The house consisted of double parlors, so-called, a dining room and kitchen backed by a shed or a laundry, a long, narrow, dark hall, and steep stairs ascending on the alley side. The two front windows and a grudging one in the jog of the back parlor were the only sources of light for those two small parlors, and both rooms were dim and breathless even with the double doors stretched wide. The dining room was brightened only by a single window looking into a neighbor’s backyard whose high fence mostly destroyed the view of even that uninspiring spot. Ernestine sometimes took a nap on the top of this fence while the boys of the neighborhood were gone to school.
The second story of the house had three good rooms and a bath, and a tin roof out over the back kitchen.
The furnishings of the house were ancient and worn and dreary. Nottingham lace curtains at the windows, flanked by gray paper shades with many pinholes winking through them. Ugly old tapestry and Brussels carpeting, oilcloth on the hall, faded ingrain carpets upstairs.
There were a few pieces of fine old mahogany furniture, relics of Aunt Abigail’s bridal days, but the rest were common and ugly. On the walls were cheap colorized prints, a steel engraving of Washington crossing the Delaware, the twin pictures of Wide Awake and Fast Asleep framed in black walnut with carved walnut leaves at the corners. Also there were doilies on the arms and backs of the chairs and sofa. Martha abominated them, but as yet she hadn’t had the courage to remove them. It didn’t seem quite polite to the old aunt and uncle to do so. They represented the handiwork of Aunt Abigail since childhood, done in tidy cotton, and were fearfully and wonderfully made.
So Miss Spicer turned from it all with a sigh of almost disappointment at the pall of dreariness that seemed to be over it and went for solace to her paper.
Outside there was a hum of children’s voices, the high treble of boys’ flutelike changing voices. They were making some kind of a horrid hullabaloo. There was the rattle of a tin pan containing stones, and the loud excited barking of a dog. It was most annoying. She told herself she didn’t like children, and especially boys.
And then as she turned a page of the paper she came on an article on saving boys. “A Plea for the Boys” it was entitled, and Martha’s lip curled. “A Plea for the People Who Have to Endure Boys” she thought it ought to be called. She would like to write it. There wasn’t a bit of sense in letting boys make such a racket in the street. They ought to be complained of. What on earth could they be doing to that poor dog? She was not particularly fond of dogs. At least she had never had anything to do with them, but she didn’t want them tortured, and she couldn’t endure that yelping.
She rose suddenly and put her head out of the window to see what was going on, and found herself the object of attention of a group of boys immediately under her window. As she drew back out of sight she heard one boy say, “Who’s that old party? Ain’t she a new one down here?”
And then the deep growl of the boy next door, which had already become familiar.
“That’s Miss Spicer. She’s the party that owns the house now. The other old ‘uns croaked, you know, and she’s some relation or other. ‘Spice Box’ the kids call her. She’s some tartar all right. I heard her talking to the milkman the other day.”
“Oh boy!” said the first lad delightedly. “Let’s give her a serenade one o’ these nights!”
Martha Spicer sat back in her patchwork rocker and fumed inwardly. What a world this was, in which children dared to talk about a respectable elderly woman that way. To think she was obliged to live here and be subject to such unpleasantness. It was unbearable!
Then she turned back to her paper again and began to read.
