Produced by Suzanne Lybarger, Brian Janes and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net and
and the Booksmiths at http://www.eBookForge.net
THE RICH LITTLE POOR BOY
ELEANOR GATES
[Illustration: WHAT HE SAW THERE HELD HIM SPELLBOUND IN HIS CHAIR]
THE RICH
LITTLE POOR BOY
BY
ELEANOR GATES
AUTHOR OF "THE POOR LITTLE RICH GIRL,"
"THE PLOW-WOMAN," "THE BIOGRAPHY OF A
PRAIRIE GIRL," "ALEC LLOYD, COW-PUNCHER,"
"PIGGIE," ETC.
[Illustration]
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK :: MCMXXII :: LONDON
COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO
F. F. M.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE WICKED GIANT 1
II. PRIDE AND PENALTY 10
III. A FEAST AND AN EXCURSION 17
IV. THE FOUR MILLIONAIRES 24
V. NEW FRIENDS 36
VI. THE DEAREST WISH 52
VII. A SERIOUS STEP 60
VIII. MORE TREASURES 68
IX. ONE-EYE 79
X. THE SURPRISE 93
XI. THE DISCOVERY 108
XII. A PRODIGAL PUFFED UP 117
XIII. CHANGES 122
XIV. THE HEAVEN THAT NEARLY HAPPENED 138
XV. SCOUTS 144
XVI. HOPE DEFERRED 153
XVII. MR. PERKINS 160
XVIII. THE ROOF 172
XIX. A DIFFERENT CIS 183
XX. THE HANDBOOK 190
XXI. THE MEETING 201
XXII. CIS TELLS A SECRET 212
XXIII. ROSES THAT TATTLED 219
XXIV. FATHER PAT 233
XXV. AN ALLY CROSSES A SWORD 241
XXVI. THE END OF A LONG DAY 247
XXVII. ANOTHER GIFT 255
XXVIII. ANOTHER STORY 275
XXIX. REVOLT 290
XXX. DISASTER 300
XXXI. THE VISION 318
XXXII. HELP 330
XXXIII. ONE-EYE FIGHTS 345
XXXIV. SIR ALGERNON 357
XXXV. GOOD-BYS 363
XXXVI. LEFT BEHIND 373
XXXVII. UPS AND DOWNS 379
XXXVIII. ANOTHER GOOD-BY 391
XXXIX. THE LETTER 400
XL. "THE TRUE WAY" 407
THE RICH LITTLE POOR BOY
ELEANOR GATES
CHAPTER I
THE WICKED GIANT
HE was ten. But his clothes were forty. And it was this difference in
the matter of age, and, consequently, in the matter of size, that
explained why, at first sight, he did not show how thin-bodied he was,
but seemed, instead, to be rather a stout little boy. For his faded, old
shirt, with its wide sleeves lopped off just above his elbows, and his
patched trousers, shortened by the scissors to knee length, were both
many times too large for him, so that they lay upon him, front, back and
sides, in great, overlapping pleats that were, in turn, bunched into
heavy tucks; and his kitchen apron, worn with the waistband about his
neck, the strings being tied at the back, also lent him--if viewed from
the front--an appearance both of width and weight.
But he was not stout. His frame was not even fairly well covered. From
the apron hem in front, the two legs that led down to the floor were
scarcely larger than lead piping. From the raveling ends of his short
sleeves were thrust out arms that matched the legs--bony, skinny arms,
pallid as to color, and with hardly any more shape to them than there
was to the poker of the cookstove. But while the lead-pipe legs ended in
the sort of hard, splinter-defying boy's feet that could be met with on
any stretch of pavement outside the tenement, the bony arms did not end
in boyish hands. The hands that hung, fingertips touching halfway to the
knee, were far too big for a boy of ten. They were red, too, as if all
the blood of his thin shoulders had run down his arms and through his
wrists, and stayed there. And besides being red, fingers, palms and
backs were lined and crinkled. They looked like the hands of a
hard-working, grown girl. That was because they knew dish washing and
sweeping, bed making and cooking, scrubbing and laundering.
