Tom Grogan | Page 5

a great hound baffled in hunt. "I'm Tom Grogan. What
can I do for ye?"
"Not Grogan the stevedore?" Babcock asked in astonishment.
"Yes, Grogan the stevedore. Come! Make it short,--what can I do for
ye?"
"Then this must be my boat. I came down"--
"Ye're not the boss?"--looking him over slowly from his feet up, a
good-natured smile irradiating her face, her eyes beaming, every tooth

glistening. "There's me hand, I'm glad to see ye. I've worked for ye off
and on for four years, and niver laid eyes on ye till this minute. Don't
say a word. I know it. I've kept the concrete gangs back half a day, but I
couldn't help it. I've had four horses down with the 'zooty, and two men
laid up with dip'thery. The Big Gray Cully's drivin' over there--the one
that's a-hoistin'--ain't fit to be out of the stables. If ye weren't behind in
the work, he'd have two blankets on him this minute. But I'm here
meself now, and I'll have her out to-night if I work till daylight. Here,
cap'n, pull yerself together. This is the boss."
Then catching sight of the boy turning a handspring behind the horse,
she called out again:--
"Now, look here, Cully, none of your skylarkin'. There's the dinner
whistle. Unhitch the Big Gray; he's as dry as a bone."
The boy loosened the traces and led the horse to water, and Babcock,
after a word with the Captain, and an encouraging smile to Tom, turned
away. He meant to go to the engineer's office before his return to town,
now that his affairs with Grogan were settled. As he swung back the
door in the board fence, he stumbled over a mere scrap of humanity
carrying a dinner-pail. The mite was peering through the crack and
calling to Cully at the horse-trough. He proved to be a boy of perhaps
seven or eight years of age, but with the face of an old man--pinched,
weary, and scarred all over with suffering and pain. He wore a white
tennis-cap pulled over his eyes, and a short gray jacket that reached to
his waist. Under one arm was a wooden crutch. His left leg was bent at
the knee, and swung clear when he jerked his little body along the
ground. The other, though unhurt, was thin and bony, the yarn stocking
wrinkling over the shrunken calf.
Beside him stood a big billy-goat, harnessed to a two-wheeled cart
made of a soap-box.
As Babcock stepped aside to let the boy pass he heard Cully shouting
in answer to the little cripple's cries. "Cheese it, Patsy. Here's Pete
Lathers comin' down de yard. Look out fer Stumpy. He'll have his dog
on him."

Patsy laid down the pail and crept through the door again, drawing the
crutch after him. The yardmaster passed with a bulldog at his heels, and
touching his hat to the contractor, turned the corner of the coal-shed.
"What is your name?" said Babcock gently. A cripple always appealed
to him, especially a child.
"My name's Patsy, sir," looking straight up into Babcock's eyes, the
goat nibbling at his thin hand.
"And who are you looking for?"
"I come down with mother's dinner, sir. She's here working on the dock.
There she is now."
"I thought ye were niver comin' wid that dinner, darlint," came a
woman's voice. "What kept ye? Stumpy was tired, was he? Well, niver
mind."
The woman lifted the little fellow in her arms, pushed back his cap and
smoothed his hair with her fingers, her whole face beaming with
tenderness.
"Gimme the crutch, darlint, and hold on to me tight, and we'll get under
the shed out of the sun till I see what Jennie's sent me." At this instant
she caught Babcock's eye.
"Oh, it's the boss. Sure, I thought ye'd gone back. Pull the hat off ye,
me boy; it's the boss we're workin' for, the man that's buildin' the wall.
Ye see, sir, when I'm driv' like I am to-day, I can't go home to dinner,
and me Jennie sends me--big--man--Patsy--down"--rounding out each
word in a pompous tone, as she slipped her hand under the boy's chin
and kissed him on the cheek.
After she had propped him between two big spars, she lifted the cover
of the tin pail.
"Pigs' feet, as I'm alive, and hot cabbage, and the coffee a-b'ilin' too!"

she said, turning to the boy and pulling out a tin flask with a screw top,
the whole embedded in the smoking cabbage. "There, we'll be after
puttin' it where Stumpy can't be rubbin' his nose in it"--setting the pail,
as she spoke, on a rough anchor-stone.
Here the goat moved up, rubbing his head in the boy's face, and then
reaching around for the