When first the young lady from the College Settlement dragged Ardelia from her degradation—she was sitting on a dirty pavement and throwing assorted refuse at an unconscious policeman—like many of her companions in misery, she totally failed to realize the pit from which she was digged. It had never occurred to her that her situation was anything less than refined, and though, like most of us, she had failed to come up to her wildest ideals of happiness, in that respect she differed very little from the young lady who rescued her.

“Come here, little girl,” said the young lady invitingly. “Wouldn’t you like to come with me and have a nice, cool bath?”

“Naw,” said Ardelia, in tones rivaling the bath in coolness.

“You wouldn’t? Well, wouldn’t you like some bread and butter and jam?”

“Wha’s jam?” said Ardelia conservatively.

“Why, it’s—er—marmalade,” the young lady explained. “All sweet, you know.”

“Naw!” and Ardelia turned away and fingered the refuse with an air of finality that caused the young lady to sigh with vexation.

“I thought you might like to go on a picnic,” she said helplessly. “I thought all little girls liked——”

“Picnic? When?” cried Ardelia, moved instantly to interest. “I’m goin’!”

She brushed the garbage from her dress—Ardelia was of that emancipated order of women who disapprove of the senseless multiplication of feminine garments, and wore, herself, but one—and regarded her rescuer impatiently.

“What’s the matter?” she asked. “I’m all ready. Hump along!”

“We’ll go and ask your mother first, won’t we?” suggested the young lady, a little bewildered at this sudden change of attitude.

“Jagged,” Ardelia returned laconically. “She’d lift y’r face off yer! Is it the Dago picnic?”

The young lady shuddered, and seizing the hand which she imagined to have had least to do with the refuse, she led Ardelia away—the first stage of her journey to Arcady.

Ardelia’s origin, like that of the civilization of ancient Egypt, was shrouded in mystery. At the age of two months she had been handed to a policeman by a scared-looking boy, who said vaguely that he found her in the park under a bench. The policeman had added her to the other foundling waiting that day at headquarters, and carried them to the matron of the institution devoted to their interest. Around the other baby’s neck was a medal of the Blessed Virgin, and a slip of paper pinned to her flannel petticoat labeled her Mary Katharine. The impartial order of the institution therefore delivered Ardelia, who was wholly unlabeled, to the Protestant fold, and one of the scrubbing-women named her.

Later she had taken up her residence with Mrs. Michael Fahey, who had consented to add to her precarious income by this means, and at the age of four she became the official nurse of Master John Sullivan Fahey. A terribly hot August, unlimited cold tea, and a habit of playing in the gutter in the noon glare proved too much for her charge, and he died on his third birthday. The ride to the funeral was the most exciting event of Ardelia’s life. For years she dated from it. Mrs. Fahey had so long regarded her as one of the family, that though her occupation was gone, and her board was no longer paid, she was whipped as regularly and cursed as comprehensively, in her foster-mother’s periodical sprees, as if they had been closely related.

What time she could spare from helping Mrs. Fahey in her somewhat casual household labor, and running errands to tell that lady’s perennially hopeful employers that her mother wasn’t feeling well to-day, but would it do if she came to-morrow, Ardelia spent in playing up and down the street with a band of little girls, or, in the very hottest days, sitting drowsy and vindictive at the head of a flight of stone steps that led into a down-stairs saloon. The damp, flat, beer-sweetened air that rushed out as the men pushed open the swing-doors was cool and refreshing to her; she was in a position to observe any possible customers at the three push-carts in her line of vision, and could rouse a flagging interest in life by listening to any one of the altercations that resounded from the tenements night and day. Drays clattered incessantly over the pavement, peddlers shouted, sharp gongs punctuated the steadier din. A policeman was almost always in sight, and one of them, Mr. Halloran, had more than once given her a penny for lemonade. In the room above her head an Italian band practised every evening, and then Ardelia was perfectly happy, for she loved music. Often before the band began, a hurdy-gurdy would station itself at the corner, and Ardelia and the other little girls would dance about, singly and in pairs, shouting the tunes they knew, rejoicing in the comparative coolness and the generally care-free atmosphere. Ardelia was the lightest-footed of them all; her hands held her skirts out almost gracefully, her thin little legs flew highest. Sometimes the saloon-keeper—they called him “Old Dutchy”—would nod approval as Ardelia skipped and pranced, and beckon her to him mysteriously.

