THE TRAINING OF A BOY
Roger, sitting in his office at the iron works, from time to time
raised his grave face to look at Bonny, who was fidgeting restlessly
about the room.
Next to his wife, Roger loved his young brother-in-law,--the
fair-haired, genial lad, everybody’s favourite, no one’s enemy but his
own.
He wondered why the boy had come to him. Probably he was in some scrape
and wanted help.
Presently the boy flung himself round upon him. “Roger--why don’t some
of you good people try to reform me?”
Roger leaned back in his chair and stared at the disturbed young face.
“Come, now, don’t say that you don’t think I need reformation,” said
the boy, mockingly.
“I guess we all need that,” replied his brother-in-law, soberly, “but
you come of pretty good stock, Bonny.”
[Illustration: “‘WHY DON’T SOME OF YOU GOOD PEOPLE TRY TO REFORM
ME?’”]
“The stock’s all right. That’s why I’m afraid of breaking loose and
disgracing it.”
“What have you been doing?” asked Roger, kindly.
“I haven’t been doing anything,” said the boy, sullenly. “It’s what I
may do that I’m afraid of.”
Roger said nothing. He was just casting about in his mind for a
suitable reply, when the boy went on. “If you’ve been brought up just
like a parson, and had all kinds of sentiments and good thoughts lived
at you, and then don’t rise to the goodness you’re bursting with, it’s
bound to rebel and give you a bad time.”
The man, having got a clue to the boy’s mental trouble, hastened to
say, “You act all right. I shouldn’t say you were unhappy.”
“Act!” repeated the boy. “Act, acting, actors, actresses,--that’s what
we all are. Now I’d like to have a good time. I don’t think I’m far out
of the way; but there’s Grandma--she just makes me rage. Such goings
on!”
“What has your grandmother been doing?”
“She hasn’t done much, and she hasn’t said a word, but, hang it!
there’s more in what Grandma doesn’t say than there is in what other
women do say.”
“You’re right there, my boy.”
“Now, what did she want to go give me a latch-key for?” asked the boy,
in an aggrieved tone, “just after I’d started coming in a little later
than usual? Why don’t she say, ‘My dear boy, you are on the road to
ruin. Staying out late is the first step. May I not beg of you to do
better, my dear young grandson? Otherwise you will bring down my gray
hairs with sorrow to the grave.’”
“This is what she didn’t say?” asked Roger, gravely.
“This is what she didn’t say,” repeated the boy, crossly, “but this is
what she felt. I know her! The latch-key was a bit of tomfoolery. An
extra lump of sugar in my coffee is more tomfoolery.”
“Do you want her to preach to you?”
“No,” snarled the handsome lad. “I don’t want her to preach, and I
don’t want you to preach, and I don’t want my sisters to preach, but I
want some one to do something for me.”
“State your case in a more businesslike way,” said the elder man,
gravely. “I don’t understand.”
“You know I’m in the National Bank,” said Bonny, shortly.
“Certainly I know that.”
“Grandma put me there a year ago. I don’t object to the bank, if I’ve
got to work. It’s as easy as anything I could get, and I hate study.”
Roger nodded.
“Being in the bank, I’d like to rise,” Bonny went on, irritably, “but
somehow or other there seems a little prejudice in the air against me.
Has any one said anything to you?”
“Not a word.”
The boy drew a long breath. “Perhaps it’s partly imagination. They’re
very down on fun in our bank. Now when hours are over, and I come out,
there’s a whole gang of nice fellows ready to do anything that’s going.
Sometimes we play billiards. On fine days we’re always on the river.
There’s no harm in that, is there?”
“Not that I see,” observed Roger, cautiously.
“Then, when evening comes, and we want to sit down somewhere, we have a
quiet little game of cards. There’s no harm in that, is there?”
“Do you play for money?”
“Sometimes--well, perhaps nearly always, but there’s no harm in that,
is there?”
“Let me hear the rest of your story.”
“Sometimes I’m late getting home. We get interested, but that’s
nothing. I’m almost a man. Five hours’ sleep is enough for me.”
A long pause followed, broken finally by Roger, who said, calmly, “You
have given an account of your time. What is wrong with it?”
“It’s all wrong,” blurted the boy, “and you know it.”
“I haven’t said so.”
“But you feel it. You’re just like Grandma--bother it! Don’t I know she
thinks I ought to spend my evenings at home, reading about banking, so
as to work myself up to a president’s chair?”
“Don’t you get any time for reading through the day?”
“How can I?” said the boy, eloquently, “when I was almost brought up
out-of-doors, and as soon as the bank closes every square inch of flesh
of me is squealing to get on the river. Now what do you think I ought
to do?”
