on the night of bird’s arrival in new york jack and larry o’more were late for supper. in fact they did not come in until she had gone to bed on the “extension” lounge in the parlour, where she was lying with her teeth clenched in an effort to keep her eyes shut and to choke down the nervousness to which crying would have brought the quickest relief. if bird could only have been alone in the dark and quiet for a few hours, it would have been much easier for her to have overcome her great disappointment. but in the corner of the family sitting room, amid a litter of sewing and the smell of pipe smoke, with the glare and noise of a busy street coming in the two small windows, sleep was impossible. finally her aunt closed the lid of the sewing-machine with a bang, tossed her work into a heap in the corner, and, turning out the gas, went into the kitchen.
there were six rooms in the flat, all quite small. the sitting room in front and the kitchen in the rear[104] had windows that opened out, above the three bedrooms clustered round an air-shaft that was like a great chimney having small windows let into it, through which even at noon only a gray, sunless light entered, and the air had no freshness but was full of odours and noises from the flats above and below.
mr. and mrs. o’more occupied the room next to the sitting room, billy sleeping beside them on a small mattress that was propped up nightly upon two chairs; for when the bed was thus made, there was no room to move about. jack and larry slept in the middle room which had a door into the hallway, while the third room, opening out of the kitchen, had been used by the oldest boy, tom, before he had taken wholly to wild ways and drifted off. now it was more than a year since he had slept there and it was tightly packed with broken furniture, old boxes, and various kinds of trash that it had been easier to throw in there than to dispose of in any other way. a small bath-room at the end of the hall was littered up in much the same way, and it was evident that no one cared for bathing, as the tub was used as a cubby hole for pails, a mop, broom, and the wash boiler and board, for which there was no room on the overloaded fire-escape. still mrs. o’more felt the dignity of having a bath-room, for it stamped her home[105] as a “flat,” tenements so called having no such luxuries.
presently bird gave up all idea of going to sleep or even of closing her eyes, and do her best she could not keep from hearing the conversation that passed between her aunt and uncle in the kitchen, for they made no effort to lower their voices, and she dared not close the door as the only breath of air that reached little billy, who was tossing about and muttering in his sleep, came through the front windows.
after hearing herself thoroughly discussed until her cheeks burned, her uncle closed with the remark, “well, of course terry was all kinds of a helpless fool, but he shouldn’t be blamed for it, his mother was a lady out of our class, and his wife too, judging from the looks and ways of the kid, and don’t you forget it, and it must come rough to her to be shoved about, anyhow.”
then a new resolve came to bird from the rough but well-meaning words. her grandmother and her mother had been ladies,—she would not forget that any more than she would forget her father’s wish that she should learn to paint and win the success that had been denied to him.
presently the subject changed and she heard her aunt speak of tom and say that it was three months[106] since she had heard from him, and she feared he was dead.
“i hope it will be three months more, then,” o’more had cried with an oath that made bird quiver and pull the pillow over her head, but she was obliged to take it off again because of the heat. “he never minds us unless he’s in a scrape, or there’s something to pay. but he’s not dead, if that’s any comfort, for he wrote to me two weeks gone, saying he must have fifty dollars or leave his job, and i wrote him that he’d leave it for all of me.”
“and you never told me! i could have sent him a trifle; god knows what he’s done by this,” and mrs. o’more covered her red head with her apron and began to whimper.
“look here, rose o’more,” answered her husband, while bird judged by the jar that he had brought his fist down on the table with a bang, “that scoundrel has bled you long enough; now we are saving up to have little billy doctored, and i’ll not see you rob yourself and him for that other that we gave the best of everything, and he’s turned it to the worst, even if he is the eldest born. if i were you, i’d bank the bit o’ money that comes in from the sewin’ and not keep it about ye.”
