet got sleepy; then it was her duty +to sit motionless in the stuffy, camphor-laden room, listening to an +endless succession of vocal gymnastics until what time the old lady saw +fit to wake up. + +If Nance had been a provident young person, she might have improved those +idle hours during that interminable winter by continuing her study of +stenography. But, instead, she crouched on the floor by the window, +holding her active young body motionless, while her thoughts like +distracted imprisoned things flew round their solid walls of facts, +frantically seeking some loophole of escape. Day after day she crouched +there, peeping out under the lowered shade with hungry eyes. The dreary +street below offered no diversion; sometimes a funeral procession dragged +its way past, but for the most part there was nothing to see save an +occasional delivery wagon or a staid pedestrian. + +She was at that critical time of transition between the romance of +childhood, when she had become vaguely aware of the desire of the spirit, +and the romance of youth, when she was to know to the full the desires +of the flesh. It was a period of sudden, intense moods, followed by +spells of languor. Something new and strange and incommunicable was +fermenting within her, and nothing was being done to direct those +mysterious forces. She was affectionate, with no outlet for her +affection; romantic, with nothing for romance to feed upon. + +The one resource lay in the bookcase that rose above the old-fashioned +secretary in Miss Bobinet's front hall. She had discovered it on the day +of her arrival and, choosing a volume at random, had become so engrossed +in the doings of one of Ouida's heroes, that she had failed to hear Miss +Bobinet's call. From that time on she was forbidden to take any books +away from the bookcase, an order which she got around by standing beside +it and eagerly devouring bits at a time. + +The monotony of the days she might have endured if there had been any +relief at the close of them. But when she returned home there was always +endless work to be done. Her four years' absence at Forest Home had +separated her from the young people she had known, and she had had no +time to make new friends. The young bar-keeper at Slap Jack's, who always +watched for her to pass in the morning, the good-looking delivery boy who +sometimes brought parcels to Cemetery Street, the various youths with +whom she carried on casual flirtations on her way to and from work, were +her nearest approach to friends. + +Dan, to be sure, still came for her every Saturday afternoon, but +Cemetery Street was across the city from Clarke's, and their time +together was short. Nance lived for these brief interviews, and then came +away from them more restless and dissatisfied than before. Dan didn't +look or talk or act like the heroes in the novels she was reading. He +never "rained fervent kisses on her pale brow," or told her that she was +"the day-star of his secret dreams." Instead he talked of eight-hour +laws, and minimum wage, and his numerous church activities. He was +sleeping at Mrs. Purdy's now, looking after the place while she was away +with her brother, and Nance was jealous of his new interests and new +opportunities. + +As the long weeks stretched into long months, her restlessness grew into +rebellion. So this was the kind of job, she told herself bitterly, that +nice girls were supposed to hold. This was what Miss Stanley and Mrs. +Purdy and Mr. Demry approved. But they were old. They had forgotten. Dan +Lewis wasn't old. Why couldn't he understand? What right had he to insist +upon her sticking it out when he knew how lonesome and unhappy she was? +Dan didn't care, that was the trouble; he thought more of his old church +and the factory than he thought of her. + +She remembered, with sudden understanding, what red-haired Gert had said +in the finishing room; some people weren't content with a good job; they +had to have a good time with it. She told herself that she was one of +these; she wanted to be good and do what was expected of her; she wanted +fervently to please Dan Lewis, but she couldn't go on like this, she +couldn't, she couldn't! + +And yet she did. With a certain dogged commonsense, she stayed at her +post, suppressing herself in a thousand ways, stifling her laughter, +smothering the song on her lips, trying to make her prancing feet keep +pace with the feeble steps of age. She lived through each day on the +meager hope that something would happen at the end of it, that elusive +"something" that always waits around the corner for youth, with adventure +in one hand and happiness in the other and limitless promise in its +shining eyes. + +Almost a year crawled by before her hope was realized. Then one Tuesday +morning as she was coming to work, she spied a bill poster announcing +the appearance of the "Rag-Time Follies." Rows upon rows of saucy girls +in crimson tights and gauzy wings smiled down upon her, smiled and +seemed to beckon. + +Since Birdie's departure from the alley, eighteen months ago, Nance had +heard no word of her. Long ago she had given up the hope of escape in +that direction. But the knowledge that she was in the city and the +possibility of seeing her, wakened all manner of vague hopes and exciting +possibilities. + +Whatever happened Nance must see the play! She must be on hand to-morrow +night when the curtain went up; perhaps she could wait outside for +Birdie, and speak to her after the performance! + +If only Dan would take her, and they could sit together and share the +fun! But the very thought of Dan in connection with those frisky girls +made her smile. No; if she went, she would have to go alone. + +The all-important question now was how to get the ticket. Miss Bobinet +could never be induced to advance a penny on the week's wages, and Susan, +while ready to accept financial favors, was adamant when it came to +extending them. + +By six o'clock Nance had exhausted every resource but one. On her way +home she visited a small shop which was all too familiar to the residents +of Calvary Alley. When she emerged, the beloved locket, which usually +dangled on the velvet ribbon around her neck, was no longer there, but +tied in the corner of her handkerchief was a much desired silver coin. + +In high spirits she rushed home only to be confronted on the threshold by +a serious domestic complication. Mrs. Snawdor, with her hat on, was +standing by the bed in the dark inside room that used to be Nance's, +futilely applying a mustard plaster to whatever portion of Fidy's +anatomy happened to be exposed. + +"How long has she been like this?" cried Nance, flinging her jacket off +and putting the tea kettle on the stove. + +"Lord knows," said Mrs. Snawdor in a tone that implied a conspiracy on +the part of poor Fidy and her Maker to interfere with her plans. "When I +come in ten minutes ago, she was tryin' to eat the sheet." + +"Didn't you give her the medicine the doctor left last time?" + +"There ain't a drop left. Mr. Snawdor took every bit of it." + +"Where's the bottle? We must get it filled." + +"What's the use? It ain't no good. I was handlin' Fidy's fits before that +there young dispensary doctor was out of knee pants. Besides I ain't got +fifty cents in the house." + +Nance stood for a moment irresolute. She looked at the writhing figure on +the bed; then she snatched up her hat and jacket. + +"Quick! Where's the bottle?" she cried. "I got the money." + +But after the medicine had been bought, and Fidy had grown quiet under +its influence, Nance went across the hall to her own cold, barren room +and flung herself across her narrow bed. The last chance of seeing the +play had vanished. The only light of hope that had shone on her horizon +for months had gone out. + +When she got up, cold and miserable, and lighted the gas, she saw on +the floor, where it had evidently been slipped under the door, a +mysterious pink envelope. Tearing it open, she found, written in a +large, loose scrawl: + +"Dear Nance. We have just struck town. Reckon you thought I was a +quitter, but I ain't. You be at the Gaiety to-morrow morning at nine A.M. +Maybe I can land you something. Don't say a word to anybody about it, and +make yourself look as pretty as you can, and don't be late. Don't tell my +folks I'm here. I got a room down-town. + +"Bye bye, +"B.S." + +Nance's breath caught in her throat. The bubble was so radiant, so +fragile, so unbelievable, that she was afraid to stir for fear of +breaking it. She waited until she heard Mrs. Snawdor's heavy feet +descending the stairs, and then she crept across the hall and sat on the +side of Fidy's bed, waiting to give her the next dose of medicine. Her +eyes were fixed on the bare lathes over the headboard where she had once +knocked the plaster off tacking up a tomato-can label. But she did not +see the hole or the wall. Calvary Alley and Cemetery Street had ceased to +exist for her. She was already transported to a region of warmth and +gaiety and song. All that was ugly and old and sordid lay behind her, +and she told herself, with a little sob of joy, that at last the +beautiful something for which she had waited so long was about to happen. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +BEHIND THE TWINKLING LIGHTS + + +The gaiety, with its flamboyant entrance, round which the lights flared +enticingly at night, had always seemed to Nance an earthly paradise into +which the financially blessed alone were privileged to enter. At the +"Star" there were acrobats and funny Jews with big noses and Irishmen who +were always falling down; but the Gaiety was different. Twice Nance had +passed that fiery portal, and she knew that once inside, you drifted into +states of beatitude, which eternity itself was too short to enjoy. The +world ceased to exist for you, until a curtain, as relentless as fate, +descended, and you reached blindly for your hat and stumbled down from +the gallery to the balcony, and from the balcony to the lobby, and thence +out into the garish world, dazed, bewildered, unreconciled to reality, +and not knowing which way to turn to go home. + +But to-day as she passed the main entrance and made her way through a +side-passage to the stage-door, she tingled with a keener thrill than she +had ever felt before. + +"Is Miss Smelts here?" she asked a man who was going in as she did. + +"Smelts?" he repeated. "What does she do?" + +"She dances." + +He shook his head. + +"Nobody here by that name," he said, and hurried on. + +Nance stood aside and waited, with a terrible sinking of the heart. She +waited a half hour, then an hour, while people came and went. Just as she +was about to give up in despair, she saw a tall, handsome girl hurry up +the steps and come toward her. She had to look twice before she could +make sure that the imposing figure was Birdie. + +"Hello, kid," was Birdie's casual greeting. "I forgot all about you. Just +as cute looking as ever, eh! Where did you get that hat?" + +"Ten-cent store," said Nance, triumphantly. + +"Can you beat that?" said Birdie. "You always did have a style about you. +But your hair's fixed wrong. Come on down to the dressing-room while I +change. I'll do it over before you see Reeser." + +Nance followed her across a barn of a place where men in shirt-sleeves +were dragging scenes this way and that. + +"Mind the steps; they are awful!" warned Birdie, as they descended into a +gas-lit region partitioned off into long, low dressing-rooms. + +"Here's where I hang out. Sit down and let me dude you up a bit. You +always did wear your hair too plain. I'll fix it so's it will make little +Peroxide Pierson green with envy." + +Nance sat before the mirror and watched Birdie's white fingers roll and +twist her shining hair into the elaborate style approved at the moment. + +"Gee! it looks like a horse-collar!" she said, laughing at her +reflection. "What you going to do to me next?" + +"Well, I haven't got much to do on," said Birdie, "but you just wait till +I get you over to my room! I could fit you out perfect if you were just a +couple of sizes bigger." + +She was putting on a pair of bloomers herself as she spoke, and slipping +her feet into her dancing slippers, and Nance watched every movement with +admiring eyes. + +"Come on now," Birdie said hurriedly. "We got to catch Reeser before +rehearsal. He's the main guy in this company. What Reeser says goes." + +At the head of the steps they encountered a gaunt, raw-boned man, with an +angular, expressive face, and an apple in his long neck that would have +embarrassed Adam himself. + +"Well! Well!" he shouted at them, impatiently, "come on or else go back! +Don't stand there in the way." + +"Mr. Reeser, please, just a minute," called Birdie, "It's a new girl +wants to get in the chorus." + +The stage-manager paused and looked her over with a critical eye. + +"Can she sing?" + +"No," said Nance, "but I can dance. Want to see me?" + +"Well, I think I can live a few minutes without it," said Reeser dryly. +"Ever been on before?" + +"No; but everybody's got to start some time." Then she added with a +smile, "I wish you'd give me a chance." + +"She's a awful cute little dancer," Birdie recommended. "She knows all +the steps in the Red-Bird chorus. I taught her when I was here before. +If you'd say a word to Mr. Pulatki he might try her out at rehearsal +this morning." + +Nance held her breath while Reeser's quizzical eyes continued to +study her. + +"All right!" he said suddenly. "She's pretty young, but we'll see what +she can do. Now clear the way. Lower that drop a little, boys. Hurry up +with the second set." + +The girls scurried away to the wings where they found a narrow space in +which Nance was put through the half-forgotten steps. + +"It's all in the team work," Birdie explained. "You do exactly what I do, +and don't let old Spagetti rattle you. He goes crazy at every rehearsal. +Keep time and grin. That's all there is to it" + +"I can do it!" cried Nance radiantly. "It's easy as breathing!" + +But it proved more difficult than she thought, when in a pair of property +bloomers she found herself one of a party of girls advancing, retreating, +and wheeling at the arbitrary command of an excitable little man in his +shirt-sleeves, who hammered out the time on a rattling piano. + +Pulatki was a nervous Italian with long black hair and a drooping black +mustache, both of which suffered harsh treatment in moments of dramatic +frenzy. His business in life was to make forty lively, mischievous girls +move and sing as one. The sin of sins to him, in a chorus girl, was +individuality. + +"You! new girl!" he screamed the moment he spied Nance, "you are out +of ze line. Hold your shoulders stiff, so! Ah, _Dio!_ Can you not move +wiz ze rest?" + +The girls started a stately number, diagonal from down-stage left toward +upper center. + +"Hold ze pose!" shouted the director. Then he scrambled up on the stage +and seized Nance roughly by the arm. "You are too quick!" he shouted. +"You are too restless. We do not want that you do a solo! Can you not +keep your person still?" + +And to Nance's untold chagrin she found that she could not. The moment +the music started, it seemed to get into her tripping feet, her swinging +arms, her nodding head; and every extra step and unnecessary gesture that +she made evoked a storm from the director. + +Just when his irritation was at his height, Reeser joined him from +the wings. + +"Here's a howdy-do!" he exclaimed. "Flossy Pierson's sprained her ankle." + +"Ze leetle bear?" shrieked Pulatki; then he clutched his hair in both +hands and raved maledictions on the absent Flossy. + +"See here," said Reeser, "this is no time for fireworks. Who in the devil +is to take her place?" + +"Zere is none," wailed Pulatki. "She make her own part. I cannot +teach it." + +"It's not the part that bothers me," said Reeser. "It's the costume. +We've got to take whoever will fit it. Who's the smallest girl in +the chorus?" + +The eyes of the two men swept the double column of girls until they +rested on the one head that, despite its high coiffure, failed to achieve +the average height. + +"Come here!" called Reeser to Nance. + +"But, no!" protested the director, throwing up his hands. "She is +impossible. A cork on ze water! A leaf in ze wind! I cannot teach her. I +vill not try!" + +"It's too late to get anybody else for to-night," said Reeser, +impatiently. "Let her walk through the part, and we'll see what can be +done in the morning." Then seeing Nance's indignant eyes on the director, +he added with a comical twist of his big mouth, "Want to be a bear?" + +"Sure!" said Nance, with spirit, "if the Dago can't teach me to dance, +maybe he can teach me to growl." + +The joke was lost upon the director, but it put Reeser into such a good +humor that he sent her down to the dressing-room to try on the costume. +Ten minutes later, a little bear, awkward but ecstatic, scrambled madly +up the steps, and an excited voice called out: + +"Look, Mr. Reeser, it fits! it fits!" + +For the rest of the morning Nance practised her part, getting used to +the clumsy suit of fur, learning to adjust her mask so that she could +see through the little, round, animal eyes, and keeping the other girls +in a titter of amusement over her surreptitious imitation of the +irascible Pulatki. + +When the rehearsal was over there was much good-natured hustling and +raillery as the girls changed into their street costumes. At Birdie's +invitation Nance went with her to the rooming-house around the corner, +where you had to ring a bell to get in, a convention which in itself +spelt elegance, and up one flight, two flights, three flights of +carpeted steps to a front-hall bedroom on the fourth floor. + +"Gee, it's a mess!" said Birdie, tossing some beribboned lingerie from a +chair into an open trunk. "There's a bag of rolls around here some place. +We can make some tea over the gas." + +Nance darted from one object to another with excited cries of admiration. +Everything was sweet and wonderful and perfectly grand! Suddenly she came +to a halt before the dresser, in the center of which stood a large, +framed photograph. + +"That's my High Particular," said Birdie, with an uneasy laugh, +"recognize him?" + +"It's Mac Clarke!" exclaimed Nance, incredulously, "how on earth did you +ever get his picture?" + +"He give it to me. How do you reckon? I hadn't laid eyes on him for a +couple of years 'til I ran across him in New York about a month ago." + +"Where'd you see him?" + +"At the theater. He come in with a bunch of other college fellows and +recognized me straight off. He stayed in New York two or three days, and +maybe we didn't have a peach of a time! Only he got fired from college +for it when he went back." + +"Where's he now?" + +"Here in town. Liable to blow in any minute. If he does, you don't want +to let on you ever saw him before. He won't remember you if you don't +remind him. He never thinks of anybody twice." + +Nance, poring over every detail of the photograph, held her own counsel. +She was thinking of the night she had stood in the drug-store door, and +he had kept the motor waiting while he smiled at her over his shoulder. +That was a smile that remembered! + +"You want to be careful what you say to anybody," Birdie continued, +"there ain't any use airing it around where you live, or what you been +doing. There ain't a girl in the chorus knows my real name, or where I +come from." + +The allusion to home stirred Nance's conscience, and reminded her that +over there beyond the cathedral spire, dimly visible from the window, lay +a certain little alley which still had claims upon her. + +"I ain't said a thing to 'em at home about this," she said. "Suppose they +don't let me do it?" + +"Let nothing!" said Birdie. "Write a note to Mrs. Snawdor, and tell her +you are spending the night down-town with me. You'll know by morning +whether Reeser is going to take you on or not. If he does, you just want +to announce the fact that you are going, and go." + +Nance looked at her with kindling eyes. This high-handed method appealed +to her. After all wasn't she past eighteen? Birdie hadn't been that old +when she struck out for herself. + +"What about Miss Bobinet?" she asked ruefully. + +"The wiggy old party up in Cemetery Street? Let her go hang. You've +swallowed her frizzes long enough." + +Nance laughed and gave the older girl's arm a rapturous squeeze. "And you +think maybe Mr. Reeser'll take me on?" she asked for the sixteenth time. + +"Well, Flossie Pierson has been shipped home, and they've got to put +somebody in her place. It's no cinch to pick up a girl on the road, +just the right size, who can dance even as good as you can. If Reeser +engages you, it's fifteen per for the rest of the season, and a good +chance for next." + +"All right, here goes!" cried Nance, recklessly, seizing paper and pen. + +When the hard rolls and strong tea which composed their lunch had been +disposed of, Nance curled herself luxuriously on the foot of the bed and +munched chocolate creams, while Birdie, in a soiled pink kimono that +displayed her round white arms and shapely throat, lay stretched beside +her. They found a great deal to talk about, and still more to laugh +about. Nance loved to laugh; all she wanted was an excuse, and everything +was an excuse to-day; Birdie's tales of stage-door Johnnies, the recent +ire of old Spagetti, her own imitation of Miss Bobinet and the ossified +Susan. Nance loved the cozy intimacy of the little room; even the heavy +odor of perfumes and cosmetics was strange and fascinating; she thought +Birdie was the prettiest girl she had ever seen. A thrilling vista of +days like this, spent with her in strange and wonderful cities, opened +before her. + +"I'll rig you up in some of my clothes, until you get your first pay," +Birdie offered, "then we can fit you out right and proper. You got the +making of an awful pretty girl in you." + +Nance shrieked her derision. Her own charms, compared with Birdie's +generous ones, seemed absurdly meager, as she watched the older girl blow +rings from the cigarette which she held daintily between her first and +second finger. + +Nance had been initiated into smoking and chewing tobacco before she was +ten, but neither appealed to her. Watching Birdie smoke, she had a sudden +desire to try it again. + +"Give us a puff, Birdie," she said. + +Birdie tossed the box over and looked at her wrist-watch. + +"We ought to be fixing something for you to wear to-night," she +said. "Like as not Mac and Monte 'll turn up and ask us to go +somewhere for supper." + +"Who is Monte?" asked Nance with breathless interest. + +"He's a fat-headed swell Mac runs with. Spends dollars like nickels. No +rarebit and beer for him; it's champagne and caviar every time. You +cotton to him, Nance; he'll give you anything you want." + +"I don't want him to give me anything," said Nance stoutly. "Time I'm +earning fifteen dollars a week, I'll be making presents myself." + +Birdie lifted her eyebrows and sighed. + +"You funny kid!" she said, "you got a heap to learn." + +During the early part of the afternoon the girls shortened one of +Birdie's dresses and tacked in its folds to fit Nance's slender figure. +Birdie worked in fits and starts; she listened every time anything +stopped in the street below, and made many trips to the window. By and by +her easy good humor gave place to irritability. At five o'clock she put +on her hat, announcing that she had to go over to the drug store to do +some telephoning. + +"Lock the door," she counseled, "and if anybody knocks while I'm gone, +don't answer." + +Nance, left alone, sewed on for a while in a flutter of happy thoughts; +then she got up and turned her chair so she would not have to crane her +neck to see the photograph on the dresser. + +"The making of an awful pretty girl!" she whispered; then she got up and +went over to the mirror. Pulling out the hairpins that held the +elaborate puffs in place, she let her shining mass of hair about her +shoulders and studied her face intently. Her mouth, she decided, was too +big, her eyes too far apart, her neck too thin. Then she made a face at +herself and laughed: + +"Who cares?" she said. + +By and by it got too dark to sew; the match box refused to be found, and +she decided it was time to stop anyhow. She opened the window and, gaily +humming the music of the Little Bear dance, leaned across the sill, while +the cool evening air fanned her hot cheeks. + +Far away in the west, over the housetops, she could see the stately spire +of the cathedral, a brown silhouette against a pale, lemon sky. Down +below, through the dull, yellow dusk, faint lights were already defining +the crisscross of streets. The whispers of the waking city came up to +her, eager, expectant, like the subdued murmur of a vast audience just +before the curtain ascends. Then suddenly, written on the twilight in +letters of fire, came the familiar words, "You get what you pay for." + +Nance's fingers ceased to drum on the window-sill. It was the big sign +facing Post-Office Square, old Post-Office Square, with its litter of +papers, its battered weather kiosk, and the old green bench where she and +Dan had sat so many evenings on their way home from the factory. Dan! A +wave of remorse swept over her. She had forgotten him as completely as if +he had never existed. And now that she remembered what was she to do? Go +to him and make a clean breast of it? And run the risk of having him +invoke the aid of Mrs. Purdy and possibly of Miss Stanley? Not that she +was afraid of their stopping her. She repeated to herself the words of +defiance with which she would meet their objections and the scorn which +she would fling at their "nice girl jobs." No; it was Dan himself she was +afraid of. Her imagination quailed before his strong, silent face, and +his deep, hurt eyes. She had always taken Dan's part in everything, and +something told her she would take it now, even against herself. + +The only safe course was to keep away from him, until the great step was +taken, and then write him a nice long letter. The nicest she had ever +written to anybody. Dear old Dan--dear, dear old Dan. + +A long, low whistle from the sidewalk opposite made her start, and look +down. At first no one was visible; then a match was struck, flared yellow +for a second, and went out, and again that low, significant whistle. +Nance dropped on her knees beside the window and watched. A man's figure +emerged from the gloom and crossed the street. A moment later she heard +the ringing of the doorbell. Could Dan have heard of her escapade and +come after her? But nobody knew where she was; the note to Mrs. Snawdor +still lay on the corner of the dresser. + +She heard a step on the stairs, then three light taps on the door. She +scrambled to her feet before she remembered Birdie's caution, then stood +motionless, listening. + +Again the taps and, "I say, Bird!" came in a vibrant whisper from +without. + +It seemed to Nance that whoever it was must surely hear the noisy +beating of her heart. Then she heard the steps move away and she sighed +with relief. + +Birdie, coming in later, dismissed the matter with gay denial. + +"One of your pipe-dreams, Nance! It must have been one of the other +boarders, or the wash woman. Stop your mooning over there by the window +and get yourself dressed; we got just thirty-five minutes to get down to +the theater." + +Nance shook off her misgivings and rushed headlong into her adventure. It +was no time to dream of Dan and the letter she was going to write him, or +to worry about a disturbing whistle in the street, or a mysterious +whisper on the other side of the door. Wasn't it enough that she, Nance +Molloy, who only yesterday was watching funerals crawl by in Cemetery +Street, was about to dance to real music, on a real stage, before a great +audience? She had taken her first mad plunge into the seething current of +life, and in these first thrilling, absorbing moments she failed to see +the danger signals that flashed across the darkness. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +THE FIRST NIGHT + + +At a quarter-past eight in the dressing-rooms of the Gaiety, pandemonium +reigned. Red birds, fairies, gnomes, will-o'-the-wisps flitted about, +begging, borrowing, stealing articles from each other in good-humored +confusion. In and out among them darted the little bear, slapping at each +passerby with her furry paws, practising steps on her cushioned toes, and +rushing back every now and then to Birdie, who stood before a mirror in +red tights, with a towel around her neck, putting the final touches on +her make-up. + +It was hot and stuffy, and the air reeked with grease paint. There was a +perpetual chatter with occasional outbursts of laughter, followed by +peremptory commands of "Less noise down there!" In the midst of the +hub-bub a call-boy gave the signal for the opening number of the chorus; +the chatter and giggling ceased, and the bright costumes settled into a +definite line as the girls filed up the stairs. + +Nance, left alone, sat on a trunk and waited for her turn in a fever of +impatience. She caught the opening strains of the orchestra as it swung +into the favorite melody of the day; she could hear the thud of dancing +feet overhead. She was like a stoker shut up in the hold of the vessel +while a lively skirmish is in progress on deck. + +As she sat there the wardrobe woman, a matronly-looking, Irish +person, came up and ordered her peremptorily to get off the trunk. +Nance not only complied, but she offered her assistance in getting it +out of the passage. + +"May ye have some one as civil as ye are to wait on ye when ye are as old +as I am!" said the woman. "It's your first night, eh?" + +"Yep. Maybe my last for all I know. They 're trying me out." + +"Good luck to ye," said the woman. "Well I mind the night I made me +first bow." + +"You!" + +"No less. I'd a waist on me ye could span wid yer two hands. And legs! +well, it ain't fer me to be braggin', but there ain't a girl in the +chorus kin stack up alongside what I oncet was! Me an' a lad named Tim +Moriarty did a turn called 'The Wearing of the Green,'--'Ryan and +Moriarty' was the team. I kin see the names on the bill-board now! We had +'em laughin' an' cryin' at the same time, 'til their tears run into their +open mouths!" + +"Wisht I could've seen you," said Nance. "I bet it was great." + +The wardrobe woman, unused to such a sympathetic listener, would have +lingered indefinitely had not a boy handed Nance a box which absorbed all +her attention. + +"Miss Birdie La Rue," was inscribed on one side of the card that dangled +from it on a silver cord, and on the other was scribbled, "Monte and I +will wait for you after the show. Bring another girl. M.D.C." + +"And I'm the other girl!" Nance told herself rapturously. + +There was a flurry in the wings above and the chorus overflowed down +the stairs. + +"It's a capacity house," gasped Birdie, "but a regular cold-storage +plant. We never got but one round. Spagetti is having spasms." + +"What's a round?" demanded Nance, but nobody had time to enlighten her. + +It was not until the end of the second act that her name was called, and +she went scampering up the stairs as fast as her clumsy suit would +permit. The stage was set for a forest scene, with gnarled trees and +hanging vines and a transparent drop that threw a midnight blue haze over +the landscape. + +"Crawl up on the stump there!" ordered Reeser, attending to half a dozen +things at once. "Put you four paws together. Head up! Hold the pose until +the gnomes go off. When I blow the whistle, get down and dance. I'll get +the will-o'-the-wisps on as quick as I can. Clear the stage everybody! +Ready for the curtain? Let her go!" + +Nance, peering excitedly through the little round holes of her mask, saw +the big curtain slowly ascend, revealing only a dazzling row of +footlights beyond. Then gradually out of the dusk loomed the vast +auditorium with its row after row of dim white faces, reaching back and +up, up further than she dared lift her head to see. From down below +somewhere sounded the weird tinkle of elfin music, and tiptoeing out from +every tree and bush came a green-clad gnome, dancing in stealthy silence +in the sleeping forest. Quite unconsciously Nance began to keep time. It +was such glorious fun playing at being animals and fairies in the woods +at night. Without realizing what she was doing, she dropped into what she +used to call in the old sweat-shop days, "dancin' settin' down." + +A ripple of amusement passed through the audience, and she looked around +to see what the gnomes were up to, but they were going off the stage, and +the suppressed titter continued. A soft whistle sounded in the wings, and +with a furiously beating heart, she slid down from her high stump and +ambled down to the footlights. + +All might have gone well, had not a sudden shaft of white light shot +toward her from the balcony opposite, making a white spot around the +place she was standing. She got out of it only to find that it followed +her, and in the bewilderment of the discovery, she lost her head +completely. All her carefully practised steps and poses were utterly +forgotten; she could think of nothing but that pursuing light, and her +mad desire to get out of it. + +Then something the director had said at the rehearsal flashed across the +confusion. "She makes her own part," he had said of Flossy Pierson, and +Nance, with grim determination, decided to do the same. A fat man in the +left hand box had laughed out when she discovered the spotlight. She +determined to make him laugh again. Simulating the dismay that at first +was genuine, she began to play tag with the shaft of light, dodging it, +jumping over it, hiding from it behind the stump, leading it a merry +chase from corner to corner. The fat man grew hysterical. The audience +laughed at him, and then it began to laugh at Nance. She threw herself +into the frolic with the same mad abandonment with which she used to +dance to the hand-organ in front of Slap Jack's saloon. She cut as many +fantastic capers as a frisky kitten playing in the twilight; she leapt +and rolled and romped, and the spectators, quick to feel the contagion of +something new and young and joyful, woke up for the first time during the +evening, and followed her pranks with round after round of applause. + +When at last the music ceased, she scampered into the wings and sank +gasping and laughing into a chair. + +"They want you back!" cried Reeser, excitedly beckoning to her. "Go on +again. Take the call." + +"The what?" said Nance, bewildered. But before she could find out, she +was thrust forward and, not being able to see where she was going, she +tripped and fell sprawling upon the very scene of her recent triumph. + +In the confusion of the moment she instinctively snatched off her mask, +and