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Show SLittlc mx j 1 .! By PHOEBE GRAY ". Copyright by Small, Maynard & Company SYNOPSIS. i 4 While trundling the clean washing up Clipper Hill Mary Alice Brown is set upon up-on by some mischievous boys, who spill the washing into the dirt. She is rescued and taken to her home in Calvert street by Francis Wiilett, a Galahad knight. 6he is punished by her drunken father (or returning without the wash money. Mary .Alice wanders away from home, takes a trolley ride into the country and spends the night at the farmhouse of Sam Thorn-is. Thorn-is. In the morning she meets little Charlie Char-lie Thomas, a cripple. V n iji Here before Sam and Martha J stretches a big problem. They ft $ want to make Mrs. Brown and "J her children comfortable in ft J some way. Can they do It? The ft '! Thomases are not wealthy ! ft PeP'e- ft CHAPTER II Continued. He flexed bis tiny arm, seeking approval ap-proval for an imagined biceps. "That's pretty good for a boy seven years old. My father says he never see nothing like it. He says if I keep on I'll be a reg'Iar Herculuss. Ever read about Herculuss? I guess he was tnost as strong as God. Do you live all the time in the city?" " 'Most all the time. I been in the country with the mission picnic sometimes." some-times." "You'd ought to live in the country, like me. It's awful healthy. I'm as healthy as anythin', just 'cause I live In the country. My father says God intends for people to stay in the country coun-try as much as possible; he says the city's full of fall-pits. Mary Alice, I want you to come back and see me. I like you. Not hardly any childun comes to play with me. My mother 6he's so busy; but sometimes she stops and reads me a story. If you was here you could read me stories 1I the time. Read me one now, Marj- Alice, before you go." Mary Alice read with a certain rapid contempt for all literary hurdles in the shape of polysyllables that made her delivery a thing of great charm. Both Sam and Martha, reading to Charlie, hesitated and stumbled at every big word. The result was halting and jerky. Charlie never complained; but the smoothness of Mary Alice's reading read-ing pleased and soothed him. She plowed along at great speed, tossing clouds of syllables to right and left like a rotary going through a snowdrift. She got there. This reckless dismemberment dismem-berment of the unlntelligibles bad scarcely any obscuring effect on the main thread of the story. Charlie listened almost breathlessly, and bis blue eyes shone through a mist of ecstasy. ec-stasy. Into the translucent pallor of his face crept a faint pink. He radiated radi-ated joy. One slim hand crept out and took the almost equally slim but far more competent band of his new friend. "With a low cadence of bliss," read Mary Alice, "Lady Isabel allowed her soldier lover to fold her close to his palpitating breast, while Sir Egbert Gleudenning. thus forever defeated in his villainous macberatlons, slunk, a beaten man, from the presence of his intended vietums." "Gee!" breathed Charlie, "that's a peach of a story. Oo, Mary Alice, don't g' 'way. You read lovely." CHAPTER III. An Old Acquaintance. Mary Alice's recollection of a day of prosperity was so vague that, for a Jong time, it had been quite Inactive. The events of the last few hours hud stirred It ever so little. She had had a good night's sleep to a clean, cool bed; .had breathed a qcairtity of air from the original package; pack-age; had been fed liberally and wholesomely; whole-somely; had seen and been in a home that -was a home. Better than all that, she had made the acquaintance of Charlie Thomas, who looked like an indolent angel and was only a crippled, crumpled little boy. Mary Alice had supposed that she wa the most unlucky child in the world, Sbe -could not think of Charlie, anchored immovably to one spot by his infirmity, and wish to change places with him. He was more unfortunate than she; yet he spoke very agreeably and confidently of God. as if God were a sort of friend, like the doctor or his father, Sam Thomas. You can't plant bitterness In the heart of a child and expect it to thrive except through a combination of very unlikely circumstances. In the soil of Mary Alice's soul the acrid, noisome shoot of bitterness had withered. In Its place, overnight, a fairer vegetation had germinated. Now. sitting beside Sam Thomas on the city-bound trolley car. Mary Alice (van all mixed up in her mind between the desire to see and comfort her mother, who would be frantic with anxiety, and the wish to go back to the quiet farm, whore the chickens peeked busily about the tide door and a crip- pled Toy -with m million dollars' -worth of gold cnrls it and looked at