The Steppe Children

"Dear Buddy:" Elizabeth was writing, "dear, dear, dear, dear Buddy: Mother says I may write you real letters, now, all about everything, because you are in a condition to bear it. So I am starting in bright and early this morning to go into details about my existence here, and my rejoicings at your convalesence. (I spelled that right, I know. I am naturally a good speller, but I have such a poor example set by my brother the Harvard gradjuate, that I fall into bad ways at the slightest provocation.)

"First let me testify that I love you best—best—best in the world next to and including Father John and Mother Darby. You know that already, but if you are like me, the things you like to be told best are the things you know already. You know also already how I feel about your being sick. Please get better and come down here quick. I want you here, oh! so very, very much. Father and Mother thought I had better get the benifit of country air, but they don't know that I can't get much benifit from country air while you are breathing cloriform and bandige lint all the time. I am not as comfortable in my mind as I should be in stuffy New York, in the hotel with Mother and Father. I know you will suspect my motives in yearning for hotel life, but it is really you and Mother and Father I want more even than life at the Holland House. Of course, I can't help feeling that if the house in Jersey is going to be closed and the family moved into town, though even in the dead of summer, that I ought to be moved with it, instead of being shoved off down here.

"Buddy, I know you used to like it here, but I am miserable. I know you would think it was awful of me if you knew how I felt inside all the time, but I am not half-civilized or savage enough to like the primative way things are down here. I think girls are more sensitive and refined than boys and care what they eat more, and how things sound that are said to them.

"I suppose that sounds horrid. Grandmother thinks I am horrid, though she is very tactful, I will say;—but Grandfather teases me from morning till night, and has no respect for my years. I don't see why he thinks I am such a child. He was engaged to Grandmother when she was sixteen, and that is only two years and forty-one days older than I am. But oh! Buddy, I wish my other grandparents had lived. I think I am all Endicott, really, because I feel like a stranger in a strange land. Children and little girls keep coming to call on me. The girls of my own age that I used to play with keep their distance, and I am not sorry. It's hard enough to be polite as it is. Life is one eternal round of corn beef and cabbage and fried fish hash. I hope you get plenty of steaks and chops and delicacies. Grandmother won't let me go in bathing unless I have someone to go with, and I haven't any one to go with. The motors whizz by all day, but Grandfather's Ford is in the repair shop, and so I don't get anywhere. Tennis? All the boys own the courts around here, and won't let the girls on them for fear they will mess them up for the tournaments. I don't know any girls to play with, so that doesn't affect me, but you can see what a good time I am having.

"Well, 'a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.' We used to have good times together, Buddy, befo' de war.

As she folded the closely written sheets of lilac-tinted notepaper and crowded them into their envelope, her grandmother's voice summoned her to the head of the stairs.

"The step-children are here," was what she seemed to be saying; "shall I send them up or are you ready to come down?"

"I beg your pardon, Grandmother?"

"The step-children are here."

"If you wish, Grandmother. It sounds just as if you said the step-children."

"I did say the step-children. I'm going to send them up for you to amuse them. Go right on upstairs, children. She ain't a bear. She won't bite you."

"I—" pant—pant—"see a bear yesterday, a dancing bear. Didn't I see a bear, Mose?"

"Hush, babe," another breathy voice answered. "You don't want to talk so much when you go a-visiting."

A mysterious single file of chubby children, considerably more ragged than dirty, made a cautious way up the steep stairs, panting as they came. Elizabeth led the way into the big chamber where she had been writing, and the three followed her solemnly. Her first instinct was to give them each a friendly pat, as if they were so many little dogs who had been running hard.

"Good morning, children," she said. She was fond of children, and these were adorable specimens, despite their superfluous fringes.

"Good morning, teacher," they answered, with unexpected promptitude.

"Well, I'm not exactly a teacher, you know. I'm just Miss—I mean—Elizabeth."

"We know who you be," the eldest, a boy, volunteered. "You'm Miss Laury Ann's granddaughty, that's who you be. We come to see you."

"That was very kind of you," Elizabeth smiled, "but I don't know who you are."

"We'm the step-children."

"You are just about like steps," said Elizabeth, "but that seems a funny name to call you just the same."

"'Tis our name," the second child, a girl with long red curls, met Elizabeth's eyes and subsided instantly.

"S-T-E-P-P-E," the boy spelled out. "'Tain't a joke. It's our name. It's Parper's name and Marmer's name."

"Steppe-father and Steppe-mother," Elizabeth said to herself, "and the Steppe children."

"You have other names?" she said aloud.

"I'm Moses."

"I'm Mabel."

"I'm Madget."

"Her real name is Margery, but she calls herself Madget, and so we call her that. Madget means a dwarft, and she's little for her age. I'm nine."

"I'm seven."

"I'm four," said Madget.

All this had so much the effect of a recitation that Elizabeth asked them if they spoke pieces.

"I speak 'Shavings,'" Moses said. "I—I mean Excelsior."

"I speak 'Baby's Evening Prayer.'"

"I speak, 'Little drops o' water—little grains o' sand—make a mighty ocean—an' a pleasant land,'" Madget contributed.

"She didn't ask you to speak it," Moses said, witheringly, "she only asked did you speak it."

"And you went and spoke it," Mabel added, accusingly.

The wail that Madget set up at being accused of this breach of polite usage sent Elizabeth's arms straight around her.

"You must remember she's only a baby," she said.

"That's what we tell her," Mabel said, "but we can't make her pay no attention to it."

"You must pay attention to it, and take care of her."

"Oh! we take care of her, all right," Moses agreed, darkly. "We gotter."

"Doesn't your mother take care of her sometimes?"

"No, ma'am."

"Is she sick—or something?"

