Page:McClure's Magazine v9 n3 to v10 no2.djvu/366

1092 country. The girl glanced about her and, after a second's hesitation, whispered to Tommy, "Is does tings on der platform all vat dey is sole?"

"So far," says Tommy, "yes, ma'am." He spoke the last words to the old woman, and he smiled reassuringly. She seemed so feeble, so agitated, and so lost among the crowd of idle men and junk-dealers that he was minded to comfort her.

She gave him a grateful glance. Her hands were clasped, one over the other. They were hands disfigured and roughened by toil, with the prominent veins and distorted knuckles and withered cleanliness of years over the washtub. Tommy remembered how in his youth he had resolved that one day his mother should have white, soft hands, like the mother of his school friend, Harry Lossing; and how he had spent some of his very first earnings in a weird assortment of cosmetics which his mother faithfully used.

His mother's hands were white now, and there were rings on them; but Tommy remembered how they used to look.

Lot after lot was disappearing and being bundled down to the new owners. The old woman, who had slowly regained composure, all at once rose suddenly from her seat, and instantly sank back again, clutching the purse in her hand. Her face had gone a dull gray; the streaks of red were ebbing slowly from her cheek. Tommy heard her thin, elderly pipe—"One dollar." "One dollar!" called the girl in a louder key. "I'm bid one dollar?" began the auctioneer; "one—do I hear two dollars? Thank you, sir. Two dollars! two dollars!"

"And five cents," called the girl, while the woman's eyes strained after every twist of the auctioneer's head, every swing of his hand.

"Dollar five, dollar five—yes, sir; thank you, sir. Three dollars—"

Here a man shouldered his way through the crowd—a stout, florid man in a checked suit, baggy as to the knees of the trousers and illuminated as to shirt-front by a vivid but soiled red scarf.

This man glanced keenly at the box and from the box to the woman, and threw a "Five dollars" carelessly at the official.

"West side dealer," commented the newspaper man in an undertone to Tommy. "He thinks there's something in it."

The old woman raised the bid, as before, by a nickel; as before, the man jumped the intervening cents to a dollar. The old woman, her agitation momently increasing, repeated the same manœuver, with the same result on the part of her opponent. The uneven bidding continued until the bids were twenty-seven dollars, bid by the dealer. The old woman turned desperately to the girl, and the latter in a second called loudly a raise of ten cents.

"Twenty-eight!" shouted the man.

The woman sank back into her chair. She trembled so violently that for a second Tommy thought she was going to faint, and he hurried to put a flask to her lips, while the newspaper man ran for water. She motioned the flask away. Her eyes went piteously to the girl.

"Come, mother," said she; "come, dear mother."

"Shan't I help you out?" said Tommy. The words rolled back in the roof of his mouth at the girl's expression.

"We don't have got no more money," said she stolidly. "The mother has been saving for this year and I also; and it was twenty-seven dollars, but we haf also the car-fare. We bid all; it was not enough—no, don't look, don't look!' she cried in her own tongue. But the old woman rose, and watched the successful bidder lift down the box, an irrepressible moan bursting through her lips.

"Say, why do you want the box?" asked Tommy. "Can't I—"

"It was by mine vater," said the girl. "Dey vas lif tirty-dree years by vun anudder, und dey vas nefar qvuarel, but ven dey coom over he vas die on der road, and dey put him in der sea. She didn't have notings, no grave; und dey vas charge so mooch vat you call it duty dat ve don't can take der box, und so she und I ve save, but it vas no use. Room, koom!"

She declined the tin cup which the reporter was holding rather helplessly at them, and would have supported her mother out of the room. The old woman looked dizzy; she only said, in German, "It was his picture, my Emil's picture."

"You wait a minute," said Tommy. "Don't you stir from her, and I'll see if I can't buy that back—there is nothing of value—no money? no watch?"

He hardly waited their denial to rush off, with the unheeded and amused reporter at his heels. The latter thoughtfully poured the water on the floor before he put the tin cup on a window-sill.

The junk-dealer had his box on the floor, meditating over it, a screw-driver in his hand, as if preparing to open it by the hinges. It was a clumsy box of wood, with iron hinges. A friend near by