JONESIE USES HIS INFLUENCE
I
Daniel Webster Jones, Jr., sauntered along the aisle, his trim young body accommodating itself gracefully to the erratic swaying of the day coach. I speak of Daniel Webster Jones, Jr., as being trim, but you are not to picture him as slender. On the contrary, without being fat, he had in his fourteen years and some months of existence managed to cushion his frame with enough flesh to give him a comfortably well-rounded appearance. It seemed probable that later on the cushion would increase in depth and that the term trim would no longer be applicable. In fact, Daniel Webster Jones’s father—you saw his likeness on the cartoons holding his justly celebrated Creamette Biscuits—was quite abundantly upholstered. But at present, what with an easy and graceful carriage and a careful attention to the niceties of attire, Daniel Webster Jones, Jr., presented a most pleasing appearance. Under a straw hat which was absolutely the latest cry in masculine fashions, the boy’s copper-brown hair was brushed sleekly back from a well-shaped forehead. Grayish blue eyes, a nose rather too button-like to be called classical, a cherubic mouth, a nice, firm chin with a dimple in it, all these features set in a round, healthy, rosy-cheeked face combined to make Daniel Webster Jones, Jr., thoroughly attractive. Yet it was, I think, the qualities of mind and character illumining the ingenuous countenance that won folks to him. The gray-blue eyes seemed veritable pools of truthfulness, the button-like nose proclaimed uncompromising integrity, the cherub lips appeared formed for the utterance of pure and beautiful thoughts, and when Daniel Webster Jones, Jr., smiled, one felt oh, so glad that such innocence and candor existed in a deceitful world!
The boy’s progress through the car was neither unnoticed nor unheralded. Small and admiring juniors looked appealingly upward and sought recognition with a wistful “How d’ye do, Jones,” while upper-class fellows, rousing from the lethargy induced by a two-hour journey on a hot September afternoon, observed his advent with something of the same relief with which a traveler on the desert might catch sight of an oasis and hailed him hopefully with a “Hi, Jonesie!” But Daniel Webster Jones, Jr., merely nodded with just the correct amount of superciliousness to the juniors—one had to keep the kids in their place—and returned the greetings of the others with preoccupied gravity. Oddly enough this had the effect of causing smirks and winks and nudges amongst the older fellows and one felt glad that Daniel Webster Jones, Jr., was unconscious of the levity. One felt certain that it would have wounded him.
The car was filled almost to its capacity, yet here and there a seat held but one occupant. At such a seat, near the front of the coach, Jonesie—for after all why should we accord him the dignity of his full title when no one else did?—Jonesie, then, paused indecisively and caught the shy upward glance of the seat’s only occupant, a boy of perhaps thirteen years of age.