Divided Skates

For the first time a shadow passed across the genial face of the plumber, though it vanished quickly.

“The curtains shall come, Mary wife, some time, if my strong arm can earn them. But we’ll not have any silly imitation laces at our windows. They’re shams, and a sham is a lie. Plain simple muslin, with as many frills and ruffles as you’ve the patience to keep starched and ironed – they’re honest and suitable to our station. Meanwhile, is there a prettier sight at anybody’s windows than the row of healthy, happy faces of our children? Look at that great house, across alley, with not a chick nor child in it. What do you suppose its mistress would give for such a batch of jolly little tackers as ours?” Then, reaching across the table corner to drop another hot cake upon the empty plate of the youngest Jay, he quoted, merrily: “‘This is my boy, I know by the building of him; bread and meat and pancakes right in the middle of him.’”

Of course, all the children laughed at the familiar jest, and each took heart to send up his own plate for another helping.

“They’ve had their allowance, John. There’s no use to make a rule and break it, dear.”

“No, Mary wife. Surely not. That is, in ordinary. But in a blizzard? Everything gets out of gear in a blizzard, even boys’ appetites. As many cakes as a child is years old is a safe rule to follow; but not on blizzard mornings, that come but seldom in a lifetime. Hark! Quiet! I hear a bell ringing somewhere. A dinner bell. It sounds like a summons.”

All fell perfectly silent for the space of a half-minute, maybe; then Molly burst forth with a thought she had been pondering:

“What a good thing it was that Miss Armacost had Sir Christopher buried last night, before this snow came! If she hadn’t I don’t know what she would have done. But – I believe that bell is from her house. It sounds out the back way, the alley side.”

There was a general stampede from the table, that was as promptly checked.

“Come back to your places, every youngster of you! Of course, it’s an exciting time, but manners to a body’s mother must never be forgotten.”

So the flock marched back to the table, and, beginning with Jim, the eldest, each inquired respectfully:

“Mother, will you excuse me?”

“Certainly,” came the prompt response.

Even the babies lisped and gurgled their merry, imitative “’Scuse me’s,” though with no thought of any attention being paid them.

“Folks without much money can’t afford to go without manners,” laughed father John, and, himself asking leave of the little woman behind the coffeepot, followed his children to the rear window.

For the ringing of the bell was so prolonged and so insistent in its demands that he no longer doubted it to be a signal of distress. But it was almost impossible to see even a few feet through the blinding clouds of snow, and raising the sash the plumber hallooed:

“What’s wanted? Anybody in trouble?”

“Help’s wanted! Awful trouble!” came the answering shout.

“Where?”

“Armacost’s. Will you lend a hand? All afloat and frozen up!”

“Lend a pair of them! Which door will I try?”

“Front. The back one’s blocked. Hurry up, please. Have you any tools? Bring everything!”

“Quite a contract!” ejaculated John, closing the window and brushing the snow from his head and shoulders. “But it’s a good thing I always keep a ‘kit’ handy here at home. Now, lads, you all get to work, too. There are some pieces of boards in the cellar. Take them and nail a sort of snow shovel together. Never mind if it’s a bit rough, it’ll be easier than clearing off the whole mass of snow with common spades or brooms. If you don’t know how, ask mother. She’s as handy as a master mechanic, any day. Then pitch in on our own front steps. Make a path for misery to enter, if need be, and for comfort to go out.”

“What do you mean, father?” asked Molly.

“Some poor creature might be floundering along outside, chilled and discouraged, and a ready-made path to a warm house would be tempting. Over the same road out, mother’s coffee and flapjacks can pass!”

“Flapjacks? That’s the first I heard about them,” said Mrs. Johns, smiling.

“Chance of your life to make yourself famous to-day,” answered her husband. “You may believe that any poor wretch who tastes your cakes and coffee, this terrible day, will never forget them. And, lads, after you’ve cut a way to our own door go and help that widow across the street who keeps the boarders. She has a hard time of it, any way, and it’s part of her business to keep things comfortable for those who live with her.”

“She wouldn’t give us a cent, if we shovelled at her sidewalk all day,” grumbled Joseph.

“The other side the bed, lad! Quickly!” ordered the father, pausing on his way to the door to see his command obeyed.

Everybody laughed, even the culprit, who had to ascend to his own sleeping-room, get into the bed at one side – the side from which he had originally climbed – and get out at the other. A simple operation, and one not helpful to mother Mary’s housekeeping labors; but she never minded that, because the novel punishment always sent the grumbler down-stairs again in good humor.

