Real Folks Part 43

"Have you had a good time?" she asked when the last one was eaten, and she led the way to go down-stairs.

"Good time! That ain't nothin'! I've had a reg'lar bust! I'm comin'

agin'; it's bully. Now I must get my loaf and my shoes, and go along back and take a lickin'."

That was the way Hazel caught her first child.

She made her tell her name,--Ann Fazackerley,--and promise to come on Sat.u.r.day afternoon, and bring two more girls with her.

"We'll have a party," said Hazel, "and play Puss in the Corner. But you must get leave," she added. "Ask your mother. I don't want you to be punished when you go home."

"Lor! you're green! I ain't got no mother. An' I always hooks jack.

I'm licked reg'lar when I gets back, anyway. There's half a dozen of 'em. When 'tain't one, it's another. That's Jane Goffey's bread; she's been a swearin' after it this hour, you bet. But I'll come,--see if I don't!"

Hazel drew a hard breath as she let the girl go. Back to her crowded cellar, her Jane Goffeys, the swearings, and the lickings. What was one hour at a time, once or twice a week, to do against all this?

But she remembered the clean little round in her face, out of which eyes and mouth looked merrily, while she talked rough slang; the same fun and daring,--nothing worse,--were in this child's face, that might be in another's saying prettier words. How could she help her words, hearing nothing but devil's Dutch around her all the time? Children do not make the language they are born into. And the face that could be simply merry, telling such a tale as that,--what sort of bright little immortality must it be the outlook of?

Hazel meant to try her hour.

This is one of my last chapters. I can only tell you now they began,--these real folks,--the work their real living led them up to. Perhaps some other time we may follow it on. If I were to tell you now a finished story of it, I should tell a story ahead of the world.

I can show you what six weeks brought it to. I can show you them fairly launched in what may grow to a beautiful private charity,--an "Insecution,"--a broad social scheme,--a millennium; at any rate, a life work, change and branch as it may, for these girls who have found out, in their girlhood, that there is genuine living, not mere "playing pretend," to be done in the world. But you cannot, in little books of three hundred pages, see things through. I never expected or promised to do that. The threescore years and ten themselves, do not do it.

It turned into regular Wednesday and Sat.u.r.day afternoons. Three girls at first, then six, then less again,--sometimes only one or two; until they gradually came up to and settled at, an average of nine or ten.

The first Sat.u.r.day they took them as they were. The next time they gave them a stick of candy each, the first thing, then Hazel's fingers were sticky, and she proposed the wash-basin all round, before they went up-stairs. The bright tin bowl was ready in the sink, and a clean round towel hung beside; and with some red and white soap-b.a.l.l.s, they managed to fascinate their dirty little visitors into three clean pairs of hands, and three clean faces as well.

The candy and the was.h.i.+ng grew to be a custom; and in three weeks'

time, watching for a hot day and having it luckily on a Sat.u.r.day, they ventured upon inst.i.tuting a whole bath, in big round tubs, in the back shed-room, where a faucet came in over a wash bench, and a great boiler was set close by.

They began with a foot-paddle, playing pond, and sailing chips at the same time; then Luclarion told them they might have tubs full, and get in all over and duck, if they liked; and children who may hate to be washed, nevertheless are always ready for a duck and a paddle. So Luclarion superintended the bath-room; Diana helped her; and Desire and Hazel tended the shop. Luclarion invented a shower-bath with a dipper and a colander; then the wet, tangled hair had to be combed,--a climax which she had secretly aimed at with a great longing, from the beginning; and doing this, she contrived with carbolic soap and a separate suds, and a bit of sponge, to give the neglected little heads a most salutary dressing.

Sat.u.r.day grew into bath-day; soap-suds suggested bubbles; and the ducking and the bubbling were a frolic altogether.

Then Hazel wished they could be put into clean clothes each time; wouldn't it do, somehow?

But that would cost. Luclarion had come to the limit of her purse; Hazel had no purse, and Desire's was small.

"But you see they've _got_ to have it," said Hazel; and so she went to her mother, and from her straight to Uncle Oldways.

They counted up,--she and Desire, and Diana; two little common suits, of stockings, underclothes, and calico gowns, apiece; somebody to do a was.h.i.+ng once a week, ready for the change; and then--"those horrid shoes!"

"I don't see how you can do it," said Mrs. Ripwinkley. "The things will be taken away from them, and sold. You would have to keep doing, over and over, to no purpose, I am afraid."

"I'll see to that," said Luclarion, facing her "stump." "We'll do for them we can do for; if it ain't ones, it will be tothers. Those that don't keep their things, can't have 'em; and if they're taken away, I won't sell bread to the women they belong to, till they're brought back. Besides, the _was.h.i.+ng_ kind of sorts 'em out, beforehand. 'Taint the worst ones that are willing to come, or to send, for that. You always have to work in at an edge, in anything, and make your way as you go along. It'll regulate. I'm _living_ there right amongst 'em; I've got a clew, and a hold; I can follow things up; I shall have a 'circle;' there's circles everywhere. And in all the wheels there's a moving _spirit_; you ain't got to depend just on yourself. Things work; the Lord sees to it; it's _His_ business as much as yours."

