phonographic monotone that he had used on his first day at school, when
the teacher had asked him the same question.
"Ah, yes--do you know my son, Andrew Francis Biron?"
"Sure. Most everybody knows Andray Franswa."
"And what do you think of--er--André François?"
The boy looked at him searchingly. "You oughter know--he's your kid,"
he said tersely.
"I know what _I_ think," said Mr. Biron, "but I want to know what you
think. That's what I brought you in for. I want to get some data on the
subject."
The boy ran his hand through his hair, and his brow puckered, as he
struggled to find a phrase by which to sum up his impression of André
François. Then he said:
"Ah, gee----" he made an abortive effort, out of regard for parental
feelings, to mitigate the vast contempt in his voice, "he's just a darn
sissy."
"Um--I see. Are there any more sissies in town?"
"Nope. Not now. There uster be one onest, about a year ago, but he's
all right now. We licked him till he got all right."
"And do you intend to lick André François until he gets all right?"
The scion of the McCarthys looked at him suspiciously for a moment,
but seeing in his face rather a desire for honest information than the
guile of a parent, he answered:
"Nope. Nobody dast to touch him."
"Why?" asked Mr. Biron with a gleam of hope, "would he fight?"
"Who? Him? Him _fight_? I guess _not_. It's cause you're his dad. My
dad, he said that if I dast to lay a finger on Andray Franswa, he'd
skin me alive--an' the rest o' the kids, their dads told 'em the same
thing."
"I see," said the manager of the White Star, and he saw also that a
certain disadvantage went with being the employer of nearly every man
in the town.
He took a thoughtful turn around the office, for his conscience gave
him a twinge at the critical moment, then stopped abruptly in front of
James Joseph and took from his pocket a bright, new silver dollar.
"See this, Jimmie?" he asked, balancing it seductively on the tip of
his index finger, "I will give you this, and further, I will see that
no complaint is made to your father--if you lick André François."
Each of Jimmie's eyes grew as big and as round as the dollar.
"Sure? D' yer mean it? Gee, that'd be fine. There's goin' to be a
circus next week in Briggs' lot, and us fellows is savin' up. Say--is
that what you just said on the dead square?"
"On the dead square," said André François' father solemnly.
Jimmie held out his hand for the dollar. "Sure," he said, "I'll lick
Andray Franswa. I'll lay low till that crazy Angélique is out of the
way. Burbank, the assayer's assistant, is soft on her, and she stops to
talk to him every afternoon, an' Andray Franswa walks as far as from
school to the assayer's office alone. I'll get him then. I'm boss o'
the gang, an' I kin lick fine. Onest I licked a kid an' he wasn't able
to be out fer a week."
"Wait," said Mr. Biron, a little alarmed at the enthusiasm he had
invoked. "Remember--you are acting under orders, and your orders are
not to hurt him. Just roll him around in the mud good and plenty--and,
Jimmie, spoil that white sailor suit."
Jimmie's eyes filled with fellow feeling. For the first time during the
interview he and the White Star manager were equals.
"I guess you was a pretty nice kid yourself onest," he said, "an' I
know how you must feel 'bout Andray Franswa."
He hesitated a moment, his face twitched with a fierce internal
struggle, then he thrust out his arm straight from the shoulder and
handed back to Mr. Biron the price of his service.
"I--I'd be glad to do it as a favor," he said.
"Thank you," said André François' father gravely, and he took and
pocketed the dollar.
As Jimmie was about to leave the office he put out a detaining hand.
"Oh, by the way," he remarked, with elaborate casuality, "you said
something of a circus in Briggs' lot--I can't get away myself, at
present, but if you'd take this and go, and let me know if there is
anything good, you'd oblige me greatly."
Jimmie McCarthy left the office of the White Star with his ethics
and his honor satisfied, and with a dollar in the pocket of his blue
overalls.
Thus was enacted the preliminary part of the plot to Americanize André
François, _fils_.
The following afternoon the manager of the White Star sat at his office
desk, a file of papers before him. But his attention wavered, and the
nearer the clock hands drew to three, the less grew his concentration
upon the file. At last the expected happened. The ground-glass door
burst open, and in rushed the immaculate Angélique, her entire person
in such dishevelment as the Rue St. Honoré had never seen. Her cap hung
by one pin from her black hair, her ruffled swiss apron was under one
arm. By the hand she dragged after her the panting André François. His
hat was gone, his hair wet, his white sailor suit streaked terra cotta
from the clayey mud of the street. His red tie, however, still made a
brave flare of color under one ear.
