"THE CHILDREN AT THE BACK"
"It seems to me if I"d money enough, My heart would be made of different stuff; I would think about those whose lot is rough."
MRS. HAWTREY.
THESE children"s home was not in a very pretty place. In front, as I have told you, it looked out on to a rather ugly street, and there were streets and streets beyond that again--streets of straight, stiff, grim-looking houses, some large and some small, but all commonplace and dull. And in and out between these bigger streets were narrower and still uglier ones, scarcely indeed to be called streets, so dark and poky were they, so dark and poky were the poor houses they contained.
The street immediately behind the children"s house, that on to which its back windows looked out, was one of these poorer ones, though not by any means one of the most miserable. And ugly though it was, Peggy was very fond of gazing out of the night nursery window on to this street, especially on days when it was "no use," as she called it to herself, looking out at the front; that meant, as I daresay you can guess, days on which it was too dull and cloudy to see the distant hills, and above all the white spot, which had taken such hold on her fancy. For she had found out some very interesting things in that dingy street. Straight across from the night nursery window was a very queer miserable sort of a shop, kept by an old Irishwoman whose name was Mrs. Whelan. It is rather absurd to call it a shop, though it was a place where things were bought and sold, for the room in which these buyings and sellings went on was Mrs. Whelan"s kitchen, and bedroom, and sitting-room, and wash-house, as well as her shop! It was on the first floor, and you got up to it by a rickety staircase--more like a ladder indeed than a staircase, and underneath it on the ground-floor lived a cobbler, with whom Mrs. Whelan used to quarrel at least once a day, though as he was a patient, much enduring man, the quarrels never went farther than the old Irishwoman"s opening her window and shouting down all manner of scoldings to the poor fellow, of which he took no notice.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "She was rather a terrible-looking old woman; she always wore a short bed-gown, that is a loose kind of jacket roughly drawn in at the waist, of washed out cotton, which never looked clean, and yet somehow never seemed to get much dirtier, a black stuff petticoat, and a cap with flapping frills which quite hid her face unless you were very near her, and she was generally to be seen with a pipe in her mouth. Her voice was both loud and shrill, and when she was in a temper you could almost hear what she said, though the nursery window was shut." P. 35]
On Sundays the cobbler used to tidy himself up and go off to church "like a gentleman," the boys said. But Mrs. Whelan, alas, never tidied herself up, and never went to church, and though she made a great show of putting a shutter across that part of the window which showed "the shop," nurse had more than once shaken her head when the children were dressing for church, and told them not to look over the way, she was sadly afraid the shutting or shuttering up was all a pretence, and that Mrs. Whelan made a good penny by her Sunday sales of tobacco and pipes to the men, or maybe of sugar, candles, or matches to careless housekeepers who had let their stock run out too late on Sat.u.r.day night.
She was rather a terrible-looking old woman; she always wore a short bed-gown, that is, a loose kind of jacket roughly drawn in at the waist, of washed-out cotton, which never looked clean, and yet somehow never seemed to get much dirtier, a black stuff petticoat, and a cap with flapping frills which quite hid her face unless you were very near her, and she was generally to be seen with a pipe in her mouth. Her voice was both loud and shrill, and when she was in a temper you could almost hear what she said, though the nursery window was shut. All the neighbours were afraid of her, and in consequence treated her with great respect.
But like most people in this world, she had some good about her, as you will hear.
Good or bad, the children, Peggy especially, found Mrs. Whelan very interesting. Peggy had never seen her nearer than from the window, and though she had a queer sort of wish to visit the shop and make closer acquaintance with the old crone, she was far too frightened of her to think of doing so really. The boys, however, had been several times inside Mrs. Whelan"s dwelling, and used to tell wonderful stories of the muddle of things it contained, and of the old woman herself. They always bought their soap-bubble pipes there, "three a penny," and would gladly have bought some of the toffee-b.a.l.l.s and barley-sugar which were also to be had, if this had not been strictly forbidden by mamma, in spite of their grumbling.
"It isn"t so _very_ dirty, mamma," they said, "and you get a lot more for a penny than in a proper shop."
But mamma would not give in. She knew what Mrs. Whelan was like, as she used sometimes to go over herself to talk to the poor old woman, but that, of course, was a different matter.
"I don"t much like your going there at all," she would say, "but it pleases her for us to buy some trifles now and then."
But in her heart she wished very much that they were not obliged to live in this dreary and ugly town, where their poor neighbours were rarely the sort of people she could let her children know anything of. Mamma, in _her_ childhood, had lived in that fairyland she called "the country," and so had papa, and they still looked forward to being there again, though for the present they were obliged to make the best of their home in a dingy street.
It seemed much less dull and dingy to the children than to them, however. Indeed I don"t think the children ever thought about it at all.
