Maggie McLanehan

I . .i

M

V '

vj

: Jar - ilk*

The young girl, with all the intensity of her nature, was at work.

BY

GULIELMA ZOLLINGER

Author of

CHICAGO

A. C. McCLURG AND CO. 1901

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, Two CoHbtt Received

COPVHMHT ENTRY

CLASS A XXc. NO.

COPY B.

Copyright

A. C. McCLURG & CO.

% e

C C

•

•••

C ♦

• • •

• • • •

A I »

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

THE YOUNG GIRL WITH ALL THE INTENSITY

OF HER NATURE WAS AT WORK. Frontispiece

“none but a loony would put it there” I 15

“i’ll READ it” 179

“ i’ll walk on THE EDGES OF THE FIELDS,”

HE GROWLED 251

AN EVENING OF GOSSIP 287

Chapter I

N TEAR the heart of the Mid-West town T ^ of Teepleton, in one of several houses which yet remained to tell the tale of when the town was smaller, lived Maggie McLanehan, and she was fifteen years old. To her cousin Bill, however, who lived two blocks distant in a similar house, she seemed aged, because she was always checking him in his mischief.

‘‘Ah, there! don’t you do that again,” she had said only the day before, when Bill McLanehan, who was three years younger than herself, had playfully thrown a soft mudball at a passing stranger. “ ’Tis the town will soon be down on the very name of McLanehan, for who is it besides yourself would want to be hit with mud? ’Tis no use saying it’s soft and don’t hurt. It spoils the 9 clothes, so it does, and other folks cares about that, if you don’t/’

‘‘ You’re older nor your grandmother,” retorted Bill, lounging off.

‘‘ That’s neither here nor there,” called Maggie after him. “ Don’t you throw any more mud.”

Then she sedately walked into her own domicile of one room, where she cooked, ate, slept, and took care of her small cousin, Nora Garity. Mrs. Garity,who had now been dead two weeks, had hired this room in the small house, and had lived there honest and self-respecting, toiling for her orphan niece, Maggie, and her own small daughter, and Maggie was determined to keep the room and bring up her little cousin — a decision which Mrs. Cloonon, who, with her husband and children, occupied the rest of the house, thoroughly approved. But in the Dave McLanehan home there were other plans afoot this pleasant day toward the end of June, and in the early evening Mr. McLanehan came to remonstrate with his niece. “You can’t be stayin’ here,” objected Mr. Me-

Lanehan. “You'd best come home with me."

“Thankin’ you kindly," returned Maggie, “ it’s right here I’m goin’ to stay, where Aunt Maggie lived before me."

Now Mr. Dave McLanehan was a great, burly, shiftless man who never could keep but one idea before his mind at one time, and who was very much under the influence of his wife, Bridget. He therefore stuck to his text, and, while he insisted, artlessly revealed his wife’s plans. “ You can’t be stayin’ here," said Mr. Dave McLanehan. “ What will you be livin’ on? Most like you never thought of that, now, for sure, it’s not for young folks to be thinkin’ anyway ; ’tis their part to mind their olders and betters. Come home with me and leave the wee Nora there with Bridget, and then you can go out to service and earn your own livin’ and Nora’s keep besides. And then, them times when your mistress gives you a half day off you can step in and help your Aunt Bridget. She’s almost wore out, she said."

To this tempting offer Maggie listened with inward disdain, but she answered politely, “ ril just stay here, as I said. Uncle Dave.’*

‘^You’re terrible obstinate,” growled Mr. McLanehan, ‘‘and your Aunt Bridget mistrusted you would be. But she said I was to bring you back with me anyway. So, get your hat and the little Nora, and to-morrow we’ll be sendin’ for the furniture and things your Aunt Maggie left.”

But Maggie was firm, and no words of her uncle’s could move her. “ She told me to bring you back with me,” he said finally. “ I don’t know what she’ll say, but I’m likely to be findin’ out when I step in without you.” And, rising, he departed.

Maggie looked after him. “ And will I go there?” she said to herself, “to live in the house with that Bill and the rest of ’em, and little Nora learning their bad ways ? Indeed, and I’ll not. I’m to earn my own living and Nora’s, and I’ll do it right here.”

