Brentwood

by Grace Livingston Hill

  “Two tons!” The boy stood aghast. “How’ll we ever pay for two tons? You didn’t get that from our regular coal man. He said he wouldn’t let us have any more till the bill was paid.” He looked at her with accusing eyes, such young, frightened, stern eyes. She loved him for the way he was trying to be a man and take responsibility.

  “But it’s all paid for, brother dear!” said Marjorie, with shining eyes. “Bill and coal and all. I told him I would pay cash if he would send it at once, and he certainly did!”

  The boy looked at her, astounded.

  “Gosh!” he said, and then he turned and ran down the cellar stairs. She could hear his footsteps going over to the coal bin, then back to the furnace a few paces, opening the furnace door, looking in, closing it again, and then more slowly coming up the stairs. She glimpsed him brushing his hand quickly across his eyes as he appeared in the kitchen, his young face filled with relief.

  “Gosh, that’s a break!” he said, flinging himself down on the box again and reaching for what was left of his sandwich. “I never expected to see that much coal again, not in that cellar! I’ll say you’re some sister!”

  Marjorie smiled, her heart warming.

  “Will you have another sandwich?”

  “No, I mustn’t eat things up. I can get along on what I’ve had. It’s more than I’ve had at once in six months. Save the rest for Mother and the others.”

  “But there is plenty,” said Marjorie happily. “I got several loaves. And how about some scrambled eggs? I can make lovely scrambled eggs!”

  “You couldn’t, not here!” said Ted with finality. “The gas company turned off our gas. You can’t scramble eggs in the furnace, can you?”

  “Oh, but the gas company has been here and turned on the gas. See?” and she struck a match and lighted a burner. “There’s no reason why you can’t have scrambled eggs.” Marjorie put on a bent little frying pan over the flame, flipped a bit of butter into it, and broke three smooth brown eggs into it.

  Ted watched her, fascinated, as she scrambled the eggs, finishing with a shake of pepper and salt.

  “Say, you can cook, can’t you? I thought you’d be too high-hat to cook.”

  “I can cook a little,” said Marjorie, “not much. Probably Betty can do much better than I. I never had a chance to practice much.”

  “Well, neither has Betts. She’s been in an office ever since she got out of school. Say! These eggs are great! Gosh, I haven’t tasted anything so good in weeks. You’re sure I ought to eat all of this? It seems enough for the whole family. Why, if we’d had this much yesterday we would have thought we were rich!”

  Marjorie felt a sudden lump coming in her throat that warned of tears near at hand. She felt so glad to have got here in time before her family starved to death! How awful to think they had been in such straits while she feasted on the fat of the land!

  He studied her for an instant and then he said gravely, “But we can’t live off of you! It’s great of you to help us out a little till we get on our feet, but we can’t keep on letting you feed us. Perhaps I can get a job soon and pay you back.”

  The brightness went out of Marjorie’s face.

  “Listen, Ted, if I had lived here, and you had plenty, wouldn’t you have shared it with me?”

  “Of course!” said Ted crossly, “but that’s different! I’m a fella!”

  “Well, that’s all right, ‘fella’ dear, but it isn’t different. I’m part of this family, unless you throw me out, and what’s mine is yours. And now, come, I’d like to say a word about what you did to me when you first came in. You took that cup of tickets away and told me they wouldn’t interest me. But they do interest me. They interest me very much. They’re pawn tickets, aren’t they? Well, what are we going to do about them, Ted? Are those Mother’s things that she’s fond of? Oughtn’t we to go and get them?”

  “That would take a lot of money,” said Ted hopelessly. “Yes, of course, they’re her things, but we had to pawn them. She had to have food and heat and medicine.”

  “Of course,” said Marjorie, just as if she was used to going out and pawning her furniture and clothes whenever she had to have something else, “but are they things she cares about? Or would she rather have new things?”

  “They’re her things. They’re all the things she has. And she couldn’t get new things even if she did want them. She can’t get these either,” he added dejectedly. “I tell you it costs a lot of money.”

