Divided Skates

Thus thinking, Miss Lucy lifted several suits of small clothing, and finally selected a black velvet blouse and knickers, with a pair of red silk stockings, some dainty kid shoes, and a broad-brimmed hat decorated by a long, drooping feather.

Having made her choice, Miss Armacost closed and locked the trunk, turned off the light, and descended to her own room. There she carefully brushed and arranged the fantastic costume and made herself ready for bed.

But she found herself exceedingly restless, and before seeking her own couch she decided to visit her new charge and see if all was well with him; though she had lingered over her task till midnight.

“That pie might disagree with him; who knows? and as he is so strange to the house he might lie and suffer without disturbing anybody by calling for help.”

She need not have worried. It would have taken more than one pie to have injured the digestion of such a boy as Towsley. He lay in beatific slumber, his sunny hair gleaming in the rays from his visitor’s candle, his long lashes sweeping his dirty cheeks, and his lips parted in a happy smile.

Miss Lucy’s heart bounded with delight. “What a beauty he is, or will be when he’s clean! How I shall love him! I will give him our Lionel’s own name and bring him up to take Lionel’s own place. Surely, that was a happy accident which sent him tumbling against me on his one borrowed skate. Though nothing which the Lord permits is ever an accident,” she corrected herself.

Now the lady had a habit of talking to herself, and Towsley was a light sleeper. He presently opened his eyes and regarded her curiously. She seemed to him, at first, some fellow newsboy, strangely transformed. Then his ideas righted themselves, and he inquired, respectfully:

“Were you calling me, Miss Armacost?”

“No, you darling. I was just looking at you.”

Abashed, Towsley dug his head into the pillow and drew the covers over his face.

“I’ve brought you a nice suit of clothes to put on in the morning. They will be rather too good for every-day wear, but on account of the storm we can’t do better for to-morrow. There will be another bath made ready for you, when you are called, and to please me I hope you’ll take it. Then dress yourself in these things and come quietly down-stairs. We always have prayers before breakfast, and I expect you to be present. One thing more. What is your last name?”

“I don’t know, ma’am – I mean, Miss Lucy. The kids call me Towhead. Towsley Towhead is all I know, though Mother Molloy, she thinks it may be Smith or Jones or something. Why, ma’am? I haven’t done any harm, have I?”

“No, child. No, none at all. I merely wish to have everything understood from the beginning. I am going to adopt you. You are to be my little boy hereafter. You are no longer Towsley Towhead. You are Lionel Armacost. You are to have no further connection with Mother Molloy or any other objectionable person. Your home is now at Number One-thousand-and-one, Washington Avenue, West. Good night. I would like to kiss you, but your face is too dirty. To-morrow, at breakfast, when you are in proper condition, I will do so. Good-night.”

Towsley listened in increasing astonishment and – terror. Whether owing to a diet of mince pie exclusively or to the unusual daintiness of his surroundings, he had not rested as well as he was accustomed to do upon the steam hole of the Express office cellar. He had never seen anybody that looked just like Miss Lucy, with her high-crowned night cap, her long trailing wrapper, her gleaming glasses, and her air of stern determination, which the flare of her candle flame seemed to accentuate. This grim expression, had he known it, was due mainly to the fact that her fastidious gaze had become riveted upon his very black finger-nails, as they clutched the white spread, and her resolution to alter their aspect as soon as daylight dawned. But he did not know this, of course, and he watched her go away – glide, he fancied – till she melted into the dimness of the hall beyond, and finally slipped, slipped, pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, in her cloth shoes, down the stairs and out of hearing.

Then he sat up. The room was very warm and comfortable and it made him drowsy. Yet he could not now afford this drowsiness. While that queer little old lady was safely out of the way he must act, and act quickly.

As noiselessly as a cat the child stole out of bed, and fumbled around for his clothes – his own clothes; the familiar rags and tatters which, at Jefferson’s command, he had removed outside the bathroom door, and from which he had never before been separated since they came into his possession, the “cast-offs” of a bigger companion.

Of course he did not find them. Jefferson had taken the best of care that he should not, and they had already been consumed among the coals of the great furnace which heated the house.

When he became convinced that he could not recover his own attire, Towsley accepted that which Miss Lucy had provided. He drew on the underwear with a gratified sense of its comfort and daintiness, but with the idea that he was only “borrowing.”

