while you gas with Ike Lavinsky."
Nance, thus admonished, obeyed orders, arriving on the domestic hearth in time to prevent the soup from boiling over. Mr. Snawdor, wearing a long ap.r.o.n and an expression of tragic doom, was trying to set the table, while over and above and beneath him surged his turbulent offspring. In a broken rocking-chair, fanning herself with a box-top, sat Mrs. Snawdor, indulging herself in a continuous stream of conversation and apparently undisturbed by the uproar around her. Mrs. Snawdor was not sensitive to discord. As a necessary adjustment to their environment, her nerves had become soundproof.
"You certainly missed it by not being here!" she was saying to Mr.
Snawdor. "It was one of the liveliest mix-ups ever I seen! One of them rich boys bust the cathedral window. Some say it"ll cost over a thousan"
dollars to git it fixed. An" I pray to G.o.d his paw"ll have to pay every cent of it!"
"Can"t you make William J. and Rosy stop that racket?" queried Mr.
Snawdor, plaintively. The twins had been named at a time when Mrs.
Snawdor"s loyalty was wavering between the President and another distinguished statesman with whom she a.s.sociated the promising phrase, "free silver." The arrival of two babies made a choice unnecessary, and, notwithstanding the fact that one of them was a girl, she named them William J. and Roosevelt, reluctantly abbreviating the latter to "Rosy."
"They ain"t hurtin" nothin"," she said, impatient of the interruption to her story. "I wisht you might "a" seen that ole fool Mason a-lordin" it aroun", an" that little devil Nance a-takin" him off to the life.
Everybody nearly died a-laughin" at her. But he says he"s goin" to have her up in court, an" I ain"t got a blessed thing to wear "cept that ole hat of yours I trimmed up. Looks like a shame fer a woman never to be fixed to go nowhere!"
Mr. Snawdor, who had been trying ineffectually to get in a word, took this remark personally and in muttering tones called Heaven to witness that it was none of his fault that she didn"t have the right clothes, and that it was a pretty kind of a world that would keep a man from gettin"
on just because he was honest, and--
"Oh, shut up!" said Mrs. Snawdor, unfeelingly; "it ain"t yer lack of work that gits on my nerves; it"s yer bein" "round. I"d pay anybody a quarter a week to keep yer busy!"
Nance, during this exchange of conjugal infelicities, a.s.sisted by Lobelia and Fidy, was rescuing sufficient dishes from the kitchen sink to serve for the evening meal. She, too, was finding it difficult to bring her attention to bear on domestic matters after the exciting events of the afternoon.
"An" he says to me,"--she was recounting with dramatic intensity to her admiring audience--"he says, "Keep offen that concrete." An" I says, "It"ll take somebody bigger"n you to make me!""
Now, of course, we know that Nance never said that, but it was what she wished she had said, which, at certain moments in life, seems to the best of us to be quite the same thing.
"Then what?" said Fidy, with a plate suspended in air.
"Then," said Nance with sparkling eyes, "I sticks my foot right in the middle of their old concrete, an" they comes pilin" offen the fence, an"
Dan Lewis he--"
"You Nance!" came in warning tones from the other room, "you shet your head an" git on with that supper. Here comes your Uncle Jed this minute!"
At this announcement Nance dropped her dish towel, and dashing to the door flung herself into the arms of a short, fat, baldheaded man who had just come out of the front room across the hall.
"Easy there!" warned the new-comer. "You ain"t aimin" to b.u.t.t the engine clean offen the track, air yer?"
Nance got his arm around her neck, and her arm around his knees, and thus entwined they made their way to the table.
Uncle Jed Burks, uncle by courtesy, was a boarder by day and a gate-tender by night at the signal tower at the railroad crossing. On that day long ago when he had found himself a widower, helpless in the face of domestic problems, he had accepted Mrs. Snawdor"s prompt offer of hospitality and come across the hall for his meals. At the end of the week he had been allowed to show his grat.i.tude by paying the rent, and by the end of the month he had become the chief prop of the family. It is difficult to conceive of an Atlas choosing to burden himself with the world, but there are temperaments that seek responsibilities just as there are those, like Mr. Snawdor, who refuse them.
Through endless discomforts, Uncle Jed had stayed on, coaxing Mr. Snawdor into an acceptance of his lot, helping Mrs. Snawdor over financial difficulties, and bestowing upon the little Snawdors the affection which they failed to elicit from either the maternal or the paternal bosom. And the amazing thing was that Uncle Jed always thought he was receiving favors instead of conferring them.
"What"s this I hear about my little partner gittin" into trouble?" he asked, catching Nance"s chin in his palm and turning her smudged, excited face up to his.
Nance"s eyes fell before his glance. For the first time since the fight her pride was mingled with misgiving. But when Mrs. Snawdor plunged into a fresh recital of the affair, with evident approval of the part she had played, her self-esteem returned.
