Chapter II: Fire, and Other Escapes

ONE'S mother never has the appearance of any particular age. She does not look precisely young, because hers is the face to which our baby eyes are raised for comfort and guidance, it is from her that we receive and hope for all things. So it is impossible to realize that she is quite young. On the other hand the familiar, beloved face never wears the look of age, no matter how wrinkled it be, nor how far we have traveled from childhood. It is too dear, too perfectly the spring that quenches our thirst for unfailing love ever to look to us withered and age-stricken as it must to strangers. The young Scollards had never stopped to consider whether their mother was quite elderly, or very youthful--her age was swallowed up in the fact of her motherhood. In reality Charlotte Scollard was but just approaching the milestone of the fourth decade. She was a pale, slenderly built woman, with a worn, sweet face, like Margery's, but older and saddened. It wore a look of ill-health which her children saw too frequently to recognize fully, though the three eldest half perceived it at times, with a tightening of fear around their hearts.

Polly and Penny clung around their mother's waist as she entered, Bob and Margery encircled her from each side with their loving arms, while Happie hugged her breathless, and Laura vainly strove for an opening for her own welcome.

"Such a dear little home! Such joy to get home to you, my blessings!" said the mother, as she said each night. "Have you been good and happy all this day?"

She went into the front room which was that nondescript allowed by flat life, neither drawing-room, library nor living-room, but a little of each. It was a pretty room, made so by its furnishing of books and pictures, and the mother looked about her, feeling anew that it was well worth the effort that taxed her slender strength to the utmost to maintain this nest and her nestlings within it.

"We've found a name for the flat at last, motherkins!" cried Happie, as she removed her mother's hat pins, while Laura and Margery unbuttoned her coat, and the two least girls pulled off a glove from each hand.

"Happie has," corrected Margery. "It's a nice, cozy, funny little name, just like this family."

"Tell me," smiled Mrs. Scollard.

"Patty-Pans!" announced Happie triumphantly. "I thought of it when I was pouring my cake into the cup pans. Don't you know that these flats are precisely like a patty-pan, every room following after and joining on to the next one the way the cups do in those sheets?"

"I see the resemblance." Mrs. Scollard laughed, and the weariness went out of her face for the moment as her eyes danced. "Shall we have a die cut for our letter paper: 'Patty-Pans,' and printed in bright silver like new tins? Only I'm afraid our correspondents might think that all our letters should be dated April first!"

"And the flat across is rented; the family came in to-day," Bob said, adding his information to the small fund of entertainment which it was the children's custom to amass daily for their mother's return.

"Oh, me! I hope they are not people who will play the piano all the evening when we are at our lessons!" Mrs. Scollard sighed, remembering past troubles.

"Two big boys and their mother; I guess not," said Bob succinctly. "The one we saw across the dumb waiter looked a good sort, and full of fun. I got home to-day earlier, mother. Mr. Felton told me that if you would agree to letting me come for all day he would make it worth our while."

"I am glad to hear that, Bob; it shows that he likes you. But I will never consent to giving you up for all day to earning, leaving no time for your studies, until we are absolutely driven to it. As long as I can earn enough to support us all--with strict economy, to be sure, but enough--I will not let my only son lose his chance for an education. Half a day is all that I will let you spend at the office, dear Bob. But thank Mr. Felton for me; tell him I am glad indeed that he thinks you worth having all day. Now, I must get ready for dinner. I hope it is very good and abundant, lassies, for I am pitiably hungry." Mrs. Scollard rose as she spoke, and pulled aside the sliding-door at the end of the room. It led into her own chamber, lighted by the glass in this door, the second room of the series of seven, arranged, as Happie had discovered, in true patty-pan order.

The girls ran through to the kitchen to serve the dinner, while Penny and Dorée lingered with the mother, waiting for the special petting to which, as the baby, Penny was entitled.

"I always think of how the girls in Little Women got ready for their mother to come home, don't you? When we are waiting for our marmee, I mean," said Happie, arranging her little cakes on the delicate Limoges plate. "They swept up the hearth and put their mother's slippers down to warm. I don't think flats are really homes; you can't do that kind of comfy, homey things in a flat."

"But our mother can come home just as truly, and that is the only important thing. We are fortunate to have a home," said Margery, with a suggestion of reproach in her voice.

"Mercy! Don't I know it," retorted Happie. "But won't you be glad when we are able to make a home for mother instead of her making one for us?"

"Next winter I shall do something towards it," said Margery in a tone of quiet conviction. "You will be old enough to keep house then without my help."

