"Don't yer little brother want to git off?" asked the conductor, sympathetically.

"No, sir," said Lovey Mary, trying to maintain her dignity while she struggled with her charge. "If you please, sir, would you mind holding his feet while I loosen his hands?"

Tommy, shrieking indignant protests, was borne from the car and deposited on the sidewalk.

"Don't you dare get limber!" threatened Lovey Mary. "If you do I'll spank you right here on the street. Stand up! Straighten out your legs! Tommy! do you hear me?"

Tommy might have remained limp indefinitely had not a hurdy-gurdy opportunely arrived on the scene. It is true that he would go only in the direction of the music, but Lovey Mary was delighted to have him go at all. When at last they were headed for the avenue, Tommy caused another delay.

"I want my ducky," he announced.

The words brought consternation to Lovey Mary. She had fearfully antic.i.p.ated them from the moment of leaving the home.

"I'll buy you a 'tend-like duck," she said.

"No; I want a sure-'nough ducky; I want mine."

Lovey Mary was exasperated. "Well, you can't have yours. I can't get it for you, and you might as well hush."

His lips trembled, and two large tears rolled down his round cheeks.

When he was injured he was irresistible. Lovey Mary promptly surrendered.

"Don't cry, baby boy! Lovey'll get you one someway."

For some time the quest of the duck was fruitless. The stores they entered were wholesale houses for the most part, where men were rolling barrels about or stacking skins and hides on the sidewalk.

"Do you know what sort of a store they sell ducks at?" asked Lovey Mary of a colored man who was sweeping out an office.

"Ducks!" repeated the negro, grinning at the queerly dressed children in their round straw hats. "Name o' de Lawd! What do you all want wif ducks?"

Lovey Mary explained.

"Wouldn't a kitten do jes as well?" he asked kindly.

"I want my ducky," whined Tommy, showing signs of returning storm.

"I don' see no way 'cept'n' gwine to de mahket. Efen you tek de cah you kin ride plumb down dere."

Recent experience had taught Lovey Mary to be wary of street-cars, so they walked. At the market they found some ducks. The desired objects were hanging in a bunch with their limp heads tied together. Further inquiry, however, discovered some live ones in a coop.

"They're all mama ducks," objected Tommy. "I want a baby ducky. I want my little ducky!"

When he found he could do no better, he decided to take one of the large ones. Then he said he was hungry, so he and Mary took turn about holding it while the other ate "po' man's pickle" and wienerwurst.

It was two o'clock by the time they reached the avenue, and by four they were foot-sore and weary, but they trudged bravely along from house to house asking for work. As dusk came on, the houses, which a few squares back had been tall and imposing, seemed to be getting smaller and more insignificant. Lovey Mary felt secure as long as she was on the avenue. She did not know that the avenue extended for many miles and that she had reached the frayed and ragged end of it. She and Tommy pa.s.sed under a bridge, and after that the houses all seemed to behave queerly. Some faced one way, some another, and crisscross between them, in front of them, and behind them ran a network of railroad tracks.

"What's the name of this street?" asked Lovey Mary of a small, bare- footed girl.

"'T ain't no street," answered the little girl, gazing with undisguised amazement at the strange-looking couple; "this here is the Cabbage Patch."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'T ain't no street...; this here is the Cabbage Patch.'"]

CHAPTER III

THE HAZY HOUSEHOLD

"Here sovereign Dirt erects her sable throne, The house, the host, the hostess all her own."

Miss Hazy was the submerged tenth of the Cabbage Patch. The submersion was mainly one of dirt and disorder, but Miss Hazy was such a meek, inefficient little body that the Cabbage Patch withheld its blame and patiently tried to furnish a prop for the clinging vine. Miss Hazy, it is true, had Chris; but Chris was unstable, not only because he had lost one leg, but also because he was the wildest, noisiest, most thoughtless youngster that ever shied a rock at a lamp-post. Miss Hazy had "raised" Chris, and the neighbors had raised Miss Hazy.

