Witch Winnie's Mystery, or The Old Oak Cabinet Part 15

"Oh! yes, a macaroon a piece for the children. I wonder if I couldn't contribute a cigarette for each of them," and he gurgled again in a purring, pleasant way.

"You are making fun of me," Milly pouted, in an aggrieved way.

"Not at all. I think it was just like you, Miss Milly, to do such a lovely thing. You are one of the most kind-hearted girls I know,--to beggars, I mean,--but the young men tell a different story. There's poor Stacey Fitz Simmons. I saw him the other day and he was complaining bitterly of your hard-heartedness. He said you hardly spoke to him at Professor Fafalata's costume dance."

"How unfair! he was my partner in the minuet. What more could he ask?"

"There's nothing mean about Stacey. He probably wanted you to dance all the other dances with him. I told him that he was a lucky young dog to be invited at all. Why did you leave me out?"

"I didn't think that a grown-up gentleman, in society, would care for a little dance at a boarding-school, where he would only meet bread-and-b.u.t.ter school girls."

"Oh! I'm too old, am I? Well, I must say you are complimentary. And it's a fault that doesn't decrease as time pa.s.ses. Well, I shall tell Stacey that there's hope for him. You only care for very young men. Why did you send back the tickets which he sent you for the Inter-scholastic Games!

You nearly broke his heart. He has been training for the past six months simply and solely in the hope that you will see him win the mile run."

"But I will see him. I wrote him that Adelaide's brother, Jim, had already sent her tickets, which we should use, and as he might like to bestow his elsewhere, I returned them."

"'Bestow them elsewhere?' Not he. Stacey is constant as the pole. He's as loyal as he is thoroughbred. He was telling me about the serenade that the cadet band gave your school last year. Some girl let down a sc.r.a.p basket from her window full of b.u.t.tonhole bouquets. He wore one pinned to the breast of his uniform for a week because he thought you had a hand in it; and you never saw a fellow so cut up as he was when he heard last summer that you had nothing to do with it, and even slept sweetly through the entire serenade."

"Stacey is too silly for anything. It is perfectly ridiculous for a little boy like him to talk that way."

"Little boy--let me see, just how old is Stacey, anyway! About seventeen. Six months your senior, is he not? At what age should you say that one might fall quite seriously and sensibly in love?"

"Oh! not till one is twenty at least," Milly answered quickly; but she blushed furiously while she spoke.

"Sensible girl! But to return to the subject of the Inter-scholastic Games. I am glad that you and your friend Miss Adelaide are going. They are to take place out at the Berkeley Oval, you know. I have no doubt that the roads will be settled and we shall have fine weather by that time. May I have the pleasure of driving you out on my coach?"

"Certainly. That is, I must coax papa to write a note to Madame, asking her to let us go."

"I will call at the bank and see your papa about it to-morrow, and meantime do beam upon poor Stacey. And, by the way, here is something which you may as well add to the macaroons for those poor children," and he pressed a dollar bill into Milly's hand. Some one pa.s.sed us rapidly at that instant and gave the young man so questioning a glance that he raised his hat, asking Milly a moment later if she knew the lady.

"Why, that is Miss Noakes!" Milly exclaimed, in dismay. "You must not go a step further with us, Mr. Van Silver, or we will be reported for 'conduct.'"

"Far be it from me to gratify the evidently malicious desire of that estimable person to report you young ladies. Good-by until the games,"

and with another bow he was gone.

As we approached the school building we saw Professor Waite leaving by the turret door, and I asked him to allow us to enter by it, at the same time requesting him to buy some of our new friend's pencils. He looked at the girl closely, and as Milly led the way with her I explained how we had found her.

"She is a picturesque creature," Professor Waite remarked. "I could make her useful as a model. The girls pose so badly and dislike to do it so much, it might be well to try this waif. Tell her to come on Monday, and if the cla.s.s like her well enough to club together and pay a small amount for her services, we will engage her to sit for us."

He scribbled a line on one of his visiting cards for her to show Cerberus, as we called our dignified janitor, who was very particular about whom he admitted to the building; and I hastily followed our _protege_ to the Amen Corner, where I found Adelaide talking with her while Milly ransacked her wardrobe for cast-off clothing, finding only a Tam O'Shanter, a parasol, and some soiled gloves.

"Can't you find her a pair of rubbers?" Adelaide asked. "The girl's feet are soaked."

"Do you keep your own rubbers?" the waif asked. "That was my father's business."

"What do you mean?" inquired Adelaide.

"My father was a rubber--a ma.s.sage man for the Earl of Cairngorm."

"Oh!" said Adelaide, a light beginning to dawn upon her mind. "I meant rubber overshoes, not a bath woman."

"We call those galoshes," said the girl, as Milly produced a pair which were not mates. "I'm sure you've given me a fine setting out, young ladies. I'll do as much for you if I ever has the chance. Who knowses?

Maybe some day I'll be a swell and you poor. Then you just call on me, and don't you forget it." With which cheerful suggestion she left us, grateful and happy. I took her down to the main entrance, and, showing the card to Cerberus, explained that she had been engaged by Professor Waite, and was to be allowed to enter every morning. He granted a grudging consent, not at all approving of her appearance without the waterproof, and I flew back to the Amen Corner to join in the general conference. She had told Adelaide that her name was Pauline Terwilliger.

