“Ihear Miss Gail’s back home.” It was the ice man. He had given her slivers1 of ice in the days when she had wished that she were a boy.
“Yassum.” Mammy Emma. She said “Yassum” to everybody; men, women, and children.
Gail, still snuggled in the pillows, smiled affectionately, and knew what time it was. She reached lazily out and pressed the button.
“Heaps.” The clink of a muffin pan. Gail knew the peculiar3 sound from that of all the other pans in the house. “I thought I done tole you yeahs ago to saw that ice straight. Does it fit that away?”
“All right, Emma.” The slam of a lid. “I’ll remember it next time. Miss Gail home for good?”
“Praise the Lawd, yes.”
“She’s a fine girl!” This with profound conviction. “She didn’t get her head turned and marry any of those rich New Yorkers.”
“She could if she’d ‘a’ wanted to!” This indignantly.
“Sure she could.” Sounds of a heavy booted iceman coming down the steps of the kitchen porch. “New 168York papers said she could have her pick; but she come back home.”
Gail’s maid came in, a neat French girl who had an artist’s delight in her. She shivered and closed the windows.
“Arly!”
“Good morning,” came a cheerful voice through three open doors. “I’m up hours,” and Arly trotted5 in, fresh-eyed and smiling, clad in a rich blue velvet6 boudoir robe and her black hair braided down her back. “I peeped in a few minutes ago, but you were sound asleep. I want my coffee.”
“You poor infant,” and Gail promptly7 slid two pink feet out of bed to be slippered8 by Nanette. “I’ll be ready in a minute. Why didn’t you ring?”
“I did. Aunty Clem was up and took all the burden of living away from me. I wouldn’t have coffee by myself, though. I get that at home,” and there was the slightest trace of wistfulness in her tone.
“All over both suites,” laughed Arly. “I shall never have enough of these beautiful little rooms,” and she hurried back to her own quarters, to summons, once more, the broadly smiling face of Aunty Clem.
That was the beginning of the first morning at home, with every delightful10 observance just as it had used to be; first the fragrant11 coffee, and the pathetically good hot muffins and jam; then the romping12, laughing, splashing process of dressing; then interrupted by a visit from Mrs. Sargent, and from Taffy, and from Vivian Jennings, who lived next door, and from Madge Frazier, who had stayed the night with Vivian; then a race out to the stables, to say good morning to the 169horses, and laughing with moist eyes, hear their excited whinnies of greeting, and slip them lumps of sugar; then to the kennels13 to be half smothered14 by the eager collies; then over to Vivian’s, to surround deaf old grandmother Jennings with the flowers she loved best, the faces of young girls; then back to the house and the telephone, for a cheery good morning to everybody in the world, beginning with Dad, who was already plugging away in his office, the morning half gone, and looking forward to lunch.
Breakfast at eleven, a brisk horseback ride, a change, and Gail’s little grey electric was at the door. There was a tremendous lot of shopping to be done. To begin with, sixteen new hair ribbons, and nine fancy marbles, not the big ones that you can’t use, but the regular unattainable fifteen centers, and twenty-five pears, and twenty-five small boxes of candy, and eleven pound packages of special tea, and six pound packages of special tobacco, and one quart of whiskey, and eighteen bunches of red carnations15, five to the bunch, five grouping better than four or six. None of these things were to be delivered. Gail piled them all in her coupé, and, after saying “howdydo” to about everybody on Main Street, and feeling immensely uplifted thereby16, she inserted Arly in among the carnations and pears and tobacco and things, and whirled her out to Chickentown, which was the actively17 devilish section of the city allotted18 to Gail’s church work.
There were those of the guild19 who made of this religious duty a solemn and serious task, to be entered upon with sweet piety20 and uplifting words; but Gail had solved her problem in a fashion which kept Chickentown from hating her and charity. She distributed flowers and pears and tobacco and things, and perfectly21 170human smiles, and a few commonsense22 observations when they seemed to be necessary, and scoldings where they seemed due, and it was a lasting23 tribute to her diplomacy24 and popularity that all the new born babies in the district were named either Gail or Gale25.
Chickentown lay in a smoky triangle, entirely26 surrounded by railroad yards and boiler27 factories and packing houses and the like, and it was as feudal28 in its instincts as any stronghold of old. Its womenfolk would not market where the Black Creek29 women marketed, its men would not drink in the same saloons, and its children came home scarred and prowed from gory30 battles with the Black Creek gang; yet, in their little cottages and in their tiny yards was the neatness of local pride, which had sprung up immediately after Gail had inaugurated the annual front yard flower prize system.
No sooner had the familiar coupé crossed the Black Creek bridge than a yell went up, which could be heard echoing and reverberating31 from street to street throughout the entire domain32 of Chickentown! One block inside the fiefdom, the progress of the car was impeded33 by exactly twenty-five children. By some miracle they all arrived at nearly the same time, the only difference being that those who had come the farthest were the most out of breath. Gail jumped out among them, and twenty-five right hands went straight up in the air. She inspected the hands critically, one by one, and, by that inspection34 alone, divided the mobs into two groups, the clean handed ones, who were mostly girls, and the dirty-handed ones, who looked sorry. She shook hands with the first group, and she smiled on 171both, and she distributed hair ribbons and marbles and pears and candy with cordial understanding.
“It doesn’t do for me to be away so long,” she confessed, looking them over regretfully. “I don’t believe you are as clean.”
Those who were as clean looked consciously hurt, but for the most part they looked guilty; and Gail apologised individually, to those who merited it.
“Now we’ll hear the troubles,” she announced; “and you must hurry. The cleanest first.”
Twenty-five hands went up, and she picked out the cleanest, a neat little girl with yellow hair and blue eyes and a prim35 little walk, who shyly came forward alone out of the group and wiggled her interlocked fingers behind her, while Gail sat in the door of her coupé and held her court.
A half-whispered conversation; a genuine trouble, and some sound and sensible advice. Yellow Hair did not like her school-teacher; and what was she to do about it? A difficult problem that, and while Gail was inculcating certain extremely cautious lessons of mingled36 endurance and diplomacy, which would have been helpful to grown-ups as well as to yellow-haired little girls, and which Gail reflected that she might herself use with profit, Arly, with an entirely new sort of smile in her softened37 eyes, walked over to the chattering38 group, all of whom had troubles to relate, and asked a boy to have a bill changed for her into quarter dollars. The boy looked at his hand.
“I guess I won’t be next for a long time,” and taking the bill ran for the candy shop, which was nearest. There were seven places of retail39 business in Chickentown, and since they dealt mostly in coppers40, he expected to be a long time on this errand.
172Arly watched Gail handle the case of a particularly black-eyed little girl, whose brother was getting too big to play with her any more; and she grew wistful.
“Do you mind if I hear a few troubles, Gail?” she requested.
“Help yourself,” was the laughing reply. “I think there’s enough to go around.”
“I’ll begin at the other end,” decided41 Arly. “Put up your hands, kiddies,” and they went up slowly. She conscientiously42 picked the dirtiest one, but the boy who owned it came forward with a reluctance43 which was almost sullen44.
“Of course,” Arly immediately agreed, smiling down into his eyes with more charm than she had seen fit to exert on anybody in many months. “But you can tell Miss Gail about it afterwards, if you like, or you might tell me your littlest trouble and save your biggest one for Miss Gail.”
“I ain’t got but one,” responded the boy, and he looked searchingly into Arly’s black eyes. Her being pretty, like Gail, was a recommendation.
“There’s a kid over in Black Creek that I used to lick; but now he’s got me faded.”
“Does he fight fairly?” she asked, and that one question alone showed that she knew the first principles of human life and conduct, which was rare in a girl or woman of any type.
He came a step closer, and looked up into her eyes with all his reservation gone.
“Yessum,” he confessed, and there was something of a clutch in his throat which would never grow up to 173be a sob47, but which would have been one in a girl. He’d rather have lied, but you couldn’t get any useful advice that way.
“Maybe he’s growing faster than you.”
“Yessum. I eat all the oatmeal they give me, and I take trainin’ runs every evening after school, clear up to Scraggers Park and back; but it don’t do any good.”
Arly pondered.
“When does he lick you?” she asked.
“Right after supper when he catches me.”
“Do you play all day?”
“I go to school.”
“Baseball?”
“Yessum. Baseball, and one-old-cat, and two-old-cat, and rounders, and marbles, and prisoner’s base, and high-spy, but mostly baseball and marbles.”
Arly studied the future citizen with the eye of a practical physical culturist, who knew exactly how she had preserved her clear complexion48 and lithe49 figure. In spite of his sturdy build, there was not enough protuberance to his chest, and, though his cheeks were full enough, there was a hollow look about his jaws50 and around his eyes.
“You’re over-trained,” she decisively told him. “You mustn’t play marbles very often, or very long at a time, because that stooping over in the dust isn’t good for you, and you mustn’t take your training runs up to that park. The other boy licks you because you’re all tired out. I don’t believe it’s because he’s a better fighter.”
That boy breathed with the sigh of one freed from a mighty51 burden, and the eyes which looked up into Arly’s were almost swimming with gratitude52.
“She’s all right,” he told the next candidate. “She’s 174a pippin! Say, do you know what’s the matter with me? I’m over-trained,” and he smacked53 his chest resounding54 whacks55 and felt of his biceps.
