# The Red Book Magazine/Volume 37/Number 2/Laurence and Roger

Extracted from The Red Book Magazine, 1921 June, pp. 32–36, 125–128. Accompanying illustrations may be omitted.
Charles seemed to wish them to understand that his hospitality was exhausted.
LAURENCE AND ROGER
By BOOTH TARKINGTON
Illustrated by William Van Dresser
A WAYFARER, passing through the “best residence section” of that town, and catching glimpses of small half-timbered gables, and of “Colonial” gambrels, among the shapely treetops. might little have suspected that here an inward canker of intellectualness gnawed beneath what appeared to be the grossest bourgeois comfort. Mrs. Norman Coy was the nucleus of that canker, so to speak; for her “living-room” had space for more than a hundred folding chairs from D. & M. Mulby's Funeral Home; and she was the founder of three organizations the titles of which began with “Civic”—though her favorite words for uses not so formal were “motivate,” “betterment,” “functioning,” “socialization” and “casual,” while the phrases she seemed to like best were “perhaps the most” and “let us then not.”
In conversation she had less the manner of a person talking than that of one presiding, probably as the result of habit, for she operated several times a week as a chairman, and except at dinner-tables was seldom involved in any discussion without mentioning that she believed in “order in all things,” and suggesting that “a better functioning might be accomplished if a chair were established.” Thereupon some one always murmured: “Then if Mrs. Norman Coy would be so gracious as to take the chair—”
Her invitations were not cajoleries to pastime, but implications of duty: tired men were spurred into evening clothes not only by their wives but by their consciences; something important to spiritual welfare might be lost in missing the evening of old chamber music by a string quartet, or “Alfred Austin, an Impression,” by Spencer Greene, Literature Editor of The Missal, Thus Mrs. Coy's living-room must be regarded as a true salon
Men were a somewhat enlivening addition to it, doubtless though by no means a requisite, for it was in session almost as frequently in the afternoons without them as it was in the evenings with them. However, this compliment was paid them: the salon evenings were usually devoted to some manifestation or discussion of Art, while the afternoon meetings, attended only by women, were concerned almost invariably with the Practical; and it is under this heading, the Practical, that Mrs. Pilman Smith's discourse on “The New in Child-rearing” should be classified.
The topic itself, as well as the reputation of Mabel Pilman Smith's magazine articles upon it, brought to Mrs. Coy's that afternoon all who had been invited; and during the lecture there was upon the face of every mother present that expression of eager and decorous inattention you see when you are talking to a polite person who has thought of something he would like to say, if you would but conclude your remarks. For the invitations had made it known that a general discussion would follow the lecture.
Naturally, Mrs. Smith opened the general discussion herself. “In setting forth my statement of these principles,” she said, “I am prepared to defend them; and I gladly invite your questions. I am bringing up my own children strictly under these tenets; but observe my use of the word 'strict.' I am strict with myself, never with the child. I do not weaken the child's will. A child must develop his will if he is to become a complete entity. A parent's command to a child is that parent's confession of failure to know his child intimately and to understand that his child is a soul. A child will never be or do anything that is not suggested to him, and he must be allowed to develop through the parent's suggestion alone; he must not be ruled, governed or given orders. When you wish a child to do, feel or think anything whatever, place the proper suggestions about him, and the happy result is inevitable.
“If I may be pardoned a personal allusion: my little boy Roger is the child I referred to so frequently in the body of my lecture, and Roger is always with me, even when I travel; and I must admit that my close study of him has revealed that he is not an ordinary child; he has exceptional powers of intellect and precocity of imagination. If I, as a mother, may be pardoned for saying so, Roger has already developed a strong literary taste; and I will now illustrate this and also the proper method for weaving this taste into the suggestive method of child control.
“On the train this morning he became interested in the magazine a man across the aisle was reading, and my attention was caught by an exclamation from this passenger. Roger had seized the magazine and was making an effort to take it away in order to look at the pictures. Now, that is a wish which, knowing the child's developing taste, I respect; but it was in opposition to the desire of the passenger to retain his magazine for himself. Ordinarily a mother, in such a case, would call to a child sharply and reprove it crossly. Then, owing to the power of suggestion and to the law of imitation, the result would be hat very soon the mother would hear the child using sharp calling tones, and speaking crossly, while its voice would tend to take on the harshness she herself had unconsciously suggested. I smiled at Roger, and instead of reproving him, I said: 'Oh, see that, outside the car window!'
