Mary Emma & Company (23 page)

“My! My!” Mother said as she counted the piles, “I can hardly believe that you little children have made so much money in so short a time. Why, that will give us money for new shoes all around, and new suits for you boys, and . . .”

“And that isn't all,” I told her. “With kindling wood selling the way it is we wouldn't be very smart to burn up the big timbers for firewood. A cord of that pitchy stuff wouldn't go any further than half a ton of coal, and half a ton of coal only costs three dollars and a cord of wood would make . . . let's see . . . there's about a square foot and a half of wood to a load of kindling, and . . .”

“And a cord is four feet, by four feet, by eight feet,” Grace broke in, “and that's a hundred and twenty-eight cubic feet, divided by one and a half is eighty-three loads of kindling, times a quarter is twenty dollars and seventy-five cents a cord. And if each of those timbers is a foot by a foot and a half, and thirty feet long; that's forty-five times eleven, divided by one twenty-eight is about four cords, so that would amount to eighty-three dollars, and two tons of coal would cost twelve dollars, leaving a profit of seventy-one dollars.”

Grace had me mixed up before she got through the four times four times eight, and I think she'd lost Mother sooner than that, but we both knew Grace well enough to know she'd be right. “
My My!
” Mother almost shouted. “Why, that's nearly a hundred dollars altogether! Well! I guess we won't have to worry much about you children being well-dressed for school next autumn.” She sat for a minute, pinching her lips together with her thumb and finger, then looked up at me and said, “Ralph, I'm going to let you and Philip stay out of school tomorrow afternoon and go to Boston for new shoes. You both need them badly, and I think you need a little holiday before you tackle the rest of that job.”

24

A May Basket for Mary Emma

I
T SEEMS
as if good luck always comes in showers, and we were right where half a dozen of those showers fell during the month of April. The last Sunday morning of that month we had the biggest turnout at our church that we'd had any Sunday except Easter. By the time Sunday School was over the church was already more than half filled, and people were coming in by sixes and sevens, but Mother and Elizabeth weren't among them.

We waited out in front of the church while more and more people went in, then we walked up Otis Street to meet Mother and hurry her along. When we got back there were a dozen or so people standing in the vestibule, and the ushers were splitting them up in ones and twos to find seats for them. As Mother whispered to the younger children, telling them to sit real still and not disturb the people they'd be seated with, an usher put his hand under her elbow and said, “Right this way, Mrs. Moody.”

She had just turned back to us and whispered, “You will be very careful, won't you, children?” when the usher motioned with his fingers for all of us to come along. He led us out through the crowd in the vestibule, and clear up to the third row from the front; the one where we'd sat ever since we'd moved to Medford. I don't think there were six other seats left in the whole church, but our six were empty. While we were going into the pew at least a dozen people turned to nod their heads and smile at Mother. Sometimes the things that made her the happiest were the ones that made her come the nearest to crying. Before she could find the right number for the opening hymn she had to lift her veil up and wipe the tears out of her eyes.

The sermon was a good one, but long, and with such a crowd in the church it took us nearly fifteen minutes to get out. I don't know how so many people knew us, with our having gone to that church only four months, but a lot of them did. We could move only a step or two at a time, because so many people were coming out of the pews, and it seemed as if half of them turned to tell Mother what well-behaved children she had. I could only walk along with my head down, because I was sure that, sooner or later, they'd find out about my name being on the bad-boy book.

It was a beautiful spring day, and the people didn't seem to be in any hurry to get away from the church. When we came down the steps they were standing around in little groups on the lawn, and up and down the sidewalk, visiting and talking. It looked to me as if Mother's customers were having a little convention under the big maple tree on the lawn. Every one of them were there, with their husbands and a dozen or so other men and women I didn't know. We were nearly out to the sidewalk when Mrs. Humphrey came toward us and said, “Oh, Mrs. Moody, I'm so glad to see you this morning. Won't you bring your lovely children over for a minute? I'd like my husband and my friends to meet them.”

Of course, Mrs. Humphrey knew Philip and Muriel and me, because we'd delivered her laundry. After she'd introduced Mother and us, she said, “And now, Mrs. Moody, I'm going to let you introduce the others, for I'm ashamed to say I don't know their names.”

Hal and Elizabeth didn't get introduced at all, because Mother started with Grace. “This is Gracie, my right hand,” she said. “It is she who does all the gentlemen's shirts and collars, and helps me with the fancier garments.”

Mr. Humphrey tipped his hat to Grace and said, “You're an artist. I've never before had my shirts so beautifully done.”

“They're both artists,” Mrs. Humphrey told the other people. She ran her fingers up through the folds of the jabot she was wearing, and said, “Everything they touch comes back like a work of art, and I have yet to receive one piece crushed in delivery. Her children are just as painstaking as she is.”

There were quite a few other nice things said, then several of the ladies I didn't know asked Mother if she'd be able to do their laundry. “Oh my!” she told them, “I don't know if we could handle so many; our lines are pretty full now on our busiest days.”

“It's largely my fault,” Mrs. Humphrey told them. “I've been selfish in sending Mrs. Moody all my flat work.” Then she turned to Mother and asked, “If I were to make different arrangements for it would you be able to handle the others?”

Grace was standing with one foot right close to mine, and it bumped me a little tap before Mother had a chance to say, “Oh, I'd hate to inconvenience you that much, Mrs. Humphrey, but we would be able to handle more of the fancier garments.” Before we left both Mrs. Humphrey and Mrs. Nickerson said they'd make other arrangements for their flat work, and Mother had said she'd try to handle all the new customers if she could have until Saturdays to get their work finished.

