it was the last day of june when one morning, before the sun had a chance to turn the pavements into ovens, bird, having finished some marketing for her aunt, was leading billy slowly in and out along the shady sides of the streets toward madison square, where they were watching the lotus plants in the fountain for the first sign of an open flower, for already buds were pushing their stately way through the great masses of leaves.
chancing to glance at the window of a newly finished store that was not yet rented, bird read the words, “flower mission.” as she paused to look at the sign, wondering what it might mean, an express wagon stopped at the curb and several slat boxes and baskets filled with flowers, for sprays peeped from the openings, were carried into the building, a wave of moist coolness and perfume following them.
bird’s heart gave a bound of longing, for the[147] fragrance of the flowers painted a picture of her little straggling garden and held it before her eyes for a brief moment.
“oh, look, bird, come quick and look; it’s all full of pretty flowers in there! do you think they would let billy go in and smell close?” billy was standing by the open door, and, as bird glanced over his shoulder, she saw that one side of the store was filled by a long counter, improvised by placing boards upon packing cases, which was already heaped with flowers of every description in addition to those that the expressman had just brought.
an elderly lady, with a big, white apron tied over a cool, gray, summer gown, was sorting the flowers from the mass, while a tall, slender young girl, of not more than sixteen, dressed all in white, was making them into small bouquets and laying them in neat rows in an empty hamper.
it was the young girl who overheard billy’s question to bird and answered it, saying, “of course billy may come in and smell the flowers as much as he pleases, and have as many as he can carry home.”
“oh, can we?” said bird, clasping her hands involuntarily with her old gesture that expressed more joy than she could speak.
at the sound of the second voice, the young girl[148] pushed back the brim of her drooping, rose-trimmed hat and looked up with clear, gray eyes. as she did so bird recognized her as marion clarke, the daughter of the man who spent his summers in the stone house on the hillside beyond northboro, and it was she who had passed bird and lammy on the roadside the day when she had left her old home and, carrying twinkle, was going to mrs. lane’s.
but if bird recognized marion, the memory was on one side, as it is apt to be where one sees but few faces and the other many. this however did not prevent marion from holding out her free hand to the younger girl, as she made room for her to pass between the boxes, saying, in a charming voice, low-keyed and softly modulated, yet without a touch of affectation: “if you are fond of flowers and can spare the time, perhaps you would help us this morning; so many of our friends have left the city that we are short-handed. here is a little box your brother can sit on if he is tired.” oh, that welcome touch of companionship, and that voice,—it made bird almost choke, as she said:—
“billy is my cousin, and i should love to tie the flowers, for aunt rose does not expect us back until noon.”
it was one of marion clarke’s strong points, young[149] as she was, that she had insight as well as tact. she saw at a glance that these children were not of the ordinary class that play about the streets, interested in every passing novelty, merely because it is new, so she had given bird a friendly greeting and asked her to help, instead of merely offering the children a bouquet and letting them pass on as objects of charity, no matter how light the gift.
when bird replied in direct and courteous speech, marion knew that she had read aright. an ordinary street child of that region would have said, “i dunno ’s i will,” or “what ’ll ye give me ’f i do?” or perhaps declined wholly to answer and bolted off after grabbing a handful of flowers.
“aunt laura, will you let us have some string? there, see, it is cut in lengths, so that you can twist it around twice and tie it so. i do wish people would tie up their flowers before they send them, they would keep so much better; but as they do not, we have to manage as best we may.
“oh, how nicely you do it,” she continued, as bird held up her first effort for approval,—a dainty bouquet of mignonette, a white rose, and some pink sweet-william, with a curved spray of honeysuckle to break the stiffness.
“so many people put the wrong colours together,[150] and tie the flowers so tight that it seems as if it must choke the dear things,—see, like this,” and marion held up a bunch in which scarlet poppies and crimson roses were packed closely together without a leaf of green.
“yes, i understand; those colours—hurt,” bird answered, groping for a word and finding exactly the right one.
“you must have lived in the country and been a great deal with flowers to touch them so deftly and know so well about the colours.”
“i always lived in the country until this summer, and terry taught me all about the colours and how to mix them.”
“who was terry?” asked marion, much interested, and not knowing that she was treading upon dangerous ground.
“he was father,” and bird, remembering where she was, stopped abruptly, and marion, who had noticed the rusty black gown, understood that there was a story in its shabby folds and forbore to intrude.
miss laura clarke, who was the lady in gray, gave billy a pasteboard box lid of short-stemmed blossoms to play with, and he sat quite content, while the others kept on tying the flowers until only one basketful was left.
[151]
“the flowers come in every wednesday morning, and i ask people to send them in as early as possible, so that they may be sorted and tied up by ten o’clock when the ladies come to distribute them,” marion explained as they worked. “they are miss vorse, the deaconess from the mission, beside two workers from the college settlement, and half a dozen district visitors. those two hampers go direct to hospitals, but the ladies take the flowers about to the sick in the tenements and to special cases.
