A Sunny Little Lass

Billy thought he had never heard anybody ask so many questions in so short a time and was on the point of saying so, impertinently, yet found it not worth while. Instead, he remarked, “I ain’t sayin’ if it’s fur er near, but I guess I better be goin’ down to th’ office now an’ see if they’s a extry out. Might be a fire, er murder, er somethin’ doin’.”

With that courtesy which even the gamins of the streets unconsciously acquire from their betters, Billy pulled off his cap again and moved away. But he was not to escape so easily. Miss Laura’s hand clasped his soiled sleeve and forth came another question, “Billy, is that little girl your sister?”

“Hey? No such luck fer Buttons. She ain’t nobody’s sister, she ain’t. She just belongs to the hull Lane, Glory does. Huh! Take-a-Stitch my sister? Wished she was. She’s only cap’n – Shucks!” Having so nearly betrayed himself, Billy broke from the restraining hand and disappeared.

Miss Bonnicastle sighed and leaned back upon her cushions, feeling that something evil must have befallen her faithful footman to keep him so long away, and almost deciding to give up this apparently hopeless quest. Then she discovered that Nick had drawn near. Possibly, he would act as her guide, even if his mate had refused. She again held up the quarter and beckoned the lad.

He responded promptly, his eyes glittering with greed as they fixed upon the coin–not to be removed from it till it was in his own possession, no matter how many questions were asked. These began at once, in a crisp, imperative tone.

“Little boy, tell me your name.”

“Nick, the parson.”

“Indeed? Nick Parsons, I suppose. Is it?”

“No’m. I’m Nicky Dodd. I got a father. He’s Dodd. So be I, ’course. But the fellers stuck it onto me ’cause–’cause onct I went to a Sunday-school.”

“Don’t you go now, Nick Dodd?”

“No, indeedy! Ketch me!” laughed the boy, watching the gleam of the money his questioner held so lightly between her gloved fingers. What if she should drop it! If some other child should see it fall and seize it before he could! “Was–was you a-wantin’ somethin’ of me, lady?”

“Yes, I was. Will you show me the way to Captain Beck’s house?”

Now Nick loved Glory as well as Billy did and he had as fully understood from her warning gesture that he was to give this stranger no information concerning her or her grandfather, but, alas! he also loved money, and he so rarely had it. Just then, too, the “Biggest Show On Earth” was up at Madison Square Garden and, if Nick had not remembered that enticing circus, he might not have betrayed his friend. Yet those wonderful trained animals – Ah!

“Fer that quarter? Ye-es, ma’am, I–I–will,” stammered the lad.

So Miss Laura again left her carriage and walked the narrow, dirty length of the Lane, past the sharp bend which gave it its name of “Elbow,” far down among the warehouses and wharves crowding the approach to the bridge. As she walked, she still asked questions and found that all the dwellers in the Lane were better known by their employments than their real names, how that Glory’s deftness with a needle had made her “Take-a-Stitch,” and anybody might guess why Jane was called “Posy” or Captain Beck had become the “Singer.” Besides, she discovered that this ragged newsboy was as fond and proud of his “Lane” as she was of her avenue, and that if she had any pity to bestow, she needn’t waste it on him or his mates and that —

“There ’tis! The littlest house in Ne’ York,” concluded Nick, proudly pointing forward, seizing the coin she held so carelessly, and vanishing.

“Well! have I become a scarecrow that all these children desert me so suddenly!” exclaimed Miss Laura, looking helplessly about and lifting her skirts the higher to avoid the dirty suds which somebody was emptying into the gutter.

“Ma’am?” asked the woman with the tub, dropping it and with arms akimbo staring amazedly at the stranger. How had such a fine madam come there? “Was you a-lookin’ for somebody, ma’am?”

Miss Laura turned her sweet old face toward the other, Meg-Laundress, and answered, “Yes, for one, Captain Simon Beck. A boy told me this tiny place was where he lives–though it doesn’t seem possible any one could really live in so small a room–and it’s empty now, anyway. Do you know where he is?”