"I'd rather be the one to go out; I'm better fitted for it," said Happie. "Dinner is served, Mrs. Scollard, mum," she added, putting her head out of the dining-room door, and calling down the three-foot hall which carried sound like a tunnel.

Mrs. Scollard did not prove her own assertion as to her appetite. The children, anxiously watching her, saw her taste her food, and push it away uneaten, telegraphing their uneasiness to one another as she did so.

"You said you were hungry, dear Deceiver," Happie reproached her at last.

"I was, dear; I felt as if I could not wait for my dear girls' good things, but when I see them I cannot eat, although I appreciate the perfect seasoning, and how fortunate I am in my cooks." Mrs. Scollard laughed a little as she spoke, and her eyes rested lovingly on Margery and Happie, but she only broke a corner of one of the golden patty-pan cakes, and took bird-like tastes of the delicate blanc mange. It seemed to the older girls and Bob that the pallor of her face, the shadows under her eyes, the droop of her lips had never been so apparent.

Before they had time to dwell on the thought and what it might portend, there came a great clatter from the kitchen, and Dorée flew into the dining-room with his golden fur so electrified that he looked like a four-legged sunflower, with very little difference in his size and shape at any point.

"What under the canopy----" Bob began, jumping up from the table and running out, followed by his sisters.

Somebody was hammering madly on the dumb waiter door with a competent stick. Bob opened the door emphatically, and there, in the opposite doorway, stood the boy whom they had seen in the afternoon, his stick raised for further pounding, but with a broad smile on his face that did not suggest anything in the least malicious.

"Say, what's the matter with you?" demanded Bob.

"Would you be so very kind as to return our cat?" asked the boy with exaggerated mildness.

"We haven't got your cat; that's ours," said Bob, pointing over his shoulder to where Jeunesse Dorée was standing sniffing the situation with greatly elongated body, having returned to investigate what had frightened him, with true feline nervous courage and curiosity.

"'Tis true, my lord, and pity 'tis 'tis true,'" returned the boy. "For that's a beauty cat. Ours is merely a cat of many colors, but we are fond of him. He is on your fire escape, having leaped across from this one. From the sounds I have heard, I think he has upset a pan of something, though it's too dark for me to see."

"Oh, my fudge!" cried Happie, and threw up the window.

A tiger cat immediately jumped into the kitchen, to Dorée's intense disapproval, and Happie fished her pan of fudge from between the slats of the fire escape floor, where it had lodged, caught by the transverse slats on its way down to the ground. The candy bore the unmistakable imprint of the tiger cat's "paddy-paw" feet, and Happie surveyed it with chagrin, while Polly stroked the interloper, and Penny clasped struggling Dorée to her breast, to prevent his manifest intention to punish his neighbor.

"Was it your fudge? I'm awfully sorry," said the boy across. "I guess Whoop-la sat in it."

"I guess so too," returned Happie with a laugh. "It's hard luck after broiling one's face to make it. Hard luck for you, too, because we'd have offered you some if it hadn't been spoiled."

"That's noble of you, but I'm afraid you wouldn't, because I shouldn't have knocked on your dumb waiter door, and so we wouldn't have met if Whoop-la hadn't gone over. That is, we shouldn't have met till after you had eaten up all the fudge. Of course we were bound to scrape acquaintance. Would you mind handing me Whoop-la?" The boy bowed as he spoke, and his eyes laughed in spite of his preternaturally solemn manner.

"Such a name for a cat!" exclaimed Bob. He picked up the tiger cat and passed him across to his master, leaning well over the ledge of the dumb waiter to do so. "Suppose you come around to see us tonight," Bob suggested. "We generally study and recite evenings, but to-night is Saturday, and a holiday. Won't you come?"

"I suppose the correct thing is for you to call on me first, you being the oldest--no, the older inhabitant, but I'll waive ceremony. I'd better waive it, because there isn't anything in this flat but bedlam--boxes and chairs you can't tell apart, burlap, and excelsior. I couldn't very well ask you over. My mother and younger brother haven't come yet, so I'm a little lonely. I will come around, if you don't mind, and thank you for asking me." The boy received his cat with hands so considerate of cat-nerves that the Scollard girls, noting, approved of him at once.

"Just give us time to scurry the dishes away," laughed Happie. "We're are own servants, and we couldn't entertain you while we were at work. Give us half an hour for finishing up, and then come."

"It would entertain me very much to watch you work," said this queer boy, "but I'll wait. Good-bye for thirty harrowing minutes. My watch goes fast; you won't mind?"

The Scollards laughed as Bob shut the dumb waiter door.

