"I am so glad you consented to stay over until Monday, auntie, for now
you can hear our famous boy choir," Ethel had said at the breakfast
table that Sunday morning.
"Humph! I've heard of 'em," Ann Wetherby had returned crisply, "but I
never took much stock in 'em. A choir--made o' boys--just as if music
could come from yellin', hootin' boys!"
An hour later at St. Mark's, the softly swelling music of the organ was
sending curious little thrills tingling to Miss Wetherby's finger tips.
The voluntary had become a mere whisper when she noticed that the great
doors near her were swinging outward. The music ceased, and there was
a moment's breathless hush--then faintly in the distance sounded the
first sweet notes of the processional.
Ethel stirred slightly and threw a meaning glance at her aunt. The
woman met the look unflinchingly.
"Them ain't no boys!" she whispered tartly.
Nearer and nearer swelled the chorus until the leaders reached the open
doors. Miss Wetherby gave one look at the white-robed singers, then
she reached over and clutched Ethel's fingers.
"They be!--and in their nighties, too!" she added in a horrified
whisper.
One of the boys had a solo in the anthem that morning, and as the
clear, pure soprano rose higher and higher, Miss Wetherby gazed in
undisguised awe at the young singer. She noted the soulful eyes
uplifted devoutly, and the broad forehead framed in clustering brown
curls. To Miss Wetherby it was the face of an angel; and as the
glorious voice rose and swelled and died away in exquisite melody, two
big tears rolled down her cheeks and splashed on the shining, black
silk gown.
At dinner that day Miss Wetherby learned that the soloist was "Bobby
Sawyer." She also learned that he was one of Ethel's "fresh-air"
mission children, and that, as yet, there was no place for him to go
for a vacation.
"That angel child with the heavenly voice--and no one to take him in?"
Miss Wetherby bethought herself of her own airy rooms and flowering
meadows, and snapped her lips together with sudden determination.
"I'll take him!" she announced tersely, and went home the next day to
prepare for her expected guest.
Early in the morning of the first Monday in July, Miss Wetherby added
the finishing touches to the dainty white bedroom upstairs.
"Dear little soul--I hope he'll like it!" she murmured, giving a loving
pat to the spotless, beruffled pillow shams; then her approving eyes
fell upon the "Morning Prayer" hanging at the foot of the bed. "There!
them sweet little cherubs sayin' their prayers is jest the thing fur
the little saint to see when he first wakes ev'ry mornin'. Little
angel!" she finished softly.
On the table in the comer were hymn books, the great red-and-gold
family Bible, and a "Baxter's Saint's Rest"--the only reading matter
suited to Miss Wetherby's conception of the mind behind those soulful
orbs upraised in devout adoration.
Just before Ann started for the station Tommy Green came over to leave
his pet dog, Rover, for Miss Wetherby's "fresh-air" boy to play with.
"Now, Thomas Green," remonstrated Ann severely, "you can take that
dirty dog right home. I won't have him around. Besides, Robert Sawyer
ain't the kind of a boy you be. He don't care fur sech things--I know
he don't."
Half an hour later, Ann Wetherby, her heart thumping loudly against her
ribs, anxiously scanned the passengers as they alighted at Slocumville
Station. There were not many--an old man, two girls, three or four
women, and a small, dirty boy with a dirtier dog and a brown paper
parcel in his arms.
He had not come!
Miss Wetherby held her breath and looked furtively at the small boy.
There was nothing familiar in _his_ appearance, she was thankful to
say! He must be another one for somebody else. Still, perhaps he
might know something about her own angel boy--she would ask.
Ann advanced warily, with a disapproving eye on the dog.
"Little boy, can you tell me why Robert Sawyer did n't come?" she asked
severely.
The result of her cautious question disconcerted her not a little. The
boy dropped the dog and bundle to the platform, threw his hat in the
air, and capered about in wild glee.
"Hi, there. Bones! We're all right! Golly--but I thought we was
side-tracked, fur sure!"
