City and town life -- Fiction; Didactic fiction; Indiana -- Fiction; Orphans -- Fiction
By night the last penny of the second dollar was gone, so Junior
borrowed his fare to his room from Mickey, who was to remain with him
to show him the way back and forth, and to spend an early hour in
search of employment. It was Mickey's first night away from Peaches,
and while he knew she was safe, he felt that when night came she would
miss him. The thought that she might cry for him tormented him to
speech. He pointed out to Junior very clearly that he would have to
mark corners and keep his eyes open because he need not expect that he
could leave her longer than that. Junior agreed with him, for he had
promised Peaches in saying good-bye to keep Mickey only one night.
He had treated himself to candy and unusual fruits until his money was
gone, while by night these and a walk of miles on hot pavement had bred
such an appetite that he felt he had not eaten a full meal in years, so
when Mickey brought out the remains of the food Mrs. Harding had given
him, her son felt insulted. But Mickey figured a day on the basis of
what he had earned, what he had expended, what he must save to be ready
when the great surgeon came, and prepared exactly as he would have done
for himself and Peaches. On reaching the tenement and climbing until
his legs ached, Junior faced stifling heat, but Mickey opened the
window and started a draft by setting the door wide. While they ate
supper, Mickey talked unceasingly, but Junior was sulkily silent. He
tried the fire-escape, but one glance from the rickety affair, hung a
mile above the ground it seemed to him, was enough, so he climbed back
in the window and tossed on the bed.
Junior did his first real thinking that night. He was ravenous before
morning and aghast at what he was offered for breakfast. He was eager
to find work and he knew for what his first day's wage would go. In
justice to his own sense of honour and in justice to Junior, mere
common fairness, such as he would have wanted in like case, for the
first few days Mickey honestly and unceasingly hunted employment. With
Junior at his elbow he suffered one rebuff after another, until it was
clear to him that it was impossible for a country boy unused to the
ways of the city to find or to hold a job at which he could survive,
even with his room provided, while the city swarmed with unemployed
men. Everywhere they found the work they would have liked done by an
Italian, Greek, Swede, German, or Polander who seemed strong as oxen,
oblivious, as no doubt they were, to treatment Junior never had seen
accorded a balky mule, and able to live on a chunk of black bread, a
bit of cheese, and a few cents' worth of stale beer. When Mickey had
truly convinced himself of what he had believed, with a free conscience
he then began allowing Junior to find out for himself exactly what he
was facing. By that time Junior had lost himself on the way to Mickey's
rooms, spent a night wandering the streets, and breakfastless was
waiting before the Iriquois.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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