"He's a character," cried Bob, elated at the prospect of his visitor.

Mrs. Scollard bore off Penny to bed, which she shared with her mother, and lying down beside the baby for her nightly story-telling, fell asleep beside her from sheer exhaustion.

Margery, Happie and Laura washed and wiped the dishes, and Polly put them away, with Bob's help for the higher closet shelves. They worked so fast that only twenty of the thirty minutes were consumed by the task. They were rather excited by the coming of a caller of their own age. Their mother discouraged them from making acquaintances lightly. Living, as they did, in a neighborhood of low rents and crowded apartment-houses, she feared for them contact with young minds less carefully shielded from the knowledge of evil than their own, dreaded their possible contact with manners and morals such as she would not have had them imitate.

Happie's bright hair was curly and moist around her temples from the hasty dash of water which she had thrown over her face, and Margery was daintily drying her fingers one by one when the bell rang, so prompt was the new boy in keeping his appointment to the moment. Polly opened the door for him, and in he walked, hailed by a shout of laughter from Bob which brought the girls in at once, although Margery was conscious of lingering dampness around her little finger.

The new boy had made a label for himself of a box cover, and on it he had written his name, "Ralph Gordon," in very bold letters for all who ran to read. This improvement upon a visiting card he had hung around his neck, so that there could not be an instant's doubt as to whom the Scollards were entertaining.

"Now if you'd only stand by the dumb waiter whistles in the cellar with that thing on, we'd never be troubled with your groceries as we were to-day," said Bob, shaking hands with the arrival. "Wait a minute. You've set the example of labor-saving introductions; I'll follow it. Here, girls, draw up in line, oldest first, and so on. Now, this, Mr.--let's see, oh, yes! Mr. Ralph Gordon----" Bob pretended to be near-sighted, and to consult Ralph's card at short range. "This, Mr. Ralph Gordon, is my oldest and elder sister, Margery, christened Margaret. This is Keren-happuch, next younger than I. This is Laura, musical at twelve. This is pretty Polly, Polly-put-the-kettle on, my sensible, reliable sister of nine. Penny, you can't see because she is in bed. She's the baby, and we consider her a bright Penny, a fairly new one, for she's only four years old, and we wouldn't give her for a five dollar gold piece, as some people do bright new pennies. I am Robert, 'Robert toi qui j'aime'--you know the air? I have only to mention that the last named Scollard is the flower of the family, and my duty's done."

"Fully," commented Margery, with her gentle smile. "We would not say that he is not _a_ flower, but _the_ flower--well, that's another matter."

"Yes," said Ralph with a little look at Margery that held the value of a compliment.

"Quite another matter. He's not a violet, anyway, because that's a modest flower. But what did he call you?" he added turning to Happie.

Happie laughed. "Did you ever hear such a name?" she cried. "Keren-happuch. But they mercifully call me Happie. I was named after an old lady, a friend of mother's mother, and she was named after her grandmother. I think they might as well have stopped with her, and not gone on handing down such a fearful name!"

"Well, it is rather a heavy weight," admitted Ralph. "But Happie is enough to make up for it. I suppose it's a case of 'What's the odds as long as you're Happie.' It ought to be a kind of fairy godmother for whom you're named! Sounds like an old lady who was the only one of her pattern, and who showered gifts on mere mortals."

"Miss Keren-happuch Bradbury is the only one of her pattern; you're right there," Bob answered for Happie. "But she's not a fairy godmother. She's as eccentric as she can be, most interesting, and as independent as the Thirteen Colonies on July, 1776; rather mannish in her ways, but very thoroughly a gentlewoman. However, she's not rich, or we suppose she's not, so she can't play fairy godmother very well."

"And we need fairy godmothers," added Happie. "Our dear father didn't know how to get rich, and when he died, four years ago, poor little mother had to take his place. She's such a frail, delicate little Charlotte-mother! It's not easy. We are all pining for the day when she won't have to work for us, but we can work for her. How she goes down in town every morning to an office. We keep house alone. Bob is in a real estate office in the forenoon, but mother insists on his staying at home to study in the afternoon; she is such a learned darling that she gives us all a good education by teaching us at night, though she is tired to death. Isn't she blessed? That's all of us; our history."

