The Girl from Sunset Ranch by AMY BELL MARLOWE (best ereader for manga .TXT) 📖

she watched it with some apprehension at first, for it came right along the sidewalk toward her.

"Hi, fellers! See de Lurcher! Here comes de Lurcher!" yelled one ribald youth, who leaped on the stoop to which Helen had retreated the better to see over the heads of the crowd at the person who was the core of it.

And then Helen, in no little amazement, saw that this individual was none other than the man whom she had seen driven out of Fenwick Grimes's office. A gang of hoodlums surrounded him. They jeered at him, tore at his ragged clothes, hooted, and otherwise nagged the poor old fellow.

At every halt he made they pressed closer upon the "Lurcher." It was easy to see why he had been given that name. He was probably an old inhabitant of the neighborhood, and his lurching from side to side of the walk had suggested the nickname to some local wit.

Just as he steered for the rail of the step on which Helen stood, half fearful, and reached it, Sadie Goronsky came bounding out of the house. Instantly she took a hand--and as usual a master hand--in the affair.

"What you doin' to that old man, you Izzy Strefonifsky? And, Freddie Bloom, you stop or I'll tell your mommer! Ike, let him alone, or I'll make your ears tingle myself--I can do it, too!"

Sadie charged as she commanded. The hoodlums scattered--some laughing, some not so easily intimidated. But the old man was clinging to the rail and muttering over and over to himself:

"They got my dollar--they got my dollar."

"What's that?" cried Sadie, coming back after chasing the last of the boys off the block. "What's the matter, Mr. Lurcher?"

"My dollar--they got my dollar," muttered the old man.

"Oh, dear!" whispered Helen. "And perhaps it was all he had."

"You can bet it was," said Sadie, angrily. "The likes of him wouldn't likely have two dollars all at once! I'd like to scalp those imps! That I would!"

The old man, paying little attention to the two girls, but still muttering about his loss, lurched away on his erratic course homeward.

"Chee!" said Sadie. "Ain't that tough luck? He lives right around the corner, all alone. And he's just as poor as he can be. I don't know what his real name is. But the boys guy him sumpin' fierce! Ain't it mean?"

"It certainly is," agreed Helen.

"Say!" said Sadie, abruptly, but looking at Helen with sheepish eye.

"Well, what?"

"Say, was yer honest goin' to blow seventy cents for that feed I spoke of up on Grand Street?"

"Certainly. And I----"

"And a dime to the waiter?"

"Of course."

"That's eighty cents," ran on Sadie, glibly enough now. "And twenty would make a dollar. I'll dig up the twenty cents to put with your eighty, and what d'ye say we run after old Lurcher an' give him a dollar--say we found it, you know--and then go upstairs to my house for dinner? Mommer's got a nice dinner, and she'd like to see you again fine!"

"I'll do it!" cried Helen, pulling out her purse at once. "Here! Here's a dollar bill. You run after him and give it to him. You can give me the twenty cents later."

"Sure!" cried the Russian girl, and she was off around the corner in the wake of the Lurcher, with flying feet.

Helen waited for her friend to return, just inside the tenement house door. When Sadie reappeared, Helen hugged her tight and kissed her.

"You are a dear!" the Western girl cried. "I do love you, Sadie!"

"Aw, chee! That ain't nothin'," objected the East Side girl. "We poor folks has gotter help each other."

So Helen would not spoil the little sacrifice by acknowledging to more money, and they climbed the stairs again to the Goronsky tenement. The girl from Sunset Ranch was glad--oh, so glad!--of this incident. Chilled as she had been by the selfishness in her uncle's Madison Avenue mansion, she was glad to have her heart warmed down here among the poor of Madison Street.

CHAPTER XX (OUT OF STEP WITH THE TIMES)

 

"No," Sadie told Helen, afterward, "I am very sure that poor Lurcher man doesn't drink. Some says he does; but you never notice it on him. It's just his eyes."

"His eyes?" queried Helen, wonderingly.

"Yes. He's sort of blind. His eyelids keep fluttering all the time. He can't control them. And, if you notice, he usually lifts up the lid of one eye with his finger before he makes one of his base-runs for the next post. Chee! I'd hate to be like that."

"The poor old man! And can nothing be done for it?"

"Plenty, I reckon. But who's goin' to pay for it? Not him--he ain't got it to pay. We all has our troubles down here, Helen."

The girls had come down from the home of Sadie again, and Helen was preparing to leave her friend.

"Aren't there places to go in the city to have one's eyes examined? Free hospitals, I mean?"

"Sure! And they got Lurcher to one, once. But all they give him was a prescription for glasses, and it would cost a lot to get 'em. So it didn't do him no good."

Helen looked at Sadie suddenly. "How much would it take for the glasses?" she asked.

"I dunno. Ten dollars, mebbe."

