"'THE LORD HAS CERTAINLY SENT YOU, DICK.'"
All his life he had heard of Dick Willis, one of the many boys his grandfather had befriended and taken into theshelter of his home for awhile. Dick had lived five years in the old house that had just burned, when Eunice and Sally Macklin were children; and all the stories of their school days were full of their foster-brother's mischievous sayings and doings.
That the harum-scarum boy had given place to this middle-aged, successful business man, with the deep voice and big whiskers, was hard for Alec to realize, for in all Miss Eunice's reminiscences he had kept the perennial prankishness of youth. But now Alec, listening, learned the changes that had taken place since the man's last visit to his home. He had thought every year that he would come back for another visit, he told Miss Eunice, but he had put it offfrom season to season, hard pressed by the demands of business, and now it was too late for him to ever see the old homestead again. He had seen an account of the fire in a paper which he read on the train on his way East, and he decided to stop his journey long enough to run over to the old place for a few hours, and see if she did not need his help. He wanted her to feel that he stood ready to give it to the extent of his power, and expected her to call upon him as freely as if he were a real brother.
Then it was that Miss Eunice's tremulous voice exclaimed again: "The Lord has certainly sent you, Dick! I have been worried for weeks over Alec's future. There is no outlook here in the village for him. If you could only gethim a position somewhere—" She paused, the tears in her eyes. Alec listened breathlessly for his answer.
"Why didn't you write me before this, Eunice? My business, travelling for a wholesale shoe house, takes me over a wide territory and gives me a large acquaintance. I am sure that I can get him into something or other very soon. You know that I would do anything for Sally's boy, and when you add to that the fact that he is Alexander Macklin's grandson, and I owe everything I am under heaven to that man, you may know that I'd leave no stone unturned to repay a little of his kindness to me."
Alec's heart gave a great throb of hope. The good cheer of the hearty voice inspired him with a courage he had not feltin weeks. There was a patter of bare feet down the garden path, and, peering out between the vines, Alec saw one of the neighbour's boys coming in with a big dish covered carefully with a napkin.
"It's fried chicken," announced the boy, with a grin, as Alec went down the step to meet him. "Mother said to eat it while it was hot. She knew you all would be too tired to cook much to-night."
Without waiting to hear Alec's thanks, he scampered down the path again and squeezed through the gap in the fence made by a missing picket. Alec carried the dish round the house to the kitchen, where Philippa was putting the finishing touches to the supper, in her aunt's stead.
"Did you know that Uncle Dick hascome?" she asked, joyfully. "Oh, how good of Mrs. Pine to send the chicken! We didn't have anything for supper but coffee and rolls and eggs. He's certainly bringing good things in his wake. How delicious that chicken does smell! Let's take it as a good omen, Alec, a forerunner of better days. He'll surely get you out of your slough of despond."
"Who, Flip? The chicken or Uncle Dick?" asked Alec, in his old jesting way, giving one of her long braids a tweak as he passed. A heavy load seemed to lift itself from Philippa's heart at this sign of Alec's return to his merry old self. All during supper she kept glancing at him, for, absorbed in their guest's interesting reminiscences, he seemed to have forgotten the grievances he had broodedover so long, and laughed and joked as he had not done for weeks.
To their great regret, Uncle Dick had to leave that night. Alec walked to the station with him, feeling that he was being subjected to a very close cross-examination as to his capabilities and preferences. The train was late, and as they sat in the waiting-room, the man fell into a profound silence, his hands thrust into his pockets and his brows drawn together in deep thought.
Finally he said: "You want to be a banker, like your grandfather. Well, I can't manage that, my boy. My influence doesn't lie in that direction. The best I can do is to get you in with the firm that manufactures all the shoes I sell. It is a big concern. The general managerof the factory at Salesbury is a good friend of mine, and I happen to know he is on the lookout for a reliable young fellow to put in training as his assistant. He is constantly giving somebody a trial, but nobody measures up to his requirements. Whoever takes it must go through a regular apprenticeship in the factory and learn the business from the ground up. According to his ideas, you'd not be fitted until you'd tried your hand at every piece of machinery in the factory, and knew how to turn out a pair of shoes from the raw leather. The wages will be small at first. Some of the duties are disagreeable, many of the requirements exacting, but promotion is rapid, and probably by the end of the year you'd be in the office, learning to take an oversight of the different departments; that is, if you had proved there was good stuff in you. If money is what you are after, this opening is better a thousand times than anything the village bank could give you in years, and in my opinion it's just as respectable a calling to handle leather as lucre. You'll have to work and work hard."
