Doodles was dumb with anguish. He stared mistily. His bliss, which a moment before had seemed so secure, had vanished like a bubble. He clinched his little fists, and sat waiting.
“I go,” Christarchus repeated dully, gazing at Doodles with a yearning that would have broken one’s heart, if anybody had been there to see. But they were alone, and when the Greek boy became sure of the fact he crossed over and took his comrade’s cold little hand in his.
“I—love—ever!” came brokenly from his quivering lips.
Doodles roused at last, and clung to him, still silent and tearless.
The voice of the father was in the hall, and the boy ran to answer. Later he returned with his small suit case.
Doodles, his grieving brown eyes full of unspeakable things, let go a few words that tried to be brave, whereupon Christarchus caught up his violin and began a sad, sweet melody, ending with a glorious strain of triumph—the good-bye that he could not put into an unfamiliar tongue. It stayed with Doodles, to comfort him, long after the player was gone.
To cap this sorrow came a new trouble. The restaurant man disappeared, leaving little behind him but debts and an unsavory reputation. The bulk of Mrs. Stickney’s well-earned wages would never be paid, and the mother was too disheartened even to sing. Caruso shared the family gloom, and moped on his perch. Some days he would eat scarcely anything.
“I’m afraid he misses the violin,” Doodles confided to his brother; but the boy wondered, secretly, if he had put too much carrot in his food, and went on a hunt for spiders, which the Scotchman had said were good for the appetite.
It was at this point of time that Blue brought home a beautiful red sweet apple, given him by Joseph Sitnitsky for the “little brother with the not-taking sickness, who couldn’t to never walk.”
Doodles clasped the gift smilingly. “What did make him send it?” he questioned. “How did he know there was any me? I never saw him.”