In Wild Rose Time. Douglas Amanda M.
away. And he said, ‘I have a heaven for all those who suffer, all those whose parents beat or maim or starve them. I will take them to my beautiful home, and they shall never suffer any more. They shall roam in lovely gardens and gather flowers, and sing and love and obey me, and be happy.’”
“O Dil, will you mind if I love this Lord Jesus? For he is so good I can’t help it. I shall always love you best. I will tell him how it was – that you loved me when there wasn’t any one else, and mammy wanted me to die ’cause I was so much trouble. An’, Dil, don’t you b’lieve he will say that was jest the kind of love he preached about, and ’cause you did it you must have a place right by me?”
The tears came to John Travis’s eyes. He wondered if the Master had ever been rewarded with a more exquisite joy.
Dil squeezed her hand.
“Oh,” cried Bess, “when we start to go to heaven in the spring, won’t you go along? We’d like to have you so. Don’t they have grown-up men in heaven? You’re so nice an’ clean an’ different from most folks, I sh’d think you’d like to go.”
“Yes, I will,” in the tone of one who gives a sacred promise. When he came to think of it, very few people had asked him to go to heaven.
“Seems too good to be true,” said Dil sententiously. “Good things mos’ly ain’t true. An’ it all seems so strange – ”
“We’ll talk it over while we are going to heaven,” he said with grave sweetness, glancing at his watch and amazed at the lateness. “I will bring you Christiana, and when you have read that I can explain many things to you. I shall have to go now. Tell me how to find Barker’s Court when I come back.”
“You won’t like it,” Dil exclaimed sharply. “It’s dirty an’ horrid, full of women washing clo’es, an’ drunken people, an’ swearin’. Oh, let me bring Bess over here. And the picture – ”
“You shall have that. But I can’t tell just when I shall be able to come. Never fear but I’ll find you. Here is something because you and Bess posed.”
It was a five-dollar note. Dil drew back in dismay.
“O mister, I couldn’t take it. I’m afeard some one’d think I stole it – so much money!”
He changed the bill into smaller ones. Then he slipped it into the bag of fruit.
“This is Bess’s bank,” he said, with a friendly, trusty smile. “When she wants any delicacies, you must spend the money for them. It is Bess’s secret, and you must not tell any one.”
He thrust the bag at the foot of the shabby carriage, and then pressed both hands.
“You’re so lovely, so splendid,” sighed Bess.
He picked up three withered buds – had some hands very dear to him held them?
“Good-by. I shall find Barker’s Court and you, never fear.” Then he plunged into the crowd, not daring to look back. What a week it had been, beginning with sorrow and loss, and – had he found the Master? Had these strange, brave little heathens, who knew not God, opened his eyes and his heart to that better way?
IV – THE DELIGHTS OF WEALTH
The children sat there in a maze of bewilderment. They knew nothing of fairy godmothers, or Santa Claus, or the dainty myths of childhood. Four years Bess had been in prison, twice four years Dilsey Quinn had been a bound slave. Not that Mrs. Quinn had been hard above all mothers. In the next house there were two little girls who sat and sewed from daylight to dark, and had no Saturday even, the age of Owen and Bess. Barker’s Court was an industrious place for children, at least. If they could have played when the men were sleeping off orgies, or the women gossiping, they would have had many a respite from toil.
This wonderful thing that had befallen Bess and Dil was so beyond any event that had ever happened before, and their imaginations were so limited, they could never have dreamed such a romance. John Travis had disappeared in the throng. But there was the bag of fruit, and the sweet knowledge that nothing could take away.
The roar of vehicles had grown less. Pedestrians were thinning out, for supper-time was drawing nigh. The shadows were lengthening; the wind had a certain grateful coolness. Still they sat as in a trance. The “cop” had received a “tip” to keep a kindly watch over them, but he would have done it without any reward.
“Dil!” The soft voice broke the hush, for it was as if they two were alone in the crowd.
The little fingers closed over the firm brown ones. They looked at each other for some moments with grave, wondering eyes. Then Dil rose soberly, settled Bess anew, and pushed the wagon along. The paper bag lay in plain sight, but no one molested it.
Dil began to come back to her narrow, practical world. Heaven, as John Travis had put it, was something for Bess rather than herself. It was too great a feast to sit down to all at once. And Dil was not much used to feasting, even playing at it with bits of broken crockery and make-believes, as so many children do. They left the enchanted country behind them, and returned to more familiar sights and sounds. Still, the delicious fragrance of the pears, the flavor of the peaches, the sweetness of the candy, was so much beyond the treats over on the East Side.
“Bess,” she said, stopping at a show window on the avenue, “jes’ look at the caps an’ things. Do you s’pose it’s real money in the bag? For it’s yours, an’ you do need a new cap. That old one’ll hardly hold together. If some one doesn’t give mammy a pile of things pritty soon, you’ll have to go naked.”
They both laughed. “O Dil! wasn’t it splendid?” and Bess turned her head around, as if she might still see their beneficent friend.
“Let me feel in my bank,” she said.
Dil handed her the bag, full of fruity fragrance. She drew out a bill with a fearful little gesture.
“They’re good, all of ’em,” she said reassuringly. “He wouldn’t give us bad money to get us into trouble. An’ we never have any real money to spend.”
Still Dil eyed the bill doubtfully.
“An’ flannils, an’ O Dil, couldn’t you buy one new dress? I’d like to have a spandy new one for onct.”
“I s’pose mother wouldn’t know when onct it was washed. An’ I might crumple down the bows on the cap. O Bess, you’d look so sweet! I wisht you’d had a new cap to-day. He said ’twas your money. An’ I was most afear’d it was like thim things Patsey told about, when you raised the han’kercher they wasn’t there!”
“But they’re here.” She laughed with soft exultation. “Le’s go in, Dil. I never went shoppin’ in my life! You could hide the things away from mammy. There’d be no use givin’ it to her. She’s got enough for gin an’ to go to Cunny Island an’ MacBride’s. But jinky! wouldn’t she crack our skulls if she did know it. O Dil, let’s never, never tell.”
“She couldn’t make me tell if she killed me.”
“Le’s go in. Can you carry me?”
She drew the wagon up by the corner of the show-window, and, taking Bess in her arms, entered the store and seated her on a stool, standing so she could brace the weak little back. Of the few dreams that had found lodgment in Dil’s prosaic brain, was this of indulging her motherly, womanly instinct, shopping for Bess. She felt dazed to have it come true. Her face flushed, her breath came irregularly, her heart beat with a delicious, half-guilty pleasure.
There was no one else in the store. A pale, tired, but kindly-looking woman came to wait on her. Dil tried on caps with laces and ribbons, and Bess looked so angelic it broke her heart to take them off. But the plain ones were less likely to betray them. Then they looked at dresses and the coveted “flannils,” and one nice soft petticoat, and oh, some new stockings.
A shrewd little shopper was Dil. She counted up every purchase, and laid aside the sum, really surprised at her bargains and the amount she had left. The attendant was very sympathetic,