Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley

by Belle Kanaris Maniates

As she walked up the street with the bishop, she frankly related the family history and the part Mr. Meredith and the surplice had played therein.

The bishop had generous instincts, and a desire to reach the needy directly instead of through the medium of institutions, but he had never known just how to approach them. His presence in this unknown part of the city had been unpremeditated, but he welcomed the chance that had led his steps hither to perform an errand of mercy. He handed Amarilly five dollars, and wrote down her address. He was most reluctant to receive the surplice as security, but Amarilly's firm insistence was not to be overcome. She returned home, rejoicing in the knowledge that she had the price of their happy home in her pocket. The bishop had given her his card, which she laid in a china saucer with other bits of pasteboard she had collected from Derry Phillips, Mr. Vedder, and Pete Noyes. The saucer adorned a small stand in the dining-room part of the house.

"It's the way Mrs. Hubbleston kep' her keerds," Amarilly explained to the family.

Meantime the bishop was walking in an opposite direction toward his home, wondering if he should find he was mistaken in his estimate of human nature; and a query arose in his mind as to what he should do with the surplice if it were left on his hands.

CHAPTER XIII

Bud sat in the park,—Clothes-line Park, Amarilly had dubbed it—one Monday afternoon, singing a song of gladness. The park was confined by a clothes-line stretched between three tottering poles and the one solitary poplar tree of the Jenkins estate. The line was hung with white linen garments, and smaller articles adorned the grass plot within the park.

This to Bud was the most beautiful spot in the world. He looked up into the sapphire blue of the sky flecked with soft patches of white, then down upon the waving grass latticed by sun and shade; he listened to the soothing rustle of the poplar leaves, the soft flapping of linen in the breeze, the birds in the tree tops, and felt his heart and throat bursting with all the harmony and melody about him. Not always was Bud's refrain one of joy. There were songs of sorrow on the damp days when the washings must be dried within the house, and he could not venture forth because he still was regarded as the delicate one of the family. There were days, too, when the number of garments was not adequate to complete the boundary to the park, and that meant less to eat and worry about the rent and a harassed look in his mother's anxious eyes.

But there was no sob in Bud's song this afternoon. The clothes had been hung out unusually early, and were nearly dry, so his mother had brought out her little lean-back rocker and sat beside him for a few moments to listen to his carol and to hark back to the days when his lusty-voiced father had sung to her in the shadows of a vine clad porch.

It was not upon Amarilly, the sharer of her burdens, nor upon the baby that Mrs. Jenkins lavished her tenderness. Bud crept closest because he had been the one most dependent upon her care.

When the little singer ceased, the mother arose and unpinned the garments, carrying them in armfuls to the huge basket in the middle of the park. Bud watched her thin, fatigued hands as they performed their accustomed task, and a sudden inspiration came to him. His future field of labor had troubled him. Now his way seemed clear. He stepped nimbly to the grass plot and gathered up the pieces spread thereon.