By the author of Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch.Of all the lonesome people in London, I suppose Leonard Vincent was just about the lonesomest! He sat with his feet tucked under him in the stiff window-seat in Miss Meeks' stiff drawing-room, and looked down disconsolately into the wet, dreary street. Three weeks before, he and his mother had come over from America to England for a joyful holiday, and no sooner had they landed than his mother was seized with a fever and carried away to a great hospital, and he was left in charge of Miss Meeks, the strange landlady.
Miss Meeks meant to be very kind; she saw that he was properly clothed and fed, and she tried, in a way, to amuse him, but she did not know any more about little boys than she did about little lions, or little tigers, or other little wild animals.
As Leonard sat watching the raindrops trickle down the pane and thought about his mother and what a long time she had been away, he could not keep from crying a little, even if he was nine years old, and the captain of a ball team when he was at home.
"Now, Leonard," said Miss Meeks, bustling into the room, "you stop that moping this minute! Did n't I give you permission to look at the books on the table if your hands were clean?"
"Yes 'm, but I 've already looked at them."
"Would you like to cut things out with scissors?" she asked vaguely.
Leonard shook his head; he had done that two years ago, when he was seven.
"Well, you can't sit there moping all day. Why don't you go out for a walk; it is n't raining enough to matter."
"Where can I go?"
"Oh, dear, what a tiresome boy! Have n't I told you you could go as far as the park one way, and down to the Embankment the other? Just be sure to mind the crossings, and be home by five."
Leonard reluctantly put on his hat and coat and started forth. On sunny days he often went to St. James's Park and wistfully watched the children playing on the banks of the stream, or hung over the charts of water-fowls along the walk, trying to find the different names of the fat birds that waddled about in the bushes. But to-day he knew it would be cold and lonesome in the park, and even the ducks would be under cover, so he turned listlessly toward the Embankment.
The Victoria Embankment is the river-front along the Thames, and Leonard usually liked to watch the boats that came and went, and the funny two-storied street-cars, and the soldiers that sometimes marched there. But to-day he was not interested in any of these sights. There was just one thing in the world that he wanted, and that was his mother!
As he walked along blinking very hard, and trying to swallow the lump that would come in his throat, he suddenly stumbled over something on the pavement.
Looking down, he saw it was a wooden leg, and it belonged to an old man who was drawing wonderful pictures in colored chalk on the pavement.
"So sorry, sir," said the old man, hunching himself back against the wall, quite as if he were used to apologizing for being stepped on.
Leonard immediately became interested; in the first place, he had never before been called "sir," and, in the second, he had made the exciting discovery that the old man's other leg was wooden, too!
After he had stood watching for some time, the old man looked up:
"Do ye like 'em?" he asked.
For a moment, Leonard did not know whether he meant the wooden legs or the pictures, but the kindly look on the old face reassured him.
"'Course I do," he said heartily; "I think you can draw fine."
"Well, hit ain't whut ye might say high hart, but hit turns me a' honest penny."
By this time, Leonard had squatted down beside him, and was watching the magic growth of a cottage that neither Queen Anne nor any other queen would have answered for architecturally.
"Hit 's all in the knowin' 'ow," the old man continued. "You l'arn 'ow to make a 'ouse, an' ye l'arn 'ow to make a ship, an' a tree mayhap, an' then you mixes of 'em up haccordin' to yer fancy. If hit 's a sunset scene you 're haimin' at, you gives 'em a pink tint, but if hit 's moonlight, you makes 'em blue."
"How do you make the moon so round?"
"Well, some favors usin' a shilling for the purpose, but I most generally does it with a carper, that bein', as you might say, more 'andy like."
"Is this one going to be a moonlight scene?" asked Leonard.
"Yes, sir, a moonlight marine. This 'ere effect is a boat."
"I knew it!" cried Leonard, triumphantly; "why don't you put a name on the side of it?"
"I ain't awerse," said the old man, obligingly, "whut name would ye favor?"
"The U. S. A.," said Leonard; "and, if you don't mind, I think it would be awful nice to do the letters in red, white, and blue."
"Right-o!" said the old man, suiting the action to the word. "Whut might your name be, lad ?"
"Leonard Vincent. What 's yours?"
"Whurtle, old Jim Whurtle. I been 'Old' Jim Whurtle for a quarter of a century."
By this time, Leonard was sitting flat on the pavement beside Mr. Whurtle, watching every movement of the chalk with flattering absorption.
"Do you make people as good as you do boats?" he asked, almost reverently.
"Well, I can't say as I don't," replied Mr. Whurtle, modestly; "I do Mr. Gladstone, an' Lord Kitchener, an' Lloyd George."
"And not George Washington?" asked Leonard, incredulously, "or Teddy?"
