Ruth Ogden

“ They were lovely-looking girls, with their bright, wide-awake faces and becoming, well-fitting dresses; enthusiastic, earnest girls, thoroughly abreast of the times, interested in everything, and fond of all that is high and ennobling—working in the sewing school this afternoon, attractive matinées notwithstanding, and talking it over in some bright circle this evening; girls, the very sight of whom must somehow have done good to the very dullest little maids upon their roll books. ”

“ True enough! what would become of poor Larry? and would it be right to ask him to make such a sacrifice? It was not necessary, however, to discuss all the details of the beautiful plan just then, and even Mr. Everett, who had raised the question, had faith to believe that somehow or other everything could be satisfactorily arranged. For the remainder of the drive home not a word was spoken. People who have just been face to face with a great peril, and realize it, are likely to find thoughts in their hearts quite too deep for utterance and too solemn. ”

“ Courage is delighted with the scheme, and they talk quietly about it for ever so long, till after awhile, right in the midst of a sentence, Courage drops asleep on Larry's shoulder. Then, rather than disturb her, Larry sits perfectly motionless, and at last the noble gray head, drooping lower and lower, rests against the red-brown curls, and Larry is also asleep, while across them both slants a band of marvellous light from the torch of the island statue. ”

“ With one superhuman effort she struggles to her feet, reaches out for it, and swings it to. Then, leaning heavily against the rail, she utters one shrill, inarticulate scream. There is another scream almost as shrill in answer, and instantly a pair of ponies, brought to an alarmingly sudden standstill, rear high in the air beside her, and Courage, unable to stand another moment, drops in a limp little heap to the flooring. ”

“ Poor child! have you some new sorrow to bear?”
“No, Miss Julia; I am going to do just what I want to do most; I am going to live on a boat; but, oh! I can't bear to go away from you and Mary Duff.”
“Going away, and to live on a boat! why, how is that, Courage?” and then as Courage explained all the plans, and how she was to spend the whole summer out on the bay with “Larry, the goodest man that ever was,” her sad little face gradually grew bright again. ”

“ Not that they were exactly anxious to stitch on and on through the spring-time, when every healthy little body loves out-of-door life and lots of it, but no sewing school meant no Miss Julia; so, with reason, they looked less glad than sorry.
Miss Julia, as was her custom, had started in abundance of time from her old-fashioned home in Washington Square, but not too early, it seemed, to find at a corner near the chapel where the school was held, half a dozen little girls already on the look-out. ”

“ During these five years of daily companionship Miss Julia has been unconsciously training Courage to be just such another noble woman as she is herself, and so they have been constantly growing nearer and still nearer to each other, if that were possible. They love the same books, they enjoy the same things, and now that regular school-life is over for Courage, they have the happiest sort of time together, day in and day out. ”

“ Shall she try it? It will be taking a dreadful risk. She may land right against the rail, be thrown back into the water, and no one know in time to hasten to her rescue. She hesitates. No—and then yes, for an instantly deciding thought has come to her.
The draw swings clear of the bridge. The men in the boat, grumbling at everything, paddled clumsily through, while over the other gate, reached barely in time, Sylvia hangs breathless and trembling. At the same moment with Courage, she, too, felt the draw begin to move, but luckily chanced to be nearer her goal. Meanwhile, where is Courage? ”

“ He starts alarmed and surprised at the sight of Courage, but fortunately is too blind to see the alarming stains of blood on her little white face, but the moment they enter the light the others are quick to see them. Courage is lifted into David's big rocker, and Larry, groping into his own room, brings a pillow for her back; Sylvia disappears and returns in a trice with a towel and a basin of water; Miss Julia, with shaking hands, measures something into a glass; the other lady, with a little help from Courage, removes the dust-begrimed coat, and then lays it very tenderly over a chair. ”

“ People who chanced to come driving over glanced in at the cosey, lamp-lighted table, caught a whiff of the savory odors, and then the moment they were off the draw urged on their horses in elusive hope of finding something as inviting at home. During the progress of the meal, and while Sylvia, who was an inimitable little mimic, was giving a lisping impersonation of one of the teachers at the Asylum, a carriage rolled rapidly by, and some one called, “Hello there, Courage!” ”

“ As for Sylvia, she soon decided that her one form of address for Larry should be “my Cap'n,” for was he not in very truth her captain by grace of his choice of her from among all the other little colored orphans whom he might have taken? Indeed, Sylvia fairly seemed to revel in the two-lettered personal pronoun, for if there is a Saxon word for which the average institution child has comparatively little use it is that word my. Where children are cared for by the hundreds, my and me and mine and all that savors of the individual are almost perforce lost sight of. ”

