Fishin'?

(From the New Orleans Times-Democrat.)

Settin' on a log An' fishin' An' watchin' the cork, An' wishin'.

Jus' settin' round home An' sighin', Jus' settin' round home— An' lyin'.

"Ardelia in Arcady"[E]

(Arranged by Maude Herndon and Grace Kellam.)

[From "The Madness of Philip," by Josephine Dodge Daskam. McClure, Phillips & Co.]

hen first the young lady from the College Settlement dragged Ardelia from her degradation, she was sitting on a dirty pavement and throwing assorted refuse at an unconscious policeman.

"Come here, little girl," said the young lady, invitingly. "Wouldn't you like to come with me and have a nice, cool bath?"

"Naw," said Ardelia, in tones rivaling the bath in coolness.

"You wouldn't? Well, wouldn't you like some bread and butter and jam?"

"Wha's jam?"

"Why, it's—er—marmalade. All sweet, you know."

"Naw!"

"I thought you might like to go on a picnic," said the young lady, helplessly. "I thought all little girls liked—"

"Picnic? When?" cried Ardelia, moved instantly to interest. "I'm goin'! Is it the Dago picnic?"

The young lady shuddered, and seizing the hand which she imagined to have had the least to do with the refuse, she led Ardelia away—the first stage of her journey to Arcady.

Later arrayed in starched and creaking garments which had been made for a slightly smaller child, Ardelia was transported to the station, and for the first time introduced to a railroad car. She sat stiffly on the red plush seat while the young lady talked reassuringly of daisies and cows and green grass. As Ardelia had never seen any of these things, it is hardly surprising that she was somewhat unenthusiastic.

"You can roll in the daisies, my dear, and pick all you want—all!" she urged eagerly.

"Aw right," she answered, guardedly.

The swelteringly hot day, and the rapid unaccustomed motion combined to afflict her with a strange internal anticipation of future woe. Once last summer, when she ate the liquid dregs of the ice-cream man's great tin, and fell asleep in the room where her mother was frying onions, she had experienced this same foreboding, and the climax of that dreadful day lingered yet in her memory.

At last they stopped. The young lady seized her hand, and led her through the narrow aisle, down the steep steps, across the little country station platform, and Ardelia was in Arcady.

A bare-legged boy in blue overalls and a wide straw hat then drove them many miles along a hot, dusty road, that wound endlessly through the parched country fields. Finally they turned into a driveway, and drew up before a gray wooden house. A spare, dark-eyed woman in a checked apron advanced to meet them.

"Terrible hot to-day, ain't it?" she sighed. "I'm real glad to see you, Miss Forsythe. Won't you cool off a little before you go on? This is the little girl, I s'pose. I guess it's pretty cool to what she's accustomed to, ain't it, Delia?"

"No, I thank you, Mrs. Slater. I'll go right on to the house. Now, Ardelia, here you are in the country. I'm staying with my friend in a big white house about a quarter of a mile farther on. You can't see it from here, but if you want anything you can just walk over. Day after to-morrow is the picnic I told you of. You'll see me then, anyway. Now run right out in the grass and pick all the daisies you want. Don't be afraid; no one will drive you off this grass!"

The force of this was lost on Ardelia, who had never been driven off any grass whatever, but she gathered that she was expected to walk out into the thick rank growth of the unmowed side yard, and strode downward obediently.

"Now pick them! Pick the daisies!" cried Miss Forsythe, excitedly. "I want to see you."

Ardelia looked blank.

"Huh?" she said.

"Gather them. Get a bunch. Oh, you poor child! Mrs. Slater,

she doesn't know how!" Miss Forsythe was deeply moved and illustrated by picking imaginary daisies on the porch. Ardelia's quick eye followed her gestures, and stooping, she scooped the heads from three daisies and started back with them. Miss Forsythe gasped.

"No, no, dear! Pull them up! Take the stem, too," she explained. "Pick the whole flower."

Ardelia bent over again, tugged at a thick-stemmed clover, brought it up by the roots, and laid it awkwardly on the young lady's lap.

"Thank you, dear," she said, politely, "but I meant them for you. I meant you to have a bunch. Don't you want them?"

"Naw," said Ardelia, decidedly.

Miss Forsythe's eyes brightened suddenly.

"I know what you want," she cried, "you're thirsty! Mrs. Slater, won't you get us some of your good, creamy milk? Don't you want a drink, Ardelia?"

Ardelia nodded. When Mrs. Slater appeared with the foaming yellow glasses she wound her nervous little hands about the stem of the goblet and drank a deep draught.

