In League with Israel Part 19

This time it was to examine Jack.

"What would you say, my son," he asked, "if I should tell you I do not want you to go to the office any more after this week?"

Jack's face was a study. The tears came to his eyes. "Why?" he asked.

"Because you will be strong enough then to go through a certain exercise I want you to take many times during the day. If you keep it up faithfully, I believe you will be walking by Christmas."

This was so much sooner than either Jack or Bethany had dared hope, that they hardly knew how to express their joy. Jack gave a loud whoop, and went wheeling out of the room at the top of his speed to tell Miss Caroline and Miss Harriet.

Dr. Trent looked after him with a fatherly tenderness in his face. Then he sighed and turned to Bethany. "I have another trouble to bring to you, my dear. Lee has been getting into so much mischief lately. I never knew till yesterday that he has not been attending school regularly this term. You see every allowance ought to be made for the child--no home but a boarding-house; no one to take an oversight--for I am called out night and day. He is such a bright boy, so full of life and spirit. I am satisfied that his teachers do not understand him. They have not been fair with him. He has been transferred from one ward to another, and finally expelled. He never told me until last night. He said he knew it would grieve me, and that he put it off from day to day, because he did not want to trouble me when I was so worried over several critical cases. That showed a sweet spirit, Bethany. I appreciated it. He has always been such an affectionate little chap. I wanted to go and interview the superintendent; but he insisted it would do no good, because they are all prejudiced against him. I know Lee is a good child.

They ought not to expect a growing boy, full of the animal spirits the Creator has endowed him with, to always work like a prim little machine.

Maybe I am not acting wisely, but he begged so hard to be allowed to go to work for awhile, instead of being sent to any other school, that I gave my consent. It is little a ten-year old boy can do, but he has a taking way with him, and he got a place himself. He is to be elevator-boy in the same building where your office is. You will see him every day, and I am giving you the true state of affairs, so you will not misjudge the child. I hope you will look out a little for him, Bethany."

"You may be sure I shall do that," she promised. "We are already great friends. He used to often join us on his way to school, and wheel Jack part of the distance."

Jack made as much as possible of the remaining time that he was allowed to go to the office. He studied no lessons but the short Hebrew exercises David still gave him. He called at all the different offices where he had made friends, and spent a great deal of time in the hall, talking to Lee, who was soon installed in the building as elevator-boy.

"My! but Lee has been fooling his father," exclaimed Jack to Bethany after his first interview. "Dr. Trent thinks he is such a little angel, but you ought to hear the things he brags about doing. He's tough, I can tell you. He smokes cigarettes, and swears like a trooper. He showed me an old horse-pistol he won at a game of 'seven up.' He shoots 'c.r.a.ps,'

too. He has been playing hooky half his time. One of the hostlers at the livery-stable, where his father keeps his horse, used to write his excuses for him. Lee paid him for it with tobacco he stole out of one of the warehouses down by the river. You just ought to see the book he carries around in his pocket to read when he isn't busy. It's called 'The Pirate's Revenge; or, A Murderer's Romance.' There is the awfulest pictures in it of people being stabbed, and women cutting their throats.

I told him he showed mighty poor taste in the stuff he read; and asked him how he would like to be found dead with such a thing in his pocket.

He told me to shut up preaching, and said the reason he has gone to work is to save up money so's he could go to Chicago or New York, or some big place, and have a 'howling good time.'"

It made Bethany sick at heart to think of the deception the boy had practiced on his father. Much as she trusted Jack, she could not bear to encourage any intimacy between the boys, and was glad when the time came for him to stay at home from the office. But in every way she could she strengthened her friends.h.i.+p with Lee. She brought him great, rosy apples, and pop-corn b.a.l.l.s that Jack had made. No ten-year-old boy could be proof against the long twists of homemade candy she frequently slipped into his pocket. Sometimes when the weather was especially stormy and bleak outside, she stopped to put a bunch of violets or a little red rose in his b.u.t.ton-hole. She was so pretty and graceful that she awakened the dormant chivalry within him, and he would not for worlds have had her suspect that he was not all his father believed him to be.

One day she told David enough of his history to enlist his sympathy.

After that the young lawyer began to take considerable notice of him, and finally won his complete friends.h.i.+p by the gift of a little brown puppy, that he brought down one morning in his overcoat pocket.

There was no more time to read "The Pirate's Revenge." The helpless, sprawling little pup demanded all his attention. He kept it swung up in a basket in the elevator, when he was busy, but spent every spare moment trying to develop its limited intelligence by teaching it tricks. That was one occupation of which he never wearied, and in which he never lost patience. From the moment he took the soft, warm, little thing in his arms, he loved it dearly.

"I shall call him Taffy," he said, hugging it up to him, "because he's so sweet and brown."

Bethany had intended for Dr. Trent and Lee to dine with them on Thanksgiving day, but the sisters were invited to Mrs. Dameron's, and Mrs. Marion was so urgent for her and Jack to spend the day with them, that she reluctantly gave up her plan.

"I shall certainly have them Christmas," she promised herself, "and a big tree for Lee and Jack. Lois will help me with it."

It was a genuine Thanksgiving-day, with gray skies, and snow, to intensify the indoor cheer.

"Didn't the altar look beautiful this morning with its decorations of fruit and vegetables, and those sheaves of wheat?" remarked Miss Harriet. She had just come home from Mrs. Dameron's, and was holding her big mink m.u.f.f in front of the fire to dry. She had dropped it in the snow.

