The Project Gutenberg EBook of Wikkey, by YAM

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Title: Wikkey
A Scrap

Author: YAM

Release Date: October 25, 2007 [EBook #23195]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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WIKKEY

A SCRAP

By YAM

NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
31 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET
1888

WIKKEY.

A SCRAP.

CHAPTER I.

Mr. Ruskin has it that we are all kings and queens, possessing realms
and treasuries. However this may be, it is certain that there are souls
born to reign over the hearts of their fellows, kings walking about the
world in broad-cloth and fustian, shooting-jackets, ulsters, and what
not--swaying hearts at will, though it may be all unconscious of their
power; and only the existence of some such psychological fact as this
will account for the incident which I am about to relate.

Lawrence Granby was, beyond all doubt, one of these royal ones, his
kingdom being co-extensive with the circle of his acquaintance--not that
he was in the least aware of the power he exercised over all who came in
contact with him, as he usually attributed the fact that he "got on"
with people "like a house on fire" to the good qualities possessed by
"other fellows." Even the comforts by which he was surrounded in his
lodging by his landlady and former nurse, Mrs. Evans, he considered as
the result of the dame's innate geniality, though the opinion
entertained of her by underlings and by those who met her in the way of
business was scarcely as favorable. He was a handsome fellow too, this
Lawrence, six feet three, with a curly brown head and the frankest blue
eyes that ever looked pityingly, almost wonderingly, on the small and
weak things of the earth.

And the boy, Wikkey Whiston, was a crossing-sweeper. I am sorry for
this, for I fancy people are becoming a little tired of the race, in
story-books at least, but as he _was_ a crossing-sweeper it cannot be
helped. It would not mend matters much to invest him with some other
profession, especially as i