There were those of the guild who made of this religious duty a solemn and serious task, to be entered upon with sweet piety and uplifting words; but Gail had solved her problem in a fashion which kept Chickentown from hating her and charity. She distributed flowers and pears and tobacco and things, and perfectly human smiles, and a few commonsense observations when they seemed to be necessary, and scoldings where they seemed due, and it was a lasting tribute to her diplomacy and popularity that all the new born babies in the district were named either Gail or Gale.
Chickentown lay in a smoky triangle, entirely surrounded by railroad yards and boiler factories and packing houses and the like, and it was as feudal in its instincts as any stronghold of old. Its womenfolk would not market where the Black Creek women marketed, its men would not drink in the same saloons, and its children came home scarred and prowed from gory battles with the Black Creek gang; yet, in their little cottages and in their tiny yards was the neatness of local pride, which had sprung up immediately after Gail had inaugurated the annual front yard flower prize system.
No sooner had the familiar coupé crossed the Black Creek bridge than a yell went up, which could be heard echoing and reverberating from street to street throughout the entire domain of Chickentown! One block inside the fiefdom, the progress of the car was impeded by exactly twenty-five children. By some miracle they all arrived at nearly the same time, the only difference being that those who had come the farthest were the most out of breath. Gail jumped out among them, and twenty-five right hands went straight up in the air. She inspected the hands critically, one by one, and, by that inspection alone, divided the mobs into two groups, the clean handed ones, who were mostly girls, and the dirty-handed ones, who looked sorry. She shook hands with the first group, and she smiled on both, and she distributed hair ribbons and marbles and pears and candy with cordial understanding.
“It doesn’t do for me to be away so long,” she confessed, looking them over regretfully. “I don’t believe you are as clean.”
Those who were as clean looked consciously hurt, but for the most part they looked guilty; and Gail apologised individually, to those who merited it.
“Now we’ll hear the troubles,” she announced; “and you must hurry. The cleanest first.”
Twenty-five hands went up, and she picked out the cleanest, a neat little girl with yellow hair and blue eyes and a prim little walk, who shyly came forward alone out of the group and wiggled her interlocked fingers behind her, while Gail sat in the door of her coupé and held her court.
A half-whispered conversation; a genuine trouble, and some sound and sensible advice. Yellow Hair did not like her school-teacher; and what was she to do about it? A difficult problem that, and while Gail was inculcating certain extremely cautious lessons of mingled endurance and diplomacy, which would have been helpful to grown-ups as well as to yellow-haired little girls, and which Gail reflected that she might herself use with profit, Arly, with an entirely new sort of smile in her softened eyes, walked over to the chattering group, all of whom had troubles to relate, and asked a boy to have a bill changed for her into quarter dollars. The boy looked at his hand.
“I guess I won’t be next for a long time,” and taking the bill ran for the candy shop, which was nearest. There were seven places of retail business in Chickentown, and since they dealt mostly in coppers, he expected to be a long time on this errand.
Arly watched Gail handle the case of a particularly black-eyed little girl, whose brother was getting too big to play with her any more; and she grew wistful.