The Project Gutenberg eBook, Billy To-morrow Stands the Test, by Sarah Pratt Carr, Illustrated by H. S. Delay

BILLY TO-MORROW
STANDS THE TEST

By the Same Author

BILLY TO-MORROW.

First volume of “Billy To-morrow Series.”

Illustrated by Charles M. Relyea.

12mo $1.25

BILLY TO-MORROW IN CAMP.

Illustrated by H. S. DeLay.

12mo $1.25

A. C. McCLURG & CO.

PUBLISHERS

“Oh, Billy, it’s no use!” Erminie sobbed, as the boat grew smaller and smaller on the gray water

“BILLY TO-MORROW” SERIES

BILLY TO-MORROW STANDS THE TEST

BY

SARAH PRATT CARR

Author of “The Iron Way,” “Billy To-morrow,” etc.

ILLUSTRATED BY H. S. DeLAY

CHICAGO

A. C. McCLURG & CO.

1911

Copyright

A. C. McCLURG & CO.

1911

Published November, 1911

The Publishers’ Press

Chicago

To Katherine

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

[“Oh, Billy, it’s no use!” Erminie sobbed, as the boat grew smaller and smaller on the gray water (Frontispiece)]

[Billy gazed down on her with tender eyes, his heart beating faster with a manly, protecting feeling new to him]

[“Weren’t you afraid?” Redtop asked when the first, busy part of the meal was over]

[“Stay where you are till I speak”]

[“What do you mean, Billy Boy, by refusing to speak to me?”]

[“Give her to me; I am fresh,” he said, attempting to take Mrs. Smith from Billy’s arms]

BILLY TO-MORROW STANDS THE TEST

CHAPTER I
EXCITEMENT IN THE FIFTH AVENUE HIGH

IT was a gray afternoon, late in April and cold enough for March, when Billy Bennett, going out of the building to the school grounds, detected a new note in the usual hubbub. There were a hundred or more boys gathered in one corner and listening to some one who was speaking.

Feeling in the school was intense. For the first time in its history there was an attempt to unite the student body under one head, thus depriving the class presidents of some of their power. The project was led by some of the best spirits, in the hope of gaining a better name for the school, and many of the teachers were, without precedent, taking a quiet part.

As Billy neared, he could hear above other angry voices the raucous, high-pitched tones of the cultus[^[1]] Kid, otherwise Jim Barney. He was a stickler for the “Jim.” “Just plain Jim; no handles to my name,” he would say if offered the courtesy of “Mr. Barney.” He had been for years the bully of his class, and now he aspired to be the boss of the school. He was entreating and menacing by turns, a master of the baser sort of eloquence.

[1]. Cultus is a Chinook word, signifying of little worth, bad.

“You cheap skates! Call yourselves men, do you? There’s not one of you with enough backbone to bolster a twine string! Why, you chew gum because you dass’n’t touch tobacco; and one soda pop ’ll make the whole bunch of you dippy!”

“Oh, cut it out!” mildly objected one of his own crowd.

“Yes. And trot out your grouch, whatever it is,” another demanded.

“It’s our grouch! I put it up to you,” the speaker shouted above the noise. “Has a bunch of teachers, or even the principal or superintendent, a right to meddle with us, to say who we shall have for presidents of our classes or of the whole student body, if this thing of having a school president goes?”

“Yes! Yes!” “They have!” “They ought to!” came from different quarters.

“I’d like to know why,” the Kid blustered.

“When students of this school, your own candidate even, follows girls and women on stilts—” “Sis” Jones began.

“Girls on stilts!” jeered some loud voice from the crowd, and the speaker laughed and nodded.

But Reginald Steele’s clear tones rose above the clamor. “You know what Jones means, Jim Barney. Last week your man, Buckman, and two of his fellows followed some ladies and girls for nearly a block, using language that is a disgrace to any school.”

“Rot! I suppose you think girls ought to run this high school. And that’s what they’ll do if Hec Price gets elected.” He glared around on them, and let his eyes rest on Reginald an instant before continuing. “I put it up to you fellows, what sort of a president will that grandmother prig make, that’s in with the girls and mollycoddles, in with the teachers, in with everybody that’s for style, and against a square deal for all. What sort of a fellow is Hec Price for president?”

“A good one!” Billy called cheerily, coming forward from the rear of the crowd, where he had been listening.

Billy was good to look at these days. His freckles were gone; and his skin, free from the blemish that mars so many growing boys, was girlishly fair. His cheeks had the red of full health, and his form was well knit and firm from plenty of work in the “gym”; and although the dimple, much to his disgust still adorned his chin, it had broadened and squared to match his strong shoulders.

Since entering school he had been allied with those opposing “the Kid’s crowd,” yet he had been able through sheer good-nature to avoid a clash with the bully. But lately that had seemed inevitable, though Billy himself could not understand why.