If some good women with pleasant homes and nobody but themselves to enjoy them, unless it be a cat or poodle—Miss Spicer cast an apologetic glance at Ernestine—would just try the experiment of cultivating one boy, they would find an ample reward in the joy of doing it. Wouldn’t it be a grand thing to save one boy from becoming a good-for-nothing man, or worse? All they need is a pleasant room, a few cakes or some molasses candy now and then, and a chance to bring their friends with them, and your boys are won. It isn’t necessary to do much to amuse them, they’ll do that themselves. What they want is a decent place to hang around in. You may say their own homes ought to hold them, and so they ought, but in nine cases out of ten they don’t, and perhaps it would not need more than one glimpse of some of those homes to show you why. In truth, most of their parents are more to blame for their being bad boys than they are; yet the parents either don’t know how, or don’t care. Why not be a mother to some boy whose mother isn’t ‘on her job’ and save a boy? But there is one thing you must remember. Don’t preach! You can’t do a thing with a boy if you begin by preaching at him. You’ve got to win him first, and after that you can do anything in the world with him. Oh, he’s like the proverbial robin. You’ve got to put salt on his tail before you can catch him. But he’s worth catching. And isn’t it a solemn thought that if you don’t do something for that boy that lives next door to you, perhaps he’ll land in jail someday, and you will be at least a little responsible, because you might have done something! Miss Spicer stirred uneasily and frowned. She had left responsibilities in the store, and she didn’t want to be reminded of any new ones. Besides, those little hoodlums out there in the street were beyond saving. They ought to end up in jail, beginning that way. They ought to be electrocuted or something and rid the world of them!
Her eyes drooped to the printed page again.
You may think that some of them are not worth saving, but just try it, and you’ll find out. You will end by loving every mother’s son of them and finding no interest in life so absorbing as a boy, if you just set yourself to know him and help him to the right way. But if you try it, you must make up your mind to give up self to a certain extent and be a boy with your boy. You’ve got to learn his language, adopt his code, and enjoy his sports. But it will pay you as nothing you ever did before. It is better than clubs and bridge. Try it and see.
The clatter outside the window was growing intolerable and the paper on how to save the boy seemed inappropriate. Martha Spicer cast it aside and went up to her room to take a nap.
But before she closed the blinds to shut out the last rays of the afternoon sun, she looked down cautiously on the little throng below, her eye singling out unconsciously the dark thatch of the boy who lived next door.
“Gee! I’d like to go! Wouldn’t that be great? I’ve never seen the ocean! But no chance for me. It costs too much! Have you ever been to the shore?”
“Oh sure!” swaggered another boy. “I been six or seven times! It’s not so great! I’d rather swim in the river. The waves knock you all around.”
“Aw, you always did hate to make any exertion,” sneered the neighbor boy. “Bet I wouldn’t mind the waves. Gee! I wish I could go!”
Miss Spicer drew her blinds shut softly then and lay down on Aunt Abigail’s big black walnut bed to try and sleep, but sleep would not come.
It might have been the boy’s talk of the “street” picnic that was to be held next week at the shore that set her thinking about a vacation. She suddenly realized that at last it was possible for her to take a good long one now if she wished. There was money enough for her to go somewhere quite comfortably for several weeks and not seem extravagant either, yet somehow the idea did not greatly appeal to her. It didn’t seem reasonable. She had a home of her own for the first time in her life and she ought to stay in it and enjoy it.
Enjoy it? That sounded like a duty, and she had been trotting around all her life at the point of that bayonet of duty. And how could she ever enjoy those gloomy rooms anyway, those ugly furnishings, that Aunt Abigail-Uncle Jonathan atmosphere of everything? It was all very well for them. They liked that sort of thing. They had been brought up to it and the things were theirs, accumulated through the years. But her soul cried out for other surroundings. Or, at least, why should she not change these as much as she could?
She sat straight up on the bed and faced the audacious thought. What would Aunt Abigail think if she knew that the ungrateful recipient of all her worldly possessions was contemplating a wholesale destruction of all doilies, antimacassars, and patchwork cushions? That was as far as she got with that first approach to the subject. Doilies and patchwork cushions. Oh yes, and those horrible pictures, Wide Awake and Fast Asleep, with their unnaturally healthy countenances and impossible auburn curls. She would take them down and burn them in the kitchen range or the furnace the first thing in the morning, frames and all, so that no one would ever suspect, if any prying neighbor should chance to come in and take notice.
Having solaced herself with this dire resolution she lay down and slept, while below the street clattered on with its Sabbath noise, and the group under her window plotted mischief.
