Michael O'Halloran Part 43

Mickey leaned against the tree, shutting his eyes, fighting with all his might. He was too big to cry. The woman would think him a coward as Mr. Bruce had. Then things happened as they actually do at times. The woman hurriedly came from the door, sat on the bench beside him, and said: "I went in there to watch you through the window, but I can't stand this a second longer. You poor child you, now tell me right straight what's the matter!"

Mickey tried but no sound came. The woman patted his shoulder. "Now doesn't it beat the band?" she said, to the backyard in general. "Just a little fellow not in long trousers yet, and bearing such a burden he can't talk. I guess maybe G.o.d has a hand in this. I'm not so sure my boy hasn't come after all. Who are you, and where are you going? Don't you want to send your ma word you will stay here a week with me?"

Mickey lifted a bewildered face.

"Why, I couldn't, lady," he said brokenly, but gaining control as he went on. "I must work. Mr. Bruce needs me. I'm a regular plute compared with most of the 'newsies'; you wouldn't want to do anything for me who has so much; but if you're honestly thinking about taking a boy and he hasn't come, how would you like to have a little girl in his place? A little girl about _so_ long, and _so_ wide, with a face like Easter church flowers, and rings of gold on her head, and who wouldn't be half the trouble a boy would, because she hasn't ever walked, so she couldn't get into things."

"Oh my goodness! A crippled little girl?"

"She isn't crippled," said Mickey. "She's as straight as you are, what there is of her. She had so little food, and care, her back didn't seem to stiffen, so her legs won't walk. She wouldn't be half so much trouble as a boy. Honest, dearest lady, she wouldn't!"

"Who are you?" asked the woman.

Mickey produced a satisfactory pedigree, and gave unquestionable references which she recognized, for she slowly nodded at the names of Chaffner and Bruce.

"And who is the little girl you are asking me to take?"

Mickey studied the woman and then began to talk, cautiously at first.

Ashamed to admit the squalor and the awful truth of how he had found the thing he loved, then gathering courage he began what ended in an outpouring. The woman watched him, listening, and when Mickey had no further word: "She is only a tiny girl?" she asked wonderingly.

"The littlest girl you ever saw," said Mickey.

"Perfectly helpless?" marvelled the woman.

"Oh no! She can sit up and use her hands," said Mickey. "She can feed herself, write on her slate, and learn her lessons. It's only that she stays put. She has to be lifted if she's moved."

"You lift her?" queried the woman.

"Could with one hand," said Mickey tersely.

"You say this young lawyer you work for, whose name I see in the _Herald_ connected with the investigation going on, is at the club house now?" she asked.

"Yes," answered Mickey.

"He's coming past here this evening?" she pursued.

Mickey explained.

"About how much waiting on would your little girl take?" she asked next.

"Well just at present, she does the waiting on me," said Mickey. "You see, dearest lady, I have to get her washed and fix her breakfast and her lunch beside the bed, and be downtown by seven o'clock, and I don't get back 'til six. Then I wash her again to freshen her up and cook her supper. Then she says her lesson, her prayers and goes to sleep. So you see it's mostly _her_ waiting on _me_. A boy couldn't be less trouble than that, could he?"

"It doesn't seem like it," said the woman, "and no matter how much bother she was, I guess I could stand it for a week, if she's such a little girl, and can't walk. The difficulty is this: I promised my son Junior a boy and his heart is so set. He's wild about the city. He's going to be gone before we know it. He doesn't seem to care for anything we have, or do. I don't know just what he hoped to get out of a city boy; but I promised him one. Then I felt scared and wrote Mr.

Chaffner how it was and asked him to send me a real nice boy who could be trusted. If it were not for Junior--Mary and the Little Man would be delighted."

"Well never mind," said Mickey. "I'll go see the Nurse Lady and maybe she can think of a plan. Anyway I don't know as it would be best for Lily. If she came here a week, seems like it would kill me to take her back, and I don't know how she'd bear staying alone all day, after she had got used to company. And pretty soon now it's going to get so hot, top floors in the city, that if she had a week like this, going back would make her sick."

"You must give me time to think," said the woman. "Peter will soon be home to supper. I'll talk it over with him and with Junior and see what they think. Where could you be found in Multiopolis? We drive in every few days. We like to go ourselves, and there's no other way to satisfy the children. They get so tired and lonesome in the country."

Mickey was aghast. "They _do?_ Why it doesn't seem possible! I wish I could trade jobs with Junior for a while. What is his work?"

"He drives the creamery wagon," answered the woman.

