"You vill do better to-morrow night," said Mrs. Lavinski kindly, in her wheezing voice. "I tell Ikey you do verra good."

Mrs. Lavinski looked shriveled and old. She wore a glossy black wig and long ear-rings, and when she was not coughing, she smiled pleasantly over her work. Once Mr. Lavinski stopped pressing long enough to put a cushion at her back.

"My Leah is a saint," he said. "If effra'boddy was so good as her, the Messiah would come."

Nance dreamed of b.u.t.tons that night, and by the next evening her ambition to become a wage-earner had died completely.

But a family conclave at the supper table revealed such a crisis in the family finances that she decided to keep on at the Lavinskis' for another week. Uncle Jed was laid up with the rheumatism, and Mr. Snawdor's entire stock in trade had been put in a wheelbarrow and dumped into the street, and a strange sign already replaced his old one of "Bungs and Fawcetts."

Things seemed in such a bad way that Nance had about decided to lay the matter before Mrs. Purdy, when Dan brought the disconcerting news that Mrs. Purdy had taken her brother south for the rest of the winter, and that there would be no more visits to the little house in b.u.t.ternut Lane.

So Nance, not knowing anything better to do, continued to sit night after night on her stool behind the hot stove, sewing on b.u.t.tons.

Thirty-six b.u.t.tons meant four cents, four cents meant a loaf of bread--a stale loaf, that is.

"Your little fingers vill git ofer bein' sore," Mrs. Lavinski a.s.sured her. "I gif you alum water to put on 'em. Dat makes 'em hard."

They not only became hard; they became quick and accurate, and Nance got used to the heat and the smell, and she almost got used to the backache.

It was sitting still and being silent that hurt her more than anything else. Mr. Lavinski did not encourage conversation,--it distracted the workers,--and Nance's exuberance, which at first found vent in all sorts of jokes and capers, soon died for lack of encouragement. She learned, instead, to use all her energy on b.u.t.tons and, being denied verbal expression, she revolved many things in her small mind. The result of her thinking was summed up in her speech to her stepmother at the end of the first week.

"Gee! I'm sick of doin' the same thing! I ain't learnin' nothin'. If anybody was smart, they could make a machine to put on two times as many b.u.t.tons as me in half the time. I want to begin something at the beginning and make it clean through. I'm sick an' tired of b.u.t.tons. I'm goin' to quit!"

But Mrs. Snawdor had come to a belated realization of the depleted state of the family treasury and she urged Nance to keep on for the present.

"We better cut all the corners we kin," she said, "till Snawdor gits over this fit of the dumps. Ain't a reason in the world he don't go into the junk business. I ain't astin' him to drive aroun' an' yell 'Old iron!' I know that's tryin' on a bashful man. All I ast him is to set still an'

let it come to him. Thank the Lord, I _have_ known husbands that wasn't chicken-hearted!"

So Nance kept on reluctantly, even after Mr. Snawdor got a small job collecting. Sometimes she went to sleep over her task and had to be shaken awake, but that was before she began to drink black coffee with the other workers at nine o'clock.

One thing puzzled her. When Ikey came from night school, he was never asked to help in the work, no matter how much his help was needed. He was always given the seat by the table nearest the lamp, and his father himself cleared a place for his books.

"Ikey gits the education," Mr. Lavinski would say, with a proud smile.

"The Rabbi says he is the smartest boy in the cla.s.s. He takes prizes over big boys. Ve vork fer him now, an' some day he make big money an' take care of us!"

Education as seen through Mr. Lavinski's eyes took on a new aspect for Nance. It seemed that you did not get rich by going to work at fourteen, but by staying at school and in some miraculous way skipping the factory altogether. "I vork with my hands," said Mr. Lavinski; "my Ikey, he vorks with his head."

Nance fell into the way of bringing her school books downstairs at night and getting Ike to help her with her lessons. She would prop the book in front of her and, without lessening the speed of her flying fingers, ply him with the questions that had puzzled her during the day.

"I wisht I was smart as you!" she said one night.

"I reckon you do!" said Ike. "I work for it."

"You couldn't work no more 'n whut I do!" Nance said indignantly.

"There's a difference between working and being worked," said Ike, wisely. "If I were you, I'd look out for number one."

"But who would do the cookin' an' lookin' after the kids, an' all?"

"They are nothing to you," said Ike; "none of the bunch is kin to you.

Catch me workin' for them like you do!"