as she did so the sea of faces merged suddenly into one. In the +orchestra below, gazing at her with dropped jaw over his arrested +fiddle-bow, was old Mr. Demry, with such a comical look of paralyzed +amazement on his face that Nance burst into laughter. + +There was something in her glowing, childish face, innocent of +make-up, and in her seeming frank enjoyment of the mishap that took +the house by storm. The man in the box applauded until his face was +purple; gloved hands in the parquet tapped approval; the balcony +stormed; the gallery whistled. + +She never knew how she got off the stage, or whether the director shouted +praise or blame as she darted through the wings. It was not until she +reached the dressing-room, and the girls crowded excitedly around her +that she knew she had scored a hit. + +She came on once more at the end of the last act in the grand ballet, +where all the dancers performed intricate manoeuvers under changing +lights. Every time the wheeling figures brought her round to the +footlights, there was a greeting from the front, and, despite warnings, +she could not suppress a responsive wag of the head or a friendly wave +of the paw. + +"She is so fresh, so fresh!" groaned Pulatki from the wings. + +"She's alive," said Reeser. "She'll never make a show girl, and she's got +no voice to speak of. But she's got a personality that climbs right over +the footlights. I'm going to engage her for the rest of the season." + +When the play was over, Nance, struggling into Birdie's complicated +finery in the dressing-room below, wondered how she could ever manage to +exist until the next performance. Her one consolation was the immediate +prospect of seeing Mac Clarke and the mysterious Monte to whom Birdie had +said she must be nice. As she pinned on a saucy fur toque in place of her +own cheap millinery, she viewed herself critically in the glass. Beside +the big show girls about her, she felt ridiculously young and slender and +insignificant. + +"I believe I'll put on some paint!" she said. + +Birdie laughed. + +"What for, Silly? Your cheeks are blazing now. You'll have time enough +to paint 'em when you've been dancing a couple of years." + +They were among the last to leave the dressing-room, and when they +reached the stage entrance, Birdie spied two figures. + +"There they are!" she whispered to Nance, "the fat one is Monte, +the other--" + +Nance had an irresistible impulse to run away. Now that the time had +come, she didn't want to meet those sophisticated young men in their long +coats and high hats. She wouldn't know how to act, what to say. But +Birdie had already joined them, and was turning to say airily: + +"Shake hands with my friend Miss Millay, Mr. Clarke--and, I say, Monte, +what's your other name?" + +The older of the young men laughed good-naturedly. + +"Monte'll do," he said. "I'm that to half the girls in town." + +Mac's bright bold eyes scanned Nance curiously. "Where have I seen you +before?" he asked instantly. + +"Don't you recognize her?" said Monte. "She's the little bear! I'd know +that smile in ten thousand!" + +Nance presented him with one on the spot, out of gratitude for the +diversion. She was already sharing Birdie's wish that no reference be +made to Calvary Alley or the factory. They had no place in this +rose-colored world. + +Monte and the two girls had descended the steps to the street when the +former looked over his shoulder. + +"Why doesn't Mac come on?" he asked. "Who is the old party he is +arguing with?" + +"Oh, Lord! It's old man Demry," exclaimed Birdie in exasperation. "He +plays in the orchestra. Full of dope half of the time. Why don't Mac come +on and leave him?" + +But the old musician was not to be left. He pushed past Mac and, +staggering down the steps, laid his hand on Nance's arm. + +"You must come home with me, Nancy," he urged unsteadily. "I want to talk +to you. Want to tell you something." + +"See here!" broke in Mac Clarke, peremptorily, "is this young lady your +daughter?" + +Mr. Demry put his hand to his dazed head and looked from one to the other +in troubled uncertainty. + +"No," he said incoherently. "I had a daughter once. But she is much older +than this child. She must be nearly forty by now, and to think I haven't +seen her face for twenty-two years. I shouldn't even know her if I should +see her. I couldn't make shipwreck of her life, you know--shipwreck of +one you love best in the world!" + +"Oh, come ahead!" called Birdie from below. "He don't know what he's +babbling about." + +But the old man's wrinkled hand still clung to Nance's arm. "Don't go +with them!" he implored. "I know. I've seen. Ten years playing for girls +to dance. Stage no place for you, Nancy. Come home with me, child. Come!" +He was trembling with earnestness and his voice quavered. + +"Let go of her arm, you old fool!" cried Mac, angrily. "It's none of your +business where she goes!" + +"Nor of yours, either!" Nance flashed back instantly. "You keep your +hands off him!" + +Then she turned to Mr. Demry and patiently tried to explain that she was +spending the night with Birdie Smelts; he remembered Birdie--used to live +across the hall from him? She was coming home in the morning. She would +explain everything to Mrs. Snawdor. She promised she would. + +Mr. Demry, partly reassured, relaxed his grasp. + +"Who is this young man, Nancy?" he asked childishly. "Tell me his name." + +"It's Mr. Mac Clarke," said Nance, despite Birdie's warning glance. + +A swift look of intelligence swept the dazed old face; then terror +gathered in his eyes. + +"Not--not--Macpherson Clarke?" he stammered; then he sat down in the +doorway. "O my God!" he sobbed, dropping his head in his hands. + +"He won't go home 'til morning!" hummed Monte, catching Birdie by the +arm and skipping down the passage. Nance stood for a moment looking +down at the maudlin old figure muttering to himself on the door-step; +then she, too, turned and followed the others out into the gay +midnight throng. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +PREPARATIONS FOR FLIGHT + + +What a radically different place the world seems when one doesn't have to +begin the day with an alarm clock! There is a hateful authority in its +brassy, peremptory summons that puts one on the defensive immediately. To +be sure, Nance dreamed she heard it the following day at noon, and sprang +up in bed with the terrifying conviction that she would be late at Miss +Bobinet's. But when she saw where she was, she gave a sigh of relief, and +snuggled down against Birdie's warm shoulder, and tried to realize what +had happened to her. + +The big theater, the rows of smiling faces, the clapping hands--surely +they must have all been a dream? And Mr. Demry? Why had he sat on the +steps and cried into a big starchy handkerchief? Oh, yes; she remembered +now, but she didn't like to remember, so she hurried on. + +There was a café, big and noisy, with little tables, and a woman who +stood on a platform, with her dress dragging off one shoulder, and sang a +beautiful song, called "I'm A-wearying for You." Mr. Monte didn't think +it was pretty; he had teased her for thinking so. But then he had teased +her for not liking the raw oysters, and for saying the champagne made her +nose go to sleep. They had all teased her and laughed at everything she +said. She didn't care; she liked it. They thought she was funny and +called her "Cubby." At least Mr. Monte did. Mr. Mac didn't call her +anything. He talked most of the time to Birdie, but his eyes were all for +_her_, with a smile that sort of remembered and sort of forgot, and-- + +"Say, Birdie!" She impulsively interrupted her own confused reflections. +"Do you think they liked me--honest?" + +"Who?" said Birdie, drowsily, "the audience?" + +"No. Those fellows last night. I haven't got any looks to brag on, and +I'm as green as a string-bean!" + +"That's what tickles 'em," said Birdie. "Besides, you can't ever tell +what makes a girl take. You got a independent way of walking and talking, +and Monte's crazy 'bout your laugh. But you're a funny kid; you beckon a +feller with one hand and slap his face with the other." + +"Not unless he gets nervy!" said Nance. + +After what euphemistically might be termed a buffet breakfast, prepared +over the gas and served on the trunk, Nance departed for Calvary Alley, +to proclaim to the family her declaration of independence. She was +prepared for a battle royal with all whom it might concern, and was +therefore greatly relieved to find only her stepmother at home. That +worthy lady surrendered before a gun was fired. + +"Ain't that Irish luck fer you?" she exclaimed, almost enviously. +"Imagine one of Yager's and Snawdor's childern gittin' on the stage! If +Bud Molloy hadn't taken to railroading he could 'a' been a end man in a +minstrel show! You got a lot of his takin' ways, Nance. It's a Lord's +pity you ain't got his looks!" + +"Oh, give me time!" said Nance, whose spirits were soaring. + +"I sort 'er thought of joining the ballet onct myself," said Mrs. +Snawdor, with a conscious smile. "It was on account of a scene-shifter I +was runnin' with along about the time I met your pa." + +"You!" exclaimed Nance. "Oh! haven't I got a picture of you dancing. Wait +'til I show you!" And ably assisted by the bolster and the bedspread, she +gave a masterly imitation of her stout stepmother that made the original +limp with laughter. Then quite as suddenly, Nance collapsed into a chair +and grew very serious. + +"Say!" she demanded earnestly, "honest to goodness now! Do you think +there's any sin in me going on the stage?" + +"Sin!" repeated Mrs. Snawdor. "Why, I think it's elegant. I was sayin' +so to Mrs. Smelts only yesterday when she was takin' on about Birdie's +treatin' her so mean an' never comin' to see her or writin' to her. +'Don't lay it on the stage,' I says to her. 'Lay it on Birdie; she always +was a stuck-up piece.'" + +Nance pondered the matter, her chin on her palm. Considering the chronic +fallibility of Mrs. Snawdor's judgment, she would have been more +comfortable if she had met with some opposition. + +"Mr. Demry thinks it's wrong," said Nance, taking upon herself the role +of counsel for the prosecution. "He took on something fierce when he saw +me last night." + +"He never knowed what he was doin'," Mrs. Snawdor said. "They tell me he +can play in the orchestry, when he's full as a nut." + +"And there's Uncle Jed," continued Nance uneasily. "What you reckon he's +going to say?" + +"You leave that to me," said Mrs. Snawdor, darkly. "Mr. Burks ain't +goin' to git a inklin' 'til you've went. There ain't nobody I respect +more on the face of the world than I do Jed Burks, but some people is +so all-fired good that livin' with 'em is like wearin' new shoes the +year round." + +"'T ain't as if I was doing anything wicked," said Nance, this time +counsel for the defense. + +"Course not," agreed Mrs. Snawdor. "How much they goin' to pay you?" + +The incredible sum was mentioned, and Mrs. Snawdor's imagination took +instant flight. + +"You'll be gittin' a autymobile at that rate. Say, if I send Lobelia +round to Cemetery Street and git yer last week's pay, can I have it?" + +Nance was counting on that small sum to finish payment on her spring +suit, but in the face of imminent affluence she could ill afford to be +niggardly. + +"I'll buy Rosy V. some shoes, an' pay somethin' on the cuckoo clock," +planned Mrs. Snawdor, "an' I've half a mind to take another policy on +William J. That boy's that venturesome it wouldn't surprise me none to +see him git kilt any old time!" + +Nance, who had failed to convince herself, either as counsel for the +defense or counsel for the prosecution, assumed the prerogative of judge +and dismissed the case. If older people had such different opinions about +right and wrong, what was the use in her bothering about it? With a shrug +of her shoulders she set to work sorting her clothes and packing the ones +she needed in a box. + +"The gingham dresses go to Fidy," she said with reckless generosity, "the +blue skirt to Lobelia, and my Madonna--" Her eyes rested wistfully on her +most cherished possession. "I think I'd like Rosy to have that when she +grows up." + +"All right," agreed Mrs. Snawdor. "There ain't no danger of anybody +takin' it away from her." + +Nance was kneeling on the floor, tying a cord about her box when she +heard steps on the stairs. + +"Uncle Jed?" she asked in alarm. + +"No. Just Snawdor. He won't ast no questions. He ain't got gumption +enough to be curious." + +"I hate to go sneaking off like this without telling everybody good-by," +said Nance petulantly, "Uncle Jed, and the children, and the Levinskis, +and Mr. Demry, and--and--Dan." + +"You don't want to take no risks," said Mrs. Snawdor, importantly. +"There's a fool society for everything under the sun, an' somebody'll be +tryin' to git out a injunction. I don't mind swearin' to whatever age you +got to be, but Mr. Burks is so sensitive about them things." + +"All right," said Nance, flinging on her hat and coat, "tell 'em how it +was when I'm gone. I'll be sending you money before long." + +"That's right," whispered Mrs. Snawdor, hanging over the banister as +Nance felt her way down the stairs. "You be good to yerself an' see if +you can't git me a theayter ticket for to-morrow night. Git two, an' I'll +take Mis' Gorman." + +Never had Nance tripped so lightly down those dark, narrow stairs--the +stairs her feet had helped to wear away in her endless pilgrimages with +buckets of coal and water and beer, with finished and unfinished +garments, and omnipresent Snawdor babies. She was leaving it all +forever, along with the smell of pickled herrings and cabbage and +soapsuds. But she was not going to forget the family! Already she was +planning munificent gifts from that fabulous sum that was henceforth to +be her weekly portion. + +At Mr. Demry's closed door she paused; then hastily retracing her steps, +she slipped back to her own room and got a potted geranium, bearing one +dirty-faced blossom. This she placed on the floor outside his door and +then, picking up her big box, she slipped quickly out of the house, +through the alley and into the street. + +It was late when she got back to Birdie's room, and as she entered, she +was startled by the sound of smothered sobbing. + +"Birdie!" she cried in sudden alarm, peering into the semi-darkness, +"what's the matter? Are you fired?" + +Birdie started up hastily from the bed where she had been lying face +downward, and dried her eyes. + +"No," she said crossly. "Nothing's the matter, only I got the blues." + +"The blues!" repeated Nance, incredulously. "What for?" + +"Oh, everything. I wish I was dead." + +"Birdie Smelts, what's happened to you?" demanded Nance in alarm, sitting +by her on the bed and trying to put her arm around her. + +"Whoever said anything had happened?" asked the older girl, pushing +her away. "Stop asking fool questions and get dressed. We'll be late +as it is." + +For some time they went about their preparations in silence; then Nance, +partly to relieve the tension, and partly because the matter was of vital +interest, asked: + +"Do you reckon Mr. Mac and Mr. Monte will come again to-night?" + +"You can't tell," said Birdie. "What do they care about engagements? +We are nothing but dirt to them--just dirt under their old +patent-leather pumps!" + +This bitterness on Birdie's part was so different from her customary +superiority where men were concerned, that Nance gasped. + +"If they _do_ come," continued Birdie vindictively, "you just watch me +teach Mac Clarke a thing or two. He needn't think because his folks +happen to be swells, he can treat me any old way. I'll make it hot for +him if he don't look out, you see if I don't." + +Once back at the Gaiety, Nance forgot all about Birdie and her love +affairs. Her own small triumph completely engrossed her. A morning paper +had mentioned the fantastic dance of the little bear, and had given her +three lines all to herself. Reeser was jubilant, the director was +mollified, and even the big comedian whose name blazed in letters of +fire outside, actually stopped her in the wings to congratulate her. + +"Look here, young person," he said, lifting a warning finger, "you want +to be careful how you steal my thunder. You'll be taking my job next!" + +Whereupon Nance had the audacity to cross her eyes and strike his +most famous pose before she dodged under his arm and scampered down +the stairs. + +It seemed incredible that the marvelous events of the night before could +happen all over again; but they did. She had only to imitate her own +performance to send the audience into peals of laughter. It would have +been more fun to try new tricks, but on this point Pulatki was adamant. + +"I vant zat you do ze same act, no more, no less, see?" he demanded of +her, fiercely. + +When the encore came, and at Reeser's command she snatched off her bear's +head and made her funny, awkward, little bow, she involuntarily glanced +down at the orchestra. Mr. Demry was not there, but in the parquet she +encountered a pair of importunate eyes that set her pulses bounding. They +sought her out in the subsequent chorus and followed her every movement +in the grand march that followed. + +"Mr. Mac's down there," she whispered excitedly to Birdie as they passed +in the first figure, but Birdie tossed her head and flirted persistently +with the gallery which was quite unused to such marked attention from the +principal show girl. + +There was no supper after the play that night, and it was only after much +persuasion on Mac's part, reinforced by the belated Monte, that Birdie +was induced to come out of her sulks and go for a drive around the park. + +"Me for the front seat!" cried Nance hoydenishly, and then, as Mac jumped +in beside her and took the wheel, she saw her mistake. + +"Oh! I didn't know--" she began, but Mac caught her hand and gave it a +grateful squeeze. + +"Confess you wanted to sit by me!" he whispered. + +"But I didn't!" she protested hotly. "I never was in a automobile before +and I just wanted to see how it worked!" + +She almost persuaded herself that this was true when they reached the +long stretch of parkway, and Mac let her take the wheel. It was only when +in the course of instruction Mac's hand lingered too long on hers, or his +gay, careless face leaned too close, that she had her misgivings. + +"Say! this is great!" she cried rapturously, with her feet braced and her +eyes on the long road ahead. "When it don't get the hic-cups, it beats a +horse all hollow!" + +"What do you know about horses?" teased Mac, giving unnecessary +assistance with the wheel. + +"Enough to keep my hands off the reins when another fellow's driving!" +she said coolly--a remark that moved Mac to boisterous laughter. + +When they were on the homeward way and Mac had taken the wheel again, +they found little to say to each other. Once he got her to light a +cigarette for him, and once or twice she asked a question about the +engine. In Calvary Alley one talked or one didn't as the mood suggested, +and Nance was unversed in the fine art of making conversation. It +disturbed her not a whit that she and the handsome youth beside her had +no common topic of interest. It was quite enough for her to sit there +beside him, keenly aware that his arm was pressing hers and that every +time she glanced up she found him glancing down. + +It was a night of snow and moonshine, one of those transitorial nights +when winter is going and spring is coming. Nance held her breath as the +car plunged headlong into one mass of black shadows after another only to +emerge triumphant into the white moonlight. She loved the unexpected +revelations of the headlights, which turned the dim road to silver and +lit up the dark turf at the wayside. She loved the crystal-clear moon +that was sailing off and away across those dim fields of virgin snow. And +then she was not thinking any longer, but feeling--feeling beauty and +wonder and happiness and always the blissful thrill of that arm pressed +against her own. + +Not until they were nearing the city did she remember the couple on the +back seat. + +"Wake up there!" shouted Mac, tossing his cap over his shoulder. "Gone +to sleep?" + +"I am trying to induce Miss Birdie to go to the carnival ball with me +to-morrow night," said Monte. "It's going to be no end of a lark." + +"Take me, too, Birdie, please!" burst out Nance with such childish +vehemence that they all laughed. + +"What's the matter with us all going?" cried Mac, instantly on fire at +the suggestion. "Mother's having a dinner to-morrow night, but I can join +you after the show. What do you say, Bird?" + +But Birdie was still in the sulks, and it was not until Mac had changed +places with Monte and brought the full battery of his persuasions to bear +upon her that she agreed to the plan. + +That night when the girls were tucked comfortably in bed and the lights +were out, they discussed ways and means. + +"I'm going to see if I can't borrow a couple of red-bird costumes off +Mrs. Ryan," said Birdie, whose good humor seemed completely restored. +"We'll buy a couple of masks. I don't know what Monte's letting us in +for, but I'll try anything once." + +"Will there be dancing, Birdie?" asked Nance, her eyes shining in the +dark. + +"Of course, Silly! Nothing but. Say, what was the matter with you and Mac +to-night? You didn't seem to hit it off." + +"Oh! we got along pretty good." + +"I never heard you talking much. By the way, he's going to take me +to-morrow night, and you are going with Monte." + +"Any old way suits me!" said Nance, "just so I get there." But she lay +awake for a time staring into the dark, thinking things over. + +"Does he always call you 'Bird'?" she asked after a long silence. + +"Who, Mac? Yes. Why?" + +"Oh! Nothing," said Nance. + +The next day being Saturday, there were two performances, beside the +packing necessary for an early departure on the morrow. But +notwithstanding the full day ahead of her, Birdie spent the morning in +bed, languidly directing Nance, who emptied the wardrobe and bureau +drawers and sorted and folded the soiled finery. Toward noon she got up +and, petulantly declaring that the room was suffocating, announced that +she was going out to do some shopping. + +"I'll come, too," said Nance, to whom the purchasing of wearing apparel +was a new and exciting experience. + +"No; you finish up here," said Birdie. "I'll be back soon." + +Nance went to the window and watched for her to come out in the street +below. She was beginning to be worried about Birdie. What made her so +restless and discontented? Why wouldn't she go to see her mother? Why was +she so cross with Mac Clarke when he was with her and so miserable when +he was away? While she pondered it over, she saw Birdie cross the street +and stand irresolute for a moment, before she turned her back on the +shopping district and hastened off to the east where the tall pipes of +the factories stood like exclamation points along the sky-line. + +Already the noon whistles were blowing, and she recognized, above the +rest, the shrill voice of Clarke's Bottle Factory. How she used to +listen for that whistle, especially on Saturdays. Why, _this_ was +Saturday! In the exciting rush of events she had forgotten completely +that Dan would be waiting for her at five o'clock at the foot of +Cemetery Street. Never once in the months she had been at Miss Bobinet's +had he failed to be there on Saturday afternoon. If only she could send +him some word, make some excuse! But it was not easy to deceive Dan, and +she knew he would never rest until he got at the truth of the matter. +No; she had better take Mrs. Snawdor's advice and run no risks. And yet +that thought of Dan waiting patiently at the corner tormented her as +she finished the packing. + +When the time arrived to report at the theater, Birdie had not returned, +so Nance rushed off alone at the last minute. It was not until the first +chorus was about to be called that the principal show girl, flushed and +tired, flung herself into the dressing-room and made a lightning change +in time to take her place at the head of the line. + +There was a rehearsal between the afternoon and evening performances, and +the girls had little time for confidences. + +"Don't ask me any questions!" said Birdie crossly, as she sat before her +dressing-table, wearily washing off the make-up of the afternoon in order +to put on the make-up of the evening. "I'm so dog tired I'd lots rather +be going to bed than to that carnival thing!" + +"Don't you back out!" warned Nance, to whom it was ridiculous that any +one should be tired under such exhilarating circumstances. + +"Oh, I'll go," said Birdie, "if it's just for the sake of getting +something decent to eat. I'm sick of dancing on crackers and ice-water." + +That night Nance, for the first time, was reconciled to the final +curtain. The weather was threatening and the audience was small, but that +was not what took the keen edge off the performance. It was the absence +in the parquet of a certain pair of pursuing eyes that made all the +difference. Moreover, the prospect of the carnival ball made even the +footlights pale by comparison. + +The wardrobe woman, after much coaxing and bribing, had been induced +to lend the girls two of the property costumes, and Nance, with the +help of several giggling assistants, was being initiated into the +mysteries of the red-bird costume. When she had donned the crimson +tights, and high-heeled crimson boots, and the short-spangled slip +with its black gauze wings, she gave a half-abashed glance at herself +in the long mirror. + +"I can't do it, Birdie!" she cried, "I feel like a fool. You be a red +bird, and let me be a bear!" + +"Don't we all do it every night?" asked Birdie. "When we've got on our +masks, nobody 'll know us. We'll just be a couple of 'Rag-Time Follies' +taking a night off." + +"Don't she look cute with her cap on?" cried one of the girls. "I'd give +my head to be going!" + +Nance put on a borrowed rain-coat which was to serve as evening wrap as +well and, with a kiss all around and many parting gibes, ran up the steps +in Birdie's wake. + +The court outside the stage entrance was a bobbing mass of umbrellas. +Groups of girls, pulling their wraps on as they came, tripped noisily +down the steps, greeting waiting cavaliers, or hurrying off alone in +various directions. + +"That's Mac's horn," said Birdie, "a long toot and two short ones. I'd +know it in Halifax!" + +At the curbing the usual altercation arose between Mac and Birdie as to +how they should sit. The latter refused to sit on the front seat for fear +of getting wet, and Mac refused to let Monte drive. + +"Oh, I don't mind getting wet!" cried Nance with a fine show of +indifference. "That's what a rain-coat's for." + +When Mac had dexterously backed his machine out of its close quarters, +and was threading his way with reckless skill through the crowded +streets, he said softly, without turning his head: + +"I think I rather like you, Nance Molloy!" + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +WILD OATS + + +The tenth annual carnival ball, under the auspices of a too-well-known +political organization, was at its midnight worst. It was one of those +conglomerate gatherings, made up of the loose ends of the city--ward +politicians, girls from the department stores, Bohemians with an unsated +thirst for diversion, reporters, ostensibly looking for copy, women just +over the line of respectability, sometimes on one side, sometimes on the +other, and the inevitable sprinkling of well-born youths who regard such +occasions as golden opportunities for seeing that mysterious phantom +termed "life." + +It was all cheap and incredibly tawdry, from the festoons of paper roses +on the walls to the flash of paste jewels in make-believe crowns. The big +hall, with its stage flanked by gilded boxes, was crowded with a shifting +throng of maskers in costumes of flaunting discord. Above the noisy +laughter and popping of corks, rose the blaring strains of a brass band. +Through the odor of flowers came the strong scent of musk, which, in +turn, was routed by the fumes of beer and tobacco which were already +making the air heavy. + +On the edge of all this stood Nance Molloy, in that magic hour of her +girlhood when the bud was ready to burst into the full-blown blossom. Her +slender figure on tiptoe with excitement, her eyes star-like behind her +mask, she stood poised, waiting with all her unslaked thirst for +pleasure, to make her plunge into the gay, dancing throng. She no longer +cared if her skirts were short, and her arms and neck were bare. She no +longer thought of how she looked or how she acted. There was no Pulatki +in the wings to call her down for extra flourishes; there was no old +white face in the orchestra to disturb her conscience. Her chance for a +good time had come at last, and she was rushing to meet it with arms +outstretched. + +"They are getting ready for the grand march!" cried Monte, who, with Mac, +represented the "two _Dromios_." "We separate at the end of the hall, and +when the columns line up again, you dance with your vis-à-vis." + +"My who-tee-who?" asked Nance. + +"Vis-à-vis--fellow opposite. Come ahead!" + +Down the long hall swung the gay procession, while the floor vibrated to +the rhythm of the prancing feet. The columns marched and countermarched +and fell into two long lines facing each other. The leader of the +orchestra blew a shrill whistle, and Nance, marking time expectantly, +saw one of the _Dromios_ slip out of his place and into the one facing +her. The next moment the columns flowed together, and she found herself +in his arms, swinging in and out of the gay whirling throng with every +nerve tingling response to the summoning music. + +Suddenly a tender pressure made her glance up sharply at the white mask +of her companion. + +"Why--why, I thought it was Mr. Monte," she laughed. + +"Disappointed?" asked Mac. + +"N-no." + +"Then why are you stopping?" + +Nance could not tell him that in her world a "High Particular" was not to +be trifled with. In her vigil of the night before she had made firm +resolve to do the square thing by Birdie Smelts. + +"Where are the others?" she asked in sudden confusion. + +"In the supper room probably. Aren't you going to finish this with me?" + +"Not me. I'm going to dance with Mr. Monte." + +"Has he asked you?" + +"No; I'm going to ask him." And she darted away, leaving Mac to follow at +his leisure. + +After supper propriety, which up to now had held slack rein on the +carnival spirit, turned her loose. Masks were flung aside, hundreds of +toy balloons were set afloat and tossed from hand to hand, confetti was +showered from the balcony, boisterous song and laughter mingled with the +music. The floor resembled some gigantic kaleidoscope, one gay pattern +following another in rapid succession. And in every group the most vivid +note was struck by a flashing red bird. Even had word not gone abroad +that the girls in crimson and black were from the "Rag Time Follies", +Birdie's conspicuous charms would have created instant comment and a host +of admirers. + +Nance, with characteristic independence, soon swung out of Birdie's orbit +and made friends for herself. For her it was a night of delirium, and her +pulses hammered in rhythm to the throbbing music. In one day life had +caught her up out of an abyss of gloom and swung her to a dizzy pinnacle +of delight, where she poised in exquisite ecstasy, fearing that the next +turn of the wheel might carry her down again. Laughter had softened her +lips and hung mischievous lights in her eyes; happiness had set her +nerves tingling and set roses blooming in cheeks and lips. The smoldering +fires of self-expression, smothered so long, burst into riotous flame. +With utter abandonment she flung herself into the merriment of the +moment, romping through the dances with any one who asked her, slapping +the face of an elderly knight who went too far in his gallantries, +dancing a hornpipe with a fat clown to the accompaniment of a hundred +clapping hands. Up and down the crowded hall she raced, a hoydenish +little tom-boy, drunk with youth, with freedom, and with the pent-up +vitality of years. + +Close after her, snatching her away from the other dancers only to have +her snatched away from him in turn, was Mac Clarke, equally flushed and +excited, refusing to listen to Monte's insistent reminder that a storm +was brewing and they ought to go home. + +"Hang the storm!" cried Mac gaily. "I'm in for it with the governor, +anyhow. Let's make a night of it!" + +At the end of a dance even wilder than the rest, Nance found herself with +Mac at the entrance to one of the boxes that flanked the stage. + +"I've got you now!" he panted, catching her wrists and pulling her within +the curtained recess. "You've got to tell me why you've been running away +from me all evening." + +"I haven't," said Nance, laughing and struggling to free her hands. + +"You have, too! You've given me the slip a dozen times. Don't you know +I'm crazy about you?" + +"Much you are!" scoffed Nance. "Go tell that to Birdie." + +"I'll tell it to Birdie and every one else if you like," Mac cried. "It +was all up with me the first time I saw you." + +With his handsome, boyish face and his frilled shirt, he looked so +absurdly like the choir boy, who had once sat on the fence flinging rocks +at her, that she threw back her head and laughed. + +"You don't even know the first time you saw me," she challenged him. + +"Well, I know I've seen you somewhere before. Tell me where?" + +"Guess!" said Nance, with dancing eyes. + +"Wait! I know! It was on the street one night. You were standing in a +drug store. A red light was shining on you, and you smiled at me." + +"I smiled at you because I knew you. I'd seen you before that. Once when +you didn't want me to. In the factory yard--behind the gas-pipe--" + +"Were you the little girl that caught me kissing Bird that day?" + +"Yes! But there was another time even before that." + +He searched her face quizzically, still holding her wrists. + +Nance, no longer trying to free her hands, hummed teasingly, half under +her breath: + +"Do ye think the likes of ye +Could learn to like the likes o' me? +Arrah, come in, Barney McKane, out of the rain!" + +A puzzled look swept his face; then he cried exultantly: + +"I've got it. It was you who let my pigeons go! You little devil! I'm +going to pay you back for that!" and before she knew it, he had got both +of her hands into one of his and had caught her to him, and was kissing +her there in the shadow of the curtain, kissing her gay, defiant eyes and +her half-childish lips. + +And Nance, the independent, scoffing, high-headed Nance, who up to this +time had waged successful warfare, offensive as well as defensive, +against the invading