Argosy, Vol. 118, No. 4 — page 33: what you’re looking at

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

THE LITTLE GIRL WHO NEVER SAW A HILL. Old Peretti was shaking his head. That was a long time to wait, with the mighty Mississippi pouring its floods down from the mountains of all America to flow eter- nally to the sea. But the old man thought of another eternal thing, and that was love in a human heart. Carlotta looked after the tall girl again curiously: ‘‘ Mr. Peretti! She’s just like a mountain, ain’t she?”’ ‘* Hey—what?” “Pretty,” said the child slowly. “ And say, can a little hill grow up to be a moun- tain?” “Hey? Oh—h-m! I guess so!” The old sailorman-artist looked after the tall girl, too. Once he had shyly wanted to ask if he might not try to sketch her face—but he knew he couldn’t. Beauty was not for him and his clumsy pencil. He could only draw angular mountains to please the little girl that\ played in the plaza. But he “knew why the other girl lived down here by the wharves, and why she lingered about the park, when a ship came up from the south ports past Yuca- tan, trying to learn things from the customs men and officers. It was the smaller ships that the girl haunted—obscure old tubs dug out of mud banks to sail again; dirty vagrants, bring- ers of copra and rich woods, manned by motley crews out of the Caribbean isles, The old man knew, and sighed: “She goes to meet the ships, and he never comes back no more.” Then he chuckled to the longshoreman’s child: ‘Hey, if I didn’t have a crick in my back I’d put to sea and find ’im!” The next evening Carlotta stood before three battered chairs piled one upon the other, over which she had heaped a won- drous pyramid. “Pile up the big box first, and the chairs on that—and then le’ me climb up and put on snow!” cried her brother vigorously. “All right! But don’t step on the flow- ers, T’ Frere!” | And they fell to work again, bringing bales and boxes and litter of the loft, and then robing the rough outlines about with loveliness. The little hill was greene nobly up to be a mountain! 503 In the last light Carlotta knelt to. caress its soft slopes, to put her eyes down close to discover the flowers. For flowers there were—gorgeous roses, delicate fleur-de-lis, faint wreathings of violets, but all in the half-dark. But Peretti had said that hills loved sunshine, and that the lordliest moun- tain could shelter the tiniest flower. ‘Somebody ’1l have to get the window open so’s to make sunshine,” mused Car- lotta. And then she gave a sudden cry of delight. For over the slate roofs of the French ‘Quarter and through the grimed windows had come a great beam of light—and there her hill stood with a snowy peak! The bright ray, blinding them for an instant, vanished, leaving the hill softly shimmering in the arc glow, while down in the crescent bend of the Mississippi came the siren of a steamship warping to its dock. And the search-light did not comé again to the loft of the secret mountain. “But did you see?” Carlotta cried. *“ Snow and everything! We got to have somebody big and tall to make sunshine! And flowers, T’ Frere—do you know where we saw flowers once like these?” “In Torchi’s shop, where they sell the little saints in Lent—”’ “No, no! Those were paper flowers! No—it was at the opera, when we stood in Bourbon Street and watched beautiful ladies get out of automobiles. Look here —dressed just like me!” And she caught up a corner of a field of pale gold and drew it about her shoul- ders. ‘“ Looky! That’s the way they go to the opera!”’ ‘““Gee!”? he murmured. as a mountain!” Carlotta drew the folds closer at this first compliment of her life. She started to walk importantly down the room, and the boy howled: ‘‘ Hold on! Youw’re upsettin’ the mountain!” It was true. The boxes ‘and broken chairs heaved and fell with a crash. T’ Frere rushed to the wreck, disconsolate. ‘““Now, see what you gone and done! Upset a mountain!” And he fell to work like Thor at the foundations of the world, trying to rebuild ‘* You're pretty GO IOO S (C(C)