Margaret had been home two hours—two hours of breathless questions, answers, tears, and laughter—two hours of delighted wandering about the house and grounds.
In the nursery she had seen the little woolly dog that lay on the floor just as she had left it five years before; and out on the veranda steps she had seen the great stone lions that had never quite faded from her memory. And always at her side had walked the sweet-faced lady of her dreams, only now the lady was very real, with eyes that smiled on one so lovingly, and lips and hands that kissed and caressed one so tenderly.
“And this is home—my home?” Margaret asked in unbelieving wonder.
“Yes, dear,” answered Mrs. Kendall.
“And you are my mother, and I am Margaret Kendall, your little girl?”
“Yes.”
“And the little dog on the floor—that was mine, and—and it’s been there ever since?”
“Yes, ever since you left it there long ago. I—I could not bear to have any one move it, or touch it.”
“And I was lost then—right then?”
“No, dear. We traveled about for almost a year. You were five when I lost you.” Mrs. Kendall’s voice shook. Unconsciously she drew Margaret into a closer embrace. Even now she was scarcely sure that it was Margaret—this little maid who had stepped so suddenly out of the great silence that had closed about her four long years before.
Margaret laughed softly, and nestled in the encircling arms.
“I like it—this,” she confided shyly. “You see, I—I hain’t had it before. Even the dream-lady didn’t do—this.”
“The dream-lady?”
Margaret hesitated. Her grave eyes were on her mother’s face.
“I suppose she was—you,” she said then slowly. “I saw her nights, mostly; but she never stayed, and when I tried to catch her, she—she was just air—and wasn’t there at all. And I did want her so bad!”
“Of course you did, sweetheart,” choked Mrs. Kendall, tremulously. “And didn’t she ever stay? When was it you saw her—first?”
Margaret frowned.
“I—don’t—seem—to know,” she answered. She was thinking of what Dr. Spencer had told her, and of what she herself remembered of those four years of her life. “You see first I was lost, and Bobby McGinnis found me. Anyhow, Dr. Spencer says he did, but I don’t seem to remember. Things was all mixed up. There didn’t seem to be anybody that wanted me, but there wouldn’t anybody let me go. And they made me sew all the time on things that was big and homely, and then another man took me and made me paste up bags. Say, did you ever paste bags?”
“No, dear.” Mrs. Kendall shivered.
“Well, you don’t want to,” volunteered Margaret; and to her thin little face came the look that her mother had already seen on it once or twice that afternoon—the look of a child who knows what it means to fight for life itself in the slums of a great city. “They ain’t a mite nice—bags ain’t; and the paste sticks horrid, and smells.”
“Margaret, dearest!—how could you bear it?” shuddered Mrs. Kendall, her eyes brimming with tears.
Margaret saw the tears, and understood—this tender, new-found mother of hers was grieved; she must be comforted. To the best of her ability, therefore, Margaret promptly proceeded to administer that comfort.
“Pooh! ‘twa’n’t nothin’,” she asserted stoutly; “besides, I runned away, and then I had a tiptop place—a whole corner of Mis’ Whalen’s kitchen, and jest me and Patty and the twins to stay in it. We divvied up everythin’, and some days we had heaps to eat—truly we did—heaps! And I went to Mont-Lawn two times, and of course there I had everythin’, even beds with sheets, you know; and——”
“Margaret, Margaret, don’t, dear!” interrupted her mother. “I can’t bear even to think of it.”
Margaret’s eyes grew puzzled.
“But that was bang-up—all of it,” she protested earnestly. “Why, I didn’t paste bags nor sew buttons, and nobody didn’t strike me for not doin’ ’em, neither; and Mis’ Whalen was good and showed me how to make flowers—for pay, too! And——”
“Yes, dear, I know,” interposed Mrs. Kendall again; “but suppose we don’t think any more of all that, sweetheart. You are home now, darling, right here with mother. Come, we will go out into the garden.” To Mrs. Kendall it seemed at the moment that only God’s blessed out-of-doors was wide enough and beautiful enough to clear from her eyes the pictures Margaret’s words had painted.
Out in the garden Margaret drew a long breath.