Mrs. Garity had not been sick long, and there had been no heavy expenses. She had been provident, and now that all bills were paid, there still remained five dollars for Maggie and Nora to begin the world upon. ‘‘Sure, and if Uncle Dave knew that, he’d want to borrow it, so he would,” she said. “He’s a great one for borrowing and never paying, and I know it, if he is my uncle. I’m not wishin’ him any harm, but I am wishing he’d lay a stick over Bill’s back once in a while. ’Twould do him some good. I’m thinking. Aunt Maggie always said it would, anyway.” Then she called the little Nora to her, kissed her fondly and put her to bed. “Sleep well, my darling,” she said. “I’m your mother and your cousin Maggie, too, now, and you shan’t suffer need unless I do myself.”

The next morning Maggie was up betimes, and putting her head out of the window, she gazed up and down the street. But no life or movement did she see except among the chattering sparrows, now busy in the dust, now flying aloft to the eaves of the buildings or the branches of the trees. It was too early for the business men to be passing to their stores; too early for the laboring men to be on the streets with their dinner pails in their hands on their way to work. Even the redoubtable Bill and his brothers were still asleep in their beds.

But though Maggie’s world seemed as empty of opportunities as the street was of passers, even while she looked her situation squarely in the face, she refused to be cast down. ‘‘Sure, and the air’s good, anyway, and there is plenty of it, too,” she said. “But I’m wondering what I can get to do. It’s one thing to talk big to Uncle Dave and another quite to make a living. I’m afraid. I can’t go out to day’s work like Aunt Maggie, for I’ve got nobody to leave Nora with every day, and all day long, and her only three years old. Aunt Maggie had me, but I’ve got nobody.”

Again the sparrows attracted her attention. “ Look at them sparrow birds, now,” she said. “ Sure, and they’re no sort of birds at all. Always in the dirt, they are, and they mind me of Bill, so they do. There’s times when a body has to get into the dirt more or less, but let ’em go into it like the pigeons, 14 that keeps out of it some way, after all, and not be right into it like them sparrow birds. I’m told they’d ever be driving their betters among the birds, too, and sure and that’s like Bill. No, ’twould never do to put the little Nora to Uncle Dave’s to live. Aunt Maggie wouldn’t like it, for Uncle Dave’s folks is no kin to her and Nora, and she never wanted anything to do with ’em.”

There was now a brisk stir in the adjoining room, a rattling down of the grate of the cooking stove, and a great hurrying with kindling and coal, for Mrs. Cloonon had overslept, and was likely to be late with her husband’s breakfast.

Maggie smiled with pleasure at the homely sounds, all unconcerned as to the outcome, for she knew capable Mrs. Cloonon well enough to be certain that at a quarter to seven Mr. Cloonon would be off as usual. The Cloonons had been Mrs. Garity’s firm friends, although they had known her only a year before she died ; that is, Mrs. Cloonon had been, while her husband and daughter and two sons had looked on without much interest. And Maggie, as she listened this morning to the bustling in the Cloonon kitchen, took heart, knowing that there was one person in the world she could depend upon.

Now, Mrs. Cloonon, in common with the rest of the neighborhood, held the Dave McLanehan family in great disfavor. She had heard Mr. McLanehan’s fine offer to his niece made the evening before, the walls being thin, all the windows open, and Mr. McLanehan’s voice loud and hearty. And she had heard it with indignation.

“And a great offer that is!” she said to herself, when Mr. McLanehan had gone, disappointed, to his home. “ He’d be makin’ a slave of the girl, and worry her to death besides. I’m glad she’s got more sense than to go with him. There’s them, no doubt, that will say, ^ But he’s her uncle.’ What if he is? All the uncles in the world ain’t good by a long shot, or we’d be short on bad men, so we would, which we ain’t now. I’d like to be doing something for Maggie myself just to show her that I know it when a girl’s got sense. And I will, too, if I get but a chance.”

i6

If Maggie could have known that it was a prolonged mental search after a chance to her liking that had kept worthy Mrs. Cloonon awake, the bustling about of her neighbor would have still more encouraged her heart.