“You trow your legs goot,” he would say. “We shall see you already dancing, no? Here is an olluf; eat her.”

And Ardelia, who loved olives to distraction, would nibble off small, sour, salty mouthfuls and suck the pit luxuriously while she listened to the Italian band.

Except for Mrs. Fahey’s errands, which never carried her far off the street, Ardelia had never left it in her life, and her journey to the Settlement-house was one of interest to her. She was a silent child, but for occasional fits of gabbling and chattering with the little girls in the street; and though she did not understand why the young lady from the Settlement should cry when she introduced her to two other ladies, nor why so many messages should be left for her mother, and so many local and general baths administered, she said very little. She was not accustomed to question fate, and when it sent her two fried eggs—she refused to eat them boiled—for her breakfast, she quietly placed them in the credit column as opposed to the baths, and held her peace.

Later, arrayed in starched and creaking garments which had been made for a slightly smaller child, she was transported to the station, and for the first time introduced to a railroad car. She sat stiffly on the red plush seat with furtive eyes and sucked-in lips, while the young lady talked reassuringly of daisies and cows and green grass. As Ardelia had never seen any of these things, it is hardly surprising that she was somewhat unenthusiastic; but the young lady was disappointed by this lack of ardor. She was so thoroughly convinced of the essential right of every child to a healthy country life, that she was almost disposed to blame Ardelia for not sharing her eminently creditable conviction.

“You can roll in the daisies, my dear, and pick all you want—all!” she urged eagerly. But no answering gleam woke in Ardelia’s eyes.

“Aw right,” she answered guardedly, and stared into her lap.

“Look out, dear, and see the fields and houses—see that handsome dog, and see the little pond!”

Ardelia shot a quick glance at the blurring green that dizzied her as it rushed by; the train was a fast express making up for lost time. Then with a scowl she resumed the contemplation of her starched gingham lap. The swelteringly hot day, and the rapid, unaccustomed motion combined to afflict her with a strange internal anticipation of future woe. Once last summer, when she ate the liquid dregs of the ice-cream man’s great tin, and fell asleep in the room where her mother was frying onions, she had experienced this same foreboding, and the climax of that dreadful day lingered yet in her memory. So she set her teeth and waited with stoical resignation for the end, while the young lady babbled of green fields, and wondered why the child should be so sullen. Finally she laid it to homesickness, and recovered her faith in human nature.

At last they stopped. The young lady seized her hand, and led her through the narrow aisle, down the steep steps, across the little country-station platform, and Ardelia was in Arcady.

A bare-legged boy in blue overalls and a wide straw hat then drove them many miles along a hot, dusty road, that wound endlessly through the parched country fields. To the young lady’s remark that they needed rain sadly, he replied, “Yep!” and held his peace for the following hour. Occasionally they passed another horse, but for the most part the only sight or sound of life was afforded by the hens clucking angrily as the travelers drove them from their dust baths in the powdery road. Released from her horror of foreboding, Ardelia took a more apparent interest in her situation, and would perhaps have spoken if her chaperone had opened conversation; but the young lady was weary of such efforts, disposed to a headache from the blinding heat, and altogether inclined to silence. At last they turned into a driveway, and drew up before a gray wooden house. Ardelia, cramped with sitting still, for she had not altered her position since she was placed stiffly on the seat between her fellow-passengers, was lifted down and escorted up the shingle-walk to the porch. A spare, dark-eyed woman in a checked apron advanced to meet them.

“Terrible hot to-day, ain’t it?” she sighed. “I’m real glad to see you, Miss Forsythe. Won’t you cool off a little before you go on? This is the little girl, I s’pose. I guess it’s pretty cool to what she’s accustomed to, ain’t it, Delia?”

