Chapter 2 No.2

armencita knocked. There was no answer. She knocked again. After the third knock she opened the door and, hand on the knob, looked in.

"Oh, Miss Frances, I was afraid you had gone out! I knocked and knocked, but you didn't say come in, so I thought I'd look. Please excuse me!"

The girl at the sewing-machine, which was close to the window and far from the door, stopped its running, turned in her chair, and held out her hand. "Hello, Carmencita! I'm glad it's you and not Miss Perkins. I wouldn't want Miss Perkins to see me trying to sew, but you can see. Take off your coat. Is it cold out?"

"Getting cold." The heavy coat was laid on one chair, and Carmencita, taking up a half-made gingham dress from another, sat in it and laid the garment in her lap. "I didn't know you knew how to sew."

"I don't." The girl at the machine laughed. "Those Simcoe children didn't have a dress to change in, and I'm practising on some skirts and waists for them. Every day I'm finding out something else I don't know how to do. I seem to have been taught a good many things there is no special need of knowing, and very few I can make use of down here."

"You didn't expect to come down here when you were learning things, did you?" Carmencita's eyes were gravely watching the efforts being made to thread the machine's needle. "I guess when you were a little girl you didn't know there were things like you see down here. What made you come here, Miss Frances? You didn't have to. What made you come?"

Into the fine fair face color crept slowly, and for a moment a sudden frown ridged the high forehead from which the dark hair, parted and brushed back, waved into a loose knot at the back of her head; then she laughed, and her dark eyes looked into Carmencita's blue ones.

"Why did I come?" The gingham dress on which she had been sewing was folded carefully. "I came to find out some of the things I did not know about. I wasn't of any particular use to anybody else. No one needed me. I had a life on my hands that I didn't know what to do with, and I thought perhaps-"

"You could use it down here? You could use a dozen down here, but you weren't meant not to get married. Aren't you ever going to get married, Miss Frances?"

"I hardly think I will." Frances Barbour got up and pushed the machine against the wall. "The trouble about getting married is marrying the right man. One so often doesn't. I wouldn't like to make a mistake." Again she smiled.

"Don't see how you could make a mistake. Isn't there some way you can tell?"

"My dear Carmencita!" Stooping, the child's face was lifted and kissed. "I'm not a bit interested in men or marriage. They belong to-to a long, long time ago. I'm interested now in little girls like you, and in boys, and babies, and gingham dresses, and Christmas trees, and night classes, and the Dramatic School for the children who work, and-"

"I'm interested in them, too, but I'm going to get married when I'm big enough. I know you work awful hard down here, but it wasn't what you were born for. I'm always feeling, right inside me, right here"-Carmencita's hand was laid on her breast-"that you aren't going to stay here long, and it makes an awful sink sometimes. You'll go away and forget us, and get married, and go to balls and parties and wear satin slippers with buckles on them, and dance, and I'd do it, too, if I were you. Only-only I wish sometimes you hadn't come. It will be so much harder when you go away."

"But I'm not going away." At the little white bureau in the plainly furnished room of Mother McNeil's "Home," Frances stuck the pins brought from the machine into the little cushion and nodded gaily to the child now standing by her side. "I've tried the parties and balls and-all the other things, and for a while they were very nice; and then one day I found I was spending all my time getting ready for them and resting from them, and there was never time for anything else. If I had died it would not have mattered the least bit that I had lived. And-"

"Didn't you have a sweetheart that it mattered to? Not even one?"

Into hers Carmencita's eyes were looking firmly, and, turning from them, Frances made effort to laugh; then her face whitened.

"One can never be sure how much things matter to others, Carmencita. We can only be sure of how much they matter-to us. But it was Christmas we were to talk about. It's much nicer to talk about Christmas. We can't talk very long, for I meet the 'Little Mothers' at half past six, and after that I-"

"And I've got to go at half past five to meet Father when he's through with that wedding up-town, and then we're going shopping. I've got a lot to talk about. The Beckwith babies are awful sick. I guess it would be a good thing if they were to die. They are always having colic and cramps and croup, and they've got a coughing mother and a lazy father; but they won't die. Some babies never will. Did you know Mr. Rheinhimer had been on another spree?" Carmencita, feet fastened in the rounds of her chair, elbows on knees, and chin in the palms of her hand, nodded affirmatively at the face in front of her. "Worst one yet. He smashed all the window-panes in the bedroom, and broke two legs of their best chairs doing it, and threw the basin and pitcher out of the window. He says he'd give any man living five hundred dollars, if he had it, if he'd live with his wife a month and not shake her. She is awful aggravating. She's always in curl papers, and don't wear corsets, and nags him to death. She says she wishes you'd send him to a cure or something. And I want to tell you about Father's present."