But now there were voices in the kitchen. Mr. Cloonon was eating his breakfast and being cheered up for his daily toil by the pleasant talk of his wife. At the sound, tears came to Maggie’s eyes. There were no cheerful voices on her side of that dividing door. No voice but her own prattling to Nora, and no one but herself to delight in the child’s pretty ways. ‘Tt’s Aunt Maggie I want,” said the young girl, under her breath.

But I can’t have her, so I can’t,” she added bravely. “ I must brace up and look for my chance.”

That very morning Maggie’s first chance was on its way, coming to her door, as chances more commonly do than most people believe.

The charitably-inclined ladies of Teepleton had a few weeks before started a manual labor training school for the poor of the town. But the poor, instead of crowding in, as it had been hoped they would do, held persistently aloof, and showed so little interest that the ladies were glad to permit the transference of membership cards, and to welcome anybody who presented one of their tickets to any class. The forenoon was half gone, and Mrs. Cloonon, who thirsted to do Maggie a kindness, was straightening out her top bureau drawer, when she came across her own daughter’s ticket to the cooking class. Hastily she caught it up and went into Maggie’s room. ‘‘ Here’s a bit of pleasure for you, Maggie, dear,” she cried. ‘‘Off with you to the cooking class on my Mollie’s ticket ! ’Tis Mollie can’t abide the cooking, so you can go as well as not, and I’ll keep little Nora the while.”

Maggie hesitated. A cooking class might be a pleasant place, but she had only Mollie Cloonon’s scornful word concerning it, and she was not attracted.

“ ’Tis ’most time now,” insisted Mrs. Cloonon. “To be sure a cooking class ain’t

i8 a circus ; far from it, but it’s better than staying to home all the time. So off with you, and who knows what’ll come of it ? ”

Thus urged, Maggie set off, thinking as she walked soberly along how she did not know of a single thing she could do to earn money, burdened as she was with little Nora. She had been a few terms to the public school, and there were many things she could do after a fashion, but the only one task at which she was an adept was caring for Nora. “ I’ll not give her up,” she declared stoutly; “come what may. I’ll not give her up. Aunt Maggie was awful good to me, and I’d be the mean one, that didn’t deserve what she done for me if I wouldn’t do for Nora, now it’s my turn.”

So thinking, she arrived at the class-room, entered, and sat down. Presently the teacher came in — a stout, amiable woman, who was that morning to give a lesson on cooking beefsteak. And as she took her place, Maggie was amazed to see the indifference displayed around her. “ Sure, there’s more than Mollie Cloonon down on the cooking, to judge by the look of it,’* she said to herself. ‘‘ I wonder what they come for, seeing they care naught about it? But maybe ’tis for the same reason Mrs. Cloonon sent me, because ’tis better than going nowhere.”

Now Maggie, besides being unusually intelligent, was also innately polite. Instinctively she put herself in the teacher’s place, and, through sympathy, she gave her attention. I’ll not be the one to be gawping around and hurting her feelings,” she said. ‘‘ There’s plenty to do that without my helping ’em.”

And so it was that, when the lesson was over, Maggie was sure she could cook beefsteak.

‘^And I wonder what good that will be to me ? ” she said to herself as she started home. With only five dollars, and no way to earn, ’twill be little beefsteak I can buy to cook.”

Just then her eyes rested on a window of the house she was passing, where a card was stuck up announcing that dressmaking was done within. “Now that’s an idea,”

she said. “ Td stick a card in my window if I had anything to put on it.”

She walked on a few steps, pondering. “ I believe I will stick one up,” she said. “ For them that knows me in Teepleton are few, and them that knows Fm wanting to earn are fewer. And Til put on it ‘Beefsteak Well Cooked for Hire.* That would be an elegant sign. And if nobody wanted steak cooked, everybody would see that the one inside wanted work. For if I had only on the sign, ‘Work Wanted,* everybody that seen it would say, ‘What work? She don*t know herself, so most like she can do little, if she can*t do less.* But seeing I can cook beefsteak, *twill be like *em to wonder what else I can do, and knock on the door to see.**

Chapter II

S she turned into Market street and drew near her own door, the little Nora spied her and came running to meet her with eager arms outspread and a cry of “Maggie! Maggie !”

