Calvary Alley | Page 2

Her matted
hair was bound in two disheveled braids around her head and secured
with a piece of shoe-string. Her dirty round face was lighted up by a
pair of dancing blue eyes, in which just now blazed the unholy light of
conflict.
The feud between the Calvary Micks and the choir boys was an ancient
one, carried on from one generation to another and gaining prestige
with age. It was apt to break out on Saturday afternoons, after rehearsal,
when the choirmaster had taken his departure. Frequently the
disturbance amounted to no more than taunts and jeers on one side and
threats and recriminations on the other, but the atmosphere that it
created was of that electrical nature that might at any moment develop
a storm.
Nance Molloy, at the beginning of the present controversy, had been
actively engaged in civil warfare in which the feminine element of the
alley was pursuing a defensive policy against the marauding masculine.
But at the first indication of an outside enemy, the herd instinct
manifested itself, and she allied herself with prompt and passionate
loyalty to the cause of the Calvary Micks.
The present argument was raging over the possession of a spade that
had been left in the alley by the workmen who were laying a concrete
pavement into the cathedral yard.
"Aw, leave 'em have it!" urged a philosophical alleyite from the top of
a barrel. "Them ole avenoo kids ain't nothin'!--We could lick daylight
outen 'em if we wanted to."

"Ye-e-e-s you could!" came in a chorus of jeers from the fence top, and
a brown-eyed youth in a white-frilled shirt, with a blue Windsor tie
knotted under his sailor collar, added imperiously, "You get too fresh
down there, and I'll call the janitor!"
This gross breach of military etiquette evoked a retort from Nance that
was too inelegant to chronicle.
"Tomboy! tomboy!" jeered the brown-eyed youth from above. "Why
don't you borrow some girls' clothes?"
"All right, Sissy," said Nance, "lend me yours."
The Micks shrieked their approval, while Nance rolled a mud ball and,
with the deadly aim of a sharpshooter, let it fly straight at the
white-frilled bosom of her tormentor.
"Soak it to her, Mac," yelled the boy next to him, "the kid's got no
business butting in! Make her get out of the way!"
"Go on and make me!" implored Nance.
"I will if you don't stand back," threatened the boy called Mac.
Nance promptly stepped up to the alley gate and wiggled her fingers in
a way peculiarly provocative to a juvenile enemy.
"Poor white trash!" he jeered. "You stay where you belong! Don't you
step on our concrete!"
"Will if I want to. It's my foot. I'll put it where I like."
"Bet you don't. You're afraid to."
"I ain't either."
"Well, do it then. I dare you! Anybody that would take a--"
In a second Nance had thrust her leg as far as possible between the

boards that warned the public to keep out, and had planted a small alien
foot firmly in the center of the soft cement.
This audacious act was the signal for instant battle. With yells of
indignation the choir boys hurled themselves from the fence, and
descended upon their foes. Mud gave place to rocks, sticks clashed, the
air resounded with war cries. Ash barrels were overturned, straying cats
made flying leaps for safety, heads appeared at doorways and windows,
and frantic mothers made futile efforts to quell the riot.
Thus began the greatest fight ever enjoyed in Calvary Alley. It went
down in neighborhood annals as the decisive clash between the classes,
in which the despised swells "was learnt to know their places onct an'
fer all!" For ten minutes it raged with unabated fury, then when the tide
of battle began to set unmistakably in favor of the alley, parental
authority waned and threats changed to cheers. Old and young united in
the conviction that the Monroe Doctrine must be maintained at any
cost!
In and out of the subsiding pandemonium darted Nance Molloy,
covered with mud from the shoestring on her hair to the rag about her
toe, giving and taking blows with the best, and emitting yells of
frenzied victory over every vanquished foe. Suddenly her transports
were checked by a disturbing sight. At the end of the alley, locked in
mortal combat, she beheld her arch-enemy, he of the brown eyes and
the frilled shirt, whom the boys called Mac, sitting astride the hitherto
invincible Dan Lewis, the former philosopher of the ash barrel and one
of the acknowledged leaders of the Calvary Micks.
It was a moment of intense chagrin for Nance, untempered by the fact
that Dan's adversary was much the bigger boy. Up to this time, the
whole affair had