Part 32 (1/2)

”Me and Sim looked at each other. 'Which?' says I. 'Mike O' who?' says Simeon.

”'Aw, don't you know him?' she begs. 'DON'T you know him? Sure I hoped you might. If you'd only tell me where he is I'd git on me knees and pray for you. O Mike, Mike! why did you leave me like this? What'll become of me?'

”And she walks off down the hall, coverin' her face with her hands and cryin' as if her heart was broke.

”'There! there!' says Simeon, runnin' after her, all shook up. He's a kind-hearted man--especially to nice-lookin' females. 'Don't act so,' he says. 'Be a good girl. Come right back into the settin' room and tell me all about it. Me and Cap'n Baker ain't got nerves, and we ain't rich, neither. You can talk to us. Come, come!'

”She didn't know how to act, seemingly. She was like a dog that's been kicked so often he's suspicious of a pat on the head. And she was cryin'

and sobbin' so, and askin' our pardon for doin' it, that it took a good while to get at the real yarn. But we did get it, after a spell.

”It seems that the girl--her whole name was Margaret Sullivan--had been in this country but a month or so, havin' come from Ireland in a steamboat to meet the feller who'd kept comp'ny with her over there. His name was Michael O'Shaughnessy, and he'd been in America for four years or more, livin' with a cousin in Long Island City. And he'd got a good job at last, and he sent for her to come on and be married to him.

And when she landed 'twas the cousin that met her. Mike had drawn a five-thousand-dollar prize in the Mexican lottery a week afore, and hadn't been seen sence.

”So poor Margaret goes to the cousin's to stay. And she found them poor as Job's pet chicken, and havin' hardly grub enough aboard to feed the dozen or so little cousins, let alone free boarders like her. And so, havin' no money, she goes out one day to an intelligence office where they deal in help, and puts in a blank askin' for a job as servant girl.

'Twas a swell place, where bigbugs done their tradin', and there she runs into Cousin Harriet, who was a chronic customer, always out of servants, owin' to the complications of Archibald and nerves. And Harriet hires her, because she was pretty and would work for a shavin'

more'n nothin', and carts her right off to Connecticut. And when Margaret sets out to write for her trunk, and to tell where she is, she finds she's lost the cousin's address, and can't remember whether it's Umpty-eighth Street or Tin Can Avenue.

”'And, oh,' says she, 'what SHALL I do? The mistress is that hard to please, and the child is that wicked till I want to die. And I have no money and no friends. O Mike! Mike!' she says. 'If you only knew you'd come to me. For it's a good heart he has, although the five thousand dollars carried away his head,' says she.

”I don't believe I ever wanted to make a feller's acquaintance more than I done that O'Shaughnessy man's. The mean blackguard, to leave his girl that way. And 'twas easy to see what she'd been through with Cousin Harriet and that brat. We tried to comfort her all we could; promised to have a hunt through Long Island and the directory, and to help get her another place when she got back from the South, and so on. But 'twas kind of unsatisfactory. 'Twas her Mike she wanted.

”'I told the Father about it at the church up there,' she says, 'and he wrote, but the letters was lost, I guess. And I thought if I might see a priest here in New York he might help me. But the mistress is to go at noon to-morrer, and I'll have no time. What SHALL I do?' says she, and commenced to cry again.

”Then I had an idea. 'Priest?' says I. 'There's a fine big church, with a cross on the ridgepole of it, not five minutes' walk from this house.

I see it as we was comin' up. Why don't you run down there this minute?'

I says.

”No, she didn't want to leave Archibald. Suppose he should wake up.

”'All right,' says I. 'Then I'll go myself. And I'll fetch a priest up here if I have to tote him on my back, like the feller does the codfish in the advertisin' picture.'

”I didn't have to tote him. He lived in a mighty fine house, hitched onto the church, and there was half a dozen a.s.sistant parsons to help him do his preachin'. But he was big and fat and gray-haired and as jolly and as kind-hearted a feller as you'd want to meet. He said he'd come right along; and he done it.

”Phinney opened the door for us. 'What's the row?' says I, lookin' at his face.

”'Row?' he snorts; 'there's row enough for six. That da--excuse me, mister--that cussed Archibald has woke up.'

”He had; there wa'n't no doubt about it. And he was raisin' hob, too.

The candy, mixed up with the dinner, had put his works in line with his disposition, and he was poundin' and yellin' upstairs enough to wake the dead. Margaret leaned over the bal.u.s.ters.

”'Is it the Father?' she says. 'Oh, dear! what'll I do?'

”'Send some of the other servants to the boy,' says the priest, 'and come down yourself.'

”Simeon, lookin' kind of foolish, explained what had become of the other servants. Father McGrath--that was his name--laughed and shook all over.

”'Very well,' says he. 'Then bring the young man down. Perhaps he'll be quiet here.'