“I must brace up, and be getting my sign in the window as soon as I can for Nora's sake," thought the young girl, while her brilliant dark-blue eyes sparkled with pleasure at the sight of her affectionate little cousin.

Not that day, however, nor for several days thereafter, was the sign to be made and put up. Mrs. Cloonon had news for her, which she began to impart the moment Maggie's foot touched the threshold.

“ 'Tis yourself that's in luck," was her greeting, as she appeared with a flushed face and cook-fork in hand. “Hardly had you gone stepping off to the cooking class, and you was barely out of sight round the corner.

when who should come driving up to the door but that there truck gardener’s son, Ezra Haymaker they call him. And sure that’s his name, his father being Mr. Haymaker and his mother Mrs. Haymaker, to say nothing of a lot more children the Haymakers has got. And pretty fair children they are, too, as I’ve been told. But come in, Maggie, and don’t stand there in the door, for you must hurry and get you a bite and be off, for I’ve promised for you.”

Maggie stared bewildered ; seeing which, Mrs. Cloonon went half-impatiently on: “Wasn’t I just telling you how Ezra Haymaker drove up to the door in his father’s wagon and not half a load in it, seeing he’d sold the rest before he got here? And I hurried out so’s not to keep him waiting, for boys that has to sell things don’t care much about being kept waiting, nor any other kind of boys neither. That’s the main difference between boys and girls. I’m thinking. The boys don’t want to wait a minute for anything, but the girls, now, they’re more patient, which is lucky, since 23 they’ve got plenty of waiting to do of one kind or another. So out I hurries and I says, ‘ I don’t want to buy nothing to-day.’ And that same wasn’t quite the truth neither, for I’d have been buying fast enough, only my money was run out, and borrow I won’t, nor get things charged neither. For who knows what’ll happen by the time the bill’s brought in, if not before? I’ve heard of more than one person that didn’t pay their debts till after they was dead; and they didn’t pay ’em then neither, for they was paid by them that come after them, children and so on, whoever happened to have the money to pay with.

“And the Haymaker boy, he says, ‘Sorry you don’t want to buy, ma’am,’ as polite as if I’d been as rich as anybody. ‘But don’t there a girl live here called Maggie Mc- Lanehan?’

“ ‘Sure and there does,’ I says, ‘and a fine girl she is.’

“He nodded his head and flicked his whip like, but the horses understood well he was only passing the time, and never budged. They ain’t the budging kind anyway, them horses ain’t, as anybody knows as has seen ’em. Still they’re all very well in their place, and hauls peas and beans and such reasonable good.

“But don’t be staring so, Maggie. You look ’most daft, and I a-telling you faithful every single thing, so’s you’ll understand it and not have to imagine a lot that never happened, just to make this and that jibe. That’s the way a-many does, Maggie, and a pretty lot of mischief they does, too, with their imagination ; for imagination’s a dangerous thing, Maggie, in the heads of fools. It’s made out honest folks to be all sorts of reprobates before this. And that’s why I always tell everything there is to tell, that is, when it’s best (and often it’s best to keep everything ^o yourself), and then when I’m through with ’em, there’s nothing for ’em to imagine. Not that you’re a fool, Maggie, but you’re young, and so needing to hear all or nothing. So the Haymaker boy, he flicked his whip like, and he says, ‘Where is she ? ’ meaning you, Maggie.

“ ‘ Gone a-pleasurin’ a bit to the cooking class/ says I.

“ ‘When will she be back?’ says he.

“ ‘In a jiffy/ says 1, ‘for she’s just gone, and the cooking class never lasts more than an hour or an hour and a half at the outside. Then she’ll start home, and if she don’t stop gazing about her in the streets she’ll be here immediate.’

“He looked ahead of him a minute, like he was reckoning up how much a peck and a half of peas and a dozen ears of green corn would come to, and says he, ‘I reckon she’ll be back about half-past eleven, then?’

“‘Sure and she will,’ says I.

“‘Tell her to be out to our house by one, then, to pick peas for the morning’s market. We’re short a hand.’

“ ‘I will,’ says I ; ‘but I thought you picked peas in the morning, getting up before day.’

