"That's very nice of you," smiled Miss Bailey, not surprised at this new delicacy of feeling in so small and unfortunate and sorely tried a heart. "Very nice of you indeed."
"Sure I won't let anybody wear it," reiterated Becky, "not 'out they pays me a penny for walkin' up and down the block, and two cents for walkin' all round the block mit mine stylish from-plush cape."
"Of course not," Teacher agreed, hastily adjusting herself to this standard of right dealing.
"No, ma'am," said Becky. "I should never leave nobody have nothings what you gives me 'out they pays me good. The lady of our floor, she goes on a dancing-ball over yesterday, and she wants I shall leave her put her on mit mine cape—she's a awful little lady—only she don't wants she shall pay me. Und so I ain't let her take it, the while you gives it to me, and I am loving much mit you."
A teacher who gains the confidence of her small charges, even to a slight degree, is sure to be made familiar with their family history unto the third or fourth generation. And so Teacher knew that the poverty of Becky's home life was embittered and made even harder to bear by the contrasting elegance of an aunt, who lived, amid rank and fashion, in the "tony" purlieus of Cherry Street. Her abode consisted, according to her smarting small relative, of "a room and a closet," a lavish and extravagant area for a household as small as hers.
"Why," Becky informed Miss Bailey, with upturned palms, upscrewed shoulders, and upturned eyes, "my aunt, she ain't got only five children and three boarders!"
It had been the habit of this rich and fashionable dame to pay visits of state and ceremony to her less fortunate sister-in-law, whose abode differed from hers only by the subtraction of the room. There, in the chaste consciousness of an incredible wig and an impenetrable shawl, she would monopolize many hundreds of cubic feet of space and air; indulge in conversations of the elegant and fashionable kind, which, so Becky reported to her teacher, "makes the tears in my mamma's eyes, and gives my papa shamed feelings," and caused an epidemic of ill-temper, with resulting slaps and kicks and yelling among her nephews and nieces.
"And what you think?" Becky had sadly added; "she says like that all times on my mamma, out of Jewish, she says: 'Why don't you never come over for see me?' Und my mamma, she says all times, mit more tears in the eyes—bend down your head, Teacher. I likes I shall whisper mit you in your ear—she couldn't come the whiles she ain't got nothing she could wear on the block. My papa has fierce feelings over it. He says like that, his sister—that's my aunt—is awful nosy."
Teacher often pondered as to whether it were possible, or even desirable, to provide the means to more frequent intercourse between the two families. She knew that this would mean shopping; that any article of her own apparel, or that of any of her friends, would be inadequate to enshroud the matronly form of Becky's mother, for years of confinement to the house, years of sedentary occupation, and years of ill-considered and ill-adapted diet had co-operated to produce almost geographical outlines in Mrs. Zabrowsky. Mountains, valleys, promontories, and plains seemed the terms most suitable to describe her, and she looked about as movable as these natural formations. Teacher thought of waiting until Christmas time, and of then doing something anonymously. Meanwhile the episode of the cape occurred, and some weeks later Becky reported with triumph:
"Teacher, what you think?" this was always her opening phrase; "my stylish aunt by Cherry Street, she goes and has a party, und my papa he goes on the party, und my mamma, she goes by my papa's side."