Hazel told Uncle t.i.tus that there were shoes and stockings and gowns wanted down in Neighbor Street; things for ten children; they must have subscriptions. And so she had come to him.

The Ripwinkleys had never given Uncle t.i.tus a Christmas or a birthday present, for fear they should seem to establish a mutual precedent. They had never talked of their plans which involved calculation, before him; they were terribly afraid of just one thing with him, and only that one,--of anything most distantly like what Desire Ledwith called "a Megilp bespeak." But now Hazel went up to him as bold as a lion. She took it for granted he was like other people,--"real folks;" that he would do--what must be done.

"How much will it cost?"

"For clothes and shoes for each child, about eight dollars for three months, we guess," said Hazel. "Mother's going to pay for the was.h.i.+ng!"

"_Guess_? Haven't you calculated?"

"Yes, sir. 'Guess' and 'calculate' mean the same thing in Yankee,"

said Hazel, laughing.

Uncle t.i.tus laughed in and out, in his queer way, with his shoulders going up and down.

Then he turned round, on his swivel chair, to his desk, and wrote a check for one hundred dollars.

"There. See how far you can make that go."

"That's good," said Hazel, heartily, looking at it; "that's splendid!" and never gave him a word of personal thanks. It was a thing for mutual congratulations, rather, it would seem; the "good"

was just what they all wanted, and there it was. Why should anybody in particular be thanked, as if anybody in particular had asked for anything? She did not say this, or think it; she simply did not think about it at all.

And Uncle Oldways--again--liked it.

There! I shall not try, now, to tell you any more; their experiences, their difficulties, their encouragements, would make large material for a much larger book. I want you to know of the idea, and the attempt. If they fail, partly,--if drunken fathers steal the shoes, and the innocent have to forfeit for the guilty,--if the bad words still come to the lips often, though Hazel tells them they are not "nice,"--and beginning at the outside, they are in a fair way of learning the niceness of being nice,--if some children come once or twice, and get dressed up, and then go off and live in the gutters again until the clothes are gone,--are these real failures? There is a bright, pure place down there in Neighbor Street, and twice a week some little children have there a bright, pure time. Will this be lost in the world? In the great Ledger of G.o.d will it always stand unbalanced on the debit side?

If you are afraid it will fail,--will be swallowed up in the great sink of vice and misery, like a single sweet, fresh drop, sweet only while it is falling,--go and do likewise; rain down more; make the work larger, stronger; pour the sweetness in faster, till the wide, grand time of full refres.h.i.+ng shall have come from the presence of the Lord!

Ada Geoffrey went down and helped. Miss Craydocke is going to knit scarlet stockings all winter for them; Mr. Geoffrey has put a regular bath-room in for Luclarion, with half part.i.tions, and three separate tubs; Mrs. Geoffrey has furnished a dormitory, where little homeless ones can be kept to sleep. Luclarion has her hands full, and has taken in a girl to help her, whose board and wages Rachel Froke and Asenath Scherman pay. A thing like that spreads every way; you have only to be among, and one of--Real Folks.

Desire, besides her work in Neighbor Street, has gone into the Normal School. She wants to make herself fit for any teaching; she wants also to know and to become a companion of earnest, working girls.

She told Uncle t.i.tus this, after she had been with him a month, and had thought it over; and Uncle t.i.tus agreed, quite as if it were no real concern of his, but a very proper and un.o.bjectionable plan for her, if she liked it.

One day, though, when Marmaduke Wharne--who had come this fall again to stay his three days, and talk over their business,--sat with him in his study, just where they had sat two years and a little more ago, and Hazel and Desire ran up and down stairs together, in and out upon their busy Wednesday errands,--Marmaduke said to t.i.tus,--

"Afterwards is a long time, friend; but I mistrust you have found the comfort, as well as the providence, of 'next of kin?'"

"Afterwards _is_ a long time," said t.i.tus Oldways, gravely; "but the Lord's line of succession stretches all the way through."

And that same night he had his other old friend, Miss Craydocke, in; and he brought two papers that he had ready, quietly out to be signed, each with four names: "t.i.tus Oldways," by itself, on the one side; on the other,--

"RACHEL FROKE, MARMADUKE WHARNE, KEREN-HAPPUCH CRAYDOCKE."

And one of those two papers--which are no further part of the present story, seeing that good old Uncle t.i.tus is at this moment alive and well, as he has a perfect right, and is heartily welcome to be, whether the story ever comes to a regular winding up or not--was laid safely away in a j.a.panned box in a deep drawer of his study table; and Marmaduke Wharne put the other in his pocket.

He and t.i.tus knew. I myself guess, and perhaps you do; but neither you nor I, nor Rachel, nor Keren-happuch, know for certain; and it is no sort of matter whether we do or not.