Guarding His Goal

by Ralph Henry Barbour

Such was the legend, neatly inscribed on a small white card, that met the gaze of the visitor to Number 22 Whitson. As Number 22 was the last room on the corridor, and as the single light was at the head of the stairway, the legend was none too legible after nightfall, and the boy who had paused in front of it to regain his breath after a hurried ascent of the two steep flights had difficulty in reading it. When he had deciphered it and glanced at the little cardboard box below, in which reposed a tiny scratch-pad and a stubby pencil, he smiled amusedly ere he raised his hand and rapped on the portal.

“Come in!” called a voice from beyond the door, and the visitor turned the knob and entered.

The room was small, with a ceiling that sloped with the roof, and rather shabby. There was an iron cot at one side, and a small steamer trunk peeped out from beneath it. A bureau, grained in imitation of yellow oak, was across the room and bore a few photographs in addition to such purely useful articles as brushes and a comb and a little china box holding studs and sleeve-links. The room contained two chairs, although at first glance one seemed quite sufficient for the available space: an armchair boasting the remains of an upholstered seat and a straight-backed affair whose uncompromising lines were at the moment partly hidden by a suit of blue serge. The one remaining article of furniture was a deal table such as one finds in kitchens. It was a good-sized table and it stood against the wall at the right of the window embrasure and under the gas bracket. From the bracket extended a pipe terminating at a one-burner gas stove which, on a square of zinc, adorned one end of the table. On the stove was a smoothing iron of the sort known to tailors as a goose. A second such implement was being pushed back and forth over an expanse of damp cloth in a little cloud of steam, hissing, but less alarmingly than the other sort of goose, and filling the room with a not unpleasant odor. The iron didn’t stop in its travels to and fro, but its manipulator, a well-set-up boy of fifteen with very blue eyes and red-brown hair, looked around as the visitor entered.

“Hello,” he said. “Sit down, please, and I’ll be through this in a shake.”

“No hurry.” The visitor seated himself gingerly in the dilapidated armchair and draped a pair of gray trousers across his knees. While the boy at the table deftly lifted the dampened cloth and laid it over another part of the coat he was pressing and again pushed the hot iron back and forth, the visitor’s gaze traveled about the little room in mild surprise. There were no pictures on the white walls, nothing in the shape of decoration beyond three gaudily colored posters. Two of them depicted heroic figures in football togs surmounting the word “Yardley” in big blue letters, and the third was an advertisement for an automobile, showing a car of gigantic size, inhabited by a half-dozen lilliputian men and women, perched precariously on the edge of a precipice. The boy holding the gray trousers hoped that the man at the wheel, who seemed to be admiring the view with no thought of danger, had his brakes well set! He hadn’t known that anywhere in Yardley Hall School was there a room so absolutely unattractive and mean as Number 22. To be sure, Whitson was the oldest of all the dormitories and so one naturally wouldn’t look for the modern conveniences found in Merle or Clarke or Dudley, but he had never suspected that Poverty Row, as the top floor of Whitson was factitiously called, held anything so abjectly hideous as the apartment of T. Tucker. Further reflections were cut short by his host, who, returning the iron to the stove and whisking the cloth aside, picked up the coat he had pressed, folded it knowingly and laid it on the foot of the bed. After which, plunging his hands into his trousers pockets, he faced the visitor inquiringly.

“Something you want done?” he asked briskly.

“Yes, if you can do it this evening,” was the reply. “But you look pretty busy. It’s just this pair of trousers, Tucker. I want to wear them away in the morning.”

“All right, I’ll do ’em. Cleaned or just pressed?” Toby Tucker took the garment and examined it with professional interest.