Annie Hamilton Donnell

“ Oughtn't there to be a law to tear them down?” Gloria was too intent on her own musings to intercept the swift glance her guardian gave her.
“Supposing one tumbled down, with little children in it and outside it! What did they name that awful street Pleasant Street for?”
Aunt Em's comely face wore a queer expression. She began to speak, then stopped.
“Don't you want to hear what kind of a runabout I ordered on the way home, Rosy-Posie?” What freak of fate made Uncle Em call her Rosy-Posie? Gloria winced as if with pain at thought of the girl Rosie—with eyes like hers—on Treeless Street. ”

“ Gloria's second letter to the District Nurse ran thus:
“Dear Miss Winship: I keep thinking of those dreadful houses. Every time I look in a daily paper I expect to read that one of them has tumbled down, and I'm afraid it will be Dinney's house, where that poor, sick woman is—or Straps' house! They ought to tumble down, every one of them, but not till they are emptied of their poor loads of humanity. If they are half as bad inside as they are outside! ”

“ The ceiling in Dinney's room came down once before his mother died, and it just missed her. It would have killed her then if it had hit her. It nearly killed Dinney, but he's tough.”
“They will mend the stair railing!” Gloria cried.
Rose's face hardened, and she looked down and pressed her lips against the baby's forehead. It was as though the girl, Gloria, beside her was reaching too far. Lifting her head, she said in a cold voice:
“They don't mend things around here. But maybe they will the railing. It costs money to mend, and they say things don't stay mended. Maybe they don't.” ”

“ And trees were dropping gold leaves down upon the men as they worked. The little singing bird was in one of the trees.
“Oh!” murmured Gloria, shutting her eyes again, “I can see better with my eyes shut! I can see a beautiful big house, Uncle Em—my house! It's straight and whole and—happy. I can see Rose and Hunkie at one of the windows and Sal coming down the stairs. 'Miss Districk,' you're there, too. And Dinney, don't you see, is playing on the grass!”
Mary Winship laughed a sweet, indulgent laugh. ”

“ The nurse goes from house to house, doing what she can in a little time. She has to divide up her care, you see. But it is a merciful work—a merciful work.”
Gloria's face was thoughtful. Treeless Street haunted her.
“Do you know a street that hasn't a single tree on it, Uncle Em? The awfulest street! Just children and children and children and tenement houses. I suppose I've been by it hundreds of times, but I never saw it till to-day. It must have a name to it.”
“What do you want to know its name for, my dear? It isn't the kind of a street to run about on!” Uncle Em laughed. ”

“ Think of a girl named Rose being in a house like that, and another girl with Rose for her middle name in a beautiful, great hotel here, or Uncle Em's lovely house at home—both of them Roses. It isn't fair!
“Do you know, I have a plan, but I'm 'most afraid to divulge it—I wouldn't to Uncle Em for the world, yet! He'd laugh the roof off. He says women have no heads for business, and as for girls!—But if not heads, I suppose they might have hearts, and the hearts might ache, the way mine does every time I think of those houses and Straps and Dinney and Hunkie—and the girl with eyes like mine. ”

“ Sometimes boys can find out things big folks can't. It came to me when I was walking along with the District Nurse that you were just the one to help me. You're so—well, so sharp yet safe. If they suspected, they would not let us know, maybe.”
The two were now walking along in a companionable way back in the direction Gloria had come.
“Dinney, if you find out who owns that house I will buy it. I've got money; Uncle Em says I have. I will buy it and we'll fix it up good.” Dinney's face was aglow, his eyes shone, his breath was drawn sharp and quick. ”

“ Of course I don't want her to be like me!” Rose's voice quivered. “I'd be ashamed of myself to want her to be like me. I was only thinking, that's all. It isn't bad to think, is it? And anyway, we're both Rosies, you say. But they call her Gloria. But she has Rose for one name. I've got that to be glad of!”
Snip—snip—the scissors cut steadily through the crisp cotton goods. “Yes, indeed, you've got that!” the District Nurse said with loving tenderness. She did not look up from her work; at that minute she did not want to see the small, stunted figure sewing tiny sleeves for Dinney's baby. ”

