CHAPTER XXVIII—THE JOURNEY

“Well, when folks git married they allus go off on a trip. Course, they will. And me—I’ll be runnin’ the business all by myself. It’ll be great! Mr. Stagg will see jest how much value I be to him. Why, it’ll be the makin’ of me!” cried the optimistic youth.

Yes, Carolyn May heard it on all sides. Everybody was talking about the affair of Uncle Joe and Miss Amanda.

Every time she saw her uncle and her “pretty lady” together the observant child could not but notice that they were utterly wrapped up in each other. It is only between lovers who have been heart-hungry for long years, as these two had, that a perfectly open expression of affection is maintained.

The modest spinster and the bashful bachelor seemed to have sloughed off their former natures. They had developed a new and exceedingly strange life, as different from their former existence as the butterfly’s is from the caterpillar’s.

Miss Amanda could not go past the easy chair in which the hardware dealer was enthroned without touching him. He, as bold as a boy, would seize her hand and kiss it. Her soft, capable hand would linger on his head in so tender a gesture that it might have brought tears to the eyes of a sympathetic observer.

Love, a mighty, warm, throbbing spirit, had caught them up and swept them away out of themselves—out of their old selves, at least. They had eyes only for each other—thoughts only for each other.

Even a child could see something of this. The absorption of the two made Aunty Rose’s remarks very impressive to Carolyn May.

A week of this followed—a week in which the trouble in Carolyn May’s heart and brain seethed until it became unbearable. She was convinced that there would soon be no room for her in the big house. She watched Aunty Rose pack her own trunk, and the old lady looked very glum, indeed. She heard whispers of an immediate marriage, here in the house, with Mr. Driggs as the officiating clergyman.

Everybody in the neighbourhood was interested in the affair and eagerly curious; but Carolyn May could not talk about it. They thought she had been instructed not to speak of the matter, but the little girl only felt that she would cry if she talked of this event that was to make her uncle and Miss Amanda so happy and herself so miserable.

“Oh, Prince!” she sobbed, clinging around the dog’s neck out under their favourite tree in the back yard of the Stagg place, “nobody wants us. We never ought to have come here. Maybe it would have been better if we had gone to the poorhouse.

“Only, I s’pose, they wouldn’t have wanted you, my dear. And you are the very best friend I’ve got, Prince. You are! you are! You wouldn’t go off and get married, would you?

“And I want ’em to be happy, too. Of course I do! But—but I didn’t know it was goin’ to be like this. I—I wish I was back in our old home in New York. Don’t you wish so, Princey?

“There we had things that were our very own. Even if my mamma and papa aren’t there, it would be nice, I think. And Mr. and Mrs. Price would be kind to us—and Edna. And there’s the janitor’s boy—he was a real nice boy. And all the little girls we knew at school there.

“Oh!” cried Carolyn May, suddenly jumping up and dashing away her tears, “I would just love to go back there. And we could, Princey! I’ve got more’n ten dollars in my bank, for Uncle Joe gave me a ten-dollar gold piece at Christmas. That’s more’n enough to take us back home. Oh, it is! it is!”

The child’s excitement thrilled her through and through. Her eyes brightened and the flush came into her cheeks. She knew, through Chet Gormley, that Mr. Stagg had never done anything with the furniture in the flat. Her home—just as it had been when her mother and father were alive—was back there in New York City. She had been happy at The Corners in a way. But it was not the happiness she had known in her old home.

And now she believed that she saw great changes coming. Uncle Joe and Miss Amanda would be just as Aunty Rose had hinted—so deeply engaged with each other that they would have no time or thought for a sunny-haired and blue-eyed little girl who had brought, all unknown to herself, a new creed into the lives of many of the adults of The Corners.

Carolyn May was not a sly child, but she was a secretive one. There is a difference. She had many thoughts in her little head that her adult friends did not suspect. She studied things out for herself. Being a child, her conclusions were not always wise ones.

She felt that she might be a stumbling-block to the complete happiness of Uncle Joe and Amanda Parlow. They might have to set aside their own desires because of her. She felt vaguely that this must not be.

