Honey-Sweet Part 25

Peggy promised, and Peggy did. "Lois took her medicine fine," she said, smiling and dimpling. "Mommer give her a dost a hour before time so's I could bring your baby-doll and get home before dark. Here she is. See! I ain't even mussed her curls."

The next day, Lois was worse again. Her mother confessed that they had "worrited half the night with her and not got a dost down her," but Honey-Sweet brought her to terms.

When Miss Margery rose to go, Anne hesitated a minute, then said, "Mrs.

Callahan, if I let Honey-Sweet stay here to-night with Lois, can you take good, good care of her?"

Mrs. Callahan's face beamed. "That I can, and that I will. I been wantin' to ask you to let her stay and hatin' to do it, seein' how much you set store by her. I'll take care of her good as if she was my own baby."

The next afternoon, Anne found Honey-Sweet sitting in state on the mantel-piece beside the medicine bottle.

"She comes down with it and she goes back with it," said Mrs. Callahan.

"The doctor was here this noon and he says she's better and if she takes her medicine reg'lar and keeps on the mend till Sadday he thinks she'll be all right. I hope she'll take it. She does every time for that doll."

And the worried mother looked anxiously at Anne.

"I reckon I'll have to spare Honey-Sweet till Sat.u.r.day," said Anne, with an effort. She missed her pet and the Callahan family was so big and so careless! "Please, Mrs. Callahan, be careful with her every minute. I love her so very dearly."

"Bless your heart, I wouldn't have harm come to her for the world. There she sits like a queen on her throne, and ain't took down but by my own hands with the medicine bottle. I've told the kids I'll skin 'em alive if they put finger on her."

Sat.u.r.day morning brought Peggy to see Anne,--a sad Peggy with downcast eyes and red nose and croaking voice.

"You've a bad cold, Peggy, haven't you?" said Miss Dorcas.

Peggy nodded. "Yessum, lady. Terrible bad. Maybe so I'll have the pneumony, like Lois, and maybe so I'll die."

"Oh, I hope not!" exclaimed Anne who had hastened out when she heard Peggy. She hoped Honey-Sweet was in that bundle--though she knew it was too small.

"Mommer sent me," said the saddened Peggy with the downcast eyes, "to ask you ladies, please'm, not to come home to-day."

"Is Lois worse?" was Miss Dorcas's anxious question.

"No'm. The doctor says she's lots better, but"--Peggy hesitated--"he says she mustn't have no company and I think he says she mustn't have no company till Monday. And here's something for you." She thrust into Anne's hand a newspaper package which being opened revealed a gauze fan spangled with silver, soiled and frayed, but the pride of Peggy's heart.

"And you won't come till Monday, ma'am?" she urged.

Miss Dorcas agreed, but Miss Margery, when she heard the tale, shook her head.

"That's one of Peggy's tales that I'm going to look into," she said. "I have to see a girl in that neighborhood and I'll go there this afternoon."

"And you'll let me go with you? Please," pleaded Anne. "I'm so homesick for Honey-Sweet. She's never been away from me before. You can hand her out the window and let me visit her, if I can't see Lois."

It was a raw December day and none of the Callahan children were playing, as usual, in front of the little brown house. The sewing-machine was rattling away at such furious speed that Miss Margery's knock at the door was unheard. The Charity lady hesitated a moment. "If Lois can stand that rattle-ty-banging, she can stand sight and sound of us. Let's go in," she said and she opened the door.

Anne's eyes went straight to the mantel-piece. Honey-Sweet was not there. Anne looked down at the pallet, where Lois lay asleep. No Honey-Sweet there. The child's questioning, appealing eyes turned to Lois's mother.

Mrs. Callahan dropped her face in her ap.r.o.n. "I wouldn't 'a' had it happen for the world!" she sobbed. "Not for all the world."

"What is the matter, Mrs. Callahan?" inquired Miss Margery.

"Where's Honey-Sweet?" asked Anne.

"I wouldn't 'a' had that doll ruint for nothin'," wailed Mrs. Callahan.

"Honey-Sweet? ruined?" stammered Anne.

"What has happened to Anne's doll, Mrs. Callahan? Will you please explain at once?" Miss Margery was at her sternest.

"Peggy done it--and she's cried herself 'most sick. 'Twas yestiddy. I'd gone to take home some sewin'. Peg she's been possessed to show that doll to the Flannagan children. Bein' as I was gone and Lois 'sleep, she slipped out. And while they were all mirationin' over the doll's shoes and stockin's, that low-down Flannagan dog grabbed the doll and made off with it. And they couldn't get it away from him--he tore it to pieces, worritin' it like 'twas a cat. He ought to be skinned alive, I say. It's low-down to keep such a dog."