“It’s a puzzling case,” said Roger, with a slow shake of his head.
“According to your own account, you are leading a blameless life. Yet,
according to the same account, you are not happy in it, though no one
is finding fault with you.”
“No one finding fault!” said the boy, sulkily. “Why, the very stones in
the street stare at me and say, ‘Animal! Animal! you don’t care for
anything but fun. You’d skip the bank every day if you dared.’”
“Why don’t you?”
Bonny gave himself a resounding thwack on the chest. “Because,” he
said, “Grandma has planted something here that won’t be downed.
Something that won’t let me have a good time when I know she isn’t
pleased with me. Sometimes I get so mad that I think I will run away,
but that wouldn’t do any good, for she’d run with me. She’d haunt my
dreams--I don’t know what I’m going to do!”
Roger, carefully concealing all signs of compassion, gazed steadily
at the distressed face. “Do you want to break away from your set?” he
asked, at last.
“No, I don’t. They’re good fellows.”
“Well, what are you going to do about that bad feeling inside of you?”
“I don’t know,” said Bonny, bitterly. “I know Grandma thinks I’m going
to be like Walt Everest, big and fat and jolly, and everybody’s chum,
who can sing a song, and dance a jig, and never does any business, and
never will amount to anything.”
“Did she ever say so?”
“No,” growled the boy, “but don’t I tell you I know what Grandma’s
thinking about?”
“How does your sister Berty take you?” asked Roger.
“Just like Grandma,” blazed the boy, in sudden wrath, “never says a
word but a pleasant one, catches me in a corner and kisses me--kisses
me!--just think of it!”
Roger thought deeply for a few minutes, while Bonny took up his
miserable ramble about the room.
“Look here, boy,” he said, finally. “You do as I tell you for a week.
Begin from this minute. Read that magazine, then go home with me to
dinner. After dinner come back here and help me. I’m working on some
accounts for a time. That will be an excuse to the boys for not playing
cards.”
Bonny’s face was clearing. “A good excuse, too,” he muttered. “If I
said I was going with Grandma or the girls, they’d laugh at me.”
“You tell them you are working on my books, and I am paying you. That
will shut their mouths, and you’ll not object to the extra money.”
“I guess I won’t. I’m hard pushed all the time.”
“Don’t you save anything from your salary for Grandma?” asked Roger,
keenly.
“How can I?” said the boy, indignantly. “She has brought me up to be
clean. It takes nearly everything I get to pay my laundry bill--I dare
say you think I’m a brute to be so selfish.”
“I’ll send you home every night at ten, and mind you go to bed,” said
Roger, calmly. “Five hours’ sleep is not enough for a boy of eighteen.
Get up in the morning and go to the bank. As soon as it closes in the
afternoon I’ll have business in Cloverdale that will take you on a
drive there.”
“You’re a daisy, Roger,” said Bonny, in a low voice.
Roger cast down his eyes. That flushed, disturbed face reminded him
of his own beautiful Margaretta. Pray Heaven, he would never see such
trouble and dissatisfaction in her blue eyes.
Bonny had already thrown himself into a deep leather-covered armchair,
and was apparently absorbed in the magazine. Presently he looked up.
“Roger, don’t you tell the girls what I’ve been saying.”
“No, I won’t.”
“Nor Grandma.”
“No, nor Grandma.”
But Grandma knew. There was no hoodwinking that dear, shrewd old lady,
and when next she met Roger, which was the following morning, as he
was on his way to his office, and she was on her way to call on his
wife, her deep-set eyes glistened strangely, and instead of saying
“Good morning, dear grandson-in-law,” as she usually did, she said
“Good morning, dear son.” She considered him as much one of the family
as her three beloved orphan grandchildren.
Yes, Grandma knew, and Grandma approved of what he was doing for her
poor, wilful, troubled Bonny.
Every evening for five evenings the lad came to the iron works, and
steadfastly set his young face to the sober, unexciting examination of
dull rows of figures, stretching indefinitely across white pages.
On the fifth night something went wrong with him. In the first place,
he was late in coming. In the second place, his nerves seemed to be
stretched to their utmost tension.
“What’s up with you?” asked Roger, when, after a few minutes’ work
Bonny pushed aside the big books, and said, “I’m going home.”
“I’m tired,” said Bonny. “I hate this bookkeeping.”
“All right,” said his brother-in-law, composedly. “I’m tired myself.
Let’s have a game of chess.”
“I hate chess,” said Bonny, sulkily.
