A Sunny Little Lass

by Evelyn Raymond

First, because to him it seemed of the greater importance, Luigi dwelt upon Toni’s disappointment, and divulged the great “secret” which had matured in the peanut-merchant’s brain, and was to have been made known to Goober Glory, had she not “runned the way.” The secret was a scheme for the betterment of everybody concerned and of Antonio Salvatore in especial; and to the effect that the blind captain and Goober Glory should form a partnership. She was to be given charge of Antonio’s own big stand; while comfortable upon a high stool, beside it, the captain was to sit and sing. This would have attracted many customers, Toni thought, by its novelty; and, incidentally, the seaman might sell some of his own frames. As for the proprietor himself, he was to have taken and greatly enlarged the “outside business”; Luigi assisting him whenever the organ failed to pay.

“Money, little one! Oh, mucha money for all! But you stole the baby and runned away,” ended this part of the stroller’s tale, as she interpreted it.

“I never! Never, never, never! She was sent! She belongs. Hear me!” cried Glory, indignantly, and forthwith poured into Luigi’s puzzled ear all her own story. Then she demanded that he should answer over again her first question when she had met him; hoping a different reply.

“Has my grandpa come back?”

But Luigi only shook his head. Even through his dim understanding, there had filtered the knowledge that the fine old captain never would so come. He had been killed, crushed, put out of this sunny world by a cruel accident. So Antonio had told him; but so, in pity, for her he would not repeat. Rather he would make light of the matter, and did so, shrugging his shoulders in his foreign fashion and elevating his eyebrows indifferently; then conveyed to her in his broken English that the seaman must have “moved,” because the landlord had come and sent all the furnishings of the “littlest house” to the grocer’s for safe keeping; and there she would find them when she wished.

As for Billy Buttons and Nick, his chum, they were as bad as ever; and Posy Jane had never a penny for his music, never; though Meg-Laundress would sometimes toss him one if he would play for a long, long time and so keep her children amused and out of mischief. She, too, had even gone so far as to bid him look out all along the road he should travel for Goober Glory herself; and if he found her and brought her back, why she would make him a fine present. Goober Glory had been the most inexpensive and faithful of nurses to Meg’s children and she could afford to do the handsome thing by any one who would restore her services.

“And here I find you, already,” said Luigi, accepting the wonderful fact as if it were the simplest thing in the world, whereas, out of the many roads by which he might have journeyed from the city, this was the one least likely to attract his wandering footsteps. And this strange thing was, afterward, to confirm good Meg-Laundress in her faith in “Guardian Angels.”

But when he proposed that they return at once to the Lane lest Meg’s promise should be forgotten and he defrauded of his present, Glory firmly objected:

“No, no, Luigi. I must find grandpa. I must find this baby’s folks. Then we will go back, you and me and all of us but her; ’cause then I’ll have to give her up, I reckon–the darlin’, preciousest thing!”

Luigi glanced at the sun, at the landscape, at the group of watchful Fogartys, and reflected that there was no money to be made there. The hand-organ belonged to Tonio, his brother, and the monkey likewise. Tonio loved money better than anything; and Luigi, the organ, and the monkey had been sent forth to collect it, not to loiter by the way; and if he was not to return at once and secure Meg’s present, that would have been appropriated by Antonio, as a matter of course, he must be about his business. When he had slowly arrived at this decision, he rose, shouldered the hurdy-gurdy, signaled Jocko to his wrist, pulled his cap in respect to his hostess, and set off.