AND FINDS IT
The clock in a nearby steeple showed Tom that there still remained
nearly ten minutes of waiting, and so he joined the northward-bound
throng and idled along the street, pausing now and then to examine the
contents of a store window. A jeweller’s display held him for several
minutes. He wondered whether he would ever be rich enough to possess
one of the handsome gold watches so temptingly displayed on black
velvet.
“They ain’t--aren’t--any thicker’n a buckwheat cake,” marvelled Tom.
“Don’t seem as if there was room inside them for the wheels and
things!” Just then he caught sight of himself in a mirror, took off
his straw hat, and smoothed down a rebellious lock of red-brown hair.
Then he replaced his hat, studied the result in the mirror, and nodded
approvingly. A lady at the other side of the window smiled at the
pantomime, and then, catching Tom’s glance in the mirror, smiled at
Tom. Tom flushed and hurried away.
“Guess she thought I was a fool,” he muttered. “Standing there and
primping like a girl!”
The lady followed his flight with kindly amusement, realising
sympathetically his embarrassment. And as she went on she wondered
about him a little. The reddish-brown hair and the clear, honest blue
eyes had been attractive, and, although the tanned and much-freckled
face could not have been called handsome, yet there was something
about it, perhaps the expression of boyish confidence and candour,
that lingered in her memory. Neatly, if inexpensively dressed, his
attire had told her that he was not an Amesville boy, while a lack of
awkwardness, a general air of self-dependence, seemed to preclude the
idea of his being from the country. The problem lasted her only for a
short distance and then Tom and the ingenuous incident at the window
passed from her mind. But she and Tom were destined to meet again,
although neither suspected it.
It was exactly half-past one when Tom entered the hardware store once
more. On the occasion of his first visit the store had been empty of
customers, but now at least half a dozen persons were there, and Mr.
Cummings was busy. Tom found a position out of the way and waited.
Besides Mr. Cummings, there were two others behind the counters--a
tall youth who, as he passed with a customer in tow, looked curiously
at the boy, and a small man with dark whiskers who, at his present
distance, had a strong likeness to the gentleman who had left his purse
in the lunch room. It was several minutes before Mr. Cummings was at
leisure, but finally, dropping the change into the glove of a lady who
had purchased a tack hammer and three papers of upholstery tacks, he
beckoned Tom to the counter.
“Well,” he said, “I spoke to Mr. Wright about you, son, but he didn’t
think we’d better hire anyone just yet. Maybe a month or so later, if
you still want a job, we can take you on. Sorry I can’t do anything
now.”
Tom’s face fell. He had been so certain since lunch that his troubles
were over that the disappointment was deeper than it should have been.
“I’m sorry too, sir,” he said after a moment. “Well, I guess I’ll go
on. I--I’m much obliged to you. You don’t happen to know of anyone who
wants a boy, do you?”
“No, I don’t believe I do,” returned Mr. Cummings kindly. He kept step
with Tom for a way as the latter moved toward the door. “You might try
Miller and Tappen’s, though. That’s the dry-goods store up the street.
They take new help on pretty often, I guess.”
“I’ve been there,” said Tom. “They said----”
“Joe, where have those three-inch brass hooks got to?” asked an
impatient voice from the front of the store. “Funny we can’t keep
anything in place here!”
“Ought to be right in front of you,” replied Mr. Cummings in patient
tones. “Second shelf, Horace. No, _second_, I said. There! Got ’em?”
“Yes,” replied the dark-whiskered man irritably. “I’ve got them at
last!”
It _was_ the gentleman of the coin-purse. Tom recognised him as he went
past. The junior partner was displaying the three-inch hooks to a man
in overalls and glanced up in his quick, nervous manner at the boy.
Then he looked again, and:
“Who’s that?” he asked sharply of Mr. Cummings.
“The boy I spoke to you about. Wants a job.”
“Call him back!”
Tom was just at the doorway when Mr. Cummings’s summons fell on his
ear. He turned and retraced his steps. Mr. Cummings beckoned him to the
counter where he had joined his partner. It was Mr. Wright who spoke,
eying Tom searchingly.
“Aren’t you the boy who found my purse in the restaurant?” he demanded,
almost fiercely.
“Yes, sir.”