“I wonder whether it’s too early for supper?” asked Roger,
good-humouredly getting up and going to a closet.
He looked over his shoulder at Bonny as he spoke. Every night at
half-past nine he was in the habit of producing cakes, candy, syrup,
fruit, and nuts for the boy’s supper. It was not very long since he had
been a boy himself, and he remembered his chronic craving for sweet
things.
“You’re always stuffing me,” replied Bonny, disagreeably. “You think
you’ll make me good-natured.”
“What’s the matter with you, Bonny?” asked Roger, closing the door and
returning to his seat.
“I don’t know what’s the matter with me,” snarled Bonny, miserably,
rolling his head about on his folded arms resting on the table. “I hate
everything and everybody. I could kill you, Roger.”
“All right--there’s a pair of Indian clubs over there in the corner,”
said his brother-in-law, cheerfully.
“I thought I’d be an angel after a few nights’ association with you,”
continued the lad, “and you make me feel worse than ever.”
“Looks as if I were a bad sort of a fellow, doesn’t it?” remarked
Roger, philosophically.
“You’re not bad,” snapped Bonny. “You’re a tremendous good sort. I’m
the brute. Roger, why don’t you preach to me?”
For some time Roger stared at him in silence; then he said, “Seems to
me you can preach better to yourself. If I were going to set up for a
preacher I’d only hold forth to the impenitent.”
“The fellows are going to a dance at Hickey’s to-night,” said Bonny,
suddenly pounding on the table with his fist, “and I’m not in it, and
then at midnight they’re going to see the circus arrive, and I’m not in
that.”
“At Hickey’s--where is that?”
“Up the road; don’t you know?”
“Oh, yes; rather gay people, aren’t they?”
“Well, they’re not in Margaretta’s set; but then she is mighty
particular.”
“Would you take her there if she cared to go?”
“No, I wouldn’t--well, go on, Roger.”
“Go on where?” asked the elder man, in slight bewilderment.
“To embrace your opportunity--administer a rebuke--cuff a sinner,”
sneered Bonny.
Roger grinned at him.
“My dear boy,” began Bonny, in an exasperated tone, “let me exhort,
admonish, and counsel you never to go to any place, or visit any
resort, or indulge in any society where you could not take your
venerable grandmother and your beloved sisters.”
“Not bad for a beginner,” said Roger, patronizingly.
“I’m going,” said the boy, abruptly jumping up. “I feel as if I should
fly in fifty pieces if I stayed here any longer--till I see you again,
Roger.”
He was already on the threshold, but Roger sauntered after him. “Hold
on a bit--four days ago you came to me in something of a pickle.”
“You bet your iron works I did,” replied Bonny.
“I helped you out of it.”
“I guess you did.”
“For four evenings you have come here and helped me, and I am going to
pay you well for it.”
“Glory on your head, you are,” said Bonny, wildly.
“In these four days,” continued Roger, “you have been early at the
bank--you have done your work faithfully there. You have not shirked.”
“Not a hair’s breadth, and mighty tired I am of it. I’m sick of
reformation. I’m going to be just as bad as I can be. Hurrah for
Hickey’s,” and he was just about darting off, when Roger caught him by
the arm.
“Listen to me for a minute. I ask you to give me one day more. Stay
here with me to-night. Do your work as usual. Go home to bed. Fill in
to-morrow properly, then in the evening, at this time, if you want to
go back to your old silly tricks, go. I wash my hands of you.”
Bonny turned his face longingly toward the city, thought deeply for a
few minutes, then retraced his steps. “I’ll be good to-night,” he said,
threateningly, “but just you wait till to-morrow night comes.”
“You’ve got a conscience,” said Roger, sternly; “if you choose to choke
it and play the fool, no one is strong enough to hold you--pass me that
ledger, will you?”
“Oh, shut up,” blurted Bonny, under his breath. However, he sat down
quietly enough, and did his work until the clock struck ten.
Then he stifled a yawn, jumped up, and said, “I’m going now.”
“Mind, seven-thirty to-morrow evening,” said Roger, stiffly.
“All right; seven-thirty for once more, and only once,” said Bonny,
with glistening eyes, “for once more and only once! I’m tired of your
stuffy old office, and strait-laced ways.”
“Good night,” said Roger, kindly, “and don’t be a fool.”
Bonny ran like a fox down the long lane leading to the city. “He’s
making for his burrow,” said Roger, with a weary smile. “He’s a scamp,
but you can trust him if he once gives his word. I wish I were a better
sort of a man,” and with mingled reverence and humility he lifted his
gaze to the stars. “If that boy is going to be saved, something has got
to be done mighty quick!”