“Whips _Mag_, because _you_ don’t get much?” I said doubtfully. “What
for?”
“I guess there’s a hard place on _me_, marm. She found that it didn’t
seem to hurt much, when she whipped _me_; and so one night Mag was
teasing her to stop, and she turned to and whipped Mag, and that made
me cry awful; and ever since, if I don’t get enough money, she whips
Mag.”
“Are you sure you are telling me the truth?”
I don’t know why I asked the question, for I saw honesty in those clear
eyes of his. He looked hurt. Yes, you may laugh if you want to, I’m
telling you just as it was--the boy looked as hurt as any of you would
if I doubted you. There came a sort of proud shame into his manner. He
clutched at the placard round his neck, as if he would tear it off, and
answered, sadly,--
“I s’pose I can’t expect anybody to believe me with this round my neck;
but, if you would go home with me, Mag could tell you, and you would
believe _her_.”
By this time Laura had gone in, leaving me to finish my interview
alone. I reflected a moment. The other day I had heard Tom say
he wanted an errand boy. Why should he not have this one? Tom was
my brother. I knew just the difficulties he would make,--want of
reference, a street beggar, a regular rat of the gutter. I could
fancy just how he would talk. I knew, too, that I could overrule his
objections. That’s a power women have when a man loves them; whether
he be husband or brother or friend. I hated the thought of vice and
ignorance and poverty. What if I could save just one small boy from
their clutches? I said resolutely,--
“Will you go home with me, and have a comfortable home and good food
and honest work, and no one ever to beat you, and learn to read?”
I had seen no assent in his eyes till I came to this last clause of my
sentence. Then he asked shrewdly,--
“Who’ll teach me? I can’t go to school and do my work, too.”
“I will teach you. Will you go and work faithfully for my brother, and
learn to read?”
“Won’t I, just?”
“Well, then, let me speak to the lady who went in, and I’ll take you
home at once.”
He shuffled uneasily.
“If you please, marm, I can’t go till I’ve been back to Meg’s, and
carried her this board.”
“But I’ll get a policeman to send a messenger with that. If you go,
perhaps she won’t let you come to me.”
“Yes, marm, I shall come. But you wouldn’t believe me, sure, if I could
steal away, like, and never say good-by to Mag, and let her cry both
her eyes out thinking I’d been shut up, or somebody had killed me.”
And his own great blue eyes grew pathetic again over this picture of
sorrowful possibilities.
“Well, you may go,” I said, half reluctantly, for the little vagabond
had inspired in me a singular interest. “You may go, and be sure you
come to-night or in the morning, to 70 Deerham Street, and ask for Miss
May.”
He looked at me with a grave, resolved look.
“I shall come,” he said; and in an instant he was gone.
That night, after dinner, I told Tom. He was mocking, incredulous,
reluctant--just as I knew he would be. But it all ended in his
promising to try “My Vagrant,” if he ever came.
Just as I had brought him to this pass, the bell rang, and I sprang to
the dining-room door. The dining-room was the front basement, and the
outside door was so near that I opened it myself. It was, indeed, my
vagrant.
“I want Miss May,” he said, with the air which such a _gamin_ puts on
when he speaks to a servant,--an air which instantly subdued itself
into propriety when he heard my voice.
I took him in to Tom; and I saw the blue eyes softened even the
prejudiced mind and worldly heart of Mr. Thomas May. He spoke very
kindly to the boy, and then sent him into the kitchen for his supper.
“Where do you propose to keep this new acquisition?” he asked me, after
the blue-eyed was out of sight.
“In this house, if you please. There is a little single bed all ready
for him in the attic, and I’ve arranged with cook to give him a bath
and then put him into some of the clothes her own boy left behind him
when he went away to sea. I mean to rescue this one soul from a starved
and miserable and wicked life, and I’m willing to take some pains; and
if you aren’t willing to do your part I’m ashamed of you.”
Tom laughed, and called me his “fierce little woman,” his “angry
turtle-dove,” and half-a-dozen other names which he never gave me
except when he was in good humor, so I knew it was all right.
Before three days were over Tom owned that my vagrant, as he persisted
in calling the boy (though we knew now that his name was Johnny True),
was the best errand boy he had ever employed. I myself taught him to
read, as I had promised, and brighter scholar never teacher had. In
four months he had progressed so fast that he could read almost any
thing. There had been a sort of feverish eagerness in his desire to
learn for which I was at a loss to account. Sometimes, coming home
from some party or opera, I would find him studying in the kitchen at
midnight.
We grew fond of him, all of us. Cook said he was no trouble, and he
made it seem as if she had her own boy back again. He waited on Tom
with a sort of dog-like faithfulness; and, as for me, I believe that he
would have cut his hand off for me at any time.
Yet one morning he got up and deliberately walked out of the house.
When his breakfast was ready cook called for him in vain, and in vain
she searched for him from attic to cellar. But before it was time
for Tom to go to business another boy came, a little older than my
vagrant,--a nice, respectable-looking boy,--and asked for Mr. May. He
came into the dining-room and stood there, cap in hand.
“If you please, sir,” he said bashfully, “Johnny True wants to know if
you’ll be so good as to take me on in his place, considering that he
isn’t coming back any more, and I have done errands before, and got
good reference.”
He had made his little speech in breathless haste, running all his
sentences together into one.
Tom looked at him deliberately, and lit a cigar.
“Johnny isn’t coming back, hey?”
“No, sir.”
“Where is Johnny gone?”
“He didn’t tell me, if you please, but he said he should be hurt to
death if it troubled you to lose him, and he knew I could do as well as
he could.”