The Little Red Chimney. Mary Finley Leonard
position and strolled away. On the Y.M.C.A. corner business had waked up.
For some time the Candy Wagon continued to reap a harvest from the rush of High School boys and younger children. Morning became afternoon, the clouds which the east wind had been industriously beating up gathered in force, and a fine rain began to fall. The throng on the street perceptibly lessened; the Candy Man had leisure once more to look about him.
A penetrating mist was veiling everything; the stone church, the seminary buildings, the tall apartment houses, the few old residences not yet crowded out, the drug store, the confectionery—all were softly blurred. The asphalt became a grey lake in which all the colour and movement of the busy street was reflected, and upon whose bosom the Candy Wagon seemed afloat. As the Candy Man watched, gleams of light presently began to pierce the mist, from a hundred windows, from passing street cars and cabs, from darting machines now transformed into strange, double-eyed demons. It was a scene of enchantment, and with pleasure he felt himself part of it, as in his turn he lit up his wagon.
The traffic officer, whose shrill whistle sounded continually above the clang of the trolley cars and the hoarse screams of impatient machines, probably viewed the situation differently. Given slippery streets, intersecting car lines, an increasing throng of vehicles and pedestrians, with a fog growing denser each moment, and the utmost vigilance is often helpless to avert an accident. So it was now.
The Candy Man did not actually see the occurrence, but later it developed that an automobile, in attempting to turn the corner, skidded, grazing the front of a car which had stopped to discharge some passengers, then crashing into a telegraph pole on the opposite side of the street. What he did see was the frightened rush of the crowd to the sidewalk, and in the rush, a girl, just stepping from the car, caught and carried forward and jostled in such a manner that she lost her footing and fell almost beneath the wheels of the Candy Wagon, and dangerously near the hoofs of a huge draught horse, brought by its driver to a halt in the nick of time.
The Candy Man was out and at her side in an instant, assisting her to rise. The panic swept past them, leaving only a long-legged child in a red tam, and a sad-faced elderly man in its wake. The Candy Man had seen all three before. The wearer of the red tam was one of the apartment-house children, the sad man was popularly known to the neighbourhood as the Miser, and the girl, to whose assistance he had sprung—well, he had seen her on two previous occasions.
As she stood in some bewilderment looking ruefully at the mud on her gloves and skirt, the merest glance showed her to be the sort of girl any one might have been glad to help.
"Thank you, I am not hurt—only rather shaken," she said in answer to the Candy Man.
"Here's your bag," announced the long-legged child, fishing it out of the soggy mass of leaves beneath the wagon. "And you need not worry about your skirt. Take it to Bauer's just round the corner; they'll clean it," she added.
The owner of the bag received it and the accompanying advice with an adorable smile in which there was merriment as well as appreciation. The Miser plucked the Candy Man by the sleeve and asked if the young lady did not wish a cab.
She answered for herself. "Thank you, no; I am quite all right—only muddy. But was it a bad accident? What happened?"
The Miser crossed the street where the crowd had gathered, to investigate, and returning reported the chauffeur probably done for. While he was gone the conductor of the street car appeared in quest of the names and addresses of everybody within a radius of ten blocks. In this way the Candy Man learned that her name was Bentley. She gave it reluctantly, as persons do on such occasions, and he failed to catch her street and number.
"I'm very sorry! I suppose there is nothing one can do?" she exclaimed, apropos of the chauffeur, and the next the Candy Man knew she was walking away in the mist hand in hand with the long-legged child.
"An unusually charming face," the Miser remarked, raising his umbrella.
To the sober mind "unusually charming" would seem a not unworthy compliment, but the Candy Man, as he resumed his place in the wagon, smiled scornfully at what he was pleased to consider its grotesque inadequacy. If he had anything better to offer, the Miser did not stay to hear it, but with a courteous "good evening" disappeared in his turn in the mist. An ambulance carried away the injured man, the crowd dispersed; the remains of the machine were towed away to a near-by garage. Night fell; the throng grew less, the rain gathered courage and became a downpour. There would be little doing in the way of business to-night.
As he made ready for early closing the Candy Man fell to thinking of the girl whose name was Bentley. Not that the name interested him save as a means of further identification. It was a phrase used by the Reporter this morning that occurred to him now as peculiarly applicable to her. The Girl of All Others! He rolled it as a sweet morsel under his tongue, undisturbed by the reflection that such descriptive titles are at present overworked—in dreams one has no need to be original.
Neither did it strike him as incongruous that he should have seen her first in the grocery kept by Mr. Simms, who catered to the needs of such as got their own breakfasts, and whose boiled ham was becoming famous, because it was really done. He went back to the experience, dwelling with pleasure upon each detail of it, even his annoyance at the grocer's daughter, who exchanged crochet patterns with the tailor's wife, after the manner of a French exercise, and ignored him. It was early and business had not yet begun on the Y.M.C.A. corner; still he could not wait forever. The grocer himself, who was attending to the wants of a lean and hungry-looking student, had just handed his rolls and smoked sausage across the counter, with a cheery "Breakfast is ready, ring the bell," when the door opened and the Girl of All Others came in.
She was tallish, but not very tall, and somewhat slight. She wore a grey suit—the same which had suffered this afternoon from contact with the street, and a soft felt hat of the same colour jammed down anyhow on her bright hair and pinned with a pinkish quill—or so it looked. The face beneath the bright hair was—— But at this point in his recollections the Candy Man all but lost himself in a maze of adjectives and adverbs. We know, at least, how the long-legged child ran to help, and finally went off hand in hand with her, and what the Miser said of her, and after all the best the Candy Man could do was to go back to the Reporter's phrase.
He had withdrawn a little behind a stack of breakfast foods where he could watch her, wondering that the clerks did not drop their several customers without ceremony and fly to do her bidding. She stood beside the counter and made overtures to a large Maltese cat who reposed there in solemn majesty. Beside the Maltese rose a pyramid of canned goods, and a placard announced, "Of interest to light house keepers." Upon this her eyes rested in evident surprise. "I didn't know there were any lighthouses in this part of the country," she said half aloud.
The Maltese laid a protesting paw upon her arm. It was not, however, the absurdity of her remark, but the cessation of her caresses he protested against. At the same moment her eyes met those of the Candy Man, across the stack of breakfast foods. His were laughing, and hers were instantly withdrawn. He saw her colour mounting as she exclaimed, addressing the cat, "How perfectly idiotic!"
He longed to assure her it was a perfectly natural mistake, the placard being but an amateurish affair; but he lacked the courage.
And then the grocer, having disposed of another customer, advanced to serve her, and the grocer's daughter, it seemed, was also at leisure; and though he would have preferred to watch the Girl of All Others doing the family marketing in a most competent manner, a thoughtful finger upon her lip, the Candy Man was forced to attend to his own business. In selecting a basket of grapes and ordering them sent to St. Mary's Hospital, he presently lost sight of her.
Once since then she had passed his corner on her way up the street. That was all until to-night. It seemed probable that she lived in the neighbourhood. Perhaps the Reporter would know.
Just here the recollection that he was