Jimmie Higgins | Page 2

meetings; and Lizzie knew that he was tremendously proud of
this discovery. So long as there had been only one baby, Jimmie had
carried it. When there had come a second, Lizzie had helped. But now
there were three, the total weight of them something over sixty pounds;
and the street-car line was some distance away, and also it hurt Jimmie
in his class-consciousness to pay twenty cents to a predatory
corporation. They had tried the plan of paying something to a
neighbour to stay with the babies; but the first they tried was a young
girl who got tired and went away, leaving the little ones to howl their
heads off; and the second was a Polish lady whom they found in a
drunken stupor on their return.
But Jimmie was determined to go to meetings, and determined that
Lizzie should go along. It was one of the curses of the system, he said,
that it deprived working-class women of all chance for
self-improvement. So he had paid a visit to the "Industrial Store", a
junk-shop maintained by the Salvation Army, and for fifteen cents he
had obtained a marvellous broad baby-carriage for twins, all finished in
shiny black enamel. One side of it was busted, but Jimmie had fixed
that with some wire, and by careful packing had shown that it was
possible to stow the youngsters in it--Jimmie and Pete side by side, and
the new baby at the foot.

The one trouble was that Jimmie Junior couldn't keep his feet still. He
could never keep any part of him still, the little jack-in-the-box. Here
he was now, tearing about the kitchen, pursuing the ever-receding tail
of the newest addition to the family, a half-starved cur who had
followed Jimmie in from the street, and had been fed into a semblance
of reality. From this treasure a bare, round tail hung out behind in
tantalizing fashion; Jimmie Junior, always imagining he could catch it,
was toddling round and round and round the kitchen-table, clutching
out in front of him, laughing so that after a while he sat down from
sheer exhaustion.
And Jimmie Senior watched enraptured. Say, but he was a buster! Did
you ever see a twenty-seven months' old kid that could get over the
ground like that? Or make a louder noise? This last because Jimmie
Junior had tried to take a short cut through the kitchen range and failed.
Lizzie swooped down, clasping him to her broad bosom, and pouring
out words of comfort in Bohemian. As Jimmie Senior did not
understand any of these words, he took advantage of the confusion to
get his coat and cap and hustle off to the Opera-house, full of fresh
determination. For, you see, whenever a Socialist looks at his son, or
even thinks of his son, he is hotter for his job of propagandist. Let the
world be changed soon, so that the little fellows may be spared those
sufferings and humiliations which have fallen to the lot of their parents!

II

"Comrade Higgins, have you got a hammer?" It was Comrade
Schneider who spoke, and he did not take the trouble to come down
from the ladder, where he was holding up a streamer of bunting, but
waited comfortably for the hammer to be fetched to him. And scarcely
had the fetcher started to climb before there came the voice of a woman
from across the stage: "Comrade Higgins, has the Ypsel banner come?"
And from the rear part of the hall came the rotund voice of fat Comrade
Rapinsky: "Comrade Higgins, will you bring up an extra table for the
literature?" And from the second tier box Comrade Mary Allen spoke:

"While you're downstairs, Comrade Higgins, would you mind
telephoning and making sure the Reception Committee knows about
the change in the train-time?"
So it went; and Jimmie ran about the big hall with his face red and
perspiring; for this was midsummer, and no breeze came through the
windows of the Leesville Opera-house, and when you got high up on
the walls to tie the streamers of red bunting, you felt as if you were
being baked. But the streamers had to be tied, and likewise the big red
flag over the stage, and the banner of the Karl Marx Verein, and the
banner of the Ypsels, or Young People's Socialist League of Leesville,
and the banner of the Machinists' Union, Local 4717, and of the
Carpenters' Union, District 529, and of the Workers' Co-operative
Society. And because Comrade Higgins never questioned anybody's
right to give him orders, and always did everything with a cheerful grin,
people had got into the habit of regarding him as the proper person for
tedious and disagreeable tasks.
He had all the more on his hands at