Yet one morning he got up and deliberately walked out of the house. When his breakfast was ready cook called for him in vain, and in vain she searched for him from attic to cellar. But before it was time for Tom to go to business another boy came, a little older than my vagrant,--a nice, respectable-looking boy,--and asked for Mr. May. He came into the dining-room and stood there, cap in hand.
“If you please, sir,” he said bashfully, “Johnny True wants to know if you’ll be so good as to take me on in his place, considering that he isn’t coming back any more, and I have done errands before, and got good reference.”
He had made his little speech in breathless haste, running all his sentences together into one.
Tom looked at him deliberately, and lit a cigar.
“He didn’t tell me, if you please, but he said he should be hurt to death if it troubled you to lose him, and he knew I could do as well as he could.”
I saw a refusal in Tom’s eyes, so I made haste to forestall it.
“Do take him,” I said in a low tone to Tom, and then I said to the boy that just now he had better go to the store, and Mr. May would see him presently, when he came to business.
Tom laughed, a half-amused, half-provoked laugh, when he went out, and said,--
“Well, my dear, I don’t think your vagrant has proved to be such a success that you need expect me to let him choose my next errand boy.”
“I think, at least, that if he has sent you one as good as himself you will have no fault to find,” I said hotly. But all the time there was a sore place in my own heart, for I had thought that my vagrant would have loved me too well to run away from me in this way.
That night Tom said that the new errand boy was doing well, and he had concluded to keep him on. I think Tom missed my vagrant; but not, of course, so much as I missed my bright scholar--my grateful little follower.
Of course, the new boy lived in his own home, wherever that might be. I did not concern myself about him, or feel any disposition to put him in the little bed in the front attic.
Two or three weeks passed and we heard no word from Johnny True. But at last a rainy day came, and with it Johnny, asking for Miss May.
“I guess he’s repented,” cook said, coming upstairs to tell me. I went down to Johnny, resolved to be equal to the occasion--to meet him with all the severity his ungrateful behavior deserved. But, somehow, the wistful look in his blue eyes disarmed me. He was a little thin and pale, too; and my heart began to soften even before he spoke.