The Rich Little Poor Boy

NEXT morning it was plain that the roses had brought about certain differences in the flat. Not that there were any blunt orders, or quarrels. Barber did not bring up the subjec...

BARBER took his time. He even prepared to have a smoke before "attending" to Johnnie. He fumbled through his coat pockets to find his pipe, grinning all the while at Cis.

IT was a blue Monday. In fact, it was the bluest Monday that Johnnie had ever spent in the flat. The urge of unrest was upon him. He had been out once, and far into the great wo...

During that moment there was dead silence. Johnnie's heart stopped beating, his ears sang, his throat knotted as if paralyzed, and the skin on the back of his head crinkled; whi...

THE first Sunday in September was a day that Johnnie was never to forget. Big Tom, Grandpa, Cis, and he--all were gathered about the kitchen table for the noon meal when Father...

"GIT on t' the size of it! . . . . Oh, my Aunt Sally! . . . . Lookee what the cat brung in! . . . . Boys, ketch me whilst I faint! . . . . Am I seein' it, or ain't I--w'ich? . ....

At the first knock of the four, a sparrow to whom Johnnie had, for this long while, been giving good-turn crumbs, made a scrambling get-away from the window sill, followed in th...

JOHNNIE went through his regular duties in the flat, but he went through them in a daze. Whenever his work was done, he sat down. Then, his body quiet, his brain registered soun...

Yet he was businesslike, and walked rapidly. No window, however beautiful, lured him to pause. He did not waste a single minute. And soon he was gazing up at a really imposing a...

The day was Sunday, so that Cis, as well as Big Tom, was at home. At the moment the longshoreman was humped over the sink, rinsing his bluish jowls after a shave. Cis was beside...

JOHNNIE always started his own daily program with a taste of fresh air. He cared less for this way of spending his first fifteen free minutes than for many another. But as Cis,...

AS life came back into his body, Johnnie's first thought was a grateful one: how cool to his cheek was the old, crackled oilcloth on the table if he rested that cheek a moment,...

"Oh!" breathed Johnnie, so glad and proud all at once that he forgot the apron and his hair, or that the table was still strewn with the breakfast dishes. He fell back a step. "...

OUT of a hip-pocket one morning Mr. Perkins produced a book--a small, limp, gray-colored volume upon the cover of which were two bare-kneed boy scouts, one of whom was waving a...

HE awoke a changed boy. How it had come about, or why, he did not try to reason; but on opening his gray eyes at dawn, he felt distinctly two astonishing differences in himself:...

WHEN he had put half a dozen blocks behind him, he slackened his pace, took a quick look into several doorways, chose one that promised seclusion, dove into it, got his breath b...

THOSE sounds of combat which penetrated to an anxious kitchen were deep, rasping breathings, muttered exclamations and grunts, a shuffling of feet that was not unlike a musicles...

IN the morning, he was very stiff. When he discovered this, he made up his mind that he was ill enough to stay in bed, which (it being Saturday) would let him out of having to d...

A TERRIBLE dread filled Johnnie's heart--that heart which had always known so much dread. It took away his desire to go upon the roof; it kept him awake long into the night, tug...

Then, great excitement. Cis ran to Mr. Perkins, laughing, "Oh, you're safe! You're safe!" Whereupon he kissed her fingers again; and Johnnie, on his feet now, felt that here, in...

"'TAKE two cupfuls of milk,'" read Johnnie, who was bent over his newest possession, a paper-covered cookbook presented him only that morning by his good friend overhead; "'thre...

HE was ten. But his clothes were forty. And it was this difference in the matter of age, and, consequently, in the matter of size, that explained why, at first sight, he did not...

WHEN, toward the latter part of March, the days were so warm that Johnnie was able once more to take short, daily walks, he never went without bringing home a box to split up fo...

In the area he halted One-Eye, and they talked the matter over. The latter had no trouble at all in seeing Johnnie's attitude. "Was a boy myself oncet," he declared. "Used t' gi...

AN energetic, hot, and dust-laden wind caught at Johnnie as he came out upon the street, whipping strands of his yellow hair into his eyes and about his ears, blowing the fringe...

A LONG moment of breathless silence--while four pairs of eyes fixed themselves upon the hall door, and as many pairs of ears strained to follow the creak and clump of Big Tom's...

JOHNNIE could hear a fumbling outside in the hall, as if some one was going slowly to and fro, brushing a wall with gentle, uncertain hands. Cautiously he tiptoed to his own doo...

HE awoke with such a feeling of happiness--a fluttery feeling, which was in his throat, and also just at the lower end of his breastbone, where he seemed to have so many kinds o...

It was as if the most delicate of gossamer curtains had been brushed aside so that he could look at a new world. What he saw there rooted him to his chair, holding him spellboun...

"BOY SCOUTS," explained Mrs. Kukor, "wass awful stylish. Say you wass a scout, so you go in beautiful gangs for makink picnic und seeink birds, mit eatinks from goot foods, und...

"LAD DEAR, I was saying to myself the other day, 'Patrick Mungovan, when you go home to God, what will you be leaving--you that haven't a red cent to your name--to that mite of...

NINE free hours!--or, to be exact, eight, since the best part of one would have to be devoted to the flat in order to avoid trouble. However, Johnnie never did his work any soon...

HIS toe stopped working across the crack in the floor. His left hand forsook his tousled hair and fell to his side. His eyes narrowed, and his chin came up. Then his lips began...

BUT for some reason which Johnnie could not fathom, Cis suddenly began to show a great deal of interest in the flat. Indeed, she was by way of making his life miserable, what wi...

CIS was seated on her narrow pallet, her back against the prized excelsior cushion, her knees drawn up within the circle of her slender arms. About her shoulders tumbled her hai...

JANUARY came in furiously, peppering with sleet, bombarding with hail, storming with snow-laden winds. Day after day the sun refused to show himself, and the kitchen was so dark...

TO the right, at the rear end of the long, black hallway that connected the area with the street on the north, was a good-sized room which had once been used by a job printer--a...

He did not enter the tiny room. Now, all at once, it seemed a sacred place, having for so long sheltered her who was sweet and fine. And he felt instinctively that the blue-wall...

OFFICER CLANCY did not wait even to knock once upon the Barber door, but pushed it open sharply--discovering Big Tom and Cis, face to face on the far side of the kitchen table,...

LEANING on his well elbow, Johnnie related to Mrs. Kukor and Cis and Grandpa the whole story of what had happened to him; and they paid such rapt attention to him that at the mo...