Out of the Triangle Part 18

"Perhaps it hasn't come yet," she said to the guests, when she came in.

A little later she went out again. Mrs. Landler came to help search, though Miss Stratton disclaimed the need of aid.

"The paper doesn't always fall where I can see it," explained Miss Stratton, mortified at her failure to find the paper for her guests.

"Who brings it around?" asked Mrs. Landler, looking at the broad front walk.

"Harry b.u.t.terworth," answered Miss Stratton.

She did not tell of the annoyance Harry had caused her heretofore.

Harry's mother was a church friend of the Landlers and the Strattons, and Miss Stratton was loath to expose the boy's shortcomings.

No paper appeared, and after a thorough search, Mrs. Landler and Miss Stratton went into the house. Dusk was coming. Miss Stratton had occasion to go upstairs for something, and glancing out of the front hall window, she saw the twisted roll of that evening's paper lying on a projection of the roof.

"He threw the paper on the roof!" exclaimed Miss Stratton, "and he didn't come in to tell me!"

She pushed up the hall window, and reaching out as far as she dared, she tried with an old umbrella handle to dislodge the paper. She drew breathlessly back.

"It's no use! I can't get it!" she gasped.

She went downstairs and told her mother quietly, but Mrs. Stratton had no scruples about informing her guests what had happened.

"That boy's thrown this evening's paper on the roof!" stated old Mrs. Stratton. "He does put us to so much trouble!"

The minister instantly offered to climb the roof. Miss Stratton and her mother protested, but Mr. Landler took off his coat, climbed out of an upper-story window, and secured the paper. In one column was a notice that the missing s.h.i.+p had been heard from and was safe. Great was the rejoicing around the Strattons' supper-table that their friend's son was not lost.

The next time Mr. Landler saw Harry, the minister said pleasantly, "You gave me quite a climb the other night, my boy."

Harry looked astonished.

"Gave you a climb?" he questioned. "I gave you one?"

"Yes," nodded Mr. Landler. "Miss Stratton's evening paper fell on her roof. My wife and I were taking supper there, so I climbed the roof for the paper."

Harry turned very red. Was ever a paper boy so unfortunate? He knew the paper fell on the roof, but who would have supposed Mr. Landler was at the Strattons'? Harry wanted very much to be thought well of by the minister and his wife. Everybody liked them.

"I didn't know you were there," apologized Harry, hardly knowing what to say.

"No," said the minister, gently, "we never know who may be in any home. You didn't know you were delivering the paper to me. You thought it was to Miss Stratton. Wasn't that it?"

"Yes," acknowledged the boy.

"If the Lord Jesus were here on earth, Harry," went on the minister in a very grave, tender tone, "and if he wanted a little service from you, you wouldn't render it in the way you deliver Miss Stratton's paper, would you? Yet she is his child, one of his representatives on earth, and as you treat her you treat him.

'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these,' you know, Harry."

The next night Miss Stratton's paper fell with an emphatic thwack in the middle of the front walk. The next night it did the same, and the next, and the next.

"What has changed that boy?" wondered Miss Stratton with grateful relief, as weeks pa.s.sed and the paper still fell in plain sight.

She did not know that as Harry carefully aimed his papers, the boy thought, "'Ye have done it unto me.'"

AN HONEST DAY'S WORK.

Willis walked down one of the city wharves. He was going to see his father, Mr. Sutherland, who was one of the men employed by the State Harbor Commissioners in repairing wharves. The piles that supported the wharves often needed renewing, being eaten by teredos. Sometimes the flooring of the wharves sagged and needed restoring to the former level.

Willis liked to see the pile-driver with its big hammer. He marveled at the air-pumps with which sagging wharves were raised. Perhaps three air-pumps at a time would be stationed over as many "caps," as the twelve-inch timbers under the wharf's flooring were called. The pumps, being worked, would raise the caps and hold them until blocks could be shoved underneath. Then the pumps were worked some more, and other blocks put under, till the wharf was restored to the required level. Great screws such as are used in raising buildings were also employed under wharves sometimes. There were rocks under some wharves, and water was under others. Whichever it was, Willis'

father often had to go under the wharves and climb around among the caps and stringers and piles, repairing.

Seven or eight other men were employed like Mr. Sutherland. It was mid-forenoon, but Willis saw that three or four of the men were not working. They were idling around the engine of the pile-driver, and were eating something that Willis found to be cooked crabs.

"Where's father?" asked Willis. "Under the wharf, working," answered one man. "He thinks the State's looking after him every minute."

Willis saw some planks had been taken up in a distant part of the wharf's flooring. He went there and swung himself down under the wharf. There were rocks there, and Willis, following the sound of a hammer, came to his father.

"That you, Willis?" asked his father pleasantly.

"Pa," said the boy, "some of the other men are up there eating crabs. Why don't you go up and get some, too?"

"It isn't lunch-time," returned Mr. Sutherland. "We're expected to work now."

"Three or four of the men aren't working," said Willis.

"No," rejoined his father. "Several of the men lately have taken to catching crabs sometimes during work-hours."

"The men tie a rope to a big twine net, and bait it, and let it out into the bay. In a little while they haul it in again, and there are maybe half a dozen big crabs in the net. The men have made a sort of boiler out of an empty kerosene can with one end cut off. They attach a hose to the boiler of the engine and fill that can with hot water. The crabs cook in a short time and those men stop work to eat. It would be all right if the men cooked the crabs at noon, when we're allowed to lay off, but they stop in the fore-noon sometimes an hour, and again in the afternoon sometimes, and eat crabs. The foreman we have now allows it. He does it himself."

While Mr. Sutherland talked he was working. Several of the other men were working up on top of the wharf, as Willis could tell by the sounds, but the boy's thoughts were with those three or four other men who were idling. Were not those men employed to work as steadily as his father?

"It isn't fair for them to stop and you to have to keep on,"

objected Willis. "I should think those, men would be discharged."

"They may and they mayn't," said his father. "They are appointed by different Harbor Commissioners, and as long as the Commissioners don't know, I suppose the men will keep their places."

"One man told me you thought the State was looking at you every minute," said Willis.

"My boy," answered Mr. Sutherland, fitting a block into place, "it's true that I'm employed to work for the State, and I feel just as much that I must do honest work for the State as if I were working for some individual. But it isn't thought of the State that makes me faithful. A Christian ought to give an honest day's work. Some people don't seem to think cheating the State is as bad as cheating another person. But it is."

Willis climbed upon the wharf again. He saw when the men who had been eating crabs came back to work. He noticed they did not work very heartily.

"My father doesn't work that way," thought the boy.

"An honest day's work." The words followed Willis as he went away from the wharf. The next week Willis was going to begin work for a large dry-goods store.

"I'll do honest day's work, too," resolved Willis.