The speaker sighted Billy and challenged him. “You, Billy To-morrow, or Yesterday, or Billy Next Week, whatever you call yourself, what have you got to say about the teachers butting into student affairs?” He looked around over the boys, an angry gleam in his red-rimmed eyes. He was stocky, red of hair and skin, red of hose and tie, blustering, blowsy, yet powerful. The strong, uncontrolled passions of generations of ancestors culminated in him in conscious power, plus a tenacity and stratagem that were his own. His silent presence in the room would attract any eye. A reader of men was likely to turn away with regret, as when one sees a mighty stream capable of producing wealth and happiness for mankind, instead tearing through the smiling valley, leaving destruction in its way.

He continued. “Have we, or have we not, a right to run our student business ourselves? to elect our officers, whether class president or school president, without interference? Answer me that. Are we all sissies, to let the girls butt in, to let the high-brows whip us into knuckling to the teachers like kindergarten kids? You, Bill Bennett, what do you say to that?”

“What’s the matter with the Kid?” asked Charley Harper, called “Redtop” because of his hair. “I thought he rather liked Billy.”

“Don’t you know? Billy’s copped his girl.” Sis Jones winked knowingly.

“Gee! Not the Fish?”

“Yep. Kid wouldn’t have cared if it had been Sally or Belle, they’re both dead gone on him; but Fishie’s different.”

“So that’s—”

“Go on, Billy! Answer him!” cried several of Jim’s opponents.

Billy stepped in front of the crowd, which shifted restlessly, and waited a moment looking them over, trying to arrange his thoughts so that they might carry weight. He had no liking for the fight his mates were forcing on him. He knew the Kid’s “line-up” was against the best of the school, including the girls; knew that his methods were, to say the least, unpleasant, and important enough to cause anxiety to the Principal.

Yet Billy was no shirk. He could think on foot better than most of the students; and when his enthusiasm was aroused no one better loved a “scrap” of wits.

He began slowly: “There are several questions we must each put up squarely to ourselves before we can rightly answer Mr. Barney. First, what’s a school for?”

“Come off!” growled Jim. “Stick to—”

“Shut up, you!” shouted Redtop, who had grown in size and muscle till he was a force Jim respected. “Billy didn’t interrupt you. Be game!”

The Kid subsided. He prided himself on allowing fair play to all.

“Second, why do we hire superintendents and principals, to say nothing of teachers, if they are to have no authority over us that we should respect? And—”

“We don’t hire ’em; our fathers do,” objected one of Jim’s admirers.

“That brings me to my third question: Who pays for the schools?” Billy stopped an instant to think out his argument, and the pause was more effective than he knew. Some of the boys were considering a phase of the school question not often presented to them.

“Nobody’s talking about the cost of schools; it’s us—ourselves we’re talking about. We want—”

Redtop promptly “chucked” the turbulent one.

Billy went on. “At least we don’t pay for them, nor hire the teachers. But they are responsible to those who do hire them for the good name of the schools. If students are lazy or lawless the teachers are called to account.”

“Well, what’s the matter with us? Aren’t we all right?” Jim loomed formidably in front of Billy.

“No! We’re not all right, Jim Barney. If you and your crowd, and the sort of manners toward women and girls you stand for,—if that’s to be the standard for this school, I’m ashamed of it, and ashamed of any principal that will stand for it,—when he knows it.” Billy’s eyes flashed and he shook his hand at Jim.

“You’ll be the tell-tale, I suppose.” Barney lunged forward and reached his long arm for Billy’s leg; but half a dozen hands pulled him back; and more hisses than he had believed possible warned him that he was on the wrong tack.

“It’s because each year Jim Barney has put in his man for class president, and each year his class has made a worse name for itself; and now he wants to boss the whole school and run his man for the new office,—it’s because of this condition that the teachers think it time to interfere.” Billy leaned forward and looked fearlessly into the face of the Kid. “If you’ve any remarks coming, you can make them later to me personally.”

“Gee!” Redtop whispered to Sis Jones; “I wish Hec Price was here to see that! Billy’s called the Kid’s bluff.”

“As to the last proposition,” Billy continued, “who does pay for the schools? Do we kids put up the money or the brains or the anxiety, or—the any other things it takes to put through a system? Did we build this great institution of the city schools? It is mighty easy to knock it, but I don’t see any school kids offering anything better. Do you? I think as long as the State,—but it’s the fathers and mothers really,—as long as they hand us a chance to get an education it’s up to us to accept it decently or—” he glared at Jim defiantly; “or quit!”

A burst of noisy applause warned Barney that his leadership was imperilled. He looked angrily around and was about to speak, when Billy, with a power new to his mates and startling to the bully, launched a threat that electrified them all. “Kid Barney, your man for president is a rowdy, and you know it. We are going to expose him and defeat him.”

“Not on your life, you won’t!” Barney hurled back with a wicked gesture; and his followers broke out noisily.

But Billy’s voice rose above the din, the more impressive for dominating it. “We’re going to have a man in this new office that represents the whole school,—a man that’s honest and capable, and a gentleman besides.”

“A kid-glove sneak—”

“And if by any chance your man gets in, Jim Barney, all of us who stand for the decent thing will cut the student body as an organization.”

