Witch Winnie Part 8

Hetterman was engaged as cook for the boarding-school, and we all rejoiced in the change. I went down to the kitchen to see her, one afternoon, and found her a buxom Englishwoman who dropped her _h_'s, but was always neat and civil. She was delighted when she found that I knew the names of her children. "It was a little boy who used to live in your court who told me about them," I said, "and who introduced us to your good fish b.a.l.l.s."

"Oh yes, Miss, I mind; it was little Jim 'Alsey; 'e's the prince of fine fellers, 'e is."

Jim Halsey the prince! My head fairly reeled, and yet this explained many things which had seemed mysterious. Winnie's agency in the matter was still not entirely clear to me. I did not connect her remorseful remarks about another sc.r.a.pe, with Jim, and I believed that by some remarkable coincidence he was really Miss Prillwitz's little prince incognito. I wondered whether Mrs. Hetterman knew anything of his real history, but she preferred to talk at present about her own family. She was very happy in the prospect of introducing her oldest daughter, Jennie, into the house as a waitress. "It will be so much better for Jennie," she said, "than the feather factory. The hair there is not good for 'er lungs."

I did not understand, at first, what Mrs. Hetterman meant by the _hair_, but when she explained that it was "the hatmosphere," her meaning dawned upon me.

"It will make it a bit lonelier for Mary and the little ones," she admitted, "but I go down every night, after the work's over, to tidy them up and to see that hall's right. The court is not a fit place for the children. If I could find decent lodgings for them, such as Mrs.

'Alsey 'as got for her Jim! I think I could pay as much, if the place was only found; I'm 'oping something will turn hup, Miss."

"I hope so," I replied; and I asked Winnie that afternoon if she thought the person who was boarding Jim Halsey would take the Hettermans, but she utterly discouraged the idea.

We saw a good deal of the little prince. Miss Prillwitz called him Giacomo, and was deeply attached to him. He did her credit too, for he was docile and bright. His mother was right in saying that he inherited his father's facility for mathematics, but with this faculty he possessed also a love for mechanics and for machinery of every sort.

"He will make one good engineer some day," said Miss Prillwitz, in speaking of him to us.

"That is a strange career for a prince," said Adelaide.

"My tear, it may be many year before he ees call to his princedom, and in ze meanstime he muss make his way. Zen, too, ze sons of ze royal houses make such study, and it is one good thing for ze country whose prince interest himself in ze science."

"I wonder how he would like to study surveying by and by," Adelaide said. "I know that father could employ him in the West."

"Zat is one excellent idea," said Miss Prillwitz. "We will see, when ze time s'all arrive."

We were all fond of the little prince. After all, Miss Prillwitz had decided to let him attend the botany lessons on Sat.u.r.days. "If he s'all be one surveyor in ze West," she said, "he s'all have opportunity to discover ze new species of flower; he must learn all ze natural science."

The prince attended the public school during the week, and held his place at the head of his cla.s.s with ease. It was not hard to do so, now that he could sleep all night. Emma Jane, who had had her spasms of doubt in regard to him, and had even gone so far at first as to say that Miss Prillwitz was a crank, and she had no faith in the boy's n.o.bility, had been won over by the boy himself, and remarked one afternoon that the internal evidence was convincing; Giacomo was not like common children; he was evidently cast in a finer mold; he would do honor to any position; birth would tell, after all. It was all that dear Milly could do not to betray the secret to the little prince. He was very fond of Milly, but deferential and unpresuming, as became his apparent position. "Some day our places may be reversed. You may live in a beautiful home and have hosts of friends," Milly said to him. "Will you remember me then, Giacomo?"

"How can that ever be?" the boy asked. "You will grow up and be a fine rich lady; I will be a poor young man whom you will have quite forgotten."

"Not necessarily poor," Milly hastened to reply. "If you go West you may, by working hard, become rich and famous. Will you forget your old friends then?"

And Jim promised that he would never, never forget. Then a shade came across his face. "Maybe I will, after all," he said, "for I have forgotten Mary Hetterman for more than a week. I did not think I could be so mean."

Adelaide and I had a conference in regard to the prince. It seemed that she had recognized him as Jim Halsey from the first. "I have been wondering," she said, "whether it was not a case like that of Little Lord Fauntleroy, and whether Mrs. Halsey could not be proved to be the wife of a prince, but I see that cannot be the explanation of the matter; and I have concluded that Jim is her adopted child. She must have taken him, when she was in better circ.u.mstances, from the people who brought him to this country when he was a very little fellow, and so he has no recollection of any other home."

"She always spoke of him as her very own," I said, "and seemed fonder of him than a foster-mother could be. It will be very hard for her to part with him, if his real relatives claim him."

"Not if he goes to high rank and great estates," said Adelaide. "She probably had no idea of his n.o.ble birth when she adopted him; and it just proves that bread cast upon the waters returns, for he will probably care for her right royally, when he comes into his own, and she will find that adopting that boy was the best investment she ever made in her life."

Winnie came in while we were talking.

"Why didn't you tell us, Winnie," I asked, "that Jim Halsey was the little prince?"

"It did not seem necessary," Winnie replied, looking unnecessarily alarmed, as it seemed to me.

"You pay his board directly to Miss Prillwitz, I suppose?" Adelaide said.