“Mm.” Mr. Wright poked a finger through the scattered hooks on the
counter. “You wait a minute.”
Tom drew aside. A glance at Mr. Cummings’s face showed him that the
senior partner was quite as much in the dark as he was as to Mr.
Wright’s conduct. But a minute later the customer in overalls went off
with his hooks, and Mr. Wright, after returning the rest of them to a
box and, as Tom saw with amusement, tossing it carelessly back to the
wrong shelf, came from behind the counter.
“Mr. Cummings says you want employment,” he said questioningly. “What
can you do?”
“Anything, sir. I ain’t afraid of work.”
“Going to school, are you?”
“Yes, sir. I start Monday at high school.”
“Do you know how to use a broom?”
“Yes, sir.”
Mr. Wright drew his fingers nervously through his black whiskers. “Do,
eh? That’s more than anybody else does around here.” Evidently that was
intended as a hit at the tall clerk who had drawn near. But the clerk
only grinned. “Well----” Mr. Wright turned to his partner. “Take him on
if you want to,” he said. “He’s honest, anyway. That’s something. You
talk to him.”
He hurried away to the front of the store. Mr. Cummings, with a smile
and a quizzical shrug of his shoulders, beckoned Tom to the railed-off
office at the rear of the store. There he told Tom to sit down.
“What’s this about a purse?” he inquired.
Tom told of the incident. Mr. Cummings seemed unduly impressed by it.
“Now that was funny, wasn’t it? A regular coincidence, eh? Blessed
if it don’t look to me as if luck had fixed everything up for you,
son. Well, now I’ll tell you what we’re willing to do and you can say
whether you want to do it. Your uncle owes this firm sixty-four dollars
and a half. We’ll call it an even sixty. Now, we’ll take you on here
to work at two and a half a week. Two of that goes to you and fifty
cents of it comes to us until we’ve squared ourselves for that sixty
dollars. That satisfactory to you?”
Tom considered a moment. Then, “Yes, sir, I think so,” he replied a
little doubtfully.
“Well, if I were you, I’d talk to my uncle; tell him our offer and see
if he wouldn’t be willing to make up the half-dollar to you. You’re
paying his bill, you know.”
“Maybe he would.” But there was little conviction in Tom’s tone.
“Anyway, if he didn’t, it wouldn’t matter, I guess. It would be all
right if I could find a room for two dollars. I looked at one this
morning, but the lady wanted two dollars and a half for it. Maybe I
could find another, though.”
“I think you ought to,” said Mr. Cummings. “Try around Locust Street,
near the depot. Well, there’s our offer, son, anyway. If you want to,
you can have a talk with your uncle before you decide.”
“No, sir, thanks, I’ll--I’ll come, anyway.”
“All right. If you get on and learn the business, after a while we’ll
give you more money. Mind you, though, you’ll have to show up here at
seven-thirty, open up the store, and sweep and dust. And we’ll expect
you back after school to stay until we close at six. On Saturdays we
stay open until nine. And just before Christmas we keep open every
evening. Let’s see; you said you wanted to get off early Saturday
evenings, didn’t you?”
“I thought I’d like to spend Sundays at home, sir.”
“That would be all right usually, I guess. Around Christmas time we
might want you to stay late on Saturdays, but other times I guess you
could get off by eight or whenever your train goes. When do you want to
start?”
“I was thinking I’d start Monday afternoon, sir. I’m going home to-day
and coming back Monday morning, in time for school. Would that be all
right?”
“Yes, that’ll do. To-day’s Thursday, isn’t it? All right, son. We’ll
look for you Monday afternoon. You do your work right and I guess
you’ll find us easy to get along with.” Mr. Cummings hesitated. “I
might as well tell you, though, that--er--my partner is a little
quick-tempered at times. It’s just his way. He’s terribly nervous.
After you get used to him, you won’t mind it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s all then, I guess. By the way, what did you tell me your name
was?”
“Thomas Pollock, sir.”
“Miss Miller, just make a note of this, please. Thomas Pollock enters
our employ Monday. Wages, two and a half a week. Enter him on the
pay-roll. Thank you. By the way, son, you’d better have a pair of
overalls here to slip on. There’ll be dirty jobs, I guess, and there’s
no use spoiling your clothes. Good day.”