"Father," he said in a high, excited voice, "I have been attacked!"
Angélique motioned him to be quiet.
"Oh, Monsieur Bir-on, oh, sair," she burst out, her round eyes becoming
perfect spheres in her excitement, "Monsieur André François have been
attack'. I have jus' stop to spik to a gentleman for a so leetle
moment--when I look a-r-r-ound and zee thees so ter-r-ible boy make
the tackle at Monsieur André François' legs. And nex'--O, _ciel_!
I zee Monsieur André François high in the air, and then--splash!
_Quelle horreur!_ down in the depths of the mud pud-dle, and thees boy
r-r-ool heem r-round an' r-round an' r-r-round. _Barbare!_ _Sauvage!_"
Angélique's voice broke, and she buried her face in her abbreviated
apron to shut out the memory of a sight so uncivilized.
"Father," said André François, trembling with passion, "you will have
him punished at once--publicly, so that every one may know that the
indignity has been wiped out?"
"My boy," said Mr. Biron quietly, placing his hand on his son's
shoulder, "I am not lord of a feudal principality. I cannot interfere.
You will have to fight your own fights."
"But," said André François, angry tears rushing to his eyes, "I cannot
fight this peasant--I am a gentleman." And he drew himself up with a
jerk, in his drabbled sailor suit, to his full three feet eight. This
assumption of dignity was not without discomfort, for the muddy water
from his over-long hair dripped down his neck in the back and into his
eyes in the front.
"Of a certainty," affirmed Angélique with finality, "he is a gentleman.
Madame Fouchette so raised heem."
"You will have to settle it your own way, Andrew. If you are too good
to fight him, and he is not too good to fight you, I do not see what
you can do--except run."
"I will _not_ run," cried André François, his voice becoming shrill and
childish with impotent rage. "I want him punished."
"I can do nothing for you," said his father shortly. "You had better go
home now to your aunt and have your suit changed."
"_Allons_," said Angélique indignantly, and, catching André François by
the hand, she started out. At the door she paused long enough to say
devoutly, fixing the so unnatural father with a basilisk glance.
"_Dieu vous garde, mon pauvre enfant._"
The manager of the White Star even thought he heard a "_Bête!_" as
the door was closed so decisively that one would almost say it was
slammed. All of which the so unnatural parent endured with equanimity,
and turned to his delayed files with a patient if dubious smile, for he
had begun to do his parental duty as he saw it, and anything he began,
whether it was a lockout, a new policy, or the training of his son, he
saw through to the bitter end.
The next morning, when the White Star manager reached his office--and
he got there early, for he began his day's work when his office boy
was still comfortably snoring---he found a small boy leaning against
the door in the stiff and resigned position of a guard waiting to be
relieved from duty. The only parts of him which moved were the toes of
his bare legs, and these nimble members dibbled the clayey earth in
front of the door-step.
As soon as this apparition caught sight of Mr. Biron, it straightened
up into life.
"Kin I see you, Mr. Biron?" asked the boy eagerly, "on a matter o'
business?"
[Illustration: "'I CANNOT FIGHT THIS PEASANT--I AM A GENTLEMAN'" ]
"Certainly," said the manager of the White Star, "just step into the
office."
The boy followed him in through the ground-glass door, shifted from
one bare foot to the other, cleared his throat, then without further
preliminary said:
"Say--d' you want Andray Franswa licked to-day?" Then, fixing him with
a bargaining eye, "I'll do it dandy fer seventy-five cents. I kin fight
'most as good as Jimmie--I uster be the biggest kid here before he come
an' licked me," he added, with reminiscent pride in a past glory.
Mr. Biron looked at him thoughtfully a moment, then said:
"I engaged Jimmie for the first job, and he did it satisfactorily. I
think there may be a tacit contract existing between us that I give
him, at least, the refusal of the rest."
"Nope," said the boy. "Jimmie, he ain't no pig. He told the bunch, 'You
fellers go 'round an' see if yer kin git nuf for the circus what's
comin'.' I bin waitin' a long time so's to be early nuf."
"I see," said Mr. Biron, "Jimmie does not believe in monopolies. He is
a despot, but an enlightened one."
"Kin I have the job, then?"
"Very well," said Mr. Biron, "I engage you to lick André François--but
with this reservation--mind you do not hurt him, and I will pay you the
standard rate of one dollar for a first-class job."