Then they all clustered about that rear window which commanded a view of the Armacost yard, and watched their father floundering through the drifts between the small house and the large. He disappeared around the corner of the mansion, and mother Mary set her young folks all to work: Molly to washing the dishes and tidying the house; while she herself bathed and dressed the twins, stirred up a fresh lot of bread dough, rolled out her sewing-machine, and made flying visits to the small cellar where the three Jays were sawing and nailing and chattering like magpies.

They were all so busy and happy that the morning flew by like magic and dinner time came before anybody realized it. Meanwhile, the three boys had kept their own steps passably free from the gathering snow, and had shovelled a way into the widow’s house, not once but twice. Coal carts and milk wagons had, as father John prophesied, come out and forced their passage through the street, and a gang of workmen, each with a shovel over his shoulder, had made their way to the Avenue for the purpose of clearing the car tracks. But they had not remained. Their task was such a great one that, until the storm was really over, there was no use in their beginning it.

Yet even these few moving figures rendered the outlook more natural, and Molly had almost forgotten to worry over any possible suffering to the poor, much less the rich, when her father came in and she saw, at once, how much graver than usual he was.

“Why, father, dear! Has anything happened? Was there real trouble over at the lady’s?”

“Plenty has happened, and there is real trouble. But let’s have dinner first; and, Mary wife, when I go back I’ll take a pot of coffee and a bit of this hot stew for our neighbor.”

“Which neighbor, John?”

“Miss Armacost.”

“Miss – Armacost! What in the world would she, with all her luxuries, want with stew from our plain table?”

“Well, the boiler in her kitchen burst this morning. Pipes frozen, and no fire till things are fixed; that is, to cook by. Pipes over the handsome parlor frozen, too, and leaking down into all the fancy stuff with which it is filled. Two of the servants sleep at their own homes, as you know, and the two who are left have all they can do helping me. I’ve ’phoned for somebody from the factory to come out and help, too, but there are so many orders ahead the boss says I must do the best I can. Yet the worst of all is – Towsley.”

Molly dropped her fork with a rattle. “Towsley! Has anything happened to him?”

“That’s what I’d like to know. That’s what that poor rich woman, yonder, is grieving herself ill over.”

“Tell us. Tell us, quick, father, please!”

“There’s not so much. She says she found him asleep in her back parlor at nine o’clock. It was snowing fast then, and she kept him all night. That’s what she meant to do, at least. She gave him his supper and had him put to bed on her top floor. She knows he was there till midnight, for she went up to see if he was all right. Then she went to bed herself, and this morning he was gone. The front door was unfastened, and he must have gone out that way. At one moment she blames herself for neglect of him, and the next for having been kind to him.”

Molly sprang up from the table.

“Oh! mother, let me go across and carry the stew and tea. Maybe I could help her to think of something would tell where he was. Anyway, I can tell her just what kind of a boy Towsley is and how well he can take care of himself. He isn’t lost. He mustn’t be. He cannot – shall not be!” cried the girl, excitedly.

“Very well. Put the stew in the china bowl” – the one nice dish that their cupboard possessed – “and take your grandmother’s little stone teapot. If Miss Armacost is a real lady, as I think, she will appreciate the motive of our gift, if not the gift itself. And if she’s not a gentlewoman her opinion would not matter.”

“But she is, mother; she is. I’m so glad I can do something for her! She was nice to me, and ‘giff-gaff makes good friends.’”

CHAPTER IV.

THE WANDERING KINDNESS

On the morning of the blizzard, at that dark hour which comes just before daylight, Dr. Frank Winthrop left his own house for a visit to the hospital. There were no cars running, and he would not think of rousing his coachman, or even his horses, to breast such a storm; for his errand might be a prolonged one, and was, indeed, a case of life or death. At ten o’clock he had left a patient in a most critical condition, and was now returning to further attend the sufferer. His ulster was fastened tightly about him, his head thrust deeply into his collar, his hands in his pockets, and with teeth grimly set he faced the night.

“Two miles, if it’s a block! Well, it’s useless to try and see one’s way. The street lamps, such as are still burning, make an occasional glimmer in the fog of snowflakes and are almost more misleading than none at all. But I’ve walked the route so often, I’ll just trust to my feet to find their own road, and to Providence that I may reach my man in time!”