“No, I thank you, Mrs. Slater, I’ll go right on to the house. Now, Ardelia, here you are in the country. I’m staying with my friend in a big white house about a quarter of a mile farther on. You can’t see it from here, but if you want anything you can just walk over. Day after to-morrow is the picnic I told you about. You’ll see me then, any way. Now run right out in the grass and pick all the daisies you want. Don’t be afraid; no one will drive you off this grass!”

The force of this was lost on Ardelia, who had never been driven off any grass whatever, but she gathered that she was expected to walk out into the thick, rank growth of the unmowed side yard, and strode downward obediently, turning when in the exact center of the plot, for further orders.

“Now pick them! Pick the daisies!” cried Miss Forsythe excitedly. “I want to see you.”

Ardelia looked blank.

“Huh?” she said.

“Gather them. Get a bunch. Oh, you poor child! Mrs. Slater, she doesn’t know how!” Miss Forsythe was deeply moved and illustrated by picking imaginary daisies on the porch. Ardelia’s quick eyes followed her gestures, and stooping, she scooped the heads from three daisies and started back with them, staring distrustfully into the depths of the thick clinging grass as she pushed through it. Miss Forsythe gasped.

“No, no, dear! Pull them up! Take the stem, too,” she explained. “Pick the whole flower!”

Ardelia bent over again, tugged at a thick-stemmed clover, brought it up by the roots, recovered her balance with difficulty, and assaulted a neighboring daisy. On this she cut her hands, and sucking off the blood angrily, she grabbed a handful of coarse grass, and plowing through the tangled mass about her feet, laid the spoils awkwardly on the young lady’s lap.

Miss Forsythe stared at the dirty, trailing roots that stained her linen skirt and sighed.

“Thank you, dear,” she said politely, “but I meant them for you. I meant you to have a bunch. Don’t you want them?”

“Naw!” said Ardelia decidedly, nursing her cut hand and stepping with relief on the smooth floor of the porch.

Miss Forsythe’s eyes brightened suddenly.

“I know what you want,” she cried, “you’re thirsty! Mrs. Slater, won’t you get us some of your good, creamy milk? Don’t you want a drink, Ardelia?”

Ardelia nodded. She felt very tired, and the glare of the sun seemed reflected from everything into her dazed eyes. When Mrs. Slater appeared with the foaming yellow glasses she wound her nervous little hands about the stem of the goblet and began a deep draught. She did not like it, it was hard to swallow, and instinct warned her not to go on with it; but all the thirst of a long morning—Ardelia was used to drinking frequently—urged her on, and its icy coldness enabled her to finish the glass. She handed it back with a deep sigh. The young lady clapped her hands.

“There!” she cried. “Now, how do you like real milk, Ardelia? I declare, you look like another child already! You can have all you want every day—why, what’s the matter?”

For Ardelia was growing ghastly pale before them; her eyes turned inward, her lips tightened. A blinding horror surged from her toes upward, and the memory of the liquid ice-cream and the frying onions faded before the awful reality of her present agony.

Later, as she lay limp and white on the slippery hair-cloth sofa in Mrs. Slater’s musty parlor, she heard them discussing her situation.

“There was a lot of Fresh Air children over at Mis’ Simms’s,” her hostess explained, “and they ’most all of ’em said the milk was too strong—did you ever! Two or three of ’em was sick, like this one, but they got to love it in a little while. She will, too.”

Ardelia shook her head feebly. She had learned her lesson. If success, as we are told, consists not in omitting to make mistakes, but in omitting to make the same one twice, Ardelia’s treatment of the milk question was eminently successful.

After a while Miss Forsythe went away, and at her urgent suggestion Ardelia came out and sat on the porch under the shade of a black umbrella. She sat motionless, staring into the grass, lost in the rapture of content that follows such a crisis as her recent misery, forgetful of all her earthly woes in the blessed certainty of her present calm. In a few minutes she was asleep.

