The Adventures of Bobby Orde Part 9

"I don't know," replied Bobby; "but I'll fix it all right yet."

Bobby was busy with his birthday party all that afternoon, but next morning he was afoot even before the Catholic Church bell called him.

The press occupied him until breakfast time, but he made small progress.

His father's morning paper filled him with envy by reason of its clear impression. After breakfast he begged a tiny bottle of benzine and an old toothbrush from his mother, and went at it again for nearly an hour.

The benzine worked like a charm. The type came out bright as new and the old ink dissolved readily from the platen and roller. Bobby took note that he should have cleared them the day before, as a night's neglect had left them sticky. With it all he seemed to have arrived at a dead wall. All his limited mechanical ingenuity was exhausted and still the letters printed either too deep or too light. About half-past nine he cleaned up and went down to the Ottawa.

His friends there were all sitting under the trees before the hotel, resting rather vacantly after a hard romp. Celia perched high on a root, her curls against the brown bark, her hat dangling by its elastic from a forefinger, her lips parted, her eyes vacant. Gerald leaned gracefully against the trunk. Bobby sat cross-legged on the ground watching her--and him. Kitty and Margaret reclined flat on their backs, gazing up through the leaves. Morris alone showed a trace of activity. He had fished from his pockets the short, blunt stub of a pencil, a penny and a piece of tissue paper. The latter he had superimposed over the penny and by rubbing with the pencil was engaged in making a tracing of the pattern on the coin. Through his preoccupation Bobby at last became cognizant of this process. He sat and watched it with increasing interest.

"By Jimmy!" he shouted leaping to his feet.

"What is it?" they cried, startled by the abrupt movement.

"I got to go home," said Bobby.

They expostulated vehemently, for his departure spoiled the even number for a game. But he would not listen, even to Celia's reproachful voice.

"I'll be back after lunch," he called, and departed rapidly. Duke arose from his warm corner, stretched deliberately, yawned, glanced at the children, half wagged his tail and finally trotted after.

Bobby rushed home as fast as he could; broke into the house like a whirlwind; tore upstairs and, breathless with speed and the excitement of a new idea, flung himself into the chair before his little table. He had seen the solution. To the flash of embryonic creative instinct vouchsafed him, Morris's penny had represented type, the inequalities of its design were the inequalities of alignment over which he had struggled so long and the pressure of the pencil and tissue paper paralleled the imposition of the card on the letters. But in the case of Morris's penny the type did not conform to the paper and the pressure, _the paper conformed to the type_.

His brain afire with eagerness, Bobby first stretched several clean sheets of paper over the platen and clamped them down; then he inked the type and pressed down the lever. Thus he gained an impression on the platen itself. At this point he hesitated. On his father's desk down stairs was mucilage, but mucilage was strictly forbidden. The hesitation was but momentary, however, for the creative spirit in full blast does not recognize ordinary restrictions. With his own round-pointed scissors he cut out little squares of paper. These he pasted on the platen over the letters whose impression had been too faint. A few moments adjusted the guides. Bobby inked the type and inserted a fresh card. The moment of test was at hand.

He paused and drew a long breath. From one point of view the matter was a small one. From another it was of the exact importance of a little boy's development, for it represented the first fruits of all the hereditary influences that had silently and through the small experiences of babyhood, led him over the edge of the dark, warm nest to this first independent trial of the wings. He pressed the lever gently and took out the card. It was not a very good job of printing; the ink was not quite evenly distributed, the type were so heavily impressed that they showed through the reverse of the card like stamping; _but each letter had evidently received the same amount of pressure!_

Bobby uttered a little chuckle of joy--he had not time for more--and plunged into the rectification of minor errors. And by noon the press was working steadily, though slowly, and a very neat array of _Mr. John Ordes_ was spread out on the window drying.

The game was absorbing. Bobby brushed his type with the benzine and toothbrush; distributed it and set up another name--Miss Celia Carleton.

He had printed nearly a dozen of these when his mother's voice behind him interrupted his labours.

"Robert," said the voice sternly, "what are you doing with that mucilage?"

V

THE LITTLE GIRL

Bobby spent as much time with Celia as he was allowed. On Sunday he took her on his regular excursion to Auntie Kate--and Auntie Kate's cookies.

"Aren't you glad there was no Sunday School to-day?" he inquired blithely.

"I like Sunday School," stated Celia.

Bobby stopped short and looked at her.

"Do you like church too?" he demanded.

"I love it," she said.

"Do you like pollywogs?"

"Ugh, No!"

"Or stripy snakes?"

"They're _horrid!_"

"Or forts?"

"I don't know."

"Or rifles an' revolvers?"

