Harmony wins

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Harmony 1

11. Nairess** 17

Chapter I

O N the top step of the eight that led to the little high front porch of the Hale residence sat Harmony. The broiling sun of an August day was beating upon her. Across her knee lay a story book, so broken-backed that it required no effort to keep the leaves open. To shade her book, Harmony had unfurled an umbrella which never could have claimed aristocracy in the ranks of umbrelladom and now was not worthy the friendship of a scarecrow.

Although she made a picture at which the street urchins jeered, it didn’t matter. She’d been hooted at ever since she was ‘‘ knee-high to a grasshopper.” That’s what came of having a man like Grandfather for a grandfather.

“Hoh! Harmony Hale,

He bought you at a bargain sale !

It wasn’t exactly pleasant, but what was a young person of eleven, or thereabouts, to do? She had in her dim youth exhausted all such abuse as turning up one’s nose and sticking out one’s tongue. Then came a period of calling names, but she had gone down to defeat long since under the colossal vocabulary of the street boy. At length. Harmony’s attitude became one of indifference, even a form of deafness. And so the boys didn’t annoy her as much, for what’s the use of teasing a person who doesn’t tease?

If only Grandfather had developed a corresponding deafness! But Grandfather, in the thirty-odd years he had enjoyed the reputation of miserliness, had never grown used to the taunts of the several generations of street boys. Invariably, when they hooted, he would dart at them.

shaking his cane and his fist, and shouting threats that sent the boys into spasms of gratification and fear*

To-day they had an hour, more or less, of fun with Harmony’s slitted sunshade, but she read serenely on, despite heat and derision. A fairy story could so enthrall her that unpleasant things did not intrude* Suddenly Harmony lifted her tousled head and gave ear to a sound that came indistinctly through the hot summer air* If there was one thing the little girl loved equally with the fairy tale, it was the gay music of the street piano. Both stirred the same part of her mind, but the melody beat in her heart and made her feet tingle* Harmony rose, listening. Her book slid down the steps unheeded and lay limply on the pavement where little quavers of heat danced. It was early, she thought, for ’Seppy. He usually waited till the sun began to go down, and it couldn’t yet be more than three o’clock*

HAR310NY WINS

Off darted the little girl, eager to locate the alluring strains. Around the corner, quick as a wink, along that street — then suddenly she stopped. The piano was in a house, and it was not the street piano of her heart after all.

Harmony’s whole figure drooped as she slowly retraced the long stretch of unshaded sidewalk to her home once more.

I was sure it was too soon for ’Seppy,” ishe sighed.

Picking up the slighted story book, she smoothed its pages lovingly with a begrimed little hand and then clasped it against her breast.

She glanced up the dusty steps to the littered porch in front of her door. The paint on that portal hadn’t a vestige of color. Harmony had often wondered what it really had been, for dust and soot had rubbed it quite away. It was blistered and peeling and altogether inhospitable-looking. In fact, the whole neighborhood was unsightly from neglect. The pitiless bright sun pointed with accusing distinctness at broken porch balusters, sagging steps, and missing shutters.

The only cheerful windows were the two that peeped up above a stone curb and area-way under the front steps. These belonged to the half-submerged dining-room where Eileen, cheerful, untidy Eileen, held sway. Here the blinds were always open, and between the fluttering tags of the ancient lace curtains, one caught glimpses of a red-checked table cloth and a few articles of cheap glass and china. Oftentimes, Eileen’s broad, smiling face beamed out upon the lonely little girl called Harmony Hale, and her tender Irish blandishments came reassuringly through the open sash.

Just now, as Harmony was peering hopefully into these half obscured windows for the curly head of Eileen, a voice sounded from within the house.

“ Harmony ! Harmony ! ”

The voice pronounced it Harmonee-e,” with a soft, fretful drawl. The child gave a little shiver, glanced hastily up and down the street, then, with feet that dragged leaden-heavy, took her reluctant way up the steps. She closed the dilapidated umbrella and entered the house softly, shutting the front door without a jar. The long, narrow hall was dark as a pocket, but Harmony seemed used to it, for she unerringly placed her book and umbrella on a table in the shadow and then opened the door at her left.

The parlor which she entered was, if anything, darker than the hall, only the merest slivers of light penetrating between the tightly closed shutters of the old-fashioned blinds. The room was stuffy, and it smelled of medicine.