Nance was puzzled, but not convinced. Wiser heads than hers have struggled with a similar problem in vain. She kept steadily on, and it was only when the squeak of Mr. Demry's fiddle came up from below that her fingers fumbled and the b.u.t.tons went rolling on the floor. Six nights in the week, when Mr. Demry was in condition, he played at the theater, and on Sunday nights he stayed at home and received his young friends. On these occasions Nance became so restless that she could scarcely keep her prancing feet on the floor. She would hook them resolutely around the legs of the stool and even sit on them one at a time, but despite all her efforts, they would respond to the rhythmic notes below.

"Them tunes just make me dance settin' down," she declared, trying to suit the action to the words.

Sometimes on a rainy afternoon when n.o.body was being born, or getting married, or dying, Mrs. Snawdor stayed at home. At such times Nance seized the opportunity to shift her domestic burden.

There was a cheap theater, called "The Star," around the corner, where a noisy crowd of boys and girls could always be found in the gallery. It was a place where you ate peanuts and dropped the sh.e.l.ls on the heads of people below, where you sc.r.a.pped for your seat and joined in the chorus and shrieked over the antics of an Irishman, a darkey, or a Jew. But it was a luxury seldom indulged in, for it cost the frightful sum of ten cents, not including the peanuts.

For the most part Nance's leisure half-hours were spent with Mr. Demry, discussing a most exciting project. He was contemplating the unheard-of festivity of a Christmas party, and the whole alley was buzzing with it.

Even the big boys in Dan's gang were going to take part. There were to be pirates and fairies and ogres, and Nance was to be the princess and do a fancy dance in a petticoat trimmed with silver paper, and wear a tinsel crown.

Scrubbing the floor, figuring on the blackboard, washing dishes, or sewing on b.u.t.tons, she was aware of that tinsel crown. For one magic night it was going to transform her into a veritable princess, and who knew but that a prince in doublet and hose and sweeping plume might arrive to claim her? But when Nance's imagination was called upon to visualize the prince, a hateful image came to her of a tall, slender boy, clad in white, with a contemptuous look in his handsome brown eyes.

"I don't know what ails Nance these days," Mrs. Snawdor complained to Uncle Jed. "She sa.s.ses back if you look at her, an' fergits everything, an' Snawdor says she mutters an' jabbers something awful in her sleep."

"Seems to me she works too hard," said Uncle Jed, still ignorant of her extra two hours in the sweat-shop. "A growin' girl oughtn't to be doin'

heavy washin' an' carryin' water an' coal up two flights."

"Why, Nance is strong as a ox," Mrs. Snawdor insisted, "an' as fer eatin'! Why it looks like she never can git filled up."

"Well, what ails her then?" persisted Uncle Jed.

"I bet I know!" said Mrs. Snawdor darkly. "It's that there vaccination.

Las' time I hid the other childern from the inspector she had to come out an' argue with him fer herself. She got paid up proper fer givin' in to him. Her arm was a plumb sight."

"Do you suppose it's the poison still workin' on her?" Uncle Jed asked, watching Nance in the next room as she lifted a boiler filled with the washing water from the stove.

"Why, of course, it is! Talk to me about yer State rules an'

regerlations! It does look like us poor people has got troubles enough already, without rich folks layin' awake nights studyin' up what they can do to us next."

CHAPTER X

THE PRINCESS COMES TO GRIEF

And bring her rose-winged fancies, From shadowy shoals of dream To clothe her in the wistful hour When girlhood steals from bud to flower; Bring her the tunes of elfin dances, Bring her the faery Gleam.--BURKE.

Christmas fell on a Sat.u.r.day and a payday, and this, together with Mr.

Demry's party, accounts for the fact that the holiday spirit, which sometimes limps a trifle languidly past tenement doors, swaggered with unusual gaiety this year in Calvary Alley. You could hear it in the cathedral chimes which began at dawn, in the explosion of fire-crackers, in the bursts of noisy laughter from behind swinging doors. You could smell it in the whiffs of things frying, broiling, burning. You could feel it in the crisp air, in the crunch of the snow under your feet, and most of all you could see it in the happy, expectant faces of the children, who rushed in and out in a fever of excitement.

Early in the afternoon Nance Molloy, with a drab-colored shawl over her head and something tightly clasped in one bare, chapped fist, rushed forth on a mysterious mission. When she returned, she carried a pasteboard box hugged to her heart. The thought of tripping her fairy measure in worn-out shoes tied on with strings, had become so intolerable to her that she had bartered her holiday for a pair of white slippers.

Mr. Lavinski had advanced the money, and she was to work six hours a day, instead of two, until she paid the money back.

But she was in no mood to reckon the cost, as she prepared for the evening festivities. So great was her energy and enthusiasm, that the contagion spread to the little Snawdors, each of whom submitted with unprecedented meekness to a "wash all over." Nance dressed herself last, wrapping her white feet and legs in paper to keep them clean until the great hour should arrive.