masculine, forgot for one transcendent second +everything in the world except the touch of those ardent lips on hers and +the warm clasp of the arm about her yielding shoulders. + +In the next instant she sprang away from him, and in dire confusion fled +out of the box and down the corridor. + +At the door leading back into the ball-room a group of dancers had +gathered and were exchanging humorous remarks about a woman who was being +borne, feet foremost, into the corridor by two men in costume. + +Nance, craning her neck to see, caught a glimpse of a white face with a +sagging mouth, and staring eyes under a profusion of tumbled red hair. +With a gasp of recognition she pushed forward and impulsively seized one +of the woman's limp hands. + +"Gert!" she cried, "what's the matter? Are you hurt?" + +The monk gave a significant wink at Mac, who had joined them, and the +by-standers laughed. + +"She's drunk!" said Mac, abruptly, pulling Nance away. "Where did you +ever know that woman?" + +"Why, it's Gert, you know, at the factory! She worked at the bench +next to mine!" + +Her eyes followed the departing group somberly, and she lingered despite +Mac's persuasion. + +Poor Gert! Was this what she meant by a good time? To be limp and silly +like that, with her dress slipping off her shoulder and people staring at +her and laughing at her? + +"I don't want to dance!" she said impatiently, shaking off Mac's hand. + +The steaming hall, reeking with tobacco smoke and stale beer, the men and +women with painted faces and blackened eyes leering and languishing at +each other, the snatches of suggestive song and jest, filled her with +sudden disgust. + +"I'm going home," she announced with determination. + +"But, Nance!" pleaded Mac, "you can't go until we've had our dance." + +But for Nance the spell was broken, and her one idea was to get away. +When she found Birdie she became more insistent than ever. + +"Why not see it out?" urged Mac. "I don't want to go home." + +"You are as hoarse as a frog now," said Monte. + +"Glad of it! Let's me out of singing in the choir to-morrow--I mean +to-day! Who wants another drink?" + +Birdie did, and another ten minutes was lost while they went around to +the refreshment room. + +The storm was at its height when at four o'clock they started on that mad +drive home. The shrieking wind, the wet, slippery streets, the lightning +flashing against the blurred wind-shield, the crashes of thunder that +drowned all other sounds, were sufficient to try the nerves of the +steadiest driver. But Mac sped his car through it with reckless +disregard, singing, despite his hoarseness, with Birdie and Monte, and +shouting laughing defiance as the lightning played. + +Nance sat very straight beside him with her eyes on the road ahead. She +hated Birdie for having taken enough wine to make her silly like that; +she hated the boys for laughing at her. She saw nothing funny in the fact +that somebody had lost the latch-key and that they could only get in by +raising the landlady, who was sharp of tongue and free with her comments. + +"You girls better come on over to my rooms," urged Monte. "We'll cook +your breakfast on the chafing-dish, won't we, Mac?" + +"Me for the couch!" said Birdie. "I'm cross-eyed, I'm so sleepy." + +"I'm not going," said Nance, shortly. + +"Don't be a short-sport, Nance," urged Birdie, peevishly. "It's as good +as morning now. We can loaf around Monte's for a couple of hours and then +go over to my room and change our clothes in time to get to the station +by seven. Less time we have to answer questions, better it'll be for us." + +"I tell you I ain't going!" protested Nance, hotly. + +"Yes, you are!" whispered Mac softly. "You are going to be a good little +girl and do whatever I want you to." + +Nance grew strangely silent under his compelling look, and under the +touch of his hand as it sought hers in the darkness. Why wasn't she angry +with Mr. Mac as she was with the others? Why did she want so much to do +whatever he asked her to? After all perhaps there was no harm in going to +Mr. Monte's for a little while, perhaps-- + +She drew in her breath suddenly and shivered. For the first time in her +life she was afraid, not of the storm, or the consequences of her +escapade, but of herself. She was afraid of the quick, sweet shiver that +ran over her whenever Mac touched her, of the strange weakness that came +over her even now, as his hands claimed hers. + +"Say, I'm going to get out," she said suddenly. + +"Stop the car! Don't you hear me? I want to get out!" + +"Nonsense!" said Mac, "you don't even know where you are! You are coming +with us to Monte's; that's what you are going to do." + +But Nance knew more than he thought. In the last flash of lightning she +had seen, back of them on the left, startlingly white for the second +against the blackness, the spire of Calvary Cathedral. She knew that they +were rapidly approaching the railroad crossing where Uncle Jed's signal +tower stood, beyond which lay a region totally unfamiliar to her. + +She waited tensely until Mac had sped the car across the gleaming tracks, +just escaping the descending gates. Then she bent forward and seized the +emergency brake. The car came to a halt with a terrific jerk, plunging +them all forward, and under cover of the confusion Nance leapt out and, +darting under the lowered gate, dashed across the tracks. The next moment +a long freight train passed between her and the automobile, and when it +was done with its noisy shunting backward and forward, and had gone +ahead, the street was empty. + +Watching her chance between the lightning flashes, she darted from cover +to cover. Once beyond the signal tower she would be safe from Uncle Jed's +righteous eye, and able to dash down a short cut she knew that led into +the street back of the warehouse and thence into Calvary Alley. If she +could get to her old room for the next two hours, she could change her +clothes and be off again before any one knew of her night's adventure. + +Just as she reached the corner, a flash more blinding than the rest +ripped the heavens. A line of fire raced toward her along the steel +rails, then leapt in a ball to the big bell at the top of the signal +tower. There was a deafening crash; all the electric lights went out, and +Nance found herself cowering against the fence, apparently the one living +object in that wild, wet, storm-racked night. + +The only lights to be seen were the small red lamps suspended on the +slanting gates. Nance waited for them to lower when the freight train +that had backed into the yards five minutes before, rushed out again. But +the lamps did not move. + +She crept back across the tracks, watching with fascinated horror the +dark windows of the signal tower. Why didn't Uncle Jed light his lantern? +Why hadn't he lowered the gates? All her fear of discovery was suddenly +swallowed up in a greater fear. + +At the foot of the crude wooden stairway she no longer hesitated. + +"Uncle Jed!" she shouted against the wind, "Uncle Jed, are you there?" + +There was no answer. + +She climbed the steep steps and tried the door, which yielded grudgingly +to her pressure. It was only when she put her shoulder to it and pushed +with all her strength that she made an opening wide enough to squeeze +through. There on the floor, lying just as he had fallen, was the old +gate-tender, his unseeing eyes staring up into the semi-darkness. + +Nance looked at him in terror, then at the signal board and the levers +that controlled the gates. A terrible trembling seized her, and she +covered her eyes with her hands. + +"God tell me quick, what must I do?" she demanded, and the next instant, +as if in answer to her prayer, she heard herself gasp, "Dan!" as she +fumbled wildly for the telephone. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +DAN + + +The shrill whistle that at noon had obtruded its discord into Nance +Molloy's thoughts had a very different effect on Dan Lewis, washing his +hands under the hydrant in the factory yard. _He_ had not forgotten that +it was Saturday. Neither had Growler, who stood watching him with an +oblique look in his old eye that said as plain as words that he knew what +momentous business was brewing at five o'clock. + +It was not only Saturday for Dan, but the most important Saturday that +ever figured on the calendar. In his heroic efforts to conform to Mrs. +Purdy's standard of perfection he had studied the advice to young men in +the "Sunday Echo." There he learned that no gentleman would think of +mentioning love to a young lady until he was in a position to marry her. +To-day's pay envelope would hold the exact amount to bring his bank +account up to the three imposing figures that he had decided on as the +minimum sum to be put away. + +As he was drying his hands on his handkerchief and whistling softly +under his breath, he was summoned to the office. + +For the past year he had been a self-constituted buffer between Mr. +Clarke and the men in the furnace-room, and he wondered anxiously what +new complication had arisen. + +"He's got an awful grouch on," warned the stenographer as Dan passed +through the outer office. + +Mr. Clarke was sitting at his desk, tapping his foot impatiently. + +"Well, Lewis," he said, "you've taken your time! Sit down. I want to +talk to you." + +Dan dropped into the chair opposite and waited. + +"Is it true that you have been doing most of the new foreman's work for +the past month?" + +"Well, I've helped him some. You see, being here so long, I know the +ropes a bit better than he does." + +"That's not the point. I ought to have known sooner that he could not +handle the job. I fired him this morning, and we've got to make some +temporary arrangement until a new man is installed." + +Dan's face grew grave. + +"We can manage everything but the finishing room. Some of the girls have +been threatening to quit." + +"What's the grievance now?" + +"Same thing--ventilation. Two more girls fainted there this morning. The +air is something terrible." + +"What do they think I am running?" demanded Mr. Clarke, angrily, "a +health resort?" + +"No, sir," said Dan, "a death trap." + +Mr. Clarke set his jaw and glared at Dan, but he said nothing. The +doctor's recent verdict on the death of a certain one-eyed girl, named +Mag Gist, may have had something to do with his silence. + +"How many girls are in that room now?" he asked after a long pause. + +Dan gave the number, together with several other disturbing facts +concerning the sanitary arrangements. + +"Well, what's to be done?" demanded Mr. Clarke, fiercely. "We can't +get out the work with fewer girls, and there is no way of enlarging +that room." + +"Yes, sir, there is," said Dan. "Would you mind me showing you a way?" + +"Since you are so full of advice, go ahead." + +With crude, but sure, pencil strokes, Dan got his ideas on paper. He had +done it so often for his own satisfaction that he could have made them +with his eyes shut. Ever since those early days when he had seen that +room through Nance Molloy's eyes, he had persisted in his efforts to +better it. + +Mr. Clarke, with his fingers thrust through his scanty hair, watched him +scornfully. + +"Absolutely impractical," he declared. "The only feasible plan would be +to take out the north partition and build an extension like this." + +"That couldn't be done," said Dan, "on account of the projection." + +Whereupon, such is the power of opposition, Mr. Clarke set himself to +prove that it could. For over an hour they wrangled, going into the +questions of cost, of time, of heating, of ventilation, scarcely looking +up from the plans until a figure in a checked suit flung open the door, +letting in a draught of air that scattered the papers on the desk. + +"Hello, Dad," said the new-comer, with a friendly nod to Dan, "I'm sorry +to disturb you, but I only have a minute." + +"Which I should accept gratefully, I suppose, as my share of your busy +day?" Mr. Clarke tried to look severe, but his eyes softened. + +"Well, I just got up," said Mac, with an ingratiating smile, as he +smoothed back his shining hair before the mirror in the hat-rack. + +"Running all night, and sleeping half the day!" grumbled Mr. Clarke. "By +the way, what time did you get in last night?" + +Mac made a wry face. + +"_Et tu, Brute?_" he cried gaily. "Mother's polished me off on that +score. I have not come here to discuss the waywardness of your prodigal +son. Mr. Clarke, I have come to talk high finance. I desire to +negotiate a loan." + +"As usual," growled his father. "I venture to say that Dan Lewis here, +who earns about half what you waste a year, has something put away." + +"But Dan's the original grinder. He always had an eye for business. Used +to win my nickel every Sunday when we shot craps in the alley back of the +cathedral. Say, Dan, I see you've still got that handsome thoroughbred +cur of yours! By George, that dog could use his tail for a jumping rope!" + +Dan smiled; he couldn't afford to be sensitive about Growler's beauty. + +"Is that all, Mr. Clarke?" he asked of his employer. + +"Yes. I'll see what can be done with these plans. In the meanwhile you +try to keep the girls satisfied until the new foreman comes. By the way I +expect you'd better stay on here to-night." + +Dan paused with his hand on the door-knob. "Yes, sir," he said in evident +embarrassment, "but if you don't mind--I 'd like to get off for a couple +of hours this afternoon." + +"Who's the girl, Dan?" asked Mac, but Dan did not stop to answer. + +As he hurried down the hall, a boy appeared from around the corner and +beckoned to him with a mysterious grin. + +"Somebody's waiting for you down in the yard." + +"Who is he?" + +"'T ain't a he. It's the prettiest girl you ever seen!" + +Dan, whose thoughts for weeks had been completely filled with one +feminine image, sprang to the window. But the tall, stylish person +enveloped in a white veil, who was waiting below, in no remote way +suggested Nance Molloy. + +A call from a lady was a new experience, and a lively curiosity seized +him as he descended the steps, turning down his shirt sleeves as he went. +As he stepped into the yard, the girl turned toward him with a quick, +nervous movement. + +"Hello, Daniel!" she said, her full red lips curving into a smile. "Don't +remember me, do you?" + +"Sure, I do. It's Birdie Smelts." + +"Good boy! Only now it's Birdie La Rue. That's my stage name, you know. I +blew into town Thursday with 'The Rag Time Follies.' Say, Dan, you used +to be a good friend of mine, didn't you?" + +Dan had no recollection of ever having been noticed by Birdie, except on +that one occasion when he had taken her and Nance to the skating-rink. +She was older than he by a couple of years, and infinitely wiser in the +ways of the world. But it was beyond masculine human nature not to be +flattered by her manner, and he hastened to assure her that he had been +and was her friend. + +"Well, I wonder if you don't want to do me a favor?" she coaxed. "Find +out if Mac Clarke's been here, or is going to be here. I got to see him +on particular business." + +"He's up in the office now," said Dan; then he added bluntly "Where did +you ever know Mac Clarke?" + +Birdie's large, white lids fluttered a moment. + +"I come to see him for a friend of mine," she said. + +A silence fell between them which she tried to break with a rather shame +faced explanation. + +"This girl and Mac have had a quarrel. I'm trying to patch it up. Wish +you'd get him down here a minute." + +"It would be a lot better for the girl," said Dan, slowly, "if you didn't +patch it up." + +"What do you mean?" + +Dan looked troubled. + +"Clarke's a nice fellow all right," he said, "but when it comes to +girls--" he broke off abruptly. "Do you know him?" + +"I've seen him round the theater," she said. + +"Then you ought to know what I mean." + +Birdie looked absently across the barren yard. + +"Men are all rotten," she said bitterly, then added with feminine +inconsistency, "Go on, Dan, be a darling. Fix it so I can speak to him +without the old man catching on." + +Strategic manoeuvers were not in Dan's line, and he might have refused +outright had not Birdie laid a white hand on his and lifted a pair of +effectively pleading eyes. Being unused to feminine blandishments, he +succumbed. + +Half an hour later a white veil fluttered intimately across a broad, +checked shoulder as two stealthy young people slipped under the window of +Mr. Clarke's private office and made their way to the street. + +Dan gave the incident little further thought. He went mechanically about +his work, only pausing occasionally at his high desk behind the door to +pore over a sheet of paper. Had his employer glanced casually over his +shoulder, he might have thought he was still figuring on the plans of the +new finishing room; but a second glance would have puzzled him. Instead +of one large room there were several small ones, and across the front was +a porch with wriggly lines on a trellis, minutely labeled, "honeysuckle." + +At a quarter of five Dan made as elaborate a toilet as the washroom +permitted. He consumed both time and soap on the fractious forelock, and +spent precious moments trying to induce a limp string tie to assume the +same correct set that distinguished Mac Clarke's four-in-hand. + +Once on his way, with Growler at his heels, he gave no more thought to +his looks. He walked very straight, his lips twitching now and then into +a smile, and his gaze soaring over the heads of the ordinary people whom +he passed. For twenty-one years the book of life had proved grim +reading, but to-day he had come to that magic page whereon is written in +words grown dim to the eyes of age and experience, but perennially +shining to the eyes of youth: "And then they were married and lived +happily ever after." + +"Take care there! Look where you are going!" exclaimed an indignant +pedestrian as he turned the corner into Cemetery Street. + +"Why, hello, Bean!" he said in surprise, bringing his gaze down to a +stout man on crutches. "Glad to see you out again!" + +"I ain't out," said the ex-foreman. "I'm all in. I've got rheumatism in +every corner of me. This is what your old bottle factory did for me." + +"Tough luck," said Dan sympathetically, with what attention he could +spare from a certain doorway half up the square. "First time you've +been out?" + +"No; I've been to the park once or twice. Last night I went to a show." +He was about to limp on when he paused. "By the way, Lewis, I saw an old +friend of yours there. You remember that Molloy girl you used to run with +up at the factory?" + +Dan's mouth closed sharply. Bean's attitude toward the factory girls was +an old grievance with him and had caused words between them on more than +one occasion. + +"Well, I'll be hanged," went on Bean, undaunted, "if she ain't doing a +turn up at the Gaiety! She's a little corker all right, had the whole +house going." + +"You got another guess coming your way," said Dan, coldly, "the young +lady you're talking about's not on the stage. She's working up here in +Cemetery Street. I happen to be waiting for her now." + +Bean whistled. + +"Well, the drinks are on me. That girl at the Gaiety is a dead ringer to +her. Same classy way of handling herself, same--" Something in Dan's eyes +made him stop. "I got to be going," he said. "So long." + +Dan waited patiently for ten minutes; then he looked at his watch. What +could be keeping Nance? He whistled to Growler, who was making life +miserable for a cat in a neighboring yard, and strolled past Miss +Bobinet's door; then he returned to the corner. Bean's words had fallen +into his dream like a pebble into a tranquil pool. What business had Bean +to be remembering the way Nance walked or talked. Restlessly, Dan paced +up and down the narrow sidewalk. When he looked at his watch again, it +was five-thirty. + +Only thirty more minutes in which to transact the most important +business of his life! With a gesture of impatience he strode up to Miss +Bobinet's door and rang the bell. + +A wrinkled old woman, with one hand behind her ear, opened the door +grudgingly. + +"Nance Molloy?" she quavered in answer to his query. "What you want +with her?" + +"I'd like to speak with her a minute," said Dan. + +"Are you her brother?" + +"No." + +"Insurance man?" + +"No." + +The old woman peered at him curiously. + +"Who be you?" she asked. + +"My name's Lewis." + +"Morris?" + +"No, Lewis!" shouted Dan, with a restraining hand on Growler, who was +sniffing at the strange musty odors that issued from the half-open door. + +"Well, she ain't here," said the old woman. "Took herself off last +Wednesday, without a word to anybody." + +"Last Wednesday!" said Dan, incredulously. "Didn't she send any word?" + +"Sent for her money and said she wouldn't be back. You dog, you!" This to +Growler who had insinuated his head inside the door with the fixed +determination to run down that queer smell if possible. + +Dan went slowly down the steps, and Growler, either offended at having +had the door slammed in his face, or else sensing, dog-fashion, the +sudden change in his master's mood, trotted soberly at his heels. There +was no time now to go to Calvary Alley to find out what the trouble was. +Nothing to do but go back to the factory and worry through the night, +with all sorts of disturbing thoughts swarming in his brain. Nance had +been all right the Saturday before, a little restless and discontented +perhaps, but scarcely more so than usual. He remembered how he had +counseled patience, and how hard it had been for him to keep from telling +her then and there what was in his heart. He began to wonder uneasily if +he had done right in keeping all his plans and dreams to himself. Perhaps +if he had taken her into his confidence and told her what he was striving +and saving for, she would have understood better and been happy in +waiting and working with him. For the first time he began to entertain +dark doubts concerning those columns of advice to young men in the +"Sunday Echo." + +Once back at the factory, he plunged into his work with characteristic +thoroughness. It was strangely hot and still, and somewhere out on the +horizon was a grumbling discontent. It was raining hard at eleven o'clock +when he boarded a car for Butternut Lane, and by the time he reached the +Purdy's corner, the lightning was playing sharply in the northwest. + +He let himself in the empty house and felt his way up to his room, but he +did not go to bed. Instead, he sat at his table and with stiff awkward +fingers wrote letter after letter, each of which he tossed impatiently +into the waste-basket. They were all to Nance, and they all tried in vain +to express the pent-up emotion that had filled his heart for years. +Somewhere down-stairs a clock struck one, but he kept doggedly at his +task. Four o'clock found him still seated at the table, but his tired +head had dropped on his folded arms, and he slept. + +Outside the wind rose higher and higher, and the lightning split the +heavens in blinding flashes. Suddenly a deafening crash of thunder shook +the house, and Dan started to his feet. A moment later the telephone +bell rang. + +Half dazed, he stumbled down-stairs and took up the receiver. + +"Hello, hello! Yes, this is Dan Lewis. What? I can't hear you. Who?" Then +his back stiffened suddenly, and his voice grew tense, "Nance! Where are +you? Is he dead? Who's with you? Don't be scared, I'm coming!" and, +leaving the receiver dangling on the cord, he made one leap for the door. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +IN THE SIGNAL TOWER + + +It seemed an eternity to Dan, speeding hatless, coatless, breathless +through the storm, before he spied the red lights on the lowered gates at +the crossing. Dashing to the signal tower, he took the steps two at a +time. The small room was almost dark, but he could see Nance kneeling on +the floor beside the big gatekeeper. + +"Dan! Is it you?" she cried. "He ain't dead yet. I can feel him +breathing. If the doctor would only come!" + +"Who'd you call?" + +"The first one in the book, Dr. Adair." + +"But he's the big doctor up at the hospital; he won't come." + +"He will too! I told him he had to. And the gates, I got 'em down. Don't +stop to feel his heart, Dan. Call the doctor again!" + +"The first thing to do is to get a light," said Dan. "Ain't there a +lantern or something?" + +"Strike matches, like I did. They are on the window-sill--only +hurry--Dan, hurry!" + +Dan went about his task in his own way, taking time to find an oil lamp +on the shelf behind the door and deliberately lighting it before he took +his seat at the telephone. As he waited for the connection, his puzzled, +troubled eyes dwelt not on Uncle Jed, but on the crimson boots and +fantastic cap of Uncle Jed's companion. + +"Dr. Adair is on the way," he said quietly, when he hung up the receiver, +"and a man is coming from the yards to look after the gates. Is he still +breathing?" + +"Only when I make him!" said Nance, pressing the lungs of the injured +man. "There, Uncle Jed," she coaxed, "take another deep breath, just one +time. Go on! Do it for Nance. One time more! That's right! Once more!" + +But Uncle Jed was evidently very tired of trying to accommodate. The +gasps came at irregular intervals. + +"How long have you been doing this?" asked Dan, kneeling beside her. + +"I don't know. Ever since I came." + +"How did you happen to come?" + +"I saw the lightning strike the bell. Oh, Dan! It was awful, the noise +and the flash! Seemed like I 'd never get up the steps. And at first I +thought he was dead and--" + +"But who was with you? Where were you going?" interrupted Dan in +bewilderment. + +"I was passing--I was going home--I--" Her excited voice broke in a sob, +and she impatiently jerked the sleeve of her rain-coat across her eyes. + +In a moment Dan was all tenderness. For the first time he put his arm +around her and awkwardly patted her shoulder. + +"There," he said reassuringly, "don't try to tell me now. See! He's +breathing more regular! I expect the doctor'll pull him through." + +Nance's hands, relieved of the immediate necessity for action, were +clasping and unclasping nervously. + +"Dan," she burst out, "I got to tell you something! Birdie Smelts has got +me a place in the 'Follies.' I been on a couple of nights. I'm going away +with 'em in the morning." + +Dan looked at her as if he thought the events of the wild night had +deprived her of reason. + +"You!" he said, "going on the stage?" Then as he took it in, he drew away +from her suddenly as if he had received a lash across the face. "And you +were going off without talking it over or telling me or anything?" + +"I was going to write you, Dan. It was all so sudden." + +His eyes swept her bedraggled figure with stern disapproval. + +"Were you coming from the theater at this time in the morning?" + +Uncle Jed moaned slightly, and they both bent over him in instant +solicitude. But there was nothing to do, but wait until the doctor +should come. + +"Where had you been in those crazy clothes?" persisted Dan. + +"I'd been to the carnival ball with Birdie Smelts," Nance blurted out. "I +didn't know it was going to be like that, but I might 'a' gone anyway. I +don't know. Oh, Dan, I was sick to death of being stuck away in that dark +hole, waiting for something to turn up. I told you how it was, but you +couldn't see it. I was bound to have a good time if I died for it!" + +She dropped her head on her knees and sobbed unrestrainedly, while the +wind shrieked around the shanty, and the rain dashed against the +gradually lightening window-pane. After a while she flung back her head +defiantly. + +"_Stop_ looking at me like that, Dan. Lots of girls go on the stage and +stay good." + +"I wasn't thinking about the stage," said Dan. "I was thinking about +to-night. Who took you girls to that place?" + +Nance dried her tears. + +"I can't tell you that," she said uneasily. + +"Why not?" + +"It wouldn't be fair." + +Dan felt the hot blood surge to his head, and the muscles of his hands +tighten involuntarily. He forgot Uncle Jed; he forgot to listen for the +doctor, or to worry about traffic that would soon be held up in the +street below. The only man in the world for him at that moment was the +scoundrel who had dared to take his little Nance into that infamous +dance hall. + +Nance caught his arm and, with a quick gesture, dropped her head on it. + +"Dan," she pleaded, "don't be mad at me. I promise you I won't go to any +more places like that. I knew it wasn't right all along. But I got to go +on with the 'Follies,' It's the chance I been waiting for all these +months. Maybe it's the only one that'll ever come to me! You ain't going +to stand in my way, are you, Dan?" + +"Tell me who was with you to-night!" + +"No!" she whispered. "I can't. You mustn't ask me. I promise you I won't +do it again. I don't want to go away leaving you thinking bad of me." + +His clenched hands suddenly began to tremble so violently that he had to +clasp them tight to keep her from noticing. + +"I better get used to--to not thinking 'bout you at all," he said, +looking at her with the stern eyes of a young ascetic. + +For a time they knelt there side by side, and neither spoke. For over a +year Dan had been like one standing still on the banks of a muddy stream, +his eyes blinded to all but the shining goal opposite, while Nance was +like one who plunges headlong into the current, often losing sight of the +goal altogether, but now and again catching glimpses of it that sent her +stumbling, fighting, falling forward. + +At the sound of voices below they both scrambled to their feet. Dr. +Adair and the man from the yards came hurriedly up the steps together, +the former drawing off his gloves as he came. He was a compact, elderly +man whose keen observant eyes swept the room and its occupants at a +glance. He listened to Nance's broken recital of what had happened, cut +her short when he had obtained the main facts, and proceeded to examine +the patient. + +"The worst injury is evidently to the right arm and shoulder; you'll have +to help me get his shirt off. No--not that way!" + +Dan's hands, so eager to serve, so awkward in the service, fumbled over +their task, eliciting a groan from the unconscious man. + +"Let me do it!" cried Nance, springing forward. "You hold him up, Dan, I +can get it off." + +"It's a nasty job," warned the doctor, with a mistrustful glance at the +youthful, tear-stained face. "It may make you sick." + +"What if it does?" demanded Nance, impatiently. + +It was a long and distressing proceeding, and Dan tried not to look at +her as she bent in absorbed detachment over her work. But her steady +finger-touch, and her anticipation of the doctor's needs amazed him. It +recalled the day at the factory, when she, little more than a child +herself, had dressed the wounds of the carrying-in boy. Once she grew +suddenly white and had to hurry to the door and let the wind blow in her +face. He started up to follow her, but changed his mind. Instead he +protested with unnecessary vehemence against her resuming the work, but +she would not heed him. + +"That's right!" said the doctor, approvingly. "Stick it out this time and +next time it will not make you sick. Our next move is to get him home. +Where does he live?" + +"In Calvary Alley," said Dan, "back of the cathedral." + +"Very good," said the doctor, "I'll run him around there in my machine as +soon as that last hypodermic takes effect. Any family?" + +Dan shook his head. + +"He has, too!" cried Nance. "We're his family!" + +The doctor shot an amused glance at her over his glasses; then he laid a +kindly hand on her shoulder. + +"I congratulate him on this part of it. You make a first class +little nurse." + +"Is he going to get well?" Nance demanded. + +"It is too early to say, my dear. We will hope for the best. I will have +one of the doctors come out from the hospital every day to see him, but +everything will depend on the nursing." + +Nance cast a despairing look at the bandaged figure on the floor; then +she shot a look of entreaty at Dan. One showed as little response to her +appeal as the other. For a moment she stood irresolute; then she slipped +out of the room and closed the door behind her. + +For a moment Dan did not miss her. When he did, he left Dr. Adair in the +middle of a sentence and went plunging down the steps in hot pursuit. + +"Nance!" he called, splashing through the mud. "Aren't you going to +say good-by?" + +She wheeled on him furiously, a wild, dishevelled, little figure, strung +to the breaking point: + +"No!" she cried, "I am not going to say good-by! Do you suppose I could +go away with you acting like that? And who is there to nurse Uncle Jed, +I'd like to know, but me? But I want to tell you right now, Dan Lewis, if +ever another chance comes to get out of that alley, I'm going to take +it, and there can't anybody in the world stop me!