Jack Henderson on tipping

by Benj. F. Cobb

I wasn’t very sure what she meant, but I couldn’t think of any experience just then that I hadn’t had, so I trailed along after her as she started for the door.

“Sorry you have to go, Jack,” Ed said; “but we’ll see you again.”

It wasn’t such a bad trip. The young lady was quite vivacious. She told me that she was studying music and put in her Sunday afternoons playing in a dago mission Sunday School. Then I began to tumble. I sure hadn’t had any experience of that kind.

“There’s the dearest class of little boys,” she told me. “Italians and Greeks, mostly, and so interesting. If my time wasn’t so taken up with the music I’d like to take them myself, but I can’t do both, of course. It was so sweet of you to volunteer, Mr. Henderson.”

I looked at her, but her face was full of gratitude and friendliness, and I couldn’t believe she was really trying to work me. But I didn’t remember volunteering to teach a class of dirty little Ginnies.

“Ed comes down here frequently and helps,” she said. “He finds the work so interesting. And it is such good experience, don’t you think so, Mr. Henderson? Oh, here we are.”

I felt weak. I looked up and down the street, but couldn’t get out any good reason for deserting the lady just at that point. Before I had decided on anything I found myself in a big room full of chairs in rows with kids placed around in bunches waiting for the show to begin.

“We’re a little late,” Miss Hargreaves said, hastily; “but Miss Smith will take care of you. Miss Smith, this is Mr. Henderson. He wants to teach the class we were speaking of,” and she was chasing down the aisle to the organ before I could get my breath.

The other young lady was very cordial. She acted as though I was all she had been waiting for. She asked me if I had been in mission work long, and what I thought of the question of the evangelization of the slums of the cities, and if I had a quarterly. I answered “No” to the last question—she didn’t give me time to answer the others—and she chased off and brought me a paper book which, she said, had the lesson in it.

I looked around while she was off for the book. There was just one door to the room and a fat woman was standing there, arguing with a little boy who wanted to get out. There didn’t seem to be much doing in that quarter, so I braced up and prepared to take my medicine like a man.