Mama soon to be no more! It could not be! But it was. For very soon afterward, she was gone, and the worst memory of Robin’s life had now been replaced with one even worse. Hawker, as he had told his friends at The Whole Hog had, out of the kindness of his heart, allowed Robin a whole week to do “all the snivelin” he wanted.
But that week was over, and Robin no longer went to school. Yet what could he do about it?
Nothing!
He would no doubt have to lie about his age and be sent to work in a factory. And what could he do about that?
Nothing!
And what of his baby brother? Poor little Danny! Not quite four months old with a terrible future already mapped out for him. And if, after being farmed out to such a place as that run by Mrs. Jiggs, he even grew up at all, would he be like Hawker, the only papa he was ever to know? It was an unbearable thought.
Robin had promised Mama he would do everything in his power to keep his little brother safe. But deep in her heart, she must have known there was nothing he could do to save Danny, or himself, from Hawker Doak.
Nothing!
Chapter IV
ESCAPE!
Robin woke with a start, only to have his blood instantly turn to ice. For what had awakened him was the sound of Danny crying, and Hawker yelling.
“Shut up! Shut up, you little brat!”
Robin leaped from his cot. By the light of an oil lamp making its feeble way from the kitchen, he saw Hawker’s huge, threatening form leaning over Danny’s little crib. His hand was raised as if to strike.
If Robin had hesitated a moment to think, he might have been too paralzyed with fear to move. Instead, he ducked under Hawker’s arm and grabbed Danny up.
“I’ll take care of him, Hawker. I’ll make him stop crying.”
Hawker, instead of lowering his arm, must have felt it necessary to make the raising of it worthwhile. He laid a bruising clout on Robin’s back. If the crib had not been there to catch him, Robin would have hit the floor, taking Danny with him.
“That’s for remindin’ you you should o’ taken care o’ the job before I got home,” Hawker snarled. “I don’t like comin’ in to find a bawlin’ brat waitin’ for me. Now you get him quiet in a hurry, or you get him out o’ here and keep him out ’til he shuts up.You got that, boy?”
“Y-yes, Hawker,” Robin said, knowing as he bounced Danny his arms to quiet him that it was probably Hawker himself who had awakened Danny when he came crashing into the apartment in his usual manner.
Hawker started to leave, then hesitated and turned back. “And you might as well know I’m takin’ back collectin’ the rents. You’re not to do newspapers neither. A little weasel like you wouldn’t last thirty minutes on the streets, nor bring in enough to pay Mrs. Jiggs to keep the brat while you’re there. So tomorrow, boy, you ain’t eleven any more. You turn fourteen, and we visit a factory or two, and see who pays the best, or who’ll even take you. Now, I’m hittin’ my bed and you see I don’t get woke again, boy!”
He stumped noisily to his room, and in a few moments, Robin heard the springs squeal as he fell into bed. In no time, snores were rumbling through the apartment.
Robin, in the meantime, quickly pulled Danny’s half-full bottle of milk from where it sat in the window box outside to keep it cold and then warmed it at the sink. The milk soon put Danny back to sleep.
Robin climbed wearily back into his cot. But he had no sooner laid down and closed his eyes than they flew open again, and he lay staring into the darkness, filled with dread. He had been so frightened when standing by Hawker and praying that Danny would quiet down, he had barely heard all that Hawker had to say. Now the crushing words came back to him. “Tomorrow you ain’t eleven any more.You turn fourteen, and we visit a factory.”
Robin knew that a child who could read and write need only be fourteen to be allowed to work in a factory. That a puny eleven-year-old could pass for fourteen was laughable. But Robin also knew that many children lied, or their parents lied for them, to get into the factories. And many factory owners or foremen accepted the lies. Hawker would lie, and expect Robin to lie. He knew that if he confessed to his true age, he could start numbering the days he had remaining in this world.
And what of Danny? Poor helpless little Danny. He would be spending his days in that pigsty run by Mrs. Jiggs. No, worse than a pigsty, for a pigsty was probably better kept than her baby farm. Robin could not bear the thought of what he had seen when he went to pick up Danny that evening.
He could not at one glance count the number of babies crawling around, dirty diapers dangling about their legs, faces filthy with caked cereal and milk, most of them sobbing piteously. Mrs. Jiggs herself, a slatternly woman of mountainous proportions, sat squeezed into a rocking chair, raising to her lips a tin cup giving off fumes bespeaking the same kind of liquid refreshment that perfumed such places as The Whole Hog. Unable, or simply too lazy, to get to the door when Robin had knocked, she had yelled at him to come in.
“You can look for him over there, dearie,” she had said to his request for Danny. She waved her arm in the direction of a pile of dirty rags in a corner of the room.
And there Robin had found Danny, his face scarlet
