Say, Billy, do you cotton to kids? I don’t suppose you know whether you
do or not, but if anyone should ask you about me, tell them I don’t. And
I’ve been thinking about it quite a bit lately.
Do you remember Ed Cook? He came out to Kansas three years ago and got
married. He and his wife are here now and her sister lives with them.
I met Ed Sunday afternoon. He was wearing a Y. M. C. A. button, and
looked the part so well that I didn’t intend to speak to him, but he
signaled me and piloted me up to the shelf in the apartment building
where he sleeps.
We hadn’t been talking very long when the door opened and the sister
came in. She was dressed to go out, and looked as if she was expecting
someone.
“Lou,” said Ed, “let me introduce Mr. Henderson. My sister, Miss
Hargreaves, Mr. Henderson.”
The girl bowed but looked kind of puzzled.
“I thought you said his name was Clark,” she said.
“Oh, Clark’s sick—couldn’t come today,” answered Ed.
“Oh, dear,” she said. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner? I simply have to
have a young man today, and it’s too late now to find anyone. I don’t
know what to do.”
She was looking at me kind of pleadingly and I said:
“Is it anything I can do?”
Ed gave her a foxy smile and said,
“Why sure, Lou. That’s just the combination. Jack’s just the boy you
want.”
“He looks as if he would be,” she said, looking at me thoughtfully. “I’m
sure it’s awfully kind of you, Mr. Henderson. I suppose you’ve had
experience in this work. Most young men have.”
I wasn’t very sure what she meant, but I couldn’t think of any
experience just then that I hadn’t had, so I trailed along after her as
she started for the door.
“Sorry you have to go, Jack,” Ed said; “but we’ll see you again.”
It wasn’t such a bad trip. The young lady was quite vivacious. She told
me that she was studying music and put in her Sunday afternoons playing
in a dago mission Sunday School. Then I began to tumble. I sure hadn’t
had any experience of that kind.
“There’s the dearest class of little boys,” she told me. “Italians and
Greeks, mostly, and so interesting. If my time wasn’t so taken up with
the music I’d like to take them myself, but I can’t do both, of course.
It was so sweet of you to volunteer, Mr. Henderson.”
I looked at her, but her face was full of gratitude and friendliness,
and I couldn’t believe she was really trying to work me. But I didn’t
remember volunteering to teach a class of dirty little Ginnies.
“Ed comes down here frequently and helps,” she said. “He finds the work
so interesting. And it is such good experience, don’t you think so, Mr.
Henderson? Oh, here we are.”
I felt weak. I looked up and down the street, but couldn’t get out any
good reason for deserting the lady just at that point. Before I had
decided on anything I found myself in a big room full of chairs in rows
with kids placed around in bunches waiting for the show to begin.
“We’re a little late,” Miss Hargreaves said, hastily; “but Miss Smith
will take care of you. Miss Smith, this is Mr. Henderson. He wants to
teach the class we were speaking of,” and she was chasing down the aisle
to the organ before I could get my breath.
The other young lady was very cordial. She acted as though I was all she
had been waiting for. She asked me if I had been in mission work long,
and what I thought of the question of the evangelization of the slums of
the cities, and if I had a quarterly. I answered “No” to the last
question—she didn’t give me time to answer the others—and she chased off
and brought me a paper book which, she said, had the lesson in it.
I looked around while she was off for the book. There was just one door
to the room and a fat woman was standing there, arguing with a little
boy who wanted to get out. There didn’t seem to be much doing in that
quarter, so I braced up and prepared to take my medicine like a man.
“Here are your boys,” she said, piloting me to a bunch of greasy looking
little devils. “Boys, this is Mr. Henderson. You must be real good to
him,” and she gave us all a sweet smile and faded away.
A pale young man with a Sunny Jim face was standing by the bunch. He
told me he was the assistant superintendent and had to keep order. He
said he always gave a little extra attention to these boys.
“I guess you’d better take them into the class room early,” he said.
“They seem to be a bit uneasy today.”
He opened a little door in the wall and the kids fell over themselves
into the next room. Then the door was shut, but I couldn’t have heard
what was doing in the next room, anyway, for the way those little dagos
were howling would have made a room full of maniacs seem like a summer
breeze. Just to remind them that I was there I picked up two of them and
cracked their heads together. That seemed to interest them a little, and
the other boys stopped to take rubbers at the fun. I couldn’t see as I
was hurting them any, so I went on batting them. The rest of the crowd
evidently got a hunch as to what might be coming to them, for they all
filed over to a row of chairs and sat down. It was so still all of a
sudden that I could hear their heads crack as I brought them together.
“Now, see here,” said I, letting go of the two interesting little dears
I was operating on, “I’m willing to do the fair thing if you give me the
chance. If you can sit still without talking or moving I’ll give you
each a quarter when they let us out of here.”
“Dat’s Isidore Simon. He’ll get de quarter,” one of the kids said. But
the rest of them were too anxious for the money to talk.
“Remember,” I said, fearing I hadn’t made it strong enough, “I’ll pound
daylight out of the first one of you little devils that opens his
mouth.”
It was enough. I sat there for thirty-five minutes by my watch with that
row of brats sitting there as still as if they were dead. The bell rang
and I let them file out into the other room, and they did it in great
style. Then I had to chase out and get the change to pay them off. As
soon as the meeting let out the two young ladies and the assistant
superintendent piked up to me and began to all talk at once.
“Oh, Mr. Henderson,” the girls said together, “we must congratulate you
on your success. You are perfectly wonderful with children! No one ever
handled those boys so well before! Couldn’t you take the class
permanently?”
Say, Billy, I thought I’d made a hit. I thought that everything was
coming my way, from the way they crowded each other to flash a happy
look at me. It must have made me kind of dizzy to get it all in a bunch
like that, for before I could think what to say in such a nice crowd as
that, Ed’s sister-in-law had got her jacket on and was walking off with
Sunny Jim.
She looked back at me with a real sweet smile. “Good-bye, Mr.
Henderson,” she said. “I’m awfully sorry, but Mr. Williams and I have to
go to a committee meeting right away. I wish you would come again. I
think it is lovely to meet a young man who is so fond of children.”
Wouldn’t kids be poison to you after that? Just think, the best looking
of the two going off with a white livered guy like that! If I had been
full she would have taken more notice of me. I was so sore that I didn’t
know that the other girl was talking to me until I heard:
“So if you’ll kindly excuse me I’ll go and attend to it now. Mr.
Williams has so much to do, and I like to help him all that I can. Don’t
you think he is a splendid young man, Mr. Henderson? And such a worker!”
“I think you’re all a bunch of workers,” I said. But she just smiled and
said, “Oh, thank you! Good-bye!”
No more Sunday School for me, Billy. It’s too costly for the returns.
Yours,
Jack.
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