“‘Some does,’ he says, ‘but we don’t. ‘Pick ’em comfortable,’ we says, ‘in the afternoon.’ I mistrust he’s never done none of the pea-picking by his saying ‘pick ’em 26 comfortable’ when there’s no comfort to it but the money you make by it. But you mustn’t be discouraged, Maggie dear, for the same can be said of a many other things. But that’s neither here nor there, for I was telling you what he said. ‘They’ll suit well enough everybody but a few cranky customers,’ he says, ‘and them we humors by picking for ’em in the morning.’

“And here it is now fifteen minutes to twelve, so hurry and get your bite and be off, for it’s a fine chance for you as ever was, barring the backache you’re sure to get a-stooping down a-picking.”

Away Mrs. Cloonon bustled to give her boiling meat some needed attention, but in a moment she was back again. Maggie looked soberly at her. She saw that it was indeed a fine chance that had come to her, but she did not see how she could take it. “There’s Nora,” she said. “What shall I do with her? ”

“Take her with you, to be sure. I thought of it, for I thought of everything, the same as if I’d been drowning instead of 27 standing on my own two feet in the street. And I says to that Ezra that you’d have to bring her, for there was no other way. ‘I’d be glad to keep her if I could,’ I says, ‘but I’m that busy to-day with extra work that I can’t, for a three-year-old is into mischief continual — that is,’ I says, catching myself up quick, for I didn’t want to spoil your chance, ‘when she’s away from Maggie. When she’s with Maggie,’ I says, ‘she’s that obedient that there couldn’t nothing drive her to do wrong no more than you can drive a pig and get him to go where you want him. She won’t bother you none,’ says I.

“ ‘All right,’ he says. ‘We’ll try her and see.’ He’s got a long head on him from selling so many cabbages and things. He don’t make no long unconditioned bargains. He says, ‘We’ll try her and see.’ ”

“But,” broke in Maggie, “I’ll have to walk a mile. I can do it, but how ever can I get Nora there ? ”

“Sure, and I’ve thought of that, too,” said Mrs. Cloonon in triumph. “ But come to the inner door, so’s I can be setting the table while I’m talking. Tom will be here in a minute and I can’t keep him waiting.”

Maggie, with the little Nora clinging to her, obediently drew near the door that divided her room from her neighbor’s kitchen, and Mrs. Cloonon resumed: “Mrs. Kirtey, round the corner, will let you take her go-cart on my telling her you wouldn’t hurt it a bit in the world, and you’d give her a nickel besides for the use of it.”

Then Maggie’s face brightened. “ You’re a friend worth having, Mrs. Cloonon,” she cried, “ and I thank you heartily. And now Nora and I must eat and be off.”

Gently she closed the inner door, for the noon whistle was blowing, and Molly and the two boys had come noisily in for their dinner.

“ Your father’ll be here in a minute. Make ready as soon as you can,” Maggie heard through the closed door. But she did not see Mrs. Cloonon’s smile, nor hear her thinking: “ Maggie’s the one to be helping ! She has the sense to know when a body’s done her a good turn.”

In Maggie’s room the frugal lunch of bread and butter and molasses was hurriedly eaten, then the go-cart was brought, and a happy girl Maggie went walking out to the Haymaker truck gardens with all sorts of visions dancing before her. Her Uncle Dave’s wife looked after her with a frowning face as she passed. ‘H’ll have that girl yet,” she said. “ I know what’s in her better than Dave does. She’s no McLanehan. She takes after her mother’s people. And they’re money-makers, every one of ’em. Where other folks would starve, they’d make a livin’.”

Meanwhile, Maggie hurried on, scarce hearing Nora’s chatter. “ I’m glad my sign ain’t done yet,” she thought, ‘^for when it is, there’ll not only be beefsteak cooking on it, but I’ll put on it, ‘Things Picked for Hire,’ as well. Between having two kinds of work I can do, I ought to be earning something. And I’ll make the sign so’s I can add to it. For who knows how many more things I’ll find out I can do ?”

Then her face saddened. “Poor Aunt 30

Maggie !’* she thought. “ She’d be proud to see this day and the luck that’s coming to me. But I have no time to be shedding tears for her, so I haven’t. There’s too much for me to do.”