Harmony could see nothing. Some one was in the room, however, for presently from the gloom, the soft, fretful voice said, “ How hot you smell, Harmonee. You must have been running in the sun. How could you? ’’

The child said nothing.

The voice continued. “Dear me! IVe been calling you for nobody knows how long? Where have you been? And Eileen, too. It seems as if I never could get any one when I want something. I might just as well live in a desert. Nobody cares. Ill as I am, and helpless, and no one nearl Dear me. No, don’t come any closer, child. You smell so hot. It’s very unpleasant to me when I feel so ill. This heat is killing me.” There was a long pause.

Harmony remained silent, but backed her sun-perfumed self several steps towards the hall door.

At last the mysterious voice sighed, and the address to Harmony was resumed.

“Dear mel I think I really ought to have the doctor, only, if I should, your grandfather would probably be more unbearable than usual. He says my doctor’s bills make his pocket-book look like a slice of dried beef. He’s so brutal.”

Another pause. The little audience felt that she was cooling off rapidly in the cellar-like atmosphere.

At any rate, I’d better get some more of that last medicine the doctor gave me, Harmonee. I must have something, or I shall surely die. I feel terribly. Here’s the bottle. Tell the druggist to re-fill the prescription and to charge it. Dear me, how I dread fighting out that druggist’s bill with your grandfather. Seems to me you can hear the pennies in his pocket squeal, he’s so pinching.”

She sighed.

“Dear me, I do wish you would go, Harmonee, and not stand staring there like a numskull. And hurry back. Oh, and I’d like to have you go to the library, too. Tell the girl you want something real exciting. I must have something to take my mind off my suffering, or I certainly shall die. The last books you brought were very dull. Now run along.’’

The child approached, in the dusk, the shape that had been speaking to her, and felt the six-ounce medicine bottle put into her hand. As she pushed her way between two heavy plush portieres into the room beyond, the irritable voice repeated, Dear me, I wish you would hurry, Harmonee.”

One window, also with the blinds drawn, served to darken this apartment materially, but a broken shutter allowed enough light to show its untidiness. The bed was unmade, and bureau drawers were ajar. A chair by the bedside held an assortment of bottles, as well as a smoked lamp and two sticky teaspoons. A petticoat with a yard or so of torn lace, several stockings, and an odd bedroom slipper occupied the floor, and Harmony promptly caught her toe in the trailing lace. But she did not pick it up. Things were always out of place in mother’s room.

She finally located the books on the center-table under a breakfast tray littered with toast-crumbs and fruit-skins, her disturbance of which started a number of tiny flies to buzzing.

The books discovered, Harmony reached the hall by another door and stumbled down the dark back-stairway to Eileen’s precincts.

“ Eileen, Eileen,” she called. Mother’s up. Did you know? Her bed isn’t made and the room looks like sixty.”

Sure, now,” said Eileen, appearing from the kitchen, she couldn’t have been up long. I was there to see her at three, meself, and her still abed. And how’s Dear-Me a-feelin’, darlin’?”

‘‘ I think she’s a-dying,” said Harmony simply, without any apparent anxiety.

Eileen laughed. ‘‘ You mean, she thinks she is. Well, I’ll go and red up her room and let her scold me a bit. That’ll cheer her.”

She complained,” continued the little girl impressively, ‘‘ that I smelt of the sunshine.”

“ An’ why shouldn’t ye smell of sunshine, I’d like to know, when you’re sunshine itself, darlin’? ” and Eileen nodded so vigorously that a big saucy curl danced down into the middle of her forehead.

‘‘Perhaps you think so, Eileen, dear,” answered Harmony, readjusting the library books on her left hip. ^^You may think so, but who else does?”

“ Well, there’s ” began the Irish girl

with a great pretence of naming a list a yard long, when the child interrupted.

“ Mother doesn’t.”

Eileen shook her head promptly.

“ Grandfather doesn’t.”

Eileen again shook her head.

“ I haven’t got any other relatives, have I?”

“ Not as I knows of,” agreed Eileen.

“Teacher doesn’t.”

'' How do you know? ”

“O, it’s easy enough to tell when people like you,” answered Harmony. I can tell. Now, Eileen, who else is there? ”

Eileen opened her mouth and kept it open, hoping for inspiration. None came.

