Boy of My Heart

by Marie Connor Leighton

Still, he is my Little Yeogh Wough, whose babyish and boyish weaknesses I have known and loved so well.

As I looked more and more round the room, I got more reminders of his small-boyish and babyish times. Under the bed, with several pairs of handsome boots, there was the wreck of an old, squeaky gramophone, and the yet more interesting wreck of a toy typewriter, with which, at the age of eleven, he printed twelve numbers of a monthly home magazine called "The Vallombrosa Record," all by himself. A dusty golliwog and a Teddy bear are jammed in among the ruins of these things, together with a few feathers from the tail of an old life-size cock which used to stand on the night nursery mantelpiece.

I opened the wardrobe. The first thing that my hand touched was a tape-measure, in the shape of a negro's head, with the tape coming out of the mouth. And how this thing brought back to me the Little Yeogh Wough of six and a half years old!

One fine spring morning, my secretary, Miss Torry, had scurried into my study in our London house with this thing in her hand and her face severe.

"Really, you ought to begin training this boy's moral character," said she, speaking with the freedom of one who, though employed by me, was yet older than I. "You see this tape measure. He bought it for a Christmas present for his grand-mamma because he wanted it himself, and he felt quite sure she would give it back to him as soon as she knew he wanted it; but she didn't, and now he's been up there to Hampstead and wheedled it out of her. He's very selfish, you know, and it ought to be nipped in the bud. And he's extravagant with his selfishness—and so cunning, too! Look at the way he came to you yesterday and asked you for a shilling—at his age!—and went out and bought a miserable little peach for tenpence and brought it to you with a great deal of fuss and hung round while you ate it, so that he got you to give him quite nine-tenths of it, and then told you all the evening that he'd made you a present of a peach. Now this is a tendency that ought to be checked. Canon Bloomfield of St. Margaret's says that——"

"It's all right, Miss Torry. The boy is not really cunning, though he seems so. He has a dear little heart, and, in spite of his tricks, he would give his brown velvet eyes right out of his head for me."

I put down the old negro head tape-measure and took up a dark little overcoat dating from the time when he was seven. I had brought it in here out of an old box, meaning to give it away. It was badly cut, and so he had never worn it much; because, even at seven years old, he had known when a coat had no style, and had hated it. Certainly it used to make him—yes, even him—look almost commonplace.

"Fancy the little wretch having known at seven years old whether a thing made him look commonplace or not!" I thought with a laugh as I moved the unsatisfactory garment aside.

He had known at that early age, too, whether my own clothes were satisfactory or not. He had always taken a vivid, throbbing interest in every new garment I had; yes, and in every new yard of ribbon and in every spray of flowers.