Elnora sat late that night working over her lessons. The next morning she put on her blue dress and ribbon and in those she was a picture. Mrs. Comstock caught her breath with a queer stirring around her heart, and looked twice to be sure of what she saw. As Elnora gathered her books her mother silently gave her the lunch box.
“Feels heavy,” said Elnora gaily. “And smelly! Like as not I’ll be called upon to divide again.”
“Then you divide!” said Mrs. Comstock. “Eating is the one thing we don’t have to economize on, Elnora. Spite of all I can do food goes to waste in this soil every day. If you can give some of those city children a taste of the real thing, why, don’t be selfish.”
Elnora went down the road thinking of the city children with whom she probably would divide. Of course, the bridge would be occupied again. So she stopped and opened the box.
“I don’t want to be selfish,” murmured Elnora, “but it really seems as if I can’t give away this lunch. If mother did not put love into it, she’s substituted something that’s likely to fool me.”
She almost felt her steps lagging as she approached the bridge. A very hungry dog had been added to the trio of children. Elnora loved all dogs, and as usual, this one came to her in friendliness. The children said “Good morning!” with alacrity, and another paper parcel lay conspicuous.
“How are you this morning?” inquired Elnora.
“All right!” cried the three, while the dog sniffed ravenously at the lunch box, and beat a perfect tattoo with his tail.
“How did you like the bologna?” questioned Billy eagerly.
“One of the girls took me to lunch at her home yesterday,” answered Elnora.
Dawn broke beautifully over Billy’s streaked face. He caught the package and thrust it toward Elnora.
“Then maybe you’d like to try the bologna to-day!”
The dog leaped in glad apprehension of something, and Belle scrambled to her feet and took a step forward. The look of famished greed in her eyes was more than Elnora could endure. It was not that she cared for the food so much. Good things to eat had been in abundance all her life. She wanted with this lunch to try to absorb what she felt must be an expression of some sort from her mother, and if it were not a manifestation of love, she did not know what to think it. But it was her mother who had said “be generous.” She knelt on the bridge. “Keep back the dog!” she warned the elder boy.
She opened the box and divided the milk between Billy and the girl. She gave each a piece of cake leaving one and a sandwich. Billy pressed forward eagerly, bitter disappointment on his face, and the elder boy forgot his charge.
“Aw, I thought they’d be meat!” lamented Billy.
Elnora could not endure that.
“There is!” she said gladly. “There is a little pigeon bird. I want a teeny piece of the breast, for a sort of keepsake, just one bite, and you can have the rest among you.”
Elnora drew the knife from its holder and cut off the wishbone. Then she held the bird toward the girl.
“You can divide it,” she said. The dog made a bound and seizing the squab sprang from the bridge and ran for life. The girl and boy hurried after him. With awful eyes Billy stared and swore tempestuously. Elnora caught him and clapped her hand over the little mouth. A delivery wagon came tearing down the street, the horse running full speed, passed the fleeing dog with the girl and boy in pursuit, and stopped at the bridge. High school girls began to roll from all sides of it.
“A rescue! A rescue!” they shouted.
It was Ellen Brownlee and her crowd, and every girl of them carried a big parcel. They took in the scene as they approached. The fleeing dog with something in its mouth, the half-naked girl and boy chasing it told the story. Those girls screamed with laughter as they watched the pursuit.
“Thank goodness, I saved the wishbone!” said Elnora. “As usual, I can prove that there was a bird.” She turned toward the box. Billy had improved the time. He had the last piece of cake in one hand, and the last bite of salad disappeared in one great gulp. Then the girls shouted again.
“Let’s have a sample ourselves,” suggested one. She caught up the box and handed out the remaining sandwich. Another girl divided it into bites each little over an inch square, and then she lifted the cup lid and deposited a preserved strawberry on each bite. “One, two, three, altogether now!” she cried.
“You old mean things!” screamed Billy.
In an instant he was down in the road and handfuls of dust began to fly among them. The girls scattered before him.
“Billy!” cried Elnora. “Billy! I’ll never give you another bite, if you throw dust on any one!”