Then she turned to her cousin. ‘‘ Do you want to help Maggie, darling?” she asked.

“Yes,” answered the child, eagerly.

“Then you must mind my every word this afternoon. If you’re naughty they won’t let Maggie come again to this nice place to be earnin’ money for us both.”

“ I will be good,” promised Nora.

“ I thought you would, when I told you that was the way to help me,” replied Maggie. “ But here we are. Mind to stay always just where I put you, and don’t touch anything.”

Again Nora promised, and the go-cart was trundled through the Haymaker gate.

It was a very warm day, but Maggie hardly noticed the heat, she was so eager to begin. She had never been in such a place before, but, as she glanced about her and saw 31 the rows and rows of different vegetables, each with its own shade of green on its leaves, she was delighted. ‘‘And are all these to be picked?” she wondered. “If I do my best, I ought to get plenty of work right here. And I’m going to do it.”

Mrs. Haymaker, who superintended the pickers, now came to meet her, and carefully gave her directions as to her picking, showing her just how full and round the pods ought to be, and telling her to leave the flat ones on the vines to All out. “ Some of our pickers leave the full pods till they are almost yellow, and pick the flat green ones that are not yet filled out, and so hurt our trade. Be sure to pick the peas just as I tell you.”

“Sure and I will, ma’am,” answered Maggie, respectfully. And Mrs. Haymaker walked away.

“Now, Nora darling,” said Maggie, “ yon’s a little, small box. Put it in the shade of the bush behind you and sit down on it while Maggie works.”

At once the child obeyed, and Maggie began to pick. She had heard somewhere 32 that workers were not expected to talk, and she was prepared to be silent. ‘‘ But sure,” she thought, “ there’ll be no harm in throwing Nora a word now and then, if I don’t stop a minute to do it.”

Presently the little face began to droop, and Maggie saw it. “ Watch the little bugs and the birds, darling ! ” she cried. Watch ’em good and tell Maggie about ’em to-night. Maggie’ll be tired, so she will, and wanting to hear something nice.”

Then Nora was alert. And every few moments her joyous voice rang out, telling Maggie something that would not keep till evening.

Mrs. Haymaker, who was everywhere, heard, and her watchful eyes noted how, while Maggie smiled and called cheerily back to her small charge, her busy fingers never slackened, and she noticed, too, that Maggie was obeying her directions implicitly.

‘‘That’s the best picker we’ve had this season, and the child is no trouble at all,” she told her husband. “ I think we’d best keep her.”

“ All right/’ returned Mr. Haymaker. “Just as you say.”

When six o’clock struck, the workers went to the big kitchen, where they were welcome to stay to a supper of bread and milk and fruit, if they wished. Eagerly Maggie eyed the bowls. “That’s the supper for Nora,” she was thinking. “ I’d like to stay if the rest does.”

The rest stayed, and joyfully Maggie led Nora to the table. The simple meal over, Maggie was taken aside for a conference with Mrs. Haymaker. She was a just woman, who had been much tried by poor workers, and she recognized the fact that in Maggie she had found a treasure. “ You belong in our first class of workers,” said Mrs. Haymaker.

But Maggie plainly did not understand.

“We grade our workers,” continued Mrs. Haymaker, “paying each grade a dilferent price. Those in the first class get a dollar a day and their dinner and supper, but they all get dinner and supper, for that matter. The supper is always what you had to-night, 34 and the dinner is always beefsteak with bread and butter and fruit. Would you be willing to stay the remainder of the season

“Fd be more than willing, ma’am, I’d be glad,” answered Maggie, her face alight with gratitude. And any time you’re too tired or have the headache, I could cook the beefsteak for you.”

Mrs. Haymaker looked surprised, but all she said was, “Very well. I’ll remember.”

Then Maggie took her fifty cents and went home.

Chapter III

ND I was going to ask you how you liked it out to Haymaker’s,” began Mrs. Cloonon, as Maggie approached her own door. ‘‘But sure, and I’ve no need to ask, for it’s yourself that looks tired and happy. I’ll help you set a bite out when you get back from taking the go-cart home.”