BATTLE AND VICTORY.
“It’s a queer world, and no mistake.”
Jim looked unusually grave, as he gave Johnny the benefit of these words
of wisdom. Johnny was on his way home from school, and he had stopped to
show Jim a certain knife, about which they had conversed a good deal,
at various times. It had four blades, one of them a file-blade; it was
strongly made, but pretty too, with a nice smooth white handle, and a
little nickel plate on one side, for the fortunate owner’s name. They had
first made its acquaintance from the outside of a shop-window, where it
lay in a tray with about a dozen others of various kinds, all included in
the wonderful statement,—
[Illustration]
“Your choice for fifty cents!”
Johnny and Jim had both chosen immediately, but as Johnny, who was
beginning to take an interest in politics, remarked, it was one thing to
nominate a knife, and quite another to elect it! A slight difficulty lay
in the way of their walking boldly into the store, and announcing their
choice; neither of them had, at that precise moment, floating capital to
the amount of fifty cents!
“And some fellow who _has_ fifty cents will be sure to snap up such a
bargain before the day’s over,” said Johnny, mournfully. “What fun it
must be to be rich, Jim; just to walk into a store when you see anything
you like, and say, ‘I’ll take that,’ without even stopping to ask how
much it is.”
“Yes, it sounds as if it would be,” said Jim, “but though I can’t exactly
say that I’m intimate with many of ’em, it does seem to me, looking at it
from the outside, as it were, that they get less sugar for a cent than
some of us ’umble sons of poverty do!”
And Jim winked in a manner which Johnny admired all the more because he
was unable to imitate it.
“I don’t see how you can tell,” said Johnny, “and I think you must be
mistaken, Jim.”
“Well now, for instance,” replied Jim, who delighted in an argument, “I’m
taking what the newspaper-poetry-man would call an ever-fresh delight
in those three jolly warm nightshirts your mother had made for me. I’d
never have saved the money for ’em in the world, if she hadn’t kept me up
to it, and I feel as proud as Cuffee, every time I put one on, to think
I paid for every stitch of it—I can’t help feeling sort of sorry that
it wouldn’t be the correct thing to wear them on the street. Now do you
suppose your millionaire finds any fun in buying nightshirts? I guess
not! And that’s only one thing out of dozens of the same sort. See?”
“Yes,” answered Johnny, thoughtfully, “I see what you mean; I didn’t
think of it in that way, before. But, all the same, I’d be willing to try
being a millionaire for a day or two. And I do wish the fellow in there
would kind of pile up the other knives over that white one till I can
raise money enough to buy it!”
It is needless to say that the shopkeeper did not act upon this
suggestion—perhaps because he did not hear it; and yet, by some singular
chance, day after day passed, and still the white-handled knife remained
unsold. And then Johnny’s uncle came to say goodbye, before going on a
long business journey, and just as he was leaving, he put a bright half
dollar in his nephew’s hand, saying,—
“I’ll not be here to help keep your birthday this year, my boy, so will
you buy an appropriate present for a young man of your age and inches,
and give it to yourself, with my love?”
Would he? Uncle Rob knew all about that knife, in less than five minutes,
and then, as soon as he was gone, Johnny begged hard to be allowed to
go out after dark, “just this once,” to secure the knife; he felt so
entirely sure that it would be gone the next morning!
But it was not. And its presence in his pocket, during school hours, had
a rather bad effect upon his pursuit of knowledge. On his way home, as I
have said, he stopped to show his newly-acquired treasure to Jim, and he
was a little disappointed that Jim did not seem more sympathetic with his
joy, but simply said, thoughtfully,—
“It’s a queer world, and no mistake!”
[Illustration: THE NEW KNIFE.]
“I don’t see anything so very queer about it, myself,” said Johnny,
contentedly, adding, with a little enjoyment of having the best of it,
for once, with Jim, “papa says, that if we think more than two people
are queer to us, we may be pretty sure that we are the queer ones, and
that the rest of the world is about as usual—at least, that’s the sense
of what he said; I don’t remember the words exactly.”
“I wasn’t thinking of myself just then, for a wonder!” said Jim, with
the slightly mocking expression on his face which Johnny did not like.
“It’s a good enough world for me, but when I see a little chap like Taffy
getting all the kicks and none of the halfpence, I don’t know exactly
what to think. He’s taken a new turn, lately; twisted up with pain, half
the time, and as weak as a kitten, the other half.”
“Where is he, anyhow?” asked Johnny.
“Well,” said Jim, turning suddenly red under his coat of tan, “I’ve got
him round at my place. The fact is, it was too unhandy for me to go and
look after him at that other place; it was noisy, too. He didn’t like it.”
Several questions rose to Johnny’s lips, but he repressed them; he had
discovered that nothing so embarrassed Jim as being caught in some good
work. So he only asked,—
“But how did my new knife make you think of Taffy?”
“Oh, never mind!” and Jim began to walk away.
“But I do mind!” said Johnny, following him and catching his arm. “And I
do wish you wouldn’t think it is smart to be so dreadfully mysterious.
Come, out with it!”
“Very well, then,” said Jim, stopping suddenly, “if you don’t like it,
maybe you’ll know better another time. It made me think of him because
I have been meaning to buy him one of those knives as soon as I could
raise the cash, but I’ve had to spend all I could make lately for other
things. The little chap keeps grunting about a knife he once found in
the street, and lost again; and he seems to fancy that when he’s doing
something with his hands he don’t feel the pain so much. He cuts out
pictures with an old pair of scissors I happened to have, whenever I can
get him any papers, but he likes best to whittle, and he broke the last
blade of that old knife of mine the other day; he’s been fretting about
it ever since. I’m glad you’ve got the knife, Johnny, since you’re so
pleased about it, and wanted it so, but I couldn’t help thinking—” and
here Jim abruptly turned a corner, and was gone before Johnny could stop
him.
“I should just like to know what he told me all that yarn for!” said
Johnny to himself; a little crossly. “He surely doesn’t think I ought
to give my knife, my new knife, that uncle Rob gave me for a birthday
present, to that little Taffy? Why, I don’t even know him!”
And Johnny tried to banish such a ridiculous idea from his mind at once.
But somehow it would not be banished. The thought came back to him again
and again; how many things he had to make life sweet and pleasant to him;
how few the little lonely boy, shut up all day in Jim’s dingy bed room,
the window of which did not even look on a street, but on a narrow back
yard, where the sun never shone. The more he thought of it, the more it
appealed to his pity. And here was a chance,—but no, surely people could
not be expected to make such sacrifices as that.
He managed to shake off the troublesome thought for a few minutes, when
he showed the knife to his mother and Tiny. They both admired it to his
heart’s content, and said what a bargain it was, and what a wonder that
nobody had bought it before, and what a suitable thing for him to buy for
Uncle Rob’s birthday present to him. But, when he went up to his room,
the question again forced itself upon him, and would not be shaken off.
Over and over again in his mind, as they had done that other time, the
words repeated themselves,—
“And who is my neighbor?”
He did not see Jim again for several days, and this made him unreasonably
angry. It seemed to him that Jim had taken things for granted altogether
too easily. How did Jim know that he, Johnny, was not waiting for a
chance to send the knife to poor little Taffy?
But was he? He really hardly knew himself until one day when, by dint of
hard running, he caught Jim, and asked him,—
“See here! How’s that little chap, and what’s gone with you lately?”
“He’s worse,” said Jim, gruffly, “and I’m busy—that’s what’s gone with
me. I can’t stop, I’m in a hurry.”
“Oh, very well!” said Johnny, in an offended tone. “I thought we were
friends, Jim Brady, but I’ll not bother you any more. Goodbye.”
“Johnny,” said Jim, putting his hand on Johnny’s shoulder as he spoke,
“can’t you make any allowance for a fellow’s being in trouble? I can’t
stop now, I really and truly can’t, but I’ll be on the corner by the
library this afternoon, and if you choose to stop, I’ll talk all you want
me to.”
“All right, I’ll come,” said Johnny, his wounded self-love forgotten at
sight of Jim’s troubled face.
He hurried home, and, with the help of an old table knife, he managed
to work ten cents out of the jug that he had “set up” for a Christmas
present fund. With this he bought the largest picture paper he could find
for the money. Then he gathered together a handful of pictures he had
been saving for his scrap book, wrapped the knife first in them, then
in the large paper, and then tied the whole up securely in a neat brown
paper parcel.
When he saw Jim that afternoon he asked him as cautiously as he could
about Taffy’s needs, and at last he said,—
“Jim, why haven’t you told mamma about him, and let her help you?”
“It seemed like begging. I didn’t like—” and Jim stopped, looking very
much embarrassed.
“Well, I mean to tell her as soon as I go home,” said Johnny, resolutely,
“for I know she’ll go and see him, and have something done to make him
better, and—Jim, I must go now, but will you please give this to Taffy,
with my love?”
And, putting the parcel in Jim’s hand, Johnny turned, and ran home.
But was he really the same Johnny? Had wings grown on his feet? Had his
heart been suddenly changed into a feather? He whistled, he sang, he
stopped to turn somersets on the grass in the square. No one but his
Captain had known of the battle. None, but the Giver of it, knew of the
victory.