"IF I WERE RICH"

After school the next day, as Carolyn had promised, she took Prince to call on the pale lady's baby.

Little did she mark the locality as being fearsome or unpleasant. She was in Prince's care, and Carolyn May usually found something interesting, and therefore pleasant, wherever she went.

Here were children of all ages, and so many, many babies! Of course they were dirty-faced and raggedly clothed in most instances. Quite in contrast to the babies on her own block or most of those she saw in the park when she went there to walk.

"I s'pose," thought the observant little girl, "that these children are so dirty because their mothers have so many to take care of. While they are washing one baby the others are getting dirty in this awfully dirty street. So, if they keep on all day washing them, they would never be all clean at once! But," admitted the philosophical Carolyn May, slowly, "it's funny not to see any clean babies here at all. I wonder where those are that have just been scrubbed."

The house, the number of which the pale lady had given the little girl, seemed slightly less disreputable than many of its neighbours. It was merely a slice of the brick block, but had been recently painted. There were four apartments on each floor, two in front and two in the rear.

The pale lady lived in one of the rear apartments, one flight up from the street. The children who crowded the stairway made way for Prince and watched him narrowly. Without him Carolyn might have found some difficulty in getting up to the pale lady's rooms.

She might, too, have found some of these children as unpleasant as the red-haired Sade had been, had Prince not been her companion. But, as it was, she went boldly to the pale lady's door and knocked.

The latter welcomed Carolyn and Prince cheerfully. Her little, dark rooms were scrupulously clean; but in the kitchen, to which the lady took her small friend, the evidences of poverty were not to be hidden.

The kitchen had two big windows overlooking a littered and dirty backyard. These windows were really the only ones of any account in the place; for those of the sitting room and bedroom between looked out into airshafts. The smells of cooking and boiling clothes rose through the house, and odours from the yard were such that it was far pleasanter to keep the windows closed than open.

The lady, with her beautiful hair, her beautifully clean and sweet-smelling skin, her well-cared-for hands, her warm if rather wistful smile, all appealed strongly to the little girl. Poor as the pale lady must be, Carolyn saw that she was quite as careful of her personal appearance as was her own mamma. And the baby was as sweet as a rose!

They put him down on the floor on a folded quilt and let him play with Prince to his heart's content. Meanwhile the pale lady and Carolyn became very well acquainted.

Of course, it began with babies; but "babies" is such a fruitful subject for discussion that they branched off into a dozen topics, all leading from, or appertaining to, babies. Carolyn could not remember much about her own babyhood—and that was funny, she said, because she certainly ought to be the one to recall most clearly what happened to her at that time. But she had known about babies, she told the pale lady, "for years and years."

"You see," she said, "there is always somebody in our apartment house who has a new baby. Why! it's so surprising, sometimes. There's Mrs. Price and Edna. Edna's my par-tic'lar friend, you know. They had no more idea of finding Baby Eldred than nothing 'tall. Why! Edna wasn't even at home when the baby came—and she certainly wouldn't have gone to Brooklyn to her auntie's to stay for a week that time, if she or her mother had had any idea that they were to find Baby Eldred.

"No! It's really quite startling when you come to think of it. I said to my mamma that I really wouldn't want to be alone in our house if we found a baby. Suppose I opened my closet door and—and—there—he—was! Wouldn't it startle you?"

"I am sure it would be quite shocking," admitted the pale lady gravely.

For her part she told Carolyn a great many things about her baby, and how much she and his father thought of him. His father she called "Laird" and that, Carolyn presumed, was his surname. Bridget Dorgan always spoke of her husband as "Dorgan." Carolyn rather thought that some men did not possess any given names at all. Her own father was particularly rich in that he had two.

So "Mrs. Laird" and "Baby Laird" the pale lady and her baby became in Carolyn May's mind, and she chattered about them so much at home that soon Mr. Cameron and Carolyn's mother spoke of the little girl's new friend as "Mrs. Laird."

Her little daughter having shown herself to be so enamoured of her new friend, Mrs. Cameron would most certainly have soon visited the pale lady; but just at this time she was extremely busy preparing for the summer. It had been decided that she and Carolyn should spend the long vacation away from the hot city.

Mr. Cameron's increased salary now made these plans possible. Besides, his wife and child were to go to a seaside resort, Block Island, which he could easily visit for the week end himself.

It was planned, however, that Carolyn and her mother should spend the first fortnight of the long vacation at the Corners, and the little girl looked forward more eagerly to that than to the unknown delights of the ocean-girt island they were later to visit.

