THE MAN WHO DID NOT KNOW BOYS
“Shake hands on it, Dick,” said Leslie; “you’ve got the old curmudgeon
to swallow the bait all right, and he’s hooked as fast as anything. All
you need to do now is to pull the line in and land him.”
“Do you think so, Leslie?” mused the other. “Well, I’m glad for the
sake of little Billy and his mother, for she has a mighty small amount
of money to live on, and the deacon is a rich man, you know.”
“What do you reckon he’s thinking about while he stands there with his
arms on the fence, and his head bowed on them?” asked Leslie, as they
were making their way silently toward the street, intending to clamber
over the front fence at a point where they could not be seen.
“I don’t know for sure,” replied the other, “but I should think it
might be about his own boy, Amos. Mebbe he looked a little like Billy
does now, when he was small. And how can we tell but what memory has
got busy in that scheming old brain of the deacon’s?”
“Well,” observed Leslie, as they reached the street safely, after
vaulting the fence boy-style, “I could see him looking into the face of
the youngster now and then, and rubbing his own forehead as if he might
be puzzled to know where he ever could have seen Billy before.”
“That’s right,” assented Dick, quickly; “you remember he asked Billy
once if he had ever lived in Cliffwood before, and the boy said not
that he knew of. Well, it seems to be working finely, and I guess after
all little Mrs. Nocker won’t have to work to keep the wolf from the
door.”
“Not with the grip Billy has got on his old grandfather’s heart,”
laughed Leslie. “I never would have believed any child could wind that
cold-blooded storekeeper around his little finger. It’s as good as pie
to me to see it.”
They headed into town, talking as they went, and, of course, there were
many matters to be discussed between them, besides Dick’s latest scheme.
“There’s Mr. Holwell,” remarked Dick, suddenly; “and since he knows so
much about my plan I think I’d like to tell him what we’ve just been
watching.”
“A good idea too, Dick,” assented the other.
The minister met them with one of his customary pleasant smiles.
“You both look as if something unusually fine had happened this
afternoon,” he remarked. “Perhaps you wouldn’t object to telling me
about the same.”
“That’s just what we meant to do, sir,” declared Dick. “It’s about
Deacon Nocker and little Billy, you see.”
Mr. Holwell immediately showed the most intense interest.
“Then that clever plan of yours must be working out in a satisfactory
manner, Dick, my lad,” he remarked, “if I can judge from the happy
expression on your face just now.”
“Indeed, I reckon it’s going to be a bully success, sir!” ventured
Leslie.
“We’ve just been watching one of their meetings,” Dick continued, “and
it’s plain to be seen, sir, that Billy has got a firm grip on Mr.
Nocker’s heart. We saw the deacon kiss him lots of times, and squeeze
him just as if he wanted to eat him. Oh, it’s bound to come out all
right in the end.”
“Good for you, Dick!” said the minister, enthusiastically, taking the
hand of the boy in his strong grip; “and I want to say that I consider
you’ve played one of the neatest games that could be devised.”
As the two chums walked onward, Dick’s face was beaming with happiness.
There had been a time when he would have cared little for the good
opinion of Mr. Holwell, but somehow, of late a great change seemed
to have come over the wayward boy’s nature. Many things that he had
formerly delighted in, no longer held an attraction for him; and every
day he was awakening to the fact that service for others could bring
more real pleasure than selfish gratification ever did.
“Here’s trouble with a big T!” burst out Leslie before they had gone
far.
“You mean about Dan Fenwick, I suppose,” ventured Dick, glancing at an
approaching figure. “Sure enough, he does look pretty sour, as if his
dinner hadn’t agreed with him any too well.”
Dan came along shaking his head, and frowning savagely.
“What’s got you this time, Dan?” burst out Leslie as they joined
forces. “Lost that new knife you got on your last birthday? Or mebbe
now Susie Banks has promised another fellow she’d go with him to that
barn dance they’re getting up for Christmas Eve?”
At that Dan shook his head and grinned, showing he had not yet reached
such a depth of actual woe.
“Huh! ’tisn’t _quite_ so bad as all that, fellows,” he went on to
explain. “But let me tell you something has got to be done about that
Mr. Loft. He’s gettin’ on my nerves, and that’s a fact.”
Dick and Leslie exchanged glances at hearing this fresh complaint
about the pedantic librarian who seemed to think boys ought to be fed
on heavy stuff from the time they were able to read their primers.
“Been knocking you again, has he, Dan?” demanded Leslie, frowning.
“Why, it’s getting so bad now,” said the other, angrily, “that a boy
can’t ask for a single work of fiction but what Mr. Loft takes occasion
to give him a long lecture on wasted opportunities. He says we ought to
be cramming intelligence into our brains instead of fooling away our
time with such trash as we ask for.”
“He makes me tired,” asserted Leslie. “To his mind everything a boy
does that isn’t meant to fill his poor brain with knowledge is wasted.
If he had his way I bet you there wouldn’t be a real boy’s book in all
the library; and some of them are standard works at that.”
“My father and grandfather read Robinson Crusoe, Swiss Family Robinson,
and a lot of other books that every boy with red blood in his veins
dotes on,” asserted Dan. “But Mr. Loft told me they ought to be burnt,
and that he meant to see if he could influence the town council to
allow him to weed out all such pernicious juvenile literature.”
“Then never a boy will be seen in our fine library, you can be sure of
that!” asserted Dick, pugnaciously.
“I’ve talked it over with several people besides my folks,” Leslie went
on to tell his chums, “and they all think this way. Like Mr. Holwell,
they admit that there are lots of books for boys published these days
at a cheap price that are written just for the excitement in them. They
condemn that class, but at the same time say there are many volumes,
and some of ’em cheap at that, that while full of adventure, show a boy
how to curb his faults, and climb up the ladder of fame.”
“I could string off two dozen titles right now, every one a dandy
book,” asserted Dan, pugnaciously, “all on my shelf at home, and my
mother has read every single one of the same. What _she_ says is all
right you can depend on isn’t going to do a fellow any harm, for she
used to be a teacher in New York City, and knows boys from the ground
up.”
“There’s only one thing to be done about it,” asserted Dick. “That is
to start a library of our own as we talked about some time ago.”
“You mean inside the Y. M. C. A.?” asked Dan, eagerly.
“Yes, after we consult again with Mr. Holwell about it,” came the
answer, showing that Dick had been thinking over the idea since the
time it was first mentioned.
“Each member of the club might contribute what books he cared to
spare,” Leslie continued. “I’ve got a whole pile I’d like to offer for
my share. Mr. Holwell could be the judge of what was fit for us to have
in our library. He knows boys ten times better than that high-brow Mr.
Loft.”
All of them displayed signs of great enthusiasm over the idea. The boys
of Cliffwood had long suffered at the hands of the town librarian, who,
though doubtless a worthy as well as a learned man, had never learned
to peep into the heart of a genuine boy, and know how to handle him so
as to cultivate the best there was in him.
“It’ll sure be a big feather in our cap if we do manage to have a
library of our own, every book carefully selected, and just the kind
we love to read as well,” Dan hastened to say, the sour look now gone
entirely from his face.
“And for my part,” Leslie went on to say, “I’m going to get Uncle Henry
interested in the scheme. I really believe he’ll put up the money
to buy a lot of books of the right sort--that are of an uplifting
character, besides being full of stirring adventure.”
“I’m mighty glad now Mr. Loft lectured me as he did,” said Dan;
“because you see it’s brought matters to a head right away. Whee! but
won’t he lift his hands in horror when he hears about it. I can just
see the look on his face.”