He did not raise his voice, speaking quietly, but his hands were nervous, and his eyes reminded me of Svengali—fascinating, but dangerous. My impression was that I had seen safer men locked in darkened cells and allowed only wooden spoons with which to eat.
“Has the charity association decided to help you?” I asked.
“I fear not,” he replied. “They wish me to tell them my father’s address in Germany, as they inform me that they always make thorough investigations. Several times they asked me my home address, but I turned them from the point, as I have no intention of adding my burdens to the burdens my father and mother already have.... Does it seem quite generous of your social workers to be so insistent?... But, pardon me, have you not a saying that ‘Beggars must not be choosers?’”
I did not reply to his question, as I was thinking what my Reception Committee—made up of the boys of the Colony—would say to me if I invited this much-bewhiskered individual to join our Family. For the instant I forgot the German’s troubles in the thought of the troubles which I was about to take upon myself. I smiled at my approaching embarrassment. “It is all very well,” the boys had cautioned me, “to hold us responsible for the newly-arrived members, to make certain that no criminal nor fraud obtains admission to the Family, but you might be a little more discriminating in your selections, could you not?”
The German was quick to avail himself of my offer to join the Colony; he would go to Hoboken and get his luggage and join me as soon as possible. His luggage—he met me an hour later—consisted of a wooden box too small to be called a trunk, too large to be called a valise.
As we approached the Colony House we passed several of the boys who had evidently seen us at a distance, for they appeared deeply interested in the setting sun, their faces turned from us. Finally one fellow who, like a good Pullman porter, can laugh at you without changing his facial expression, only if you watch closely you may note that the muscles at the back of the neck dance in uncontrolled merriment—came forward and said to us: “A beautiful sunset.”
He should have been reprimanded for his impudence, but I simply asked, “Where?”
“In the west,” he explained. Then the boys turned and laughed without restraint.
“An ordinary sunset and a most ordinary joke,” I said, rather icily. But they continued to laugh, first looking at my companion and then at me.