"And do you s'pose he could have that prescription now?" asked Helen, eagerly.

"Mebbe. But why for?"

"Perhaps I could--could get somebody uptown interested in his case who is able to pay for the spectacles."

"Chee, that would be bully!" cried Sadie.

"Will you find out about the prescription?"

"Sure I will," declared Sadie. "Nex' time you come down here, Helen, I'll know all about it. And if you can get one of them rich ladies up there to pay for 'em--Well! it would beat goin' to a swell restaurant for a feed--eh?" and she laughed, hugged the Western girl, and then darted across the sidewalk to intercept a possible customer who was loitering past the row of garments displayed in front of the Finkelstein shop.

But Helen did not get downtown again as soon as she expected. When she awoke the next morning there had set in a steady drizzle--cold and raw--and the panes of her windows were so murky that she could not see even the chimneys and roofs, or down into the barren little yards.

This--nor a much heavier--rain would not have ordinarily balked Helen. She was used to being out in all winds and weathers. But she actually had nothing fit to wear in the rain.

If she had worn the new cheap dress out of doors she knew what would happen. It would shrink all out of shape. And she had no raincoat, nor would she ask her cousins--so she told herself--for the loan of an umbrella.

So, as long as it rained steadily, it looked as though the girl from Sunset Ranch was a sure-enough "shut-in." Nor did she contemplate this possibility with any pleasure.

There was nothing for her to do but read. And one cannot read all the time. She had no "fancy-work" with which to keep her hands and mind busy. She wondered what her cousins did on such days. She found out by keeping her ears and eyes open. After breakfast Belle went shopping in the limousine. There was an early luncheon and all three of the Starkweather girls went to a matinée. In neither case was Helen invited to go--no, indeed! She was treated as though she were not even in the house. Seldom did either of the older girls speak to her.

"I might as well be a ghost," thought Helen.

And this reminded her of the little old lady who paced the ghost-walk every night--the ex-nurse, Mary Boyle. She had thought of going to see her on the top floor before; but she had not been able to pluck up the courage.

Now that her cousins were gone from the house, however, and Mrs. Olstrom was taking a nap in her room, and Mr. Lawdor was out of the way, and all the under-servants mildly celebrating the free afternoon below stairs, Helen determined to venture out of her own room, along the main passage of the top floor, to the door which she believed must give upon the front suite of rooms which the little old lady occupied.

She knocked, but there was no response. Nor could she hear any sound from within. It struck Helen that the principal cruelty of the Starkweathers' treatment of this old soul was her being shut away alone up here at the top of the house--too far away from the rest of its occupants for a cry to be heard if the old lady should be in trouble.

"If they shut up a dog like this, he would howl and thus attract attention to his state," muttered Helen. "But here is a human being----"

She tried the door. The latch clicked and the door swung open. Helen stepped into a narrow, hall-like room, well furnished with old-fashioned furniture (probably brought from below stairs when Mr. Starkweather re-decorated the mansion) with one window in it. The door which evidently gave upon the remainder of the suite was closed.

As Helen listened, however, from behind this closed door came a cheerful, cracked voice--the same voice she had heard whispering the lullaby in the middle of the night. But now it was tuning up on an old-time ballad, very popular in its day:

"Wait till the clouds roll by, Jennie-- Wait till the clouds roll by! Jennie, my own true loved one-- Wait till the clouds roll by."

"She doesn't sound like a hopeless prisoner," thought Helen, with surprise.

She waited a minute longer and, as the thin yet still sweet voice stopped, Helen knocked timidly on the inner door. Immediately the voice said, "Come in, deary. 'Tis not for the likes of you to be knockin' at old Mary's door. Come in!"

Helen turned the knob slowly and went into the room. The moment she crossed the threshold she forgot the clouds and rain and gloominess which had depressed her. Indeed, it seemed as though the sun must be ever shining into this room, high up under the roof of the Starkweather mansion.

In the first place, it was most cheerfully papered and painted. There were pretty, simple, yellow and white hangings. The heavier pieces of old furniture had gay "tidies" or "throws" upon them to relieve the sombreness of the dark wood. The pictures on the walls were all in white or gold frames, and were of a cheerful nature--mostly pictures of childhood, or pictures which would amuse children. Evidently much of the furnishings of the old nursery had been brought up here to Mary Boyle's sitting-room.

Helen had a glimpse, through a half-open door, of the bedroom--quite as bright and pretty. There was a little stove set up here, and a fire burned in it. It was one of those stoves that have isinglass all around it so that the fire can be seen when it burns red. It added mightily to the cheerful tone of the room.

How neat everything appeared! Yet the very neatest thing in sight was the little old lady herself, sitting in a green-painted rocker, with a low sewing-table at her side, wooden needles clicking fast in her fleecy knitting.

She looked up at Helen with a little, bird-like motion--her head a bit on one