  “Yes, but how much, Ted?” persisted Marjorie. “That is what I was trying to find out when I was looking over those tickets. I wasn’t wanting to pry. I was trying to find out what to do.”

  “It isn’t your responsibility,” said Ted doggedly. “It’s mine. I pawned them.”

  “Now look here, Ted, you just stop pushing me out of the family like that. I’m trying to make up a little for all the good I might have been to the family if I had been here. Don’t you see I want to be in and be loved and be a part of things, even of your troubles? That’s what it would have been if I had lived with you while I was growing up instead of with the Wetherills. And I’m certainly sharing in everything from now on. Now you reach up to that top shelf and take down that teacup and we’ll add those tickets up and see what it comes to. Please!”

  Half-shamedly, Ted did her bidding.

  They got out the tickets and Marjorie added them all up, a pitifully small sum it seemed to the girl, to represent the household goods of a home, but to the boy it seemed a breathtaking fortune.

  “Is that all!” said Marjorie, when he handed her the sum. “Why, I can give you that right away. I was afraid maybe I’d have to go out and cash a check. But is this all? Aren’t there some things somewhere else?”

  “No,” said Ted. “The rest we had to burn up to keep warm with, but they weren’t much account. The old rickety kitchen table and a few shaky chairs. Oh, yes, and Betty’s bedstead and mine, they went first, but they weren’t anything great. We just put the mattresses on the floor.”

  He grinned, and Marjorie stifled a gasp and grinned back. What a lot of things she was learning about the makeshifts of poverty.

  “All right!” she said briskly, “then let’s get those things back and make the house look natural before Mother gets up to see it. That will do a good deal toward making her cheerful, and there is no need for her to know how we did it, either. Have these things been out of the house long?”

  “Not so many of them. The spoons went first. Mother felt awfully down about those, and soon after that she was taken so sick she had to go to bed. She doesn’t know about most of the rest. We kept her room like it was when she went to bed. I guess she thinks we’ve been living on the spoons all this time. She doesn’t know how little they gave for them. She thought an awful lot of those spoons. They were her grandmother’s.”

  Ted flashed a quick negative.

  “I’ll get them,” he said. “It’s no work for you. I’ll have to bring the big things one at a time. I’m not sure I can borrow the handcart I had when I took them away. I took them at night, you know, so the neighbors wouldn’t see. Probably I can get the cart after the store closes tonight, but it will take several nights to get everything.”

  “Oh, my dear! Don’t try to bring them yourself. It won’t cost but a few dollars to hire a truck and have them brought.”

  “A few dollars!” laughed Ted excitedly. “I can get Sam Sharpe to bring them all after five this evening for a dollar. He’d be glad to get it. He takes the truck to his dad’s garage for the night and has the privilege of using it for any little odd jobs he gets. But a dollar’s a dollar, you know, and I’ve been too near the edge of nothing to throw dollars away when I can do the thing myself.”

  “Oh, Ted!” said Marjorie pitifully. “But in this case I think a dollar is cheap, just to get the things here tonight and make things look like home again.”

  “Okay with me,” said Ted, “but it won’t likely look like your home at that. Mother’s told us h
ow it looks where you were brought up.”

  “Yes, it was a lovely home,” said Marjorie, with a sudden rush of feeling, “but we’re going to make this as lovely as we can. Now, can you go right away and see if you can get the truck?”

  “Sure thing!” said Ted. “But he can’t bring them till after five. I might as well stick around here and see if there is anything else I can do till then. That will be after dark, too. The neighbors are so curious. Mother hates that! Having them all find out just what we’ve got and what we haven’t. You know, we used to have a nice home in a suburb on the other side of the city. Nice big house, built of stone. Plenty of room. We each had a room to ourselves, and there was a garage and a big garden, and flowers and fruit trees. It was a swell place. And Dad had a position with a good salary. That was before the depression, you know. We had a car, too, and Dad used to drive to town every morning. It was swell living there. Dad had money in the bank. That was about the time Mother tried to get to see you. She did so want to have you visit us. She was all in when she came back with that picture of you and said they wouldn’t let her see you. She’d counted on bringing you home. We’d all counted on it. And then all of a sudden the man where Dad worked died, and his business went flooey, and Dad couldn’t get anything else right away except a little accountant job that didn’t pay much. He took it and kept on trying for something better, but things were going bad, and Mother had to have an operation, and the kids were sick, and Dad had to put a mortgage on the house, and the next thing that happened the bank that had the mortgage went belly up, and they demanded the money right away, all of it, and Dad hadn’t been able to pay the interest for a couple of times, so they took away the house. Oh, it was a mess, and then Dad got sick, and everything’s been going from bad to worse ever since.”

