Stories Worth Rereading Part 35

Harold put his fingers to his lips, and uttered two sharp whistles. Bobby understood the signal, and came around the side of the house. He had carefully wiped away his tears, but his voice was rather shaky.

"What d'ye want?" he called. He felt sure Hal had an errand for him.

"Charlie's going to the commons with us," shouted his brother, "so I guess you can come, if you want to."

Bobby came down the path in leaps and bounds.

"I'm going, mother!" he shouted, waving his cap. And away he and Charlie tore down the street ahead of their brothers.

"Hold on, there!" cried Harold, with a laugh. "Don't get crazy! And mind you two keep near us at the track!"

It was about a week later that Aunt Kate laid her hand on Harold's shoulder, and said: "I am afraid I made a mistake the other day, Hal. I believe Bobby's been promoted from the rank of footman to be a brother."--_Martha Graham, in the King's Own._

ELNATHAN'S GOLD

One morning Christopher Lightenhome, aged sixty-eight, received an unexpected legacy of six hundred dollars. His good old face betokened no surprise, but it shone with a great joy. "I am never surprised at the Lord's mercies," he said, reverently. Then, with a step to which vigor had suddenly returned, he sought out Elnathan Owsley, aged twelve.

"Elnathan," he said, "I guess I am the oldest man in the poorhouse, but I feel just about your age. Suppose you and I get out of here."

The boy smiled. He was very old for twelve, even as Christopher Lightenhome was very young for sixty-eight.

"For a poorhouse this is a good place," continued Christopher, still with that jubilant tone in his voice. "It is well conducted, just as the county reports say. Still there are other places that suit me better. You come and live with me, Elnathan. What do you say to it, boy?"

"Where are you going to live?" asked Elnathan, cautiously.

The old man regarded him approvingly. "You'll never be one to get out of the frying-pan into the fire, will you?" he said. "But I know a room. I have had my eye on it. It is big enough to have a bed, a table, a cook-stove, and three chairs in it, and we could live there like lords.

Like lords, boy! Just think of it! I can get it for two dollars a month."

"With all these things in it?"

"No, with nothing in it. But I can buy the things, Elnathan, get them cheap at the second-hand store. And I can cook to beat--well to beat some women anyway--" He paused to think a moment of Adelizy, one of the pauper cooks.

"Yes," he thought, "Adelizy has her days. She's systematic. Some days things are all but pickled in brine, and other days she doesn't put in any salt at all. Some days they're overcooked, and other days it seems as if Adelizy jerked them off the stove before they were heated through." Then he looked eagerly into the unresponsive young face before him. "What's the matter with my plan, Elnathan?" he asked, gravely. "Why don't you fall in with it? I never knew you to hang off like this before."

"I haven't any money," was the slow answer. "I can't do my share toward it.

And I'm not going to live off of you. Your money will last you twice as long as if you don't have to keep me. Adelizy says six hundred dollars isn't much, if you do think it is a fortune, and you'll soon run through with it, and be back here again."

For a moment the old man was stung. "I sha'n't spend the most of it for salt to put in my victuals anyway," he said. Then his face cleared, and he laughed. "So you haven't any money, and you won't let me keep you," he continued. "Well, those are pretty honorable objections. I expect to do away with them though, immediately." He drew himself up, and said, impressively: "'That is gold which is worth gold.' You've got the gold all right, Elnathan, or the money, whichever you choose to call it."

Elnathan stared.

"Why, boy, look here!" Mr. Lightenhome exclaimed, as he seized the hard young arm, where much enforced toil had developed good muscle. "There's your gold, in that right arm of yours. What you want to do is to get it out of your arm and into your pocket. I don't need to keep you. You can live with me and keep yourself. What do you say now?"

The boy's face was alight. "Let's go today," he said.

"Not today--tomorrow," decided Mr. Lightenhome, gravely. "When I was young, before misfortune met me and I was cheated out of all I had, I was used to giving spreads. We'll give one tonight to those we used to be fellow paupers with no longer ago than yesterday, and tomorrow we will go. We began this year in the poorhouse; we will end it in our own home. That is one of the bad beginnings that made a good ending, boy. There is more than one of them. Mind that."

The morrow came, and the little home was started. Another morrow followed, and Elnathan began in earnest to try getting the gold out of his arm and into his pocket. He was a dreamy boy, with whom very few had had patience; for n.o.body, not even himself, knew the resistless energy and dogged perseverance that lay dormant within him. Mr. Lightenhome, however, suspected it. "I believe," he said to himself, "that Elnathan, when he once gets awakened, will be a hustler. But the poorhouse isn't exactly the place to rouse up the ambition of Napoleon Bonaparte in any boy. Having a chance to scold somebody is what Adelizy calls one of the comforts of a home. And she certainly took out her comforts on Elnathan, and all the rest helped her--sort of deadening to him, though. Living here with me and doing for himself is a little more like what's needed in his case."