This threat met an instant’s silence. It was Billy’s own idea, born that moment; but when its great import filtered through those surprised brains, a storm broke that neither Billy nor Jim could master.

“Rats! What good would that do?” Jim at last made himself heard.

“It will be blazoned in every paper in the State,” Billy replied quickly. “The names of the students that follow your man will be published, as well as the names of those standing with the teachers for decency. And you’ll find, Jim Barney, when it comes to a show-down, there won’t be many fathers and mothers patting you on the back, even among those who don’t wear kid gloves.”

A roar drowned Billy, but at last they saw that he had more to say and subsided into an expectant hush.

“I propose we form a Good Citizens’ Club under Mr. Streeter’s system, ask the girls to join, and help the Playground Progressives carry their campaign for a clean playground, no improper language, and a larger respect for the teachers and law.”

“Well, I’ll be lead-dog to a blind man if that isn’t a little the rawest dose yet!” Even that bit of choice English did not relieve the Kid, for he stared silently around at the boys, evidently trying to grasp the situation.

“We got fool clubs enough, except for fun. I’m in for that any time, but not for more work,” an overgrown, bulgy-looking boy yawned.

“More work?” jeered Sis Jones; “did you ever do any work, Lazyleg?”

“Cut it! School’s rotten anyway,” the yawner returned; “a kid don’t need it like the old folks let on.”

“Any slob that goes to school after he’s out of the grades, if he don’t have to, is dippy,” drawled another.

Mumps stepped forward and faced them. Someway, when Sydney Bremmer, the ex-newsboy,—called “Mumps” from his heavy jaw,—when he said anything, people always listened in spite of his style of speech.

“I lay you’re mistaken, you wise kids. Thirty years ago a kid could get along in the world without much schooling; but now, if a man expects to do more than dig some other man’s ditches, he’s got to kick in for things he can’t learn in any grammar school. The chap that don’t know enough to go to school to-day is the one that’s dippy.”

“Hooray for Mumps!” Redtop bellowed with a grin of contempt at the bulgy one. Then to Billy, “What’s your scheme, anyway?”

“It’s Mr. Streeter’s idea, a corking good one. He’ll come up and tell us about it if we ask him.”

“We’ll do it!” shouted several at once.

“No! We don’t want any swells running things here,” Jim struck in; but even his partial ear heard fresh warning in the conflicting cries. Some suspicion of a force beneath the surface that was growing in strength angered him, but he did not reckon it at its full strength, and he displayed an ill temper that he would better have controlled. “And say, any kid that kicks in on this frame-up has to cut my crowd from this on.” He started off, but at the edge of the crowd turned and called, “Come on, kids!”

There was a breathless moment. The dullest one there knew that this was a crisis, knew that the smouldering rebellion against Jim Barney’s tyranny had at last broken into open war.

None understood the situation better than Billy. “Fellows, think before you follow Jim Barney. His game is as cultus as his name; and this hour starts the open fight between rowdyism and decency. All that want to line up for things we shall not be ashamed of, stay!”

For a second no one stirred.

“Come on!” Jim shouted, paused a second, then waved his hand toward Billy. “Or stand in with lily-necked Bill and his Fish!”

With this parting gibe that set Billy’s face blazing, he wheeled and walked off the grounds with no backward glance.

Slowly, one by one at first, then in groups as their courage rose, about thirty boys followed him off. Down on the street they sent back one or two loud shouts, and were soon out of hearing.

“This is better than I thought it would be,” Billy said to those remaining; “but Jim Barney can divide the school a good deal nearer even than some of you think. How many here are in for an active fight for the good name of the Fifth Avenue High?”

Nearly every one shouted “I!”

“How many like the idea of a Good Citizens’ Club?”

Again the vote was largely in favor.

“How many will stand for the girls joining?”

Groans and objections warned him he was on thin ice.

“Well, they can have their clubs separately, then, as they do in the playground campaign. How many favor a preliminary talk from Mr. Streeter?”

This carried.

“All right. I’ll put it up to the Principal, set a day, and post it on the bulletin board.”

“All the committee for the Price campaign meet at his house to-night,” Redtop yelled.

In the midst of the noise that followed, Mumps went up and slipped his arm into Billy’s higher one. “Billy, you’re up against a tough job, and I’ve got some pointers for you. Any time for me?”

“Sure! Come up to dinner, can you?”

“All right.”

The two walked off together.

CHAPTER II
BILLY PUTS HIMSELF ON RECORD

NO student of the Fifth Avenue High was more a credit to it than Sydney Bremmer. A motherless boy wholly orphaned by the great fire in San Francisco, he had lived, tramp-like, as a newsboy, till adventuring into the newer opportunities of the City of Green Hills. He had been Billy’s fellow-traveller on the steamer that brought them both from California; and his efforts to make good at each turn of his fortune’s wheel enlisted every one in his favor.

