THE POOR LITTLE RICH BOY.
(Dialogue for two boys.)
Harry. (Enters room, tossing his hat on table where Roy sits studying.) “I tell you, Roy, I’m sorry for Harold Belmont!”
Roy. “Sorry for Harold Belmont! Why, I’d like to know? His father is the richest man in town. You know father has been working for him ever since we were born.”
Harry. “Yes, I know; but Harold don’t have half the nice times we do.”
Roy. “Well, I like that. Don’t he wear nicer clothes every day than we ever had for Sunday?”
Harry. “Yes, but they’re so nice his mother won’t let him roll on the grass, or go wading in the pond, or anything.”
Roy. “Well, did you ever notice what nice lemon pie and frosted cake he has in his lunch basket?”
Harry. “Yes, but he often wants to trade lunches with me.”
Roy. “But, Harry, he’s got a bicycle!”
Harry. “He told me yesterday that he would rather have a dog like our Rover that he could drive to a little wagon like ours.”
Roy. “But only think, Harry, of the hundreds and hundreds of books in his father’s library that he can read as much as he pleases! Why, if I had them, I’d be the happiest boy in the State. I wouldn’t waste a minute. I know just what books I’d read first—Dickens’ Child’s History of England, and—”
Harry. “O yes, Roy, but then he doesn’t care for books, like you, nor to be a carpenter, as I mean to be. He wants to be a farmer, and he says his father don’t mean to let him—wants Harold to be a banker, like himself; but those are not the things I was thinking of when I said I was sorry for him.”
Roy. “What was it?”
Harry. “Why, you know I made a little bird-house out of that cracker-box mother gave me; just a common little bird-house, without any paint or nice things about it, and set it up on a pole in the garden—”
Roy. “Yes, I know, and two families of blue-birds are living in it. What else?”
Harry. “Well, Harold begged his father to let him have a bird-house, and so Mr. Belmont got a man to make one—oh, a little beauty!—just like a little Swiss chalet, with porches and gables, and all painted so nicely, white with green trimmings and a dark brown roof, and the pole is striped red, white and blue, and they put it close to the big maple tree on the lawn. Oh, it was so nice I was almost ashamed of my poor little unpainted house—only the birds were building in it then, and it made me glad to see them so busy and happy. Harold was happy, too. He sat by the window for hours, watching for the birds to come to his house. But, Roy, none ever came! They were afraid of that beautiful house. I guess they thought it was a trap. Harold don’t sit by the window to watch it any more; that’s why I’m sorry for him.”
Roy. “Well, that is too bad; but I don’t know that we can help him. You couldn’t give him your little house, because it isn’t fine enough for his father’s lawn; besides, the blue-birds might object to moving.”
Harry. “Of course; but, Roy, don’t you believe he’d like to come over here and watch our birds feed their little ones? I never get tired of seeing them.”
Roy. “He might. Let’s go and ask him.”
(Both boys take their hats and pass out.)
Mrs. Adrian Kraal.