THE UNRIVALED SCORCH
“Say! ain’t Old Gudgeon a good one?” murmured the red-headed boy, as he followed Nancy to the gate.
She did not answer. That lump had come back into her throat and she was industriously swallowing it. It seemed to her just then as though it would never be possible for her to eat luncheon at Arrandale’s,—wherever that might be.
Scorch caught up his cap and hustled her out of the gate, and out of the main office door, and whistled shrilly to an elevator that was just shooting down.
“Come on, Nancy!” he said, with immense patronage. “We’ll have a swell dinner and it takes time to do it. When does your train get away?”
She managed to tell him.
“Golly! we are all right, then. We can talk over the eats, an’ you can tell me your troubles and I’ll relate the story of my life to you—eh?”
The girl tried to smile at him, for she realized that his chatter was kept up partly for the purpose of covering her disappointment. But Nancy was no baby-girl; by the time the elevator reached the lower floor of the building she had winked back her tears and the ache had gone out of her throat.
“This way, Nancy,” said her conductor, cheerfully rushing her through the revolving door to the sidewalk. “There’s Arrandale’s over yonder. If I’d known I was going to eat at such a swell place to-day I’d have worn my glad rags—good duds, you know.”
“You—you look all right,” returned Nancy, smiling, for the red-headed boy did indeed have a neat appearance. Somebody took pains to make him spruce when he started for the office in the morning. “I guess you’ve got some folks?” she questioned.
“Sure. My mother scrubs out the offices. That’s how I come by my job. My big sister keeps house for us, an’ the kids are in school. Yes! there’s folks enough belonging to me. But my father is dead.”
“I—I don’t know anything about my father or mother—or any of my folks.”
“No! Don’t old Gordon know?”
“He says not.”
“And he’s your guardeen?”
Nancy was silent for a moment. But she was a perfectly honest girl and she knew she was allowing Scorch to gain a wrong impression.
“He—he isn’t my guardian,” she blurted out as they crossed the street.
“Hey? I thought you said he was!”
“And I thought so, then. This is the first time I ever saw him. He says he is not my guardian and that he doesn’t know anything about me. He only has money sent to him to spend for me.”
“You don’t mean it?” cried Scorch, his eyes twinkling. “That’s like a story; ain’t it? You’re the mysterious heiress who doesn’t know who she is. That’s great!”
“Do you think so?” demanded Nancy, rather warmly. “Well, let me tell you it isn’t nice at all.”
“Why not?” demanded the romance-loving youth.
“Why.... The girls at school think it’s so odd. I’m just Miss Nobody from Nowhere. And they’ve all got folks.”
“Gee!” observed Scorch, getting a new idea of the situation.
They reached the door of the fashionable restaurant and Scorch led the way in with characteristic sang froid. He would have approached a king or an emperor with perfect ease. Nothing ever “feazed” him, as he was wont to boast.
The head-waiter looked a little askance at the red-headed office boy; but Nancy, in her neat outfit, reassured him, and he led them to a table and drew out the chair for the girl.
“Bring us a couple of time-tables so we can pick our eats,” ordered Scorch.
“Hush!” commanded Nancy, blushing a little. “Other people will hear you.”
“That’s what I talk for,” declared the unabashed boy.
“Well, now you’re going to be a real nice boy while you’re with me; aren’t you? They might take you for my brother, and I wouldn’t want to be ashamed of your manners.”
“That’s a hot one!” observed Scorch, admiringly. “You’re not so slow after all, Nancy.”
“Miss Nancy, please,” corrected the girl, smiling at him.
“Say! but you are particular.”
“I believe you know how to conduct yourself much better than you appear,” said the girl, looking at him seriously.
“Discovered!” mocked the red-haired one, grinning. “But it’s hard work to be proper.”
“Why?”
“Because of my hair.”
“Yep.”
“I don’t see what—what light-colored hair has to do with your manners,” confessed Nancy.
“‘Light-colored’—I like that!” exclaimed Scorch. “Trying to let me down easy—eh?”
“We-ell——”
“It’s red. Say! nobody’s ever let me forget it since I could creep,” declared the boy. “I useter lick all the boys I could at Number Six school, an’ those that I couldn’t lick I throwed stones at. For calling my hair out o’ name, I mean.”
“I suppose being red-headed is hard,” commented Nancy.
“Say! bein’ an heiress without no folks ain’t in it with being a carrot-top,” said Scorch, grinning.
“Don’t you think so?”
“The folks in the office began getting fresh right away,” went on the boy, earnestly. “Some of the girls that run the typewriters was as bad as the Willy-boys, too. They’d come up and try warming their hands over my head, an’ all those back-number jokes.
“So I had ter give ’em better than they sent, or they’d have put it all over me. Men that come in to see the boss, or Old Gordon, or the others, see my fiery top-knot, and they try to crack jokes on me. So I have to crack a few.
