The Rich Little Poor Boy Part 20

Maloney rose, and Johnnie saw that he was angry. "You know the law!" he a.s.serted. "This boy ought to be in school!"

School! Johnnie caught his breath. Mr. Maloney was here to help him! Had not Cis declared over and over that some day Big Tom would be arrested for keeping Johnnie home from public school? Mrs. Kukor had agreed. And now this was going to happen! And, oh, school would be Heaven!

"Sure," a.s.sented Big Tom, smoothly. "But who's goin' t' send him? 'Cause I don't have t' do _anything_ for him."

"You'll have to appear before a magistrate," declared the other. "For I'm going to enter a complaint."

Barber began to swell. With a curse, he rose and faced Maloney. "Look here!" he said roughly. "This kid is nothin' t' me. I fetched him here when his aunt died. I didn't have t'. But if I hadn't, he'd 've starved, and slept in the streets, or been a cost t' the city. Well, he's been a cost t' me--git that, Mister Maloney? T' _me_! A poor man! I've fed him, and give him a place t' sleep--instead of takin' in roomers, like the rest of the guys do in this buildin'."

Again the man looked about him. "Roomers?" he repeated. "Why, there's no ventilation here, and you get no sun. This flat is unfit to live in!"

"You tell that t' the landlord!" cried Big Tom, his chest heaving. "He makes me pay good rent for it, even if it _ain't_ fit t' live in!"

Maloney shook his head.

"Oh, yes, I know all about your city rules," went on the longsh.o.r.eman.

"But the Dagoes in this tenement pack their flats full. I don't. Jus'

the boy sleeps in this kitchen. And if it wasn't for me, where'd he be right now? Out in the snow?"

Maloney shrugged, sat down, and leaned back, thinking. And in the pause Johnnie thought of several matters. For one thing, now he had a new way of considering his being in the flat. Sure enough, if Barber had not fed and housed him where would he have been? With Uncle Albert? But Uncle Albert had never come down to see him; had not--as Big Tom had often taken the pains to point out--even written Johnnie a postcard. Now the boy suddenly found himself grateful to Barber.

Mr. Maloney's manner had lost much of its a.s.surance. "But the boy must be taught something," he declared. "He's ignorant!"

Ignorant! Johnnie rose, scarcely able to keep back a protest.

Barber whirled round upon him. "Ignorant!" he cried. "Y' hear that, Johnnie? This gent thinks you don't know nothin'!--That's where you're off, Maloney!--Johnnie, suppose you read for him. Ha? Just show him how ignorant y' are!"

Johnnie made an involuntary start toward the drawer of the table, remembered, and stopped. "What--what'll I read?" he asked.

The man looked around. "Exactly!" he exclaimed. "What'll he read? What have you got in this flat _for_ him to read? Where's your books? or papers? or magazines? You haven't a sc.r.a.p of printed matter, as far as I can see."

"Give us that paper out of your overcoat," suggested Big Tom, ignoring what the other had said. "Let the kid read from it."

As Johnnie took the paper, he was almost as put out at the man as was Barber. "I've read ever since I was a baby," he declared. "Aunt Sophie, she used to give me lessons." Then he read, easily, smoothly, pausing at commas, stopping at periods, p.r.o.nouncing even the biggest words correctly.

"All right," interrupted Maloney, after a few paragraphs. "That'll do.

You read first rate--first rate."

"And I know dec'mals," boasted Johnnie; "and fractions. And I can spell ev'ry word that was in Cis's spellin' book." Yes, and he knew much more that he dared not confess in the hearing of Barber. He longed to discourse about his five books, and all the wonderful people in them, and to say something about the "thinks" he could do.

"There y' are!" exclaimed the longsh.o.r.eman, triumphant. "There y' are!

D' y' call that ignorant? for a ten-year-old boy?"

Maloney looked across at Johnnie and smiled. "He's a _mighty_ smart lad!" he admitted warmly.

"Knows twice as much as most boys of his age," went on Barber. (He had come to this conclusion, however, in the past five minutes.) "And all he knows is good. He behaves himself pretty fair, too, and I don't have much trouble with him t' speak of. So he's welcome t' stay on far's _he's_ concerned. But"--his voice hardened, his nose darted sidewise menacingly--"if _you_ stick your finger in this pie, and drag me up in front of a Court, I'm goin' t' tell y' what'll come of it, and I mean just what I say: I'll set the kid outside that door,"--indicating the one leading to the hall, "and the city can board and bed him. Jus' put _that_ in your pipe and smoke it!"

Evidently Mr. Maloney did not smoke, for though Johnnie watched the visitor closely, the latter drew out no pipe. "Wouldn't know where I could send him," he confessed, but as if to himself rather than to Big Tom; "not just now, anyhow. But"--suddenly brightening--"what about night school?"