"Yes, and wasn't that salad-dressing fine?" chimed in Miss Caroline.

"Sally always did have a real talent for such things."

"It couldn't have been any better than we had," insisted Jack. "I don't believe I'll want anything more to eat for a week."

"That's very fortunate," answered Miss Caroline, "for I gave Mena an entire holiday. We'll only have a cup of tea, and I can make that in here."

They sat around the fire in the gloaming, quietly talking over the happy day. One of Bethany's greatest causes for thanksgiving was that these two gentle lives had come in contact with her own. Their simple piety and childlike faith sweetened the atmosphere around them, like the modest, old-fas.h.i.+oned garden-flowers they loved so dearly. Well for Bethany that she had the constant companions.h.i.+p of these loving sisters.

Happy for Jack that he found in them the gracious grandmotherly tenderness, without which no home is complete. They were very proud of their boy, as they called him. Between the Junior League and their conscientious instruction, Jack was pretty firmly "rooted and grounded"

in the faith of his fathers. Night stole on so gradually, and the firelight filled the room with such a cheerful glow, they did not notice how dark it had grown outside, until a sudden peal of the door-bell startled them.

"I'll go," said Miss Caroline, adjusting the spectacles that had slipped down when the sudden sound made her start nervously up from her chair.

She waited to light the gas, and hastily arrange the disordered chairs.

When she opened the door she saw David Herschel patiently awaiting admittance. It was the first time he had ever called. She was all in a flutter of surprise as she ushered him into the library. He declined to take a seat.

"I have just come home from Dr. Trent's," he said. "You know he boards across the street from Rabbi Barthold's, where I have been spending the day. He was called out to see a patient last night, and came home late, with a hard chill. Lee saw me coming out of the gate a little while ago, and came running over to tell me. He had been out skating all morning.

After dinner, when he went up-stairs, he found his father delirious, and had telephoned for Dr. Mills. He was very much frightened, and wanted me to stay with him until the doctor came. As soon as Dr. Mills examined him, he called me aside and asked me to get into his buggy and drive out to the Deaconess Home. I have just come from there," he said, "and Miss Carleton has no case on hands. Tell her if ever she was needed in her life, she is needed now. He has pneumonia, and it has been neglected too long, I'm afraid. It may be a matter of only a few hours."

Bethany started up, looking so white and alarmed that David thought she was going to faint. He arose, too.

"I must go over there at once," she said.

"It is quite dark," answered David. "I am at your service, if you want me to wait for you."

"O, I shall not keep you waiting a moment," she answered. "Jack, I'll be back in time to help you to bed."

As she spoke she began putting on her wraps, which were still lying on the chair, where she had thrown them off on coming in, a little while before.

David offered his arm as they went down the icy steps.

"It was so good of you to come at once," she said, as she accepted his a.s.sistance. "Is Miss Carleton there now?"

"Yes," he answered, "she was ready almost instantly. She is the same nurse that I met early one morning in that laundry office. She told me on the way back that Dr. Trent has done so much for the Home and for the poor. She says she owes her own life to his skill and care, and that no service she could render him would be great enough to express her grat.i.tude. They all feel that way about him at the Home."

Belle Carleton met them at the bedroom door. "Dr. Trent has just spoken about you," she said in a low tone to Bethany. "He has had several lucid intervals. Take off your hat before you go to him."

Lee sat curled up in a big chair in a dark corner of the room, with Taffy hugged tight in his arms. An undefinable dread had taken possession of him. He looked up at Bethany, with a frightened, tearful expression, as she patted him on the cheek in pa.s.sing.

Dr. Trent opened his eyes when she sat down beside him, and took his hand. He smiled brightly as he recognized her.

"Richard's little girl!" he said in a hoa.r.s.e whisper, for he could not speak audibly. "Dear old d.i.c.k."

Then he grew delirious again. It was only at intervals he had these gleams of consciousness.

After awhile his eyes closed wearily. He seemed to sink into a heavy stupor. Bethany sat holding his hand, with the tears silently dropping down into her lap as she looked at the worn fingers clasped over hers.

What a world of good that hand had done! How unselfishly it had toiled on for others, to wipe out the brother's disgrace, to surround the little wife with comforts, to provide the boy with the best of everything! Besides all that, it had filled, as far as lay in its power, every other needy hand, stretched out toward its sympathetic clasp.

She sat beside him a long time, but he did not waken from the heavy sleep into which he had fallen, even when she gently withdrew her fingers, and moved away to let Dr. Mills take her place. He had just come in again.

"Will you need me here to-night, Belle?" asked Bethany.

The nurse turned to Dr. Mills inquiringly. He shook his head. "Miss Carleton can do all that is necessary," he said. "I shall come again about midnight, and stay the rest of the night, if I am needed. He will probably have no more rational awakenings while this fever keeps at such a frightful heat. If we can subdue that soon, he has such great vitality he may pull through all right."

"You'd better go back, dear," urged the nurse. "You have your work ahead of you to-morrow, and you look very tired."

"I have an almost unbearable headache," admitted Bethany, "or I would not think of leaving. I would not go even for that, if I thought he would have conscious intervals of any length; but the doctor thinks that is hardly probable to-night. I'll come back early in the morning. Maybe he will know me then."

"Are you going, too?" asked Lee, clinging wistfully to David's hand, as Bethany put on her hat.