THE ENGLISH BOY
Bethany came home from school that day full of glee. She had gained a
little prize for good work.
“What kind of work?” inquired the Judge.
Bethany looked up at him and smiled—such a demure, knowing little smile.
Then she pressed his hand to her lips. “Making boxes, Daddy Grandpa.”
She was swinging on the Judge’s hand, leading him down to the lunch
table. Every day she ran up to his study at one o’clock when she came
from school. That gave her time for a little chat with him and a play
with Sukey before the bell rang for lunch.
She noticed that the Judge was graver than usual to-day, and she said
suddenly, “Are you ill, Daddy Grandpa?”
“No, child,” he said, slowly, but he immediately lapsed into gravity. He
always felt deeply mortified and ashamed of himself after any indulgence
in excitement or annoyance. He had been greatly disturbed this
morning—foolishly so. There was no necessity for annoyance. All that he
had to do was to take the affair calmly and to send the boy back.
So it was really with kindness and sympathy that he shook the hand of
the orphan lad standing beside Titus in the dining room.
The English boy was somewhat puzzled. At first he had been sure that
this old gentleman did not want him. Now he was not so sure about it, so
fatherly was the Judge’s manner.
Bethany was the life of the table. She was not a chatterbox, but she
possessed a peculiar mind, and what she said often amused the Judge and
always amused Titus.
The English boy was greatly taken with her. His glance rested often upon
her pretty brown head, and he secretly and bitterly envied her. Here, he
thought, in ignorance of her past life, is a child born to affluence and
delightful surroundings. How little she knows of the cold world and the
struggling for existence there.
Bethany was prattling about ghosts, one of her favorite subjects. Last
night she had talked with Ellen and Susie, the Judge’s two little
daughters.
“W-w-what were they doing?” said Titus, seriously. He did not dare to
jest upon such a subject, though sometimes his boyish soul was sorely
tempted to do so.
“Ellen, she had a little basket in her hands, and she was going to pick
blueberries,” replied Bethany. “She said, ‘Bethany, come with us.’”
“And did you go?” asked Titus.
“’Course I did; I, and Ellen, and Susie set out. We hadn’t gone far when
we met a lion.”
“A-a-a lion!” ejaculated Titus.
“Yes, a truly lion,” said Bethany, smiling enough to show two rows of
white little teeth; “a kind Mr. Lion. Said he, ‘Little girls, come with
me. I’ll show you where the blueberries grow.’ Ellen said, ‘Mr. Lion,
how do you know where the blueberries grow, because we haven’t any lions
in America.’ Mr. Lion said he had run away from a circus because the men
beat him and fired pistols at him, and he was living on blueberries, and
they were very sweet.”
“N-n-now, Bethany,” interposed Titus, “a lion is a meat-eating animal;
it couldn’t live on berries.”
“But, boy,” she replied (she often called him boy), with an obstinate
little shake of her head, “this was a ghost lion.”
“A dream lion, you mean,” said Titus.
She turned her clear eyes on the Judge. “You understand me, Daddy
Grandpa?”
Her faith in him was so great that he would not have had the heart to
shake it even if he had wished to do so. Therefore he nodded kindly, and
Bethany proceeded:
“The dear ghost lion took us on his back—Ellen and Susie and me—and we
hadn’t gone far before we met a bear.”
“A-a-a bear!” said Titus, in pretended surprise.
“Yes, a bad, bad bear. Said the bad, bad bear, ‘I am looking for little
girls.’
“Said the dear ghost lion, with a sweet roar, ‘What kind bf little
girls?’
“Said the big black bear, ‘Little girls who haven’t any home. I eat them
up, or I take them to my cubs in my den.’
“Said the good ghost lion, ‘Why don’t you eat little girls that have
good homes?’
“‘’Cause,’ he said, ‘’cause the fathers and mothers would be so, so
angry. They would come and hunt me and kill my dear baby cubs. I’m only
looking for little orphan girls. Answer my question quick: Have those
little girls on your back got any parents?’
“‘No,’ said the dear lion, ‘but they have the next best thing—they have
a Daddy Grandpa. He’ll kill you and eat your cubs if you dare to touch
them. Stand aside, wretch!’”
Titus, at this quietly dramatic command of the lion, became so convulsed
with amusement that Bethany, in confusion, stopped, and would not go on.
Titus, recovering himself, begged her pardon, but she was inexorable.
“’Ceptin’ Daddy Grandpa, no boy shall ever know what became of the good
lion and the bad bear,” she said, firmly, but without the slightest
resentment, for she immediately went on talking to Titus on other
subjects.
