BETTY MAKES A FRIEND
Betty had appealed to Master Maloney's esthetic sense of beauty
directly she appeared before him. It was with regret, therefore, rather
than with the usual calm triumph of the office boy, that he informed
her that the editor was not in. Also, seeing that she was evidently
perturbed by the information, he had gone out of his way to suggest
that she lay her business, whatever it might be, before Mr. Renshaw's
temporary successor.
Smith received her with Old-World courtesy.
"Will you sit down?" he said. "Not to wait for Comrade Renshaw, of
course. He will not be back for another three months. Perhaps I can
help you. I am acting editor. The work is not light," he added
gratuitously. "Sometimes the cry goes round New York, 'Can Smith get
through it all? Will his strength support his unquenchable spirit?' But
I stagger on. I do not repine. What was it that you wished to see
Comrade Renshaw about?"
He swung his monocle lightly by its cord. For the first time since she
had entered the office Betty was rather glad that Mr. Renshaw was away.
Conscious of her defects as a stenographer she had been looking forward
somewhat apprehensively to the interview with her prospective employer.
But this long, solemn youth put her at her ease. His manner suggested
in some indefinable way that the whole thing was a sort of round game.
"I came about the typewriting," she said.
Smith looked at her with interest.
"Are you the nominee?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"Do you come from Mrs. Oakley?"
"Yes."
"Then all is well. The decks have been cleared against your coming.
Consider yourself engaged as our official typist. By the way,
_can_ you type?"
Betty laughed. This was certainly not the awkward interview she had
been picturing in her mind.
"Yes," she said, "but I'm afraid I'm not very good at it."
"Never mind," said Smith. "I'm not very good at editing. Yet here I am.
I foresee that we shall make an ideal team. Together, we will toil
early and late till we whoop up this domestic journal into a shining
model of what a domestic journal should be. What that is, at present, I
do not exactly know. Excursion trains will be run from the Middle West
to see this domestic journal. Visitors from Oshkosh will do it before
going on to Grant's tomb. What exactly is your name?"
Betty hesitated. Yes, perhaps it would be better. "Brown," she said.
"Mine is Smith. The smiling child in the outer office is Pugsy Maloney,
one of our most prominent citizens. Homely in appearance, perhaps, but
one of us. You will get to like Comrade Maloney. And now, to touch on a
painful subject--work. Would you care to start in now, or have you any
other engagements? Perhaps you wish to see the sights of this beautiful
little city before beginning? You would prefer to start in now?
Excellent. You could not have come at a more suitable time, for I was
on the very point of sallying out to purchase about twenty-five cents'
worth of lunch. We editors, Comrade Brown, find that our tissues need
constant restoration, such is the strenuous nature of our duties. You
will find one or two letters on that table. Good-by, then, for the
present."
He picked up his hat, smoothed it carefully and with a courtly
inclination of his head, left the room.
Betty sat down, and began to think. So she was really earning her own
living! It was a stimulating thought. She felt a little bewildered. She
had imagined something so different. Mrs. Oakley had certainly said
that _Peaceful Moments_ was a small paper, but despite that, her
imagination had conjured up visions of bustle and activity, and a
peremptory, overdriven editor, snapping out words of command. Smith,
with his careful speech and general air of calm detachment from the
noisy side of life, created an atmosphere of restfulness. If this was a
sample of life in the office, she thought, the paper had been well
named. She felt soothed and almost happy.
Interesting and exciting things, New York things, began to happen at
once. To her, meditating, there entered Pugsy Maloney, the guardian of
the gate of this shrine of Peace, a nonchalant youth of about fifteen,
with a freckled, mask-like face, the expression of which never varied,
bearing in his arms a cat. The cat was struggling violently, but he
appeared quite unconscious of it. Its existence did not seem to occur
to him.
"Say!" said Pugsy.
Betty was fond of cats.
"Oh, don't hurt her!" she cried anxiously.
Master Maloney eyed the cat as if he were seeing it for the first time.
"I wasn't hoitin' her," he said, without emotion. "Dere was two fresh
kids in the street sickin' a dawg on to her. And I comes up and says,
'G'wan! What do youse t'ink youse doin', fussin' de poor dumb animal?'
An' one of de guys, he says, 'G'wan! Who do youse t'ink youse is?' An'
I says, 'I'm de guy what's goin' to swat youse on de coco, smarty, if
youse don't quit fussin' de poor dumb animal.' So wit' dat he makes a
break at swattin' me one, but I swats him one, an' I swats de odder
feller one, an' den I swats dem bote some more, an' I gits de kitty,
an' I brings her in here, cos I t'inks maybe youse'll look after her. I
can't be boddered myself. Cats is foolishness."
And, having finished this Homeric narrative, Master Maloney fixed an
expressionless eye on the ceiling, and was silent.
"How splendid of you, Pugsy!" cried Betty. "She might have been killed,
poor thing."
"She had it pretty fierce," admitted Master Maloney, gazing
dispassionately at the rescued animal, which had escaped from his
clutch and taken up a strong position on an upper shelf of the
bookcase.