There were troubles of all sorts and shapes and sizes, and Arly bent56 to them more concentrated wisdom than she had been called upon to display for years. It was a new game, one with a live zest57, and Gail had invented it. Her admiration58 for Gail went up a notch59. One boy was not so funny as his brother, and was never noticed; another had to eat turnips60; and Arly’s only little girl, for she had started at the boy end, couldn’t have little slippers61 that pinched her feet!
“I’m glad I came home with you,” commented Arly, when she had finished her court and had distributed her money, which Gail had permitted her just this once, and they had driven up the block attended by an escort of exactly twenty-five. “It makes me think, and I’d almost forgotten how.”
“It makes me think, too,” confessed Gail, very seriously. “Suppose I should go away. They’d go right on living, but I like to flatter myself that I’m doing more good for them than somebody else could do.” Why that thought had worried her she could not say. She was home to stay now, except for the usual trips.
“You’d find the same opportunities anywhere,” Arly quickly assured her.
“Yes, but they wouldn’t be these same children,” worried Gail. “I’d never know others like I know these.”
“No,” admitted Arly slowly. “I think I’ll pick out a few when I go back home. I’ve often wondered how to do it, without having them think me a fool or a nosy62, but you’ve solved the problem. You’re tremendously clever.”
“Here’s Granny Jones’s,” interrupted Gail, with a 175smile for the compliment. “Don’t come in, for she’s my worst specimen63. She’s a duty,” and taking some carnations and a package of tea, she hurried away.
Flowers and tea for the old ladies, tobacco and flowers for the old men, and the bottle of whiskey for old Ben Jackson, to whom his little nip every morning and night was a genuine charity, though one severe worker left the guild because Gail persisted in taking it to him.
At the house they found silver-haired old Doctor Mooreman, the rector of the quaintly64 beautiful little chapel65 up the avenue, and he greeted Gail with a smile which was a strange commingling66 of spiritual virtue67 and earthly shrewdness.
“Well, how’s my little pagan?” he asked her, in the few minutes they had alone.
“Worse than ever, I’m afraid,” she confessed. “I suppose you’re asking about the state of my mind and the degree of my wickedness.”
“That’s it exactly,” agreed the Reverend Doctor, smiling on her fondly. “Are you still quarrelling with the Church, because it prefers to be respectable rather than merely good?”
“I’m afraid so,” she laughed. “I still don’t understand why Hell is preached when nobody believes it; nor why we are told the material details of a spiritual Heaven, when no one has proved its existence except by ancient literature; nor why an absolutely holy man whose works are all good, from end to end of his life, can’t go to Heaven if he doubts the divinity of the Saviour68; nor why so much immorality69 is encouraged in the world by teaching that marriage itself is sinful; nor why a hundred other things, which are necessarily the formulas of man, are made a condition of the worship of the heart. You see, I’m as bad as ever.”
“You’re in no spiritual difficulties,” he told her. “You’re only having fun with your mind, and laying tragic71 stress on the few little innocent fictions which were once well-meant and useful.”
Gail looked at him in astonishment72.
“You’re approaching years of discretion,” laughed her old rector. “All these things are of small moment compared with the great fact that the Church does stand as a constant effort to inculcate the grace of God. The young are prone74 to require roses without a blemish75, but even God has never made one.”
“I don’t understand,” she puzzled. “You’re not combatting me on any of these things as you used to,” and it actually worried her.
“Let me whisper something to you,” and the Reverend Doctor Mooreman, whose face had the purity which is only visible in old age, leaned forward, with his eyes snapping. “I don’t believe a lot of them myself; but Gail, I believe much in the grace of God, and I believe much in its refining and bettering influence on humanity, so to the people who would discard everything for the reason of one little flaw, I teach things I don’t believe; and my conscience is as clean as a whistle.”
“You’re a darling old fraud!” Gail’s mind was singularly relieved. She had worried how a man of Doctor Mooreman’s intelligence could swallow so many of the things which were fed him in his profession. The conversation had done her good. It tempered her attitude toward certain things, but it did not change her 177steadfast principle that the Church would be better off if it did not require the teachings of tenets and articles of faith which were an insult to modern intelligence.
Had she been unfair with the Reverend Smith Boyd? She could not shake off that thought. She must tell him the attitude of Doctor Mooreman. That is, if she ever saw him again. Of course she would, however.