“I can go home,” she repeated over and over to herself.

“Home” was still in the New York City apartment house where she had lived so happily before that day when her father and mother had gone aboard the ill-fated Dunraven.

Their complete loss out of the little girl’s life had never become fixed in her mind. It had never seemed a surety—not even after her talks with the sailor, Benjamin Hardy.

Hardy had long since left the locality, having taken a berth again on one of the lake schooners. Nobody seemed to have much time to give to Carolyn May just at this time. Wherever she wandered about the neighbourhood people were talking about the coming wedding of Uncle Joe and Miss Amanda. Even Miss Minnie, at school, was quite in a flutter over it.

Friday afternoon the little girl went to the churchyard and made neat the three little graves and the one long one on the plot which belonged to Aunty Rose Kennedy. She almost burst into tears that evening, too, when she kissed Aunty Rose good-night at bedtime. Uncle Joe was down at the Parlows. He and Mr. Parlow actually smoked their pipes together in harmony on the cottage porch.

Aunty Rose was usually an early riser; but the first person up at The Corners on that Saturday morning was Carolyn May. She was dressed a full hour before the household was usually astir.

She came downstairs very softly, carrying the heavy bag she had brought with her the day she had first come to The Corners. She had her purse in her pocket, with all her money in it, and she had in the bag most of her necessary possessions. She wore a black dress, but not the one she had worn when she came from New York. That had been outgrown long since.

She washed her face and hands. Her hair was already combed and neatly braided. From the pantry she secured some bread and butter, and, with this in her hand, unlocked the porch door and went out. Prince got up, yawning, and shook himself. She sat on the steps to eat the bread and butter, dividing it with Prince.

“This is such a beautiful place, Princey,” she whispered to the mongrel. “We are going to miss it dreadfully, I s’pose. But, then— Well, we’ll have the park. Only, you can’t run so free there.”

Prince whined. Carolyn May got up and shook the crumbs from her lap. Then she unchained the dog and picked up her bag. Prince pranced about her, glad to get his morning run.

The little girl and the dog went out of the gate and started along the road towards Sunrise Cove. Nobody seemed to be astir. She looked back and waved her hand at the Stagg house. She looked at the church, the blacksmith shop, and the store. She bade them all good-bye.

Prince came to walk beside her and whined. He evidently could not understand her going away from the place so early.

But Carolyn May knew what she was about. She knew all about the train that went south. It left Sunrise Cove station before most people were up, even at this time of year.

The houses had all been asleep at The Corners. So was the Parlow cottage when she trudged by. She would have liked to see Miss Amanda, to kiss her just once. But she must not think of that! It brought such a “gulpy” feeling into her throat.

Nobody saw Carolyn May and Prince until she reached Main Street. Then the sun had risen, and a few early persons were astir; but nobody appeared who knew the child or who cared anything about her.

At the railroad station nobody spoke to her, for she bought no ticket. She was not exactly clear in her mind about tickets, anyway. She had found the conductor on the train coming up from New York a kind and pleasant man, and she decided to do all her business with him.

Had she attempted to buy a ticket of the station agent, undoubtedly he would have made some inquiry. As it was, when the train came along, Carolyn May, after seeing Prince put into the baggage car, climbed aboard with the help of a brakeman.

“Of course, if he howls awfully,” she told the baggageman, who gave her a check without question, “I shall have to go in that car and sit with him.”

There were not many people in the car. They steamed away from Sunrise Cove, and Carolyn May dabbled her eyes with her handkerchief and told herself to be brave.

The stations were a long way apart and the conductor did not come through for some time. When he did open the door and come into the car Carolyn May started up with a glad cry. It was the very conductor who had been so kind to her on the trip up from New York.

The railroad man knew her at once and shook hands most heartily with her.

“Where are you going, Carolyn May?” he asked.

“All the way with you, sir,” she replied.

“To New York?”

“Yes, sir. I’m going home again.”

“Then I’ll see you later,” he said, without asking for her ticket.

The conductor remembered the little girl very well, although he did not remember all the details of her story. Nine months before she had gone up to Sunrise Cove with him to visit relatives. As she had travelled alone then, he did not think it strange that she was now travelling back again without any guardian.