She did not seem to show much curiosity with regard to the English boy,
though he was gazing at her with the greatest amusement and interest.
Her prattle soothed the Judge; she was beginning to be a great comfort
to him. A little girl about the house was more company than a boy, and
she was quieter. He liked boys, and yet there were times when he would
just as soon have a whirlwind in his study as his dear grandson Titus.
Bethany was never noisy, never violent. She crept about the house after
him like a little mouse.
“Yes, dear,” he said; “what is it?” for she was patiently waiting for
him to answer some question. “May you go to drive with me this
afternoon? Certainly; it is much pleasanter to have a little girl than
to go alone.”
Then, for they had all finished eating, he got up from the table.
“I want to speak to you, my lad,” he said, laying a hand on the shoulder
of the English boy.
Titus looked pityingly after Dallas as the Judge led the way to the
large, handsome parlor—the one room that they all disliked, since there
was no woman in the house to give it a homelike air.
The Judge closed the door after him, then he turned to Dallas.
“My boy,” he said, kindly, “I am very sorry to inform you that you have
come here through a mistake. Mr. Folsom was not authorized to send you.
I do not see anything for you to do but to go back.”
Whatever the English boy’s feelings were, he bravely surmounted them
and, quietly bowing his head, he said, respectfully, “very well; I will
do as you wish.”
“You look pale,” said the Judge, kindly. “I do not think the air of New
York is good for growing lads, so if you wish I will allow you to stay
here a few days before going back to Mr. Folsom.”
The boy’s face flushed gratefully. “I am greatly pleased to accept your
offer, sir; I will stay gladly.”
“I will advise Mr. Folsom of my decision,” said the Judge, “so that he
can be making other arrangements for you. In the meantime, amuse
yourself as best you can. My grandson will, I know, do all he can to
entertain you,” and the Judge paused and glanced delicately at the lad’s
thin suit of clothes.
“I will take you to my tailor’s this afternoon.”
Dallas’s face became as red as fire. “I would rather not, sir; if I am
not to stay here I can accept no favors.”
“Nonsense, my boy,” replied the Judge. “By staying a few days you are
accepting a favor, and you are not suitably dressed for this cold
weather. If I were a poor boy, and you a well-to-do man, would you not
give me a suit of clothes?”
“Yes, indeed,” he said, earnestly.
“Then think no more about it. It is no disgrace to be poor. It is a
disgrace to suffer when friends are willing to relieve you.”
The Judge paused, and the interview was closed.
Dallas went away, and Titus was informed by his grandfather of what had
occurred.
“I want you to entertain him for a few days,” the Judge said.
“Very well, sir,” replied the boy, submissively, but there was no
pleasure on his face, nor graciousness in his manner.
“Don’t you like this boy?” asked the Judge.
“I don’t know him,” said Titus, gruffly.
The Judge pondered. Titus was not stuttering; he was disturbed in some
way.
“He speaks peculiarly,” remarked the Judge, “at least to our ears. We do
not hear very much that broad sound of the ‘a’ here.”
Titus maintained a grim silence.
“Suppose you were alone in the world?” suggested the Judge, softly.
“I’ll take care of him, sir,” said Titus, almost roughly, and he hurried
away.
He kept his word. For five days he was just as attentive to the stranger
as one lad could be to another. They were scarcely separated one hour,
and there was not a hint of discord between them. The Judge saw very
little of them except at meal times. He was struck by the exquisite and
unfailing courtesy of the newcomer. Nothing ruffled him, nothing caused
him to forget his good manners. They really seemed to be a part of him.
Sometimes the Judge felt a vague uneasiness that all this politeness hid
something that ought to have been revealed—that the boy was too
agreeable to be genuine. He was pretty sure that Titus agreed with him
in this, although he had never heard him discuss his new friend with
anyone.
“Titus,” he said one day when Dallas happened to be away with Charlie
Brown, “Dallas’s visit is drawing to a close. I hope that he considers
it a successful one.”
Titus gave him a peculiar look. “I think he does, sir.”
“The servants have been respectful to him, I hope.”
“They’ve got to be,” said Titus, grimly; “he has a way with him—”
“What kind of a way?” inquired the Judge.
“Hard inside and soft out,” replied the boy, “and his blood is blue.
Theirs is only red.”
“Is he proud of his culture?”
“He’s got a pedigree,” said Titus, gloomily, “a pedigree as long as your
arm, and he carries it in that old leather bag. It takes the de Warrens
away back to William the Conqueror.”
“Why, so have you a pedigree for that matter,” and the Judge smiled.
Titus looked up quickly, and the Judge opened one of his table drawers.