“i have come here from the country place where i live every week all through may and june, but this is my last day this season, because i’m going to europe next week with my aunt, and miss vorse will take my place.”
another disappointment for bird. at last she had met some one to whom she had felt drawn, and whom she thought she might see occasionally, and almost in the same breath learned that she was going away.
“do you know of any children who would like some flowers, or any one who is ill?” she added, as she noticed that bird was silent and loath to go, even though all the bouquets were ready and miss laura was packing them in the baskets and boxes for distribution.
[152]
“there’s tessie; oh, i know that tessie would love to have some!” cried bird, eagerly; “she has not waved to us for nearly a week, and i was going to see her this afternoon when billy takes his nap, if aunt rose will let me,” and bird told what she knew of the little cripple who “kept house” by herself while her mother and sister worked.
then a happy idea came to marion clarke. handing out a flat wicker basket, that held perhaps twenty-five bouquets, to bird, she said: “would you like to be one of the flower missionaries this summer and carry bouquets? yes?” as she saw the glad look in her eyes; “then you may fill this basket, and here is a big bouquet for you and something extra sweet to add to the basket,—see, a bunch of real wallflowers, such as grow over seas, some foreign-born body will go wild with joy over it, and here is a fruit bouquet a youngster has evidently put together,—big strawberries on their stalks set in their own leaves.
“miss vorse is coming now. i will introduce you and tell her to give you the flowers. what is your name? bird o’more. i’m glad of that; it seems to fit you. i should have been disappointed if it had been jane jones,” she continued, as a sweet-faced, tall young woman, dressed in a dark blue gown and[153] bonnet, entered, saying: “i’m afraid that i am late, but there is so much illness among the little children in the district now that i could not get away. a new flower missionary! that is good; children can reach those whom we cannot.”
presently bird found herself walking along the street, billy’s hand in one of hers, and the basket of flowers in the other. billy was prattling happily, but for once she scarcely heard what he said, the flower voices were whispering so gently and saying such beautiful things.
“take us to tessie,” whispered one. “god lets us bring sunlight to dark places,” said another—“you can do the same.” “be happy, you have something to give away,” breathed another, and this flower was a spray of cheerful honeysuckle that blooms freely for every one alike.
yes, bird was happy, for marion clarke had held her by the hand and called her a flower missionary; she had flowers to give away and flowers to take home. oh, joy! she could try to paint them, and she pushed the bouquet that held the old garden flowers, the mignonette, sweet brier and honeysuckle under the others to keep for her own.
if she waited to go home first, the flowers might fade, so an impulse seized her to give tessie her[154] flowers first, and then turned into the street below their own, trying to remember mattie’s directions—“count six houses from the butcher’s, and then go through the arch, and up two pairs of stairs to the top.”
before she had gone a block, two little girls had begged her for flowers, one rosy and sturdy chose red and yellow zenias; the other, who, like billy, had a “bad leg” and hopped, chose delicate-hued sweet peas. bird had never seen a lame child in laurelville, but now she met them daily, for such little cripples are one of the frequent sights of poorer new york.
at the first corner a blind woman, selling the mats she herself crocheted, begged for “a posy that she could tell by the smell was passing.” to her bird gave the bunch of mignonette. a burly truckman, who thought she was selling the flowers, threw her a dime and asked for a “good-smellin’ bokay for the missis who was done up with the heat,” so she tossed him back the coin and a bouquet of spicy garden pinks and roses together, while billy called in his piping voice, “we’re a flower mission—we gives ’em away,” so that the man drove off laughing, his fat face buried in the flowers.
when bird had counted the “six houses from the[155] butcher’s” and found the archway, which was really the entrance to a dismal alley, her basket was almost empty. she hesitated about taking billy into such a place, and in fact but for her great desire to give tessie the flowers, she would have turned back herself. as she looked up and down the street, a policeman passing noticed her hesitation and stopped.
“sure it’s the plucky girl from johnny o’more’s beyond that tried to catch the thief,—and what do you be wantin’ here?”
bird recognized the policeman and explained, and he said, “ye do right not to be pokin’ in back buildings heedless; it’s not fit fer girls like you, but this same is a dacent place, though poor, and as i’m not on me beat, only passin’ by chance, i’ll go through to the buildin’ with ye, and the kid can stay below with me while ye go up, for stairs isn’t the easiest fer the loikes av him.”
so through they went, the big policeman leading the way, and entering the back building bird began to grope upward. when the house had stood by itself in the middle of an old garden, the sun had shone through and through it, but now the windows on two sides were closed, and the halls were dark, and the bannister rails half gone.
at the first floor landing she paused a moment.[156] what was that tap, tapping? it came from a small room made by boarding off one end of the broad, old-fashioned hallway. the door was open and a single ray of sun shot across from an oval window that had originally lighted the stairs and was high in the wall.
in the streak of sun was a cobbler’s bench and on it sat a man busily at work fastening a sole to a shoe, so old that it scarcely seemed worth the mending.
then she went on again and, after knocking at two wrong doors, finally found the right one.
“come in,” piped a shrill, cheery voice; “i can’t come to open it,” and in bird went.