An hour later she awoke with a start and realized that there was a loud banging at her front door, accompanied by the most unearthly yowling of a cat. At once the thought flashed into her mind—Ernestine! Those terrible boys!—and she sprang from her bed and hurried over to her window.
It was indeed Ernestine in the hands of the enemy. A group of small boys were tying her plumy tail to the front doorknob. Their grimy, hurried hands knotted the bit of clothesline clumsily but firmly in place, while Ernestine, with tooth and claw, defended herself as best she could, meanwhile giving forth the most unearthly yowlings of distress. She must have put up rather an effective defense to judge by the rough exclamations and curses that came from the young lips as they gave the pampered pet a last yank and fled down the alley.
Miss Spicer exclaimed in horror as the shouts of the boys died away, but Ernestine’s furious, frightened caterwaulings grew louder and more anguished, and there stood her natural defender looking down angrily upon her, silent and helpless. And then Martha Spicer suddenly realized that she must go down herself.
Then before she could even turn from the window to go downstairs, there suddenly burst from the little side gate of the house next door a long, lanky boy with dark hair, the son of her next-door neighbor, Ronald MacFarland by name. She supposed him to be like all bad boys and therefore come to further torment the poor beast in her distress, and it was quite evident that Ernestine also regarded his approach in the same light, for her howls grew louder and more intense. Martha Spicer suddenly realized that it would be too late to help Ernestine if she waited to reach the front door, so she leaned from the window and addressed the boy, who by this time had reached the cat. But her words were drowned in the noise of the poor animal, and then Martha Spicer stopped in astonishment as she watched the movements of the boy. He threw himself against the cat deftly to prevent her scratching him, and drew out a big knife from his pocket. Opening it with one hand, as he held the cat under his arm with the other, he cut the clothesline with a swift clip and set the cat free.
“What are you doing to that cat?” burst forth Miss Spicer angrily, unable to grasp the fact that a boy would do a kind act. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”
As the words left her lips the cat made a dart for the little iron gate that guarded the path to the back door and disappeared from sight, her clothesline decoration tarrying in view for a brief space behind her like the tail of a comet on its way, and then vanished.
The boy looked up with a grin.
“Ma’am?” he inquired easily. He felt there wasn’t much she could do from that height except throw out a pitcher of water, and besides, for a wonder, he had a clear conscience, so he met her gaze undisturbedly.
Suddenly Miss Spicer found herself looking embarrassedly into a pair of merry, dancing eyes of the deepest blue with the curliest black lashes she had ever seen, and wondering what she ought to do or say. It suddenly became evident that she was under obligation to this clear-eyed boy for Ernestine’s release, and the condemnation that had hung upon her tongue clogged and trammeled her speech.
“I—why—that is—excuse me!” she stammered, “I’m much obliged to you for setting my cat free. I thought you were one of those bad boys.”
Ronald’s face beamed serenely up at her. It did his heart good to be recognized as belonging in another class from the “bad boys.”
“Aw—them kids is nutty!” he responded affably. “They’ll get sense bimeby.”
Ronald was perhaps two years the senior of the eldest of those other boys, and he drew himself up with superiority. The lady suddenly realized that he was a pleasant-looking boy. There was something, too, in his tone that gave him the air of being her champion. A quick wonder filled her. She liked it! Nobody had ever championed her before. To be sure, it was a very subtle thing, and when she had thanked the boy again she wondered just what it had been about him that made her feel so friendly toward him.
Chapter 4
She went downstairs and tried to find Ernestine. She had never been fond of the cat. It had seemed as if it had taken the place with Aunt Abigail and Uncle Jonathan that a child might have occupied. And that ridiculous name! Ernestine! For a cat! She knew it represented all the romance that had no other outlet in poor little narrow Aunt Abigail’s life. Ernestine had been the name perhaps that she would have named a child if she had ever had one. But Martha Spicer had little patience for one who could lavish on a cat the affection that should have belonged to a human being. Yet she had cared for the cat conscientiously and until now had felt only tolerance for her fellow inheritor. It was her duty to look after that cat thoroughly as long as she lived, but love her she had never intended to do.
