"Why?" she asked in puzzled tone. "There is not an Irish boy here. You are Italians, and Spanish, and Jewish, and Russian, so why call it Irish-American?"
"My stepfather is an Irishman, his name is Mike O"Malley," said a small Mexican. "So I"ll be the captain."
"G"wan, ain"t it enough to get the club named for you?" came the angry retort. "What you know about baseball, anyhow?"
Eveley silenced them quickly. "Let"s just call it the American League,"
she pleaded.
"The Irish-American League is well known, and gets its name in the paper," was the ready argument in its favor.
And this fact, together with the strong appeal the words had made to their sense of dignity, proved irresistible. They refused to give it up.
And when Eveley tried to reason with them, they told her slyly that the proper way to decide was by putting it to vote.
Eveley swallowed hard, but conscientiously admitted the justice of this, and put the question to vote. And as the club was unanimously in favor of it, and only Eveley was opposed, her Americanization baseball club of Italians and Mexicans and Orientals went down into history as the Irish-American League.
When it came to voting for officers, she again met with scant success.
They flatly refused to have a president, stating that a captain could do all the bossing necessary, and that baseball clubs always had a captain.
In the vote that followed the result was curiously impartial. Every boy in the club voted for himself. Eveley, who had been won by the bright face of a young Jewish boy sitting near her with keen eyes intent upon her, voted for him, which gave him a fifty per cent. majority over the nearest compet.i.tor, and Eveley declared him the captain.
A few moments later, Eveley was called away to the telephone by Nolan, wishing to know what time he should call for her and the moment she was out of hearing, the club went into noisy conference. Upon her return, the argumentative Russian announced that the vote had been changed, and he was unanimously elected captain.
"But how did that happen?" Eveley demanded doubtfully. "Did the rest of you change your votes, and decide he should be captain?"
There was a rustle of hesitation, almost a dissenting murmur.
The newly elected captain lowered his brows ominously. "You did, didn"t you?" he asked, glaring around on his fellow members.
"Yes," came feebly though unanimously.
"Did--did you vote?" questioned Eveley tremulously.
"Sure, we voted," said the captain amiably. "We decided that I know the game better than the rest of the guys, and I can lick any kid in this gang with one hand, and we decided that I ought to be the captain. Ain"t that right?" Again he turned lowering brows on the Irish-American League.
No denial was forthcoming, and although Eveley felt a.s.sured that in some way the American ideal of popular selection had been violently outraged, it seemed the part of policy to overlook what might have occurred. Some minor rules were agreed upon, and the club decided to meet for practise every evening after school. Eveley could not attend except on Sat.u.r.days, and a boy near her, whose features had seemed vaguely and bewilderingly familiar, announced that he must withdraw as he worked and had no time for baseball. The captain professed his ability to fill up the club to the required number with exceptional baseball material, and the meeting adjourned without further parley.
This one meeting sufficed unalterably to convince Eveley that she was totally and helplessly out of her element. She was not altogether sure those quick-witted boys needed Americanizing, but she was sure that she was not the one to do it if they did require it. She realized that she had absolutely no idea how to go about instilling principles of freedom and loyalty in the hearts of young foreigners.
It was with great sadness that she began adjusting her hat and collar ready to go home, leaving defeat and failure behind her, when a blithe voice at her elbow broke into her despair.
"So long, Miss Ainsworth; see you in the morning."
Eveley whirled about and stared into the face of the small lad whose features had seemed so curiously familiar.
"To-morrow?" she repeated.
"Surest thing you know, at the office," he said, grinning impishly at her evident inability to place him. "I knew all the time you didn"t know me.
I am Angelo Moreno, the Number Three elevator boy at the Rollo Building."
"Do--do you know who I am?"
"Sure, you"re Miss Ainsworth, old Jim Hodgin"s private secretary."
"How long have you been there?"
"About a year and a half."
"I never noticed," she said, and there was pain in her voice.
"Oh, well," he said soothingly, "there"s always a jam going up and down when you do, and you are tired evenings."
"But you are in the jam, too, and you are tired as well as I, but you have seen."
"That"s my job," he said complacently. "I got to know the folks in our building."
"How much do you know about me?" she pursued with morbid curiosity.
He grinned at her again, companionably. "You"re twenty-five years old, and you"re stuck on that fellow Inglish, with Morrow and Mayne over at the Holland Building. You used to live with your aunt up on Thorn Street, but she died and you got the house. B. T. Raines is your brother-in-law, and he"s got two kids, but his wife is not as good-looking as you are.
You stayed with them two months after your aunt died, but last week you got a bunch of your beaux, soldiers and things, to build you some steps up the outside of your house and now you live up there by yourself. Gee, I"d think you"d be afraid of pirates and Greasers and things coming up that canyon from the bay to rob you--you being just a woman alone up there."
Eveley gazed upon him in blank astonishment. "Do--do you know that much about everybody in our building?" she asked.
"Well, I know plenty about most of "em, and some things that some of "em don"t know I know, and wouldn"t be keen on having talked around among strangers. But of course I pays the most attention to the good-lookers,"
he admitted frankly.
"Thank you," said Eveley, with a faint smile. Then she flushed. "What nerve for me to talk of a.s.similation," she said. "We don"t know how to go about it. We have been asleep and blind and careless and stupid, but you--why, you will a.s.similate us, if we don"t look out. You are a born a.s.similator, Angelo, do you know that?"
"I guess so," came the answer vaguely, but politely. "I live about half a mile below you, Miss Ainsworth, at the foot of the canyon on the bay front. That"s all the diff there is between us and you highbrows in Mission Hills--about half a mile of canyon." He smiled broadly, pleased with his fancy.
"That isn"t much, is it, Angelo? And it will be less pretty soon, now that we are trying to open our eyes. Good night, Angelo. I will see you to-morrow--really see you, I mean. And please don"t a.s.similate me quite so fast--you must give me time. I--I am new to this business and progress very slowly."
Then she said good night again, and went away. And Angelo swaggered back to his companions. "Gee, ain"t she a beaut?" he gloated. "All the swells in our building is nuts on that dame. But she gives "em all the go-by."
Then the Irish-American League, without the a.s.similator, went into a private session with cigarettes and near-beer in a small dingy room far down on Fifth Street--a session that lasted far into the night.
But Eveley Ainsworth did not know that. She was sitting in the dark beside her window, staring out at the lights that circled the bay. But she did not see them.
"a.s.similate the foreign element," she whispered in a frightened voice. "I am afraid we can"t. It is too late. They got started first--and they are so shrewd. But we"ve got to do something, and quickly, or--they will a.s.similate us, beyond a doubt. And weren"t they right about it, after all? Isn"t it patriotism and loyalty for them to go out to foreign countries to pick up the finest and best of our civilization and take it back to enrich their native land? It is almost--blasphemous--to teach them a new patriotism to a new country. And yet we have to do it, to make our country safe for us. But who has brains enough and heart enough to do it? Oh, dear! And they do not call it duty that brings them here to take what we can give them--they call it love--not love of us and of America, but love of the little Wops and the little Greasers and the little Polaks in their own home-land. Oh, dear, such a frightful mess we have got ourselves into. And what a dunce I was to go to that silly meeting and get myself mixed up in it."
CHAPTER V
HER INHERITANCE
The worries of the night never lived over into the sunny day with Eveley, and when she arose the next morning and saw the amethyst mist lifting into sunshine, when she heard the sweet ecstatic chirping of little Mrs.
Bride beneath, she smiled contentedly. The world was still beautiful, and love remained upon its throne.