Part 12 (1/2)

cried Nahum--”before I'd touch a dollar of her money or anything that was bought with her money, her money or any other rich person's. I want what I earn. I don't want a gift with a curse on it. Let her keep her fine things. She and her kind are responsible for all the misery of the poor on the face of the earth.”

”Seems to me you're reasonin' in a circle, Nahum,” Andrew said, good-humoredly.

”Look here, Andrew, if you're on the side of the rich, why don't you say so?” cried Eva.

”He ain't,” returned f.a.n.n.y--”you know better, Eva Loud.”

”No, I ain't,” declared Andrew. ”You all of you know I'm with the cla.s.s I belong to; I ain't a toady to no rich folks; I don't think no more of 'em than you do, and I don't want any favors of 'em--all I want is pay for my honest work, and that's an even swap, and I ain't beholden, but I want to look at things fair and square. I don't want to be carried away because I'm out of work, though, G.o.d knows, it's hard enough.”

”I don't know what's goin' to become of us,” said Joseph Atkins--then he coughed.

”I don't,” Jim Tenny said, bitterly.

”And G.o.d knows I don't,” cried Eva, and she sat down in the nearest chair, flung up her hands before her face, and wept.

Then f.a.n.n.y spoke to Ellen, who had been sitting very still and attentive, her eyes growing larger, her cheeks redder with excitement. f.a.n.n.y had often glanced uneasily at her, and wished to send her to bed, but she was in the habit of warming Ellen's little chamber at the head of the stairs by leaving open the sitting-room door for a while before she went to it, and she was afraid of cooling the room too much for Joseph Atkins, and had not ventured to interrupt the conversation. Now, seeing the child's fevered face, she made up her mind. ”Come, Ellen, it's your bed-time,” she said, and Ellen rose reluctantly, and, kissing her father, she went to her aunt Eva, who caught at her convulsively and kissed her, and sobbed against her cheek. ”Oh, oh!” she wailed, ”you precious little thing, you precious little thing, I don't know what's goin' to become of us all.”

”Don't, Eva,” said f.a.n.n.y, sharply; ”can't you see she's all wrought up? She hadn't ought to have heard all this talk.”

Andrew looked anxiously at his wife, rose, and caught up Ellen in his arms with a hug of fervent and protective love. ”Don't you worry, father's darlin',” he whispered. ”Don't you worry about anythin' you have heard. Father will always have enough to take care of you with.”

Jim Tenny, when Andrew set the child down, caught her up again with a sounding kiss. ”Don't you let your big ears ache, you little pitcher,” said he, with a gay laugh. ”Little doll-babies like you haven't anythin' to worry about if Lloyd's shut down every day in the year.”

”They're the very ones whom it concerns,” said Nahum Beals, when Ellen and her mother had gone up-stairs.

”Well, I wouldn't have had that little nervous thing hear all this, if I'd thought,” Andrew said, anxiously.

Joseph Atkins, whom f.a.n.n.y had stationed in a sheltered corner near the stove when she opened the door, peered around at Andrew.

”Seems as if she was too young to get much sense of it,” he remarked. ”My Maria, that's her age, wouldn't.”

”Ellen hears everything and makes her own sense of it,” said Andrew, ”and the Lord only knows what she's made of this. I hope she won't fret over it.”

”I wish my tongue had been cut off before I said anything before her,” cried Eva. ”I know just what that child is. She'll find out what a hard world she's in soon enough, anyway, and I don't want to be the one to open her eyes ahead of time.”

Ellen went to bed quietly, and her mother did not think she had paid much attention to what had been going on, and said so when she went down-stairs after Ellen had been kissed and tucked in bed and the lamp put out. ”I guess she didn't mind much about it, after all,”

she said to Andrew. ”I guess the room was pretty warm, and that was what made her cheeks so red.”

But Ellen, after her mother left her, turned her little head towards the wall and wept softly, lest some one hear her, but none the less bitterly that she had no right conception of the cause of her grief.

There was over her childish soul the awful shadow of the labor and poverty of the world. She knew naught of the substance behind the shadow, but the darkness terrified her all the more, and she cried and cried as if her heart would break. Then she, with a sudden resolution, born she could not have told of what strange understanding and misunderstanding of what she had heard that evening, slipped out of bed, groped about until she found her cherished doll, sitting in her little chair in the corner. She was accustomed to take the doll to bed with her, and had undressed her for that purpose early in the evening, but she had climbed into bed and left her sitting in the corner.

”Don't you want your dolly?” her mother had asked.

”No, ma'am; I guess I don't want her to-night,” Ellen had replied, with a little break in her voice. Now, when she reached the doll, she gathered her up in her little arms, and groped her way with her into the closet. She hugged the doll, and kissed her wildly, then she shook her. ”You have been naughty,” she whispered--”yes, you have, dreadful naughty. No, don't you talk to me; you have been naughty. What right had you to be livin' with rich folks, and wearin' such fine things, when other children don't have anything.

What right had that little boy that was your mother before I was, and that rich lady that gave you to me? They had ought to be put in the closet, too. G.o.d had ought to put them all in the closet, the way I'm goin' to put you. Don't you say a word; you needn't cry; you've been dreadful naughty.”

Ellen set the doll, face to the wall, in the corner of the closet, and left her there. Then she crept back into bed, and lay there crying over her precious baby s.h.i.+vering in her thin night-gown all alone in the dark closet. But she was firm in keeping her there, since, with that strange, involuntary grasp of symbolism which has always been maintained by the baby-fingers of humanity for the satisfying of needs beyond resources and the solving of problems outside knowledge, she had a conviction that she was, in such fas.h.i.+on, righting wrong and punis.h.i.+ng evil. But she wept over the poor doll until she fell asleep.