By-and-by he came back and sat down beside her. Carolyn May took out her purse and offered him money for her fare.

“Didn’t they buy you a ticket?” he asked in surprise.

“No, sir,” she told him honestly.

“Well, I’ll tend to it for you. You’ll want that money for candy and moving-picture shows in the city.”

He was very kind to her and brought her satisfying news about Prince in the baggage car. The brakeman was nice, too, and brought her water to drink in a paper cup. And even the “candy butcher” made the journey pleasanter by his attentions. He once dropped a package of candy in Carolyn May’s lap and then forgot to pick it up again!

So, altogether, she had a pleasant, if tiresome, ride to New York City.

At one place the brakeman brought into the car for her some sandwiches and a glass of milk. He assured her, too, that the men in the baggage car had divided their lunches with Prince and had given him water.

She slept part of the time, and while she was awake there was so much going on that she could not feel very lonely. The excitement of travelling had taken that empty feeling out of her heart.

At last, the long stretches of streets at right angles with the tracks appeared—asphalt streets lined with tall apartment houses. This could be nothing but New York City. Her papa had told her long ago that there was no other city like it in the world.

She knew One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street and its elevated station. That was not where she had boarded the train going north, when Mr. Price had placed her in the conductor’s care, but it was nearer her old home—that she knew. So she told the brakeman she wanted to get out there, and he arranged to have Prince released.

The little girl alighted and got her dog without misadventure. She was down on the street level before the train continued on its journey downtown.

At the Grand Central Terminal the conductor was met with a telegram sent from Sunrise Cove by a certain frantic hardware dealer, and that telegram told him something about Carolyn May of which he had not thought to ask.

CHAPTER XXIX—THE HOMING OF CAROLYN MAY

She could not blame Uncle Joe and Miss Amanda for forgetting her. Aunty Rose had been quite disturbed, too, since the forest fire. She had given the little girl no hint that provision would be made for her future.

Wearily, Carolyn May travelled through the Harlem streets, shifting the bag from hand to hand, Prince pacing sedately by her side.

“We’re getting near home now, Princey,” she told him again and again.

Thus she tried to keep her heart up. She came to the corner near which she had lived so long, and Prince suddenly sniffed at the screened door of a shop.

“Of course, poor fellow! That’s the butcher’s,” Carolyn May said.

She bought a penny afternoon paper on a newsstand and then went into the shop and got a nickel’s worth of bones and scraps for the dog. The clerk did not know her, for he was a new man.

They ventured along their block. The children all seemed strange to Carolyn May. But people move so frequently in Harlem that this was not at all queer. She hoped to see Edna or some other little girl with whom she had gone to school. But not until she reached the very house itself did anybody hail her.

“Oh, Carolyn May! Is that you?”

A lame boy was looking through the iron fence of the areaway. He was the janitor’s son.

“Oh, Johnny! I’m real glad to see you!” cried the little girl. Then she added more slowly: “We—we’ve come home again—me and Prince.”

“You’ve growed a lot, Carolyn May,” said the boy. “My pop and mom’s away.”

“I’ll go up into Edna’s flat, then,” the weary little girl sighed.

“The Prices have gone away, too. They won’t be back till to-morrow some time.”

“Oh!” murmured Carolyn May.

“But, say, I can get the keys to your flat. The water’s turned on, too. Everything’s all right up there, for Mrs. Price she sweeps and dusts it all every once in a while. Shall I get the keys?”

“Oh, if you will, please!” returned the relieved child.

The boy hobbled away, but soon returned with the outer-door key and the key to the apartment itself. Carolyn May took them and thanked him. Then she gladly went in and climbed the two flights to their floor.

She saw nobody, and easily let herself into the flat. It had been recently aired and dusted. Every piece of furniture stood just as she remembered it.

“Oh, Princey, it’s home!” she whispered. “This is our real, real home! I—I loved ’em all at The Corners; but it wasn’t like this there!”

Prince perhaps agreed, but he was too deeply interested in snuffing at the package of meat scraps she had purchased for his supper to reply.

