Three People Part 19

But, deary me! I do believe in my heart that's half the trouble, folks won't do it; his own folks, too, that have heard, and have got one of the mansions waiting for 'em. He's given them all work to do helping to fill the others, and half the time they let it go, and tend to their own work, and leave him to do the coaxing all alone."

"Mother," interrupted Winny, impatiently drumming on the corner of the Bible, "I thought you said it was bedtime. I could have learned two grammar lessons in this time."

The mother gave a gentle little sigh.

"Well, deary, so it is," she said. "We'll just have a word of prayer, and then we'll go."

Tode in his little room took his favorite position, a seat on the side of the bed, and lost himself in thought. Great strides the boy had taken in knowledge since tea time. Wonderful truths had been revealed to him.

Some faint idea of the wickedness of this world began to dawn upon him.

All his life hitherto had been spent in the depths, and it would seem that if he were acquainted with anything it must be with wickedness, yet a new revelation of it had come to him. "Ye _will_ not come unto me, that ye might have life." He did not know that there was such a verse in the Bible; but now he knew the fact, and it gave this boy, who had come out of a cellar rum-hole, and had mingled during his entire life with just such people as swarm around cellar rum-holes, a more distinct idea of the total depravity of this world than he had ever dreamed of before. It gave him a solemn old feeling. He felt less like whistling and more like going very eagerly to work than he ever had before.

"There's work to do," he said to himself. "He's got a mansion ready for me it seems. I won't ever want other folk's nice homes any more as long as I live, 'cause it seems I've got a grander one after all than they can even think of; but then there's other mansions, and he wants people to come and fill them, and he let's us help." Then his voice took a more joyful ring, like that of a strong brave boy ready for work. "There's work to do, plenty of it, and I'll help--I'll help fill _some_ of them."

"The poor homeless boy," said the warm-hearted little mother down stairs. "Deary me, my heart does just go out to him. And to think that he owns one of them mansions, and never knew it! Well, now, he shan't ever want for a home feeling on this earth if I can help it. I do believe he's one of the Lord's own, and we must feel honored, Winny dear, because we're called to help him. Don't you think he's a good warm-hearted boy, deary?"

"Oh yes," Winny said, indifferently. "But, mother, he does use such shocking grammar."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER XIV.

SIGNS AND WONDERS.

Tode bustled into the house half an hour earlier than usual. Before him he carried a great sheet of pasteboard.

"Where's Winny?" he asked, sitting down on the nearest chair, out of breath with his haste. "I've got an idea, and she must help me put it on here."

"Winny's gone to the store, deary, for some tea. Whatever brought you home so early? Isn't business brisk to-day?"

"It was until it came on to rain, and I had to put things under cover, and then I had my idea, and I thought I'd run right home and tend to it."

The door opened and Winny came in, tugging her big umbrella. Instinct, it could not have been education, prompted Tode to take the dripping thing from her and put it away.

"What on earth is that?" Winny said, pausing in the act of taking off her things to examine the pasteboard.

"That's my sign--leastways it will be when your wits and my wits are put together to make it. I got some colored chalk round the corner at the painters, and he showed me how to use 'em."

"Tode, you said you would remember not to use ''em' and 'leastways' any more."

"So I will one of these days. I keep remembering all the time. Say, won't that make a elegant sign? I never thought of a sign in my life till Pliny Hastings he came along to-day. Did you ever see Pliny Hastings?"

"No. Tode, I _do wish_ you would begin to study grammar this very evening. You're enough to kill any body the way you talk."

"Oh bother the grammar, I'm telling you about Pliny Hastings. He came along, and says he, 'Halloo, Tode, here you are as large as life in business for yourself. You ought to have a sign,' says he. 'What's your establishment called?' And you may think I felt cheap as long as I lived at the Euclid house, to have no kind of a name for my place. I thought then I'd have a name and a sign before this time to-morrow. So when I went for my dinner I bought this pasteboard, and I been studying the thing out all this afternoon between the spells of arithmetic, and I've got it all fixed now, and I've got another idea come of that I never see how one thing starts another. There's going to come a piece of pasteboard off this end, 'cause you see it's too long, and I'm going to have a circle out of that."

"A circle. What for?"

"Oh you'll see when we get to it. But now don't you want to know what my sign is?"

"I suppose I'll have to know if I'm to help you, whether I want to or not."

"Well, I had to study on that for quite a spell. You see I want a name for my house, and then my own name right under it, 'cause I like to see a man stand by his business, name and all; and then I want every body to know I stand up for temperance. I thought of 'Cold Water House,' but then you see it _ain't_ a cold water house, cause coffee is my princ.i.p.al dish. Then I thought of 'Coffee House,' but there's a coffee house not more than two blocks away from my place, and they keep plenty of whisky there, and _that_ wouldn't do. And I thought and _thought_, and by and by it came to me. I wouldn't have no 'House' at all about it, 'cause after all is said and done it's just a _box_; and I concluded to have a out-and-out temperance sign. I'll print a great big NO, so big you can see it across the street, and then we'll make two great big black bottles, like they keep rum in, standing by the 'No.' And then, says _I_, everybody will know where to find _me_ on _that_ question."

Even grave Winny laughed over this queer idea.

"I can't make bottles any more than I can fly away," she said at last "And neither can you."

"I shan't say that till I've tried it about a month, _anyhow_," Tode answered, positively. "I never _did_ like to give up a thing before I began it."