"No, I give it to his mother, and she sends it by mail."

"Well, I don't see any harm in letting Miss Prillwitz know that we know his mother, and are helping in his support."

"I do, and I wish you would not tell her this," Winnie entreated.

"Just as you please," Adelaide replied, "but I hate mysteries."

"So do I," said Winnie, with a deep sigh.

"What is the matter with you, any way, Winnie?" Adelaide asked.

"That is my business," Winnie replied, shortly, and left the room, banging the door behind her.

"Winnie isn't half as jolly as she used to be," said Milly, in an injured tone. "I always depend on her to save me when I'm not prepared for recitation. When Professor Todd was coming down the line in the Virgil cla.s.s and was only two girls away from me, I made the most beseeching faces at Winnie, who sits opposite, and usually she is so quick to take the hint, and come to the rescue by asking Professor Todd a lot of questions about the sites of the ancient cities, and where he thinks the Hesperides were situated. She gets him to talking on his pet hobbies, and he proses on like an old dear, until the bell rings for change of cla.s.s. But this time she just stared at me in the most wall-eyed manner, while I signaled her in a perfect agony as he got nearer and nearer. I tried to think of some question of my own to ask him, and suddenly one popped into my head which I thought was very bright. He had just been talking about aeneas' s.h.i.+pwreck, and he referred to St. Paul's, with a description of the ancient vessels, and how he met the same Mediterranean storms, and I plucked up courage and said, 'Professor Todd, why is it that we hear so much about Virginia, and in all the pictures of the s.h.i.+pwreck we see her standing on the deck of the s.h.i.+p, and Paul rus.h.i.+ng out into the surf to rescue her? Now I have read the chapter in Acts which describes St. Paul's s.h.i.+pwreck, very carefully, and in that, and in all the history of Paul, there is not one word about Virginia.'

"You should have heard the girls shout; I think they were just as mean as they could be. That odious Cynthia Vaughn nearly fell off the bench, and Professor Todd looked at me in such a despairing way, as though he gave me up from that time forth. I just burst into tears, and Winnie came over and took me out of the room. She acknowledged that it was all her fault, and that she ought to have come to my rescue sooner."

Poor Milly! we could only comfort her with our a.s.surances that we loved her all the more for her troubles.

Summer was approaching, and we were making our plans for vacation.

Milly's mother had invited Adelaide to spend the season with them at their cottage at Narragansett Pier; and Winnie's father had consented to her spending June and July with me on our Long Island farm. Winnie cheered up somewhat at the prospect. "It's the warm weather which makes me feel muggy," she said; "I shall feel better when we get out of the city too. The noise and racket distract me, and seeing so many miserable people makes me miserable and sick at heart."

"I don't feel so at all," I replied. "It makes me happy to see how much good even we can do. Mrs. Halsey would not have obtained her situation with Madame Celeste but for us, or have been able to place Jim with Miss Prillwitz."

Winnie winced. "Don't talk about them; I am sick and tired of hearing about the little prince. Do you know, I don't believe he is a prince at all!"

"What! Do you imagine that this story of Miss Prillwitz's is only a fabrication?"

"Perhaps so, or at least a hallucination on her part; and even if it is all true Jim may not be the boy. I wonder what proof she has of his ident.i.ty, or whether she has written yet to his relatives. I mean to ask her--this very day."

But Winnie did nothing of the kind, for we were surprised on arriving at Miss Prillwitz's to find three new children sitting in the broad window-seats. One was a thin girl with crutches, whom I at once guessed must be Mary Hetterman; two chubby, freckle-faced little ones sat in the suns.h.i.+ne looking over a picture-book together, while Miss Prillwitz beamed upon them.

"My tears," she said, "you see I haf some more companie. Giacomo haf brought these small people to spend ze day."

Jim came in a little later, and introduced his friends. He was flushed and excited, and it presently appeared that the visit was a part of a deep-laid scheme of his own.

"I wanted you to know the Hettermans," he said, "because they are such nice children, and Rickett's Court is no place for them, for the family next door have the fever, and Mr. Grogan has the tremens, and scares them most to death. Mrs. Hetterman gets twenty dollars a month as cook now, and she says she can pay a dollar a week apiece for each of the children if she can board them where it is healthful and decent; and you young ladies were so kind as to help my mother at first, and now, as she don't need it any longer, maybe you would help the Hettermans, and then maybe Aunty would take them in. Mary is very handy, for all she's a cripple, and the babies' noise is just nothing but a pleasure, and--"

here the tears stood in his eyes, and he looked at Miss Prillwitz, who was frozen stiff with astonishment, with piteous appealing--"and I would eat just as little as I could."

The good woman's voice trembled, "Take ze children to play in ze park,"

she said; "ze young ladies and I, we talk it some over."

Mary Hetterman tied the children's hoods on with cheerful alacrity. She evidently had high hopes, while Jim threw his arms around Miss Prillwitz--"Aunty," he said, "they deserve that you should be kind to them more than I do."

"What reason is zere that I should take them in more as all ze uzzer children in ze court?"

"Just as much reason as for you to take me," replied the boy, running away.

"Bless his heart!" said Miss Prillwitz, as he closed the door; "he knows not ze reason zat draw me to him, ze cherubim. But I did not know you to help his muzzer until now."