“ Of course there’s ’Seppy and Grig, but they don’t count ’specially. ’Seppy’s only a Dago and a grind-organ man, and Grig’s only a boy,” finished Harmony.

Eileen chose to change the subject. ‘‘ Where ye goin’? ”

‘‘ Library, drug store.”

Might ’a’ known, with your arms full. Didn’t you go yest’day?”

Harmony nodded. ‘‘ I went to the library in the morning and for some diffurnt kind of med’cine in the afternoon. Say, Eileen, I don’t see when she gets a chance to read so many books, when she stays in that dark room all day long.”

Eileen laughed and chucked the questioner under the chin.

“Dear-Me reads purty near all night, that’s what she does. And say, darlin’, I haven’t a crust of bread in the house. Can’t you stop and get me a loaf on your way back, sweetheart?”

Of course Harmony could and would, and so, grasping the medicine bottle with its sticky label, with the books tucked under her arm, out she went into the hot sun again.

It wasn’t far from the Hale residence to either the drug store or the library, for the old house was quite down town, in the ragged, nondescript edges of the business district. It was in a part of the great city that had once been fashionable and peopled with the ‘‘ best.” Now, nobody in particular lived there but the Hales, and the whole neighborhood was going to wrack and ruin. It was a community of a few shabby homes, several business blocks devoted to printing and kindred trades, cheap lodging houses, small shops and saloons.

The Hale home was the corner one of a block of eight brick houses built in the uncomfortable fashion of three stories and a basement. It had been owned by Jasper Hale for almost fifty years. The block was, at present, in a shockingly dilapidated condition, due, people said, to the niggardliness of the landlord, who was holding the property until he could get a good fat price for the land. He had already had several fine offers, but he shook his shaggy gray head. “ Not yet,” he said.

A number of large buildings had recently been reared in the vicinity, notably the plant of a big morning newspaper. Near by was a schoolhouse, one of the oldest now standing in the municipality, the public library, and, just a block away, a fine hotel. The city’s retail shopping district was not far distant.

The other houses of the block were rented as boarding-places or apartments for light housekeeping. The swarms of tenants were continually changing. Harmony’s house, which fronted on Elm Avenue, had a side entrance on Seventh Street, the only perceptible advantage it possessed over its neighbors.

As Harmony sped upon her errands, the sound of music came again to her ears. It was after five o’clock and the fierceness of the day’s heat was gone.

“ Well, thafs ’Seppy,” cried the little girl, breaking into a run.

Down the street was a small crowd of idle children, surrounding a street piano which was heartily pouring forth The Glow-worm,” with metallic precision. At the crank was Giuseppe Acquaviva, fondly shortened to ’Seppy by his host of child friends. His dark eyes sparkled as they caught sight of the fiying figure of Harmony winging its way towards him.

Here comes ma leetla hoap-toad,” said he to the assembly.

‘‘Mamie, hold my things,” commanded Harmony, thrusting books and bottle into the first empty pair of hands she saw. ‘‘ Now, move back a little.”

The hop-toad, the hop-toad,” sang the delighted throng.

Harmony poised herself, smiled blinkingly at a low shaft of sunlight that shot in between the buildings and began to dance.

“The hop-toai), the hop-toad,” sang the delighted throng

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Chapter II A Nairess ”

H armony never knew anything that went on about her while she was dancing. She didn’t even notice the admiring crowd that usually gathered around ’Seppy’s street piano, if only it left her vacant circle large enough.

But ’Seppy noticed, for he knew that coppers and nickels came easily when his little Hop-Toad ” danced. In New York, among his relatives with whom he had emigrated to America, the value of the hop-toads ” was much appreciated. The little children who could dance were enticed to follow the piano, sometimes many miles, about the city pavements.

’Seppy, seeking pastures new, some

HARMONY WINS.

IS

hundred miles west of the great metropolis, hailed the unsolicited services of the little hop-toad as the direct gift of his patron saint.

Harmony hardly knew when she began, for ’Seppy had been an almost daily visitor in the neighborhood, during open weather, for three years past. The little girl had commenced with the other children, taking the few simple dancing steps that are current amongst even the poorest folk, and to these had added steps and postures invented under the inspiration of the music, until she had reached the acknowledged position of ’Seppy’s premiere danseuse. Everybody stopped to watch, :when the hop-toad appeared.