“Adopted me, did she? I know what that means. Peter-the-Cripple he got adopted, that time he was run over by a lady’s carriage. She adopted him, and he went to a big house and he died. No, siree! there isn’t anybody going to catch me that way! least of all a little wizzly old lady like her! No, siree! Of course, I’ll have to wear these things till I get down-town and can borrow some more of a kid, and then I’ll send ’em back. Say, if I’m a swell like she said I was, and my name’s Lionel Armacost, if you please, what’s the matter with my pressing the button and getting a little light on a dark subject?”

Towsley’s bright eyes had observed where the electric button was, when Jefferson had lighted the hall bedroom earlier in the night, and he now manipulated it for his own benefit. A soft radiance promptly filled the pretty room and showed him where each article lay. In a wonderfully brief time the waif had arrayed himself from head to foot, and coolly surveyed himself in the long mirror that stood upon its rollers in one corner.

“Pshaw! Ain’t I a guy! But – but – it’s sort of tasty, too. I wonder what the fellows’ll say! Wait till they see that feather and feel that velvet! Cracky! then you’ll hear them howl! I wonder what time it is? I wonder if I’m too late to get my papers? If I’m not, what a haul I’ll make in these duds! Maybe enough to buy a suit for myself down at Cheap John’s store. Then I’d have these wrapped in brown paper and sent back to Miss Armacost with my compliments. The compliments of Mister Towsley Lionel Towhead Armacost, esquire! Hi! ain’t that a notion! But plague take these shoes! They aren’t half as comfortable as my own old holeys! But it all goes! And she really is a dear little old lady. I’d like to oblige her if I could, but – adopted! No, siree!”

A country child of Towsley’s age would have been puzzled how to escape from the well-locked and bolted mansion; but the keen-witted gamin of the city’s streets had little difficulty. True, the great front door did open rather slowly to his puny grasp, but that was on account of the storm.

The wind swept and howled around the corner where the big house stood, and the white marble steps were heaped with snow. A great mass of the snow was dislodged by the movement of the door and fell in clouds over Towsley’s big hat and fine costume; also the tight shoes upon his feet seemed to make him stumble and stagger sadly; but he was not to be deterred by such trifles as these. The cold breath of the wind was delightful to him, the rush of outer air meant freedom.

All the delightful interests of his vagabond life rose up to beguile him; all its miseries were forgotten. He must get to the office right away. This was a blizzard, sure enough! and that meant “extras” to cry, sidewalks to shovel, a mad haste to get ahead of his mates and gather in more nickels than they, maybe stolen rides behind livery sleighs when the storm was over, and a thousand and one enjoyable things such as poor Miss Armacost could never even dream of!

“Hi! Here’s for it!” shouted the happy boy, and leaped forward into the night and the storm, which silently received him.

CHAPTER III.

THE BLIZZARD

“Whew! I’ve never seen such a storm since I lived in Baltimore city!” cried John Johns, looking out of the window, early on the morning following Molly’s visit to Miss Armacost. “It snows as if it never meant to stop. How still it is, too! Not a car running, not a wagon rattling over the stones, everything as quiet as a country graveyard.”

“Not quite, John. There’s a milk cart trying to force itself through the drifts. My! look into the alley between us and Miss Armacost’s! The snow is heaped as high as the fence, in some spots.”

“Well, I’m glad I’m a plumber! There’ll be plenty of work for me and my kind to-day. We’re not used to anything of this sort down here, and nobody’ll think to look out for his water pipes. Just listen to that wind, will you?”

“I’d rather not. It makes me think of poor folks without coals, and babies without their milk, and lots of suffering.”

“Not so much, wife. Not so much. The coal wagons will be the first astir, and they’ll break the roads nicely with their heavy wheels. The bakers and butchers and milkmen will follow mighty soon. The boys that want a bit of money for Christmas will all be out with any sort of broom, or shovel, or even a stick, they can pick up. It’ll give work for idle men, clearing the streets, and the liverymen will make a lot of money as soon as it settles a little. Oh! a rousing snow-storm is a good thing once in a while.”

“I declare, John, you are the cheerfullest soul. Nothing is ever wrong with you, and Molly is as like you as two peas! But I must say, I wish you wouldn’t go to work to-day. I’ll worry lest you get overcome or frozen, or something.”

