



Produced by Charles Aldarondo.  HTML version by Al Haines.










MRS. WIGGS OF THE CABBAGE PATCH


BY

ALICE CALDWELL HEGAN


NEW YORK.. MCMII

Copyright, 1901, by





  THIS LITTLE STORY IS
  LOVINGLY DEDICATED
  TO MY MOTHER, WHO
  FOR YEARS HAS BEEN
  THE GOOD ANGEL OF
  "THE CABBAGE PATCH"






CONTENTS


MRS. WIGGS'S PHILOSOPHY

WAYS AND MEANS

THE "CHRISTMAS LADY"

THE ANNEXATION OF CUBY

A REMINISCENCE

A THEATER PARTY

"MR. BOB"

MRS. WIGGS AT HOME

HOW SPRING CAME TO THE CABBAGE PATCH

AUSTRALIA'S MISHAP

THE BENEFIT DANCE






MRS. WIGGS OF THE CABBAGE PATCH




CHAPTER I

MRS. WIGGS'S PHILOSOPHY

    "In the mud and scum of things
    Something always always sings!"

"MY, but it's nice an' cold this mornin'! The thermometer's done
fell up to zero!"

Mrs. Wiggs made the statement as cheerfully as if her elbows were
not sticking out through the boy's coat that she wore, or her teeth
chattering in her head like a pair of castanets. But, then, Mrs.
Wiggs was a philosopher, and the sum and substance of her philosophy
lay in keeping the dust off her rose- spectacles. When Mr.
Wiggs traveled to eternity by the alcohol route, she buried his
faults with him, and for want of better virtues to extol she always
laid stress on the fine hand he wrote. It was the same way when
their little country home burned and she had to come to the city to
seek work; her one comment was: "Thank God, it was the pig instid of
the baby that was burned!"

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. It was not a real cabbage
patch, but a queer neighborhood, where ramshackle cottages played
hop-scotch over the railroad tracks. There were no streets, so when
a new house was built the owner faced it any way his fancy prompted.
Mr. 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. 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. When the country house burned,
one door had been saved. So Mrs. Wiggs and the boys brought it to
the new home and skilfully placed it at the front end of the side
porch. But the roof gave the house its chief distinction; it was the
only tin roof in the Cabbage Patch. Jim and Billy had made it of old
cans which they picked up on the commons.

Jim was fifteen and head of the family; his shoulders were those of
a man, and were bent with work, but his body dwindled away to a pair
of thin legs that seemed incapable of supporting the burden imposed
upon them. In his anxious eyes was the look of a bread-winner who
had begun the struggle too soon. Life had been a tragedy to Jim: the
tragedy that comes when a child's sensitive soul is forced to meet
the responsibilities of manhood, yet lacks the wisdom that only
experience can bring.

Billy Wiggs was differently constituted; responsibilities rested
upon him as lightly as the freckles on his nose. When occasion or
his mother demanded he worked to good purposes with a tenacity that
argued well for his future success, but for the most part he played
and fought and got into trouble with the aptitude characteristic of
the average small boy.

It was Mrs. Wiggs's boast that her three little girls had geography
names; first came Asia, then Australia. When the last baby arrived,
Billy had stood looking down at the small bundle and asked
anxiously: "Are you