"And you say Mason"s fixin" to send her up to the juvenile court?" asked Uncle Jed gravely, his fat hand closing on her small one.
"Dan Lewis has got to go too!" said Nance, a sudden apprehension seizing her at Uncle Jed"s solemn face.
"Oh, they won"t do nothin" to "em," said Mrs. Snawdor, pouring hot water over the coffee grounds and shaking the pot vigorously. "Everybody knows it was the Clarke boy that bust the window. Clarke"s Bottle Works" son, you know, up there on Zender Street."
"Was it the Clarke boy and Dan Lewis that started the fracas?" asked Uncle Jed.
"No, it was me!" put in Nance.
"Now, Nance Molloy, you lemme hear you say that one time more, an" you know what"ll happen!" said Mrs. Snawdor, impressively. "You"re fixin" to make me pay a fine."
"I"m mighty sorry Dan Lewis is mixed up in it," said Uncle Jed, shaking his head. "This here"s his second offense. He was had up last year."
"An" can you wonder?" asked Mrs. Snawdor, "with his mother what she is?"
"Mrs. Lewis ain"t a bad looker," Mr. Snawdor roused himself to observe dejectedly.
His wife turned upon him indignantly. "Well, it"s a pity she ain"t as good as her looks then. Fer my part I can"t see it"s to any woman"s credit to look nice when she"s got the right kind of a switch and a good set of false teeth. It"s the woman that keeps her good looks without none of them luxuries that orter be praised."
"Mrs. Lewis ain"t done her part by Dan," said Uncle Jed, seating himself at the red-clothed table.
"I should say she ain"t," Mrs. Snawdor continued. "I never seen nothin"
more pathetical than that there boy when he was no more than three years old, a-tryin" to feed hisself outer the garbage can, an" her a comin an"
a goin" in the alley all these years with her nose in the air, too good to speak to anybody."
"Dan don"t think his mother"s bad to him," said Nance. "He saved up his shoe-shine money an" bought her some perfumery. He lemme smell it."
"Oh, yes!" said Mrs. Snawdor, "she"s got to have her perfumery, an" her feather in her hat, an" the whitewash on her face, no matter if Dan"s feet are on the groun", an" his naked hide shinin" through his shirt."
"Well, I wish him an" this here little girl wasn"t mixed up in this business," repeated Uncle Jed. "Courts ain"t no place fer children. Seems like I can"t stand fer our little Nance to be mixin" up with shady characters."
Nance shot an apprehensive glance at him and began to look anxious. She had never seen Uncle Jed so solemn before.
"You jes" remember this here, Nancy," went on the signalman, who could no more refrain from pointing a moral when the chance presented itself, than a gun can help going off when the trigger is pulled; "nothin" good ever comes from breakin" laws. They wouldn"t a-been made into laws if they wasn"t fer our good, an" even when we don"t see no reason in keepin" "em, we ain"t got no more right to break through than one of them engines up at the crossing"s got a right to come ahead when I signals it from the tower to stop. I been handin" out laws to engines fer goin" on thirty year, an" I never seen one yet that bust over a law that didn"t come to grief. You keep on the track, Sister, an" watch the signals an" obey orders an" you"ll find it pays in the end. An" now, buck up, an" don"t be scared. We"ll see what we can do to git you off."
"Who"s skeered?" said Nance, with a defiant toss of her head. "I ain"t skeered of nothin"."
But that night when Mrs. Snawdor and Uncle Jed had gone to work, and Mr.
Snawdor had betaken himself out of ear-shot of the wailing baby, Nance"s courage began to waver. After she had finished her work and crawled into bed between Fidy and Lobelia, the juvenile court, with its unknown terrors, rose before her. All the excitement of the day died out; her pride in sharing the punishment with Dan Lewis vanished. She lay staring up into the darkness, swallowing valiantly to keep down the sobs, fiercely resolved not to let her bed-fellows witness the break-down of her courage.
"What"s the matter, Nance?" asked Fidy.
"I"m hot!" said Nance, crossly. "It feels like the inside of a oven in here!"
"I bet Maw forgot to open the window into the shaft," said Fidy.
"Windows don"t do no good," said Nance; "they just let in smells. Wisht I was a man! You bet I would be up at Slap Jack"s! I"d set under a "lectric fan, an" pour cold things down me an" listen at the "phoney-graf ever"
night. Hush! Is that our baby?"
A faint wail made her scramble out of bed and rush into the back room where she gathered a hot, squirming bundle into her arms and peered anxiously into its wizened face. She knew the trick babies had of dying when the weather was hot! Two other beloved sc.r.a.ps of humanity had been taken away from her, and she was fiercely determined to keep this one.
Lugging the baby to the window, she scrambled over the sill.