“Oh!” she cooed softly, caressing with her cheek a great red rose. “I knew flowers smelled good, but I didn’t find it out for sure till I went to Mont-Lawn that first time. You see the kind we made was cloth and stiff, and they didn’t smell good a mite—oh, you’ve picked it!” she broke off, half-rapturously, half-regretfully, as Mrs. Kendall placed in her hands the great red rose.
“Yes, pick all you like, dear,” smiled Mrs. Kendall, reaching for another flower.
“But they’ll die,” stammered Margaret, “and then the others won’t see them.”
“The—‘others’? What others, dear?”
“Why, the other folks that live here, you know, and walk out here, too.”
Mrs. Kendall laughed merrily.
“But there aren’t any others, dear. The flowers are all ours. No one else lives here.”
Margaret stopped short in the garden path and faced her mother.
“What, not any one? in all that big house?”
“Why, no, dear, of course not. There is no one except old Mr. and Mrs. Barrett who keep the house and grounds in order. We have it all to ourselves.”
Margaret was silent. She turned and walked slowly along the path at her mother’s side. On her face was a puzzled questioning. To her eyes was gradually coming a frightened doubt.
Alone?—just they two, with the little old man and the little old woman in the kitchen who did not take up any room at all? Why, back in the Alley there were Patty, the twins, and all the Whalens—and they had only one room! It was like that, too, everywhere, all through the Alley—so many, many people, so little room for them. Yet here—here was this great house all windows and doors and soft carpets and pretty pictures, and only two, three, four people to enjoy it all. Why had not her mother asked——
Even to herself Margaret could not say the words. She shut her lips tight and threw a hurried look into the face of the woman at her side. This dear dream-lady, this beautiful new mother—as if there could be any question of her goodness and kindness! Very likely, anyway, there were not any poor——
Margaret’s eyes cleared suddenly. She turned a radiant face on her mother.
“Oh, I know,” she cried in triumph. “There ain’t any poor folks here, and so you couldn’t do it!”
Mrs. Kendall looked puzzled.
“‘Poor folks’? ‘Couldn’t do it’?” she questioned.
“Yes; poor folks like Patty and the Whalens, and so you couldn’t ask ’em to live with you.”
Mrs. Kendall sat down abruptly. Near her was a garden settee. She felt particularly glad of its support just then.
“And of course you didn’t know about the Whalens and Patty,” went on Margaret, eagerly, “and so you couldn’t ask them, neither. But you do now, and they’d just love to come, I know!”
“Love to—to come?” stammered Mrs. Kendall, gazing blankly into the glowing young face before her.
“Of course they would!” nodded Margaret, dancing up and down and clapping her hands. “Wouldn’t you if you didn’t have nothin’ but a room right down under the sidewalk, and there was such a heap of folks in it? Why, here there’s everythin’—everythin’ for ’em, and oh, I’m so glad, ’cause they was good to me—so good! First Mis’ Whalen took in Patty and the twins when the rent man dumped ’em out on the sidewalk, and she gave ’em a whole corner of her kitchen. And then when I runned away from the bag-pasting, Patty and the twins took me in. And now I can pay ’em back for it all—I can pay ’em back. I’m so glad!”
Mrs. Kendall fell back limply against the garden seat. Twice she opened her lips—and closed them again. Her face flushed, then paled, and her hands grew cold in her lap.
This dancing little maid with the sunlit hair and the astounding proposition to adopt into their home two whole families from the slums of New York, was Margaret, her own little Margaret, lost so long ago, and now so miraculously restored to her. As if she could refuse any request, however wild, from Margaret! But this—!
“But, sweetheart, perhaps they—they wouldn’t want to go away forever and leave their home,” she remonstrated at last, feebly.
The child frowned, her finger to her lips.
“Well, anyhow, we can ask them,” she declared, after a minute, her face clearing.
“Suppose we—we make it a visit, first,” suggested Mrs. Kendall, feverishly. “By and by, after I’ve had you all to myself for a little while, you shall ask them to—to visit you.”
“O bully!” agreed Margaret in swift delight. “That will be nicest; won’t it? Then they can see how they like it—but there! they’ll like it all right. They couldn’t help it.”
