A Cathedral Singer | Page 8

Mister. Why not?"
"On a piano?"
"Why, yes, Mister; on my piano."
"Oh, you have a piano, have you?"
"There isn't any sound in about half the keys. Granny says the time has come to rent a better one. She has gone over to the art school to-day to pose to get the money."
A chill of silence fell between the talkers, the one looking up and the other looking down. The man's next question was put in a more guarded tone:
"Does your mother pose as a model?"
"No, Mister, she doesn't pose as a model. She's posing as herself. She said I must have a teacher. Mister, were you ever poor?"
The man looked the boy over from head to foot.
"Do you think you are poor?" he asked.
The good-natured reply came back in a droll tone:
"Well, Mister, we certainly aren't rich."
"Let us see," objected the man, as though this were a point which had better not be yielded, and he began with a voice of one reckoning up items: "Two feet, each cheap at, say, five millions. Two hands--five millions apiece for hands. At least ten millions for each eye. About the same for the ears. Certainly twenty millions for your teeth. Forty millions for your stomach. On the whole, at a rough estimate you must easily be worth over one hundred millions. There are quite a number of old gentlemen in New York, and a good many young ones, who would gladly pay that amount for your investments, for your securities."
The lad with eager upturned countenance did not conceal his amusement while the man drew this picture of him as a living ragged gold-mine, as actually put together and made up of pieces of fabulous treasure. A child's notion of wealth is the power to pay for what it has not. The wealth that childhood is, escapes childhood; it does not escape the old. What most concerned the lad as to these priceless feet and hands and eyes and ears was the hard-knocked-in fact that many a time he ached throughout this reputed treasury of his being for a five-cent piece, and these reputed millionaires, acting together and doing their level best, could not produce one.
Nevertheless, this fresh and never-before-imagined image of his self-riches amused him. It somehow put him over into the class of enormously opulent things; and finding himself a little lonely on that new landscape, he cast about for some object of comparison. Thus his mind was led to the richest of all near-by objects.
"If I were worth a hundred million," he said, with a satisfied twinkle in his eyes, "I would be as rich as the cathedral."
A significant silence followed. The man broke it with a grave surprised inquiry:
"How did you happen to think of the cathedral?"
"I didn't happen to think of it; I couldn't help thinking of it."
"Have you ever been in the cathedral?" inquired the man more gravely still.
"Been in it! We go there all the time. It's our church. Why, good Lord! Mister, we are descended from a bishop!"
The man laughed outright long and heartily.
"Thank you for telling me," he said as one who suddenly feels himself to have become a very small object through being in the neighborhood of such hereditary beatitudes and ecclesiastical sanctities. "Are you, indeed? I am glad to know. Indeed, I am!"
"Why, Mister, we have been watching the cathedral from our windows for years. We can see the workmen away up in the air as they finish one part and then another part. I can count the Apostles on the roof. You begin with James the Less and keep straight on around until you come out at Simon. Big Jim and Pete are in the middle of the row." He laughed.
"Surely you are not going to speak of an apostle as Pete! Do you think that is showing proper respect to an apostle?"
"But he was Pete when he was little. He wasn't an apostle then and didn't have any respect."
"And you mustn't call an apostle Big Jim! It sounds dreadful!"
"Then why did he try to call himself James the Greater? That sounds dreadful too. As far as size is concerned he is no bigger than the others: they are all nine and a half feet. The Archangel Gabriel on the roof, he's nine and a half. Everybody standing around on the outside of the roof is nine and a half. If Gabriel had been turned a little to one side, he would blow his trumpet straight over our flat. He didn't blow anywhere one night, for a big wind came up behind him and blew him down and he blew his trumpet at the gutter. But he didn't stay down," boasted the lad.
Throughout his talk he was making it clear that the cathedral was a neighborhood affair; that its haps and mishaps possessed