Honey-Sweet Part 22

Sometimes Anne went to the Charity office and sat mouse-like watching the people who came and went. One Sat.u.r.day afternoon, Peggy Callahan hurried into the room, untidy as usual, her eyes s.h.i.+ning with excitement.

"Are you the head lady of the Charity?" she asked the lady at the desk.

Miss Margery answered that she was.

"If you please, ma'am, we don't want to be put away," Peggy announced.

"Who wants to put you away? Tell me about it," said Miss Margery.

"The folks over there." The girl nodded her head vaguely. "They say as how mommer can't take care of us--popper he's got to go to the work'ouse again. He wa'n't so very drunk this time but the judge sent him there--mean old thing! And they say mommer can't take care of us and we'll have to be put away in 'sylums. And we don't want to go. She says if the Charity folks will help with the rent, we can get on. Don't none of us eat much and we can do with terrible little," Peggy concluded breathlessly.

"What is your name? where do you live? I shall have to see your mother and talk to her," said Miss Margery.

"My name's Peggy Callahan and we live out that way," waving her hand northward. "There ain't no number to the house. You go down this street till it turns to a road and you come to a gate marked 'No Thoroughfare'

and you go straight through it and follow the path and you come to a little brown house with red roses on the porch. That's our house. Oh!

there's two with roses! One is a colored lady's. Ours is the one with the so many children."

"I know your mother. And I remember the place," said Miss Margery, writing a few lines in her notebook. "I am going out that way this afternoon and we will see what can be done."

"Thank you, lady," said Peggy, and bounded away.

"I'd better send you home, Anne," said Miss Margery, with a little sigh, "and let you go with me some other time. This place is a long way off, much farther than I had expected to go this afternoon."

"Please, Miss Margery, let me go," pleaded Anne. "I never get tired. And I do want to go through the 'No Thoroughfare' gate, and see the little brown house with the red roses and the children."

Miss Margery hesitated, then consented, and she and Anne trudged through the dingy suburb of shabby, scattered houses.

"P'rhaps I oughtn't to have come," said Anne, rather doubtfully. "It's cobblestones. They skin shoes. Cousin Dorcas says she doesn't know where money's coming from to buy another pair. I asked her if we couldn't get you to give me some shoes, like you do Albert and those other children, and it made her cry. She said that would be a disgrace. Why, Miss Margery?"

"Miss Dorcas does not like to have people give her things," said Miss Margery.

"But Mrs. Collins gave me a dress and a hat and ever so many things. And I need shoes. I need them bad as Albert did. If I don't get some pretty soon, I can't go to school. Why mustn't you give them to me?"

Miss Margery did not undertake to explain. "Don't worry about shoes to-day," she said. "Be careful where you walk and don't stump your toes.

Those shoes look pretty well still. Miss Dorcas crosses bridges sometimes before she comes to them. Why, there's Albert Naumann.

Good-afternoon, Albert. Have you any pennies for the saving bank to-day?"

"No, madam, lady," answered Albert. "I have no time for to earn the pennies to-day. I have for to pick up the coal for mine Mutter. It makes the hands to be dirty"--looking at his blackened fingers--"but it saves the to buy coal."

"That is good, Albert," said Miss Margery, heartily, "better than earning pennies for yourself. Can you show me where the Callahans live?

Anne tells me Peggy is your cla.s.smate."

"Yes, madam, lady," answered Albert, "it's the second house on the path back of those trees."

"There's the house," exclaimed Anne, a few minutes later. "I know that's it. It's little and it's brown and look at the roses--and the children! It's like the old woman that lived in a shoe."

Indeed, the little brown house was overflowing with children. Peggy, with a baby in her arms, sat in a broken rocking-chair on the porch. Two little girls were making mud-pies near by. A tow-headed boy, watched from an up-stairs window by two admiring small boys, was walking around the edge of the porch roof, balancing himself with outstretched arms. A neat negro woman, emptying an ash-can in the adjoining yard, caught sight of him and shrieked, "Uh, John Edward! is that you on the porch roof? or is it Elmore? Whichever you be, if you don't go right in, I'll tell yo' ma. You Bud and tother twin, you stop leanin' out of that window. Peg, uh Peg! thar's a boy on the porch roof and two leanin' out the window. They all goin' to fall and break their necks."

The boy on the roof stuck out his tongue, and said, "Uh, you tell-tale!"

then walked on around the porch and climbed in the window.

"I done it," he shouted to his twin brother. "You dared me to and I done it. Now I double-dare you to climb the chimbley."