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +CALVARY CATHEDRAL + + +"I don't take no stock in heaven havin' streets of gold," said Mrs. +Snawdor. "It'll be just my luck to have to polish 'em. You needn't tell +me if there's all that finery in heaven, they won't keep special angels +to do the dirty work!" + +She and Mrs. Smelts were scrubbing down the stairs of Number One, not as +a matter of cleanliness, but for the social benefit to be derived +therefrom. It was a Sunday morning institution with them, and served +quite the same purpose that church-going does for certain ladies in a +more exalted sphere. + +"I hope the Bible's true," said Mrs. Smelts, with a sigh. "Where it says +there ain't no marryin' nor givin' in marriage." + +"Oh, husbands ain't so worse if you pick 'em right," Mrs. Snawdor said +with the conviction of experience. "As fer me, I ain't hesitatin' to say +I like the second-handed ones best." + +"I suppose they are better broke in. But no other woman but me would 'a' +looked at Mr. Smelts." + +"You can't tell," said Mrs. Snawdor. "Think of me takin' Snawdor after +bein' used to Yager an' Molloy! Why, if you'll believe me, Mr. Burks, +lyin' there in bed fer four months now, takes more of a hand in helpin' +with the childern than Snawdor, who's up an' around." + +"Kin he handle hisself any better? Mr. Burks, I mean." + +"Improvin' right along. Nance has got him to workin' on a patent now. +It's got somethin' to do with a engine switch. Wisht you could see the +railroad yards she's rigged up on his bed. The childern are plumb crazy +'bout it." + +"Nance is gittin' awful pretty," Mrs. Smelts said. "I kinder 'lowed Dan +Lewis an' her'd be makin' a match before this." + +Mrs. Snawdor gathered her skirts higher about her ankles and transferred +her base of operations to a lower step. + +"You can't tell nothin' at all 'bout that girl. She was born with the bit +'tween her teeth, an' she keeps it there. No more 'n you git her goin' in +one direction than she turns up a alley on you. It's night school now. +There ain't a spare minute she ain't peckin' on that ole piece of a +type-writer Ike Lavinski loaned her." + +"She's got a awful lot of energy," sighed Mrs. Smelts. + +"Energy! Why it's somethin' fierce! She ain't content to let nothin' +stay the way it is. Wears the childern plumb out washin' 'em an' learnin' +'em lessons, an' harpin' on their manners. If you believe me, she's got +William J. that hacked he goes behind the door to blow his nose!" + +"It's a blessin' she didn't go off with them 'Follies,'" said Mrs. +Smelts. "Birdie lost her job over two months ago, an' the Lord knows what +she's livin' on. The last I heard of her she was sick an' stranded up in +Cincinnati, an' me without so much as a dollar bill to send her!" And +Mrs. Smelts sat down in a puddle of soap-suds and gave herself up to the +luxury of tears. + +At this moment a door on the third floor banged, and Nance Molloy, a +white figure against her grimy surroundings, picked her way gingerly down +the slippery steps. Her cheap, cotton skirt had exactly the proper flare, +and her tailor-made shirtwaist was worn with the proud distinction of one +who conforms in line, if not in material, to the mode of the day. + +"Ain't she the daisy?" exclaimed Mrs. Snawdor, gaily, and even Mrs. +Smelts dried her eyes, the better to appreciate Nance's gala attire. + +"We're too swell to be Methodist any longer!" went on Mrs. Snawdor, +teasingly. "We're turned 'Piscopal!" + +"You ain't ever got the nerve to be goin' over to the cathedral," Mrs. +Smelts asked incredulously. + +"Sure, why not?" said Nance, giving her hat a more sophisticated tilt. +"Salvation's as free there as it is anywhere." + +It was not salvation, however, that was concerning Nance Molloy as she +took her way jauntily out of the alley and, circling the square, joined +the throng of well-dressed men and women ascending the broad steps of the +cathedral. + +From that day when she had found herself back in the alley, like a bit of +driftwood that for a brief space is whirled out of its stagnant pool, +only to be cast back again, she had planned ceaselessly for a means of +escape. During the first terrible weeks of Uncle Jed's illness, her +thoughts flew for relief sometimes to Dan, sometimes to Mac. And Dan +answered her silent appeal in person, coming daily with his clumsy hands +full of necessities, his strong arms ready to lift, his slow speech +quickened to words of hope and cheer. Mac came only in dreams, with gay, +careless eyes and empty, useless hands, and lips that asked more than +they gave. Yet it was around Mac's shining head that the halo of romance +oftenest hovered. + +It was not until Uncle Jed grew better, and Dan's visits ceased, that +Nance realized what they had meant to her. To be sure her efforts to +restore things to their old familiar footing had been fruitless, for Dan +refused stubbornly to overlook the secret that stood between them, and +Nance, for reasons best known to herself, refused to explain matters. + +But youth reckons time by heart-throbs, and during Uncle Jed's +convalescence Nance found the clock of life running ridiculously slow. +Through Ike Lavinski, whose favor she had won by introducing him to Dr. +Adair, she learned of a night school where a business course could be +taken without expense. She lost no time in enrolling and, owing to her +thorough grounding of the year before, was soon making rapid progress. +Every night on her way to school, she walked three squares out of her way +on the chance of meeting Dan coming from the factory, and coming and +going, she watched the cathedral, wondering if Mac still sang there. + +One Sunday, toward the close of summer, she followed a daring impulse, +and went to the morning service. She sat in one of the rear pews and held +her breath as the procession of white-robed men and boys filed into the +choir. Mac Clarke was not among them, and she gave a little sigh of +disappointment, and wondered if she could slip out again. + +On second thought she decided to stay. Even in the old days when she had +stolen into the cathedral to look for nickels under the seats, she had +been acutely aware of "the pretties." But she had never attended a +service, or seen the tapers lighted, and the vast, cool building, with +its flickering lights and disturbing music, impressed her profoundly. + +Presently she began to make discoveries: the meek apologetic person +tip-toeing about lowering windows was no other than the pompous and +lordly Mason who had so often loomed over her as an avenging deity. In +the bishop, clad in stately robes, performing mysterious rites before +the altar, she recognized "the funny old guy" with the bald head, with +whom she had compared breakfast menus on a historical day at the +graded school. + +So absorbed was she in these revelations that she did not notice that she +was sitting down while everybody else was standing up, until a small +black book was thrust over her shoulder and a white-gloved finger pointed +to the top of the page. She rose hastily and tried to follow the service. +It seemed that the bishop was reading something which the people all +around her were beseeching the Lord to hear. She didn't wonder that the +Lord had to be begged to listen. She wasn't going to listen; that was one +thing certain. + +Then the organ pealed forth, and voices caught up the murmuring words and +lifted them and her with them to the great arched ceiling. As long as the +music lasted, she sat spell-bound, but when the bishop began to read +again, this time from a book resting on the out-stretched wings of a big +brass bird, her attention wandered to the great stained glass window +above the altar. The reverse side of it was as familiar to her as the +sign over Slap Jack's saloon. From the alley it presented opaque blocks +of glass above the legend that had been one of the mysteries of her +childhood. Now as she looked, the queer figures became shining angels +with lilies in their hands, and she made the amazing discovery that "Evol +si dog," seen from the inside, spelled "God is Love." + +She sat quite still, pondering the matter. The bishop and the music +and even Mac were for the time completely forgotten. Was the world +full of things like that, puzzling and confused from the outside, and +simple and easy from within? Within what? Her mind groped uncertainly +along a strange path. So God was love? Why hadn't the spectacled lady +told her so that time in the juvenile court instead of writing down +her foolish answer? But love had to do with sweethearts and dime +novels and plays on the stage. How could God be that? Maybe it meant +the kind of love Mr. Demry had for his little daughter, or the love +that Dan had for his mother, or the love she had for the Snawdor baby +that died. Maybe the love that was good was God, and the love that was +bad was the devil, maybe-- + +Her struggle with these wholly new and perplexing problems was +interrupted by the arrival of a belated worshiper, who glided into the +seat beside her and languidly knelt in prayer. Nance's attention +promptly leaped from moral philosophy to clothes. Her quick eyes made +instant appraisal of the lady's dainty costume, then rested in startled +surprise on her lowered profile. The straight delicate features, slightly +foreign, the fair hair rippling from the neck, were disconcertingly +familiar. But when Nance saw her full face, with the petulant mouth and +wrinkled brow, the impression vanished. + +After a long time the service came to an end, and just as Nance was +waiting to pass out, she heard some one say: + +"When do you expect your son home, Mrs. Clarke? We miss him in the +choir." + +And the fair-haired lady in front of her looked up and smiled, and all +her wrinkles vanished as she said: + +"We expect him home before next Sunday, if the naughty boy doesn't +disappoint us again!" + +Nance waited to hear no more, but fled into the sunlight and around the +corner, hugging her secret. She was not going to let Mr. Mac see her, she +assured herself; she was just going to see him, and hear him sing. + +When the next Sunday morning came, it found her once more hurrying up the +broad steps of the cathedral. She was just in time, for as she slipped +into a vacant pew, the notes of the organ began to swell, and from a side +door came the procession of choir boys, headed by Mac Clarke carrying a +great cross of gold. + +Nance, hiding behind the broad back of the man in front of her, watched +the procession move into the chancel, and saw the members of the choir +file into their places. She had no interest now in the bishop's robes or +the lighted tapers or cryptic inscriptions. Throughout the long service +her attention was riveted on the handsome, white-robed figure which sat +in a posture of bored resignation, wearing an expression of Christian +martyrdom. + +When the recessional sounded, she rose with the rest of the congregation, +still keeping behind the protecting back of the man in front. But when +she saw Mac lift the shining cross and come toward her down the chancel +steps at the head of the singing procession, something made her move +suddenly to the end of the pew, straight into the shaft of light that +streamed through the great west window. + +Mac, with his foot on the lowest step, paused for the fraction of a +second, and the cross that he held swayed slightly. Then he caught step +again and moved steadily forward. + +Nance hurried away before the benediction. She was never going to do it +again, she promised herself repeatedly. And yet, how wonderful it had +been! Straight over the heads of the congregation for their eyes to meet +like that, and for him to remember as she was remembering! + +For three weeks she kept her promise and resolutely stayed away from the +cathedral. One would have to be "goin' on nineteen" and live in Calvary +Alley to realize the heroic nature of her moral struggle. Victory might +have been hers in the end, had not Dan Lewis for the first time in years, +failed one Saturday to spend his half-holiday with her. He had come of +late, somber and grimly determined to give her no peace until he knew the +truth. But Dan, even in that mood, was infinitely better than no Dan at +all. When he sent her word that he was going with some of the men from +the factory up the river for a swim, she gave her shoulders a defiant +shrug, and set to work to launder her one white dress and stove-polish +her hat, with the pleasing results we have already witnessed through the +eyes of Mrs. Snawdor and Mrs. Smelts. + +There is no place where a flirtation takes quicker root or matures more +rapidly than in ecclesiastical soil. From the moment Nance entered the +cathedral on that third Sunday, she and Mac were as acutely aware of each +other's every move as if they had been alone together in the garden of +Eden. At first she tried to avert her eyes, tried not to see his +insistent efforts to attract her attention, affected not to know that he +was singing to her, and watching her with impatient delight. + +Then the surging notes of the organ died away, the bishop ascended the +pulpit, and the congregation settled down to hear the sermon. From +that time on Nance ceased to be discreet. There was glance for glance, +and smile for smile, and the innumerable wireless messages that youth +has exchanged since ardent eyes first sought each other across +forbidden spaces. + +It was not until the end of the sermon that Nance awoke to the fact that +it was high time for Cinderella to be speeding on her way. Seizing a +moment when the choir's back was turned to the congregation, she slipped +noiselessly out of the cathedral and was fleeing down the steps when she +came face to face with Monte Pearce. + +"Caught at last!" he exclaimed, planting himself firmly in her way. +"I've been playing watchdog for Mac for three Sundays. What are you +doing in town?" + +"In town?" + +"Yes; we thought you were on the road with the 'Follies.' When did you +get back?" + +"You're seeking information, Mr. Monte Carlo," said Nance, with a smile. +"Let me by. I've got to go home." + +"I'll go with you. Where do you live?" + +"Under my hat." + +"Well, I don't know a nicer place to be." Monte laughed and looked at +her and kept on laughing, until she felt herself blushing up to the +roots of her hair. + +"Honest, Mr. Monte, I got to go on," she said appealingly. "I'm in no +end of a hurry." + +"I can go as fast as you can," said Monte, his cane tapping each step as +he tripped briskly down beside her. "I've got my orders from Mac. I'm to +stay with you, if you won't stay with me. Which way?" + +In consternation for fear the congregation should be dismissed before she +could get away, and determined not to let him know where she lived, she +jumped aboard a passing car. + +"So be it!" said her plump companion, settling himself comfortably on the +back seat beside her. "Now tell your Uncle Monte all about it!" + +"There's nothing to tell!" declared Nance, with the blush coming back. +She was finding it distinctly agreeable to be out alone like this with a +grandly sophisticated young gentleman who wore a light linen suit with +shoes to match, and whose sole interest seemed to center upon her and +her affairs. + +"But you know there is!" he persisted. "What made you give us the shake +that night of the ball?" + +Nance refused to say; so he changed the subject. + +"How's Miss Birdie?" + +"Give it up. Haven't seen her since you have." + +"What? Didn't you go on with the show that next morning?" + +"No." + +"And you've been in town all summer?" + +She nodded, and her companion gave a low, incredulous whistle. + +"Well, I'll be darned!" he said. "And old Mac sending letters and +telegrams every few minutes and actually following the 'Follies' +to Boston!" + +"Birdie was with 'em up to two months ago," said Nance. + +"Mac wasn't after Birdie!" said Monte. "He hasn't had but one idea in his +cranium since that night of the carnival ball. I never saw him so crazy +about a girl as he is about you." + +"Yes, he is!" scoffed Nance, derisively, but she let Monte run on at +length, painting in burning terms the devastating extent of Mac's +passion, his despair at losing her, his delight at finding her again, and +his impatience for an interview. + +When Monte finished she looked at him sidewise out of her +half-closed eyes. + +"Tell him I've gone on a visit to my rich aunt out to the sea-shore +in Kansas." + +"Give him another show," coaxed Monte. "We were all a bit lit up that +night at the ball." + +"No, we weren't either!" Nance flashed. "I hadn't had a thing, but one +glass of beer, and you know it! I hate your old fizz-water!" + +"Well, make it up with Mac. He's going back to college next month, and +he's wild to see you." + +"Tell him I haven't got time. Tell him I'm studying instrumental." + +Nance was fencing for time. Her cool, keen indifference gave little +indication of the turmoil that was going on within. If she could manage +to see Mac without letting him know where she lived, without Dan's +finding it out-- + +The car compassed the loop and started on the return trip. + +"Where do we get off?" asked Monte. + +"I'm not getting off anywhere until after you do." + +"I've got lots of nickels." + +"I've got lots of time!" returned Nance, regardless of her former haste. + +At Cathedral Square, Monte rang the bell. + +"Have it your own way," he said good-naturedly. "But do send a +message to Mac." + +Nance let him get off the back platform; then she put her head out of +the window. + +"You tell him," she called, "that he can't kill two birds with one +stone!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + +BACK AT CLARKE'S + + +The promotion of Uncle Jed from the bed to a pair of crutches brought +about two important changes in the house of Snawdor. First, a financial +panic caused by the withdrawal of his insurance money, and, second, a +lightening of Nance's home duties that sent her once more into the world +to seek a living. + +By one of those little ironies in which life seems to delight, the only +opportunity that presented itself lay directly in the path of temptation. +A few days after her interview with Monte Pearce, Dan came to her with an +offer to do some office work at the bottle factory. The regular +stenographer was off on a vacation, and a substitute was wanted for the +month of September. + +"Why, I thought you'd be keen about it," said Dan, surprised at her +hesitation. + +"Oh! I'd like it all right, but--" + +"You needn't be afraid to tackle it," Dan urged. "Mr. Clarke's not as +fierce as he looks; he'd let you go a bit slow at first." + +"He wouldn't have to! I bet I've got as much speed now as the girl he's +had. It's not the work." + +"I know how you feel about the factory," said Dan, "and I wouldn't want +you to go back in the finishing room. The office is different. You take +my word for it; it's as nice a place as you could find." + +They were standing on the doorless threshold of Number One, under the +fan-shaped arch through which the light had failed to shine for twenty +years. From the room on the left came the squeak of Mr. Demry's fiddle +and the sound of pattering feet, synchronizing oddly with the lugubrious +hymn in which Mrs. Smelts, in the room opposite, was giving vent to her +melancholy. + +Nance, eager for her chance, yearning for financial independence, +obsessed by the desire to escape from the dirt and disorder and confusion +about her, still hesitated. + +"If you're afraid I'm going to worry you," said Dan, fumbling with his +cap, "I can keep out of your way all right." + +In an instant her impulsive hand was on his arm. + +"You shut up, Dan Lewis!" she said sharply. "What makes me want to take +the job most is our coming home together every night like we used to." + +Dan's eyes, averted until now, lifted with sudden hope. + +"But I got a good reason for not coming," she went on stubbornly. "It +hasn't got anything to do with you or the work." + +"Can't you tell me, Nance?" + +The flicker of hope died out of his face as she shook her head. He looked +down the alley for a moment; then he turned toward her with decision: + +"See here, Nance," he said earnestly, "I don't know what your reason is, +but I know that this is one chance in a hundred. I want you to take this +job. If I come by for you to-morrow morning, will you be ready?" + +Still she hesitated. + +"Let me decide it for you," he insisted, "will you, Nance?" + +She looked up into his earnest eyes, steadfast and serious as a collie's. + +"All right!" she said recklessly, "have it your own way!" + +The first day in Mr. Clarke's office was one of high tension. Added to +the trepidation of putting her newly acquired business knowledge to a +practical test, was the much more disturbing possibility that at any +moment Mac might happen upon the scene. Just what she was going to do and +say in such a contingency she did not know. Once when she heard the door +open cautiously, she was afraid to lift her eyes. When she did, surprise +took the place of fear. + +"Why, Mrs. Smelts!" she cried. "What on earth are you doing here?" + +Birdie's mother, faded and anxious, and looking unfamiliar in bonnet and +cape, was evidently embarrassed by Nance's unexpected presence. + +"He sent for me," she said, nervously, twitching at the fringe on her +cape. "I wrote to his wife, but he sent word fer me to come here an' see +him at ten o'clock. Is it ten yet?" + +"Mr. Clarke sent for _you_?" Nance began incredulously; then remembering +that a stenographer's first business is to attend to her own, she crossed +the room with quite a professional manner and tapped lightly on the door +of the inner office. + +For half an hour the usually inaccessible president of the bottle factory +and the scrub woman from Calvary Alley held mysterious conclave; then the +door opened again, and Mrs. Smelts melted into the outer passage as +silently as she had come. + +Nance, while frankly curious, had little time to indulge in idle +surmise. All her faculties were bent on mastering the big modern +type-writer that presented such different problems from the ancient +machine on which she had pounded out her lessons. She didn't like this +sensitive, temperamental affair that went off half-cocked at her +slightest touch, and did things on its own account that she was in the +habit of doing herself. + +Her first dictation left her numb with terror. She heard Mr. Clarke +repeating with lightning rapidity phrases which she scarcely +comprehended: "Enclose check for amount agreed upon." "Matter settled +once and for all." "Any further annoyance to be punished to full extent +of the law." + +"Shall I address an envelope?" she asked, glancing at the "Dear Madam" at +the top of the page. + +"No," said Mr. Clarke, sharply, "I'll attend to that." + +Other letters followed, and she was soon taking them with considerable +speed. When mistakes occurred they could usually be attributed to the +graded school which, during its brief chance at Nance, had been more +concerned in teaching her the names and the lengths of the rivers of +South America than in teaching her spelling. + +At the noon hour Mr. Clarke departed, and she stood by the window eating +her lunch and watching the men at work on the new wing. The old finishing +room was a thing of the past, and Dan's dream of a light, well-ventilated +workroom for the girls was already taking definite form. She could see +him now in the yard below, a blue-print in his hand, explaining to a +group of workmen some detail of the new building. One old glass-blower, +peering at the plan through heavy, steel-rimmed spectacles, had his arm +across Dan's shoulder. Nance smiled tenderly. Dear Dan! Everybody liked +him--even those older men from the furnace-room who had seen him promoted +over their heads. She leaned forward impulsively and called to him. + +"Danny!" she cried, "here's an apple. Catch!" + +He caught it dexterously in his left hand, gave her a casual nod, then +went gravely on with the business in hand. Nance sighed and turned away +from the window. + +In the afternoon the work went much easier. She was getting used to Mr. +Clarke's quick, nervous speech and abrupt manner. She was beginning to +think in sentences instead of words. All was going famously when a quick +step sounded in the passage without, followed by a gaily whistled tune, +and the next instant the door behind her was flung open. + +Mr. Clarke went steadily on with his dictation, but the new stenographer +ceased to follow. With bent head and lips caught between her teeth, she +made futile efforts to catch up, but she only succeeded in making +matters worse. + +"That will do for this afternoon," said Mr. Clarke, seeing her confusion. +"Make a clear copy of that last letter and put it on my desk." Then he +turned in his chair and glared over his shoulder. "Well, Mac!" he said, +"I've waited for you just one hour and thirty-five minutes." + +"Dead sorry, Dad. Didn't know it was so late," said the new-comer, +blithely. "How long before you are going home?" + +"Ten minutes. I've got to go over to the new building first. Don't go +until I return. There's something I want to see you about." + +Nance heard the door close as Mr. Clarke went out; then she waited in a +tremor, half trepidation, half glee, for Mac to recognize her. He was +moving about restlessly, first in one office, then in the other, and she +could feel his bright inquisitive eyes upon her from different angles. +But she kept her face averted, changing her position as he changed his. +Presently he came to a halt near her and began softly to whistle the +little-bear dance from the "Rag-Time Follies." She smiled before she knew +it, and the next instant he was perched on the corner of her desk, +demanding rapturously to know what she was doing there, and swearing that +he had recognized her the moment he entered the room. + +"Let go my hand, Mr. Mac!" she implored in laughing confusion. + +"I'm afraid to! You might give me the slip again. I've been scouring the +town for you and to think I should find you here!" + +"Look out!" warned Nance. "You're upsetting the ink-bottle!" + +"What do I care? Gee, this is luck! You ought to see my new racer, a +regular peach! Will you come out with me sometime?" + +"Will you let me run it?" + +"I'll let you do anything you like with anything I've got," he declared +with such ardor that she laughed and regretted it the next moment. + +"Now look here, Mr. Mac!" she said, severely, "you touch me again, and I +quit to-night. See?" + +"I'll be good. I'll do anything you say if you'll just stay and +play with me." + +"Play nothing! I've got work to do." + +"Work be hanged! Do you suppose when I haven't seen you for four months +that I'm not going to claim my inning?" + +"Well, I want to tell you right here," she said, shaking a warning pencil +in his face, "that I mean what I say about your behaving yourself." + +Mac caught the end of the pencil and held it while their eyes challenged +each other. + +"So be it!" he said. "I promise to be a model of discretion. Nance, I've +been mad about you! Did Monte tell you--" + +"Mr. Monte didn't tell me anything I wanted to hear," she said in her +cool, keen way, as she got the imperiled ink-well to a place of safety, +and straightened the other articles on the desk. + +"You wouldn't be so down on a fellow if you knew how hard hit I am," +persisted Mac. "Besides, I'm in for an awful row with the governor. You +may see my scalp fly past the window in less than ten minutes." + +"What's the row about?" + +"Same old thing. I am the original devil for getting found out." For +the space of a minute he gloomily contemplated a spot in the carpet; +then he shrugged his shoulders, rammed his hands in his pockets, and +began to whistle. + +"The governor'll fork out," he said. "He always does. Say, Nance, you +haven't said a word about my moustache." + +"Let's see it," said Nance in giggling derision. "Looks like a baby's +eyebrow. Does it wash off?" + +A step in the hall sent them flying in opposite directions, Nance back to +her desk, and Mac into the inner office, where his father found him a +moment later, apparently absorbed in a pamphlet on factory inspection. + +When Nance started home at six o'clock, she found Dan waiting at his old +post beside the gas-pipe. + +"It's like old times," he said happily, as he piloted her through the +out-pouring throng. "I remember the first night we walked home together. +You weren't much more than a kid. You had on a red cap with a tassel to +it. Three years ago the tenth of last May. Wouldn't think it, would you?" + +"Think what?" she asked absently. + +"Tired?" he asked anxiously. "Is the work going to be too heavy?" + +She shook her head impatiently. + +"No, the work's all right. But--but I wish you hadn't made me come +back, Dan." + +"Stick it out for a week," he urged, "and then if you want to stop, I +won't say a word." + +She looked up at him quizzically and gave a short enigmatic laugh. + +"That's my trouble," she said, "if I stick it out for a week, I won't be +wanting to quit!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + +MAC + + +Nance's prophecy regarding herself was more than fulfilled. Whatever +scruples had assailed her at the start were soon overthrown by the +on-rushing course of events. That first month in Mr. Clarke's office +proved to be a time of delightful madness. There were daily meetings with +Mac at the noon hour, stolen chats on street corners, thrilling suppers +with him and Monte at queer cafes, and rides after dark in that wonderful +racer that proved the most enticing of playthings. + +Dan was as busy as Mac was idle; Mr. Clarke was gloomy and preoccupied; +Mrs. Snawdor was in bed when Nance left home in the morning, and gone to +work when she returned in the evening. The days flashed by in a glorious +succession of forbidden joys, with nobody to interrupt the furious +progress of affairs. + +Half of her salary Nance gave to her stepmother, and the other half she +spent on clothes. She bought with taste and discrimination, measuring +everything by the standard set up by her old idol, Miss Stanley at Forest +Home. The result was that she soon began to look very much like the +well-dressed women with whom she touched elbows on the avenue. + +She had indeed got the bit between her teeth, and she ran at full tilt, +secure in the belief that she had full control of the situation. As long +as she gave satisfaction in her work, she told herself, and "behaved +right," she could go and come as she liked, and nobody would be the +worse for it. + +She did not realize that her scoffing disbelief in Mac's avowals, and her +gay indifference were the very things that kept him at fever heat. He was +not used to being thwarted, and this high-handed little working-girl, +with her challenging eyes and mocking laugh, who had never heard of the +proprieties, and yet denied him favors, was the first person he had ever +known who refused absolutely to let him have his own way. With a boy's +impetuous desire he became obsessed by the idea of her. When he was not +with her, he devised schemes to remind her of him, making love to her by +proxy in a dozen foolish, whimsical ways. When it was not flowers or +candy, it was a string of nonsense verses laid between the pages of her +type-writer paper, sometimes a clever caricature of himself or Monte, and +always it was love notes in the lining of her hat, in her gloves, in her +pocket-book. She was afraid to raise her umbrella for fear a rain of +tender missives would descend therefrom. Once he gave her a handsome +jeweled bracelet which she wore under her sleeve. But he got hard up +before the week was over and borrowed it back and pawned it. + +Of two things Nance succeeded in keeping him in ignorance. During all +their escapades he never discovered where she lived, and he never +suspected her friendship for Dan Lewis. He was not one to concern himself +with troublesome details. The pleasure of the passing moment was his sole +aim in life. + +And Nance, who ordinarily scorned subterfuge and hated a secret, +succeeded not only in keeping him in ignorance of Dan; but with even +greater strategy managed to keep Dan in complete ignorance of the whole +situation. Dan, to be sure, took his unconscious revenge. His kind, +puzzled eyes haunted her dreams, and the thought of him proved the one +disturbing element in these halcyon days. In vain she told herself that +he was an old fogy, that he had Sunday-school notions, that he wouldn't +be able to see anything but wrong in a harmless flirtation that would end +with Mac's return to college. But would it end? That was a question Nance +was beginning to ask herself with curious misgiving. + +The last of the month rolled round with incredible swiftness. It brought +to Nance not only an end to all her good times, but the disheartening +knowledge that she would soon be out of employment again with no money +saved, and under the self-imposed necessity of making a clean breast of +her misdeeds to Dan Lewis. + +On the Saturday before Mac's intended departure, as she sat at her desk +ruefully facing the situation, he rushed into the office. + +"Has a mean-looking little Jew been in here this morning?" he demanded +breathlessly. + +"Nobody's been here," said Nance. + +"Gloree!" said Mac, collapsing into a chair. "He gave me a scare! Wonder +if he 'phoned!" + +"Mr. Clarke's been out all morning. These are the people who called up." + +Mac ran his eye hurriedly down the list and sighed with relief. Then he +got up and went to the window and stood restlessly tapping the pane. + +"I've a good notion to go East to-night," he said, half to himself, "no +use waiting until Monday." + +Nance glanced at him quickly. + +"What's up?" she asked. + +"Money, as usual," said Mac in an aggrieved tone. "Just let me get ready +to leave town, and fellows I never heard of turn up with bills. I could +stand off the little fellows, but Meyers is making no end of a stew. He +holds a note of mine for five hundred and sixty dollars. It was due +yesterday, and he swore that if I didn't smoke up by noon to-day, he'd +come to the governor." + +"Won't he give you an extension?" + +"He's given me two already. It's the money I lost last spring at the +races. That's the reason I can't get it out of the governor. It looks as +if it were about time for little Willie to take to the tall timbers." + +Nance got up from her desk and joined him at the window. There was +something she had been burning to say to him for ten days, but it was +something she found it very hard to say. He might tell her it was none of +her business; he might even not like her any more. + +"See here, Mr. Mac," she said, bracing herself for the ordeal, "did it +ever strike you that you spend a lot of money that don't belong to you?" + +"It'll all be mine some day," said Mac reassuringly. "If the governor +would listen to mother, we'd never have these financial rackets. She +knows that it takes a lot for a fellow to live right." + +"It takes a lot more for him to live wrong," said Nance, stoutly. +"You get a whacking big allowance; when you get to the end of it, why +don't you do like some of the rest of us--go without the things you +can't pay for?" + +"I am going to," said Mac as if the idea was a new one. "Once I get +squared up, you bet I'll stay so. But that doesn't help me out of this +mess. The money has got to come from somewhere, and I tell you I haven't +got a sou!" + +Nance had never seen him so perturbed. He usually approached these +conflicts with his father with a passing grimace, exhibited sufficient +repentance to get what he wanted, and emerged more debonair than ever. +It was disturbing to see him so serious and preoccupied. + +"I bet your father'd help you if he thought you'd make a new +start," she said. + +Mac shook his head. + +"He would have a month ago. But he's got it in for me now. He believes an +idiotic story that was cocked up about me, and he's just waiting for my +next slip to spring a mine on me. I got to keep him from finding out +until I'm gone; that's all there is to it!" + +He fumbled in his pocket for a match and instead drew out a bank-note. + +"By George! here's a lonesome five-spot I didn't know I had! I +believe I'll play it on the races and see what it'll do for me. Maybe +it's a mascot." + +His momentary depression was gone, and he was eager to be off. But +Nance stood between him and the door, and there was a dangerous light +in her eyes. + +"Do you know," she said, "I've a good mind to tell you what I +think of you?" + +He caught her hand. "Do, Nance! And make it nice. It's going to be no end +of a grind to leave you. Say something pretty that I can live on 'til +Christmas. Tell me I'm the sweetest fellow that ever lived. Go on. Make +love to me, Nance!" + +"I think you are a short-sport!" she burst forth. "Any fellow that'll +go on making debts when he can't pay his old ones, that'll get things +in a muddle and run off and let somebody else face the racket is a +coward--I think--" + +"Help! Help!" cried Mac, throwing up an arm in pretended defense, and +laughing at her flashing eyes and blazing cheeks. "By jinks, I don't know +whether you look prettiest when you are mad or when you are glad. If you +don't stop this minute I'll have to kiss you!" + +The anger in Nance's face faded into exasperation. She felt suddenly hot +and uncomfortable and a little ashamed of her violence. She had neither +offended him nor humiliated him; she had simply amused him. Tears of +chagrin sprang to her eyes, and she turned away abruptly. + +"Nance!" Mac demanded, with quick concern, "you surely aren't crying? Why +the very idea! It makes me perfectly miserable to see girls cry. You +mustn't, you know. Look at me, Nance! Smile at me this minute!" + +But Nance's head was down on her desk, and she was past smiling. + +"I'll do anything you say!" cried Mac, dropping on his knees beside her. +"I'll 'fess up to the governor. I'll go on the water-wagon. I'll cut out +the races. I'll be a regular little tin god if you'll only promise to be +good to me." + +"Good to you nothing!" said Nance, savagely, lifting a tear-stained, +earnest face. "What right have I got to be anything to you? Haven't I +been letting you spend the money on me that wasn't yours? I've been as +bad as you have, every bit." + +"Oh, rot!" said Mac, hotly. "You've been an angel. There isn't another +girl in the world that's as much fun as you are and yet on the square +every minute." + +"It isn't on the square!" contradicted Nance, twisting her wet +handkerchief into a ball. "Sneaking around corners and doing things on +the sly. I am ashamed to tell you where I live, or who my people are, +and you are ashamed to have your family know you are going with me. +Whenever I look at your father and see him worrying about you, or think +of your mother--" + +"Yes, you think of everybody but me. You hold me at arm's length and +knock on me and say things to me that nobody else would dare to say! And +the worse you treat me, the more I want to take you in my arms and run +away with you. Can't you love me a little, Nance? Please!" + +He was close to her, with his ardent face on a level with hers. He was +never more irresistible than when he wanted something, especially a +forbidden something, and in the course of his twenty-one years he had +never wanted anything so much as he wanted Nance Molloy. + +She caught her breath and looked away. It was very hard to say what she +intended, with him so close to her. His eloquent eyes, his tremulous +lips were very disconcerting. + +"Mr. Mac," she whispered intently, "why don't you tell your father +everything, and promise him some of the things you been promising me? Why +don't you make a clean start and behave yourself and stop giving 'em all +this trouble?" + +"And if I do, Nance? Suppose I do it for you, what then?" + +For a long moment their eyes held each other. These two young, +undisciplined creatures who had started life at opposite ends of the +social ladder, one climbing up and the other climbing down, had met +midway, and the fate of each trembled in the balance. + +"And if I do?" Mac persisted, hardly above his breath. + +Nance's eyelids fluttered ever so slightly, and the next instant, Mac had +crushed her to him and smothered her protests in a passion of kisses. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + +BETWEEN TWO FIRES + + +When Mr. Clarke returned from luncheon, it was evident that he was in no +mood to encourage a prodigal's repentance. For half an hour Nance heard +his voice rising and falling in angry accusation; then a door slammed, +and there was silence. She waited tensely for the next sound, but it was +long in coming. Presently some one began talking over the telephone in +low, guarded tones, and she could not be sure which of the two it was. +Then the talking ceased; the hall door of the inner office opened and +closed quietly. + +Nance went to the window and saw Mac emerge from the passage below and +hurry across the yard to the stables. His cap was over his eyes, and his +hands were deep in his pockets. Evidently he had had it out with his +father and was going to stay over and meet his difficulties. Her eyes +grew tender as she watched him. What a spoiled boy he was, in spite of +his five feet eleven! Always getting into scrapes and letting other +people get him out! But he was going to face the music this time, and he +was doing it for her! If only she hadn't let him kiss her! A wave of +shame made her bury her hot cheeks in her palms. + +She was startled from her reverie by a noise at the door. It was Dan +Lewis, looking strangely worried and preoccupied. + +"Hello, Nance," he said, without lifting his eyes. "Did Mr. Clarke leave +a telegram for me?" + +"Not with me. Perhaps it is on his table. Want me to see?" + +"No, I'll look," Dan answered and went in and closed the door behind him. + +Nance looked at the closed door in sudden apprehension. What was the +matter with Dan? What had he found out? She heard him moving about in the +empty room; then she heard him talking over the telephone. When he came +out, he crossed over to where she was sitting. + +"Nance," he began, still with that uneasy manner, "there's something I've +got to speak to you about. You won't take it amiss?" + +"Cut loose," said Nance, with an attempt at lightness, but her heart +began to thump uncomfortably. + +"You see," Dan began laboriously. "I'm sort of worried by some talk +that's been going on 'round the factory lately. It hadn't come direct to +me until to-day, but I got wind of it every now and then. I know it's +not true, but it mustn't go on. There's one way to stop it. Do you know +what it is?" + +Nance shook her head, and he went on. + +"You and I have been making a mess of things lately. Maybe it's been my +fault, I don't know. You see a fellow gets to know a lot of things a nice +girl don't know. And the carnival ball business--well--I was scared for +you, Nance, and that's the plain truth." + +"I know, Dan," she said impatiently. "I was a fool to go that time, but I +never did it again." + +Dan fingered the papers on the desk. + +"I ain't going to rag about that any more. But I can't have 'em saying +things about you around the factory. You know how I feel about you--how I +always have felt--Nance I want you to marry me." + +Nance flashed a look at him, questioning, eager, uncertain; then her eyes +fell. How could she know that behind his halting sentences a paean of +love was threatening to burst the very confines of his inarticulate soul? +She only saw an awkward young workman in his shirt sleeves, with a smudge +across his cheek and a wistful look in his eyes, who knew no more about +making love than he knew about the other graces of life. + +"I've saved enough money," he went on earnestly, "to buy a little house +in the country somewhere. That's what you wanted, wasn't it?" + +Nance's glance wandered to the tall gas-pipe that had been their +unromantic trysting place. Then she closed her eyes and pressed her +fingers against them to keep back the stinging tears. If Dan loved her, +why didn't he say beautiful things to her, why didn't he take her in his +arms as Mac had done, and kiss away all those fears of herself and of the +future that crowded upon her? With her head on his shoulder she could +have sobbed out her whole confession and been comforted, but now-- + +"You care for me, don't you, Nance?" Dan asked with a sharp note of +anxiety in his voice. + +"Of course I care!" she said irritably. "But I don't want to get married +and settle down. I want to get out and see the world. When you talk about +a quiet little house in the country, I want to smash every window in it!" + +Dan slipped the worn drawing he had in his hand back into his pocket. It +was no time to discuss honeysuckle porches. + +"We don't have to go to the country," he said patiently. "I just thought +it was what you wanted. We can stay here, or we can go to another town if +you like. All I want is to make you happy, Nance." + +For a moment she sat with her chin on her palms, staring straight ahead; +then she turned toward him with sudden resolution. + +"What's the talk you been hearing about me?" she demanded. + +"There's no use going into that," he said. "It's a lie, and I mean to +stamp it out if I have to lick every man in the factory to do it." + +"Was it--about Mac Clarke?" + +"Who dared bring it to you?" he asked fiercely. + +"What are they saying, Dan?" + +"That you been seen out with him on the street, that you ride with +him after night, and that he comes down here every day at the noon +hour to see you." + +"Is that all?" + +"Ain't it enough?" + +"Well, it's true!" said Nance, defiantly. "Every word of it. If anybody +can find any real harm in what I've done, they are welcome to it!" + +"It's true?" gasped Dan, his hands gripping a chair-back. "And you never +told me? Has he--has he made love to you, Nance?" + +"Why, he makes love to everybody. He makes love to his mother when he +wants to get something out of her. What he says goes in one ear and +out the other with me. But I like him and I ain't ashamed to say so. +He's give me the best time I ever had in my life, and you bet I don't +forget it." + +"Will you answer me one thing more?" demanded Dan, sternly. + +"Yes; I ain't afraid to answer any question you can ask." + +"Was it Clarke that took you to the carnival ball?" + +"Him and a fellow named Monte Pearce." + +"Just you three?" + +"No; Birdie Smelts was along." + +Dan brushed his hand across his brow as if trying to recall something. + +"Birdie come here that day," he said slowly. "She wanted to see Clarke +for a friend of hers. Nance did he--did he ever ask you to kiss him?" + +"Yes." + +Dan groaned. + +"Why didn't you tell me all this before, Nance? Why didn't you give me a +chance to put you on your guard?" + +"I _was_ on my guard!" she cried, with rising anger. "I don't need +anybody to take care of me!" + +But Dan was too absorbed in his own thoughts to heed her. + +"It's a good thing he's going away in a couple of days," he said grimly. +"If ever the blackguard writes to you, or dares to speak to you again--" + +Nance had risen and was facing him. + +"Who's to stop him?" she asked furiously. "I'm the one to say the word, +and not you!" + +"And you won't let me take it up with him?" + +"No!" + +"And you mean to see him again, and to write to him?" + +Nance had a blurred vision of an unhappy prodigal crossing the factory +yard. He had kept his part of their compact; she must keep hers. + +"I will if I want to," she said rather weakly. + +Dan's face flushed crimson. + +"All right," he said, "keep it up if you like. But I tell you now, I +ain't going to stay here to see it. I'm going to clear out!" + +He turned toward the door, and she called after him anxiously: + +"Dan, come back here this minute. Where are you going?" + +He paused in the doorway, his jaw set and a steady light in his eyes. + +"I am going now," he said, "to apologize to the man I hit yesterday for +telling the truth about you!" + +That night Nance shed more tears than she had ever shed in the whole +course of her life before; but whether she wept for Mac, or Dan, or +for herself, she could not have said. She heard the sounds die out of +the alley one by one, the clanging cars at the end of the street +became less frequent; only the drip, drip, drip from a broken gutter +outside her window, and the rats in the wall kept her company. All day +Sunday she stayed in-doors, and came to the office on Monday pale and +a bit listless. + +Early as it was, Mr. Clarke was there before her, pacing the floor in +evident perturbation. + +"Come in here a moment, Miss Molloy," he said, before she had taken off +her hat. "I want a word with you." + +Nance followed him into the inner room with a quaking heart. + +"I want you to tell me," he said, waiving all preliminaries, "just who +was in this room Saturday afternoon after I left." + +"Dan Lewis. And of course, Mr. Mac. You left him here." + +"Who else?" + +"Nobody." + +"But there must have been," insisted Mr. Clarke, vehemently. "A man, +giving my name, called up our retail store between two and two-thirty +o'clock, and asked if they could cash a check for several hundred +dollars. He said it was too late to go to the bank, and he wanted the +money right away. Later a messenger brought my individual check, torn out +of this check-book, which evidently hasn't been off my desk, and received +the money. The cashier thought the signature looked queer and called me +up yesterday. I intend to leave no stone unturned until I get at the +truth of the matter. You were the only person here all afternoon. Tell +me, in detail, exactly what happened." + +Nance recalled as nearly as she could, the incidents of the afternoon, +with careful circuits around her own interviews with Mac and Dan. + +"Could any one have entered the inner office between their visits, +without your knowing it?" asked Mr. Clarke, who was following her +closely. + +"Oh, yes, sir; only there wasn't time. You see Mr. Mac was just going out +the factory yard as Dan come in here." + +"Did either of them use my telephone?" + +"Both of them used it." + +"Could you hear what was said?" + +"No; the door was shut both times." + +"Did Lewis enter through the other room, or through the hall?" + +"He come through the other room and asked me if you had left a +telegram for him." + +"Then he came in here?" + +"Yes, sir." + +Mr. Clarke's brows were knitted in perplexity. He took up the telephone. + +"Send Lewis up here to my office," he directed. "What? Hasn't come in +yet?" he repeated incredulously. "That's strange," he said grimly, half +to himself. "The first time I ever knew him to be late." + +Something seemed to tighten suddenly about Nance's heart. Could it be +possible that Mr. Clarke was suspecting Dan of signing that check? +She watched his nervous hands as they ran over the morning mail. He +had singled out one letter and, as he finished reading it, he handed +it to her. + +It was from Dan, a brief business-like resignation, expressing +appreciation of Mr. Clarke's kindness, regret at the suddenness of his +departure, and giving as his reason private affairs that took him +permanently to another city. + +When Nance lifted her startled eyes from the signature, she saw that Mr. +Clarke was closely scrutinizing the writing on the envelope. + +"It's incredible!" he said, "and yet the circumstances are most +suspicious. He gives no real reason for leaving." + +"I can," said Nance, resolutely. "He wanted me to marry him, and I +wouldn't promise. He asked me Saturday afternoon, after he come out of +here. We had a quarrel, and he said he was going away; but I didn't +believe it." + +"Did he ask you to go away with him? Out of town anywhere?" + +"Yes; he said he would go anywhere I said." + +A flash of anger burnt out the look of fear that had been lurking in Mr. +Clarke's face. + +"He's the last man I would have suspected! Of course I knew he had been +in a reformatory at one time, but--" + +The band that had been tightening around Nance's heart seemed suddenly +to burst. She sprang to her feet and stood confronting him with +blazing eyes. + +"What right have you got to think Dan did it? There were two of them in +this room. Why don't you send for Mr. Mac and ask him questions?" + +"Well, for one reason he's in New York, and for another, my son doesn't +have to resort to such means to get what money he wants." + +"Neither does Dan Lewis! He was a street kid; he was had up in court +three times before he was fourteen; he was a month at the reformatory; +and he's knocked elbows with more crooks than you ever heard of; but you +know as well as me that there ain't anybody living more honest than Dan!" + +"All he's got to do is to prove it," said Mr. Clarke, grimly. + +Nance looked at the relentless face of the man before her and thought of +the money at his command to prove whatever he wanted to prove. + +"See here, Mr. Clarke!" she said desperately, "you said a while ago that +all the facts were against Dan. Will you tell me one thing?" + +"What is it?" + +"Did you give Mr. Mac the money to pay that note last Saturday?" + +"What note?" + +"The one the Meyers fellow was after him about?" + +"Mac asked for no money, and I gave him none. In fact he told me that +aside from his debts at the club and at the garage, he owed no bills. So +you see your friend Meyers misinformed you." + +Here was Nance's chance to escape; she had spoken in Dan's defense; she +had told of the Meyers incident. To take one more step would be to +convict Mac and compromise herself. For one miserable moment conflicting +desires beat in her brain; then she heard herself saying quite calmly: + +"No, sir, it wasn't Meyers that told me; it was Mr. Mac himself." + +Mr. Clarke wheeled on her sharply. + +"How did my son happen to be discussing his private affairs with you?" + +"Mr. Mac and me are friends," she said. "He's been awful nice to me; he's +given me more good times than I ever had in my whole life before. But I +didn't know the money wasn't his or I wouldn't have gone with him." + +"And I suppose you thought it was all right for a young man in Mac's +position to be paying attention to a young woman in yours?" + +Mr. Clarke studied her face intently, but her fearless eyes did not +falter under his scrutiny. + +"Are you trying to implicate Mac in this matter to spare Lewis, is that +it?" + +"No, sir. I don't say it was Mr. Mac. I only say it wasn't Dan. There are +some people you just _know_ are straight, and Dan's one of them." + +Mr. Clarke got up and took a turn about the room, his hands locked behind +him. Her last shot had evidently taken effect. + +"Tell me exactly what Mac told you about this Meyers note," he demanded. + +Nance recounted the facts in the case, ending with the promise Mac had +made her to tell his father everything and begin anew. + +"I wish I had known this Saturday!" Mr. Clarke said, sinking heavily +into his chair. "I came down on the boy pretty severely on another score +and gave him little chance to say anything. Did he happen to mention the +exact amount of his indebtedness to Meyers?" + +"He said it was five hundred and sixty dollars." + +A sigh that was very like a groan escaped from Mr. Clarke; then he pulled +himself together with an effort. + +"You understand, Miss Molloy," he said, "that it is quite a different +thing for my son to have done this, and for Lewis to have done it. Mac +knows that what is mine will be his eventually. If he signed that check, +he was signing his own name as well as mine. Of course, he ought to have +spoken to me about it. I am not excusing him. He has been indiscreet in +this as well as in other ways. I shall probably get a letter from him in +a few days explaining the whole business. In the meanwhile the matter +must go no further. I insist upon absolute silence. You understand?" + +She nodded. + +"And one thing more," Mr. Clarke added. "I forbid any further +communication between you and Mac. He is not coming home at Christmas, +and we are thinking of sending him abroad in June. I propose to keep him +away from here for the next two or three years." + +Nance fingered the blotter on the table absently. It was all very well +for them to plan what they were going to do with Mac, but she knew in her +heart that a line from her would set at naught all their calculations. +Then her mind flew back to Dan. + +"If he comes back--Dan, I mean,--are you going to take him on again?" + +Mr. Clarke saw his chance and seized it. + +"On one condition," he said. "Will you give me your word of honor not to +communicate with Mac in any way?" + +They were both standing now, facing each other, and Nance saw no +compromise in the stern eyes of her employer. + +"I'll promise if I've got to," she said. + +"Very well," said Mr. Clarke. "That's settled." + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + +FATE TAKES A HAND + + +Some sinister fascination seems to hover about a bridge at night, +especially for unhappy souls who have grappled with fate and think +themselves worsted. Perhaps they find a melancholy pleasure in the +company of ghosts who have escaped from similar defeats; perhaps they +seek to read the riddle of the universe, as they stand, elbows on rail, +studying the turbulent waters below. + +On the third night after Dan's arrival in Cincinnati, the bridge claimed +him. He had deposited his few belongings in a cheap lodging-house on the +Kentucky side of the river, and then aimlessly paced the streets, too +miserable to eat or sleep, too desperate even to look for work. His one +desire was to get away from his tormenting thoughts, to try to forget +what had happened to him. + +A cold drizzle of rain had brought dusk on an hour before its time. +Twilight was closing in on a sodden day. From the big Ohio city to the +smaller Kentucky towns, poured a stream of tired humanity. Belated +shoppers, business men, workers of all kinds hurried through the murky +soot-laden air, each hastening to some invisible goal. + +To Dan, watching with somber eyes from his niche above the wharf, it +seemed that they were all going home to little lamp-lit cottages where +women and children awaited them. A light in the window and somebody +waiting! The old dream of his boyhood that only a few days ago had seemed +about to come true! + +Instead, he had been caught up in a hurricane and swept out to sea. His +anchors had been his love, his work, and his religion, and none of them +held. The factory, to which he had given the best of his brain and his +body, for which he had dreamed and aspired and planned, was a nightmare +to him. Mrs. Purdy and the church activities, which had loomed so large +in his life, were but fleeting, unsubstantial shadows. + +Only one thing in the wide universe mattered now to him, and that was +Nance. Over and over he rehearsed his final scene with her, searching +for some word of denial or contrition or promise for the future. She had +never lied to him, and he knew she never would. But she had stood before +him in angry defiance, refusing to defend herself, declining his help, +and letting him go out of her life without so much as lifting a finger +to stop him. + +His heavy eyes, which had been following the shore lights, came back to +the bridge, attracted by the movement of a woman leaning over one of +the embrasures near him. He had been vaguely aware for the past five +minutes of a disturbing sound that came to him from time to time; but it +was only now that he noticed the woman was crying. She was standing with +her back to him, and he could see her lift her veil every now and then +and wipe her eyes. + +With a movement of impatience, he moved further on. He had enough +troubles of his own to-night without witnessing those of others. He had +determined to stop fleeing from his thoughts and to turn and face them. A +rich young fellow, like Mac Clarke, didn't go with a girl like Nance for +nothing. Why, this thing must have been going on for months, perhaps long +before the night he had found Nance at the signal tower. They had been +meeting in secret, going out alone together; she had let him make love to +her, kiss her. + +The blood surged into his head, and doubts blacker than the waters below +assailed him, but even as he stood there with his head in his hands and +his cap pulled over his eyes, all sorts of shadowy memories came to plead +for her. Memories of a little, tow-headed, independent girl coming and +going in Calvary Alley, now lugging coal up two flights of stairs, now +rushing noisily down again with a Snawdor baby slung over her shoulder, +now to snatch her part in the play. Nance, who laughed the loudest, cried +the hardest, ran the fastest, whose hand was as quick to help a friend +as to strike a foe! He saw her sitting beside him on the mattress, +sharing his disgrace on the day of the eviction, saw her standing before +the bar of justice passionately pleading his cause. Then later and +tenderer memories came to reinforce the earlier ones--memories of her +gaily dismissing all other offers at the factory to trudge home night +after night with him; of her sitting beside him in Post-Office Square, +subdued and tender-eyed, watching the electric lights bloom through the +dusk; of her nursing Uncle Jed, forgetting herself and her disappointment +in ministering to him and helping him face the future. + +A wave of remorse swept over him! What right had he to make her stay on +and on in Cemetery Street when he knew how she hated it? Why had he +forced her to go back to the factory? She had tried to make him +understand, but he had been deaf to her need. He had expected her to +buckle down to work just as he did. He had forgotten that she was young +and pretty and wanted a good time like other girls. Of course it was +wrong for her to go with Mac, but she was good, he _knew_ she was good. + +The words reverberated in his brain like a hollow echo, frightening away +all the pleading memories. Those were the very words he had used about +his mother on that other black night when he had refused to believe the +truth. All the bitterness of his childhood's tragedy came now to poison +his present mood. If Nance was innocent, why had she kept all this from +him, why had she refused in the end to let him defend her good name? + +He thought of his own struggle to be good; of his ceaseless efforts to be +decent in every thought as well as deed for Nance's sake. Decent! His lip +curled at the irony of it! That wasn't what girls wanted? Decency made +fellows stupid and dull; it kept them too closely at work; it made them +take life too seriously. Girls wanted men like Mac Clarke--men who +snapped their fingers at religion and refused responsibilities, and +laughed in the face of duty. Laughter! That was what Nance loved above +everything! All right, let her have it! What did it matter? He would +laugh too. + +With a reckless resolve, he turned up his coat collar, rammed his hands +in his pockets, and started toward the Kentucky shore. The drizzle by +this time had turned into a sharp rain, and he realized that he was cold +and wet. He remembered a swinging door two squares away. + +As he left the bridge, he saw the woman in the blue veil hurry past him, +and with a furtive look about her, turn and go down the steep levee +toward the water. There was something so nervous and erratic in her +movements, that he stopped to watch her. + +For a few moments she wandered aimlessly along the bank, apparently +indifferent to the pelting rain; then she succeeded, after some +difficulty, in climbing out on one of the coal barges that fringed the +river bank. + +[Illustration: "Don't call a policeman!" she implored wildly] + +Dan glanced down the long length of the bridge, empty now save for a few +pedestrians and a lumbering truck in the distance. In mid-stream the +paddle of a river steamer was churning the water into foam, and +up-stream, near the dock, negro roustabouts could be heard singing. But +under the bridge all was silent, and the levee was deserted in both +directions. He strained his eyes to distinguish that vague figure on the +barge from the surrounding shadows. He saw her crawling across the +shifting coal; then he waited to see no more. + +Plunging down the bank at full speed, he scrambled out on the barge and +seized her by the arms. The struggle was brief, but fierce. With a cry +of despair, she sank face downward on the coal and burst into +hysterical weeping. + +"Don't call a policeman!" she implored wildly. "Don't let 'em take me to +a hospital!" + +"I won't. Don't try to talk 'til you get hold of yourself," said Dan. + +"But I'm chokin'! I can't breathe! Get the veil off!" + +As Dan knelt above her, fumbling with the long veil, he noticed for the +first time that she was young, and that her bare neck between the collar +and the ripple of her black hair was very white and smooth. He bent down +and looked at her with a flash of recognition. + +"Birdie!" he cried incredulously, "Birdie Smelts!" + +Her heavy white lids fluttered wildly, and she started up in terror. + +"Don't be scared!" he urged. "It's Dan Lewis from back home. How did you +ever come to be in this state?" + +With a moan of despair she covered her face with her hands. + +"I was up there on the bridge," Dan went on, almost apologetically. "I +saw you there, but I didn't know it was you. Then when you started down +to the water, I sorter thought--" + +"You oughtn't 'a' stopped me," she wailed. "I been walkin' the +streets tryin' to get up my courage all day. I'm sick, I tell you. I +want to die." + +"But it ain't right to die this way. Don't you know it's wicked?" + +"Good and bad's all the same to me. I'm done for. There ain't a soul in +this rotten old town that cares whether I live or die!" + +Dan flushed painfully. He was much more equal to saving a body than a +soul, but he did not flinch from his duty. + +"God cares," he said. "Like as not He sent me out on the bridge a-purpose +to-night to help you. You let me put you on the train, Birdie, and ship +you home to your mother." + +"Never! I ain't goin' home, and I ain't goin' to a hospital. Promise me +you won't let 'em take me, Dan!" + +"All right, all right," he said, with an anxious eye on her shivering +form and her blue lips. "Only we got to get under cover somewhere. Do you +feel up to walking yet?" + +"Where'd I walk to?" she demanded bitterly. "I tell you I've got no money +and no place to go. I been on the street since yesterday noon." + +"You can't stay out here all night!" said Dan at his wit's end. "I'll +have to get you a room somewhere." + +"Go ahead and get it. I'll wait here." + +But Dan mistrusted the look of cunning that leaped into her eyes and the +way she glanced from time to time at the oily, black water that curled +around the corner of the barge. + +"I got a room a couple of squares over," he said slowly. "You might come +over there 'til you get dried out and rested up a bit." + +"I don't want to go anywhere. I'm too sick. I don't want to have to +see people." + +"You won't have to. It's a rooming house. The old woman that looks after +things has gone by now." + +It took considerable persuasion to get her on her feet and up the bank. +Again and again she refused to go on, declaring that she didn't want to +live. But Dan's patience was limitless. Added to his compassion for her, +was the half-superstitious belief that he had been appointed by +Providence to save her. + +"It's just around the corner now," he encouraged her. "Can you make it?" + +She stumbled on blindly, without answering, clinging to his arm and. +breathing heavily. + +"Here we are!" said Dan, turning into a dark entrance, "front room on the +left. Steady there!" + +But even as he opened the door, Birdie swayed forward and would have +fallen to the floor, had he not caught her and laid her on the bed. + +Hastily lighting the lamp on the deal table by the window, he went back +to the bed and loosened the neck of her dripping coat and then looked +down at her helplessly. Her face, startlingly white in its frame of black +hair, showed dark circles under the eyes, and her full lips had lost not +only their color, but the innocent curves of childhood as well. + +Presently she opened her eyes wearily and looked about her. + +"I'm cold," she said with a shiver, "and hungry. God! I didn't know +anybody could be so hungry!" + +"I'll make a fire in the stove," cried Dan; "then I'll go out and get +you something hot to drink. You'll feel better soon." + +"Don't be long, Dan," she whispered faintly. "I'm scared to stay +by myself." + +Ten minutes later Dan hurried out of the eating-house at the corner, +balancing a bowl of steaming soup in one hand and a plate of food in the +other. He was soaked to the skin, and the rain trickled from his hair +into his eyes. As he crossed the street a gust of wind caught his cap and +hurled it away into the wet night. But he gave no thought to himself or +to the weather, for the miracle had happened. That dancing gleam in the +gutter came from a lighted lamp in a window behind which some one was +waiting for him. + +He found Birdie shaking with a violent chill, and it was only after he +had got off her wet coat and wrapped her in a blanket, and persuaded her +to drink the soup that she began to revive. + +"What time of night is it?" she asked weakly. + +"After eleven. You're going to stay where you are, and I'm going out and +find me a room somewhere. I'll come back in the morning." + +All of Birdie's alarms returned. + +"I ain't going to stay here by myself, Dan. I'll go crazy, I tell you! I +don't want to live and I am afraid to die. What sort of a God is He to +let a person suffer like this?" + +And poor old Dan, at death-grips with his own life problem, wrestled in +vain with hers; arguing, reassuring, affirming, trying with an almost +fanatic zeal to conquer his own doubts in conquering hers. + +Then Birdie, bent on keeping him with her, talked of herself, pouring +out an incoherent story of misfortune: how she had fainted on the stage +one night and incurred the ill-will of the director; how the company +went on and left her without friends and without money; how matters had +gone from bad to worse until she couldn't stand it any longer. She +painted a picture of wronged innocence that would have wrung a sterner +heart than Dan's. + +"I know," he said sympathetically. "I've seen what girls are up against +at Clarke's." + +Birdie's feverish eyes fastened upon him. + +"Have you just come from Clarke's?" + +"Yes." + +"Is Mac there?" + +Dan's face hardened. + +"I don't know anything about him." + +"No; and you don't want to! If there's one person in this world I hate, +it's Mac Clarke." + +"Same here," said Dan, drawn to her by the attraction of a common +antipathy. + +"Thinks he can do what he pleases," went on Birdie, bitterly, "with his +good looks and easy ways. He'll have a lot to answer for!" + +Dan sat with his fists locked, staring at the floor. A dozen questions +burned on his lips, but he could not bring himself to ask them. + +A fierce gust of wind rattled the window, and Birdie cried out in terror. + +"You stop being afraid and go to sleep," urged Dan, but she shook her +head. + +"I don't dare to! You'd go away, and I'd wake up and go crazy with fear. +I always was like that even when I was a kid, back home. I used to pretty +near die of nights when pa would come in drunk and get to breaking up +things. There was a man like that down where I been staying. He'd fall +against my door 'most every night. Sometimes I'd meet him out in the +street, and he'd follow me for squares." + +Dan drew the blanket about her shoulders. + +"Go to sleep," he said. "I won't leave you." + +"Yes; but to-morrow night, and next night! Oh, God! I'm smothering. +Lift me up!" + +He sat on the side of the bed and lifted her until she rested against his +shoulder. A deathly pallor had spread over her features, and she clung to +him weakly. + +Through the long hours of the stormy night he sat there, soothing and +comforting her, as he would have soothed a terror-stricken child. By +and by her clinging hands grew passive in his, her rigid, jerking limbs +relaxed, and she fell into a feverish sleep broken by fitful sobs and +smothered outcries. As Dan sat there, with her helpless weight against +him, and gently stroked the wet black hair from her brow, something +fierce and protective stirred in him, the quick instinct of the +chivalrous strong to defend the weak. Here was somebody more wretched, +more desolate, more utterly lonely than himself--a soft, fearful, +feminine somebody, ill-fitted to fight the world with those frail, +white hands. + +Hitherto he had blindly worshiped at one shrine, and now the image was +shattered, the shrine was empty--so appallingly empty that he was ready +to fill it at any cost. For the first time in three days he ceased to +think of Nance Molloy or of Mac Clarke, whose burden he was all +unconsciously bearing. He ceased, also, to think of the soul he had +been trying so earnestly to save. He thought instead of the tender +weight against his shoulder, of the heavy lashes that lay on the +tear-stained cheeks so close to his, of the soft, white brow under his +rough, brown fingers. Something older than love or religion was making +its claim on Dan. