Ester Ried Yet Speaking Part 3

"Where, then?"

"Nowhere."

"Nowhere! Mean place. Too cold weather to stop in the streets. There'll be a good fire at Poke's. You come along; don't go to getting the sulks; it ain't becoming, just after you've been to Sunday-school."

But the young fellow persisted in gloomily refusing to join them, and presently they began to tease, in what they meant to be a good-natured way.

"Dirk's struck," said one. "That yellow-haired party has got him by the throat; I saw her looking at him most uncommon sharp, when she was telling that biggest story of hers, about the serpent that swallowed.

Dirk he thinks he's been swallowed by one of 'em; he feels it choking in his throat."

"No," said another, "that ain't it; Dirk's a-going to get pious. That's his last dodge; I've seen the spell coming on, for some time. Didn't you see him pick up that there Bible and lay it on the seat the other Sunday, after Jerry's elbow knocked it off by mistake? I've been scared about Dirk ever since; and now he won't go to Poke's! It's a bad sign. I say, Dirk, maybe there's going to be a prayer-meeting down your way, and you wouldn't mind letting us come?"

They expected him to laugh, but his face grew blacker than before, and at last he said, in very significant tones:--

"You better hold up there, Scrawly, if you don't want to try the depth of that gutter."

"Leave him be," said Nimble d.i.c.k, quickly; "he's going into one of his tantrums. When he begins like that, there's no end to the fighting that's in him; and I don't want a row now,--it's too early in the day; besides, I know something that's better fun. You fellows come along with me, and let him go."

As this was said in a sort of undertone as Dirk strode on ahead; and when, at another corner, he dashed down it, leaving them all, there was no call after him. He was free to go where he would, and for reasons that he himself could not have explained he chose that it should be home,--that is, the place which he called home. It might not meet your ideas of what a spot so named should be. The road to it led through one of the meanest portions of the city. Each foot of the way the houses seemed to grow more squalid looking, and the streets filthier. The particular alley down which he dived at last was narrower and blacker than any yet pa.s.sed, and the cellar door which he pushed open let him into the meanest-looking house in the row,--a long, low, dark room. In one corner there was the remnant of a stove, braced up by bricks and stones, but no fire was burning therein, though the day was cold.

Furniture there was none, unless the usual rickety table and two broken chairs could be called by that name. A door was ajar that led into an inner cellar, and a glimpse of piles of offensive looking rags, that were called "bed-clothes" by the family, might have given you an idea of what their home life was, as hardly any other phase of it can. The rags were not all in the further cellar, however; a gay patch-work quilt, or at least one that had once been gay, but from which bits of black cotton now oozed in every direction, seemed to have curled itself in a heap against the one window. However, it moved soon after Dirk opened the door, and showed itself to be more than a quilt. Inside was a young girl, the quilt wrapped around her closely, drawn up about her face and head, as if she would hide all but her eyes within, and try to get rid of s.h.i.+vering.

"You home?" she said, her tones expressing surprise, but at the same time indifference. "What is it for?"

"Because I wanted to come. Hasn't a fellow a right to come home if he wants to?"

"Of course; and it's such a lovely home, and you are so fond of it, no one need wonder at your coming in the middle of the day."

The sentence was sarcastic enough, but the tones were hardly so; they expressed too much indifference even for sarcasm.

Dirk surveyed her thoughtfully; he seemed to have no answer ready. In fact, his face wore almost a startled air, and really the thought which presented itself for consideration was startling. Something about the face of the girl, done up so grotesquely in her ragged quilt, suggested the lady who had been his teacher at the Mission! Could one find a sharper contrast than existed between these two? Yet Dirk, as he looked, could not get away from it.

"What are you staring at?" the girl asked, presently, growing uneasy over the fixedness of his gaze. "Do you see anything uncommon about me?"

"Where's mother?" he asked, dropping his eyes, and turning from her.

"In there, asleep. You needn't talk quite so loud; it won't hurt her to get a bit of rest. She sat up till morning, poking at your old coat."

Dirk looked down at it thoughtfully. There had been an attempt to make it decent, although the setting of the patches showed an unpractised hand, and they were of a strikingly different color from the coat itself.

"You might have done it for her, then, in the daytime," he said, briefly, and added, "Where's father?"

The girl shrugged her shoulders.

"How should I know? Where he is most of the time; you know more about it than I do, or ought to; you live on the street."

He gave her an answer which seemed to surprise her:--

"I say, Mart, what is the use in being so horrid cross all the time?"

"You are so good-natured," she said, "and everything is so nice and pleasant around me, it is a wonder that I should ever be cross!"