“ Some had either guessed or found out the meaning of the black bow on the sleeve, and ever afterward seemed to regard her with an interest close bordering on downright affection. Indeed, in one way and another, the household on the draw became known far and wide, and strangers sometimes driving that way for no other reason than to see the beautiful little girl with the remarkable name, were disappointed enough if they did not chance to come across her; but of this far-reaching notoriety Courage fortunately never so much as dreamed. ”

“ Dick and Sylvia had made his undesirable acquaintance one evening when Larry had sent them to the island to learn the right time. He was the son of one of the men employed to care for the statue, and was, alas! every whit as disagreeable in manners as in looks, which is not to put the case mildly.
“Hello, Miss Woolly-head!” he called, bringing his boat to the lighter's side, and tossing a rope aboard, which Miss Woolly-head was supposed to catch, but didn't, so that the boat veered off again. ”

“ So the real story commences with a twelve-year-old Courage standing one May morning on the edge of a wharf at the foot of a West side street. The wind was tossing her auburn hair and winding her little plaid skirt close about her, but was not strong enough by half to blow a sad, wistful look from her brown eyes. Morning after morning she had taken her position at exactly the same spot, and there had sat or stood for hours at a time. The men who worked on the wharf had come to know her, and some of them to wish her a cherry good-morning as she tripped by. ”

“ It's queer Mary Duff never told me about orphans wearing black always.”
“But they do not always wear it, Courage. It seems sad to me to see a child in black, and I think Mary Duff did just right in not putting you into mourning.” ”

“ But while I have been telling you all this, Courage and Sylvia, their crabbing concluded, have tied their boat to the shore, and with a well-filled basket swinging between them, are coming down the bridge. Over against the house Larry sits in the sunshine, smoking his pipe, that is now more of a comfort than ever, and with Bruce at his feet. He hears the children and knows their tread almost the instant they set foot on the roadway, his good old ears seeming kindly bent on doing double service. ”

“ Even for Larry and Dick, when work was hardest and weather warmest, there was a sure prospect of the yellow pitcher of iced tea, which Courage never failed to bring midway in the long morning, and then at the end of the day the leisurely, comfortable dinner, for they were quite aristocratic in their tastes, this little boat's company. ”

“ Courage shrugged her shoulders rather ruefully.
“Perhaps,” she said; “but next winter's a long way off.”
“That's so,” said Larry, every whit as glad of the fact as was Courage herself. “And you said,” he continued, “that Mary Duff is going to care for that little lame Joe of John Osborne's.”
“Yes,” Courage answered, “though Mr. Osborne can't afford to pay her anything, as papa did for me; but she says she doesn't mind; if she only has her home and her board she can manage, and that it's just her life to care for motherless little children that need her.” ”

“ At nine o'clock the book was laid away and Larry went directly to bed. Courage and Sylvia hurried into coats and hats for a run in the bracing night air, and David, stopping first to light his pipe, followed them out onto the bridge. All three found to their surprise that the sky had grown suddenly lowering and overcast, while the breeze of the twilight was fast stiffening to a vigorous west wind.
“We're in for a blow, I'm thinkin',” said David, looking down-river, with the children standing beside him, “and, bless me! there isn't a star to be seen. ”

“ I shall never sail a boat again. They told me in the spring that I wasn't fit for it, but then I found you'd set your heart on being on the water with me, and so, with Dick's eyes to help, I thought I could manage just for the summer; but it's all over now, and it's plain enough that I've got to give in.”
And so Larry has done all this for her. At first Courage cannot speak, but at last she contrives to say, in a tearful, trembling voice, “Try not to mind, Larry. If you'll only let me take care of you, it won't matter at all whether we live on the water or not. ”

“ He had not been feeling well for a few days, and Sylvia, who had been left behind at the bridge, wrote for Courage; and Courage, losing not a moment, came in time to care for him for two whole weeks before he passed away. His illness was not a painful one, and now that complete darkness had closed in about him, he had no great wish to live. The many mansions of the Father were very real to Larry, and the eyes that were blind to all on earth seemed to look with wondrous keenness of vision toward “the land that is very far off;” ”

“ CHAPTER III.—LARRY COMES. Strange as it still may appear to you that a little girl should have Courage for her name, yet, true it is, that she was no sooner named herself than she had a namesake. It was none of your little baby namesakes either, but a stanch and well-built boat, and one that was generally admitted to be the finest craft of her class in the harbor. The Courage Masterson was what is commonly known as a lighter, and to whom of course did she belong but to Larry Starr, Hugh Masterson's best friend ”