the hills. Her faWt recollection of a day of prosperity Included a cottage and some grass. "Nothing in 'ft reminded her Of carit feeding, whippings and ever-present -fear. She could -not manage man-age to make any connection between it and Tier father, the besotted Lem Brown 'of today. The -sweet morning "breeze that stirred her black hair as the trolley car'Whizzed dizzily along, the friendly presence Of Sam, 'Charlie's father, broke through Mary Alice's Teserve. Martha had helped her straighten out her hair, just before -s'he left the farm. and had tied a piece of ribbon on it. ; This gave Mary Alice a faintly stlrrmg consciousness of her own appearance; there is no tonic like it. Sam Thomas did not ask direct, leading lead-ing questions, as did Martha and Charlie. Char-lie. He ventured the opinion that Mary Alice's father would have gone to work' by the time she reached home. Mary Alice said that her 'father didn't work. Sam did not Immediately cry "Oh" and seem shocked, so Mary Alice overlooked her negligence in having let slip something she had kept a secret from Charlie. "Then he'll be real scared about you, won't he, with nothin' else to think of?" "I guess not very," replied the little girl. "But mother 'II be most crazy." "Wbere'd you tell 'em you was goin' when you left home?" ; "Ma and the baby was asleep: they j didn't know it. I was only goin' as far j as the park. Then I got on the car for a little ride, and the car didn't I come back." "Wasn't your pa at home?" "Him? No!" Those two words told Sam Thomas a prologue, forty chapters, and an appendix, ap-pendix, concerning the life history of Mary Alice Brown and her family. "Now listen, little girl," he said. "It's eight o'clock. The stores are openin' up. I got them arrands to do for Marthy; you can come with me. It'll take a few minutes, and then we'll go to your house." "Oh, no, I couldn't. I couldn't. I got to go right" This was as far as she got; the prospect was too alluring. By nine o'clock Mrs. Brown had begun be-gun to be genuinely alarmed about her daughter, whom she had missed upon waking at five. There were plenty of places where she might have gone, for numerous purposes; but there was no conceivable reason why she should stay so long. Mrs. Brown thrust her head from the window and peered anxiously anx-iously down the narrow alley. Once she left the baby alone while she trot- He Held Out a Large Hand That Was About as Soft as a Brick. ted to the corner of Calvert street and back. There was nothing to eat in the house or a penny of money. Now the baby wailed dolefully for his milk. Over the washtubs Mrs. Brown had long since dried up the natural sources for his need. On the stairs came a thumping and pounding of feet, heralding the approach ap-proach of at least two persons. Mrs. Brown straightened up and listened, nervously wiping her hands on her damp apron. Mary Alice came in, followed closely by a large, ruddy man who didn't bother to take off his hat. Mary Alice's face wus shining with a new light, her black eyes sparkled, and her black hair looked blacker than ever because of the bow of red ribbon Mrs. Thomas had tied on It. The little girl's arms were full of bundles. The moment Sam Thomas entered Mrs. Brown's sudsy kitchen the woman wom-an knew he was from the country, for he possessed a pungent and bucolic aura compounded of many things. The barn, the dairy and the field had all contributed to Jt. Dainty people turn up their noses at that kind of odor; maybe.lt is agreeable only by suggestion. sugges-tion. To Mrs. Brown it brought back apple blossoms and rcses and morning glories; glo-ries; it brought back big shiny pans of unskimmed yellow milk, smoky rafters hung with braided-together ears of popcorn, rag rugs, chickens that you had to shoo out of the kitchen, the bloating of sheep on a hummocky Mil-side. Mil-side. It brought back the tears she had forgotten how to shed. All this was as instantaneous as the ; breath of odor-laden air that wafted across her face. She looked up into ! Sam Thomas' eyes and saw that they wore very friendly. She saw something else, but she was not quite sure of it; j something that rtfored her to the depths of her soul. It just couldn't be. "Here I am, ma," said Mary Alice. "Was you scared?" 'I was most scared to pieces, child. Good land, where've you been?" 