Mrs. Cameron's sewing machine was very busy, and Carolyn May had to spend what seemed to her long, long hours being fitted and refitted with the pretty summer frocks that her mother made for her. Carolyn was delighted with all these new fineries, but she confessed she found the trying-on process very trying indeed.

"You see, my arms and legs get so squirmy," she said to Papa Cameron. "I can just feel worms crawling and creeping all under my skin, and up and down my whole body. Of course, I know they aren't really worms. Mamma says they are nerves. But if they feel like worms they might as well be worms, I should think."

"My goodness!" gasped Papa Cameron, entering into the spirit of his little daughter's imaginings, as he almost always did, "you wouldn't really want to know that you were wormy, would you, Snuggy? My goodness! Just like a wormy chestnut, or a wormy apple! I couldn't love a wormy little girl, I am afraid."

Carolyn, sitting on his lap, allowed herself to shudder deliciously at the thought.

"Mamma says the nerves are under my skin and that they spread all over me, like a fine net. Like a hair-net, I spect. And if they were worms crawling under my skin I don't believe they would feel any worse."

So Carolyn's visits with her dog to the pale lady were curtailed because of the dressmaking activities. Nevertheless, within the following few weeks the little girl became very good friends indeed with Mrs. Laird. She never saw Mr. Laird, but they often spoke of him, for the pale lady evidently loved him very much and believed heartily that he was a much more worthy man than their circumstances seemed to suggest. What Mr. Laird did for a living Carolyn was never told; but it was evident he did not earn much money. The pale lady was continually taking medicine, so the doctor must get a good part of what her husband earned; and the baby had cost a great deal, of course.

"Yes; they always do," agreed Carolyn May, commenting upon this final fact. "It seems just as though nobody ever finds a baby that doesn't need a doctor, and nurses, and clothes, and a baby carriage, and a whole lot of things. It would be lots nicer," observed Carolyn May, stating an obvious fact as though it were quite original, "if babies were left right outside your door in a nice carriage all dressed up, and with a boxful of clothes. Then there wouldn't be a single, sol'tary thing to worry about."

"I believe, Carolyn May," said the pale lady, laughing faintly, "that if you could make this old world over you would have things much more nicely arranged than they now are. I am sure we should all be happier."

"Oh, as for being happy," said the little girl, "that is altogether in our own hands. So my papa says. It's just like burning a tiny, tiny candle in a very dark place, he says. Never mind how small the light is, right close to it there is plenty to see by. We may not light up the whole big world with our little candle; but we can light ourselves, anyway. Papa Cameron," added the small philosopher, who came honestly enough by her optimism, "says always to look out and up, never to look inside us at our troubles. You know," and the giggles bubbled up and the little girl's eyes danced. "You know, he always says he works for the firm of 'Grin and Bearit' and so, no matter what happens, he is prepared for it.

"It's an awful nice way to be," added the little girl. "My papa's a real comferble man to have about the house. My mamma often says so."

The pale lady thought that cheerful little Carolyn was most "comferble" to have around one too. In spite of the frock fittings the child came frequently, if only for half an hour at a time.

The pale lady went out but seldom with her baby. Although he was such a "skinny" child in Carolyn's opinion, the baby was a good deal of a burden for the frail mother. And lacking a carriage now, it was too great a task for her to carry the baby as far as Central Park.

The little girl wanted very much to know why Mrs. Laird would not use the twenty-dollar bill sent her by the rich man with which to buy another go-cart; but she was too polite to ask. Indeed, although she realized that her new friend was poor, she said or did nothing to show that she noticed the deficiencies in housekeeping arrangements and the like that were so apparent in the pale lady's apartment. The latter might have felt much embarrassed had Mrs. Cameron called; but one could not experience that feeling for long with friendly little Carolyn May.

The weather was growing hotter and harder to bear. The sun poured into the kitchen windows of the cramped little apartment in the afternoon and made the place almost stifling. The big-eyed baby showed the effects of the heat, and the pale lady grew more pale and wan every day.

Carolyn May's visits, however, cheered her friend immensely. Sometimes the little girl carried some plaything she had bought for the baby with her own money. She saw that, unlike other babies she knew—Eldred Price for instance—the pale lady's baby woefully lacked toys.

Then, on several occasions, she brought sweets which her mother made, carrying the confection carefully in a flowered bowl and wrapped in a damask napkin under the outside cover of paper. They had a little feast in the pale lady's kitchen at such times, all four of them; for of course Prince had to have his share. He certainly had a sweet tooth!

