Divided Skates

“Miss Lucy?”

“That’s right. You are quick-witted. That’s in your favor. I asked about your people; who they are and where they live.”

“I don’t know as I’ve got any. There’s Molly – she’s about the nicest one I know. Of course, there’s Mother Molloy, up alley, where I stay sometimes, with the other kids. That’s when I have the cash to pay up. Mother don’t take in nobody for nothing, Mother don’t. Can’t blame her, neither. It’s business. And once when I fell and got scared of the hospital she was real good to me. She made me tea and done up my head and treated me real square. When I got well I gave her something. Course I wanted to buy her a shirt waist, but they hadn’t any big enough, so I bought her a ring with a red stone. The ring was too small, but she could put it away for a keepsake. She’s dreadful fat, Mother Molloy is. She gets real good stuff to eat, ’cause the kids she keeps regular are on the best streets; and the ‘coons’ that live in the big houses save a lot for them. One of the boys works your kitchen, I believe. And – there’s Mary.”

Miss Armacost rose and led the way to the basement. She was very much perplexed. Not that she wavered in her decision to take in this homeless boy and provide for his welfare, but because he did not at all fit in with her previous ideas of what such a child should be. He was neither humble nor bold, and now that he had forgotten his shyness was keen and business-like. He neither complained of his poverty nor was ashamed of it; and his manner as he walked toward the table and drew out a chair for Miss Armacost was as gallant as possible.

“That’s the checker!” he said to himself. “That’s the way I’ve seen the gentlemen do in the hotel dining-rooms when I’ve been peeking through, or the waiters, I mean. The gentlemen would have done it, if the waiters hadn’t been there, and it goes. Some day, when I own the papers I sell now, I’ll know just how to act. Ma’am – I mean, Miss Armacost? Did you speak?”

“I – Yes, I did. I thought that as you had had a nap since – since you had made your toilet, it would be as well to make yourself fresh before meat. There’s a bowl and water in that closet; and towels.”

“Well, I declare!” thought the watchful Mary. “If that don’t beat all! ’Stead of ordering the little chap to wash himself, or even me to do it for him, she’s treating him same’s if he was a Livingston or Satterlee, himself. And – he’s doing it! My land! he’s doing it.”

Towsley retired to the pantry and drew some water in the bowl. Such lavatories were familiar enough to him, among the railway stations and hotel corridors which he frequented to sell his papers, but he had never seen one more richly appointed than this. He was rather short for the stationary bowl, but he succeeded in wetting the tips of his very dirty fingers and drawing them down over his face. This operation left streaks of a lighter color upon the dusty cheeks and several dingy marks upon the damask towel which he applied to dry them. With the silver-backed brush which lay beside the bowl he made a frantic dab at his tangled hair, shook himself deeper into his over-large jacket, and presented himself before his hostess.

Concealing a smile at his peculiar appearance she motioned him to his place, with the remark:

“It is so long past the regular dinner hour that I hardly know which of these dishes you would like first. But suppose we take the soup. Shall we begin with that? Eh? No? Don’t you care for soup?”

“I like pie better.”

Mary smiled, and both mistress and guest observed it. She was promptly dismissed with the statement that Miss Armacost would herself attend upon the table, and the request to go to the third floor and make a warm bath ready there.

Towsley was grateful for her departure, but suspicious of its object. Like most others of his class he hated water, save in summer when he could go swimming. However, he was not a boy who went half-way to meet trouble. The bath was a future possibility and the pie a delightfully present one.

“Which sort? Mince or apple?”

Two possibilities, in fact!

“Mince, please. I had that once at a dinner the rich folks gave us. I tell you it was prime!”

Miss Lucy smiled again. The little lad with his honest, outspoken ways interested her greatly. She remembered that when she was a child herself she had used to wish her dinners might always begin with the dessert. But they never had. She resolved that Towsley should escape this disappointment of her own early days, and drawing the pie toward her divided it into quarters. It was a large pie and might easily have been served in eighths without any skimpiness; but she gave him a quarter. Then she offered him the cheese, which he declined by a negative wave of his grimy hand; his mouth being at the instant too much occupied for speech.

Before Miss Armacost had carved a slice of beef, as a second course for the young gentleman, his pie plate was empty.

“Would you like another piece, Towsley?”

“I’d like it, if you can spare it.”

“Oh! certainly. I am glad you enjoy it. Chloe does make rather nice pastry, I think.”

“Should say she did! Is that the black one, ’at stuck her head in the door curtain and sniffed?”

“She is the black one. Yes. I did not observe the sniffing.”

The lad did not explain. He was biting the last mouthful from the second quarter of the pie, which he had held in his hand as he ate it. This was the custom at the sidewalk table where he generally dined, and where forks were things unknown.

