"Why, for yer job to-morrow. Yer can't work in them good clo'es. Yer'd
sile 'em."
In a second-hand shop, known to Honey Lem, in Charles Street, they
found a suit of boy's overalls not too much the worse for wear. Honey
Lem pulled out a roll of bills and paid for them.
"But I've got my own money, Mr. Honeybun."
"Dooty o' next o' kin, boy. I ain't doin' it for me own pleasure.
Yer'll need yer money for yer eddication. Yer mustn't forgit that."
The overalls bound him more closely to the criminal from whom he was
trying to cut loose. More closely still he found himself tied by the
scraps of talk he overheard between the former pals that evening. They
were on the lowest of the steps leading up from the chop saloon, where
all three of them had dined. Tom, who had preceded them, stood on the
sidewalk overhead, out of sight and yet within earshot.
"I tell yer I can't, Goody," Mr. Honeybun was saying, "not as long as
I'm next o' kin to this 'ere kid. 'Twouldn't be fair to a young boy for
me to keep no such company."
Mr. Goodsir made some observation the nature of which Tom could only
infer from Mr. Honeybun's response.
"Well, don't yer suppose it's a damn sight 'arder for me to be out'n a
good thing than it is for you to see me out'n it? I don't go in for no
renounciation. But when yer've got a fatherless kid on yer 'ands ye'
must cut out a lot o' nice stuff that'll go all right when yer've only
yerself to think about. Ain't yer a Christian, Goody?"
Once more Mr. Goodsir's response was to Tom a matter of surmise.
"Well, then, Goody, if yer don't like it yer can go to E and double L.
What's more, I ain't a-goin' to sleep in our own room to-night, nor
any night till that guy comes back. I'm goin' to sleep in the kid's
room, and keep him company. 'Tain't right to leave a young boy all by
hisself in a 'ouse like this, as full o' toughs as a ward'll be full o'
politicians."
Tom removed himself to a discreet distance, but the knowledge that
the other bed in his room would not remain so creepily vacant was
consciously a relief. He slept dreamlessly that night, because of
his feeling of security. In the morning, not long after four, he was
wakened by a hand that rocked him gently to and fro.
"Come, little shaver! Time to git up! Got to be on yer job at five."
The job was in a market that was not exactly a market since it supplied
only the hotels. Together with the Gansevoort and West Washington
Markets, it seemed to make a focal point for much of the food on the
continent of America. Railways and steamers brought it from ranches
and farms, from plantations and orchards, from rivers and seas, from
slaughter-stockades and cold-storage warehouses, from the north and
the south and the west, from the tropics and farther than the tropics,
to feed the vast digestive machine which is the basis of New York's
energies. Tom's job was not hard, but it was incessant. His was the
duty of collecting and arranging the empty cases, crates, baskets,
and coops, which were dumped on the raised platform surrounding the
building on the outside, or which cluttered the stalls within. Trucks
and vans took them away full on one day, and brought them back empty on
another. It was all a boy could do to keep them stacked, and in order,
according to sizes and shapes. The sizes in the main were small; the
shapes were squares and oblongs and diminishing churnlike cylinders.
Nimbleness, neatness, and goodwill were the requisites of the task, and
all three of them the boy supplied.
Fatigue that night made him wakeful. His companion in the other bed
was wakeful too. In talking from bed to bed Tom found it a comfort to
be dealing with an easy conscience. Mr. Honeybun had nothing on his
mind, nor was he subject to nightmares. Speculation on the subject of
Quidmore's disappearance, and possible fate, turned round and round on
itself, to begin again with the selfsame guesses.
"And there's another thing," came from Mr. Honeybun. "If he don't come
back, why, you'll come in for a good bit o' proputty, won't yer? Didn't
he own that market-garden place, out there on the edge of Connecticut?"
"He left it to his sister. He told me that the other night. You see, I
wasn't his real son. I wasn't his son at all till about a year ago."
This statement coming to Mr. Honeybun as something of a shock, Tom was
obliged to tell the story of his life to the extent that he knew it.
The only details that he touched on lightly were those which bore on
the manner in which he had lost his "mudda." Even now it was difficult
to name her in any other way, because in no other way had he ever named
her. Obliged to blur the outlines of his earliest recollections, which
in themselves were clear enough, his tale was brief.
"So yer real name is Whitelaw," Mr. Honeybun commented, with interest.
"I never hear that name but once. That was the Whitelaw baby. Ye'll
have heard tell o' that?"
Since Tom had never heard tell of the Whitelaw baby, the lack in his
education was supplied. The Whitelaw baby had been taken out to the
Park on a morning in May, and had vanished from its carriage. In the
place where it had lain was found a waxen image so true in likeness to
the child himself that only when it came time to feed him did the nurse
make the discovery that she had wheeled home a replica. The mystery
had been the source of nation-wide excitement for the best part of two
years. It was talked of even now. It couldn't have been more than three
or four years earlier that Mr. Honeybun had seen a daily paper, bearing
the headlines that Harry Whitelaw had been found, selling like hotcakes
to the women shopping in Twenty-third Street.
"And was he?" Tom asked, beginning at last to be sleepy.
"No more'n a puff of tobacker smoke when yer'd blowed it in the air.
The father, a rich banker--a young chap he was, too, I believe--he
offers a reward of fifty thousand dollars to anyone as'd put him on the
track o' the gang what had kidnapped the young 'un; and every son of a
gun what thought he was a socialist was out to win the money. This 'ere
Goody, he had a scheme. Tried to work me in on it, and I don't know but
what I might a took a 'and if a chum o' mine hadn't got five year for
throwin' the same 'ook without no bait on it. They 'auled in another
chap I knowed, what they was sure he had somethink to do with it, and
tried to make him squeal; but--" A long breath from Tom interrupted
this flow of narrative. "Say, kiddy, yer ain't asleep, are yer? and me
tellin' yer about the Whitelaw baby?"
"I am nearly," the boy yawned. "Good night--Honey! Wake me in time in
the morning."
"That's a good name for yer to call me," the next o' kin commended.
"I'll always be Honey to you, and you'll be Kiddy to me; and so we'll
be pals. Buddies they call it over here."
Echoes of a street brawl reached them through the window. Had he been
alone, the country lad of thirteen would have shivered, even though the
night was hot. But the knowledge of this brawny companion, lying but
a few feet away, nerved him to curl up like a puppy, and fall asleep
trustfully.