Chapter XII: The Man Who DID Not Know Boys

“Shake hands on it, Dick,” said Leslie; “you’ve got the old curmudgeon to swallow the bait all right, and he’s hooked as fast as anything. All you need to do now is to pull the line in and land him.”

“Do you think so, Leslie?” mused the other. “Well, I’m glad for the sake of little Billy and his mother, for she has a mighty small amount of money to live on, and the deacon is a rich man, you know.”

“What do you reckon he’s thinking about while he stands there with his arms on the fence, and his head bowed on them?” asked Leslie, as they were making their way silently toward the street, intending to clamber over the front fence at a point where they could not be seen.

“I don’t know for sure,” replied the other, “but I should think it might be about his own boy, Amos. Mebbe he looked a little like Billy does now, when he was small. And how can we tell but what memory has got busy in that scheming old brain of the deacon’s?”

“Well,” observed Leslie, as they reached the street safely, after vaulting the fence boy-style, “I could see him looking into the face of the youngster now and then, and rubbing his own forehead as if he might be puzzled to know where he ever could have seen Billy before.”

“That’s right,” assented Dick, quickly; “you remember he asked Billy once if he had ever lived in Cliffwood before, and the boy said not that he knew of. Well, it seems to be working finely, and I guess after all little Mrs. Nocker won’t have to work to keep the wolf from the door.”

“Not with the grip Billy has got on his old grandfather’s heart,” laughed Leslie. “I never would have believed any child could wind that cold-blooded storekeeper around his little finger. It’s as good as pie to me to see it.”

They headed into town, talking as they went, and, of course, there were many matters to be discussed between them, besides Dick’s latest scheme.

“There’s Mr. Holwell,” remarked Dick, suddenly; “and since he knows so much about my plan I think I’d like to tell him what we’ve just been watching.”

“A good idea too, Dick,” assented the other.

The minister met them with one of his customary pleasant smiles.

“You both look as if something unusually fine had happened this afternoon,” he remarked. “Perhaps you wouldn’t object to telling me about the same.”

“That’s just what we meant to do, sir,” declared Dick. “It’s about Deacon Nocker and little Billy, you see.”

Mr. Holwell immediately showed the most intense interest.

“Then that clever plan of yours must be working out in a satisfactory manner, Dick, my lad,” he remarked, “if I can judge from the happy expression on your face just now.”

“Indeed, I reckon it’s going to be a bully success, sir!” ventured Leslie.

“We’ve just been watching one of their meetings,” Dick continued, “and it’s plain to be seen, sir, that Billy has got a firm grip on Mr. Nocker’s heart. We saw the deacon kiss him lots of times, and squeeze him just as if he wanted to eat him. Oh, it’s bound to come out all right in the end.”

“Good for you, Dick!” said the minister, enthusiastically, taking the hand of the boy in his strong grip; “and I want to say that I consider you’ve played one of the neatest games that could be devised.”

As the two chums walked onward, Dick’s face was beaming with happiness. There had been a time when he would have cared little for the good opinion of Mr. Holwell, but somehow, of late a great change seemed to have come over the wayward boy’s nature. Many things that he had formerly delighted in, no longer held an attraction for him; and every day he was awakening to the fact that service for others could bring more real pleasure than selfish gratification ever did.

“Here’s trouble with a big T!” burst out Leslie before they had gone far.

“You mean about Dan Fenwick, I suppose,” ventured Dick, glancing at an approaching figure. “Sure enough, he does look pretty sour, as if his dinner hadn’t agreed with him any too well.”

Dan came along shaking his head, and frowning savagely.

“What’s got you this time, Dan?” burst out Leslie as they joined forces. “Lost that new knife you got on your last birthday? Or mebbe now Susie Banks has promised another fellow she’d go with him to that barn dance they’re getting up for Christmas Eve?”

At that Dan shook his head and grinned, showing he had not yet reached such a depth of actual woe.

“Huh! ’tisn’t _quite_ so bad as all that, fellows,” he went on to explain. “But let me tell you something has got to be done about that Mr. Loft. He’s gettin’ on my nerves, and that’s a fact.”

Dick and Leslie exchanged glances at hearing this fresh complaint about the pedantic librarian who seemed to think boys ought to be fed on heavy stuff from the time they were able to read their primers.

“Been knocking you again, has he, Dan?” demanded Leslie, frowning.

“Why, it’s getting so bad now,” said the other, angrily, “that a boy can’t ask for a single work of fiction but what Mr. Loft takes occasion to give him a long lecture on wasted opportunities. He says we ought to be cramming intelligence into our brains instead of fooling away our time with such trash as we ask for.”

“He makes me tired,” asserted Leslie. “To his mind everything a boy does that isn’t meant to fill his poor brain with knowledge is wasted. If he had his way I bet you there wouldn’t be a real boy’s book in all the library; and some of them are standard works at that.”

“My father and grandfather read Robinson Crusoe, Swiss Family Robinson, and a lot of other books that every boy with red blood in his veins dotes on,” asserted Dan. “But Mr. Loft told me they ought to be burnt, and that he meant to see if he could influence the town council to allow him to weed out all such pernicious juvenile literature.”

“Then never a boy will be seen in our fine library, you can be sure of that!” asserted Dick, pugnaciously.

“I’ve talked it over with several people besides my folks,” Leslie went on to tell his chums, “and they all think this way. Like Mr. Holwell, they admit that there are lots of books for boys published these days at a cheap price that are written just for the excitement in them. They condemn that class, but at the same time say there are many volumes, and some of ’em cheap at that, that while full of adventure, show a boy how to curb his faults, and climb up the ladder of fame.”

“I could string off two dozen titles right now, every one a dandy book,” asserted Dan, pugnaciously, “all on my shelf at home, and my mother has read every single one of the same. What _she_ says is all right you can depend on isn’t going to do a fellow any harm, for she used to be a teacher in New York City, and knows boys from the ground up.”

“There’s only one thing to be done about it,” asserted Dick. “That is to start a library of our own as we talked about some time ago.”

“You mean inside the Y. M. C. A.?” asked Dan, eagerly.

“Yes, after we consult again with Mr. Holwell about it,” came the answer, showing that Dick had been thinking over the idea since the time it was first mentioned.

“Each member of the club might contribute what books he cared to spare,” Leslie continued. “I’ve got a whole pile I’d like to offer for my share. Mr. Holwell could be the judge of what was fit for us to have in our library. He knows boys ten times better than that high-brow Mr. Loft.”

All of them displayed signs of great enthusiasm over the idea. The boys of Cliffwood had long suffered at the hands of the town librarian, who, though doubtless a worthy as well as a learned man, had never learned to peep into the heart of a genuine boy, and know how to handle him so as to cultivate the best there was in him.

“It’ll sure be a big feather in our cap if we do manage to have a library of our own, every book carefully selected, and just the kind we love to read as well,” Dan hastened to say, the sour look now gone entirely from his face.

“And for my part,” Leslie went on to say, “I’m going to get Uncle Henry interested in the scheme. I really believe he’ll put up the money to buy a lot of books of the right sort--that are of an uplifting character, besides being full of stirring adventure.”

“I’m mighty glad now Mr. Loft lectured me as he did,” said Dan; “because you see it’s brought matters to a head right away. Whee! but won’t he lift his hands in horror when he hears about it. I can just see the look on his face.”