Divided Skates Part 6

"Chance of your life to make yourself famous to-day," answered her husband. "You may believe that any poor wretch who tastes your cakes and coffee, this terrible day, will never forget them. And, lads, after you've cut a way to our own door go and help that widow across the street who keeps the boarders. She has a hard time of it, any way, and it's part of her business to keep things comfortable for those who live with her."

"She wouldn't give us a cent, if we shovelled at her sidewalk all day," grumbled Joseph.

"The other side the bed, lad! Quickly!" ordered the father, pausing on his way to the door to see his command obeyed.

Everybody laughed, even the culprit, who had to ascend to his own sleeping-room, get into the bed at one side--the side from which he had originally climbed--and get out at the other. A simple operation, and one not helpful to mother Mary's housekeeping labors; but she never minded that, because the novel punishment always sent the grumbler down-stairs again in good humor.

Then they all cl.u.s.tered about that rear window which commanded a view of the Armacost yard, and watched their father floundering through the drifts between the small house and the large. He disappeared around the corner of the mansion, and mother Mary set her young folks all to work: Molly to was.h.i.+ng the dishes and tidying the house; while she herself bathed and dressed the twins, stirred up a fresh lot of bread dough, rolled out her sewing-machine, and made flying visits to the small cellar where the three Jays were sawing and nailing and chattering like magpies.

They were all so busy and happy that the morning flew by like magic and dinner time came before anybody realized it. Meanwhile, the three boys had kept their own steps pa.s.sably free from the gathering snow, and had shovelled a way into the widow's house, not once but twice.

Coal carts and milk wagons had, as father John prophesied, come out and forced their pa.s.sage through the street, and a gang of workmen, each with a shovel over his shoulder, had made their way to the Avenue for the purpose of clearing the car tracks. But they had not remained.

Their task was such a great one that, until the storm was really over, there was no use in their beginning it.

Yet even these few moving figures rendered the outlook more natural, and Molly had almost forgotten to worry over any possible suffering to the poor, much less the rich, when her father came in and she saw, at once, how much graver than usual he was.

"Why, father, dear! Has anything happened? Was there real trouble over at the lady's?"

"Plenty has happened, and there is real trouble. But let's have dinner first; and, Mary wife, when I go back I'll take a pot of coffee and a bit of this hot stew for our neighbor."

"Which neighbor, John?"

"Miss Armacost."

"Miss--Armacost! What in the world would she, with all her luxuries, want with stew from our plain table?"

"Well, the boiler in her kitchen burst this morning. Pipes frozen, and no fire till things are fixed; that is, to cook by. Pipes over the handsome parlor frozen, too, and leaking down into all the fancy stuff with which it is filled. Two of the servants sleep at their own homes, as you know, and the two who are left have all they can do helping me.

I've 'phoned for somebody from the factory to come out and help, too, but there are so many orders ahead the boss says I must do the best I can. Yet the worst of all is--Towsley."

Molly dropped her fork with a rattle. "Towsley! Has anything happened to him?"

"That's what I'd like to know. That's what that poor rich woman, yonder, is grieving herself ill over."

"Tell us. Tell us, quick, father, please!"

"There's not so much. She says she found him asleep in her back parlor at nine o'clock. It was snowing fast then, and she kept him all night.

That's what she meant to do, at least. She gave him his supper and had him put to bed on her top floor. She knows he was there till midnight, for she went up to see if he was all right. Then she went to bed herself, and this morning he was gone. The front door was unfastened, and he must have gone out that way. At one moment she blames herself for neglect of him, and the next for having been kind to him."

Molly sprang up from the table.

"Oh! mother, let _me_ go across and carry the stew and tea. Maybe I could help her to think of something would tell where he was. Anyway, I can tell her just what kind of a boy Towsley is and how well he can take care of himself. He isn't lost. He mustn't be. He cannot--shall not be!" cried the girl, excitedly.

"Very well. Put the stew in the china bowl"--the one nice dish that their cupboard possessed--"and take your grandmother's little stone teapot. If Miss Armacost is a real lady, as I think, she will appreciate the motive of our gift, if not the gift itself. And if she's not a gentlewoman her opinion would not matter."