“Off a-singin’ likely. He mostly is, this time o’ day.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry. I have come – ” Miss Bonnicastle checked herself, unwilling to disclose to this rough stranger affairs in which she had no concern. “I was told he had a grandchild living with him. Is she anywhere about?”

“Glory? She’s off peddlin’ her goobers, I s’pose. I can give ’em any word that’s left,” said Meg, with friendly interest.

“Glory? Is her name Glory? Is it she I saw with a basket of peanuts, a yellow haired, bright-faced little girl, in a blue frock?” cried the lady, eagerly, and recalling the child’s inquiry about “Snug Harbor” felt that she should have guessed as much even then.

“Sure. The purtiest little creatur’ goin’; or, if not so purty, so good-natured an’ lovin’. Why, she’s all the sunlight we gets in the Lane, Glory is, an’, havin’ her, some on us don’t ’pear to need no more. Makes all on us do her say-so but always fer our own betterment. In an’ out, up an’ down, lendin’ a hand or settin’ a stitch or tendin’ a baby, all in the day’s work, an’ queenin’ it over the hull lot, that’s our ‘Goober Glory,’ bless her! And evil to anybody would harm the child, say I! Though who’d do ill to her? Is’t a bit of word you’d be after leavin’, ma’am?” said Meg, with both kindness and curiosity.

“Thank you. If you see either of them, will you say that Miss Bonnicastle, Colonel Bonnicastle’s sister, will be here again in the morning, unless it storms, upon important business? Ask them to wait here for me, please. I should not like to make a second useless trip. Good-afternoon.”

As the gentlewoman turned and made her way back along the alley toward her distant carriage, which could come no nearer to her because the Lane was so narrow, Meg watched and admired her, reflecting with some pride:

“She’s the real stuff, that old lady is. Treated me polite ’s if I was the same sort she is. I wonder what’s doin’ ’twixt her an’ the Becks? Well, I’ll find out afore I sleep, or my name ain’t Meg-Laundress, an’ I say it. Guess Jane’ll open her eyes when I up an’ tells her how one them grand folks she sees crossin’ the bridge so constant has got astray in the Lane an’ come a visitin’, actilly a visitin’, one our own folks. But then, I always knowed, we Elbowers was a touch above some, an’ now she’ll know it, too.

“I do wish the cap’n would come in,” continued Meg. “But ’twill be a long spell yet afore he does. An’, my land! I must sure remind him to put on his other shirt in the mornin’. He don’t never get no sile on him, the cap’n don’t, yet when grand carriage folks comes a callin’, it’s a time for the best or nothin’.”

By a roundabout way, Glory had hurried, breathlessly, to her tiny home, fearing that by some mischance grandpa might have returned to it, and that this fresh advocate of the “Harbor” would find him there. She was such a pretty old lady, she had such a different manner from that of the Lane women, she might persuade the gallant old captain to accompany her to the asylum, whether or no. If he were at home, Glory meant to coax him elsewhere; or, if he would not go, then she would remain and use her own influence against that of this dangerous stranger.

One glance showed her that all was yet safe. The tiny room was empty and neither “Grandpa!” nor “Bo’sn!” answered to her call.

“I hain’t got no goobers to sell now an’ them boys won’t show her a step of the way an’ she couldn’t get here so quick all herself without bein’ showed so I may as well rest a minute,” said Glory to herself, and sat down on the narrow threshold to get cool and to decide upon what she should do.

But she could not sit still. A terrible feeling that these strangers were determined to separate her from her grandfather made her too restless. It was natural, she thought, that they should wish to do him a kindness, such as providing him with a fine home for life. He was a grown-up man and a very clever one, while she was only a little girl, of no account whatever. They didn’t care about her, ’course, but him —

“I must go find him! I must keep him away, clear, clear away from the Lane till it gets as dark as dark. Then we can come home an’ sleep. Such as them don’t come here o’ nights,” cried Glory, springing up. “An’ I’m glad grandpa is blind. If he went right close by them two he couldn’t see ’em, an’ she, she, anyway, don’t know him. I wonder where best to look first. I s’pose Broadway, ’cause that’s where he gets the most money. They’s such a heap of folks on that wide street an’ it’s so nice to look at.”