"Yes, ma'am. She's sick o' living, she says."

"What does she do all the time?"

"Nothin'."

"Does she have to stay in bed?"

"Yes, ma'am, when she ain't up."

"What does the doctor say is the matter with her?"

"She don't have no doctor. She reads novels."

"All the time?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Who does the cooking?"

"We don't have no cooking."

"What do you eat?"

"Bread and molasses, and doughnuts out the cart."

"Don't you ever have any meat or chicken or fish hash or anything?"

"When my a'nt comes we do."

"Then your mother isn't really sick?"

"She feels as if she was, and she says that's just as bad."

"I'm going to be a hired girl when I grow up, and go out to work where I can make pies and cakes," Mabel said.

"I'm going to be a cook on a vessel," Moses said, "and get learned how to make vittles."

"I'm going to be a bake-cart," Madget said.

"Listen to her. Don't you know you can't be a bakery cart?" Moses jeered.

"You gotter be the one that drives it," Mabel contributed.

"I wanter be a bake-cart and curry the food around all the time."

"All right, you may." Elizabeth spoke just in time to avert another tearful crisis. "What would you like to do to amuse yourselves, children? Would you like to have me tell you a story?"

"No, ma'am," Moses said, promptly. He indicated the row of shiny travelling bags by the mahogany what-not. Elizabeth had long since unpacked them, but they were such proud possessions that she could not bear to put them out of sight. "I want to see what's in that," he said, selecting the hat-box.

"I want to see what's in that," Mabel said, choosing the suitcase in her turn.

Madget fell upon the overnight bag.

"I wanner see that," she said.

Elizabeth's laugh rang out gayly.

"You are acting just like the story of the three bears," she said. "There isn't anything inside of the bags now, but I'll show them to you, just the same. This is my hat-box, see, and these silver letters on the outside are my initials, E. S."

"There is, too, something inside," Mabel cried, as the brightly flowered lining was disclosed. "Trimming. Now open mine. There's trimming in all of them."

"And a pocket, too," Elizabeth said.

"Now me," said Madget.

"There isn't any trimming in this," Elizabeth said, hastily, "but there are lots of pockets, and see, in this pocket there is a little cake of lovely smelling soap, and I'm going to give it to you. You can wash your face and hands with it."

"She ain't a very good one to give soap to," Moses said. "Water makes her nervous."

"I'll give you all a piece of soap if you'll promise to use it every day—the big bear and the middle-sized bear, and the baby bear."

"I ain't going to be no bear," Moses said, "I was a bear in a canatartar. Zibe Hunt—he had me on a string, and he sang a song."

"What kind of a song?"

Mabel obliged, "And then he done some tricks," she added, "and Zibe hit him; and Parper licked him."

"Why should your father lick him?"

"For what he done to Zibe after the canatartar. He don't like to play bears now."

"I see a dancing bear," Madget said. "Didn't I, Mose?"

"You better stop talking about bears," Moses hinted, darkly.

"If you'll bring the children downstairs, Elizabeth," Grandmother called from the foot of the staircase, "they can have some milk and cookies."

Madget made directly for the staircase, and as promptly fell all the way into Grandmother's arms, from which position she scowled and freed herself.

"She always falls downstairs," Mabel said, tolerantly. "It don't hurt her."

"It does her good," Moses explained.

"Milk," said Madget, "and cookies."

"The little thing is really hungry," Grandmother said. "How long ago did she have her breakfast, Mose?"

"We don't have no breakfast to our house. She wouldn't eat her bread because she said she was skeered of it."

"Scared of it?"

"Well, some of it had gray fur on it, and she was afraid it was going to crawl out on her."

"Grandmother," Elizabeth cried, "why are these children neglected like this? Are they so poor or what?"

"They ain't no poorer than a great many other folks. Their mother won't do anything for them—that's all."

"But why?"

"She don't like work. Mercy me! They've et a dozen cookies already. You fill up their glasses, Elizabeth. I stirred half a cup o' cream into the pitcher so's to be sure they was nourished."

"Why isn't something done about them? The Charity Organization Society, or somebody, ought to take up the case."

"The only organization society we got is the fire department. These children don't need putting out, they need taking in more, I should say. If one person in the world lays down and refuses to do what the Lord requires of him he puts a powerful lot o' machinery out o' gear. Mis' Steppe—she just refuses to do her part in the Lord's scheme."

"Is she old and ugly?"

"She's young and pretty if she'd fix herself up some. She come from real good folks, too, but when she see how hard it was to live and take care o' her children like other folks, she just decided to lay down, and down she lay. Most all of us feels inclined to shirk our responsibilities at one time or another, but most of us thinks better of it after a spell. She thought worse of it, Mis' Steppe did. Too bad you don't like sugar-molasses cookies, Elizabeth."

"I do," Elizabeth blushed. "I was only just waiting for the children to get all they wanted."

"They'll never do that, but they got all they can hold. You open the screen door, Elizabeth——Scat, out you go," she said, shooing at the Steppe family as if they were so many chickens, and the children scattered instantly, chickenwise, onto the lawn, and down the path to the gate. "Too much of anything is good for nothing," she concluded, tranquilly.

"Buddy, my darling, I have broken into my letter again to say that I am a pig—the piggiest kind of pig, and this letter to you is a piggy letter. I will send it because I wrote it, and because I haven't got any time to write another, better one. I only wish to add that in certain ways I am as bad as 'Mis' Steppe,' that's a good pun you see, whether you know who I'm talking about or not. I'm going to be a better sister to you, and a better daughter to Father John and Mother Darby. I've found out that one poor mother can do so much damage in the world that I don't want to be a poor—anything. Get well, and write me a letter, Buddy.—Sister Bet."