"Only, if he wouldn't gollop everything down so!" sighed his little mistress. "One lick of his tongue and a swallow, and his share is gone. And then he begs with his eyes and mouth all the time you are eating your share. It's no use. You can't teach a dog much etiquette, I guess."

They played games as well as gossiped. Carolyn had one favourite "solitaire" game which she had made up herself and which she often played on rainy days when she might not go out and when her mother was too busy to stop her work to play with her. It was a most fascinating form of exercise for the imagination, for Carolyn called it, "If I Were Rich" and it consisted of "spending money in your mind."

"You know," she told the pale lady, "I could spend a million if I had the time. And it's lots of fun to 'supposing.' Why! I guess half the fun in the world is 'supposing' about things."

But Carolyn was too generous to wish to enjoy entirely this imaginary good fortune.

"You tell what you'd buy, and where you'd live, and how many servants and all you'd have, if you owned a million, million dollars," she urged the lady.

"That must be a great deal of money, Carolyn May," said the other thoughtfully. She had a bit of sewing in her lap—oh! something ever so coarse and commonplace. And she let her white hands remain idle while she stared out through the window at a picture the little girl could not see.

"That must be a great deal of money," she repeated.

"What would you do with part of it?" asked Carolyn. "What kind of house would you live in?"

"Oh, I can see the house, Carolyn May," sighed the pale lady. "It would be a big, sprawling, brown stone house with white pillars before it holding up a veranda roof at the level of the second floor windows. And, oh! the cool, wide veranda itself, deep and quiet, with chairs and benches and swinging seats. It was lovely in the hot weather."

"Yes, yes," said the little girl. "That would be nice! I like hammocks and swings."

"And a maid to wheel out the tea wagon in the afternoon, and real orange-pekoe tea and cupcakes made by Margaret—"

"Who is Marg'ret?" asked Carolyn May quickly.

"Oh!" said the pale lady. "That is what I will call a dear old nurse who, perhaps, has been in the family for years and years. And she makes lovely cupcakes."

"Like my Aunty Rose Kennedy. She makes jumbles, too," said Carolyn, nodding. "Yes?"

"And a beautiful, old, shady lawn sloping down to the river, the far bank of which rises in terraces of green forest and grey rock on, oh! the most beautiful stretch of the Hudson. And in the cool of the day a lovely, smoothly running car would come around from the garage and we would go to drive in it, over the hills and far away—sometimes as far, even, as Poughkeepsie.

"Sometimes we would stop for dinner at a roadside hotel, where there was music and dancing. And often we went to the Country Club and there we had regular parties."

"I love parties!" gasped Carolyn, with shining eyes and clasping her hands.

"Do you?" almost whispered the pale lady, still with her vision set upon things a great way off. Her baby was asleep. So was Prince—brokenly—on the floor at their feet. It was hot in the kitchen, and Prince twitched his legs and occasionally snapped at a fly.

"Do you?" the pale lady repeated. "It was at a party given for me by some friends that I first met Laird. Then—then—the beautiful old home was already lost; the dear old people who had owned it and who had brought me up to know nothing but the good things of life, had lost their all—everything had been swept away, and they had died, broken-hearted. Other friends had taken me in—for a time. I met Laird. Of course I had to marry. All my friends said so. There was nothing else for me to do—absolutely penniless as I was. But," and she smiled suddenly, and it was such a lovely, revealing smile that Carolyn, too, broke into smiles, "they did not have to urge me to marry Laird. I loved him from the first, you see."

"Oh, yes," said Carolyn May, earnestly. "That is just how it was with my Uncle Joe Stagg and Miss Amanda Parlow. They were loving each other for years an' years and at last they just had to get married."

"We did not have to wait years and years," said Carolyn's friend. "People said we ought, for Laird—well! he had nothing at all when I married him but his two bare hands. But he is going to earn plenty for us—for Baby and me—some day."

She sighed. She looked around the poor room. All the glory of remembrance went out of her face and her eyes misted with unbidden tears. It was some time before she spoke again and the game of "If I Were Rich" was ended for that afternoon.

"But," said Carolyn May, in telling her mother all about it, "my pale lady must have been truly rich once. She don't have to supposing when she plays my game. She lived in a great house—big as the public library down on Fifth Avenue, I guess—only without those funny lions in front. And she had automobiles and everything.

"But of course," concluded the little girl, within whose breast stirred already the true instinct of motherhood, "I s'pose she thinks Baby Laird makes up for everything she's lost."