“When I was in England last I went to a heraldic office. I knew that
Sancroft was an old English name, and I wished authentic information
respecting our descent. There I saw our armorial bearings and got the
pedigree. Here it is.”
The boy eagerly took the long slip of paper.
“Do you see,” said the Judge, “you can trace your ancestry back to a
viking of Norway.”
“Hooray!” said Titus, suddenly brandishing the paper as if it were a
weapon, “farther back than his. May I show this to Dallas?”
“Certainly.”
The boy stopped on his way out of the room and said in an injured voice,
“Why didn’t you show me this before, sir?”
“I didn’t know that you would be interested,” said the Judge, in much
amusement. “We pay, or have paid, so little attention to such matters in
America. However, you are typical. The younger generation is thinking
more about ancestral descent than ever the older ones have thought.”
Titus ran away, and the Judge gazed thoughtfully out of the window.
Sukey was on the balcony nodding and bowing very energetically at a
number of common street pigeons who were very anxious to perch beside
her.
Higby had put her bath out in the sun, and it looked very attractive to
them, but she was determined that they should not bathe in her china
bowl.
One male pigeon lighted on the railing, and, strutting and talking to
the princess, at last persuaded himself that she was favorably inclined
toward him. He flew boldly on the edge of the dish. Whereupon Sukey ran
forward, seized him by the short, soft feathers of the neck, and in a
most unprincesslike rage shook him and dragged him about, until at last
he was glad to get away from her.
The Judge smiled and stepped out on the balcony.
He looked down on a calm, homelike scene. All about him were handsome
houses standing in their own grounds. The snow lay thickly over
everything now, even the trees were laden with it, but the winter scene
had a beauty of its own. The day was not cold; it was barely freezing.
Roblee was sweeping the concrete in front of the stable in his shirt
sleeves. Two of the maids were brushing a rug at the back door, and Mrs.
Blodgett was standing in the sunshine watching them, with nothing but an
apron thrown over her head.
Presently Dallas came through the stable and down the walk to the house.
The Judge noticed what a kind smile he threw each of the servants as he
passed them and how respectfully they eyed him.
He waited till he heard the lad coming up the stairs and through the
hall outside his study, then he stepped out to meet him.
How well the boy looked! His new clothes had come the day before. In
deference to his wishes, the Judge had ordered black for him. Dallas had
been very much touched—indeed, he had almost broken down—and he had
confided the information to the Judge that his inability to put on
mourning for his beloved father had been a great grief to him.
“Dallas,” said the Judge, kindly, “Mr. Folsom expects you to-morrow
evening. You must take the early morning train from here.”
A quick, heavy shadow passed over the boy’s face, but he said,
composedly, “Very well, sir. I shall be ready.” Then he passed on to his
room upstairs.
With a strange sinking of the heart the Judge paced slowly up and down
the hall. He was sorry to send the lad away, very sorry indeed, for he
feared that he did not want to go.
Presently he paused in his walk and went to the big hall window
overlooking the street. Where was Bethany? The mild afternoon was
drawing to a close. It would soon be dark; she ought to be in. Just
after dinner she had gone for a drive with him, then had asked
permission to take some flowers to a sick child a few doors away, but
she should have returned by this time. Ah! there she was, crossing the
street. But what was the child doing?
The Judge’s eyes were affectionately fastened on the little white-fur
figure coming toward the house. In the middle of the snowy avenue she
had paused. A coal cart, lately passing, had shaken off some black lumps
on the street. Bethany was surveying these lumps with interest. “Now,
what has she got in her little head?” thought the Judge with amusement.
Suddenly the child bent over. She carefully set down the little pink
beribboned basket in which she had carried the flowers to the sick
playmate, drew a tiny handkerchief from her pocket, and spreading it in
the basket she took off her gloves and was carefully lifting the lumps
of coal one by one, when she had two interruptions. The first came from
two ladies, neighbors, who were going to their homes near by. The Judge
saw them stop and speak to Bethany, then he opened the window.
In unconcealed amusement they were asking her what she was going to do
with the coal.
She seemed to be shyly evading their questions, and as they passed on
the Judge heard one of them say, in a clear voice, “How curious it is
that a black, dirty thing like coal should have such a fascination for
the average child!”
Bethany’s second interruption was not so easily put off. Mrs. Blodgett,
whose keen eyes surveyed not only the interior of the Judge’s mansion
but also its exterior and the avenue on which it was situated, had
espied the stray lamb, and the Judge saw her fat figure descending the
steps with considerable agility and pouncing upon Bethany.
“Here, dear child,” she said, “come into the house this minute.”