“That so? Glad to hear it. Makes a man feel happy inside to know his folks’ll worry about him when he’s in danger. But isn’t it an odd fact that a soft little thing like a snowflake can stop the traffic of a whole city! Hello there, Molly! Got my coat and mittens ready? Well, you don’t look as if the storm had kept you awake much. Give the father a kiss, lass, to sort of sweeten his breakfast. Are the Jays awake? Hunt them up a spade or a shovel and set them digging their neighbors out. And, Mary wife, if I were you I’d keep a pot of coffee on the range all day. There’s maybe a poor teamster or huckster passing who’ll be the better for a warm cup of drink, and the coffee’ll keep him from thinking of beer or whiskey.”

“That might cost a good bit, all day so.”

“Never mind; never mind. What they drink we’ll go without. We’re hale and hearty folks, who’ll thrive well enough on cold water, if need be. Thank the Lord for all His mercies, say I.”

“Well, breakfast is ready. I’ll dish it up while you two have your own morning talk,” said the mother, patting Molly’s sturdy shoulder as she passed tableward. For the girl and her father were the closest of friends, which isn’t always the case between parent and child. But Molly’s day would have seemed imperfect without that few minutes’ chat with the cheery plumber at its beginning; and he managed always to leave a bit of his wisdom or philosophy in the girl’s thoughts.

The three brothers, Jim, Joe, and Jack, known in the household as the “three Jays,” came tumbling down the short flight of stairs from the bedroom above to the little first-floor kitchen, which they immediately seemed to fill with their noisy presence. They were so nearly of one size that strangers often mistook one for another, and they were all as ruddy and round as boys could be. Yet their noise was happy noise and disturbed nobody; and they good-naturedly made room for Sarah Jane, their “sister next youngest but the twins,” as they commonly mentioned her.

Those twins! My! but weren’t they the pride of everybody’s heart, with their fair little faces, like a pair of dolls; and their round blue eyes which were always watching out for mischief to be done. Their names had been selected “right out of a story book” that their mother had once read, and expressed about the only “foolishness” of which the busy woman had ever been guilty.

“Ivanora! Idelia! Truck and dicker! Why, Mary wife, such names will handicap the babies from the start. Who can imagine an Ivanora making bread? or an Idelia scrubbing a floor? But, however, if it pleases you, all right, though I do think a sensible Susan or Hannah would be more useful to girls of our walk in life.”

“Oh! I don’t object to those either. Let’s put them on behind the pretty ones; and maybe they’ll not have to scrub floors or make bread, the sweet darlings,” answered the wife, when soon after the babies’ birth the important matter of naming them arose.

At the moment when the father and Molly were watching the storm from one small window, while the three Jays and Sarah Jane occupied the other, these youngest members of the big family were seated upon a gray blanket behind the stove. They had been placed there by their careful mother, as a safeguard against cold and exposure, and in dangerous proximity to a pan of bread dough which had been set to rise. It was due to the excitement of the storm that, for once, their mother forgot them; and it was not till she called, “All hands round!” and the family filed into place about the big table that she remembered them; or, rather, had her attention called to them by Sarah Jane, the caretaker of the household.

“Oh! mother Johns! the twins! the twins!”

“Bless me! the twins, indeed! the bread-maker’s beginning early, Mary wife!” laughed the plumber.

“Oh! oh! oh! you naughty dears! You naughty, naughty dears! To think that great big girls, almost two years old, should waste mother’s nice dough like that!”

The pair had plunged their fat little arms deep in the soft, yielding mass and plucked handfuls of it, to smear upon each other’s faces and curls; and what remained in the raiser had been plentifully dotted with bits of coal from the near-by hod. They looked so funny, and were themselves so hilarious with glee over their own mischief, that there was nothing left for their elders to do except join in the general merriment.

But Mrs. Johns’ face sobered soon.

“It’s a pity, it’s a pity. All that good bread gone to do nobody any good, when there are so many hungry people will be needing food before this storm’s over. And we almost out of flour, too.”

“Seems to me we’re almost always out of flour – or shoes!” laughed the father. “And it’s a blessing, that, so long as I’ve the money to pay for either. There wouldn’t be empty flour buckets if there weren’t healthy appetites in the house; and shoes wouldn’t wear out if the feet inside them weren’t active and strong.”

“Hm’m. I’d like a chance to save a cent, now and then. What if your own health should fail, or you lose your job? And I’ve been wanting a set of cheap, pretty lace curtains to the front-room windows ever since I could remember. All the neighbors have them, but we never can.”