Sentimental Tommy | Page 3

another added he must spill, and away he ran for an
audience, which could also help him to bait Tommy, that being a game
most sportive when there are several to fling at once. At the door he
knocked over, and was done with, a laughing little girl who had strayed
from a more fashionable street. She rose solemnly, and kissing her
muff, to reassure it if it had got a fright, toddled in at the first open door
to be out of the way of unmannerly boys.
Tommy, climbing courageously, heard the door slam, and looking
down he saw--a strange child. He climbed no higher. It had come.
After a long time he was one flight of stairs nearer it. It was making

itself at home on the bottom step; resting, doubtless, before it came
hopping up. Another dozen steps, and--It was beautifully dressed in one
piece of yellow and brown that reached almost to its feet, with a bit left
at the top to form a hood, out of which its pert face peeped impudently;
oho, so they came in their Sunday clothes. He drew so near that he
could hear it cooing: thought itself as good as upstairs, did it!
He bounced upon her sharply, thinking to carry all with a high hand.
"Out you go!" he cried, with the action of one heaving coals.
She whisked round, and, "Oo boy or oo girl?" she inquired, puzzled by
his dress.
"None of your cheek!" roared insulted manhood.
"Oo boy," she said, decisively.
With the effrontery of them when they are young, she made room for
him on her step, but he declined the invitation, knowing that her design
was to skip up the stair the moment he was off his guard.
"You don't needn't think as we'll have you," he announced, firmly.
"You had best go away to--go to--" His imagination failed him. "You
had best go back," he said.
She did not budge, however, and his next attempt was craftier. "My
mother," he assured her, "ain't living here now;" but mother was a new
word to the girl, and she asked gleefully, "Oo have mother?" expecting
him to produce it from his pocket. To coax him to give her a sight of it
she said, plaintively, "Me no have mother."
"You won't not get mine," replied Tommy doggedly.
She pretended not to understand what was troubling him, and it passed
through his head that she had to wait there till the doctor came down
for her. He might come at any moment.
A boy does not put his hand into his pocket until every other means of

gaining his end has failed, but to that extremity had Tommy now come.
For months his only splendid possession had been a penny despised by
trade because of a large round hole in it, as if (to quote Shovel) some
previous owner had cut a farthing out of it. To tell the escapades of this
penny (there are no adventurers like coin of the realm) would be one
way of exhibiting Tommy to the curious, but it would be a hard-hearted
way. At present the penny was doubly dear to him, having been long
lost and lately found. In a noble moment he had dropped it into a
charity box hanging forlorn against the wall of a shop, where it lay very
lonely by itself, so that when Tommy was that way he could hear it
respond if he shook the box, as acquaintances give each other the time
of day in passing. Thus at comparatively small outlay did he spread his
benevolence over weeks and feel a glow therefrom, until the glow went,
when he and Shovel recaptured the penny with a thread and a bent pin.
This treasure he sadly presented to the girl, and she accepted it with
glee, putting it on her finger, as if it were a ring, but instead of saying
that she would go now she asked him, coolly,
"Oo know tories?"
"Stories!" he exclaimed, "I'll--I'll tell you about Thrums," and was
about to do it for love, but stopped in time. "This ain't a good stair for
stories," he said, cunningly. "I can't not tell stories on this stair, but I--I
know a good stair for stories."
The ninny of a girl was completely hoodwinked; and see, there they go,
each with a hand in the muff, the one leering, oh, so triumphantly; the
other trusting and gleeful. There was an exuberance of vitality about
her as if she lived too quickly in her gladness, which you may
remember in some child who visited the earth for but a little while.
How superbly Tommy had done it! It had been another keen brain
pitted against his, and at first he was not winning.