Miss Wetherby sank in limp dismay to a box of freight near by--the
bared head disclosed the clustering brown curls and broad forehead, and
the eyes uplifted to the whirling hat completed the tell-tale picture.
The urchin caught the hat deftly on the back of his head, and pranced
up to Ann with his hands in his pockets.
"Gee-whiz! marm--but I thought you'd flunked fur sure. I reckoned me
an' Bones was barkin' up the wrong tree this time. It looked as if
we'd come to a jumpin'-off place, an' you'd given us the slip. I'm
Bob, myself, ye see, an' I've come all right!"
"Are you Robert Sawyer?" she gasped.
"Jest ye hear that, Bones!" laughed the boy shrilly, capering round and
round the small dog again. "I's 'Robert' now--do ye hear?" Then he
whirled back to his position in front of Miss Wetherby, and made a low
bow. "Robert Sawyer, at yer service," he announced in mock pomposity.
"Oh, I say," he added with a quick change of position, "yer 'd better
call me 'Bob'; I ain't uster nothin' else. I'd fly off the handle
quicker 'n no time, puttin' on airs like that."
Miss Wetherby's back straightened. She made a desperate attempt to
regain her usual stern self-possession.
"I shall call ye 'Robert,' boy. I don't like--er--that other name."
There was a prolonged stare and a low whistle from the boy. Then he
turned to pick up his bundle.
"Come on, Bones, stir yer stumps; lively, now! This 'ere lady 's
a-goin' ter take us ter her shebang ter stay mos' two weeks. Gee-whiz!
Bones, ain't this great!" And with one bound he was off the platform
and turning a series of somersaults on the soft grass followed by the
skinny, mangy dog which was barking itself nearly wild with joy.
Ann Wetherby gazed at the revolving mass of heads and legs of boy and
dog in mute despair, then she rose to her feet and started down the
street.
"You c'n foller me," she said sternly, without turning her head toward
the culprits on the grass.
The boy came upright instantly.
"Do ye stump it, marm?"
"What?" she demanded, stopping short in her stupefaction.
"Do ye stump it--hoof it--foot it, I mean," he enumerated quickly, in a
praise-worthy attempt to bring his vocabulary to the point where it
touched hers.
"Oh--yes; 't ain't fur," vouchsafed Ann feebly.
Bobby trotted alongside of Miss Wetherby, meekly followed by the dog.
Soon the boy gave his trousers an awkward hitch, and glanced sideways
up at the woman.
"Oh, I say, marm, I think it's bully of yer ter let me an' Bones come,"
he began sheepishly. "It looked 's if our case 'd hang fire till the
crack o' doom; there wa'n't no one ter have us. When Miss Ethel, she
told me her aunt 'd take us, it jest struck me all of a heap. I tell
ye, me an' Bones made tracks fur Slocumville 'bout's soon as they 'd
let us."
"I hain't no doubt of it!" retorted Ann, looking back hopelessly at the
dog.
"Ye see," continued the boy confidentially, "there ain't ev'ry one what
likes boys, an'--hi, there!--go it, Bones!" he suddenly shrieked, and
scampered wildly after the dog which had dashed into the bushes by the
side of the road. Ann did not see her young charge again until she had
been home half an hour. He came in at the gate, then, cheerfully
smiling, the dog at his heels.
"Jiminy Christmas!" he exclaimed, "I begun ter think I 'd lost ye, but
I remembered yer last name was the same's Miss Ethel's, an' a
boy--Tommy Green, around the corner--he told me where ye lived. And,
oh, I say, me an' Bones are a-goin' off with him an' Rover after I 've
had somethin' ter eat--'t is mos' grub time, ain't it?" he added
anxiously.
Ann sighed in a discouraged way.
"Yes, I s'pose 't is. I left some beans a-bakin', and dinner'll be
ready pretty quick. You can come upstairs with me, Robert, an' I'll
show ye where yer goin' ter sleep," she finished, with a sinking heart,
as she thought of those ruffled pillow shams.