“And how—how many are there?” questioned Mrs. Kendall, moistening her dry lips, and feeling profoundly thankful for even this respite from the proposed wholesale adoption.
“Why, let’s see.” Margaret held up her fingers and checked off her prospective guests. “There’s Patty, she’s the oldest, and Arabella and Clarabella—they’re the twins an’ they’re my age, you know—that’s the Murphys. And then there’s all the Whalens: Tom, Peter, Mary, Jamie, and—oh, I dunno, six or eight, maybe, with Mis’ Whalen and her husband. But, after all, it don’t make so very much diff’rence just how many there are; does it?” she added, with a happy little skip and jump, “’cause there’s heaps of room here for any ‘mount of ’em. And I never can remember just how many there are without forgettin’ some of ’em. You—you don’t mind if I don’t name ’em all—now?” And she gazed earnestly into her mother’s face.
“No, dear, no,” assured Mrs. Kendall, hurriedly. “You—you have named quite enough. And now we’ll go down to the brook. We haven’t seen half of Five Oaks yet.” And once more she tried to make the joyous present drive from her daughter’s thoughts the grievous past.
It was not long before all Houghtonsville knew the story, and there was not a man, woman, or child in the town that did not take the liveliest interest in the little maid at Five Oaks who had passed through so amazing an experience. To be lost at five years of age in a great city, to be snatched from wealth, happiness, and a loving mother’s arms, only to be thrust instantly into poverty, misery, and loneliness; and then to be, after four long years, suddenly returned—no wonder Houghtonsville held its breath and questioned if it all indeed were true.
Bit by bit the little girl’s history was related in every house in town; and many a woman—and some men—wept over the tale of how the little fingers had sewed on buttons in the attic sweat shop, and pasted bags in the ill-smelling cellar. The story of the coöperative housekeeping establishment in one corner of the basement kitchen, where she, together with Patty and the twins, “divvied up” the day’s “haul,”—that, too, came in for its share of exclamatory adjectives, as did the account of how she was finally discovered through her finding her own name over the little cot-bed at Mont-Lawn—the little bed that Mrs. Kendall had endowed in the name of her lost daughter, in the children’s vacation home for the poor little waifs from the city.
“An’ ter think of her findin’ her own baby jest by givin’ some other woman’s baby a bit of joy!” cried Mrs. Merton of the old red farmhouse, when the story was told to her. “But, there! ain’t that what she’s always doin’ for folks—somethin’ ter make ’em happy? Didn’t she bring my own child, Sadie, an’ the boy, Bobby, back from the city, and ain’t Sadie gettin’ well an’ strong on the farm here? And it’s a comfort ter me, too, when I remember ’twas Bobby who first found the little Margaret cryin’ in the streets there in New York, an’ took her home ter my Sadie. ‘Twa’n’t much Sadie could do for the poor little lamb, but she did what she could till old Sullivan got his claws on her and kept her shut up out o’ sight. But there! what’s past is past, and there ain’t no use frettin’ over it. She’s home now, in her own mother’s arms, and I’m thinkin’ it’s the whole town that’s rejoicin’!”
And the whole town did rejoice—and many and various were the ways the townspeople took to show it. The Houghtonsville brass band marched in full uniform to Five Oaks one evening and gave a serenade with red fire and rockets, much to Mrs. Kendall’s embarrassment and Margaret’s delight. The Ladies’ Aid Society gave a tea with Mrs. Kendall and Margaret as a kind of pivot around which the entire affair revolved—this time to the embarrassment of both Mrs. Kendall and her daughter. The minister of the Methodist church appointed a day of prayer and thanksgiving in commemoration of the homecoming of the wanderer; and the town poet published in the Houghtonsville Banner a forty-eight-line poem on “The Lost and Found.”
Nor was this all. To Mrs. Kendall it seemed that almost every man, woman, and child in the place came to her door with inquiries and congratulations, together with all sorts of offerings, from flowers and frosted cakes to tidies and worked bedspreads. She was not ungrateful, certainly, but she was overwhelmed.
Not only the cakes and the tidies, however, gave Mrs. Kendall food for thought during those first few days after Margaret’s return. From the very nature of the case it was, of necessity, a period of adjustment; and to Mrs. Kendall’s consternation there was every indication of friction, if not disaster.