“So that’s why I act so fresh. Natcherly I’m as tame as though I wore a velvet jacket and curls; it’s just havin’ to defend myself, that’s made me what I am,” declared Scorch, shaking his head, mournfully, as he prepared to eat his soup with much gusto.
“Oh, don’t!” begged Nancy. “Don’t make so much noise.”
“That’s so! I was thinkin’ I was at Joe’s, where I us’lly feeds,” and the boy proceeded to use his spoon with a proper regard for the niceties of the table.
“There! I knew very well you knew how,” said Nancy.
“But it hurts!” exclaimed Scorch, with a wicked grin.
“And that is never your real name?” asked Nancy, after a moment.
“‘Scorch’?”
“Yes. It refers to your hair, I suppose.”
“You’re a clairvoyant, lady,” said the boy. “I gotter real, sure-’nuff name. But I forget it. My mother don’t even remember it any more. But ‘Scorch’ don’t just mean my color. It’s because I’m some scorcher,” proceeded the boy, with pride.
“There weren’t any kids my size or age could outrun me at school—nix! and I won a medal when I worked for the District Telegraph Company. I was the one fast kid that ever rushed flimsies.”
“What’s that?” demanded Nancy, in wonder.
“Carried telegrams. But I couldn’t stop there. The other kids pounded the life pretty near out of me,” he said, with perfect seriousness.
“Oh! why were they so mean?”
“’Cause I set ’em all a pace that they couldn’t keep up with. So they fired me out of the union, and then the boss fired me because I was always all marred up from fighting the other kids. So I come to work at that law shop.”
Under advice from the knowing Scorch, Nancy had ordered the very nicest little luncheon she had ever eaten. And the boy gave evidence of enjoying it even more than she did.
Indeed, her appetite was soon satisfied; but Scorch kept her answering questions about herself; and soon she found that she was being quite as confidential with this red-headed office boy as she ever had been with anybody in her life.
“Say! did it ever strike you that Old Gordon might be stringing you?” demanded Scorch.
His slang puzzled the girl not a little; but the red-headed one explained:
“Suppose he did know all about you and your folks—only he didn’t want to tell?”
“But why?”
“Oh, ain’t you green?” demanded Scorch. “Don’t you see he might be making money out of you? Mebbe there’s a pile of money, and he’s using only a little for you and putting the rest of it in his pocket?”
“Oh, I don’t believe Mr. Gordon would do such an awful thing,” gasped Nancy, shaking her head vigorously.
“Well, they do it to heiresses in stories,” returned Scorch, doggedly. “And worse.”
“But I don’t believe it.”
“That’s all right—that’s all right,” said the boy. “You’re not supposed to believe it. You’re the heroine; they never believe anything but what’s all nice and proper,” urged Scorch. “You lemme alone. I’m goin’ to watch Gordon. If he’s up to something foxy, I’ll find it out. Then I’ll write to you. Say! where’s this jail they’re goin’ to put you in?”
“It’s no jail,” laughed Nancy, immensely amused, after all, by this romantic and slangy youth. “It’s a beautiful school. It’s Pinewood Hall. It’s at Clintondale, on Clinton River. And it’s very select.”
“It’s what?”
“Select. It costs a lot of money to go there. The girls are very nice.”
“All right. You can get a letter, just the same; can’t you?”
“Why—I suppose so. I—I never did receive a letter—not one.”
“All right. You’ll get one from me,” promised Scorch, with assurance. “If I find out anything about Old Gordon that looks like we was on his trail, I’ll let you know.”
“That’s very nice of you,” replied Nancy, demurely, but quite amused. “Now, have you finished, Scorch?”
“Full up,” declared the youngster. “The gangplank’s ashore and we’re ready to sail—if we ain’t overloaded,” and he got up from his chair with apparent difficulty.
Nancy had paid the bill and tipped the waiter. She had a good bit of the ten dollars left to slip back in her pocketbook; but she reserved a crisp dollar-bill where it would be handy.
They had plenty of time to walk to the station, and Nancy was glad to do this. Besides, Scorch declared he needed the exercise.
The red-headed boy was a mixture of good-heartedness and mischievousness that both delighted Nancy and horrified her. He was saucy to policemen, truckmen, and anybody who undertook to treat him carelessly on the street. But he aided his charge very carefully over all the crossings, and once ran back into the middle of the street and held up traffic to pick up an old woman’s parcel.
They came to the station, got Nancy’s bag, and Scorch insisted upon taking her to the very step of the car. When she shook hands with him Nancy had the banknote ready and she left it in his hand.
Before she got up the steps, however, he ran back, pushed aside the brakeman, and reached her.
“Say! you can’t do that,” he gasped, his face as red as his hair.
“Do what?” demanded the girl.
“You can’t tip me. Say! I ain’t the waiter—nor the janitor of the flat. I’m the hero—and the heroine never tips the hero—nix on that!”
The next moment he had thrust the dollar-bill into her hand, jumped down to the platform, and scuttled through the crowd, leaving Nancy with the feeling that she had offended a friend.