Part 38 (1/2)

'Does he feel big enough for us to take?' Mr. Lincoln demanded.

'Oh, I think so!' she answered quickly, one arm slipping about the little boy's shoulders.

'An' I'll be five ve twenty-second of March,' Stanislaus threw in to overbalance the argument in his favor.

He snuggled himself confidingly against Miss Lyman, and fell to playing with the many jingling attachments of her chatelaine.

'I heard vese tinkly fings when you was comin' 'w-a-y a-w-a-y outside, 'fore you o-pened ve door,' he murmured softly.

'His mother's dead,' the man explained.

'Little sister's dead, too,' Stanislaus supplemented him. 'S'e token a awful bad cold so s'e couldn't b'eave. I take awful bad colds, but I don't die, do I?' he demanded.

'Yes,' said the man, 'my baby's dead, too. I had a woman lookin' after both kids, but she let the baby git the pneumonia.'

'I fink I like you better van vat other lady,' Stanislaus confided to Miss Lyman.

'Of course we can take him,' Miss Lyman said hastily to Mr. Lincoln.

And thus it was that Stanislaus came to Lomax.

As has been said, he was the youngest child at school. This in itself was sufficient to set him apart from the thirty or so other blind boys; but there were other things that served to distinguish him as well. His thoughts, for instance, were so different--so unexpected and whimsical; so entirely off the beaten track.

Witness Mr. Grey, for instance. At his best Mr. Grey was a delightful person; but as he was of a retiring disposition, he never flowered into being, save in a sympathetic atmosphere. Miss Julia, for example, never met Mr. Grey. She was one of the older teachers, whose boast it was that she never stood for any foolishness. In her not doing so, however, she was apt to walk with a heavy foot over other folks' most cherished feelings. For which reason, sensitive people were inclined in her presence to retreat within themselves, sailing, as it were, with their lights blanketed. This was the reason, no doubt, why she and Mr. Grey never met.

Indeed, Mr. Grey was of such an extremely shy nature that he had to be observed with the greatest delicacy. Looked at too closely, he was apt to go out like a blown candle. He lived apparently in an empty closet in the blind boys' clothes room. It is probable that he had taken up his abode there for the sake of being near Stanislaus, for as the latter was too small to be in school all the morning, he spent the rest of his time with Miss Lyman in the clothes room, where she sat and sewed on b.u.t.tons, mended rips, and put on patches, in a desperate endeavor to keep her army of blind boys mended up. When the other children were about, as they usually were on Sat.u.r.days, Mr. Grey kept discreetly to himself, and his presence in the closet would not have been suspected. On the long school mornings, however, when Miss Lyman sat quietly sewing, with Stanislaus playing about, no one could be more unbending than Mr. Grey.

Stanislaus would go over to the closet and open it a crack, and then he and Mr. Grey would fall into pleasant conversation. Miss Lyman, of course, could hear only Stanislaus's side of it, but he constantly repeated his friend's remarks for her benefit.

From hints which Stanislaus let fall, Miss Lyman gathered that there had once been a real Mr. Grey in the past, from which beginning, the interesting personality of the closet had developed.

Mr. Grey's comments upon things and people, as repeated by Stanislaus, showed a unique turn of mind. He seemed to have a poor opinion of mankind in general, coupled with an excellent one of himself in particular; for, retiring as he was before strangers, in the presence of friends he blossomed into an incorrigible braggart. If any one failed to do anything, Mr. Grey could always have done it, and never hesitated to say so. There was, for instance, the time when Mr. Beverly, one of the supervisors, was thrown from his horse and rather severely bruised. When informed of the incident by Stanislaus, who always gave his friend the news of the day, Mr. Grey was very scornful.

'Gwey says,' Stanislaus, over by the half-open closet door, turned to announce to Miss Lyman, ''at _he_ never had no horse to frow _him_ yet--an' he's wid all kinds of horses. Horses wif four legs, an' horses wif five legs,--' Stanislaus had been learning to count lately,--'an'

horses wif _six_ legs.'

Again, when Miss Lyman sighed over a particularly disreputable pair of Edward Stone's trousers, remarking that she really did not think she could patch those, she was met by the a.s.sertion, 'Gwey says _he_ could patch 'em. He says he ain't erfwaid to patch n.o.body's pants. He could patch Eddy Stone's, a-a-n' he could patch Jimmie Nickle's, a-a-a-n' Sam Black's, an'--an''--this last all in a hurry, and as a supreme evidence of proficiency in the art of patching--'he dest b'ieves he could patch Mr. _Lincoln's_ pants!'

But this was more than Miss Lyman could stand. 'No, he couldn't either, for Mrs. Lincoln wouldn't let him,' she declared, stung to retort by such unbridled claims on the part of Mr. Grey.

It is sad to relate also that Mr. Grey was a skeptic as well as a braggart, and had had, apparently, a doubtful past. This was revealed the morning after the Sunday on which Stanislaus had first encountered the Flood, the Ark, and Noah. After giving Mr. Grey on Monday morning a graphic account of the affair,--'An' Noah him went into ve ark, an'

token all ve animals wif him, an' ven all ve wicked people was dwown-ed,'--Stanislaus appeared to listen a moment, after which he turned to Miss Lyman.

'Gwey says,' he reported, ''at he doesn't b'ieve all ve wicked people was dwown-ed, 'cause he was a-livin' ven, an' he was a very wicked man, an' he didn't go into ve Ark, an' _he_ wasn't dwown-ed.'

Miss Lyman might have forgiven Mr. Grey's skepticism, but he showed a tendency to incite Stanislaus to a recklessness which could not be overlooked.

None of the children were allowed to leave the school grounds without permission, but time and again Stanislaus slipped out of the gate, and was caught marching straight down the middle of the road leading to the village. This was a particularly alarming proceeding, because at this point in the road automobiles were apt to put on their last crazy burst of speed, before having to slow down to the sober ten miles an hour of the village limits. Indeed, one day, he was returned to the school by a white and irate automobilist.

'What do you suppose this little scoundrel did?' the man stormed. 'Why, he ran out from the side of the road and barked at my car!'