Out of the Triangle Part 19

He did not put it into words, but he thought that the One who saw whether a man under the wharves did an honest day's work would see whether a boy working for a store did the same. Willis was trying to be a Christian.

Busy days Willis had after that. The large dry-goods store had many customers who often did not wish to carry bundles home. The store had two pretty, white-covered, small carts for the delivering of packages. Willis drove one cart and a boy named August drove the other.

One afternoon Willis, out delivering dry-goods, drove by the house where August lived, and saw the store's other cart standing there.

"August is home," thought Willis. Just then, August came out.

"Don't tell," called August, laughing.

Willis, hardly comprehending, drove on about his business.

That evening at store-closing time, both boys were back with their receipt books, signed by customers who had received their packages.

The boys went out of the store together.

"Saw me coming out of our house today, didn't you?" said August to Willis.

"Don't you ever stop off half an hour or so, when you're on your rounds?"

"Why, no!" answered Willis. "What would they say at the store, if they knew?"

"They can't know," a.s.serted August. "I often stop, that way.

Yesterday I went to see my aunt. How can the store tell? They don't know just how long it will take to deliver all the parcels. Some folks live farther off than others. Who's going to know?"

Willis hesitated. He remembered that the thought of the men at the wharves had been: "Who would know?" Willis had never heard that anybody had lost his place at the wharves on account of dawdling.

What if August never was found out? Was it right to steal an hour, or half an hour, of his employer's time?

"No," thought Willis. "I'm going to be honest."

Late one afternoon August came into the store. Willis was later still, because he had had more parcels to deliver. Both boys'

receipt books showed the customers' signatures.

"There was a big fire up-town," said August secretly to Willis afterwards. "I stopped to see it before delivering my parcels. You just ought to have been there!"

"How long did you stay?" asked Willis, gravely.

"Oh, I don't know!" returned August. "Three-quarters of an hour, maybe. I delivered my parcels all right afterwards."

Willis did not tell anybody about August's actions.

"I wish he wouldn't tell me about them, either," thought Willis, uncomfortably.

That week August was discharged.

"I happened to be at the fire myself, and saw you," said one of the store's proprietors to August. "The next time you stop to see a fire, you will not have a chance to keep one of our delivery carts waiting an hour while you waste your employer's time watching the firemen. It didn't look well to see our firm's name on that white cart standing idle, just as if we hadn't many customers."

"And you were seen once," added the other proprietor, "with one of our carts standing beside an open block, while a ball game was being played there last week."

As Willis regretfully saw his companion turned away, there came back to him the scene in the semi-darkness under the wharf, when his father said, "A Christian ought to give an honest day's work." "And I will," he muttered.

TIMOTEO

Two white jaw-bones of a whale stood upright in the suns.h.i.+ne, their surfaces showing to a near observer numerous small indentations that caught the dust. The jaw-bones were relics from a little whaling station that had once been in business near the town. Even now whales occasionally wander from the great Pacific into the blue bay on which this old, partly Spanish, California town was situated.

The two white jaw-bones now served the purpose of gate-posts, and stood some six feet high beside the front gate that opened into a garden where red hollyhocks rose higher than the humbled jaw-bones.

Inside the gate, the front walk had long been paved with the vertebrae of whales, each vertebra being laid separately.

No one who had not seen such a walk would realize how well whales'

vertebrae will answer for paving. Some of the old vertebrae had now sunk below the original level of the walk, so that the path by which a person went to the old adobe house beyond the red hollyhocks was somewhat uneven as to surface.

The long, low house was partly roofed with tiles, and the adobe walls of the dwelling were a yard thick, as any one might see who looked at the windowsills.

On one of these broad sills Isabelita leaned, her black eyes fixed on the bone gate-posts that she could see through the blossoming hollyhocks. There was a displeased expression on the young girl's face. She was watching for her brother Timoteo, who would soon come from school.

"He must go for the cow tonight," resolved Isabelita aloud in Spanish. "I will not go! I wish the Americans had never come to this town! In the old days, my father says, there were no cattle notices on the trees. My father did not have to go for cows every night!"

And Isabelita frowned as she remembered the notices about letting cattle run loose upon the highway.

These Spanish--and--English notices were now nailed on pines here and there along the roads, and proved a source of inquiry to wandering Americans who saw the boards with their heading:

"AVISO!!"

preceded by two inverted exclamation points and followed by two others in the upright position--that some Americans have perhaps been wont to think is the only att.i.tude in which an exclamation point can stand, Americans not being accustomed to the ease with which an exclamation point can stand on its head, when used in Spanish literature.

But it was not only with cattle notices and Americans that Isabelita was offended this day. She was in a bad humor, and nothing suited her. Hence it was in no pleasant voice that she called to Timoteo, when he at last made his appearance between the bony gate-posts:

"Hombre bobo, thou must go for the cow tonight!"

Now, "hombre bobo" means much the same as our word "b.o.o.by,"

therefore this was not a very soothing manner of beginning her information. To Isabelita's surprise, however, Timoteo answered only "Yes," and, coming in, put his one book carefully away, and then went forth for the cow, as he had been bidden. Isabelita stared after him. She had at least expected a quarrel.

Isabelita would have been more surprised still, if she could have seen what Timoteo did after reaching the place in the woods where the cow was tethered. He threw himself down; crus.h.i.+ng the fragrant, small-leaved vines of "yerba buena" as he fell, and, hiding his face, Timoteo cried in a half-angry, half-hopeless tumult of feeling. The pink blossoming thistles nodded, and the cow looked wonderingly at the lad, but no one else saw or heard him. By and by he sat up.

"Teacher never like me any more," he told himself, his lips quivering. "Americanos tell her my father lazy, my mother no clean.

And I try, I try!"

He choked down a sob. A new teacher had come to the public school, a sweet-faced, pleasant-toned young lady, whom Timoteo was ready to obey devotedly from the first time she smiled on the school. Timoteo did want to learn to be somebody! He looked with admiration on the Americans boys' clothes and on an especial blue necktie that Herbert Page wore. Timoteo wondered how it would seem to have a father who worked and who provided his family with plenty to wear. The lad Timoteo meant to be like one of the Americans when he grew up. He would work, instead of lounging about the streets all day, smoking "cigarros."

But alas! That day he had overheard some of the American boy scholars talking to the teacher about the Spanish ones.

"There's Timoteo," he overheard Herbert Page say. "You don't want to have him for your milk-man, Miss Montgomery! I don't believe they keep the milk pails any too clean at his house. Laziness and dirt go together in these Spanish houses!"

Poor Timoteo! He had hoped the teacher and her mother would take milk of him. Miss Montgomery had almost promised to, before this, and one customer for milk made such a difference in Timoteo's home finances!

"But now she never like me any more," Timoteo hopelessly forewarned himself, as he sat among the trees, his eyes yet red with crying.

"And I try, I try! I have learned wash my hands clean, when I go school. And I try so hard learn read and write!"