There were never any hotter cheeks than young Ried's just at that moment. This was the most extraordinary person with whom he had ever talked. It was impossible to generalize with her. Not that he wanted to generalize; on the contrary, he at once saw the possibilities growing out of individual effort, and caught at the idea of undertaking something. But the question was, Why had he not thought of it before?

One person to reach after, and try for!--surely, he might have attempted it, instead of trying to carry the hundreds that he stumbled against, and so accomplish nothing for any of them. It was humiliating, the confession that he had to make:--

"Indeed, Mrs. Roberts, I have not one in mind. If you asked me what one hundred I was most anxious about, I might possibly be able to answer; but I see that there has been no individuality about it, unless, perhaps, the half-dozen or more boys who compose that cla.s.s are taking a little stronger hold on me than any of the others; but even for them I have tried to do nothing, unless two or three attempts to secure a permanent teacher for them--which have ended in failure--may count for effort. I don't blame myself as much as I might, because, now that you suggest personal work to me, I realize that there is nothing for one situated as I am to do. I have no Christian home at my command."

"Ah, but we are to come down to very small numbers, you know,--to fractions, if need be. You have a piece of Christian home at command, I trust?"

But he looked at her inquiringly, and she explained:--

"Why, you have the privacy of your own room, which is, of course, your corner of home just now, and it is a Christian corner. Is there not room in it sometimes for two?"

He smiled faintly over that.

"Mrs. Roberts, there is one thing with which you evidently are not familiar, and that is the corner which a poor clerk in the city has to call home. Mine is the fourth story back of a fourth-rate boarding-house, where the thermometer drops often below the freezing-point, and this place I share with as uncongenial a fellow as ever breathed. What would you think of labelling such accommodations 'home?' and what can I do in it for others?"

"Not much, perhaps," smiling, "unless for the uncongenial fellow. I should think there might be a chance in this direction."

"Ah, but," he said, eagerly, "he is a Christian. My sympathies do not need to be drawn out in that direction."

The smile was a peculiar one now, but the tone was very quiet in which the little lady said that some time, when they had leisure to talk, she should like to ask him whether his experience with Christians had been so exceptionally bright that he thought there was no work to do in that direction.

"But just now," she added, earnestly, "I want to know, since you are shut away from home effort, for which of these boys you are praying especially, and which of them do you carry about on your heart, with the hope of a chance meeting, an unexpected, opportunity to speak a word, or do a kindness, or look a kindness that shall give you possible future influence? Don't you have to work in those ways? Two people never equally interest me at the same moment. I find I must be intensely individual, not to the exclusion of others, but in praying. For instance, yesterday I prayed, and this morning I prayed, for my entire cla.s.s, but there was one all the time who was uppermost. I find myself questioning, What can I do for them all, but especially for him? Do you know, I fancy that most Christians feel the same; individual effort is so necessary that I have thought perhaps the Holy Spirit turns our thoughts most directly toward one person at a time, so that we may concentrate our efforts. Do you think this is so?"

Young Ried did not answer promptly; he had no answer ready that suited him. His strongest feeling just then was one of self-reproach, mingled with humiliation. How had he looked down on this fair and beautiful little woman,--her very beauty being, he had fancied, an element against her when it came to actual effort. How had he allowed himself to sneer over her attempts at teaching that cla.s.s of boys! How actually irritable he had been over it! How almost angrily he had questioned why it was that a teacher was not found for them fitted to their needs; when he had prayed about it so much; determined not to believe that the prayer had been answered, and the teacher found; yet here she was, the one whose efforts he had despised, talking already about individual prayer for them, while he, who had done a great amount of fretting for them, had not once presented them as individuals to Christ, and asked a definite blessing for each! His answer, when it came, was low and full of feeling:--

"I have concentrated my desires in praying for the coming of such a teacher as might get hold of them; and I begin to think that I have an answer to my prayers."

But she was absolutely proof against compliments. She wasted not a moment's thought on that, but said:--

"Mr. Ried, who are they? I tried to get their names yesterday, but soon saw that they were not in the mood to help me. I don't think I have one correct name. Can you give me a list?"

No, he could not--which admission did not lessen the glow on his cheek.

Possibly he could mention the names of two, and guess at a third, but of the others he knew nothing.

"To whom, then, can I go? Mr. Durant would know, of course. Where shall I find him?"

So much Alfred knew. Mr. Durant was to be found at the Fourth National Bank; but, as for giving information in regard to that cla.s.s, he was sure it was beyond him. He (Alfred) had asked only last Sabbath who the boy was who behaved so wretchedly, and also who was the fellow next him, but Mr. Durant had not known.

Well, then, Mrs. Roberts said, nothing daunted, not even a shadow appearing on her quiet face, she must just study it out with his help.

"There is immediate work for you," she said, "for of course I want to know their names. Who are the two? This Dirk Colson, whom you mentioned,--which was he?"

Alfred described him as well as his bewilderment would allow, and was interrupted--

"Oh, the small dark one. I know,--he interested me. Where does he live?"

But to this question no clear answer could be given. Down in one of the alleys towards the South End; but just which alley, or how far down it, Alfred did not know. He knew it was a disreputable alley, and that there wasn't a decent home anywhere about it, and that was all.

"What does Dirk do for a living?"

This question was quite as difficult to answer as the other. Nothing, young Ried believed; at least nothing regular; odd jobs he doubtless picked up occasionally, but as for regular employment, Alfred was sure he had none.

