The cable

A GROUP of small boys stood on the corner, looking anxiously down the shaded street. They ranged from eight to twelve years in age; from grimy hands to universal griminess in uncleanliness; from comfortable meagreness to ragged poverty in clothing, while in race they were polyglot, but they were identical in the impatience with which they scanned the sidewalk, vision-length, and found it empty though there were frequent passers-by.

“Gee! What’s the matter wid her?”

“Say! She wouldn’t go th’ udder way?”

“Th’ odder way nothin’! Don’t she know we’re waitin’?”

The tallest, but also the raggedest, boy of the group made a fine gesture, drawing a nickel watch from somewhere between his bagging shirt and tight trousers. “’Tain’t so late,” he said, displaying the watch’s candid face. “Twenty to one by mine, an’ I set her by the city hall when de ball dropped’t noon. She ain’t so late.”

“Whatjer bet she’s got, sour balls ’r peanuts?” asked the smallest boy.

“Pennies, maybe!” hopefully suggested a young Israelite not without guile; he was saving up for an excursion.

“Git out! She don’t hand ’em out less’n she didn’t have time to buy nothin’,” a boy scornfully rebuked him. “Didn’ she tell us she hadn’t no use fer money presen’s less’n she was up against it fer time?”

“I bet she’s got somepin!” declared a round little colored boy. “We’d ought t’ be gittin’ down town; mos’ in gen’ly she’s here by now, an’ we’s gotter git our af’ernoon ’ditions.”

“Oh, chase yourself, Coony! ’Tain’t near two. Dere she is!”

The last speaker ended in a triumphant yell, wildly pointing down the street as he jumped up and down, his bare feet thudding on the pavement; his comrades echoed the yell with Indian War Dance gestures.

The cause of this suspense and final excitement was a slender young figure, tall for a girl, but looking taller than its actual height because of its boyish lines, the straight short skirt and straight loose jacket which clad it.

The girl wore light-weight summer tweed, several colors blended in its weave to a tone of warm brownish drab. Her gloveless hands were thrust into the jacket’s side pockets; she wore a sailor hat, pushed back somewhat from her brow, but even if it had been set on her head straight, it would not have confined her masses of brilliant hair; they wreathed her face in lawless rings which had the effect of a halo worn in jest.

She walked with a free, careless grace, a stride that was businesslike, yet springing, as of one who enjoyed the business which claimed her. Her face, which was not pretty, yet was compounded of many irregular charms, enhanced by a perfectly regular beauty of skin, was bright with smiles as she espied the shabby, yelling band awaiting her; the smile displayed an unbroken row of strong white teeth between full red lips. She waved her hand at the lads with a gesture which was like their own as they waved back at her, a straight-out motion from the brim of her hat, then flung widely out to the right.

“Gosh, ain’t her hair red!” cried one of the boys, struck by the glow of the rings under the sailor hat in the sunshine.

“Red nothin’! You shut up!”

“Sure it’s red! What is it, then?” The question in derision, not for information.

“It’s—it’s hair.” The defender was at a loss, not being accustomed to define.

“You bet! Red hair! Awful red hair!” The triumphant tone was for victory, not because there was any desire to disparage this newsboys’ goddess.

“Red hair yourse’f! Your mother’s red-headed!” This was a shot in the dark; acquaintance between these boys, being confined to the streets, did not embrace knowledge of family tints.

“Sh’ ain’t! Black!” The wiry little Italian struck his opponent a hard blow on the mouth with the back of his hand, and, with a growl like two puppies, they clinched.

The approaching figure broke into a run and came down upon them, the hair under dispute glowing to the utmost justification of its accuser, but the girl did not come like an avenging angel; her smile had widened and her eyes laughed with her lips, though it was a strong grasp that seized a shoulder of each combatant and swung them apart.

“Here, you young heathens, what’s the matter with you? Fend fighting!” she cried in a breezy, clear young voice. “Tony Caprioli, slow down! Mike McGinty, what’s wrong with you? Breaking the law! Fend fighting, you know, you scalawags!”

“He said you’d got red hair. I said ’tain’t,” muttered Tony, not yet “slowed down.”

“He hit me first. I didn’t mean nawthin’ but—it looked red.” Mike delicately altered the statement that he was about to make, implying that the appearance of the hair was a thing of the past.

The girl threw back her head and the brilliant hair seemed to scintillate as she laughed a jolly laugh.