“Well, well, Prince,” she said, “you shall have it at once.”

Dropping the bag in the private hall, she went into the kitchen and stood on tiptoe to open the door of the closet above the dresser. Securing a plate, she emptied the contents of the paper into it, and set the plate down on the floor.

In spreading out the paper she saw some big-type headlines on the front page:

The Experiences of This Newspaper Man like Those of a Character in a Novel—Lost for Eight Months in the Desert—At the Mercy of Semi-savage Tribes, Man and Wife Escape at Last to Return in Safety and Health.

Carolyn May read no further. It did not particularly interest a little girl. Besides, she was very tired—too tired to think of her own supper. Had she read on, however, even her simple mind might have been startled by the following paragraphs printed below the heading of this startling story:

“Their wonderful good fortune in escaping from the disaster that overtook the steamer on which they travelled and which was caught between the gunfire of a French battleship and two of a Turkish squadron can only be equalled by the chance which followed. Naturally, as a journalist himself, Mr. Cameron is prepared to tell the details of his remarkable adventure in the columns of the Beacon at a later date.

“The boat in which they left the sinking Dunraven was separated in the night and fog from that of the other refugees and was carried by the current far to the south. In fact, they were enveloped by fog until they landed upon a stretch of deserted beach.

“There was no town near, nor even an encampment of Arabs. But soon after their disembarkation and before the officer in command could take means to communicate with any civilised, or semi-civilised, place a party of mounted and armed tribesmen swooped down on the castaways.

“These people, being Mohammedans, and having seen the battle the day before between the French and the Turks, considered the castaways enemies and swept them away with them into the desert to a certain oasis, where for nearly eight months Mr. John Lewis Cameron and his wife and the other refugees from the Dunraven were kept without being allowed to communicate with their friends.

“Mr. Cameron was on furlough from his paper because of ill-health. At the beginning of his captivity he was in a very bad way, indeed, it is said. But the months in the hot, dry atmosphere of the desert have made a new man of him, and he personally cannot hold much rancour against the Mohammedan tribe that held him a prisoner.”

There was more of the wonderful story, but the sleepy little girl had given it no attention whatsoever. Prince had eaten and lain down in his familiar corner. The little girl had gone softly into her own room and made up her bed as she had seen her mother and Mrs. Price make it.

Then she turned on the water in the bathtub and took a bath. It was delightful to have a real tub instead of the galvanised bucket they used at Uncle Joe’s.

She put on her nightgown at last, knelt and said her prayer, including that petition she had never left out of it since that first night she had knelt at Aunty Rose’s knee:

“God bless my papa and mamma and bring them safe home.”

The faith that moves mountains was in that prayer.

CHAPTER XXX—THE HOUSE OF BEWILDERMENT

“And the Prices are away,” said Uncle Joe in a troubled voice. “What do you think of that, Mandy?”

“Oh, Joe! where could the dear child have gone?”

“I haven’t seen her,” declared the janitor. “But I can let you into the flat. There’s been lots of telegrams to Mr. Price in the night—and they weren’t all yours. You’re Carolyn May’s uncle, ain’t you?” he asked Mr. Stagg.

Uncle Joe acknowledged the relationship. “Let’s go upstairs,” he said to Amanda. “Now that I’m here—”

“Oh, dear, Joe!” almost wept Amanda, “could anything have happened to her in this big city?”

“’Most anything, I s’pose,” growled Joseph Stagg, following close on the janitor’s heels.

The janitor’s passkey grating in the lock of the private hall door started something that none of them expected. A startling bark echoed in the rooms which were supposed to be empty.

“Whatever is that?” gasped the janitor.

“It’s Prince! It’s her dog!” shouted Uncle Joe.

“The child is here!” cried Amanda Parlow, and she was the first to enter the apartment.

Prince bounded wildly to meet her. He leaped and barked. A cry sounded from a room beyond. Miss Amanda and Uncle Joe rushed in.

Sleepily, her face flushed, rubbing her blue eyes wide open, Carolyn May sat up in bed.

“Oh, Uncle Joe! Oh, Miss Amanda!” she said. “I—I was just dreaming my own papa and mamma had come home and found me here.”

