Little Aliens Part 6

They purred congratulations; the whole staff was summoned, and the Consul made a short address, which produced great enthusiasm in the audience. He then pinned a sc.r.a.p of red ribbon into the b.u.t.ton-hole of Miss Bailey's jacket, and handed her a small white leather box. Inside was a gem-encircled miniature--gorgeous and blazing as the sunshine broke upon it. The gentle-faced Empress of all the Russias smiled sadly out at Constance Bailey, and on the reverse, still in diamonds, was the inscription: "For Service."

FRIENDS

"My mamma," reported Morris Mowgelewsky, choosing a quiet moment during a writing period to engage his teacher's attention, "my mamma likes you shall come on mine house for see her."

"Very well, dear," answered Miss Bailey with a patience born of many such messages from the parents of her small charges. "I think I shall have time to go this afternoon."

"My mamma," Morris began again, "she says I shall tell you 'scuse how she don't sends you no letter. She couldn't to send no letter the while her eyes ain't healthy."

"I am sorry to hear that," said Teacher, with a little stab of regret for her prompt acceptance of Mrs. Mowgelewsky's invitation; for of all the ailments which the children shared so generously with their teacher, Miss Bailey had learned to dread most the many and painful disorders of the eye. She knew, however, that Mrs. Mowgelewsky was not one of those who utter unnecessary cries for help, being in this regard, as in many others, a striking contrast to the majority of parents with whom Miss Bailey came in contact.

To begin with, Mrs. Mowgelewsky had but one child--her precious, only Morris. In addition to this singularity she was thrifty and neat, intensely self-respecting and independent of spirit, and astonishingly outspoken of mind. She neither shared nor understood the gregarious spirit which bound her neighbors together and is the lubricant which makes East Side crowding possible without bloodshed. No groups of chattering, gesticulating matrons ever congregated in her Monroe Street apartment. No love of gossip ever held her on street corners or on steps. She nourished few friendships and fewer acquaintanceships, and she welcomed no haphazard visitor. Her hospitalities were as serious as her manner; her invitations as deliberate as her slow English speech.

And Miss Bailey, as she and the First Readers followed the order of studies laid down for them, found herself, again and again, trying to imagine what the days would be to Mrs. Mowgelewsky if her keen, shrewd eyes were to be darkened and useless.

At three o'clock she set out with Morris, leaving the Board of Monitors to set Room 18 to rights with no more direct supervision than an occasional look and word from the stout Miss Blake, whose kingdom lay just across the hall. And as she hurried through the early cold of a November afternoon, her forebodings grew so lugubrious that she was almost relieved at last to learn that Mrs. Mowgelewsky's complaint was a slow-forming cataract, and her supplication, that Miss Bailey would keep a watchful eye upon Morris while his mother was at the hospital undergoing treatment and operation.

"But of course," Miss Bailey agreed, "I shall be delighted to do what I can, Mrs. Mowgelewsky, though it seems to me that one of the neighbors----"

"Neighbors!" snorted the matron; "what you think the neighbors make mit mine little boy? They got four, five dozens childrens theirselves. They ain't got no time for look on Morris. They come maybe in mine house und break mine dishes, und rubber on what is here, und set by mine furniture und talks. What do they know over takin' care on mine house? They ain't ladies. They is educated only on the front. Me, I was raised private and expensive in Russia. I was ladies. Und you ist ladies. You ist Krisht--that is too bad--but that makes mit me nothings. I wants _you_ shall look on Morris."

"But I can't come here and take care of him," Miss Bailey pointed out.

"You see that yourself, don't you, Mrs. Mowgelewsky? I am sorry as I can be about your eyes, and I hope with all my heart that the operation will be successful. But I shouldn't have time to come here and take care of things."

"That ain't how mine mamma means," Morris explained. He was leaning against Teacher and stroking her m.u.f.f as he spoke. "Mine mamma means the money."

"That ist what I means," said Mrs. Mowgelewsky, nodding her ponderous head until her quite incredible wig slipped back and forth up on it.

"Morris needs he shall have money. He could to fix the house so good like I can. He don't needs no neighbors rubberin'. He could to buy what he needs on the store. But ten cents a day he needs. His papa works by Harlem. He is got fine jobs, und he gets fine moneys, but he couldn't to come down here for take care of Morris. Und the doctor he says I shall go _now_ on the hospital. Und any way," she added sadly, "I ain't no good; I couldn't to see things. He says I shall lay in the hospital three weeks, maybe--that is twenty-one days--und for Morris it is two dollars und ten cents. I got the money." And she fumbled for her purse in various hiding-places about her ample person.

