"Cabby! _Cabby_, you didn't leave the boy's trunk, too, did you?"
The little fellow slid down from the seat, and began fumbling around
in the dark.
"No, sir; I've got 'em here;" and he held up the collar box and brown
paper bundle!
"Is that all?" I gasped.
"Oh, no, sir! I got ten cents the lady give me. Do you want to see
it?" and he began cramming his chubby hand into his side pocket.
"No, my son, I don't want to see it."
I didn't want to see anything in particular. His word was good enough.
I couldn't, really. My eyelashes somehow had got tangled up in each
other, and my pupils wouldn't work. It's queer how a man's eyes act
sometimes.
We were now reaching the open country. The houses were few and farther
apart. The street lamps gave out; so did the telegraph wires festooned
with snow loops. Soon a big building, square, gray, sombre-looking,
like a jail, loomed up on a hill. Then we entered a gate between
flickering lamps, and tugged up a steep road, and stopped. Cabby
sprang down and rang a bell, which sounded in the white stillness like
a fire-gong. A door opened, and a flood of light streamed out, showing
the kindly face and figure of an old priest in silhouette, the yellow
glow forming a golden background.
"Come, sonny," said cabby, throwing open the cab door.
The little fellow slid down again from the seat, caught up the box and
bundle, and, looking me full in the face, said:--
"It _was_ too far to walk."
There were no thanks, no outburst. He was merely a chip in the
current. If he had just escaped some sunken rock, it was the way with
chips like himself. All boys went to asylums, and had no visible
fathers nor invisible mothers nor friends. This talk about boys going
swimming, and catching bull-frogs, and robbing birds' nests, and
playing ball, and "hooky," and marbles, was all moonshine. Boys never
did such things, except in story-books. He was a boy himself, and
knew. There couldn't anything better happen to a boy than being sent
to an orphan asylum. Everybody knew that. There was nothing strange
about it. That's what boys were made for.
All this was in his eyes.
* * * * *
When I reached the platform and faced my audience, I was dinnerless,
half an hour late, and still in my traveling dress.