For four years now her young daughter had been away from her tender care and influence; and for only one of those four years—the last—had she come under the influence of any sort of refinement or culture, and then under only such as a city missionary and an overworked schoolteacher could afford, supplemented by the two trips to Mont-Lawn. To be sure, behind it all had been Margaret’s careful training for the first five years of her life, and it was because of this training that she had so quickly yielded to what good influences she had known in the last year. The Alley, however, was not Five Oaks; and the standards of one did not measure to those of the other. It was not easy for “Mag of the Alley” to become at once Margaret Kendall, the dainty little daughter of a well-bred, fastidious mother.
To the doctor—the doctor who had gone to New York and brought Margaret home, and who knew her as she was—Mrs. Kendall went for advice.
“What shall I do?” she asked anxiously. “A hundred times a day the dear child’s speech, movements, and actions are not what I like them to be. And yet—if I correct each one, ’twill be a continual ‘don’t’ all day. Why, doctor, the child will—hate me!”
“As if any one could do that!” smiled the doctor; and at the look in his eyes Mrs. Kendall dropped her own—the happiness that had come to her with this man’s love was very new; she had scarcely yet looked it squarely in the face.
“The child is so good and loving,” she went on a little hurriedly, “that it makes it all the harder—but I must do something. Only this morning she told the minister that she thought Houghtonsville was a ‘bully place,’ and that the people were ‘tiptop.’ Her table manners—poor child! I ran away from the table and cried like a baby the first time I saw her eat; and yet—perhaps the very next thing she does will be so dainty and sweet that I could declare the other was all a dream. Doctor, what shall I do?”
“I know, I know,” nodded the man. “I have seen it myself. But, dear, she’ll learn—she’ll learn wonderfully fast. You’ll see. It’s in her—the gentleness and the refinement. She’ll have to be corrected, some, of course; it’s out of the question that she shouldn’t be. But she’ll come out straight. Her heart is all right.”
Mrs. Kendall laughed softly.
“Her heart, doctor!” she exclaimed. “Just there lies the greatest problem of all. The one creed of her life is to ‘divvy up,’ and how I’m going to teach her ordinary ideas of living without shattering all her faith in me I don’t know. Why, Harry,”—Mrs. Kendall’s voice was tragic—“she gazes at me with round eyes of horror because I have two coats and two hats, and two loaves of bread, and haven’t yet ‘divvied up’ with some one who has none. So far her horror is tempered by the fact that she is sure I didn’t know before that there were any people who did not have all these things. Now that she has told me of them, she confidently looks to me to do my obvious duty at once.”
The doctor laughed.
“As if you weren’t always doing things for people,” he said fondly. Then he grew suddenly grave. “The dear child! I’m afraid that along with her education and civilization her altruism will get a few hard knocks. But—she’ll get over that, too. You’ll see. At heart she’s so gentle and—why, what”—he broke off with an unspoken question, his eyes widely opened at the change that had come to her face.
“Oh, nothing,” returned Mrs. Kendall, almost despairingly, “only if you’d seen Joe Bagley yesterday morning I’m afraid you’d have changed your opinion of her gentleness. She—she fought him!” Mrs. Kendall stumbled over the words, and flushed a painful red as she spoke them.
“Fought him—Joe Bagley!” gasped the doctor. “Why, he’s almost twice her size.”
“Yes, I know, but that didn’t seem to occur to Margaret,” returned Mrs. Kendall. “She saw only the kitten he was tormenting, and—well, she rescued the kitten, and then administered what she deemed to be fit punishment there and then. When I arrived on the scene they were the center of an admiring crowd of children,”—Mrs. Kendall shivered visibly—“and Margaret was just delivering herself of a final blow that sent the great bully off blubbering.”
“Good for her!”—it was an involuntary tribute, straight from the heart.
“Harry!” gasped Mrs. Kendall. “‘Good’—a delicate girl!”
“No, no, of course not,” murmured the doctor, hastily, though his eyes still glowed. “It won’t do, of course; but you must remember her life, her struggle for very existence all those years. She had to train her fists to fight her way.”
“I—I suppose so,” admitted Mrs. Kendall, faintly; but she shivered again, as if with a sudden chill.
