“You must have had a strange mother,” remarked Bonny.
The tramp suddenly raised himself again, and his sunburnt face grew redder. “For the love of Heaven,” he said, extending one ragged arm, “don’t say a word against her. The thought of her is the only thing that moves me. She loved me, and, unclean, characterless wretch that I am, she would love me yet if she were still alive.”
The man’s head sank on his arm, but not quickly enough. Tom and Bonny had both seen glistening in his eyes, not the one jewel they were jestingly in search of, but two priceless jewels that were not pearls, but diamonds.
“Come on, Bonny,” said Tom, roughly, as he drew him from the shed.
“Tom,” remarked Bonny, softly, as they went slowly up-stairs, “Berty wants you to do something for that fellow, doesn’t she?”
Bonny made no further remarks until some time later, when they were standing on the front door-step, then he asked, thoughtfully, “What does Berty want you to do, Tom?”
“Gutter cats, back yard cats, disreputable cats, I should guess from the character of the superintendent she has chosen,” replied Tom, gruffly.
“The superintendent being the tramp,” said Bonny, slyly.
“There’s no one else in question,” responded Tom.
“I think you are wrong about the nature of the beasts,” continued Bonny. “I believe Berty means pet cats--Angoras, and so on.”
“Do you mean to say you haven’t noticed them? It’s the latest cry among the women--‘Give me a long-haired cat!’ Mrs. Darley-James has a beauty--snow-white with blue eyes.”
“All nonsense--these society women don’t know what to do to kill time.”
“They’re not all society women that have them. Old Mrs. McCarthy has a pair of dandies--and I find that the women who take up cat-culture are more kind to back yard tabbies.”
“Maybe you’re right, Bonny. I don’t call round on these women as you do.”
“Well,” said Bonny, apologetically, “I don’t see any harm in putting on your best coat and hat, and doing a woman who has invited you to her house the compliment of calling on her day.”
“Oh, dressing up,” said Tom, “is such a nuisance.”
“You can’t call on many that you’d be bothered with calling on without it. Sydney Gray tried calling on Margaretta on her day in a bicycle suit. He had ridden fifty miles, and was hot and dusty and perspiring. He had the impudence to go into Margaretta’s spick and span rooms and ask for a cup of tea. She was so sweet to him that he came away hugging himself--but he never got asked there again, and every once in awhile he says to some one, ‘Queer, isn’t it, that Mrs. Stanisfield gives me the go-by. I don’t know what I’ve done to offend her.’”