Red-Robin | Page 4

inviting an approach with hungry eyes.
"She was just a little kid," loftily. Then, "Ain't the doll mine?"
Mrs. Lynch patted down the outermost garment. "Yes, it's yours it is, darlin'. At least--" she hesitated over a fleeting sense of justice, "maybe the little stranger will be a-coming back for her doll. It's a fair bit of dolly and it's lonesome and weeping the little mother may be this very minute--"
Beryl reached out eager arms.
"It's an orphan doll. I'll love it hard. Give me it. Oh," with a breath that was like a whistle. "Ain't she lovely? Mom, is she too lovely for us?"
The timid question brought a quick change in the mother's face, a kindling of a fire within the mother breast. She straightened her slender body.
"And if there's anything too good for my girlie I'd like to see it! Isn't this the land where all men are equal and my girl and boy shall have a school as good as the best and grow up to be maybe the President himself?" She repeated the words softly as though they made a creed, learned carefully and with supreme faith. Why had she come, indeed, to this crowded, noisy city from her fair home meadows if not for this promise it held out to her?
"And isn't your brother the head of his class?" she finished triumphantly. "And it's smarter than ever you'll be yourself with your little books. Oh, childy!" She caught the little girl, doll and all, into an impulsive embrace.
From it Beryl wriggled to a practical curiosity as to supper. She sniffed. Her mother nodded.
"Stew! And with dumplin's--" She made it sound like fairy food. "Ready to the beating when your father comes."
"Where's Dale? And Pop?"
"It's Dale's night at the store. And Pop'll be comin' along any minute. I've set the lamp for him."
"I'm hungry," Beryl complained. She sat down cross-legged on the spotless scrap of carpeting and proceeded with infinite tenderness to disrobe the doll.
"Do you think she will like it here?" she asked suddenly, looking about the humble room which for the Lynch's, served as parlor, dining-room and kitchen. Now its bareness lay wrapped in a kindly shadow through which glinted diamond sparks from much-scrubbed tin. "It's nice--" Beryl meditated. She loved this hour, she loved the singing tea-kettle and the smell of strong soap and her mother's face in the lamplight, with all the loud noises of the street hushed, and the ugliness outside hidden by the closed door, against the paintless boards of which had been nailed a flaming poster inviting the nation's youth to join the Navy.
"But maybe this home'll be--too different," she finished.
The mother's eyes grew moist with a quick tenderness. Her Beryl, with this wonder of a dolly in her arms! Her mind flashed over the last Christmas and the one before that when Beryl had asked Santa Claus for a "real doll" and had cried on Christmas morning because the cheap little bit of dolldom which the mother had bought out of her meagre savings would not open or shut its eyes. And now--the impudent heart of the blessed child worrying that the home wasn't good enough for the likes of the doll!
"It's a good home for her where it's loving you are to her. It's the heart and not the gold that counts. And who knows--maybe it's a bit of luck the dolly'll be a-bringing."
As though a word of familiar portent had been uttered Beryl lifted a face upon which was reflected the glow of the little mother's. Babe as she was, she knew something of the mother's faith in the fickle god of chance, a faith that helped the little woman over the rough places, that never failed to brighten her deepest gloom. Did she not staunchly believe that someday by a turn of good fortune she and her Danny would know the America and the good things of which they had dreamed, sitting in the gloaming of their Ireland, their lover's hands close clasped? But for that hope why would they have left their dear hillsides with the homely life and the kindly neighbors and good Father Murphy who had taught her from his own dog-eared books because she was eager and quick to learn? Through the fourteen years since they had come to America those girl-and-boy dreams had gone sadly astray, but the little wife still clung to the faith that they'd have the good things sometime, her Danny would get a better job and if he didn't there was young Dale, always at the head of his class in school and even the baby Beryl, as quick as anything to pick out words from her little books.
"A good luck dolly!" Beryl held the doll close. Her eyes grew round and excited. "Then I can ride all day