“Do take him,” I said in a low tone to Tom, and then I said to the boy
that just now he had better go to the store, and Mr. May would see him
presently, when he came to business.
Tom laughed, a half-amused, half-provoked laugh, when he went out, and
said,--
“Well, my dear, I don’t think your vagrant has proved to be such a
success that you need expect me to let him choose my next errand boy.”
“I think, at least, that if he has sent you one as good as himself you
will have no fault to find,” I said hotly. But all the time there was
a sore place in my own heart, for I had thought that my vagrant would
have loved me too well to run away from me in this way.
That night Tom said that the new errand boy was doing well, and he
had concluded to keep him on. I think Tom missed my vagrant; but not,
of course, so much as I missed my bright scholar--my grateful little
follower.
Of course, the new boy lived in his own home, wherever that might be. I
did not concern myself about him, or feel any disposition to put him in
the little bed in the front attic.
Two or three weeks passed and we heard no word from Johnny True. But at
last a rainy day came, and with it Johnny, asking for Miss May.
“I guess he’s repented,” cook said, coming upstairs to tell me. I went
down to Johnny, resolved to be equal to the occasion--to meet him with
all the severity his ungrateful behavior deserved. But, somehow, the
wistful look in his blue eyes disarmed me. He was a little thin and
pale, too; and my heart began to soften even before he spoke.
“I couldn’t stay away, ma’am,” he said, with the clear accent he had
caught so quickly from my brief teaching, “and not let you know why I
went.”
“To let me know _when_ you went would have been more to the purpose,” I
answered, with what sternness I could command. “I had thought better of
you, Johnny, than that you were capable of running away.”
“But you see, ma’am, I was afraid you would not let me go if I told
you.”
“And why did you want to go? Were you not comfortable?”
“Yes, ma’am--that was the worst of it.”
“Why the worst of it? Have you any especial objection to be
comfortable?”
Suddenly the blue eyes filled with tears, like a girl’s; and there was
a pitiful sob in the voice which answered me.
“Oh, it hurt me so, when I was warm, and had a good supper, and
everybody’s kind word, to think of poor Mag there at home, cold and
hungry, and with old Meg beating her. I never should have come and left
her but for the learning to read. _She_ wanted me to come for that.”
“So you could read to her?”
“So I could _teach_ her, ma’am. You never in all your life saw anybody
so hungry to learn to read as Mag; and when I went home that first day
and told her all you said, and told her that after all I couldn’t go
and leave her there to take all the hard fare and hard words, she just
began to cry, and to tease me to go and learn to read, so I could teach
her, until I couldn’t stand it any longer, and I came.”
“And how did she know she would ever see you again?” I asked. “It would
have been most natural, having learned what comfort was, to stay on
here and enjoy it.”
“Mag _knew me_, ma’am,” said my vagrant, as proudly as a prince could
speak if his honor were called in question. “Mag knew what I was, and
I learned as fast as I could to get back to her--don’t you think so,
ma’am?”
“You learned faster than any one else could; I know that,” I answered.
“But, Johnny, how could you bear to go back to begging again?”
“I couldn’t bear it, ma’am, and I didn’t. I had money enough, that
Mr. Tom had given me, to buy myself a stock of papers. I’m a newsboy
now, and I teach Mag to read out of the papers I have left. And old Meg
knows better now than to beat Mag, and we are so much happier. It’s all
owing to you; and I came back to thank you,--but I never could forsake
Mag for long. I must stay with my own.”
“But they are not your own.”
“Mag is, ma’am.”
He was as resolute to ally himself, for that girl’s sake, with poverty,
and, if need were, shame, as ever was a hero to live or die for the
land of his birth; and out in the rain, down the desolate street, I
watched my vagrant go away from me for ever. But I did not pity him. No
soul is to be pitied which has reached life’s crowning good,--the power
to love another better than itself. Nor do I know any curled darling of
fortune who seems to me happier than was my vagrant.