Bobby followed Miss Wetherby into the dainty chamber. He gave one
look, and puckered up his lips into a long, low whistle.
"Well, I'll be flabbergasted! Oh, I say, now, ye don't expect me ter
stay in all this fuss an' fixin's!" he exclaimed ruefully.
"It--it is the room I calculated fur ye," said Ann, with almost a choke
in her voice.
The boy looked up quickly and something rose within him that he did not
quite understand.
"Oh, well, ye know, it's slick as a whistle an' all that, but I ain't
uster havin' it laid on so thick. I ain't no great shakes, ye know,
but I'll walk the chalk all right this time. Golly! Ain't it squashy,
though!" he exclaimed, as with a run and a skip he landed straight in
the middle of the puffy bed.
With one agitated hand Miss Wetherby rescued her pillow shams, and with
the other, forcibly removed the dog which had lost no time in following
his master into the feathery nest. Then she abruptly left the room;
she could not trust herself to speak.
Miss Wetherby did not see much of her guest that afternoon; he went
away immediately after dinner and did not return until supper time.
Then he was so completely tired out that he had but two words in reply
to Miss Wetherby's question.
"Did ye have a good time?" she asked wistfully.
"You bet!"
After supper he went at once to his room; but it was not until Miss
Wetherby ceased to hear the patter of his feet on the floor above that
she leaned back in her chair with a sigh of relief.
When Ann went upstairs to make the bed that Tuesday morning, the sight
that met her eyes struck terror to her heart. The bedclothes were
scattered in wild confusion half over the room. The washbowl, with two
long singing-books across it, she discovered to her horror, was serving
as a prison for a small green snake. The Bible and the remaining hymn
books, topped by "Baxter's Saints' Rest," lay in a suspicious-looking
pile on the floor. Under these Miss Wetherby did not look. After her
experience with the snake and the washbowl, her nerves were not strong
enough. She recoiled in dismay, also, from the sight of two yellow,
paper-covered books on the table, flaunting shamelessly the titles:
"Jack; the Pirate of Red Island," and "Haunted by a Headless Ghost."
She made the bed as rapidly as possible, with many a backward glance at
the book-covered washbowl, then she went downstairs and shook and
brushed herself with little nervous shudders.
Ann Wetherby never forgot that Fourth of July, nor, for that matter,
the days that immediately followed. She went about with both ears
stuffed with cotton, and eyes that were ever on the alert for all
manner of creeping, crawling things in which Bobby's soul delighted.
The boy, reinforced by the children of the entire neighborhood, held a
circus in Miss Wetherby's wood-shed, and instituted a Wild Indian Camp
in her attic. The poor woman was quite powerless, and remonstrated all
in vain. The boy was so cheerfully good-tempered under her sharpest
words that the victory was easily his.
But on Saturday when Miss Wetherby, returning from a neighbor's, found
two cats, four dogs, and two toads tied to her parlor chairs, together
with three cages containing respectively a canary, a parrot, and a
squirrel (collected from obliging households), she rebelled in earnest
and summoned Bobby to her side.
"Robert, I've stood all I'm a-goin' ter. You've got to go home Monday.
Do you hear?"
"Oh, come off, Miss Wetherby, 't ain't only a menag'ry, an' you don't
use the room none."
Miss Wetherby's mouth worked convulsively.
"Robert!" she gasped, as soon as she could find her voice, "I never,
never heard of such dreadful goin's-on! You certainly can't stay here
no longer," she continued sternly, resolutely trying to combat the
fatal weakness that always overcame her when the boy lifted those
soulful eyes to her face. "Now take them horrid critters out of the
parlor this minute. You go home Monday--now mind what I say!"
An hour later, Miss Wetherby had a caller. It was the chorister of her
church choir. The man sat down gingerly on one of the slippery
haircloth chairs, and proceeded at once to state his business.
"I understand, Miss Wetherby, that you have an--er--young singer with
you."