When she awoke she was in a strange place. Outside the umbrella all was dusk and shadow. Only a square white mist filled the place of the barn, the tall trees loomed vaguely toward the dark sky, the stars were few. As she gazed in half-terror about her, a strange jangling came nearer and nearer, and a great animal with swinging sides, panting terribly, ran clumsily by, followed by a bare-legged boy, whose thudding feet sounded loud on the beaten path. Ardelia shrank against the wall with a cry that brought Mrs. Slater to her side.

“There, there, Delia, it’s only a cow. She won’t hurt you. She gives the milk—” Ardelia shuddered—“and the butter, too. Here’s some bread and butter for you. We’ve had our supper, but I thought the sleep would do you more good.”

Still shaken by the shock of that panting, hairy beast, Ardelia put out her hand for the bread and butter, and ate it greedily. Then she stretched her cramped limbs and looked over the umbrella. On the porch sat a bearded man in shirt-sleeves and stocking feet, his head thrown back against his chair, his mouth open. He snored audibly. Tipped back in another chair, his feet raised and pressed against one of the supports of the porch roof, sat a younger man. He was not asleep, for he was smoking a pipe, but he was as motionless as the other. Curled up on the steps was the boy who had brought them from the station. Occasionally he patted a mongrel collie beside him, and yawning, stretched himself, but he did not speak.

“That’s Mr. Slater,” said the woman softly, “and the young man is my oldest son, William. Henry brought you up with the team. They’re out in the field all day, and they get pretty tired. It gets nice an’ cool out here by evenin’, don’t it?”

She leaned back and rocked silently to and fro, and Ardelia waited for the events of the evening. There were none. She wondered why the gas was not lit in all that shadowy darkness, why the people didn’t come along. She felt scared and lonely. Now that her stomach was filled, and her nerves refreshed by her long sleep, she was in a condition to realize that aside from all bodily discomfort she was sad—very sad. A new, unknown depression weighed her down. It grew steadily, something was happening, something constant and mournful—what? Suddenly she knew. It was a steady, recurrent noise, a buzzing, monotonous click. Now it rose, now it fell, accentuating the silence dense about it.

“Zig-a-zig! Zig-a-zig!” then a rest.

“Zig-a-zig! Zig-a-zig-a-zig!”

She looked restlessly at Mrs. Slater. “Wha’s ’at?” she said.

“That? Oh, those are katydids. I s’pose you never heard ’em, that’s a fact. Kind o’ cozy, I think. Don’t you like ’em?”

“Naw,” said Ardelia.

Another long silence intervened. The rocking-chair swayed back and forth, and Mr. Slater snored. Little bright eyes glowed and disappeared, now high, now low, against the dark. It will never be known whether Ardelia thought them defective gaslights or the flashing, changing electric signs that add color to the night advertisements of her native city, for contrary to all fictional precedent, she did not inquire with interest what they were. She did not care, in fact.

After half an hour of the katydids William spoke.

“Nick Damon’s helpin’ in the south lot t’day,” he observed.

“Was he?” asked his mother, pausing a moment in her rocking.

“Yep.”

Again he smoked, and the monotonous clamor was uninterrupted.

“Zig-a-zig! Zig-zig! Zig-a-zig-a-zig!”

Slowly, against the background of this machine-like clicking, there grew other sounds, weird, unhappy, far away.

“Wheep, wheep, wheep!”

This was a high, thin crying.

“Buroom! Brrroom! broom!”

This was low and resonant and solemn. Ardelia scowled.

“Wha’s ’at?” she asked again.

“That’s the frogs. Bull-frogs and peepers. Never heard them, either, did ye? Well, that’s what they are.”

William took his pipe out of his mouth.

“Come here, sissy, ’n I’ll tell y’ a story,” he said lazily.

Ardelia obeyed, and glancing timorously at the shadows, slipped around to his side.

