Mary Cary Part 8

"I can't," I said. "I hate my conscience, for even in business it pokes itself in. But five cents is all I can take."

"Which shows you're new in business, or you'd take the other fellow's skin if he had to have what you've got. And I'm bound to have that apple. Bound to!" And he dug the toe of his shoe so deep in the dirt he could have put his foot in. We were down at the fence, where I went to tell him he mustn't leave but five cents any more.

The Apple business was much easier than the Entertainment business; but I enjoyed both. Making money is exciting. I guess that's why men love to make it.

I made in all $2.34. One dollar and fifty cents on entertaining, and eighty-four cents on apples.

The entertaining was this way. Mrs. d.i.c.k Moon is twin to the lady who lived in a shoe. Her house isn't far from the Asylum, and I like her real much; but she isn't good on management. Everything on the place just runs over everything else, and nothing is ever ready on time.

She has money--that is, her husband has, which Miss Katherine says isn't always the same thing. And she has servants and a graphophone and a pianola, but she doesn't really seem to have anything but children, and they are everywhere.

They are the sprawly kind that lie on their stomachs and kick their heels, and get under your feet and on your back. And their mouths always have mola.s.ses or sugar in the corners, and their noses have colds, and their hands are that sticky they leave a print on everything they touch.

But they aren't mean-bad, just bad because they don't know what to do, and they beg me to stay and play with them when Miss Jones sends me over with a message. Sometimes I do, and the day Martha gave Mary such a rasping about making money, another thought came besides the apples, and I went that afternoon to see Mrs. Moon.

"Mrs. Moon," I said, "the children have colds and can't go out. If Miss Bray will let me, would you like me to come over and entertain them during our play-hour? It's from half-past four to half-past five. I'll come every day from now until Christmas, and I charge twenty-five cents a week for it."

I knew my face was rambler red. I hated to mention money, but I hated worse not to have any to buy Miss Katherine a present with. If she thought twenty-five cents a week too high she could say so. But she didn't.

"Mercy, Mary Cary!" she said, "do you mean it? Would I like you to come?

Would I? I wish I could buy you!" And she threw her arms around me and kissed me so funny I thought she was going to cry.

"Of course I want you," she went on, after wiping her nose. She had a cold, too. "You can manage the children better than I, and if you knew what one quiet hour a day meant to the mother of seven, all under twelve, you'd charge more than you're doing. I'll see Miss Bray to-morrow."

She saw, and Miss Bray let me come.

Mrs. Moon is a member of the Board, and Mr. Moon is rich. Miss Bray never sleeps in waking time.

Well, when Mrs. Moon paid me for the first week, she gave me fifty cents instead of twenty-five, and I wouldn't take it.

"But you've earned it," she said, putting it back in my hand, and giving it a little pat--a little love pat. "You didn't say you were coming on Sundays, and you came. Sunday is the worst day of all. I nearly go crazy on Sunday. No, child, don't think you're getting too much. One doctor's visit would be two dollars, and the prescription forty cents, anyhow.

The children would be on the bed, and my head splitting, and Mammy as much good in keeping them quiet as a cackling hen. I feel like I'm cheating in only paying fifty cents. Each nap was worth that. I wish I could engage you by the year!" And she gave me such a squeeze I almost lost my breath.

But they are funny, those Moon children. Sarah Sue is the oldest, and n.o.body ever knows what Sarah Sue is going to say.

Yesterday I made them tell me what they were going to buy for their mother's and father's Christmas presents, and the things they said were queer. As queer as the presents some grown people give each other.

"I'm going to give father a set of tools," said Bobbie. "I saw 'em in Mr. Blakey's window, and they'll cut all right. They cost eighty-five cents."

"What are you going to give your father tools for?" I asked. "He's not a boy."

"But I am." And Bobbie jumped over a chair on Billy's back. "You said yourself you ought always to give a person a thing you'd like to have, and I'd like those tools. They're the bulliest set in Yorkburg. I'm going to give mother a little yellow duck. That's at Mr. Blakey's, too."

