Doodles, the Sunshine Boy

FRAGMENTS of the auctioneer’s entreaties floated through the open doorway of the bird shop and, above the rattle and roar of the street, clacked in Blue’s ears.

“Ladies and gentlemens ... beautiful lark ... emperor of singers ... not swell to look at, but.... Only twenty cents!—Twenty─two am I offered? ... shame, ladies and gentlemens!” And so on, in tones of pleading and mild complaint.

Blue, meanwhile, studied the placarded window, where all manner of feathered stock, “slightly damaged, but every bird a bargain,” was announced to be sold to the highest bidder.

“Lovely starling ... ladies and gentlemens,... how much?” the persuasive voice skipped on, but was rudely interrupted by another.

“Huntin’ fer bargains?” A boy of Blue’s own size nudged him in the back. “Why don’t yer go in ’n’ git one fer Doodles? ’T ’u’d keep him f’m bein’ down ’n’ dumpy. My aunt—”

“‘Down ’n’ dumpy’—Doodles!” Blue’s rallying laugh drowned the “ladies and gentlemens” drifting through the doorway. “Huh,” he chuckled, “guess yer don’t know Doodles!”

“Ain’t he, now? S’posed all sick folks was. My aunt she—”

“Doodles dumpy!” The boy’s shoulders shook again. “Why, if there was nothin’ left in the whole world but just barbers’ poles, Doodles ’u’d sure make friends with the stripes. And he’d have the best time ever—bet you he would!” Blue’s hard little face grew suddenly tender, as he thought of the brother whose life was all pain and all joy.

The auction was over. The crowd poured out into the noisy street. Here and there a bird─cage told that a lame canary, a blind bobolink, or some other “damaged” fluff of feathers had changed owners.

One of the purchasers, a small, hatless girl, clad in scowls and a lace─collared coat, halted when she saw Blue, and began recklessly to swing her cage.

“Here, you Mame Sweeney!” the boy cried, seizing the child’s arm; “don’t yer see you’re scarin’ that bird ’most to death?”

“Le’ go!” she snapped. “’T ain’t yours!” She wrenched herself free, and defiantly thrashed the cage about her knees.

“Stop it!” The girl found her hand gripped in a vise of muscles.

“Le’ me be!” she screamed. “Don’t care if I do scare him! Horrid old thing!”

A little group of newsboys circled about them, eager for a closer view of the cause of the wrangle.

The ragged gray bird, panting on the floor of his prison, did not invite favor. There was a subdued chorus of grunts and ejaculations. Then disapproval burst into bantering speech.

“Ain’t he a dood!”—“Mame, wha’ ’d yer pay fer th’ beaut?”—“Whin ’ll he give a concert?”—“Sure, if he sings like he looks, he’ll bate th’ show!”

The girl frowned on the teasing lads.

“How could I see him in all that jam!” she pouted. “The man said he was swell, and could sing like everything. Anyhow, I got him for seventeen cents!”

“Swell!” Blue let go a whistle. Yet he gazed pityingly at the poor, draggled thing in the cage.

“You could n’t to know nothin’ ’bout him the while he’s got fraids,” apologized Joseph Sitnitsky. “He be a awful stylish kind.” Joseph’s uncle was half─proprietor of the bird shop.

As if encouraged by this friendly comment, the bird tentatively cast an eye upward, and then hopped to his perch. But if he had hoped by this act to win kindlier words, the effort failed. Scorn swept the circle. The Bargain was disgracefully dirty, his left wing hung limp at his side, his bill was nicked, and his tail was reduced to three ragged feathers.

“Aw, he’s worser’n a muddy sparrer! Out him, Marne, an’ done with it!”

“You could to have nice feelings over him, und maybe sometime he sings,” mildly remonstrated the loyal nephew of Abraham Sitnitsky.

But nobody heeded the plaintive voice, and the girl, chagrined at the loss of her money and exasperated by the jeers of the boys, seemed about to follow Pete’s dismal advice, when Blue Stickney interposed.

“I’ll give yer a quarter for him!”

Staying her reckless hand, Mame stared.

“Honest?” she scowled.

The boy was already counting out the sum from his meager handful of small coins, and in a moment the gray bird had again changed owners.

As Blue started up the steep stairs to the top floor of The Flatiron, he wished it had been possible to give his purchase a bath before revealing it to the keen eyes of Doodles; but then the little brother would have had just so much less of happy ministration for his pet. For, of course, the bird would belong to Doodles. There had never been any other thought of it in Blue’s mind.

Down the dim stairway floated a strain of melody, and it told the boy agreeable news,—that his mother had come home and was getting dinner, that things had gone well at the big shop where she worked, and that the little brother was not suffering from the “bad spell” which had threatened in the morning. Mrs. Stickney rarely sang when Doodles was in unusual pain, and if she did it was not in so brisk a voice.

The song grew clearer, the words came distinctly now.

“Je—ru—sa—lem, the gold—en, With milk and hon—ey blest! Be—neath thy contempla—tion Sink heart and voice oppressed: I know not, oh, I know not, What holy joys are there, What ra—dian—cy of glo—ry, What light beyond compare.

“They stand, those halls of Zi—on, All ju—bi—lant—”

Blue opened the kitchen door, and as he stepped from the dusky hallway to the sunlit room, a sudden mellow trill struck into the song.

This tuneful greeting quite caught away the boy’s remembrance of the little speech of presentation with which he had thought to amuse his brother, and Doodles, his eyes big with wonder and delight, stretched out both hands towards the unkempt singer.

“O—h! is he ours?” he cried.

Blue nodded.

“To keep forever?”

Another nod.