Then Billy dropped the dust, bored both fists into his eyes, and fled sobbing into Elnora’s new blue skirt. She stooped to meet him and consolation began. Those girls laughed on. They screamed and shouted until the little bridge shook.
“To-morrow might as well be a clear day,” said Ellen, passing around and feeding the remaining berries to the girls as they could compose themselves enough to take them. “Billy, I admire your taste more than your temper.”
Elnora looked up. “The little soul is nothing but skin and bones,” she said. “I never was really hungry myself; were any of you?”
“Well, I should say so,” cried a plump, rosy girl. “I’m famished right now. Let’s have breakfast immediate!”
“We got to refill this box first!” said Ellen Brownlee. “Who’s got the butter?” A girl advanced with a wooden tray.
“Put it in the preserve cup, a little strawberry flavour won’t hurt it. Next!” called Ellen.
A loaf of bread was produced and Ellen cut off a piece which filled the sandwich box.
“Next!” A bottle of olives was unwrapped. The grocer’s boy who was waiting opened that, and Ellen filled the salad dish.
“Next!”
A bag of macaroons was produced and the cake compartment filled.
“Next!”
“I don’t suppose this will make quite as good dog feed as a bird,” laughed a girl holding open a bag of sliced ham while Ellen filled the meat dish.
“Next!”
A box of candy was handed her and she stuffed every corner of the lunch box with chocolates and nougat. Then it was closed and formally presented to Elnora. The girls each helped themselves to candy and olives, and gave Billy the remainder of the food. Billy took one bite of ham, and approved. Belle and Jimmy had given up chasing the dog, and angry and ashamed, stood waiting half a block away.
“Come back!” cried Billy. “You great big dunces, come back! They’s a new kind of meat, and cake and candy.”
The boy delayed, but the girl joined Billy. Ellen wiped her fingers, stepped to the cement abutment and began reciting “Horatio at the Bridge!” substituting Elnora wherever the hero appeared in the lines.
Elnora gathered up the sacks, and gave them to Belle, telling her to take the food home, cut and spread the bread, set things on the table, and eat nicely.
Then Elnora was taken into the wagon with the girls, and driven on the run to the high school. They sang a song beginning—
“Elnora, please give me a sandwich.
I’m ashamed to ask for cake!”
as they went. Elnora did not know it, but that was her initiation. She belonged to “the crowd.” She only knew that she was happy, and vaguely wondered what her mother and Aunt Margaret would have said about the proceedings.
Chapter 7
Wherein Mrs. Comstock Manipulates Margaret and Billy Acquires a Residence
Saturday morning Elnora helped her mother with the work. When she had finished Mrs. Comstock told her to go to Sintons’ and wash her Indian relics, so that she would be ready to accompany Wesley to town in the afternoon. Elnora hurried down the road and was soon at the cistern with a tub busily washing arrow points, stone axes, tubes, pipes, and skin-cleaning implements.
Then she went home, dressed and was waiting when the carriage reached the gate. She
stopped at the bank with the box, and Sinton went to do his marketing and some shopping for his wife.
At the dry goods store Mr. Brownlee called to him, “Hello, Sinton! How do you like the fate of your lunch box?” Then he began to laugh—
“I always hate to see a man laughing alone,” said Sinton. “It looks so selfish! Tell me the fun, and let me help you.”
Mr. Brownlee wiped his eyes.
“I supposed you knew, but I see she hasn’t told.”
Then the three days’ history of the lunch box was repeated with particulars which included the dog.
“Now laugh!” concluded Mr. Brownlee.
“Blest if I see anything funny!” replied Wesley Sinton. “And if you had bought that box and furnished one of those lunches yourself, you wouldn’t either. I call such a work a shame! I’ll have it stopped.”
“Some one must see to that, all right. They are little leeches. Their father earns enough to support them, but they have no mother, and they run wild. I suppose they are crazy for cooked food. But it is funny, and when you think it over you will see it, if you don’t now.”