Perhaps this hot August afternoon, while she danced so absorbedly on the sun-heated pavement, would be as admirable an opportunity as any for a . good look at our little heroine.

Should one have introduced you to her formally, you would have had no better acknowledgment than a glance, direct but briefj from a pair of clear gray eyes without a smile in them. For Harmony had never been taught manners, and it would not have occurred to her to extend her hand in token of greeting nor to dip in an old-fashioned curtsy. She would probably not have said anything, either, for she talked little except to her crony, Eileen.

Usually Harmony had few smiles to dispense, but in dancing she considered them a part of the dance. On this August afternoon, you would have caught her with an expression that was very lovely, a little smile that made her lips curve most kissingly. It was not directed at any person — if it were, that person would be hardhearted indeed not to be thoroughly charmed.

As a matter of fact. Harmony’s face was dirty, and her straight little nose and firm chin would have been much improved by intimate contact with a thoroughly soaped wash-cloth. Her hair was a tousle of loose, light-brown curls, around which a crumpled green ribbon had been tied by the loving Eileen. The curls hung half-way down her back and were inextricably wound about the buttons of her pink-and-white checked gingham dress. The dress was smudgy and wrinkled, and the hair-wound buttons were the only ones it could boast. Her brown stockings, very imperfectly fastened up, made little rolls at the top of her shabby shoes, and coarse black darns were distinctly visible at both heels.

So much for untidy, neglected little Harmony Hale, posing and gesturing and dancing, with all the repressed enthusiasm of her eager child heart poured out into the gentle grace of forest dryads and the piquant witchery of winged fairies.

The music stopped, and the sudden sharp tinkling of broken glass awoke the hop-toad from her ecstasy.

NAIRESS^^

The medicine bottle! Mother’s errands!

Mamie, in her pleasure at Harmony’s performance, had tried to clap the hands already occupied with bottle and books, to the destruction of the former. It lay in fragments on the pavement.

Harmony stood in mute tragedy. How was she to get the prescription re-filled if the bottle was destroyed! But quick in alternatives, she dropped to her knees and picked up the bits of broken glass that still clung together where the label had been pasted.

I can take these to the drug store man, only — only the bottle will cost extra,” she mourned.

‘‘Leetla hoap-toad,” said a soft Italian voice in her ear, “ no weep. So sorra I am. You dance so lika ze angel for me. Heere ees money. You buy new bottla.” ’Seppy put into her hand a dime, and smiled.

''Oh, thank you,” said Harmony, very much surprised; and, conscience-stricken at the lateness of the hour, she hurried away upon her belated errands.

Nothing further happened to add to her anxiety, for the prescription clerk easily made out the number of the medicine from the broken bits, and refused to take any money for the new bottle.

I guess I can give such a good customer as you a new bottle without bankrupting the store,” he said generously. “ How’s your mother, to-day? ”

“ She’s dying, I guess,” answered Harmony.

Pshaw, that’s too bad,” he exclaimed, as if the little girl had not told him the same sad news dozens of other times.

‘‘Yes, and she may be dead by now,” continued Harmony sadly, “ because she told me to hurry, and ’Seppy came along with his street piano, and I forgot and began to dance — and — and I’m so late now, perhaps she’s died already.”

“ Oh, I wouldn’t worry if I were in your

N AIRES S place,” reassured the clerk, as he wrapped the bottle in pink paper and fastened it at top and bottom with dabs of sealing wax.

Then she hastened to the library. Few people were there because it was most everybody’s supper time.

The young lady in the fiction department looked dubious.

“ Something exciting? Why, let’s see. Seems as if she’d had every detective story in the library and most of the tales of adventure.”

Harmony followed her earnestly fromi shelf to shelf, her face full of concern.

“ She said she guessed she’d die if she • didn’t have something to take her mind off her suffering.”

The young lady shrugged her shoulders.

‘‘ Well, dear, we’ll do the best we can,” she said, and briskly marked down the two books she finally selected.

Nor did Harmony forget the loaf of bread, but added that to her armful as she passed the corner grocery a short distance from home.

