"I don't care," said Alice Sweet, with quite audible impudence.

The black eye at the knot-hole in the fence which separated the girls' yard from the boys' was replaced by a blue one. Maria's attention was attracted towards it by an audible t.i.tter from the other side.

"Every one of you boys march straight into the school-house," she called. Then she led Jessy into a little room which was dedicated to the teacher's outside wraps. The room was little more than a closet, and very cold. Maria put her arm around Jessy and felt with horror the little, naked body under the poor frock.

"For Heaven's sake, child, why are you out with so little on such a day as this?" she cried out.

Jessy began to cry. She had heretofore maintained a sullen silence of depression under taunts, but a kind word was too much for her.

"I 'ain't got no underclothes, teacher; I 'ain't, honest," she sobbed. "I'd outgrowed all my last year's ones, and Mamie she's got 'em; and my mother she 'ain't got no money to buy any more, and my father he's away on a drunk. I can't help it; I can't, honest, teacher."

Maria gazed at the little thing in a sort of horror. "Do you mean to say that you have actually nothing to put on but your dress, Jessy Ramsey?" said she.

"I can't help it, honest, teacher," sobbed Jessy Ramsey.

Maria continued to gaze at her, then she led her into the school-room and rang the bell furiously. When the scholars were all in their places, she opened her lips to express her mind to them, but a second's reflection seemed to show her the futility of it. Instead, she called the geography cla.s.s.

After school that night, Maria, instead of going home, went straight to Jessy Ramsey's home, which was about half a mile from the school-house. She held Jessy, who wore a threadbare little cape over her frock, by the hand. Franky Ramsey and Mamie Ramsey, Jessy's younger brother and sister, tagged timidly behind her. Finally, Maria waited for them to come up with her, which they did with a cringing air.

"I want to know," said Maria to Mamie, "if you are wearing all your sister's underclothes this winter?"

Mamie whimpered a little as she replied. Mamie had a habitual whimper and a mean little face, with a wisp of flaxen hair tied with a dirty blue ribbon.

"Yes, ma'am," she replied. "Jessy she growed so she couldn't git into 'em, and mummer--"

The boy, who was very thin, almost to emaciation, and looked consumptive, but who was impishly pert, cut in.

"I had to wear Jessy's shirts," he said. "Mamie she couldn't wear them 'ere."

"So you haven't any flannel shirts?" Maria asked of Mamie.

"I'm wearin' mummer's," said Mamie. "Mummer's they shrunk so she couldn't wear 'em, and Jessy couldn't nuther."

"What is your mother wearing?" asked Maria.

"Mr. John Dorsey he bought her some new ones," replied Mamie, and a light of evil intelligence came into the mean little face.

"Who is Mr. John Dorsey?" asked Maria.

"Oh, he's to our house considerable," replied Mamie, still with that evil light, which grew almost confidential, upon her face.

The boy chuckled a little and dug his toes into the frozen earth, then he whistled.

The Ramsey house was the original old homestead of the family. It was unspeakably decrepit and fallen from a former high estate. The old house presented to Maria's fancy something in itself degraded and loathsome. It seemed to partake actually of the character of its inmates--to be stained and swollen and out of plumb with unmentionable sins of degeneration. It was a very poisonous fungus of a house, with blotches of paint here and there, with its front portico supported drunkenly on swaying pillars, with its roof hollowed about the chimney, with great stains here and there upon the walls, which seemed like stains of sin rather than of old rains.

Maria marched straight to the house, leading Jessy, with Mamie and Franky at her heels. She knocked on the door; there was no bell, of course. But Franky pushed past her and opened the door, and sang out, in his raucous voice:

"Hullo, mummer! Mummer!"

Mamie echoed him in her equally raucous voice, full of dissonances.

"Mummer! Mummer!"

A woman, large and dirty, but rather showily clad, with a brave display of cheap jewelry, appeared in the doorway of a room on the right, from which also issued a warm, spirituous odor, mingled with onions and boiling meat. The woman, who had at one time been weakly pretty, and even now was not bad-looking, stared with a sort of vacant defiance at Maria.

"It's teacher, mummer," volunteered Mamie.

Franky chuckled again, and again whistled. Franky's chuckles and whistles were characteristic of him. He often disturbed the school in such fashion.

Maria had a vision of a man in his shirt-sleeves, smoking beside a red-hot stove, on which boiled the meat and onions. She began at once upon her errand.

"How do you do, Mrs. Ramsey?" said she.

The woman mumbled something inarticulate and backed a little. The man in the room leaned forward and rolled bloodshot eyes at her. Maria began at once. She had much of her mother's spirit, which, when it was aroused, balked at nothing. She pointed at Jessy, then she extended her small index-finger severely at Mrs. Ramsey.

"Mrs. Ramsey," said she, and she stood so straight that she looked much taller, her blue eyes flashed like steel at the slinking ones of the older woman, "I want to inquire why you sent this child to school such a day as this in such a condition?"

Mrs. Ramsey again murmured something inarticulate and backed still farther. Maria followed her quite into the room. A look of insolent admiration became evident in the bloodshot eyes of the man beside the stove. Maria had no false modesty when she was righteously incensed.

She would have said just the same before a room full of men.

"That child," she said, and she again pointed at Jessy, shivering in her little, scanty frock--"that child came to school to-day without any clothing under her dress; one of the coldest days of the year, too. I don't see what you are thinking of, you, her own mother, to let a child go out in such a condition! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!"

Then the woman crimsoned with wrath and she found speech, the patois of New England, instead of New Jersey, to which Maria was accustomed, and which she understood. This woman, instead of half speaking, ran all her words together in a coa.r.s.e, nasal monotone.

"Hadn't nothin' to put on her," she said. "She'd outgrowed all she had, hadn't nothin', mind your own business, go 'long home, where you b'long."

Maria understood the last words, and she replied, fiercely, "I am not going home one step until you promise me you'll get decent underwear for this child to wear to school," said she, "and that you won't allow her to go out-of-doors in this condition again. If you do, I'll have you arrested."

The woman's face grew redder. She made a threatening movement towards Maria, but the man beside the stove unexpectedly arose and slouched between them, grinning and feeling in his pocket, whence he withdrew two one-dollar notes.

"Here," he said, in a growling voice, which was nevertheless intended to be ingratiating. "Go 'n' buy the young one somethin' to go to school in. Don't yer mind."

Maria half extended her hand, then she drew it back. She looked at the man, who exhaled whiskey as a fungus an evil perfume. She glanced at Mrs. Ramsey.

"Is this man your father?" she asked of Jessy.

Immediately the boy burst into a peal of meaning laughter. The man himself chuckled, then looked grave, with an effort, as he stood extending the money.

"Better take 'em an' buy the young one some clothes," he said.

"Who is this man?" demanded Maria, severely, of the laughing boy.

"It's Mr. John Dorsey," replied Franky.

Then a light of the underneath evil fire of the world broke upon Maria's senses. She repelled the man haughtily.

"I don't want your money," said she. "But"--she turned to the woman--"if you send that child to school again, clothed as she is to-day, I will have you arrested. I mean it." With that she was gone, with a proud motion. Laughter rang out after her, also a scolding voice and an oath. She did not turn her head. She marched straight on out of the yard, to the street, and home.

She could not eat her supper. She had a sick, shocked feeling.