'My name's Thomas, Sam Thomas," said the bucolic stranger. "I s'pose you're Mrs. Brown. This little girl tome to my house last night, and we kept ber till mornln'. I'd brought her back sooner, but what with chores and errands and " He stopped and looked hard at the woman. Then he blinked in a puzzled way and asked: "Say., am I mistaken or are you Lottie Dillingham, that married mar-ried Lem Brown?" "That's just who I am," said Mrs. Brown. "I recognized you the minute you opened that door, Sam." "Gosh!" said Sam. He held out a large hand, about as soft and yielding as a molded -brick. "This is a surprise, ain't it!" Mary Alice looked in bewilderment from her mother to her new friend and back again. Something besides whippings whip-pings and skipped meals was beginning begin-ning to happen in her life. She listened lis-tened with her entire equipment of ears to the conversation between her mother and Sam Thomas; and she helped get the breakfast. The baby sucked contentedly at a bottle of warm milk. Mrs. Brown said he was a good deal better. Mrs. Brown was not a reticent woman; wom-an; that lis, if she were, all her instinct of self-repression was broken down by this unexpected meeting with an old friend. She told Sam Thomas all the things that Mary Alice had been at pains to 'conceal. It was not quite edifying to hear her do so. Mary Alice did not understand the awful longing to tell one's troubles that accumulates through years of silent suffering. Mrs. Brown had had a home and a baby girl, as much hers as Lem's. This . home she had 'helped to make pretty and attractive. Mrs. Brown and her : baby did not drink, of course. Lem lost job after job and became destitute. desti-tute. Nobody would keep Lem at work just because his wife was sober and industrious. in-dustrious. Mrs. Brown's unexceptionable unexception-able habits did not prevent the "building "build-ing and loan" from foreclosing the mortgage. She and her children were paying a debt they had never incurred, suffering vengeance wiafe no vengeance ven-geance was due. You can say if you like that it served Lem Brown right to lose his home; he drank it 'up. But you can't say it served Mrs. Brown right to lose hers. You can say if you like that It served Lem right to be sent up, in the coldest time of year, to work out a three months' sentence in a warm jail workshop, where the tasks were, after all, not unbearably hard and there were blankets at night and regular nourishment. But you can't say that it served Mrs. Brown right to bear a child in an unheated room, with quite inadequate attention and not a penny at hand to pay for the nakedest necessaries neces-saries of her situation. Little Dick hsd been thus born. Mary Alice Brown trudged off with the wagonload of laundry for Mrs. Travers. Something had happened in her life. What was to come of it? She looked down a trifle complacently at her new dress of dark blue cloth with red trimmings. Below the new dress a stout pair of shoes came into alternate view. They were still stiff and hurt villainously. Mary Alice didn't care. She hauled the heavy wagon wag-on up Clipper Hill and gloried in her aching feet. Halfway up she met a boy with red hair. All the joy went out of the little girl's heart. This was the boy who had helped her last night, the boy she had treated so cavalierly, whose bounty boun-ty she had spurned and later picked up from the gutter. She felt as If she had stolen it. "Hello, Mary Alice Brown." said Francis Wiilett. All resentment had apparently gone from him. He seized the wagon tongue. "Aren't you going to speak to me?" he inquired. "What you mad at?" "I ain't mad," said Mary Alice. Francis assumed the entire labor of hauling the wagon. She tried Tainly to pull a share of the load. "Oh, you leggo," said Francis. "I don't need any help. Say, how ofteD do you come up this way? I'll tell you what I'll do. Every day you come up I'll try to be here and help you. I belong to the Galahad Knights. Us Galahad Knights have got to assist maidens in distress. You can be a maiden in distress, can't you?" "How much," asked Mary Alice, "does It cost to belong to your Galahad Gala-had Knights?" "Twenty-five cents a year; but girls can't " "Could a little boy that livies out in the country, all by himself with his father and mother, on a farm, belong to it? He's a cripple; he never moves out of his chair all day. Could he belong?" be-long?" "Sure, if he's got twenty-five cents, he could." Mary Alice fished In the pocket of her new dress. She had forgotten, in the flash of her L.g Idea, that she was beholden to this very txy for the coins her fingers touched. She could only see. as in a vision, the radiant face of Charlie Thomas, framed in its invaluable inval-uable border of gold. "Hetv," said Mary Alice. "His name is Charlie Thomas, and he lives in Hillside Falls." f " ft Something surely had hap- J4 ft pened In Mary Alice's life and something was pretty certain ft ft to come of it but what? Fate " J plays strange tricks. Here's this acquaintance with the Wil- ft & lett boy. ! ft, , $ ,,ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ- ! (TO LE CONTINUED. |