Having decided her route, Glory was off and away. She dared not think about Toni Salvatore and his anger. She did not see how she would ever be able to repay him for his loss and she could remember nothing at all about the money Miss Bonnicastle had offered her. If Billy or Nick had taken it, they would give it to her, of course; but if not–well, that was a small matter compared to the spiriting away of her grandfather and she must find him and hold him fast.

“Grandpa don’t go above the City Hall, ’cause Bo’sn don’t know the way so well. Up fur’s there an’ down to Trinity; that’s the ‘tack he sails’ an’ there I’ll seek him. I wish one them boys was here to help me look, though if he was a-singin’ I shouldn’t need nobody.”

So thinking and peering anxiously into the midst of every crowd and listening with keen intentness, the little girl threaded her way to the northern limit of the captain’s accustomed “beat.” But there was no sign nor sound of him upon the eastern side of the thoroughfare, and, crossing to the more crowded western side, she crept southward, step by step, scanning every face she passed and looking into every doorway, for in such places the blind singer sometimes took his station, to avoid the jostling of the passers-by.

“Maybe I’ll have to go ’way down to the Battery, ’cause he does, often. Though ’seems he couldn’t hardly got there yet.”

Now Glory was but a little girl, and, in watching the shifting scenes of the busy street, she soon forgot her first anxiety and became absorbed in what was around her. And when she had walked as far southward as old Trinity, there were the lovely chimes ringing and, as always, a mighty crowd had paused to listen to them. Glory loved the chimes, and so did grandpa; and it was their habit on every festival when they were to be rung to come and hear them. Always the child was so moved by these exquisite peals that when they ceased she felt as if she had been in another world, and it was so now. To hear every tone better, she had clasped her hands and closed her eyes and uplifted her rapt face; and so standing upon the very curb, she was rudely roused by a commotion in the crowd about her.

There was the tramping of horses’ feet, the shouts of the police, the “Ahs!” and “Ohs!” of pity which betokened some accident.

“Out the way, child! You’ll be crushed in this jam! Keep back there, people! Keep back!”

Glory made herself as small as she could and shrank aside. Then curiosity sent her forward again to see and listen.

“An old man!”

“Looks as if he were blind!”

“Back those horses! Make way–the ambulance–make way!”

“All over with that poor fellow! A pity, a pity!”

These exclamations of the onlookers and the orders of the policemen mingled in one harsh clamor, yet leaving distinct upon Glory’s hearing the words, “An old blind man.”

“Oh, how sorry grandpa will be to know that!” thought the child, and, with eagerness to learn every detail of the sad affair, stooped and wormed her way beneath elbows and between legs till she had come to the very roadbed down which an ambulance was dashing at highest speed, its clanging bell warning everything from its path. Right before the curb where she stood it paused, uniformed men sprang to the pavement and, with haste that was still reverent and tender, laid the injured man upon the stretcher; then off and away again, and the little girl had caught but the faintest glimpse of a gray head and faded blue garments, yet thought:

“Might be another old captain, it might. Won’t grandpa be sorry–if I tell him. Maybe I shan’t, though I must hurry up an’ find him, ’cause seein’ that makes me feel dreadful lonesome, ’seems if. Oh! I do wish nobody ever need get hurted or terrible poor, or anything not nice! And–oh, oh, there’s that very lady I run away from, what come to the Lane! Drivin’ down in her very carriage and if – She mustn’t see me! She must not–’less she’s got him in there with her a’ready! What if!”

Miss Bonnicastle’s laudau was, indeed, being carefully driven through the jam of wagons which had stopped to give the ambulance room and she was anxiously watching the inch-by-inch progress of her own conveyance. Yet with an expression of far keener anxiety, Goober Glory recklessly darted into the very tangle of wheels and animals, crying aloud:

“She’s goin’ straight down toward that ‘Harbor’ ferry! Like’s not she’s heard him singin’ somewhere an’ coaxed him to get in there with her. He might be th’ other side–where I can’t see–an’ I must find out–I must! For —What if!”