"It don't cost but five cents," said Sarah Sue, and she looked at Bobbie as if he were not even the dust of the earth. Then she handed me her list.

"But, Sarah Sue," I said, after I'd read it, "you've got seventy-five cents down here for your mother and only fifty for your father. Do you think it's right to make a difference?"

"Yes, I do." And Sarah Sue's big brown eyes were as serious as if 'twere funeral flowers she was selecting. "You see, it's this way. I love them both seventy-five cents' worth, but I don't think I ought to give them the same. Father is just my father by marriage, but Mother's my mother by bornation. I think mothers ought always to have the most."

I think so, too.

IX

LOVE IS BEST

Christmas is over. I feel like the parlor grate when the fire has gone out.

But it was a grand Christmas, the grandest we've ever known. It came on Christmas Day. From the time we got up until we went to bed we were so happy we forgot we were Charity children; and no matter whatever happens, we've got one beautiful time to look back on.

Miss Katherine says a beautiful memory is a possession no one can take from you, and it's one of the best possessions you can have. I think so, too. She's made all my memories. All. I mean the precious ones.

Everybody in this Orphan Asylum had a present from somebody outside.

Even me, who might as well be that man in the Bible, Melchesey something, who didn't have beginning or end, or any relations.

I had fourteen from outside. Some I hid, because I didn't want the girls to know, several not getting more than one, and hardly any more than three or four.

Those who had the heart to give them didn't have the money, and those who had the money didn't have the heart. Being so busy with their own they forgot to remember, and if it hadn't been for Miss Katherine and her friends this last Christmas would have been like all others.

Her Army brother's wife sent a box full of all sorts of pretty Indian things, she being in the wild West near the Indians who made them. And she sent ten dolls, all dressed, for the ten youngest girls.

She is awful busy, having three children and not much money; but Miss Katherine says busy people make time, and those who have most to do, do more still.

She sent me the darlingest little bedroom slippers with fur all around the top. And in them she put a little note that made me cry and cry and cry, it was so dear and mothery. I don't know what made me cry, but I couldn't help it. I couldn't.

She doesn't know me except from what Miss Katherine writes, and I wonder why she wrote that note. But everybody is good to me--that is, nearly everybody.

It certainly makes a difference in your backbone when people are kind and when they are not. I don't believe unkindness and misfortune and suffering will ever make me good. If anybody is mean to me, I'm stifferer than a lamp-post, and you couldn't make me cry. But when any one is good to me, I haven't a bit of firmness, and am no better than a caterpillar.

I got thirty-one presents this year. Thirty-one! I didn't know I had so many friends in Yorkburg, and my heart was so bursting with surprise and grat.i.tude it just ached. Ached happy.

We are not often allowed to make regular visits, but I have lots of little talks informal on errands, or messages, or pa.s.sing; and as I know almost everybody by sight, I have a right large speaking acquaintance.

With some people, Miss Katherine says, that's the safest kind to have.

You see, Yorkburg is a very small place. Just three long streets and some short ones going across. Scratching up everything, it hasn't got three thousand people in it. A lot of them are colored.

But it's very old and historic. Awful old; so is everything in it. As for its blue blood, Mrs. Hunt says there's more in Yorkburg than any place of its size in America.

Most of the strangers who come here, though, seem to prefer to pa.s.s on rather than stop, and Miss Webb thinks it's on account of the blood. A little red mixed in might wake Yorkburg up, she says, and that's what it needs--to know the war is over and the change has come to stay.

But I love Yorkburg, and most of the people are dear. Some queer. Old Mrs. Peet is. Her husband has been dead forty years, but she still keeps his hat on the rack for protection, and whenever any one goes to see her after dark she always calls him, as if he were upstairs.

She lives by herself and is over seventy, and she's pretended so long that he's living that they say she really believes he is. She almost makes you believe it, too.

Miss Bray sent me there one night. She wanted some cherry-bounce for Eliza Green, who had an awful pain, and after I'd knocked, I'd have run if I'd dared.