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + +THE PRICE OF ENLIGHTENMENT + + +It was November of the following year that the bird of ill-omen, +which had been flapping its wings over Calvary Alley for so long, +decided definitely to alight. A catastrophe occurred that threatened +to remove the entire population of the alley to another and, we +trust, a fairer world. + +Mrs. Snawdor insists to this day that it was the sanitary inspector who +started the trouble. On one of his infrequent rounds he had encountered a +strange odor in Number One, a suspicious, musty odor that refused to come +under the classification of krout, kerosene, or herring. The tenants, in +a united body, indignantly defended the smell. + +"It ain't nothin' at all but Mis' Smelts' garbage," Mrs. Snawdor +declared vehemently. "She often chucks it in a hole in the kitchen floor +to save steps. Anybody'd think the way you was carryin' on, it was a +murdered corpse!" + +But the inspector persisted in his investigations, forcing a way into the +belligerent Snawdor camp, where he found Fidy Yager with a well-developed +case of smallpox. She had been down with what was thought to be +chicken-pox for a week, but the other children had been sworn to secrecy +under the threat that the doctor would scrape the skin off their arms +with a knife if they as much as mentioned Fidy's name. + +It was a culmination of a battle that had raged between Mrs. Snawdor +and the health authorities for ten years, over the question of +vaccination. The epidemic that followed was the visible proof of Mrs. +Snawdor's victory. + +Calvary Alley, having offered a standing invitation to germs in general, +was loathe to regard the present one as an enemy. It resisted the +inspector, who insisted on vaccinating everybody all over again; it was +indignant at the headlines in the morning papers; it was outraged when +Number One was put in quarantine. + +Even when Fidy Yager, who "wasn't all there," and who, according to her +mother, had "a fit a minute," was carried away to the pest-house, nobody +was particularly alarmed. But when, twenty-four hours later, Mr. Snawdor +and one of the Lavinski helpers came down with it, the alley began to +look serious, and Mrs. Snawdor sent for Nance. + +For six months now Nance had been living at a young women's boarding +home, realizing a life-long ambition to get out of the alley. But on +hearing the news, she flung a few clothes into an old suitcase and rushed +to the rescue. + +Since that never-to-be-forgotten day a year ago when word had reached +her of Dan's marriage to Birdie Smelts, a hopeless apathy had possessed +her. Even in the first weeks after his departure, when Mac's impassioned +letters were pouring in and she was exerting all her will power to make +good her promise to his father, she was aware of a dull, benumbing +anxiety over Dan. She had tried to get his address from Mrs. Purdy, from +Slap Jack's, where he still kept some of his things, from the men he knew +best at the factory. Nobody could tell her where he had gone, or what he +intended to do. + +Just what she wanted to say to him she did not know. She still resented +bitterly his mistrust of her, and what she regarded as his interference +with her liberty, but she had no intention of letting matters rest as +they were. She and Dan must fight the matter out to some satisfactory +conclusion. + +Then came the news of his marriage, shattering every hope and shaking the +very foundation of her being. From her earliest remembrance Dan had been +the most dependable factor in her existence. Whirlwind enthusiasms for +other things and other people had caught her up from time to time, but +she always came back to Dan, as one comes back to solid earth after a +flight in an aeroplane. + +In her first weeks of chagrin and mortification she had sought refuge in +thoughts of Mac. She had slept with his unanswered letters under her +pillow and clung to the memory of his ardent eyes, his gay laughter, the +touch of his lips on her hands and cheeks. Had Mac come home that +Christmas, her doom would have been sealed. The light by which she +steered had suddenly gone out, and she could no longer distinguish the +warning coast lights from the harbor lights of home. + +But Mac had not come at Christmas, neither had he come in the summer, and +Nance's emotional storm was succeeded by an equally intolerable calm. +Back and forth from factory to boarding home she trudged day by day, and +on Sunday she divided her wages with Mrs. Snawdor, on the condition that +she should have a vote in the management of family affairs. By this plan +Lobelia and the twins were kept at school, and Mr. Snawdor's feeble +efforts at decent living were staunchly upheld. + +When the epidemic broke out in Calvary Alley, and Mrs. Snawdor signaled +for help, Nance responded to the cry with positive enthusiasm. Here was +something stimulating at last. There was immediate work to be done, and +she was the one to do it. + +As she hurried up the steps of Number One, she found young Dr. Isaac +Lavinski superintending the construction of a temporary door. + +"You can't come in here!" he called to her, peremptorily. "We're in +quarantine. I've got everybody out I can. But enough people have been +exposed to it already to spread the disease all over the city. Three more +cases to-night. Mrs. Smelts' symptoms are very suspicious. Dr. Adair is +coming himself at nine o'clock to give instructions. It's going to be a +tussle all right!" + +Nance looked at him in amazement. He spoke with more enthusiasm than he +had ever shown in the whole course of his life. His narrow, sallow face +was full of keen excitement. Little old Ike, who had hidden under the bed +in the old days whenever a fight was going on, was facing death with the +eagerness of a valiant soldier on the eve of his first battle. + +"I'm going to help you, Ike!" Nance cried instantly. "I've come to stay +'til it's over." + +But Isaac barred the way. + +"You can't come in, I tell you! I've cleared the decks for action. Not +another person but the doctor and nurse are going to pass over this +threshold!" + +"Look here, Ike Lavinski," cried Nance, indignantly, "you know as well as +me that there are things that ought to be done up there at the +Snawdors'!" + +"They'll have to go undone," said Isaac, firmly. + +Nance wasted no more time in futile argument. She waited for an opportune +moment when Ike's back was turned; then she slipped around the corner of +the house and threaded her way down the dark passage, until she reached +the fire-escape. There were no lights in the windows as she climbed past +them, and the place seemed ominously still. + +At the third platform she scrambled over a wash-tub and a dozen plaster +casts of Pocahontas,--Mr. Snawdor's latest venture in industry,--and +crawled through the window into the kitchen. It was evident at a glance +that Mrs. Snawdor had at last found that long-talked-of day off and had +utilized it in cleaning up. The room didn't look natural in its changed +condition. Neither did Mrs. Snawdor, sitting in the gloom in an +attitude of deep dejection. At sight of Nance at the window, she gave a +cry of relief. + +"Thank the Lord, you've come!" she said. "Can you beat this? Havin' to +climb up the outside of yer own house like a fly! They've done sent Fidy +to the pest-house, an' scattered the other childern all over the +neighborhood, an' they got me fastened up here, like a hen in a coop!" + +"How is he?" whispered Nance, glancing toward the inner room. + +"Ain't a thing the matter with him, but the lumbago. Keeps on complainin' +of a pain in his back. I never heard of such a hullabaloo about nothin' +in all my life. They'll be havin' me down with smallpox next. How long +you goin' to be here?" + +Nance, taking off her hat and coat, announced that she had come to stay. + +Mrs. Snawdor heaved a sigh of relief. + +"Well, if you'll sorter keep a eye on him, I believe I'll step down +an' set with Mis' Smelts fer a spell. I ain't been off the place fer +two days." + +"But wait a minute! Where's Uncle Jed? And Mr. Demry?" + +"They 're done bounced too! Anybody tell you 'bout yer Uncle Jed's +patent? They say he stands to make as much as a hundern dollars offen it. +They say--" + +"I don't care what they say!" cried Nance, distractedly. "Tell me, did +the children take clean clothes with 'em? Did you see if Uncle Jed had +his sweater? Have you washed the bedclothes that was on Fidy's bed?" + +Mrs. Snawdor shook her head impatiently. + +"I didn't, an' I ain't goin' to! That there Ike Lavinski ain't goin' to +run me! He took my Fidy off to that there pest-house where I bet they +operate her. He'll pay up fer this, you see if he don't!" + +She began to cry, but as Nance was too much occupied to give audience to +her grief, she betook herself to the first floor to assist in the care of +Mrs. Smelts. Illness in the abode of another has a romantic flavor that +home-grown maladies lack. + +When Dr. Adair and Isaac Lavinski made their rounds at nine o'clock, they +found Nance bending over a steaming tub, washing out a heavy comfort. + +"What are you doing here?" demanded Isaac in stern surprise. + +"Manicuring my finger-nails," she said, with an impudent grin, as she +straightened her tired shoulders. Then seeing Dr. Adair, she blushed and +wiped her hands on her apron. + +"You don't remember me, Doctor, do you? I helped you with Uncle Jed Burks +at the signal tower that time when the lightning struck him." + +He looked her over, his glance traveling from her frank, friendly face to +her strong bare arms. + +"Why, yes, I do. You and your brother had been to some fancy-dress +affair. I remember your red shoes. It isn't every girl of your age that +could have done what you did that night. Have you been vaccinated?" + +"Twice. Both took." + +"She's got no business being here, sir," Isaac broke in hotly. "I told +her to keep out." + +"Doctor! Listen at me!" pleaded Nance, her hand on his coat sleeve. +Honest to goodness, I _got_ to stay. Mrs. Snawdor don't believe it's +smallpox. She'll slip the children in when you ain't looking and go out +herself and see the neighbors. Don't you see that somebody's got to be +here that understands?" + +"The girl's right, Lavinski," said Dr. Adair. "She knows the ropes here, +and can be of great service to us. The nurse downstairs can't begin to +do it all. Now let us have a look at the patient." + +Little Mr. Snawdor was hardly worth looking at. He lay rigid, like a +dried twig, with his eyes shut tight, and his mouth shut tight, and his +hands clenched tighter still. It really seemed as if this time Mr. +Snawdor was going to make good his old-time threat to quit. + +Dr. Adair gave the necessary instructions; then he turned to go. He had +been watching Nance, as she moved about the room carrying out his orders, +and at the door he laid a hand on her shoulder. + +"How old are you, my girl?" he asked. + +"Twenty." + +"We need girls like you up at the hospital. Have you ever thought of +taking the training?" + +"Me? I haven't got enough spondulicks to take a street-car ride." + +"That part can be arranged if you really want to go into the work. +Think it over." + +Then he and the impatient Isaac continued on their rounds, and Nance went +back to her work. But the casual remark, let fall by Dr. Adair, had set +her ambition soaring. Her imagination flared to the project. Snawdor's +flat extended itself into a long ward; poor little Mr. Snawdor, who was +hardly half a man, became a dozen; and Miss Molloy, in a becoming +uniform, moved in and out among the cots, a ministering angel of mercy. + +For the first time since Dan Lewis's marriage, her old courage and zest +for life returned, and when Mrs. Snawdor came in at midnight, she found +her sitting beside her patient with shining eyes full of waking dreams. + +"Mis' Smelts is awful bad," Mrs. Snawdor reported, looking more serious +than she had heretofore. "Says she wants to see you before the nurse +wakes up. Seems like she's got somethin' on her mind." + +Nance hurried into her coat and went out into the dark, damp hall. Long +black roaches scurried out of her way as she descended the stairs. In the +hall below the single gas-jet flared in the draught, causing ghostly +shadows to leap out of corners and then skulk fearfully back again. Nance +was not afraid, but a sudden sick loathing filled her. Was she never +going to be able to get away from it all? Was that long arm of duty going +to stretch out and find her wherever she went, and drag her back to this +noisome spot? Were all her dreams and ambitions to die, as they had been +born, in Calvary Alley? + +Mrs. Smelts had been moved into an empty room across the hall from her +own crowded quarters, and as Nance pushed open the door, she lifted a +warning hand and beckoned. + +"Shut it," she said in a hoarse whisper. "I don't want nobody to hear +what I got to tell you." + +"Can't it wait, Mrs. Smelts?" asked Nance, with a pitying hand on the +feverish brow across which a long white scar extended. + +"No. They're goin' to take me away in the mornin'. I heard 'em say +so. It's about Birdie, Nance, I want to tell you. They've had to +lock her up." + +"It's the fever makes you think that, Mrs. Smelts. You let me sponge you +off a bit." + +"No, no, not yet. She's crazy, I tell you! She went out of her head last +January when the baby come. Dan's kept it to hisself all this time, but +now he's had to send her to the asylum." + +"Who told you?" + +"Dan did. He wrote me when he sent me the last money. I got his +letter here under my pillow. I want you to burn it, Nance, so no one +won't know." + +Nance went on mechanically stroking the pain-racked head, as she reached +under the pillow for Dan's letter. The sight of the neat, painstaking +writing made her heart contract. + +"You tell him fer me," begged Mrs. Smelts, weakly, "to be good to her. +She never had the right start. Her paw handled me rough before she come, +an' she was always skeery an' nervous like. But she was so purty, oh, so +purty, an' me so proud of her!" + +Nance wiped away the tears that trickled down the wrinkled cheeks, and +tried to quiet her, but the rising fever made her talk on and on. + +"I ain't laid eyes on her since a year ago this fall. She come home sick, +an' nobody knew it but me. I got out of her whut was her trouble, an' I +went to see his mother, but it never done no good. Then I went to the +bottle factory an' tried to get his father to listen--" + +"Whose father?" asked Nance, sharply. + +"The Clarke boy's. It was him that did fer her. I tell you she was a good +girl 'til then. But they wouldn't believe it. They give me some money to +sign the paper an' not to tell; but before God it's him that's the father +of her child, and poor Dan--" + +But Mrs. Smelts never finished her sentence; a violent paroxysm of pain +seized her, and at dawn the messenger that called for the patient on the +third floor, following the usual economy practised in Calvary Alley, made +one trip serve two purposes and took her also. + +By the end of the month the epidemic was routed, and the alley, cleansed +and chastened as it had never been before, was restored to its own. Mr. +Snawdor, Fidy Yager, Mrs. Smelts, and a dozen others, being the unfittest +to survive, had paid the price of enlightenment. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + +IN TRAINING + + +One sultry July night four years later Dr. Isaac Lavinski, now an +arrogant member of the staff at the Adair Hospital, paused on his last +round of the wards and cocked an inquiring ear above the steps that led +to the basement. Something that sounded very much like suppressed +laughter came up to him, and in order to confirm his suspicions, he +tiptoed down to the landing and, making an undignified syphon of himself, +peered down into the rear passage. In a circle on the floor, four nurses +in their nightgowns softly beat time, while a fifth, arrayed in pink +pajamas, with her hair flying, gave a song and dance with an abandon that +ignored the fact that the big thermometer in the entry registered +ninety-nine. + +The giggles that had so disturbed Dr. Lavinski's peace of mind increased +in volume, as the dancer executed a particularly daring _passeul_ and, +turning a double somersault, landed deftly on her bare toes. + +"Go on, do it again!" "Show us how Sheeny Ike dances the tango." "Sing +Barney McKane," came in an enthusiastic chorus. + +But before the encore could be responded to, a familiar sound in the +court without, sent the girls scampering to their respective rooms. + +Dr. Isaac, reluctantly relinquishing his chance for administering prompt +and dramatic chastisement, came down the stairs and out to the entry. + +An ambulance had just arrived, and behind it was a big private car, and +behind that Dr. Adair's own neat runabout. + +Dr. Adair met Dr. Isaac at the door. + +"It's an emergency case," he explained hastily. "I may have to operate +to-night. Prepare number sixteen, and see if Miss Molloy is off duty." + +"She is, sir," said Isaac, grimly, "and the sooner she's put on a case +the better." + +"Tell her to report at once. And send an orderly down to lend a hand with +the stretcher." + +Five minutes later an immaculate nurse, every button fastened, every fold +in place, presented herself on the third floor for duty. You would have +had to look twice to make certain that that slim, trim figure in its +white uniform was actually Nance Molloy. To be sure her eyes sparkled +with the old fire under her becoming cap, and her chin was still carried +at an angle that hinted the possession of a secret gold mine, but she had +changed amazingly for all that. Life had evidently been busy chiseling +away her rough edges, and from a certain poise of body and a +professional control of voice and gesture, it was apparent that Nance had +done a little chiseling on her own account. + +As she stood in the dim corridor awaiting orders, she could not help +overhearing a conversation between Dr. Adair and the agitated lady who +stood with her hand on the door-knob of number sixteen. + +"My dear madam," the doctor was saying in a tone that betokened the limit +of patience, "you really must leave the matter to my judgment, if we +operate--" + +"But you won't unless it's the last resort?" pleaded the lady. "You know +how frightfully sensitive to pain he is. But if you find out that you +must, then I want you to promise me not to let him suffer afterward. You +must keep him under the influence of opiates, and you will wait until his +father can get here, won't you?" + +"But that's the trouble. You've waited too long already. Appendicitis is +not a thing to take liberties with." + +"You don't mean it's too late? You don't think--" + +"We don't think anything at present. We hope everything." Then spying +Nance, he turned toward her with relief. "This is the nurse who will take +charge of the case." + +The perturbed lady uncovered one eye. + +"You are sure she is one of your very best?" + +"One of our best," said the doctor, as he and Nance exchanged a +quizzical smile. + +"Let her go in to him now. I can't bear for him to be alone a second. As +I was telling you--" + +Nance passed into the darkened room and closed the door softly. The +patient was evidently asleep; so she tiptoed over to the window and +slipped into a chair. On each side of the open space without stretched +the vine-clad wings of the hospital, gray now under the starlight. +Nance's eyes traveled reminiscently from floor to floor, from window to +window. How many memories the old building held for her! Memories of +heartaches and happiness, of bad times and good times, of bitter defeats +and dearly won triumphs. + +It had been no easy task for a girl of her limited education and +undisciplined nature to take the training course. But she had gallantly +stood to her guns and out of seeming defeat, won a victory. For the first +time in her diversified career she had worked in a congenial environment +toward a fixed goal, and in a few weeks now she would be launching her +own little boat on the professional main. + +Her eyes grew tender as she thought of leaving these protecting gray +walls that had sheltered her for four long years; yet the adventure of +the future was already calling. Where would her first case lead her? + +A cough from the bed brought her sharply back to the present. She went +forward and stooped to adjust a pillow, and the patient opened his eyes, +stared at her in bewilderment, then pulled himself up on his elbow. + +"Nance!" he cried incredulously. "Nance Molloy!" + +She started back in dismay. + +"Why, it's Mr. Mac! I didn't know! I thought I'd seen the lady +before--no, please! Stop, they're coming! Please, Mr. Mac!" + +For the patient, heretofore too absorbed in his own affliction to note +anything, was covering her imprisoned hands with kisses and calling on +Heaven to witness that he was willing to undergo any number of operations +if she would nurse him through them. + +Nance escaped from the room as Mrs. Clarke entered. With burning cheeks +she rushed to Dr. Adair's office. + +"You'll have to get somebody else on that case, Doctor," she declared +impulsively. "I used to work for Mr. Clarke up at the bottle factory, +and--and there are reasons why I don't want to take it." + +Dr. Adair looked at her over his glasses and frowned. + +"It is a nurse's duty," he said sternly, "to take the cases as they come, +irrespective of likes or dislikes. Mr. Clarke is an old friend of mine, +a man I admire and respect." + +"Yes, sir, I know, but if you'll just excuse me this once--" + +"Is Miss Rand off duty?" + +"No, sir. She's in number seven." + +"Miss Foster?" + +"No, sir." + +"Then I shall have to insist upon your taking the case. I must have +somebody I can depend upon to look after young Clarke for the next +twenty-four hours. It's not only the complication with his appendix; it's +his lungs." + +"You mean he's tubercular?" + +"Yes." + +Nance's eyes widened. + +"Does he know it?" + +"No. I shall wait and tell his father. I wouldn't undertake to break the +news to that mother of his for a house and lot! You take the case +to-night, and I'll operate in the morning--" + +"No, no, please, Doctor! Mr. Clarke wouldn't want me." + +"Mr. Clarke will be satisfied with whatever arrangement I see fit to +make. Besides another nurse will be in charge by the time he arrives." + +"But, Doctor--" + +A stern glance silenced her, and she went out, closing the door as hard +as she dared behind her. During her four years at the hospital the +memory of Mac Clarke had grown fainter and fainter like the perfume of a +fading flower. But the memory of Dan was like a thorn in her flesh, +buried deep, but never forgotten. + +To herself, her fellow-nurses, the young internes who invariably fell in +love with her, she declared gaily that she was "through with men +forever." The subject that excited her fiercest scorn was matrimony, and +she ridiculed sentiment with the superior attitude of one who has weighed +it in the balance and found it wanting. + +Nevertheless something vaguely disturbing woke in her that night when she +watched with Mrs. Clarke at Mac's bedside. Despite the havoc five years +had wrought in him, there was the old appealing charm in his voice and +manner, the old audacity in his whispered words when she bent over him, +the old eager want in his eyes as they followed her about the room. + +Toward morning he dropped into a restless sleep, and Mrs. Clarke, who +had been watching his every breath, tiptoed over to the table and sat +down by Nance. + +"My son tells me you are the Miss Molloy who used to be in the office," +she whispered. "He is so happy to find some one here he knows. He loathes +trained nurses as a rule. They make him nervous. But he has been +wonderfully good about letting you do things for him. It's a tremendous +relief to me." + +Nance made a mistake on the chart that was going to call for an +explanation later. + +"He's been losing ground ever since last winter," the doting mother went +on. "He was really quite well at Divonne-les-Bains, but he lost all he +gained when we reached Paris. You see he doesn't know how to take care of +himself; that's the trouble." + +Mac groaned and she hurried to him. + +"He wants a cigarette, Miss Molloy. I don't believe it would hurt +him," she said. + +"His throat's already irritated," said Nance, in her most professional +tone. "I am sure Dr. Adair wouldn't want him to smoke." + +"But we can't refuse him anything to-night," said Mrs. Clarke, with an +apologetic smile as she reached for the matches. + +Nance looking at her straight, delicate profile thrown into sudden relief +by the flare of the match, had the same disturbing sense of familiarity +that she had experienced long ago in the cathedral. + +But during the next twenty-four hours there was no time to analyze +subtle impressions or to indulge in sentimental reminiscence. From the +moment Mac's unconscious form was borne down from the operating room and +handed over to her care, he ceased to be a man and became a critically +ill patient. + +"We haven't much to work on," said Dr. Adair, shaking his head. "He has +no resisting power. He has burned himself out." + +But Mac's powers of resistance were stronger than he thought, and by the +time Mr. Clarke arrived the crisis was passed. Slowly and painfully he +struggled back to consciousness, and his first demand was for Nance. + +"It's the nurse he had when he first came," Mrs. Clarke explained to her +husband. "You must make Dr. Adair give her back to us. She's the only +nurse I've ever seen who could get Mac to do things. By the way, she used +to be in your office, a rather pretty, graceful girl, named Molloy." + +"I remember her," said Mr. Clarke, grimly. "You better leave things as +they are. Miss Hanna seems to know her business." + +"But Mac hates Miss Hanna! He says her hands make him think of +bedsprings. Miss Molloy makes him laugh and helps him to forget the pain. +He's taken a tremendous fancy to her." + +"Yes, he had quite a fancy for her once before." + +"Now, Macpherson, how can you?" cried Mrs. Clarke on the verge of tears. +"Just because the boy made one slip when he was little more than a +_child_, you suspect his every motive. I don't see how you can be so +cruel! If you had seen his agony, if you had been through what I have--" + +Thus it happened that instead of keeping Nance out of Mac's sight, Mrs. +Clarke left no stone unturned to get her back, and Mr. Clarke was even +persuaded to take it up personally with Dr. Adair. + +Nance might have held out to the end, had her sympathies not been +profoundly stirred by the crushing effect the news of Mac's serious +tubercular condition had upon his parents. On the day they were told Mr. +Clarke paced the corridor for hours with slow steps and bent head, +refusing to see people or to answer the numerous inquiries over the +telephone. As for Mrs. Clarke, all the fragile prettiness and girlish +grace she had carried over into maturity, seemed to fall away from her +within the hour, leaving her figure stooped and her face settled into +lines of permanent anxiety. + +The mother's chief concern now was to break the news of his condition to +Mac, who was already impatiently straining at the leash, eager to get +back to his old joyous pursuits and increasingly intolerant of +restrictions. + +"He refuses to listen to me or to his father," she confided to Nance, who +had coaxed her down to the yard for a breath of fresh air. "I'm afraid +we've lost our influence over him. And yet I can't bear for Dr. Adair to +tell him. He's so stern and says such dreadful things. Do you know he +actually was heartless enough to tell Mac that he had brought a great +deal of this trouble on himself!" + +Nance slipped her hand through Mrs. Clarke's arm, and patted it +reassuringly. She had come to have a sort of pitying regard for this +terror-stricken mother during these days of anxious waiting. + +"I wonder if you would be willing to tell him?" Mrs. Clarke asked, +looking at her appealingly. "Maybe you could make him understand without +frightening him." + +"I'll try," said Nance, with ready sympathy. + +The opportunity came one day in the following week when the regular day +nurse was off duty. She found Mac alone, propped up in bed, and +tremendously glad to see her. To a less experienced person the +brilliancy of his eyes and the color in his cheeks would have meant +returning health, but to Nance they were danger signals that nerved her +to her task. + +"I hear you are going home next week," she said, resting her crossed arms +on the foot of his bed. "Going to be good and take care of yourself?" + +"Not on your life!" cried Mac, gaily, searching under his pillow for his +cigarette case. "The lid's been on for a month, and it's coming off with +a bang. I intend to shoot the first person that mentions health to me." + +"Fire away then," said Nance. "I'm it. I've come to hand you out a nice +little bunch of advice." + +"You needn't. I've got twice as much now as I intend to use. Come on +around here and be sociable. I want to make love to you." + +Nance declined the invitation. + +"Has Dr. Adair put you wise on what he's letting you in for?" + +"Rather! Raw eggs, rest, and rust. Mother put him up to it. It's perfect +rot. I'll be feeling fit as a fiddle inside of two weeks. All I need is +to get out of this hole. They couldn't have kept me here this long if it +hadn't been for you." + +"And I reckon you're counting on going back and speeding up just as you +did before?" + +"Sure, why not?" + +"Because you can't. The sooner you soak that in, the better." + +He blew a succession of smoke rings in her direction and laughed. + +"So they've taken you into the conspiracy, have they? Going to +frighten me into the straight and narrow, eh? Suppose I tell them that +I'm lovesick? That there's only one cure for me in the world, and +that's you?" + +The ready retort with which she had learned to parry these personalities +was not forthcoming. She felt as she had that day five years ago in his +father's office, when she told him what she thought of him. He smiled up +at her with the same irresponsible light in his brown eyes, the same +eager desire to sidestep the disagreeable, the old refusal to accept life +seriously. He was such a boy despite his twenty-six years. Such a +spoiled, selfish lovable boy! + +With a sudden rush of pity, she went to him and took his hand: + +"See here, Mr. Mac," she said very gravely, "I got to tell you +something. Dr. Adair wanted to tell you from the first, but your mother +headed him off." + +He shot a swift glance at her. + +"What do you mean, Nance?" + +Then Nance sat on the side of his bed and explained to him, as gently and +as firmly as she could, the very serious nature of his illness, +emphasizing the fact that his one chance for recovery lay in complete +surrender to a long and rigorous regime of treatment. + +From scoffing incredulity, he passed to anxious skepticism and then to +agonized conviction. It was the first time he had ever faced any +disagreeable fact in life from which there was no appeal, and he cried +out in passionate protest. If he was a "lunger" he wanted to die as soon +as possible. He hated those wheezy chaps that went coughing through life, +avoiding draughts, and trying to keep their feet dry. If he was going to +die, he wanted to do it with a rush. He'd be hanged if he'd cut out +smoking, drinking, and running with the boys, just to lie on his back for +a year and perhaps die at the end of it! + +Nance faced the bitter crisis with him, whipping up his courage, +strengthening his weak will, nerving him for combat. When she left him +an hour later, with his face buried in the pillow and his hands locked +above his head, he had promised to submit to the doctor's advice on the +one condition that she would go home with him and start him on that fight +for life that was to tax all his strength and patience and self-control. + + + + +CHAPTER XXX + +HER FIRST CASE + + +October hovered over Kentucky that year in a golden halo of enchantment. +The beech-trees ran the gamut of glory, and every shrub and weed had its +hour of transient splendor. A soft haze from burning brush lent the world +a sense of mystery and immensity. Day after day on the south porch at +Hillcrest Mac Clarke lay propped with cushions on a wicker couch, while +Nance Molloy sat beside him, and all about them was a stir of whispering, +dancing, falling leaves. The hillside was carpeted with them, the brook +below the pergola was strewn with bits of color, while overhead the warm +sunshine filtered through canopies of russet and crimson and green. + +"I tell you the boy is infatuated with that girl," Mr. Clarke warned his +wife from time to time. + +"What nonsense!" Mrs. Clarke answered. "He is just amusing himself a bit. +He will forget her as soon as he gets out and about." + +"But the girl?" + +"Oh, she's too sensible to have any hopes of that kind. She really is +an exceptionally nice girl. Rather too frank in her speech, and +frequently ungrammatical and slangy, but I don't know what we should do +without her." + +But even Mrs. Clarke's complacence was a bit shaken as the weeks slipped +away, and Mac's obsession became the gossip of the household. To be sure, +so long as Nance continued to regard the whole matter as a joke and +refused to take Mac seriously, no harm would be done. But that very +indifference that assured his adoring mother, at the same time piqued her +pride. That an ordinary trained nurse, born and brought up, Heaven knew +where, should be insensible to Mac's even transient attention almost +amounted to an impertinence. Quite unconsciously she began to break down +Nance's defenses. + +"You must be very good to my boy, dear," she said one day in her gentle, +coaxing way. "I know he's a bit capricious and exacting at times. But we +can't afford to cross him now when he is just beginning to improve. He +was terribly upset last night when you teased him about leaving." + +"But I ought to go, Mrs. Clarke. He'd get along just as well now with +another nurse. Besides I only promised--" + +"Not another word!" implored Mrs. Clarke in instant alarm. "I wouldn't +answer for the consequences if you left us now. Mac goes all to pieces +when it is suggested. He has always been so used to having his own way, +you know." + +Yes, Nance knew. Between her unceasing efforts to get him well, and her +grim determination to keep the situation well in hand, she had unlimited +opportunity of finding out. The physicians agreed that his chances for +recovery were one to three. It was only by the most persistent observance +of certain regulations pertaining to rest, diet, and fresh air, that they +held out any hope of arresting the malady that had already made such +alarming headway. Nance realized from the first that it was to be a fight +against heavy odds, and she gallantly rose to the emergency. Aside from +the keen personal interest she took in Mac, and the sympathy she felt for +his stricken parents, she had an immense pride in her first private case, +on which she was determined to win her spurs. + +For three months now she had controlled the situation. With undaunted +perseverance she had made Mac submit to authority and succeeded in +successfully combatting his mother's inclination to yield to his every +whim. The gratifying result was that Mac was gradually putting on flesh +and, with the exception of a continued low fever, was showing decided +improvement. Already talk of a western flight was in the air. + +The whole matter hinged at present on Mac's refusal to go unless Nance +could be induced to accompany them. The question had been argued from +every conceivable angle, and gradually a conspiracy had been formed +between Mac and his mother to overcome her apparently absurd resistance. + +"It isn't as if she had any good reason," Mrs. Clarke complained to her +husband, with tears in her eyes. "She has no immediate family, and she +might just as well be on duty in California as in Kentucky. I don't see +how she can refuse to go when she sees how weak Mac is, and how he +depends on her." + +"The girl's got more sense than all the rest of you put together!" said +Mr. Clarke. "She sees the way things are going." + +"Well, what if Mac is in love with her?" asked Mrs. Clarke, for the first +time frankly facing the situation. "Of course it's just his sick fancy, +but he is in no condition to be argued with. The one absolutely necessary +thing is to get her to go with us. Suppose you ask her. Perhaps that's +what she is waiting for." + +"And you are willing to take the consequences?" + +"I am willing for anything on earth that will help me keep my boy," +sobbed Mrs. Clarke, resorting to a woman's surest weapon. + +So Mr. Clarke turned his ponderous batteries upon the situation, using +money as the ammunition with which he was most familiar. + +The climax was reached one night toward the end of October when the +first heavy hoar-frost of the season gave premonitory threat of coming +winter. The family was still at dinner, and Mac was having his from a +tray before the library fire. The heavy curtains had been drawn against +the chill world without, and the long room was a soft harmony of dull +reds and browns, lit up here and there by rose-shaded lamps. + +It was a luxurious room, full of trophies of foreign travel. The long +walls were hung with excellent pictures; the floors were covered with +rare rugs; the furniture was selected with perfect taste. Every detail +had been elaborately and skilfully worked out by an eminent decorator. +Only one insignificant item had been omitted. In the length and breadth +of the library, not a book was to be seen. + +Mac, letting his soup cool while he read the letter Nance had just +brought him, gave an exclamation of surprise. + +"By George! Monte Pearce is going to get married!" + +Nance laughed. + +"I've got a tintype of Mr. Monte settling down. Who's the girl?" + +"A cousin of his in Honolulu. Her father is a sugar king; no end of cash. +Think of old Monte landing a big fish like that!" + +"That's what you'll be doing when you get out to your ranch." + +"I intend to take my girl along." + +"You'll have to get her first." + +Mac turned on her with an invalid's fretfulness. "See here, Nance," +he cried, "cut that out, will you? Either you go, or I stay, do you +see? I know I'm a fool about you, but I can't help it. Nance, why +don't you love me?" + +Nance looked down at him helplessly. She had been refusing him on an +average of twice a day for the past week, and her powers of resistance +were weakening. The hardest granite yields in the end to the persistent +dropping of water. However much the clear-headed, independent side of her +might refuse him, to another side of her he was strangely appealing. +Often when she was near him, the swift remembrance of other days filled +her with sudden desire to yield, if only for a moment, to his insatiable +demands. Despite her most heroic resolution, she sometimes relaxed her +vigilance as she did to-night, and allowed her hand to rest in his. + +Mac made the most of the moment. + +"I don't ask you to promise me anything, Nance. I just ask you to come +with me!" he pleaded, with eloquent eyes, "we can get a couple of ponies +and scour the trails all over those old mountains. At Coronada there's +bully sea bathing. And the motoring--why you can go for a hundred miles +straight along the coast!" + +Nance's eyes kindled, but she shook her head. "You can do all that +without me. All I do is to jack you up and make you take care of +yourself. I should think you 'd hate me, Mr. Mac." + +"Well, I don't. Sometimes I wish I did. I love you even when you come +down on me hardest. A chap gets sick of being mollycoddled. When you fire +up and put your saucy little chin in the air, and tell me I sha'n't have +a cocktail, and call me a fool for stealing a smoke, it bucks me up more +than anything. By George, I believe I'd amount to something if you'd take +me permanently in hand." + +Nance laughed, and he pulled her down on the arm of his chair. + +"Say you'll marry me, Nance," he implored. "You'll learn to care for me +all right. You want to get out and see the world. I'll take you. We'll go +out to Honolulu and see Monte. Mother will talk the governor over; she's +promised. They'll give me anything I want, and I want you. Oh, Nance +darling, don't leave me to fight through this beastly business alone!" + +There was a haunted look of fear in his eyes as he clung to her that +appealed to her more than his former demands had ever done. Instinctively +her strong, tender hands closed over his thin, weak ones. + +"Nobody expects you to fight it through alone," she reassured him, "but +you come on down off this high horse! We'll be having another bad night +the first thing you know." + +"They'll all be bad if you don't come with me, Nance. I won't ask you to +say yes to-night, but for God's sake don't say no!" + +Nance observed the brilliancy of his eyes and the flush on his thin +cheeks, and knew that his fever was rising. + +"All right," she promised lightly. "I won't say no to-night, if you'll +stop worrying. I'm going to fix you nice and comfy on the couch and not +let you say another word." + +But when she had got him down on the couch, nothing would do but she must +sit on the hassock beside him and soothe his aching head. Sometimes he +stopped her stroking hand to kiss it, but for the most part he lay with +eyes half-closed and elaborated his latest whim. + +"We could stay awhile in Honolulu and then go on to Japan and China. I +want to see India, too, and Mandalay, + + ... somewhere east of Suez, where the best is like the worst, +And there aren't no Ten Commandments + +--you remember Kipling's Mandalay?" + +Nance couldn't remember what she had never known, but she did not say +so. Since her advent at Hillcrest she had learned to observe and listen +without comment. This was not her world, and her shrewd common-sense told +her so again and again. Even the servants who moved with such easy +familiarity about their talks were more at home than she. It had kept her +wits busy to meet the situation. But now that she had got over her first +awkwardness, she found the new order of things greatly to her liking. For +the first time in her life she was moving in a world of beautiful +objects, agreeable sounds, untroubled relations, and that starved side of +her that from the first had cried out for order and beauty and harmony +fed ravenously upon the luxury around her. + +And this was what Mac was offering her,--her, Nance Molloy of Calvary +Alley,--who up to four years ago had never known anything but bare +floors, flickering gas-jets, noise, dirt, confusion. He wanted her to +marry him; he needed her. + +She ceased to listen to his rambling talk, her eyes rested dreamily on +the glowing back-log. After all didn't every woman want to marry and have +a home of her own, and later perhaps--Twenty-four at Christmas! Almost an +old maid! And to think Mr. Mac had gone on caring for her all these +years, that he still wanted her when he had all those girls in his own +world to choose from. Not many men were constant like that, she thought, +as an old memory stabbed her. + +Then she was aware that her hand was held fast to a hot cheek, and that a +pair of burning eyes were watching her. + +"Nance!" Mac whispered eagerly, "you're giving in! You're going with me!" + +A step in the hall made Nance scramble to her feet just before Mrs. +Clarke came in from the dining-room. + +"I thought we should never get through dinner!" said that lady, with an +impatient sigh. "The bishop can talk of nothing else but his new hobby, +and do you know he's actually persuaded your father to give one of the +tenements back of the cathedral for the free clinic!" + +Nance who was starting out with the tray, put it down suddenly. + +"How splendid!" she cried. "Which house is it?" + +"I don't know, I am sure. But they are going to put a lot of money into +doing it over, and Dr. Adair has offered to take entire charge of it. For +my part I think it is a great mistake. Just think what that money would +mean to our poor mission out in Mukden! These shiftless people here at +home have every chance to live decently. It's not our fault if they +refuse to take advantage of their opportunities." + +"But they don't know how, Mrs. Clarke! If Dr. Adair could teach the +mothers--" + +Mrs. Clarke lifted her hands in laughing protest. + +"My dear girl, don't you know that mothers can't be taught? The most +ignorant mother alive has more instinctive knowledge of what is good for +her child than any man that ever lived! Mac, dearest, why didn't you eat +your grapes?" + +"Because I loathe grapes. Nance is going to work them off on an old sick +man she knows." + +"Some one at the hospital?" Mrs. Clarke asked idly. + +"No," said Nance, "it's an old gentleman who lives down in the very +place we're talking about. He's been sick for weeks. It's all right +about the grapes?" + +"Why, of course. Take some oranges, too, and tell the gardener to give +you some flowers. The dahlias are going to waste this year. Mac, you +look tired!" + +He shook off her hand impatiently. + +"No, I'm not. I feel like a two-year old. Nance thinks perhaps she may go +with us after all." + +"Of course she will!" said Mrs. Clarke, with a confident smile at the +girl. "We are going to be so good to her that she will not have the +heart to refuse." + +Mrs. Clarke with her talent for self-deception had almost convinced +herself that Nance was a fairy princess who had languished in a nether +world of obscurity until Mac's magic smile had restored her to her own. + +Nance evaded an answer by fleeing to the white and red breakfast-room +where the butler was laying the cloth for her dinner. As a rule she +enjoyed these tête-à-têtes with the butler. He was a solemn and +pretentious Englishman whom she delighted in shocking by acting and +talking in a manner that was all too natural to her. But to-night she +submitted quite meekly to his lordly condescension. + +She ate her dinner in dreamy abstraction, her thoughts on Mac and the +enticing prospects he had held out. After all what was the use in +fighting against all the kindness and affection? If they were willing to +take the risk of her going with them, why should she hesitate? They knew +she was poor and uneducated and not of their world, and they couldn't +help seeing that Mac was in love with her. And still they wanted her. + +California! Honolulu! Queer far-off lands full of queer people! Big ships +that would carry her out of the sight and sound of Calvary Alley forever! +And Mac, well and happy, making a man of himself, giving her everything +in the world she wanted. + +Across her soaring thoughts struck the voices from the adjoining +dining-room, Mr. Clarke's sharp and incisive, the bishop's suave and +unctious. Suddenly a stray sentence arrested her attention and she +listened with her glass half-way to her lips. + +"It is the labor question that concerns us more than the war," Mr. +Clarke was saying. "I have just succeeded in signing up with a man I +have been after for four years. He is a chap named Lewis, the only man +in this part of the country who seems to be able to cope with the +problem of union labor." + +"A son of General Lewis?" + +"No, no. Just a common workman who got his training at our factory. He +left me five or six years ago without rhyme or reason, and went over to +the Ohio Glass Works, where he has made quite a name for himself. I had a +tussle to get him back, but he comes to take charge next month. He is one +of those rare men you read about, but seldom find, a practical idealist." + +Nance left her ice untouched, and slipped through the back entry and up +to the dainty blue bedroom that had been hers now for three months. All +the delicious languor of the past hour was gone, and in its place was a +turmoil of hope and fear and doubt. Dan was coming back. The words beat +on her brain. He cared nothing for her, and he was married, and she would +never see him, but he was coming back. + +She opened the drawer of her dressing table and took out a small faded +photograph which she held to the silk-shaded lamp. It was a cheap +likeness of an awkward-looking working-boy in his Sunday clothes, a stiff +lock of unruly hair across his temple, and a pair of fine earnest eyes +looking out from slightly scowling brows. + +Nance looked at it long and earnestly; then she flung it back in the +drawer with a sigh and, putting out the light, went down again to +her patient. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI + +MR. DEMRY + + +The next afternoon, armed with her flowers and fruit, Nance was +setting forth for Calvary Alley, when Mrs. Clarke called to her from +an upper window. + +"If you will wait ten minutes, I will take you down in the machine." + +"But I want the walk," Nance insisted. "I need the exercise." + +"Nonsense, you are on your feet nearly all the time. I won't be long." + +Nance made a wry face at an unoffending sparrow and glanced regretfully +at the long white road that wound invitingly in and out of the woods +until it dropped sharply to the little station in the valley a mile +below. She had been looking forward to that walk all morning. She wanted +to get away from the hot-house atmosphere of the Clarke establishment, +away from Mac's incessant appeals and his mother's increasing dependence. +Aside from amusing her patient and seeing that he obeyed Dr. Adair's +orders, her duties for the past few weeks had been too light to be +interesting. The luxury that at first had so thrilled her was already +beginning to pall. She wanted to be out in the open alone, to feel the +sharp wind of reality in her face, while she thought things out. + +"I am going to the cathedral," said Mrs. Clarke, emerging from the +door, followed by a maid carrying coats and rugs. "But I can drop you +wherever you say." + +"I'll go there, too," said Nance as she took her seat in the car. "The +old gentleman I'm taking the things to lives just back of there, in the +very house Dr. Adair is trying to get for the clinic." + +"Poor soul!" said Mrs. Clarke idly, as she viewed with approval Nance's +small brown hat that so admirably set off the lights in her hair and the +warm red tints of her skin. + +"He's been up against it something fierce for over a year now," Nance +went on. "We've helped him all he'd let us since he stopped playing at +the theater." + +"Playing?" Mrs. Clarke repeated the one word that had caught her +wandering attention. "Is he an actor?" + +"No; he is a musician. He used to play in big orchestras in New York and +Boston. He plays the fiddle." + +For the rest of the way into town Mrs. Clarke was strangely preoccupied. +She sat very straight, with eyes slightly contracted, and looked absently +out of the window. Once or twice she began a sentence without finishing +it. At the cathedral steps she laid a detaining hand on Nance's arm. + +"By the way, what did you say was the name of the old man you are +going to see?" + +"I never said. It's Demry." + +"Demry--Never mind, I just missed the step. I'm quite all right. I think +I will go with you to see this--this--house they are talking about." + +"But it's in the alley. Mrs. Clarke; it's awfully dirty." + +"Yes, yes, but I'm coming. Can we go through here?" + +So impatient was she that she did not wait for Nance to lead the way, but +hurried around the bishop's study and down the concrete walk to the gate +that opened into the alley. + +"Look out for your skirt against the garbage barrel," warned Nance. It +embarrassed her profoundly to have Mrs. Clarke in these surroundings; she +hated the mud that soiled her dainty boots, the odors that must offend +her nostrils, the inevitable sights that awaited her in Number One. She +only prayed that Mrs. Snawdor's curl-papered head might not appear on the +upper landing. + +"Which way?" demanded Mrs. Clarke, impatiently. + +Nance led the way into the dark hall where a half-dozen ragged, +dirty-faced children were trying to drag a still dirtier pup up the +stairs by means of a twine string. + +"In here, Mrs. Clarke," said Nance, pushing open the door at the left + +The outside shutters of the big cold room were partly closed, but the +light from between them fell with startling effect on the white, +marble-like face of the old man who lay asleep on a cot in front of the +empty fireplace. For a moment Mrs. Clarke stood looking at him; then with +a smothered cry she bent over him. + +"Father!" she cried sharply, "Oh, God! It's my father!" + +Nance caught her breath in amazement; then her bewildered gaze fell upon +a familiar object. There, in its old place on the mantel stood the +miniature of a pink and white maiden in the pink and white dress, with +the golden curl across her shoulder. In the delicate, beautiful profile +Nance read the amazing truth. + +Mr. Demry sighed heavily, opened his eyes with an effort and, looking +past the bowed head beside him, held out a feeble hand for the flowers. + +"Listen, Mr. Demry," said Nance, breathlessly. "Here's a lady says she +knows you. Somebody you haven't seen for a long, long time. Will you look +at her and try to remember?" + +His eyes rested for the fraction of a minute on the agonized face lifted +to his, then closed wearily. + +"Can you not get the lady a chair, Nancy?" he asked feebly. "You can +borrow one from the room across the hall." + +"Father!" demanded Mrs. Clarke, "don't you know me? It is Elise. Your +daughter, Elise Demorest!" + +"Demorest," he repeated, and smiled. "How unnatural it sounds now! +Demorest!" + +"It's no use," said Nance. "His mind wanders most of the time. Let me +take you back to the cathedral, Mrs. Clarke, until we decide what's got +to be done." + +"I am going to take him home," said Mrs. Clarke, wildly. "He shall have +every comfort and luxury I can give him. Poor Father, don't you want to +come home with Elise?" + +"I live at Number One, Calvary Alley," said Mr. Demry, clinging to the +one fact he had trained his mind to remember. "If you will kindly get me +to the corner, the children will--" + +"It's too late to do anything!" cried Mrs. Clarke, wringing her hands. "I +knew something terrible would happen to him. I pleaded with them to help +me find him, but they put me off. Then I got so absorbed in Mac that he +drove everything else out of my mind. How long has he been in this awful +place? How long has he been ill? Who takes care of him?" + +Nance, with her arms about Mrs. Clarke, told her as gently as she could +of Mr. Demry's advent into the alley fourteen years before, of his +friendship with the children, his occasional lapses from grace, and the +steady decline of his fortune. + +"We must get him away from here!" cried Mrs. Clarke when she had gained +control of herself. "Go somewhere and telephone Mr. Clarke. Telephone Dr. +Adair. Tell him to bring an ambulance and another nurse and--and plenty +of blankets. Telephone to the house for them to get a room ready. But +wait--there's Mac--he mustn't know--" + +It was the old, old mother-cry! Keep it from Mac, spare Mac, don't let +Mac suffer. Nance seized on it now to further her designs. + +"You go back to Mr. Mac, Mrs. Clarke. I'll stay here and attend to +everything. You go ahead and get things ready for us." + +And Mrs. Clarke, used to taking the easiest way, allowed herself to be +persuaded, and after one agonized look at the tranquil face on the +pillow, hurried away. + +Nance, shivering with the cold, got together the few articles that +constituted Mr. Demry's worldly possessions. A few shabby garments in the +old wardrobe, the miniature on the shelf, a stack of well-worn books, and +the violin in its rose-wood case. Everything else had been sold to keep +the feeble flame alive in that wasted old form. + +Nance looked about her with swimming eyes. She recalled the one happy +Christmas that her childhood had known. The gay garlands of tissue paper, +the swinging lanterns, the shelf full of oranges and doughnuts, and the +beaming old face smiling over the swaying fiddle bow! And to think that +Mrs. Clarke's own father had hidden away here all these years, utterly +friendless except for the children, poor to the point of starvation, sick +to the point of death, grappling with his great weakness in heroic +silence, and going down to utter oblivion rather than obtrude his +misfortune upon the one he loved best. + +As the old man's fairy tales had long ago stirred Nance's imagination and +wakened her to the beauty of invisible things, so now his broken, futile +life, with its one great glory of renunciation, called out to the soul of +her and roused in her a strange, new sense of spiritual beauty. + +For one week he lived among the luxurious surroundings of his daughter's +home. Everything that skill and money could do, was done to restore him +to health and sanity. But he saw only the sordid sights he had been +seeing for the past fourteen years; he heard only the sounds to which his +old ears had become accustomed. + +"You would better move my cot, Nancy," he would say, plucking at the +silken coverlid. "They are scrubbing the floor up in the Lavinski flat. +The water always comes through." And again he would say: "It is nice and +warm in here, but I am afraid you are burning too much coal, dear. I +cannot get another bucket until Saturday." + +One day Mrs. Clarke saw him take from his tray, covered with delicacies, +a half-eaten roll and slip it under his pillow. + +"We must save it," he whispered confidentially, "save it for to-morrow." +In vain they tried to reassure him; the haunting poverty that had stalked +beside him in life refused to be banished by death. + +Mrs. Clarke remained "the lady" to him to the end. When he spoke to her, +his manner assumed a faint dignity, with a slight touch of gallantry, the +unmistakable air of a gentleman of the old school towards an attractive +stranger of the opposite sex. + +His happiest hours were those when he fancied the children were with him. + +"Gently! gently!" he would say; "there is room for everybody. This knee +is for Gussie Gorman, this one for Joe, because they are the smallest, +you know. Now are you ready?" And then he would whisper fairy stories, +smiling at the ceiling, and making feeble gestures with his wasted old +hands. + +The end came one day after he had lain for hours in a stupor. He stirred +suddenly and asked for his violin. + +"I must go--to the--theater, Nancy," he murmured. "I--do not want--to +be--a--burden." + +They laid the instrument in his arms, and his fingers groped feebly over +the strings; then his chin sank into its old accustomed place, and a +great light dawned in his eyes. Mr. Demry, who was used to seeing +invisible things, had evidently caught the final vision. + +That night, worn with nursing and full of grief for the passing of her +old friend, Nance threw a coat about her and slipped out on the terrace. +Above her, nebulous stars were already appearing, and their twinkling +was answered by responsive gleams in the city below. Against the velvety +dusk two tall objects towered in the distance, the beautiful Gothic +spire of the cathedral, and the tall, unseemly gas pipe of Clarke's +Bottle Factory. Between them, under a haze of smoke and grime, lay +Calvary Alley. + +"I don't know which is worse," thought Nance fiercely, "to be down there +in the mess, fighting and struggling and suffering to get the things you +want, or up here with the mummies who haven't got anything left to wish +for. I wish life wasn't just a choice between a little hard green apple +and a rotten big one!" + +She leaned her elbows on the railing and watched the new moon dodging +behind the tree trunks and, as she watched, she grappled with the +problem of life, at first bitterly and rebelliously, then with a dawning +comprehension of its meaning. After all was the bishop, with his +conspicuous virtues and his well-known dislike of children, any better +than old Mr. Demry, with his besetting sin and his beautiful influence on +every child with whom he came in contact? Was Mr. Clarke, working +children under age in the factory to build up a great fortune for his +son, very different from Mr. Lavinski, with his sweat-shop, hoarding +pennies for the ambitious Ikey? Was Mrs. Clarke, shirking her duty to her +father, any happier or any better than Mrs. Snawdor, shirking hers to her +children? Was Mac, adored and petted and protected, any better than +Birdie, now in the state asylum paying the penalty of their joint +misdeed? Was the tragedy in the great house back of her any more poignant +than the tragedy of Dan Lewis bound by law to an insane wife and burdened +with a child that was not his own? She seemed to see for the first time +the great illuminating truth that the things that make men alike in the +world are stronger than the things that make them different. And in this +realization an overwhelming ambition seized her. Some hidden spiritual +force rose to lift her out of the contemplation of her own interests into +something of ultimate value to her fellowmen. + +After all, those people down there in Calvary Alley were her people, and +she meant to stand by them. It had been the dream of her life to get out +and away, but in that moment she knew that wherever she went, she would +always come back. Others might help from the top, but she could help +understandingly from the bottom. With the magnificent egotism of youth, +she outlined gigantic schemes on the curtain of the night. Some day, +somehow, she would make people like the Clarkes see the life of the poor +as it really was, she would speak for the girls in the factories, in the +sweatshops, on the stage. She would be an interpreter between the rich +and the poor and make them serve each other. + +"Nance!" called an injured voice from the music room behind her, "what in +the mischief are you doing out there in the cold? Come on in here and +amuse me. I'm half dead with the dumps!" + +"All right, Mr. Mac. I'm coming," she said cheerfully, as she stepped in +through the French window and closed it against her night of dreams. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII + +THE NEW FOREMAN + + +The Dan Lewis who came back to Clarke's Bottle Factory was a very +different man from the one who had walked out of it five years before. He +had gone out a stern, unforgiving, young ascetic, accepting no +compromise, demanding perfection of himself and of his fellow-men. The +very sublimity of his dream doomed it to failure. Out of the crumbling +ideals of his boyhood he had struggled to a foothold on life that had +never been his in the old days. His marriage to Birdie Smelts had been +the fiery furnace in which his soul had been softened to receive the +final stamp of manhood. + +For his hour of indiscretion he had paid to the last ounce of his +strength and courage. After that night in the lodging-house, there seemed +to him but one right course, and he took it with unflinching promptness. +Even when Birdie, secure in the protection of his name and his support, +lapsed into her old vain, querulous self, he valiantly bore his burden, +taking any menial work that he could find to do, and getting a sort of +grim satisfaction out of what he regarded as expiation for his sin. + +But when he became aware of Birdie's condition and realized the use she +had made of him, the tragedy broke upon him in all of its horror. Then +he, too, lost sight of the shore lights, and went plunging desperately +into the stream of life with no visible and sustaining ideal to guide +his course, but only the fighting necessity to get across as decently +as possible. + +After a long struggle he secured a place in the Ohio Glass Works, where +his abilities soon began to be recognized. Instead of working now with +tingling enthusiasm for Nance and the honeysuckle cottage, he worked +doggedly and furiously to meet the increasing expense of Birdie's +wastefulness and the maintenance of her child. + +Year by year he forged ahead, gaining a reputation for sound judgment and +fair dealing that made him an invaluable spokesman between the employer +and the employed. He set himself seriously to work to get at the real +conditions that were causing the ferment of unrest among the working +classes. He made himself familiar with socialistic and labor newspapers; +he attended mass meetings; he laid awake nights reading and wrestling +with the problems of organized industrialism. His honest resentment +against the injustice shown the laboring man was always nicely balanced +by his intolerance of the haste and ignorance and misrepresentation of +the labor agitators. He was one of the few men who could be called upon +to arbitrate differences, whom both factions invariably pronounced +"square." When pressure was brought to bear upon him to return to +Clarke's, he was in a position to dictate his own terms. + +It was the second week after his reinstatement that he came up to the +office one day and unexpectedly encountered Nance Molloy. At first he did +not recognize the tall young lady in the well-cut brown suit with the bit +of fur at the neck and wrists and the jaunty brown hat with its dash of +gold. Then she looked up, and it was Nance's old smile that flashed out +at him, and Nance's old impulsive self that turned to greet him. + +For one radiant moment all that had happened since they last stood there +was swept out of the memory of each; then it came back; and they shook +hands awkwardly and could find little to say to each other in the +presence of the strange stenographer who occupied Nance's old place at +the desk by the window. + +"They told me you weren't working here," said Dan at length. + +"I'm not. I've just come on an errand for Mrs. Clarke." + +Dan's eyes searched hers in swift inquiry. + +"I'm a trained nurse now," she said, determined to take the situation +lightly. "You remember how crazy I used to be about doping people?" + +He did not answer, and she hurried on as if afraid of any silence that +might fall between them. + +"It all started with the smallpox in Calvary Alley. Been back +there, Dan?" + +"Not yet." + +"Lots of changes since the old days. Mr. Snawdor and Fidy and Mrs. Smelts +and Mr. Demry all gone. Have you heard about Mr. Demry?" + +Dan shook his head. He was not listening to her, but he was looking at +her searchingly, broodingly, with growing insistence. + +The hammering of the type-writer was the only sound that broke the +ensuing pause. + +"Tell me your news, Dan," said Nance in desperation. "Where you +living now?" + +"At Mrs. Purdy's. She's going to take care of Ted for me." + +"Ted? Oh! I forgot. How old is he now?" + +For the first time Dan's face lit up with his fine, rare smile. + +"He's four, Nance, and the smartest kid that ever lived! You'd be +crazy about him, I know. I wonder if you couldn't go out there some +day and see him?" + +Nance showed no enthusiasm over the suggestion; instead she gathered up +her muff and gloves and, leaving a message for Mr. Clarke with the +stenographer, prepared to depart. + +"I am thinking about going away," she said. "I may go out to California +next week." + +The brief enthusiasm died out of Dan's face. + +"What's taking you to California?" he asked dully, as he followed her +into the hall. + +"I may go with a patient. Have you heard of the trouble they're in at the +Clarkes'?" + +"No." + +"It's Mr. Mac. He's got tuberculosis, and they are taking him out to the +coast for a year. They want me to go along." + +Dan's face hardened. + +"So it's Mac Clarke still?" he asked bitterly. + +His tone stung Nance to the quick, and she wheeled on him indignantly. + +"See here, Dan! I've got to put you straight on a thing or two. Where can +we go to have this business out?" + +He led her across the hall to his own small office and closed the door. + +"I'm going to tell you something," she said, facing him with blazing +eyes, "and I don't care a hang whether you believe it or not. I never was +in love with Mac Clarke. From the day you left this factory I never saw +or wrote to him until he was brought to the hospital last July, and I was +put on the case. I didn't have anything more to do with him than I did +with you. I guess you know how much that was!" + +"What about now? Are you going west with him?" + +Dan confronted her with the same stern inquiry in his eyes that had shone +there the day they parted, in this very place, five years ago. + +"I don't know whether I am or not!" cried Nance, firing up. "They've done +everything for me, the Clarkes have. They think his getting well depends +on me. Of course that's rot, but that's what they think. As for Mr. Mac +himself--" + +"Is he still in love with you?" + +At this moment a boy thrust his head in the door to say that Dr. Adair +had telephoned for Miss Molloy to come by the hospital before she +returned to Hillcrest. + +Nance pulled on her gloves and, with chin in the air, was departing +without a word, when Dan stopped her. + +"I'm sorry I spoke to you like that, Nance," he said, scowling at the +floor. "I've got no right to be asking you questions, or criticizing what +you do, or where you go. I hope you'll excuse me." + +"You _have_ got the right!" declared Nance, with one of her quick changes +of mood. "You can ask me anything you like. I guess we can always be +friends, can't we?" + +"No," said Dan, slowly, "I don't think we can. I didn't count on seeing +you like this, just us two together, alone. I thought you'd be married +maybe or moved away some place." + +It was Nance's time to be silent, and she listened with wide eyes and +parted lips. + +"I mustn't see you--alone--any more, Nance," Dan went on haltingly. "But +while we are here I want to tell you about it. Just this once, Nance, if +you don't mind." + +He crossed over and stood before her, his hands gripping a chair back. + +"When I went away from here," he began, "I thought you had passed me up +for Mac Clarke. It just put me out of business, Nance. I didn't care +where I went or what I did. Then one night in Cincinnati I met Birdie, +and she was up against it, too--and--" + +After all he couldn't make a clean breast of it! Whatever he might say +would reflect on Birdie, and he gave the explanation up in despair. But +Nance came to his rescue. + +"I know, Dan," she said. "Mrs. Smelts told me everything. I don't know +another fellow in the world that would have stood by a girl like you did +Birdie. She oughtn't have let you marry her without telling you." + +"I think she meant to give me my freedom when the baby came," said Dan. +"At least that was what she promised. I couldn't have lived through +those first months of hell if I hadn't thought there was some way out. +But when the baby came, it was too late. Her mind was affected, and by +the law of the State I'm bound to her for the rest of her life." + +"Do you know--who--who the baby's father is, Dan?" + +"No. She refused from the first to tell me, and now I'm glad I don't +know. She said the baby was like him, and that made her hate it. That was +the way her trouble started. She wouldn't wash the little chap, or feed +him, or look after him when he was sick. I had to do everything. For a +year she kept getting worse and worse, until one night I caught her +trying to set fire to his crib. Of course after that she had to be sent +to the asylum, and from that time on, Ted and I fought it out together. +One of the neighbors took charge of him in the day, and I wrestled with +him at night." + +"Couldn't you put him in an orphan asylum?" + +Dan shook his head. + +"No, I couldn't go back on him when he was up against a deal like that. I +made up my mind that I'd never let him get lonesome like I used to be, +with nobody to care a hang what became of him. He's got my name now, and +he'll never know the difference if I can help it." + +"And Birdie? Does she know you when you go to see her?" + +"Not for two years now. It's easier than when she did." + +There was silence between them; then Nance said: + +"I'm glad you told me all this, Dan. I--I wish I could help you." + +"You can't," said Dan, sharply. "Don't you see I've got no right to be +with you? Do you suppose there's been a week, or a day in all these years +that I haven't wanted you with every breath I drew? The rest was just a +nightmare I was living through in order to wake up and find you. Nance--I +love you! With my heart and soul and body! You've been the one beautiful +thing in my whole life, and I wasn't worthy of you. I can't let you go! +I--Oh, God! what am I saying? What right have I--Don't let me see you +again like this, Nance, don't let me talk to you--" + +He stumbled to a chair by the desk and buried his head in his arms. His +breath came in short, hard gasps, with a long agonizing quiver between, +and his broad shoulders heaved. It was the first time he had wept since +that night, so long ago, when he had sat in the gutter in front of Slap +Jack's saloon and broken his heart over an erring mother. + +For one tremulous second Nance hovered over him, her face aflame with +sympathy and almost maternal pity; then she pulled herself together and +said brusquely: + +"It's all right, Danny. I understand. I'm going. Good-by." + +And without looking back, she fled into the hall and down the steps to +the waiting motor. