The Turn of the Tide Part 27

Margaret smiled.

"Nothing, Patty. I only meant that they hadn't lived in Mrs. Whalen's kitchen and kept all their wealth in a tin cup."

"No, they hain't," said Patty, her eyes on the sparkle of a diamond on the plump white finger of a woman near by.

Margaret and Patty lost no time the next morning in beginning their search for the twins. There was very little, after all, that Patty knew of her sisters since she had last seen them; but that little was treasured and a.n.a.lyzed and carefully weighed. The twins were at the Whalens' when last heard from. The Whalens, therefore, must be the first ones to be looked up; and to the Whalens--as represented by the address in Clarabella's last letter--the searchers proposed immediately to go.

"An' ter think that you was bein' looked fur jest like this once,"

remarked Patty, as they turned the corner of a narrow, dingy street.

"Poor dear mother! how she must have suffered," murmured Margaret, her eyes shrinking from the squalor and misery all about them. "I think perhaps never until now did I realize it--quite," she added softly, her eyes moist with tears.

"Ye see the Whalens ain't whar they was when you left 'em in that nice place you got fur 'em," began Patty, after a moment, consulting the paper in her hand. "They couldn't keep that, 'course; but Clarabella wrote they wa'n't more'n one or two blocks from the Alley."

"The Alley! Oh, how I should love to see the Alley!" cried Margaret.

"And we will, Patty; we'll go there surely before we return home. But first we'll find the Whalens and the twins."

The Whalens and the twins, however, did not prove to be so easily found.

They certainly were not at the address given in Clarabella's letter. The place was occupied by strangers--people who had never heard the name of Whalen. It took two days of time and innumerable questions to find anybody in the neighborhood, in fact, who had heard the name of Whalen; but at last patience and diligence were rewarded, and early on the third morning Margaret and Patty started out to follow up a clew given them by a woman who had known the Whalens and who remembered them well.

Even this, however, promising as it was, did not lead to immediate success, and it was not until the afternoon of the fifth day that Margaret and Patty toiled up four flights of stairs and found a little bent old woman sitting in a green satin-damask chair that neither Margaret nor Patty could fail to recognize.

"Do I remember 'Maggie'? 'Mag of the Alley'?" quavered the old woman excitedly in response to Margaret's questions. "Sure, an' of course I do! She was the tirror of the hull place till she was that turned about that she got ter be a blissed angel straight from Hiven. As if I could iver forgit th' swate face of Mag of the Alley!"

"Oh, but you have," laughed Margaret, "for I myself am she."

"Go 'way wid ye, an' ye ain't that now!" cried the old woman, peering over and through her gla.s.ses, and finally s.n.a.t.c.hing them off altogether.

"But I am. And this is Mrs. Durgin, who used to be Patty Murphy. Don't you remember Patty Murphy?"

Mrs. Whalen fell back in her chair.

"Saints of Hiven, an' is it the both of yez, all growed up ter be sich foine young ladies as ye be? Who'd 'a' thought it!"

"It is, and we've come to you for help," rejoined Margaret. "Do you remember Patty Murphy's sisters, the twins? We are trying to find them, and we thought perhaps you could tell us where they are."

Mrs. Whalen shook her head.

"I knows 'em, but I don't know whar they be now."

"But you did know," interposed Patty. "You must 'a' known four--five years ago, for my little Maggie was jest born when the twins come ter New York an' found ye. They wrote how they was livin' with ye."

The old woman nodded her head.

"I know," she said, "I know. We was livin' over by the Alley. But they didn't stay. My old man he died an' we broke up. Sure, an' I'm nothin'

but a wanderer on the face of the airth iver since, an' I'm grown old before my time, I am."

"But, Mrs. Whalen, just think--just remember," urged Margaret. "Where did they go? Surely you can tell that."

Again Mrs. Whalen shook her head.

"Mike died, an' Tom an' Mary, they got married, an' Jamie, sure an' he got his leg broke an' they tuk him ter the horspital--bad cess to 'em!

An' 'twas all that upsettin' that I didn't know nothin' what did happen.

I seen 'em--then I didn't seen 'em; an' that's all thar was to it. An'

it's the truth I'm a-tellin' yez."

It was with heavy hearts that Margaret and Patty left the little attic room half an hour later. They had no clew now upon which to work, and the accomplishment of their purpose seemed almost impossible.

