im. But he dismissed the
notes pretty swiftly and suddenly said to the Scoutmaster:

"Where did you pick up those two kids, Smokey, and his--his pal, Jimmy?"

"Oh, that's quite a yarn," said the Scoutmaster. "Both of them were New
York newsboys. They got sick down there--ill-feeding, lack of care and
so on, and drifted up here. We have a lot of invalids who come here for
their health--rich mostly. But Jimmy and Smokey weren't rich. In fact,
if a couple of our boys hadn't heard about them and done one of the best
turns ever pulled off, I----"

The Commissioner leaned forward and tapped the Scoutmaster on the knee.

"Tell me the whole story," said he, his eyes sparkling. And the
Scoutmaster did.

THE STORY THE SCOUTMASTER TOLD

Smokey and Jimmy were newsboys in the big city. Smokey was much littler,
I expect, when he invested his first pennies in papers and tried to hold
his own with the newsboy gang at the Grand Central Station. Jimmy was
cock of the walk and had licked every newsboy on the stand. He looked
little Smokey over. He resented the smokiness, but hated to wallop him;
there was so little to wallop. And because the other newsboys tried to,
Jimmy walloped the whole lot of them all over again. After that he felt
sort of responsible for Smokey's welfare.

By and by Jimmy found out that Smokey never had had any parents. He came
out of a colored orphan asylum--ran away, I expect. Jimmy didn't know
anything about his parents, either. He came out of a foundling
hospital--ran away, too, perhaps. Anyway, Jimmy says he felt he didn't
have much on Smokey. They became close friends. Smokey thought Jimmy was
God's little brother, and Jimmy proved it by taking absolute charge of
Smokey's destiny.

They saved their pennies. Their living didn't cost much. They fed mostly
at the back door of an east side quick-lunch place. For domicile they
shared a basement with a drunken janitor, an Italian organ-grinder, and
a monkey. The monkey got shoved off a second-story window ledge by some
Christian person who probably resented the Darwin theory and died
several days later of internal injuries. Smokey nursed him, while Jimmy
and the organ-grinder worked harder and raised enough money to get a
doctor. The doctor was indignant when he found that his patient was of
the Simian persuasion. But that's a story by itself. You ought to hear
Jimmy tell it. You'd find yourself laughing on only one side of your
face.

About a week afte