Scarcely had Houghtonsville recovered from its first shock of glad surprise at Margaret’s safe return, when it was shaken again to its very center by the news of Mrs. Kendall’s engagement to Dr. Spencer.
The old Kendall estate had been for more than a generation the “show place” of the town. Even during the years immediately following the loss of little Margaret, when the great stone lions on each side of the steps had kept guard over closed doors and shuttered windows, even then the place was pointed out to strangers for its beauty, as well as for the tragedy that had so recently made it a living tomb to its mistress. Sometimes, though not often, a glimpse might be caught of a slender, black-robed woman, and always there could be seen the one unshuttered window on the second floor. Every one knew the story of that window, and of the sunlit room beyond where lay the little woolly dog just as the baby hands had dropped it there years before; and every one knew that the black-robed woman, widow of Frank Kendall and mother of the lost little girl, was grieving her heart out in the great lonely house.
Not until the last two years of Margaret’s absence had there come a change, and then it was so gradual that the townspeople scarcely noticed it. Little by little, however, the air of gloom left the house. One by one the blinds were thrown open to the sunlight, and more and more frequently Mrs. Kendall was seen walking in the garden, or even upon the street. Not until the news of the engagement had come, however, did Houghtonsville people realize the doctor’s part in all this. Then they understood. It was he who had administered to her diseased body, and still more diseased mind; he who had roused her from her apathy of despair; and he who had taught her that the world was full of other griefs even as bitter as her own.
Not twenty-four hours after the news of the engagement became public property, old Nathan—town gossip, and driver-in-chief to a generation of physicians, Dr. Spencer included—observed triumphantly:
“And I ain’t a mite surprised, neither. It’s a good thing, too. They’re jest suited ter each other. Ain’t they been traipsin’ all over town tergether, an’ ridin’ whar ’twas too fur ter foot it?... Ter be sure, they allers went ter some one’s that was sick, an’ allers took jellies an’ things ter eat an’ read, but I had eyes, an’ I ain’t a fool. She done good, though—heaps of it; an’ ’tain’t no wonder the doctor fell head over heels in love with her.... An’ thar was the little gal, too. Didn’t he go twice ter New York a-huntin’ fur her, an’ wa’n’t it through him that they finally got her? ‘Course ’twas. ’Twas him that told Mis’ Kendall ‘bout that ’ere Mont-Lawn whar they sends them poor little city kids ter get a breath o’ fresh air; an’ ’twas him that sent on the twenty-one dollars for her, so’s she could name a bed fur little Margaret; an’ ’twas him that at last went ter New York an’ fetched her home. Gorry, ’twas allers him. Thar wa’n’t no way out of it, I say. They jest had ter get engaged!”
It was not long before the most of Houghtonsville—in sentiment, if not in words—came to old Nathan’s opinion: this prospective marriage was an ideal arrangement, after all, and not in the least surprising. There remained now only the pleasant task of making the wedding a joyful affair befitting the traditions of the town and of the honored name of Kendall.
In all Houghtonsville, perhaps, there was only one heart that did not beat in sympathy, and that one, strangely enough, belonged to Mrs. Kendall’s own daughter, Margaret.
“You mean you are goin’ to marry him, and that he’ll be your husband for—for keeps?” Margaret demanded with some agitation, when her mother told her of the engagement.
Mrs. Kendall smiled. The red mounted to her cheek.
“Yes, dear,” she said.
“And he’ll live here—with us?” Margaret’s voice was growing in horror.
“Why, yes, dear,” murmured Mrs. Kendall; then, quizzically: “Why, sweetheart, what’s the matter? Don’t you like Dr. Spencer? It was only last week that you were begging me to ask some one here to live with us.”
Margaret frowned anxiously.
“But, mother, dear, that was poor folks,” she explained, her eyes troubled. “Dr. Spencer ain’t that kind, you know. You—you said he’d be a husband.”
“Yes?”
“And—and husbands—mother!” broke off the little girl, her voice sharp with anguished love and terror. “He sha’n’t come here to beat you and bang you ‘round—he just sha’n’t!”
“Beat me!” gasped Mrs. Kendall. “Margaret, what in the world are you thinking of to say such a thing as that?”