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1
slivers
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| （切割或断裂下来的）薄长条，碎片( sliver的名词复数 ) | |
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rattle
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| v.飞奔，碰响；激怒；n.碰撞声；拨浪鼓 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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tongs
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| n.钳；夹子 | |
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trotted
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| 小跑，急走( trot的过去分词 )； 匆匆忙忙地走 | |
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velvet
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| n.丝绒，天鹅绒；adj.丝绒制的，柔软的 | |
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promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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slippered
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| 穿拖鞋的 | |
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dressing
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| n.(食物)调料；包扎伤口的用品，敷料 | |
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delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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fragrant
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| adj.芬香的，馥郁的，愉快的 | |
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romping
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| adj.嬉戏喧闹的，乱蹦乱闹的v.嬉笑玩闹( romp的现在分词 )；（尤指在赛跑或竞选等中）轻易获胜 | |
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13
kennels
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| n.主人外出时的小动物寄养处，养狗场；狗窝( kennel的名词复数 )；养狗场 | |
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14
smothered
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| （使）窒息， （使）透不过气( smother的过去式和过去分词 )； 覆盖； 忍住； 抑制 | |
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15
carnations
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| n.麝香石竹，康乃馨( carnation的名词复数 ) | |
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thereby
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| adv.因此，从而 | |
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actively
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| adv.积极地，勤奋地 | |
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allotted
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| 分配，拨给，摊派( allot的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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guild
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| n.行会，同业公会，协会 | |
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piety
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| n.虔诚，虔敬 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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commonsense
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| adj.有常识的；明白事理的；注重实际的 | |
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lasting
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| adj.永久的，永恒的；vbl.持续，维持 | |
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diplomacy
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| n.外交；外交手腕，交际手腕 | |
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gale
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| n.大风，强风，一阵闹声（尤指笑声等） | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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boiler
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| n.锅炉；煮器(壶，锅等) | |
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feudal
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| adj.封建的，封地的，领地的 | |
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creek
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| n.小溪，小河，小湾 | |
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gory
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| adj.流血的；残酷的 | |
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reverberating
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| 回响，回荡( reverberate的现在分词 )； 使反响，使回荡，使反射 | |
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domain
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| n.(活动等)领域，范围；领地，势力范围 | |
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impeded
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| 阻碍，妨碍，阻止( impede的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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inspection
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| n.检查，审查，检阅 | |
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prim
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| adj.拘泥形式的，一本正经的；n.循规蹈矩，整洁；adv.循规蹈矩地，整洁地 | |
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36
mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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softened
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| （使）变软( soften的过去式和过去分词 )； 缓解打击； 缓和； 安慰 | |
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38
chattering
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| n. （机器振动发出的）咔嗒声，(鸟等)鸣，啁啾 adj. 喋喋不休的，啾啾声的 动词chatter的现在分词形式 | |
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39
retail
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| v./n.零售；adv.以零售价格 | |
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40
coppers
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| 铜( copper的名词复数 )； 铜币 | |
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41
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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42
conscientiously
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| adv.凭良心地；认真地，负责尽职地；老老实实 | |
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43
reluctance
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| n.厌恶，讨厌，勉强，不情愿 | |
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44
sullen
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| adj.愠怒的，闷闷不乐的，(天气等)阴沉的 | |
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45
frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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46
intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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47
sob
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| n.空间轨道的轰炸机；呜咽，哭泣 | |
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48
complexion
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| n.肤色；情况，局面；气质，性格 | |
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49
lithe
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| adj.(指人、身体)柔软的，易弯的 | |
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50
jaws
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| n.口部；嘴 | |
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51
mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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52
gratitude
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| adj.感激，感谢 | |
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53
smacked
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| 拍，打，掴( smack的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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54
resounding
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| adj. 响亮的 | |
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55
whacks
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| n.重击声( whack的名词复数 )；不正常；有毛病v.重击，使劲打( whack的第三人称单数 ) | |
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56
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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57
zest
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| n.乐趣；滋味，风味；兴趣 | |
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58
admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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59
notch
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| n.(V字形)槽口，缺口，等级 | |
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60
turnips
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| 芜青( turnip的名词复数 )； 芜菁块根； 芜菁甘蓝块根； 怀表 | |
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slippers
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| n. 拖鞋 | |
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62
nosy
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| adj.鼻子大的，好管闲事的，爱追问的；n.大鼻者 | |
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specimen
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| n.样本，标本 | |
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64
quaintly
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| adv.古怪离奇地 | |
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chapel
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| n.小教堂，殡仪馆 | |
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commingling
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| v.混合，掺和，合并( commingle的现在分词 ) | |
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virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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saviour
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| n.拯救者，救星 | |
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69
immorality
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| n. 不道德, 无道义 | |
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70
behold
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| v.看，注视，看到 | |
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tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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72
astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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73
marvelled
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| v.惊奇，对…感到惊奇( marvel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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prone
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| adj.(to)易于…的，很可能…的；俯卧的 | |
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blemish
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| v.损害；玷污；瑕疵，缺点 | |
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