The sun hung on the sharp point of Old Dog-Tooth like a portent, before he woke the boy.
Ches was all amazement for a second; then he gave a glad cry.
“Gee! Yer still here, ain’t yer? No pipe in dis.” He looked all around him. “Say! Dis is a reg’lar teeayter uf er place, ain’t it?” he remarked. “Dis is der scene where der villun almost gits der gent wid der sword, if der stage mannecher didn’t send sumun ter help ’im out.”
Jim laughed at the sophisticated infant. “You don’t believe in the theater much, then, Ches?”
“Aggh!” replied Ches. “If it ain’t seven it’s ’leven on der stage—but it’s mostly craps in der street.”
“Well, son, there are such points on the dice,” admitted Jim. “But let’s have something to eat and we’ll feel better.”
Ches rustled around after sticks in his funny, angularly active style, singing a song the while from the gladness of his heart. It was a merry song, about mother slowly going down the hectic path of phthisis pulmonalis, and sister, who has—one is led to believe—taken to small bottles, small hours and undesirable companions, refusing to come home and lift the mortgage which is shortly to be foreclosed—all in the narrow confines of twenty-five verses.
Jim listened to the inspiriting ditty in astonishment.
| “‘Bird of the wilderness, blithesome and cumberless, Sweet be thy matin o’er moorland and lea!’” |
he quoted. “For Heaven’s sake, child,” he continued, in some irritation, “where did you learn that echo of the morgue?”