Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and others Part 8

She dreamed that Jim Carr's voice said, "Take the kid, Sing! He's all right!" and that Jim Carr lifted her up, and shouted out, "She's almost gone!"

Then some one was carrying her across rough ground, across smooth ground, to where there was a fire, and blankets, and voices--voices--voices.

"It makes me choke!" That was Mary Bell Barber, whispering to Jim Carr.

But she could not open her eyes.

"But drink it, dearest! Swallow it!" he pleaded.

"You were too late, Jim, we couldn't hold on!" she whispered pitifully.

And then, as the warmth and the stimulant had their effect, she did open her eyes; and the fire, the ring of faces, the black sky, and the moon breaking through, all slipped into place.

"Did you come for us, Jim?" she murmured, too tired to wonder why the big fellow should cry as he put his face against hers.

"I came for you, dear! I came back to sit with you on the steps. I didn't want to dance without my girl, and that's why I'm here. My brave little girl!"

Mary Bell leaned against his shoulder contentedly.

"That's right; you rest!" said Jim. "We're all going home now, and we'll have you tucked away in bed in no time. Mrs. Bates is all ready for you!"

"Jim," whispered Mary Bell.

"Darling?"--he put his mouth close to the white lips.

"Jim, will you remind Aunty Bates to hang up my party dress real carefully? In all the fuss some one's sure to muss it!" said Mary Bell.

WHAT HAPPENED TO ALANNA

A capped and ap.r.o.ned maid, with a martyred expression, had twice sounded the dinner-bell in the stately halls of Costello, before any member of the family saw fit to respond to it.

Then they all came at once, with a sudden pounding of young feet on the stairs, an uproar of young voices, and much banging of doors. Jim and Danny, twins of fourteen, to whom their mother was wont proudly to allude as "the top o' the line," violently left their own sanctum on the fourth floor, and coasted down such banisters as lay between that and the dining-room. Teresa, an angel-faced twelve-year-old in a blue frock, shut 'The Wide, Wide World' with a sigh, and climbed down from the window-seat in the hall.

Teresa's pious mother, in moments of exultation, loved to compare and commend her offspring to such of the saints and martyrs as their youthful virtues suggested. And Teresa at twelve had, as it were, graduated from the little saints, Agnes and Rose and Cecilia, and was now compared, in her mother's secret heart, to the gracious Queen of all the Saints. "As she was when a little girl," Mrs. Costello would add, to herself, to excuse any undue boldness in the thought.

And indeed, Teresa, as she was to-night, her blue eyes still clouded with Ellen Montgomery's sorrows, her curls tumbled about her hot cheeks, would have made a pretty foil in a picture of old Saint Anne.

But this story is about Alanna of the black eyes, the eight years, the large irregular mouth, the large irregular freckles.

Alanna was outrunning lazy little Leo--her senior, but not her match at anything--on their way to the dining-room. She was rendering desperate the two smaller boys, Frank X., Jr., and John Henry Newman Costello, who staggered hopelessly in her wake. They were all hungry, clean, and good-natured, and Alanna's voice led the other voices, even as her feet, in twinkling patent leather, led their feet.

Following the children came their mother, fastening the rich silk and lace at her wrists as she came. Her handsome kindly face and her big shapely hands were still moist and glowing from soap and warm water, and the shining rings of black hair at her temples were moist, too.

"This is all my doin', Dad," said she, comfortably, as she and her flock entered the dining-room. "Put the soup on, Alma. I'm the one that was goin' to be prompt at dinner, too!" she added, with a superintending glance for all the children, as she tied on little John's napkin.

F.X. Costello, Senior, undertaker by profession, and mayor by an immense majority, was already at the head of the table.

"Late, eh, Mommie?" said he, good-naturedly. He threw his newspaper on the floor, cast a householder's critical glance at the lights and the fire, and pushed his neatly placed knives and forks to right and left carelessly with both his fat hands.

The room was brilliantly lighted and warm. A great fire roared in the old-fashioned black marble grate, and electric lights blazed everywhere. Everything in the room, and in the house, was costly, comfortable, incongruous, and hideous. The Costellos were very rich, and had been very poor; and certain people were fond of telling of the queer, ridiculous things they did, in trying to spend their money. But they were very happy, and thought their immense, ugly house was the finest in the city, or in the world.

"Well, an' what's the news on the Rialter?" said the head of the house now, busy with his soup.

"You'll have the laugh on me, Dad," his wife a.s.sured him, placidly.

"After all my sayin' that nothing'd take me to Father Crowley's meetin'!"

"Oh, that was it?" said the mayor. "What's he goin' to have,--a concert?"

"--AND a fair too!" supplemented Mrs. Costello. There was an interval devoted on her part to various bibs and trays, and a low aside to the waitress. Then she went on: "As you know, I went, meanin' to beg off.

On account of baby bein' so little, and Leo's cough, and the paperers bein' upstairs,--and all! I thought I'd just make a donation, and let it go at that. But the ladies all kind of hung back--there was very few there--and I got talkin'--"

"Well,'tis but our dooty, after all," said the mayor, nodding approval.

"That's all, Frank. Well! So finally Mrs. Kiljohn took the coffee, and the Lemmon girls took the grab-bag. The Guild will look out for the concert, and I took one fancy-work booth, and of course the Children of Mary'll have the other, just like they always do."

"Oh, was Grace there?" Teresa was eager to know.

"Grace was, darlin'."

"And we're to have the fancy-work! You'll help us, won't you, mother?

Goody--I'm in that!" exulted Teresa.

"I'm in that, too!" echoed Alanna, quickly.

"A lot you are, you baby!" said Leo, unkindly.

"You're not a Child of Mary, Alanna," Teresa said promptly and uneasily.

"Well--WELL--I can help!" protested Alanna, putting up her lip. Can't I, mother? "CAN'T _I_, mother?"

"You can help ME, dovey," said her mother, absently. "I'm not goin' to work as I did for Saint Patrick's Bazaar, Dad, and I said so! Mrs.

O'Connell and Mrs. King said they'd do all the work, if I'd just be the nominal head. Mary Murray will do us some pillers--leather--with Gibsons and Indians on them. And I'll have Lizzie Bayne up here for a month, makin' me ap.r.o.ns and little j.a.ppy wrappers, and so on."

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 two or three hundred a month!"

"You always say that 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?"