"Who 's Teddy?"
"Why, Mr. Roosevelt, of course. Anybody can do him if they have a piece of chalk. I can "
The hint was not taken, and Leonard's ability as an artist was not put to the test. But he stayed on, nevertheless, watching the growth of one wonderful masterpiece after another, until Big Ben reminded him that it was time to be going home.
Big Ben is the great clock in the high tower that rises over the Houses of Parliament, and 1t rules the comings and goings of everybody in that part of London. It is not just an ordinary clock, for it has a wonderful set of chimes called the Westminster chimes, and every fifteen minutes all through the day and night, it sings out the passing hour.
"Well, I 'll have to be going," said Leonard, reluctantly; "will you be here tomorrow?"
Mr. Whurtle lay down his chalk and looked far off into space.
"Aye, lad," he said, "tomorrow, an' the next day, an' the day followin'."
"How early in the morning?" asked Leonard.
"Not afore noon. Mr. Minny fetches me 'ere in 'is cart on 'is second round, an' comes by fer me ag'in long about sundown."
"Who is Mr. Minny?"
"He 's the ash man that lives alongside o' me."
"And can't you go home if you want to? Not even if it 's raining like everything?"
Mr. Whurtle shook his head: "The rain ain't whut you 'd say harf bad. I ain't made o' sugar, nor yet salt, that I 'd melt in a bit of wetting. Hit 's the cold that counts."
"Anyhow," said Leonard, cheerfully, "you can't get rheumatism in your legs, can you?" And at this Mr. Whurtle laughed for the first time, a silent, fat laugh, that shook his brown waistcoat up and down and sent the wrinkles running all over his kind old face.
From this time on, Leonard ceased to be the lonesomest little boy in London; in fact, he became a very busy and interested boy, and all because he had discovered a friend. Every morning he practised with his own crayons at home, and, as soon as lunch was over, he hurried down to the Embankment to find Mr. Whurtle, and to watch the new pictures that were drawn each day on the pavement.
After the regulation moonlight effect, and snow scene, and marine view, with an occasional portrait or bunch of grapes interspersed, had been drawn, and each neatly framed in a flourishing scroll, the two would sit with their backs to the wall and wait for pennies to fall into the cap that Mr. Whurtle laid invitingly handy.
"I ain't never stooped to holdin' of hit out," he would say proudly. "I 've seen the time when the day was long, an' no supper at the end of hit, but I 'd say to meself, 'Leave the cap lay, Jim Whurtle: ye are workin' fer yer livin', not beg- gin'."
Yet Leonard could see that Mr. Whurtle looked rather downcast and sad on the days when the pennies failed to come.
While they waited, they discussed all sorts of interesting things, and Leonard discovered that Mr. Whurtle knew the answers to more questions than any one he had ever talked to. He never said he did not know, or told a little boy to be still. He knew where the boats on the river came from and where they were going, he knew how birds build their nests, and what makes the light in a firefly, and why policemen wear helmets; he even ventured to say where the wind went when it was not blowing, and whether or not God had a wife. Leonard asked him all the questions that had been bottled up in him since his mother went to the hospital, and each evening he thought up a lot more to ask him the following day.
The most exciting discovery he made was that Mr. Whurtle had once been a fireman and had lost his legs when a roof crashed in on a burning tenement.
"Ye would n't think now," said Mr. Whurtle, in ending the story, "that them very cobblestones there in the street has struck fire to the 'oofs of me 'orses, as I braced me two good legs ag'inst the engine an' let 'em 'ave their 'eads clean from Number Three Engine-house to the Parlymint Buildin's. Aye, lad, I was young then, an' the blood was 'ot in me veins. I can feel the wind in me face now, an' the strength in me harms, an' 'ear the poundin' of them 'orses' feet."
"Don't it make you awful sorry, Mr. Whurtle?" Leonard had asked, and then Mr. Whurtle had cleared his throat, and said:
"Per'aps it war n't so bad fer me, lad. I was young an' reckless in them days, an' my legs they carried me many a place I 'ad no right to be. Per'aps the good God seen the chanct to save me by takin' away the legs that was carryin' me to the bad."
Leonard did not tell Miss Meeks about Mr. Whurtle. Miss Meeks liked people to be very clean and proper, and he was quite sure she would not approve of a person who sat on the pavement and had no legs. Mother, of course, would understand, and he could scarcely wait for the time when he could tell her all about his new friend, and give her the many pictures he had made for her during her absence.
"There's only one more week now to wait," Miss Meeks said to him one afternoon as he was starting off. "The nurse telephoned that your mother was sitting up a wee bit, and they hoped to let her out of the hospital by Christmas Day."
