Argosy, Vol. 118, No. 4 — page 32: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

502 The little girl clapped her hands, her eyes widened: ‘‘ Come see! T’ Frere—a mountain! Like the old sailor said—pretty purple things with white on top where snow is! )») The boy came to look fearsomely at the thing at her feet: ‘‘ But mountains are big—Peretti said so.” “We'll make it big. Look now!” She knelt and thrust an arm under the lustrous stuff. There was the little hill at least a foot higher, pointing valiantly up to the attic dark as Fujiyama lifts to the stars on the roof of the world. 3 ‘Snow! Snow!” cried Carlotta. retti said there’d be snow!” ‘“‘What’s snow?” The small boy stared doubtfully. ‘‘I never saw any.” “It’s white. where nobody goes.” She ran back to the dusty bundles which they had torn apart under the rafters, and came now to fling a great band of silvery fabric across the ancient floor. The arc light showed floating motes through the gloom, and there, sure enough, under this murky chaos was the little hill taking form 6c Pe- and beauty. ‘And flowers—” the child breathed wonderingly. ‘Snow on top where no- body goes, but down where it’s warm— flowers on the mountain. T’ Frere—come see! There are flowers!” He knelt by her, their noses very close to the tiny mountain. ‘““Gee—flowers!”” he said at length. “ But don’t you make so much racket jumpin’ up and down, or the people down- stairs ‘ll hear, and we never can come up here any more to play with mountains or nothin’.” ‘“‘ Nobody lives down-stairs since Mr. Daly died in his shop.” “The police ‘Il come and find all this, and then they won’t be no mountain. And it’s so dark you can’t hardly see the flow- ers.” “ We'll build it big—by the window. If the sun shines on it, it ‘ll shine. The sun shines on mountains. Peretti said so.” “We'll get these old chairs and boxes and pile ’em. We'll build ’at ol’ mountain up higher ’n the sky, Carlotta. We’ll—” It stays on mountains THE ARGOSY. ‘‘ Keep still,” she warned. “ Don’t ever tell any of the kids we been up here. Don’t you ever tell anybody. Remember, T’ Frere!” And they went through the hole over the jagged bricks, and then down the ladder to their own lodgings. Louis Labat, the long- shoreman, was snoring, and did not hear the whispering of his two motherless chil- dren as they crept to bed and covered their ears against the sting of the Texas norther that swayed the creaking palms out in the plaza of the bronze general. The bronze general on the green horse was always peering to the west, as if he, too, might be looking for mountains over the flat roofs of New Orleans; and Carlot- ta, who played through the wide, stone- flagged alley of Pere Antoine and about the plaza where she pleased, often wondered why Mr. Peretti—surely a greater man, with his cane from the cannibal isle and his sketches of hills, done in pink and pur- -ple crayons—did not have a monument with a horse and a cocked hat so that the tourists in the motor buses would stop and look and listen. And the other girl—the tall girl who lived behind the latticed gallery on the floor above Mme. Torchi’s shop, where they sold little plaster saints and angels—Car- lotta wondered at her, too; for once she stopped by Mr. Peretti, who was sunning himself on a bench, and asked: “The Arabella docked last night; and didn’t the mate—did he say he’d asked down there in Trinidad, or Port 0’ Spain, as he said he would, for word of—Eddie?”’ The old sailor rubbed his nose doubt- fully. “‘ I—miss—I limped down there soon as that ol’ windjammer tied up, and asked em. I asked ’em all, miss—and the mate said jes’ once, when they was loadin’ asphalt, some lad saw him shippin’ out for the Wind’ard Islands. It was two years ago, and—”’ “Qh, tell him to come back!” the girl cried. ‘In any port—on any ship—have them tell him to come back! Tell him I waited—that I’ll wait as long as the hills last and the rivers run to the sea!”’ Then the tall girl went on, leaving the little girl staring after. cConmnicoool.