“My dear! My dear!” sobbed Amanda Parlow, dropping to her knees beside the bed.

“You’re a great young one!” growled Uncle Joe, blowing his nose suspiciously. “You’ve nigh about scared ev’rybody to death. Your Aunty Rose is almost crazy.”

“Oh—I’m—sorry,” stammered Carolyn May. “But—you—see—Uncle Joe! you and Miss Amanda are going to be happy now. Aunty Rose says ‘two is comp’ny.’ So you wouldn’t have room for me.”

“Bless me!” gasped the hardware dealer. “What do you know about this child’s feeling that way, Mandy?”

“I am afraid we have been selfish, Joe,” the woman said, sighing. “And that is something that Carolyn May has never been in her life!”

“I dunno—I dunno,” said Uncle Joe ruefully, and looking at the little, flowerlike face of the child. “How about Aunty Rose? How d’you s’pose she feels about Hannah’s Car’lyn running away?”

“Oh!” ejaculated the little girl.

“It may be that ‘two’s company and three’s a crowd,’ but you and Aunty Rose would be two likewise, wouldn’t you, Car’lyn May?”

“I—I never thought of that, Uncle Joe,” the child whispered.

“Why, your running away from The Corners this way is like to make both Mandy and me unhappy, as well as Aunty Rose. I—I don’t b’lieve Mandy could get married at all if she didn’t have a little girl like you to carry flowers and hold up her train. How about it, Mandy?”

“That is quite true, Carolyn May,” declared Miss Amanda, hugging the soft little body of the child tightly again.

“Why, I—I——”

Carolyn May was, for once, beyond verbal expression. Besides, there was a noise in the outer hall and on the stairway. The door had been left open by the surprised janitor.

A burst of voices came into the apartment. Uncle Joe turned wonderingly. Miss Amanda stood up. Carolyn May flew out of bed with a shriek that startled them both.

“My papa! My mamma! I hear them! They’re not drownd-ed! God didn’t let ’em be lost at sea!”

She was out of the room in her nightgown, pattering in bare feet over the floor. A brown man, with a beard and twinkling blue eyes, caught her up in strong arms and hugged her swiftly—safely—to his breast.

“Snuggy!” he said chokingly. “Papa’s Snuggy!”

“My baby! My baby!” cried the woman at whom Joseph Stagg was staring as though he believed her to be the ghost of his lost sister Hannah.

It was several hours later before there was a really sane thing said or a sane thing done in that little Harlem flat.

“It’s like a lovely fairy story!” cried Carolyn May. “Only it’s better than a fairy story—it’s real!”

“Yes, yes, it’s real, thank God!” murmured the happy mother.

“And I’m never going away from my little girl again,” added the father, kissing her for at least the tenth time.

“But what Aunty Rose is going to do, I don’t see,” said Uncle Joe, shaking his head with real commiseration. “I’ve sent her a despatch saying that the child is safe. But if we go back without Hannah’s Car’lyn——”

“The poor soul!” said his sister. “I can believe that in her secret, subdued way Aunty Rose Kennedy is entirely wrapped up in Carolyn May. She will suffer if they are separated for long—and so abruptly.”

“That is true,” Miss Amanda said gently. “And Joe will feel it, too.”

“I bet I will,” agreed Joseph Stagg. “But I have you, Mandy. Aunty Rose isn’t going to have anybody. And for her to go back alone into her old house—for she won’t stay with us, of course—” he shook his head dolefully.

“Let me write to Aunty Rose,” said Hannah Cameron briskly. “We want her here. Why, of course, we do! don’t we, Carolyn May?”

“Why!” cried the child delightedly, “that’s just the way out of it, isn’t it? My! how nice things do come about in this world, don’t they? Aunty Rose shall come here. You’ll like her ever so much, papa. And Prince will be glad to have her come, for she always has treated Princey real well.”

Prince, who had been standing by with his ears cocked, yawned, whined, and lay down with a sigh, as though considering the matter quite satisfactorily settled.

Carolyn May, having climbed up into her father arms, reached out and drew her mother close beside her.