Maggie | Page 5

threateningly.
"Ah, come off! I got dis can fer dat ol' woman an' it 'ud be dirt teh
swipe it. See?" cried Jimmie.
The father wrenched the pail from the urchin. He grasped it in both
hands and lifted it to his mouth. He glued his lips to the under edge and
tilted his head. His hairy throat swelled until it seemed to grow near his
chin. There was a tremendous gulping movement and the beer was
gone.
The man caught his breath and laughed. He hit his son on the head with
the empty pail. As it rolled clanging into the street, Jimmie began to
scream and kicked repeatedly at his father's shins.
"Look at deh dirt what yeh done me," he yelled. "Deh ol' woman 'ill be
raisin' hell."
He retreated to the middle of the street, but the man did not pursue. He
staggered toward the door.
"I'll club hell outa yeh when I ketch yeh," he shouted, and disappeared.
During the evening he had been standing against a bar drinking
whiskies and declaring to all comers, confidentially: "My home reg'lar
livin' hell! Damndes' place! Reg'lar hell! Why do I come an' drin'
whisk' here thish way? 'Cause home reg'lar livin' hell!"
Jimmie waited a long time in the street and then crept warily up

through the building. He passed with great caution the door of the
gnarled woman, and finally stopped outside his home and listened.
He could hear his mother moving heavily about among the furniture of
the room. She was chanting in a mournful voice, occasionally
interjecting bursts of volcanic wrath at the father, who, Jimmie judged,
had sunk down on the floor or in a corner.
"Why deh blazes don' chere try teh keep Jim from fightin'? I'll break
her jaw," she suddenly bellowed.
The man mumbled with drunken indifference. "Ah, wha' deh hell. W'a's
odds? Wha' makes kick?"
"Because he tears 'is clothes, yeh damn fool," cried the woman in
supreme wrath.
The husband seemed to become aroused. "Go teh hell," he thundered
fiercely in reply. There was a crash against the door and something
broke into clattering fragments. Jimmie partially suppressed a howl and
darted down the stairway. Below he paused and listened. He heard
howls and curses, groans and shrieks, confusingly in chorus as if a
battle were raging. With all was the crash of splintering furniture. The
eyes of the urchin glared in fear that one of them would discover him.
Curious faces appeared in doorways, and whispered comments passed
to and fro. "Ol' Johnson's raisin' hell agin."
Jimmie stood until the noises ceased and the other inhabitants of the
tenement had all yawned and shut their doors. Then he crawled upstairs
with the caution of an invader of a panther den. Sounds of labored
breathing came through the broken door-panels. He pushed the door
open and entered, quaking.
A glow from the fire threw red hues over the bare floor, the cracked
and soiled plastering, and the overturned and broken furniture.
In the middle of the floor lay his mother asleep. In one corner of the

room his father's limp body hung across the seat of a chair.
The urchin stole forward. He began to shiver in dread of awakening his
parents. His mother's great chest was heaving painfully. Jimmie paused
and looked down at her. Her face was inflamed and swollen from
drinking. Her yellow brows shaded eye- lids that had brown blue. Her
tangled hair tossed in waves over her forehead. Her mouth was set in
the same lines of vindictive hatred that it had, perhaps, borne during the
fight. Her bare, red arms were thrown out above her head in positions
of exhaustion, something, mayhap, like those of a sated villain.
The urchin bended over his mother. He was fearful lest she should open
her eyes, and the dread within him was so strong, that he could not
forbear to stare, but hung as if fascinated over the woman's grim face.
Suddenly her eyes opened. The urchin found himself looking straight
into that expression, which, it would seem, had the power to change his
blood to salt. He howled piercingly and fell backward.
The woman floundered for a moment, tossed her arms about her head
as if in combat, and again began to snore.
Jimmie crawled back in the shadows and waited. A noise in the next
room had followed his cry at the discovery that his mother was awake.
He grovelled in the gloom, the eyes from out his drawn face riveted
upon the intervening door.
He heard it creak, and then the sound of a small voice came to him.
"Jimmie! Jimmie! Are yehs dere?" it whispered. The urchin started.
The thin, white face of his sister looked at him from the door-way of
the