Evelyn Raymond - A Sunny Little Lass

It was in “the littlest house in Ne’ York” that Glory lived, with grandpa and Bo’sn, the dog, so she, and its owner, often boasted; and whether this were actually true or not, it certainly was so small that no other sort of tenant than the blind captain could have bestowed himself, his grandchild, and their few belongings in it.

A piece-of-pie shaped room, built to utilize a scant, triangular space between two big warehouses, only a few feet wide at the front and no width at all at the rear. Its ceiling was also its roof and from it dangled whatever could be hung thus, while the remaining bits of furniture swung from hooks in the walls. Whenever out of use, even the little gas-stove was set upon a shelf in the inner angle, thereby giving floor space sufficient for two camp-stools and a three-cornered scrap of a table at which they ate and worked, with Bo’sn curled beneath.

This mite of a house stood at the crook of Elbow Lane, down by the approaches to the big bridge over East River, in a street so narrow that the sun never could shine into it; yet held so strong an odor of salt water and a near-by fish-market, that the old sailor half fancied himself still afloat. He couldn’t see the dirt and rubbish of the Lane, nor the pinched faces of the other dwellers in it, for a few tenements were still left standing among the crowding warehouses, and these were filled with people. Glory, who acted as eyes for the old man, never told him of unpleasant things, and, indeed, scarcely saw them herself. To her, everything was beautiful and everybody kind, and in their own tiny home, at least, everything was scrupulously clean and shipshape.

When they had hung their hammocks back upon the wall, for such were the only beds they had room for, and had had their breakfast of porridge, the captain would ask: “Decks scrubbed well, mate?”

“Aye, aye, sir!” came the cheery answer, and Glory’s hands, fresh from the suds, would touch the questioner’s cheek.

“Brasses polished, hawsers coiled, rations dealt?”

“Aye, aye, cap’n!” again called the child.

“Eight bells! Every man to his post!” ordered the master, and from the ceiling a bell struck out the half-hours in the only way the sailor would permit time to be told aboard his “ship.” Then Glory whisked out her needle and thread, found grandpa his knife and bit of wood, and the pair fell to their tasks. His was the carving of picture frames, so delicately and deftly that one could hardly believe him sightless; hers the mending of old garments for her neighbors, and her labor was almost as capable as his. It had earned for her the nickname of “Take-a-Stitch,” for, in the Lane, people were better known by their employments than their surnames. Grandpa was “Cap’n Carver” when at his morning work, but after midday, “Captain Singer,” since then, led by his dog Bo’sn, he sang upon the streets to earn his livelihood. In the later hours the little girl, also, wore another title–“Goober Glory”–because she was one of the children employed by Antonio Salvatore, the peanut man, to sell his wares on commission.

But grandpa, Glory, and Bo’sn had the long delightful mornings at home and together; and this day, as usual, their talk turned upon the dream of their lives–“Sailors’ Snug Harbor.”

“Now, grandpa, talk. Tell how ’tis. Do it fast an’ picturey-like, ’less I never can guess how to make this piece do. It’s such a little patch an’ such a awful big hole! Posy Jane gets carelesser an’ carelesser all the time. This very last week that ever was she tore this jacket again. An’ I told her, I said: ‘Jane, if you don’t look out you’ll never wear this coat all next winter nohow.’ An’ she up an’ laughed, just like she didn’t mind a thing like that. An’ she paid me ten whole centses, she did. But I love her. Jane’s so good to everybody, to every single body. Ain’t she, grandpa?”

“Aye, aye, deary. I cal’late she done it a purpose. She makes her money easy, Jane does. Just sets there on the bridge-end and sells second-hand flowers to whoever’ll buy. If she had to walk the streets – ”

Glory was so surprised by this last sentence that she snapped her thread off in the wrong place and wasted a whole needleful. Until yesterday, she had never heard her grandfather speak in any but the most contented spirit about his lot in life. Then he had twice lamented that he “didn’t know whatever was to become o’ two poor creatur’s like them,” and now, again, this gay morning, he was complaining–almost complaining. Glory didn’t feel, in the least, like a “poor creatur’.” She felt as “chirpy as a sparrow bird,” over in City Hall park; and, if the sun didn’t shine in the Lane, she knew it was shining in the street beyond, so what mattered?

Vaguely disturbed, the child laid her hand on his arm and asked, “Be you sick, grandpa?”

He answered promptly and testily, “Sick? No, nor never was in my life. Nothin’ but blind an’ that’s a trifle compared to sickness. What you askin’ for? Didn’t I eat my breakfast clean up?”

“Ye-es, but–but afterward you–you kicked Bo’sn, an’ sayin’ that about ‘walkin’ the street’ just a singin’; why, I thought you liked it. I know the folks like to hear you. You do roll out that about the ‘briny wave’ just grand. I wish you’d sing it to Bo’sn an’ me right now, grandpa, dear.”

Wholly mollified and ashamed of his own ill-temper, the captain tried the familiar tune but it died in his throat. Music was far beyond him just then, yet he stroked the child’s head tenderly, and said, “Some other time, mate, some other time. I’m a little hoarse, maybe, or somethin’.”

“Well, then, never mind. Let’s talk ‘Snug Harbor.’ You begin. You tell an’ I’ll put in what I’m mind to; or I’ll say what I guess it’s like an’ you set me straight if I get crooked. ’Cause you’ve seen it, grandpa, an’ I never have. Not once; not yet. Bime-by – Oh, shall I begin, shall I, grandpa?”

The sailor sighed fit to shake the whole small tenement and nodded in consent; so, observing nothing of his reluctance to their once favorite subject, Glory launched forth:

“‘Sailors’ Snug Harbor’ is the most beautifulest spot in the whole world! It’s all flowery an’ grassy an’ treesy. It’s got fountains an’ birds an’ orchestry-music forever an’ ever. ’Tain’t never cloudy there, nor rainy, nor freezy, nor snowy, nor nothin’ mean. Eh, grandpa? Am I straight or crooked?”

The captain, roused as from a reverie, replied absently, “It’s a beautiful place, mate; I know that. Nobody wants for nothin’ there, an’ once a man casts anchor there he’s in safe haven for the rest of his days. Oh, I ain’t denyin’ none of its comforts, but I wish the whole concern’d burn to the ground or sink in the bay. I wish the man first thought of it had died before he did.”

In his anger, the blind man clasped his knife till its blade cut his hand and Glory cried out in dismay. But he would not have her bathe the wound and resumed his carving in silence. The little girl waited awhile, once more fitting the small patch into the big hole of Posy Jane’s jacket; then she went on as if nothing had occurred:

“When we go there to live, me an’ you, we’ll have a room as big an’ nice as this an’ you won’t have to do a hand’s turn for yourself. You an’ Bo’sn’ll just set round in rockin’-chairs–I’ve seen ’em in the stores–with welwet cushings on your laps–I mean you two a settin’ on the cushings, a dressed up to beat. Maybe, they’ll let you order the whole crew, yourself, into white ducks for muster at six bells, or somethin’.