Someone was reading aloud from a newspaper to several young men who *puffed away at their cigarettes and regarded with vacant eyes the handsome ceiling of the club room. Through the open windows drifted late spring airs, bearing up from the streets below the squawking sounds of an old violin—a most discordant interruption of the full, pleasing voice of the reader. The youth lolling nearest the window bore placidly this torment for two minutes, then sprang to his feet, leaned half way across the sill and snarled, “If you don't stop that rumpus down there I'll come and make you.”
The man with the violin raised his face, touched his cap apologetically and turned away, followed by a small dilapidated boy and a shaggy mongrel dog.
“Oh! I say, you know,” called he at the window, “I'm deuced sorry I spoke so. I didn't know you were blind; here,” and he flipped a ten cent piece from his fingers, returned to his easy chair and said, “Excuse the interruption, old man—go on.” But he did not seem to hear the conclusion of the reading, and when they all left the club, he stood for a moment at the door step looking up and down the street.
“What's the matter, Gerrard?” said his chum; “you seem wool gathering.”
“Oh! nixie,” he replied carelessly. “I was wishing I'd given that blind duffer a quarter. I might just as well have, he looked down on his luck.”
“An' what did the gem'man look like, Teddy?” the “blind duffer” was saying.
“Oh! kinder nice; he'd yeller lookin' hair, curly like, an' a dood collar.”
“He'd a nice voice when he said he was sorry, he'd a nice voice anyhow. I'd sooner be scolded by him than be giv' to by some, an' he giv' us the first silver we's had to-day.”
“I say, say, capt'n, will you take us back to town? We missed the train.”
“Yes, boys, I'll take you, if you don't mind a lot of ragged, dirty Fresh Air Fund youngsters aboard. I've got about a hundred of them here.”
“We don't care for them if you'll only give us the sail,” said Gerrard, as he and two companions, garmented like himself in tennis flannels and bright-striped blazers, made a rush for the gangway and sprang on board.
“Jove! these flannels will be chilly outside. Are you going straight home, captain?” asked one of the young men.
“No, sir; sorry, sir; it's the last trip of the season for these little fellows, and the ladies have asked me to run out in the ocean a bit, but we'll be in on time, for we've started earlier on that account.”
“Oh! all right, no hurry; we will get some sport out of the small fry. Perhaps they'll take us for curates,” and with a light laugh Gerrard went on deck.
Dozens of urchins were scampering about, drinking in great draughts of sea air, their eyes alight with the first sparkle of joyousness that they had felt, perhaps since their birth. Some sweet-faced women were handing bread and butter, milk, currant cake and a little fruit about, assisted by a few fashionably dressed young ladies, and an elderly jovial clergyman, who would teasingly pretend that he was going to keep all the cake for himself, just to see the horror in the wide hungry eyes of those poor children from the slums, whose thin little lips had never known what it was to close over anything but a crust.
Teddy was there. He saw Gerrard the instant he came on board.
“Say, mister,” he said, edging up to the young man shyly. “Whare's yer dood collar?”
“Why, little chap, did you ever see me in anything so monstrous as a ‘dude’ collar?” asked the young man laughingly.
“Yesser, the day yer throwed dad tin cints outer the winder o' the big red brick house.”
Gerrard looked puzzled.
“Dad, yer know that had the fiddle.”
“Was he blind?”
“Yesser.”
“Oh! I remember, and where is he, and his fiddle?”
“He's dead, sir; an' the fiddle went to pay the rint.”
“I'm very sorry.”
“There's jist me an' Rover now an' we lodge down to Mrs. McCarthy's garret. Dad says to me when he was dyin': ‘Ted,’ says he, ‘I've nothin' to leave to yer, jist Rover, fer the fiddle'll have to go to pay the rint, but yer jist hang onter the dog. He's the bes' dog livin' an' jist remem'er like sometimes that I loved you'n Rover better'n anythin' in the worl'.’”
At that moment a burly head with an ill-tempered face was thrust out of the wheelhouse a step above them. “Say, you beats down there, who ever owns this here brute of a dog had better keep him out o' here or I'll throw the blarmed beast overboard.”
Teddy sprang forward. “He's mine yer sassy, an' you'd better leave him alone,” he said.
“Shut you mouth now, young 'un, or I'll pitch him over, he's no business on board anyhow.”
“The leddies sed I might bring him,” Teddy replied with an offended air.
“Well no ladies are a' runnin' of this boat, I'll jist till you that now,” said the uncouth owner of the burly head, as Rover sneaked down the steps with a doglike consciousness of wrong-doing.
“You must keep him out my boy,” rejoined Gerrard, “or the sailors might kick him, and you would not like that.”
“There's more'n them that can kick,” the child said with a little determined look, that Gerrard liked—but laughed at.
The sea was calm as the sky above it, and from two miles out, the children watched the sun getting ready to set behind the blue line of shore. Gerrard was lounging about smoking cigarettes with one of his companions and feeling a certain depression whenever he looked into the wistful, starved faces of the youngsters, who however were enjoying wildly the goods the gods gave them to-day, when his ear caught the sound of a scuffle, a dog's yelp, and the next instant something splashed into the ocean—and then the wailing cry of a child. Gerrard hurried to the wheelhouse. “What's the matter?” he demanded.
“It's that confounded dog. I told the kid I'd throw it overboard if he didn't keep it out o' this,” snapped burly head.
“Oh! mister, he's throw'd him overboard, he's throw'd him overboard,” choked a little voice at his elbow.
Gerrard said one word, a very bad word, the next moment he had snatched off his blazer and shoes, leapt over the rail, and there was a second splash.
