“That’s yourn,” she said. “You keep a-hold of that and don’t let those kids git it.” Then on second thought she snatched it away from the child and hung it on a rafter far out of his reach. For a little it tantalized him, then it was forgotten until a memorable morning when the welfare worker appeared with a couple of officers, a patrol wagon and an ambulance. Into the ambulance Moll was hurried, to the children’s amazement. They had failed to distinguish the ravings of fever from the outcries attending the frequent visitation of the black bottle. The dark man had disappeared.
As the welfare worker rounded the reluctant children into the patrol wagon, Snooks ran back and with a long stick knocked down the handbag.
“What’s that?” asked the welfare lady.
“It’s mine,” said Snooks in his hoarse, unchildish voice. “Moll she give it to me and said to keep it because it’s mine.”
The welfare worker scented one of the strange clues that often lie hidden for so long before they appear to clear up a mystery, but the bag, a very shabby, cheap affair, held nothing but a small photograph wrapped up in a piece of newspaper, and on another piece that had evidently been about some small change as the shape of the money still marked the scrap, was the name Lawrence, written over and over as though to try a pen point.
Snooks was put in a home and once more the bag passed out of his possession into the keeping of the authorities who had him in charge. A name was needed, and Snooks was asked to find one for himself, a feat he was incapable of doing. So one of the teachers, remembering the scrap of paper, called him Lawrence and added Petit as the child was so very small.
So Snooks, dirty, unkempt and blankly ignorant, became Lawrence Petit, a ward of the city of Louisville.
Bathed, clipped, and neatly clad, the boy changed almost at once. He seemed possessed by an overpowering ambition. He learned rapidly,—so rapidly that he forged ahead of all his classmates. Lectures on health and strength that bored the other children held him spellbound. He became quick and wiry as a cat, with lean limbs and perfectly trained muscles. As time passed, he heard stories of homes and of mothers and fathers that filled him with sick longing, but finally he accepted his fate and as he grew older made up his mind that he must remain Lawrence Petit, with no people, no home, no age, no past; just a nameless waif in an orphanage.
Two great passions consumed the boy. He was bound to fly; he was bound to succeed in life.
If any of us want a thing badly enough and long enough, we always find that we are given a chance to get it. There was a young teacher in the Home who spent much time with Lawrence and made it possible for him to read everything that was written about airplanes and balloons and all sorts of aircraft. When an aircraft factory was started in Louisville to supply the growing demands for private machines, this teacher secured employment for Lawrence, and soon he was dismissed from the Home as perfectly able to care for himself. With him went the shabby bag; and now for the first time the boy took time to look at its contents. He had had no desire to do so before. He looked long at the scrap with the name Lawrence scrawled over it, and the other scrap around the photograph he read carefully, but evidently it had been torn from the advertising page of a newspaper and had to do with “Help Wanted, Female.”