"Will you go out and get her some milk, Pugsy? She's probably starving.
Here's a quarter. Will you keep the change?"
"Sure thing," assented Master Maloney.
He strolled slowly out, while Betty, mounting a chair, proceeded to
chirrup and snap her fingers in the effort to establish the foundations
of an _entente cordiale_ with the cat.
By the time Pugsy returned, carrying a five-cent bottle of milk, the
animal had vacated the shelf, and was sitting on the table, polishing
her face. The milk having been poured into the lid of a tobacco tin, in
lieu of a saucer, she suspended her operations and adjourned for
refreshments, Pugsy, having no immediate duties on hand, concentrated
himself on the cat.
"Say!" he said.
"Well?"
"Dat kitty. Pipe de leather collar she's wearin'."
Betty had noticed earlier in the proceedings that a narrow leather
collar encircled the animal's neck.
"Guess I know where dat kitty belongs. Dey all has dose collars. I
guess she's one of Bat Jarvis's kitties. He's got twenty-t'ree of dem,
and dey all has dose collars."
"Bat Jarvis?"
"Sure."
"Who is he?"
Pugsy looked at her incredulously.
"Say! Ain't youse never heard of Bat Jarvis? He's--he's Bat Jarvis."
"Do you know him?"
"Sure, I knows him."
"Does he live near here?"
"Sure, he lives near here."
"Then I think the best thing for you to do is to run round and tell him
that I am taking care of his cat, and that he had better come and fetch
it. I must be getting on with my work, or I shall never finish it."
She settled down to type the letters Smith had indicated. She attacked
her task cautiously. She was one of those typists who are at their best
when they do not have to hurry.
She was putting the finishing touches to the last of the batch, when
there was a shuffling of feet in the outer room, followed by a knock on
the door. The next moment there entered a short, burly young man,
around whom there hung, like an aroma, an indescribable air of
toughness, partly due, perhaps, to the fact that he wore his hair in a
well-oiled fringe almost down to his eyebrows, thus presenting the
appearance of having no forehead at all. His eyes were small and set
close together. His mouth was wide, his jaw prominent. Not, in short,
the sort of man you would have picked out on sight as a model citizen.
He blinked furtively, as his eyes met Betty's, and looked round the
room. His face lighted up as he saw the cat.
"Say!" he said, stepping forward, and touching the cat's collar.
"Ma'am, mine!"
"Are you Mr. Jarvis?" asked Betty.
The visitor nodded, not without a touch of complacency, as of a monarch
abandoning his incognito.
For Mr. Jarvis was a celebrity.
By profession he was a dealer in animals, birds, and snakes. He had a
fancier's shop on Groome Street, in the heart of the Bowery. This was
on the ground floor. His living abode was in the upper story of that
house, and it was there that he kept the twenty-three cats whose necks
were adorned with leather collars.
But it was not the fact that he possessed twenty-three cats with
leather collars that had made Mr. Jarvis a celebrity. A man may win a
local reputation, if only for eccentricity, by such means. Mr. Jarvis'
reputation was far from being purely local. Broadway knew him, and the
Tenderloin. Tammany Hall knew him. Long Island City knew him. For Bat
Jarvis was the leader of the famous Groome Street Gang, the largest and
most influential of the four big gangs of the East Side.
To Betty, so little does the world often know of its greatest men, he
was merely a decidedly repellent-looking young man in unbecoming
clothes. But his evident affection for the cat gave her a feeling of
fellowship toward him. She beamed upon him, and Mr. Jarvis, who was
wont to face the glare of rivals without flinching, avoided her eye and
shuffled with embarrassment.
"I'm so glad she's safe!" said Betty. "There were two boys teasing her
in the street. I've been giving her some milk."
Mr. Jarvis nodded, with his eyes on the floor.
There was a pause. Then he looked up, and, fixing his gaze some three
feet above her head, spoke.
"Say!" he said, and paused again. Betty waited expectantly.
He relaxed into silence again, apparently thinking.
"Say!" he said. "Ma'am, obliged. Fond of de kit. I am."
"She's a dear," said Betty, tickling the cat under the ear.
"Ma'am," went on Mr. Jarvis, pursuing his theme, "obliged. Sha'n't
fergit it. Any time you're in bad, glad to be of service. Bat Jarvis.
Groome Street. Anybody'll show youse where I live."
He paused, and shuffled his feet; then, tucking the cat more firmly
under his arm, left the room. Betty heard him shuffling downstairs.
He had hardly gone, when the door opened again, and Smith came in.
"So you have had company while I was away?" he said. "Who was the
grandee with the cat? An old childhood's friend? Was he trying to sell
the animal to us?"
"That was Mr. Bat Jarvis," said Betty.
Smith looked interested.
"Bat! What was he doing here?"
Betty related the story of the cat. Smith nodded thoughtfully.
"Well," he said, "I don't know that Comrade Jarvis is precisely the
sort of friend I would go out of my way to select. Still, you never
know what might happen. He might come in useful. And now, let us
concentrate ourselves tensely on this very entertaining little journal
of ours, and see if we cannot stagger humanity with it."