But his head was all that a boy's head should be, showing plenty of
brain room above his ears. While it was still actually--and
naturally--large for his body, it looked much too large; not only
because the body that did its bidding was undersized, but because his
hair, bright and abundant, added to his head a striking circumference.
He hated his hair, chiefly because it had a hint of wave in it, but also
because its color was yellow, with even a touch of green! He had been
taunted about it--by boys. But what was worse, women and girls had
admired it, and laid hands upon it--or wanted to. And small wonder; for
in thick undulations it stood away from forehead and temples as if blown
by the wind. A part it had not, nor any sort of neat arrangement. He saw
strictly to that. Whenever his left hand was not busy, which was less
often than he could wish, he tugged at his locks, so that they reared
themselves on end, especially at the very top, where they leaned in
various directions and displayed what appeared to be several cowlicks.
At every quarter that shining mop was uneven, because badly cut by Big
Tom Barber, his foster father, whose name belied his tonsorial ability.
Below that wild shock of colorful hair was a face that, when clean,
could claim attention on its own account. It was a square-jawed little
face over which the red was quick to come, though, unhappily, it did not
stay. Its center was a nose that seemed a trifle small in proportion to
its surroundings. But the top line of it was straight, and the nostrils
were well carved, and had a way of lifting and swelling whenever his
interest was caught.
Under them was a mouth that was wide yet noticeably beautiful--not with
the soft beauty of a baby's mouth, or a girl's, and not because it could
boast even a touch of scarlet. It had been cut as carefully as his nose,
the lips full yet firm, their lines drawn delicately, but with strength.
It was sensitive, with a little quirk at each corner which betrayed its
humor. Above all things, its expression was sweet.
Colorless as were his cheeks and lips, nevertheless he did not seem a
pale boy, this because his brows were a misty yellow-white, and his
thick lashes flaxen; while his eyes were an indescribable mixture of
glowing gray and blue plentifully flecked with yellow. Perfectly
adjusted were these straight-looking eyes, and set far apart. By turns
they were quick, and bold, and open, and full of eager inquiry; or they
were thoughtfully half covered by their heavy lids, very still, and far
sighted. And when he laughed, what with the shine of his hair and brows
and light lashes, and the flash of his eyes and his teeth, the effect
was as if sunlight were upon his face--though the sun so seldom shone
upon him that he had not one boyish freckle.
Such was Johnnie Smith.
Just now he was looking smaller and less sunlit than usual. This was
because Big Tom bulked in front of him, delivering the final orders for
the day before going down the three flights of stairs, out into the
brick-paved area, thence through a dank, ground-floor hall which bored
its way from end to end of another tenement, and into the crowded East
Side street, and so to his work on the docks.
Barber was a huge-shouldered, long-armed slouch of a man, with a
close-cropped head (flat at the back) upon which great hairy ears stood
out like growths. His eyes were bloodshot and bulging, the left with an
elusive cast in it that showed only now and then, when it testified to
the kink in his brain. His nose, uneven in its downward trend, was so
fat and wide and heavy that it fairly sprawled upon his face; and its
cavernous, black nostrils made it seem to possess something that, to
Johnnie, was like a personality--as if it were a queer sort of snakish
thing, carefully watched over by the bulging, bloodshot eyes.
For Barber's nose had the power of moving itself as Johnnie had seen no
other nose move. Slowly and steadily it went up and down whenever Barber
ate or talked--as even Johnnie's small, straight nose would often do.
But whenever Big Tom laughed--sneeringly or boastfully or in ugly
triumph--the nose would make a sudden, sidewise twist.
But something besides its power to move made it seem a live and separate
thing: the longshoreman troubled himself to shave only of a Sunday
morning, when, with all the stiff, dark growth cleared away to right and
left--for Barber's beard grew almost to his eyes--his nose, though bent
and purplish, was fairly like a nose. But with Monday, again the nose
took on that personality; and seemed to be crouching and writhing at the
center of its mat of stubble.
But Barber's mouth was his worst feature, with its great, pushed-out
underlip, which showed his complete satisfaction in himself. So big was
that lip that it seemed to have acquired its size through the robbing of
the chin just beneath--for Big Tom had little enough chin.