This caught his attention at once, and of course he wished to know what I found so interesting. I began to speak of the landscape as a picture—one much more beautiful than any picture in a magazine—and only a short time elapsed before he relinquished his grasp upon the passenger's magazine and came to look out of our window with the most vivid interest in everything we passed. That, ladies, is just an instance, you see. I accomplished the desired effect, but in the new way, and the child was given nothing ugly or peremptory to imitate, but was left in the purity and gentleness of his natural soul. And now I hope that you will ask me whatever questions you like, either about Roger, as an example of the working of the system, or about the subject in which I am sure you are as deeply interested as myself: “The New in Child-rearing.'”
She resumed her chair, which was upon the little portable platform always placed at the head of the room for lecturers; and when the general flutter of pleased appreciation had moderated, the hostess rose from her seat beside Mrs. Smith's, and spoke.
“I am sure,” she said, “we are all convinced that this application of new scientific methods to the causal qualities of child phenomena makes for the betterment of parenthood and must eventuate in a broader motivation of child-rearing. In taking up the discussion. I would state that Mabel Pilman Smith's theories, perhaps the most illuminating of all on the topic, have been personally known to me for several years, and that I have observed the results of their application personally, for I have endeavored with perhaps most remarkable success to employ them in the case of my own youngest child, little Laurence. Laurence is not so robust as his older brothers, and for years was unable to compete with them physically, or other boys, since a case of scarlet fever which attacked him in his second winter. Indeed, we almost gave him up; and for several days the doctors said there was no hope, but he was such a brave, sweet little man I have never been able to account for his recovery except that it must just have been the power of his own natural soul and character.
“You see I agree with Mabel Pilman Smith absolutely—first, that the parent must intimately know the child, and secondly, that children have character and that they are souls. Encouraged solely by suggestion, Laurence almost learned to read when he was only six and a half. One day, when he was rather naughty and pulled the cat's tail, I had the impulse to speak to him peremptorily; but I remembered in time, and checked it. Instead I stroked the cat and spoke of the pleasurable sensation to my fingers. It brought me no little gratification to see how soon he was motivated by the suggestion and found his greater pleasure in the gentle stroking.
“So're you afraid to!” “Am I? Look!” Laurence lifted the cup to his lips and drank half the oil.
“Of course I do not claim that every child can be reached as readily. Laurence is rather unusual, and has an intellect—or perhaps I should say, in the new spirit, he has a character and is a soul, which lends unusual interest to anything undertaken for his development. However, I must not take up all the time of discussion and will yield the floor to others, though I should be glad further to explain Laurence's development under the Mabel Pilman Smith theory to any of you who would like to know more of this at any time, personally. I can only say that Laurence is—at least so it seems to his mother—a very perfect and sweet example of its making for betterment. We will now take up any questions you may wish to ask of Mabel Pilman Smith.”
She sat down, and several ladies rose simultaneously; but Mrs Coy, without embarrassment, selected one. “I think we will hear Mrs. Eliot first,” she said.
Mrs. Eliot smiled deprecatingly and said: “My question is a very simple one, I fear—though I am not sure.”
“Any question,” Mrs. Smith returned amiably. “Any question at all.”
“Well, then,” said Mrs. Eliot, “I have a little boy named Robert, for his grandfather. He is a very observing child—though of course I know every mother thinks that!—and it has been so interesting to me to observe his development. His grandfather, my husband's father, happens to be the head of a large wholesale hardware business, and we think Robert looks a great deal like him. Well, one day I heard Robert playing with some other boys in our attic, and I'm afraid I was guilty of listening at the door. I could hear Robert's voice louder than any of the others; he kept shouting to the other children to stand in line; and then I heard him asking them, one after the other, what they knew about the hardware business. You see, he was playing he was his grandfather and examining applicants for clerkship! It was too amusing—to see the ancestral traits of leadership coming out in him so early and dominating the other children like that; and so, after this interesting lecture, I thought it might be well to speak of this point as illustrating Robert's character.”
Mrs. Eliot concluded with q murmurous throat noise as of a courteous humor almost caressive, this sound being a kind of finis to her remarks, and at the same time a little appreciation of Robert. Other ladies kindly made similar sounds to ease her down as she sank into her chair; but Mrs. Coy's expression indicated a momentary confusion of thought.