Her father had been English, her mother Swiss. They had knocked about the world as foot-b.a.l.l.s of fortune, but had lived longest in London, where her father had died. Her brother had come to New York some years previous, and her mother had brought the family over on his insistence.

But this brother had failed to meet them, as he had promised to do, on their landing at Castle Garden. Their mother had lost his address, and they were stranded in a strange city. They had advertised in the papers, and had left their own address at the Barge Office, but her brother had never appeared. They had taken a room in a tenement house, and the mother had obtained some work, scrubbing offices and cleaning windows.

But she had taken cold and was now in a hospital, and Polo was trying to support the two younger children.

"They are living in one of the worst tenement houses in Mulberry Bend,"

said Adelaide. "I would like to give them a room in my house, but it is full; and cheap as the rent is, they could never pay it."

"The younger children ought to go to the Home," I suggested.

"The Home is full," Winnie replied. "I called there to-day. Emma Jane says it just breaks her heart to look at the list of applications waiting for a vacancy. Our dear Princess[2] has in mind a little old-fashioned house which fronts on a side street, whose yard backs against ours. She would like to have it rented as an annex. She says the Home ought to have a nursery for very little babies. You know it does not now take children under two years of age, on account of the expense of nurses; but this would be such a charming place for them, and we could call it the 'Manger,' and have it connected with the main building with a long gla.s.s piazza. The scheme is a perfect one. All it needs is money to carry it out. Unfortunately, that is lacking. I have corresponded with all our out-of-town circles of King's Daughters. They are doing all they can, and have pledged enough, with our other subscriptions, to carry the Home through the coming year on its old basis; but there isn't a cent to spare for a 'manger.'"

[2] "The Princess" was a quaint little foreigner, who gave the girls botany lessons, and who originated the idea of the Home, whose founding is related in the initial volume of this series.

"Would all of the new house be taken up by the nursery?" Adelaide asked.

"No; the Princess proposed that the upper story, which consists of four little bedrooms, should be used as 'guest chambers' for emergency cases, convalescent children returned from hospitals, and children who, on account of peculiar distress,--like Polo's sisters,--it seemed best to receive for a short time entirely free. The Princess thought that we might like to club together and pay for one such room, and then we could designate at any time the persons we would like to have occupy it. There is always a list of applicants, which would be submitted to us to choose from, in case we had no candidates of our own to suggest. The occupants of such a room would then be as truly our guests as if we entertained them in our own home. It would come in very nicely now in Polo's case."

Milly gave a deep sigh. "I wish I could help you, girls, but you know just how I am situated."

Adelaide knitted her brows. "We must get up some sort of an entertainment. It makes me tired to think of it, but there's no other way."

"And in the mean time, Emma Jane must find room for those children some way," said Winnie. "I will call a meeting of the Hornets in our corner to-night, and we will pledge ourselves to raise money enough for one guest chamber for these children, and until it is arranged for, Emma Jane must make up beds for them on the school desks, or we can buy a _retrousse_ bedstead for the parlor."

"_Retrousse_ bedstead! What's that?" Milly asked, in a puzzled way.

"Don't be dense, Milly; it's vulgar to speak of a turn-up nose, you know; and I don't know why we should insult a parlor organ bedstead in the same way. If we can't afford that sort of thing, they might turn the dining tables upside down; they would make better cribs than the children have now, I'll venture to say."

"You will tuck them up, I suppose, with napkins and table-cloths,"

Cynthia sneered. But Winnie paid no attention to the interruption.

"They will not mind a little crowding, and the thing will march right along if we only plunge into it. They must not stay another night in that old tenement. Polo said there was a rag-picker under them, and a woman who had delirium tremens in the next room. I am going down to-morrow afternoon to take them to the Home."

A meeting of our own particular circle of King's Daughters, which was made up of ourselves and the "Hornets," took place that evening in the Hornets' Nest. The Hornets were a coterie of mischievous girls rooming in a little family like the Amen Corner, but in the attic story under the very eaves. They took up the idea of the guest chamber with great enthusiasm, but they were nearly as impecunious as ourselves. Suddenly Little Breeze--our pet name for Tina Gale--exclaimed, "I have a notion!

We will invite the school to a 'Catacomb Party, and the underground Feast of the Ghouls.'"

"How very scareful that sounds!" said Trude Middleton. "What is it, anyway?"

"Oh! it's a mystery, a blood-curdling mystery. It will cost everybody fifty cents, but it will be worth it. I want Witch Winnie to be on the committee of arrangements with me, and you must all give us full authority to do just as we please; and it is to be a surprise, and you must ask no questions."

"We trust you. Where's it to be? In the sewers, or the cathedral crypts?"

But Little Breeze refused to waft the least zephyr of information our way, and there was nothing for it but to wait.

As we were returning rather noisily from the Hornets' Nest, we pa.s.sed Miss Noakes's open door, and she rang her little bell in a peremptory manner. This meant that we were to report ourselves immediately to her, and we did so.

"Young ladies," said Miss Noakes in her most disagreeable manner, "before reporting you to Madame, I would like to give you an opportunity of explaining a very irregular performance. As I was returning from a meeting of the Young Women's Christian a.s.sociation this afternoon, I saw three occupants of your corner taking a promenade with a gentleman. This is, as you know, an infringement of school rules, and I would like to inquire whether the young man has any authorization from your parents for such attention."