T. Tembarom. Frances Hodgson Burnett

She liked to hear about the newspaper office and Mr. Galton, and never was uninterested in his hopes of “making good.” She seemed to him the wisest and most direct and composed person he had ever known. She spoke with the broad, flat, friendly Manchester accent, and when she let drop a suggestion, it carried a delightfully sober conviction with it, because what she said was generally a revelation of logical mental argument concerning details she had gathered through her little way of listening and saying nothing whatever.

      “If Mr. Biker drinks, he won't keep his place,” she said to Tembarom one night. “Perhaps you might get it yourself, if you persevere.”

      Tembarom reddened a little. He really reddened through joyous excitement.

      “Say, I didn't know you knew a thing about that,” he answered. “You're a regular wonder. You scarcely ever say anything, but the way you get on to things gets me.”

      “Perhaps if I talked more I shouldn't notice as much,” she said, turning her bit of sewing round and examining it. “I never was much of a talker. Father's a good talker, and Mother and me got into the way of listening. You do if you live with a good talker.”

      Tembarom looked at the girl with a male gentleness, endeavoring to subdue open expression of the fact that he was convinced that she was as thoroughly aware of her father's salient characteristics as she was of other things.

      “You do,” said Tembarom. Then picking up her scissors, which had dropped from her lap, and politely returning them, he added anxiously: “To think of you remembering Biker! I wonder, if I ever did get his job, if I could hold it down?”

      “Yes,” decided Little Ann; “you could. I've noticed you're that kind of person, Mr. Tembarom.”

      “Have you?” he said elatedly. “Say, honest Injun?”

      “Yes.”

      “I shall be getting stuck on myself if you encourage me like that,” he said, and then, his face falling, he added, “Biker graduated at Princeton.”

      “I don't know much about society,” Little Ann remarked—“I never saw any either up-town or down-town or in the country—but I shouldn't think you'd have to have a college education to write the things you see about it in the newspaper paragraphs.”

      Tembarom grinned.

      “They're not real high-brow stuff, are they,” he said. “'There was a brilliant gathering on Tuesday evening at the house of Mr. Jacob Sturtburger at 79 Two Hundredth Street on the occasion of the marriage of his daughter Miss Rachel Sturtburger to Mr. Eichenstein. The bride was attired in white peau de cygne trimmed with duchess lace.'”

      Little Ann took him up. “I don't know what peau de cygne is, and I daresay the bride doesn't. I've never been to anything but a village school, but I could make up paragraphs like that myself.”

      “That's the up-town kind,” said Tembarom. “The down-town ones wear their mothers' point-lace wedding-veils some-times, but they're not much different. Say, I believe I could do it if I had luck.”

      “So do I,” returned Little Ann.

      Tembarom looked down at the carpet, thinking the thing over. Ann went on sewing.

      “That's the way with you,” he said presently: “you put things into a fellow's head. You've given me a regular boost, Little Ann.”

      It is not unlikely that but for the sensible conviction in her voice he would have felt less bold when, two weeks later, Biker, having gone upon a “bust” too prolonged, was dismissed with-out benefit of clergy, and Galton desperately turned to Tembarom with anxious question in his eye.

      “Do you think you could take this job?” he said.

      Tembarom's heart, as he believed at the time, jumped into his throat.

      “What do you think, Mr. Galton?” he asked.

      “It isn't a thing to think about,” was Galton's answer. “It's a thing I must be sure of.”

      “Well,” said Tembarom, “if you give it to me, I'll put up a mighty hard fight before I fall down.”

      Galton considered him, scrutinizing keenly his tough, long-built body, his sharp, eager, boyish face, and especially his companionable grin.

      “We'll let it go at that,” he decided. “You'll make friends up in Harlem, and you won't find it hard to pick up news. We can at least try it.”

      Tembarom's heart jumped into his throat again, and he swallowed it once more. He was glad he was not holding his hat in his hand because he knew he would have forgotten himself and thrown it up into the air.

      “Thank you, Mr. Galton,” he said, flushing tremendously. “I'd like to tell you how I appreciate your trusting me, but I don't know how. Thank you, sir.”

      When he appeared in Mrs. Bowse's dining-room that evening there was a glow of elation about him and a swing in his entry which attracted all eyes at once. For some unknown reason everybody looked at him, and, meeting his eyes, detected the presence of some new exultation.

      “Landed anything, T. T.?” Jim Bowles cried out. “You look it.”

      “Sure I look it,” Tembarom answered, taking his napkin out of its ring with an unconscious flourish. “I've landed the up-town society page—landed it, by gee!”

      A good-humored chorus of ejaculatory congratulation broke forth all round the table.

      “Good business!” “Three cheers for T. T.!” “Glad of it!” “Here's luck!” said one after another.

      They were all pleased, and it was generally felt that Galton had shown sense and done the right thing again. Even Mr. Hutchinson rolled about in his chair and grunted his approval.

      After dinner Tembarom, Jim Bowles, and Julius Steinberger went upstairs stairs together and filled the hall bedroom with clouds of tobacco-smoke, tilting their chairs against the wall, smoking their pipes furiously, flushed and talkative, working themselves up with the exhilarated plannings of youth. Jim Bowles and Julius had been down on their luck for several weeks, and that “good old T. T.” should come in with this fairy-story was an actual stimulus. If you have never in your life been able to earn more than will pay for your food and lodging, twenty dollars looms up large. It might be the beginning of anything.

      “First thing is to get on to the way to do it,” argued Tembarom. “I don't know the first thing. I've got to think it out. I couldn't ask Biker. He wouldn't tell me, anyhow.”

      “He's pretty mad, I guess,” said Steinberger.

      “Mad as hops,” Tembarom answered. “As I was coming down-stairs from Galton's room he was standing in the hall talking to Miss Dooley, and he said: `That Tembarom fellow's going to do it! He doesn't know how to spell. I should like to see his stuff come in.' He said it loud, because he wanted me to hear it, and he sort of laughed through his nose.”

      “Say, T. T., can you spell?” Jim inquired thoughtfully.

      “Spell? Me? No,” Tembarom owned with unshaken good cheer. “What I've got to do is to get a tame dictionary and keep it chained to the leg of my table. Those words with two m's or two l's in them get me right down on the mat. But the thing that looks biggest to me is how to find out where the news is, and the name of the fellow that'll put me on to it. You can't go up a man's front steps and ring the bell and ask him if he's going to be married or buried or have a pink tea.”

      “Wasn't that a knock at the door?” said Steinberger.

      It was a knock, and Tembarom jumped up and threw the door open, thinking Mrs. Bowse might have come on some household errand. But it was Little Ann Hutchinson instead of Mrs. Bowse, and there was a threaded needle stuck into the front of her dress, and she had on a thimble.

      “I want Mr. Bowles's new socks,” she said maternally. “I promised I'd mark