"There!" cried the young lady. "Now, how do you like real milk, Ardelia? I declare you look like another child already! You can have all you want every day—why, what's the matter?"

For Ardelia was growing ghastly pale before them; her eyes turned inward, her lips tightened. A blinding horror surged from her toes upward, and the memory of the liquid ice-cream and the frying onions faded before the awful reality of her present agony.

Later, as she lay limp and white on the slippery haircloth sofa in Mrs. Slater's musty parlor she heard them discussing her situation.

"There was a lot of Fresh-Air children over at Mis' Simms's," her hostess explained, "and they 'most all of 'em said the milk was too strong—did you ever! Two or three of 'em was sick, like this one, but they got to love it in a little while. She will, too."

Ardelia shook her head feebly. In a few minutes she was asleep. When she awoke all was dusk and shadow. She felt scared and lonely. Now that her stomach was filled and her nerves refreshed by her long sleep, she was in a condition to realize that aside from all bodily discomfort

she was sad—very sad. A new, unknown depression weighed her down. It grew steadily, something was happening, something constant and mournful—what? Suddenly she knew. It was a steady, recurrent noise, a buzzing, monotonous click. Now it rose, now it fell, accentuating the silence dense about it.

"Zig-a-zig! Zig-a-zig!" then a rest.

"Zig-a-zig! Ziz-a-zig-a-zig!"

"Wha's 'at?" she said.

"That? Oh, those are katydids. I s'pose you never heard 'em, that's a fact. Kind o' cozy, I think. Don't you like 'em?"

"Naw."

Another long silence intervened. Mr. Slater snored, William smoked, and the monotonous clamor was uninterrupted.

"Zig-a-zig! Zig-zig! Zig-a-zig-a-zig!"

Slowly, against the background of this machine-like clicking, there grew other sounds, weird, unhappy, far away.

"Wheep, wheep, wheep!"

This was a high, thin crying.

"Burrom! Burrom! Brown!"

This was low and resonant and solemn. Ardelia scowled.

"Wha's 'at?" she asked again.

"That's the frogs. Bull-frogs and peepers. Never heard them, either, did ye? Well, that's what they are."

William took his pipe out of his mouth.

"Come here, sissy, 'n I'll tell y' a story," he said, lazily.

Ardelia obeyed, and glancing timorously at the shadows, slipped around to his side.

"Onc't they was an' ol' feller comin' 'long crosslots, late at night, an' he come to a pond, an' he kinder stopped up an' says to himself, 'Wonder how deep the ol' pond is, anyhow?' He was just a leetle—well, he'd had a drop too much, y' see—"

"Had a what?" interrupted Ardelia.

"He was sort o' rollin' 'round—he didn't know just what he was doin'—"

"Oh! Jagged!" said Ardelia, comprehendingly.

"I guess so. An' he heard a voice singin' out, 'Knee deep! Knee deep! Knee deep.'"

William gave a startling imitation of the peepers; his voice was a high, shrill wail.

"'Oh, well,' s' he, ''f it's just knee deep, I'll wade through,' an' he starts in.

"Just then he hears a big feller singin' out, 'Better go rrround! Better gorrround! Better gorrround!'

"'Lord,' says he, 'is it s' deep 's that? Well, I'll go round then.' 'N' off he starts to walk around.

"'Knee deep! Knee deep! Knee deep!' says the peepers.

"An' there it was. Soon's he'd start to do one thing they'd tell him another. Make up his mind he couldn't, so he stands there still, they do say, askin' 'em every night which he better do."

"Stands where?"

"Oh, I d' know. Out in the swamp, mebbe."

Again he smoked. Time passed by.

Suddenly Mr. Slater coughed and arose. "Well, guess I'll be gettin' to bed," he said. "Come on, boys. Hello, little girl! Come to visit us, hey? Mind you don't pick poison vine."

Mrs. Slater led Ardelia upstairs into a little hot room, and told her to get into bed quick, for the lamp drew the mosquitoes.

Ardelia kicked off her shoes and approached the bed distrustfully. It sank down with her weight and smelled hot and queer. Rolling off she stretched herself on the floor, and lay there disconsolately. At home the hurdy-gurdy was playing, the women were gossiping on every step, the lights were everywhere—the blessed fearless gas lights—and the little girls were dancing in the breeze that drew in from East River.

In the morning Miss Forsythe came over to inquire after her charge's health, accompanied by another young lady.

"Why, Ethel, she isn't barefoot!" she cried. "Come here, Ardelia, and take off your shoes and stockings directly. Shoes and stockings in the country! Now, you'll know what comfort is."

