CHAPTER XXVI
THE END OF A LONG DAY
A LONG moment of breathless silence—while four pairs of eyes fixed themselves upon the hall door, and as many pairs of ears strained to follow the creak and clump of Big Tom's departure. The sound of his steps died away. Another, and a longer, wait, and the door moved and rattled, that signal which marked the opening and shutting of the area door three flights below. The longshoreman was really gone. Cis laid her forehead against an arm of the wheel chair, and burst into tears, clinging to old Grandpa, and trembling, and frightening him into weeping; whereupon Johnnie hurried to them, and alternately patted them comfortingly, and Father Pat came to stand over the three.
"Dear! dear! dear!" exclaimed the priest. "But ain't I glad that I came, though! Shure, the big baboon was ugly! Ha-ha-a-a! And when he's like that, faith, and how he throws the coconuts!"
That fetched the smiles, even from Cis. And, "Oh-ho! Here comes the sun!" cried the Father, beaming joyously at them all. "Shure, we've had the thunderstorm, and the air's clear, and so all the kittens dear can come out o' their corners, and frisk a bit! Faith, I wasn't half as mad as I sounded. No, I wasn't, old gentleman! (And what's that he's holdin' on to? Bless me soul, is it a doll?)" Then having taken up Letitia, and turned her about, and chuckled over her, and given her into Grandpa's outstretched hands again, "It's only that our rampin' Mr. Barber," he explained, "wouldn't understand me if I didn't give him a bit o' the rough edge o' me tongue—no, nor respect me, neither! So I laid it on a mite thick!—Oh, that man! Say, he'd sell the tears right out o' yer eye! Yes, he would! He'd sell yer eyelashes t' make a broom for a fly!"
"Big Tom, he makes me awful 'fraid sometimes," confessed Johnnie. "But he makes Cis lots 'fraider, 'cause she's only a girl."
"A girl!" cried the Father. "And ye think bein' a girl is anny good reason for bein' afraid? Faith, little friend, have ye not got hold o' a wrong notion entirely about girls?" Then seeing that here was an opportunity to take the thoughts of these two harried ones away from themselves, "Children dear," he went on, "all this about girls who are afraid reminds me o' a certain story. 'Twas in Belgium it happened, a few years back, and in the city o' Brussels, which is the capital. Oh, 'tis a grand and a sorrowful story! So! Come now!" He wheeled Grandpa to a place beside the morris chair, signed Cis to take the kitchen chair, helped Johnnie to a perch on the table, and sat again, the others drawn about his red head like so many moths around a cheerful lamp.
It was just as the tale of Edith Cavell ended that, most opportunely, who should come stealing in but Mrs. Kukor, pushing the door open with a slippered foot, for each hand held a dish. The exciting events which had transpired in the Barber flat being common property up and down the area building, naturally she knew them; also, leaned out of her own window, she had heard more than enough. The paleness of her round face told how anxious she was.
The priest stood up. "I'm Father Patrick Mungovan, at yer service, ma'am," he said, bowing gravely.
Mrs. Kukor first wiped both plump hands upon a black sateen apron. Then she extended one of them to the priest. "Glat to meet!" she declared heartily. "Und glat you wass come!"