But his neck was massive, and an angry red, sprinkled with long, wiry
hairs. It fastened his flat-backed head to a body that was like a
gorilla's, thick and wide and humped. And his arms gave an added touch
of the animal, for they were so long that his great palms reached to his
knees; and so sprung out at the shoulder, and so curved in at the wrist,
that when they met at the fingers they formed a pair of mammoth,
muscled tongs--tongs that gave Barber his boasted value in and out of
ships.
His legs were big, too. As he stood over Johnnie now, it was plain to
see where the boy's shaggy trousers had come from (the grotesquely big
shirt as well). Each of those legs was almost as big as Johnnie's
skimped little body. And they turned up at the bottom in great broganned
feet that Barber was fond of using as instruments of punishment. More
than once Johnnie had felt those feet. And if he could ever have decided
how pain was to be inflicted upon him, he would always have chosen the
long, thick, pliant strap that belted in, and held together, his baggy
clothes. For the strap left colorful tracks that stung only in the
making; but the mark of one of those feet went black, and ached to the
bone.
Johnnie hated Big Tom worse than he hated his own yellow hair. But he
feared him, too. And now listened attentively as the longshoreman, his
cutty pipe smoking in one knotted fist, his dinner pail in the other,
his cargo hook slung to his burly neck, glowered down upon him.
"Git your dishes done," admonished Barber. "Don't let the mush dry on
'em, and draw the flies."
There being no question to answer, Johnnie said nothing. Final orders of
a morning were the usual thing. If he was careful not to reply, if he
waited, taking care where he looked, the longshoreman would have his say
out and go--pressed by time. So the boy, almost holding his breath,
fastened his eyes upon a patch of wall where the smudged plaster was
broken and some laths showed. And not a muscle of him moved, except one
big toe, which he curled and uncurled across a crack in the rough, worn
kitchen floor.
"Git everything else done, too," went on Big Tom. "You don't scrub till
to-morrow, so the day's clear for stringin' beads, or makin' vi'lets.
And don't let me come home t'night and find no hot supper. _You_ hear
me." He chewed once or twice--on nothing.
Johnnie continued silent, counting the laths--from the top down, from
the bottom up. But his toe moved a shade faster. For there was a note of
rising irritation in that _You_ hear me.
"I say, you _hear_ me!" repeated Big Tom (replies always angered him:
this time silence had). He thrust the whole of the short stem of his
"nose-warmer" into his mouth. Then, with the free hand, he seized
Johnnie by one thin shoulder and gave him a rough, forward jerk.
"Yes," acknowledged the boy, realizing too late that this was one
occasion when speech would have been safest. He still concentrated on
the laths, hoping that matters would go no further.
But that single jerk, far from satisfying Barber's rancor, only added to
it--precisely as if he had tasted something which had whetted his
appetite for more. He gripped Johnnie's shoulder again, this time
driving him back a step. "Now, no sass!" he warned.
The blood came rushing to Johnnie's face, darkening it so that the misty
yellow-white brows stood out grotesquely. And his chest began to heave.
He loathed the touch of Barber's hand. He despised the daily orders that
only turned him against his work. But most of all he shrank from the
indignity of being jerked when it was wholly undeserved.
Big Tom marked the boy's rising color. And the sight spurred his
ill-humor. "What do you do for your keep?" he demanded. "_Stop_ pullin'
your hair!" He struck Johnnie's hand down with a sweaty palm that
touched the boy's forehead. "Pullin' and hawlin' _all_ the time, but
don't earn the grub y' swallow!"
Just as one jerk always led to another, so one blow was usually the
prelude to a thrashing. Johnnie saw that he must stop the thing right
there; must have instant help in diverting Barber. Taking a quick, deep
breath, he sounded his call for aid--a loud, croupy cough.
It was instantly answered. The door beside the cookstove swung wide, and
Cis came hurrying in from the tiny, windowless closet--this her "own
room"--where she had been listening anxiously. "Oh, Mr. Barber," she
began, trying to keep her young voice from trembling, "this week can I
have enough out of my wages for some more shoe-whitening?"