"I don't mind how hard the work is," answered Alec. "I hate to give up the one thing that has been my ambition all my life, but I have come to the point where I'd do anything honest to get a place somewhere out of this town. I'd even scrub floors. You don't know what I've been through this summer, Uncle Dick. Of course, you know about my father?"
He asked the question with such bitterness of tone that his listener scanned his face intently, then sympathetically.
"Well, I must get away from that," Alec continued. "It's an awful handicap. The thought of it made me desperate at times. If they should hear about him in Salesbury and turn me down on his account—well, I'd just give up! I couldn't stand any more than I have already suffered on his account."
There was no answer for a minute, then the deep voice answered, cheerily: "Alec, your grandmother Macklin once told me that when she was a very small child she went to visit her grandmother; quite a remote ancestor of yours that would be, wouldn't it? For some reason, she was put to sleep in a trundle-bedin the old lady's room, and along late in the night she was awakened by a very earnest voice. She sat up in the little trundle-bed to listen, and there was the old saint on her knees, praying for—now, what do you suppose? For 'all her posterity to the latest generation!' She said she didn't understand then what the words meant, but years afterward, when she held her first baby in her arms, they came back to her with a feeling of awe, to think that prayers uttered for him, long years before he was born, were still working to his blessing.
"It is the same with you, Alec. Evil influences were set afloat by your father's crime that will undoubtedly work against you many a time, but you must remember all the good that lies on the other handto counteract them. Even your great-great-grandmother's prayers must count for something in your behalf. I remember that Alexander Macklin planted an apple orchard after he was eighty years old. He never lived to gather even its first harvest, but you have been enjoying it all your life. He did a thousand unrecorded kindnesses that brought him no returns seemingly, but 'bread cast upon the waters' does come back after many days, my boy, every time. And you will be eating the results of that scattering all your life. The little that I may be able to do for you will only be the result of kindness he showed me, and which I could not repay, but am glad now to pass it on to his grandson. Don't grow bitter because of your father, and say that fatehas handicapped you. That admission of itself will sap your courage and go far toward defeating you. Say, instead, 'The Eternal Goodnesswill more than compensate for the evil that this one man has wrought me.' Then go on, trusting in that, and win in spite of everything. The harder the struggle the more praise to the victor, you know."
The whistle of the approaching train brought his little sermon to a close, and, seizing his satchel, he started hurriedly to the door. "I'll see the manager in a few days," he continued, hurriedly. "I have only a few stops to make this time on my way to Salesbury. Probably I'll have something definite to write you the last of the week. Good-bye and good luck to you!" He shook hands heartily,swung himself up on the platform, and disappeared into the car.
Philippa was waiting in the hammock with a shawl over her head when Alec returned. The moonlight nights were chilly, but she could not bear to go inside until she heard the result of their conversation.
"Oh, Alec," she exclaimed, as he came up wide awake and glowing from his walk and his hopeful interview, "wasn't it just like a lovely story to have the traditional uncle drop down long enough to restore the family fortunes and then disappear again?"
"Yes, you're a good prophet," he laughed. "I drifted on to my island when I least expected it, and in the middle of my darkest night. Salesbury isfour hundred miles from here, Flip, and we sha'n't see each other often, so if it will be any comfort to you, you may say, 'I told you so,' three times a day, from now on until I leave."
Philippa, coming home from school one afternoon, late in September, loitered at the gate for a few more words with the girls who had walked that far with her. Sometimes the little group lingered there until nearly sundown, between the laburnum bushes and hollyhocks of the old garden, but to-day, Alec's impatient whistle from an upper window signalled her. He waved a letter toward her, calling, excitedly, "It's come, Flip! It'scome! I'm to start in the morning. I'm packing my trunk now."