To patter about bare-legged on the clear, safe pavement, was one thing; to venture unprotected into that waving, tripping tangle was another. Ardelia stepped cautiously upon the short grass near the house, and with jaw set felt her

way into the higher growth. Suddenly she stopped; she shrieked:

"Oh, gee! Oh, gee!"

"What is it, Ardelia; what is it? A snake?" Mrs. Slater rushed out, seized Ardelia, half rigid with fear, and carried her to the porch. They elicited from her as she sat with feet tucked under her that something had rustled by her "down at the bottom"—that it was slippery, that she had stepped on it, and wanted to go home.

"Toad," explained Mrs. Slater, briefly. "Only a little hop-toad, Delia, that wouldn't harm a baby, let alone a big girl nine years old, like you."

"She's a queer child," Mrs. Slater confided to the young ladies. "Not a drop of anything will she drink but cold tea. It don't seem reasonable to give it to her all day, and I won't do it, so she has to wait till meals. She makes a face if I say milk, and the water tastes slippery, she says, and salty-like. She won't touch it. I tell her it's good well-water, but she just shakes her head. She's stubborn 's a bronze mule, that child. Just mopes around. 'S morning she asked me when did the parades go by. I told her there wa'n't any, but the circus, an' that had been already. I tried to cheer her up, sort of, with that Fresh-Air picnic of yours to-morrow, Miss Forsythe, an s'she, 'Oh, the Dago picnic,' s'she, 'will they have Tong's band?'"

"She don't seem to take any int'rest in th' farm, like those Fresh-Air children, either. I showed her the hens an' the eggs, an' she said it was a lie about the hens layin' 'em. 'What d' you take me for?' s'she. The idea! Then Henry milked the cow, to show her—she wouldn't believe that, either—and with the milk streamin' down before her, what do you s'pose she said? 'You put it in!' s'she. I never should a' believed that, Miss Forsythe, if I hadn't heard it."

"Oh, she'll get over it; just wait a few days. Good-bye, Ardelia. Eat a good supper."

But this Ardelia did not do. Mr. Slater ate in voracious silence. William never spoke, and Mrs. Slater filled their plates without comment. Ardelia had never in her life eaten in silence. Through the open door the buzz of the katydids was beginning tentatively. In the intervals of William's gulps a faint bass note warned them from the swamp.

"Better gorrround! Better gorrround!"

Ardelia's nerves strained and snapped. Her eyes grew wild.

"Fer Gawd's sake, talk!" she cried, sharply. "Are youse dumbies?"

The morning dawned fresh and fair; the homely barnyard noises brought a smile to Miss Forsythe's sympathetic face, as she waited for Ardelia to join her in a drive to the station. But Ardelia did not smile.

At the station Miss Forsythe shook her limp little hand.

"Good-bye, dear. I'll bring the other little children back with me. You'll enjoy that. Good-bye."

"I'm comin', too," said Ardelia.

"Why—no, dear—you wait for us. You'd only turn around and come right back, you know."

"Come, back nothin'. I'm goin' home."

"Why—why, Ardelia! Don't you really like it?"

"Naw, it's too hot."

Miss Forsythe stared.

"But Ardelia, you don't want to go back to that horribly smelly street? Not truly?"

"Betcher life I do!"

"It's so lonely and quiet," pleaded the young lady. Ardelia shuddered. Again she seemed to hear that fiendish, mournful wailing:

"Knee deep! Knee deep! Knee deep!"

They rode in silence. But the jar and jolt of the engine made music in Ardelia's ears; the familiar jargon of the newsboy:

"N' Yawk evening paypers! Woyld! Joynal!" was a breath from home to her little cockney heart.

They pushed through the great station, they climbed the steps of the elevated track, they jingled on a cross-town car. And at a familiar corner Ardelia slipped loose her hand, uttered a grunt of joy, and Miss Forsythe looked after her in vain. She was gone.

But late in the evening, when the great city turned out to breathe, and sat with opened shirt and loosened bodice on the dirty steps; when the hurdy-gurdy executed brassy scales and the lights flared in endless sparkling rows; when the trolley gongs at the corner pierced the air, and feet tapped cheerfully down the cool stone steps of the beer-shop,

Ardelia, bare-footed and abandoned, nibbling at a section of bologna sausage, cake-walked insolently with a band of little girls behind a severe policeman, mocking his stolid gait, to the delight of Old Dutchy, who beamed approvingly at her prancing.

"Ja, ja, you trow out your feet good. Some day we pay to see you, no? You like to get back already!"

"Ja, danky slum, Dutchy," she said airily, as she sank upon her cool step, stretched her toes and sighed:

"Gee! N' Yawk's the place!"

[E]