Flamsted quarries Part 5

One finger was visible at the dormitory window. The Marchioness laughed and after telling them she knew ever so many began to count on her fingers for the benefit of her opposite neighbors.

"One, two, three, four, five," she began on her right hand--

"I don't believe her," said Freckles with a suspicious sniff.

Flibbertigibbet turned fiercely upon her. "I'd believe her if she said she knew a thousand, so now, Margaret O'Dowd, an' yer hold yer tongue!"

she cried; but in reprimanding Freckles for her want of faith she lost count of the boys.

"I must go now," said the Marchioness; "but when the drawing-room downstairs is lighted, you look in--there'll be one boy there to dance with me. Be sure you look." Suddenly the Marchioness made a sign that both girls understood, although it was an extra one and the very prettiest of all in the deaf-and-dumb alphabet of the affections: she put her fingers to her lips and blew them a kiss.

"Ain't she a darlint!" murmured Flibbertigibbet, tossing the same sign across the street. When the Marchioness had left the window, the two girls spent the remaining minutes of their reward in planning how best to see the dance upon which they had set their hearts. They thought of all the places available, but were sure they would not be permitted to occupy them. At last Flibbertigibbet decided boldly, on the strength of a good conscience throughout one whole week, to ask at headquarters.

"I'm goin' straight to Sister Angelica an' ask her to let us go into the chapel; it's the only place. Yer can see from the little windy in the cubby-hole where the priest gits into his other clothes."

Freckles looked awestruck. "She'll never let yer go in there."

Her mate snapped her fingers in reply, and catching Freckles' hand raced her down the long dormitory, down the two long flights of stairs to the schoolroom where Sister Angelica was giving a lesson to the younger girls.

"Well, Flibbertigibbet, what is it now?" said the sister smiling into the eager face at her elbow. When Sister Angelica called her by her nickname instead of by the Asylum number, Flibbertigibbet knew she was in high favor. She nudged Freckles and replied:

"I want to whisper to you."

Sister Angelica bent down; before she knew it the little girl's arms were about her neck and the child was telling her about the dance at the stone house across the way. The sister smiled as she listened to the rush of eager words, but she was so glad to find this madcap telling her openly her heart's one desire, that she did what she had never done before in all her life of beautiful child-consecrated work: she said "Yes, and I will go with you. Wait for me outside the chapel door at half-past four."

Flibbertigibbet squeezed her around the neck with such grateful vigor that the blood rushed to poor Sister Angelica's head. She was willing, however, to be a martyr in such a good cause. The little girl walked quietly to the door, but when it had closed upon her she executed a series of somersaults worthy of the Madison Square Garden acrobats.

"What'd I tell yer, what'd I tell yer!" she exclaimed, pirouetting and somersaulting till the slower-moving Freckles was a trifle dizzy.

Within a quarter of an hour the three were snugly ensconced in the window niche of the "cubby-hole," so Flibbertigibbet termed the robing-room closet, and looking with all their eyes across the street.

They were directly opposite what Sister Angelica said must be the drawing-room and on a level with it. As they looked, one moment the windows were dark, in the next they were filled with soft yet brilliant lights. The lace draperies were parted and the children could see down the length of the room.

There she was! Hopping and skipping by the side of her father-lover and drawing him to the central window. Behind them came the lovely young lady and the Boy! The two were holding hands and swinging them freely as they laughed and chatted together.

"That's the Boy!" cried Flibbertigibbet, wild with excitement.

"And that must be the Aunt Ruth she told about--oh, ain't she just lovely!" cried Freckles.

"Watch out now, an' yer'll see the minute!" said Flibbertigibbet, squeezing Sister Angelica's hand; Sister Angelica squeezed back, but kept silence. She was learning many things before unknown to her. The four came to the middle window and looked out, up, and all around. But although the two children waved their hands wildly to attract their attention, the good people opposite failed to see them because the little window suffered eclipse in the shadow of the large electric arc-light's green cap.

"She's goin' to begin!" cried Flibbertigibbet, clapping her hands.

The young lady sat down at the piano and began to play. Whether Flibbertigibbet expected a variation of a "c.o.o.n dance" or an Irish jig cannot be stated with certainty, but that she was surprised is a fact; so surprised, indeed, that for full two minutes she forgot to talk. To the slow music, for such it was--Flibbertigibbet beat time with her fingers on the pane to the step--the Marchioness and the Boy, pointing their daintily slippered feet, moved up and down, back and forth, swinging, turning, courtesying, bowing over the parquet floor with such childishly stately yet charming grace that their rhythmic motions were as a song without words.

The father-lover stood with his back to the mantel and applauded after an especially well executed flourish or courtesy; Aunt Ruth looked over her shoulder, smiling, her hands wandering slowly over the keys. At last, the final flourish, the final courtesy. The Marchioness' dress fairly swept the floor, and the Boy bowed so low that--well, Flibbertigibbet never could tell how it happened, but she had a warm place in her heart for that boy ever after--he quietly and methodically stood head downwards on his two hands, his white silk stockings and patent leathers kicking in the air.