“the top drawer of the bureau is bank enough for[107] me. the sum is near complete to buy the frame for his leg, and it will be wanted next week when i take billy to the doctor, for it’s to his own house he shall go, and not to the thing they call the “clink” at the hospital, to be stood up and twisted before a crowd o’ dunce heads.”
so billy was to go to a doctor. that was good news, and bird began to take an interest in life again, for billy, in a single hour had crept quickly into her sensitive, motherly little heart, and with her to love and to serve were one and the same impulse.
presently two new voices joined the conversation, knives and forks rattled, and amid pauses she heard scraps of conversation muffled by food-filled mouths, and knew that they were talking of her. jack and larry had come home and were having supper. jack, who worked in an office by day, was attending an evening school of type-writing and bookkeeping, while larry, who was of slight build and whose ambition was to be a jockey and ride races, was kept late on the track where he was serving an apprenticeship as handy man to a well-known trainer.
“where is she? let’s have a peek at her. i hope she’s pretty if i’ve got to look at her steady,” said larry, who prided himself on his eye for beauty, and wore plaid clothes and wonderful pink and green[108] neckties, the colours of the stable to which he was attached, and thought it the finest thing in the world, for jockeys are often as loyal to their racing colours as college men are to theirs.
“she isn’t so handsome but what it’ll keep until morning, and she’s dead asleep by this. quit yer noise, all of ye; ye’ll wake little billy, and he’s been that fretful to-day that the rasp of his voice would wear through an iron bar,” mrs. o’more added, as the three burst into loud laughter over some tale of track happenings that larry told.
then the voices dropped to a hum, and then turned to the song of the bees in mrs. lane’s hives, and bird drifted away into that sleep that god sends to make our tired bodies and minds able to live together without quarrelling.
bird slept heavily for many hours, yet to her it seemed only a few minutes when she awoke again, a streak of light shining directly across her face and the same noises coming from every side. this time, however, the light was from the sun, not from the gas, and the noises were fourfold, for there is nothing so varied, penetrating, and stunning as the sound of the awakening of a great city to unaccustomed ears.
[109]
for a few moments she lay quite still, gazing about, and trying to realize where she was, and whether awake or asleep, for so many things had happened during the past week, that it all seemed like a bad dream.
not many days before, morning light brought the hope to bird that this day her father might be better; only the day before she had waked in mrs. lane’s big white bed, to see that kind soul watching beside her and twinkle had come racing upstairs.
presently it all came back to her, and, getting up, she raised the shade quietly, for no one else was awake, and looked down into the street in which wagons of all kinds were passing, while the sidewalks were already, at six o’clock, swarming with children, driven into the air as early as possible by the heat of the night. then she looked about for her clothes and a place where she might go to bathe and dress, for the small rooms were all open through, and the lack of privacy and the sight of the flushed disordered sleepers was a fresh jar to her.
finally she tiptoed into the kitchen where a friendly clothes-horse offered shelter, and managed to make herself neat, and arranged her hair at a mirror hung over the kitchen sink, which she afterward found was the family toilet place; then she[110] stepped out on to the fire-escape where there was the possibility of a breeze.
at that moment she heard billy’s querulous little voice wail, “oh, i’m so tired—tireder than last night, and i hurt all over,” and she slipped back through the hallway into the front room again to meet her aunt who stood in the middle of the parlour, gazing at the empty sofa and open window in some alarm.
“oh, so yer up and dressed betimes and not fallen out of the winder through sleep-walkin’,” she said, not unkindly. “jack has turns of it at the coming of every hot weather, and he’s been down the escape to the ground, up to the roof and every place he could get, so it gave me a turn when i missed yer. here, i’ll just throw a few clothes on billy and you can take him down to the street for a mouthful of air, while i get the breakfast. i’ll fetch him to the doctor to-day if it does put back my sewin’, and see if i can’t get some ease for him.”
“shall i wash him first?” bird asked quickly, as his mother began to pull and jerk at his clothes, and then stopped short as she saw a flash in her aunt’s eyes that told her that she must be careful what she said.
