FullReads

We gave him another dollar and he went out smiling and hopeful. It seemed that at last we had solved his problem. Tish recalled one of her Sunday-school scholars who sold papers and saved enough to buy a second-hand automobile and rear a family. But our fond hopes were dashed to the ground when, the next morning, Hannah, opening the door at Tish’s to bring in the milk bottles, found a huge stack of the night-before’s newspapers and a note on top addressed to Tish, which said:-

Deer Mother Tish: You see now that I am no good. I wish to die! I hav one papier sold, and newsboys kell me on sight. I hav but you and God–and God has forget!

TUFIK.

We were discouraged and so, clearly, was Tufik. For ten days we did not hear from him, except that a flirty little Syrian boy called for the ten dollars on Saturday and brought a pair of Tufik’s shoes for us to have resoled. But one day Tish telephoned in some excitement and said that Tufik was there and wanted us to go to a wedding.

“His little sister’s wedding!” she explained. “The dear child is all excited. He says it has been going on for two days and this is the day of the ceremony.”

Aggie was spending the afternoon with me, and spoke up hastily.

“Ask her if I have time to go home and put on my broadcloth,” she said. “I’m not fixed for a wedding.”

Tish said there was no time. She would come round with the machine and we were to be ready in fifteen minutes. Aggie hesitated on account of intending to wash her hair that night and so not having put up her crimps; but she finally agreed to go and Tish came for us. Tufik was in the machine. He looked very tidy and wore the shoes we had had repaired, a pink carnation in his buttonhole, and an air of suppressed excitement.

“At last,” he said joyously while Tish cranked the car–“at last my friends see my three mothers! They think Tufik only talks–now they see! And the priest will bless my mothers on this so happy day.”

Tish having crawled panting from her exertion into the driver’s seat and taken the wheel, in sheer excess of boyish excitement he leaned over and kissed the hand nearest him.

The janitor’s small boy was on the curb watching, and at that he set up a yell of joy. We left him calling awful things after us and Tish’s face was a study; but soon the care of the machine made her forget everything else.

The Syrian quarter was not impressive. It was on a hillside above the Russian Jewish colony, and consisted of a network of cobble-paved alleys, indescribably dirty and incredibly steep. In one or two of these alleys Tish was obliged to turn the car and go up backward, her machine climbing much better on the reverse gear. Crowds of children followed us; dogs got under the wheels and apparently died, judging by the yelps–only to follow us with undiminished energy after they had picked themselves up. We fought and won a battle with a barrel of ashes and came out victorious but dusty; and at last, as Tufik made a lordly gesture, we stopped at an angle of forty-five degrees and Tufik bowed us out of the car. He stood by visibly glowing with happiness, while Tish got a cobblestone and placed it under a wheel, and Aggie and I took in our surroundings.

We were in an alley ten feet wide and paved indiscriminately with stones and tin cans, babies and broken bottles. Before us was a two-story brick house with broken windows and a high, railed wooden stoop, minus two steps. Under the stoop was a door leading into a cellar, and from this cellar was coming a curious stamping noise and a sound as of an animal in its death throes.