Good Blood | Page 3

had enough. Sneering and shrugging his shoulders, he kept drawing away farther and farther until he had reached a safe distance, when he began to call out names. The two brothers now collected the belongings of Little-Boy that lay scattered about, stuffed them into the portfolio, picked up their caps, whipped the dust from them, and turned home ward. On the way they passed the windows of our wine-room. I could now plainly see the brave little fellow; he was a thoroughbred, every inch of him. Long-Shanks was again approaching from behind and bawling after them through the length of the square. Little-Boy shrugged his shoulders with fine contempt. "You great, cowardly bully," said he, and stopping suddenly, turned right about and faced the enemy. At once Long-Shanks stopped too, and the two brothers broke out into derisive laughter.
They were now standing directly under the window at which the old colonel was sitting. He leaned out.
"Bravo, youngster!" said he, "you are a plucky one--here--drink this on the strength of it." He had taken up the tumbler and was holding it out of the window toward Little-Boy. The boy looked up, surprised, then whispered something to his older brother, gave him his portfolio to hold, and gripped the big glass in his two little hands.
When he had drunk all he wanted, with one hand he held the glass by its stem, with the other took back the portfolio from his brother, and without asking by your leave, handed the glass over to him.
Chubby-Cheeks then took a long swallow.
"The blessed boy," muttered the colonel to himself. "I give him my glass, and without further ado he makes his cher fr��re drink out of it, too."
But by the face of Little-Boy, who now reached the glass up to the window again, one could see that he had only been doing something which seemed to him quite a matter of course.
"Do you like the bouquet?" asked the old colonel.
"Yes, thanks, very well," said the boy, who snatched at his cap politely, and went on his way with his brother.
The colonel looked after them until they had turned a corner of the street and disappeared from his sight.
"With boys like that"--then said the colonel, returning to his soliloquizing--"it is often an odd thing about boys like that."
"That they should fight so in the public streets!" said the fat waiter with disapproval, still standing at his post. "One wonders how the teacher can allow it; and they seem to belong to good family, too."
"It isn't that that does the harm," grunted the old colonel. "Young people must have their liberty, teachers can't always be keeping an eye on them. Boys all fight--must fight."
He rose heavily from his place so that the chair creaked beneath him, scraped the cigar butt out of its holder into the ash-tray, and walked stiffly over to the wall where his hat hung on a nail. At the same time he continued his reverie.
"In young blood like that nature will show itself--everything, just as it really is--afterward, when older, things look all much alike--then one is able to study more carefully--young blood like that."
The waiter had put his hat into his hand; the colonel took up his tumbler again, in which there were still a few drops of the red wine.
"God bless the youngsters," he murmured; "they have hardly left me a drop." He looked, almost sadly, into what remained of the wine, then set the tumbler down again without drinking.
The fat waiter became suddenly alive.
"Will the colonel, perhaps, have another glass?"
The old man, standing at the table, had opened the wine list and was mumbling to himself.
"H'm--another sort, maybe--but one can't buy it by the glass--only by the bottle--somewhat too much."
Slowly his gaze wandered over in my direction; I read in his eyes the dumb inquiry a man sometimes throws his neighbor when he wants to go halves with him over a bottle of wine.
"If the colonel will allow me," I said, "it would give me great pleasure to drink a bottle with him."
He agreed, plainly not unwilling. He pushed the wine list over to the waiter, lining with his finger the sort he wanted, and said in a commanding tone: "A bottle of that."
"That is a brand I know well," he said, turning to me, while he threw his hat on a chair and sat down at one of the tables--"it's good blood."
I had placed myself at a table with him so that I could see his face in profile. His look was again turned toward the window, and as he gazed past me up into the heavens, the glow of the sunset was reflected in his eyes.
It was the first time I had seen him at such close quarters.
By the look of his eyes he was lost in dreams,