“wash him this time of the morning when he’s[111] scarce awake, and have him all tired before he has a bite of breakfast? i guess not. you can clean him up this noon, before i take him to the doctor’s,” and billy, now hopping, now stumbling along on his little crutch, led the way down the three flights of dark stairs, moving carefully from step to step so that he should not trip in the holes in the carpet with which they were covered.
once in the street bird was at the same time interested and confused by what was going on about her. a jewish fish pedler, with much wagging of head and hands, was trying to sell some stale-smelling flat-fish to a woman who had preceded them downstairs. another pedler, with a push cart, piled high with cabbages, radishes, and greens, went into one of the houses with a basketful of his wares at the very moment that a big, roan truck-horse halted with his soft, inquisitive nose dangerously near the green stuff. first he sampled a bunch of radishes, but these were too hot for his taste, so he tried a carrot or two, and mangled fully a peck of spinach before he sniffed the cabbages. at these he gave a whinny of delight and nosed among them so vigorously that half a dozen rolled into the gutter, and when the man returned, the horse had started back a yard or so in fright and looked guiltless of the mischief,[112] and the pedler ran down the street after some suspicious-looking boys. meanwhile the horse stepped forward and nibbled the biggest cabbage with great relish, while billy clapped his hands, half a dozen other children cheered, and bird herself laughed and felt glad to see the horse, who did not look overfat, have such a good breakfast.
for if bird loved flowers and all outdoors, she loved animals still more even if she did not know it, but the other children did not think of the horse at all; they were only glad because it had outwitted the pedler, for between the people of poorer new york and the push-cart people there is everlasting war. this lesson bird learned that morning before the various factories in the neighbourhood had blown their seven-o’clock whistles.
another thing that struck her sensitive ear was the different languages that were spoken by the passers-by,—the various mixtures of slang and foreign idioms that the speakers used for english being almost as difficult for her to understand as the german and italian.
at laurelville, to be sure, people spoke in two ways. the real country folk had a vigorous, if homely, dialect, such as the lanes spoke, while dr. jedd, the minister, and her father and mother used a[113] purer speech, though her father alone had the soft, distinct way of pronouncing the words that was one of bird’s great attractions.
little billy, however, was quite at home with this street language, as far as understanding it went, but no word of it came from his baby lips, strangely enough, and though he was really over six years old, he had the slight frame and innocent, open-eyed gaze of a child of four, and he was entirely “different like” from the rest of his family, as his mother said, and it provoked her as if the fact of the child’s being apart from her own rudeness was a personal reproach.
“hullo, billy,” called a freckled, lanky-looking girl of perhaps fifteen,—reading by her face, though she was no taller than bird,—who was coming across the street from a grocer’s carefully carrying a bottle of milk as if it was a rare possession.
“hello, mattie,” he answered cheerfully, hopping to the curb to meet her. “where’ve you been? i thinked you moved away.”
“i’ve been working all of two weeks, and we moved right in back of your house yesterday. we’ve got two fine rooms now, and i buy tessie a bottle of milk every morning now my own self,” she said proudly.
[114]
“tessie’s legs are very bad again, and i can’t get her out except sundays when mother’s at home to help, but she’s got a rocking-chair and she can pull it all round the room an’ see up out the winder to your ’scape. we seen you sittin’ up there last night. who’s the girl?” she added, dropping her voice as bird drew near to billy, not knowing how he went about alone and fearful lest he should fall.
“it’s bird, my cousin; she came last night from the far-away country,” he answered, clinging to bird’s hand, while the two girls looked at each other, one shyly and the other—city bred and quick-witted—curiously, noticing at once the plain black gown.
“come to visit or stop?” she asked presently.
“i’ve come to stay,” said bird, slowly, only half realizing the truth of the words.
“father dead?”
“yes.”
“mother living?”
“no.”
“any brothers and sisters?”
“no.”
“well, that’s tough luck,” said mattie, her tone full of sympathy. as she set the precious bottle on a damp spot on the sidewalk, so that her hands need[115] not heat the milk, she noticed the tears in bird’s eyes and changed the subject quickly.
“ain’t you going to work soon? i’ve got a good job—cash-girl—$3.50 a week, saturday afternoons off all summer; ’n, if i’m smart in a year, i can get to be an assistant stock-girl. how old are you, anyhow? i’m fifteen and over.”
“i’m thirteen and uncle john is going to send me to school by and by; he says that it closes too soon to make it worth while this term.”
“yes, you’ll have to go until you’re fourteen or they’ll chase you up, even if you do live in a flat with stair carpet. it’s too bad, though; you’d have lots more fun working.”