Peggy came out to reprove the reckless climber, and then, seeing the approaching visitors, came forward to greet them. She invited Miss Margery and Anne into the front room where her mother sat at a sewing-machine that was running like a race-horse. Mrs. Callahan shook hands and then took a garment from her work-basket and began to make b.u.t.tonholes.

"My machine makes such a racket," she explained, "I always keep finger jobs for company work. There's so many fact'ries nowadays that Keep-at-it is the only sewin'-woman that makes a livin'. You'd be s'prised to see how much Peggy helps me. She can rattle off most as many miles as me on that old machine in a day."

"Peggy tells me you are in trouble, Mrs. Callahan," said Miss Margery, coming directly to the cause of her visit.

"Well, not exactly. n.o.body ain't dead or sick," Mrs. Callahan answered cheerfully. "I told Peggy to tell you we could do with a little help.

Pa--that's my old man--he's the best man that ever lived, ma'am. He'd never do nothin' wrong. It's just the whiskey that gets in him. He's kind and good-tempered and hard-workin'--long as he can let liquor alone. It's made him lose his place."

"Our books show that you had help from the Charity office last winter,"

Miss Margery reminded her.

"Yes'm," responded Mrs. Callahan, "that was after his Christmas spree.

The man might 'a' overlooked that. But he got mighty mad. Some bad boys, they see pa couldn't take care of the dray and they stole some things offn it. Pa he couldn't get a job right away and I couldn't keep up my reg'lar sewin'--the baby just being come--and so pa was up before the judge for non-support. And the judge made him sign the pledge for a year. Pa tried to keep it, ma'am, but his old gang wouldn't let him.

They watched for him goin' to work and they watched for him comin' from work. He'd dodge 'em and go and come diff'rent ways. But they'd lay for him here and there, with schooners of beer in their hands. Next thing, he was drunk. The cops didn't catch him that time. But the pledge bein'

broke, look like he give up heart. He kept on with the drink, and lost his job. Then the policeman nabbed him."

Mrs. Callahan did not tell that the drunken man had struck her and that the children--seeing her fall to the floor as if dead--ran out screaming, and that the frightened neighbors called a doctor and a policeman. She made the tale as favorable to 'pa' as she could. She went on to say that, having broken the pledge, he was sent to the workhouse for sixty days and she was left without money, with seven children to care for.

"They want me to put the children away to the 'sylums, but we want to stay together, ma'am. We can get on elegant with a little help with the rent and a teenchy bit grocery order now and then. Mine is helpful children, ma'am, and t'ain't as if they were all little. Peggy's near 'leven though she's small for her age. And even them twins, ma'am, they pick up sticks for kindlin' and help in ways untold."

"What have you to eat in the house?" asked Miss Margery.

"There's some potatoes, ma'am. They're mighty filling when they're cold."

Miss Margery knit her brows and considered. There were many calls on the limited fund at her command. "The money from the workhouse for your husband's labor will pay the rent," she calculated. "I will give you a small grocery order twice a week. You can manage with that?"

"Oh, yessum, splendid, and thank you kindly, ma'am," said Mrs. Callahan.

"Don't put down meat--just a little piece onct a week so's not to forget the taste. And a leetle mite coffee. Put in mostly fillin' things--rice and beans and dried apples. You got to cram seven hearty children.

Thank'e, thank'e, ma'am. Peggy, give the little lady some roses, the purtiest ones where the frost hasn't nipped 'em."

While Miss Margery talked with Mrs. Callahan, Anne was getting acquainted with the children. She chattered gleefully about them on her homeward way. "Peggy says a lady her mother sews for gave them a lot of clothes. Peggy has a pink velvet waist and a red skirt, and her mother has a lace waist and a blue skirt with rows and rows of blue satin on it. They're very int'resting children, Miss Margery, but do you think they always tell just the very exact truth?" asked Anne.

"I'm afraid they do not. I'm afraid their mother doesn't set them a very good example," answered Miss Margery who knew the Callahans of old.

"Peggy says it isn't harm to tell a fib that don't hurt anybody," said Anne.

"I hope you told her it was."

"Yes, Miss Margery. I told her we thought it was low-down to tell stories. And Peggy just laughed and said they wouldn't act so stiff as to tell the truth all the time.--Miss Margery, when are you going there again? I do want to go with you. The baby has a new tooth coming. You can feel it. I want to see it when it comes through. May I go with you another Sat.u.r.day?"

"Perhaps."