The Corner House Girls Part 22

"You want-a me to feex up, Padrona?" he asked. "I no ask nottin' since w'en I come here. De walls much dirt'-eh?"

"If they were whitewashed I think it would be ever so nice and clean,"

declared Ruth. "I shall speak to Mr. Howbridge and see if I can get him to supply the whitewash. Will you put it on?"

"But surely-si! si!" exclaimed the man. "I lik-a have nice place. I keep good-a fruit-good-a vegetable. Da wife, she clean an'

scr-r-rub-oh, yes! But poor man live in da cellar not lik-a da reech dat live in da fine house."

Ruth sighed. With such little experience as she had had, she knew the man's words to be true. The Kenways had lived among poor people themselves and knew how hard it was to keep an old tumble-down tenement in nice order.

Maria came dancing out in what was evidently her gala frock. It was pretty and neatly made, too. She ran to the sink and washed her face and hands. Then she came to Ruth for her approval.

"You're a pretty girl," said Ruth, kissing her. "You can help a lot, too, by keeping your brothers and sisters clean."

"Oh, yes, Ma'am! I make them wash up every day before they go to school. But there is no school now," said Maria.

The visitors went out of the cellar with Maria. The other children eyed them curiously, but smilingly. Poverty set well upon these Italians, for they smiled at it!

"Now we shall go in and see Mrs. Kranz," said Ruth to Agnes. "Goodness only knows what she will say to us. Come, Maria," and she took the little girl's hand.

CHAPTER XIV

FIVE CENTS' WORTH OF PEPPERMINTS

"Vell! vell!" was the German lady's greeting when the girls entered the shop. "You gome quick back to see me already, eh? I am glad."

She came forward and kissed Agnes and then Ruth. But she halted as she was about to stoop to Maria.

"Ach! this is nefer von of de kinder I saw yesterday?" she cried.

"Don't you know this little girl, Mrs. Kranz?" asked Ruth, smiling.

"This is Maria Maroni."

"Ach! I nefer did!" exclaimed Mrs. Kranz, using an expression that she must have picked up from her American neighbors. "Vell! I lofe _clean_ kinder," and she delivered a resounding kiss upon Maria's darkly flushed cheek. "Undt how pretty she iss."

"I am sure she is quite as good as she is pretty," said Ruth, smiling.

"You ought to have just such a little girl as Maria to help you, Mrs.

Kranz."

"Ach! I would lofe to have such a girl," declared the good lady. "Come you all right back to mine poller. Iky! 'tend to the store yet," she shouted to a lanky youth lounging on the sidewalk.

"He vill eat up all mine dried apples, yet, undt trink soda-pop, if I don't vatch him. Some day dot Iky iss goin' to svell right up undt bust! But he lifs up stairs undt his mutter iss a hard vorkin' vidow."

"As though _that_ excused Iky for stuffing himself with dried apples,"

whispered Agnes to Ruth. Ruth looked at her admonishingly and Agnes subsided.

Mrs. Kranz bustled about to put coffee-cake and other toothsome dainties, beside bottles of lemon-soda, before the three visitors. She treated Maria just as nicely as she did Ruth and Agnes. Ruth had not been mistaken in her judgment of Mrs. Kranz. She _had_ to own such a big body to hold her heart!

Ruth told her how they had talked with Maroni and how he had agreed to clean up the cellar, and get rid of the decayed vegetables daily. But it was, without doubt, Maria's improved appearance, more than anything else, that thawed the good lady.

"Ach! it iss de way de vorld iss made," sighed Mrs. Kranz. "That Joe Maroni, he ha.s.s six kinder; I haf none. This madchen, she shall help me in de house, undt in de store. I buy her plenty clean dresses. I'll talk to that Joe. Ven I am madt mit him I can't talk, for he smile, an' smile--Ach! how can I fight mit a man dot smiles all de time?"

The two older Kenway girls started home feeling that they had accomplished something worth while at the Meadow Street tenement house. "Only," said Ruth, "if we really had the right to do so, I can see that there are a lot of repairs that would make the house more comfortable for the tenants."

"And I suppose if Uncle Peter had thought of the comfort of the tenants, he would never have made so much money out of the houses,"

observed Agnes, with more thought than she usually displayed.

Just then Joe and Maria came hurrying down the block after them. "No, Padrona!" cried the man. "You would not r-r-refuse Joe's poor litla present? Maria shall carry eet for you-si! si! She is a smart girl-no? She fin' her way all over town."

They thanked Maroni for the basket of fruit, and allowed Maria to carry it to the Corner House, for that gave her pleasure, too, Ruth could see.

It gave them an opportunity of introducing Maria Maroni to Tess and Dot. The younger Kenways were very glad to see her, and Maria was made acquainted with the garden playhouse and with the rows of dolls.

"I don't care so much because the Creamer girls won't play with us,"

said Tess, happily, after Maria had run home. "Alfredia and Maria are both very nice little girls."

"Yes, indeed," said Dot, quickly. But she added, after a moment: "And they can't either of them help being so awful dark complected!"

It had begun to bother Ruth, however, if it did none of the other three, that so few people called on them. Of course, the Kenways had not been in Milton but four weeks. The people they met at church, however, and the girls they had become acquainted with at Sunday School, had not called upon them.

Eva Larry was delighted to see Agnes on the street, and had taken her home one day with her. Myra Stetson was always jolly and pleasant, but no urging by Agnes could get either of these nice girls to visit the old Corner House.

"Do you suppose it is the ghost of the garret that keeps them away?"

demanded Agnes, of Ruth.

"We wouldn't entertain them in the garret," responded Ruth, laughing.

Only she did not feel like laughing. "If that is the trouble, however, we'll soon finish up cleaning out the garret. And we'll sweep out the ghost and all his tribe, too."

A Sat.u.r.day intervened before this could be accomplished, however. It was the first Sat.u.r.day after Mr. Howbridge had bestowed upon the Corner House girls their monthly allowance.

After the house was spick and span, and the children's playthings put away for over Sunday, and the garden (which was now a trim and promising plot) made particularly neat, the four girls dressed in their very best and sallied forth. It was after mid-afternoon and the shoppers along Main Street were plentiful.

Aunt Sarah never went out except to church on Sunday. Now that the weather was so warm, the big front door stood open a part of the time, and the girls sat with their sewing and books upon the wide porch.

Mrs. McCall joined them there; but Aunt Sarah, never.

Because she did not go out, anything Aunt Sarah needed was purchased by one of the girls. Particularly, Ruth never forgot the peppermints which were bought as regularly now that they lived in the Corner House as they were bought in the old days, back in Bloomingsburg.

Sometimes Ruth delegated one of the other girls to buy the peppermints, but on this particular occasion she chanced to find herself near the candy counter, when she was separated from Agnes in Blachstein & Mapes. So she purchased the usual five cents' worth of Aunt Sarah's favorite Sunday "comfort."

"No matter how dry the sermon is, or how long-winded the preacher, I can stand it, if I've got a pep'mint to chew on," the strange old lady once said. That was almost as long a sentence as the girls had ever heard her speak!

With the peppermints safe in her bag, Ruth hunted again for Agnes. But the latter had those shoe-buckles on her mind and, forgetting Ruth, she left the big store and made for the shoeshop.

On the way Agnes pa.s.sed the Lady's Shop with its tempting display in the show-window, and she ventured in. There were those lovely handkerchiefs! Agnes feasted her eyes but she could not gain the courage to break one of her dollar bills for the trifle.