Part 20 (1/2)

”Sam, have you ever been in the country?”

It was Michael who asked the question. They were sitting in a small dismal room that Michael had found he could afford to rent in a house on the edge of the alley. Not that he had moved there, oh, no! He could not have endured life if all of it that he could call his own had to be spent in that atmosphere. He still kept his little fourth floor back in the dismally respectable street. He had not gone to the place recommended by Endicott, because he found that the difference he would have to pay would make it possible for him to rent this sad little room near the alley; and for his purposes this seemed to him an absolute necessity at present.

The weather was growing too cold for him to meet with his new-old acquaintances of the alley out of doors, and it was little better indoors even if he could have endured the dirt and squalor of those apartments that would have been open to him. Besides, he had a great longing to show them something brighter than their own forlorn homes.

There was a settlement house three or four blocks away, but it had not drawn the dwellers in this particular alley. They were sunken too low, perhaps, or there were so many more hopeful quarters in which to work; and the city was so wide and deep and dark. Michael knew little about the settlement house. He had read of such things. He had looked shyly toward its workers now and then, but as yet knew none of them, though they had heard now and again of the ”Angel-man of the alley,” and were curious to find him out.

But Michael's enterprise was all his own, and his ways of working were his own. He had gone back into the years of his childhood and found out from his inner consciousness what it was he had needed, and now he was going to try to give it to some other little ”kids” who were as forlorn and friendless as he had been. It wasn't much that he could do, but what he could he would do, and more as soon as possible.

And so he had rented this speck of a room, and purified it. He had literally compelled Sam to help him. That compelling was almost a modern miracle, and wrought by radiant smiles, and a firm grip on Sam's shoulder when he told him what he wanted done.

Together they had swept and scrubbed and literally sc.r.a.ped, the dirt from that room.

”I don't see what you're making sech a darned fuss about dirt fer!”

grumbled Sam as he arose from his knees after scrubbing the floor for the fourth time. ”It's what we're all made of, dey say, an' n.o.buddy'll know de diffrunce.”

”Just see if they won't, Sam,” encouraged Michael as he polished off the door he had been cleaning. ”See there, how nice that looks! You didn't know that paint was gray, did you? It looked brown before, it was so thick with dirt. Now we're ready for paint and paper!”

And so, in an atmosphere of soap and water they had worked night after night till very late; and Sam had actually let a well-planned and promising raid go by because he was so interested in what he was doing and he was ashamed to tell Michael of his engagement.

Sam had never a.s.sisted at the papering of a room before; in fact, it is doubtful if he ever saw a room with clean fresh paper on its walls in all his life, unless in some house he had entered unlawfully. When this one stood arrayed at last in its delicate newness, he stood back and surveyed it in awed silence.

Michael had chosen paper of the color of the suns.h.i.+ne, for the court was dark and the alley was dark and the room was dark. The souls of the people too were dark. They must have light and brightness if he would win them to better things. Besides, the paper was only five cents a roll, the cheapest he could find in the city. Michael had learned at college during vacations how to put it on. He made Sam wash and wash and wash his hands before he was allowed to handle any of the delicate paper.

”De paper'll jest git dirty right away,” grumbled Sam sullenly, albeit he washed his hands, and his eyes glowed as they used to when a child at a rare ”find” in the gutter.

”Wot'll you do when it gits dirty?” demanded Sam belligerently.

”Put on some clean,” said Michael sunnily. ”Besides, we must learn to have clean hands and keep it clean.”

”I wish we had some curtains,” said Michael wistfully. ”They had thin white curtains at college.”

”Are you makin' a college fer we?” asked Sam looking at him sharply.

”Well, in a way, perhaps,” said Michael smiling. ”You know I want you to have all the advantages I had as far as I can get them.”

Sam only whistled and looked perplexed but he was doing more serious thinking than he had ever done in his life before.

And so the two had worked, and planned, and now to-night, the work was about finished.

The walls reflected the yellow of the suns.h.i.+ne, the woodwork was painted white enamel. Michael had, just put on the last gleaming coat.

”We can give it another coat when it looks a little soiled,” he had remarked to Sam, and Sam, frowning, had replied: ”Dey better hev dere han's clean.”

The floor was painted gray. There was no rug. Michael felt its lack and meant to remedy it as soon as possible, but rugs cost money. There was a small coal stove set up and polished till it shone, and a fire was laid ready to start. They had not needed it while they were working hard. The furniture was a wooden, table painted gray with a cover of bright cretonne, two wooden chairs, and three boxes. Michael had collected these furnis.h.i.+ngs carefully and economically, for he had to sacrifice many little comforts that he might get them.

On the walls were two or three good pictures fastened by bra.s.s tacks; and some of the gray moss and pine branches from Michael's own room. In the central wall appeared one of Michael's beloved college pennants. It was understood by all who had yet entered the sacred precincts of the room to be the symbol of what made the difference between them and ”the angel,”

and they looked at it with awe, and mentally crossed themselves in its presence.

At the windows were two lengths of snowy cheese-cloth crudely hemmed by Michael, and tacked up in pleats with bra.s.s-headed tacks. They were tied back with narrow yellow ribbons. This had been the last touch and Sam sat looking thoughtfully at the stiff angular bows when Michael asked the question: