Chapter VI

MRS. HETTERMAN THROWS LIGHT ON THE MYSTERY.

Mrs. Hetterman came into our life in consequence of a train of troubles which arose in the boarding-school from the frequent change of the cook. Madame had been served for several years by a faithful colored man, who had suddenly taken it into his head to go off as steward on a gentleman's yacht. She had supplied his place by a Biddy, who was found intoxicated on the kitchen floor. A woman followed who turned out to be a thief, and we were now enduring an incompetent creature who made sour bread and spoiled nearly every dish which passed through her hands. Half of the girls were suffering with dyspepsia, and all were grumbling. The Amen Corner was especially out of sorts. Milly, who was always fastidious, had eaten nothing but maple-sugar for breakfast, and had a sick headache; Emma Jane was snappish; Witch Winnie had stolen a box of crackers from the pantry, which she had passed around. Adelaide and I had regaled ourselves upon them, but Emma Jane had declined on high moral grounds, and was virtuously miserable. It was in this unchristian frame of mind, or rather of stomach, that we took our next botany lesson. We found the princess beaming with pleasure. "My tear young ladies," she exclaimed, "you must felicitate me. It is all so much better as I had hoped. Ze leetle prince has not been so badly elevated after all. He haf been taught to be kind and unselfish; zat is already ze foundation of a gentleman."

Miss Prillwitz had occasion to leave the room a few minutes later. Adelaide sniffed the air, and remarked, "Girls, don't you smell something very nice?"

"It's here on the stand in the corner," said Witch Winnie, lifting a napkin which covered a tray, and exclaiming, "Fish balls! Only see! the most beautiful brown fish balls!"

"It's the remnants of their breakfast; she has forgotten to take it away," said Adelaide. "They make me feel positively faint with longing; I don't believe she would mind if we took just one."

We ate of the dainties, even Emma Jane yielding to temptation; they were delicious, and, having begun, we could not stop until they were all devoured. Then we looked at one another in shame and dismay. "Who will confess?" asked Adelaide.

"You ought to; you put us up to it," said Emma Jane Anton.

"Let's write a round-robin," I suggested, "and all sign it."

"I'll stand it," said Winnie. "I led you into temptation."

A step was heard in the hall. Winnie stepped forward and began to speak rapidly; the rest of us looked down shamefacedly.

"Miss Prillwitz, please forgive us; we were so hungry we could not stand it. If you knew what a dreadful breakfast we had this morning, I'm sure you would not blame us--"

But she was interrupted by a cry of dismay--"Oh! have you eaten them all? I bought them for Aunty."

Looking up, we saw a manly little boy with an expression of distress on his frank features.

Adelaide uttered a sharp exclamation. I thought she said, "It's him!" and yet Adelaide seldom forgot her grammar. Winnie drew a deep breath, and caught Adelaide by the arm. The boy looked up from the empty platter to the girls' faces, and his expression changed. "Oh! it's you," he said. "Well, no matter, only I meant 'em for a present for _her_--Miss Prillwitz, you know. She's no end good to me. Mrs. Hetterman, down at Rickett's Court, makes 'em for regular customers every Friday morning. They are prime, and mother gave me a quarter for pocket-money this month, so I got ten cents' worth for Aunty; she lets me call her so. I thought she'd like 'em, and it would patronize Mrs. Hetterman, and show her I hadn't forgotten old friends, if I had moved up in the world."

"Here's ten cents to get some more from Mrs. Hetterman," said Adelaide, "and maybe we can get her a wholesale order to furnish our boarding-school. I'll speak to Madame about it this very day."

"And if Madame doesn't order them, we girls will club together and have a spread of our own," said Winnie.

Miss Prillwitz came in at this juncture, and explanations followed.

"If Madame is in such trouble in regards of a cook," said Miss Prillwitz, "I vill write her of Mrs. Hetterman, and perhaps it will be to them both a providence. Can she make ozzer sings as ze croquettes of codfish?"

"Oh yes, indeed," the little prince spoke up, eagerly; "soup, and turnovers, and _such_ bread! She gave me a little loaf every baking while mother had the pneumonia. Mr. Dooley, the butcher, gave me a marrow bone every Monday, and I always took it to Mrs. Hetterman to make into soup. It made mother sick to boil it in our little room, and Mrs. Hetterman would make a kettle of stock, and showed me how to keep it in a crock outside the window, so mother could have some every day; it was what kept mother's strength up through it all. We had such good neighbors at the court! but Mrs. Hetterman was best of all. She has five children of her own, too. Bill is a messenger boy, and Jennie works in a feather factory. Mary is a cripple, but she is just lovely, and tidies the house, and takes care of the two little ones. Mr. Hetterman was a plasterer and got good wages, but he fell from a scaffolding and broke his leg, and he's at the hospital."

"And does Mrs. Hetterman support the family on ze croquettes of codfish?" asked Miss Prillwitz.

"She scrubs offices, but she could get a place as cook in a family if it wasn't for the children." He looked longingly at Miss Prillwitz as he spoke, but she did not seem to notice the glance.

"Here, mon garcon, run down to ze court, and tell Mrs. Hetterman to take a basket of her cookery to ze boarding-school. I t'ink she will engage to herself some beesness."

The lesson proceeded, but Adelaide and Winnie both blundered; they were evidently thinking of something else.

A change came over Witch Winnie; she lost her old reckless gayety and became subdued and thoughtful. The Hornets said she was studying for honors, but I knew this was not the case, for her lessons were not as well prepared as formerly. She would sit for long periods lost in reverie. Winnie had charge of the money collected for Jim's board. She reported, after one week, that his mother did not need as much; two dollars would supply the margin between what was required and the sum she was able to pay. None of us, with the exception of Adelaide, knew where Winnie had domiciled Jim, but we were content to leave the matter in her hands. A week later Mrs. Halsey only needed one dollar. Mrs. Hetterman was engaged as cook for the boarding-school, and we all rejoiced in the change. I went down to the kitchen to see her, one afternoon, and found her a buxom Englishwoman who dropped her _h_'s, but was always neat and civil. She was delighted when she found that I knew the names of her children. "It was a little boy who used to live in your court who told me about them," I said, "and who introduced us to your good fish balls."

"Oh yes, Miss, I mind; it was little Jim 'Alsey; 'e's the prince of fine fellers, 'e is."

Jim Halsey the prince! My head fairly reeled, and yet this explained many things which had seemed mysterious. Winnie's agency in the matter was still not entirely clear to me. I did not connect her remorseful remarks about another scrape, with Jim, and I believed that by some remarkable coincidence he was really Miss Prillwitz's little prince incognito. I wondered whether Mrs. Hetterman knew anything of his real history, but she preferred to talk at present about her own family. She was very happy in the prospect of introducing her oldest daughter, Jennie, into the house as a waitress. "It will be so much better for Jennie," she said, "than the feather factory. The hair there is not good for 'er lungs."

I did not understand, at first, what Mrs. Hetterman meant by the _hair_, but when she explained that it was "the hatmosphere," her meaning dawned upon me.

"It will make it a bit lonelier for Mary and the little ones," she admitted, "but I go down every night, after the work's over, to tidy them up and to see that hall's right. The court is not a fit place for the children. If I could find decent lodgings for them, such as Mrs. 'Alsey 'as got for her Jim! I think I could pay as much, if the place was only found; I'm 'oping something will turn hup, Miss."

"I hope so," I replied; and I asked Winnie that afternoon if she thought the person who was boarding Jim Halsey would take the Hettermans, but she utterly discouraged the idea.

We saw a good deal of the little prince. Miss Prillwitz called him Giacomo, and was deeply attached to him. He did her credit too, for he was docile and bright. His mother was right in saying that he inherited his father's facility for mathematics, but with this faculty he possessed also a love for mechanics and for machinery of every sort.

"He will make one good engineer some day," said Miss Prillwitz, in speaking of him to us.

"That is a strange career for a prince," said Adelaide.

"My tear, it may be many year before he ees call to his princedom, and in ze meanstime he muss make his way. Zen, too, ze sons of ze royal houses make such study, and it is one good thing for ze country whose prince interest himself in ze science."

"I wonder how he would like to study surveying by and by," Adelaide said. "I know that father could employ him in the West."

"Zat is one excellent idea," said Miss Prillwitz. "We will see, when ze time s'all arrive."

We were all fond of the little prince. After all, Miss Prillwitz had decided to let him attend the botany lessons on Saturdays. "If he s'all be one surveyor in ze West," she said, "he s'all have opportunity to discover ze new species of flower; he must learn all ze natural science."

The prince attended the public school during the week, and held his place at the head of his class with ease. It was not hard to do so, now that he could sleep all night. Emma Jane, who had had her spasms of doubt in regard to him, and had even gone so far at first as to say that Miss Prillwitz was a crank, and she had no faith in the boy's nobility, had been won over by the boy himself, and remarked one afternoon that the internal evidence was convincing; Giacomo was not like common children; he was evidently cast in a finer mold; he would do honor to any position; birth would tell, after all. It was all that dear Milly could do not to betray the secret to the little prince. He was very fond of Milly, but deferential and unpresuming, as became his apparent position. "Some day our places may be reversed. You may live in a beautiful home and have hosts of friends," Milly said to him. "Will you remember me then, Giacomo?"

"How can that ever be?" the boy asked. "You will grow up and be a fine rich lady; I will be a poor young man whom you will have quite forgotten."

"Not necessarily poor," Milly hastened to reply. "If you go West you may, by working hard, become rich and famous. Will you forget your old friends then?"

And Jim promised that he would never, never forget. Then a shade came across his face. "Maybe I will, after all," he said, "for I have forgotten Mary Hetterman for more than a week. I did not think I could be so mean."

Adelaide and I had a conference in regard to the prince. It seemed that she had recognized him as Jim Halsey from the first. "I have been wondering," she said, "whether it was not a case like that of Little Lord Fauntleroy, and whether Mrs. Halsey could not be proved to be the wife of a prince, but I see that cannot be the explanation of the matter; and I have concluded that Jim is her adopted child. She must have taken him, when she was in better circumstances, from the people who brought him to this country when he was a very little fellow, and so he has no recollection of any other home."

"She always spoke of him as her very own," I said, "and seemed fonder of him than a foster-mother could be. It will be very hard for her to part with him, if his real relatives claim him."

"Not if he goes to high rank and great estates," said Adelaide. "She probably had no idea of his noble birth when she adopted him; and it just proves that bread cast upon the waters returns, for he will probably care for her right royally, when he comes into his own, and she will find that adopting that boy was the best investment she ever made in her life."

Winnie came in while we were talking.

"Why didn't you tell us, Winnie," I asked, "that Jim Halsey was the little prince?"

"It did not seem necessary," Winnie replied, looking unnecessarily alarmed, as it seemed to me.

"You pay his board directly to Miss Prillwitz, I suppose?" Adelaide said.

"No, I give it to his mother, and she sends it by mail."

"Well, I don't see any harm in letting Miss Prillwitz know that we know his mother, and are helping in his support."

"I do, and I wish you would not tell her this," Winnie entreated.

"Just as you please," Adelaide replied, "but I hate mysteries."

"So do I," said Winnie, with a deep sigh.

"What is the matter with you, any way, Winnie?" Adelaide asked.

"That is my business," Winnie replied, shortly, and left the room, banging the door behind her.

"Winnie isn't half as jolly as she used to be," said Milly, in an injured tone. "I always depend on her to save me when I'm not prepared for recitation. When Professor Todd was coming down the line in the Virgil class and was only two girls away from me, I made the most beseeching faces at Winnie, who sits opposite, and usually she is so quick to take the hint, and come to the rescue by asking Professor Todd a lot of questions about the sites of the ancient cities, and where he thinks the Hesperides were situated. She gets him to talking on his pet hobbies, and he proses on like an old dear, until the bell rings for change of class. But this time she just stared at me in the most wall-eyed manner, while I signaled her in a perfect agony as he got nearer and nearer. I tried to think of some question of my own to ask him, and suddenly one popped into my head which I thought was very bright. He had just been talking about AEneas' shipwreck, and he referred to St. Paul's, with a description of the ancient vessels, and how he met the same Mediterranean storms, and I plucked up courage and said, 'Professor Todd, why is it that we hear so much about Virginia, and in all the pictures of the shipwreck we see her standing on the deck of the ship, and Paul rushing out into the surf to rescue her? Now I have read the chapter in Acts which describes St. Paul's shipwreck, very carefully, and in that, and in all the history of Paul, there is not one word about Virginia.'

