LITMIR.BIZ

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if the instructor called on him very often in that week, for he would just say “Not prepared,” but anything was to be preferred to standing up there like a jay and letting Addicks make fun of him!

      When he reached the head of School Street he pulled the slip of paper again from his pocket and made sure of the address. “A. T. Merriman, 109 Mill Street,” was what was written there. He asked his way at the next corner and was directed across the railroad. “Mill Street runs at right angles to the track,” said the citizen who was directing him. “You’ll see a granite building after you pass the crossing. That’s Whitwell’s Mill. The street you want runs along the farther side of it.” Myron thanked him and went on down School Street. The obliging citizen gazed after him in mingled surprise and admiration.

      “Well, he’s certainly a dressy boy,” he murmured. “Must be Old John W. Croesus’s son!”

      Mill Street wasn’t far and 109 was soon found, but the character of the district wasn’t at all to Myron’s liking. Ragged and dirty children overflowed the sidewalks and played in the cobbled roadway, slatternly women gossiped from open windows, dejected-looking men lounged at the corners, stray cats rummaged the gutters. The houses, frame structures whose dingy clapboards were flush with the street, had apparently seen far better days. Now dust and grime lay thick on them and many a window was wanting a pane of glass. The prospect of penetrating to such a place every day was revolting, and, having found the numerals “109” above a sagging porch, Myron was strongly inclined to turn back. But he didn’t, and a tinkle that followed his pull at the rusty knob beside the door brought a stout and frowsy woman who wiped her hands on her apron as she pulled the portal open.

      “Mr. Merriman?” inquired Myron.

      “I don’t know is he in, sir. One flight up and you’ll see his name on the door. If you come again, sir, just you step right in. The door ain’t never locked in the daytime.”

      Myron mounted a creaky stairway guiltless of carpet and found himself in a narrow hall from which four doors opened. In spite of dinginess and want of repairs, the interior of 109 was, he had to acknowledge, astonishingly clean. One of the doors did present a card to the inquiring gaze, but in the gloom its inscription was not decipherable and so Myron chanced it and knocked. A voice answered from beyond the portal and nearly simultaneously a dog barked sharply. Myron entered.

      The room was large and well lighted from two sides. It was also particularly devoid of furniture, or so it looked to the visitor. A large deal table strewn with papers and piled with books stood near the centre of the apartment where the cross light from the two pairs of windows fell on it. The floor was carpetless, but two scraps of straw matting saved it from utter bareness. There was a bench under the windows on one side and a flattened cushion and two faded pillows adorned it. What seemed to Myron the narrowest bed in the whole wide world, an unlovely thing of black iron rails, was pushed into a corner, and beside it was a box from which overflowed a grey blanket. Three chairs, one a decrepit armchair from whose leather covering the horsehair stuffing protruded in many places, stood about. There was also a bureau and a washstand. On the end of the former stood a small gas-stove and various pans and cooking utensils. Books, mostly sober-sided, dry-looking volumes, lay everywhere, on table, bureau, window-seat, chair and even on the floor. Between the several articles of furniture lay broad and arid expanses of unpainted flooring.

      At first glance the room appeared to be inhabited only by a tall, thin but prepossessing youth of perhaps twenty years and a Scottish terrier whose age was a matter for conjecture since her countenance was fairly well hidden by sandy hair. The youth was seated at the deal table and the terrier was halfway between box and door, growling inquiringly at the intruder. At Myron’s entry Merriman tilted back in his chair, thrust his hands into his trousers pockets and said “Good morning” in a deep, pleasant voice. Then he added mildly: “Shut up, Tess, or I’ll murder you.” The terrier gave a last growl and retired to the box. As she settled down in it a series of astonishing squeaks emerged. Myron looked across startledly and Merriman laughed.

      “Puppies,” he explained. “Six of them. That’s why she’s so ferocious. Seems to think every one who comes upstairs is a kidnapper. I tell her the silly things are too ugly to tempt any one, but she doesn’t believe me.”

      “Will she let me see them?” asked Myron eagerly.

      “Oh, yes.” Merriman drew his long length from the chair and led the way to the box. “Now then, old lady, pile out of here and let the gentleman have a look at your ugly ducklings.”

      The terrier made no objection to being removed, but the puppies cried dismally at the parting. Myron chuckled. “Funny things!” he exclaimed. “Why, they haven’t got their eyes open yet!”

      “No, they’re only six days old. How’s this one for a butter-ball? Isn’t he a fat rascal? All right, Tess, we won’t hurt them. I vouch for the gentleman. He never stole a puppy in all his innocent young life.”

      “I never did,” Myron corroborated, “but I’d like to start right now!”

      “Like dogs, eh?” asked the host.

      “Yes, indeed. Funny thing is, though, that I’ve never owned one.”

      “No? How does that happen?”

      “I don’t know. My mother thinks they’re rather a nuisance around the house. Still, I dare say she’d have let me kept one if I’d insisted. I don’t suppose you – you’d care to sell one of those?”

      “Oh, yes, I would. I’ll have to either sell them or give them: unless I send them off to the happy hunting ground.”

      “Really? How much would they be?”

      “The lot?” asked Merriman, a twinkle in his eye.

      “Gee, no! One!”

      “Five dollars. Tess is good stock, and the father is a thoroughbred belonging to Terrill, the stableman on Centre Street. Got a place to keep him?”

      “I’d forgot about that,” owned Myron. “I’m afraid not. They wouldn’t let me have him in Sohmer, would they?”

      “Scarcely!” laughed the other. “All right, old lady, back you go. Sit down – ah – What’s the name, please?”

      “Foster. Mr. Morgan gave me your address. I want some tutoring in Latin, and he said he thought you could take me on.”

      “Possibly. Just dump those books on the seat there. What hours do you have free, Foster?”

      “This hour in the morning and any time in the evening.”

      “What about afternoon?”

      “I’m trying for the football team and that doesn’t leave me much time afternoons. Still, I guess we’re usually through by five.”

      Merriman shook his head. “I’d rather not waste my time and yours, Foster. Football practice doesn’t leave a fellow in very good trim for tutoring. Better say the evening, I guess. How would seven to nine do?”

      “Two hours?” asked Myron startledly.

      “Yes, you can’t accomplish much in less. I can’t, anyhow.”

      “Very well. Seven to nine. Shall I come here or – ”

      “I’ll come to you. What’s the number in Sohmer? Seventeen? All right. We’ll begin tomorrow. My terms are a dollar an hour. You pay for the time it takes me to get to you, usually about ten minutes. Can you arrange with your room-mate to let us have the place to ourselves at that time?”

      “Oh, yes,” replied Myron confidently.

      “Good. Now pull your chair over here, please, and we’ll see what the job is.”

      Merriman had a lean face from which two dark brown eyes looked keenly forth. His mouth was broad and his nose straight and long. A high forehead, a deep upper lip and a firmly pointed chin added to the general effect of length. You couldn’t have called him handsome, by any stretch of the imagination, but there was something attractive in his homeliness. Perhaps it was the expression of the eyes or perhaps the smile that hovered continuously

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