With a hurried good-bye to the girls at the gate, Philippa rushed up the stairs to her brother's room. The bureau drawers had all been emptied on the bed, and every chair was full.
"Here's some things that need buttons," he announced, as she came in. "Aunt Eunice is pressing my best suit, and Mack has gone down-town after the shoes that I left to be half-soled. I'll have to rush, for the letter says to come at once. I didn't suppose they'd be in such a hurry. They're hustlers, I guess."
His haste was so contagious that Philippa ran into the next room for her sewing-basket, without waiting to take off her hat, and sitting down on the floorbeside the window began to sew on buttons as fast as she asked questions. She always had plenty to say to Alec, and now that the time for conversation was limited to a few short hours, she could not talk fast enough.
Presently the click of the gate made her look out. "Here comes Mack," she said. "Your shoes are wrapped in a newspaper, and he's so busy reading something on it that he doesn't know where he is going. Look out, snail!" she called; "you'll bump into the house in a minute if you are not careful!"
The boy came slowly up the stairs still spelling out the paragraph that interested him.
"Alec," he said, pausing in the doorway, "what's a green goods man? Thissays that a gang of 'em were arrested in New York. The detectives traced them by a letter one of them left here in Ridgeville at the hotel. Think of that! Jonas Clark is the man's real name, alias H-u-m-p-h," he spelled, "Humphrey (I guess it is) Long."
Alec snatched the knotty bundle and glanced at the paragraph so eagerly that Philippa looked at him in surprise. She was still more surprised to see a deep flush spread over his face, as he tore the newspaper off the shoes and glanced at the date. Then he dropped it on the bed and began to fumble for something in the bottom of his trunk, saying, carelessly, "Oh, green goods men are just fellows who rope people in to buy counterfeit money. Here, Mack, you'll not have achance to run many more errands for me. Trot down to Aunt Eunice with these neckties, please, and ask her to press them for me while she's in the business."
As soon as Mack disappeared, Alec caught up the paper again. "Flip," he said, in an impressive voice, after his second reading, "do you remember the night of the fire I was to meet a man at the hotel and make the final arrangement with him for taking a position he had offered me?"
Philippa nodded.
"Well, that is the man; Humphrey Long. Think of what I have escaped. From what he said about his sure scheme for making money and making it easy, I know now that is what he meant; but I never suspected such a thing then. Hewas the smoothest talker I ever saw, and was as gentlemanly and well dressed as the minister. And such a way as he had! He could almost make a body believe that black was white. Suppose I had gone off with him. Whillikens! but I would be in hot water now! Everybody would have said, 'Only a chip off the old block. Just what might have been expected with such a father.'"
"But, Alec, you wouldn't have gone after he had told you what his business was!" Philippa exclaimed, in a horrified tone. "You know that you wouldn't."
"No," he answered, slowly, "but I think now that he intended to keep me in the dark till he got me just where he wanted me, in too deep to inform on them. And I was so desperate for a jobaway from here that I would have accepted his offer with very few questions. Don't you see, my very ignorance of his schemes would have made me a better decoy in some cases than if I had not been such an innocent young duck. Of course, Stumpy Fisher told him all about me," he added, after a moment's thought. "He might have counted on my being enough like my father to take kindly to his crookedness."
"How queerly things work out!" said Philippa. "If you had had your own way, you'd have been off with that man and probably in jail with him now. But the fire stopped you. And if it hadn't been for the fire, Uncle Dick never would have been aroused to the necessity of leaving his business long enough tomake us a visit, and if it hadn't been for the visit you never would have had this position in Salesbury."
"That's so," Alec assented, gravely. "It's a whole chain of those islands that you and Aunt Eunice are always singing about. I'll make a map of them some day and name each one: 'Fire Island,' 'Isle of Uncle Dick,' etc. Then I'll name the whole group after you: 'Flip's Providence Islands,' or something like that."
Then the subject was dropped, as Macklin came clattering back up the stairs.