"But she is, mother; she is. I'm so glad I can do something for her!

She was nice to me, and 'giff-gaff makes good friends.'"

CHAPTER IV.

THE WANDERING KINDNESS.

On the morning of the blizzard, at that dark hour which comes just before daylight, Dr. Frank Winthrop left his own house for a visit to the hospital. There were no cars running, and he would not think of rousing his coachman, or even his horses, to breast such a storm; for his errand might be a prolonged one, and was, indeed, a case of life or death. At ten o'clock he had left a patient in a most critical condition, and was now returning to further attend the sufferer. His ulster was fastened tightly about him, his head thrust deeply into his collar, his hands in his pockets, and with teeth grimly set he faced the night.

"Two miles, if it's a block! Well, it's useless to try and see one's way. The street lamps, such as are still burning, make an occasional glimmer in the fog of snowflakes and are almost more misleading than none at all. But I've walked the route so often, I'll just trust to my feet to find their own road, and to Providence that I may reach my man in time!"

Robust and determined as the good physician was, he was almost overcome by the cold and the struggle through the unbroken drifts; while his whole person soon became so covered with the flying flakes that he looked like a great snow-man itself, suddenly made alive and set in motion. But the hope of easing pain gave him courage to persevere; and finally he came within a short distance of the great building whose dimly lighted windows made a dull redness through the storm.

"There she is, the blessed old house of comfort! Her wards are like to be full this night. And that was the very hardest walk I ever took. I hope, I pray, it has not been for nothing."

Just then his foot stumbled against some half-buried obstruction, and stooping, the doctor touched the object with his hands.

"Oh! as I feared! A human being. A child--a boy. Overcome and maybe frozen. Poor little chap, poor little chap!"

Unb.u.t.toning his overcoat the physician struck a match within the shelter of its flap, and by its flare scanned the small face from which he had brushed away the snow. Then he uttered another exclamation of surprise and lifting the little, rigid figure in his arms, folded his great-coat about it and started forward with renewed energy.

"Whatever is a child like this doing down here in this part of town?

If it weren't for his clothes I might think he was a newsboy headed for Newspaper Square, yonder; but newsboys don't wear velvet attire, or hats with wide brims and drooping feathers, like a girl's 'picture'

headgear. Thank G.o.d, we're almost there!"

On such a night, more than ever alert, the attendant at the door of the accident ward opened it wide to the slightest summons of the good doctor, who staggered into the light and warmth, shaking the snow from him in clouds and ordering:

"Promptest attention. Child overcome in the snow. Call nurse Brady.

She'll know."

The nurse was instantly at hand, and received the new "case" from the attendant; while the physician took off his own snow-covered ulster and brushed the melting flakes from his beard. All the while his keen eyes were studying the child's countenance and following his motionless figure as, with that haste which is never waste, the trained nurse carried it away toward the great ward where so many other "cases" were receiving the care which should save life.

Finding, by brief question and answer, that the patient he had come especially to see was neither better nor worse, Dr. Winthrop followed nurse Brady and her new charge; watching and directing as it seemed necessary, and finally announcing:

"I'll have him put in a private room; this ward is so full already, and there'll be more coming right along. A boy who wears velvet and feathers must belong to some rich family, who'll gladly pay for every attention. Poor, little, bedraggled bird of paradise!"

So it happened that when Towsley opened his eyes, a few hours later, it was in a room whose comfort quite equalled that of the one from which he had fled, even though its furnis.h.i.+ngs were much plainer. And over his pillow leaned another woman wearing a snowy cap, far daintier in shape than had adorned Miss Lucy's gray curls. There were no gleaming gla.s.ses shading the kindly eyes which regarded him, and no sternness in the lips that said slowly and gently:

"So my little patient is better. I am so glad of that."

After a long, silent stare into nurse Brady's face, Towsley asked:

"Be you? Where's I at?"

"In a nice warm bed, all safe and sound, with a fine breakfast waiting for you."

"Where's it at, I say?"

"The hospital."

"What for?"