Lo, Michael!. Grace Livingston Hill
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for school, and no clothes to wear if they had the time or the inclination to go. Schools were everywhere, free, of course, but it did not touch them. They lived in dark places and casual crannies, like weeds or vermin. No one cared whether they went to school. No one suggested it. They would have as soon thought of entering a great mansion and insisting on their right to live there as to present themselves at school. Why, they had to hustle for a mere existence. They were the water rats, the bad boys, the embryo criminals for the next generation. The problem, with any who thought of them was how to get rid of them. But of course this man from another world did not understand. They merely looked at him dully and wished he would walk away and leave Mikky to them while he stayed. His presence made it seem as if their companion were already gone from them.
It was hard, too, to see Mikky dressed like the fine boys on Fifth Avenue, handsome trousers and coat, and a great thick overcoat, a hat on his shining crown of hair that had always been guiltless of cap, thick stockings and shining shoes on his feet that had always been bare and soiled with the grime of the streets—gloves on his hands. This was a new Mikky. "The kids" did not know him. In spite of their best efforts they could not be natural. Great lumps arose in their throats, lumps that never dared arise for hunger or cold or curses at home.
They stood helpless before their own consciousness, and Mikky, divining the trouble with that exquisite keenness of a spirit sent from heaven to make earth brighter, conceived the bright idea of giving each of his comrades some article of his apparel as a remembrance. Mr. Endicott came upon the scene just in time to keep Mikky from taking off his overcoat and enveloping Buck in its elegant folds. He was eagerly telling them that Bobs should have his undercoat, Jimmie his hat; they must take his gloves to Jane, and there was nothing left for Sam but his stockings and shoes, but he gave them all willingly. He seemed to see no reason why he could not travel hatless and coatless, bare of foot and hand, for had he not gone that way through all the years of his existence? It was a small thing to do, for his friends whom he was leaving for a long time.
The bright face clouded when he was told he could not give these things away, that it would not be fair to the kind professor to ask him to carry with him a boy not properly dressed. But he smiled again trustfully when Endicott promised to take the whole group to a clothing house and fit them out.
They bade Mikky good-bye, pressing their grimy noses against the bars of the station gate to watch their friend disappear from their bare little lives.
Endicott himself felt like crying as he came back from seeing the boy aboard the train. Somehow it went hard for him to feel, he should not meet the bright smile that night when he went home.
But it was not the way of "the kids" to cry when tragedy fell among them. They did not cry now—when he came back to them they regarded the banker with lowering brows as the originator of their bereavement. They had no faith in the promised clothing.
"Aw, what's he givin' us!" Buck had breathed under his breath. But to do Buck credit he had not wanted to take Mikky's coat from him. When their comrade went from them into another walk in life he must go proudly apparelled.
Endicott led the huddled group away from the station, to a clothing house, and amused himself by fitting them out. The garments were not of as fine material, nor elegant a cut as those he had pleased himself by purchasing for Mikky's outfit, but they were warm and strong and wonderful to their eyes, and one by one the grimy urchins went into a little dressing room, presently emerging with awe upon their faces to stand before a tall mirror surveying themselves.
Endicott presently bade the little company farewell and with a conscience at ease with himself and all mankind left them.
They issued from the clothing house with scared expressions and walked solemnly a few blocks. Then Buck called them to a halt before a large plate glass show-window.
"Take a good look at yersel's, kids," he ordered, "an' we'll go up to the
Park an' shine around, an' see how ther swells feels, then we'll go down to
Sheeny's an' sell 'em."
"Sell 'em! Can't we keep 'em?" pitifully demanded Bobs who had never felt warm in winter in all his small life before.
"You wouldn't hev 'em long," sneered Buck. "That father o' yourn would hey 'em pawned 'afore night; You better enjoy 'em a while, an' then git the money. It's safer!"
The children with wisdom born of their unhappy circumstances recognized this truth. They surveyed themselves gravely in their fleeting grandeur and then turned to walk up to the aristocratic part of town, a curious little procession. They finished by rounding the Madison Avenue block, marched up the alley, and gave the salute with new hats toward the window where their Prince and Leader used to be. He was no longer there, but his memory was about them, and the ceremony did their bursting little hearts good. Their love for Mikky was the noblest thing that had so far entered their lives.
Jimmie suggested that they must let Jane see them before they disposed forever of their elegant garments, so Bobs, minus coat, hat, stockings and shoes was sent to bid her to a secluded retreat at the far end of the alley. Bobs hurried back ahead of her little tapping crutch to don his fine attire once more before she arrived.
Little Jane, sallow of face, unkempt of hair, tattered of clothing and shivering in the cold twilight stood and watched the procession of pride as it passed and repassed before her delighted eyes. The festivity might have been prolonged but that the maudlin voice of Bobs' father reeling into the alley struck terror to their hearts, and with small ceremony they scuttled away to the pawnshop, leaving little Jane to hobble back alone to her cellar and wonder how it would feel to wear a warm coat like one of those.
"Gee!" said Jimmie as they paused with one consent before the shop door, and looked reluctantly down at their brief glory, "Gee! I wisht we could keep jest one coat fer little Jane!"
"Couldn't we hide it some'ere's?" asked Sam, and they all looked at Buck.
Buck, deeply touched for his sister's sake, nodded.
"Keep Jim's," he said huskily, "it'll do her best."
Then the little procession filed proudly in and gave up their garments to the human parasite who lived on the souls of other men, and came away bearing the one coat they had saved for Janie, each treasuring a pitiful bit of money which seemed a fortune in their eyes.
Little Jane received her gift with true spirit when it was presented, skilfully hid it from her inhuman father, and declared that each boy should have a turn at wearing the coat every Sunday at some safe hour, whereat deep satisfaction, reigned among them. Their grandeur was not all departed after all.
Meantime, Mikky, in his luxurious berth in a sleeper, smiled drowsily to think of the fine new clothes that his friends must be wearing, and then fell asleep to dream of little Starr's kisses on his closed eyelids.
Chapter IV
Into a new world came Mikky, a world of blue skies, song birds, and high, tall pines with waving moss and dreamy atmosphere; a world of plenty to eat and wear, and light and joy and ease.
Yet it was a most bewildering world to the boy, and for the first week he stood off and looked at it questioningly, suspiciously. True, there were no dark cellars or freezing streets, no drunken fathers or frightened children, or blows, or hunger or privation; but this education he had come to seek that he might go back to his own world and better it, was not a garment one put on and exercised in so many times a day; it was not a cup from which one drank, nor an atmosphere that one absorbed. It was a strange, imperceptible thing got at in some mysterious way by a series of vague struggles followed by sudden and almost alarming perceptions. For a time it seemed to the boy, keen though his mind, and quick, that knowledge was a thing only granted to the few, and his was a mind that would never grasp it. How, for instance, did one know how to make just the right figures under a line when one added a long perplexity of numbers? Mikky the newsboy could tell like a flash how much change he needed to return to the fat gentleman who