“Are there any other—” she began, and paused. “Are there any other—questions?” Then, again making a selection among several women who had risen, she nodded to one and pronounced the name: “Mrs. Henry Threamer.”
“I feel quite out of place,” Mrs. Threamer began, “having only girls; but my question refers to children's training for the stage, and whether such training is not after all very like what Mrs. Pilman Smith has so interestingly told us; and I believe that a little anecdote of a children's theatrical performance in which my little daughter Elsie took the principal part as a Pixy Princess—though she danced and sang several songs too, and recited—and a Mr. Coleman, in the audience, told me that he had been on the stage professionally for eight years, but these mere children were positively brilliant! Of course no one would expect them to adopt the stage professionally—they are all the merest tots, and Elsie herself is only nine. At first I was rather opposed to her going into it, as she is a day pupil at Miss Hurd's, and that might interfere with this, but Elsie begged so hard, and the people who were getting it up said they just had to have her—”
At this point there was an interruption by the lecturer, who had begun to look restive. She coughed with a determined loudness, rose and said: “If the lady will pardon me, I should have explained that of course the new ideas apply with equal force to both boys and girls, and I think this will perhaps answer her question satisfactorily. I have spoken of male children chiefly as a matter of grammatical convenience, to avoid I the continued use of the expression 'his or her' and—”
“Oh, I see,” said Mrs. Threamer. “Well, as it happened, Elsie—”
This person stared gloomily at the tickets, and at Laurence and Roger; then he took Laurence and Roger each by an elbow and marched them to the girl in the glass case.
But Mabel Pilman Smith increased the volume of her voice, continuing: “And because my own studies have been made chiefly of male children. This calls to my mind a point I did not go fully into in the body of my talk. It is not enough for the parent to know the child, and to realize that the child has a character and is a soul; the child must know this too.”
“Yes indeed!” Mrs. Threamer exclaimed, and went on hastily “Now, I said to Elsie: 'If you want to take this part—'”
But again Mabel Pilman Smith's voice was increased in volume continuing; and Mrs. Threamer, after standing for some time longer, sat down, looking somewhat buffeted.
“The child I have most frequently used in illustration, little Roger,” Mrs. Smith went on, “is like other children in the various traits which all children share in common; yet I think that any stranger would instantly realize that there is something different about him, due in part to native character and in par to the new thought in his rearing. Every morning, before he gets out of bed and as soon as he wakes, he repeats these words aloud the first thing: 'I know that I have a character, and I know that I am a soul.' And at night he says it again, after his prayers, just as he gets into bed. He was not commanded to do this: it was patiently suggested to him until he found that it was a beautiful thought to begin and end the day with. Roger has responded perhaps more perfectly than any other living child to the new thought in rearing, and so—”
BUT here Mrs. Coy, smiling amiably, shook her head, and interrupted: “If our visitor will allow me—I am not prepared to admit that. There are Rolands and Olivers; and I dare make the claim that for a Roger there is a Laurence!”
This brought from the audience that applausive laughter ever awarded to a witticism uttered by a local favorite on the home grounds; and Mrs. Smith bowed in humorous acknowledgment. “My dear Mrs. Norman Coy,” she said, “how graciously—how charmingly—put! Indeed your Laurence has absorbed the New Thought in Child-rearing, and as soon as I saw him, I recognized a child whose every slightest impulse was known to the mother, because she had made herself intimate with his most hidden self, and had adopted the maxim: 'Parent, know thy child!'
“I believe I should tell the ladies of the meeting between Laurence and Roger. Mrs. Coy had written me that this little boy of hers, reared in the same way, would dearly love to entertain Roger during the time his mother performed the same function for myself—and it was so interesting to observe the two little men when they were introduced. We introduced them precisely as if they had been adults, but for the first moment they each had a little shyness—a little delicacy were the truer way to put it—about taking the initiative. Then I said, not directly addressing them, but as if it were a general remark: “How happy two gallant little men could be if they ran out to play in this beautiful big yard!'
“Each of them seemed to be thoughtful for a few seconds, as if considering the wishes of the other; and then, not saying anything at all, they turned and went out together; and I am sure it gives Mrs. Coy as much pleasure as it does me to know that her Laurence and my Roger are now playing happily together—not quite as ordinary children play, perhaps, for each has always the consciousness that he has a character and is a soul—that these two little men are playing happily together in the beautiful big yard outside these windows.”
