Evelyn Raymond - A Sunny Little Lass

“Got the pay, mate?” he called after her, but, if she heard him, she, for once, withheld an answer.

“O Mister Grocer!” she cried, darting into the dairy shop, like a stray blue and golden butterfly, “could you possibly lend me a cent’s worth o’ milk for grandpa’s dinner? I’ll pay you to-night, when I get home from peddlin’, if I can. If I can’t then, why the next time – ”

“Say no more, Take-a-Stitch, I’ve a whole can turnin’ sour on me an’ you’re welcome to a pint on’t if you’ll take it. My respects to the captain, and here’s good luck to the Queen of Elbow Lane!”

Glory swept him a curtsy, flashed a radiant smile upon him and was tempted to hug him; but she refrained from this, not knowing how such a caress might be received. Then she thanked and thanked him till he bade her stop, and with her tin cup in her hand sped homeward again, crying:

“Here am I, grandpa! More milk ’an you can shake a stick at, with the store-man’s respeckses an’ all. A hull pint! Think o’ that! An’ only just a teeny, tiny mite sour. Isn’t he the nicest one to give it to us just for nothin’? An’ he’s another sort of Elbow folks, though he’s off a bit around the block. Oh, this is just the loveliest world there is! An’ who’d want to go to that old ‘Snug Harbor’ an’ leave such dear, dear people, I sh’d like to know? Not me nor you, Cap’n Simon Beck, an’ you know it!”

Glory sat down and watched her grandsire make the best dinner he could upon cold porridge and sour milk, her face radiant with pleasure that she had been able so well to supply him, and almost forgetting that horrid, all-gone feeling in her own small stomach. Never mind, a peanut or so might come her way, if Toni Salvatore, the little Italian with the long name, should happen to be in a good humor and fling them to her, for well he knew that of the stock he trusted to her, not a single goober would be extracted for her personal enjoyment; and this was why he oftener bestowed upon her a tiny bag of the dainties than upon any other of his small sales people.

The captain finished his meal and did not distress his darling by admitting that it was still distasteful, then rose, slung his basket of frames over his shoulder, took Bo’sn’s leading-string, and passed out to his afternoon’s peddling and singing. But, though he had kissed her good-bye, Glory dashed after him, begging still another and another caress, and feeling the greatest reluctance to letting him go, yet equally unwilling to have him stay.

“If he stays here that man will come and maybe get him, whether or no; an’ if he goes, the shiny colonel may meet him outside and take him anyhow. If only he’d sing alongside o’ my peddlin’ route! But he won’t. He never will. He hates to hear me holler. He says ‘little maids shouldn’t do it’; only I have to, to buy my sewin’ things with; an’ – My, I clean forgot Posy Jane’s jacket! I must hurry an’ finish it, then off to peanuttin’,” pondered the child, and watched the blind man making his way, so surely and safely, around the corner into the next street, with Bo’sn walking proudly ahead, what tail he had pointing skyward and his one good ear pricked forward, intent and listening.

The old captain in the faded uniform he still wore, and the faithful little terrier, who guided his sightless master through the dangers of the city streets with almost a human intelligence were to Goober Glory the two dearest objects in the world, and for them she would do anything and everything.

“Funny how just them few words that shiny man said has changed our hull feelin’s ’bout the ‘Harbor.’ Only this mornin’, ’fore he come, we was a-plannin’ how lovely ’twas; an’ now–now I just hate it! I’m glad they’s water ’twixt us an’ that old Staten Island, an’ I’m glad we haven’t ferry money nor nothin’,” cried the little girl, aloud, shaking a small fist defiantly southward toward the land of her lost dreams. Then, singing to make herself forget how hungry she was, she hurried into the littlest house and–shall it be told?–caught up her grandpa’s plate and licked the crumbs from it, then inverted the tin cup and let the few drops still left in it trickle slowly down her throat; and such was Glory’s dinner.

Afterward she took out needle and thread and heigho! How the neat stitches fairly flew into place, although to make the small patch fill the big hole, there had to be a little pucker here and there. Never mind, a pucker more or less wouldn’t trouble happy-go-lucky Jane, who believed little Glory to be the very cleverest child in the whole world and a perfect marvel of neatness; for, in that particular, she had been well trained. The old sea captain would allow no dirt anywhere, being as well able to discover its presence by his touch as he had once been by sight; and, oddly enough, he was as deft with his needle as with his knife.

So, the jacket finished, Glory hurried away up the steep stairs to the great bridge-end, received from the friendly flower-seller unstinted praise and a ripe banana and felt her last anxiety vanish.

“A hull banana just for myself an’ not for pay, dear, dear Jane? Oh, how good you are! But you listen to me, ’cause I want to tell you somethin’. Me an’ grandpa ain’t never goin’ to that old ‘Snug Harbor,’ never, nohow. We wouldn’t be hired to. So there.”

“Why–why, Take-a-Stitch! Why, be I hearin’ or dreamin’, I should like to know. Not go there, when I thought you could scarce wait for the time to come? What’s up?”

“A shiny rich man from the avenue where such as him lives and what owns the ship grandpa used to master, an’ a lot more like it has so much to do with the ‘Harbor’ ’at he can get anybody in it or out of it just as he pleases. He’s been twice to see grandpa an’ made him all solemn an’ poor-feelin’, like he ain’t used to bein’. Why, he’s even been cross, truly cross, if you’ll believe it!”

“Can’t, hardly. Old cap’n’s the jolliest soul ashore, I believe,” said Jane.

“An’ if grandpa maybe goes alone, ’cause they don’t take little girls, nohow, then that colonel’d have me sent off to one o’ them Homeses or ’Sylums for childern that hasn’t got no real pas nor mas. Huh, needn’t tell me. I’ve seen ’em, time an’ again, walkin’ in processions, with Sisters of Charity in wide white flappin’ caps all the time scoldin’ them poor little girls for laughin’ too loud or gettin’ off the line or somethin’ like that. An’ them with long-tailed frocks an’ choky kind of aperns an’ big sunbonnets, lookin’ right at my basket o’ peanuts an’ never tastin’ a single one. Oh, jest catch me! I’ll be a newspaper boy, first, but–but, Jane dear, do you s’pose anything–any single thing, such as bein’ terrible hungry, or not gettin’ paid for frames or singin’–could that make my grandpa go and leave me?”

For at her own breathless vivid picture of the orphanage children, as she had seen them, the doubt concerning the captain’s future actions returned to torment her afresh.

“He might be sick, honey, or somethin’ like that, but not o’ free will. Old Simon Beck’ll never forsake the ’light o’ his eyes,’ as I’ve heard him call you, time an’ again.”

“Don’t you fret, child,” continued Posy Jane. “Ain’t you the ‘Queen of Elbow Lane’? Ain’t all of us, round about, fond of you an’ proud of you, same’s if you was a real queen, indeed? Who’d look after Mis’ McGinty’s seven babies, when she goes a scrubbin’ the station floors, if you wasn’t here? Who’d help the tailor with his job when the fits of coughin’ get so bad? ’Twas only a spell ago he was showin’ me how’t you’d sewed in the linin’ to a coat he was too sick to finish an’ a praisin’ the stitches beautiful. What’d the boys do without you to sew their rags up decent an’ tend to their hurt fingers an’ share your dinner with ’em when–when you have one an’ they don’t?