“but i want to go to school as long as i can,” said bird, smiling at mattie’s mistake.
“oh, then you want to begin in an office type-writing or keeping sales books. i don’t like that; it’s too slow and you can’t see the crowd. you’ll have a daisy time this summer, though, with nothin’ to do but takin’ billy riding in trolleys and seein’ the town. i’ll tell you all the parks where they have music. billy’s pa is free with dimes for trolley rides. last year, before my pa’s falling accident, we lived down this street, and when tessie’s legs were well enough, mr. o’more ’d often give me a quarter to[116] take billy along fer a ride. you can ride near all day fer that, if you know how to work the transfers and stick up fer yer rights.”
“was your father badly hurt?” asked bird, drawn to this stranger by a common chord.
“yes, hurt dead,” she answered, in a matter-of-fact tone without the trace of a tremble, “and then pretty soon we had to move, and we’ve been doin’ it most ever since, so i kinder lost track o’ billy. you see mother worried sick and we all got down on our luck, but now she’s got a steady job to do scrubbin’ at the police court, and i’ve got a job, and we’ve got two rooms and everything is all hunky; that is ’cept tessie’s legs, but some’s worse than her and can’t even sit up.”
“you say you live behind us; which house is it? perhaps i could see your sister through the window,” said bird, somehow feeling reproached at mattie’s cheerfulness.
“it’s the little low house down in the yard, back of yours, that’s got winders that stick out of the roof. ours is the top middle and it’s got blinds to it,—all the winders haven’t,—and they’re fine to draw-to if it rains, ’cause you don’t have to shut the window. it’s a rear building, and some don’t like ’em, and of course tessie would rather see out to the street, but[117] rents come so high and rear buildings are stiller at night; that is, when there’s not too many cats. were rents high a month where you came from?”
“i don’t exactly know,” said bird, trying to remember. “i think we paid ten dollars, but we had a whole house, though it was old, and a garden, and a woodshed, and a barn, and chickens. everybody lived in whole houses in laurelville, even though some had only two or three rooms.”
“ten dollars for all that, and we pay eight for two rooms!” ejaculated mattie, looking hard at bird to see if she was in earnest, and, seeing that she was, quickly grew confidential, and, coming close, whispered: “would you, may be, sometime come in and tell tessie about it and the garden and chickens? she’s read about the country in a book she’s got,—oh, yes, she can read; she’s twelve and went to school up to last year, for all she isn’t much bigger ’n billy—but she can’t seem to understand what it’s just like and she’s cracked after flowers; the man in the corner market gave her one in a pot last year, but it didn’t live long because we hadn’t a real window that opened out then. maybe your aunt won’t let you come ’cause we live in a rear; my mother says she’s awful proud; but then, most anybody would be, living in a whole flat with bells and a stair carpet.
[118]
“say, bird,” she continued, after a moment’s silence,—during which the pedler had given up chasing the boys, rearranged his scattered wares, and plodded patiently on,—this time dropping her voice to a whisper and putting her lips to the other’s ear, “if yer aunt won’t let yer come over, maybe you’d wave to tessie when you and billy’s takin’ the air on the ’scape. i’ll tie a rag to our blind so’s you’ll know the winder. it would be an awful lot of company fer her daytimes when we’re out to have somebody to wave to. yer will? i believe ye; somehow i could tell in a minute ye’d be different from the rest,” and giving bird a thump on the back expressive of gratitude, mattie picked up her milk bottle and hurried round the corner.
a shout from above next attracted bird, and looking up she saw her uncle leaning out of the window and calling to them to come up for breakfast. billy could hop downstairs quite easily, but in going up he was obliged to crawl, baby fashion, on his hands and knees, so bird followed, slowly carrying his crutch.
her uncle and cousins were already seated at the table when the pair came up, both rather out of breath. of the two boys, larry made no attempt to rise and shake hands, but stared hard at bird’s pale, clear-cut face and neatly brushed almost blue-black[119] hair and lashes that made her violet-black eyes darker yet, then gave a quick nod in which recognition and approval were combined, and continued his meal; while jack got up, came forward pleasantly, if with the very flourishy sort of manner that somehow always reminds one of the pigeon wings and squirrels in old fashioned writing-books, and waved her to a seat between himself and his father and began to collect the dishes about her plate.