If the history of Alec's experiences during the next few weeks could have been written, it would have differed littlefrom that of thousands of boys who yearly leave farm and village to push their way into the already overcrowded cities. Eager and hopeful, his ambition placed no limit to the success he meant to achieve. That he might fall short of the goal he set for himself never once entered his thoughts. He knew the conditions requisite to success, and felt an honest pride in the consciousness that he could meet them. He had a strong, healthy body, a thorough education so far as the high school could take him, good habits, and high ideals.
As the train whirled him on toward Salesbury, he felt that at last he was placing himself in line with the long list of illustrious men who had begun life as poor boys and ended it as the benefactorsof mankind. And he felt that he had a distinct advantage over Franklin and some of his ilk, for he faced his future with far more than a loaf of bread under his arm. Forward in the baggage-car his grandfather's old leather trunk held ample provision for his present, and an assured position awaited him.
Salesbury was not a large city, but it seemed a crowded metropolis to Alec's eyes, accustomed to the quiet life of the little inland village. But it was not as a gaping backwoodsman he viewed its sights. If he had never seen a trolley-car before, he had carefully studied the power that propels one. The whir and clang, the rush of automobiles, the pounding of machinery in the great factory all seemed familiar, because they were apart of the world he had learned to know in his extensive reading. Keenly alive to new impressions, he was so interested in everything that went on round him that he had little time to be lonesome at first.
He stayed only a few days at the hotel. Anxious to repay his Aunt Eunice as soon as possible the money she had spent in replenishing his wardrobe after the fire, and defraying his travelling expenses, he took a room in a lodging-house, and his meals at a cheap restaurant. In that way he was able to save nearly twice as much each week toward cancelling his indebtedness.
The letters he wrote home were re-read many times. They were so bright and cheerful and full of interesting descriptions. He didn't like the work in the factory, but he liked the manager, and with the determination to make his apprenticeship as short as possible and gain a place in the office, he pegged away with a faithfulness and energy that he felt sure must bring a speedy reward.
Not till the cold November nights came did Miss Eunice detect a little note of homesickness creeping into his letters. She would not have wondered could she have looked in on him while he wrote, buttoned up in his overcoat and with his hat on. His chilly little bedroom, with its dim lamp and worn matting, was a dismal contrast to the cheerful home where he had always spent his winter evenings. Then she noticed that there was nearly always some reference to therestaurant fare, some longing expressed for one more taste of her cooking—the good cream gravy, the mince turnovers, the crisp doughnuts that had been his favourite dishes at home.
Once he wrote to Philippa:
"Think of it, Flip! I don't know a single girl in town. Excepting my landlady, I haven't spoken to a woman since I pulled out of the depot at Ridgeville two months ago. It seems so strange to know only the factory fellows, when at home I was acquainted with everybody. The manager, Mr. Windom, has a pretty daughter whom I'd give a good deal to know. She drives down to the office with him sometimes, and I see her at church. She looks something like your chum,Nordic Gray, laughing sort of eyes, and soft, light hair, and a saucy little nose like your own."
"Think of it, Flip! I don't know a single girl in town. Excepting my landlady, I haven't spoken to a woman since I pulled out of the depot at Ridgeville two months ago. It seems so strange to know only the factory fellows, when at home I was acquainted with everybody. The manager, Mr. Windom, has a pretty daughter whom I'd give a good deal to know. She drives down to the office with him sometimes, and I see her at church. She looks something like your chum,Nordic Gray, laughing sort of eyes, and soft, light hair, and a saucy little nose like your own."
Later, in a reply to a question from Miss Eunice, he wrote:
"No, I haven't put in my church letter yet. I took it with me every Sunday for awhile, but I can't get screwed up to the point, somehow. People here are so stand-offish with strangers. I've gone pretty regularly, but nobody has spoken to me yet. I suppose they think that a gawky country boy doesn't belong in such a fashionable congregation. The minister doesn't come down after service to shake hands with people, as Doctor Meldrum does at home. They have aChristian Endeavour Society that I think might be nice if there was any way of breaking the ice to get into it. The young people seem to have the best kind of times among themselves, but they don't seem to care for anybody that hasn't the inside track in their exclusive little circle."