When Lovey Mary stumbled over the Hazy threshold with the sleeping Tommy and the duck in her arms, Miss Hazy fluttered about in dismay.

She pushed the flour-sifter farther over on the bed and made a place for Tommy, then she got a chair for the exhausted girl and hovered about her with little chirps of consternation.

"Dear sakes! You're done tuckered out, ain't you? You an' the baby got losted? Ain't that too bad! Must I make you some tea? Only there ain't no fire in the stove. Dear me! what ever will I do? Jes wait a minute; I'll have to go ast Mis' Wiggs."

In a few minutes Miss Hazy returned. With her was a bright-faced little woman whose smile seemed to thaw out the frozen places in Lovey Mary's heart and make her burst into tears on the motherly bosom.

"There now, there," said Mrs. Wiggs, hugging the girl up close and patting her on the back; "there ain't no hole so deep can't somebody pull you out. An' here's me an' Miss Hazy jes waitin' to give you a h'ist."

There was something so heartsome in her manner that Lovey Mary dried her eyes and attempted to explain. "I'm tryin' to get a place," she began, "but n.o.body wants to take Tommy too. I can't carry him any further, and I don't know where to go, and it's 'most night--" again the sobs choked her.

"Lawsee!" said Mrs. Wiggs, "don't you let that worry you! I can't take you home, 'cause Asia an' Australia an' Europeny are sleepin' in one bed as it is; but you kin git right in here with Miss Hazy, can't she, Miss Hazy?"

The hostess, to whom Mrs. Wiggs was an oracle, acquiesced heartily.

"All right: that's fixed. Now I'll go home an' send you all over some nice, hot supper by Billy, an' to-morrow mornin' will be time enough to think things out."

Lovey Mary, too exhausted to mind the dirt, ate her supper off a broken plate, then climbed over behind Tommy and the flour-sifter, and was soon fast asleep.

The business meeting next morning "to think things out" resulted satisfactorily. At first Mrs. Wiggs was inclined to ask questions and find out where the children came from, but when she saw Lovey Mary's evident distress and embarra.s.sment, she accepted the statement that they were orphans and that the girl was seeking work in order to take care of herself and the boy. It had come to be an unwritten law in the Cabbage Patch that as few questions as possible should be asked of strangers. People had come there before who could not give clear accounts of themselves.

"Now I'll tell you what I think'll be best," said Mrs. Wiggs, who enjoyed untangling snarls. "Asia kin take Mary up to the fact'ry with her to-morrow, an' see if she kin git her a job. I 'spect she kin, 'cause she stands right in with the lady boss. Miss Hazy, me an' you kin keep a' eye on the baby between us. If Mary gits a place she kin pay you so much a week, an' that'll help us all out, 'cause then we won't have to send in so many outside victuals. If she could make three dollars an' Chris three, you all could git along right peart."

Lovey Mary stayed in the house most of the day. She was almost afraid to look out of the little window, for fear she should see Miss Bell or Kate Rider coming. She sat in the only chair that had a bottom and diligently worked b.u.t.tonholes for Miss Hazy.

"Looks like there ain't never no time to clean up," said Miss Hazy, apologetically, as she shoved Chris's Sunday clothes and a can of coal-oil behind the door.

Lovey Mary looked about her and sighed deeply. The room was brimful and spilling over: trash, tin cans, and bottles overflowed the window- sills; a crippled rocking-chair, with a faded quilt over it, stood before the stove, in the open oven of which Chris's shoe was drying; an old sewing-machine stood in the middle of the floor, with Miss Hazy's sewing on one end of it and the uncleared dinner-dishes on the other.

Mary could not see under the bed, but she knew from the day's experience that it was used as a combination store-room and wardrobe.

She thought of the home with its bare, clean rooms and its spotless floors. She rose abruptly and went out to the rear of the house, where Tommy was playing with Europena Wiggs. They were absorbed in trying to hitch the duck to a spool-box, and paid little attention to her.

"Tommy," she said, clutching his arm, "don't you want to go back?"