Slowly Elnathan wakened, and Mr. Lightenhome had patience with him. He earned all he could, and he kept himself from being a burden on his only friend, but he disliked work, and so he lagged over it. He did all that he did well, however, and he was thoroughly trustworthy.

Three years went by. Elnathan was fifteen years old, and Christopher Lightenhome was seventy-one.

The little room had always been clean. There had been each day enough nouris.h.i.+ng food to eat, though the old man, remembering Adelizy's prediction, had set his face like flint against even the slightest indulgence in table luxuries. And, although there had been days when Elnathan had recklessly brought home a ten-cent pie and half a dozen doughnuts from the baker's as his share of provision for their common dinner, Mr. Lightenhome felt that he had managed well. And yet there were only fifty dollars of the original six hundred left, and the poorhouse was looming once more on the old man's sight. He sighed. An expression of patience grew on the kind old face. He felt it to be a great pity that six hundred dollars could not be made to go farther. And there was a wistfulness in the glance he cast upon the boy. Elnathan was, as yet, only half awake. The little room and the taste of honest independence had done their best. Were they to fail?

The old man began to economize. His mittens wore out. He did not buy more.

He needed new flannels, but he did not buy them. Instead he tried to patch the old ones, and Elnathan, coming in suddenly, caught him doing it.

"Why, Uncle Chris!" he exclaimed. "What are you patching those old things for? Why don't you pitch 'em out and get new ones?"

The old man kept silent till he had his needle threaded. Then he said, softly, with a half-apology in his tone, "The money's 'most gone, Elnathan."

The boy started. He knew as well as Mr. Lightenhome that when the last coin was spent, the doors of the poorhouse would open once more to receive his only friend. A thrill of gladness went through Elnathan as he recognized that no such fate awaited him.

He could provide for himself. He need never return. And by that thrill in his own bosom he guessed the feeling of his friend. He could not put what he guessed into words. Nevertheless, he felt sure that the old man would not falter nor complain.

"How much have you?" he asked.

Mr. Lightenhome told him.

Then, without a word, Elnathan got up and went out. His head sunk in thought, and his hands in his trousers' pockets, he sauntered on in the wintry air while he mentally calculated how long Mr. Lightenhome's funds would last. "Not any later than next Christmas he will be in the poorhouse again." He walked only a few steps. Then he stopped. "Will he?" he cried.

"Not if I know it."

This was a big resolve for a boy of fifteen, and the next morning Elnathan himself thought so. He thought so even to the extent of considering a retreat from the high task which he had the previous day laid before himself. Then he looked at Mr. Lightenhome, who had aged perceptibly in the last hours. Evidently he had lain awake in the night calculating how long his money would last. The sight of him nerved the boy afresh. "I am not going back on it," he told himself, vigorously. "I am just going to dig out all the gold there is in me. Keeping Uncle Chris out of the poorhouse is worth it."

But he did not confide in the old man. "He would say it was too big a job for me, and talk about how I ought to get some schooling," concluded the boy.

Now it came about that the room, which, while it had not been the habitation of lords, had been the abode of kingly kindness, became a silent place. The anxious old man had no heart to joke. He had been to the poorhouse, and had escaped from it into freedom. His whole nature rebelled at the thought of returning. And yet he tried to school himself to look forward to it bravely. "If it is the Lord's will," he told himself, "I will have to bow to it."

Meanwhile those who employed Elnathan were finding him a very different boy from the slow, lagging Elnathan they had known. If he was sent on an errand, he made speed. "Here! get the gold out of your legs," he would say to himself. If he sprouted potatoes for a grocer in his cellar, "There's gold in your fingers, El," he would say. "Get it out as quick as you can."

He now worked more hours in a day than he had ever worked before, so that he was too tired to talk much at meals, and too sleepy in the evening. But there was a light in his eyes when they rested on Mr. Lightenhome that made the old man's heart thrill.

"Elnathan would stand by me if he could," he would say to himself. "He's a good boy. I must not worry him."

A month after Elnathan had begun his great labor of love, an astonis.h.i.+ng thing happened to him. He had a choice of two places offered him as general utility boy in a grocery. Once he would have told Mr. Lightenhome, and asked his advice as to which offer he should take, but he was now carrying his own burdens. He considered carefully, and then he went to Mr. Benson.

"Mr. Benson," he said, "Mr. Dale wants me, too, and both offer the same wages. Now which one of you will give me my groceries reduced as you do your other clerks?"

"I will not," replied Mr. Benson, firmly. "Your demand is ridiculous. You are not a clerk."

The irate Mr. Benson turned on his heel, and Elnathan felt himself dismissed. He then went to Mr. Dale, to whom he honestly related the whole.

Mr. Dale laughed. "But you are not a clerk," he said, kindly.

"I know it, but I mean to be, and I mean to do all I can for you, too."