"No, I haven't put in my church letter yet. I took it with me every Sunday for awhile, but I can't get screwed up to the point, somehow. People here are so stand-offish with strangers. I've gone pretty regularly, but nobody has spoken to me yet. I suppose they think that a gawky country boy doesn't belong in such a fashionable congregation. The minister doesn't come down after service to shake hands with people, as Doctor Meldrum does at home. They have aChristian Endeavour Society that I think might be nice if there was any way of breaking the ice to get into it. The young people seem to have the best kind of times among themselves, but they don't seem to care for anybody that hasn't the inside track in their exclusive little circle."
Then the letters grew shorter. "He had no time to write during the day," he explained. At night he was either so tired that he went to bed as soon as he had his supper, or some of the boys that worked where he did came round for him to go out with them. He had been to the library several times, and to a free band-concert. When he was out of debt, he intended to get a season lecture courseticket and go to other entertainments once in awhile to keep from getting the blues.
He did not mention some of the other places to which he had gone with the boys. It would only worry his Aunt Eunice, he thought. Probably she wouldn't think it was any harm if she lived in the city. People in little places were apt to be narrow-minded, he told himself. He could feel that his own opinions were broadening every day.
He wrote to Macklin on Thanksgiving Day, saying that he intended to make the most of his holiday and skate all the afternoon. He was glad that he had brought his skates, for the ice was in fine condition. That was the last letter home for two weeks.
While Miss Eunice worried, and Philippa haunted the post-office, he was lying ill in his cheerless little bedroom, on the top floor of the cheap lodging-house. He had skated not only Thanksgiving afternoon, but again at night when the ice was illuminated by bonfires and lanterns. There was a danger-signal posted farther down where the ice was thin. He had avoided it all the afternoon, but intent on cutting some fancy figure one of the boys had taught him, he did not notice how near he was to the dangerous spot until he heard a cracking noise all round him, and it was too late to save himself from a plunge into the icy water.
Although he was helped out immediately, and ran every step of the way to his room, he was shaking with a chill when he reached it. All the covering he couldpile on the bed did not stop the chattering of his teeth as he lay shivering between the cold sheets. In the morning he was burning with fever. There was such a sharp pain in his lungs that he could not draw a full breath.
He tried to get up and dress, but the attempt made him so weak and dizzy that he could only stagger back to bed and lie there in a sort of stupor. It was not quite clear to him who brought a doctor, but one came in the course of the morning and left two kinds of little pellets and a glass of water on the chair beside his bed. He was to take two pink pellets every hour and one white one every two hours, he was told.
There was no clock in the room, and he had no watch, but the engine-housebell in the next block clanged the alarm regularly.
The responsibility of giving himself his own medicine kept him from dropping asleep as he longed to do. He would doze for a few minutes and start up, fearing that he had let the time go by, or that he had taken a double dose, or that he had confused directions. Was it two pink ones or two white ones, or one hour or two hours? He said it over and over with every variation possible. The confusion was maddening.
The pain in his lungs grew worse. He was burning with thirst, but there was no more water in the glass. He looked round the room with feverish, aching eyes, that suddenly filled with hot tears. If he could only be back in his own roomat home, with Aunt Eunice to care for him, and Flip to make him comfortable, how good it would seem! He was tasting to the dregs the misery of being ill, all alone among strangers.
Toward evening the woman who kept the lodging-house sent a little coloured boy up to ask if he wanted anything. A pitcher of water was all that Alec asked for. That being supplied, the boy shut the door and clattered down the hall, whistling. The night seemed endless. Hour after hour he started up shuddering, as the bell's loud clang awakened him, not knowing what it was that startled him. In his feverish hallucinations he thought he was continually breaking through the ice into a sea of burning water. He kept clutching at the pillows,thinking they were islands that he was for ever drifting past and could never reach.
When morning came at last, and the doctor made his second visit, he found Alec delirious and the medicine still on the chair beside the bed. With one glance round the cheerless room, he shrugged his shoulders and went out for help.
When Alec next noticed his surroundings with eyes that were once more clear and rational, he saw that the dingy little grate had been opened and a bright fire was burning in it. The clothing he had left on the floor in a heap had been put away. The window shade no longer hung askew. He looked round half-expecting to see his Aunt Eunice or Flip,and wondered if he had been so ill that some one had sent for them. Then his glance fell on a grizzled old man with a wooden leg, dozing in a rocking-chair by the fire.
