“Yes, ma'am,” replied Ellen. The look of the boy in her face had bewildered and confused her, without her knowing the why of it. It was as if she had spelled a word in her reading-book whose meaning she could not grasp.
“I don't care who he is,” said Mrs. Zelotes, “he 'ain't no business racin' out of gates that way, and his folks hadn't ought to let a boy no older than that out alone of nights.”
They kept on, and the boy apparently left them far behind in his career of youthful exuberance, until they came to the factories. Andrew looked up at the windows of Lloyd's, dark except for a faint glimmer in a basement window from the lamp of the solitary watchman, and drew a heavy sigh.
“It ain't as bad for you as it is for some,” his mother said, sharply, and then she jumped aside, catching her son's arm as the boy sprang out of a covering shadow under the wall of Lloyd's and dashed before them with another wild whoop and another glance of defiant bashfulness at Ellen.
“My land! it's that boy again,” cried Mrs. Zelotes. “Here, you boy!—boy! What's your name?”
“His name is Granville Joy,” Ellen replied, unexpectedly.
“Why, how did you know, child?” her grandmother asked. “Seems to me he's got a highfalutin' name enough. Here you, Granville—if that's your name—don't you know any better than to—” But the boy was gone, his sled creaking on the hard snow at his heels, and a faint whoop sounded from the distance.
“I guess if I had the bringin' up of that boy there wouldn't be such doin's,” said Mrs. Zelotes, severely. “His mother's a pretty woman, but I don't believe she's got much force. She wouldn't have given him such a name if she had.”
“She named him after the town she came from,” said Fanny. “She told me once. She's a real smart woman, and she makes that boy stand around.”
“She must; it looks as if he was standin' round pretty lively jest now,” said Mrs. Zelotes. “Namin' of a boy after a town! They'd better wait and name a town after the boy if he amounts to anything.”