“go on with yer eatin’,” said mrs. o’more, rather sharply, as if resenting the attention. “bird can wait on herself,—she’s got all day to do it in and it’s time you were off. come round this side by billy’s chair so’s you can spread his bread; he’s always cuttin’ himself,” she added.
the food was plentiful enough, if rather coarse in quality,—a dish of oatmeal, slices of head-cheese and corn-beef on the same dish, potatoes sliced cold with pickled cabbage, a bowl of hard-boiled eggs, a huge plate of bread with a big pot of coffee, still further heating the close room from its perch on the gas range. but the table-cloth was soiled and tumbled, and bird saw with horror that her uncle wiped his mouth on the edge of it, using it as a napkin, while the dishes seemed to have been thrown on without any sort of arrangement.
[120]
not feeling hungry herself, she began to cut up some meat for billy, who fed himself awkwardly using his knife instead of a fork; but bird did not dare say anything, and in a few minutes his appetite failed and he sat picking holes in a piece of bread, while bird looked at the heaped-up plate her uncle pushed toward her with dismay, yet forced herself to eat from inbred politeness.
larry and jack, having finished, pushed back their chairs, and hastily filling their lunch-boxes with bread, meat, and eggs, took their coats from the rack in the narrow hall and went out, larry calling, “so long,” as he went downstairs, but jack turned back and said pleasantly to bird, “good-by till night, and don’t get homesick, ladybird!”
“ladybird, indeed,” snapped mrs. o’more, “you needn’t bother; she can’t well sicken long over what she ain’t got,” at which unnecessarily cruel remark, that made bird stoop lower over her plate and swallow some coffee so quickly that coughing hid her tears, o’more looked up and said: “what’s wrong with yer to-day, rosy? you’ve no call to hit out when nobody’s touchin’ yer.”
“what’s wrong? what’s right, i’d like you to tell me?” she flashed; “me with a lot uv sewin’ to do, and to get billy up-town to the doctor’s by ten.”
[121]
“you don’t do that tomfool dressmakin’ with my leave and consent. i can keep my family and well, too, if you weren’t so set on robbin’ yerself fer tom, who’ll land himself in prison yet for all of you, if, please god, he doesn’t drag the rest of us along with him.”
“i can wash the dishes and dress billy if i may,” said bird, timidly, feeling the tension of a bitter quarrel in the air.
“well, you may try it for onct, but look to it you neither smash them nor make him cry; there’s days he near takes fits at the sight of water. here’s his clean suit, and i’ll just go and finish up that silk skirt,” and mrs. o’more pulled some clothes from a corner bureau and left bird and billy alone.
“don’t you worry with what she says,” said o’more, in a gruff whisper, pressing bird’s shoulder with his kindly grasp. “just you be good to the little feller and yer uncle john ’ll stand by yer, and maybe ye’ll see some way to chirk things up a bit. i’ve been thinkin’ some of puttin’ a bit uv an awning out on the ’scape to keep the sun off him while he’s takin’ the air, only travellin’ so much i’ve not got to it. i’d do it to-day, only i must go to the yards to unload a car o’ horses. to-morrer, maybe, i’ll stay around home.”
[122]
“don’t you want any breakfast, billy?” bird asked, as her uncle clumped downstairs.
“no,—yes,—i’m hungry, but i’m tired more,” he answered, laying his head on the table.
“suppose i wash and dress you first, and then you can go out on the piazza and eat something and see if you can spy tessie.”
“will you hurt billy’s bones when you wash him? ma always does,” he added, his lower lip beginning to quiver. he always called himself by name and often spoke in short sentences as very young children do.
“i’ll try not to; and if i do, you must tell me and i’ll stop right away.”
bird looked about the room to see what she could find without calling her aunt, whose very presence seemed to irritate billy. there were two stationary wash-tubs beside the range; one of these being empty, she proceeded to fill it half full of water, making it comfortably warm by aid of the tea-kettle. next she hunted up a piece of soap and found a towel with much difficulty, for the roller towel on the kitchen door was for general use.
