Faith Gartney's Girlhood Part 46

Glory had one trouble, to-day, that hindered her pure, free and utter enjoyment of what she had to do.

All day she had seen, here and there along the street, little forlorn and ragged ones, straying about aimlessly, as if by any chance, a sc.r.a.p of Christmas cheer might even fall to them, if only they kept out in the midst of it. There was a distant wonder in their faces, as they met the buyers among the shops, and glanced at the fair, fresh burdens they carried; and around the confectioners' windows they would cl.u.s.ter, sometimes, two or three together, and _look_; as if one sense could take in what was denied so to another. She knew so well what the feeling of it was! To see the good times going on, and not be in 'em! She longed so to gather them all to herself, and take them home, and make a Christmas for them!

She could only drop the pennies that came to her in change loose into her pocket, and give them, one by one, along the wayside. And she more than once offered a bright quarter (it was in the days when quarters yet were, reader!), when she might have counted out the sum in lesser bits, that so the pocket should be kept supplied the longer.

Down by the ---- Railway Station, the streets were dim, and dirty, and cheerless. Inside, the pa.s.sengers gathered about the stove, where the red coals gleamed cheerful in the already gathering dusk of the winter afternoon. A New York train was going out; and all sorts of people--from the well-to-do, portly gentleman of business, with his good coat b.u.t.toned comfortably to his chin, his tickets bought, his wallet lined with bank notes for his journey, and secretly stowed beyond the reach (if there be such a thing) of pickpockets, and the _Mishaumok Journal_, Evening Edition, damp from the press, unfolded in his fingers, to the care-for-naught, dare-devil little newsboy who had sold it to him, and who now saunters off, varying his monotonous cry with:

"_Jour-nal_, gentlemen! Eve-nin' 'dition! Georgy out!"

("What's that?" exclaims an inconsiderate.)

"Georgy out! (Little brother o' mine. Seen him anywhere?) Eve-nin'

'dition! _Jour-nal_, gentleman!" and the shivering little candy girl, threading her way with a silent imploringness among the throng--were bustling up and down, in waiting rooms, and on the platforms, till one would think, a.s.suredly, that the center of all the world's activity, at this moment, lay here; and that everybody _not_ going in this particular express train to New York, must be utterly devoid of any aim or object in life, whatever.

So we do, always, carry our center about with us. A little while ago all the world was buying dolls and tin horses. Horizons shift and ring themselves about us, and we, ourselves, stand always in the middle.

By and by, however, the last call was heard.

"Pa.s.sengers for New York! Train ready! All aboard!"

And with the ringing of the bell, and the mighty gasping of the impatient engine, and a scuffle and scurry of a minute, in which carpetbags and babies were gathered up and shouldered indiscriminately, the rooms and the platforms were suddenly cleared of all but a few stragglers, and half a dozen women with Christmas bundles, who sat waiting for trains to way stations.

Two little pinched faces, purple with the bitter cold, looked in at the door.

"It's good and warm in there. Less' go!"

And the older drew the younger into the room, toward the glowing stove.

They looked as if they had been wandering about in the dreary streets till the chill had touched their very bones. The larger of the two, a boy--torn hopelessly as to his trousers, dilapidated to the last degree as to his fragment of a hat--knees and elbows making their way out into the world with the faintest shadow of opposition--had, perhaps from this, a certain look of pushing knowingness that set itself, by the obscure and inevitable law of compensation, over against the gigantic antagonism of things he found himself born into; and you knew, as you looked at him, that he would, somehow, sooner or later, make his small dint against the great dead wall of society that loomed itself in his way; whether society or he should get the worst of it, might happen as it would.

The younger was a little girl. A flower thrown down in the dirt. A jewel encrusted with mean earth. Little feet in enormous coa.r.s.e shoes, cracked and trodden down; bare arms trying to hide themselves under a bit of old woolen shawl; hair tangled beneath a squalid hood; out from amidst all, a face of beauty that peeped, like an unconscious draft of G.o.d's own signing, upon humanity. Was there none to acknowledge it?

An official came through the waiting room.

The boy showed a slink in his eyes, like one used to shoving and rebuff, and to getting off, round corners. The girl stood, innocent and unheeding.

"There! out with you! No vagrums here!"

Of course, they couldn't have all Queer Street in their waiting rooms, these railway people; and the man's words were rougher than his voice.

But these were two children, who wanted cherishing!

The slink in the boy's eye worked down, and became a sneak and a shuffle, toward the door. The girl was following.

"Stop!" called a woman's voice, sharp and authoritative. "Don't you stir a single step, either of you, till you get warm! If there isn't any other way to fix it, I'll buy you both a ticket somewhere and then you'll be pa.s.sengers."

It was a tall, thin, hoopless woman, with a carpetbag, a plaid shawl, and an umbrella; and a bonnet that, since other bonnets had begun to poke, looked like a chaise top flattened back at the first spring. In a word, Mehitable Sampson.

Something twitched at the corners of the man's mouth as he glanced round at this sudden and singular champion. Something may have twitched under his comfortable waistcoat, also. At any rate, he pa.s.sed on; and the children--the brief battledore over in which they had been the shuttlec.o.c.ks--crept back, compliant with the second order, much amazed, toward the stove.

Miss Sampson began to interrogate.

"Why don't you take your little sister home?"

"This one ain't my sister." Children always set people right before they answer queries.

"Well--whoever she is, then. Why don't you both go home?"

"'Cause it's cold there, too. And we was sent to find sticks."

"If she isn't your sister, who does she belong to?"

"She don't belong to n.o.body. She lived upstairs, and her mother died, and she came down to us. But she's goin' to be took away. Mother's got five of us, now. She's goin' to the poorhouse. She's a regular little brick, though; ain't yer, Jo?"

The pretty, childish lips that had begun to grow red and lifelike again, parted, and showed little rows of milk teeth, like white sh.e.l.ls. The blue eyes and the baby smile went up, confidingly, to the young ragam.u.f.fin's face. There had been kindness here. The boy had taken to Jo, it seemed; and was benevolently evincing it, in the best way he could, by teaching her good-natured slang.

"Yes; I'm a little brick," she lisped.

Miss Sampson's keen eyes went from one to the other, resting last and long on Jo.

"I shouldn't wonder," she said, deliberately, "if you was Number Four!"

"Whereabouts do you live?" suddenly, to the boy.

"Three doors round the corner. 'Tain't number four, though. It's ninety-three."

"What's your name?"

"Tim Rafferty."

"Tim Rafferty! Did anybody ever trust you with a carpetbag?"

"I've carried 'em up. But then they mostly goes along, and looks sharp."

"Well, now I'm going to leave you here, with this one. If anybody speaks to you, say you was left in charge. Don't stir till I come back.

And--look here! if you see a young woman come in, with bright, wavy hair, and a black gown and bonnet, and if she comes and speaks to you, as most likely she will, tell her I said I shouldn't wonder if this was Number Four!"

And Nurse Sampson went out into the street.

When she came back, the children sat there, still; and Glory McWhirk was with them.

"I don't know as I'd any business to meddle; and I haven't made any promises; but I've found out that you can do as you choose about it, and welcome. And I couldn't help thinking you might like to have this one for Number Four."

Glory had already nestled the poor, tattered child close to her, and given her a cake to eat from the refreshment counter.

Tim Rafferty delivered up the carpetbag, in proud integrity. To be sure, there were half a dozen people in the room who had witnessed its intrustment to his hands; but I think he would have waited there, all the same, had the coast been clear.

Miss Sampson gave him ten cents, and recounted to Glory what she had learned at number ninety-three.