CHAPTER I_Doodles, the Sunshine Boy

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=_By Emma C. Dowd_=

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DOODLES. Illustrated in color.

THE OWL AND THE BOBOLINK. Illustrated.

POLLY OF LADY GAY COTTAGE. Illustrated in color.

POLLY OF THE HOSPITAL STAFF. Illustrated in color.

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

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DOODLES

[Illustration:

(Page 49)

HE WAS NEVER LONELY WHEN HE COULD SING]

DOODLES

The Sunshine Boy

EMMA C. DOWD

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

BY MARIA L. KIRK

[Illustration: Publisher’s Logo]

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

_The Riverside Press Cambridge_

1915

Published April 1915

MY PHYSICIAN AND FRIEND

EDWARD THOMAS BRADSTREET, M.D.

CONTENTS

I. THE BARGAIN 1

II. CARUSO 10

III. THE ROBBERY ON THE TOP FLOOR 19

IV. DOODLES TURNS MATCHMAKER 36

V. CARUSO AND DOCTOR SANDY 43

VI. GRANDPA MOON COMES TO TOWN 49

VII. A FRIEND FROM GREECE 64

VIII. THE STRIKE 71

IX. THOMAS FITZPATRICK’S WHISTLE 81

X. “COMFORT YE, COMFORT YE MY PEOPLE” 99

XI. THE PASSING OF THE DANCER 116

XII. THE HEART OF THE FLATIRON 129

XIII. “JIM’S FIDDLE” 133

XIV. THE LETTER 140

XV. HOSPITAL DAYS 146

XVI. CARUSO SINGS IN PUBLIC 159

XVII. A THUNDERBOLT 177

XVIII. “THE TRUE─BLUEST BOY” 189

XIX. JOSEPH SITNITSKY PROVES HIS VALOR 201

XX. DOODLES AND BLUE, DETECTIVES 212

XXI. SURPRISING NEWS 238

XXII. THE COMFORTING OF EUDORA FLEMING 245

XXIII. “THE MIRACLE VOICE” 267

XXIV. DOODLES KEEPS ON 279

XXV. IN FAIR HARBOR 291

XXVI. “DR. POLLY” 307

XXVII. “AULD LANG SYNE” 325

ILLUSTRATIONS

HE WAS NEVER LONELY WHEN HE COULD Frontispiece

SING

“I THOUGHT YOU WOULD LIKE IT” 16

ONE STORMY EVENING HE BEGAN TO PLAY 144

“IT WOULD KILL DOODLES TO GIVE UP 260

CARUSO”

DOODLES

CHAPTER I

THE BARGAIN

FRAGMENTS of the auctioneer’s entreaties floated through the open

doorway of the bird shop and, above the rattle and roar of the street,

clacked in Blue’s ears.

“Ladies and gentlemens ... beautiful lark ... emperor of singers ... not

swell to look at, but.... Only twenty cents!—Twenty─two am I offered?

... shame, ladies and gentlemens!” And so on, in tones of pleading and

mild complaint.

Blue, meanwhile, studied the placarded window, where all manner of

feathered stock, “slightly damaged, but every bird a bargain,” was

announced to be sold to the highest bidder.

“Lovely starling ... ladies and gentlemens,... how much?” the persuasive

voice skipped on, but was rudely interrupted by another.

“Huntin’ fer bargains?” A boy of Blue’s own size nudged him in the back.

“Why don’t yer go in ’n’ git one fer Doodles? ’T ’u’d keep him f’m bein’

down ’n’ dumpy. My aunt—”

“‘Down ’n’ dumpy’—Doodles!” Blue’s rallying laugh drowned the “ladies

and gentlemens” drifting through the doorway. “Huh,” he chuckled, “guess

yer don’t know Doodles!”

“Ain’t he, now? S’posed all sick folks was. My aunt she—”

“Doodles dumpy!” The boy’s shoulders shook again. “Why, if there was

nothin’ left in the whole world but just barbers’ poles, Doodles ’u’d

sure make friends with the stripes. And he’d have the best time ever—bet

you he would!” Blue’s hard little face grew suddenly tender, as he

thought of the brother whose life was all pain and all joy.

The auction was over. The crowd poured out into the noisy street. Here

and there a bird─cage told that a lame canary, a blind bobolink, or some

other “damaged” fluff of feathers had changed owners.

One of the purchasers, a small, hatless girl, clad in scowls and a

lace─collared coat, halted when she saw Blue, and began recklessly to

swing her cage.

“Here, you Mame Sweeney!” the boy cried, seizing the child’s arm; “don’t

yer see you’re scarin’ that bird ’most to death?”

“Le’ go!” she snapped. “’T ain’t yours!” She wrenched herself free, and

defiantly thrashed the cage about her knees.

“Stop it!” The girl found her hand gripped in a vise of muscles.

“Le’ me be!” she screamed. “Don’t care if I do scare him! Horrid old

thing!”

A little group of newsboys circled about them, eager for a closer view

of the cause of the wrangle.

The ragged gray bird, panting on the floor of his prison, did not invite

favor. There was a subdued chorus of grunts and ejaculations. Then

disapproval burst into bantering speech.

“Ain’t he a dood!”—“Mame, wha’ ’d yer pay fer th’ beaut?”—“Whin ’ll he

give a concert?”—“Sure, if he sings like he looks, he’ll bate th’ show!”