Miss Armacost gazed at the boy in astonishment. He had now consumed a half pie, yet seemed as eager as ever. She resolved that he should have the whole of it, if he so desired, but that she would instil a bit of instruction along with the mince-meat. She placed the third quarter upon a fresh plate and ostentatiously laid a fork beside it.

Towsley accepted this third portion and being in less haste attempted to use the fork, as Miss Lucy’s action had suggested. He succeeded fairly well, considering his inexperience, and his hostess was delighted by his aptness. As soon as the third piece had disappeared she gave him the fourth, and all that remained.

“There!” she thought; “by the time that is gone he will have learned the fork lesson completely!”

But the fourth quarter went slowly. Towsley eyed it lingeringly, even lovingly, yet the passes toward his crumby lips were few and far between. The lady grew somewhat disturbed, for, from his previous exhibition of it, she had supposed there could be no limit to the child’s appetite.

“Is there anything wrong with it, Towsley? Doesn’t it taste as nicely as the rest?”

“Well, ma’am – Miss Armacost, not quite. I think it’s getting – getting a little – little bitter.”

The hostess checked another smile and proffered the beef which she had carved. This was declined. So was everything else she suggested, and they rose from the table.

Miss Lucy rang the bell that summoned Jefferson, who was not only coachman but a man-of-all-work in the quiet establishment. When this gray-headed “boy” appeared, the newsboy was put into his charge with the order:

“Take him to the third floor bath. He is to sleep in the front hall bedroom. After you have attended him to bed, come to me. I will have something else for you to do.”

Jefferson was good-natured and devoted to Miss Armacost; but he liked things to go along in an orderly way. Commonly, he would have been through with all his tasks for the day, and he looked with something like disgust at this dirty street arab who was thus turning the household “all tipsy-topsy.” But he dared not show his feelings to his mistress, and with a gruff “Come along, then,” he guided Towsley toward the top of the house.

An hour later Miss Lucy called Mary.

“Did he take his bath nicely? Was he troublesome to Jefferson? I thought I heard voices – rather loud ones.”

“Yes, ma’am, I guess you did. They had some words, them two. No, ma’am, he didn’t take his bath. He didn’t even touch to do it. Jefferson says the kid shut the door in his face, and the next he knew he heard the water running out the tub. ’Twasn’t a minute then, before he hopped right into the middle of that lovely clean bed with a kind of a yell. ‘I’m a gentleman for one night, I am!’ says he, ‘and when I’m a man I’ll be one all the time!’ But the dirty little scamp! Fooling old Jeff that way.”

“Well, he’ll do better after a little. He’s a very bright child. I can see that distinctly.”

“After a while, ma’am? Is he to stop – then?”

“Yes, Mary. He is to live here if he will. Do you know how early the stores are open in the morning?”

“Oh! along about eight o’clock, ma’am, I think.”

“Call me at seven, if you do not hear me stirring before. I suppose Jefferson could hardly have the horse ready so early?”

“He’d think it a great hardship, ma’am, and he’d be cross as two sticks all day after.”

“Yes, I suppose he would. I wish people were born without tempers.”

“’Twould be a fine thing,” assented the housemaid, recalling some occasions when Miss Lucy had been a little “sharp” herself.

“Well, you may go now. No; I shall need nothing more. I am going up into the storeroom to look over some trunks. In the morning I will take a car down-town and we’ll have a late breakfast afterward. Good-night.”

“Good-night, ma’am. But I’m thinking I wouldn’t count too much on the cars being early to-morrow, ma’am. It’s a regular blizzard snowing, and the tracks are getting blocked.”

“Humph! that’s always the way. After our admitting the railway on this avenue the company run their cars to suit themselves, not our convenience. Because I happen to need a car in the morning, they will, of course, not be running. Well, I must not be unjust. I suppose they lose more by stopping than I do by having them stop.”

Miss Armacost climbed to the storeroom at the back of the top of her house. In this room were rows of trunks and boxes, and two big wardrobes hung full of cast-off clothing. The garments had belonged to dead and gone Armacosts, of various ages, and after some hesitation the lady knelt before one leather-covered chest that bore the initials “L. A.” painted in red upon its cover.

“He was a dear little boy!” sighed Miss Lucy, as she turned a key and raised the lid. “My only brother’s only son. Well, brother was always a generous fellow, and he had less of family pride than most of us. I mean of the silly kind of pride. He wouldn’t do anything to disgrace his name, but he – well, he fancied the Armacosts were not the only people in the world! He used to say: ‘It doesn’t matter about birth, so long as a man is a “gentleman,”’ and ‘gentleman,’ in his mind, meant everything that was brave and strong and noble. I believe that, dearly as he loved his boy, he would be pleased to have these useless garments do somebody some good. I’ve often thought of giving away a lot of the things up here, yet could never quite make up my mind to do it. Now the Lord has sent me the need, and I must supply it.”