“All right. Take your seat. I’ll talk with you about it after singing is over. Miss Leonard, may I keep this boy here for a moment after the others are gone?”
Miss Leonard bowed a smiling assent. She was very proud to think that one of her boys was to be honored.
“Now, boys,” she returned to her class again. “Let’s try our song once more.”
Teddy Burke finished the rest of the singing period in a delightful daze. Once he gave his hand a wicked little pinch to see if he were really awake. He pinched himself hard enough to leave an angry red spot, so he ruefully concluded that he was not dreaming. Every now and then he glanced shyly at Harry, who beamed at him in a way that left no doubt in Teddy’s mind of Harry’s pleasure in his good fortune.
Harry was unselfishly glad that his friend was to have the longed-for chance to sing, particularly so since he had heard the boy’s sweet voice. He waited anxiously about for a moment after school was over, thinking perhaps Miss Verne would take time merely to make an appointment with his chum after the store closed.
“Don’t loiter here, Harry,” reproved Miss Leonard rather coldly. Although the boy was the soul of good behavior in school, she did not trust him. The growing number of demerits on his card influenced her against him, and instead of inquiring into matters, she placed a secret ban of disapproval upon him and privately characterized him as one of those boys who were well-behaved when watched, and then only. Usually clever in her reading of boy character, she was wholly in error as far as Harry was concerned, an error which time alone could rectify.
Harry glanced wistfully toward the gymnasium, then he went sadly downstairs. Miss Leonard did not like him. She did not trust him. She believed the story of his report card. She would never know that he had not deserved all those demerits, for he could never tell her. How beautifully everything was going for Teddy. He wondered what would have happened to Teddy, had their positions been reversed. Suppose Teddy had been placed at the exchange desk, while he, Harry, had taken Teddy’s place in the house furnishings. Teddy was such a droll little boy. Perhaps Mr. Barton would have liked him. Then he remembered Miss Welch had said that Mr. Barton had never been kind to any of the various boys who had been stationed at the exchange desk. Harry gave a little sigh, then involuntarily straightened his shoulders. He was better fitted to bear harsh treatment than his chum. Teddy would have flared at the first cross word on the part of the crabbed aisle manager. He would have rebelled, defied Mr. Barton, delivered a most uncomplimentary opinion of him to his face, and then he would have walked out of the store without waiting to be discharged. That was precisely what Teddy would have done.
“I’m glad Teddy’s in a nice department and glad folks like him,” was Harry’s honest reflection, as he walked down one of the aisles of the book department to the exchange desk. “I suppose ‘what is to be, will be.’ That’s what Mother always says. Maybe there’s a better day ahead for me, too. Only I guess it’s so far ahead I can’t see it.”
But while he peered hopefully into the veiled future, that “better day” was not far distant, although he was destined to pass through one more ordeal before it dawned.