How It Happened.

by Kate Langley Bosher.

CHAPTER I

Head on the side and chin uptilted, she held it at arm's-length, turning it now in one direction, now in another, then with deliberation she laid it on the floor.

"I have wanted to do it ever since you were sent me; now I am going to."

Hands on hips, she looked down on the high-crown, narrow-brim hat of stiff gray felt which was at her feet, and nodded at it with firmness and decision. "It's going to be my Christmas present to myself--getting rid of you. Couldn't anything give me as much pleasure as smashing you is going to give. Good-by--"

Raising her right foot, Carmencita held it poised for a half-moment over the hated hat, then with long-restrained energy she brought it down on the steeple-crown and crushed it into shapelessness. "I wish she could see you now." Another vigorous punch was given, then with a swift movement the battered bunch of dull grayness, with its yellow bird and broken buckle of tarnished steel, was sent in the air, and as it landed across the room the child laughed gaily, ran toward it, and with the tip of her toes tossed it here and there. Sending it now up to the ceiling, now toward the mantel, now kicking it over the table, and now to the top of the window, she danced round and round the room, laughing breathlessly. Presently she stooped, picked it up, stuck it on her head, and, going to the stove, opened its top, and with a shake of her curls dropped the once haughty and now humbled head-gear in the fire and watched it burn with joyous satisfaction.

"The first time she wore it we called her Coachman Cattie, it was so stiff and high and hideous, and n.o.body but a person like her would ever have bought it. I never thought it would some day come to me.

Some missioners are nice, some very nice, but some--"

With emphasis the lid of the stove was put back, and, going to the table in the middle of the room, Carmencita picked up the contents of the little work-basket, which had been knocked over in her rushing round, and put them slowly in place. "Some missioners seem to think because you're poor everything G.o.d put in other people's hearts and minds and bodies and souls He left out of you. Of course, if you haven't a hat you ought to be thankful for any kind." The words came soberly, and the tiniest bit of a quiver twisted the lips of the protesting mouth. "You oughtn't to know whether it is pretty or ugly or becoming or--You ought just to be thankful and humble, and I'm not either. I don't like thankful, humble people; I'm afraid of them."

Leaving the table where for a minute she had jumbled needles and thread and scissors and b.u.t.tons in the broken basket, she walked slowly over to the tiny mirror hung above a chest of drawers, and on tiptoes nodded at the reflection before her--nodded and spoke to it.

"You're a sinner, all right, Carmencita Bell, and there's no natural goodness in you. You hate hideousness, and poorness, and other people's cast-offs, and emptiness in your stomach, and living on the top floor with crying babies and a drunken father underneath, and counting every stick of wood before you use it. And you get furious at times because your father is blind and people have forgotten about his beautiful music, and you want chicken and cake when you haven't even enough bacon and bread. You're a sinner, all right. If you were in a cla.s.s of them you would be at the head. It's the only thing you'd ever be at the head of. You know you're poverty-poor, and still you're always fighting inside, always making out that it is just for a little while. Why don't you--"

The words died on her lips, and suddenly the clear blue eyes, made for love and laughter and eager for all that is lovely in life, dimmed with hot tears, and with a half-sob she turned and threw herself face downward on the rug-covered cot on the opposite side of the room.

"O G.o.d, please don't let Father know!" The words came in tones that were terrified. "Please don't ever let him know! I wasn't born good, and I hate bad smells, and dirty things, and ugly clothes, and not enough to eat, but until I am big enough to go to work please, _please_ help me to keep Father from knowing! Please help me!"

With a twisting movement the child curled herself into a little ball, and for a moment tempestuous sobbing broke the stillness of the room, notwithstanding the knuckles of two little red hands which were pressed to the large sweet mouth. Presently she lifted the hem of her skirt and wiped her eyes, then she got up.

"I wish I could cry as much as I want to. I never have had a place convenient to do it all by myself, and there's never time, but it gets the choked things out and makes you feel much better. I don't often want to, just sometimes, like before Christmas when you're crazy to do a lot of things you can't do--and some people make you so mad! If I'd been born different and not minding ugly things and loving pretty ones, I wouldn't have hated that hat so. That's gone, anyhow. I've been wanting to see how high I could kick it ever since Miss Cattie sent it to me, and now I've done it. I've got a lot of old clothes I'd like to send to Ballyhack, but I can't send."