The girl frowned on the teasing lads.

“How could I see him in all that jam!” she pouted. “The man said he was

swell, and could sing like everything. Anyhow, I got him for seventeen

cents!”

“Swell!” Blue let go a whistle. Yet he gazed pityingly at the poor,

draggled thing in the cage.

“You could n’t to know nothin’ ’bout him the while he’s got fraids,”

apologized Joseph Sitnitsky. “He be a awful stylish kind.” Joseph’s

uncle was half─proprietor of the bird shop.

As if encouraged by this friendly comment, the bird tentatively cast an

eye upward, and then hopped to his perch. But if he had hoped by this

act to win kindlier words, the effort failed. Scorn swept the circle.

The Bargain was disgracefully dirty, his left wing hung limp at his

side, his bill was nicked, and his tail was reduced to three ragged

feathers.

“Aw, he’s worser’n a muddy sparrer! Out him, Marne, an’ done with it!”

“You could to have nice feelings over him, und maybe sometime he sings,”

mildly remonstrated the loyal nephew of Abraham Sitnitsky.

But nobody heeded the plaintive voice, and the girl, chagrined at the

loss of her money and exasperated by the jeers of the boys, seemed about

to follow Pete’s dismal advice, when Blue Stickney interposed.

“I’ll give yer a quarter for him!”

Staying her reckless hand, Mame stared.

“Honest?” she scowled.

The boy was already counting out the sum from his meager handful of

small coins, and in a moment the gray bird had again changed owners.

As Blue started up the steep stairs to the top floor of The Flatiron, he

wished it had been possible to give his purchase a bath before revealing

it to the keen eyes of Doodles; but then the little brother would have

had just so much less of happy ministration for his pet. For, of course,

the bird would belong to Doodles. There had never been any other thought

of it in Blue’s mind.

Down the dim stairway floated a strain of melody, and it told the boy

agreeable news,—that his mother had come home and was getting dinner,

that things had gone well at the big shop where she worked, and that the

little brother was not suffering from the “bad spell” which had

threatened in the morning. Mrs. Stickney rarely sang when Doodles was in

unusual pain, and if she did it was not in so brisk a voice.

The song grew clearer, the words came distinctly now.

“Je—ru—sa—lem, the gold—en,

With milk and hon—ey blest!

Be—neath thy contempla—tion

Sink heart and voice oppressed:

I know not, oh, I know not,

What holy joys are there,

What ra—dian—cy of glo—ry,

What light beyond compare.

“They stand, those halls of Zi—on,

All ju—bi—lant—”

Blue opened the kitchen door, and as he stepped from the dusky hallway

to the sunlit room, a sudden mellow trill struck into the song.

This tuneful greeting quite caught away the boy’s remembrance of the

little speech of presentation with which he had thought to amuse his

brother, and Doodles, his eyes big with wonder and delight, stretched

out both hands towards the unkempt singer.

“O—h! is he ours?” he cried.

Blue nodded.

“To keep forever?”

Another nod.

“Isn’t he a darling!” breathed the little occupant of the pillowed

chair, when the battered cage was placed beside him. He threw one arm

around the small prison, and leaned lovingly over it.

The bird cocked an eye upward, and ventured another trill.

“He’s just beautiful!” piped Doodles in ecstasy.

After that who could dare to make unflattering remarks about the singer?

Certainly not Doodles’s mother, so with a happy light on her face she

continued her work of preparing dinner.

In The Flatiron news flew fast. Even before Mrs. Stickney’s potatoes had

fried brown, up the stairs puffed Granny O’Donnell on her rheumatic old

legs, bringing the deserted home of her long─mourned─for Canary Dick,

who had flown away from Cherry Street six years ago.

With a joyful whiff the Bargain took possession of his roomier quarters,

and, despite his drooping wing, pranced about on the perches.

“See how happy he is!” laughed Doodles, clapping his little thin hands.

“He is saying thank─you!”

Then, perhaps because his new master had suggested the returning of

thanks, the slim gray bird, with a little captivating prelude, broke

into a torrent of melody such as Canary Dick with his limited powers had

never dreamed of.

“Shure, an’ he must ’a’ coome sthraight f’m hiven!” gasped Granny

O’Donnell, as the last note dropped into silence.

Blue stood, big─eyed, in the pantry doorway, arrested in his hunt for a

suitable bathtub for the singer; the mother quite forgot her scorching

potatoes; and Doodles himself, with both arms around the cage, crooned

words of endearment in the ears of the little songster.

Granny O’Donnell’s astonishing reports of Blue’s twenty─five─cent

purchase spread through the big tenement house, until old and young

tripped or hobbled up to the top floor to see the surprising handful of

feathers that could “sing loike a blissid a─angil.” A long bath and a

still longer toilet in the sun brought the ragged Bargain to something

like sleekness, and he began the promise of making good his little

master’s first praise. On rainy days, when shut─in neighbors were apt to

be neighborly and numerous, the gray bird sometimes sulked on the end of

his perch and refused to sing, possibly too strongly reminded of his

dismal surroundings in the bird shop. But as soon as the sunshine

returned he would promptly forget the past and graciously display his

wonderful gift to all that came.