Mrs. Coy nodded in gracious confirmation, but—Mabel Pilman Smith was mistaken. At that moment her Roger and Mrs. Coy's Laurence were not playing happily in the beautiful big yard.
WHEN their mothers introduced them, the two clean and well-dressed little boys merely glanced at each other and looked away. Both of them had acquired, by exceptional experience, a boy's knowledge that it is better to be natural as seldom as possible when under adult observation; and there were also other forces at work upon them: because when two little boys meet for the first time, just as when two little dogs meet for the first time (though such a thought as this might horrify Mrs. Coy and Mrs. Smith), neither is sure that that there isn't going to be a fight presently. Thus, for more than one reason, Roger and Laurence refrained from speech until they reached the beautiful big yard, where they halted, scuffed the turf absently, swallowed, scratched themselves a little, looked each other over freely, and finally opened a conversation.
“How old are you?” Laurence inquired.
“I'll be goin' on ten in about a few months. How old are you?”
“Well, I was nine last week. I'm older'n you.”
“How do you know you are?” Roger asked coldly.
“Because if you aren't goin' on ten yet, you aren't nine; that's how,” Laurence returned, and added with a hint of challenge: “If you don't like it you can lump it.”
Roger frowned, looked at him uncertainly, turned away, and for a few moments regarded the grass with a morbid gaze. Then he seemed to forget his host's impulsive discourtesy and asked: “You go to school?'”
“Yep; I do mornings. Do you?”
“Yep, excep' when I go somewheres with my mother like this.”
They were silent again for a little while, but a step in the acquaintanceship had been taken.
“You had the scarlet fever?” Laurence inquired.
“No; I never.”
“I did.”
“Well, I've had chickenpox,” said Roger. “Do you believe in Santy Claus?”
“No,” said Laurence. “It's your father and mother.”
“You just find that out? I knew that before I was knee-high to a duck.”
“So'd I,' Laurence boasted promptly. “I knew that before I was dry behind the ears.”
“So'd I,” said Roger. “What's that you said? 'Dry behind the ears?'”
“That's nothin'. I know lots o' things like that to say. You better not say it around your mother or father, though. Oh, oh!”
“I guess not!” Roger agreed. “Oh, oh!”
And upon that they were again silent, scraping the sod with their feet, until Roger inquired: “What d' you haf to say when you go to bed?”
“*Now I lay me down to sleep.'”
“So do I. Do you haf to say: 'I know I got a charicter an' I know I am a soul?'”
“No, I don't.”
“I haf to,” said Roger, not boastfully, but rather with an air of patience. “I haf to say it when I get up, too.”
“I don't,” said Laurence. “I haf to wash all over, though.”
“I do too.”
“I can run faster'n you can,” said Laurence.
“Bet you can't.”
“Why can't I?'
“Because,” Roger informed him, “all us guys in New York can run faster'n other boys can.”
Laurence was able for come time to maintain a sitting position upon Roger's head; but upon Roger's calling to mind that teeth have other uses than mastication, Laurence was dislodged.
At this it was Laurence's turn to be pleasantly impressed. “'All us guys,'” he repeated thoughtfully. “'All us guys in New York!'” And having acquired this new accomplishment, he said glibly: “Well, all us guys in this town can run faster'n anybody else there is.”
“You can't, either. Yous guys here can't run as fast as us guys in New York.”
“Yes, we can,” said Laurence. “Us guys can run faster'n yous guys.”
“You better not say that before your father and mother,” Roger warned him, not unamiably. “Us guys talk like that on the way home from school, but you better look out. Oh, oh!”
“Oh, oh!” said Laurence. “Anyhow, I bet I beat you from here back to our garage.” And instantly, not waiting for an even start, he cuffed his guest brusquely upon the back and sped away.
“No fair!” Roger shouted, registering his protest as he pursued. “You went and took a start on me!”
But Laurence slapped the wall of the garage in token of victory, disallowing all such claims. “I won,” he remarked. “Yous guys can't run like us guys.” And then, as Roger began hotly to challenge the unsportsmanlike claim, Laurence said, “Oh, close up your ole fly-trap,” in a bored way and walked into the garage, where the chauffeur was washing a car. Roger followed as far as the open doorway, but halted there, looking morose.