"That's all lost, Mart, for I never said I was good-natured, nor thought I was; and if I don't know just how hateful things are, I should like to know who does! But, after all, what good does it do to snarl? Why couldn't you and me say a good-natured word once in a while, just for a change?"

"Try it," she said; "I wish you would! I'm so tired of things as they now are, that most any change would be fine. But I'll risk your doing much in that line; it isn't in you."

What was there in this cross girl to remind any one in his senses of Mrs. Evan Roberts? Yet even as she spoke that last ungracious sentence, she turned a little, so that a slant beam of suns.h.i.+ne--one of the few that ever found its way into this dreary room--laid a streak of light just across her hair, yellowing it until it was almost the shade that he had noted in the lady at the Mission; and he thought of her again, and wondered curiously whether, if Mart were dressed in the s.h.i.+ning black dress, and fur wraps and feather-decked bonnet that the lady had worn, she would really resemble her. How would Mart look dressed up, he wondered; even decently dressed, as the girls were whom he met on the streets. He had never seen her in anything much more becoming than the ragged quilt. He was studying her in a way that Mart did not in the least understand. She broke the spell suddenly again:--

"Have you had any dinner?"

"Dinner? Why, no! of course not! Where would I find that sort of thing?

I looked all up and down the streets, and smelled plenty of it, but not a bite did I get."

"Where have you been?"

"Oh, around in several places; not much of anywhere."

"I know where you've been,"--a severe light coming into her eyes; "you've been down to the South End, and if I was you I'd be ashamed of myself! I know how you fellows go on down there. Sallie Calkins goes, and she told me all about it. She said that she was ashamed to live on the same street with any of you, and that none of the folks in the Mission knew what to do with you, and the next thing you knew you would all be marched off to the lockup."

"Let them try it," muttered Dirk, his face growing darker; "we'd make that street too hot to hold them in short order if they played at any such game as that, and I guess they know it."

"Well, anyhow, I wouldn't be meaner and lower down than I had to be, Dirk Colson! It is bad enough as it is,--a drunkard for a father, and we nothing more than beggars! But I'd behave myself half-way decent when I went among folks that wanted to be good to me, or else I'd stay away."

"Look here, you keep your preaching for them that wants to hear it; I don't. A fellow can't come home without having a row; if it isn't of one kind, it's another. I wonder I ever come home at all."

Dirk was angry now, and his dark, thin face looked fierce with pa.s.sion.

His sister kept the curiously composed tone and manner with which she had said all her exasperating things.

"I wonder you do," she said. "I suppose you get starved, and can't help it, now and then. There's some dinner I saved for you. If you want it, eat it, and then take yourself to some place that suits you better."

As she spoke, she jerked open the door of a little cupboard near which she stood, and brought therefrom a much-cracked plate, on which lay a baked potato, with one end broken or bitten off, then carefully replaced, as if the owner might have had a second thought as to its disposal; there was also a bit of corn-bread, somewhat burned, and half of a roasted apple.

Meagre as the fare was for a hungry boy, there was more variety than he had expected, and something in the simple preparation touched him, and quieted his anger.

"Where did this come from?" he asked, taking in the unaccustomed morsel of apple with two eager bites. "I tell you, that is good!"

"Sally Calkins gave it to me last night. She got one give to her somewhere."

Just as the last bite was gone, it occurred to Dirk, first to wonder, and then to be almost certain, that his sister, having shared the apple, had saved her entire share for him. It was not the first time he had known of such an effort on her part to supply him with food. Had he thought of it sooner he would certainly have left a bit of the dainty for her; but no thought of telling her so, for an instant crossed his mind. Neither had she, on her part, the slightest idea of describing to him with what care and patience she and Sallie had roasted the choice morsel before Sallie's fire, only last night,--Sallie's father being fortunately late in coming, and so giving them a chance; then she had borne hers home in a bit of paper, and carefully guarded it all day, just for this hour. Also, she might have told him that she bit the end from the potato before she remembered that there would be none left for him, and then fitted it on again as best she could, and went without.

She would not have told him for worlds. Why? She could not have explained why. Something within her shrank from letting him know, not that she sacrificed for him, but that she _cared_ enough for him to want to do it!

Potato and corn-bread were gone, to the last crumb; it seemed to Dirk that there had been only enough of them to show him how hungry he was.

"I suppose there isn't anything more?" he said, wistfully, with the rising inflection, indeed, but not as one who had any idea of receiving an affirmative answer.

"I should think there wasn't!"--defiance in the tone--"there's a piece of bread that I kept for mother's supper, and I mean she shall have it."

"Well, don't bite me! I'm perfectly willing that she shall. Isn't there anything for a fire?"