"And you want me to be banker," cried Miss Bailey; "to keep the money and give Morris ten cents a day--is that it?"

"Sure," answered Mrs. Mowgelewsky.

"It's a awful lot of money," grieved Morris. "Ten cents a day is a awful lot of money for one boy."

"No, no, my golden one," cried his mother. "It is but right that thou shouldst have plenty of money, und thy teacher, a Christian lady, though honest--und what neighbor is honest?--will give thee ten cents every morning. Behold, I pay the rent before I go, und with the rent paid und with ten cents a day thou wilt live like a landlord."

"Yes, yes," Morris broke in, evidently repeating some familiar warning, "und every day I will say mine prayers und wash me the face, und keep the neighbors out, und on Thursdays und on Sundays I shall go on the hospital for see you."

"And on Sat.u.r.days," broke in Miss Bailey, "you will come to my house and spend the day with me. He's too little, Mrs. Mowgelewsky, to go to the synagogue alone."

"That could be awful nice," breathed Morris. "I likes I shall go on your house. I am lovin' much mit your dog."

"How?" snorted his mother. "Dogs! Dogs ain't nothing only foolishness.

They eats something fierce, und they don't works."

"That iss how mine mamma thinks," Morris hastened to explain, lest the sensitive feelings of his Lady Paramount should suffer. "But mine mamma she never seen _your_ dog. He iss a awful nice dog; I am lovin' much mit him."

"I don't needs I shall see him," said Mrs. Mowgelewsky, somewhat tartly.

"I seen, already, lots from dogs. Don't you go make no foolishness mit him. Don't you go und get chawed off of him."

"Of course not, of course not," Miss Bailey hastened to a.s.sure her; "he will only play with Rover if I should be busy or unable to take him out with me. He'll be safer at my house than he would be on the streets, and you wouldn't expect him to stay in the house all day."

After more parley and many warnings the arrangement was completed. Miss Bailey was intrusted with two dollars and ten cents, and the censorship of Morris. A day or so later Mrs. Mowgelewsky retired, indomitable, to her darkened room in the hospital, and the neighbors were inexorably shut out of her apartment. All their offers of help, all their proffers of advice were politely refused by Morris, all their questions and visits politely dodged. And every morning Miss Bailey handed her Monitor of the Gold Fish Bowl his princely stipend, adding to it from time to time some fruit or other uncontaminated food, for Morris was religiously the strictest of the strict, and could have given cards and spades to many a minor rabbi on the intricacies of Kosher law.

The Sat.u.r.day after his mother's departure Morris spent in the enlivening companionship of the antiquated Rover, a collie who no longer roved farther than his own back yard, and who accepted Morris's frank admiration with a n.o.ble condescension and a few rheumatic gambols. Miss Bailey's mother was also hospitable, and her sister did what she could to amuse the quaint little child with the big eyes, the soft voice, and the pretty foreign manners. But Morris preferred Rover to any of them, except perhaps the cook, who allowed him to prepare a luncheon for himself after his own little rites.

Everything had seemed so pleasant and so successful that Miss Bailey looked upon a repet.i.tion of this visit as a matter of course, and was greatly surprised on the succeeding Friday afternoon when the Monitor of the Gold Fish Bowl said that he intended to spend the next day at home.

"Oh, no!" she remonstrated, "you mustn't stay at home. I'm going to take you out to the Park and we are going to have all kinds of fun. Wouldn't you rather go and see the lions and the elephants with me than stay at home all by yourself?"

For some s.p.a.ce Morris was a prey to silence, then he managed by a consuming effort:

"I ain't by mineself."

"Has your father come home?" said Teacher.

"No, ma'am."

"And surely it's not a neighbor. You remember what your mother said about the neighbors, how you were not to let them in."

"It ain't neighbors," said Morris.

"Then who--?" began Miss Bailey.

Morris raised his eyes to hers, his beautiful, black, pleading eyes, praying for the understanding and the sympathy which had never failed him yet. "It's a friend," he answered.

"Nathan Spiderwitz?" she asked.

Morris shook his head, and gave Teacher to understand that the Monitor of the Window Boxes came under the ban of neighbor.

"Well, who is it, dearest?" she asked again. "Is it any one that I know?"

"No, ma'am."

"None of the boys in the school?"

"No, ma'am."

"Have you known him long?"

"No, ma'am."

"Does your mother know him?"