Divided Skates Part 4

"Did he take his bath nicely? Was he troublesome to Jefferson? I thought I heard voices--rather loud ones."

"Yes, ma'am, I guess you did. They had some words, them two. No, ma'am, he didn't take his bath. He didn't even touch to do it.

Jefferson says the kid shut the door in his face, and the next he knew he heard the water running out the tub. 'Twasn't a minute then, before he hopped right into the middle of that lovely clean bed with a kind of a yell. 'I'm a gentleman for one night, I am!' says he, 'and when I'm a man I'll be one all the time!' But the dirty little scamp!

Fooling old Jeff that way."

"Well, he'll do better after a little. He's a very bright child. I can see that distinctly."

"After a while, ma'am? Is he to stop--then?"

"Yes, Mary. He is to live here if he will. Do you know how early the stores are open in the morning?"

"Oh! along about eight o'clock, ma'am, I think."

"Call me at seven, if you do not hear me stirring before. I suppose Jefferson could hardly have the horse ready so early?"

"He'd think it a great hardship, ma'am, and he'd be cross as two sticks all day after."

"Yes, I suppose he would. I wish people were born without tempers."

"'Twould be a fine thing," a.s.sented the housemaid, recalling some occasions when Miss Lucy had been a little "sharp" herself.

"Well, you may go now. No; I shall need nothing more. I am going up into the storeroom to look over some trunks. In the morning I will take a car down-town and we'll have a late breakfast afterward.

Good-night."

"Good-night, ma'am. But I'm thinking I wouldn't count too much on the cars being early to-morrow, ma'am. It's a regular blizzard snowing, and the tracks are getting blocked."

"Humph! that's always the way. After our admitting the railway on this avenue the company run their cars to suit themselves, not our convenience. Because I happen to need a car in the morning, they will, of course, not be running. Well, I must not be unjust. I suppose they lose more by stopping than I do by having them stop."

Miss Armacost climbed to the storeroom at the back of the top of her house. In this room were rows of trunks and boxes, and two big wardrobes hung full of cast-off clothing. The garments had belonged to dead and gone Armacosts, of various ages, and after some hesitation the lady knelt before one leather-covered chest that bore the initials "L. A." painted in red upon its cover.

"He was a dear little boy!" sighed Miss Lucy, as she turned a key and raised the lid. "My only brother's only son. Well, brother was always a generous fellow, and he had less of family pride than most of us. I mean of the silly kind of pride. He wouldn't do anything to disgrace his name, but he--well, he fancied the Armacosts were not the only people in the world! He used to say: 'It doesn't matter about birth, so long as a man is a "gentleman,"' and 'gentleman,' in his mind, meant everything that was brave and strong and n.o.ble. I believe that, dearly as he loved his boy, he would be pleased to have these useless garments do somebody some good. I've often thought of giving away a lot of the things up here, yet could never quite make up my mind to do it. Now the Lord has sent me the need, and I must supply it."

Thus thinking, Miss Lucy lifted several suits of small clothing, and finally selected a black velvet blouse and knickers, with a pair of red silk stockings, some dainty kid shoes, and a broad-brimmed hat decorated by a long, drooping feather.

Having made her choice, Miss Armacost closed and locked the trunk, turned off the light, and descended to her own room. There she carefully brushed and arranged the fantastic costume and made herself ready for bed.

But she found herself exceedingly restless, and before seeking her own couch she decided to visit her new charge and see if all was well with him; though she had lingered over her task till midnight.

"That pie might disagree with him; who knows? and as he is so strange to the house he might lie and suffer without disturbing anybody by calling for help."

She need not have worried. It would have taken more than one pie to have injured the digestion of such a boy as Towsley. He lay in beatific slumber, his sunny hair gleaming in the rays from his visitor's candle, his long lashes sweeping his dirty cheeks, and his lips parted in a happy smile.

Miss Lucy's heart bounded with delight. "What a beauty he is, or will be when he's clean! How I shall love him! I will give him our Lionel's own name and bring him up to take Lionel's own place. Surely, that was a happy accident which sent him tumbling against me on his one borrowed skate. Though nothing which the Lord permits is ever an accident," she corrected herself.

Now the lady had a habit of talking to herself, and Towsley was a light sleeper. He presently opened his eyes and regarded her curiously. She seemed to him, at first, some fellow newsboy, strangely transformed. Then his ideas righted themselves, and he inquired, respectfully:

"Were you calling me, Miss Armacost?"

"No, you darling. I was just looking at you."

Abashed, Towsley dug his head into the pillow and drew the covers over his face.

"I've brought you a nice suit of clothes to put on in the morning.

They will be rather too good for every-day wear, but on account of the storm we can't do better for to-morrow. There will be another bath made ready for you, when you are called, and to please me I hope you'll take it. Then dress yourself in these things and come quietly down-stairs. We always have prayers before breakfast, and I expect you to be present. One thing more. What is your last name?"

"I don't know, ma'am--I mean, Miss Lucy. The kids call me Towhead.

Towsley Towhead is all I know, though Mother Molloy, she thinks it may be Smith or Jones or something. Why, ma'am? I haven't done any harm, have I?"

