A Sunny Little Lass. Raymond Evelyn
minute that ever was, maybe, to the ‘Harbor’ you won’t be blind any more; for true, maybe not. In such a splendid place, with doctors settin’ round doin’ nothin’, an’ hospitals an’ all, likely they’ll put somethin’ in your eyes will make you see again. O grandpa – If!”
The old man listened silently.
“An’ when–when do you think would be the soonest we might go? ’Twon’t cost much to take me an’ you an’ Bo’sn on the boat to Staten Island. I know the way. Onct I went clear down to the ferry where they start from just a purpose to see, an’ we could ’most any time. Will we go ’fore next winter, grandpa? An’ yet I hate, I do hate, to leave this dear Lane. We live so lovely in our hull house an’ the folks’d miss us so an’ we’d miss the folks. Anyway, I should. You wouldn’t, course, havin’ so many other old sailors all around you. An’ – Why, here’s that same man again!”
Even in Elbow Lane, where the shadows lie all day long, other and darker shadows may fall; and such a shade now touched Glory’s shoulder as she pictured in words the charm of that blessed asylum to which the captain and she would one day repair. He had always fixed the time to be “when he got too old and worthless to earn his living.” But that morning she had swiftly reasoned that since he had grown cross–a new thing in her experience–he must also have suddenly become aged and that the day of their departure might be near at hand.
The shadow of the stranger pausing at their door cut short her rhapsody and sent her, the table, and Bo’sn, promptly out of doors, because when any of the sailor’s old cronies called to see him, there wasn’t room in “the littlest house” for all. So, from the narrow sidewalk beyond the door, the child listened to the talk within, not much of it being loud enough for her to hear, and fancied, from grandpa’s short, sharp replies to his guest’s questions, that he was crosser, therefore, more ill, than ever.
Bo’sn, too, sat on his haunches beside her, closely attentive and, at times, uttering a low, protesting growl. Both child and dog had taken a dislike to this unknown, who was so unlike the usual visitors to the Lane.
Glory sometimes wandered as far as Fifth Avenue, with her peanut basket, and now confided to Bo’sn:
“He’s just like them dressed-up folks on th’ avenue, what goes by with their noses in th’ air, same’s if they couldn’t abide the smell o’ goobers, whilst all the time they’re just longing to eat ’em. Big shiny hat, clothes ’most as shiny, canes an’ fixin’s, an’ gloves, doggie; gloves this hot day, when a body just wants to keep their hands under the spigot, to cool ’em.
“An’,” continued Glory, “he ain’t like the rest, Cap’n Gray, an’ Cap’n Wiggins, what makes grandpa laugh till he cries, swoppin’ yarns. This one ’most makes him cry without the laughin’ an’ – Why, Bo’sn, Bo’sn!”
In the midst of her own chatter to the terrier, Glory had overheard a sentence of the “shiny gentleman” which sent her to her feet, and the table, work, and stool into the gutter, while her rosy face paled and her wide mouth opened still more widely. The stranger was saying:
“Of course, they’ll never take in the child. You can go to the ‘Harbor’ to-day, if you will, and you ought. She–oh, there are plenty of Homes and Orphanages where they will give her shelter. She’d be far better off than she is here, in this slum, with only a blind old man to look after her. You come of good stock, Beck, and, with a proper chance, the little girl might make a nice woman. Here–whew, I really can’t endure the stench of this alley any longer. We’ll make it this afternoon, captain. At three o’clock I’ll send a man to take you over, and I’ll get my sister, who knows about such things, to find a place for your grandchild. Eh? I didn’t quite catch your words.”
Grandpa was murmuring something under his breath about: “Slum! I knew it was small but ‘slum’–my little Glory–why, why – ”
Colonel Bonnicastle interrupted without ceremony. He had put himself out to do an old employee a service and was vexed that his efforts were so ungratefully received. However, he was a man who always had his way and intended to do so now; so he remarked, as if the captain had not objected to so sudden a removal, “The man will be here at three precisely. Have whatever traps you value put together ready. You’ll not know yourself in your new quarters. Good-morning.”
With that the visitor turned to depart but Bo’sn darted between his feet, causing him either to step about in a peculiar fashion or crush the dog; and, with equal want of courtesy, Glory pushed him aside to fling herself on grandpa’s neck, and to shriek to the guest, “Go ’way! Go ’way! Don’t you come back to Elbow Lane! I hate you–oh, I do hate you!”
The great man was glad to go, nor did he notice her rudeness. His carriage was waiting in the street outside the alley, and even his sister Laura, who spent her days working to help the poor and who had sent him here, could expect no more of him than he had done. Neither his visit of yesterday nor to-day seemed appreciated by that old captain who had once so faithfully commanded the colonel’s own ship.
Miss Laura had chanced to hear of the seaman’s blindness and poverty, and promptly tried to help him by having him placed in “Sailors’ Snug Harbor,” of which her brother was a trustee. Nobody had told her about Glory, nor that the “Harbor” was the subject oftenest discussed within the “littlest house.”
But other old sailors had told the captain of it, and pictured its delights, and once a crony had even taken him to visit it. After that, to him and his grandchild, the asylum had seemed like a wonderful fairyland where life was one happy holiday. When at their work, they talked of this safe “Harbor” and the little girl’s imagination endowed the place with marvelous beauties. In all their dreaming they had still been together, without thought of possible separation, till Colonel Bonnicastle’s sentence fell with a shock upon their ears, “They will never take in the child.”
CHAPTER II
After the Colonel’s Visit
“Don’t you go an’ leave me, grandpa. Grandpa, don’t you dast to go!” wailed Glory, her arms clasped so tightly about the captain’s neck that they choked him. When he loosened them, he drew her to his knee and laid her curly head against his cheek, answering, in a broken voice, “Leave you, deary? Not while I live. Not while you will stay with the old blind man, who can’t even see to what sort of a home he has brought his pet.”
“Why, to the nicest home ever was. Can’t be a nicer nowhere, not any single where. Not even on that big avenue where such shiny people as him live. Why, we’ve got a hull house to ourselves, haven’t we?”
“Child, stop. Tell me exact, as you never told before. Is Elbow Lane a ‘slum’?”
“‘Deed I don’t know, ’cause I never heard tell of a ‘slum’ ’fore. It’s the cutest little street ever was. Why, you can ’most reach acrost from one side to the other. Me an’ Billy has often tried. It’s got the loveliest crook in it, right here where we be; an’ one side runs out one way an’ t’other toward the river. Why, grandpa, Posy Jane says onct–onct, ’fore anybody here was livin’, the Lane was a cow-path an’ the cows was drove down it to the river to drink. Maybe she’s lyin’. ’Seems if she must be, ’cause now there ain’t no cows nor nothin’ but milk-carts an’ cans in corner stores, an’ buildin’s where onct she says was grass–grass, grandpa, do you hear?”
“Yes, I hear, mate. But the folks, the neighbors. A slum, deary, I guess a slum is only where wicked people live. I don’t know, really, for we had no such places on the broad high sea. Are our folks in the Lane wicked, daughter?”
“Grandpa!” she cried, indignantly. “When there’s such a good, good woman, Jane’s sister Meg-Laundress, what washes for us just ’cause I mend her things. An’ tailor-Jake who showed me to do a buttonhole an’ him all doubled up with coughin’; an’ Billy Buttons who gives us a paper sometimes, only neither of us can read it; an’ Nick, the parson, who helps me sort my goobers; an’ Posy Jane, that’s a kind o’ mother to everybody goin’. Don’t