Argosy, Vol. 118, No. 4 — page 37: 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. “No. Daly’s been dead a long time. Now, open the windows—” “ Kid! Tell me! Where did you get this stuff?” “We found it here. We tore it out of the boxes and built a hill like Peretti said—”’ “ Daly!” he cried. And then he did dash to the windows, and his big shoulder heaved against the frame in a fury that astonished her. Again, and then with a crash of glass and rending wood the high window under the gable tottered and went out and downward. The child stood terrified. ‘Now you done it! The police ‘ll come, and—” —~ The late afternoon sunshine was pouring in a long, wide gap that was filled with dusty motes. Carlotta cried out in rapture, for there, as if by new magic, the silken hill stood forth with a snowy peak and slopes of flowers streaming to the floor. “The Turrialba’s silk,” the stranger muttered grimly. ‘‘ Daly hid the stuff here —and died.” Carlotta had gone to the window and was staring down. ‘You better get out,” she warned, “ you done it now! People are lookin’ at the window. There’s Mr. Peretti in the square and that girl who’s all the time lookin’ and lookin’. You better run!” And suddenly the young man who oe make sunshine did so. He whirled with a strange laugh, out through the hole in the wall and down the loft ladder to the Labat lodging floor. Carlotta followed slowly and with some regret. If the sunshine maker had not created all that racket with the window he could have remained and put up the sky, Sky would have kept the mountain from getting so dusty. Carlotta was trying to adjust the ladder where this sailor, who seerned so upset at sight of a mountain, had displaced it, when she saw him coming back. He was greatly excited, and shouted and laughed to some one behind. “Why, the tall girl who lives above the plaster-angel shop,” she murmured in sur- prise. ‘‘ Pretty like a mountain, and knows Mr. Peretti!” 507 When Eddie Bright’s head came above the floor into the loft he was surprised to him. He held a flash-light upon her, and she blinked and then said: “Give me that! It’s just what we need- ed before!” ‘ All right! You show the way!” Then the young man who made sunshine turned to help the other girl through the narrow cleft in the old brick wall to the room of the secret mountain. ‘It’s here, I tell you, Helen! The forty thousand dollars’ worth of silks that Daly got away with from the Turrialba, and they swore I was crooked in the customs service and let the gang do it. ‘Daly’s stuff —oh, come and look what the kids did with it!” ‘“A mountain,” explained the child, be- cause they were still. The tall girl was crying softly, and Car- lotta turned the flash-light on them both. No, she was laughing—in his arms. - It was queer the effect that mountains have on some people, she thought. “Looky,” she went on. where it’s dark, the robbers live, and bears come out of the woods. side, where it’s prettiest, princesses live and climb the hill to see everything beauti- ful.” The other girl, with the arm of the sunshine maker around her, stood in silent wonder again. The young man also was looking about as if he was trying to com- prehend it all, this cave of the jinn which they had made. | As high on the rough walls as children could reach, the stuff was tacked and spread over boxes and ancient chairs; everywhere, flung and unrolled, fabrics that the queens of the ages would have envied. Levantine merchants, beautiful women of Byzantium, priests and warriors of medi- eval pageants would have loved the clothes that were scattered under the feet of the longshoreman’s children. Wondrous vel- vets like unto those for which Genoese sailors braved the seas to Cathay; damasks of Sicily, silken rugs from Oriental garden find Carlotta’s there, staring expectantly at “This side, But on the other. walls, lovely tapestries of Anjou, robes of © nn (Cl QO) NOOK