"Sh-h-h, dear! You mustn't call him that. We must help him to forget
it, and to grow into being like ourselves."
Arthur grunted noncommittally. Presently he strolled into the sitting
room, whistling a tune. With hands in his pockets, his bearing was that
of an overlord. He made a circuit of the room, eying the new guest, as
the new guest eyed him back.
"Hello?" the overlord said at last, with a faint note of interrogation.
Still whistling and still with his hands in his pockets, he strolled
out again.
Tom Whitelaw's nerves had become so many runlets for shame. He was
the crook! He knew the word as one which crooks themselves use
contemptuously. If he should hear it again.... But happily Mrs.
Tollivant had put her veto on its use.
The gate clicked again. Coming up the pathway, he saw a girl of about
his own age, with a boy much younger who swung himself on crutches. All
his movements were twisted and grotesque. His head was sunk into his
shoulders as if he had no neck. His feet and legs wore metal braces.
His face had the uncannily aged look produced by suffering. Without
actually helping him, the little girl kept by his side maternally. She
was a dainty little girl, very fair, with shiny yellow hair hanging
down her back, like a fairy princess in a picture book. The boy looking
out of the window fell in love with her at sight. He was sure that in
her he would find a friend.
On entering she called out in a whiny voice, very musical to Tom
Whitelaw's ear:
"Ma! Bertie's been a naughty boy. He wouldn't sing 'Pretty Birdling'
for Miss Smallbones. I told him you'd punish him, and you will, won't
you, ma?"
As there was no response to this, the young ones came to the door of
the sitting room and looked in. They stared at the stranger, and the
stranger stared at them, with the unabashed frankness of young animals.
Having stared their fill, the son and daughter of the house went off to
ask about dinner.
To Tom that dinner was another new experience. For the first time in
his life he sat down to what is known as a family meal. Attempts had
sometimes been made by well-meaning women in the tenements to rope
him to their tables, but his mother had never permitted him to yield
to them. Now he sat down with those of his own age, to be served like
them, and on some sort of footing of equality. The honor was so great
that he could hardly swallow. Second helpings were beyond him.
The afternoon was blank again. "You'll begin to go to school on
Monday," Mrs. Tollivant had explained; but in the meantime he had the
hours to himself. They were long. He was lonely. Having been given
permission to go into the yard, he stood studying the Plymouth Rocks.
Presently he was conscious of a light step behind him. Before he had
time to turn around he also heard a voice. It was a whiny voice, yet
sharp and peremptory.
"You stop looking at our hens."
The fairy princess had not come up to him; she had paused some two
or three yards away. Her expression was so haughty that it hurt him.
It hurt him more from her than from anybody else because of his
admiration. He looked at her beseechingly, not for permission to go on
studying the Plymouth Rocks, but for some shade of relenting. He got
none. The sharp little face was as glittering and cold as one of the
icicles hanging from the roof behind her. Heavy at heart, he turned to
go into the house by the back door.
He had climbed most of the hill when the clear, whiny voice arrested
him.
"Who's a crook?"
At this stab in the back he leaped round, fury in his dark blue eyes.
But the fairy princess was used to fury in dark blue eyes, and knew
how best to defy it. The tip of the tongue she thrust out at him added
insolence to insult. He turned again, and, wounded in all his being,
went on into the house.
Near the back door there was a sun parlor, and in it he saw Bertie,
squatting in a small-wheeled chair built for his convenience. Bertie
called to him invitingly.
"I've got a book."
"I've got a book, too," he returned, in Bertie's own spirit.
"You show me your book, and I'll show you mine."
The proposal being fair, he went in search of his History of Mankind.
In a few minutes he was seated on the floor beside Bertie's chair,
exchanging literary criticisms. He liked Bertie. He had a premonition
that Bertie was going to like him. After the disdain of the fairy
princess, and the superciliousness of the overlord, this was
comforting. Moreover, he could return Bertie's friendliness by doing
things for him which no one else had time to do. He could push his
wheeled chair; he could run his errands; he could fetch and carry; he
would like doing it.
"I've got infantile paralysis."
"I've got a rubber ball."
"I've got a train."
"I've got a funny little man what dances."
Coming into the house, Cilly found them the best of friends, in the
best of spirits. Without entering the sun-parlor, she spoke through the
doorway, coldly.
"Bertie, I don't think momma would like you to act like that. I'll go
and ask her."
Mrs. Tollivant hurried from the kitchen, scouring a saucepan as she
looked in on them. Seeing nothing amiss, she went away again. Then as
if distrusting her own vision, she came back. She came back more than
once, anxiously, suspiciously. Bertie was enjoying himself with this
boy picked out of the gutter. That the boy had been picked out of the
gutter was not what troubled her, but that Bertie should enjoy himself
in the lad's society. Wise enough not to put notions into Bertie's
head, she stopped her ward later in the day, when she had the chance to
speak to him alone.
"I saw you playing with Bertie. Well, that's all right. Only you'll
remember your promise, won't you? You won't teach him anything harmful?"
"No, ma'am," the boy answered, humbly, as one who has a large selection
of harmful things to impart.