“Onc’t they was an ol’ feller comin’ ’long cross-lots, late at night, an’ he come to a pond, an’ he kinder stopped up an’ says to himself, ’Wonder how deep th’ ol’ pond is, anyhow?’ He was just a leetle—well, he’d had a drop too much, y’ see——”

“Had a what?” interrupted Ardelia.

“He was sort o’ rollin’ ’round—he didn’t know just what he was doin’——”

“Oh! Jagged!” said Ardelia comprehendingly.

“I guess so. An’ he heard a voice singin’ out, ’Knee deep! Knee deep! Knee deep!’”

William gave a startling imitation of the peepers: his voice was a high, shrill wail.

“’Oh, well,’ s’ he, ‘’f it’s just knee deep I’ll wade through,’ an’ he starts in.

“Just then he hears a big feller singin’ out, ‘Better go rrrround! Better go rrround! better-goround!’”

William rolled out a vibrating bass note that startled the bull-frogs themselves.

“’Lord!’ says he, ‘is it s’deep’s that? Well, I’ll go round, then.’ ’N’ off he starts to walk around.

“’Knee deep! Knee deep! Knee deep!’ says the peepers.

“An’ there it was. Soon’s he’d start to do one thing, they’d tell him another. Make up his mind he couldn’t, so he stands there still, they do say, askin’ ’em every night which he better do.”

“Stands where?” Ardelia looked fearfully behind her.

“Oh, I d’know. Out in that swamp, mebbe.”

Again he smoked, and the younger boy chuckled.

Time passed by. To Ardelia it might have been minutes, hours, or generations. An unspeakable boredom, an ennui that struck to the roots of her soul, possessed her. Her muscles twitched from nervousness. Her feet ached and burned in the stiff boots.

Suddenly Mr. Slater coughed and arose. “Well, guess I’ll be gettin’ to bed,” he said. “Come on, boys. Hello, little girl! Come to visit with us, hey? Mind you don’t pick poison vine.”

He shuffled into the house, and the boys followed him in silence. Mrs. Slater led Ardelia upstairs into a little hot room, and told her to get into bed quick, for the lamp drew the mosquitoes.

Ardelia kicked off her shoes and approached the bed distrustfully. It sank down with her weight and smelled hot and queer. Rolling off, she stretched herself on the floor, and lay there disconsolately. Sharp, quick stabs from the swarming mosquitoes stung her to rage; she tossed about, slapping at them with exclamations that would have shocked Mrs. Slater. The eternal chatter of the katydids maddened her. She could not sleep. Across the swamp came the wail of the peepers.

“Knee deep! Knee deep! Knee deep!”

At home the hurdy-gurdy was playing, the women were gossiping on every step, the lights were everywhere—the blessed fearless gaslights—the little girls were dancing in the breeze that drew in from the East River, Old Dutchy was giving Maggie Kelly an olive;—Ardelia slapped viciously at a mosquito on her hot cheek, heard a great June bug flopping into the room through the loosely waving netting, and burst into tears of pain and fright, wrapping her head tightly in her gingham skirt.

In the morning Miss Forsythe came over to inquire after her charge’s health, accompanied by another young lady.

“How do you do, my dear?” said the new lady kindly. “How terribly the mosquitoes have stung you! What makes you stay in the house, and miss the beautiful fresh air? See that great plot of daisies—does she know that she can pick all she wants, poor little thing? I suppose she never had a chance! Come out with me, Ardelia, and let’s see which can pick the biggest bunch.”

And Ardelia, fortified by ham and eggs, went stolidly forth into the grass and silently attacked the daisies.

In the middle of her bunch the new young lady paused. “Why, Ethel, she isn’t barefoot!” she cried. “Come here, Ardelia, and take off your shoes and stockings directly. Shoes and stockings in the country! Now you’ll know what comfort is,” as she unlaced the boots rapidly on the porch.

“Oh, she’s been barefoot in the city,” explained Miss Forsythe, “but this will be different, of course.”

