I
My mother’s savings were exhausted in the spring of 1900. The payments on her pension were delayed. The good woman was almost alone in the world with a seam-ripping, button-bursting, small boy who demanded to be clothed, fed, educated. Rather than submit to the slavery of keeping house for some widowed farmer, she decided to move to Paris also and try to find work in a store.
Thus I ultimately rejoined Nathan.
He did not greet me as effusively as I had expected. His indifference hurt. But I soon made allowance. Nathan was in love. The object of his affections was Bernie Gridley.
“Come over to my house and tell me all about her,” I invited that first noontime.
“After school? I can’t. I work.”
“You work! Where?”
“I peddle papers every night—Telegraphs.”
“You mean you make real money? Gee, that’s swell.”
Nat shut his lips.
“Aw, I don’t get nothin’. Pa makes me do it. He takes it and uses it to help out at home.”
“But you do the work and so the money belongs to you!”
“Yeah! But pa figgers he’s supportin’ me and he had to work when he was a boy—and turn over the money to his father. So he makes me do the same.”
“I’d like to see myself——”
“Aw, you’re talkin’ through your hat! Whatter you know about havin’ a father? Your father died! Hang it all, some guys have all the luck!”