Now, however, she felt sudden sympathy for the injured cat, a sort of fellow feeling. They were strays and lonely ones together, with no one to protect and care for them. Her heart smote her for her cold unfriendliness toward the dumb creature. She would never be one to pamper an animal, but her heart was warming toward Ernestine, and she felt quite distressed when she opened the door to find no cat crouching on the steps.
“Kitty, kitty, kitty!” she called, softening her voice uncharacteristically.
A sudden stealthy movement at her feet attracted her attention, and two great green eyes peered fearsomely out at her from under the steps.
“Poor kitty! Poor Ernestine!” she said tenderly, using the hateful name for the first time and without being aware of it.
Ernestine’s head came a little farther out from her hiding place, showing a gaunt look in the furry face.
“Come kitty, poor kitty,” went on Miss Spicer, stooping down in earnest now to soothe the frightened beast.
Ernestine suddenly projected herself like a stealthy shadow out from under the step and slid past her benefactor into the kitchen, taking a hasty surveillance of her environment and making sure of her safety by gliding under the high dining room dresser, from where her green eyes shone balefully out like two green lamps.
Martha closed and locked the kitchen door with a reassuring click and set about preparing their supper. Nice, appetizing milk toast and poached eggs—a whole egg for Ernestine. The smell of the browning toast presently tempted the cat, and her mistress was able to draw her forth from her hiding place and remove the fragment of rope still attached to her tail. The cat seemed grateful for this and set up a broken rumbling in her chest intended to indicate gratitude. The lady suddenly realized that it was pleasant to have even a cat grateful and friendly to her.
Perhaps under the circumstances Aunt Abigail might have given Ernestine a seat at the table with a high chair and a bib, but her niece would never go so far as that. She did, however, find real comfort in setting Ernestine’s saucer of toast and egg quite near to her side as she ate her own supper.
Of her own free will she stooped and patted the cat when they were done, and perhaps the wise animal drew as much comfort from the touch as she might have done from more elaborate pity.
After the supper things were washed and put away, Martha turned on the light and sat down with her paper once more. Ernestine tucked close to her skirts unreproved, rumbling away her content.
Somehow Martha felt shaken from her beaten path and seemed to have a sweeter, more wholesome view of the world. A boy, a simple unregenerate boy, had gone out of his way to be kind to a dumb animal, and had incidentally smiled at her, and the whole universe seemed changed.
She read her paper conscientiously through, reading over again the article about how to help boys, and this time it did not seem to anger her so much. A kindly freckled face seemed to be smiling at her between the lines and saying in a fascinating drawl, “They’re only kids. They’ll get some sense bimeby,” and the good-natured appeal in his eyes seemed to warm her heart and cool her anger toward boys in general. When she finally turned out the lights for the night, she allowed Ernestine to go upstairs with her. Every night so far the cat had attempted it but had been firmly put back in the kitchen on a cushion in a soapbox. Tonight, however, she looked down hesitatingly as the great creature purred wistfully about her feet, and then said, “Well, come on, I suppose you’re used to it!” And when Ernestine happily jumped on the foot of the bed and curled in a furry mound close to the footboard, Martha did not shove her off, and she absently smiled and patted her as she passed to turn out the light. She was thinking of a freckled, blue-eyed face turned up to the window, and a pleasant, saucy voice saying, “Ma’am?”
During the hours that she lay awake that night thinking new thoughts, she was dimly conscious of the purring of the cat and strangely comforted by it. Why hadn’t she known before how lonely it was in the world without even a cat? Why, even a cat was company.
Bits of sentences from that article about boys floated through her mind now and then, and stayed with her in the morning when she awoke. She tried to forget them, but they would return at the most unexpected moments and confuse her thoughts. She half resented and half courted the suggestions that article seemed to bring to her.