“i hoped that you would come to-day,” said the small figure, sitting bolstered up in a wooden rocking-chair with her feet on a box covered with an end of rag carpet, by way of greeting. no introduction was necessary, for the two girls knew each other perfectly well, although their previous acquaintance had merely been by waving rags across the yards.
“my legs haven’t felt as if they had bones in ’em in a week,” tessie continued, “so’s i couldn’t reach up high enough to wave, and it seemed real lonesome, but i’ve got a new pattern for lace, and there’s a man in the store where mattie works who says he’ll give me half-a-dollar for every yard i make of it,—what[157] do you think of that?” and she spread out proudly a handsome bit of irish crocheted lace upon which she was working. it was four inches wide, a combination of clover leaves, and very elaborate, of the kind that is so much sought now and costs many dollars a yard in the shops.
“it is beautiful,” explained bird; “how do you know how to do it?”
“my mother learned long ago in the convent in the old country, but her hands are too stiff to make it now, and besides she says it wouldn’t pay her. so she showed me the stitch and some of the old patterns, and one night last week, when i couldn’t sleep very good, i was thinkin’ of the lace work, and i guess i must have dreamed the new pattern, for the next morning i worked it right out. those leaves is like some that came in a pocketful of grass mattie fetched me home; one day they were cutting it over in the square, and the man let her take it. i just love the smell o’ grass, don’t you? and now’s i can’t get out, mattie brings me some in her pocket every time she can. i guess she will to-night if they’ve cut it to-day.”
all this time bird held her basket behind her, but now she wheeled about and rested it on the arm of tessie’s chair. the joy of the child was wonderful,[158] almost startling. her dark eyes dilated and she looked first at bird and then at the flowers, as she almost whispered in the excitement of her surprise, “ye ain’t got ’em to keep, have ye?” then as bird tipped them into her lap, “they ain’t fer me, fer sure?”
“yes, they are, and i’m going to bring you some every wednesday,” said bird, joyfully, and then she told about marion clarke and the flower mission.
“ain’t it jest heavenly to think of,—me with a whole winder to myself that opens out and the crochet to do and real flowers, new ones that ain’t been used at all,” and tessie leaned back and closed her eyes in perfect content.
then suddenly bird’s sorrow seemed to grow lighter and life a little brighter, and the sunlight as it were crept in to sweeten them both—she had something to give away, and lo, it was good.
tessie was down handling the blossoms again and discovered the berry bouquet beneath. “oh, but here’s growing strawberries on a bush like! well, i never, never! but they’re handsome! maybe i could make a pattern from them, too. oh, surely there’s angels about somewhere doin’ things. you know father john, he says i’ve got a guardian angel looking out after me, and st. theresa my name saint [159]chose her, and that everybody has, though for a long spell i didn’t know it. you see it’s been easier for her to look after me since we’ve got a room with an opened-out winder. i reckon if i was an angel, i wouldn’t care to poke around air-shafts much. oh, what’s these browny-yeller flowers that smell so elegant?” and tessie held up the wallflowers.
when bird told their name, tessie gave a little cry and said, “they’re what mother talks about that grew up in the wall below the big house at home where her father was a keeper, and the smell of them came in the cottage windows in the night air right to her, and she’s often said she’d cross the sea again to smell them if she had the price, and now she won’t have to take that trouble. that angel has found our winder for sure. would you get me the little pitcher and some water in it yonder?”
the larger of the two rooms, the one with the window, had two clean beds in it, over which a newspaper picture of the madonna and child was pinned to the wall, two chairs, and an old bureau, while the smaller room, little more than a closet, held a table, a few dishes, and an oil cooking-stove, all as neat as wax. a pail of water stood on the table, from which bird filled the pitcher, and set it on a chair by tessie that she might herself arrange the flowers.[160] then, remembering that the policeman and billy were waiting, she picked up her basket and her own flowers, and, promising to come the next week, groped her way downstairs again.
bird did not see the tired mother, when she returned from her day’s scrubbing, enter the dark room and drawing a quick breath say, in an awe-struck voice, “i smell them—i smell the wallflowers! sure, am i dreaming or dying?” or see the way in which she buried her face in the mass, laughing and crying together, when the lamp was lit and tessie had told her the how and why of it.
there were dreary days often after this, when her uncle was away on long trips and her aunt was cross, but though bird did not yet give up all hope of going back some day among her friends, or studying, as she had promised her father, she was learning the lesson of patience, which, after all, is the first and last one to know by heart.
now the morning-glories had reached the window tops, and in the little bower above the clothes-lines she and billy often sat as she told him stories of the real country, of lammy and twinkle, the old white horse, and the red peonies, and flew there in imagination. then the child’s big eyes would flash as he gazed at her, and he[161] always ended by asking, “when we stop being birds in this cage, we’ll fly right up there to your country and be real birds and see lammy and twinkle, won’t we?” and bird always answered, “yes,” to please him, but it was a word that meant nothing to her. so the summer wore on, and bird did not go back to laurelville.
