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      The Undoing of Dinney Crockett

       Table of Contents

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      THE UNDOING OF DINNEY

       CROCKETT

       Table of Contents

      Tho' they tykes us out of our gutter 'ome,

      An' scrub till our 'ides is sore,

       Their stinkin' suds won't myke of a bloke

      W'ot 'e never was afore!

      ​

      THE UNDOING OF DINNEY CROCKETT

      DINNEY was born lucky. No one knew this better than Dinney himself, who was, in a way, a sort of second Dr. Pangloss.

      And, look at it from whatever standpoint you will, Dinney had many reasons to be happy. In the first place, he was as free as the wind, and answerable to no one but his own elastic conscience.

      As for his wordly wants, he had plenty to eat, for he could live sumptuously on eight cents a day. Four cents were really enough, on a pinch, but Dinney found that he most always got a stomach-ache after a few days of four-cent diet.

      In the second place, Dinney was never without a place to sleep. In fact, he had dozens of them. If it chanced to be winter, ​he slumbered on the comfortable iron door over the hot-air shaft of the World building, where the heat blew out through the iron grating in a most delicious way. There, no matter how cold it was, he was as contented and as much at home as the most luxuriously cotted child on Fifth Avenue. And what was more, he was not afraid of the dark, and the night had no terrors for him. Dinney, like all self-respecting members of the profession, had an honest and outspoken contempt for fixed quarters of any sort, and openly scoffed at the Newsboys' Home. Another point to be remembered was that with sleeping apartments at the World building, Dinney was always on hand for the morning papers, which, as very few in the great city ever guessed, came up long before the sun itself.

      In the summer, Dinney had the habit of going about and nosing out sleeping-places at his own sweet will. Often, it is true, he had to fight for them, but that fact only made him enjoy them all the more.

      So, since Dinney could sell as many as ​seventy papers of an afternoon, he envied no one, shot his craps, tossed his pennies, and enjoyed his quiet smoke with the rest of "de gang," and had no particular kick to register against the things that were.

      But continuous sleeping in the open, the perpetual smoking of cigarettes and the vilest of cigar stubs, and the immoderate consumption of over-ripe fruit, stale sandwiches, and well-larded doughnuts, while perhaps pleasant enough in their way, do not tend either to promote growth or to produce remarkable roundness of feature. And for this reason all men misunderstood Dinney.

      Yet probably that was why he was so very thin. His cheeks were sunken, his eyes were hollow, and there was a general air of wistful hungriness about his woeful little face. Dinney knew this well enough; in fact, he inwardly rejoiced over it, being wise enough to realise why he could sell seventy papers while his more prosperous-looking rivals scarcely got rid of their paltry two dozen.

      Indeed, it was nothing else than this intangible soul-hunger shadowing Dinney's face ​that one day caused a certain sad-eyed woman in a carriage to stop at the curb where Dinney was selling his papers, and blushingly thrust a quarter into his black and dirty hand.

      Dinney's heart turned on its electrics at that. Such things meant something to him, for he was always too proud to beg, though not to steal. His big eyes lighted up in a truly marvellous way, and he, carried for a moment off his guard, grinned his genuine gratefulness.

      That made the sad-eyed woman in the carriage turn to her husband and say:

      "Did you notice, George? He has really a bee-yew-tiful face!"

      They had been watching him for weeks.

      "Yes, I suppose so," answered the man, with feigned disinterestedness, "if he'd only wash it now and then."

      "Do you know, George, as I pass him I often think—he he looks like poor little Albert."

      The man called George had thought so, too, but did not say so. Instead, he looked up at the roofs of the buildings, for Albert ​had been their only child, had died but a year before, and neither of them could quite forget it, as sometimes happens in this world.

      Dinney did not forget that carriage, and it must be confessed that he made it a point to assume a most ridiculous and priggish expression of dejected meekness whenever it passed. He knew it would not make the sad-eyed woman any happier to feel that he had shot craps with every cent of her quarter!

      But as time went on these little gifts grew more and more frequent, and, if kept up, would have been the ruin of the best news-boy in the Ward. The outcome of it all was that the sad-eyed woman came one day and drove off with Dinney in her carriage.

      "George, do you know, I believe that child has consumption," she explained to her husband, who was really not a bit astonished at her act, "and I've brought him home, and I'm going to nurse him up for a while!"

      George kissed her and called her a silly little woman, and said he supposed he'd have to let her have her own way. It was very lonely in that big house.

      ​In fact, it was George himself who led Dinney up to the bathroom, showed him how to turn on the hot water, and significantly advised him not to be afraid of wasting the soap. In some unaccountable way George found it very pleasant to talk to a child again, and answer questions, and explain what everything was for. When he went downstairs he mildly and tentatively suggested that Dinney be taken out to their country house with them. He also determined, in his own mind, to see about buying Dinney a box of tools.

      As for Dinney himself, that strange bathroom, with all its pipes and taps and shower controller and enamel tub, was a wonder and delight. For the fact must be confessed, it was Dinney's first premeditated bath.

      He overflowed the bath tub, spotted the woodwork with soap suds, unscrewed one of the taps for investigative purposes, and had a most delightful time of it.

      When a big, clean-shaven, stately-looking man in a bottle green suit with brass buttons stepped in, Dinney's heart jumped into his ​mouth, as he thought for a moment that it was a policeman. It was only the butler with a new suit of clothes for him. Dinney eyed them with some curiosity, for it was his first acquisition of such a character. He ordered the butler to put them down on the

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