For twenty minutes they talked long and earnestly. Carmencita's list of names and number of pennies were gone over again and again, and when at last she got up to go the perplexities of indecision and adjustment were mainly removed, and she sighed with satisfaction.

"I'm very much obliged to you for helping me fix it." The piece of paper was carefully pinned to the inside of the coat. "I'm not going to get anything but Father's present to-night. I won't have to go to school to-morrow, and I want the buying to last as long as possible. Isn't it funny the way Christmas makes you feel?"

Carmencita's hands came suddenly together, and, pressing them on her breast, her eyes grew big and shining. Standing first on one foot and then on the other, she swayed slightly forward, then gave a leap in the air.

"I can't help it, Miss Frances, I really can't! It's something inside me-something that makes me wish I was all the world's mother! And I'm so squirmy and thrilly and shivery, thinking of the things I'd do if I could, that sometimes I'm bound to jump-just bound to! I'm almost sure something nice is going to happen. Did you ever feel that way, Miss Frances?"

"I used to feel that way." The clear dark eyes for a moment turned from the eager ones of the child. "It's a very nice way to feel. When one is young-though perhaps it is not so much youth as hope in the heart, and love, and-"

"I don't love everybody. I loathe Miss Cattie Burns. She's the very old dev- I promised Father I wouldn't say even a true mean thing about anybody for a month, and I've done it twice! I'd much rather love people, though. I love to love! It makes you feel so nice and warm and homey. If I had a house I'd have everybody I know-I mean all the nice everybodies-to spend Christmas with me. Isn't it funny that at Christmas something in you gets so lonely for-for- I don't know what for, exactly, but it's something you don't mind so much not having at other times."

Carmencita's arms opened to their full length, then circled slowly, and her hands crossed around her neck. "It's the time to wipe out and forget things, Father says. It's the home-time and the heart-time and-" In her voice was sudden anxiety. "You are not going away for Christmas are you, Miss Frances?"

"Not for Christmas eve." She hesitated. "I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do on Christmas day. My people live in different places and far apart. It is all very different from what it used to be. When one is alone-"

She stopped abruptly and, going over to the window, looked down on the street below; and Carmencita, watching, saw the face turned from hers twist in sudden pain. For a moment she stood puzzled and helpless. Something she did not understand was troubling, something in which she could not help. What was it?

"You couldn't be alone at Christmas, Miss Frances." Slowly she came toward the window, and shyly her hand slipped into that of her friend. "There are too many wanting you. Father and I can't give fine presents or have a fine dinner, but there wouldn't be words in which to tell you how thankful we'd be if you'd spend it with us. Would you-would you come to us, Miss Frances?"

Into the eager blue eyes looking up the dark eyes looked down, and, looking, grew misty. "Dear child, I'd come to you if I were here, but I do not think I'll be here." Her head went up as if impatient with herself. "I'm going away on Christmas day-going-" She took out her watch hurriedly and looked at it. "It's after half past five, Carmencita. You will have to hurry or you won't see the wedding guests go in. Good-by, dear. Have a good time and tuck away all you see to tell me later. I will be so busy between now and Christmas, there will be no time for talking, but after Christmas-Why, you've got on your straw hat, Carmencita! Where is the winter one Miss Cattie gave you? She told me she had given you a perfectly good hat that would last a long time."

"She did." Carmencita's hands were stuck in the deep pockets of her long coat, and again her big blue eyes were raised to her friend's. "It would have lasted for ever if it hadn't got burned up. It fell in the fire and got burned up." Out in the hall she hesitated, then came back, opened the door, and put her head in. "It did get burned up, Miss Frances. I burned it. Good-by."

Late into the night Frances Barbour sat at her desk in the bare and poorly furnished room which she now called hers, and wrote letters, settled accounts, wrapped bundles, assorted packages, and made lists of matters to be attended to on the next day. When at last through, with the reaction that comes from overtired body and nerves she leaned back in her chair and let her hands fall idly in her lap, and with eyes that saw not looked across at the windows, on whose panes bits of hail were tapping weirdly. For some minutes thought was held in abeyance; then suddenly she crossed her arms on the table, and her face was hidden in them.

"Oh, Stephen! Stephen!" Under her breath the words came wearily. "We were so foolish, Stephen; such silly children to give each other up! All through the year I know, but never as I do at Christmas. And we-we are each other's, Stephen!" With a proud uplifting of her head she got up. "I am a child," she said, "a child who wants what it once refused to have. But until he understood-" Quickly she put out the light.

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