“Tony, your name means goat—Caprioli—and I’m afraid you’re it! Shame, my dear, when you’re doing your best to bleach my hair, but Mike scores! My hair is red, hot red, and what’s more I’m not sorry it is! Shake, boys, and stop your scrapping! Red hair is what gives me pep, and pep is what makes me hustle around—when I’m late, too!—and buy toffy squares for the crowd! So it’s all right, friend Tony, though I’m much obliged to you for standing up for me! Catch, fellows! I bought a box, two boxes, three squares apiece, and good luck to you all! Hurry up! It’s almost one o’clock, and I’ll have to run the rest of the way, or the girl I relieve will fight me!”

The animosity in the air cleared up like magic under the spell of this girl’s merry laughter of eyes and lips. She rapidly dealt out sticky squares of toffy to the crowd, and boyishly, though daintily, licked her finger tips when the last square had left them.

“Enough of that!” she cried. “Suck it; don’t chew it! You’ll get no more toffy till cool weather comes! I was a dunce to buy anything so messy. Balls, or peanuts, or anything neat for mine—and so for yours!—till September! So long, boys, dear; I’ve got to hustle. Hope you’ll each sell more than any of the rest! Every last paper you take out. Good-bye!”

She waved her hand to the adoring group; each boy waved back again and shouted: “Good-bye!” in spite of the difficulty of enunciation caused by a large, soft toffy square in the roof of the mouth.

The girl hurried away, not running as she had threatened to do, but walking so fast that running would have been easier.

The group of boys melted around the corner, in the direction of the shortest way to the newspaper offices, and the funny little daily event was over for the time being. The red-haired girl had formed the acquaintance of this young mongrel band, and it had been her kindly whim to make for them a daily small joy to anticipate. She varied her gifts, but she never failed them; that they adored her and exalted her into an incarnate proof that human trustworthiness and kindness was truth, not fiction, she was keen enough to see was the best result of her action.

No one but herself and the boys knew about “this freak philanthropy,” as she called it to herself; it took but a few minutes of her time and not a great expenditure of money. “It was worth it,” so she told herself, “to let her red hair light up the poor little snipes’ noon hour.”

The girl swung into a tall building at a tremendous pace, her hands out of her pockets now, her arms swinging to speed her action, not at all breathless, but softly whistling: “Silver Threads among the Gold,” a little twist around the corners of her lips as she considered how distant that state of things was from her own radiant locks.

She burst out of the elevator and into the great room of the telephone exchange almost with one movement, covering the intervening space between one and the other door on a sort of slide.

“Well, Cis Adair! If I didn’t begin to wonder if you’d get here!” cried a small, extremely-ornamented young person waspishly, as the boyish red-haired girl appeared, throwing off her hat and jacket and hanging them up rapidly, smiling her gay smile at the small person whom she succeeded.

“Sure—ly, Amelia! Don’t I always get there, whether it’s to work or to play? I’m only five minutes late, anyway,” cried the newcomer, harnessing her ears.

“Five minutes is five minutes when you’ve got to get home, eat and dress. I’ve got a date, I’d have you know, Miss Cicely!” retorted Amelia.

“Lucky you! Fruit market’s always closed for me; can’t even get a date, not ever!” sighed Cicely with a pensive droop of the head and an inimitable little wink at the girl on her farther side. “Sorry, Amelia! I’ll come five minutes early to-morrow, so get another date ready. Might I hint that you’d get there sooner if you started, now I am here, than if you lingered to reproach me?”

The other girls laughed, and Amelia Day flounced away with a toss of her head. It was recognized in the office that there “was no sort of use in trying to get ahead of Cis Adair.” Most of the girls liked her, a few of them were her devoted admirers, so it was only Amelia who ever really longed to damage her happy-go-lucky confidence in herself and in all her world.

“Funny little old Amelia!” Cis said after Amelia had gone. “Seems to disagree with herself so like fury, and not to be able to cut herself out of her diet.”

“Oh, Cis!” murmured Nan Dowling, Cis’s next neighbor, at whom she had winked. “You do say such ridiculous things, and such just-right ones! You ought to write. That’s Amelia all over; she does disagree with herself—little sour ball!”

“Thought we agreed not to fuss about her,” hinted Cis. “I don’t have to, as long as my shift follows hers; I don’t have more than a ships-that-pass-in-the-night, au revoir intercourse with Miss Day.”

“No, but I do! I have her from nine to one, except during lunch, right in your place! Why aren’t you on all through my shift, you blessed old duck, Cis?” cried Nan.

“Never could answer whys, Nan; nothing harder,” said Cis cheerfully. “Be glad you’ve got the chance to sun yourself in the light of my hair from one to six! And that we don’t get a whole lot of calls on our wires, usually, till after three, so we can ‘chin.’”

“Amelia is raving jealous of you, Cis, and you know why!” said Nan. “She’d have your scalp, if she could get it.”

