BREAKERS AHEAD FOR HARRY
“Don’t feel so bad about it, Kiddy.” It was the sympathetic Miss Welch
who addressed Harry. Seated at the exchange desk she had witnessed Mr.
Barton’s harsh, unjust manner of dealing with Harry. Her pretty eyes
still snapped with angry sympathy as she tried to comfort the boy, who
looked ready to cry.
Harry clenched his hands hard, and manfully swallowed the lump that
rose in his throat. He was a sturdy boy and not given to tears, but
now his sense of outraged justice was so great that they were very
near to falling. “I--I----” he stammered, then stopped, fighting for
self-control.
“Don’t I know you wasn’t to blame?” soothed Miss Welch’s kindly voice.
“Ain’t I seen him get after other boys besides you, when they hadn’t
done a thing? Don’t tell me. You don’t have to. I guess I know old
Smarty Barty.”
Harry’s woe-begone face lightened a little at Miss Welch’s
disrespectful reference to the formidable Mr. Barton.
“Oh, see the gloom break up!” she exclaimed in pretended astonishment.
“I guess it’ll be a nice day after all. How about it, Kiddy?”
“I guess it will,” smiled Harry. Then he sighed. “I couldn’t help
being late, Miss Welch. First an old man asked me where the perfumes
were. I directed him to them, but he said I’d have to go with him to
show him. I was afraid he’d report me, so I went with him. Then, just
as I was coming through the book department, I bumped into a man with
some books. The books fell to the floor and I stooped to pick them up.
Then I came here as fast as ever I could, but I was ten minutes late.
Now I’ve got three demerits on my card, and I wanted to keep it so
nice--and--clean.” Harry’s voice broke.
“Never mind, Kiddy, never mind,” comforted Miss Welch. “Just let me put
you wise, though. Don’t have nothing to do with these old fuss-budgets
that want you to go on a personally conducted tour of the store with
’em. Answer ’em politely if they ask you anything, and then beat it
out of their vicinity as fast as you can. They won’t report you. They
wouldn’t know you from Adam if they saw you two minutes afterward.
Course, you couldn’t help but pick up those books. You’re all right,
youngster, and you just keep on being the little gentleman you are, no
matter what fifty Smarty Bartys have to say.
“Now, cheer up. I’m goin’ to tell you something funny. ’Bout half an
hour ago, while you was up to school, a long, thin, solemn-looking
woman came up to the desk and says in a kind of a scared voice, ‘Is
this the exchange desk?’
“‘It is,’ says I, ‘what can I do for you?’
“She hands me a big package and says, ‘I bought two little gold
baby-pins here day before yesterday on a transfer, and when they come
home they was two pairs of men’s overalls. They wasn’t no pins at all.’
Maybe I didn’t laugh. I couldn’t help it. When the woman saw me laugh,
she grinned a kind of a sickly grin, too. Now, wasn’t that funny?”
Miss Welch leaned back in her chair and indulged in a fresh burst
of laughter. “Ha, ha! That certainly was a good one on the Transfer
Department,” she chuckled. “They certainly changed things around that
time.”
Harry forgot his troubles and joined in the laugh. The sunshine cast by
the good-natured exchange clerk had scattered his gloom for the time
being, at least. “I’ll try harder than ever,” he thought, setting his
boyish mouth firmly. “He sha’n’t give me any more demerits. I guess
everybody has to learn things by experience.”
He was greatly surprised and not a little perplexed that afternoon
when Mr. Barton beckoned to him from one of the aisles and said in an
actually pleasant tone, “45, I want you to go on an errand. Here is a
pass. Show this to the time-keeper as you go out. Come with me and I
will tell you what you are to do.” Beckoning to Harry, he strode down
the aisle, the boy at his heels. At the extreme end of the jewelry
department was a small room in which Mr. Barton kept his personal
effects. It had formerly been used by the buyer of the jewelry as an
office. Now it held nothing but empty boxes and odds and ends that had
drifted into it. Unlocking a small closet, Mr. Barton took from it a
good-sized pasteboard box. “Here, boy, I want you to take this to 1855
Commerce Street. It goes to Jacoby’s tailor shop. Here’s his card.
There’s a note in the box. Just ask for Mr. Jacoby, and say that Mr.
