Part 40 (2/2)

”Well,” Tom made answer, ”it weren't such a great show there, so I up and left.”

”I didn't suppose you'd do such a thing! What was the matter anyway?”

”They was always rus.h.i.+ng a feller. They didn't give yer any time to think.”

”Tom!” Hertha broke into laughter, such peals of laughter that the cook, back in the kitchen, listened and smiled as she wrung out her dishcloth, glad that her favorite in the house, who never made a mite of trouble, was having a good time.

”It weren't a bad place,” Tom went on, indulgent to the school, not wis.h.i.+ng to do it an injustice, ”there's some as likes to jump about like a chicken with its head cut off, but I like a chance to think. You'd have found it right pretty, Hertha--a river not so big as ours but full of lights at sunset. The trees were fine, too, with bigger leaves than we have, and when winter come it was white with snow.”

”Oh, I know about that,” Hertha interrupted. ”I was out in the first snowstorm this winter, and on a sled, too. Did you go coasting, Tom?”

”No, ma'am!” His negative was emphatic. It precluded the possibility that even, for a moment, he had indulged in such a pastime. And after the spoken word he shook his head some seconds in further denial.

”It were this-a-way,” he went on, ”they thought as there weren't a minute of the day that a feller could have to himself. I reckon they do that way in the army, an' we wore army clothes--play clothes though, for we didn't have no guns. You'd get up in the morning after a cat-nap, an'

go about your tasks till breakfast, and when you'd eaten that up an'

more too, there'd be drill and lessons and Lord knows what all, I can't remember such a long while as this. But by and by there'd come a minute when the bell didn't ring and a fellow would think he could stop to study something. Perhaps he'd sit on a bench and try to figure out what was in his mind when an officer'd come along and call out, 'What you doing?'”

”And I know what you'd say,” Hertha cried, interrupting him. ”You'd say, 'I was thinking----'” imitating his drawl.

”Yes'm. And then he'd say, 'Get up, man, and go to work. This ain't no place to think.'

”Well, it was like that all day. I went into chapel, a mighty fine building, you could put most of the cabins at home in it without crowding, and I sat down there alone on the back seat, jes' studying the world here an' the world ter come. I hadn't been there a minute when the Captain comes up and says sharp-like, 'What you doin' here?' 'Jes'

thinkin',' I says. 'Can't have that,' he says, 'this ain't no place to think. Go to work!' I walks down under the trees at sunset an' watches the pink turn into soft purple, studying ter find the first star, when some one comes along and calls out, 'Get up, man! Don't sit still like that. Go to work!' At night, when every one's in bed, I thought they'd let up, so I looked out the window. The moon was sailing past the stars, you know, and I was studying it out the way we used ter, and thinking, thinking--But, Lord, 'What you up at this time of night for, boy? 'the officer asks, tapping me on the arm. 'Jes' thinkin',' I answers. 'You can't do that here,' says he, 'no time for thinking. Go to bed!' So then I studies how to come to New York and after a while I gets here.”

Tom finished his recital and smiled down at his listener.

”But Tom,” Hertha asked, ”wasn't Ellen terribly disappointed?”

”She's reconciled,” he said dryly.

Hertha thought of Ellen and the wreckage of her plans, and surmised that there must have been a stormy period before reconciliation.

”It seems strange, Tom,” she said at length, ”that you should be here in New York alone.”

”I ain't alone,” he replied, ”not exactly alone. I's boarding with a lady from the South.”

”Why, that's just the way it is with me,” Hertha said. ”Isn't that odd!”

”Do you get enough to eat?” Tom asked.

”Plenty. Don't you?”

”Oh, I suppose so,” the boy said tolerantly. ”It stand ter reason city folks can't feed you like they do at home. When you have to put down a nickel or a dime for every mite o' food you buy, for every pinch o' corn meal, and every orange, it comes hard to set much on the table. And if a feller goes out to one o' these restaurants to feed, why before he's reached the pie, if he don't look out, he's eat up his day's wages.”

”Eaten, Tom.”

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