Public-domain ebook
Bobby in Search of a Birthday
Language: en327 downloads on Project Gutenberg
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In: Children & Young Adult Reading·Novels
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #43569.
The opening · free to read
Once When Bobby Wasn't Left Behind
Bobby North went out into the front yard by the iron gate between the two tall stone columns to watch the horses and wagons and 'mobiles traveling up and down that invitingly dusty and mysterious road that he was forbidden ever to set foot upon.
He knew he could crawl under the gate, he was so little, and raise clouds of dust by dragging his feet in the road as two small boys did who passed by and stopped to gaze in wonder at Bobby and at the big brick house set back in the yard among some trees. He wondered if the Supe'tendent would really send him to bed without anything to eat if he disobeyed her just this once and slipped under the gate, out into the road for as many as forty or a dozen minutes.
He was afraid she really might, and was standing with face pressed against the iron bars of the gate when a man drove up back of him with a buggy jammed as full as it would hold of boys and girls from the Home.
"Bobby North!" cried the sharp, irritated voice of the Supe'tendent. "How many times must I tell you to keep away from that gate!"
He turned clear around and saw on the porch the tall, thin figure of the Supe'tendent. The man in the buggy jumped out to open the gate. Bobby stepped back from the graveled road, for he knew by experience that it is always safer, if you are a small boy, to keep out of the way of grown-up folks--_then_ they can't scold you for doing something you mustn't, or not doing something you should, even when you had never thought of doing either one.
He looked up longingly at the buggy load of boys and girls who were going to explore the mysteries of that delightfully dusty road and not coming back for maybe forty or a dozen days. Bobby was used to being left behind and stepped further away, but without taking his lonely eyes off those more fortunate children.
When the man had opened the gate, he stopped and looked at Bobby and then at the Supe'tendent on the porch. He came directly towards Bobby as he kept backing away, caught him up in his arms and tossed him into the lap of the lady who sat on the front seat!
"You'd like a whole week in the country, too, wouldn't you?" said the man.
"Yes'm."
Bobby was so surprised that that was all he could think of to say.
"I'm afraid he will be too much trouble for you," called the Supe'tendent. "He's so young."
Bobby steeled his heart and started to climb down from the lady's lap, but his lower lip twitched in spite of his effort to keep it steady.
"Nonsense!" exclaimed the man, as he led the horses out into the road, shut the gate, jumped into the seat by the woman and drove off in a cloud of dust. He didn't seem to be at all afraid of the much-to-be-feared Supe'tendent!
Bobby was so glad to be riding away from the Home that he thought he almost liked the Supe'tendent this once, and looked back and waved good-bye to her. She stood there stiff and angry and did not reply.
Thus it came about that Bobby North had his first trip away from the Home that he could remember. The week at Mr. and Mrs. Robert Eller's in the country was a glorious time--days to be remembered by all the red letters on the playing blocks that were sometimes given him on a Sunday to keep him quiet.
Besides the calves and little pigs, the clover field and the daisies in the yard, there was the two-months' old puppy that Mr. Eller's little boy told him was a St. Bernard. It soon became the chief delight of this puppy to chase Bobby about the yard and trip him and then, when he fell headlong, to lick his hands and face affectionately with a moist, red tongue. The man never once objected to his playing with the awkward and much-to-be-desired puppy all day long.
He was an answer to ardent and secret prayer, this Man Who Lets You Play with the Puppy, and Bobby looked up to him with a great deal of awe; his words carried the weight of authority. He seemed to understand what small boys want, to know that the greatest of all treasures, a real live puppy, is good for them.
Thus the happy days in the country passed like magic.
The Boy with Eight Birthdays
One afternoon the puppy was not to be found anywhere. Bobby returned to the front yard at Mr. Eller's, after a vain search for his playmate, and found that that day was a very special occasion.
The grown-ups, and the children, too, were celebrating something which seemed to be called a "birthdays." It belonged to Richard, the small son of the Man Who Lets You Play with the Puppy. It was the boy's eighth birthdays, and he was very proud of that fact.
There was ice-cream--enough so that Bobby's dish was heaped full a second time without asking and before he had quite finished the first helping--and cake and two big red and white apples for each child. Bobby was still munching contentedly away at his first apple, the other clutched tightly in his left hand, when Richard's mothers led the children into the house to see the "presents."
There was quite an array of them--enough Bobby decided for all eight birthdays and he vaguely wondered if all eight of them had come on that one day. There was a baseball, and a bat, a dozen marbles--"glassies" Richard called them, presents it seemed from his fathers; a nice, new, starchy white blouse with blue trousers, a gift from his mothers. Then there was a pair of high boots with a copper plate on the point of each toe, sent him by his Uncle John in the city.
Last of all there was something out at the barn which was to be sold when "they" grew up and help to buy something for Richard some day which his fathers never had--"an edge-cation."
"They" proved to be six little pigs with curly tails and squealy voices. Bobby wondered if Richard wouldn't grow up before they did, he was so much bigger, and then what would become of his edge-cation?
He fell to wondering about this thing called a birthdays. As near as he could make out, it was a very special day on which everybody--at least your fathers and mothers, if you had such possessions--unaccountably gave you playthings that you had always wanted, such as "glassies" and baseballs and, yes, little curly-tailed pigs that were to help buy you an edge-cation.
He decided he wanted a birthdays, but didn't know the least thing about how to go about it to get one. He determined to ask and went immediately to Richard who, having eight birthdays of his own, must be an authority on the matter.
"Where did you get your birthdays?" he asked in what he thought was a very loud voice, but apparently it wasn't for Richard said "Huh?" and for a moment stopped trying to straighten the curls out of the tails of the little pigs. Bobby repeated his question and added wistfully:
"Never had none."
"You have, too," said Richard.
"Ain't not," said Bobby resolutely.
"You have, too," repeated Richard.
Bobby fell silent under that assertion and tried to remember when anybody had ever given him presents. He could recall no such occasion. Then an explanation came to him.
"P'raps," he suggested timidly, "you only have birthdays when you have fathers and mothers and things like that."
"Everybody has birthdays," said Richard from the lofty peak of his superior years.
Bobby again remained silent and Richard, to add the final, crushing blow, gave further information.
"Everybody has fathers and mothers, some time."
"P'raps I'm not big enough yet to have fathers and mothers and birthdays. How big will I have to be?"
Richard snorted in derision.
"_They_ have you," he said and turned his attention to straightening out the curls from his pigs' tails.
Bobby did not understand, but felt that somehow he was in the wrong, and he went off a ways by himself and took the first comforting bite out of his other apple, carefully choosing the side with the most red on it.
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