The boys were busy at school, and found plenty of both work and play to make the time pa.s.s quickly, and Peggy, who might perhaps have been a little dull and lonely in her rather shut-up life, had her fancies and her wonders--her interesting things to look at both at the front and the back of the house, and mamma to tell all about them to! And this reminds me that I have not yet told you what it was she was _most_ fond of watching from the night nursery window. It was not Mrs. Whelan or the cobbler; it was the tenants of the third or top story of the rickety old house--the family she always spoke of to herself as "the children at the back."
Such a lot of them there were. It was long before Peggy was able to distinguish them "all from each other," as she said, and it took her longer still to make names by which she could keep a clear list in her head. The eldest looked to her quite grown-up, though in reality she was about thirteen; she was a big red-cheeked girl, though she lived in a town; her arms were red too, poor thing, especially in winter, for they were seldom or never covered, and she seemed to be always at work, scrubbing or washing, or running out to fetch two or three of the little ones in from playing in the gutter. Peggy called her "Reddy," and though it was the girl"s red cheeks and arms which made her first choose the name, in a while she came to think of it as meaning "ready" also, for Peggy did not know much about spelling as yet, and the thought in her mind of the look of the two words was the same. For a good while Peggy fancied that Reddy was the nurse or servant of the family, but one day when she said something of the kind to her own nurse she was quickly put right.
"Their servant, my dear! Bless you, no. How could they afford to keep a servant; they"ve hard enough work to keep themselves, striving folk though they seem. There"s such a many of them, you see, and mostly so little--save that big girl and the sister three below her, there"s none really to help the mother. And the cripple must be a great charge."
"What"s the cripple, nursey?" Peggy asked.
"Why, Miss Peggy, haven"t you noticed the white-faced girl on crutches?
You must have seen her dragging up and down in front of the house of a fine day."
"Oh yes," said Peggy, "but I didn"t know that was called cripple. And she"s quite little; she"s as little as me, nurse!"
"She"s older than she looks, poor thing," said nurse--"maybe oldest of them all."
This, however, Peggy could not believe. She fixed in her own mind that "Crippley" came after the two boys who were evidently next to Reddy--she did not give the boys names, for they did not interest her as much as the girls. Having so many brothers of her own and no sister, it seemed to her as if a sister must be the very nicest thing in the world, and of all the children at the back, the two that she liked most to watch were a pair of little girls about three years older than herself, whom she named "The Smileys," "Brown Smiley" and "Light Smiley" when she thought of them separately, for though they were very like each other, the colour of their hair was different. They were very jolly little girls, poorly clad and poorly fed though they were, taking life easily, it seemed--too easily in the opinion of their eldest sister Reddy, and the sister next above them--between them and Crippley, according to Peggy"s list. This sister was the only one whose real name Peggy knew, by hearing it so frequently shouted after her by the mother and Reddy. For this child, "Mary-Hann," was rather deaf, though it was not till long afterwards that Peggy found this out.
"Mary-Hann" was a patient stupid sort of girl, a kind of second in command to Reddy, and she was like Reddy in appearance, except that she was several sizes smaller and thinner, so that even supposing that her arms were as red as her sister"s they did not strike one in the same way.
Below the Smileys came another boy, who was generally to be seen in their company, and who, according to Peggy, rejoiced in the name of "Tip." And below Tip were a few babies, in reality I believe never more than three, during the years through which their little over-the-way neighbour watched them. But even she was obliged to give up hopes of cla.s.sifying the babies, for there always seemed to be _a_ baby about the same age, and one or two others just struggling into standing or rather tumbling alone, and for ever being picked up by Reddy or her attendant sprite Mary-Hann.
Such were Peggy"s "children at the back." And many a dull day when it was too rainy to go a walk, and too cloudy to be "any use" to gaze out at the front of the house, did these poor children, little as they guessed it, help to make pa.s.s more quickly and pleasantly for the sisterless maiden. Many a morning when Hal and Baby were asleep and nurse was glad to have an hour or so for a bit of ironing, or some work of the kind down in the kitchen--for my Peggy"s papa and mamma were not rich and could not keep many servants, so that nurse, though she was plain and homely in her ways, was of far more use than a smarter young woman to them--many a morning did the little girl, left in the night nursery in charge of her sleeping brothers, take up her stand at the window which overlooked Mrs. Whelan"s and the cobbler and the Smileys with all their brothers and sisters. There was always something new to see or to ask nurse to explain afterwards. For ever so long it took up Peggy"s thoughts, and gave much conversation in the nursery to "plan"
how the ten or eleven children, not to speak of the papa and mamma, _could_ all find place in two rooms. It kept Peggy awake at night, especially if the weather happened to be at all hot or close, to think how _very_ uncomfortable poor Reddy and Crippley and Mary-Hann and the Smileys must be, all sleeping in one bed as nurse said was too probably the case. And it was the greatest relief to her mind, and to nurse"s too, I do believe, to discover by means of some cautious inquiries of the cobbler when nurse took him over some of the boys" boots to mend, that the family was not so short of s.p.a.ce as they had feared.