  “Oh, my dear!” said Marjorie, quite honestly crying now. “My dear! I’m so sorry you’ve been going through all that!”

  “Well, don’t bawl!” said Ted crossly, brushing his hand over his own eyes. “I can’t stand bawling! I just told ya because I thought you’d wantta know. We haven’t always been down and out this way. We had a swell home!”

  “Well, let’s make this one as cheerful as we can before evening,” said Marjorie, taking a deep breath. “I’ll get the money!”

  She went into the parlor to her handbag that she had left on the bare little high mantel shelf and brought back a roll of bills that made Ted’s eyes open wide.

  “I put in a little extra,” said his sister, smiling. “I thought perhaps you’d think of something we need that I’ve forgotten.”

  “Gosh!” said Ted, gazing down at the roll of bills in his hand. “Don’t know’s I can trust myself out alone. I might get held up carrying all this wealth.”

  Marjorie smiled. It seemed a very small amount of money to her.

  “Get anything you want, you know. I’m not used to providing for a family. I got everything I could think of at the little store down here, but I suppose I’ve left out a lot of things. Soap is one. Better get plenty. Betty says there isn’t any in the house. And potatoes. We could have roasted potatoes for dinner tonight. I got a beefsteak!”

  The boy grinned.

  “I can see where you’re going to spoil us for living again when you’re gone.”

  “Gone!” said Marjorie with dismay in her voice. “Do you want me to go?”

  “No, not on yer life! But you’re not going to stick around these diggings. Not with the home you’ve been used to! You’ll be spreading your wings and flying away!” And he gave her a sudden quick look. “Say!” he added irreverently, “You look a lot like Betts, and yet you don’t. I could tell you apart already! You don’t look quite so frowsy as Betty, and you’ve got a cute little quirk in the corners of your mouth. Maybe Betty would look like that too if she hadn’t had to work so hard, and have such a lot of trouble.”

  “You’re sweet!” said Marjorie, and she suddenly reached up with a quick motion and kissed her new brother on his lean, hard, young cheek.

  He blinked and the color went up in a great wave, and receding, left it white, and his eyes shadowed and weary-looking.

  “Okay with me!” he said, grinning. “If that’s your line you better give warning next time. We don’t have much time for mush and sob-stuff!”

  Then he turned sharply away toward the window and she saw him brush his hand across his eyes and swallow hard.

  “Okay with me!” said Marjorie, trying to make her voice sound as much like his a minute before as she could. And suddenly he laughed.

  “You’re aw’right,” he said grudgingly.

  “Thanks awfully!” said Marjorie, trying to enter into his spirit. “But who is that coming in the door?”

  “That’s Bud,” said Ted, peering through the crack in the wall. “Hey, kid! Hush up there! Dad and Muth’s asleep! They’re sick and yer not ta make a noise! Come on out here an’ shut the door carefully.”

  A boy about ten came panting into the room, so out of breath he could scarcely articulate.

  “They—sent me—ta tell ya—!” he panted. “You gotta come right away an’ get the kids. Bonnie’s got a fever—an’ she—wouldn’t eat her cereal—an’ she is crying for Betty—an’ Sunny is yellin’ his head off!”

  “Good night!” said Ted. “Who told you that?”

  “Miss Baker! She said we’d haveta take ’em home. She said they couldn’t do—a thing with Sunny since Bonnie got sick. They said”—he was still puffing and panting from his run—“They said—they hadta—have the beds—fer the—little kids. They got too many—an’ ours gotta come home now.”