It was Mr. Streeter who, after watching the boy at Camp Going Some the summer before, advised the lad as to night-school work, helped him with his studies, and at length found a good home for him with a woman who lived alone and wished a boy for errands. Here Sydney went, studied early and late, and passed the examinations admitting him to the high school at the beginning of the winter semester. He was a general favorite with his class, and on account of his friendship with Billy and Hector, was well known to the juniors.

As the two boys walked along in the gray evening, an unusual silence fell between them, caused on Billy’s part by a rush of plans for the coming campaign. But Sydney was occupied with Billy’s personal affairs, and puzzled to know how to say certain things he feared Billy would resent.

“Lost your buzzer?” At last Billy waked to the fact that they had walked many blocks without speaking.

“No; but you won’t like my buzz.”

“Try it and see. You’ve a right to say what you please to me, Mumps. Hand it over.”

“It’s about Miss Fisher.”

Billy turned and slapped him on the shoulder. “Good for you! I’m sick of hearing her called ‘the Fish.’ It’s a positive disgrace, that nickname.”

Sydney’s reply was halting, as if he were feeling his way. “Did you ever reckon it might be partly her own fault?”

“No. Why?”

“Well, they call Miss Carter ‘the Queen’; does that make you sick?”

“That’s different. I began that myself. We always called her that in California,—the Queen of Sheba. But Fish—” He made a gesture of disgust.

“Yet, if the boys called Miss Carter ‘the Cart’ would you feel the same about it?”

“Search me. I don’t get you.”

“It’s this way: Miss Carter is the style of girl that makes any name you give her—well, kind of fine and all right. But with Miss Fisher—”

“Well?”

“It’s up to the girl herself. She’s been in the school nearly four years. She’s two years older than you, and—”

“Two years is nothing,” Billy growled. He was sensitive on that point.

“It’s a lot, Billy. She’s twice as old as you are in knowing things,—some of ’em it would be a whole lot better if she didn’t know. And others she knows—well, she knows ’em just because she’s a girl; and you—you’re only a kid, Billy; not as old as I am in some ways.”

Billy stopped and wheeled. “Say! You’re down on her too. Every one has a black eye for her, it seems.” He walked on, his face averted.

“No, I’m not; but I don’t want to see her get you in trouble, Billy; and that’s what she will, without meaning it, too; because the Kid’s hankering that way, and mighty mad at you.”

“Oh!” With a rush Billy understood some things that had before been enigmatic. “She never cared for Jim,” he said presently.

“Maybe not, but she made him think so. See?”

“I see that we have no business to be talking over any girl in this way.” Billy spoke coldly, and Sydney felt it.

“Billy Bennett, you know I ain’t the kind to harm any girl kid. I wouldn’t talk this over with any living kid but you. But you’re the best friend I got—except Mr. Streeter—and I’m not going to see you—her too—get stung if I can help it. My advice is, go slow there; and you’ll be sorry if you don’t take it.”

They had arrived at the Wright home, where Billy’s sister and brother-in-law, Hal, as well as Mrs. Bennett, always had a warm welcome for Sydney.

There was no time for further confidential speech, for as soon as the new baby, Billy’s nephew, had been duly exhibited, dinner was served; and afterwards both boys had appointments.

Billy went out of his way to accompany Sydney, who was to attend a meeting of his troop down town, the Chetwoots (black bears), the newsboys’ troop of the Boy Scouts. Billy did not wish it known that he was to call on Erminie Fisher, especially after their conversation concerning her.

Ever since a day in early winter when she had caught her foot in a car track and fallen, and Billy that moment passing, had helped her up and back to her home, his calls had grown more and more frequent.

Conditions in his own home made these calls doubly pleasant. The advent of his small nephew had robbed him largely of both his mother and his freedom, for he was rather a noisy boy around the house, and the youngster resented noise. And in place of his mother’s good-night talks, now rare, Billy found a luring substitute in the flattering chatter of the attractive young woman at 745 East Street.

Erminie was beautiful and subtle; beautiful, because she could not help being so; subtle, partly by nature and partly because all her life, by means of wheedling and cajolery, she had adroitly managed—or evaded—her coarse, drinking, but clever father. There were times, however, when no art prevailed against his tyranny. Still she was not bad, but rather the victim of her parentage and environment. She was brilliant, generous, energetic; and when aroused to its need, sincere and faithful.

Her mother was not wise. Her hopes for Erminie were all matrimonial; and her oftenest repeated advice was, “Keep your eye peeled for the chap in the automobile, Sis. It’s money that makes the woman go; and your face is your fortune only when you’re young.”

Into this girl’s sordid life came Billy, clean, young, with high ambitions. Little he dreamed that Erminie’s foot, purposely stuck between the tracks, was as well able as the other to bear her weight during that limping walk home; and not for any bribe would she have confessed; for if the acquaintance began merely as an escapade, it had grown into a friendship which she cherished as the most beautiful thing in her life.

She was looking for him this evening and saw him when he entered the block. Before he could ring she was at the door. “Let’s walk in the park,” she said breathily, closing the door behind her. “Dad—dad and ma are quarrelling, and I can’t bear you to hear them.” She sighed and walked on rapidly, leaving Billy with no alternative but to follow.

