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Miss Hazy's cottage, as has been said, was built on the bias in the Wiggses' side yard, and the little lean-to, immediately behind Miss Hazy's bedroom, had been pressed into service as Cuba's temporary abiding-place. After her first agonized fright, the old woman ventured to push the door open a crack and peep out.
"Bother the old party!" said Lucy, impatiently. She had begun disobeying Aunt Chloe when she was a very little girl. Fifteen minutes later she was tramping through the snow, her cheeks glowing and her spirits rising. The Wiggses, while always interesting, had of late acquired a new significance.
So this bleak morning in December she pinned the bed-clothes around the children and made them sit up close to the stove, while she pasted brown paper over the broken window-pane and made sprightly comments on the change in the weather. The Wiggses lived in the Cabbage Patch.
"Look how pretty it looks, all the lights a-streamin' out the winders on the snow. Looks like a chromo ma used to have." But the young Wiggses were in no frame of mind to appreciate the picturesqueness of the scene. It was very cold, and even the prospect of the show was dimmed by the present discomfort. By and by Australia's sobs began anew. "What's the matter, honey?
"You might 'a' knowed, it wuz fum dem Wiggses," she said. Lucy opened the note and read: "Dear miss Lucy the basket of cloths and vittles come. We or so mutch obliged, and asia wore the read dress to the soshul and enjoyed her selph so. Much I wish you could a went. Billy liked his hock and ladar and romcandons.
Bagby's grocery, it is true, conformed to convention, and presented a solid front to the railroad track, but Miss Hazy's cottage shied off sidewise into the Wiggses' yard, as if it were afraid of the big freight-trains that went thundering past so many times a day; and Mrs. Schultz's front room looked directly into the Eichorns' kitchen. The latter was not a bad arrangement, however, for Mrs.
To which deluge of information Lucy had listened with outward calmness and inward thrills. To-day, as she entered the Wiggses' gate a shout greeted her. Billy let himself down from the chicken-coop roof, and ran forward. "Them Roman candles wasn't no good!" he cried. "One of 'em busted too soon, and 'most blowed my hand off." "Oh, no, it didn't, Miss Lucy!" said Mrs.
Immediately behind them sat the Hazys and the Wiggses. "That there is the seminary student gittin' up now," whispered Mrs. Wiggs. "He's goin' to call out the pieces. My land! ain't he washed out? Looks like he'd go into a trance fer fifty cents. Hush, Australia! don't you see he is goin' to pray?"
The descent of the temperature seemed to have a like effect on the barrel of potatoes and the load of coal in the Wiggses' parlor. Mrs. Wiggs's untiring efforts to find employment had met with no success, and Jim's exertions were redoubled; day by day his scanty earnings became less sufficient to meet the demands of the family.
Schultz had been confined to her bed for ten years, and her sole interest in life consisted in watching what took place in her neighbor's family. The Wiggses' house was the most imposing in the neighborhood. This was probably due to the fact that it had two front doors and a tin roof. One door was nailed up, and the other opened outdoors, but you would never guess it from the street.
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