“ Everywhere that Miss Julia goes Courage goes too that is, if she is wanted (and seldom is she not) , and one of the places where they go most frequently, and never empty-handed, is to a great hospital, where, since little lame Joe died, Mary Duff has become one of the sisters who give their lives to caring for sick children.
Courage even has a class next to Miss Julia's in the sewing-school where she used to be a scholar. ”

“ Directly over their heads is the queer little place that has recently become their home. That chink there is in the floor of Sylvia's carpetless room, and those wisps of straw are sticking through from Bruce's kennel. To be sure, you have heard nothing of that young gentleman since the day when Courage dried her tears on his coat, but that is only because there have been more important things to tell about. He has, however, been behaving in the most exemplary manner all the while, and has been, as always, Larry's constant companion. ”

“ That to give you merely an intimation as to what probably happened to Courage, and to leave you wholly in ignorance as to the others, would be far more in keeping with modern story-telling; but why try to be modern unless it is more satisfactory? ”

“ Then Larry and Courage between them explain matters, and Miss Julia in turn tells of her summer home, but a mile away on the Rumson Road, and of how very often she drives over the Shrewsbury Draw.
Meanwhile poor Sylvia has been having an anxious time of it. When Courage so unceremoniously dropped her end of the basket, several of the crabs went scrawling out of it, and, as you know, there is nothing more lively than a hard-shell crab, struggling with all its might to regain its native element. ”

“ Courage Masterson happened to be in Miss Julia's own class, and was ordinarily a most apt little scholar; but on this particular Saturday her thoughts seemed to be everywhere rather than on her work; indeed, she had to rip out almost every stitch taken, until Miss Julia wondered what could have happened. ”

“ And so it happened that the little girl grew to fill a larger and still larger place In his life, till on her sixth birthday he decided that she really ought to have a name, that little woman beginning strongly to resent the fact that she was known only as Baby Masterson to the small world in which she lived. ”

“ As to its meaning as the poets use it, I find that even some pretty wise people are not able to enlighten us, so we'll have it mean just what we choose, and say that it stands for the winding up of a story by which you learn what became of all the people in it. ”

“ So side by side, in this friendly fashion, they walked up the dock to where the men were unloading a Southern steamer.
“Has ony o' ye heard a word o' Larry Starr o' late?” called Big Bob, but in a tone so different from the one in which he had spoken to Courage, that she gave a little start of surprise, and then hoped he had not seen it. Most of the men shook their heads in the negative. “Niver a wurrud,” answered an old Irishman. Indeed, only one of the number made no reply whatsoever, so that Courage thought he could not have heard. ”

“ And this is the place to which Larry has come with Courage and Sylvia, and lonely old David is glad enough to see them, particularly as Larry proposes to pay a snug little sum weekly, by way of board.
What they will do when cold weather sets in Larry has not yet decided; he fully expects, however, to send Courage to school somewhere in the city, if it take half his savings to do it; but for Larry himself, alas! the darkness is settling down more and more surely. ”

“ Often, indeed, they have a very merry time of it, largely accounted for by the fact that Courage, being well and strong, as well as young, is often brimming over with a contagious buoyancy, sometimes called animal spirits, but to my thinking, it deserves a better name than that. ”

“ One day I went to Miss Sylvester an' sez, kind o' mischievous, 'How do yer like yer namesake?' 'Ain't got none, Sylvy,' sez she. 'Yes you hab,' I done told her. 'It's ten year old an' its black, but I hope yer don't mind, 'case it's me.' An' she didn't mind a bit, jes' as I knowed she wouldn't, and she sez some beautiful 'things 'bout as I mus' 'allers be a honor to the name, an' arter dat she gimme two books, wid Sylvy Sylvester wrote into 'em, from her everlastin' friend an' well-wisher, Mary Sylvester. Youse done seen dose two books on my table, Miss Courage. ”

“ He always does that when he has work at this pier for Monday.” Then, looking up to Big Bob, she said gratefully, “Thank you very much for finding out for me. I will run right home now and tell Mary Duff,” and suiting the action to the word, Courage was at the wharf's end and up the street and out of sight before the slow-moving longshoremen had fairly settled to work again.
Now that Courage was sure that Larry was coming, as sure as though it had been flashed across the blue May sky in letters of silver, all the hours of weary foreboding and waiting were quite forgotten. ”