“About where would a body find that father?” inquired Wesley Sinton grimly. Mr. Brownlee told him and he started, locating the house with little difficulty. House was the proper word, for of home there was no sign. Just a small empty house with three unkept little children racing through and around it. The girl and the elder boy hung back, but dirty little Billy greeted Sinton with: “What you want here?”
“I want to see your father,” said Sinton.
“Well, he’s asleep,” said Billy.
“Where?” asked Sinton.
“In the house,” answered Billy, “and you can’t wake him.”
“Well, I’ll try,” said Wesley.
Billy led the way. “There he is!” he said. “He is drunk again.”
On a dirty mattress in a corner lay a man who appeared to be strong and well. Billy was right. You could not awake him. He had gone the limit, and a little beyond.
He was now facing eternity. Sinton went out and closed the door.
“Your father is sick and needs help,” he said. “You stay here, and I will send a man to see him.”
“If you just let him ’lone, he’ll sleep it off,” volunteered Billy. “He’s that way all the time, but he wakes up and gets us something to eat after awhile. Only waitin’ twists you up inside pretty bad.”
The boy wore no air of complaint. He was merely stating facts.
Wesley Sinton looked intently at Billy. “Are you twisted up inside now?” he asked.
Billy laid a grimy hand on the region of his stomach and the filthy little waist sank close to the backbone. “Bet yer life, boss,” he said cheerfully.
“How long have you been twisted?” asked Sinton.
Billy appealed to the others. “When was it we had the stuff on the bridge?”
“Yesterday morning,” said the girl.
“Is that all gone?” asked Sinton.
“She went and told us to take it home,” said Billy ruefully, “and ’cos she said to, we took it. Pa had come back, he was drinking some more, and he ate a lot of it—almost the whole thing, and it made him sick as a dog, and he went and wasted all of it. Then he got drunk some more, and now he’s asleep again. We didn’t get hardly none.”
“You children sit on the steps until the man comes,” said Sinton. “I’ll send you some things to eat with him. What’s your name, sonny?”
“Billy,” said the boy.
“Well, Billy, I guess you better come with me. I’ll take care of him,” Sinton promised the others. He reached a hand to Billy.
“I ain’t no baby, I’m a boy!” said Billy, as he shuffled along beside Sinton, taking a kick at every movable object without regard to his battered toes.
Once they passed a Great Dane dog lolling after its master, and Billy ascended Sinton as if he were a tree, and clung to him with trembling hot hands.
“I ain’t afraid of that dog,” scoffed Billy, as he was again placed on the walk, “but onc’t he took me for a rat or somepin’ and his teeth cut into my back. If I’d a done right, I’d a took the law on him.”
Sinton looked down into the indignant little face. The child was bright enough, he had a good head, but oh, such a body!
“I ’bout got enough of dogs,” said Billy. “I used to like ’em, but I’m getting pretty tired. You ought to seen the lickin’ Jimmy and Belle and me give our dog when we caught him, for taking a little bird she gave us. We waited ’till he was asleep ’nen laid a board on him and all of us jumped on it to onc’t. You could a heard him yell a mile. Belle said mebbe we could squeeze the bird out of him. But, squeeze nothing! He was holler as us, and that bird was lost long ’fore it got to his stummick. It was ist a little one, anyway. Belle said it wouldn’t ’a’ made a bite apiece for three of us nohow, and the dog got one good swaller. We didn’t get much of the meat, either. Pa took most of that. Seems like pas and dogs gets everything.”
Billy laughed dolefully. Involuntarily Wesley Sinton reached his hand. They were coming into the business part of Onabasha and the streets were crowded. Billy understood it to mean that he might lose his companion and took a grip. That little hot hand clinging tight to his, the sore feet recklessly scouring the walk, the hungry child panting for breath as he tried to keep even, the brave soul jesting in the face of hard luck, caught Sinton in a tender, empty spot.
“Say, son,” he said. “How would you like to be washed clean, and have all the supper your skin could hold, and sleep in a good bed?”
“Aw, gee!” said Billy. “I ain’t dead yet! Them things is in heaven! Poor folks can’t have them. Pa said so.”