By this time it was dusk, and Harmony’s worry had increasd at a terrible rate. She ran clumsily, tears blinding her eyes, sobs aching in her throat. Oh, oh, if she hadn’t forgotten and danced so long — and mother waiting for her medicine!

At a corner near home, she ran plump into a gray-haired man who was coming along at a great pace.

“Here, here,” he growled at her, taking her by the arm and swinging her out of his way. “Whom are you running into, 'you little scamp? ”

It was her grandfather, and he didn’t know her in the half-light. Harmony did not wait to explain. She ran on to the paved area-way, down the steps, and burst into Eileen’s hot kitchen.

“ Oh, Eileen, is she dead yet, tell me, Eileen, tell me quick — mother?” gasped the child, white-faced and teary.

“Little silly, is who dead?’’ asked Eileen. “ Whatever is the matter with ye?”

“ Oh, I’m so glad.” Harmony sat down. “ Here’s your bread, Eileen, and I’m so hungry and thirsty. I want my supper.”

“You’re a little goosey-gander, that’s what,” said Eileen, unwrapping the bread and beginning to slice off wholesome white slabs. “ When Dear-Me’s that sick that we’re out for watchers. I’ll tell ye straight. Just you trust your old Eileen.” She whisked into the dining-room with her plate of bread and a pitcher of milk. “Now’ll ye promise not to get yerself into a stew again?” she shouted, as she set the things down on the red-checked cloth, with a resounding thump.

Harmony followed.

“ Oughtn’t I to take her med’cine right up to her now?” she asked, relinquishing her worry by degrees.

“ After supper,” said Eileen, “ I’ll take the whole kit of stuff up to her, bottle and books and lamp, too. She’s had her supper, and she’s prob’ly asleep, or her bell’d be buzzing for all it’s worth. Eat your supper, child.”

The gas, mingled with the stale, hot air of the dying day, made the room close and uncomfortable, but both Eileen and Harmony were used to these conditions and sat cheerfully down to the frugal meal.

Bread and milk for us, and your grandfather gone out to get a whacking big dinner at the rest’rant. To be sure, it saves me from sweltering over the hot stove, and I think your complexion’ll be a sight better for eatin’ bread and milk. Harmony. You’ve got a nice skin, child, and you’d best take care of it.”

‘'But bread and milk’s good,” answered the little girl, spooning away with energy, careless of complexion, but hungry as a hawk.

Eileen, pottering over a cup of muchcooked tea and her bread and butter, gazed affectionately at the child opposite her,

‘‘ To look at you, now,” she said, smil* ing across at the serious gray eyes, “ eatin’ your bread and milk so contented-like, in that faded old gingham dress, one’d never guess at your bein’ a nairess.”

Harmony gulped a spoonful to ask eagerly, “What’s a nairess?”

Eileen was puzzled. “ My, ain’t nobody ever told you that you’re a nairess?” she questioned to gain time, “ your grandfather’s? ”

“ Nope. Has it anything to do with his being a miser?”

Eileen laughed.

“ Not unless that you’ll get a bigger fortune just because he is so stingy.”

“Do you mean,” asked Harmony, at length understanding Eileen to mean heiress, “ that when Grandather dies. I’ll have all his money? ”

“ Sure. That’s what I mean.”

“ Is that much? ” asked the child.

“ They say it’s heaps and heaps, answered the young woman, lowering her voice mysteriously.

“ Oh,” said Harmony, “ so that’s what they mean when the boys holler after him, ‘Miser, miser, mean and old, where d’you hide your piles o’ gold? ’ If somebody else should find his piles o’ gold, I wouldn’t be much of an heiress, would I?”

“No, I s’pose not,” responded Eileen, picking up her teapot and preparing to clear away the dishes. “ Mercy, child, you do think of such queer things.”

Harmony sat dreamily staring out of the low windows, where, in the twilight, she could see only the feet of men and the skirts of women passing.

“What does he hide his piles o’ gold for? ” she asked Eileen, who was going noisily back and forth.

“ Sakes alive, how should I know? ” came the answer, almost crossly, “an’ me strugglin’ to make both ends meet on the few dollars he allows me for the housekeepin’, and his only grandchild goin’ around lookin’ like a rag-bag.”

Remarks about her personal appearance failed as yet to arouse any kind of interest in Harmony. She still dreamed, with her elbows planted firmly on the red checks.

