Atlantic Narratives Part 43

She paused over the cutlets and the chicken pie, which she had been helping with an amazing attention to personal preference. The young Costellos chafed at the delay, but their mother's fine eyes saw them not.

'Kelley & Moffat ought to let me have materials at half price,' she reflected aloud. 'My bill's six or seven hundred a month!'

'You always say you're not going to do a thing, and then get in and make more than any other booth!' said Dan proudly.

'Oh, not this year, I won't,' his mother a.s.sured him. But in her heart she knew she would.

'Aren't you glad it's fancy-work?' said Teresa. 'It doesn't get all sloppy and mussy like ice-cream, does it, mother?'

'Gee, don't you love fairs!' burst out Leo rapturously.

'Sliding up and down the floor before the dance begins, Dan, to work in the wax?' suggested Jimmy, in pleasant antic.i.p.ation. 'We go every day and every night, don't we, mother?'

'Ask your father,' said Mrs. Costello discreetly.

But the mayor's attention just then was taken by Alanna, who had left her chair to go and whisper in his ear.

'Why, here's Alanna's heart broken!' said he cheerfully, encircling her little figure with a big arm.

Alanna shrank back suddenly against him, and put her wet cheek on his shoulder.

'Now, whatever is it, darlin'?' wondered her mother, sympathetically but without concern. 'You've not got a pain, have you, dear?'

'She wants to help the Children of Mary!' said her father tenderly. 'She wants to do as much as Tessie does!'

'Oh, but, dad, she _can't_!' fretted Teresa. 'She's not a Child of Mary!

She oughtn't to want to tag that way. Now all the other girls' sisters will tag!'

'They haven't got sisters!' said Alanna, red-cheeked of a sudden.

'Why, Mary Alanna Costello, they have too! Jean has, and Stella has, and Grace has her little cousins!' protested Teresa triumphantly.

'Never mind, baby,' said Mrs. Costello hurriedly. 'Mother'll find you something to do. There now! How'd you like to have a raffle-book on something--a chair or a piller? And you could get all the names yourself, and keep the money in a little bag--'

'Oh, my! I wish I could!' said Jim artfully. 'Think of the last night, when the drawing comes! You'll have the fun of looking up the winning number in your book and calling it out in the hall.'

'Would I, dad?' said Alanna softly, but with dawning interest.

'And then, from the pulpit, when the returns are all in,' contributed Dan warmly, 'Father Crowley will read out your name,--"With Mrs. Frank Costello's booth--raffle of sofa cushion, by Miss Alanna Costello, twenty-six dollars and thirty-five cents!"

'Oo--would he, dad?' said Alanna, won to smiles and dimples by this charming prospect.

'Of course he would!' said her father. 'Now go back to your seat, machree, and eat your dinner. When mommer takes you and Tess to the matinee to-morrow, ask her to bring you in to me first, and you and I'll step over to Paul's, and pick out a table or a couch, or something. Eh, mommie?'

'And what do you say?' said that lady to Alanna, as the radiant little girl went back to her chair.

Whereupon Alanna breathed a bashful 'Thank you, dad,' into the ruffled yoke of her frock, and the matter was settled.

The next day she trotted beside her father to Paul's big furniture store, and after long hesitation selected a little desk of shining bra.s.s and dull oak.

'Now,' said her father, when they were back in his office, and Teresa and Mrs. Costello were eager for the matinee, 'here's your book of numbers, Alanna. And here, I'll tie a pencil and a string to it. Don't lose it. I've given you two hundred numbers, at two bits each, and mind, the minute any one pays for one, you put their name down on the same line!'

'Oo,--oo!' said Alanna, in pride. 'Two hundred! That's lots of money, isn't it, dad? That's eleven or fourteen dollars, isn't it, dad?'

'That's fifty dollars, goose!' said her father, making a dot with the pencil on the tip of her upturned little nose.

'Oo!' said Teresa, awed. Hatted, furred, and m.u.f.fed, she leaned on her father's shoulder.

'Oo--dad!' whispered Alanna, with scarlet cheeks.

'So _now_!' said her mother, with a little nod of encouragement and warning. 'Put it right in your m.u.f.f, lovey. Don't lose it. Dan or Jim will help you count your money, and keep things straight.'

'And to begin with, we'll all take a chance!' said the mayor, bringing his fat palm, full of silver, up from his pocket. 'How old are you, mommie?'

'I'm thirty-seven--all but, as well you know, Frank!' said his wife promptly.

'Thirty-six and thirty-seven for you, then!' He wrote her name opposite both numbers. 'And here's the mayor on the same page--forty-four! And twelve for Tessie, and eight for this highbinder on my knee, here! And now we'll have one for little Gertie!'

Gertrude Costello was not yet three months old, her mother said.

'Well, she can have number one, any way!' said the mayor. 'You make a rejooced rate for one family, I understand, Miss Costello?'

'I _don't_!' chuckled Alanna, locking her thin little arms about his neck, and digging her chin into his eye.

So he gave her full price, and she went off with her mother in a state of great content, between rows and rows of coffins, and cases of plumes, and handles and rosettes, and designs for monuments.

'Mrs. Church will want some chances, won't she, mother?' she said suddenly.

'Let Mrs. Church alone, darlin',' advised Mrs. Costello. 'She's not a Catholic, and there's plenty to take chances without her!'

Alanna reluctantly a.s.sented; but she need not have worried. Mrs. Church voluntarily took many chances, and became very enthusiastic about the desk.

She was a pretty, clever young woman, of whom all the Costellos were very fond. She lived with a very young husband, and a very new baby, in a tiny cottage near the big Irish family, and pleased Mrs. Costello by asking her advice on all domestic matters, and taking it. She made the Costello children welcome at all hours in her tiny, shining kitchen, or sunny little dining-room. She made them candy and told them stories. She was a minister's daughter, and wise in many delightful, girlish, friendly ways.

And in return Mrs. Costello did her many a kindly act, and sent her almost daily presents in the most natural manner imaginable.

But Mrs. Church made Alanna very unhappy about the raffled desk. It so chanced that it matched exactly the other furniture in Mrs. Church's rather bare little drawing-room, and this made her eager to win it.

Alanna, at eight, long familiar with raffles and their ways, realized what a very small chance Mrs. Church stood of getting the desk. It distressed her very much to notice that lady's growing certainty of success.

She took chance after chance. And with every chance she warned Alanna of the dreadful results of her not winning; and Alanna, with a worried line between her eyes, protested her helplessness afresh.

'She _will_ do it, dad!' the little girl confided to him one evening, when she and her book and her pencil were on his knee. 'And it _worries_ me so.'

'Oh, I hope she wins it,' said Teresa ardently. 'She 's not a Catholic, but we're praying for her. And you know people who aren't Catholics, dad, are apt to think that our fairs are pretty--pretty money-making, you know!'

'And if only she could point to that desk,' said Alanna, 'and say that she won it at a Catholic fair.'

'But she won't,' said Teresa, suddenly cold.