E made his first appearance one after noon a week or so before the Fall Handicap Meeting. Mosher, Fosgill, Allen, Ronimus, and several more of us were down at the end of the field putting the shot. Fosgill, who was scratch man that year, had just done an even forty feet and the shot had trickled away toward the cinder path. Whereupon a small bit of humanity appeared from somewhere, picked up the sixteen pounds of lead with much difficulty, and staggered back to the circle with it.
“Hello, kid,” said Fosgill; “that’s pretty heavy for you, isn’t it?”
“Naw,” was the superb reply; “that ain’t nothin’!”
We laughed, and the youngster grinned around at us in a companionable way that won us on the spot.
“What’s your name?” asked Ronimus.
“Patsy.”
“Patsy what?”
“Burns.”
“How old are you?”
“’Leven.”
“You’re a Frenchman, aren’t you?”
“Naw.”
“You’re not?” Ronimus pretended intense surprise.
“He’s a Dutchman, aren’t you, Patsy?” said Mosher.
“Naw.”
“What are you then?”
“Mucker,” answered Patsy with a grin.
For the rest of that day and for many days afterward Patsy honored us with his presence. After each put he ambled forth, lifted the metal ball from the ground with two dirty little hands, snuggled it against the front of his dirty little shirt, and labored back with it. At the end of the week Patsy had become official helper.
He was a diminutive wisp of humanity, a starved, slender elf with a freckled face, wizened and peaked, which at times looked a thousand years old. It reminded you of the face of one of those preternaturally aged monkeys that sit motionless in a dark corner of the cage, oppressed with the sins and sorrows of a hundred centuries. And yet it mustn’t be supposed that Patsy was either a pessimist or a misanthrope. Patsy’s gray Irish eye could sparkle merrily and his thin little Irish mouth usually wore a whimsical smile. It was as though he realized that life was but a hollow mockery and yet had bravely resolved to pretend otherwise, that we, young and innocent, might still preserve our cherished illusions.
We made a good deal of Patsy. We pretended that he was very, very old and sophisticated—not a difficult task—and deferred to his judgment on all occasions. But in spite of this Patsy never became “fresh.” To be sure, he speedily began calling Fosgill “Bull,” but I don’t think he meant the slightest disrespect; every one called the big fellow “Bull,” and it is quite possible that Patsy believed it to be a title of honor. He was attentive to all of us, but his heart was Fosgill’s. He used to wait outside the Locker Building until we came out after dressing and then walk beside Fosgill until he reached the Square. Then Patsy would say:
“Good night, Bull.”
And Fosgill would answer gravely:
“Good night, Patsy.”
And Patsy would disappear.
But the evening of the Handicaps we took him back to the boarding-house with us, and he sat beside Fosgill and ate ravenously of everything placed before him. We learned Patsy’s life-story that evening. He went to school—generally. He lived with Brian. Brian was his brother, eighteen years old, and a man of business; Brian drove for Connors, the teamster. Patsy wasn’t sure that he had ever had a mother, but he was absolutely certain about his father. He still had vivid recollections of the night they broke down the door and put the handcuffs on father after father had laid out the lieutenant with a chair. Patsy didn’t know just what father had done, but he had an idea it was something regarding the disappearance of numerous suits of clothes from a tailor’s shop. Patsy was going into business himself just as soon as they let him stop school; he was going to sell papers. He had tried several times to wean himself from education, but each time they haled him back to the schoolhouse. Patsy thought the thing was terribly wrong.
When the snow covered the field we saw Patsy only occasionally. In the spring we got to work early. We believed we had a good show to win the Dual that year and a fighting chance at the Intercollegiate. We were strong on the sprints and distances, fair at the jumps and hurdles, and rather weak at the weights. We had a good man in Fosgill at the shot-put, but that’s about all. Along in May we had it doped out that if we could get first in the shot-put we could win out by a point or two. But there wasn’t anything certain about it, for our opponent was strong on second, near-“second,” and third-place men.