William Jordan, Junior

by J. C. Snaith

However, upon the following morning, during the luncheon hour, this drastic opinion underwent a modification as serious as it was unexpected. It occurred in the following manner. Of late the boy had refrained from going forth to seek his luncheon in public places, being content with a few pieces of bread-and-butter which he brought from home in his pocket, and with a glass of water which he obtained on the premises. From this method of procedure, although it exposed him to the scorn of Mr. Dodson, and others eminent in the world, he derived several advantages. Foremost, and beyond all things, he was spared actual contact with the ever-surging crowd of street-persons, and from the necessity of plucking, as it were, his food from the cannon’s mouth of shops and restaurants, a feat which, if attempted by himself, invariably ended in total failure and annihilation; and if undertaken in the company of Mr. Dodson, as it sometimes was by an act of condescension on the part of that gentleman, was apt to prove expensive. Again, it enabled him to bestow more time on his duties, which seemed to demand so much; while again, so far had he been initiated already into the meaning of “what two and two made”—in the phrase of Mr. Dodson—that he divined that the less he went out to luncheon the more pieces of silver would there be for the service of the little room in the grave hour which he felt that Fate was so inexorably devising. Further, it happened in the days subsequent to his first entrancing insight into what he called “the Book of the Ages,” he occasionally took the courage to carry in his pocket a small volume of the ancient authors, that he might receive sustenance in the thrice-blessed hour between one and two, when he was left to his own devices in the counting-house of Crumpett and Hawker.

It was this habit that so unexpectedly shattered the faith of the eminent worldling in whose charge he still was. It befell that he was immersed in a small black, time-stained, musty-smelling volume, with his hands over his ears, as he sat on his high stool, and his eyes pressed close to the page, when all of a sudden, he received a smart blow on the cheek which made him start with surprise and wince with pain.

“None of that,” said the stern voice of Mr. Dodson, who had crept up behind him, he having returned by a special dispensation on the part of providence, which took the form of a lack of means, some twenty minutes before his usual time. In consequence, the philosophic calm, upon which Mr. Dodson justly prided himself, was a little ruffled. “If Pa sees you there’ll be trouble,” he said, taking his charge by the ear for due admonishment. “Dick Deadeye, The Adventures of Jack Sheppard, and that sort of truck, doesn’t do in the counting-house of Crumpett and Hawker. I am surprised at you, Luney, I really am.”

Each of these sentences was punctuated by a solemn blow on the ear, which made the recipient gasp.

“Why, what the dooce is it?” said Mr. Dodson, as his eye fell on the curious old black volume. “It looks like a Bible for the blind, or a privately printed copy of Magna Charta. Give it to me!”

The boy, oppressed with a dreadful sense of guilt and humiliation that he should be detected in the act of reading in the ancient authors almost on the first occasion he had attempted to do so outside the little room, yielded his treasure with a sinking heart into the ruthless grasp of his mentor.

“I k-k-knew it was w-wrong, wicked,” he gasped, “to b-b-ring the ancient authors into the great world out of doors, but—but they give me such a great s-s-strength in my veins that——”

“What are you burbling about, you lunatic?” said Mr. Dodson truculently. “Stow it; and tell me the name of this very fishy-looking volume. Is it a Russian hymn-book, or a bit of Chinese, or a copy of the last will and testament of Omar Khayyam, or what the dooce is it? I hope there is nothing in it there shouldn’t be, that’s all.”

“It is the Adventures of Odysseus,” said the boy, with the blood springing to his cheeks. Even as he spoke he speculated as to what dire fate would overtake him for having dared to expose his sacred intercourse with heroes to the scorn of the great world out of doors; yet he was fain to marvel also that one such as his mentor should not recognize at a glance the nature of his crime.

“Who’s he?” said his mentor sternly. “Who in the name of thunder is Odys—— Stars above! I never saw such rum-looking stuff in my life. I should say it is a pretty fair imitation of a bad dream.”