But evidently through that experience, and on account of my having sold the kindling wood, our friends were at last apprised of the actual poverty in our house, and for a while there seemed to be no end to the little offerings of food that were brought in. I shall always remember with pride the diplomacy with which most of the food was given. When Mrs. Harrup brought in a steaming pigeon-pie, wrapped in a spotless napkin, she said, “Mrs. Brindin, I had more meat than I knew what to do with and some pie-crust left to waste, so I says to our Elizabeth Ann, ‘Lizzie Ann, make up a little pie for Mrs. Brindin, to let her see how well you’re doing with crust. She knows good crust when she tastes it, and I want you to let her pass judgment on it, Lizzie Ann.’ I said, likewise, ‘Lizzie Ann, if thy pie-crust doesna’ suit Mrs. Brindin, then thy ’usband’ll never be suited.’ So here’s it, Mrs. Brindin. Never mind washing the dish, please.”
Mrs. Harrow, the iron monger’s demure wife, herself a bride of but two months, came in one morning, dangling a long, lank hare. She had a doubtful expression on her face, and, as soon as she had crossed the threshold of our kitchen, she made haste to fling the hare on our table, exclaiming, “There, Mrs. Brindin. There it is for you to tell us on’t. I bought it yestere’en down’t lower road and it come this morning, early. I was going to stew it, but then I smelled it. It’s not a bit nice smell, is’t? I couldn’t bring myself to put it in the stew. I made a pudding and dumpling dinner ’stead. Just you sniff at it, Mrs. Brindin. You know about ’em, bein’ as you sold ’em, mony on ’em. It don’t smell tidy, do it?” She looked anxiously at aunt. “Why, Mrs. Harrow,” said my aunt, “’Ares always are that way. It all goes off in the cooking. It’s nothing to bother over.”
“Uh,” said the iron monger’s wife, “come off or not, I could never eat it. I never could. I wonder, Mrs. Brindin, if you will let Al, there, throw it away or do something with it. I will never have such a thing in my house!” and she hurried out of the kitchen.
“Al,” smiled aunt, a rare smile, “here’s stew and pie for near a week.”
Our neighbors could not always be doing such diplomatic acts, and after a while we had to go back to treacle and bread, hourly expecting word from America. We had faith that Uncle Stanwood would let us hear from him, though his long, disheartening silence worried us considerably. Aunt did not go to work, because she hoped at any day to hear the call, “Come to America.” Then in desperation Aunt had her name put on the pauper’s list for a shilling a week. I had to go to the parish house on Monday mornings, and stand in line with veteran paupers—“Barley-corn Jack,” the epileptic octogenarian, Widow Stanbridge, whose mother and grandparents before her had stood in this Monday line, Nat Harewell, the Crimean hero, who had a shot wound in his back, and many other minor characters who came for the shilling. The first Monday I stood in’t, I chanced to step in front of “Barley-corn” Jack, who, unknown to me at the time, was usually given the place of honor at the head of the line. He clutched me by the nape of the neck, whirled me around, lifted up my upper lip with a dirty finger, and grinned, “Got a row of ’em, likely ’nough! Screw th’ face, young un, screw it tight, wil’t?”
I was so terror stricken, and tried to escape his clutch with such desperation, that Nat Harewell interjected, “Lend ’im hup, Jack, lend ’im hup, owld un!” and Jack did let me go with a whirl like a top until I was dazed. I fell in line near the Widow, who laughed at me, showing her black teeth; and then, while she twisted an edge of her highly flavored and discolored shawl, and chewed on it, she asked, “Was’t ale ur porter ’at browt thee wi’ uns, laddie?”
I replied that I was Al Priddy and that I was “respectable.” With that, the line began to move past the clerk’s window, and there was no more talking.
In such circumstances we reached the Christmas season, and still we had no word from America. It was the night before Christmas, and a night before Christmas in an English town is astir with romance, joy, and poetic feeling. The linen draper had a white clay church in his window, with colored glass windows behind which burned a candle. The butcher had his pink pig in his window with a hat on its head, a Christmas grin on its face, and a fringe of pigs’ tails curled into spirals hanging in rows above him. There were tinsel laden trees with golden oranges peeping out from behind the candy stockings, wonderlands of toys, and The Home of Santy, where he was seen busy making toys for the world. I had gone down the row with my aunt, looking at all that, for aunt had said, “Al, there’s to be a sorry Christmas for you this time. You had better get all you can of it from the shop windows.” We were pushed this way and that by the crowds that went by doing their shopping. Once we had been with them in the Christmas spirit, now we dwelt apart because of our poverty.
“My,” commented aunt, with the old bitterness in her tone, “the fools! Parading afore us to let us see that they can have a good time of it!”
Our dark home had a more miserable aspect about it than ever when we got back. “Get right up to bed,” commanded aunt, “there’s no coal to waste. You can keep warm there!” and though her manner of saying it was rough, yet I heard a catch in her voice, and then she burst into tears.