“I think I’ll begin to hunt for them,” she said finally. ‘‘ Wouldn’t it be exciting, Eileen, to come across a secret chamber, and when one opened the door, softly and slowly, and pee-e-eked in, to see the shining piles o’ gold all heaped up and running over from the chests and the sacks? O-oo- 00, Eileen, wouldn’t you love to be with me when I find his treasure? ”

“ Get out with ye,” laughed Eileen, ‘^you’ve been readin’ too many stories. Nobody but id jits keeps gold in their houses nowadays. Sane folks, if they have any, put it into the bank.”

Harmony smiled.

‘‘ I don’t care, Eileen; it makes something exciting to think about, and that’s the best of all. As long as I can have nice stories to think out, it doesn’t matter so much about Dear-Me and Grandfather not loving me. I’ve got the sweetest story I tell myself, about a lovely lady who is my pretend mamma and loves me most to death. I found the picture of her one day, in a box that Dear-Me gave me. I think about her nights, when I go to bed. I’ll show her to you some time. You don’t suppose Dear-Me would care, if she knew I told myself this beautiful story of a pretend mamma, do you?”

Eileen didn’t answer the child, but her attitude, as she stood near the window, was a listening one, so Harmony went on.

‘‘ Now I’ve got a new story to tell myself, all about being an heiress. That’ll be lots of fun, Eileen, ’cause being an heiress is almost as good as being a fairy princess, isn’t it? Oh, and I’m going to think up a story about hunting for Grandfather’s piles o’ gold. He won’t mind, will he, Eileen? You don’t s’pose he’d call it meddling, do you? ’Specially if I didn’t touch anything — ^just thought about it? ”

“ Well, he’d be a worse old curmudgeon than he is now, if he should mind your dreamin’ about his piles o’ gold, as you call ’em. Ain’t it most your bedtime? I’m expectin’ company to-night.”

‘‘Oh!” Harmony jumped to her feet with alacrity. “All right, Eileen. Good night. Shall I take the things up to Dear- Me?”

But Eileen said, “ No,” and the child trudged off contentedly to her small room on the second floor at the back, far removed from the rest of the household.

The other rooms on this floor were closed. Each month Grandfather threatened to rent them out to lodgers, and each month Eileen threatened to depart without notice if she had to take care of lodgers’ rooms.

So the second floor remained untenanted except by the child who now found her way down the dim corridor to the small, untidy apartment at the end, which was her own domain.

Still in the dark, but a dark that she loved, the little girl got herself ready for bed. The August moon silvered everything, indoors and out, with a soft radiance.

At last Harmony unfolded a tissuepaper package that had been tucked for safekeeping under her pillow, and kissed, with the fervour of a warm-hearted and love-hungry child, the photograph so carefully preserved. Then hiding it away again, she disposed herself for the happy period of dreaming awake, until dreaming asleep carried her into higher realms of bliss.

Chapter III The Treasuee Chamber

W HEN Harmony awoke next morning, the last thought of the night before came back to her. She determined that, instead of thinking a story about Grandfather’s hidden piles of gold, she would act it out. It would make a splendid game. Not that she really expected to find a treasure, but there was excitement in exploring for it, even in an old, ramshackle city house that didn’t look as if it had any secrets to conceal more than the mice’s nests behind the baseboards.

The little girl dressed rapidly, and not remembering to wash her face or eat her breakfast, started on her voyage of discovery.

Eileen wondered where she was, but as

Harmony came and went, from day’s end to day’s end, during the vacation, as her whim dictated, she only knew that the child would appear when she was hungry, and gave her no more thought.

The careful examination of every dusty old room made Harmony’s morning pass thrillingly. There were three rooms on her floor, half furnished, with bare floors and dingy wall paper, airless, cobwebby, and altogether uninviting. But with the enthusiasm of an adventurer. Harmony searched every nook and cranny, tapped on the walls for hidden rooms and closets, peered up narrow, sooty chimneys, crept around on her hands and knees, examining every floor for a loose board or trap door. She had a grand time until about noon, when, smitten with a sudden emptiness in the middle of her body, she suddenly remembered that she hadn’t eaten a mouthful that day.

“What a sight you are!” exclaimed

Eileen, as Harmony appeared, smooched and begrimed from her curly head to her ragged heels.