MR. HITTAKER CALLS ON THE JUDGE
A few weeks later on a lovely spring day Titus, hammer in hand, stood
prying open a box that had just come for him by express.
While he was energetically pulling out nails and removing strips of wood
Brick came lounging up the steps holding a mayflower between his teeth.
“Mass’ Titus, Jennie she say an ole gen’l’man jus’ come from New York
want to see de Jedge.”
“‘Jedge’ has gone driving,” said Titus, briefly.
“Well, but dat ole gen’l’man won’t take no for yes. He says he mus’ see
some one.”
“Bring him out here, then.”
Brick hesitated. He had some idea of propriety, and he did not like to
think of “young Mass’ Titus” receiving company in the pigeon loft.
Titus understood him. “Do you suppose I’d leave the pigeons?” he said,
indignantly. “They’ve had a hot, tiresome journey. I’ve got to feed and
water them. Bring the old gentleman out here if he can’t wait. If he
can, I’ll go in the house later.”
Brick disappeared, and presently returned, followed by a thin, slight,
elderly man who carried his hands in his pockets.
“Sorry to bring you out here, sir,” said Titus, politely, “but these
birds are suffering and I can’t leave them. Will you sit down?” and he
nodded toward a stool.
The gentleman remained standing, and with a pair of remarkably small
eyes listlessly surveyed the roomy, bright pigeon loft, the birds at the
open windows, and the wiry, athletic young figure of Titus himself.
There was a weary sneer on his face. Titus saw it, but unconcernedly
went on with his work.
“What is the good of all these?” said the stranger at last, and he
withdrew one of his hands from his pocket and waved it at the birds.
“O, I like to hear them laugh and talk and fight, just the way we do,”
said Titus, calmly.
“Laugh and talk,” repeated the elderly man, and he straightened himself
and looked like one trying to force himself to take an interest in
something.
“Yes, sir, they have their language just as we have ours. Look at that
young one there. He is crying because his stepfather is beating him.
Here, stepfather, come away.”
The man’s head sank on his breast. He seemed to be thinking deeply, but
Titus shrewdly guessed that his mind was not on the relations of birds
to each other.
“Looks as if he’d had some trouble,” thought the boy to himself, then he
said aloud, “Come in here, pigeons,” and he gently guided the two
prisoners he had released from their traveling box into a large cage.
“I always put strangers in this cage for a few days,” he remarked, in a
cheerful, explanatory way, “so they can look about them. Pigeons hate to
be rushed into a crowd.”
The stranger roused himself and gazed at the newcomers. “What kind of
pigeons do you call them?” he asked, in languid curiosity.
“Pouters,” replied Titus.
“They look as if they had their stomachs under their chins,” said the
elderly man, with slight animation. “Ugly things!”
“They’re New Yorkers,” said Titus, slyly. Then he added, “I don’t think
they’re beautiful myself, but I wanted to have them. Here, pigeons, have
some canary seed,” and he put a dish in beside them.
“Where is your grandfather?” asked the stranger, abruptly. “That is, if
you are Judge Sancroft’s grandson. I think some one said you were.”
“Yes, sir, I am. My grandfather is driving with my adopted sister
Bethany.”
“Adopted sister,” said his companion, thoughtfully. “Is that the
Hittaker child?”
“Yes, sir—Hittaker-Smith. My grandfather had some kind of papers made
out. We’re going to hold on to little Bethany.”
A heavy shadow passed over the man’s face, and Titus thought he heard
him sigh. “I heard about her,” he said, dreamily. “They said kidnapers
tried to steal her.”
A sudden thought flashed into Titus’s mind. “You’re not Mr. Hittaker,
are you, sir?” he asked, sharply, and he stared in boyish curiosity at
his visitor.
The man nodded slightly. “Yes, yes, my name is Hittaker.”
Titus looked deeply sympathetic, and his eye ran over his caller’s black
clothes. “I say, sir,” he murmured, sympathetically, “we were awfully
sorry for you. Bethany cried when she heard about the little children
being drowned.”
At this statement Titus lost the attention of his companion. Mr.
Hittaker’s face became more dreamy. His mind was wandering away into
regions where the boy could not follow it. He thought Mr. Hittaker
looked ill. He certainly was in a peculiar state mentally. Minute after
minute he stood silently, his eyes fixed on vacancy.
Titus leaned against the wall and watched him. Finally, just as his
young limbs began to ache from inaction, Mr. Hittaker roused himself,
turned to him, and said, abruptly, “We were speaking of your
grandfather. When will he come home?”
“Probably not till near dinner time. It is such a fine day.”
“I planned to take the seven o’clock train back to New York,” said Mr.
Hittaker, slowly, “but it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter.”
“Stay all night, sir,” said Titus, hospitably. “Then you will have time
to talk to my grandfather. But,” he went on, slowly, “I hope you are not
to ask him for Bethany. It wouldn’t be any use. We can’t give her up.”
Mr. Hittaker stared moodily at him and made no reply.
“My grandfather doesn’t think an awful sight of money,” said the boy,
proudly.
“Money,” repeated his caller, and a gleam illuminated his small eyes and
sharp, shrewd face. “Show me the man that doesn’t care for it, or the
woman, either.”
“Grandfather does care for it, in a way,” Titus went on, earnestly. “He
thinks you can do a lot of good and be a great power in the world if you
have plenty of money, but he preaches to us all the time about not
thinking too much of riches.”
“Easy to talk,” replied Mr. Hittaker, with some show of interest in the
subject. “If you were that black stable boy you couldn’t have all this,”
and he looked about the well appointed loft.
“Sir,” said Titus, intensely, “the other evening I was walking with
grandfather. We passed a tiny house in the suburbs. A boy was nailing
away at a box and whistling like a good fellow. We stopped and spoke to
him. He was making a house for his rabbits out of two big soap
boxes—and, by the way, they were Hittaker soap boxes; I saw the name.
When we left him my grandfather said, ‘Do you suppose you are any
happier than that boy?’
“‘No, sir,’ I said, ‘I don’t.’
“Then my grandfather went on: ‘Don’t run away with the idea that no
happiness can exist in cottages. The contented mind makes its own
dwelling.’”
Mr. Hittaker gazed in an uninterested way at a box of sawdust. He was
too old, and too self-centered, and too absent-minded, to be moved by
Titus’s eloquence; and then, when he had been a boy, he had had no wise
grandfather to train his youthful mind. A grasping, miserly father had
made a grasping, miserly son.
Titus broke off with a slight shrug of his shoulders. He was half
pitiful, half inimical to his visitor. “Come into the house, sir,” he
said, hospitably. “I can leave these birds now. Perhaps the time won’t
seem so long if you are looking at grandfather’s books.”
Mr. Hittaker did not care for reading. The most interesting books to him
were account books. However, he followed Titus willingly enough.