Barton sent you. It won’t take you long.”
“Yes, sir,” replied Harry obediently. “Shall I go now?”
“Yes, and get back as soon as you can.” Mr. Barton’s grim features
relaxed into what he evidently considered a pleasant smile.
Taking the box under his arm, Harry started toward the men’s coat room
for his cap. As he walked, he examined the bit of paper. It was a
printed form of store pass, and at the bottom was written, “On store
business. Barton.”
The man at the time-desk examined the slip indifferently, made a
mysterious mark on it with a red pencil, and shoved it back to Harry.
It was not until Harry had left the store behind and walked at least
a block that he took the card bearing the tailor’s address from his
pocket and again glanced at the street and number. Martin Brothers’
store fronted on Commerce Street. It took up the entire space between
numbers five and six hundred. But it was to number 1855 that Mr.
Barton was sending him. Twelve long, city blocks lay before him.
The boy looked rather dismayed; not because he objected to the long
walk in the crisp, autumn air, but because of the time it would take
him to go to the shop and return. Harry wondered vaguely if it were
not customary to allow the messengers their carfare when on outside
business for the store. Perhaps Mr. Barton had forgotten all about
it. He was decidedly absent-minded. Even in the short time Harry had
been stationed at the exchange desk, he had discovered that. Had he
not heard Miss Welch scold frequently over Mr. Barton’s mistakes, due
to his absent-mindedness? But he was so crabbed that she never dared
call him to account openly for them. She had to content herself with
throwing out barbed insinuations, to which he never appeared to pay the
slightest attention.
Harry soon forgot his brief uneasiness over the distance to his
destination and trudged briskly along the city streets, happy in being
out in the fresh air. After twenty minutes fast walking he arrived
at the shop. Over the door hung a large sign, which read, “A. Jacoby,
Repairing, Cleaning and Pressing Garments While You Wait.” It was
followed by a list of prices.
Harry delivered the box into the hands of a stout, gray-haired man with
a red face and a decided German accent. The man opened the box. In it
lay a blue serge suit. On top of the suit lay a note. The tailor read
the note, then motioning Harry to a chair he said, “Sit down and vait.
It vill be a little while only before I can do dot shob for Meester
Parton.”
The old man took the suit over one arm and trotted off into an
adjoining room with it.
Harry sat down obediently enough. He glanced curiously about him at
the rows of suits, single coats and trousers that hung on racks set
on three sides of the room, each garment bearing a large white tag.
Harry always made it a point to be interested in all that he saw, but
tailoring and repairing did not in the least appeal to him. After
twenty minutes had passed he began to feel slightly impatient. Mr.
Barton had said it would not take him long. When twice twenty minutes
had slipped away, he grew uneasy. It had been twenty minutes past two
o’clock when he left the store. It was now twenty minutes past three. A
whole hour had vanished.
“Won’t Mr. Barton’s suit be ready soon, sir?” he asked the gray-haired
proprietor politely, as Mr. Jacoby waddled into view at the sound of
the door-bell.
“Ven it ees hready, I dell you, poy,” the old man returned placidly,
then went on explaining, to a beetle-browed young man who had just come
in, why it would be advisable to steam clean a much-soiled gray suit he
had brought into A. Jacoby’s dominion for renovation.
Half-past three, then a quarter to four arrived. Harry fidgeted
uneasily. He was in an agony of apprehension lest Mr. Barton might
accuse him of playing along the way. At four o’clock, A. Jacoby waddled
into the room where Harry sat in despair. The blue serge suit hung over
one pudgy arm.
“You dell Mr. Parton he should pring his glose alhready sooner. Next
dime he haf to vait until the next tay.” The old man was folding the
suit in the box as he talked. It seemed to Harry that he was hours
tying up the box. “Dell him he can bay me any dime,” he instructed
Harry.
“Two hours in that shop, and it’ll take twenty minutes to get back to
the store. Oh, if I just had a nickel.” He looked longingly at the cars
as they lumbered by him, then squaring his shoulders he set off toward
Martin Brothers’ Store almost on a run.
He thought the time-keeper eyed him rather suspiciously as he tendered
his slip at the time-desk. He wondered if the man thought he had been
loitering. But what would Mr. Barton say? That was the all-important
question. Harry decided that if Mr. Barton accused him of playing
along the way, he would suggest that he call A. Jacoby himself on the
telephone and thus find out the time he left the tailor shop.