"No, child. No, none at all. I merely wish to have everything understood from the beginning. I am going to adopt you. You are to be my little boy hereafter. You are no longer Towsley Towhead. You are Lionel Armacost. You are to have no further connection with Mother Molloy or any other objectionable person. Your home is now at Number One-thousand-and-one, Washington Avenue, West. Good night. I would like to kiss you, but your face is too dirty. To-morrow, at breakfast, when you are in proper condition, I will do so. Good-night."

Towsley listened in increasing astonishment and--terror. Whether owing to a diet of mince pie exclusively or to the unusual daintiness of his surroundings, he had not rested as well as he was accustomed to do upon the steam hole of the _Express_ office cellar. He had never seen anybody that looked just like Miss Lucy, with her high-crowned night cap, her long trailing wrapper, her gleaming gla.s.ses, and her air of stern determination, which the flare of her candle flame seemed to accentuate. This grim expression, had he known it, was due mainly to the fact that her fastidious gaze had become riveted upon his very black finger-nails, as they clutched the white spread, and her resolution to alter their aspect as soon as daylight dawned. But he did not know this, of course, and he watched her go away--glide, he fancied--till she melted into the dimness of the hall beyond, and finally slipped, slipped, pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, in her cloth shoes, down the stairs and out of hearing.

Then he sat up. The room was very warm and comfortable and it made him drowsy. Yet he could not now afford this drowsiness. While that queer little old lady was safely out of the way he must act, and act quickly.

As noiselessly as a cat the child stole out of bed, and fumbled around for his clothes--his own clothes; the familiar rags and tatters which, at Jefferson's command, he had removed outside the bathroom door, and from which he had never before been separated since they came into his possession, the "cast-offs" of a bigger companion.

Of course he did not find them. Jefferson had taken the best of care that he should not, and they had already been consumed among the coals of the great furnace which heated the house.

When he became convinced that he could not recover his own attire, Towsley accepted that which Miss Lucy had provided. He drew on the underwear with a gratified sense of its comfort and daintiness, but with the idea that he was only "borrowing."

"Adopted me, did she? I know what that means. Peter-the-Cripple he got adopted, that time he was run over by a lady's carriage. She adopted him, and he went to a big house and he died. No, siree! there isn't anybody going to catch me that way! least of all a little wizzly old lady like her! No, siree! Of course, I'll have to wear these things till I get down-town and can borrow some more of a kid, and then I'll send 'em back. Say, if I'm a swell like she said I was, and my name's Lionel Armacost, if you please, what's the matter with my pressing the b.u.t.ton and getting a little light on a dark subject?"

Towsley's bright eyes had observed where the electric b.u.t.ton was, when Jefferson had lighted the hall bedroom earlier in the night, and he now manipulated it for his own benefit. A soft radiance promptly filled the pretty room and showed him where each article lay. In a wonderfully brief time the waif had arrayed himself from head to foot, and coolly surveyed himself in the long mirror that stood upon its rollers in one corner.

"Pshaw! Ain't I a guy! But--but--it's sort of tasty, too. I wonder what the fellows'll say! Wait till they see that feather and feel that velvet! Cracky! then you'll hear them howl! I wonder what time it is?

I wonder if I'm too late to get my papers? If I'm not, what a haul I'll make in these duds! Maybe enough to buy a suit for myself down at Cheap John's store. Then I'd have these wrapped in brown paper and sent back to Miss Armacost with my compliments. The compliments of Mister Towsley Lionel Towhead Armacost, esquire! Hi! ain't that a notion! But plague take these shoes! They aren't half as comfortable as my own old holeys! But it all goes! And she really is a dear little old lady. I'd like to oblige her if I could, but--adopted! No, siree!"

A country child of Towsley's age would have been puzzled how to escape from the well-locked and bolted mansion; but the keen-witted gamin of the city's streets had little difficulty. True, the great front door did open rather slowly to his puny grasp, but that was on account of the storm.

The wind swept and howled around the corner where the big house stood, and the white marble steps were heaped with snow. A great ma.s.s of the snow was dislodged by the movement of the door and fell in clouds over Towsley's big hat and fine costume; also the tight shoes upon his feet seemed to make him stumble and stagger sadly; but he was not to be deterred by such trifles as these. The cold breath of the wind was delightful to him, the rush of outer air meant freedom.

All the delightful interests of his vagabond life rose up to beguile him; all its miseries were forgotten. He must get to the office right away. This was a blizzard, sure enough! and that meant "extras" to cry, sidewalks to shovel, a mad haste to get ahead of his mates and gather in more nickels than they, maybe stolen rides behind livery sleighs when the storm was over, and a thousand and one enjoyable things such as poor Miss Armacost could never even dream of!

"Hi! Here's for it!" shouted the happy boy, and leaped forward into the night and the storm, which silently received him.

CHAPTER III.

THE BLIZZARD.

"Whew! I've never seen such a storm since I lived in Baltimore city!"

cried John Johns, looking out of the window, early on the morning following Molly's visit to Miss Armacost. "It snows as if it never meant to stop. How still it is, too! Not a car running, not a wagon rattling over the stones, everything as quiet as a country graveyard."

"Not quite, John. There's a milk cart trying to force itself through the drifts. My! look into the alley between us and Miss Armacost's!

The snow is heaped as high as the fence, in some spots."