“But I want to go to school as long as I can,” said Bird, smiling at Mattie’s mistake.
“Oh, then you want to begin in an office type-writing or keeping sales books. I don’t like that; it’s too slow and you can’t see the crowd. You’ll have a daisy time this summer, though, with nothin’ to do but takin’ Billy riding in trolleys and seein’ the town. I’ll tell you all the parks where they have music. Billy’s pa is free with dimes for trolley rides. Last year, before my pa’s falling accident, we lived down this street, and when Tessie’s legs were well enough, Mr. O’More ’d often give me a quarter to take Billy along fer a ride. You can ride near all day fer that, if you know how to work the transfers and stick up fer yer rights.”
“Was your father badly hurt?” asked Bird, drawn to this stranger by a common chord.
“Yes, hurt dead,” she answered, in a matter-of-fact tone without the trace of a tremble, “and then pretty soon we had to move, and we’ve been doin’ it most ever since, so I kinder lost track o’ Billy. You see mother worried sick and we all got down on our luck, but now she’s got a steady job to do scrubbin’ at the Police Court, and I’ve got a job, and we’ve got two rooms and everything is all hunky; that is ’cept Tessie’s legs, but some’s worse than her and can’t even sit up.”
“You say you live behind us; which house is it? Perhaps I could see your sister through the window,” said Bird, somehow feeling reproached at Mattie’s cheerfulness.
“It’s the little low house down in the yard, back of yours, that’s got winders that stick out of the roof. Ours is the top middle and it’s got blinds to it,—all the winders haven’t,—and they’re fine to draw-to if it rains, ’cause you don’t have to shut the window. It’s a rear building, and some don’t like ’em, and of course Tessie would rather see out to the street, but rents come so high and rear buildings are stiller at night; that is, when there’s not too many cats. Were rents high a month where you came from?”
“I don’t exactly know,” said Bird, trying to remember. “I think we paid ten dollars, but we had a whole house, though it was old, and a garden, and a woodshed, and a barn, and chickens. Everybody lived in whole houses in Laurelville, even though some had only two or three rooms.”
“Ten dollars for all that, and we pay eight for two rooms!” ejaculated Mattie, looking hard at Bird to see if she was in earnest, and, seeing that she was, quickly grew confidential, and, coming close, whispered: “Would you, may be, sometime come in and tell Tessie about it and the garden and chickens? She’s read about the country in a book she’s got,—oh, yes, she can read; she’s twelve and went to school up to last year, for all she isn’t much bigger ’n Billy—but she can’t seem to understand what it’s just like and she’s cracked after flowers; the man in the corner market gave her one in a pot last year, but it didn’t live long because we hadn’t a real window that opened out then. Maybe your aunt won’t let you come ’cause we live in a rear; my mother says she’s awful proud; but then, most anybody would be, living in a whole flat with bells and a stair carpet.
“Say, Bird,” she continued, after a moment’s silence,—during which the pedler had given up chasing the boys, rearranged his scattered wares, and plodded patiently on,—this time dropping her voice to a whisper and putting her lips to the other’s ear, “if yer aunt won’t let yer come over, maybe you’d wave to Tessie when you and Billy’s takin’ the air on the ’scape. I’ll tie a rag to our blind so’s you’ll know the winder. It would be an awful lot of company fer her daytimes when we’re out to have somebody to wave to. Yer will? I believe ye; somehow I could tell in a minute ye’d be different from the rest,” and giving Bird a thump on the back expressive of gratitude, Mattie picked up her milk bottle and hurried round the corner.