And so it was, but not in the sense she intended. To patter about bare-legged on the clear, safe pavement, was one thing; to venture unprotected into that waving, tripping tangle was another. She stepped cautiously upon the short grass near the house, and with jaw set and narrowed lids felt her way into the higher growth. The ladies clapped their hands at her happiness and freedom. Suddenly she stopped, she shrieked, she clawed the air with outspread fingers. Her face was gray with terror.

“Oh, gee! Oh, gee!” she screamed.

“What is it, Ardelia, what is it?” they cried lifting up their skirts in sympathy, “a snake?”

Mrs. Slater rushed out, seized Ardelia, half rigid with fear, and carried her to the porch. They elicited from her as she sat with her feet tucked under her and one hand convulsively clutching Mrs. Slater’s apron that something had rustled by her “down at the bottom,” that it was slippery, that she had stepped on it, and wanted to go home.

“Toad,” explained Mrs. Slater briefly. “Only a little hop-toad, Delia, that wouldn’t harm a baby, let alone a big girl nine years old, like you.”

But Ardelia, chattering with nervousness, wept for her shoes, and sat high and dry in a rocking-chair for the rest of the morning.

“She’s a queer child,” Mrs. Slater confided to the young ladies. “Not a drop of anything will she drink but cold tea. It don’t seem reasonable to give it to her all day, and I won’t do it, so she has to wait till meals. She makes a face if I say milk, and the water tastes slippery, she says, and salty-like. She won’t touch it. I tell her its good well water, but she just shakes her head. She’s stubborn’s a bronze mule, that child. Just mopes around. ’S morning she asked me when did the parades go by. I told her there wa’n’t any but the circus, an’ that had been already. I tried to cheer her up, sort of, with that Fresh Air picnic of yours to-morrow, Miss Forsythe, and s’she, ‘Oh, the Dago picnic,’ s’she, ‘will they have Tony’s band?’

“She don’t seem to take any int’rest in th’ farm, like those Fresh Air children, either. I showed her the hens an’ the eggs, an’ she said it was a lie about the hens layin’ ’em. ‘What d’you take me for?’ s’she. The idea! Then Henry milked the cow, to show her—she wouldn’t believe that, either—and with the milk streamin’ down before her, what do you s’pose she said? ‘You put it in!’ s’she. I never should ’a’ believed that, Miss Forsythe, if I hadn’t heard it.”

“Oh, she’ll get over it,” said Miss Forsythe easily, “just wait a few days. Good-by, Ardelia, eat a good supper.”

But this Ardelia did not do. She gazed fascinated at Mr. Slater, who loaded his fork with cold green peas, shot them into his mouth, and before disposing of them ultimately added to them half a slice of rye bread and a great gulp of tea in one breath, repeating this operation at regular intervals in voracious silence. She regarded William, who consumed eight large molasses cookies and three glasses of frothy milk, as a mere afterthought to the meal, gulping furiously. He never spoke. Henry she dared not look at, for he burst into laughter whenever she did, and cried out, “You put it in! You put it in!” which irritated her exceedingly. But she knew that he was biting great round bites out of countless slices of buttered bread, and in utter silence. Now Ardelia had never in her life eaten in silence. Mrs. Fahey, when eating, gossiped and fought alternately with Mr. Fahey’s old, half-blind mother; her son Danny, in a state of chronic dismissal from his various “jobs,” sang, whistled and performed clog dances under the table during the meal; their neighbor across the narrow hall shrieked her comments, friendly or otherwise; and all around and above and below resounded the busy noise of the crowded, clattering city street. It was the breath in her nostrils, the excitement of her nervous little life, and this cold-blooded stoking took away her appetite, never large.

Through the open door the buzz of the katydids was beginning tentatively. In the intervals of William’s gulps a faint bass note warned them from the swamp:

“Better go rrround! Better go round!”

Mrs. Slater filled their plates in silence. Henry slapped a mosquito and chuckled interiorly at some reminiscence. A cow-bell jangled sadly out of the gathering dusk.

Ardelia’s nerves strained and snapped. Her eyes grew wild.

“Fer Gawd’s sake, talk!” she cried sharply. “Are youse dumbies?”