With the opulent purr that seems to be peculiar to luxurious limousines, Mrs Carew’s car rolled down Commonwealth Avenue and out upon Arlington Street to Charles. Inside sat a shining-eyed little girl and a white-faced, tense woman. Outside, to give directions to the plainly disapproving chauffeur, sat Jerry Murphy, inordinately proud and insufferably important.
When the limousine came to a stop before a shabby doorway in a narrow, dirty alley, the boy leaped to the ground, and, with a ridiculous imitation of the liveried pomposities he had so often watched, threw open the door of the car and stood waiting for the ladies to alight.
Pollyanna sprang out at once, her eyes widening with amazement and distress as she looked about her. Behind her came Mrs Carew, visibly shuddering as her gaze swept the filth, the sordidness, and the ragged children that swarmed shrieking and chattering out of the dismal tenements, and surrounded the car in a second.
Jerry waved his arms angrily.
“Here, you, beat it!” he yelled to the motley throng. “This ain’t no free movies! Can that racket and get a move on ye. Lively, now! We gotta get by. Jamie’s got comp’ny.”
Mrs Carew shuddered again, and laid a trembling hand on Jerry’s shoulder.
“Not – here!” she recoiled.
But the boy did not hear. With shoves and pushes from sturdy fists and elbows, he was making a path for his charges; and before Mrs Carew knew quite how it was done, she found herself with the boy and Pollyanna at the foot of a rickety flight of stairs in a dim, evil-smelling hallway.
Once more she put out a shaking hand.
“Wait,” she commanded huskily. “Remember! Don’t either of you say a word about – about his being possibly the boy I’m looking for. I must see for myself first, and – question him.”
“Of course!” agreed Pollyanna.
“Sure! I’m on,” nodded the boy. “I gotta go right off anyhow, so I won’t bother ye none. Now toddle easy up these ’ere stairs. There’s always holes, and most generally there’s a kid or two asleep somewheres. An’ the elevator ain’t runnin’ ter-day,” he gibed cheerfully. “We gotta go ter the top, too!”
Mrs Carew found the “holes” – broken boards that creaked and bent fearsomely under her shrinking feet; and she found one “kid” – a two-year-old baby playing with an empty tin can on a string which he was banging up and down the second flight of stairs. On all sides doors were opened, now boldly, now stealthily, but always disclosing women with tousled heads or peering children with dirty faces. Somewhere a baby was wailing piteously. Somewhere else a man was cursing. Everywhere was the smell of bad whiskey, stale cabbage, and unwashed humanity.
At the top of the third and last stairway the boy came to a pause before a closed door.
“I’m just a-thinkin’ what Sir James’ll say when he’s wise ter the prize package I’m bringin’ him,” he whispered in a throaty voice. “I know what Mumsey’ll do – she’ll turn on the weeps in no time ter see Jamie so tickled.” The next moment he threw wide the door with a gay: “Here we be – an’ we come in a buzz-wagon! Ain’t that goin’ some, Sir James?”
It was a tiny room, cold and cheerless and pitifully bare, but scrupulously neat. There were here no tousled heads, no peering children, no odors of whiskey, cabbage, and unclean humanity. There were two beds, three broken chairs, a dry-goods-box table, and a stove with a faint glow of light that told of a fire not nearly brisk enough to heat even that tiny room. On one of the beds lay a lad with flushed cheeks and fever-bright eyes. Near him sat a thin, white-faced woman, bent and twisted with rheumatism.Mrs Carew stepped into the room and, as if to steady herself, paused a minute with her back to the wall. Pollyanna hurried forward with a low cry just as Jerry, with an apologetic “I gotta go now; goodbye!” dashed through the door.
“Oh, Jamie, I’m so glad I’ve found you,” cried Pollyanna. “You don’t know how I’ve looked and looked for you every day. But I’m so sorry you’re sick!”
Jamie smiled radiantly and held out a thin white hand.
“I ain’t sorry – I’m glad,” he emphasized meaningly; “’cause it’s brought you to see me. Besides, I’m better now, anyway. Mumsey, this is the little girl, you know, that told me the Glad Game – and Mumsey’s playing it too,” he triumphed, turning back to Pollyanna. “First she cried ’cause her back hurts too bad to let her work; then when I was took worse she was glad she couldn’t work, ’cause she could be here to take care of me, you know.”
At that moment Mrs Carew hurried forward, her eyes half fearfully, half longingly on the face of the lame boy in the bed.
“It’s Mrs Carew. I’ve brought her to see you, Jamie,” introduced Pollyanna, in a tremulous voice.
The little twisted woman by the bed had struggled to her feet by this time, and was nervously offering her chair. Mrs Carew accepted it without so much as a glance. Her eyes were still on the boy in the bed.
“Your name is – Jamie?” she asked, with visible difficulty.
“Yes, ma’am.” The boy’s bright eyes looked straight into hers.
“What is your other name?”
“I don’t know.”
“He is not your son?” For the first time Mrs Carew turned to the twisted little woman who was still standing by the bed.