U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [417]
-173-going to live with the Francinis in a little apartment on the corner on the same block with the bakery they ran on Amsterdam Avenue where Agnes was going to work. They had a smal room for the two of them but it had a canary-bird in a cage and a lot of plants in the window and the Francinis were both of them fat and jol y and they had cakes with icing on them at every meal. Mrs. Francini was Grandma Fisher's sister. They didn't let Margie play with the other children on the block; the Francinis said it wasn't a safe block for little girls. She only got out once a week and that was Sunday evening, everybody always had to go over to the Drive and walk up to Grant's Tomb and back. It made her legs ache to walk so slowly along the crowded streets the way the Francinis did. Al summer she wished for a pair of rol erskates, but the way the Francinis talked and the way the nuns talked about dangers made her scared to go out on the streets alone. What she was so scared of she didn't quite know. She liked it, though, helping Agnes and the Francinis in the bakery.
That fal she went back to the convent. One afternoon soon after she'd gone back from the Christmas holidays Agnes came over to see her; the minute Margie went in the door of the visitors' parlor she saw that Agnes's eyes were red and asked what was the matter. Things had
changed dreadful y at the bakery. Poor Mr. Francini had fal en dead in the middle of his baking from a stroke and Mrs. Francini was going out to the country to live with Uncle Joe Fisher. "And then there's something else," Agnes said and smiled and blushed. "But I can't tel you about it now. You mustn't think that poor Agnes is bad and wicked but I couldn't stand it being so lonely." Margie jumped up and down. "Oh, goody, Fred's come back."
"No, darling, it's not that," Agnes said and kissed her and went away. That Easter Margie had to stay at the convent al
-174-through the vacation. Agnes wrote she didn't have any place to take her just then. There were other girls there and it was rather fun. Then one day Agnes came over to get her to go out, bringing in a box right from the store a new darkblue dress and a little straw hat with pink flowers on it. It was lovely the way the tissuepaper rustled when she unpacked them. Margie ran up to the dormitory and put on the dress with her heart pounding, it was the pret-tiest and grownupest dress she'd ever had. She was only twelve but from what little she could see of herself in the tiny mirrors they were' al owed it made her look quite grownup. She ran down the empty greystone stairs, tripped and fel into the arms of Sister Elizabeth. "Why such a hurry?""My mother's come to take me out on a party with my father and this is my new dress.""How nice," said Sister Elizabeth,
"but you mustn't . . ." Margie was already off down the passage to the parlor and was jump-ing up and down in front of Agnes hugging and kissing her. "It's the prettiest dress I ever had." Going over to New York on the elevated Margie couldn't talk about anything else but the dress.
Agnes said they were going to lunch at a restaurant where theatrical people went. "How wonderful. I've never had lunch in a real restaurant. . . . He must have made a lot of money and gotten rich.""He makes lots of money," said Agnes in a funny stammering way as they were walking west along Thirtyeighth Street from the el-station. Instead of Fred it was a tal dark man with a dignified manner and a long straight nose who got up from the table to meet them. " Margie," said Agnes, "this is Frank Man-devil e." Margie never let on she hadn't thought al the time that that was how it would be. The actor shook hands with her and bowed as if she
was a grownup young lady. "