The white cap frill nodded violently over this sentiment

"That's the way to talk," said the little mother. "There's more giving up of good things before they're begun than there ever is afterward, I do believe."

_Such_ an evening as they had! Winny, in spite of her discouraging words, entered into the work with considerable heartiness; and the slate first, and afterward pieces of brown paper covered over with grotesque images of black bottles, looking most of them, it must be confessed, like anything else in the world. Finally the sympathetic mother came to the rescue. She mounted a high chair to reach the topmost shelf in her little den of a pantry, where were congregated the few bottles that had ensued from a quarter of a century of housekeeping. One after another was taken down and anxiously examined, until at last, oh joyful discovery! the label of one showed the picture of an unmistakable bottle, over which a picture of the inventor of the bitters which it was supposed to contain was fondly leaning, as if it were his staff of life.

The young artists greeted it with delight, and with it for a model produced such delightful results that by half-past eight the sign shone out in blue and black and red chalks.

"Now for my circle," said Tode, seizing upon the piece of pasteboard which had been cut off. A large plate from the pantry did duty in the absence of sufficient geometrical knowledge, and the circle was quickly produced. Then did Tode's skill at making figures s.h.i.+ne forth. In the bright red chalks did he quickly produce a circle of the nine figures around his pasteboard circle.

"Now what is all that for, I _should_ like to know?" Winny asked, looking on half interestedly, half contemptuously.

"I'm just going to show you. You see, the lesson you gave me to-day is the addition table, and that addition table is a tough, ugly job, I can tell you. Well, I pelted away at it till dinner time, and I guess by that time I knew almost as much as I did before I begun it; and I went to Jones' after my dinner, and Mr. Jones he wanted me to take a note for him to a man at the bank, just around the corner from there, you know.

Well I went, and the man I took the note to was busy counting money. He wouldn't look at me, but just counted away like lightning. I never see anything like it in my life, the way he did fly off them bills. It wasn't a quarter of a minute when he said to a man who stood waiting, 'Nine hundred and seventy-eight dollars, sir. All right.' Now just think of counting such a pile of money as that in about the time it would take me to count seventy-eight cents? Well, I come back, and I pitched into the addition table harder than ever, because, I thinks to myself, there's no telling but that I may have some money to count one of these days, and I guess I'll get ready to count it. But it was tough work. All at once, while I was looking at my pasteboard, and wondering what I should do with this end, it came to me. Now I'll explain. You see them nine figures around there? Well, thinks I, now there ain't but nine figures in this world, 'cause Pliny Hastings he told me that once, and I've noticed it lots of times since, that you may talk about just as many things as you're a mind to, and you'll just be using them same nine figures over and over again, with a nothing thrown in now and then, you know. Now, then, s'pose I begin at this one, and I say, 'one and two is three, and three is six, and four is ten.'"

"For pity's sake say 'are ten,'" interposed Winny.

"Why?"

"Because it's right. Go on."

"Well, now, I could remember just as quick again if you'd give a fellow a reason for it. Well, and four are ten, and so all around to the nine.

Well, I say that, and say it, and _say it_, till it goes itself, and then I begin at two, and say two and three is--no, _are_ five, and on round to the nine, only this time I take in the one at the other end.

Understand? Well, after I've learned that I begin with the three, and go around to the two, and so on with them all; and then I mix them up and say them every which way, and after I've put them a few different ways, let's see you give me a line of figures that I can't add!"

"That is so," said Winny, at last, speaking slowly and admiringly. "It is a very good way indeed. Tode, I shouldn't wonder if you would know a great deal after awhile."

"Well now," answered Tode, gleefully, "I call this a pretty good evening's work, painted a sign and made a new arithmetic, enough sight easier than the other, so far as it goes; and you've helped me, so now I'll help you, turn about is fair play. Bring out your grammar, and let's see what it looks like, and to-morrow I'll go into the second-hand bookstore and hunt one up. Then I'll pitch in and learn everything I come to."

He was true to his word, and thereafter grammar was added to the numerous studies to which he gave all his leisure time. Perhaps no motto could have been given Tode that would have helped him so much in this matter of study as did the one which he had overheard and adopted for his own: "Learn everything I possibly can about everything that can be learned." He was obeying its instructions to the very letter.

Sunday morning dawned brightly upon him. The first Sunday in his new business. The air was balmy with the breath of spring.

"Oh, oh," said Tode, drawing long breaths and inhaling the perfume of swelling buds and springing blades, "I just wish I could go to church to-day, I do. Wouldn't it be nice now to put on my clean s.h.i.+rt, and make myself look nice and spry, and step around there to Mr. Birge's church and hear another preach? I'd like that first-rate; but now there's no use in talking. 'Do everything exactly in its time,' that's one of my rules, and I'm bound to live up to them; and it's time now for me to go to my business. I'll go to church this evening, I will. I ought to be glad that folks don't want coffee and cakes much of evening, instead of grumbling about having to give 'em some this morning."

Now it so happened, in the multiplicity of things which the new acquaintances had to talk over, that Sunday and church-going had not been discussed; and owing to the fact that Tode did not breakfast with the family, no knowledge of his intentions came to them, and no knowledge of that old command, "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy," came to him. True, he knew that stores and shops were closed quite generally on the Sabbath, but hotels were not, the Euclid House had never been, and Tode, without reasoning about it at all, had imbibed the idea that it was because they kept things to eat and drink. Now these were the very things which he kept, and people must eat and drink on Sundays as well as on any other days, so of course it was his duty to supply them.