Harry hastily handed his cap to the boy who was on duty in the
coat-room and hurried up the nearest stairway, two steps at a time.
As he neared the exchange desk number 10, his eyes traveled over the
jewelry department, in a search for Mr. Barton. Then suddenly he heard
an indignant voice exclaim, “Well, 45, I wonder where _you’ve_ been all
afternoon!”
Harry whirled to face Miss Welch’s disapproving eyes. Her pretty face
was not lighted by its usual smile. She looked distinctly out of humor.
“I didn’t think it of you, Kid,” she replied. “I thought you was a good
boy. Here, when I’m as busy as can be, you go and lose yourself for
all afternoon. I nearly ruined my voice hollering for you, and maybe
Mr. Seymour ain’t mad. He flopped up here with some lady friend of his
awhile ago. She wanted to exchange a ring and I had no boy to send with
her to the department. He had to go himself. After she was gone he came
back and I had to give him your number. He asked Smarty Barton where
you was and he said he sent you to the stock-room half an hour ago,
and you’d oughta been back. Now there’s just this about it, Kid. If you
aren’t going to be on the job when I need you, then I’m going to ask
for another boy. I’ve tried to be good to you and you ought to kinda
look out for me and be Johnny-on-the-spot when I call, ‘Boy,’ without
my wasting my breath and splitting my throat yelling for you.”
Harry stared at the ruffled exchange clerk in silent amazement. Could
he believe his ears? What was it Miss Welch had just said about Mr.
Barton?
“I guess you know you didn’t do right,” went on Miss Welch. “I
certainly am su’prised and sorry.”
“Miss Welch,” Harry’s voice rose in excitement. “I wasn’t up in the
stock-room. Why, I don’t even know where it is. I was out of the store
on an errand for Mr. Barton.”
It was the exchange clerk’s turn to stare. There was absolute truth in
the boy’s clear eyes. They met hers unflinchingly.
“Well, what do you think of that?” she muttered. “On an errand for old
Smarty! Where’d he send you?”
“To a tailor shop on Commerce Street. I had to take a blue suit there
to be pressed. I had to wait for it, and it took a long time. He gave
me a store pass. I’m afraid he’ll scold me, though, for being gone so
long. But I----”
“Scold you,” snorted Miss Welch. “Don’t you worry. He won’t scold
you. The mean old reprobate! Here he sends you out on an errand for
him and then tells Mr. Seymour he sent you to the stock-room. Oh, just
wait till the next time he gets on his ear around here. I’ll hand him
something. Now, you listen to me, Harry. I mighta known you was too
good a kid to go playing hookey from your department. Don’t you ever go
on personal errands for anybody but a real boss. No aisle man can send
you out with his clothes or his laundry or to buy theatre tickets or
anything like that. Some of ’em do it, I know, but they’re generally
men enough to stand up and say so. If he tries it again, say ‘No,’
right out flat. Just like that. He can’t do a thing to you, because if
he reported you he’d have to tell on himself. Catch him doing that!”
“But what shall I say if Mr. Seymour asks me about to-day?” queried
Harry, his boyish face very sober.
“Tell him--let me see--tell him--the truth, of course. You don’t love
Smarty Barton so much that you want to be a nice, gentle martyr for
him, do you?”
“No-o-o, only I hate to--tell tales,” faltered Harry.
“Humph!” ejaculated the exchange clerk with deep scorn. “Well, wait and
see. Maybe Mr. Seymour won’t think of it again. But you remember what I
told you. No more errands for S. B. I’ll bet you he never gave you a
cent of carfare, now did he?”
Harry shook his head.
“Can you beat it?” muttered Miss Welch. “Yes, lady, this is the
exchange desk.” She turned to the customer who had asked the question.
“Where’s your check? You’ll have to get the aisle manager to sign it.”
Harry moved a little away from the desk, still keeping within call.
His honest young soul rebelled against Mr. Barton’s treachery. He made
up his mind, however, that he would not betray the aisle manager if he
could avoid doing so, provided Mr. Seymour should take him to task for
his long absence from the floor. But he hoped with all his heart that
Mr. Barton would not ask him to go on another similar errand.