"They"ve two other rooms, Miss Peggy, as doesn"t show to the front,"
said nurse, "two attics with sloping windows in the roof to their back again. And they"re striving folk, he says, as indeed any one may see for theirselves."
"Then how shall we plan it now, I wonder," said Peggy, looking across to the Smileys" mansion with new respect. But nurse had already left the room, and perhaps, now she was satisfied their neighbours were not quite so much to be pitied, would scarcely have had patience to listen to Peggy"s "wonderings" about them. So the little girl went on to herself--
"I should think the downstairs room is the papa"s and mamma"s and the teeniest baby"s, and perhaps Crippley sleeps there, as she"s ill, like me when I had the hooping-cough and I couldn"t sleep and mamma kept jumping up to me. And then the big boys and Tip has one room--"ticks,"
nurse calls the rooms with windows in the roof. I think I"d like to sleep in a "tick" room; you must see the stars so plain without getting up; and--and--let me see, Reddy and Mary-Hann and the Smileys and the old babies--no, that"s too many--and I don"t know how many old babies there is. We"ll say _one_--if there"s another it must be a boy and go in the boys" tick--and that makes Reddy and Mary----"
"Miss Peggy, your mamma"s ready for your lessons," came the housemaid"s voice at the door, and Peggy hurried off. But she was rather in a brown study at her lessons that morning. Mamma could not make her out at all, till at last she shut up the books for a minute and made Peggy tell her where her thoughts were wool-gathering.
"Not so very far away, mamma dear," said Peggy, laughing. She never could help laughing when mamma said "funny things like that." "Not so very far away. I was only wondering about the children at the back."
She called them always "the children at the back" when she spoke of them--for even to mamma she would have felt shy of telling her own names for them. And then she went on to repeat what nurse had heard from the cobbler. Mamma agreed that it was very interesting, and she too was pleased to think "the children at the back"s house," as Peggy called it, was more commodious than might have been expected. But still, even such interesting things as that must not be allowed to interfere with lessons, Peggy must put it all out of her head till they were done with, and then mamma would talk about it with her.
"Only, mamma," said Peggy, "I don"t know what com--commo--that long word you said, means."
"I should not have used it, perhaps," said mamma. "And yet I don"t know.
If we only used the words you understand already, you would never learn new ones--eh, Peggy! Commodious just means large, and not narrow and squeezed up."
Peggy nodded her head, which meant that she quite understood, and then the lessons went on smoothly again.
When they were over, mamma talked about poor people, especially about poor children, to Peggy, and explained to her more than she had ever done before about what being poor really means. It made Peggy feel and look rather sad, and once or twice mamma was afraid she was going to cry, which, of course, she did not wish her to do. But Peggy choked down the crying feeling, because she knew it would make her mother sorry and would not do the poor people any good.
"Mamma," she said, "it _neely_ makes me cry, but I won"t. But when I"m big can"t I do something for the children at the back?"
"They won"t be children then, Peggy dear. You may be able to do something for them without waiting for that. I"ll think about it. I don"t fancy they are so _very_ poor. As I have been telling you, there are many far poorer. But I daresay they have very few pleasures in their lives. We might try to think of a little sunshine for them now and then."
"The Smile----" began Peggy, but she stopped suddenly, growing red--"the littler ones do play a good deal in the gutter, mamma dear," she said, anxious to state things quite fairly; "but I don"t think that"s _very_ nice play, and the sun very seldom shines there. And Red--the big ones, mamma dear, and the one that goes on--I can"t remember the name of those sticks."
"Crutches," said mamma.
"Yes, crutches--_her_ never has no plays at all, I don"t think. She"d have more sunshine at the "nother side of our house, mamma dear."
Mamma smiled. Peggy did not understand that mamma did not mean "sunshine" exactly as she took it; she forgot, too, that of actual sunshine more fell on the back street than she thought of. For it was only on dull or rainy days that she looked out much on the children at the back. On fine days her eyes were busy in another direction.
"I"ll think about it," said mamma. So Peggy for the present was satisfied.
This talk about the Smileys and the rest of them had been a day or two before the morning on which we first saw Peggy--the morning that Thor tried so to make fun of her about choosing sugar in her bread and milk, because it was cold. Mamma had not said any more about the children at the back, and this particular morning Peggy herself was not thinking very much about them. Her head was running a good deal on the white cottage and all her fancies about it, and she was feeling rather disappointed that she had not succeeded better in amusing Hal by her stories.
"It must be, I suppose," she said to herself, "that he"s rather too little for that kind of fancy stories. I wonder if Baldwin would like them; it would be nice to have somebody to make fancies with me."
But somehow Baldwin and the fairy cottage did not seem to match. And Thor and Terry were both much too big--Thor would laugh at her, and Terry would think it a waste of time; he had so many other things to amuse himself about. No, Peggy could not think of any one who would "understand," she decided, with a sigh!
CHAPTER IV