His new comrade, on the contrary, had become breezily waggish, and played the comedian to impress his guest. The chauffeur, in overalls, was kneeling upon the floor, sponging the underpinnings of a wet car; and Laurence, swaggering up to him from behind, pretended to deliver a series of terrible blows upon his back. “Hello, you ole Charles, you!” he said.
Charles responded with a grunt not eloquent of cordiality, and the comedian turned to other matters. He picked up a tin cup containing a small amount of a lazy amber fluid, and brought it to Roger.
“There,” he said. “That oil's good for your gizzard. I dare you to drink it.”
“I don' want any,” said Roger coldly.
“Huh! Oil aint anything. I dare you to!”
“I tell you I don' want any!”
“You're afraid to!”
“So 're you afraid to!”
“Am I? Look!” And Laurence, a little too much excited in his comedy mood, lifted the cup to his lips and drank half the oil. Roger immediately drank the rest of it.
For several minutes after that neither of them spoke; they repeatedly wiped their faces upon their sleeves, and opened and closed their mouths a great many times; then, retiring from the garage, they ate a little grass and the heads of several plants growing in a flower-bed.
“That wasn't anything,” Laurence said firmly. “That was perty good ole oil.”
“Perty good!” responded Roger.....
They returned to the doorway of the garage, and feeling restored, Laurence resumed the comedian. Suddenly leaving his companion, he dashed through the building and spanked the kneeling chauffeur smartly in passing. “Hi, Charles!” he shouted tauntingly as he performed this feat, and in celebration of it. Then he turned at the other end of the garage and dashed back, repeating the spank and the jubilant “Hi, Charles!” as he came.
Roger felt the inspiration; he at once ran by the chauffeur, spanked him, shouting “Hi, Charles!” and returned in the same manner. Then both Roger and Laurence rushed upon the chauffeur together, shouting “Hi, Charles!”
But Charles was now become of an intolerant humor; he leaped upward with so ferocious an aspect that in sudden horror Roger and Laurence swerved, collided, and lost their footing upon a treacherous area.
Prostrate, they still continued to progress by means of acquired momentum, and passed across a shallow black pond or lakelet an exudation that had previously made its way through the considerable insides of a robust limousine; and upon the farther borders of this pool they struggled and scrambled, murmuring despondently. As for Charles, he seemed to wish them to understand that his hospitality was exhausted. “You git to hell out o' here!” he said.
They thought it best to fall in with his suggestion, and went out through the rear door of the garage. Their appearance was not what it had been when they entered the building; and though of course it is a habit of garages to alter the appearances of people, this one had done a work upon Laurence and Roger quite out of the common, particularly as Laurence's “sailor” waist and Roger's little breeches had been white. However, they rubbed themselves, distributing their decorations, and almost at once gave their attention to other matters.
Roger felt a warm interest in what had just been said to them, and as he rubbed himself, he repeated it several times, like one desirous of committing a striking passage to memory.
“That's nothin',” said Laurence. “He says that lots o' times. He said it to our cook.”
“It's bad, isn't it?” Roger inquired, not with an air of disapproval, but in the manner of a thoughtful student
“You bet! When he said it to our cook, she ast him to go there.”
“Where?”
“You wait an' Ill show you.” Laurence returned, frowning, for just now he naturally felt a strong animosity toward Charles; and with his forefinger he formed upon the white wall of the garage, in plain if irregular black letter, the name “Charles,” obtaining his writing material from the denser coatings upon his person and garments. Then after “Charles” he added the three simple old-fashioned words of the cook's request.
“There!” he said. “I guess that'll show ole Charles!” And at a sound from within the garage, he added hastily: “We better run!”
There seemed to be little doubt that he was right, and Roger accompanied him hurriedly down the alley. Their good spirits were fully restored; for they came out of the alley into an unpretentious street, and without any challenge, or indeed any words at all, simultaneously whooped and began to wrestle upon the sidewalk. Having fallen, they rolled over and over, gripping each other fiercely, and were both somewhat jolted as they thus descended from the curbstone into the depression beneath it—though after that their situation was more refreshing, owing to the lavish generosity of a municipal sprinkling-cart. At first Laurence seemed to be the conqueror—at least, he was able for some time to maintain himself in a sitting position upon Roger's head; but upon Roger's calling to mind the fact that teeth may have other uses than mastication, Laurence was dislodged in sudden pain, and became the nether.