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII + +NANCE COMES INTO HER OWN + + +For two hours Nance was closeted with Dr. Adair in his private office, +and when she came out she had the look of one who has been following +false trails and suddenly discovers the right one. + +"Don't make a hasty decision," warned Dr. Adair in parting. "The trip +with the Clarkes will be a wonderful experience; they may be gone a year +or more, and they'll do everything and see everything in the approved +way. What I am proposing offers no romance. It will be hard work and +plenty of it. You'd better think it over and give me your answer +to-morrow." + +"I'll give it to you now," said Nance. "It's yes." + +He scrutinized her quizzically; then he held out his hand with its short, +thick, surgeon's fingers. + +"It's a wise decision, my dear," he said. "Say nothing about it at +present. I will make it all right with the Clarkes." + +During the weeks that followed, Nance was too busy to think of herself +or her own affairs. She superintended the shopping and packing for Mrs. +Clarke; she acted as private secretary for Mr. Clarke; she went on +endless errands, and looked after the innumerable details that a family +migration entails. + +Mac, sulking on the couch, feeling grossly abused and neglected, spent +most of his time inveighing against Dr. Adair. "He's got to let you come +out by the end of next month." he threatened Nance, "or I'll take the +first train home. What's he got up his sleeve anyhow?" + +"Ask him," advised Nance, over her shoulder, as she vanished into the +hall. + +Toward the end of November the Clarkes took their departure; father, +mother, and son, two servants, and the despised, but efficient Miss +Hanna. Nance went down to see them off, hovering over the unsuspecting +Mac with feelings of mingled relief and contrition. + +"I wish you'd let me tell him," she implored Mrs. Clarke. "He's bound to +know soon. Why not get it over with now?" + +Mrs. Clarke was in instant panic. + +"Not a word, I implore you! We will break the news to him when he is +better. Be good to him now, let him go away happy. Please, dear, for my +sake!" With the strength of the weak, she carried her point. + +For the quarter of an hour before the train started, Nance resolutely +kept the situation in hand, not giving Mac a chance to speak to her +alone, and keeping up a running fire of nonsense that provoked even Mr. +Clarke to laughter. When the "All Aboard!" sounded from without, there +was scant time for good-bys. She hurried out, and when on the platform, +turned eagerly to scan the windows above her. A gust of smoke swept +between her and the slow-moving train; then as it cleared she caught her +last glimpse of a gay irresponsible face propped about with pillows and a +thin hand that threw her kisses as far as she could see. + +It was with a curious feeling of elation mingled with depression, that +she tramped back to the hospital through the gloom of that November day. +Until a month ago she had scarcely had a thought beyond Mac and the +progress of his case; even now she missed his constant demands upon her, +and her heart ached for the disappointment that awaited him. But under +these disturbing thoughts something new and strange and beautiful was +calling her. + +Half mechanically she spent the rest of the afternoon reestablishing +herself in the nurses' quarters at the hospital which she had left nearly +four months before. At six o'clock she put on the gray cape and small +gray bonnet that constituted her uniform, and leaving word that she would +report for duty at nine o'clock, went to the corner and boarded a street +car. It was a warm evening for November, and the car with its throng of +home-going workers was close and uncomfortable. But Nance, clinging to a +strap, and jostled on every side, was superbly indifferent to her +surroundings. With lifted chin and preoccupied eyes, she held counsel +with herself, sometimes moving her lips slightly as if rehearsing a part. +At Butternut Lane she got out and made her way to the old white house +midway of the square. + +A little boy was perched on the gate post, swinging a pair of fat legs +and trying to whistle. There was no lack of effort on his part, but the +whistle for some reason refused to come. He tried hooking a small finger +inside the corners of his mouth; he tried it with teeth together and +teeth apart. + +Nance, sympathizing with his thwarted ambition, smiled as she approached; +then she caught her breath. The large brown eyes that the child turned +upon her were disconcertingly familiar. + +"Is this Ted?" she asked. + +He nodded mistrustfully; then after surveying her gravely, evidently +thought better of her and volunteered the information that he was waiting +for his daddy. + +"Where is Mrs. Purdy?" Nance asked. + +"Her's making me a gingerbread man." + +"I know a story about a gingerbread man; want to hear it?" + +"Is it scareful?" asked Ted. + +"No, just funny," Nance assured. Then while he sat very still on the gate +post, with round eyes full of wonder, Nance stood in front of him with +his chubby fists in her hands and told him one of Mr. Demry's old fairy +tales. So absorbed were they both that neither of them heard an +approaching step until it was quite near. + +"Daddy!" cried Ted, in sudden rapture, scrambling down from the post and +hurling himself against the new-comer. + +But for once his daddy's first greeting was not for him. Dan seized +Nance's outstretched hand and studied her face with hungry, +inquiring eyes. + +"I've come to say good-by, Dan," she said in a matter-of-fact tone. + +His face hardened. + +"Then you are going with the Clarkes? You've decided?" + +"I've decided. Can't we go over to the summer-house for a few minutes. I +want to talk to you." + +They crossed the yard to the sheltered bower in its cluster of bare +trees, while Ted trudged behind them kicking up clouds of dead leaves +with his small square-toed boots. + +"You run in to Mother Purdy, Teddykins," said Dan, but Nance caught the +child's hand. + +"Better keep him here," she said with an unsteady laugh. "I got to get +something off my chest once and for all; then I'll skidoo." + +But Ted had already spied a squirrel and gone in pursuit, and Nance's +eyes followed him absently. + +"When I met you in the office the other day," she said, "I thought I +could bluff it through. But when I saw you all knocked up like that; and +knew that you cared--" Her eyes came back to his. "Dan we might as well +face the truth." + +"You mean--" + +"I mean I'm going to wait for you if I have to wait forever. You're not +free now, but when you are, I'll come to you." + +He made one stride toward her and swept her into his arms. + +"Do you mean it, girl?" he asked, his voice breaking with the unexpected +joy. "You are going to stand by me? You are going to wait?" + +"Let me go, Dan!" she implored. "Where's Ted? I mustn't stay--I--" + +But Dan held her as if he never meant to let her go, and suddenly she +ceased to struggle or to consider right or wrong or consequences. She +lifted her head and her lips met his in complete surrender. For the +first time in her short and stormy career she had found exactly what +she wanted. + +For a long time they stood thus; then Dan recovered himself with a +start. + +He pushed her away from him almost roughly. "Nance, I didn't mean to! I +won't again! Only I've wanted you so long, I've been so unhappy. I can't +let you leave me now! I can't let you go with the Clarkes!" + +"You don't have to. They've gone without me." + +"But you said you'd come to say good-by. I thought you were starting to +California." + +"Well, I'm not. I am going to stay right here. Dr. Adair has asked me to +take charge of the clinic--the new one they are going to open in +Calvary Alley." + +"And we're going to be near each other, able to see each other +every day--" + +But she stopped him resolutely. + +"No, Dan, no. I knew we couldn't do that before I came to-night. Now I +know it more than ever. Don't you see we got to cut it all out? Got to +keep away from each other just the same as if I was in California and you +were here?" + +Dan's big strong hands again seized hers. + +"It won't be wrong for us just to see each other," he urged hotly. "I +promise never to say a word of love or to touch you, Nance. What's +happened to-night need never happen again. We can hold on to ourselves; +we can be just good friends until--" + +But Nance pulled her hands away impatiently. + +"You might. I couldn't. I tell you I got to keep away from you, Dan. +Can't you see? Can't you understand? I counted on you to see the right of +it. I thought you was going to help me!" And with an almost angry sob, +she sat down suddenly on the leaf-strewn bench and, locking her arms +across the railing, dropped her flaming face upon them. + +For a long time he stood watching her, while, his face reflected the +conflicting emotions that were fighting within him for mastery. Then into +his eyes crept a look of dumb compassion, the same look he had once bent +on a passion-tossed little girl lying on the seat of a patrol-wagon in +the chill dusk of a Christmas night. + +He straightened his shoulders and laid a firm hand on her bowed head. + +"You must stop crying, Nance," he commanded with the stern tenderness he +would have used toward Ted. "Perhaps you are right; God knows. At any +rate we are going to do whatever you say in this matter. I promise to +keep out of your way until you say I can come." + +Nance drew a quivering breath, and smiled up at him through her tears. + +"That's not enough, Dan; you got to keep away whether I say to come or +not. You're stronger and better than what I am. You got to promise that +whatever happens you'll make me be good." + +And Dan with trembling lips and steady eyes made her the solemn promise. + +Then, sitting there in the twilight, with only the dropping of a leaf to +break the silence, they poured out their confidences, eager to reach a +complete understanding in the brief time they had allotted themselves. In +minute detail they pieced together the tangled pattern of the past; they +poured out their present aims and ambitions, coming back again and again +to the miracle of their new-found love. Of their personal future, they +dared not speak. It was locked to them, and death alone held the key. + +Darkness had closed in when the side door of the house across the yard +was flung open, and a small figure came plunging toward them through the +crackling leaves. + +"It's done, Daddy!" cried an excited voice. "It's the cutest little +gingerbread man. And supper's ready, and he's standing up by my plate." + +"All right!" said Dan, holding out one hand to him and one to Nance. +"We'll all go in together to see the gingerbread man." + +"But, Dan--" + +"Just this once; it's our good-by night, you know." + +Nance hesitated, then straightening the prim little gray bonnet that +would assume a jaunty tilt, she followed the tall figure and the short +one into the halo of light that circled the open door. + +The evening that followed was one of those rare times, insignificant in +itself, every detail of which was to stand out in after life, charged +with significance. For Nance, the warmth and glow of the homely little +house, with its flowered carpets and gay curtains, the beaming face of +old Mrs. Purdy in its frame of silver curls, the laughter of the happy +child, and above all the strong, tender presence of Dan, were things +never to be forgotten. + +At eight o'clock she rose reluctantly, saying that she had to go by the +Snawdors' before she reported at the hospital at nine o'clock. + +"Do you mind if I go that far with you?" asked Dan, wistfully. + +On their long walk across the city they said little. Their way led them +past many familiar places, the school house, the old armory, Cemetery +Street, Post-Office Square, where they used to sit and watch the +electric signs. Of the objects they passed, Dan was superbly unaware. He +saw only Nance. But she was keenly aware of every old association that +bound them together. Everything seemed strangely beautiful to her, the +glamorous shop-lights cutting through the violet gloom, the subtle +messages of lighted windows, the passing faces of her fellow-men. In +that gray world her soul burned like a brilliant flame lighting up +everything around her. + +As they turned into Calvary Alley the windows of the cathedral glowed +softly above them. + +"I never thought how pretty it was before!" said Nance, rapturously. +"Say, Dan, do you know what 'Evol si dog' means?" + +"No; is it Latin?" + +She squeezed his arm between her two hands and laughed gleefully. + +"You're as bad as me," she said, "I'm not going to tell you; you got to +go inside and find out for yourself." + +On the threshold of Number One they paused again. Even the almost +deserted old tenement, blushing under a fresh coat of red paint, took on +a hue of romance. + +"You wait 'til we get it fixed up," said Nance. "They're taking out all +the partitions in the Smelts' flat, and making a big consulting room of +it. And over here in Mr. Demry's room I'm going to have the baby clinic. +I'm going to have boxes of growing flowers in every window; and +storybooks and--" + +"Yes," cried Dan, fiercely, "you are going to be so taken up with all +this that you won't need me; you'll forget about to-night!" + +But her look silenced him. + +"Dan," she said very earnestly, "I always have needed you, and I always +will. I love you better than anything in the world, and I'm trying to +prove it." + +A wavering light on the upper landing warned them that they might be +overheard. A moment later some one demanded to know who was there. + +"Come down and see!" called Nance. + +Mrs. Snawdor, lamp in hand, cautiously descended. + +"Is that you, Nance?" she cried. "It's about time you was comin' to see +to the movin' an' help tend to things. Who's that there with you?" + +"Don't you know?" + +"Well, if it ain't Dan Lewis!" And to Dan's great embarrassment the +effusive lady enveloped him in a warm and unexpected embrace. She even +held him at arm's length and commented upon his appearance with frank +admiration. "I never seen any one improve so much an' yet go on favorin' +theirselves." + +Nance declined to go up-stairs on the score of time, promising to come on +the following Sunday and take entire charge of the moving. + +"Ain't it like her to go git mixed up in this here fool clinic business?" +Mrs. Snawdor asked of Dan. "Just when she'd got a job with rich swells +that would 'a' took her anywhere? Here she was for about ten years +stewin' an' fumin' to git outen the alley, an' here she is comin' back +again! She's tried about ever'thin' now, but gittin' married." + +Dan scenting danger, changed the direction of the conversation by asking +her where they were moving to. + +"That's some more of her doin's," said Mrs. Snawdor. "She's gittin' her +way at las' 'bout movin' us to the country. Lobelia an' Rosy V. is goin' +to keep house, an' me an' William Jennings is going to board with 'em. +You'd orter see that boy of mine, Dan. Nance got him into the 'lectric +business an' he's doin' somethin' wonderful. He's got my brains an' his +pa's manners. You can say what you please, Mr. Snawdor was a perfect +gentleman!" + +It was evident from the pride in her voice that since Mr. Snawdor's +demise he had been canonized, becoming the third member of the ghostly +firm of Molloy, Yager, and Snawdor. + +"What about Uncle Jed?" asked Nance. "Where's he going?" + +Mrs. Snawdor laughed consciously and, in doing so, exhibited to full +advantage the dazzling new teeth that were the pride of her life. + +"Oh, Mr. Burks is goin' with us," she said. "It's too soon to talk about +it yet,--but--er--Oh, you know me, Nance!" And with blushing confusion +the thrice-bereaved widow hid her face in her apron. + +The clock in the cathedral tower was nearing nine when Nance and Dan +emerged from Number One. They did not speak as they walked up to the +corner and stood waiting for the car. Their hands were clasped hard, +and she could feel his heart thumping under her wrist as he pressed it +to his side. + +Passers-by jostled them on every side, and an importunate newsboy +implored patronage, but they seemed oblivious to their surroundings. The +car turned a far corner and came toward them relentlessly. + +"God bless you, Dan," whispered Nance as he helped her on the platform; +then turning, she called back to him with one of her old flashing smiles. +"And me too, a little bit!" + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Calvary Alley, by Alice Hegan Rice + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CALVARY ALLEY *** + +This file should be named 8calv10.txt or 8calv10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 8calv11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 8calv10a.txt + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan +and PG Distributed Proofreaders + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we usually do not +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance +of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing. +Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections, +even years after the official publication date. + +Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til +midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. +The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at +Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A +preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment +and editing by those who wish to do so. + +Most people start at our Web sites at: +http://gutenberg.net or +http://promo.net/pg + +These Web sites include award-winning information about Project +Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new +eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!). + + +Those of you who want to download any eBook before announcement +can get to them as follows, and just download by date. This is +also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the +indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an +announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter. + +http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03 or +ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext03 + +Or /etext02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90 + +Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want, +as it appears in our Newsletters. + + +Information about Project Gutenberg (one page) + +We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The +time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours +to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright +searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. Our +projected audience is one hundred million readers. If the value +per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 +million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text +files per month: 1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+ +We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002 +If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total +will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year's end. + +The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away 1 Trillion eBooks! +This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers, +which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users. + +Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated): + +eBooks Year Month + + 1 1971 July + 10 1991 January + 100 1994 January + 1000 1997 August + 1500 1998 October + 2000 1999 December + 2500 2000 December + 3000 2001 November + 4000 2001 October/November + 6000 2002 December* + 9000 2003 November* +10000 2004 January* + + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created +to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium. + +We need your donations more than ever! + +As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people +and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, +Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, +Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, +Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New +Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, +Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South +Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West +Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. + +We have filed in all 50 states now, but these are the only ones +that have responded. + +As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list +will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states. +Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state. + +In answer to various questions we have received on this: + +We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally +request donations in all 50 states. If your state is not listed and +you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have, +just ask. + +While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are +not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting +donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to +donate. + +International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about +how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made +deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are +ways. + +Donations by check or money order may be sent to: + +Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +PMB 113 +1739 University Ave. +Oxford, MS 38655-4109 + +Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment +method other than by check or money order. + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by +the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN +[Employee Identification Number] 64-622154. Donations are +tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law. As fund-raising +requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be +made and fund-raising will begin in the additional states. + +We need your donations more than ever! + +You can get up to date donation information online at: + +http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html + + +*** + +If you can't reach Project Gutenberg, +you can always email directly to: + +Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com> + +Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message. + +We would prefer to send you information by email. + + +**The Legal Small Print** + + +(Three Pages) + +***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS**START*** +Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers. +They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with +your copy of this eBook, even if you got it for free from +someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our +fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement +disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how +you may distribute copies of this eBook if you want to. + +*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS EBOOK +By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +eBook, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept +this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive +a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this eBook by +sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person +you got it from. If you received this eBook on a physical +medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request. + +ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM EBOOKS +This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBooks, +is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart +through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project"). +Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright +on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and +distribute it in the United States without permission and +without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth +below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this eBook +under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark. + +Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market +any commercial products without permission. + +To create these eBooks, the Project expends considerable +efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain +works. Despite these efforts, the Project's eBooks and any +medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other +things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged +disk or other eBook medium, a computer virus, or computer +codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment. + +LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES +But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below, +[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may +receive this eBook from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook) disclaims +all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including +legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR +UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT, +INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE +OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE +POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. + +If you discover a Defect in this eBook within 90 days of +receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) +you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that +time to the person you received it from. If you received it +on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and +such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement +copy. If you received it electronically, such person may +choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to +receive it electronically. + +THIS EBOOK IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS +TO THE EBOOK OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A +PARTICULAR PURPOSE. + +Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or +the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the +above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you +may have other legal rights. + +INDEMNITY +You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation, +and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated +with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm +texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including +legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the +following that you do or cause: [1] distribution of this eBook, +[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the eBook, +or [3] any Defect. + +DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm" +You may distribute copies of this eBook electronically, or by +disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this +"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg, +or: + +[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this + requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the + eBook or this "small print!" statement. You may however, + if you wish, distribute this eBook in machine readable + binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form, + including any form resulting from conversion by word + processing or hypertext software, but only so long as + *EITHER*: + + [*] The eBook, when displayed, is clearly readable, and + does *not* contain characters other than those + intended by the author of the work, although tilde + (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may + be used to convey punctuation intended by the + author, and additional characters may be used to + indicate hypertext links; OR + + [*] The eBook may be readily converted by the reader at + no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent + form by the program that displays the eBook (as is + the case, for instance, with most word processors); + OR + + [*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at + no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the + eBook in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC + or other equivalent proprietary form). + +[2] Honor the eBook refund and replacement provisions of this + "Small Print!" statement. + +[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the + gross profits you derive calculated using the method you + already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you + don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are + payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation" + the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were + legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent + periodic) tax return. Please contact us beforehand to + let us know your plans and to work out the details. + +WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO? +Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of +public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed +in machine readable form. + +The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time, +public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses. +Money should be paid to the: +"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or +software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at: +hart@pobox.com + +[Portions of this eBook's header and trailer may be reprinted only +when distributed free of all fees. Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 by +Michael S. Hart. Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be +used in any sales of Project Gutenberg eBooks or other materials be +they hardware or software or any other related product without +express permission.] + +*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END* + diff --git a/old/8calv10.zip b/old/8calv10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..5607807 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/8calv10.zip |