"Old Jimmy Scott!" Alec said to himself after a moment's puzzled scrutiny, in which he racked his brain to recall where he had seen the face before. Finally he remembered. One of the boys had pointed him out as an old soldier who had taken to nursing when he could no longer fight. He held no diploma from any training-school for nurses, he was uncouth and rough in many ways, but his varied experiences had made him a valuable assistant to the doctor, whom he called his general, and obeyed with military exactness.
As Alec stirred on his pillow, the old soldier looked up, and then hobbled over to the bed as quietly as his wooden leg would allow. He bent over him, felt his pulse, and then said, cheerfully, "All right, buddy, guess it's time now for rations." Taking a covered cup from the hob on the grate, he deftly put a spoonful of hot beef tea to Alec's lips.
"You had a pretty close call, young man," he said, in response to Alec's attempt to question him. "A leetle more and it would have been double pneumonia. But you're about out of the woods now. We'll soon have you on your feet." Giving his patient a few more spoonfuls, he drew the covers gently in place, saying, "Now don't you talk any more. Turn over and go to sleep."
Weak, yet thrilled with a delightful sense of comfort and freedom from pain, Alec obeyed unquestioningly. True, a thought did trail teasingly across his mind for a moment, a dim wonder as to where the money was to come from to pay for the expensive luxuries of nurse and doctor and medicines and fire, but it faded presently, and instead his Aunt Eunice's old song took its place:
"I know not where His islands liftTheir fronded palms in air;I only know I cannot driftBeyond—beyond—beyond—"
He groped languidly for the final words, but could not recall them. "Never mind," he thought, drowsily; "I've got as far as old Jimmy Scott, and that's a big enough island for this trip."
A most comfortable stopping-place old Jimmy proved to be.
Considerate as a woman of his patient's comfort, cheerful, tireless, and prompt as a minute-gun in carrying out the doctor's instructions, it was not long before he had Alec sitting up for a little while each day. With such an old philosopher to keep him company, and entertained by the old veteran's endless fund of anecdote, Alec enjoyed those few days of convalescence more than he could have believed possible.
"It isn't such a bad sort of world, after all," he remarked one morning, the day after the minister had called. "It is strange what a difference knowing persons makes in the way you feel toward them. The minister was as cordial andfriendly as Doctor Meldrum used to be in Ridgeville. Wonder how he found out about me? I didn't know he'd ever heard of me or noticed me in the congregation."
Old Jimmy made no reply, although he longed to say: "He came because I sent for him, buddy, as people ought to do. They are quick enough to send for a doctor when their bodies are sick, but when they are out of sorts either physically or mentally they never think of letting their minister know. They hang back and feel hurt if he doesn't come, just as if he could tell by intuition or a sort of sixth sense that he's needed. How can a D. D. be expected to know when you want him, any more than an M. D.?"
That afternoon as Alec sat propped upby the window for a little while, looking down on the snowy street, there was a knock at the door. Old Jimmy, answering it, came back with a florist's box addressed, "Mr. Alec Stoker, with best wishes and sympathy of the Grace Church Christian Endeavour Society." Inside was a fragrant bunch of hothouse roses.
Alec held them up in amazement. "Why should they have sent them to me?" he cried. There was no Endeavour society in Ridgeville, and he did not understand its methods.
"The flower committee sends 'em to all the sick people in the congregation," explained Jimmy. "Posies and piety always sorter go together, seems like. Pretty, ain't they? But they ain't halfso pretty as the young ladies that brought 'em."
"Young ladies!" gasped Alec, looking toward the door.
"Yes, the flower committee itself, I suppose. I didn't know two of them. But one of them you ought to know, buddy, seeing as it's the daughter of your boss. Thomas Windom's daughter—Avery, I believe they call her."
Alec's heart gave a thump. Avery Windom was the pretty girl he had written to Flip about; the one whom he had wanted of all others to know; and she had climbed to his door, had left the roses; it seemed too strange to be true.