“What'll we do?” Roger asked nervously. “Why, jus' let her yell,” said Laurence.
They gave over the sport only upon the severe protests of a truck-driver, who halted his machine to explain what he thought of them for so nearly getting him tried for manslaughter, and they were profoundly interested in certain expressions used by this truck-driver. Phrases of such scope and vigor must always remain imperishable in any memory.
“You go on!” Laurence called after the truck, as it moved ponderously away. “You're another!” But his voice was not loud; nor did he hope that the driver would hear him.
“You're another!” Roger echoed shrilly, for the truck's engine had begun to roar hideously, and it was certain that the driver could hear no human voice. Then both Laurence and Roger repeatedly shouted after the vehicle those expressions they had just learned from the driver. The farther from them the truck went, the louder and shriller were their voices; and though the phrases failed to reach the object they were considered to describe, they did reach elsewhere. For a young woman came to the open window of an apartment-house behind the shouters, and looked out shrewishly:
“You two!” she called. “You stop that! I wish I knew your mothers: they ought to be ashamed! Get out of this neighborhood!”
They looked at her blankly. “Well, le's go.” said Laurence; but as he began to move away, somewhat depressed by the unfavorable behavior of the woman at the window, his eyes fell upon a muddy coin in the gutter, and he pounced upon it. “It's my quarter,” he explained to Roger, as he walked on. “It must dropped out o' my pocket when we was layin' there.”
“Le's go to the movies,” Roger said immediately.
“All right. Do your father and mother let you go to the movies?”
“They took me couple times. I can go whenever they take me.”
“So can I,” said Laurence.
“Other times,” Roger continued brightly, “I can go more like this.”
Laurence understood him perfectly. “So do I.”
They proceeded cheerfully down the street. Part of the way they chased each other in spontaneous games of tag; the rest of it they enlivened by various entertainments: they picked up pebbles and whatever light débris they found by the wayside, and practiced marksmanship upon telephone-poles, lamp-posts and domestic animals; they had another friendly wrestling match; then had a contest in kicking bits of wood over the pavement, but finally stumbled upon something more absorbing. Laurence found a cigarette that was almost as long as when it had been purchased.
“Oh, oh!” he cried. “Watch me now!”
“You gimme half of it.”
“No sir; I bet it'd make you sick!”
“Me! I already smoke many's the time!” Roger insisted.
“You did—honest?”
“Many's the time,” said Roger. “I smoked many's the time!”
“I bet you didn't!”
“I did too!”
“So'd I,” said Laurence. “I smoked many's the time.”
“I don' b'lieve it!”
“I did too!”
“What'd you smoke?”
“Well, what'd you smoke?”
“I've smoked cigars,” Roger informed him. “My father leaves our living-room half full of 'em every night when he goes to bed, and I'm the first one up in the morning.”
“Don't he see they're gone?”
“I mean in the ash-trays,” Roger explained. “I got sick a couple times in the 'bus that takes us to school, but I don't get sick any more. You gimme half o' that, an' I'll show you!”
Laurence consented; the division was made; and a popcorn man at a corner kindly permitting lights to be obtained from the flame of his roaster, the adventurers went on, deeply preoccupied with at least the gesture of smoking. Each completed this gesture at about the same time his companion did.
“We can eat some weeds on the way home,” said Laurence. “That keeps 'em from smellin' it.”
They had now arrived before a picture theater, and paused for the anticipatory pleasure of examining the two billboards heralding the happiness to be found within. One of these showed a comedian attacked by mal-de-mer, and the other a beautiful young woman attacked by a strongly mustached man in evening clothes. The latter was labeled “In Defense of Her Honor;” and Roger and Laurence were even more pleased with it than they were with the sick comedian.
“Oh, oh!” Roger exclaimed. “Look at 'em fightin'.”
“That's what I like,” said Laurence. “She's mad at him because he's tore her clo'es.”
“Le's go in,” Roger urged. “We might miss this part.”
A girl in a glass case sold them tickets, which they grasped hurriedly and hastened to present to a discontented-looking man at the swing-door entrance. This person, however, stared gloomily at the tickets, and at Laurence and Roger; then he took Laurence and Roger each by an elbow and marched them back to the girl in the glass case.
