Two Boys and a Fortune Part 31

"Jimmy only found it out by accident one night, listening to his father and mother talking when they thought he was asleep. She said I wasn't to feel bad about it; because they thought everything of me.

"But I did feel bad about it. It seemed too hard when the Morriseys had all they could do to get along they should have one more mouth-- and that not a Morrisey one-- to feed.

"I studied as hard as I could at school, so as to try and get through sooner and go to work and begin to pay them back, but when I was twelve Mr. Morrisey was kicked to death by a horse and the next year Mrs. Morrisey married a man who took her and the children out to Dakota to live.

"She wanted me to go along, but I knew Mr. Rollings didn't like me, and besides I wanted to stay East where there was some chance of my finding out who my parents were. I got a place as cash boy in a j.a.panese store and boarded with some people who lived across the hall from where the Morriseys had their rooms.

"But Mr. Benton used to get drunk and when he was that way he'd beat me, just for the fun of it, it seemed to me. Then when they cut down the number of boys employed in the store and I couldn't find another place right away, he growled so about my not paying my board that I did my things up in a bundle one night and hid myself on a ca.n.a.l boat down at the East River docks.

"The captain was awful mad when he found me after we had got clear up the North River. He gave me a good thras.h.i.+ng and then said he was going to drop me overboard. But he didn't and I stayed on board all that season, driving mules and being sworn at and kicked and trounced like any other boy on the ca.n.a.l. I sometimes wonder why I didn't wear out.

"When navigation closed I was set adrift, and had a hard scrub of it to get along for a time. I almost starved for a while in Albany, trying to pick up odd jobs. Then I came near freezing to death.

"Finally I got a place as errand boy in a grocery store and kept that till some money was missing and they said I took it. I never stole in my life. Mrs. Morrisey brought me up too well for me to do that. But I couldn't prove I didn't and I had to go. The man said I ought to consider myself lucky I wasn't sent to jail.

"After that I had a worse time of it than ever. Whenever I applied for a position they wanted to know why I had left my last place. And when I told them, they wouldn't have anything to do with me.

"Then came the days when sometimes I thought I might as well steal, I was suffering because I was accused of doing it. When I was very hungry and saw chances of sneaking apples out of grocery-men's barrels, it seemed as if I had almost a right to do it. But I never did.

"Something always turned up to keep me from starving. Once a woman stopped me in the street and gave me a dollar. She said I looked so hungry she couldn't go by me without doing it.

"Another time I was taken sick in one of the parks, something like Rex. I fell down in a kind of faint, and when I came to I was in a hospital and I stayed there quite a little while.

"After I got out it was spring and I thought I'd try the country. I didn't beg; only asked for work. Sometimes I got it; many more times I didn't.

"Now and then if they didn't give me work they'd offer me milk or a cup of coffee, so I managed to pull through somehow.

"At last I got back to New York. I'd been wanting to get there again ever since the thought came to me one day that perhaps some friends of Mr. Morrisey's might know something about the man who had given me to him when I was a baby.

"With a good deal of trouble I found one of them. He was a bricklayer, and he told me as near as he could remember the man who gave me to Tim Morrisey was from Philadelphia, and that's all he knew.

"Then I wanted to go to Philadelphia.

"'But what good will that do you, Miles?' Mr. Beesley asked. 'You can't find out any more there, nor as much, as you can here.'

"'No,' I told him, 'but if I'm there maybe somebody else'll find out something from pa.s.sing me in the street.'

"'That's an idea, sure enough,' he said, so I started for Philadelphia, and that's how I came to fall in with Rex."

Miles finished his story with this word. It almost seemed as if he had done it on purpose, planning for it, as it were. He always spoke the name with a little pause before it, as if it were something sacred.

Rex had told him to call him by it the day before when he had started in to address him as "Mr. Pell." All of Reginald's striving after premature manhood had been left in that past which preceded his experiences in the hotel at New York.

CHAPTER XXVI

IN WINTER DAYS

Miles's story had been listened to with the closest attention by all the little party.

"It's just like a chapter out of a book," Florence whispered to Roy.

"I wonder if he'll ever find out who he really is?"

"But how did you come by the name Harding?" Roy inquired. "Weren't you Miles Morrisey once?"

"Yes, but when they went away, and I got to having such hard knocks from the world, I didn't want to drag the name down with me, and so I thought Harding would suit me pretty well, and took it."

Rex seemed inclined to grow excited over the theme, so Mrs. Raynor proposed an immediate adjournment.

"To-morrow is Sunday," she said, "and Miles can have a long day with you."

In the course of this long day, the wanderer told Roy why he had been so drawn to Rex.

"I'd seen lots of nice looking fellows like him," he said, "but they always looked down on me and kind of kept off, as if they didn't want me to touch them with my dirty clothes. But I had to touch Rex when he fell over, and he didn't seem to mind it."

Rex flushed when Roy told him this.

"I'm afraid I didn't seem to mind because I was too far gone to mind anything," he said. "But I do like Miles and would like to do all I can for him."

Roy returned home Monday morning, and Mrs. Pell went out to Rex that night. He improved rapidly, and within a fortnight was able to be moved to Philadelphia.

It was pitiable to see the effect of the parting on Miles. The Raynors had found him very capable and were anxious to keep him. There was no reason why he should not stay, except his desire to be where Rex was, and his quixotic notion that he might meet his father or mother should he go to Philadelphia.

"Keep a look out for me, Rex," he said, "and if you hear of any position you think I could fill, let me know."

Rex promised, and after he got home told his mother that when she could make up her mind to completely forgive him for all he had done, he wished that she would think of something they could do for Miles.

"I have forgiven you already, Reggie," was the reply. "I know that you have suffered enough not to need any other lesson. Now, why not make Miles a present of a complete outfit? Wouldn't he take it all right?

Then when he is properly fitted out you can invite him on here for Thanksgiving day."

Rex talked over the idea with Roy and then they wrote to Mrs. Raynor about it. The end of the matter was that they procured Miles's measure, and sent him the things as a present from Rex.

The invitation for Thanksgiving was in the letter that accompanied them.

The young fellow's grat.i.tude was beyond the power of expression, and over and over again he asked Mrs. Raynor if she thought it was right for him to accept the invitation.

"Of course it is right," she told him. "They would not have asked you if they had not wanted you."

His happiness seemed to s.h.i.+ne out of every feature of his face when he boarded the Philadelphia train Wednesday afternoon. Rex met him at the station, and was surprised to see what a good looking fellow he made when he was properly rigged out.

"Maybe I'll make some awful blunders," Miles confided to him on the way to the house. "Remember I've never been with swell folks before."

"We're not swell," Rex laughed.

He had half a mind to let him know then and there where they got their money, but decided that he wouldn't. That night he took his guest to the theater, and the next day Sydney had a long talk with him.

His manners were much easier among the unaccustomed surroundings than Rex had dared to hope they would be. Mrs. Pell was very much attracted by him, and both girls declared he was "so interesting."

In his talk with him Sydney sought to draw out all the facts he could about the Morriseys.