Chapter IV. SWEEPING CLEAN
“My goodness me!” ejaculated Bess Harley. “Talk about the 'leaden wings of Time.' Why! Time sweeps by us on electrically-driven, ball-bearing pinions. Here's another week gone, Nan, and tomorrow's Saturday.”
“Yes,” Nan agreed. “Time flies all too quickly, for me, anyway. The mills have been closed a week now.”
“Oh, dear! That's all I hear,” complained Bess. “Those tiresome old mills. Our Maggie's sister was crying in the kitchen last night because her Mike couldn't get a job now the mills were closed, and was drinking up all the money they had saved. That's what the mill-hands do; their money goes to the saloon-keepers!”
“The proportion of their income spent by the laboring class for alcoholic beverages is smaller by considerable than that spent by the well-to-do for similar poison!” quoted Nan decisively. “Mike is desperate, I suppose, poor fellow!”
“My goodness me!” cried Bess again. “You are most exasperating, Nan Sherwood. Mike's case has nothing to do with political Economy, and I do wish you'd drop that study out of school——”
“I have!” gasped Nan, for just then her books slipped from her strap; “and history, rhetoric, and philosophical readings along with it,” and she proceeded cheerfully to pick up the several books mentioned.
“You can't mean,” Bess said, still severely, “that you won't go to Lakeview with me, Nan?”
“I wish you wouldn't keep saying that, Bess,” Nan Sherwood cried. “Is it my fault? Don't you suppose I'd love to, if I could? We have no money. Father is out of work. There is no prospect of other work for him in Tillbury, he says, and,” Nan continued desperately, “how do you suppose I can go to a fancy boarding school under these circumstances?”
“Why——-”
For once Elizabeth was momentarily silenced. Suddenly her face brightened. “I tell you!” she exclaimed. “I'll speak to my father about it. He can fix it so that you will be able to go to the Hall with me, I know.”
“I'd like to see myself an object of charity!” Nan cried, with heat. “I, guess, not! What I can't earn, or my father can't give me, I'll go without, Bess. That's all there is to that!”
Bess stared at her with quivering lips. “You can't be so mean, Nan,” she faltered.
“I'm not mean!” denied the other.
“I'd like to know what you call it? Why, father'd never miss your tuition money in the world. And I know he'd pay your way if I asked him and told him how bad I felt about your not going.”
“You're a dear, Bess!” declared Nan, impulsively hugging her friend again. “But you mustn't ask him, honey. It wouldn't be right, and I couldn't accept.
“Don't you understand, honey, that I have some pride in the matter? So have Papa Sherwood and Momsey. What they can't do for me their own selves I wouldn't want anybody to do.”
“Why, that sounds awfully silly to me, Nan!” said Bess. “Why not take all you can get in this world? I'm sure I should.”
“You don't know what you are saying,” Nan returned seriously. “And, then, you are not poor, so you can afford to say it, and even do it.”
“Poor! I'm getting to hate that word,” cried Bess stormily. “It never bothered me before, much. We're not poor and none of our friends were poor. Not until those old mills closed. And now it seems all I hear is about folks being POOR. I hate it!”
“I guess,” said Nan ruefully, “you don't hate it half as much as those of us who have to suffer it.”
“I'm just going to find some way of getting you to Lakeview Hall, my dear,” Bess rejoined gloomily. “Why! I won't want to go myself if you don't go, Nan.”
Her friend thought she would better not tell Bess just then that the prospect was that she, with her father and mother, would have to leave Tillbury long before the autumn. Mr. Sherwood was trying to obtain a situation in Chicago, in a machine shop. He had no hope of getting another foreman's position.
Nothing had been heard from Mr. Adair MacKenzie, of Memphis. Mrs. Sherwood wanted to write again; but her husband begged her not to. He had a proper pride. It looked to him as though his wife's cousin did not care to be troubled by the necessities of his relations.
“We'll get along!” was Mr. Sherwood's repeated and cheerful statement. “Never say die! Hope is our anchor! Fate shall not balk us! And all the other copy-book maxims.”
But it was Mrs. Sherwood and Nan who managed to save and scrimp and be frugal in many infinitesimal ways, thus making their savings last marvelously.
Nan gave up her entire Saturdays to household tasks. She insisted on that, and urged the curtailment of the weekly expense by having Mrs. Joyce come in to help but one day.
“I can iron, Momsey, and if I can't do it very well at first, I can learn,” declared the plucky girl. “And, of course, I can sweep. That's good for me. Our physical instructor says so. Instead of going to the gym on Saturday, I'll put in calisthenics and acrobatic stunts with a broom and duster.”
She was thorough, too. She could not have been her father's daughter without having that virtue. There was no “lick and a promise” in Nan Sherwood's housekeeping. She did not sweep the dust under the bureau, or behind the door, or forget to wipe the rounds of the chairs and the baseboard all around the rooms.
Papa Sherwood, coughing in the lower hall as the dust descended from above, declared she went through the cottage like a whirlwind. It was not as bad as that, but her vigorous young arms wielded the broom with considerable skill.
One Saturday, with every other room swept but the front hall, she closed the doors into that, and set wide open the outer door. There was more snow on the ground now; but the porch was cleaned and the path to the front gate neatly dug and swept. The tinkle of sleigh bells and the laughter of a crowd of her school friends swept by the corner of Amity Street. Nan ran out upon the porch and waved her duster at them.
There she stood, smiling out upon her little world for a minute. She might not see Amity Street, and the old neighbors, many weeks longer. A half-promise of work from the Chicago machine shop boss had reached Mr. Sherwood that morning by post. It seemed the only opening, and it meant that they would have to give up the “dwelling in amity” and go to crowded Chicago to live. For Momsey was determined that Papa Sherwood should not go without her.
Nan came back into the hall and began to wield the broom again. She could not leave the door open too long, for it was cold outside and the winter chill would get into the house. They had to keep all the rooms at an even temperature on account of Momsey's health.
But she swept vigorously, moving each piece of furniture, and throwing the rugs out upon the porch for a special sweeping there. The rough mat at the door was a heavy one. As Nan stooped to pick it up and toss it after the other small rugs, she saw the corner of a yellow envelope sticking from under the edge of the hall carpet.
“Wonder what that is?” murmured Nan. “Somebody has thrust a circular, or advertisement, under our door, and it's gone under the carpet. Yes! There's a tack out there.”
She seized the corner of the envelope with thumb and finger. She drew it out. Its length surprised her. It was a long, official looking envelope, not bulky but most important looking. In the upper left-hand corner was printed:
ADAIR MACKENZIE & CO. STOCKS AND BONDS MEMPHIS
It was properly stamped and addressed to her mother. By the postmark on it Nan knew it must have been tucked under the door by the postman more than a week before. Somehow he had failed to ring their bell when he left the letter. The missing tack in the edge of the hall carpet had allowed the document to slide out of sight, and it might have been hidden for weeks longer had chance not shown the small corner of straw-colored paper to Nan.
She felt breathless. Her knees trembled. Somehow, Nan just KNEW that the letter from her mother's cousin must be of enormous importance. She set her broom in the corner and closed the door. It was fated that she should do no more sweeping that day.