“ Anyway, nobody but the thinnest of them can leak through, and Sal isn't here to lean on it; poor Sal!”
Rose was not in the bare, half-lighted little room they entered. The tidiness and cleanliness of it, however, bore witness to her recent occupancy. On the neat bed lay a baby asleep.
“Hunkie!” Gloria said softly, as she tiptoed across the room and looked down at the thin little face.
“It seems a tiny morsel of humanity to get hold of life, doesn't it?” said the nurse. “But Rose is so careful of it, and Dinney is so insistent that it shall have everything it needs.” ”

“ Not until then did the District Nurse have time to look at Gloria.
“Why, you poor dear! You're white as a sheet! I ought to have thought how it would make you feel! Come with me up to Rose's room. That's the quietest place around here. It's a little haven to us all. She's got Dinney's baby with her now. Since the mother died she's about adopted it. But Dinney pays for it. Dinney's a brave one!”
They now passed up the stairway, and as they came to the gap in the railing that had been the ruin of poor Sal, the nurse paused with a look of anxiety sweeping over her face. ”

“ It was on the day of Gloria's visit with the District Nurse that Mr. McAndrew came home to luncheon, which was rather an unusual proceeding for the busy attorney during hot weather. Mrs. McAndrew, seated with her mending on the shady piazza, could see a worried expression upon her husband's face even before he reached the steps.
“Something is the matter,” she said, rising hastily, while spools and scissors fell upon the cat dozing near. “Something is the matter or he would never have come home in this boiling sun.” ”

“ But for ten years he and this sweet-faced elderly woman in the doorway had been father and mother to the orphaned girl.
“Of course he'll come, if I tell him to!” laughed back Gloria from the sidewalk. “Auntie, please ask Bergitta to come out and move Abou Ben's cushion into the shade when the sun gets round to him. He'd never condescend to move without the cushion.” ”

“ She's a dear, but what does she do?”
“Why,” explained Uncle Em, “she visits the poor and takes care of them if they are sick, you know. It's rather a new institution here in Tilford, but seems to be working finely. The city pays the nurse's salary, or else it's done by private subscriptions.”
“But I don't see how one nurse gets time to take care of a whole city—mercy!” Gloria's personal experience with nurses had been two to one girl. She remembered them now—the gentle day-nurse and the gentle night-nurse, who had moved soft-footedly about her bed, performing soothing little offices. ”

“ Yet Gloria was not selfish—only young. Gloria's father had been a keen business man, and the investments of his money as he earned it had been of the kind that fatten men's pocketbooks, however lean they may make the bodies of other men. ”

“ Such things are coming up in life all the time. But when women are mixed up in 'em, there's no making them see straight. It wasn't fitting that Gloria should have everything explained to her at the start. It wasn't businesslike. When she comes into full control of things herself, it will be different. I am afraid Richards is not quite the man to have charge of things down there. ”

“ She is so intense, and she's hardly more than a child to reason with. And in the meantime she's gotten so many ideas into her head that she wouldn't have had, maybe, if she had known the situation from the first, and grown up with it. ”

“ She ain't no doctor-woman.” This from Dinney, who had the advantage of early acquaintance. “She's on'y a cuttin' roun' de street. Youse better not be smudgin' up her dress, Carrots—gwan off, now! All o' youse gwan an' let de lady 'lone. Me 'n' Hunkie's de on'y ones as she wants roun'.”
Dinney and Hunkie escorted Gloria to the end of the street and back. Gloria returned on the opposite side with the idea of more thoroughly exploring. But she might as well have kept to the one side; both sides were alike in tenements and children—dreariness and poverty. ”