And the game at an end, without waiting for direction or guidance, the newcomer marched with the other children about the big room and took her place with them at one of the tables spread with entrancing green and yellow papers. And here, absorbed in directing the work at her own table, and her two a.s.sistant teachers equally absorbed at theirs, Miss Stannard was presently aroused by a nudge from "Tildy Peggins, the freckle-faced young person employed in a capacity of janitress and nursery maid.
"Look a-yonder to that young willain, Miss Ruth," urged "Tildy, whose sentiments regarding the infant populace refused, despite all the efforts of her employers, to be tempered by Kindergarten views.
Miss Stannard looked up hastily, and so did the twenty pairs of eyes about her table.
From the depths of one pocket the Major had produced a cigarette, and from the mixed contents of another he had extracted a match, and as the twenty pairs of eyes fell on him, a fascinating curl of blue smoke was just issuing from his lips.
"Tildy Peggins folded her arms on her flat chest and gave vent to a groan. Already, with her gloomy views on Kindergarten regeneration versus innate depravity, she foresaw the contamination of every half-subjugated small masculine in the room.
Miss Stannard, with a shake of her head at "Tildy, coughed slightly.
Instantly the eyes of the school left the Major and fixed themselves expectantly on her pretty face.
"I thought you wanted to be a soldier, Major," she observed, addressing the small gentleman.
"I is goin" to be," returned that unabashed gentleman, calmly sticking a thumb in his belt, and in so doing pushing his jacket aside, so as to further expose the military trappings about his round little person, "I"s a-goin" to be a sojer in the Fourth Regiment."
"No, indeed," said Miss Ruth, "the members of the Fourth Regiment are gentlemen, and a gentleman would never have smoked in here without asking if he might."
The Major looked somewhat moved out of his usual imperturbability. The curl of offending smoke ceased.
"I know a soldier," Miss Ruth went on calmly, "and what is more, he is a member of the Fourth Regiment, but he never would have done such a thing as you are doing."
The cigarette trembled in the Major"s irresolute fingers.
"And even if you had asked first," the steady voice went on, "I would have said no, for such a thing as smoking is never allowed in this room."
The Major"s irresolute brown eyes met Miss Stannard"s resolute brown ones. Then the cigarette went out the open window behind him and the work at the tables went on.
Presently Miss Ruth looked up again. "Won"t you come," she said pleasantly, touching a pile of the gay papers. "Are you not tired?"
The Major shook his head decidedly. "No, he would not," and finding a chip among the apparently inexhaustible stores of his pockets, he next produced a knife boasting an inch of blade and went to whittling upon "Tildy"s immaculate floor.
Miss Ruth saw it all, and presently saw the chip fall to the floor and the round head begin to nod. Then, with "Tildy Peggins" gloomy and disapproving eye upon her at this act of overture, she crossed the room.
"Major," said Miss Ruth, just a little plaintively, perhaps, "do you suppose you could do something for me?"
The Major was wide awake on the instant.
"These papers," explained Miss Ruth, while "Tildy from her work of washing windows, shook her disapproving head, "put all like this in a pile on the table here, and all like this over here, and this color,--here," and before Miss Stannard had gotten over to her table again, the Major was deep in the seductive fascinations of Kindergarten.
It was when the three teachers, with "Tildy"s help, had at last distributed the sixty hats, hoods, and caps, and started the loitering groups on their homeward ways, that pretty Miss Stannard, putting on her own hat, addressed her new pupils. "Now, Major, I am ready," she said, and the three accordingly turned their steps toward the neighborhood of the Tenement.
Miss Ruth"s small escort had quite an idea of the proper thing to do, and pointed out the landmarks as the three went along, the Angel"s friendly hand slipped confidingly into that of her new friend.
"I did hear as so many died in this yere house of the fevers this summer," Joey remarked cheerfully, pointing to a wretched-looking tenement building they were pa.s.sing; "they"ll give yer a room there now fer nothin" to git a good name fer the house agin."
Miss Ruth shivered as they pa.s.sed.
The Major next nodded toward a dingy saloon. "Here"s where I take a schooner an" a free lunch sometimes," he remarked confidentially.
The tall young lady"s brown eyes danced as she glanced down at the small person of the Major. "And how old are you, Major?" she inquired.
"Ha"f pas" seven, the Cap"n an" Old G. A. R., they say."
"The Captain? Old G. A. R.?"
"Uh, huh! The Cap"n"s a good "un, he is. He gim" me these yere togs, he did, an" he told Old G. A. R. I might sleep to th" Arm"ry, see?"
Miss Ruth saw, and was just about to pursue the subject of Old G. A. R., when the Angel dropped her hand and with a gleeful cry ran ahead, and Miss Stannard looked up to behold two females bearing down upon them.
Miss Bonkowski and Mrs. O"Malligan in fact, nor did they pause in their haste, until the Angel was safe in Norma"s embrace and the Major anything but safe, in the clutches of the irate Irish lady.
"An" it"s yerself, ye limb, an" plaze to tell us whut ye mane by it?"
the loud-voiced Mrs. O"Malligan demanded, "a-runnin" off with the childer agin, an" the whole Tiniment out huntin" an" her niver to be found at all, at all?"
But the sweet-faced, tall young lady coming to his rescue, the two women softened, and reaching the Tenement, insisted on Miss Stannard coming in, and hearing the Angel"s story.
And on the way up to Miss Bonkowski"s apartment, she learned that the Tenement, that morning, had been convulsed from cellar to garret, by the great honor bestowed upon it. For who but the Prima Donna, the Great Personage of Norma"s professional world, had just driven away in her carriage after a visit of an hour and the Angel never to be found at all!
"An" ma"am," explained Mary Carew, her bony face swollen with crying, when Miss Stannard had been installed in one of the two chairs of the apartment, "an" ma"am, it was fer th" Angel she come. A offerin" Norma an" me anything we"d name to give her up, such a fancy as she"s taken to her, an" wantin" her fer her own."
"And you, what did you say?" asked Miss Ruth, gently, watching Mary with tender eyes as she held the beautiful, chattering little creature so jealously in her arms, and thinking as she watched, of the life and reputation commonly accorded the great singer.
"Say?" came from Miss Bonkowski quickly, her befrizzled blonde tresses fairly a-tremble with her intensity, and sticking the hat-pin recklessly in and out of the lace hat she had taken off, "what did we say, you ask, and knowing, as you and every body must, the kind of life and future it would mean for a child that takes to things like this "n does! With all her money and her soft, winning ways, it is better, far better, for the child with her disposition, to starve along with Mary an" me, than grow up to that, if it was nothing more to be afraid of than being left to servants and hotel people and dragged around from place to place in such a life as it is. Not that I mean, ma"am," and Miss Bonkowski spoke with quick pride, "that being in the profession need to make any body what they shouldn"t be, for I know plenty of "em of the best, and am one myself, though only a Chorus, but what with what"s said about this one, even with her good heart and generous ways, she"s not the one to have our Angel, though she meant it for the best."
"An" she said," Mary Carew took it up, "as how Norma"s gettin" old, and "ll be dropped afore long from the Chorus, an" she offered her, she did, in this very room, a" here before me, to buy out a Costumer as is leavin" the business, an" start Norma in for herself, along of her knowin" how to run a business such as that."
"And oh girls," declared Miss Stannard as she told this part of the story to her a.s.sistant teachers afterward, "it was the bravest thing I"ve met among the poor people yet. Think of the courage of those two women, with poverty grimmer than they have yet known, ahead of them in all probability, yet determined to resist the temptation because they are a.s.sured it is not well for the child. Picture making jean pantaloons, year in, year out, at barely living wages, yet having the courage to put the matter so resolutely aside. After that, I could not bring myself to tell them they had done wrong in the beginning in not notifying the authorities. Of course there is some mystery about it. I cannot for a moment accept their explanation of it. The child, beyond question, is well born and has been carefully trained. And she goes about among all the strange, queer inmates of that Tenement house as fearlessly as a little queen. But, oh, the one that is a chorus-singer!
If you could see her! So lean, so sallow, so airy and full of manner.
But I will never laugh at another elderly chorus-singer again in my life, she is grand, she"s heroic," and the pretty Kindergartner threaded gay worsteds into needles with a vigor which lent emphasis to her words.
"She"s powerful stuck up, too," a.s.serted the gloomy tones of "Tildy Peggins, and she shook her mournful head, as she moved about straightening the disordered room for the next day, "there"s a man lives in our Tenement wanted to keep comp"ny with her, but, la, she tossed her yellow head at his waffle cart, she did, an" she said if he"d had a settled h"occupation she might a thought about it in time, but she couldn"t bring herself to consider a perambulating business, an" that was all there was to it. La, maybe she is grand an" "eroic, but she"s got a "aughty "eart, too, that woman has!"
CHAPTER VII.
MISS RUTH MAKES THE ACQUAINTANCE OF OLD G. A. R.
The Angel, as the cooler weather came on, being suitably clothed by Miss Stannard and the invisible though still generous Mrs. Tony, and the good ladies of the Tenement seeing that she was properly fed, her little ladyship continued to thrive, and to pursue her way, sweet and innocent, in the midst of squalor, poverty and wickedness such as Mary and Norma could not always hide, even from her baby eyes.
True to the promise these ladies had made, she appeared regularly at Kindergarten in the charge of her faithful squire, the Major, whose own interest in the daily work had never flagged since the day he first agreed to help Miss Stannard.
It was with surprise, therefore, that, late in November, Miss Ruth noted the absence of the two for several successive days.
"Childern"s obliged to get wore out fiddlin" with beads an" paper an"
such, in time," said the perverse and unconverted "Tildy Peggins.
"That"s the reason they"s constant droppin" off, an" new ones comin" in.