Ralph Gordon's humorous face grew grave, and a look of admiration and respect dawned in his laughing eyes. "It's great," he said in boyish commendation of true heroism. "I have a good mother, too," he added. "My father died when Snigs--that's my brother; he's thirteen, and I guess his name's Charley, but of course Snigs is much better--well, when Snigs was three years old and I was five, father died. Mother didn't have much either. She has kept us at school, and managed pretty well--you see she came of good old fighting, revolutionary stock, and she never dipped her colors once, though she had enough to discourage her. She means me to go to college--she has gone without everything she could give up to save enough to start me, and for the rest I am to help myself through. She has moved up here thinking she could rent a room or so in this flat to some of the boys up there at Columbia, and so get on better until I start, which can't be for two years more. I guess my mother is stronger, more able to bear her burdens than yours is, from what you say, but I've got my hat off to my mother, too, every time. Talk about women's rights! They're about as near right as they can be, rights or not, and when there's anything to be done they don't fall far behind men in pluck and stick-to-it-iveness, I notice."

"Hear, hear!" cried Margery and Happie. "We're much obliged."

"Don't mention it," said Ralph generously. "I hope you will live up to my high opinion."

"I wonder if your cat--Whoop-la, isn't it?--got into both pans of fudge, Happie?" suggested Margery.

"Sure enough!" cried Happie departing on this hint, as Ralph exclaimed: "Thank goodness, you are beginning to prove yourself worthy of my confidence in your sex!"

Happie returned with a pan of fudge, which she examined carefully under the gaslight, turning it at different angles to make sure that Whoop-la's paws had not touched it.

"I think it's all right," she announced at last. "It would surely show if he had stepped into it."

"Certainly," assented Ralph promptly. "And departing leave behind him, footprints in the bands of line. I see you've marked it off into squares. But if he had stepped on it, N'importe! as we said when I was Minister to Paris. Whoop-la is the cleanest cat on Manhattan Island. He licks each snowy paw till it's free from fleck or flaw."

"Ugh!" shuddered Laura. "How disgusting! Think of eating candy he'd touched with licked paws!"

"Oh, he didn't, Laura!" cried Margery. "He got into one pan, but he missed the other."

"I believe you like nonsense as well as a Scollard--better than Laura and Polly, who worry because it doesn't seem quite sensible," said Happie approving the new boy more and more.

He shook his head reproachfully at Laura and Polly. "Do you not know the full title of this highest form of philosophy, my sisters?" he asked. "It is called: _Non sensus sed_, defense--us. That means it is not sense but a defense, because it defends us from the horrible fate of being dull. This has been contracted into one English word--nonsense. But the whole title fits better."

Laura stared doubtfully at the lecturer, and Polly gazed at him with round-eyed admiration, while Margery, Bob and Happie chuckled over his fooling, beginning to suspect that this merry-looking boy with the queer ways was decidedly clever.

"Pretty good fudge, Sister Keren-happuch; just a suspicion too sugary, but I can use it," said Bob, helping himself to a corner piece, and devouring it with the same relish he had shown for its three predecessors.

"Same here!" remarked Ralph, following Bob's example. "It will go."

"So it seems," laughed Happie. "Much obliged."

"And I must do in like manner," Ralph supplemented his preceding remark, rising. "I am tired with the effort of superintending the van men and moving things around after they had gone. I felt tired enough to dread the evening all alone in the lunatic asylum our place looks like to-night. So I'm no end grateful to you for taking me off my own hands. Hope you'll all come to see me. Next time maybe we'll get at music--I play the violin and the mandolin a little, and I see some one fiddles and pianos here."

"Bob plays the violin, but Laura is our musical girl; we all sing more or less, and better or worse," said Happie. "Please come again. I'm sorry you couldn't see mother for she is--well, you will see her by and by."

She held out her honorably burnt little right hand, which had been scalded that night by the gravy, and Ralph took it with a look of hearty liking and respect.

"You're all my sort," he said. "I'm mighty glad we're neighbors. You'll like my mother, too, though I say it who should, for I know her better than any one else ever can."

Margery laughed, and shook hands so cordially that Bob and Happie knew that Ralph had accomplished the difficult feat of winning reserved Margery's approval in his first visit.

"We've had cat escapes, fudge escapes, loneliness escapes, formality escapes, all turning on Whoop-la on your fire escape," said Ralph. "We ought to sing, 'For We Are Jolly Good Fellows,' in parting, but I'm afraid we should disturb your mother and wake up your Penny. Good-bye, and heaps of thanks."

"Hold on; I'll get my top coat and glasses, and take you home in my automobile," said Bob, opening the door, and shaking hands with his new friend across the narrow hall as Ralph fitted his key into the door opposite. "You won't wait? Good-night, then, and drop over as often as you can, unceremoniously, like your intelligent Whoop-la."

"He's all right," he added to the girls as he closed the door of Patty-Pans.