Leonard ran all the way to the Embankment. He knew Mr. Whurtle would be glad, and he was eager to share the good news with him. But, when he arrived, Mr. Whurtle was nowhere to be seen. Instead, a small crowd was gathered about an ambulance wagon, into which two men in uniform were carefully lifting a stretcher. Just as he managed to wriggle his way to the front, a policeman slammed the door of the wagon in the face of the crowd, and ordered the driver to go ahead.
"What 's the matter?" demanded Leonard, breathlessly, but, as usual, nobody noticed him. He heard something about "a runa'way horse," and "an old party," and "nothing serious," and then the crowd melted away faster than it had gathered, and he was left alone gazing at a small square of carpet that lay by the wall, covered with lumps of gaily colored chalk.
Those were Mr. Whurtle's things, there was no doubt of that, but where was Mr. Whurtle? Then the truth dawned upon him: it was Mr. Whurtle that had been thrust head first into that long wagon, and it was Mr. Whurtle of whom they spoke as "the old party!"
Leonard started up to ask more questions, but nobody was left who had seen the accident, and only the chalk and the carpet lay there, mute witnesses of his friend's misfortune. His first impulse was to run home, for he was very much frightened. But what was he to do with Mr. Whurtle's things? He could n't take them to him, for he had no idea where he lived, and he could n't take them home with him, for they might be sent for any minute. It was quite a grave responsibility for a person of nine who had an exaggerated respect for artists' materials.
He decided that the only thing for him to do was to sit down and wait. He hoped he would not have to wait until Mr. Minny came at six. Big-Ben chimed out the quarter past the hour, then the half-hour, then the quarter to, and still he sat with his back to the wall keeping vigilant watch over the treasure. And, as he waited, a little thought popped into his head and kept getting bigger and bigger, until there did n't seem to be room for anything else. Why could n't he make Mr. Whurtle's pictures for him? It was a sunshiny afternoon and many people were passing, and surely some of them would give a penny or two if only there were some pictures on the pavement.
His heart beat faster as he picked up a piece of chalk and began making the regulation squares. Then came the momentous decision whether his first effort should be a house and a pine-tree against a setting sun, or a boat in a storm. He decided on the former, and, stretching out his legs, just as Mr. Whurtle tie did his peg-sticks, he went resolutely to work. Now and then, when a shadow fell across the pavement, he knew that some one had stopped to watch him, but when one is absorbed in the engrossing business of making wreaths of blue smoke come out of red chimneys, there is no time to look up.
His first distraction came when a penny was tossed over his head. He was just beginning a new picture, and his first thought was now he would have something round to draw the moon by! His second thought was for Mr. Whurtle. He had almost forgotten the really important part of the work before him, the part that Mr. Whurtle always did first, and was most particular should n't get rubbed out. He set about to remedy his mistake at once.
He remembered the words exactly, and just how they looked on the middle square. He even remembered the exact curve of the big flourish beneath them; it was the spelling that bothered him. After several attempts which he rubbed out with his coat-sleeve, he wrote the following:
"If worthy of your notice
Please bestow a trifel."
The first person to read the inscription was a little girl, who carried a pail in her hand. She and Leonard eyed each other for some time in suspicious silence, then Leonard asked:
"Do you know how many pennies it takes to make a shilling?"
She was so surprised to have this strange little boy ask her a question right out of the arithmetic that she began to move away, but at a safe distance she turned and called back, "Twelve," then scampered up the street with the pail bumping against her legs. Leonard sighed. Mr. Whurtle had told him once that unless he made a shilling a day, things went very badly with him, and here it was late in the afternoon, and only
one penny collected! He sat patiently, with his back to the wall and waited, anxiously scanning each approaching figure, but nobody seemed to notice him. Of course he knew that his pictures were not so splendid as Mr. Whurtle's, but surely anybody could tell that one was a ship, and one was a house, even if he might not be certain whether the round thing in the middle was the sun or the moon!
Sitting still so long made Leonard sleepy, and by and by his head drooped, and the chalk fell out of his limp hand. The next thing he knew, somebody was shaking him gently by the shoulder, and. looking up, he saw a woman in a gray cape and with a gray veil hanging from her bonnet, leaning over him:
"Are you waiting for somebody?" she asked kindly.
For a moment, Leonard could not remember what he was doing there, then he rubbed his eyes and looked at the crudely drawn pictures on the pavement.
"No," he said, with dignity, "I 'm 'tending to Mr. Whurtle's business while he 's gone."
"Where 's he gone?"
"In the ambulance."
"Oh! Do you mean the old fellow with the wooden legs who sits here every afternoon?"
Leonard's face lit up. "Yes 'm, that 's Mr. Whurtle. Do you know him?"
"Well, I 've seen him. But who are you?"
"I 'm Leonard Vincent. My mother 's at the fever hospital, and we are going home just as soon as she gets well."