He noticed a tone of weariness he had never heard before, for she was the embodiment of high spirits. Also he thought it strange that she should not even greet him. “Is it—is it anything you could tell me about?”

“I ought not, Billy, but I’m going to—I can’t keep it to myself any longer.” She looked up at him, and he saw both anger and defiance in her dark, restless eyes. “My father wants me to quit school and marry an old fellow—a man nearly forty, who’s got the goods—money—and is crazy about me.”

Billy gasped. “Gee!” For a minute he could say no more, and they stood looking at each other till a passer jostled them into moving on.

“But you don’t have to! Girls aren’t like—they aren’t property any more.”

“No; but some fathers think they are.”

“Does your father?”

“Dad wouldn’t put it that way; but you see, Billy, this man who—who wants to marry me—is awfully strong with the city ring, and in some way he has dad cinched. Dad thinks he could make it square by getting him into the family.” Her little half-smile was quite without conceit.

Billy looked at her a moment before replying. Any one seeing her then could have forgiven her a little vanity. The low sun, piercing the clouds for a good-night glance, brought out the rusty reds in her softly waving dark hair, hair that at the roots melted into her creamy skin through a lighter shading that was neither red nor brown, but seemed to have been mixed on Nature’s palette for no other face than hers. Her eyes, usually too shallow and brightly brown, were now deep and misty with an emotion Billy could only guess; while all the loveliness of her gracious face and figure was enhanced by a womanly dignity new to Billy, new to herself, and unrealized.

“I guess ’most any man’d like to get into your family that way.” All the man in him had risen to her beauty; but he was not thinking of himself—not seeing himself in that relation to her. His remark was entirely impersonal.

She smiled, but instantly it changed to a look of pain. She had no measure but that of personality—herself. “Billy! Don’t! Don’t! That’s the sort of thing they all say, and they don’t mean it. I’ve—I’ve liked you awfully just because you never handed out that stuff. If I can’t trust you, there’s—there’s nobody.” There was a little catch in her voice, and she hastened on.

Billy was astonished, puzzled. In their early acquaintance he had felt and resented her coquetry, and very soon interested her in other ways; had established the same sort of comradeship that existed in his earlier boy and girl friendships; but as their acquaintance progressed he found it rich with new experiences.

This girl was no frank child, but a woman, full-grown, delightfully attractive in her wonderful knowledge of things he had not even considered; and alluring in her teasing, half tender, half patronizing manner toward him.

Billy’s own feeling was as perplexing to him. His mother had warned him against the usual “puppy love,” so frank, so ludicrous, that, did not most fathers and mothers have a blushing yet happy remembrance of first-love affairs, they would promptly lock up the younger culprits till the spell wore off.

But Billy’s case was different. Erminie, preeminently the beauty of the school, knew well how to steer an affair safely and in propriety, as when she chose she knew how to make a fellow look “the silliest sort,” in this last art making her largest success with the Kid.

In the park they chose a seat slightly back from the main paths that they might talk freely. Billy had intended to heed Sydney’s warning so far as not to be seen out with Erminie for a few weeks. He knew that turbulent days were coming, and if Jim really cared for her, Billy had no desire to inflame him unnecessarily.

Yet here and now that very thing happened. They were barely seated when he passed them, halted a second, lifted his hat, but was not recognized by Erminie, and passed on with a scowl that Billy understood.

“How was it you didn’t bow to him?”

“I never will, after what he said about you. I heard what happened this afternoon.”

Billy was uneasy. “It doesn’t matter about me, but he’ll get back at you some way. I wish you’d speak to him next time, square it with him.”

“No, I won’t. He can’t speak falsely of my best—of my friends and expect to keep in with me.”

“But—”

“Billy, don’t waste time on him. I’m up against the worst ever, and I want your advice.”

“My advice!” He laughed. Yet what boy is not flattered by such a request from a lovely girl older than himself? “Are you banking on my wisdom? Yours is much greater.”

“Not for what I wish to know, Billy. Tell me about Mr. Alvin Short.”

He faced her quickly. “Alvin Short! I don’t know anything exactly, except that his reputation is as bad as a man’s can be. I get it from my brother Hal.”

“A grafter?”

“Yes, and worse.”

“Worse?”

“Yes. For one thing, he grafts within the law; but those he cinches get it—” Billy lifted an eloquent finger to his neck.

“I was afraid so. That’s where he’s got dad, I’m afraid.”

“Gee! Then he’s—” Billy paused, a great disgust for the man rising, but to be routed by a hot sympathy for the girl. “By gracious! You won’t have anything to do with him, will you?”

“No.” She looked at him earnestly for a moment. “No,” she said again with a hint of fatality in her voice; “but that means that I must run away from home.”

“Run—away—from home?”

“Yes.” She was touched to wistfulness by the thought of what his home must be if no such possible contingent had occurred in his life. “If I don’t, I’ll have to marry Alvin Short; daddy will make me.”

“How can he?”

