FullReads

“The dickens you did! And what are you telling me for?”

He eyed the boy keenly as he put the question.

At this Crow fairly wailed aloud: “‘Caze I ain’t gwine do it no mo’.” And throwing his arms against the door-frame he buried his face in them, and he sobbed as if his little heart would break.

For a moment old Mr. Cary seemed to have lost his voice, and then he said, in a voice quite new to Crow:

“I don’t believe you will, sir–I don’t believe you will.” And in a minute he said, still speaking gently: “Come here, boy.”

Still weeping aloud, Crow obeyed.

“Tut, tut! No crying!” he began. “Be a man–be a man. And if you stick to it, before Christmas comes, we’ll see about those pockets, and you can walk into the new year with your head up. But look sharp! Good-bye, now!”

For the first time since the boy’s fall Mr. Cary did not follow him to the gate. Maybe this was the beginning of trust. Slight a thing as it was, the boy took comfort in it.

At last it was Christmas eve. Crow was on the back “gallery” putting a final polish on a pair of boots. He was nearly done, and his heart was beginning to sink, when the old lady came and stood near him. There was a very hopeful twinkle in her eye as she said, presently: “I wonder what our little shoeblack, who has been trying so hard to be good, would like to have for his Christmas gift?”

But Crow only blinked while he polished the faster.

“Tell me, Solomon,” she insisted. “If you had one wish to-day, what would it be?”

The boy wriggled nervously. And then he said:

“You knows, lady. Needle–an’ thrade–an’–an’–you knows, lady. Pockets.”

“Well, pockets it shall be. Come into my room when you get through.”

Old Mrs. Cary sat beside the fire reading as he went in. Seeing him, she nodded, smiling, towards the bed, upon which Crow saw a brand-new suit of clothes–coat, vest, and breeches–all spread out in a row.

“There, my boy,” she said; “there are your pockets.”

Crow had never in all his life owned a full new suit of clothes. All his “new” things had been second-hand, and for a moment he could not quite believe his eyes; but he went quickly to the bed and began passing his hands over the clothes. Then he ventured to take up the vest–and to turn it over. And now he began to find pockets.

“Three pockets in de ves’–two in de pants–an’–an’ fo’, no five, no six–six pockets in de coat!”

He giggled nervously as he thrust his little black fingers into one and then another. And then, suddenly overcome with a sense of the situation, he turned to Mrs. Cary, and, in a voice that trembled a little, said:

“Is you sho’ you ain’t ‘feerd to trus’ me wid all deze pockets, lady?”

It doesn’t take a small boy long to slip into a new suit of clothes. And when a ragged urchin disappeared behind the head of the great old “four-poster” to-day, it seemed scarcely a minute before a trig, “tailor-made boy” strutted out from the opposite side, hands deep in pockets–breathing hard.

As Solomon Crow strode up and down the room, radiant with joy, he seemed for the moment quite unconscious of any one’s presence. But presently he stopped, looked involuntarily upward a minute, as if he felt himself observed from above. Then, turning to the old people, who stood together before the mantel, delightedly watching him, he said:

“Bet you my angel twin ain’t ashamed, ef he’s a-lookin’ down on me to-day.”