"Have him chasin' out o' _nights_?" cried Barber, scandalized. "Comin'

in all hours off the _street_? I guess _not_! So if you and your Court want this kid t' go t' night school, out he gits from _here_. And that's my last word." He sat down.

Mr. Maloney got up, a worried expression on his face. "I'll have to let the matter stand as it is for a while," he admitted quietly. "This year the city's got more public charges than it knows what to do with--so many men out of work, and so much sickness these last months. And as you say, the boy isn't ignorant."

When he went, he left the paper behind; and that evening Johnnie read it from the first page to the last, advertis.e.m.e.nts and all. Big Tom saw him poring over it, but said nothing (the boy's reading on the sly had proved a good thing for the longsh.o.r.eman). Johnnie, realizing that he was seen, but that his foster father did not roar an objection, or jerk the paper from his hands, or blow out the light, was grateful, and felt suddenly less independent.

But what he did not realize was that, by reading as well as he had, he had hurt his own chances of being sent to public school.

CHAPTER XV

SCOUTS

WHEN, toward the latter part of March, the days were so warm that Johnnie was able once more to take short, daily walks, he never went without bringing home a box to split up for kindling. The box was an excuse. And he wanted the excuse, not to ease his conscience about leaving Grandpa alone, but to save himself should Big Tom happen home and find him gone.

So far as Grandpa was concerned, the feeble veteran scarcely seemed to know any more whether he was alone or not, there being small difference between the flat without Johnnie and the flat with Johnnie if Johnnie had a book. But also Grandpa always had some one else with him now--some one who comforted his old heart greatly. This was Let.i.tia.

Grandpa had always shown much fondness for the old doll. And one day--soon after Cis received the new one--when Johnnie chanced to give Let.i.tia into the hands of the old man, the latter was so happy that Johnnie had not taken Let.i.tia away, and Cis had not. Instead, she gave the old doll to Grandpa. And so it came about that Let.i.tia shared the wheel chair, where she lay in the crook of Grandpa's left arm like a limp infant (she was shedding sawdust at a dreadful rate, what with the neglect she was suffering of late), while her poor eyes fixed themselves on distance.

"She don't look like she's happy," Johnnie had declared to Cis more than once. "She looks like she's just standin' it."

"Why, Johnnie!" Cis had reproved, "And here you've always said that _I_ was silly about her!"

"Who's silly?" Johnnie had demanded, defensive, and blus.h.i.+ng furiously.

"Grandpa's tickled to have her," Cis had continued.

There the matter was dropped. Nevertheless, Johnnie had then formed a certain firm conviction, which he continued to hold. It was that Cis was lacking in loyalty to the old doll (forgetting that only recently he had hurled Let.i.tia headfirst into the tiny room).

By the end of March Johnnie had begun to fret about One-Eye. He missed the cowboy sadly; and what made the latter's absence seem all the harder to bear was the belief that his friend was back in New York again, yet was not visiting the flat because he was, for some reason, displeased.

With Cis?--about that new doll--or what?

"He's mad about somethin',"--Johnnie vowed it over and over. "He said he'd be gone a few days. But that was _months_ ago."

Cis denied that she had anything to do with One-Eye's staying away. She missed him, too; or, rather, she felt the loss of those almost nightly gifts of fruit and sweets. As for Barber, he had no more good cigars to smoke before his fellow longsh.o.r.emen. And his lunch pail lacked oranges and bananas at noontime, and had to be filled with prunes. Altogether, the cowboy's failure to return worked a general hards.h.i.+p.

"Oh, why don't he write me again?" mourned Johnnie. These days he secretly enjoyed any glimpse of Edwarda, and would even steal into Cis's room sometimes to peep at her. She made him feel sure that One-Eye had really once been there with them--as did also the letter and the blue handkerchief.

Johnnie lightened his heart with all this testimony. For it was often difficult for him to feel any more certain about the cowboy than he did about his four millionaires, or Sir Galahad, say, or Uncas, or Goliath, or Crusoe. He could revel gloriously in make-believe, yes; but perhaps for this very reason he found himself terribly p.r.o.ne to doubt facts! And as each day went by, he came to wonder more and more about the reality of One-Eye, though the pa.s.sing time as steadily added romantic touches to the figure of the Westerner.

Often at night Johnnie held long conversations with him, confessing how much he missed him, thanking him for past favors, begging him to return.

"Oh, One-Eye, _are_ y' mad at me?" he would implore. And if there were stars framed by the window, they would dance as the gray eyes swam.

Whenever he roved hither and thither, hunting for boxes, he was really hunting his friend. He kept close watch of the men who pa.s.sed him, always hoping earnestly that one day he might catch sight of One-Eye.

He brought home only one box at a time. At first if some grocer gave him a large one, so that he had more wood than was needed to start the morning fire, he burned his surplus, so that he would have to go out again the following day. Later on he gave the extra sticks to Mrs.