VII
A TRIP TO THE CITY
“Here we are,” said Mr. Polk, as the train thundered into the station at Louisville. The ride of four hours had been a continued kaleidoscopic delight. Steve could not understand how it was that trees and houses went racing by the car windows and Mr. Polk had rare enjoyment in the boy’s unsophisticated inquiry and comment.
Bringing this boy into the city was like giving sudden sight to a child who had lived its life in blindness. With keenest pleasure, Mr. Polk took him into a brilliantly lighted restaurant for supper and then afterwards up town by trolley into a large furnishing establishment, for it was Saturday night and the stores were open. There he fitted the little fellow out from top to toe according to his liking, the outfit including a shining German silver watch! The two attracted attention everywhere, the boy’s face a study in its swiftly changing expression and the man full of eager interest which he could not curb.
When Steve was all dressed and stood before a mirror, Mr. Polk exclaimed:
“Now, that is something like!” And the boy turning from the transformed vision of himself, lifted a quivering face to his benefactor.
There was a delicately sensitive side to the nature of this boy of the woods. To him this experience was not simply getting new, fine clothes, but his old familiar self seemed to go with the old clothes, and like the chrysalis emerging into the butterfly, he could not pass into the new life, which the new type of clothes represented, without having his joy touched with the pain of travail.
With the tenderness of a woman Mr. Polk put his arm about the little fellow in quick contrition, knowing that it had been too much for this habitant of the quiet woods, and said in a most matter-of-fact way: “Now, son, for home and bed,” and in a few minutes more the boy was snugly tucked in bed in Mr. Polk’s comfortable bachelor quarters, and the next morning when he woke he was a new boy inwardly as well as outwardly.
He was ready for new “thrills” and they came. After a very astonishing breakfast he went with Mr. Polk to church. The beautiful building and wonderfully dressed people held his wide-eyed interest, but when the deep-toned organ poured forth its solemn melody, big tears dropped down the boy’s face and Mr. Polk drew him within a protecting arm. It was 80 like touching the quivering chords of a little bared soul with new, strange harmonies, and the sensitive heart of the man understood intuitively the boy’s mingled joy and pain.