“come and play duck and go in swimming,” she said to billy, who had been watching her with interest as she overturned a pail and put it in the corner of the tub for a seat.
[123]
the idea struck the child’s fancy so completely that he could hardly wait to slip out of his few clothes and be helped up on a chair and then into the tub, where he sat comfortably pouring the water over himself with a tea-cup, and chuckling in a way that would have warmed his father’s heart.
meanwhile, bird gathered the dishes together in the sink, wiping off the plates with bits of bread,—as she had done ever since she could remember and had seen her mother do in the short “better days” when they had a pretty home and her mother had always herself washed the best china in the inside pantry,—and straightened the furniture and hung up various articles that littered the floor so that there was room to move about. by this time billy was ready for drying, which bird did so gently that he did not even wince, for she had ministered to her father, seen her father care for her mother, and god had given her the best gift that a girl, be she child or woman, can have,—the gift of loving touch, of doing the right thing almost unconsciously for the weak or helpless.
billy, clean, refreshed, with his bright hair brushed into a wreath around his forehead, sitting in his little chair on the fire-escape, and being fed with bread and milk by bird, who talked to him as he ate, was[124] a different being from the crumpled little figure that had only a few moments before looked so pathetic sitting in his high-chair, head on table.
as bird gave him the last morsel and wiped his mouth, he leaned backward to where she knelt behind him and, clasping his arms around her neck, pulled her head down to him, and, nestling there, whispered, “billy loves bird very much, and she must stay close by him forever ’n’ ever, won’t she?”
“see, that must be tessie’s window down there,” she said, not trusting herself to answer and catching sight of a white rag hanging from the blind of a low building that stood in the rear of a shop that fronted on the next street. it was an old-fashioned, two-story, wooden house, with dormer windows in a roof that had been once shingled. there were a dozen such in laurelville, and as bird looked at it she wondered how it came to be there, built in on all sides, and if it didn’t miss the garden that must have once surrounded it.
then as she looked she saw the outline of a face inside the window. it was so far down and across that she could not distinguish the features, but she waved the towel she held, and billy shook his hand. presently something white waved back, and thus a[125] telegraph of love and sympathy crossed the dreary waste of brick and clothes-lines, and put the three in touch, and the bird, who had been taken from the country wilds and put in a city cage, and the two little cripples were no longer alone, for even at these back windows there was some one to wave to and respond.
mrs. o’more was in a better mood when, an hour later, having finished the gown, she came back to the kitchen to find the dishes washed and set away, and billy sitting contentedly in his chair throwing crumbs to try to coax some pigeons that lived in the stable next door from the roof to the fire-escape.
“i’ll take him up to the doctor’s now,” she said to bird, without vouchsafing any remarks upon the improved appearance of the kitchen, though she saw it all. “you can come along with me if you like, or you can stop here and look about and rest yourself a bit. there’s plenty of passing to be seen from the front room.”
bird said she thought she would rather stay at home.
“mind, now, and lock the inside hall door as soon as we’ve gone and don’t let anybody in, for, in spite of the catch on the door below, there’s always pedlers and one thing and another pushing up.”
[126]
after mrs. o’more had left, bird went through into the sitting room. seating herself by the window with her arms on the sill, she looked down into the street. it was an intensely hot day in spite of a breeze that blew from the east river; down by the pavement the mercury was climbing up into the nineties—summer had come with a jump. could it be only a week ago that she had been picking long-stemmed, purple violets by the brook beyond the wood lot at laurelville? was it only day before yesterday that lammy had brought her the red peonies, and they had walked up the hill road together?
she had stayed by the window for some time, perhaps half an hour, watching the horses that were led out from the stable to be cooled by spray from the hose attached to the hydrant in front, when a slight noise in the kitchen caused her to turn. the light from the window opening on the fire-escape was darkened, and a man’s figure showed for a second in outline against the sky and then swung noiselessly into the kitchen.