He leaned toward the window and looked down. Yes, there she went with her friends, fluttering along the snowystreet. He could see the gleam of her soft, light hair under her velvet hat. Her cheeks were flushed with her walk in the cold. He leaned eagerly nearer the window as she fluttered along, farther and farther down the street, until she was lost in the crowd. Then he lay back in the chair with a sigh. It seemed so long since he had lived in a world where there were bright, friendly girls like Flip. The sight of these who had been so near made him homesick for the old friends of his school days, and he began to talk to old Jimmy about his sister and the good times they used to have together.
"I wonder which one wrote this card," he thought, as he slipped it out of the box. "I am sure she did. The handwriting is so light and graceful, just likeher. So her name is Avery. I might have known it would be different from other girls'. Avery! Avery!" he repeated softly, while old Jimmy stumped out into the hall for some water in which to put the roses. "It's a pretty name. I wonder if I'll ever know her well enough to call her that."
"Time to get back into bed now," said old Jimmy, coming in with the pitcher. He placed the roses in it on a stand beside the bed. "Mustn't overdo matters."
"No, indeed," said Alec, with a new note of determination in his voice which did not escape old Jimmy. "I've got to get well in a hurry now, and go back to work." Then he settled himself on his pillow, and lay smiling happily at the roses.
If the calendar over Alec's mantel could have told the history of the next few weeks, it would have been the record of a hard struggle with homesickness and discouragement. There was a heavy black cross drawn through the date of his return to work. He had come in that night when it was over weighed down with the fact that his wages had been stopped in his absence, and that it would take a long time to pay the debts incurred during his illness.
There was a zigzag line struck twice across the calendar below that date. "That much goes for the doctor!" he exclaimed, fiercely checking off the time with a stubby pencil. "And that much to old Jimmy, and that much for fire and extras. It'll take way into the new year to get straightened out. Luckily I am nearly through with my debt to Aunt Eunice."
Later there was a tiny star drawn in the corner of one date. It marked the Sabbath evening he had gone to the Christian Endeavour praise service and heard Avery Windom sing. He had been introduced to half a dozen of the boys and girls, and been invited to come again, and had gone back to his calendar to count the nights until the next meeting.Ever since he had left home, he had longed with a longing that was like hunger for the companionship of young people such as he had known at home. There was a blur over one of the dates, the little square that marked the twenty-fifth of December. It was a red-letter day on the calendar, but in Alec's bare little room a holiday that dragged its dismal length out toward dark, like a dull ache.
The box that had been sent him from home failed to reach him till the next day. Standing with his hands in his pockets, looking out over the snowy roofs of the city, he recalled all the merry Christmas days at home, since the first time he and Flip had hung up their stockings beside their grandfather's widechimney-seat. This was the first time he had ever missed following the old custom. The city seemed overflowing with the joy and good-will of the Yuletide, yet none of it was for him. He had never felt so utterly left out and alone in all his life.
Despite his seventeen years, there was an ache in his throat that he could not drive back, and when he laid down the calendar he had been mechanically examining, although he whistled bravely, there was a telltale blur on the page.
But there came a day when he tore off the leaf that was crossed with the double black lines meaning debt and worry, and began a fresh sheet which seemed to promise better days. A change of work came the first of February, and a slightadvance in wages. The manager, who had kept a keen eye on him, was beginning to think that at last he had found a boy who was worth training, and that if he proved as efficient in every stage of his apprenticeship as he had in the first, he would soon have the capable assistant that he had long been in search of.
Alec's notification of his promotion was in the envelope which held his check for the last week in January. He did not see it until he stepped into the bank to have the check cashed, and in his delight and surprise he could scarcely refrain from turning a handspring.
So many people were ahead of him that he had to stand several minutes awaiting his turn at the little barred window. In that time he made several rapid calculations on the back of the envelope.
"HE MADE SEVERAL RAPID CALCULATIONS ON THE BACK OF THE ENVELOPE."
"Can you give me five dollars of that in gold?" he asked of the cashier when his turn finally came. With a nod of assent, the cashier counted out several small bills, and laid a shining five-dollar gold piece on top. Alec seized it eagerly and, thrusting the bills into his pocket, walked out with the coin in his hand.