This was the first but not the last of the manager's visitors. It was
Saturday, and that whole morning the office of the White Star was
besieged by applicants for a "job." Mr. Biron had his pick of the
entire bellicose population of the town between the ages of nine and
thirteen, and several more nefarious bargains were secretively struck
in the shadow of the big iron safe, behind the discreet ground-glass
door of the White Star office.
That afternoon Mr. Biron found it difficult to concentrate on the work
before him, for, reasoning from cause to effect, and having produced
the cause, he was subconsciously expectant of another visit from André
and Angélique. Nothing, however, occurred to disturb him and, as he
closed up his desk and safe, preparatory to leaving, he smiled grimly
to himself.
"I never was stumped by a proposition yet," he muttered half aloud, as
he walked home in the sunset, "and André François isn't going to be
the first. He _must_ have some red blood in his veins--his grandfather
fought at Gettysburg, and I could fight my weight in wildcats at his
age."
As he ate his dinner, half an hour later, his sister recounted to him
the events of the day.
[Illustration: "'IT WAS OF A SUDDENNESS,' SAID ANGÉLIQUE BLUSHING"]
"Andrew Francis was attacked again," she said, casually nodding toward
André François, who ate in silence--for she was a woman of sense. "He
came home again covered with mud from head to foot. Angélique says he
refused to run and she could do nothing----"
"But no," interrupted the _bonne_ eagerly, and her words came like a
string of firecrackers exploded by a small boy on the Fourth of July,
"he came with a quickness--like _zat_!" and she clapped her hands.
"Before I know, he have come behin' and trip Monsieur André François
up from his legs. Zen I try to grab thees boy, but he is of a so great
slipperiness as an eel! He have hit Monsieur André François--_whack_!
He have poke heem an' make heem to fall into the mud. Zen he is away
with a quickness--_zipp_! No person is of a similar quickness to catch
heem."
During this display of wordy pyrotechnics, the son and heir of the
house sat in sullen silence and broke his bread into small pieces. When
it ended, he suddenly looked up.
"Father," he said, "I do not want Angélique to take me to school any
longer. She is a fool."
"Sank you, sair," said the lady referred to sarcastically, "you have
a great gratitude when I protec' your life." Then she turned to the
manager of the White Star:
"Sair, I have the pleasure to inform you of somesing. In one month I am
about to marry myself to the Mr. Burbank--he who makes known what is in
the rocks."
"Kind of sudden, wasn't it, Angélique?" asked Mr. Biron.
"It was of a suddenness," said Angélique blushing. "I was greatly of
a desire to go back to France, but I could not, an' the nex' bes'
zing--zat is to marry myself. I mus' have a protector in thees so
savage land where even the children are bloodthirsty. I am not of a
nervousness to stan' everysing. _Voilà!_"
[Illustration: "THAT FIGHT WILL LONG BE REMEMBERED IN THE ANNALS OF THE
GANG"]
The next morning Andrè François went to school minus his familiar.
During the week and a half that followed he was "attacked" with
startling frequency and regularity. Almost every afternoon he came home
with his clothes muddy and torn.
He was grimly silent about the details of these mishaps.
Angélique was in despair.
"Ah, Madame," she said to Miss Biron, "in one short month he will not
have a stitch to wear--out of the largesse of four trunks full. And
the las' command of Madame Fouchette, it was 'Angélique, always make
Monsieur André François to look like the little prince.' _Ciel!_ how
can one make heem to look like the little prince when thees so savage
boys tear off his clothes? But I do my ver' bes'--I darn and darn and
darn heem."
André François made no one his confidant, but day by day he grew more
somber and silent. His early garrulity was quite gone. Instead of the
air of hauteur which characterized him on his entrance to the town, he
now had a pathetic droop. He even became careless about his clothes.
"He used to be so proud, so debonair," said Angélique sadly, "when he
have the clean, white suit on, he is like the peacock, he know he is
beautiful--but now--he does not care what he have on. No!"
"What can be the matter?" asked Miss Biron anxiously, for she was
really worried by André François' looks; "he has never been seriously
hurt in these little school-boy fights."
"_Eh, bien!_ Madame! Is it not of a seriousness to be wound' in the
pride? To be insult'? Monsieur André François has been made the gross
insult many times. Those insult, they knaw heem in his heart. He zink.
