"That is my name. What can I do for you?"
The old lady dropped him a very low, very odd little courtesy ere she answered:
"And I'm the widow Jenkins, and I've come—well, could I possibly see you alone for a bit of a moment? My head is kind of confused like with all this noise and running about; them little boys act as if they was most crazy anyhow, hopping about all over. I didn't know they allowed no playing in these big stores; but then you see I'm from the country, and things is queer all around; but if I only could see you all alone I wouldn't take a mite hardly of your time."
"You may come with me," answered Theodore, not stopping to explain the mystery of the cash boys, and show how very little like play their hopping about was after all. He led the way to a room opening off the private office, and giving the old lady one of the leathern arm-chairs, stood before her, and again inquired kindly:
"Now what can I do for you?"
"Well," began Mrs. Jenkins, her voice trembling with eagerness, "it's about my Tommy. He's the only boy I've got, and I'm a widow, and he lives at the Euclid House—works there, you know, and sleeps there, and all; and he's a good-natured, coaxy boy; he kind of wants to do just as everybody says; and he's promised me time and again that he wouldn't drink a mite of their stuff that they live on there, and he doesn't mean to, but they offer it to him, and the other boys they laugh at him, and kind of lead him along—and the long and short of it is, the habit is coming on him, Mr. Mallery, coming on fast. I've coaxed Tommy, and he means all right, only he don't do it; and I've been down there to Mr. Roberts, and talked to him, and he's just as smooth as glass, and the difference between him an' Tommy is that he don't mean it at all, not a word of it, any of the time. I see it in his eyes, and I've tried to coax Tommy away from there, but he thinks he can't find anything else to do, and they are good to him there, and he's kind of bent on staying, and I've done every blessed thing I could think of, and now I am at my wits' ends."
And the voluble little woman paused long enough to wipe two glistening tears from her withered cheeks, while her listener, roused and sympathetic, asked in earnest tones:
"And what is it you would like to have me do? Tommy is in danger, that is evident. I do not wonder that you are alarmed, and I am ready to help you in any possible way. Have you any plan in view in which you would like my assistance?"
Before Mrs. Jenkins answered she bestowed a look of undisguised admiration on the earnest face before her, as she said:
"They told me you'd do it. Jim said—says he, 'if that man can't help you no man can, and if he can he will. He told my Katie that last night, and I made up my mind to come right straight to you." And then she dashed eagerly into the important part of her subject. "I've laid awake nights, and I've thought and thought, and planned. Now that Mr. Roberts, he's a slippery man, and when you talk to him he says he's under orders, and he does just as he is directed. Now, according to my way of thinking, it ain't no ways likely that Mr. Hastings goes and orders him to feed them boys on rum. But then it flashed on me last night about that Mr. Hastings—why he must be a good kind of a man, he give five hundred dollars to the Orphans' Home only last week."