Apron-Strings | Page 4

toward the library. "Orphanage?" she repeated. "Oh, not without consulting me. And besides there's so much to be done in this house before tomorrow.--Susan! Susan!" She went out, calling more impatiently.
As Hattie disappeared into the vestibule, that door from the passage, upon which she had kept a watch, was opened, slowly and cautiously, and the tousled head of a boy was thrust in. Seeing that the drawing-room was vacant, the boy now threw the door wide, disclosing nine other small heads, but nine more carefully combed. The ten were packed in the narrow passage, and did not move forward with the opening of the door. Their freshly washed faces were eager; but they contented themselves with rising on tiptoe to peer into the room. About them, worn over black cassocks, hung their spotless cottas. Choir boys they were, but on every small countenance was written the indefinable mark of the orphan-reared.
Now he of the tousled hair stole forward across the sill. And boldly signaled the others. "St!--Aw, come on!" he cried. "What're you 'fraid of! Didn't the new minister tell us to wait in here?"
The choir obeyed him, but without argument. As each cotta-clad figure advanced, eyes were directed toward doors, and hands mutely signed what tongues feared to utter. One boy came to the sofa and gingerly smoothed a velvet pillow; whispering and pointing, the others scattered--to look up at a painting of a bishop of the Anglican Church, which hung above the mantel, to open the Bible on the small mahogany table that held the center of the room, to touch the grand piano with moist and marking finger-tips, and to gaze with awe upon two huge and branching candlesticks that flanked a marble clock above the hearth.
Now a husky whisper broke the unwonted silence of the choir; and an excited, finger directed all eyes to the painting of the Bishop: "Oh, fellers! Fellers!" He rallied his companions with his other arm. "Look-ee! Look-ee! That's Momsey's father!"
"Momsey's father!" It was the tousled chorister, and he plowed his way forward through the gathering choir before the hearth. "What're you talkin' about? Momsey's father wasn't a minister."
But the other was not to be gainsaid. "Yes, he was," he persisted; "and it's him."
"Aw, that's a Bishop,--or somethin'. There's Momsey's father." Beside the library door stood a small writing-desk. Atop it, in a wooden frame, was a photograph. This was now caught up, and went from hand to hand among the crowding boys. "That's him, and he's been dead twenty years."
"Let me see!" A shining tow-head wriggled up from under the arms of taller boys, and a freckled hand captured the picture. "Why, he looks like Momsey!"
The tousled songster seized the photograph in righteous anger. "Sure!" he cried, waving it in the face of the tow-headed boy; "you don't think she takes after her mother, do y'?"
A chorus of protests, all aimed at the tow-head, which was turned defensively from side to side.
"Y' know what I think?" demanded the tousled one. He motioned the others to gather round. "I don't believe the old lady is Momsey's mother at a-a-all!"
"Oo-oo-oo!" The choir gasped and stared.
"No, I don't," persisted the boy. "I believe that years, and years, and years ago, some nice, poor lady come cree-ee-eepin' through the little white door, and left Momsey--in the basket!"
Nine small countenances beamed with delight. "You're right!" the choir clamored. "You're right! You're dead right!" White sleeves were waved joyously aloft.
Now the heavy door to the library began to swing against the backs of two or three. The choir did not wait to see who was entering. Smiles vanished. Eyes grew frightened. Like one, the boys wheeled and fled. The door into the passage stood wide. They crowded through it, and halted only when the last cotta was across the sill. Then, like a flock of scared quail, they faced about, panting, and ready for further flight.
One look, and ten musical throats emitted as many unmusical shouts of laughter. While the tousle-headed boy, swinging the photograph which he had failed to restore to its place, again set foot upon the Brussels of the drawing-room. "Oh! Oh!" he laughed. "Oh, golly, Dora, you scared me!"
With all the dignity of her sixteen years, and with all the authority of one who has graduated from the ranks of an Orphanage to the higher, if rarer, air of a Rector's residence, Dora surveyed with shocked countenance the saucy visages of the ten. On occasions she could assume a manner most impressive--a manner borrowed in part from a butler who had been installed, at one time, by a wealthy and high-living incumbent of St. Giles, and in part from ministers who had reigned there by turns and whose delivery and outward manifestations of inward sanctity she had carefully studied during the period of