Miss Billy: A Neighborhood Story

MARCH had gone out like a roaring lion, and April had slipped demurely in, armed with a pot of green paint and a scrubbing brush. There was not much to paint in Cherry Street. A few sparse blades of grass, tenacious of life, clung here and there to curbstone and dooryard; but there was plenty to scrub, and the Spring maid fell to with a will.

In consequence, on this Saturday morning, the water rushed down the gutters in torrents, while at the same time the small denizens of Cherry Street were lifted into the seventh heaven of delight by the sun's showing his jolly face through the clouds and inviting them out to wade. To make their happiness, if possible, more complete, a pine-wood wagon, creaking and groaning under its heavy weight, had turned the corner by Coffey's saloon and was coming up the street. The small Cherryites paused in blissful anticipation to watch its progress, while miniature Niagara cataracts hissed and foamed about their bare legs.

History repeats itself, and they argued with reason that when the driver should reach the end of the block and find it a blind: a street with no outlet, he would be covered with confusion and beat his horses and swear horribly in trying to turn around.

So, as the creaking wagon drew nearer, the youthful Cherryites fled ecstatically through the cold waters for the parquet seats on the curbstone nearest the stage, and waited breathlessly for the rising of the curtain.

But it was decreed that the Pine Wood Dramatic Company was to play to empty seats after all, for round the corner by Coffey's loomed a star of greater magnitude. It was Mr. Schultzsky, landlord and taxpayer of all Cherry Street, with his humped shoulders and rusty silk hat, his raw-boned grey nag and a vehicle popularly known as a "rattle-trap." Not that Mr. Schultzsky was an unusual sight in Cherry Street. Indeed, he dwelt therein, together with a strange little niece for housekeeper, who had come from some far-off heathen land; but rent day, always an interesting event, on this occasion held an added charm from the fact that Tommy Casey had made it known to all whom it might concern that his mother intended on this day to utter such truths to Mr. Schultzsky as would make him tremble on his throne. Therefore, almost before the iron-grey nag had come to a full stop, the bare-legged Cherryites, precipitately deserting the Pine Wood Drama, were gathered in a circle before Mrs. Casey's door awaiting with fearsome ecstasy the promised crack of doom.

The Casey house, in the early history of the city, had been a proud brick mansion of eight rooms, with green blinds, and flower beds outlined in serrated points of red brick. But the street had risen above the level of the yard, leaving the old house like a tombstone on a sunken grave. The old-fashioned porches were dust-coloured and worm-eaten, the fences fallen away, and the broken window panes and missing slats of the blinds gave it a peculiarly sightless and toothless appearance. Like a faithful friend, the old house shared the fallen fortunes of its early owner, for Mr. Schultzsky had bought it, as he had come into possession of nearly all his real estate, at a tax title sale. Now, as he tied his horse and Tommy Casey heralded his approach, Mrs. Casey with the baby tucked in the curve of one arm turned the bread in the oven, slammed the oven door, whisked the dust off a chair, and waited.