She stopped, smoothed her rumpled dress, and shook back the long loose curls which had fallen over her face. "I must be getting sorry for myself. If I am I ought to be spanked. I can't spank, but I can dance.

If you don't head it off quick it goes to your liver. I'll head!"

With a swift movement Carmencita sprang across the room and from the mantel took down a once beribboned but now faded and worn tambourine.

"You'd rather cry," she said, under her breath, "but you sha'n't cry.

I won't let you. Dance! Dance! Dance!"

Aloft the tambourine was shaken, and its few remaining bells broke gaily on the air as with abandon that was bewildering in grace and suppleness the child leaped into movement swift and light and amazing in beauty. Around the room, one arm akimbo, one hand now in the air, now touching with the tambourine the hard, bare floor, now tossing back the loose curls, now waving gaily overhead, faster and faster she danced, her feet in perfect rhythm to the bells; then presently the tambourine was thrown upon the table, and she stopped beside it, face flushed, eyes shining, and breath that came in quick, short gasps.

"That was much better than crying." She laughed. "There isn't much you can do in this world, Carmencita, but you can dance. You've got to do it, too, every time you feel sorry for yourself. I wonder if I could see Miss Frances before I go for Father? I _must_ see her. Must! Those Beckwith babies have got the croup, and I want to ask her if she thinks it's awful piggy in me to put all my money, or 'most all, in Father's present. And I want to ask her--I could ask Miss Frances things all night. Maybe the reason I'm not a thankful person is I'm so inquiring. I expect to spend the first hundred years after I get to heaven asking questions."

Going over to the mantel, Carmencita looked at the little clock upon it. "I don't have to go to the wedding-place for father until after six," she said, slowly, "and I'd like to see Miss Frances before I go.

If I get there by half past five I can see the people get out of their automobiles and sail in. I wish I could sail somewhere. If I could see some grandness once and get the smell of cabbage and onions out of my nose, which I never will as long as the Rheinhimers live underneath us, I wouldn't mind the other things so much, but there isn't any chance of grandness coming as high up in the air as this. I wonder if G.o.d has forgot about us! He has so many to remember--"

With a swift turn of her head, as if listening, Carmencita's eyes grew shy and wistful, then she dropped on her knees by the couch and buried her face in her arms. "If G.o.d's forgot I'll remind Him," she said, and tightly she closed her eyes.

"O G.o.d"--the words came eagerly, fervently--"we are living in the same place, and every day I hope we will get in a better one, but until we do please help me to keep on making Father think I like it better than any other in town. I thought maybe You had forgotten where we were. I'm too little to go to work yet, and that's why we're still here. We can't pay any more rent, or we'd move. And won't You please let something nice happen? I don't mean miracles, or money, or things like that, but something thrilly and exciting and romantic, if You can manage it. Every day is just the same sort of sameness, and I get so mad-tired of cooking and cleaning and mending, before school and after school and nights, that if something don't happen soon I'm afraid Father will find out what a pretending person I am, and he mustn't find. It's been much better since I knew Miss Frances. I'm awful much obliged to You for letting me know her, but she isn't permanent, Mother McNeil says, and may go away soon. I'm going to try to have a grand Christmas and be as nice as I can to Mrs. Rheinhimer, but she's so lazy and dirty it's hard not to tell her so. And if You could let a nice thing happen for Christmas I hope You will. If it could be a marriage and I could be bridesmaid I'd like that best, as I've never been to an inside wedding, just outside on the street. I don't care for poor marriages. Amen."

On her feet, Carmencita hesitated, then, going to a closet across the room, took from its top shelf a shabby straw hat and put it on. "This was bought for me and fits," she said, as if to some one by her side, "and, straw or no straw, it feels better than that Coachman Cattie, which is gone for evermore. Some day I hope I can burn you up, too"--she nodded to the coat into which she was struggling--"but I can't do it yet. You're awful ugly and much too big, but you're warm and the only one I've got. I'll have half an hour before it's time to go for Father. If Miss Frances is home I can talk a lot in half an hour."

CHAPTER II

Carmencita knocked. There was no answer. She knocked again. After the third knock she opened the door and, hand on the k.n.o.b, looked in.

"Oh, Miss Frances, I was afraid you had gone out! I knocked and knocked, but you didn't say come in, so I thought I'd look. Please excuse me!"

The girl at the sewing-machine, which was close to the window and far from the door, stopped its running, turned in her chair, and held out her hand. "h.e.l.lo, Carmencita! I'm glad it's you and not Miss Perkins.

