Little Aliens

by Myra Kelly

"But that Truant Officer will get you sure," warned Yetta. "He comes in my house and he gets me, und makes me I shall go on the school."

"He can go on mine house all he likes," responded the lawless Rosie, making careful inventory of her hair ribbons the while, "all he likes he can go. There ain't never nobody there. My mamma she is all times on factories, und me und the baby is all times by the street. I don't needs I shall go on no school. I ain't got time."

"He'll get you on a rainy day," maintained Cassandra.

But the dread official never did discover Rosie. She was sufficiently wise to avoid any public display of her red and yellow charms until after school hours, unless she were well out of her own district. She would follow street organs and behave like any other member of a decorous audience until she was well out of the path of the ravening Truant Officer. Then she would abandon the baby to the cold stones, and herself to the enchantment of the music. Thus she achieved that freedom of which her adopted country boasts, and for which Yetta Aaronsohn—though basking in the rays of a free education, with lunches, medical attendance, and spectacles thrown in—still yearned.

There had been a time when life had been to Yetta, even as it now was to Rosie, a simple matter of loving and helping her mother, taking care of the babies, and dancing to the organs in the street. Then entered the Truant Officer, and life became a complicated affair of manners, dress, books, washing, and friendships, with every day new laws to be met, new ideas to be assimilated, old pleasures and employments to be thrown aside.

That the end of his three months of wandering found Isidore alive bordered on the miraculous; that the end of these three months found him in congenial employment was altogether a miracle. Yet these things had occurred, and Isidore's long loneliness and self-imposed exile were nearly over, when his daughter and Miss Aaronsohn melted their souls together in the langorous solvent of "Silver Threads Among the Gold." On the ensuing Saturday he was to receive his first week's wages as janitor's assistant in a combination of restaurant, hall, and Masonic lodge, much patronized by small and earnest clubs or societies, having no permanent stamping ground of their own. On the Friday afternoon the large hall was occupied by "The Cornelia Aid Society for the Instruction of Ignorant Parents Among the Poor." It had been the happy idea of one of the vice-presidents to hold the meeting within the citadel as it were of poor and ignorant parenthood, so that the members coming gingerly through unimagined streets and evidences of parenthood appallingly ignorant, might derive—the vice-president was fond of the vernacular—some idea of what the society was "up against." Automobiles, victorias, disgusted footmen, and blasphemous chauffeurs thronged the unaccustomed street, and the children of Israel thronged about them.

A genius for opportunity drew Giusseppi Pagamini and his new piano organ to this sensational business opening, and the sweet strains of the piano organ drew Rosie Rashnowsky after him. They had drawn her for many blocks, and the meeting of the Cornelias was in full swing when her kimona and hair ribbons came into play upon the sidewalk. She laid the baby upon the steps, swept clean for her reception by Isidore the conscientious, who had little idea—as he plied his broom and scrubbing-brush earlier in the day—that he was strewing the couch of his own small daughter's siesta.

Then to an audience composed of glorified gentlemen in silk hats and top-boots, and the quieter but still sumptuous chauffeur livery, Rosie threw herself into a very ecstasy of her art. Louder thrilled Giusseppi, quicker flew the "fer-ladies-shoes," wilder waved ribbons and dressing jacket. "Out o' sight," commented the footmen. "Bravissimo," ejaculated the chauffeurs, and Rosie reached the climax of her career in a pirouette which brought her, madly whirring, under the aristocratic noses of a pair of chestnut cobs, whose terrified plunges would have ended her gyrations forever and a day if a footman had not interfered. Then Giusseppi passed his battered hat, and the audience, naturally inferring that the black-eyed child belonged to the black-eyed musician, threw him such encouragement as a week of ordinary days would not have brought him.

Rosie threw herself into a very ecstasy of her art.