“You can tell me about it when I come home to-night, dear. I haven’t time to listen to you now. I am to meet Mrs. Andrews at the club at seven o’clock and I’ll never get there on time if you bother me. Run downstairs and get your supper. That’s a good boy.”
“All right,” Teddy sighed, and turning on his heel went downstairs to the kitchen. He paused before the kitchen range and stared at it with a scowl. “I knew it wouldn’t work,” he muttered. “Harry’s lucky. I’ll try it again to-morrow. If I keep it up, maybe she’ll listen to me, even if I do bother her.” Then he set to work to carry his lonely supper to the table, and was soon eating it with the appetite of a very hungry little boy, his brief disappointment forgotten.
But though Teddy did not then know it, the seed had fallen on good ground, for Mrs. Burke could not help wondering as she dressed for the concert what had caused her usually non-communicative son to be so ready to talk. A sudden vague regret that she had sent him away swept over her, and as she hurried downstairs to keep her appointment she found time to stop in the dining-room and say, “I’m sorry I have to hurry away, dear. But I wish you’d tell me all about the store to-morrow.” Stooping, she kissed Teddy’s cheek and hurried off to the Mozart Club, leaving a happy little boy to murmur, “Maybe it’s goin’ to work, after all. She certainly is some mother.”
[CHAPTER VII]
TEDDY COMES INTO HIS OWN
Their second day in the store passed much more quickly than the first, for Harry Harding and Teddy Burke. In the first place everything did not seem so new and strange. To Teddy, his realm of kettles and pans looked fairly familiar, and he felt quite as though he had known Mr. Hickson, the red-haired salesman, all his life. Harry, however, was not at ease at the exchange desk. It seemed to him that Mr. Barton perpetually hovered near the desk, ordering everyone about, his heavy, black eyebrows almost meeting in a ferocious scowl. Even Miss Welch, the pretty clerk, could not escape his fault-finding. Above the hum of the busy departments his loud, strident voice was constantly to be heard, and wherever he moved he left behind him a trail of dissatisfaction and muttered rebellion.
Harry had fully determined to obey the crabbed man’s orders so promptly that he should have no room for complaint. All day he was strictly on the alert, and though Mr. Barton spoke sharply to him whenever he demanded his services, he found no room to criticize the clear-eyed, obedient lad.
Harry went to lunch earlier that day and made his way to the lunch room with the feeling that if he kept on as he had done that morning, Mr. Barton would understand that he was trying to do his best. As he entered the long room he glanced quickly about to see if the fat boy of his yesterday’s encounter had arrived. Yes, there he was at the far end of the room, greedily gobbling his dinner, his head bent low over his food. When Harry had secured his own tray of food, he took good care to put the length of the room between them. Though far from being afraid of the disagreeable youth, he had no desire to precipitate another scene. Meanwhile, he kept one eye on the door for Teddy, who was due in the lunch room some minutes later than himself. He intended to go forward and meet his chum with the idea of steering him clear of trouble. To his relief, however, the belligerent fat youth finally rose and shuffled off, disappearing through the door that led to the stairs.
Five minutes later Teddy appeared, and hailing him, Harry pointed to a place at his table which he had reserved for his chum.