CHAPTER V
THE RED-HAIRED GIRL—AND OTHERS
The red-haired girl became very soon Carolyn May's b te noire. She had but recently moved into the neighbourhood and even the best of the Harlem blocks sometimes have a sprinkling of ill-bred children. The progeny of the vulgar is mixed in with well-behaved girls and boys both at school and at play.
The red-haired girl, who was called "Sade" by her fellows, soon led the wilder children, both boys and girls, in all manner of mischief. She had the shrillest voice and the liveliest legs in the neighbourhood. She never, in fact, spoke otherwise than at top-register, and she travelled like a comet—at full speed all the time.
More, she was like a comet because of that flaming aura of hair when she ran, was Sade. None of her mates called her "Comet" of course. Instead they dubbed her "Ginger," "Brick-top," "Redney," "Scarlet," or "Carrot-top."
"Though," Carolyn May confessed to her father of this last, "I don't just see why they call her 'carrot-top.' Carrots aren't red at the top. I stopped at the vegetable stand on the corner and looked partic'lar. The tops are green. It's the bottom that is red."
However, Carolyn May herself called Sade none of these names. In the first place she was much too polite and well taught. Again, she never spoke to the red-haired girl if she could help it, for Sade called Carolyn "stingy" and "stuck up" and made other derogatory remarks calculated to grieve a child like Carolyn May.
Not that Carolyn was what is known among children as a "softie." She could take care of herself in most arguments. Children, if they attend the mixed public schools, have to fight their way, and she had battled up the educational heights as far as grade 3-A.
She was looking forward now to her graduation in June from the 3-A grade to the 4-B. The girls she knew in the latter division of her school were almost grown up. At least, so Carolyn thought And she had peeped into some of the books they studied and really, they seemed so deep and "wonderful," that she feared her own father might have difficulty in understanding them.
Naturally Carolyn was beloved of her teachers. Sometimes they did not altogether understand her. Her present teacher—a fluffy-haired, short-skirted, rattle-pated creature, herself more of a child than many of her pupils—delighted in saying that Carolyn was "so quaint."
"And I don't think much of Miss Solomons calling me that," Carolyn said to her mother. "I looked 'quaint' up in papa's Big Dick, and I'm not 'antique looking.' Antiques and horribles, are what they have in the Thanksgiving Day parades—and I ain't one."
"Nor do you speak as though you were taught very well by Miss Solomons," was her mother's comment. "I am sure she does not tell you to say 'ain't.'"
"M-m. No, ma'am. Perhaps she doesn't know herself if it's right or not—when she calls me quaint. I ain't quaint! Oh, my! isn't that funny? You only have to leave off that funny 'q' letter and it makes 'quaint' 'ain't.' 'Quaint' ain't right; and 'ain't' ain't right—"
"Oh, dear me, Carolyn!" cried her mother, stopping both ears. "You clatter just like a mill wheel. Do stop."
"Anyway," murmured the little girl, subsiding, "I don't like Miss Solomons as I did Miss Minnie Lester, who taught the red schoolhouse at the Corners."
Carolyn was never through talking about the Corners and Sunrise Cove, where Uncle Joe Stagg lived and had his hardware store, and all her friends thereabout, as well as the adventures which had befallen her while her father and mother were away.
Yet she had plenty of friends about her Harlem home—as odd, perhaps, and as curious a collection as she had found in the country where she had spent the greater part of a year. The sunny heart of Carolyn May appealed to almost everybody whom she met.
There was Dominick, the "ice, wood and coal" man in the corner cellar. She had been fain to call him at first (she was only a very little girl then, so she often said) the Nicewoodencoalman—all run together just like that!
"And he is a 'nice' man as well as an 'ice' man," she declared. "He has a nice wife, too, and a nice 'bambino.' That's a baby. It is Italian. I expect I'll learn all the Italian there is pretty soon if I talk much with Dominick.
"We've a little girl at our school, Maria Maretta, who is an Italian I'm quite sure. Only she won't talk it for us. She says it's 'wop talk' and she is an American. But Dominick talks Italian all the time. He says: 'I sella da coal, sella da wood, sella da ice, an' maka da mon'—maka nottings.' That is Italian. It is funny talk. It sounds almost like a kind of English!"
The butcher's clerk—whoever he might be—was always a friend of Carolyn, for she had daily and serious discussions with him about Prince's scraps. Carolyn "marketed" for her dog with the same care that her mother selected provisions for their table. Otto, the butcher's boy, was teaching her German. She could already say "wie geht es."
"The child will be a linguist," observed Papa Cameron in his joking way.
Mrs. Dorgan, the "scrub lady," who always spoke in a hoarse whisper and was very devout if her calling upon the saints was any criterion, was likewise well up on Carolyn's list of friends. Mrs. Dorgan was a very mysterious woman, the little girl thought, for while she worked she told Carolyn out of the corner of her mouth endless tales of her relatives and how badly they treated her, and of her son Jimmy in the Canadian army who was bound to be sent home before long by his general because he had killed so many "av thim Germans that there won't be none lift for the other byes to kill, at all at all, if they don't stop the gossoon!"
Carolyn was usually willing to go on errands, for in that way lay adventure. Around the corner, up and across the avenue, and easterly on another and much poorer block, was a small grocery and delicatessen store much patronized by frugal housewives of the neighbourhood.
The little girl never went to this store without taking Prince with her. Prince was only a "mongorel," as Carolyn herself admitted. But he had a fighting strain of blood in him and he was afraid of nothing that went on four legs or two.
