O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 Part 55

"If I cross out his name, or give him a _nom de plume_?"

On that condition Miss Lance consented.

III

At the office next morning Sloan found the essay in his pocket and looked around the city-room for D.K.T. The staff poet-clown was no daylight saver; professing to burn the midnight oil in the interest of his employer, he seldom drifted in before half-past nine.

"See me. S.S." wrote Sloan, and dropped Willie's ma.n.u.script on D.K.T.'s desk.

Then he jumped and gasped, and copy-readers and office-boys jumped and gasped, and the religious editor dashed frantically for the stairs, outrunning the entire staff down the hall, though he had farther to go than any other man or woman there. A huge, heart-stopping shock had rocked the building, set the windows to clattering and the lights to swinging, and brought down in a cloud the acc.u.mulated dust of a quarter-century.

Within two minutes by the clock Sloan and five reporters had started for the scene of the Rutland disaster, fifteen miles away, where enough giant powder had gone up in one terrific blast to raze Gibraltar. A thriving town lay in ruins; hundreds of families were homeless; a steamship was sunk at her dock; a pa.s.senger train blown from the rails.

At eleven o'clock on the night following that pitiful day Sloan journeyed homeward to Ashland in an inter-urban trolley-car in company with a crowd of refugees. A copy of the last edition of the _Bee_ comforted his weary soul.

The first page was a triumph. Count on the office to back up its men in the field! There was the whole story, the whole horror and heartbreak, finely displayed. There were his photographs of the wreckage; there, in a "box" was his interview with the superintendent of the Rutland Company; there was a map of the devastated area.

Perhaps someone had found time even to do an editorial; in that case the clean-up would be complete.

Opening the paper to the sixth page, he groaned; for the first thing that caught his eye was Willie Downey's essay, at the top of D.K.T.'s column, with Willie's name below the headline.

MOREL PRINSAPLES

BY WILLIE DOWNEY

AGE 12

Morel Prinsaples is when you have a nerve to stick up for some thing.

Like last night my Father went in Mires meet shop & stood in line 15 or twenty min. wateing his tirn & when his tirn come he says to mr.

Mires Ile have 6 porc chops.

at that inst. the telaphone wrang & mr. Mires slidd for it like it was 2nd base.

Hold on Mires says Pa, who got here 1st, me or that bell wringer.

Igscuse me just 1 min. says Mr. mires.

No I be ding if Ile igscuse you says Pa, 1st come 1st served is the rool of bizness all over.

But Mr. mires wyped his hands on his apern & ansered the wring & it was mrs. Will Brum, she was going to eat out at a frends so she wanted 2 lbs, bolony & a dog bone.

So then Pa give him hale columbus.

Here I bin wateing an our he said, yet when some lazy lofer of a woman who has been reading a novvle or a sleep all after noon pfhones you to rush her up some dog meet in youre Autto with ga.s.s 36 cts. & charge it to her acct. & may be you wont get youre munny for three 4 munths, wy you run to wate on her while I stand & shovle my feet in youre saw dust like a ding mexican pea own or some thing.

What says Pa is there about a cusstamer who takes the trubble to come for his meet & pay cash for it & deliwers it him self that maiks him so Meen & Lo that he ha.s.s to be pushed one side for some body that has not got Gumpshun enoughf to order her dog bones before the rush our?

Do you think that people with a telapfhone's munny is any better than mine, do you think because I walk in here on my hine leggs that I am a piker & a cheep skait, becuase if so I will bring along my telapfhone contract nex time & show you & then may be you will reckonnize me as a free born amerrican who dont haff to traid where I haff to play 2d fiddle to a chow pupp. Its agenst my morel prinsaples says Pa.

With theas wirds he walks out in the rane althogh his feet hurt him clear down to Washington St. to the nex meet store, but by that time they were all cloased up so we had prinsaples for supper insted of porc chops.

Pa says if he run a store & had a pfhone & no body to anser it & do nothing else he would ring it's neck, becuase while the telaphone is the gratest blesing of the aige, but a pfhone with out an opperater is like a ham ommalet with the ham let out. He says the reazon the Chane Stores have such a pull with the public is becuase the man behine the counter is not all the time jilting you in the middle of your order & chacing off to be sweet to some sosciety dame with a dog 4 miles away.

Ma says she dont kno why we have a pfhone any how becuase every time she is youseing it a woman buts in & jiggles the hook & says will you pleas hang up so I can call a Dr. & when Ma hangs up & then lissens in to see who is sick, wy this woman calls up a lady f rend & they nock Ma back & 4th over the wyre for ours & some times they say I bet she is lisening in on us dont you.

So as I say let us all stick up for our Morel Prinsaples like my Father come what may.

IV

Bright were Miss Angelina's eyes but not with mirth. It was unspeakable, this thing that Mr. Sloan had done. Thrice before bedtime she called his lodgings. Mr. Sloan was not in.

Before the last call, she donned her wraps and went out to Plume Street. Courageously she pulled the bell at Number Nine. Willie's mother opened the door and cried, surprised, "Why! Miss Lance."

"Is Willie here? Have you seen the paper? Will you let me tell him how it happened, and how sorry I am?"

Willie was not receiving callers this evening. He had been sent to bed without supper. The explosion at Rutland had been as nothing, it seemed, to the outburst in the Downey home.

Slowly the extent of the harm dawned upon Miss Angelina.

"It was Mrs. A. Lincoln Wilbram wanted the dog bone," said Mrs. Downey tearfully. "Everybody will recognize her; and what Mr. Wilbram will do to us we don't need to be told. Poor Jake is so upset he has gone out to roam in the dark. He couldn't stay in the house."

New jobs were scarce for men at his time of life, and with his feet.

Dora and Jennie might have to leave high school.

"I'm sure you meant us no wrong, Miss Lance; I'm sure there was a mistake. But think how dreadful it is, after twenty-two years of having Mr. Wilbram's pay, then to turn around and backbite his wife like that, right out in print!"

Doubly troubled now, Miss Lance departed. Attracted by a quick gathering of loiterers in the avenue, she witnessed a controversy that might easily have become a police matter.

"You're a liar if you say you said all that to me!" shouted the burly Butcher Myers. "You never opened your head, you shrimp! Bawling me out in the papers and losing me my best customers! Whaddye mean?"

Back came the retort from Jacob Downey with the snarl of a little creature at bay.

"If I didn't say it to you then, you big lobster, I say it to you now.

All that the paper says I said I say. What'll you do about it?"

"Hah! You!" Myers snapped his fingers in Downey's fiery face and turned away.

Miss Lance's path to the Hilldale School next morning took her past three post-boxes. Into the third she dropped a note that she had carried from home. Mr. Sloan would find her message exceedingly brief, although (or, perhaps, because) she had spent hours in composing it.

DEAR SIR:

I regret to discover that you lack moral principles.

ANGELINA LANCE.

Just before the last bell the janitor brought in a prisoner for her custody. Willie Downey's head was b.l.o.o.d.y but unbowed; three seventh-graders he had vanquished in one round. "They guyed me," said he. "They called me a Nawthour."

Morning prayer and song waited while teacher and pupil spoke earnestly of many things; while the teacher's eyes filled with tears, and the pupil's heart filled with high resolve to bring home the baseball championship of the Ashland Public School League and lay it at Miss Angelina's feet, or perish in the attempt.