“Oh, Billy, don’t ask me. Fathers have ways. If Cousin Will were here he could help me.”

“You never told me about him. Did I ever see him?”

“No. He’s not a cousin really. Uncle Henry’s wife was married before, and Will is her son. We were great chums till they moved to Oregon a few years ago.”

Billy looked at her, speculating on the reminiscent light that came into her eyes as she gazed absently off into the west.

“Will was as good as a brother,—better,—he didn’t tease. If he was here he’d not let them make me marry if I didn’t want to.”

“You aren’t old enough to marry!” Billy burst out vehemently.

She smiled faintly. “I’m more than two years older than ma was, and she thinks it would be fine because Alvin—Mr. Short—has so much money.”

“Still she won’t—surely she won’t—” He hesitated, unable to picture a mother who would sacrifice her daughter to such a man. He had seldom seen the tired, frowzy woman who kept out of sight when Erminie had callers.

“Ma always does as dad says. It’s the easiest way to keep peace in the family. Sometimes she spunks up a little, as to-day. Daddy’s generally good to her, though; to me, too, if I do as he wants. But lately he won’t stand for anything from us.”

“What can you do for a living?”

She sighed and drew in her lip. “Nothing well, Billy; but I can learn housework, I suppose.”

“Don’t you know that already?” He thought of his capable mother, of his sister, who was a good housekeeper as well as an accomplished musician.

“No. Ma has always made me save my hands and complexion, study, take music, go to dancing school, and all that, because she was sure I’d marry rich.”

Billy thought hard. Wild notions of succoring this girl, of taking her to his own home, of leaving school and going to work that he might support her, of doing something, anything worthy of a man on whom womanhood calls for help. A dozen equally impossible plans surged through his excited brain; but he could not think of anything definite, practical enough.

“Don’t look so hurt—so angry, Billy. Something will turn up. You’ve told me what I wanted to be sure about, the sort of man Alvin Short is, and—”

“Perhaps some of it isn’t true. I’ll find out exactly.”

“Enough is true to decide me. The man I marry must have a good name, if he hasn’t a dollar.”

“You won’t think about run—about any change right away?”

“No. I guess I can coax dad off—and Mr. Short—till school closes. I want my diploma.”

“Couldn’t you teach?”

“No, Billy, I’m not built that way; but I can scrub if necessary; and I will, before I’ll marry Alvin Short.”

Billy looked at her pretty hands, remembering what melodies they had drawn from the piano on the many evenings he and Erminie had sung together; and his anger rose again.

“We must go back. If dad knows I’ve been out with any one but Mr. Short, he’ll be mad.”

“But I’m just a boy.”

The bitterness in his tone did not escape her. “Don’t fret. You’re plenty big enough and old enough to make dad mad, and Alvin Short jealous.”

She rose and looked into his face as he stood beside her, head and shoulders taller. She could no more help saying and looking the pleasant, flattering thing to those she cared for than she could help breathing. It was part of her charm. She was always looking more than she meant, too, and having to use all her art to escape the results.

Billy gazed down on her with tender eyes, his heart beating faster with a manly, protecting feeling new to him. “Anyway I’m big enough and old enough to do just my level best to make things easy for you. Let me know how I can, won’t you?”

“Yes, Billy, I will. Oh, you’re such a comfort!” And because she was worn out by a stormy interview with her father that she was too proud to repeat, she could not restrain the sob that came with the last word.

That was too much for impressionable Billy. He put his arms around her and kissed her.

Often in fun and frolic he had kissed girls more to tease them than to please himself; but this was very different,—his first man’s kiss; and with its sweetness mingled a quick-born sense of responsibility and the acceptance of a man’s part. He had put himself on record with her; the kiss was the compact.

They walked for blocks in silence, and separated at the end of her street with but a word of good-bye; speech seemed superfluous.

That night Billy went to bed having a secret his mother could not share, for it was Erminie’s rather than his own. Life seemed very portentous, big with duties and prospects that belonged to a new world. All his past was but a flash, a gleam of childish nonsense. Now he was a man!

CHAPTER III
“POP” STREETER’S PROPOSITION

FOR the first time he could remember, Billy was sleepless till the sun rose. All night long he thought and thought. He had considered his life rather complex—he was leader of one of the patrols of his troop, the Olympics; he had a part in the school drama which he had believed very important. And on waking came the sudden remembrance of the talk Mr. Streeter was to give soon on the matter of Good Citizens’ Clubs. Billy was sponsor for that, and must see it through. Also it looked still more as if he would not be able to avoid the clash with the bully.

But all this was trivial now, childish. He could no longer think of himself alone,—there would be two. That kiss—that kiss was his pledge, a consecration of his life to Erminie’s happiness.

By the time the sun had struck through the window into his large attic room he had mapped out his course. He would have to continue school till vacation—his mother would insist on that; but by that time he would have secured work of some sort. He regretted having sold the “ha’nt” in California and invested his money with his mother’s—by Mr. Smith’s advice—in the City of Green Hills; but it was too late to change that. Yet he would work hard, attend night school, and prepare himself for his real life-business, which was to be Journalism. He spelled it with a capital, for he would be no small truckling reporter, but a faithful, inspiring leader of the people.

