He didn’t wait for the boy to take the cue and act on it, but he gave the box a kick with his square-toed boot that sent it to the middle of the street, and then he led the boy to a clothing shop where he had him fitted out with everything a fellow that size ought to have.
He saw possibilities in this youngster, and he figured that it would be a wise move to have some one as close to him as his shirt, and upon whom, in time of trouble, he could depend with absolute certainty.
A good bed, good food three times a day and money in the pocket serves often to make a marvelous transformation, and it was so in this case, and the erstwhile bootblack forgot in a moment that he had ever shined shoes or performed any menial services for any human being. He was swept along on the tide of prosperity with his patron and he scoffed at poor things and poor people, as might have been expected. He was aggressive to everyone except his source of income, whom he followed and fawned upon like a hound.
The work he did was criminal, but he did it cheerfully, even though a hundred could have sent him up the river with a word. His morals were as flat as a desert, and he grew into a selfish, egotistical, arrogant, blatant man whose friends were friends by force of circumstances, and not by reasons of any virtues that he possessed, or of any real liking they had for him.
In the course of time the big man with the neck of a gladiator died, and was buried in a manner fitting his life. A ton of flowers followed him to the six-foot hole which had been provided for him; a few bottles of wine were drunk by his cronies to drown their grief and to toast his successful debut into that new and unknown world to which he had gone, and that was all.
The bootblack, who had taken himself seriously, and was fond of calling himself a gentleman on all possible occasions, for no other reason apparently than that he wore the best clothes that money could buy, took possession of his patron’s effects, rifled his safe, his desk, and appropriated to himself everything that was of the slightest value, and then developed into a short card man.
So he sits there to-night, eating lobster and talking to a woman who, between you and me, is worth looking at more than once.
By an old and familiar, as well as extremely simple, process she had taken his name. It was a trifling matter, settled in a moment over a small bottle, and her only speculation was as to whether he could suitably provide for her.
It was a very good investment for him, for she has proven to be a very useful little lady in more ways than one. She knows a lot of real nice boys, and when they get very sporty she tells them about a good game where good fellows may be found. She is the kind of a woman who would make a sport out of a church deacon, consequently she fits very snugly into the life and trade of our friend the shoe-shiner.
When you get to know her passing well she will tell you how she was educated in a convent, which she left to visit a wealthy aunt in Pittsburg. While there she became engaged to marry a rich broker, and so on, and so on, you know, the same old story. The stage figures in it, too, because there is always a fascinating glamor about the other side of the footlights.