“It was hanged foolish of you—hanged foolish,” said Gerrard's friend when they brought him, with the dog, dripping, on board again.
“It was beastly foolish and you in such a heat from tennis; you'll get a chill sure as a gun.”
“I've got it now,” chattered Gerrard, laughing and sputtering the salt water through his teeth. “By Jove, boys, it won't harm that dog to have a bath, though I don't believe he ever had one before.”
The animal in question was rolling about on deck, snorting and shaking, much to the amusement of the children, and to Teddy's especial delight. Some of the ladies had come forward quickly to see what they could do for Gerrard, but he only laughed at everything their kindness suggested, and took himself down below, where the captain gave him a mysterious drink “just to keep away the chance of a chill, you know, sir.”
As he was looking for a cab on the wharf, Teddy ran up to him. “Good-bye, Mister,” said the child, “an' thank yer fer—”
“Ah! never mind that, little man—that's all right. I rather enjoyed the plunge. Here's some change; I won't give you a big price—people might say you stole it.”
“That's him,” said Teddy, watching a fashionably dressed young man coming out of the theater door. “That's him, that's his dood collar, an' them's his yeller curls. But, oh! golly! what a cough he's got. I believe he's agoin' to be awful sick. I'm goin' to foller him and see whar he lives.”
“My! what a big house,” exclaimed the boy, as Gerrard entered a palatial residence in a fashionable locality; “he mus' be awful rich. Here, Rove, now don't you be jumpin' arter him, or he'll think we want money, an' he's guv us enough already, but if we ever have to starve we'll know whar to come.”
For many days Ted and his dog would go round in the morning to watch Gerrard come out at the large carved door and walk down the opposite side of the street, but one morning they waited in vain for him to make his appearance.
Day after day for two weeks they haunted the locality, but never a sight of the “dood gem'man” did they get. At last the child could bear it no longer, and boldly marching up the great steps with Rover in his rear, he pounded on the door with his dirty little fist.
It was opened by a very grave-faced affair in livery. “Why can't you press the button?” he was asked.
“I don't know nothin' what yer mean,” said Ted. “Be you's a play actor?”
“No,” he was told sedately. “What do you want?”
“I want to know if the young gem'man with the yeller curls is sick!”
“Yes, he's sick; very sick.”
“Is it a cough like?”
“Yes, it's pneumonia.”
“Has he hed a cough like all fall?”
“Yes, but it's worse now.”
“I say, mister, he ain't agoin' to die, is he?”
“I'm afraid so.” And the man's lip trembled almost as much as the boy's.
The little fellow turned away saying, “Thank yer, sir, I'll come agin.”
“You mustn't be a bother now. They're in great trouble here,” said the footman, “but you seem rather fond of the young master.”
“Yesser, I am, sir, and it's my fault he's sick.”
Christmas was coming, but never once did Teddy go up town to see the pretty shop windows. He and Rover sat and shivered and starved day in and day out across the street from the Gerrard mansion.
At night he would crawl away to his garret down in the slums; in the morning he would be at his post watching with greedy eyes for the doctor's carriage, and once he essayed to arrest that worthy on the doorstep.
“Is he agoin' to die?” he asked.
“I'm afraid so, Johnnie,” was the reply, as the doctor, too anxious and absent to notice the youngster, stepped into his carriage and was off.
Teddy was sick. Christmas morning he was unable to get up off the old ragged quilt that he and Rover slept upon together. The child was half-starved, half-clad, and his long vigils had been too much for him, he had contracted a violent cold, and to-day his cheeks burned bright with fever. The ladies of the Fresh Air Fund had sent him a Christmas present—two sugar top buns, an orange, a slice of cake and five chrysanthemums.
“I know what I'll do, I'll git up if it kills me, an' take 'em all over to him. I've hearn' Mrs. McCarthy say that when one's awful sick a bit sent in from a neighbor's tastes twice as good as yer own—maybe he'll eat some, leastways he'll smell them flowers. Golly! but them's good. I wish I could keep 'em myself.”
He then gave the dog one of the buns, which the poor creature swallowed whole. Then as afternoon came on he crawled downstairs, with his dog and his dainties.
At the Gerrard's door stood the doctor's carriage, and for an entire half-hour Teddy sat on the cold stone steps awaiting his reappearance. When he did come bustling out he was followed immediately by an elderly lady with sweet tear-stained eyes, and curling yellow hair dashed with gray.
“Tell me doctor—please tell me,” she said, “will Harry live? Is there the smallest hope?”
“My dear Mrs. Gerrard,” the doctor replied smiling, shaking her hand, “it's the best Christmas present I could offer you all. Harry will live, and I should not wonder if I had him downstairs for his New Year's dinner.”
“O! misses,” interrupted Teddy, holding up the brown paper bag which contained his treasures. “Will yer giv' him these, an' tell him they're from me? Me, Ted, an' Rover. I bet he'll like 'em—an' tell him I'm glad he's goin' ter live!”
The lady took the bag and smiled sadly, it was the first smile she had worn for weeks. She was too happy to ask the boy questions, but in a day or two she told Gerrard the circumstances, forgetting all about the dog, and showed him the cakes and flowers.
“Poor little chap,” said the young man weakly. “I wonder who he could have been—likely some youngster I've bought a newspaper of. I'll bet he wanted them himself—Lord! I couldn't eat that stuff, could I mother? But he'll never know.”
No, Teddy will never know. For the arm that hugged the sleeping dog grew cold and heavy during the night, and the faithful animal awakened in the morning with a plaintive whine, and with pricked up ears sat gazing with almost human eyes into a poor little shrivelled face that was quite lifeless.