bird’s first impulse was to scream, but, checking it, she shrank trembling behind a tall rocking-chair and watched. the man glanced about the kitchen and came directly through to the room where her uncle and aunt slept. it did not seem to occur to him that[127] there was anybody at home, though bird did not think of this until afterward.
pausing before the bureau, he opened the upper drawer, and, after passing his hand rapidly through the clothing it contained, drew out a long wallet, which bird recognized as the one from which her aunt had taken some money before going to the doctor’s. without thinking of the result or counting the cost, she rushed forward and caught the wallet tight in both hands, crying, “you mustn’t take it, you shan’t; for it’s the money to pay for mending poor billy’s leg.”
the man, taken utterly by surprise, fell back, but only for a moment, and, muttering a string of such words as bird had never before heard, seized her by the shoulder with one hand while he tried to wrench the pocket-book from her with the other; but, strong as he was, this took several minutes, for bird hung on desperately, clinging to his arm after he had secured the wallet, until finally he picked her up bodily and threw her on to the bed, and before she could recover herself, locked the door into the sitting room, and, taking out the key, did the same to the door into the boys’ room, through which he retreated, leaving her a prisoner, for the window into the air-shaft was high out of reach.
[128]
as bird sat on the edge of the bed sobbing with fright and the thought of what the loss of the money might mean to billy, noise of a scuffle reached her ears from the kitchen and the locked door burst open suddenly as it had closed, pushed by a strong shoulder, but it was the face of a perspiring policeman that peered through the crack.
“catch him, oh, do catch him!” she implored; “he’s got the money from aunt rose’s drawer that’s to pay for mending billy’s leg!”
“he’s caught safe enough, my girl,—me mate has him in the kitchen and the money, too, though he did try to throw it over the yards when we grappled him. you see there’s been a slew of these daylight thieves around these parts lately, sneaking over roofs and down escapes when folks are at work. we spotted this one goin’ through the saloon on the corner and in among the skylights, and we followed but lost track, for he has another wallet lifted besides this one, and if he’d slid out a minute sooner, we’d have lost him.”
“then holding on did some good, after all,” bird gasped, still standing with tightly clasped hands as if she were holding the precious money in them.
“an’ did yer grab him, now? look at that fer pluck,—it’s a wonder he didn’t smash yer entirely.[129] come out and take a look at him; maybe ye can tell did ye see him before.”
bird looked, but the young man was a stranger to her. he did not appear to be more than twenty, and, as they led him away, handcuffed to an officer, he pulled his hat so low over his face that the crowd that gathered and followed as soon as the street was reached could not see his features, or if he was old or young.
bird gave the officer her uncle’s name, and he said: “when he comes in, tell him to come round to the station-house and he’ll get his money all right. i’ve got to take it in as evidence.” the street was hardly clear again of the curious crowd when the twelve-o’clock whistle sounded and workmen appeared from all quarters, either with pails to eat their dinners in the shade of the house fronts, or on the way to their various homes.
mrs. o’more and her husband—for he had been watching for their car—came up the street together, little billy between them, and it was strange that they did not meet the policemen with their prisoner. bird was watching eagerly for them, and, after hearing their news,—that the doctor said it was possible to help the lame leg, only that billy must grow stronger before it could be done,—told them hers.
[130]
both listened eagerly. her uncle said, “yer pluck does credit to the o’mores, but did ye mind the villain’s face what it was like?”
“oh, yes,” bird answered excitedly, “it was smooth and fair, and he had very blue eyes with a long scar over one, and his hair was quite red.” glancing at her aunt, she saw that she had turned deadly pale, and a certain resemblance struck her for the first time.
“god help us,—it’s tom come back to rob his own mother,” gasped poor john o’more.
“but you’ll not appear against him, john,” cried his wife, throwing her arms around him as he seized his hat and turned to go out.
“i can’t, woman, i can’t; but maybe it’ll do no good. i must go round to the station and get the wallet and see to this, anyway.”
and bird, after laying billy on the lounge for a nap, sat by her aunt,—who, while waiting to hear the outcome, had collapsed and was crying noisily,—and tried to take off her tight waist and bathe her face, and she realized that there were even worse griefs than leaving one’s home and father, for surely dear terry was safe beyond all harm now.
