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CHAPTER I.
W
hat have you done with those new overshoes, Ally?"
"Put 'em away."
"Well, you can just go and get 'em, then. Come, hurry up, for I want to wear 'em down town."
But Ally didn't move.
"Ally, do you hear?" cried her cousin Florence.
"Yes, I hear, but I ain't a-going to mind you. The rubbers are mine, and you've worn 'em about enough already; you're stretching 'em all out, for your foot is bigger than mine."
"No such thing. I'm not hurting them in the least."
"Yes, you are; and you are taking the gloss all off 'em, too, and I want 'em to look new when I wear 'em in Boston."
"Well, I never heard of such selfish, stingy meanness as this. It's raining hard, and you'd let me go out and get my feet sopping wet rather than lend me your new rubbers."
"Why don't you wear your own old ones?"
"Because they leak."
"They've leaked ever since I got this new pair!" retorted Ally, scornfully. "But it isn't these rubbers only; you're always borrowing my things. There's my blue jacket; you've worn it till the edge is threadbare, and you've worn my brown hat until it looks as shabby—and—there! you've got my silver bangle on now! You're no better than a thief, Florence Fleming!"
"A thief! that's a nice pretty thing to say to me ! I should like to know who buys your things for you? Isn't it my father and Uncle John? I should like to know where you'd be, Alice Fleming, if it wasn't for Uncle John and father. Here, take your old bangle and keep it, and everything else that you've got. I never want to see anything of yours again; and I'm glad you're going off to Boston to Uncle John's for the rest of the winter, and I wish you'd stay there and never come back here,—I do!"
"I wish so too. Nobody in Uncle John's family would ever be so mean as to fling it in my face that I was a poor little beggar of an orphan."
"Uncle John's family! Uncle John's wife said the last time she was here that she dreaded the winter on your account,—there!"
"Aunt Kate—said that?"
"Yes, she did; I heard her."
A strange look came into Ally's eyes, and all the pretty color faded from her cheeks, as she cried out in a hoarse, passionate voice,—
"You're a cruel, bad girl, Florence Fleming, and I hope some day you'll have something cruel and bad come to you to punish you!" and with these words the excited child flung herself across her little bed, and burst into a paroxysm of stormy sobs and tears.
"Here, here, what's the matter now?" called out Mrs. Fleming, Florence's mother, coming across the hall and pushing the bedroom door open.
"Ask Ally," answered Florence, coolly,—so coolly, so calmly, that it was quite natural to suppose that she was much less to blame in the present disturbance than her cousin; and as poor Ally was past speaking, Florence had a double advantage, and Mrs. Fleming, glancing from one girl to the other, thought she understood the situation perfectly, and in consequence said rather sharply,—
"I do wish, Ally, you would try to control your temper a little more!" and with these words the lady turned and left the room, her daughter Florence following her. As they crossed the hall, Ally unfortunately overheard her aunt say to Florence, "I am thankful that you two are to be separated to-morrow for the rest of the winter. I hope by spring some other arrangement can be made to keep you apart. We shall never have any peace while—"
The rest of the sentence was lost to Ally. But she was quite sure it was—"while Ally is with us;" and a fresh gust of stormy sobs and tears shook the child's frame, as she thus concluded the sentence. A fresh gust also of stormy resentment and self-pity shook the girl. "Oh, yes, it's always Ally, always Ally, that's to blame," she said to herself. "It would be very different if I wasn't a poor little beggar of an orphan; yes, indeed, very different. If I was a rich orphan, if papa and mamma had left a lot of money to be taken care of with me, I guess things would be different,—I guess they would. I guess Florence Fleming and her mother wouldn't lay everything that goes wrong to me then, and I guess Aunt Kate wouldn't say that she dreaded the winter on account of me,—no, I guess she wouldn't! Oh, oh!" with a fresh sob, "I wish some other arrangement could be made away from 'em all. They don't any of 'em want me, not any of 'em, and I'd rather go to an orphan asylum. I'd rather—I'd rather—oh, I'd rather go to jail than to them !" and down into the pillow again went the fuzzy yellow head of this little hot-tempered Ally Fleming, who called herself so pityingly "a poor little beggar of an orphan."
The facts of the case were these: Ally's father and mother had both died when she was seven years old, leaving her to the care of her two nearest relatives,—her father's two brothers,—Mr. Tom and Mr. John Fleming. As her father had little or nothing to leave her, he had requested that the burden of her maintenance should be equally divided between the uncles, the child to live alternately with each family, six months with one and six with the other. She had been old enough when she was thus transplanted from her own home to realize more or less the peculiar condition of things; and as she was quick-tempered and sensitive, she very soon began to take note of any comment or remark regarding herself that was dropped in her hearing, and very often misunderstood or made too much of it. But there was no denying, whichever way you looked at it, that it was rather a difficult situation for both sides, and that the Fleming aunts and uncles and cousins had something to put up with, as well as Ally. But that Ally was the most to be pitied there was also no denying, for she could remember with unfading vividness being the centre of love, the one special darling in one home, and now she hadn't even one home, and was nobody's darling. As she lay there on the bed shaken by her sobs, she pictured to herself, as she had pictured many, many times in these three years, the happy home that she had lost. For three years this once petted child had been learning what it was to be one of many, or, as she herself put it, one too many.