“Come back!” cried Billy. “You great big dunces, come back! They's a new kind of meat, and cake and candy.”
The boy delayed, but the girl joined Billy. Ellen wiped her fingers, stepped to the cement abutment and began reciting “Horatio at the Bridge!” substituting Elnora wherever the hero appeared in the lines.
Elnora gathered up the sacks, and gave them to Belle, telling her to take the food home, cut and spread the bread, set things on the table, and eat nicely.
Then Elnora was taken into the wagon with the girls, and driven on the run to the high school. They sang a song beginning—
“Elnora, please give me a sandwich.
I'm ashamed to ask for cake!”
as they went. Elnora did not know it, but that was her initiation. She belonged to “the crowd.” She only knew that she was happy, and vaguely wondered what her mother and Aunt Margaret would have said about the proceedings.
CHAPTER VII
WHEREIN MRS. COMSTOCK MANIPULATES MARGARET AND BILLY ACQUIRES A RESIDENCE
Saturday morning Elnora helped her mother with the work. When she had finished Mrs. Comstock told her to go to Sintons' and wash her Indian relics, so that she would be ready to accompany Wesley to town in the afternoon. Elnora hurried down the road and was soon at the cistern with a tub busily washing arrow points, stone axes, tubes, pipes, and skin-cleaning implements.
Then she went home, dressed and was waiting when the carriage reached the gate. She stopped at the bank with the box, and Sinton went to do his marketing and some shopping for his wife.
At the dry goods store Mr. Brownlee called to him, “Hello, Sinton! How do you like the fate of your lunch box?” Then he began to laugh—
“I always hate to see a man laughing alone,” said Sinton. “It looks so selfish! Tell me the fun, and let me help you.”
Mr. Brownlee wiped his eyes.
“I supposed you knew, but I see she hasn't told.”
Then the three days' history of the lunch box was repeated with particulars which included the dog.
“Now laugh!” concluded Mr. Brownlee.
“Blest if I see anything funny!” replied Wesley Sinton. “And if you had bought that box and furnished one of those lunches yourself, you wouldn't either. I call such a work a shame! I'll have it stopped.”
“Some one must see to that, all right. They are little leeches. Their father earns enough to support them, but they have no mother, and they run wild. I suppose they are crazy for cooked food. But it is funny, and when you think it over you will see it, if you don't now.”
“About where would a body find that father?” inquired Wesley Sinton grimly. Mr. Brownlee told him and he started, locating the house with little difficulty. House was the proper word, for of home there was no sign. Just a small empty house with three unkept little children racing through and around it. The girl and the elder boy hung back, but dirty little Billy greeted Sinton with: “What you want here?”
“I want to see your father,” said Sinton.
“Well, he's asleep,” said Billy.
“Where?” asked Sinton.
“In the house,” answered Billy, “and you can't wake him.”
“Well, I'll try,” said Wesley.
Billy led the way. “There he is!” he said. “He is drunk again.”
On a dirty mattress in a corner lay a man who appeared to be strong and well. Billy was right. You could not awake him. He had gone the limit, and a little beyond.
He was now facing eternity. Sinton went out and closed the door.
“Your father is sick and needs help,” he said. “You stay here, and I will send a man to see him.”
“If you just let him 'lone, he'll sleep it off,” volunteered Billy. “He's that way all the time, but he wakes up and gets us something to eat after awhile. Only waitin' twists you up inside pretty bad.”
The boy wore no air of complaint. He was merely stating facts.
Wesley Sinton looked intently at Billy. “Are you twisted up inside now?” he asked.
Billy laid a grimy hand on the region of his stomach and the filthy little waist sank close to the backbone. “Bet yer life, boss,” he said cheerfully.
“How long have you been twisted?” asked Sinton.
Billy appealed to the others. “When was it we had the stuff on the bridge?”
“Yesterday morning,” said the girl.
“Is that all gone?” asked Sinton.
“She went and told us to take it home,” said Billy ruefully, “and 'cos she said to, we took it. Pa had come back, he was drinking some more, and he ate a lot of it—almost the whole thing, and it made him sick as a dog, and he went and wasted all of it. Then he got drunk some more, and now he's asleep again. We didn't get hardly none.”
“You children sit on the steps until the man comes,” said Sinton. “I'll send you some things to eat with him. What's your name, sonny?”
“Billy,” said the boy.
“Well, Billy, I guess you better come with me. I'll take care of him,” Sinton promised the others. He reached a hand to Billy.
“I ain't no baby, I'm a boy!” said Billy, as he shuffled along beside Sinton, taking a kick at every movable object without regard to his battered toes.
Once they passed a Great Dane dog lolling after its master, and Billy ascended Sinton as if he were a tree, and clung to him with trembling hot hands.
“I ain't afraid of that dog,” scoffed Billy, as he was again placed on the walk, “but onc't he took me for a rat or somepin' and his teeth cut into my back. If I'd a done right, I'd a took the law on him.”
Sinton looked down into the indignant little face. The child was bright enough, he had a good head, but oh, such a body!
“I 'bout got enough of dogs,” said Billy. “I used to like 'em, but I'm getting pretty tired. You ought to seen the lickin' Jimmy and Belle and me give our dog when we caught him, for taking a little bird she gave us. We waited 'till he was asleep 'nen laid a board on him and all of us jumped on it to onc't. You could a heard him yell a mile. Belle said mebbe we could squeeze the bird out of him. But, squeeze nothing! He was holler as us, and that bird was lost long 'fore it got to his stummick. It was ist a little one, anyway. Belle said it wouldn't 'a' made a bite apiece for three of us nohow, and the dog got one good swaller. We didn't get much of the meat, either. Pa took most of that. Seems like pas and dogs gets everything.”
Billy laughed dolefully. Involuntarily Wesley Sinton reached his hand. They were coming into the business part of Onabasha and the streets were crowded. Billy understood it to mean that he might lose his companion and took a grip. That little hot hand clinging tight to his, the sore feet recklessly scouring the walk, the hungry child panting for breath as he tried to keep even, the brave soul jesting in the face of hard luck, caught Sinton in a tender, empty spot.
“Say, son,” he said. “How would you like to be washed clean, and have all the supper your skin could hold, and sleep in a good bed?”
“Aw,