I wouldn't want Miss Perkins to see me trying to sew, but you can see.

Take off your coat. Is it cold out?"

"Getting cold." The heavy coat was laid on one chair, and Carmencita, taking up a half-made gingham dress from another, sat in it and laid the garment in her lap. "I didn't know you knew how to sew."

"I don't." The girl at the machine laughed. "Those Simcoe children didn't have a dress to change in, and I'm practising on some skirts and waists for them. Every day I'm finding out something else I don't know how to do. I seem to have been taught a good many things there is no special need of knowing, and very few I can make use of down here."

"You didn't expect to come down here when you were learning things, did you?" Carmencita's eyes were gravely watching the efforts being made to thread the machine's needle. "I guess when you were a little girl you didn't know there were things like you see down here. What made you come here, Miss Frances? You didn't have to. What made you come?"

Into the fine fair face color crept slowly, and for a moment a sudden frown ridged the high forehead from which the dark hair, parted and brushed back, waved into a loose knot at the back of her head; then she laughed, and her dark eyes looked into Carmencita's blue ones.

"Why did I come?" The gingham dress on which she had been sewing was folded carefully. "I came to find out some of the things I did not know about. I wasn't of any particular use to anybody else. No one needed me. I had a life on my hands that I didn't know what to do with, and I thought perhaps--"

"You could use it down here? You could use a dozen down here, but you weren't meant not to get married. Aren't you ever going to get married, Miss Frances?"

"I hardly think I will." Frances Barbour got up and pushed the machine against the wall. "The trouble about getting married is marrying the right man. One so often doesn't. I wouldn't like to make a mistake."

Again she smiled.

"Don't see how you could make a mistake. Isn't there some way you can tell?"

"My dear Carmencita!" Stooping, the child's face was lifted and kissed. "I'm not a bit interested in men or marriage. They belong to--to a long, long time ago. I'm interested now in little girls like you, and in boys, and babies, and gingham dresses, and Christmas trees, and night cla.s.ses, and the Dramatic School for the children who work, and--"

"I'm interested in them, too, but I'm going to get married when I'm big enough. I know you work awful hard down here, but it wasn't what you were born for. I'm always feeling, right inside me, right here"--Carmencita's hand was laid on her breast--"that you aren't going to stay here long, and it makes an awful sink sometimes. You'll go away and forget us, and get married, and go to b.a.l.l.s and parties and wear satin slippers with buckles on them, and dance, and I'd do it, too, if I were you. Only--only I wish sometimes you hadn't come.

It will be so much harder when you go away."

"But I'm not going away." At the little white bureau in the plainly furnished room of Mother McNeil's "Home," Frances stuck the pins brought from the machine into the little cushion and nodded gaily to the child now standing by her side. "I've tried the parties and b.a.l.l.s and--all the other things, and for a while they were very nice; and then one day I found I was spending all my time getting ready for them and resting from them, and there was never time for anything else. If I had died it would not have mattered the least bit that I had lived.

And--"

"Didn't you have a sweetheart that it mattered to? Not even one?"

Into hers Carmencita's eyes were looking firmly, and, turning from them, Frances made effort to laugh; then her face whitened.

"One can never be sure how much things matter to others, Carmencita.

We can only be sure of how much they matter--to us. But it was Christmas we were to talk about. It's much nicer to talk about Christmas. We can't talk very long, for I meet the 'Little Mothers' at half past six, and after that I--"

"And I've got to go at half past five to meet Father when he's through with that wedding up-town, and then we're going shopping. I've got a lot to talk about. The Beckwith babies are awful sick. I guess it would be a good thing if they were to die. They are always having colic and cramps and croup, and they've got a coughing mother and a lazy father; but they won't die. Some babies never will. Did you know Mr. Rheinhimer had been on another spree?" Carmencita, feet fastened in the rounds of her chair, elbows on knees, and chin in the palms of her hand, nodded affirmatively at the face in front of her. "Worst one yet. He smashed all the window-panes in the bedroom, and broke two legs of their best chairs doing it, and threw the basin and pitcher out of the window. He says he'd give any man living five hundred dollars, if he had it, if he'd live with his wife a month and not shake her. She is awful aggravating. She's always in curl papers, and don't wear corsets, and nags him to death. She says she wishes you'd send him to a cure or something. And I want to tell you about Father's present."