In the little attic room behind them, however, they left nothing but rejoicing. Margaret's gifts had been liberal, and her promises for the future even more than that. The little bent old woman could look straight ahead now to days when there would be no bare cupboards and empty coal scuttles to fill her soul with apprehension, and her body with discomfort.

Back to the hotel went Margaret and Patty for a much-needed night's rest, hoping that daylight and the morning sun would urge them to new efforts, and give them fresh courage, in spite of the unpromising outlook. Nor were their hopes unfulfilled. The morning sun did bring fresh courage; and, determined to make a fresh start, they turned their steps to the Alley.

The Alley never forgot that visit, nor the days that immediately followed it. There were men and women who remembered Mag of the Alley and Patty Murphy; but there were more who did not. There were none, however, that did not know who they were before the week was out, and that had not heard the story of Margaret's own childhood's experience in that same Alley years before.

As for the Alley--it did not know itself. It had heard, to be sure, of Christmas. It had even experienced it, in a way, with tickets for a Salvation Army tree or dinner. But all this occurred in the winter when it was cold and snowy; and it was spring now. It was not Christmas, of course; and yet--

The entire Alley from one end to the other was flooded with good things to eat, and with innumerable things to wear. There was not a child that did not boast a new toy, nor a sick room that did not display fruit and flowers. Even the cats and the dogs stopped their fighting, and lay full-stomached and content in the sun. No wonder the Alley rubbed its eyes and failed to recognize its own face!

The Alley received, but did not give. Nowhere was there a trace of the twins; and after a two weeks' search, and a fruitless following of clews that were no clews at all, even Margaret was forced sorrowfully to acknowledge defeat.

On the evening before the day they had set to go home, Patty timidly said:

"I hadn't oughter ask it, after all you've done; but do ye s'pose--could we mebbe jest--jest go ter Mont-Lawn fur a minute, jest ter look at it?"

"Mont-Lawn?"

"Yes. We was so happy thar, once," went on Patty, earnestly. "You an' me an' the twins. I hain't never forgot it, nor what they learnt me thar.

All the good thar was in me till you come was from them. I thought mebbe if I could jest see it once 'twould make it easier 'bout the other--that we can't find the twins ye know."

"See it? Of course we'll see it," cried Margaret. "I should love to go there myself. You know I owe it--everything, too."

It was not for home, therefore, that Margaret and Patty left New York the next morning, but for Mont-Lawn. The trip to Tarrytown and across the Hudson was soon over, as was the short drive in the fresh morning air. Almost before the two travelers realized where they were, the beautiful buildings and grounds of Mont-Lawn appeared before their eyes.

Margaret had only to tell that they, too, had once been happy little guests in the years gone by, to make their welcome a doubly cordial one; and it was not long before they were wandering about the place with eyes and ears alert for familiar sights and sounds.

In the big pavilion where their own hungry little stomachs had been filled, were now numerous other little stomachs experiencing the same delight; and in the long dormitories where their own tired little bodies had rested were the same long rows of little white beds waiting for other weary little limbs and heads. Margaret's eyes grew moist here as she thought of that dear mother who years before had placed over just such a little bed the pictured face of her lost little girl, and of how that same little girl had seen it and had thus found the dear mother arms waiting for her.

It was just as Margaret and Patty turned to leave the grounds that they saw a young woman not twenty feet away, leading two small children.

Patty gave a sudden cry. The next moment she bounded forward and caught the young woman by the shoulders.

"Clarabella, Clarabella--I jest know you're Clarabella Murphy!"

It was a joyous half-hour then, indeed--a half-hour of tears, laughter, questions, and e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns. At the end of it Margaret and Patty hurried away with a bit of paper on which was the address of a certain city missionary.

All the way back to New York they talked it over--the story of the twins'

life during all those years; of how after months of hards.h.i.+p, they had found the good city missionary, and of how she had helped them, and they had helped her, until now Clarabella had gone to Mont-Lawn as one of the caretakers for the summer, and Arabella had remained behind at the missionary's home to help what she could in the missionary's daily work.

"And we'll go now and see Arabella!" cried Patty, as they stepped from the train at New York. "An' ain't it jest wonderful--wonderful ter think that we are a-goin' ter see Arabella!"