"If Peggy had obeyed--" began Miss Margery.

"Yessum," interrupted Mrs. Callahan. "And n.o.body's got any business to keep such a dog! We wouldn't 'a' had it happen for the world, ma'am. I sent you that word 'bout Lois," she went on, addressing Anne, "so's you wouldn't come. We didn't want you to know 'bout it till Monday. Pa he draws his pay to-night and John Edward, too. John Edward he's errant boy for a grocer down on M Street. They're going to take all their money and buy you the finest doll in Was.h.i.+ngton, rent or no rent, victuals or no victuals."

"No, no, no," protested Anne.

"Don't you look so white and pitiful," sobbed Mrs. Callahan. "I wouldn't 'a' had it happen for the world. You shall have the finest doll--"

"I don't want a doll," Anne spoke with difficulty. "Tell them not to, Miss Margery. It wouldn't be Honey-Sweet. Please, oh, please, let's go home, Miss Margery."

Poor little Anne! Miss Margery had her downstairs to tea that evening, and gave her milk toast and pink iced cakes and candy in a Santa Claus box that was to have waited till Christmas. Then she sang Anne's favorite songs. But the shadow did not lift. Anne kissed her friend good-night and crept away to bed before nine o'clock. An hour later, Miss Dorcas and Miss Margery tiptoed into her room. There she lay, her face swollen with weeping and her breath coming in sobbing gasps. She stirred and crumpled a pillow in her arms, and crooned in her sleep the old lullaby:--

"'Honey, honey! Sweet, sweet, sweet!

Honey, honey! Honey-Sweet!'"

CHAPTER XXVIII

All this time--so little is our big world--Miss Drayton was hardly a stone's throw from Anne. She was keeping house for her brother-in-law who was busy with office work in Was.h.i.+ngton. Pat was at home, having entered cla.s.ses to prepare for George Was.h.i.+ngton University. It was strange that Anne and her old friends went to and fro, back and forth, so near together and yet did not meet. They must have missed one another sometimes by only a minute or two in a shop or on a street-car or at a street corner. But week after week pa.s.sed without bringing them together.

One morning, as Mr. Patterson was glancing over his newspaper at breakfast, he uttered an exclamation of surprise. "This is something you'll want to hear," he said to Miss Drayton--and then he read aloud an article with these headlines:--

Truth Stranger than Fiction

"Felon Gives himself up

"Returns to take his Punishment."

Mr. Carey Mayo of New York City, who had used funds of the Stuyvesant Trust Company and had disappeared two years before just as he was about to be arrested, had surrendered himself to the officers of the law. His trial was set for an early day. As he had given himself up of his own free will, it was thought that his sentence would be light.

Fuller explanation came in a letter to Miss Drayton, forwarded by the consul at Nantes. Mr. Mayo thanked her for her care and goodness to Anne--the words smote her heart. He had spent these two years at work in South Africa and had laid aside every possible penny of his earnings in order to keep his niece from being a burden on strangers. This money he was putting in a certain New York banking-house for Miss Drayton in trust for Anne. He requested her to use it to educate Anne and to buy back the child's old home. It would be better, when Anne was old enough to understand the matter, to tell her the truth about him. He asked Miss Drayton to say that his regret, his repentance, were as great as his sin. He had come to realize that the disgrace was in the deed he had done and not in its punishment. So, having righted affairs for Anne as well as he could, he was going to surrender himself to the officers of the law. He was tired of being followed everywhere by fear of discovery, tired of being an outcast from his own land and people. The worst hurt was to think that Anne must some day know that he was in a felon's cell.

Only one course lay open to Miss Drayton, and how painful that was! She must inform Anne's uncle that she had not taken care of Anne, as he thought, and that the child had been sent to an orphan asylum, from which she had wandered away, no one knew where. If only he need not be told! But he must.

Miss Drayton and Mr. Patterson resolved to go to see Mr. Mayo. But the proposed journey was never made. A day or two before they were to start, the newspapers announced that Mr. Carey Mayo had died in the prison to which he had been committed to await trial. He had heart disease, and strain and excitement had brought on a fatal attack.

What was to be done about the property left to Miss Drayton in trust for Anne? Mr. Patterson advised his sister-in-law to let the matter rest for the present. Anne might be found. Mrs. Marshall wrote that they had a clew which they were following. A little girl, answering in general the description of Anne, had been seen near Westcot with a gypsy band. They would continue the search and never give up hope.