The Iron Puddler | Page 7

gravely.
I told her about Miss Foraker.
"Did you work for them?"
"No; everything is free," I said.
Mother told me to take the suit off. I went to the attic, blinking a tear
out of my eyes, and changed into my old rags again. Then mother took
the blue suit, wrapped it up carefully and putting it in my hands told me

to take it back to Miss Foraker.
"You don't understand, James," she said. "But these clothes are not for
people like us. These are to be given to the poor."
I have often smiled as I looked back on it. I'll bet there wasn't a dime in
the house. The patches on my best pants were three deep and if laid
side by side would have covered more territory than the new blue suit.
To take those clothes back was the bitterest sacrifice my heart has ever
known.
A few days later there was a fire sale by one of the merchants, and I got
the job of ringing the auction bell. Late in the afternoon the auctioneer
held up a brown overcoat. "Here is a fine piece of goods, only slightly
damaged," he said. He showed the back of the coat where a hole was
burned in it. "How much am I offered?"
I knew that I would get fifty cents for my day's work, so I bid ten
cents--all that I could spare.
"Sold," said the auctioneer, "for ten cents to the kid who rang the bell
all day."
I took the garment home and told my mother how I had bought it for
cash in open competition with all the world. My mother and my aunt
set to work with shears and needles and built me a suit of clothes out of
the brown overcoat. It took a lot of ingenuity to make the pieces come
out right. The trousers were neither long nor short. They dwindled
down and stopped at my calves, half-way above my ankles. What I
hated most was that the seams were not in the right places. It was a
patchwork, and there were seams down the front of the legs where the
crease ought to be. I didn't want to wear the suit, but mother said it
looked fine on me, and if she said so I knew it must be true. I wore it all
fall and half the winter.
The first time I went to Sunday-school, I met Babe Durgon. He set up
the cry:

"Little boy, little boy,
Does your mother know you're out;
With your breeches put on backward,
And the seams all inside out!"
This was the first time that my spirit had been hurt. His words were a
torment that left a scar upon my very soul. Even to this day when I
awake from some bad dream, it is a dream that I am wearing crazy
breeches and all the world is jeering at me. It has made me tender
toward poor children who have to wear hand-me- downs.
To-day psychologists talk much of the "inferiority complex" which
spurs a man forward to outdo himself. But Babe Durgon and I didn't go
into these matters as we trudged along through the dark on our way to
do battle "over the line." At the foot of the hill, Babe exclaimed:
"What's the use of going any farther? Let's fight here." It was in front of
a new building--a church-school half completed. We took off our coats
and made belts of our suspenders. Then we squared off and the fight
began. Babe rushed me like a wild boar and tried to thrust his deadly
thumb into my eye. I threw up my head and his thumb gashed my lips
and went into my mouth. The impact almost knocked me over, but my
teeth had closed on his thumb and when he jerked back he put me on
my balance again. I clouted him on the jaw and knocked him down. He
landed in the lime box. The school had not yet been plastered, and the
quicklime was in an open pit. I started in after the bully, but stopped to
save my pants from the lime. There was a hose near by, and I turned the
water on Babe in the lime bath. The lime completely covered him. He
was whipped and in fear of his life. Choking and weeping he hollered,
"Nuff." We got him out, too weak to stand, and gently leaned him up in
a corner of the school building. There we left the crushed bully and
returned to town. But before I went I gave him this parting shot:
"Do you know why I licked you, Babe? It wasn't what you said in the
tavern that made me mad. I didn't want