"I am afraid of them."

"Or dogs?"

"I love dogs. I've got one home. His name is Pancho."

"What kind is he?" asked Bobby with a vast sigh of relief at finding a common ground. He had been brought to realize yesterday that little girls differ from boys; but for a few dreadful, floundering moments this morning he had feared they might, so to speak, belong to a different race. Afterward he realized that it would not have mattered even if she had not liked dogs. He merely wished to be near her. When he left her he immediately experienced the strongest longing to be again where he could see her, and breathe the deep, intoxicating, delicious, clean influence of her near presence. And yet with her his moments of unalloyed happiness were few and his hours of sheer misery were many.

Self-consciousness had never troubled Bobby before; but now in the presence of Gerald's slim elegance and easy, languid manner, he became acutely aware of his own deficiencies. His clothes seemed coa.r.s.er; his hands and feet were awkward; his body dumpier; his face rounder and more freckled. To him was born a great humility of spirit to match the great longing of it.

Nevertheless, as has been said, he and Duke trudged down to the Ottawa every morning, and again every afternoon, or as many of them as Mrs.

Orde permitted. He was content to come under the immediate spell of the dancing, sprite-like, sunny little girl. No thought of the especial effort to please, called courts.h.i.+p, entered his young head. He played with the children, and kept as close to Her as possible; that was all.

And one evening, trudging home dangerously near six o'clock, he ran slap against the legend chalked in huge letters on a board fence:

CELIA CARLETON and BOBBY ORDE

He stopped short, his heart jumping wildly. Often had he seen this coupling of names, other names; and he knew that it was considered a little of a shame, and somewhat of a glory. The sight confused him to the depths of his soul; and yet it also pleased him. He rubbed out the letters; but he walked on with new elation. The undesired but authoritative sanction of public recognition had been given his devotion. Gerald was not considered. Somebody had observed; so the affair must be noticeable to others. And with another tremendous leap of the heart Bobby welcomed the daring syllogism that, since the somebody of the impertinent chalk had fathomed his devotion to her, might it not be possible, oh, remotely inconceivably possible, of course, that the unknown had equally marked some slight interest on her part for him? The board fence, the maple-shaded walk, the soft brown street of pulverized s.h.i.+ngles, all faded in the rapt glory of this vision. Bobby gasped. Literally it had not occurred to him before. Now all at once he desired it, desired it not merely with every power of his child nature, but with the full strength of the man's soul that waited but the pa.s.sing of years to spread wide its pinions. The need of her answer to his love shook him to the depths, for it reached forward and back in his world-experience, calling into vague, drowsy, fluttering response things that would later awaken to full life, and reanimating the dim and beautiful instincts that are an heritage of that time when the soul is pa.s.sing the lethe of earliest childhood and retains still a wavering iridescence of the glory from which it has come. The question rose to his lips ready for the asking. He wanted to turn track on the instant, to call for Celia, to demand of her the response to his love.

And then, after the moment of exaltation, came the reaction. He was afraid. The thought of his stubby uninteresting figure came to him; and a deep sense of his unworthiness. What could she, accustomed to brilliant creatures of the wonderful city, of whom Gerald was probably but a mild sample, find in commonplace little Bobby Orde? He walked meekly home; and took a scolding for being late.

Nevertheless the idea persisted and grew. It came to the point of rehearsal. Before he fell asleep that very night, Bobby had ready cut and dried a half-dozen different ways in which to ask the question, and twice as many methods of leading up to it. In the darkness, and by himself, he felt very bold and confident.

The next morning, however, even after he had succeeded in sequestrating Celia from her companions, he found it impossible to approach the subject. The bare thought of it threw him to the devourings of a panic terror. This new necessity tore him with fresh but delicious pains. He felt the need of finding out whether she cared for him as he had never conceived a need could exist; yet he was totally unable to satisfy it.

By comparison the former misery of jealousy seemed nothing. Bobby lived constantly in this high breathless state of delight in Celia; and misery in the condition of his love for her. The Fuller boys and Angus saw him no more; the little library was neglected; the wood-box half the time forgotten; and the arithmetic, always a source of trouble, tangled itself into a hopeless snarl of which Bobby's blurred mental vision could make nothing.

All of his spare time he spent at his toy printing press, trying over and over for a perfect result--unblurred, well-registered, well aligned--in the shape of calling cards for "Miss Celia Carleton."

As soon as they were done to his satisfaction, he wrapped them in a clumsy package, and set out for the Ottawa, followed, as always, by Duke.

He found Celia alone in a rocking chair.

"Why didn't you come down this morning?" she asked him at once.

Bobby held up the package and looked mysterious.