"Where is home?"
"In America. Don't you see my flag?" He proudly pulled out the little silk square from his breast pocket.
The woman smiled. "So you are drawing the old man's pictures for him while he 's gone?"
"Yes 'm, but I 've only made one penny so far, and if I don't get twelve, things will go very badly with Mr. Whurtle."
The woman thought for a moment, then she stooped down suddenly, and, to Leonard's dismay, rubbed out the inscription he had so carefully lettered.
"Give me a piece of chalk," she said, and proceeded to write the following:
The wooden-legged man who usually sits here has met with an accident. This little boy is doing his work for him. Your penny is needed.
Nurse Wilson.
"Now," she said, rising, "you go on making pictures. People want to see you doing it. Draw a lot. Draw them clear up to the letter-box."
"But think of the chalk it will use up!" said Leonard, eager but dubious; "I 've already used up 'most all the red."
"This will pay for the chalk," she said, and dropping a shiny silver coin into his cap, she hurried on her busy way.
Leonard fell to work with enthusiasm. Now that his mind was relieved about the chalk, he let his imagination have full play. He drew houses, and boats, and bunches of grapes, and flowers, and even made so bold as to try a portrait of a gentleman with prominent teeth and eye-glasses.
As he worked, people began to stop to watch him, and to read what was written on the pavement. Some of them looked doubtful, some of them laughed, others asked questions, but sooner or later most of them tossed a penny into his cap.
When Big Ben chimed out five o'clock, Leonard glanced up anxiously. Miss Meeks allowed him to go about the neighborhood as he liked in the afternoon, provided he was at home by five. This was the first time he had disobeyed, but there was nobody to give the money to, and nobody to explain to about the chalk, and it would be a full hour before Mr. Minny came by in his cart.
Leonard had to think very hard before he decided upon a plan. He rolled the remainder of the chalk up in the square of carpet and placed it beside the cap full of pennies. Then he wrote on the pavement, below what Nurse Wilson had written:
I can't watch Mr. Whurtle's things any longer, But plese don't anyboddy take them because he has an axident and no legs.
Leonard Vincent.
When Mr. Minny drove up an hour later in the cart in which he usually took Mr. Whurtle home, he was surprised to find the familiar figure of his old friend missing. It was strange enough to think of Mr. Whurtle getting away when he could not walk, but the most amazing thing was that the pavement was covered with strange, wild drawings that suggested he had been there, and yet did not in the least resemble the pictures he usually made.
Mr. Minny got out of the cart and read the inscriptions. Then he looked in bewilderment at the small cap overflowing with coins that had remained untouched on the pavement beside the pictures.
"Well, I 'll be blowed!" he said, and, snatching up the cap and the money, he jumped back into his cart, and went dashing off to find out what had happened to Mr. Whurtle.
At the door of the dark basement where they both lived, he paused. There were voices within, and he was almost afraid to enter.
"Whurtle?" he called anxiously.
"Still in the ring!" called out Mr. Whurtle, with a feeble attempt at cheerfulness. Then, as Mr. Minny entered, he added: "This here young gentleman, he 's a newspaper reporter."
The young man sitting beside the low couch looked up from his note-book.
"I was sent down to write up the accident," he said, "and my friend here has been telling me the story of his life."
"Being as it were n't whut you might term a haxident," began Mr. Whurtle, apologetically, but Mr. Minny interrupted impatiently:
"Any bones broken?"
"No, jes peg-sticks. Though the Lord knows it will be as 'ard fer me to get new ones as to grow new legs!"
Then Mr. Minny, unable longer to control himself, poured the money out of the cap onto the floor and proceeded to tell with great relish what had happened. By the time he had finished, the reporter was writing furiously and asking as many questions as Leonard himself.
When Christmas Day came, Leonard felt that he did not have another single thing in the world to wish for. In the first place he had his blessed mother, propped up with pillows to be sure, but bright and smiling; then he had gifts from all the old maid and old bachelor boarders at Miss Meeks's boarding-house: but most exciting of all, he had his name in the biggest newspaper in London!
One whole page of the supplement was taken up with Mr. Whurtle. It told of his early days in the fire-department, and the heroic act that had cost him his legs. It spoke of the plucky fight he had made for thirty years against poverty, supporting himself by first one thing, then another, against odds that would have discouraged the best of men. And, at the last, it gave the story of his friendship for the little American boy, who had taken his place and drawn his pictures when he could no longer draw them for himself.
The article ended thus:
Little Leonard Vincent will be going back to America soon, but old Jim Whurtle, whose picture you see below, will be doing business at the old stand in a few days, and it is predicted that the good work begun by the small American boy will be kept up by the many pedestrians on the Embankment, to whom the old man has long been a familiar figure.
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