But all dogs were not like Prince, as Carolyn May very well knew. On one corner of the block where the delicatessen store was situated was a very bad "store." Some corner "stores" were bad. Carolyn did not just know how it was; but she knew it to be a fact.
This particular "store" was such that she often crossed the street and walked on the other side to avoid it, and recrossed again when she arrived opposite the delicatessen shop. Sometimes a big pursy man with a very red face and wearing a white apron stood outside the swinging two-leaved door of the corner "store," while at his feet squatted a blear-eyed bulldog of a dirty white colour.
Now, a thoroughbred bulldog is never a coward and always a gentleman. But the saloon man's fat dog was a crossbreed and had only the bulldog's savage appearance without the faithfulness and kindness that makes the bull an aristocrat among dogs.
If one showed fear of the corner store dog that cowardly creature bristled up directly, showed his ugly fangs, and put on so threatening a front that the victim immediately felt himself in peril of his life.
The mere appearance of the bowlegged dog with his undershot jaw and hanging dewlaps "all a-slobber," frightened most of the neighbourhood children to a respectful distance from his owner's place of business. But sometimes they forgot and got a good scare, if nothing worse, by coming too near the bulldog. It was said that once the ugly dog had bitten a child and "Gus," the big man in the white apron, had had to pay damages.
One afternoon Carolyn May was sent by her mother to the delicatessen store in question, and of course she took Prince on his leash. Unfortunately when Carolyn came out of the house, there was the red-haired girl with some of her friends right across the way.
Now, there can be nothing that so fills the soul with rage, whether one be eight years old or eighty, as to be made ridiculous in the eyes of one's fellows. The more silly the means by which one is flouted and belittled the sharper the smart.
As soon as Sade saw Carolyn and her dog, she began to make faces. These grimaces were ignored by Carolyn. She walked away in a manner quite as dignified as that of Prince himself. Prince paid no attention to "faces" made at him by other dogs unless he meant to punish his opponents in proper fashion. Prince was no "bluffer."
So Carolyn might have followed a much worse example than that set by her dog. Sade continued to make faces; but finding the other armoured against that she went to other extremes.
The red-haired girl dared not come to close quarters. She was not above pulling Carolyn's hair, or snatching her hair ribbons away, or even slapping her. And there were plenty of missiles lying about to fling at the girl whom Sade considered "too stuck up to live!"
But there was Prince. Prince had never been seen to bite anybody—not even a cat, though he delighted to chase them. But he had such a threatening aspect when Carolyn appeared to be in danger that it was a legend in the block that the mongrel had fairly "chewed up" several tramps and a big fat policeman.
It was known that a man delivering coal at the apartment where Carolyn lived had offered to put a very black hand upon Carolyn's clean dress, and when she squealed half in fear and half in fun, Prince had growled terribly and showed a set of fearsome teeth which made the coal man hastily retreat.
Therefore the red-haired girl had a hearty respect for Prince. This did not keep her on this afternoon from aping Carolyn from the safe side of the street, walking as Carolyn was supposed to walk, "with her nose in the air," picking her way daintily over the crossing, and otherwise suggesting that Carolyn felt herself to be too good and much too "stuck up" to yield her attention to ordinary folk.
Carolyn May's face reddened and her eyes flashed, the hot rage of her glance quite burning up the tear drops that started involuntarily. The impudent Sade was followed by an ever increasing rabble of children, much amused by the gyrations of the impish one and even more entertained by the evident annoyance it caused Carolyn May.
They strung out behind her and her dog, after turning the corner into the avenue, in a sidewalk procession. The red-haired girl was now on the same side of the street as her victim. First she was ahead of Carolyn, then beside her, then behind her, almost walking in her steps. The impish behaviour of Sade caused many of the passers-by to smile.
Carolyn really felt bad! She could not reply to Sade's impudence in kind. Not a word was said, and therefore the retort stinging was denied her. And of course she would not attempt to strike the red-haired girl.
If she quickened her steps the rabble would keep up. And Carolyn May was no coward. She would not run from her enemy. But she was so confused when she came to the corner of the block on which was the delicatessen store, that, without thinking, she crossed over directly toward the store where the white bulldog lived.
It chanced that he was squatting like a great frog at his master's feet, as the troop of children came toward him. The big brute raised himself with a savage growl, but red-haired Sade did not see or hear him. She was running backward just then in front of Carolyn, sticking out a very red and pointed tongue and dancing up and down in a most tantalizing manner.
"Yah! Yah! Yah!" singsonged the red-haired girl.
Why it is a fact that these syllables are the most impudent and maddening of all cries, has never been explained. And how unanswerable they are!
Carolyn May kept steadily on, while the red-haired girl danced backward. The avenue was crowded. Sade came close to the white bulldog.
Suddenly there was a deep-throated growl, a wild shriek from Sade, and a scramble and scratching of heavy paws on the sidewalk.
Sade slipped, but in falling managed to escape the first dash of the bulldog. The other children screamed and scattered like chickens when a hawk is sighted. Carolyn was stricken motionless.
The red-haired girl got away from the bulldog that first time, although he tore a big mouthful from her skirt. But the man who owned him did not succeed in calling him off. The creature knew the child was afraid of him and took delight in giving pursuit.
As poor Sade started running into the side street the bulldog followed. The child was utterly terrified. The strength left her limbs. Falling against the wall of the saloon she looked back, and, seeing the brute coming, she sank down, helpless and in his power.
The dog's master had not aroused himself to the seriousness of the situation. Perhaps he was befuddled by some of his own stock-in-trade, for he actually laughed as he waddled after the brute.