"O Lord!" Mickey burst forth. "Excuse me ma'am, I mean----Oh my! Drives a real live horse along these streets and gathers up the cream cans we pa.s.s at the gates, and takes them to the trolley?"

"Yes," she said.

"And he'd give up _that_ job for blacking somebody's shoes, or carrying papers, or running errands, or being shut up all summer in a big hot building! Oh my!"

"When will you be our way again?" asked the woman. "I'll talk this over with Peter. If we decided to try the little girl and she did the 'waiting' as you say, she couldn't be much trouble. I should think we could manage her, and a boy too. I wish you could be the boy. I'd like to have _you_. I've been thinking if we could get a boy to show Junior what it is he wants to know about a city, he'd be better satisfied at home, but I don't know. It's just possible it might make him worse. Now such an understanding boy as you seem to be, maybe you could teach Junior things about the city that would make him contented at _home_.

Do you think you could?"

"Dearest lady, I _get_ you," said Mickey. "_Do I think I could?_ Well if you really wished me to, I could take your Junior to Multiopolis with me for a week and make him so sick he'd never want to see a city again while his palpitator was running."

"Hu'umh!" said the lady slowly, her eyes on far distance. "Let me think! I don't know but that would be a fine thing for all of us. We have land enough for a nice farm for both boys, and the way things look now, land seems about as sure as anything; we could give them a farm apiece when we are done with it, and the girl the money to take to her home when she marries--I would love to know that Junior was going to live on land as his father does; but all his life he's talked about working in the city when he grows up. Hu'umh!"

"Well if you want him cured of that, gimme the job," he grinned. "You see lady, I know the city, inside out and outside in again. I been playing the game with it since I can remember. You can't tell me anything I don't know about the lowest, poorest side of it. Oh I could tell you things that would make your head swim. If you want your boy dosed just sick as a horse on what a workingman gets in Multiopolis 'tween Sunrise Alley and Biddle Boulevard, just you turn him over to me a week. I'll fix him. I'll make the creamery job look like 'Lijah charioteering for the angels to him, honest I will lady; and he won't ever _know_ it, either. He'll come through with a lump in his neck, and a twist in his stummick that means home and mother. See?"

The woman looked at Mickey in wide-eyed and open-mouthed amazement: "Well if I ever!" she gasped.

"If you don't believe me, try it," said Mickey.

"Well! Well! I'll have to think," she said. "I don't know but it would be a good thing if it could be done."

"Well don't you have any misgivings about it being done," said Mickey.

"It's being _done_ every day. I know men, hundreds of them, just sc.r.a.ping, and slaving and half starving to get together the dough to pull out. I hear it on the cars, on the streets, and see it in the papers. They're jumping their jobs and going every day, while hundreds of Schmeltzenschimmers, O'Laughertys, Hansons, and Pietros are coming in to take their places. Multiopolis is more than half filled with crowd-outs from across the ocean now, instead of home folks' cradles, as it should be. If Junior has got a hankering for Multiopolis that is going to cut him out of owning a place like this, and bossing his own job, dearest lady, cook him! Cook him quick!"

"Would you come here?" she questioned.

"Would I?" cried Mickey. "Well try me and see!"

"I'm deeply interested in what you say about Junior," she said. "I'll talk it over to-night with Peter."

"Well I don't know," said Mickey. "He might put the grand kibosh on it.

Hard! But if Junior came back asking polite for his mush and milk, and offering his Christmas pennies for the privilege of plowing, or driving the cream wagon, believe me dear lady, then Peter would fall on your neck and weep for joy."

"Yes, in that event, he would," said the lady, "and the temptation is so great, that I believe if you'll give me your address, I'll look you up the next time I come to Multiopolis, which will be soon. I'd like to see your Lily before I make any promises. If I thought I could manage, I could bring her right out in the car. Tell me where to find you, and I'll see what Peter thinks."

Mickey grinned widely. "You ain't no suffragette lady, are you?" he commented.

"Well I don't know about that," said the lady. "There are a good many things to think of these days."

"Yes I know," said Mickey, "but as long as everything you say swings the circle and rounds up with Peter, it's no job to guess what's most important in your think-tank. Peter must be some pumpkins!"

"Come to think of it, he is, Mickey," she said. "Come to think of it, I do sort of revolve around Peter. We always plan together. Not that we always _think_ alike: there are some things I just _can't_ make Peter see, that I wish I _could;_ but I wouldn't trade Peter----"

"No I guess he's top crust," laughed Mickey.

"He is so!" said the woman. "How did you say I could reach you?"