Margaret was almost crying now. The old hunted look had come back to her eyes, and her face looked suddenly pinched and old. She came close to her mother’s side and caught the soft folds of her mother’s dress in cold, shaking fingers.
“But they do do it—all of ’em,” she warned frenziedly. “Tim Sullivan, an’ Mr. Whalen, an’ Patty’s father—they was all husbands, every one of ’em; and there wasn’t one of ’em but what beat their wives and banged ’em ‘round. You don’t know. You hain’t seen ’em, maybe; but they do do it, mother—they do do it!”
For a moment Mrs. Kendall stared speechlessly into the young-old face before her; then she caught the little girl in her arms.
“You poor little dear!” she choked. “You poor forlorn little bunch of misguided pessimism! Come, let me tell you how really good and kind and gentle the doctor is. Beat me, indeed! Oh, Margaret, Margaret!”
In spite of Mrs. Kendall’s earnest efforts Margaret was not easily convinced that marriage might be desirable, and that all husbands were not patterned after Tim Sullivan and Mike Whalen. Nor was this coming marriage the only thing that troubled Margaret. Life at the Alley was still too vividly before her eyes to allow her to understand any scheme of living that did not recognize the supremacy of the sharpest tongue and the heaviest fist; and this period of adjustment to the new order of things was not without its trials for herself as well as for her mother.
The beauty, love, and watchful care that surrounded her filled her with ecstatic rapture; but the niceties of speech and manner daily demanded of her, terrified and dismayed her. Why “bully” and “bang-up” should be frowned upon when, after all, they but expressed her pleasure in something provided for her happiness, she could not understand; and why the handling of the absurdly large number of knives, forks, and spoons about her plate at dinner should be a matter of so great moment, she could not see. As for the big white square of folded cloth that her mother thought so necessary at every meal—its dainty purity filled Margaret with dismay lest she soil or wrinkle it; and for her part she would have much preferred to let it quite alone.
There were the callers, too—beautiful ladies in trailing gowns who insisted upon seeing her, though why, Margaret could not understand; for they invariably cried and said, “Poor little lamb!” when they did see her, in spite of her efforts to convince them that she was perfectly happy. And there were the children—they, too, were disconcerting. They came, sometimes alone, and sometimes with their parents, but always they stared and seemed afraid of her. There were others, to be sure, who were not afraid of her. But they never “called.” They “slipped in” through the back gate at the foot of the garden, and they were really very nice. They were Nat and Tom and Roxy Trotter, and they lived in a little house down by the river. They never wore shoes nor stockings, and their clothes were not at all like those of the other children. Margaret suspected that the Trotters were poor, and she took pains that her mother should see Nat and Tom and Roxy. Her mother, however, did not appear to know them, which did not seem so very strange to Margaret, after all; for of course her mother had not known there were any poor people so near, otherwise she would have shared her home with them long ago. At first, it was Margaret’s plan to rectify this little mistake immediately; but the more she thought of it, the more thoroughly was she convinced that the first chance belonged by right to Patty’s family and the Whalens in New York, inasmuch as they had been so good to her. She determined, therefore, to wait awhile before suggesting the removal of the Trotter family from their tiny, inconvenient house to the more spacious and desirable Five Oaks.
Delightful as were the Trotters, however, even they did not quite come up to Bobby McGinnis for real comradeship. Bobby lived with his mother and grandmother in the little red farmhouse farther up the hill. It was he who had found Margaret crying in the streets on that first dreadful day long ago when she was lost in New York. For a week she had lived in his attic home, then she had become frightened at his father’s drunken rage, one day, and had fled to the streets, never to return. All this Margaret knew, though she had but a faint recollection of it. It made a bond of sympathy between them, nevertheless, and caused them to become fast friends at once.
It was to Bobby that she went for advice when the standards of Houghtonsville and the Alley clashed; and it was to Bobby that she went for sympathy when grievous mismanagement of the knives and forks or of the folded square of cloth brought disaster to herself and tears to her mother’s eyes. She earnestly desired to—as she expressed it to Bobby—“come up to the scratch and walk straight”; and it was to Bobby that she looked for aid and counsel.
beautiful