He zink all the time now. He zink of those many insult'! Some day he
will have his revengement--you see."
About this time the manager of the White Star noticed a falling off
in the number of applicants for his peculiar variety of "job." There
was a slump in the André François market. One morning he called in a
youngster whom he saw going early to school, stated his terms, and
made his usual proposal. The boy hesitated a few moments, then said:
"It'll cost yer a dollar an' a quarter now, Mr. Biron. Yer see, 'taint
so easy as 'twas at first. 'Course Andray Franswa never runs, an' it's
easy t' git him, but he's growin' awful savage. He kicks an' bites
somethin' fierce, sir. He nearly chewed Harry Peters' finger offer him
day 'fore yesterday."
The manager paid the extra quarter without any demur.
It was about this time also that Mr. Biron made a discovery which
gratified him. He found, secreted under a pillow in the window-seat
where André François usually sat, a dusty, copiously diagrammed book
entitled, "The Manly Art of Self-Defense." It was an edition of twenty
years ago, and had been used by Mr. Biron himself during his college
days.
He put it back carefully and held his silence.
The following evening he proceeded in an experimental, roundabout way
to get into a conversation with his son.
"Andrew," he said, with sociable casualness, to his heir, who now
always ensconced himself in the window-seat directly after dinner, and
kept a moody silence until Angélique took him off to bed, "you have
never told me about your school days in France."
Accepting this remark as the statement of an irrefutable fact, André
François merely remained politely silent.
"What do you do for recreation? What sport do you have now, for
instance?"
"We fence, father," said André François, listlessly.
"Ah, yes," said the White Star manager, introducing his subject in as
elaborately casual a way as a politician about to ask for a favor,
"just so. Well, you see we don't do much fencing in America, not very
much. Boxing, now, is more in our line."
A gleam of interest, which was not lost upon his father, shot into
André François' weary eyes.
"Father," he asked timidly, "are you familiar with the manly art of
self-defense?"
"I am, my son," answered the manager of the White Star gravely.
André François gazed at him questioningly a moment, then drew the
manual from under the sofa cushion.
"I have been practising some of the things described in this book,"
he said, slowly opening it and disclosing diagrams of a heavy-muscled
individual executing a wonderful curve along a dotted line marked
"a----a----a," "but I am unable to make out the explanations attached
to most of these figures. If you could show me the rudiments----" he
finished tentatively.
It was at this point that the manager of the White Star joyously threw
diplomacy to the winds.
"You bet I will," he cried enthusiastically, "we will have our first
lesson to-night in the attic," and grasping his son's arm he started
off.
Miss Biron and Angélique, sedately sewing by the fire in the next room,
were electrified to see, a moment later, the manager of the White Star
and André François rush madly through, banging a door at either end in
their flight, and laughing at the top of their voices. They also stayed
awake that night beyond their usual retiring time, for strange noises
emanated from the attic long after the hour when a well-conducted
father and son should have been in bed.
The next morning the manager of the White Star let the applicant in
waiting know that no further business would be transacted, and the word
went forth among the members of the gang that he would pay for no more
André François lickings, and would tolerate no unpaid-for ones.
So, by the ultimatum of his father, André François went whither he
would, unmolested except by word of mouth. But he underwent such
martyrdom as only a small boy can receive at the hands of others of his
kind.
Not only did the gang remember and resent his former attitude of
superiority, but they looked on him as a source of revenue taken from
them. His presence irritated them as the presence of a government-owned
railroad might irritate a company of magnates shorn of their profits.
His first position had been marked at least by a certain uniqueness and
dignity. He _had_ never been licked, even if he could have been.
Now, however, he was the lowest of the low. In the democracy of the
gang, where might was right, he was a pariah, a proven coward, licked
by each and every member, and ought, by the law of the survival of the
fittest, to be kicked out. He was only allowed to intrude his presence
on suffrance, because a higher power artificially protected him.
At recess, in school, he sat on the well-worn bench that ran around the
yard and watched the others play or fight. No one ever spoke to him,
except now and then to throw a taunt his way.
"Where's nursie, Annie?"
"Hello, sissy--are yer lost?"
"Where'd yer git that suit?" and similar personalities greeted him
when one of the boys chanced to notice his presence. Sometimes, as he
walked home, pebbles and bits of hardened mud were sent richochetting
after him, but this was the extent of any assault, for the manager of
the White Star, sitting behind his ground-glass door, had it within his
power to speak a potent word to the father of any boy who disobeyed him.
