“You’ll bring him home?”
“Sure!”
“All right! I don’t mind being alone—much. I’d rather you’d go get Caruso. I feel better. Granny needn’t come.”
“Guess I’ll ask her,” Blue insisted, and bade his brother a cheery good-bye. Yet as he ran down the stairs his face darkened and he shut his lips tight. He was thinking of his errand round the corner.
“Ye don’t say!” exclaimed the old Irishwoman, when the boy told her briefly of the robbery and Doodles’s consequent illness. “Seem’s if I’d ’a’ heerd her—bold little sarpint!—go’n’ right by me dure with that a-angil bur-rd! Iv coorse, I’ll sthay with th’ blissid child!”
Dear Granny O’Donnell! From Christmas Day to Christmas Day she was at her neighbors’ disposal with her capable hands, her quick brain, and her rheumatic old legs. Whether it was mumps or pneumonia, an ailing kitten or a new baby, a drunken husband or a dying child,—whatever the need, Granny was always ready. Even now, before Blue was well out on the street she was limping up the stairs to Doodles.
Just below The Flatiron stood Joseph Sitnitsky.
“Hello!” hailed Blue. “You’re the man I want.”
Joseph smiled good-naturedly.
“Say,” Blue went on, in a confidential tone, “I’ve got some business on hand that can’t wait, and it’s ’most time for the paper to be out. Would yer mind runnin’ down to the Courant office an’ gittin’ mine? I’ll give yer the money,” drawing a small handful from his pocket.