The Bishop's Shadow Part 15

"You've no father or mother?"

"No--never had none since I's big enough to know anything," was the careless reply.

Mr. Scott laid his hand kindly on the lad's shoulder.

"My boy," he said, slowly and earnestly, "I believe yours is a very beautiful name. It must be Theodore."

"That's it! That's it!" exclaimed Tode, excitedly. "I 'member somebody told it to me once, an' I know that's it. How'd you know it so quick?" He looked up wonderingly into his teacher's face as he asked the question.

"I once knew another Theodore who was nicknamed Tode; but, my boy, do you know what your name means?"

Tode shook his head. "Didn't know names meant anything," he answered.

"But they do. Theodore means the gift of G.o.d. A boy with such a name as that ought to count for something in the world."

"I mean to." The boy uttered the words slowly and emphatically.

Mr. Scott's face brightened. "Do you mean that you love and serve the Lord Jesus, Theodore?" he asked, softly.

The boy shook his head half sadly, half perplexedly.

"I don't know nothin' much 'bout Him," he answered, with a gentleness most strange and unusual in him, "but I've promised to do the right thing every time now--an' I'm a-goin' to do it."

"You have promised--whom, Theodore?"

"Promised myself--but I don't know nothin' much 'bout what is the right thing," he added, in a discouraged tone.

"You'll soon learn if you're in earnest, my boy. This Book will tell you all you need to know. Can you read?"

"Some."

"Then read this verse for me, will you?" Mr. Scott held out his Bible and pointed to the verse.

Slowly and stumblingly the boy read, "Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves," and again,

"Recompense to no man evil for evil."

Seeing that Tode did not understand the meaning of what he had read, Mr. Scott explained the pa.s.sages to him. The boy listened attentively, then he exclaimed in a tone of dismay,

"But does it mean that a feller can't never strike back?"

"That's what it says."

Tode pondered this unpalatable statement with a clouded face.

"But what ye goin' to do when some other feller cuts up rough with ye?"

"Find some other way to get even with him."

"But I don't see--what other way is there 'cept hittin' him a harder one'n he gives you?"

Mr. Scott opened his Bible again and pointed to the last two verses of the twelfth chapter of Romans.

Tode went home that day with his mind in a tumult. These new ideas did not suit him at all. A "word and a blow," and the blow first had been his method of settling such questions heretofore, and it seemed to him far the better way.

He took a roundabout route home, for he did not want to see Nan until he had thought out this matter to his own satisfaction. To help people poorer or weaker than himself, or to "keep straight" himself, and help others to do likewise--this was one thing. To meekly submit to ill treatment and "take a blow" from a fellow whom he "could whip with his little finger"--this was quite another and, to one of Tode's temperament, a far more distasteful thing.

The boy had reached no conclusion when he finally went home to supper. He was silent and thoughtful all the evening, but it was not until the following day that he spoke of the matter to Nan.

Nan listened in perplexed silence to what he had to say. She had been well taught while her mother lived, but she had never given these subjects any real, deep thought, as Tode was doing now. She began to feel that this rough, untaught street boy was likely to get far ahead of her if he should keep on pondering over questions like this. Even now she could give him but little help.

Seeing this, Tode took up his Testament again, and read on and on until he had finished the book of Matthew, and gained a pretty clear idea of the life and death of Jesus the Christ. There was much, of course, that he did not understand at all. Many of the words and expressions conveyed no meaning to him, but yet he gathered enough to understand, in a measure, what that Life was, and he began dimly to realise why the bishop gave so much of his time and thought to G.o.d's poor. The boy pondered these things in his heart, and a new world seemed to open before him.

"Nan," he said at last, "I've found out what my real name is. It's Theodore."

"Theodore," repeated the girl. "Well, I'm glad to know it, for I never did like to call you Tode. How did you find out?"

"Mr. Scott said it to me, and I knew as soon as I heard it that that was it."

"Then I won't ever call you Tode again. I shall call you Theo. I like that."

The boy liked it too. It gave him a strange thrill of pleasure every time he thought of what Mr. Scott had said about the meaning of his name.

VIII. THEO'S SHADOW WORK

The days that followed were very busy ones for both Nan and Theo. The girl spent most of her time over the stove or the moulding board, and the boy, delivering the supplies to many of the families in the two big tenement houses, attending to his stand, and selling evening papers, found the days hardly long enough for all that he wanted to do.

As he went from room to room with Nan's bread and soup and gingerbread, he soon learned much about the different families and found plenty of opportunities to serve as the "bishop's shadow," in these poor homes. Money he had not to give, for every penny that he could possibly spare was laid aside for a special purpose now, but he found countless ways to carry help and sunshine to sad and sore hearts, without money.

One morning he left Nan's room with a basket piled with bread--brown and white--in one hand, and a big tin pail full of boiled hominy in the other. He went first to the top floor, stopping at one door after another, where dirty, frowzy women and children opened at the sound of his cheery whistle. He handed in the loaves, or the measures of hominy with a gay word or a joke that more than once banished a frown from a woman's worn face, or checked the tears of a tired, hungry child. Children were getting to be fond of the boy now, and he liked it.

In one room there were two families and half a dozen children. In one corner, on a rickety couch was a crippled boy, who had lain there day after day, through long, weary months. He was listening intently for that whistle outside the door, and when he heard it, his dull eyes brightened, and he called out eagerly,

"Oh, tell him to come in a minute--_just_ a minute!"

The woman who opened the door, said indifferently, "Tommy wants you to come in a minute."

Theo stepped over to the tumbled couch, and smiled down into the wistful eyes of the sick boy.

"h.e.l.lo, old man!" he said, cheerily. "I've brought you something," and out of his pocket he pulled a golden chrysanthemum that he had picked up in the street the day before, and had kept all night in water. It was not very fresh now, but Tommy s.n.a.t.c.hed it hungrily, and gazed at it with a happy smile.

"Oh, how pretty--how pretty it is!" he cried, softly smoothing the golden petals with his little bony forefinger. "Can I keep it, truly?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Oh, how pretty,--how pretty it is!"]

"'Course. I brought it for you," Theo answered, his round, freckled face reflecting the boy's delight. "But I must scoot. Folks'll be rowin' me if their bread's late."