The Box-Car Children
A man stepped up to him quickly.
"Want to enter?" he asked. "No time to waste."
"Yes," replied Henry.
The man tossed him a pair of white shoes and some blue trunks. He liked
the look of Henry's face as he paused to ask in an undertone, "Where did
you train?"
"Never trained," replied Henry.
"I suppose you know these fellows have been training all the year?"
observed the man. "You don't expect to win?"
"Oh, no!" replied Henry, apparently shocked at the idea. "But it's lots
of fun to run, you know." He was dressed and ready by this time. How
light he felt! He felt as if he could almost fly. Presently the
contestants were all marshalled out to the running track. Henry was
Number 4.
Now, Henry had never been trained to run, but the boy possessed an
unusual quantity of common sense. "It's a mile race," he thought to
himself, "and it's the second half mile that counts." So it happened
that this was the main thought in his mind when the starter's gong
sounded and the racers shot away down the track. In almost no time,
Henry was far behind the first half of the runners. But strangely
enough, he did not seem to mind this greatly.
"It's fun to run, anyhow," he thought.
It was fun, certainly. He felt as if his limbs were strung together on
springs. He ran easily, without effort, each step bounding into the next
like an elastic.
After a few minutes of this, Henry had a new thought.
"Now you've tried how _easy_ you can run, let's see how _fast_ you can
run!"
And then not only Henry himself, but the enormous crowd as well, began
to see how fast he could run. Slowly he gained on the fellow ahead of
him, and passed him. With the next fellow as a goal, he gradually crept
alongside, and passed him with a spurt. The crowd shouted itself hoarse.
The field all along the course was black with people. Henry could hear
them cheering for Number 4, as he pounded by. Six runners remained ahead
of him. Here was the kind of race the crowd loved; not an easily won
affair between two runners, but a gradual victory between the best
runner and overpowering odds. Henry could see the finish-flag now in the
distance. He began to spurt. He passed Numbers 14 and 3. He passed 25,
6, and 1 almost in a bunch. Number 16 remained ahead. Then Henry began
to think of winning. How much the twenty-five dollar prize would mean to
Jess and the rest! Number 16 _must_ be passed.
"I'm going to win this race!" he said quietly in his own mind. "I'll
bet you I am!" The thought lent him speed.
"Number 4! Number 4!" yelled the crowd. Henry did not know that the
fellow ahead had been ahead all the way, and just because he--Henry--had
slowly gained over them all, the crowd loved him best.
Henry waited until he could have touched him. He was within three yards
of the wire. He bent double, and put all his energy into the last
elastic bound. He passed Number 16, and shot under the wire.
Then the crowd went wild. It scrambled over and under the fence,
cheering and blowing its horns. Henry felt himself lifted on many
shoulders and carried panting up to the reviewing stand. He bowed
laughing at the sea of faces, and took the silver cup with its little
wings in a sort of dream. It is a wonder he did not lose the envelope
containing the prize, for he hardly realized when he took it what it
was.
Then someone said, "What's your name, boy?"
That called him to earth. He had to think quickly under cover of getting
his breath.
"Henry James," he replied. This was perfectly true, as far as it went.
In a moment the enormous signboard flashed out the name:
HENRY JAMES No. 4. AGE 13
WINNER OF FREE-FOR-ALL
Meanwhile the man of the dressing room was busy locating Mr. Cordyce of
the Cordyce Mills. He knew that was exactly the kind of story that old
James Henry would like.
"Yes, sir," he said smiling. "I says to him, 'You don't expect to win,
of course.' And he says to me, 'Oh, no, but it's lots of fun to run, you
know.'"
"Thank you, sir," returned Mr. Cordyce. "That's a good story. Bring the
youngster over here, if you don't mind."
When Henry appeared, a trifle shaken out of his daze and anxious only to
get away, Mr. Cordyce stretched out his hand. "I like your spirit, my
boy," he said. "I like your running, too. But it's your spirit that I
like best. Don't ever lose it."
"Thank you," said Henry, shaking hands. And there was only one in the
whole crowd that knew who was shaking hands with whom, least of all
James Henry and Henry James.
MORE EDUCATION
With twenty-five dollars in his hand, Henry felt like a millionaire as
he edged through the crowd to the gate.
"That's the boy," he heard many a person say when he was forced to hold
his silver cup in view out of harm's way.
When Dr. McAllister drove into his yard he found a boy washing the
concrete drives as calmly as if nothing had happened. He chuckled
quietly, for he had stopped at the Fair Grounds for a few minutes
himself, and held a little conversation with the score-keeper. When
Henry faithfully repeated the list of winners, however, he said nothing
about it.
"What are you going to do with the prize?" queried Dr. McAllister.
"Put it in the savings bank, I guess," replied Henry.
"Have you an account?" asked his friend.
"No, but Jess says it's high time we started one."
"Good for Jess," said the doctor absently. "I remember an old uncle of
mine who put two hundred dollars in the savings bank and forgot all
about it. He left it in there till he died, and it came to me. It
amounted to sixteen hundred dollars."
"Whew!" said Henry.
"He left it alone for over forty years, you see," explained Dr.
McAllister.
