"Meantime, Mr. Roberts, hasn't Tom some old clothes that he has outgrown? This fellow is shorter than Tom, I should think. He'll work for his board and clothes, of course, for the present. Can you make it go, Mr. Roberts?"
Mr. Roberts thought he could, and as Mr. Hastings drew on his gloves he remarked to that gentleman aside:
"I've taken a most unaccountable interest in the young scamp. He's a scamp, no mistake about that, and he'll have to be looked after very closely. But then he's sharp, sharp as steel; just the sort to develop into a business man with the right kind of training, such as he will receive here. The way in which he wheedled me into bringing him home with me was a most astonishing proceeding. I shall have to tell you all about it when we are more at leisure. Good-morning, sir."
And Mr. Hastings bowed himself out.
By noon Tode was fairly launched upon his new life, and made such good use of his eyes and ears that in some respects he knew more about the business than did the new errand boy who had been there for a week. For the first time in his life he was going to earn his living.
Mr. Hastings was correct in his opinion. Tode was sharp; yet he was after all, not unlike a piece of soft putty, ready to be molded into almost any shape, ready to take an impression from anything that he chanced to touch. If the people who dined at that great hotel on the Avenue during those following weeks could have known how the chance words which they let drop, and in dropping forgot, were gathered up by that round-eyed boy, how startled they would have been! There was one memory which stood out sharply in Tode's life—it was of his mother's death. The boy had never in his fifteen years of life heard but one prayer, that was his mother's, it was for him: "O Lord, don't let Tode ever drink a drop of rum." He had very vague ideas in regard to prayer, very bewildering notions concerning the Being to whom this prayer was addressed; but he knew what rum was—he had excellent reason to know; and he knew that these words of his mother's had been terribly earnest ones—they had burned themselves into his brain. He remembered his mother as one who had given him what little care and kindness he had ever received. Finally he had a sturdy, positive, emphatic will of his own, which is not a bad thing to have if one takes proper care of it. So without any sort of idea as to the right or wrong of the matter, with perfect indifference as to whether this thing came under either head, he had sturdily resolved that he would never, no never, so long as he lived, drink a drop of rum. In this resolution he had been strengthened by the constant jeers and gibes and offerings of his father not only but of his boon companions.
There are natures which grow stronger by opposition. Tode had one of these; so the very forces which would have met to ruin nine boys out of ten, came and rallied around him to strengthen his purpose. So Tode, having been brought up, or rather having come up, thus far in one of the lowest of low grog-shops, had steadily and defiantly adhered to his determination. It was seven years since his mother's prayer had gone up to God; Tode, only seven at that time, but older by almost a dozen years than are those boys of seven who have been tenderly and carefully reared in happy homes, had taken in the full force of that one oft-repeated sentence and had lived it ever since.
Behold him now, the caterpillar transformed into the butterfly. He had shuffled off the grog-shop, and fluttered into one of the brightest of Cleveland hotels. The bright-winged moth singes itself in the brilliant gaslight sometimes where the caterpillar never comes.
Queer thoughts came into Tode's head with that suit of new clothes with which he presently arrayed himself. Not particularly new, either. Tom Roberts was in college, and they were his cast-off attire, worn before he, too, in his way became a butterfly; and he would not have been seen in them—no, nor have had it enter into the mind of one of his college mates that he ever had been seen in them, for a considerable sum even of spending money.
Different eyes have such different ways of looking at the same thing. Tode will never forget how that suit of clothes looked to his eyes, nor how, when arrayed in them, he stood before his bit of glass, and took a calm, full, deliberate survey of himself. To be sure, Tom being a chunk and Tode being long limbed, notwithstanding Mr. Hastings' supposition to the contrary, pants and jacket sleeves were somewhat lacking in length; moreover there was a patch on each knee, and you have no idea how nice those patches looked to Tode. Why, bless you! he was used to seeing great jagged, unseemly holes where these same neat patches now were. Also he had on a shirt! A real, honest white shirt; and so persistently does one improvement urge upon us the necessity of another in this world, that Tode had already been obliged to doff his shirt once in order to bring his face and hair into something like propriety, that the contrast might not be too sharp.