Jap came running into the office, early in January, his freckled face
aglow, his red hair standing wildly erect.
"Golly Haggins!" he exploded, "I got a letter from Wat. He's up at the
Legislator and he writes--he writes this!" He fairly lunged the letter
at Ellis.
Ellis read, scowling:
"My dear young Friend,--
"I am at the Halls of Justice and I want to fill my promise to reward
you for the noble deed you done. There is a chance for a bright boy as
page, and I have spoke for it for my noble boy. Come at once. Time
and tide won't wait, and there is thirty other boys camped on the trail,
"Respectfully your Friend,
"WAT HARLOW."
"Whoopee!" yelled Bill, jumping from his stool and turning a handspring
across the office.
"Reckon I'd better ask Flossy to fix my things--get my clothes out?"
asked Jap, beaming radiantly over the big barrel stove. He started
toward the door.
"Stop!" said Ellis, in a voice Jap had never heard. "You are not
going."
"Not going?" echoed both boys hollowly.
"No!" almost shouted Ellis, his brown eyes flashing. "I might have
expected this from that wooden-headed son of a lost art. Do you think
that you are going to leave my office to lick the boots of that loafing
gang of pie-biters? Not in a thousand years! I am going to put a tuck
in that idea right now. And while I'm talking about it, you may as
well know that Flossy is getting ready to teach you how to 'read and
write and 'rithmetic,' as Bill says. And as for you, Bill, Flossy says
that if your father hasn't enough pride to do the right thing by you,
she'll give you an education, along with Jap. You begin your lessons
to-morrow evening.
"Jap, write to that reformed auctioneer and thank him for his favor.
Tell him that you belong to the ancient and honorable order of
printers. When he runs for governor, you will boom him. Till then,
nothing doing in the 'Halls of Justice.'"
Jap sulked all day, but he wrote the letter whose contents might have
changed his career, and the following evening he and Bill began the
schooling that Flossy had planned. It was a full winter for the boys,
the most important of their lives. Even when spring came, with its
yawns and its drowsy fever, they begged that the lessons continue.
Already the effect was beginning to show in the galley proof.
One morning in July, Jap had held down the office alone. Flossy was
not well, and Ellis spent as much time with her as possible. Bill
blustered in, a look of disgust in his brown eyes.
"Ain't nothin' doin' in town, 'cept at Summers's," he exploded,
luxuriating in the kind of speech that was tabooed in the presence of
his elders. "Only ad I could scare up was at Summers's, and Ellis
don't want that."
Jap looked from the door, beyond the little village park and the hotel,
to where the dingy white face of the saloon stared impudently upon the
town.
"I never see one of them places without scringin'," he said slowly.
"My pappy almost lived in one. When we were cold, he was warm. When
Ma and us children were hungry, the saloon fed him, because--because he
could be so amusing and entertaining when he was half drunk. Ma said
that my pappy's folks were quality, but they didn't have any time for
him.
"I used to creep around to the side winder to see what kind of a drunk
he had. If it was a mean one, I'd run home and sneak Aggie out and
hide. He had a spite agin us two, and when he had a mean drunk he used
to beat us. He was skeered to fetch Fanny Maud. She had the
wild-cattest temper you ever saw. He tried to pull her out of bed by
her hair one night, and she jumped on him and scratched his face like a
map. Ma had to drag her off, and if he hadn't run, Fanny would 'a' got
him again. After that he would brag what a fine girl she was. One
night Aggie and me hid in a straw stack all night."
Bill looked sorrowfully upon his friend.
"I thought I was the most forsakenest boy in the world," he said. "But
my father never beat me, and he never touches no kind of licker. He
just don't like me around. You know my mother died when I was born,
and somehow he seems to blame it on me. I don't know how to figger it,
for he married in a year, and when that one died it didn't take him no
time to start lookin' out again. He hardly ever speaks to me, 'cept to
cuss me or tell me what a nuisance I am. Allus makes me feel like a
cabbage worm."
"Cabbage worm?" queried Jap.
"Yes, they turn green when they eat, and I feel like I am green, every
bite I take. He looks at me so mean, like he thought I hadn't any
right to eat. That's why I eat at Flossy's, every time she asks me.
