His first glimpse of the spot where he had last seen his brother showed him that it was vacant. The sidewalk was swarming with boys and girls—a glance told him that they were not of the immediate neighborhood. Had anything—oh! had anything happened? There was the wheel chair,—but Doodles was not in it! Who—? It was Sim Sweeney! And Doodles, big-eyed with terror, was sitting on the lowest step of the market!
Blue’s feet barely touched the ground. Some of the children saw him coming, and fled. Sim Sweeney, trying to wheel through the screaming troop that blocked his way, knew naught of the flying figure with the blazing eyes until he was suddenly shoved from his seat by one frantic thrust. But before Blue could obtain possession of the chair Sim’s cronies were upon him, and the fiercest fight followed that The Flatiron had ever seen.
Blue struck out boldly, here, there, on every side; but five against one makes too ill balanced a combat, and the victim’s part became still more hazardous by Mame Sweeney’s joining the assault. Blue would not knowingly hit a girl, and when Sim’s sister added her fiery little fists to those of the others, the boy was in a desperate strait.
“A—a—h!” It was a long-drawn battle cry, right in the ears of the attacking party. But the few that heard gave it small notice. In any event its source would have brought it only derision. Joseph Sitnitsky had never been known to lift an arm against anybody, and not a boy among them but would have scorned the question of being worsted by him in a fight—not a boy except Blue, and he was too much engaged in returning blows with interest even to know that Joseph was near.
For weeks afterward it was marveled over,—how “that little tiger of a Jew,” employing all the arts of hand-to-hand conflict, which had been so rigidly taught him, felled those five bullies to the ground and chased Sim’s sister and Sim himself as far as the corner, before stopping to see if his friend were injured or to comfort Doodles.
Blue declared that he was able to help carry his brother upstairs, where Granny O’Donnell promptly mingled sympathy and lamentations with soap and water and healing salve. By the time Mrs. Stickney arrived, things were plodding along about as usual. Even Doodles, in admiration of his brother’s pluck and Joseph’s prowess, forgot his fright and was eager to talk of what ever afterwards was referred to as The Flatiron fight.
CHAPTER XX
DOODLES AND BLUE, DETECTIVES
“What a sweet, sweet singer!”
Doodles turned quickly from Caruso, to see a child on the threshold. He had not heard a footfall.