“Well, you can have them if you want to go with me and get them,” promised Sinton.
“Honest?”
“Yes, honest.”
“Crost yer heart?”
“Yes,” said Sinton.
“Kin I take some to Jimmy and Belle?”
“If you’ll come with me and be my boy, I’ll see that they have plenty.”
“What will Pa say?”
“Your pa is in that kind of sleep now where he won’t wake up, Billy,” said Sinton. “I am pretty sure the law will give you to me, if you want to come.”
“When people don’t ever wake up they’re dead,” announced Billy. “Is my pa dead?”
“Yes, he is,” answered Sinton.
“And you’ll take care of Jimmy and Belle, too?”
“I can’t adopt all three of you,” said Sinton. “I’ll take you, and see that they are well provided for. Will you come?”
“Yep, I’ll come,” said Billy. “Let’s eat, first thing we do.”
“All right,” agreed Sinton. “Come into this restaurant.” He lifted Billy to the lunch counter and ordered the clerk to give him as many glasses of milk as he wanted, and a biscuit. “I think there’s going to be fried chicken when we get home, Billy,” he said, “so you just take the edge off now, and fill up later.”
While Billy lunched Sinton called up the different departments and notified the proper authorities ending with the Women’s Relief Association. He sent a basket of food to Belle and Jimmy, bought Billy a pair of trousers, and a shirt, and went to bring Elnora.
“Why, Uncle Wesley!” cried the girl. “Where did you find Billy?”
“I’ve adopted him for the time being, if not longer,” replied Wesley Sinton.
“Where did you get him?”
“Well, young woman,” said Wesley Sinton, “Mr. Brownlee told me the history of your lunch box. It didn’t seem so funny to me as it does to the rest of them; so I went to look up the father of Billy’s family, and make him take care of them, or allow the law to do it for him. It will have to be the law.”
“He’s deader than anything!” broke in Billy. “He can’t ever take all the meat any more.”
“Billy!” gasped Elnora.
“Never you mind!” said Sinton. “A child doesn’t say such
things about a father who loved and raised him right. When it happens, the father alone is to blame. You won’t hear Billy talk like that about me when I cross over.”
“You don’t mean you are going to take him to keep!”
“I’ll soon need help,” said Wesley. “Billy will come in just about right ten years from now, and if I raise him I’ll have him the way I want him.”
“But Aunt Margaret doesn’t like boys,” objected Elnora.
“Well, she likes me, and I used to be a boy. Anyway, as I remember she has had her way about everything at our house ever since we were married. I am going to please myself about Billy. Hasn’t she always done just as she chose so far as you know? Honest, Elnora!”
“Honest!” replied Elnora. “You are beautiful to all of us, Uncle Wesley; but Aunt Margaret won’t like Billy. She won’t want him in her home.”
“In our home,” corrected Wesley.
“What makes you want him?” marvelled Elnora.
“God only knows,” said Sinton. “Billy ain’t so beautiful, and he ain’t so smart, I guess it’s because he’s so human. My heart goes out to him.”
“So did mine,” said Elnora. “I love him. I’d rather see him eat my lunch than have it myself any time.”
“What makes you like him?” asked Wesley.
“Why, I don’t know,” pondered Elnora. “He’s so little, he needs so much, he’s got such splendid grit, and he’s perfectly unselfish with his brother and sister. But we must wash him before Aunt Margaret sees him. I wonder if mother—”
“You needn’t bother. I’m going to take him home the way he is,” said Sinton. “I want Maggie to see the worst of it.”
“I’m afraid—” began Elnora.
“So am I,” said Wesley, “but I won’t give him up. He’s taken a sort of grip on my heart. I’ve always been crazy for a boy. Don’t let him hear us.”
“Don’t let him be killed!” cried Elnora. During their talk Billy had wandered to the edge of the walk and barely escaped the wheels of a passing automobile in an effort to catch a stray kitten that seemed in danger.
Wesley drew Billy back to the walk, and held his hand closely. “Are you ready, Elnora?”
The Best of Gene Stratton-Porter Page 34