Page:Arthur Stringer-The Loom of Destiny.djvu/194

The Loom of Destiny of Perkins Place, which had no less than twelve tumble-down tenement houses facing on it. But nothing is so proudly exclusive as a slum like Perkins Place, and as it was an open secret that Teddie's forebears were unknown, he found no one to play with, and from the first day of his appearance on the Place repeatedly had flung at him an epithet which he, happily, did not understand. In more generous moments they merely made fun of his yellow curls, and called him "Girlie!"

His loneliness, however, did not weigh heavily upon him. He held animated discourse with bits of broken flower-pots, and fell into the habit of telling wonderful stories to the third step in the landing, which had a crack in it, and therefore always listened best. Later on he invented a series of games, in which the pieces of sticks were all men and the stones all tigers. If the tigers knocked over the men first throw, that meant they were all eaten up. But if the men fell down across one another, that meant the tigers could n't touch them, and the tigers 182