“If she could get it she’d be welcome to it,” declared Cis imperturbably. “Anyone that lets a person get her hands on her scalp so she can lift it, deserves to be scalped; that’s what I say! Amelia can’t harm me as long as I do my work and tend strictly to my own affairs. If you mean that Amelia Day is still stewing because that puffy Harold Brown thought he’d enjoy thinking that he thought a lot of me—” Cis shrugged her shoulders to conclude her sentence. “Stuff!” she added.

Nan laughed, but she looked anxious. “All the same, Amelia would love to get you out, Cis,” she said. “Of course you don’t care a rap what Harold Brown does—”

“Care!” Cis interrupted her. “Ever see a chestnut worm?”

Both girls went off into a spasm of laughter, subdued, not to disturb their companions. Harold Brown was large, plump, puffy and abnormally white; nothing was needed to point Cis’s rhetorical question.

“Oh, Cis!” sighed Nan, as she sighed many times a day, in fervent, admiring delight over Cicely’s high spirits. “Such a Cis!”

Nan had a call just then, but when she had answered it and was free again, she turned to Cis.

“It’s not only Harold Brown, Cis; you don’t seem to care about any of them,” she said.

“Meaning boys and men?” asked Cis. “Wrong you are, my Nanny: I love ’em all.”

“Yes, like one of themselves!” retorted Nan. “But not the way they do you! You’re like a jolly boy yourself, friendly as anything, but you don’t—And there are lots of them crazy about you! You make them sort of crazy over you, Cis, with your come-on-stand-off way, and your sort of—heady charm, like champagne!”

“Oh, say!” protested Cis. “Much you know about champagne, kid dear! You got that out of a novel; own up! The price of it per bottle, and the Eighteenth sitting on the bottles, shows that’s a pure flight of fancy! Stick to facts, Anna Dowling! Me heady! I should say not!”

With that Cicely had a call, followed by five other calls, which kept her busy plugging in and attending to the time for awhile. When this was over, a lull followed, and Cis turned again to Nan.

“That was a coincidence, a sort of coincidental run,” she said, “The first call was Parkway 58—and we know what that is, don’t we, Nanny?”

“Of course; Miss Lucas,” said Nan promptly.

“Neither of us ever thinks of any other Lucas but Miss Jeanette Lucas; we always forget there are other Lucases, a father, a mother, a younger sister, and a few boys, too young to matter, scattering along,” commented Cis. “But it was for Miss Lucas, and what is more, it was her betrothed calling her. I always know his voice. To be truthful, I don’t half like it; it’s sweet, cloying, yet it isn’t sweet—sounds the way maple syrup tastes when it’s just beginning to work. At our house maple syrup always seems to work before it gets eaten; I don’t know how often Miss Spencer puts it on the table like that! It’s an awful sell when you pour it over cakes! Well, about Mr. Herbert Dale’s voice. I’m nuts on voices; I think they give their owners away more than anything else, and I don’t like that voice over the ’phone. Hope I’m wrong, because Miss Jeanette Lucas is a fine girl. I met her once, though she wouldn’t remember it, probably. She’s a gentle, sweet, ladylike, old-fashioned sort of girl, and I imagine she’s the kind that loves a man adoringly, when she gets about it.”

“That’s the way to love the man one marries,” declared romantic Nan.

“No disputing the proposition, but it’s dangerous, because most men are quite a good deal human,” Cis observed dryly.

“You needn’t talk! If you ever fall in love, you’ll pave the path of the man with your whole self!” cried Nan.

“Heavens! Not so loud, Nan! That’s nothing to tell a crowd! Besides I would not!” whispered Cicely.

Then with a swift abandonment of her position, she said aloud, with a suppressed vehemence: “Well, what would be the fun of loving any other way?”

“Not much fun, either, when you take it like a fatal disease,” said Nan. “Where was the coincidence in Mr. Dale’s calling up Miss Lucas, Cis?”

“Nowhere. But the coincidence was that the rest of those calls I had were Miss Lucas calling up Oldboy’s store, and a dressmaker, and a jeweller, and a garage,” Cis explained.

“She would, she does every day. Of course she would, now that she is getting ready to be married as fast as she can,” murmured Nan, disappointed that there was no more in Cicely’s mystery.

“Yes, of course,” agreed Cis. “I merely said that she called these people as soon as her betrothed rang off. Ever notice the way he calls? I’d not only know his voice over a wire in China, but he gives the number so peculiarly: ‘I’d like to get 58, the Parkway, if you please.’” Cis imitated an oily, smooth voice, unctuously used, and Nan laughed.