“See here, Miss Vance,” he said, “if you can't do better'n this, I'm going to get somebody 't can!”
“What's the matter?” she inquired.
“Say, listen!” he said with growing heat. “You're supposed to look at what you sell tickets to, aint you? Will you kindly 'blige me by lookin' at what you jest sold them two tickets to?”
“Well—” she began uncertainly
“Yes; I sh'd think you would say, 'Well'!” the man cut her off, morosely. “You know's well as I do how much them new seats in my theater cost me! Gi' them there boys their money back for them two tickets.”
SHE did as he bade her, and the man rudely pushed Laurence and Roger toward the street. “You git out o' here,” he said. “I don't propose to have my seats ruined! No ma'am, not fer no boys!”
Wholly perplexed, they found themselves upon the sidewalk. They did not understand the man, or his references to his seats; but they were conscious of rebuff, and saw no means of redress. Their desire to see a movie had left them; and without consultation or discussion, they silently turned back upon the way they had come.
They had suffered indignity, and felt it dumbly; they hated this man who had so mysteriously misused them, but they made no effort to comprehend him, being positive that such comprehension was beyond their powers—for thus, at the age of Laurence and Roger, must one suffer frequently from the surly mysteries of adults whom one approaches with an unsuspecting heart.
The two walked half a dozen blocks before speaking, or even so much as departing from the line of march; and they the pall began to lift, for Laurence remembered the truck-driver. He applied to the movie man all the phrases firs applied by the truck-driver to Roger and himself, and then applied by Roger and himself to the truck-driver. Roger listened with gloomy pleasure, and spoke in the same manner, reproducing the original with a fidelity which extended even to the accenting of every word
AFTER that they became more cheerfully sociable, again practiced with missiles, tagged each other, played a migratory form of hop-scotch; and so, whiling away the stretches of their journey they came again to those comelier purlieus where stood the houses of Mrs. Norman Coy and the frequenters of her salon. Unexpectedly, at a corner Laurence halted.
Fifty yards away a larger boy, fat and obviously self-contented, was leaning against an iron fence and sweetly engaged with a mass of hard taffy on the end of a little stick; his business with this being to dissolve the taffy by a plunging motion in and out of the mouth. His eyes were affectionately occupied with these emergences and disappearances.
“What's the matter?” Roger inquired. “We better get home before—”
“Wait a minute,” said Laurence. He stared at the boy with the taffy, and seemed to be in doubt what course to follow. “I guess maybe we better go back. That's that ole Robert Eliot, an' he's after me.”
“What for?”
“Well, he's ten years old, and I guess you wouldn't want him after you,” Laurence said rather plaintively. “He said I broke his ole air-gun. I guess—I guess we better go back.”
But it was too late. Master Eliot's glance, roving by chance from the inedible on the stick, had fallen upon the nervous pair, and his manner and expression straightway became sternly arrogant. He approached.
“I guess I got you at last, Laurence Coy,” he said, and to Laurence the words were sheerly horrible.
“You le' me alone, you ole thing, you,” he said quaveringly. “I never touched your ole air-gun.”
The fat boy came close to him. “You needn't try to run this time,” he said.
“I aint tryin' to run, am I?” Laurence quavered. “You le' me alone. Just be cause you're twice my size, you went and picked on me about your ole air-gun—”
“Who is?” Master Eliot asked fiercely. “Who's twice your size?”
“You are! You know you're twice twice my—”
But he ended the rather faint assertion with a cry of “Uff!” For the fat boy, as if goaded beyond all self-control by this insistence on his superior dimensions, struck out with his plump fist, which made a perceptible sound upon Laurence's abdomen. Laurence wept instantly, but had no further thoughts of flight; bellowing and blinded, he struck out in return, and the fight was on. No rules were observed.
The fat boy was not only the greater in size, but much the more powerful, although only equally energetic. From the start he had the best of it, and would have come off an easy conqueror except for additional troubles that accumulated for him, due to Laurence's old friend Roger. Roger and Laurence, by this time, had been through a great deal together; they had shared experiences of the greatest intensity, had grown into an intimacy impossible to adults; and Roger was not one to stand by and see an affinity borne down in defeat by a comparative stranger.