The Marchioness was laughing so hard that she sat down in a regular "cheese" on the floor; the father-lover was clapping his hands like mad; the lady swung round on the piano stool and shook her forefinger at the Boy who suddenly came right side up at last, hand on his heart, and bowed with great dignity to the little girl on the floor. Then he, too, laughed and cut another caper just as a solemn-faced butler came in with wraps and furs. But by no means did he remain solemn long! How could he with the Boy prancing about him, and the Marchioness playing at "Catch-me-if-you-can" with her father-lover, and the lady slipping and sliding over the floor to catch the Boy who was always on the other side of the would-be solemn butler? Why, he actually swung round in a circle by holding on to that butler's dignified coat-tails!

Nor were they the only ones who laughed. Across the way in one of the Orphan Asylum windows, Sister Angelica and the children laughed too, in spirit joining in the fun, and when the butler came to the window to draw the shades there were three long "Ah's," both of intense disappointment and supreme satisfaction.

"Watch out, now," said Flibbertigibbet excitedly on the way down into the bas.e.m.e.nt for supper and dishwas.h.i.+ng, for it was their turn this week, "an' yer'll see me dance yer a minute in the yard ter-morrow."

"Yer can't dance it alone," replied doubting Freckles; "yer've got to have a boy."

"I don't want one; I'll take you, Freckles, for a boy." Clumsy Freckles blushed with delight beneath her many beauty-spots at such promise of unwonted graciousness on the part of her chum, and wondered what had come over Flibbertigibbet lately.

A few hours afterwards when they went up to bed, they whispered together again concerning the dance, and begged Sister Angelica to let them have just one peep from the dormitory window at their house of delight--a request she was glad to grant. They opened one of the inside blinds a little way, and exclaimed at the sight. It was snowing. The children oh'ed and ah'ed under their breath, for a snowstorm at Christmas time in the great city is the child's true joy. At their opposite neighbor's a faint light was visible in the balcony room; the wet soft flakes had already ridged the bal.u.s.trade, powdered the dwarf evergreens, topped the cap of the electric arc-light and laid upon the concrete a coverlet of purest white.

The long bare dormitory filled with the children--the fatherless and motherless children we have always with us. Soon each narrow cot held its asylum number; the many heads, golden, brown, or black, busied all of them with childhood's queer unanch.o.r.ed thoughts, were pillowed in safety for another night.

And without the snow continued to fall upon the great city. It graced with equal delicacy the cathedral's marble spires and the forest of pointed firs which made the numberless Christmas booths that surrounded old Was.h.i.+ngton Market. It covered impartially, and with as pure a white, the myriad city roofs that sheltered saint and sinner, whether among the rich or the poor, among the cherished or castaways. It fell as thickly upon the gravestones in Trinity's ancient churchyard as upon the freshly turned earth in a corner of the paupers' burying ground; and it set upon black corruption wherever it was in evidence the seal of a transient stainlessness.

VI

"Really, I am discouraged about that child," said Sister Agatha just after Easter. She was standing at one of the schoolroom windows that overlooked the yard; she spoke as if thoroughly vexed.

"What is it now--208 again?" Sister Angelica looked up from the copybook she was correcting.

"Oh, yes, of course; it's always 208."

"Oh, she doesn't mean anything; it's only her high spirits; they must have some vent."

"It's been her ruin being on the stage even for those few weeks, and ever since the Van Ostends began to make of her and have her over for that Christmas luncheon and the Sunday nights, the child is neither to have nor to hold. What with her 'make believing' and her 'acting' she upsets the girls generally. She ought to be set to good steady work; the first chance I get I'll put her to it. I only wish some one would adopt her--"

"I heard Father Honore--"

"Look at her now!" exclaimed Sister Agatha interrupting her.

Sister Angelica joined her at the window. They could not only see but hear all that was going on below. With the garbage house as a stage-setting and background to the performance, Flibbertigibbet was courtesying low to her audience; the skirt of her scant gingham dress was held in her two hands up and out to its full extent. The orphans crouched on the pavement in a triple semi-circle in front of her.

"All this rigmarole comes of the theatre," said Sister Agatha grimly.

"Well, where's the harm? She is only living it all over again and giving the others a little pleasure at the same time. Dear knows, they have little enough, poor things."

Sister Agatha made no reply; she was listening intently to 208's orders.

The little girl had risen from her low courtesy and was haranguing the a.s.sembled hundreds:

"Now watch out, all of yer, an' when I do the minute yer can clap yer hands if yer like it; an' if yer want some more, yer must clap enough to split yer gloves if yer had any on, an' then I'll give yer the c.o.o.n dance; an' then if yer like _that_, yer can play yer gloves are busted with clappin' an' stomp yer feet--"

"But we can't," Freckles entered her prosaic protest, "'cause we're squattin'."

"Well, get up then, yer'll have to; an' then if you stomp awful, an'

holler 'On-ko--on-ko!'--that's what they say at the thayertre--I'll give yer somethin' else--"

"Wot?" demanded 206 suspiciously.

"Don't yer wish I'd tell!" said 208, and began the minuet.