"Is that his fault? I mean, doesn't he desire work, and make an effort to secure it?"

But this young Ried could not even pretend to answer. Work, for such as he, was scarce; boys with better habits, brought up to be industrious, were at this present time out of work. Possibly the fellow was not to blame for being an idler.

Many other questions were asked, and many attempts were made at answers; but when the shoppers began to press in, to such a degree that their conversation was broken, and the energetic seeker after information felt herself obliged to retire, one thing had been accomplished: Alfred Ried had been made to realize that he knew much less than he had supposed he did about the seven boys who had seemed to be filling his thoughts for several weeks; and also, in his eager, pa.s.sionate desire that everything should be done for all of them, he had overlooked the chances for doing here and there some little thing for one of them.

"Good morning," Mrs. Roberts had said, turning cordially to a fashionably-dressed lady. "Collars? Oh, yes, this is the counter for them to be found in endless variety. They have a new pattern that I have been admiring. Mr. Ried, please show Mrs. Emory the curtain collars, with embroidered points."

Which thing Mr. Ried proceeded to do with alacrity and respect, no trace of the earlier contemptuous feeling shadowing his face. Here was a woman who knew stylish collars when she saw them, and who also knew several other things, and had taught him a lesson this very morning that he would not be likely to forget.

But Mrs. Roberts, as she made her way out from the fast-filling store, felt that she had not made great progress toward getting acquainted with her cla.s.s.

Still it must be admitted that if young Ried had gotten some new ideas, so also had she. "A Christian home!" She found herself repeating the phrase, lingering over it, wondering if her new home, in every sense of the word, merited that t.i.tle. "It cannot simply mean a home where Christ is honored," she said to herself. "I surely have that. It rather means a home where everything pertaining to it serves His cause. The very furniture and the light and the brightness are made to do duty for Him, else they have no place there; and I, labelled Christian, have no right to them. Can they bear the test, I wonder? What is there that I can do with all the beauties of my parlors? There are things that I have not done. I can see some to do; but how can my Christian home serve these boys? When I get them into it, of course it will work for me; but how to get them in! Who are they? I wonder what spring I can touch to give me even this meagre bit of information?"

As if in answer to her mental query, she came just then full upon Policeman Duffer. She recognized him instantly: a man who, though by no means small, was so far from having the majestic presence of most policemen that, in the estimation of the boys, he merited the name "Little Duffer." Mrs. Roberts carried to her new work one talent not always to be found among even efficient workers,--the ability to remember both names and faces. Especially did a name seem, without any effort on her part, to fasten itself upon her memory; and not only that, but it brought with it a train of memories enabling her to locate when and where, and under what circ.u.mstances, she heard the name; and, therefore, generally whom the name fitted. Recognizing the features of the policeman whom she had seen at the door of the South End Mission, she connected him at once with the term "Little Duffer," heard in her cla.s.s, and addressed him:--

"Mr. Duffer, I believe."

It is safe to say that Policeman Duffer, entirely accustomed as he was to hearing himself addressed officially a hundred or a thousand times a day, was yet utterly unaccustomed to the prefix of "Mr.", and started in surprise.

"Are you not the gentleman whom I saw at the South End last Sabbath?"

The policeman admitted that he probably was. He was detailed for duty there. Then she plunged at once into business. Did he know the boys who attended that school? Some of them he did, better than he wanted to; and a precious set they were, in Policeman Duffer's opinion.

"Might as well go out to the Zoo," he declared, "and get a set of animals and try to tame 'em."

Mrs. Roberts was not in the mood to argue; she was bent on information.

Did he know, she wondered, the boys who composed her cla.s.s? She had just taken the cla.s.s, and was so unfortunate as not to be acquainted with their names. One was Dirk Colson, and another she had heard was Haskell--Timothy Haskell, perhaps, though of that she was not certain.

Did that give Mr. Duffer any clue?

"Plenty of clue," he said, shaking his head. "So you've taken that cla.s.s, ma'am?"--a curious mixture of amazement and credulity in his voice. "What possessed you, if I may be so bold? They're a hard lot, ma'am. I know them, as I said, altogether too well. I've had enough to do with some of them; and I expect more work from them. They gain in wickedness in a most surprising way. Their names, yes; there's Scrawley and Sneaking Billy, and Black Dirk,--him you know."

Mrs. Roberts interrupted him. She begged his pardon, but could those really be the boys names? Were they not rather some unfortunate street names that had been fastened upon them?

Thus brought back to his senses, Policeman Duffer laughed, and admitted that he supposed Sneaking Billy was properly named Sneyder; but he was once caught in a mean trick, from which he tried in so many ways to squirm out, that the boys had themselves named him Sneaking Billy, and the name had stuck.

As for "Scrawley," his real name was Stephen Crowley. How it became contracted into "Scrawley" the boys could tell better than anybody else.

They always called him that, and so did other people; and Policeman Duffer was inclined to doubt whether the fellow remembered that he had any other name.

"You can see yourself, ma'am," he added, "how Black Dirk came by his name. He is the blackest white fellow as ever I saw, and I've seen crowds of 'em."

The streets were full, and Policeman Duffer was being interviewed by a great many people in regard to all the questions that policemen are expected to answer. But by dint of patient waiting, one foot poised on a curbstone to keep it out of the mud, making hurried little memoranda while Policeman Duffer was engaged, and earnestly plying her questions when he was at leisure, Mrs. Roberts learned the names of her seven boys, and where several of them lived.

CHAPTER VI.