He leaped upon the fat boy's back; the three went to earth together; there were pummelings, poundings, and fearful tearings of garments; there were tickings and gougings, and even a few bitings. Master Eliot continued to be game against odds for almost fifteen minutes; and he indeed made his mark. He made more than one; but in the end Laurence and Roger did all they listed with him. They pounded him; they beat him heartily; they called him all that they had learned from the truck-man to call the movie man; they covered him with the black grease they had on them; and they took his taffy away from him, and divided it, and ate it while still busy upon him.
After that as soon as the fat boy possibly could, he got away and fled, tattered and mumbling.
WHEN Laurence and Roger returned to the beautiful big yard, the salon was still in session, a fact of which they made themselves aware by listening cautiously beneath one of the open windows. “I guess it's all right,” Laurence whispered. “I was afraid mamma might been lookin' for us, an' found out we wasn't here. I aint allowed outside the yard unless I tell where I'm goin'.”
“Listen,” said Roger. “They're talkin' about me.”
He was right: a voice was heard to speak of him distinctly. “I am sure Mrs. Pilman Smith is right; so far as her statements cover the case of the child Roger,” this voice said. “But all of Ernest's relatives and teachers believe just as I do about him, and they think he has shown a really unusual talent. I only wonder if what would apply to an ordinary child would—”
Roger had no difficulty in recognizing the voice that rather emphatically interrupted the speaker at this point. “I hoped I had made it quite clear,” Mrs. Smith said distinctly, “that Roger is not quite an 'ordinary child'!”
“No, no,” said the other lady hastily, “I'm sure he isn't. I only meant that as Ernest's remarkable talent for geogmphy has been so widely recog—”
Here she was interrupted by Mrs. Coy. “I think I shall adopt the suggestion of Mabel Pilman Smith,” she said. “Before leaving, you will all naturally be interested to see the child who has been, as it were, at once the principal inspiration and object lesson of her theories. I shall send a maid to suggest to Roger and Laurence that they come in to for a few moments as we close this very interesting discussion.”
Laurence and Roger stared at each other with some disquietude. Neither of them was “particular,” as we say, about his outward adornment, but each could see that the other was but ill prepared for a public appearance. Laurence saw the disarrangements and discolorations of Roger's attire and the increased size of Roger's lower lip, as well as other facial tokens of the late encounter; Roger in turn, perceived similar manifestations upon the person of his host. In fact Roger and Laurence both looked so disastrous that even they perceived that to be presented to the salon, as they were might prove embarrassing.
THE voice of a housemaid calling crossly behind the house came to them “Laurunce! You Laur-runce! You c'm'ere this minute! Laur-ruh-hunce!”
“What'll we do?” Roger asked neryously.
“Why, jus' let her yell,” said Laurence with easy confidence.
Then, passing round the front of the house, they made a discreet entrance through a window on the other side, and with an intelligence developed by no inconsiderable experience of emergencies, contrived to reach a bathroom, and to obtain fresh clothes, unobserved.
“I stuck mine 'way under everything in mamma's big bag,” Roger said, speaking of the garments he had removed.
“Mine's on the bottom a clo'es-basket,” said Laurence.
The searching housemaid came upon them; but their visible portions were by this time rather clean, and they were presentably dressed. “Mrs. Coy says you come on down and meet them ladies,” she said, looking with a kind of bitterness at Laurence. “I expect little Roger prob'ly behaves like a little gentleman all the time, and ought to be a lesson to you, Laurence. I bet if them ladies knew you the way I do, they'd hold their hands up!”
Laurence made no audible reply, but descended with his friend to the ordeal. They were much admired, petted, cooed over; and Roger, upon suggestion, publicly announced that he knew he had a character and knew he was a soul; but neither Laurence nor Roger said anything else, except when it became necessary to explain that they had fallen out of a tree.
Laurence had to add something to his prayers that evening. After long and patient suggestion on the part of Mrs Coy, he saw that the thing must be done. “All right,” he said, sighing. “I know I got a charicter and I know I am a soul.”
His old friend Roger, on the contrary, finding himself in the seclusion of a sleeping-car berth, with his mother at the other end of the aisle, thought it more convenient to omit this rite, and passed smilingly from recollections of a pleasant day into slumber.
   The next story of this delightful series by Mr. Tarkington will appear in an early issue of THE RED BOOK MAGAZINE.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1946, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 77 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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