“That’s he!” she cried. “You’re a mocking bird as well as a tanager, as you call yourself, Cis! The paper last Sunday had Miss Lucas’ picture on the society page, with Mr. Herbert Dale’s, and said they’d be married on the 10th of next month, in our church, with a Nuptial Mass. Is Mr. Dale a Catholic, Cis?”

“Not enough to notice, I think,” said Cis. “His people are. The Lucases are strict; I suspect that sweet Jeanette will make him toe the mark when it comes to the wedding. Probably she’s got a candle burning all the time before the Lourdes shrine, and means to make him a saint at the end of six months. Wish she may! I’m sure I don’t really know but he’s going that way on his own, but I honestly hate his voice!”

“Aren’t you queer, Cis? You don’t often get down on anyone; you’re pretty sure to give everyone the benefit of the doubt,” cried Nan, wondering. Then she hesitated, and whispered: “Did you go to the seven o’clock yesterday, Cis, dear?”

Cis shook her head, her color mounting slightly.

“I didn’t see you at the eight o’clock Mass, as usual,” persisted Nan timidly, for Cicely looked forbidding.

“Good reason why,” said Cis shortly. “I wasn’t there. And I didn’t go to Late Mass, so don’t go on to that, Nan; I didn’t go at all.”

“Oh, Cicely dear!” Pain crept into Nan’s words, though they were whispered.

“Well! Oh, Nan dear!” Cis tried to laugh at her. “Yes, I know I’m bad, but I was so tired! I was out till after one, danced, and ate such a supper! I did mean to go to the eight, but I turned over, stretched and—” Cis made a slight gesture that conveyed the suggestion of a passage beyond daily affairs.

“Cis, oh, Cis! And you are so fine, so splendid! Why don’t you make it perfect? You’re a Catholic,” sighed loving Nan, her gentle eyes clouded.

“I’m nothing else, at least, Nanny, but it doesn’t bother me a great deal, all this that has to do with such far-off things! I’m sorry, nice little Nan! I will brace up, I promise you, and go to Mass Sundays. When I get there, it’s hot and crowded, and I’m just there in my body, and not my mind, and it’s a mighty uncomfortable body, I can tell you that! I wonder if it makes much difference whether you go or not, when you go like an oyster? Sorry, Nanny,” Cis said again, seeing how grieved Nan looked. “I didn’t have your training; maybe that’s it. I went to public school and high school, and my mother died when I was eight, and my father was no good, and went off to his own ways when I was a baby, so I’m kind of a hybrid Catholic-heathen! Sorry, nice little Nan!”

“You’re the biggest girl I know, the truest and finest, and I’m sure God will pull you to Him. You’re too great to miss the Greatest,” said Nan, with such earnestness in spite of her muffled voice, and with such a light in her eyes, that careless Cicely was impressed.

“Put your candle beside Miss Jeanette Lucas’,” she said, knowing that the look in Nan’s eyes foretold prayers for her beloved Cicely’s safety.

“You two girls have talked enough in duet for one day,” remonstrated another girl, a little distance down the table from Cis and Nan. “We like a whack at Cis ourselves, Nan Dowling!”

“Won’t get much more chance to talk, duet or chorus,” said Cis. “Half past two, and the afternoon buzz is beginning.”

It was a particularly busy afternoon in this uptown exchange. Nan went off duty at five, but she waited that night to go out to supper with Cis, whose hours did not end till ten at night, and who supped in the restaurant on the top floor of the building, and returned to the exchange to finish her eight-hours’ shift.

Cis did not know what fear was; she went about the quiet streets after ten o’clock at night, when she was returning to her boarding place, with the same careless assurance with which she walked the streets at ten o’clock in the morning. There was that about her carriage, her free, graceful walk, her faultless complexion, her glowing, abundant, striking hair that made her a conspicuous figure; yet there was also in her entire effect that indifference to notice, that light-hearted frankness, that absence of self-consciousness, which reveals the Una-like girl who walks the earth fearing no man because she seeks no man’s admiration.

It is the glory of our American curious compound, that such a maidenly girl is rarely molested if she keeps within decent neighborhoods at not too-late hours, and Cicely Adair went and came as safely as if she were a child playing in her father’s garden.

“I hate to leave you, Cis, but nothing ever does happen to you,” said Nan, after they had supped, and Cicely was preparing to return to the office and Nan to go home.

“You wouldn’t be a mighty protection, small Nan,” laughed Cis. “Nonsense, child! I’m off by ten, and that’s only an hour after nine, and nine is curfew hour, so that’s all right! I’ll go back to the office and join up the rest of the world on wires, and go home as I always do. Don’t you know, no one would dare molest a red-haired girl? I fly a danger signal on top, and they turn out for me!”