Harvey nimbly slipped the noose in the bridle rein, the strap dangling free; the horse was quite oblivious, trying to snatch a little sleep between skirmishes.
"Hello there!" Harvey called to the boy, "come here—I want you to run a message."
The boy responded with a slightly quickened pace, and was almost at his side when he suddenly stood still and emitted a dreary howl.
"What's the matter?" Harvey asked, slightly alarmed, the sorrel waking completely and looking around at the newcomer.
"I bit my tongue," the urchin wailed, disgorging his varied grist as he spoke. The dual process had been too complicated for him and he cautiously pasted the gum about a glass alley, storing both away in his breeches pocket. Then he bent his undivided powers upon the apple.
"That'll soon be all right," Harvey assured him—"rub it with your gums," he directed luminously. "Don't you see that horse is loose?—well, I want you to run back and tell Cecil Craig his horse has got untied; don't tell him who said so."
"What'll you give me?" enquired he of the wounded tongue, extending the injured member with telescopic fluency, squinting one eye violently down to survey it. "Is it bleedin'?" he asked tenderly.
"No—'tisn't even cut," Harvey responded curtly, examining it seriously, nevertheless, with the sympathy that belongs to boyhood. "Let it back—you look like a jay-bird."
The other withdrew it reluctantly, the distorted eye slowly recovering its orbit till it rested on Harvey's face. "What'll you give me?" he asked again, making another savage onslaught on the apple.
Harvey fumbled in his pocket, rather dismayed. But his face lightened as his hand came forth. "I'll give you this tooth-brush," he said, holding out a sorely wasted specimen. "I found it on the railroad track—some one dropped it, I guess. Or I'll give you this garter," exposing a gaudy circlet of elastic, fatigued and springless; "I found it after the circus moved away."