  “Okay, you come with me, kid. We’ll get ’em,” said Ted, “but I don’t know what we’ll do with ’em here. Gosh! Can you beat it?” He cast an apologetic eye at the new sister.

  “What is it?” she asked puzzled. “Who are they?”

  “The kids!” answered the brother in astonishment. “Didn’t you know about them?”

  “No!” said Marjorie. “Oh, I remember, Betty said something when I first came about taking the children somewhere, but I had forgotten about it. I didn’t realize there were more of us.”

  “Two besides Bud!” said Ted, lifting his chin and sighing. “I don’t know how we’re going to make the grade with any more sick folks.”

  Marjorie gave a little gasp of amazement and then her soft lips set firmly.

  “We’ll manage!” she said. “I’ll go with you to get them. I can carry one of them.”

  The boy Bud was standing now, gazing at her in a kind of distress.

  “Who’s that?” he spat out, pointing to Marjorie, his eyes wide with a kind of fear. “Where’s Betty? That’s not Betty.”

  “No,” said Ted, “she’s the new sister. Did you have any lunch, Bud?”

  “Naw. They wouldn’t give me any. They said I didn’t belong. They said I was too big to be there and I couldn’t come tamorra. And anyhow, I hate ’em. They kep’ tellin’ me I oughtta be in school.”

  “Well, don’t worry. You don’t havta go again. We’ve got a fire now.”

  “Gee! It feels good!” said the child, rubbing his red, cold hands together. “I’m gonta stand over the register. Say, gimme a little piece of bread, can’t ya? I’m holler!”

  “You poor child!” exclaimed the new sister in horror. “Wait. I’ll make him a sandwich before I go. It won’t take a minute!”

  “Who said sandridge?” said Bud. “Not honest? Gee! Where’dya get the ham? Real ham!”

  He watched with shining eyes and grabbed the sandwich eagerly, too hungry to wait for an answer to his question, accepting the new sister quite casually, as being not nearly so important as the sandwich to his poor starving little stomach.

  “Do you like ham?” Marjorie smiled as she buttered another generous slice of bread.

  “I’ll say!” said the urchin, taking enormous bites of his sandwich.

  “How about a glass of milk?” she asked.

  “Got milk, too? Okay wi
th me!”

  She laughed and poured out a brimming glass of milk, and then brought out an orange and some little cookies from a tin.

  “Gosh!” he said, eyeing the spread with genuine amazement, his jaws pausing for a second in their vigorous chewing. “All that!”

  “Will that keep you busy till we get back?” asked Marjorie with another smile.

  “I’ll say!”

  “Well, don’t make any noise. You just stay here and keep the door and be ready to open it for us when we get back with the children!”

  Then Marjorie flung on her coat and put on her hat as she went out the door with Ted.

  “Say, you don’t needta come,” said Ted with belated courtesy. “I can manage with the two kids. Sunny’ll run along beside me, and Bonnie’s nearly seven. She can walk all right.”

  “But if she has a fever, she ought not to walk,” said Marjorie. “Is she too heavy for you to carry? Couldn’t we get a taxi?”

  Ted grinned.

  “Taxis don’t grow around here,” he said significantly. “Sure, I can carry her if it’s necessary. It’s only a little over three blocks.”

  They walked along almost a block before Marjorie spoke again, and a great shyness was possessing Ted. Out in the sunshine with this strange new sister, who looked so much like Betty, and yet was different, who dressed like a “swell” and used scarcely any slang at all, he was deeply embarrassed. Conscious, too, of his shabby trousers and torn old sweater, awfully conscious of that lovely squirrel coat she was wearing and the chic little hat perched on her golden head. She seemed a strange lady from another world. In the house it had been comparatively easy to converse with another Betty, who was wearing Betty’s apron, cleaning off pantry shelves, and scrambling eggs. But out here it was different. He felt that everyone they met was staring at him and comparing his shabbiness with his new sister’s elegance.

  Then Marjorie spoke.

  “You said something about the beds, but I didn’t take it in. Is there a place for the children? I expect the little girl with a fever ought to be put to bed at once. Where does she sleep? Will it disturb Father and Mother to put her to bed? I think it’s important that they should not be disturbed.”