Yet another bit of talk.
They shambled down the stairs, from the second-rate hall at a late hour that evening—those seven boys; quiet for them, though the play had been exciting, and not remarkably moral “viewed” from the standpoint of a Christian.
“After all,” said Nimble Dick, breaking a silence with speech, as though the subject of which he spoke had been under discussion among them, “after all, it was rather sneaking to bolt and say nothing; I kind of wish we hadn't done it.”
“That's what I told you all along,” said Dirk Colson, with even unusual sullenness, “but you would go and do it, and we was fools enough to follow you.”
“And I'll bet she had oysters or something!” This from Jerry Tompkins; you have probably no idea how hungry he was at that moment.
“They was goin' to do somethin' new to-night; that there Dennis girl told me so when I met her on the street yesterday; something that we would like first rate, she said—a brand-new notion.” This was Stephen Crowley's contribution to the general discomfort.
“Well,” said Nimble Dick, and the sigh with which he spoke the word would have gone to Mrs. Roberts' heart, “I s'pose it's all up now; I shouldn't wonder if we never got another bid; I wouldn't if I was them, I know that; and their old theatre wasn't no great shakes, after all. We've been a pack of fools, and I don't mind owning it.”
Whereupon, having reached the corner, they separated and went glumly to their homes. And this is gratitude! What a pity Mr. McCullum—who had been smiling over his benevolence all the evening—could not have heard them!
The weeks that followed this night, were crowded with trifles on which hung important and far-reaching results. This is a very trite saying, I know. All weeks are crowded with eventful trifles; at least, we in our blindness call them trifles, although we are constantly discovering their importance, and being constantly astonished over them.
Among other things, the seven boys became nine,—having taken to their companionship two choice spirits, apparently worse than themselves, and appeared at the South End Mission with all the bravado that boys of their stamp are apt to put on when they feel somewhat ashamed of themselves. The consequence was that the trials which Mrs. Roberts had to endure from them, though a trifle less apparent to others, were not a whit less distressing than usual.