Part 5

"What is it now, 208?" The voice at the head of the table put the question with a note of exasperation in it.

"Please 'um, another helpin'."

The sister's lips set themselves close. "Pass up 208's plate," she said. The empty plate, licked clean of molasses on the sly, went up the line and returned laden with three "bloomin' beauties" as 208 murmured serenely to herself. She ate one with keen relish, then eyed the remaining two askance and critically. Freckles grew anxious. What next? Contrary to all rules 208's head, after slowly drooping little by little, lower and lower, dropped finally with a dull thud on the edge of the table and a force that tipped the plate towards her. Freckles doubled up again; she had seen through the manuvre: the three remaining cakes slid gently into the open half--low apron neck and were safely lodged with the other four.

"Number 208 sit up properly or leave the table."

The sister spoke peremptorily, for this special One Three-hundredth was her daily, almost hourly, thorn in the flesh. The table stopped eating to listen. There was a low moan for answer, but the head was not lifted. Number 206 took this opportunity to give her a dig in the ribs, and Number 205 crowded her in turn. To their amazement there was no response.

"Number 208 answer at once."

"Oh, please, 'um, I've got an awful pain--oo--au--." The sound was low but piercing.

"You may leave the table, 208, and go up to the dormitory."

208 rose with apparent effort. Her hands were clasped over the region where hot corn-meal cakes are said to lie heavily at times. Her face was screwed into an expression indicative of excruciating inner torment. As she made her way, moaning softly, to the farther door that opened into the cheerless corridor, there was audible a suppressed but decided giggle. It proceeded from Freckles. The monitor warned her, but, unheeding, the little girl giggled again.

A ripple of laughter started down the three tables, but was quickly suppressed.

"Number 207," said the much-tried and long-suffering sister, "you have broken the rule when under discipline. Go up to the dormitory and don't come down again to-night." This was precisely what Freckles wanted. She continued to sniff, however, as she left the room with seemingly reluctant steps. Once the door had closed upon her, she flew up the two long flights of stairs after Flibbertigibbet whom she found at the lavatory in the upper dormitory, cleansing the inside of her apron from molasses.

Oh, but those cakes were good, eaten on the broad window sill where the two children curled themselves to play at their favorite game of "making believe about the Marchioness"!

"But it's hot they be!" Freckles' utterance was thick owing to a large mouthful of cake with which she was occupied.

"I kept 'em so squeezin' 'em against my stommick."

"Where the pain was?"

"M-m," her chum answered abstractedly. Her face was flattened against the window in order to see what was going on below, for the electric arc-light at the corner made the street visible for the distance of a block.

"I've dropped a crumb," said Freckles ruefully.

"Pick it up then, or yer'll catch it--Oh, my!"

"Wot?" said Freckles who was on her hands and knees beneath the window searching for the crumb that might betray them if found by one of the sisters.

"Git up here quick if yer want to see--it's the Marchioness an' another kid. Come on!" she cried excitedly, pulling at Freckles' long arm. The two little girls knelt on the broad sill, and with faces pressed close to the window-pane gazed and whispered and longed until the electric lights were turned on in the dormitory and the noise of approaching feet warned them that it was bedtime.

Across the street from the Asylum, but facing the Avenue, was a great house of stone, made stately by a large courtyard closed by wrought-iron gates. On the side street looking to the Asylum, the windows in the second story had carved stone balconies; these were filled with bright blossoms in their season and in winter with living green. There was plenty of room behind the balcony flower-boxes for a white Angora cat to take her constitutional. When Flibbertigibbet entered the Asylum in June, the cat and the flowers were the first objects outside its walls to attract her attention and that of her chum, Freckles. It was not often that Freckles and her mate were given, or could obtain, the chance to watch the balcony, for there were so many things to do, something for every hour in the day: dishes to wash, beds to make, corridors to sweep, towels and stockings to launder, lessons to learn, sewing and catechism. But one day Flibbertigibbet--so Sister Angelica called the little girl from her first coming to the Asylum, and the name clung to her--was sent to the infirmary in the upper story because of a slight illness; while there she made the discovery of the "Marchioness." She called her that because she deemed it the most appropriate name, and why "appropriate" it behooves to tell.

Behind the garbage-house, in the corner of the yard near the railroad tracks, there was a fine place to talk over secrets and grievances. Moreover, there was a knothole in the high wooden fence that inclosed the lower portion of the yard. When Flibbertigibbet put her eye to this aperture, it fitted so nicely that she could see up and down the street fully two rods each way. Generally that eye could range from butcher's boy to postman, or 'old clothes' man; but one day, having found an opportunity, she placed her visual organ as usual to the hole--and looked into another queer member that was apparently glued to the other side! But she was not daunted, oh, no!

"Git out!" she commanded briefly.

"I ain't in." The Eye snickered.

"I'll poke my finger into yer!" she threatened further.

"I'll bite your banana off," growled the Eye.

"Yer a cross-eyed Dago."

"You're another--you Biddy!" The Eye was positively insulting; it winked at her.