Long ago he had decided how to spend his first surplus five dollars if it came in time. It should go as a happy surprise to Flip on her sixteenth birthday. It had come in time. Her birthday was on the twenty-first of the month. At first he thought he could not wait three long weeks before sending it. He wanted her to have the pleasure and surprise of receiving it at once; and he wanted the thrill of feeling that he was man enough not only to be self-supporting, but to help care for his sister.
He wrapped the coin in a bit of tissue-paper, torn from the shaving-case Flip had sent him in the delayed Christmas box. Then he carefully put it in the inner pocket of the old wallet he carried. But scarcely a night passed between that time and the twentieth that he did not take a peep at the coin, and then count the days on his calendar.
Ever since the night of the praise service, when he first heard Avery Windom sing, he had been a regular attendant at the Christian Endeavour meetings. It was like a bit of home to sit there in the midst of the young people, singing thefamiliar old hymns, and he sang them so heartily and entered into the exercises of the meeting with such zest that he soon lost the feeling that he was only a stranger within the gates.
There were some, it is true, who were only coolly polite to him, thinking of his position, an unknown boy working in the shoe factory as a common labourer. He felt the chill of their manner keenly, and he knew why he was so pointedly ignored. It was not a deeply spiritual society. Only a few of the members were really consecrated Christians. There were more socials and concerts and literary evenings than devotional meetings. Most of the members belonged to old, wealthy families, and had always been accustomed to leisure and pocket-money.Alec soon realized the bounds that were set to his social privileges. He might take a prominent part in the meetings, even be asked to lead on occasions, be put on committees, be assigned many tasks in connection with suppers and festivals, but outside of his church relationship he was never noticed. No hospitable home swung open its doors for him.
Only one who has lived in a country place, which knows no class distinctions, where character is all that counts, and where the butcher and baker may be bidden any day, in simple village fashion, to banquet with the judge, only such an one can understand the feeling of a boy in Alec's position. He wondered sometimes, with a sudden sinking of the heart,what would be the result if they knew about his father.
He never looked at Avery Windom without thinking of it. He used to watch her in church, sitting up between her aristocratic father and mother, sweet and refined, like a dainty white flower. He wondered if her slim-gloved hand would ever be held out to him again in greeting, as it had been on several occasions, if she knew that he was the son of a criminal.
Then he wondered what she would think if she knew that the touch of that little hand in his had been like the saving touch of a guardian angel. Once, urged on by one of the factory boys, an almost overwhelming temptation had seized him, but the remembrance that if he yielded he would never again be fit totake her hand made him thrust his into his pockets and turn away toward home with a shrug of the shoulders.
Avery, as ignorant of the influence she was exerting as a lily is of the fragrance it sheds, went serenely on in her gentle, high-bred way. Alec held no larger place in her thoughts than any other of the employees in her father's factory.
"Flip would call her one of my islands," he said to himself one night, as he parted on the corner from a crowd of boys who were begging him to go with them for a little game of cards and a lark afterward. "No telling where I would have drifted if it hadn't been for her. It's no easy matter to keep straight when you're all alone in a city as big and tough as this."
On his way home, he stopped at the library for a book he had heard her mention. He had overheard her quoting a line from Sir Galahad, and although he knew the story well of the maiden knight "whose strength was as the strength of ten because his heart was pure," it took on a new meaning because she had praised it. He learned the entire poem by heart, and the inspiration of the lines as he bent over his work in the factory gave him many an uplift that left him more nearly the man whom he imagined Avery's ideal to be.
One other date was marked on the calendar with a star before Flip's birthday came round. It was the night of the literary contest at the high school, when Avery's essay took the prize. Alec had manœuvred for a week to get a ticket, and finally procured one from the head bookkeeper at the factory, whose sister taught in the high school.
He lingered a little while after the contest in the outskirts of the crowd that flocked up to congratulate Avery. She came out to the carriage on her father's arm, with a fleecy evening cloak wrapped round her, and he saw the prize. She held it out a moment in her bare, white hand to some one who stood near Alec. It was a bright five-dollar gold piece.