André François seldom spoke back, but his silence had something grim in
it, and there was a portentous light in his eye.
At home he never complained, and Angélique, rejoiced that the régime
of physical violence was over, snatched the time between stitches on
a wonderful, beruffled trousseau, to make him "look like the little
prince." Only his father knew how he spent his time every evening in
the attic, and what passionate energy he put into his work. Neither
alluded to it, but both knew that the lessons had an ultimate object.
And, one day, three weeks from the time he took his first boxing
lesson, this object was unexpectedly accomplished.
It was a Saturday afternoon, and the gang, freed from the tyranny of
school and the irritation of Saturday morning chores, were joyously
disporting themselves in a vacant lot at the corner of the street.
The first inning of a baseball game was just over, and the overalled
players were lying on the ground disputing certain fine points of the
play with the audience.
André François stopped, leaned on the top rail of the fence, and gazed
at them a trifle wistfully. Jimmie McCarthy's roving eye discovered
him, and he yelled out:
"You'd better run along, Annie--nursie will be out lookin' fer yer in a
minnut."
The gang laughed flatteringly at the subtle wit of their leader. André
François' face flushed a vivid crimson and his eyes darkened. Then he
electrified the gang by leaping over the fence and rushing straight up
to the redoubtable Jimmie.
He thrust out his chin and yelled up into the face of the surprised
leader:
"I'll show you if I'm an Annie or not. D'you want to fight?"
Jimmie stood dumb with amazement a moment, then he laughed long and
loud, for his sense of humor was Irish; and the whole gang joined in.
"S-a-a-y," he said, "yer wanter git licked again, d'yer? You must'er
got inter the habit. I tell yer what--I got a baby brother two years
old ter home. I'll go fetch him, and the two o' yez kin have it out."
It was here that André François' early training enabled him to make an
impression. He stood up on his toes, as he had once seen the Marquis
de Boissé stand up on his toes, and slapped Jimmie McCarthy across the
mouth with his open palm, as he had seen that noble marquis slap a
count of France.
But what followed was not an exchange of ultra courteous priorities
to a duel. It was a good American fight in the middle of a ring of
small boys, and what happened is what always happens when natural and
scientific force stand up before each other. That fight will be long
remembered in the annals of the gang, which, like the records of the
great Homeric fights or the sagas of the primitive Northmen, are first
handed down by word of mouth.
"I wished yer'd seen it, kid," said Charlie Brown, to his wide-eyed,
freckled-faced junior, whom he was trying to bring up in the right way.
"It'd bin an eddycation fer yer. Andray Franswa jumped round jest like
he was made o' rubber. Every time that Jim grabbed fer him, he was on
the other side an' had landed him one on the nose. Gee, yer oughter
seen it bleed--it was worse'n the time Jim beat Buck Paxell. Now,
Teddy, yer want ter keep yer eye on Andray Franswa, an' do same as yer
see him doin'--'cause he's goin' ter be a great man some day like Jim
Jeffries--see?"
That afternoon the manager of the White Star chanced to look out of his
window, and he saw André François, with his white sailor hat, fashioned
after that of Prince Edward, set rakishly over one ear, his hands in
his pockets, whistling at the top of his lungs, come down the street.
His face was muddy and bleeding, a great scratch cut across it from ear
to ear, his hair was wild and tangled, but his swagger was that of a
conqueror, and he took the middle of the road. An admiring concourse of
small boys followed along at a respectful distance.
[Illustration: "AN ADMIRING CONCOURSE OF SMALL BOYS FOLLOWED AT A
RESPECTFUL DISTANCE"]
Mr. Biron smiled to himself. Then he took down his ledger, for he was
a careful man of business, and read over a certain page. On it was
written fourteen times:
"To Andrew Francis, licking... $1.00"
"Um," said the manager of the White Star softly at the end of the
addition, "fourteen dollars." Then he took another look out of the
window:
"I never made a better bargain in my life."
AIN'T YOU GWINE TO COME?
BY
EDMUND VANCE COOKE
De debbil done ast me to be his chile;
De debbil he's allus a follerin';
I run de debbil foh mos' a mile;
Don' you hear de debbil a-hollerin'?
I'se gwine to jine de fambly of de Lohd;
I'se gwine to glory in de mawnin';
I'se gwine to be bohn in de grace of Gohd;
Ain't you gwine to come to my bohnin'?