There were several ways in which to take Big Tom's mind from any
subject. The surest of these was to bring up a question of spending. And
now, answering to his stepdaughter's subterfuge as promptly as if he
were a mechanism that had been worked by a key, he turned from glowering
down upon Johnnie to scowl at her.
"_More?_" he demanded harshly.
Her blue eyes met his look timidly. Out of the wisdom of her
sixteen-year-old policy, she habitually avoided him, slipping away of a
morning to her work at the pasteboard-box factory without a word;
slipping back as quietly in the late afternoon; keeping out of his sight
and hearing whenever that was possible; and speaking to him seldom.
Cis looked at every one timidly. She avoided Big Tom not only because it
was wise to do so but because she was naturally shy and retiring, and
avoided people in general. She had a quaint face (framed by straight,
light-brown hair) that ended in a pointed, pink chin. Habitually she
wore that expression of mingled understanding and responsibility common
to all children who have brought up other children. So that she seemed
older than she was. But her figure was that of a child--slim, frail, and
still lacking a woman's shapeliness, notwithstanding the fact that it
had long carried the burdens of a grown-up.
Facing her stepfather now, she did not falter. "Yes, please," she
answered. "The last, I got a month ago."
His pipe was in his fist again, and he was chewing wrathfully. "I'll
see," he growled. And waved her to go.
From the hall door, she glanced back at Johnnie. Not only had she and he
a system of communication by means of coughs, humming, whistles, taps
and other audible sounds; and a second system (just as good) that
depended upon wall marks, soap-inscribed hieroglyphics on the bit of
mirror in Cis's room, or the arrangement of dishes on the kitchen table,
and pots and pans on the stove, but they had a well-worked-out silent
system--by means of brow-raisings, eye and lip movements, head tippings
and swift finger pointings--that was as perfect and satisfactory as the
dumb conversation of two colts. Such a system was necessary; for
whenever the great figure of Barber came wedging itself through the hall
door, and his presence, like a blighting shadow, darkened the already
dark little flat, then the two young voices had to fall instantly
silent, since Barber would brook no noise--least of all whispering.
Now by the quick, sidewise tip of her small, black-hatted head, Cis
inquired of Johnnie whether she should stay or go. And Johnnie, with
what amounted to an upward fling of his eyelids, answered that she need
not stay. With Barber's cutty once more in his right fist, and with his
mind veered to a fresh subject, Johnnie knew the crisis was past.
With a swift glance of affection and sympathy, not unmixed with triumph
over the success of her interruption, Cis fluttered out--leaving the
door open at Barber's back.
The longshoreman turned heavily as if to follow her, but came about with
a final caution, lowering his voice to cheat any busy ear in the other
flat on the same floor. "Don't you neglect the old man," he charged.
"Face--hair--fix him up--_you_ know."
At the stove, an untidy heap of threadbare, brown blanket, in a wheel
chair suddenly stirred. In several ways old Grandpa was like a big baby,
but particularly in this habit of waking promptly whenever he was
mentioned. "Is that you, Mother?" he asked in his thin, old voice. (He
meant Big Tom's mother, dead now these many years.)
A swift change came over Barber's face. His great underlip drew in, what
chin he had was thrust out with something like concern, and his eyes
rolled away from Johnnie to the whimpering old man. "It's all right,
Pa," he said soothingly. "It's all right. Jus' you sleep." Then he
turned, tiptoed through the door, and shut it after him softly.
Johnnie did not move--except to shift his look from the laths to the
door knob, and take up his toeing of the crack at his feet. The door
itself moved, and rattled gently, as the area door three flights below
was opened by Cis, and a gust from the narrow court was sent up the
stairs of the tenement, as a bubble forces its way surfaceward through
water, to suck at the Barber door.
But Big Tom was not yet gone. And a moment later, the boy was looking at
the outer knob, now in the clutch of several great, grimy, calloused
fingers.
"Let your hair _alone_!" ordered the longshoreman. Then the door closed
finally, and the stairs complained with loud creakings as Barber
descended them.
Johnnie waited till the door in front of him moved and rattled again,
then--