When Henry arrived at his little home in the woods with the twenty-five
dollars (for he never thought of putting it in the bank before Jess saw
it), he found a delicious lunch waiting for him. Jess had boiled the
little vegetables in clear water, and the moment they were done she had
drained off the water in a remarkable drainer, and heaped them on the
biggest dish with melted butter on top.
His family almost forgot to eat while Henry recounted the details of the
exciting race. And when he showed them the silver cup and the money they
actually did stop eating, hungry as they were.
"I said my name was Henry James," repeated Henry.
"That's all right. So it is," affirmed Jess. "It's clever, too. You can
use that name for your bank book."
"So I can!" said Henry, delighted. "I'll put it in the bank this very
afternoon. And by the way, I brought something for dinner tonight."
Jess looked in the bag. There were a dozen smooth, brown potatoes.
"I know how to cook those," said Jess, nodding her head wisely. "You
just wait!"
"Can't wait, hardly," Henry called back as he went to work.
When he had gone, Benny frolicked around noisily with the dog.
"Benny," Jess exclaimed suddenly, as she hung her dish towels up to dry,
"it's high time you learned to read."
"No school _now_," said Benny hopefully.
"No, but I can teach you. If I only had a primer!"
"Let's make one," suggested Violet, shaking her hair back. "We have
saved all the wrapping paper off the bundles, you know."
Jess was staring off into space, as she always did when she had a bright
idea.
"Violet," she cried at last, "remember those chips? We could whittle out
letters like type--make each letter backwards, you know."
"And stamp them on paper!" finished Violet.
"There would be only twenty-six in all. It wouldn't be awfully hard,"
said Jess. "We wouldn't bother with capitals."
"What could we use for ink?" Violet wondered, wrinkling her forehead.
"Blackberry juice!" cried Jess. The two girls clapped their hands.
"Won't Henry be surprised when he finds that Benny can read?"
Now from this conversation Benny gathered that this type-business would
take his sisters quite a while to prepare. So he was not much worried
about his part of the work. In fact, he sorted out chips very cheerfully
and watched his teachers with interest as they dug carefully around the
letters with the two knives.
"We'll teach him two words to begin with," said Jess. "Then we won't
have to make the whole alphabet at once. Let's begin to teach him
_see_."
"That's easy," agreed Violet. "And then we won't have to make but two
letters, _s_ and _e_."
"And the other word will be _me_," cried Jess. "So only three pieces of
type in all, Violet."
Jess cut the wiggly _s_, because she had the better knife, while Violet
struggled with the _e_. Then Jess cut a wonderful _m_ while Violet
sewed the primer down the back, and gathered a cupful of blackberries.
As she sat by, crushing the juice from the berries with a stick, Jess
planned the ink pad.
"We'll have to use a small piece of the wash-cloth, I'm afraid," she
said at last.
But finally they were obliged to cut off only the uneven bits of cloth
which hung around the edges. These they used for stuffing for the pad,
and covered them with a pocket which Violet carefully ripped from her
apron. When this was sewed firmly into place, and put into a small
saucer, Jess poured on the purple juice. Even Benny came up on his hands
and knees to watch her stamp the first _s_. It came out beautifully on
the first page of the primer, purple and clean-cut. The _e_ was almost
as good, and as for the _m_, Jess' hand shook with pure pride as she
stamped it evenly on the page. At last the two words were completed. In
fact, they were done long before Benny had the slightest idea his
sisters were ready for him.
He came willingly enough for his first lesson, but he could not tell the
two words apart.
"Don't you see, Benny?" Jess explained patiently. "This one with the
wiggly _s_ says _see_?" But Benny did not "see."
"I'll tell you, Jess," said Violet at last. "Let's print each word again
on a separate card. That's the way they do at school. And then let him
point to _see_."
The girls did this, using squares of stiff brown paper. Then they called
Benny. Very carefully, Jess explained again which word said _see_,
hissing like a huge snake to show him how the _s_ sounded. Then she
mixed the cards and said encouragingly, "Now, Benny, point to
_s-s-s-ee_."
Benny did not move. He sat with his finger on his lip.
But the children were nearly petrified with astonishment to see Watch
cock his head on one side and gravely put his paw on the center of the
word! Now, this was only an accident. Watch did not really know one of
the words from the other. But Benny thought he did. And was he going to
let a dog get ahead of him? Not Benny! In less time than it takes to
tell it, Benny had learned both words perfectly.
"Good old Watch," said Jess.
"It isn't really hard at all," said Benny. "Is it, Watch?"
During all this experiment Jess had not forgotten her dinner. When you
are living outdoors all the time you do not forget things like that. In
fact both girls had learned to tell the time very accurately by the sun.
Jess started up a beautiful little fire of cones. As they turned into
red-hot ashes and began to topple over one by one into the glowing pile,
Jess laughed delightedly. She had already scrubbed the smooth potatoes
and dried them carefully. She now poked them one by one into the glowing
ashes with a stick from a birch tree. Whenever a potato lit up
dangerously she gave it a poke into a new position. And when Henry found
her, she was just rolling the charred balls out onto the flat stones.
"Burned 'em up?" queried Henry.
"Burned, nothing!" cried Jess energetically. "You just wait!"
"Can't wait, hardly," replied Henry smiling.
"You said that a long time ago," said Benny.
"Well, isn't it true?" demanded Henry, rolling his brother over on the