Resolutely he put aside the thought of marriage although it lay, coiled and conscious like fate, at the back of all his plans. Other men married young, why not one more? The conventions were ridiculous; a man was a man when he was grown! He drew himself up and measured again before his mirror. Almost six feet!

Yet he must not subject Erminie to ridicule. The world must see that she was marrying a man who could support and protect her. He would not have to wait very long,—he looked twenty-one,—and his mother would consent when she saw he was well prepared, saw how pitiful was Erminie’s situation. Shyly—though there was none to see—he rubbed his rough chin and wondered how he would look with mustache and imperial.

The elation of the night still lifted him. His body was strangely light; he felt as if he could move a mountain. The need for secrecy increased the stimulation, and he looked on forest, lake, and Sound with new vision. The yellow rose of sunrise touched Cascades and Olympics alike with a splendor he had not before recognized, and lighted the vast reaches between ranges with a clear thin radiance not seen in southern lands.

Billy’s heart ached with this new fulness of life. Visions undreamed before opened his eyes to his own manhood; and the impulse came to put this experience into rhythm,—the impulse that touches every normal young creature. Some may not have the wit to fix it on paper, but all sing the song.

Billy sang it,—sang in a lilting, rather difficult metre, beginning ambitiously with an apostrophe to his love,

“Ermine-white soul of my Erminie,”

and leaping immediately to the next rhyme which should be “burn in me”—he was not acquainted with the exactions of prosody. However, his Muse proceeded for a couple of verses; and if she limped at times, it was no more than appears in the work of some real poets when they push the lady too hard.

He read the lines several times, softly whispering the passioned words. They sounded rather good, though not by a tithe were they adequate. What miserable, foolish little things were written words! Still he marvelled that he could write even these. He would copy them on a typewriter and gave them to Erminie. No one could then guess their authorship, not even her father should he chance upon them.

At breakfast he was silent, preoccupied; but his mother, being tired from a night of watching with the baby, who had been fretful, did not notice Billy, nor object when he said he would not be home at noon.

Billy gazed down on her with tender eyes, his heart beating faster with a manly, protecting feeling new to him

He hurried off, hoping to meet Erminie in the halls before she went to her class-room; but she was barely prompt, passing him as the bell rang, with a hasty nod. Billy thought it cool, till he saw that Walter Buckman was right behind her.

The hours droned by, seemingly interminable. Automatically he went from class to class. Twice he had to be reminded that the bell had tapped. In the midst of defining the powers of the Constitution of the United States of America, he saw a picture of a little house with a vine over it, and Erminie sitting in the tiny living-room. And while walking down the hall to his German Class he built still other castles, followed impossible adventures that involved Erminie, himself, and two other men who wanted her; and vanquished them both just at the moment his teacher said, “Guten Morgen, Herr Bennett.”

Yet as the day proceeded, he had to wake to his many duties. At the noon recess he was besieged by boys asking of the meeting to be addressed in the assembly-room by Mr. Streeter, its importance, and if they could not go would he tell them all about it later? And the girls appealed to him to know if they were really invited. A delayed English exercise had to be copied; and at the moment—hoped for, watched for—when Erminie went down the main hall on her way back from luncheon, a teacher was explaining to Billy some stubbornly hidden point in his geometry.

Two o’clock came finally, and Billy, waiting till the last moment, hoping vainly to see Erminie, went to the assembly-room, where a crowd of noisy boys waited for Mr. Streeter’s coming.

“Who is he, anyway?” asked a boy new to the city and the school.

“He’s the best, jolliest ever,” Billy answered. “They say he’s never grown up and never will. But the boys like him that way, and the fathers and mothers trust him to the limit.”

“What does he do?”

“For a living? Nothing now. He’s had a fortune come to him, ten times as much a year as he used to earn.”

“That must beat the old game for fun.”

“He gets his fun with the boys,—spends his time and money that way. You see he’s had the university, Europe, and all that.”

When Mr. Streeter tapped for order, it was instant, for he always had some message the boys were eager to hear, though they knew as little of the scope of his work as did their busy fathers.

He had a round, jolly face; and near each end of his brown mustache a dimple that was the envy of every girl who knew him. But in spite of dimples, and kind eyes that grew dark and tender at a tale of suffering, those eyes could compel, the dimples could disappear in a look that few disregarded.

After his greeting, and one of the funny stories that he told well, he said, “I have a message more serious than usual for you to-day, a plan that touches not only you but your city of the future, for which in five years nearly every one of you before me will be responsible.

“I wonder if you know, boys and girls, how different this city of ours is from the older, Eastern cities? It has risen almost by magic. Your fathers and mothers are still busy with their hard fight with nature, cutting down trees and washing mountains into the sea, filling deep valleys or making land where water was. They don’t have time to think of the future.

“But it’s coming, and it will have as hard nuts to crack as any we have now. I wonder if you wish to learn a little about them now, before they are dropped down on you?