"You should have heard the girls shout; I think they were just as mean as they could be. That odious Cynthia Vaughn nearly fell off the bench, and Professor Todd looked at me in such a despairing way, as though he gave me up from that time forth. I just burst into tears, and Winnie came over and took me out of the room. She acknowledged that it was all her fault, and that she ought to have come to my rescue sooner."

Poor Milly! we could only comfort her with our assurances that we loved her all the more for her troubles.

Summer was approaching, and we were making our plans for vacation. Milly's mother had invited Adelaide to spend the season with them at their cottage at Narragansett Pier; and Winnie's father had consented to her spending June and July with me on our Long Island farm. Winnie cheered up somewhat at the prospect. "It's the warm weather which makes me feel muggy," she said; "I shall feel better when we get out of the city too. The noise and racket distract me, and seeing so many miserable people makes me miserable and sick at heart."

"I don't feel so at all," I replied. "It makes me happy to see how much good even we can do. Mrs. Halsey would not have obtained her situation with Madame Celeste but for us, or have been able to place Jim with Miss Prillwitz."

Winnie winced. "Don't talk about them; I am sick and tired of hearing about the little prince. Do you know, I don't believe he is a prince at all!"

"What! Do you imagine that this story of Miss Prillwitz's is only a fabrication?"

"Perhaps so, or at least a hallucination on her part; and even if it is all true Jim may not be the boy. I wonder what proof she has of his identity, or whether she has written yet to his relatives. I mean to ask her--this very day."

But Winnie did nothing of the kind, for we were surprised on arriving at Miss Prillwitz's to find three new children sitting in the broad window-seats. One was a thin girl with crutches, whom I at once guessed must be Mary Hetterman; two chubby, freckle-faced little ones sat in the sunshine looking over a picture-book together, while Miss Prillwitz beamed upon them.

"My tears," she said, "you see I haf some more companie. Giacomo haf brought these small people to spend ze day."

Jim came in a little later, and introduced his friends. He was flushed and excited, and it presently appeared that the visit was a part of a deep-laid scheme of his own.

"I wanted you to know the Hettermans," he said, "because they are such nice children, and Rickett's Court is no place for them, for the family next door have the fever, and Mr. Grogan has the tremens, and scares them most to death. Mrs. Hetterman gets twenty dollars a month as cook now, and she says she can pay a dollar a week apiece for each of the children if she can board them where it is healthful and decent; and you young ladies were so kind as to help my mother at first, and now, as she don't need it any longer, maybe you would help the Hettermans, and then maybe Aunty would take them in. Mary is very handy, for all she's a cripple, and the babies' noise is just nothing but a pleasure, and--" here the tears stood in his eyes, and he looked at Miss Prillwitz, who was frozen stiff with astonishment, with piteous appealing--"and I would eat just as little as I could."

The good woman's voice trembled, "Take ze children to play in ze park," she said; "ze young ladies and I, we talk it some over."

Mary Hetterman tied the children's hoods on with cheerful alacrity. She evidently had high hopes, while Jim threw his arms around Miss Prillwitz--"Aunty," he said, "they deserve that you should be kind to them more than I do."

"What reason is zere that I should take them in more as all ze uzzer children in ze court?"

"Just as much reason as for you to take me," replied the boy, running away.

"Bless his heart!" said Miss Prillwitz, as he closed the door; "he knows not ze reason zat draw me to him, ze cherubim. But I did not know you to help his muzzer until now."

Adelaide explained matters, and the case of the Hettermans was discussed, Miss Prillwitz agreeing to take them in if we would assist in their support. "I shall leaf zem in my apartement for ze summer," she said, "for it is necessaire to me zat I go ze shore of ze sea, and I s'all take Giacomo with me, for I cannot bear to separate myself of him. Zis is so near to your school zat Mrs. Hetterman can sleep her nights here. But I have not decided to myself where I shall repose myself for ze summer."

I spoke up quickly, referring her to Miss Sartoris for the beauties of our part of Long Island and for mother's low price for board. Miss Prillwitz was evidently pleasantly impressed. She thought she would like to study the seaweed of that part of the coast, and when she heard of the lighthouse, against which the birds of passage dashed themselves, and how the keeper had kept their skins, waiting for some one to come that way and teach him to stuff them, she was quite decided in our favor.

I noticed that Winnie grew suddenly silent. As we left the house she pinched me softly. "You didn't mean any harm, Tib," she said, "but if they go, it will take every bit of pleasure out of my summer."