I put down the child—he was only seven years of age—in the middle of our general living room, and looked at him. His little coat was split out in the back; one of his stockings, already well-darned at the knees, was past remedy; his hands were black, and one was bleeding; his whole little body was throbbing with excitement, anger, and violent exercise. As I looked at him quietly the defiant expression in his eyes began to give place to tears.
“There is no use in punishing him now,” said my wife. “Please leave him to me and find the others.”
“I wasn’t going to punish him,” I said.
“What are you going to do? What makes you look at him so?”
“He’s a problem I can’t solve—with the given conditions.”
“O Robert, you drive me half wild. If the house was on fire you’d stop to follow out some train of thought about it all. I’m tired to death. Do bring the children home. When we’ve put them to bed you can figure on your problem, and I can sit down.”
As I went up to the Daggetts’ flat I was dimly conscious of another problem. My wife was growing fretful and nervous. Our rooms would not have satisfied a Dutch housewife, but if “order is heaven’s first law” a little of Paradise was in them as compared to the Daggetts’ apartments. “Yes,” I was told, in response to my inquiries; “Winnie is in the bedroom with Melissy.”
The door was locked, and after some hesitation the girls opened it. As we were going downstairs I caught a glimpse of a newspaper in my girl’s pocket. She gave it to me reluctantly, and said “Melissy” had lent it to her. I told her to help her mother prepare supper while I went to find Merton. Opening the paper under a street lamp, I found it to be a cheap, vile journal, full of flashy pictures that so often offend the eye on newsstands. With a chill of fear I thought, “Another problem.” The Daggett children had had the scarlet fever a few months before. “But here’s a worse infection,” I reflected. “Thank heaven, Winnie is only a child, and can’t understand these pictures;” and I tore the paper up and thrust it into its proper place, the gutter.
“Now,” I muttered, “I’ve only to find Merton in mischief to make the evening’s experience complete.”
In mischief I did find him—a very harmful kind of mischief, it appeared to me. Merton was little over fifteen, and he and two or three other lads were smoking cigarettes which, to judge by their odor, must certainly have been made from the sweepings of the manufacturer’s floor.
“Can’t you find anything better than that to do after school?” I asked, severely.
“Well, sir,” was the sullen reply, “I’d like to know what there is for a boy to do in this street.”
During the walk home I tried to think of an answer to his implied question. What would I do if I were in Merton’s place? I confess that I was puzzled. After sitting in school all day he must do something that the police would permit. There certainly seemed very little range of action for a growing boy. Should I take him out of school and put him into a shop or an office? If I did this his education would be sadly limited. Moreover he was tall and slender for his age, and upon his face there was a pallor which I dislike to see in a boy. Long hours of business would be very hard upon him, even if he could endure the strain at all. The problem which had been pressing on me for months—almost years—grew urgent.
With clouded brows we sat down to our modest little supper. Winifred, my wife, was hot and flushed from too near acquaintance with the stove, and wearied by a long day of toil in a room that would be the better for a gale of wind. Bobsey, as we called my little namesake, was absorbed—now that he was relieved from the fear of punishment—by the wish to “punch” the boy who had tripped him up. Winnie was watching me furtively, and wondering what had become of the paper, and what I thought of it. Merton was somewhat sullen, and a little ashamed of himself. I felt that my problem was to give these children something to do that would not harm them, for do something they certainly would. They were rapidly attaining that age when the shelter of a narrow city flat would not answer, when the influence of a crowded house and of the street might be greater than any we could bring to bear upon them.
I looked around upon the little group for whom I was responsible. My will was still law to them. While my little wife had positive ways of her own, she would agree to any decided course that I resolved upon. The children were yet under entire control, so that I sat at the head of the table, commander in chief of the little band. We called the narrow flat we lived in “home.” The idea! with the Daggetts above and the Ricketts on the floor beneath. It was not a home, and was scarcely a fit camping ground for such a family squad as ours. Yet we had stayed on for years in this long, narrow line of rooms, reaching from a crowded street to a little backyard full of noisy children by day, and noisier cats by night. I had often thought of moving, but had failed to find a better shelter that was within my very limited means. The neighborhood was respectable, so far as a densely populated region can be. It was not very distant from my place of business, and my work often kept me so late at the office that we could not