It was not yet two o’clock when Tom passed out of Cummings and Wright’s
and his train did not leave until after four. That gave him a good two
hours in which to seek a room within the limit of the two dollars which
he was to actually receive. He had scant expectation of being able to
persuade Uncle Israel to make good that fifty cents a week to him.
Israel Bowles was considered a hard man around Derry, and, it seemed,
his reputation had even spread to the city. Tom didn’t for a moment
doubt that Uncle Israel really did honestly owe that sixty-odd dollars
to the hardware house. Uncle Israel, however, probably had what seemed
to him a perfectly legitimate reason for not paying it. And, as the
indebtedness had remained for six years, Tom didn’t believe that Uncle
Israel would agree to paying it off through him. Still, it would do no
harm to ask, he told himself as he set off down Main Street.
Tom’s mother had died when he was a baby, and his father when he was
nine years old. They had lived in Plaistow, a small Ohio town about
a hundred miles from Derry. Before Tom, who was the only child, had
been born his parents had had several homes, as he had learned from
Uncle Israel. Uncle Israel called Tom’s father a “ne’er-do-well” and
a “gallivanter.” Tom for a long time didn’t know what a “gallivanter”
was, but he always resented the term as applied to his father. His
parents, like Uncle Israel, who was his mother’s brother, had come
originally from New Hampshire. When Tom’s father died, leaving little
in the way of earthly goods, Uncle Israel had promptly claimed the boy
and taken him to Derry. On the whole, Uncle Israel had been kind to
Tom. The lad had had to work hard during the six years on the farm,
had had to rise early and, often enough, go late to bed, since his
schooling had been more or less intermittent, and it had been only
by studying in the evenings that he had been able to keep up with
his class in the little country schoolhouse. Tom couldn’t doubt that
Uncle Israel was fond of him, even if displays of affection had been
few. And Tom was honestly fond of Uncle Israel. He knew better than
perhaps anyone else that, hard as his uncle seemed, there were some
soft places, after all. But Tom didn’t deceive himself with false hopes
about the fifty cents a week!
Main Street crossed the railroad tracks between the station and the
freight houses. Parallel to the railroad ran Locust Street, lined on
one side with small stores and lodging-houses affected by railroad
employés. It was not an attractive part of the town, and the smoke from
the engines and the dust raised by the wagons and drays that passed on
their way to the freight houses made the fronts of the cheap, unlovely
buildings dingy and dirty. But Tom knew he had no right to expect a
great deal for two dollars and so began his search philosophically.
There were plenty of rooms for rent in those three blocks, but most of
them, after his own neat and clean little bedroom at the farm, turned
him away in disgust. But at length he found what seemed to answer
his purpose. It was a back room in a lodging-house even smaller and
meaner-looking than usual, but it was clean and, within its limits,
attractive. And the price was better than he had dared hope for. He
could have it, said the stout Irishwoman who pantingly conducted him up
the flight of steep, uncarpeted stairs, for a dollar and seventy-five
cents a week, payable in advance. From the one small window there
was a not unattractive view of a diminutive back-yard, which held a
prosperous-looking elm tree, and the rear of a livery stable which,
being only one story in height, allowed him to look over its flat
tar-and-gravel roof to the more distant roofs and spires and trees of
Amesville. Tom took the room, paid down fifty cents as earnest money,
and agreed to pay the balance Monday morning. His landlady’s name, as
she told him on the way downstairs, was Cleary, and her husband worked
in the roundhouse. She referred to him as a “hostler,” but Tom didn’t
see how a hostler could be employed about engines. He didn’t question
her statement, however. She seemed a good-hearted, respectable woman.
She had six other lodgers, she informed him, “all illigint tinants,”
and proceeded to supply him with the life history of each. Two small
children crept bashfully through the door of a back room and stared
unblinkingly at Tom until their mother discovered their presence and
sent them scurrying out of sight. “Me two youngest,” she explained
proudly. “I’ve three more. One do be working for Miller and Tappen,
drives a delivery cart, he does, and the next two do be in school.
They’re good kiddies, the whole lot of ’em.”
Tom finally dragged himself away and crossed over to the station to
kill time until his train left, on the whole very well satisfied with
the results of his day’s industry.