The only nice thing my pappy ever done for me was to put me in here
with Ellis. Jap," he broke off suddenly, "I'm durn glad you licked me,
that day. But your hair _was_ red!"
Ellis had come quietly in at the rear door and had listened, half
consciously, to the sacred confession. His face saddened for a moment.
Then he squared his shoulders and his dark eyes flashed.
"I am going to make men of those boys yet," he promised himself. "Who
knows----"
He interrupted the spasm of painful speculation, the dark foreboding
that had for days hovered over him. The heat of summer and his anxiety
over Flossy were beginning to tell on his nerves. He tiptoed softly
out of the back door, across the weed-grown yard and out through the
alley gate. A moment later he came in at the front door, whistling
blithely.
The summer was intensely hot. As the dog-days waxed, Ellis grew ever
more and more morose. His sharp bursts of temper were made tolerable
only by the swift justice of the amend. Late in September he came down
to the office one morning, pale and shaken. The boys had been sticking
type for an hour when his sudden entrance startled them.
"Flossy is very sick," he said with lips that quivered, "and I will
have to trust you boys."
Jap followed him to the door. His face was downcast.
"Is it true, Ellis? Bill said that Flossy would--would----" He
gulped. He could not finish. Ellis turned suddenly and sat down at
the table and buried his face in the pile of exchanges. His body shook
with the effort to suppress his emotion. Bill slipped down from his
stool and the two awkward, ungainly youths looked at each other in
embarrassed sorrow. Finally Jap laid an inky hand on Ellis's shoulder.
"Tell her--tell her," he stuttered, "that Bill and me are--are
a--prayin'."
Ellis gave a mighty sob and rushed away, bare-headed.
The two apprentices sat at their cases, the tears wetting the type in
their sticks. The long day dragged by. Neither of them remembered
noon, but plodded stolidly and silently through the clippings on their
copy hooks.
It was growing dusk when a great commotion arose. It seemed to come
from the corner near Blanke's drug store. It gathered force as it
neared Granger's bank, Now it had reached the mouth of the alley that
separated the bank from the _Herald_ office. There was cheering and
laughter. Jap's face hardened. He slung one leg to the floor. How
dared any one cheer or laugh, when Flossy lay dying?
In another instant Ellis burst into the room. His dark locks were
rumpled, his eyes wild and bright.
"Get out all the roosters--and the stallions, too!" he shouted. "Open
a can of vermilion and, in long pica, double-lead it: 'It is a boy!'"
Jap let the other leg fall and dragged himself around. His mouth had
fallen loose on its hinges. He sat down on the floor and gaped
foolishly at Ellis.
"She's feeling fine," babbled Ellis, "and you and Bill are coming in
the morning to see the boy." He rushed out again.
Jap looked at Billy glued to the stool, holding in one paralyzed hand
the inverted stick.
"Gee!" said Jap.
In the morning they tiptoed into Flossy's room. Very pale and weak was
the energetic little woman who had taken the moulding of their
destinies into her hands. She smiled gently and, as mothers have done
since time was, she tenderly drew back the covers from a tiny black
head and motioned for the two to look.
"Our boy," she said, smiling radiantly. "I am going to name him Jasper
William, and I want you to make him very proud of the men he was named
for."
The hot tears sprang to Jap's eyes and fell upon the little red face.
The wee mite, perhaps prompted by an angel whisper from the land from
whence he came, threw aloft one wrinkled hand and touched him on the
cheek. Sobbing stormily, Jap hid his face in the covers as he knelt
beside the bed. Then he took the little fingers in his.
"If God lets me live, Flossy, I will make him proud of me."
He choked and dashed outside to join Bill, who was snubbing
[Transcriber's note: "snubbing" is what's in the source book. Perhaps
the author meant "snuffling" or "sobbing".] audibly on the back steps.
After a muffled silence he said, his eyes growing suddenly bright:
"Bill, did you notice what Flossy said? She said the 'men' that he was
named after. Bill, we've got to quit kiddin' and begin to grow up."