“Don’t we want a beautiful city? Want our city to look as well on post cards as Paris looks, or any city on earth? No city in the world has more beauty from nature; if we should do as well with our building as Paris has with hers, all the people on earth would sell all their goods and travel here to see us,—come any way they could, on foot if they couldn’t fly,—to see the beautiful City of Green Hills.

“Do you know how we could have it that way? By making out of every boy and girl living here a good citizen, a patriotic citizen, who would no more be wasteful of her wealth or beauty than he would strike himself. You are beginning here in the right way. Your playground politics, your attempt to make it a clean place, beautiful and pleasant for ear as well as eye,—that is fine. But nothing of that sort amounts to much unless it reaches out to all: that’s it, to all. No city is fine or lasting, or ought to last, if the set of people that are making fine avenues and boulevards let its poor folk live in holes and sow tin cans instead of roses in the alleys.”

He stopped a moment to get the temper of the meeting. They knew that his hobby was hunting boys, to help them. He hunted them as other men hunt game, or business opportunities. Only the recording angel knew how many waifs he “rounded in for rations.” The street boys adored him for his power as well as for his goodness. He was the champion all-round amateur athlete of the town, and though slow to anger, in the language of the “newsies,” when “he does let go his bunch o’ fives, skidoo the bunch!”

There were plenty of cheers, and cries of, “Go on!”

“Scouts and Sunday schools and school politics are all good; but we need something that includes all in one larger work, as the schools and the city include all. I have thought of a chain of Young Citizens’ Clubs that should reach all. How many of you know about your city, her population, income, resources, officers? Would you like to know? I am willing to lead such a movement if you’d like it.

“There isn’t time to tell you in detail all the different schemes I have thought out! Bands—I will see that every boy that will learn is taught to play some instrument; drills, scouting parties in the city to spy out what we’d like to do to make it better; the best speakers in the city and State, to tell us just what sort of a pie the politicians cook for us each year; picnics and camping, to learn how much fun there is out under the sky, and how a man can jolly along without much but a blanket and a frying pan, and have the time of his life; and each year some great celebration the young citizens would themselves manage that would really mean things—all these ideas, our history, our future,—do you get this, young people? Would it be great? Or am I just dreaming?”

They caught the bigness of his idea and responded as heartily as boys and girls always will when they are enlisted.

Jim Barney and his followers were there in force, because it was necessary for them to be in touch with all that was going on. They saw, or their leader did, that this Good Citizens’ Club meant the end of their influence and of his rule.

“Of course you don’t mean girls,” Jim drawled in a slow, confident tone.

“Can girls be loyal to the city? Isn’t your mother as good a citizen as your father?”

It was an unfortunate question. Jim’s mother had run off with a man his father despised; while the father, a successful saloon-keeper, and good to Jim according to his light, was the boy’s idol.

“You bet she ain’t. Women and girls don’t count in politics.”

The girls scowled, some boys hissed, but too many cheered.

“If they don’t count, America is a lie,” Mr. Streeter said when the noise had ceased. “Yet even that aspect of the case is futile. The amendment to enfranchise the women of Washington will surely carry; your mothers and sisters will be citizens whether you like it or not. What will you do about it?”

Cheering and laughing, good-natured jeers and one or two faint hisses followed. But the majority were interested, and an organization on Mr. Streeter’s basis followed, with Reginald Steele and Cicero Jones as president and vice-president, Bess Carter secretary, and Billy treasurer. As these four were of the strongest opposers of Jim Barney, it was not surprising that he rose and rather boisterously led his gang out.

Mr. Streeter did not quite understand, but said rivalry was sometimes wholesome, and perhaps Mr. Barney would organize something himself.

“You may think it strange that I come with this proposition so near the end of the school year. I wonder if you will like my further plans? How do you think we can make this most effective? I had thought we could have every member of this club, and those that are forming in the other schools, start a little feeder in his own neighborhood. The Scouts are already enthusiastic. And my biggest notion of all is to have a band in each club; and when these bands are studying and playing about the city, we’ll select the very best of them, and the ten best citizens,—that is, those who, on the vote of all the rest have done most in this work,—and we’ll go abroad with them. East, all over our own States, and then to Europe. Well, it’s a pretty big jump, that is; I won’t propose Mars till next time.”

“But that would take a heap of money; we couldn’t—” The “doubting Thomas” hesitated and subsided.

“There is a city on this coast where they are doing just that thing. And when, after a tour of six months, those thirty boys came home, having earned their way by their splendid music, and won the applause and goodwill of all the countries they visited, what do you suppose their own city did? Gave them the freedom of the city, made one of them mayor of the town for a week, and the entire city feted them.”

“Well, what do you think of that?” one astonished person upspoke in meeting.

“That may be far away, but I have one idea coming that isn’t,—a flag for the city. Do you like that idea? Would it be a good thing for a city to have its own banner floating with the Stars and Stripes on every school house, shop, ship, and home?”

“Has any other city a flag?”

“Not that I know of.”