I carried Elizabeth and we all walked quietly until we'd reached the end of Otis Street. But when we'd turned the corner onto Washington, out of sight of the people coming from church, Mother threw an arm around Grace's waist, and they took two or three skipping steps. When they stopped, Grace slapped her hands together and said, “Well, I guess we're over the hill.”

“I'm sure of it,” Mother told her. “Let's hurry right home and fix a special treat for dinner.”

During the last couple of days of April, most of the talking around Franklin School was about May baskets. If a boy liked some particular girl and wanted her to be his girl he didn't very often tell her so. He waited for May Day and then hung a May basket on her door just after dark, then he ran. You didn't ever put your name on the basket, but wrote the girl's name on a little card you tucked inside. Then she was supposed to guess who it was from by the handwriting.

I hadn't thought much about liking one girl any better than the others, or about hanging a May basket, until the boys at school began talking about it so much. And then I began thinking about Evelyn Gorham a good deal. Evelyn sat right back of me at school, and she was the prettiest girl in our class: small and dark, with brown eyes and coal-black hair.

Of course, I didn't know how to make a pretty May basket, and I wanted to have a real nice one for Evelyn, so at daylight on May Day morning I rapped on the girls' bedroom door. When Grace opened it a crack and asked me what I wanted I told her I had to talk to her for a minute out in the hall. Sometimes Grace could be a bit grumpy when she was waked up too early, but that morning she was as nice as pie. After I'd told her about Evelyn, and wanting to hang a May basket for her, and not knowing how to make one, she said, “That's easy. I could make you a real pretty one if I had some colored crepe paper, but that would cost about a dime, and if you want a really nice one you'd have to spend a quarter for candy and nuts to fill it. Why don't you take thirty-five cents out of the kindling treasury?”

“That's partnership money,” I told her, “and it wouldn't be fair to Philip.”

“Oh, piffle!” she said. “Philip wouldn't care.” Then she sort of giggled, and asked me, “How do you know he hasn't got a girl, too? Maybe he'd like to hang a May basket, and I could make two as easy as one. Let's go wake him up and ask him.”

Philip's eyes sparkled when Grace told him about the basket she was going to make for me and asked him if he wanted to hang one. “Sure I do,” he told her, “but I'm not going to waste it on any girl; I'm going to hang it for Mother.”

Grace tried to tell him that you only hung a May basket to a girl you wanted for your sweetheart, but that didn't make any difference to Philip; he wouldn't change his mind. At noon he met me at Uebel's drug store, and we picked out the crepe paper and nuts and candy. In the afternoon Grace made us two beautiful baskets, but she did it up in her room where Mother couldn't see them.

As soon as we'd eaten supper that night I changed into my Sunday clothes, and twilight was just turning into darkness when I hung my basket on Evelyn's doorknob and rang the bell. Then I ran back toward Washington Street, but I didn't run awfully fast, and I was careful to slow up as I went under the street lamp. I wasn't too sure that Evelyn would know my handwriting.

I hadn't been home more than five minutes, and we were all in the kitchen when our own doorbell rang. Grace and I looked around quickly to be sure Philip was there, because we hadn't planned for him to hang his basket until Mother had gone into the parlor for the evening. Philip looked as puzzled as we were. It was about a minute before Grace said, “Mother, that was our doorbell.”

“Yes, Daughter,” Mother said, “you run along and answer it; it must be a May basket.”

“Hmmmmff!” Grace sniffed. “Nobody'd be hanging me a May basket, and Muriel and Elizabeth are too little. It's probably one of our new customers to see you.”

“Well, you run right along,” Mother told her. “I'll bet a cookie it's a May basket.”

Grace made another little sniffing sound, but she went to the door. And when she came back she was carrying a May basket nearly as big as a shoe box. At first she tried to act as if she weren't a bit excited, but her eyes were as bright as bluebells when she passed her basket around for all of us to have a piece of candy.

Philip could hardly wait for a chance to hang his May basket for Mother. Ever since supper he'd had it hidden under the back steps, but there wasn't any chance for him to sneak out and hang it for another half-hour. Twice more before that half-hour was up our doorbell had rung again, and both times it was a May basket for Grace. We were all sitting in the parlor when it rang the second time, and Grace ran to the door as fast as she could go, but when she came back she wouldn't tell us if she'd seen the boy. I think she had all right, and that it was one of the older boys who had been sliding at the clay pit with us, way back in the winter, but Grace wouldn't admit it.

Mother seemed as happy about Grace's getting the baskets as Grace was herself. Her eyes sparkled just as much, and she was telling us about her very first May basket when Philip said he was going to the kitchen for a drink of water. He wasn't gone more than a minute before our bell rang again, and that time we all made Mother go to answer the door. Before she had time to get back Philip had run around to the kitchen door and come in. He was bouncing up and down in his chair when Mother came back to the parlor with a big smile on her face. She held the pretty basket out toward Grace and said, “Another basket for you, Gracie. My, you must be the most popular girl in town!”

“Oh, no!” Grace said. “No boy would ever hang a basket as fancy as that one to anybody but his very best girl, and I'm nobody's very best girl. Look and see what it says on the card.”

Mother looked a little puzzled for a second, but I think she guessed from the looks on our faces that we knew something about the basket. She sat down on the edge of her chair, set the basket on her knees, and took the card out. She had only glanced at it when she jumped up, dropping basket, card, and all. She was half laughing and half crying as she ran across to Philip's chair, dropped down on her knees, and hugged him up tight to her. While she was loving him I picked up the card she'd dropped. Philip had printed on it:

As soon as Mother could talk, she brushed the tears away from her eyes and said, “Oh, children, hasn't the Lord been good to us! Just think of it! At the first of January we left Colorado, not knowing where we'd find a place to lay our heads, or if we'd ever again have good friends and a home we could call our own. And here it is only May.” Then she hugged Philip to her again.