Bethany protested slightly, but Mrs. Blodgett calmly seized the basket,
turned it upside down, took her by the hand, and led her into the house.
Just before they arrived outside his study the Judge closed the window
and went inside beside his fire.
“Sir,” said Mrs. Blodgett, knocking on the half-open door, “can you
speak to this little girl?”
“Come in,” he said, and Mrs. Blodgett walked in, still holding Bethany,
who looked disturbed and a little rebellious.
“Now, sir,” said Mrs. Blodgett, decidedly, “I wish you would speak to
this little girl, for she don’t mind me. I’m tellin’ her all the time
that, though you don’t like wastefulness, yet meanness is hateful to
you, and she do the strangest things. She picks up coal and little bits
of sticks for the fire, an’ she goes round an’ smells the soap—”
“Smells the soap?” repeated the Judge, in bewilderment.
“Yes, sir; I caught her the other day. She were in your room. You know,
sir, you has in your bathroom sandalwood soap. Master Titus, he have
pure Castile; the strange boy he have common toilet; in the kitchen we
have Hittaker’s.”
“Ah! Hittaker’s,” interposed the Judge, “is that a good soap?”
“Fine, sir, for a cheap soap. But what I was goin’ to say is this: This
here little girl loves good soap, and, young as she be, she knows the
difference. She rolled your cake in these weeny hands, she put it to
that little nose, she wanted it herself, but what do she do? She slips
into your dish the little bit of sandalwood that I’d given her, she goes
to the upper hall closet an’ takes a cake of Hittaker to her own room.”
“Well!” observed the Judge, patiently. He did not understand what all
this talk about coal, and sticks, and soap meant, and he did not like to
see the sensitive child stand there looking like a culprit.
“Sir,” said Mrs. Blodgett, solemnly, “she be a-tryin’ to save.”
The Judge started. This threw a new light on the subject.
“Yes,” Mrs. Blodgett continued, “I know that this little girl has been a
poor little girl, but her mother were a lady. I can tell by her ways,
an’ I’m tired of tellin’ her that you don’t want her to be a poor little
girl no longer, a pickin’, tradin’, savin’ little girl. You does the
business. She has only to be good an’ not wasteful, but also not
beggarlike. What’s what in one place isn’t what’s what in another. She
have mentioned River Street. Now, River Street aint Grand Avenue.”
“Very well, Mrs. Blodgett,” said the Judge, with a reassuring nod, “I
will talk to her,” and in great relief the fat woman surrendered the
culprit to him and went away.
After the housekeeper’s departure Bethany advanced somewhat timidly to
the fire, and, taking off her cap, coat, and gloves, placed them in a
neat little heap on a chair. Then she looked up apprehensively at the
Judge.
“You’re not angry with Bethany, are you, Daddy Grandpa?”
“No,” he said, “I’m not angry.”
“We used to do it at Mrs. Tingsby’s,” she said, spreading her little
hands to the blaze. “Annie, and Rodd, and Goldie, and I used to take
little pails and go round the streets; on barge days we got lots.”
“What do you mean by barge days,” asked the Judge.
“Days when the barges came up the river with coal. Then the trucks took
it round the city. We followed the trucks. We could keep the kitchen
fire going for days. Lots of children did it, Daddy Grandpa.”
The Judge was ominously silent, and Bethany went on in a depreciatory
way. “Mrs. Tingsby was very good to me. When my mamma died she said,
‘You must do all you can to help her, but do not go round to the hotels
with her.’”
“To the hotels?” repeated the Judge.
“Yes, sir; to the back doors. They give poor people leavings from
plates. Mrs. Tingsby used to get quite nice things sometimes, such as
turkey slices, broken cake, perhaps even whole mutton chops, fish heads
and tails, cut apples, decayed bananas, melted ice cream, lumps of
pudding—”
“Stop!” implored the Judge.
Bethany looked up at him quietly, for she had been gazing at the fire
and speaking in a dreamy fashion.
“They were very good, sir. Once I found a little turnover in a pail Mrs.
Tingsby brought home—the sweetest little turnover I ever ate. There were
lots of surprises. You know Jimmy Fox, the dog man, don’t you?”
“No, I don’t know him.”
“Well, he has lots of dogs, and he lives out the back road near the iron
works. Jimmy always carried a bag; Mrs. Tingsby, she took a pail. One
night Jimmy got a whole rabbit. He was so pleased; but Mrs. Tingsby said
there must have been something the matter with that rabbit, or they
wouldn’t have given him a whole one. However, Jimmy didn’t die, and he
ate it. She saw him.”
The Judge tried to smile, but he could not. He did not find Bethany’s
reminiscences at all amusing.
