Part 40 (2/2)

”It was so much better for her that Uncle t.i.tus had taken her home.”

With these last words Mrs. Ledwith rea.s.sured herself and cheered her child.

Perhaps it would have been the same--it came into Desire's head, that would conceive strange things--if the angels had taken her.

Mrs. Ledwith went to New York; she stayed a few days with Mrs.

Macmichael, who wanted her to buy lace for her in Brussels and Bohemian gla.s.s in Prague; then a few days more with her cousin, Geraldine Raxley; and then the _City of Antwerp_ sailed.

XX.

NEIGHBORS AND NEXT OF KIN.

”I'll tell you what to do with them, Luclarion,” said Hazel briskly.

”Teach them to play.”

”Music! Pianners!” exclaimed Luclarion, dismayed.

”No. Games. Teach them to have good times. That was the first thing ever we learnt, wasn't it, Dine? And we never could have got along without it.”

”It takes _you_!” said Luclarion, looking at Hazel with delighted admiration.

”Does it? Well I don't know but it does. May I go, mother?

Luclarion, haven't you got a great big empty room up at the top of the house?”

Luclarion had.

”That's just what it's for, then. Couldn't Mr. Gallilee put up a swing? And a 'flying circle' in the middle? You see they can't go out on the roofs; so they must have something else that will seem kind of flighty. And _I'll_ tell you how they'll learn their letters. Sulie and I will paint 'em; great big ones, all colors; and hang 'em up with ribbons, and every child that learns one, so as to know it everywhere, shall take it down and carry it home. Then we will have marbles for numbers; and they shall play addition games, and multiplication games, and get the sums for prizes; the ones that get to the head, you know. Why, you don't understand _objects_, Luclarion!”

Luclarion had been telling them of the wild little folk of Neighbor Street, and worse, of Arctic Street. She wanted to do something with them. She had tried to get them in with gingerbread and popcorn; they came in fast enough for those; but they would not stay. They were digging in the gutters and calling names; learning the foul language of the places into which they were born; chasing and hiding in alley-ways; filching, if they could, from shops; going off begging with lies on their lips. It was terrible to see the springs from which the life of the city depths was fed.

”If you could stop it _there_!” Luclarion said, and said with reason.

”Will you let me go?” asked Hazel of her mother, in good earnest.

”'Twon't hurt her,” put in Luclarion. ”Nothing's catching that you haven't got the seeds of in your own const.i.tution. And so the catching will be the other way.”

The seeds of good,--to catch good; that was what Luclarion Grapp believed in, in those dirty little souls,--no, those clean little _souls_, overlaid with all outward mire and filth of body, clothing, speech, and atmosphere, for a mile about; through which they could no more grope and penetrate, to reach their own that was hidden from them in the clearer life beyond, than we can grope and reach to other stars.

”I will get Desire,” quoth Hazel, inspired as she always was, both ways.

Running in at the house in Greenley Street the next Thursday, she ran against Uncle t.i.tus coming out.

”What now?” he demanded.

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