“Child,” he said, suddenly, “promise me that you won’t pick up any more
coal.”
Bethany looked at him in surprise. “Why, course not, Daddy Grandpa, if
you don’t want me to.”
“And take the soap Mrs. Blodgett gives you; don’t use Hittaker’s.”
“Very well, Daddy Grandpa,” she replied, quietly. “Has Bethany been a
bad girl?”
“No, child, no; but it is not necessary for you to be so economical.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means saving. Do you think that Titus ought to go and pick up sticks
for the fire?”
“No, sir.”
“Why not?”
“Because he isn’t a little poor boy. He is your very own child.”
“Yes, he is my very own grandson, and you are my very own
granddaughter.”
She took a quick step toward him, and in her excitement made one of her
rare slips in speaking. “But he was borned that way.”
“And you are made that way,” said the Judge, firmly. “I make you my
little granddaughter. Unless the Lord takes my money away from me, you
will never have to pick up coal again.”
“I didn’t think you would send me back to River Street, Daddy Grandpa,”
she said, earnestly.
The Judge was silent, not knowing what turn her thoughts would take.
“I thought I was your little girl,” she went on, earnestly, “your little
poor girl. I picked up sticks and coal to help you. It is a good deal
for you to take a little poor girl when you have a rich boy to keep up.”
“Child,” said the Judge, firmly, “I don’t wish any distinction to be
made. You and Titus are on the same footing.”
Bethany made a little obstinate movement of her neck. “My mamma told me
all about it, sir. She said, ‘Bethany, when I am dead, remember a
’dopted child isn’t like a real child. She must be sweet, and good,
because people are watching her. She must save everything, even a pin.
She must say every day, “Lord, keep me gentle like a lamb.”’”
The Judge, somewhat disconcerted, said hastily, “I wish your mother had
not told you that.”
Bethany shook her head patiently. “You are very kind, sir, but you can’t
change me—I’m only ’dopted. I’m not borned your really grandchild.”
Her companion was silent for a few minutes, musing on the enormous power
of early impressions and maternal influence. At last he said, somewhat
impatiently, “Then I suppose that as I am not your real grandfather you
do not care much for me.”
Bethany had begun to carefully stack her little arms with her wraps to
take upstairs, but she suddenly laid them down again.
“Sir,” she said, facing him once more, “last night I said to Ellen and
Susie, said I, ‘Girls, you must have been dreadful fond of your dear
grandpa, who was your real grandpa, when I am only his play grandchild,
and I just love him—just love him,’” she repeated, earnestly.
The Judge looked down at the little face glowing in the firelight.
“You are a good child,” he said, softly, and he bent over and kissed her
forehead; “whatever you say, you are my own dear granddaughter after
this.”
She smiled happily, then bent in a reproving way over the pigeon, who
had come in and was pecking at one of her gloves that had fallen on the
hearthrug.
“Little saint, you must not soil Bethany’s glove. You are a rich bird,
and do not understand that poor little girls have to be careful of their
clothes.”
Sukey seized the glove and did her best to toss it into the ashes.
Bethany patiently took it from her, then she looked round. “Daddy
Grandpa, where is Sukey’s pincushion? She wants something to play with.”
The Judge took the cushion from a drawer and put it on the hearthrug,
and the pigeon, trotting over to it, began to pull out the large-headed
pins and throw them about the carpet.
“I’ll pick them up,” said Bethany, “just as soon as I put my things
away,” and she again filled her arms with her wraps, the Judge agreeably
placing the cap on the top of the pile.
“Good-bye,” she said, sweetly, “I’ll soon be back.” Then she bent
forward and looked mysteriously out into the hall, which Higby, strange
to say, had not yet lighted.
“What do you see?” asked the Judge.
“The yellow, spotted dog,” she replied, in a whisper. “I just caught one
little glimpse of his tail. He’s running upstairs. Maybe I’ll find him
under my bed.”
The Judge watched her toiling up the staircase. What a strange child! He
had never heard her express any fear of the darkness. Indeed, it was so
peopled with ghosts and fancies that he doubted if it had any terrors
for her. It was rather filled with companionship. He often heard her
talking to Ellen and Susie, to her mother and the yellow, spotted dog.
Then he must also take into consideration that she was the child of
poverty. Children nursed in the lap of luxury can afford to have nerves.
The children of the poor must steel themselves to privations. Bethany
had never been accustomed to lighted halls till she came here.
Dear little child! What kind of a woman would she make; and as the Judge
went back into his study he put up a fervent prayer, “O! Lord, let me
live till I see what is to become of my own child and the child of my
adoption.”