II.

MR. JAYRES.

[Illustration: B]

Bootsey Biggs was a Boy. From the topmost hair of his shocky head to the
nethermost sole of his tough little feet, Bootsey Biggs was a Boy.
Bootsey was on his way to business. He had come to his tenement home in
Cherry Street, just below Franklin Square, to partake of his noonday
meal. He had climbed five flights of tenement-house stairs, equal to
about thirty flights of civilized stairs, and procuring the key of his
mother's room from Mrs. Maguinness, who lived in the third room beyond,
where it was always left when Mrs. Biggs went out to get her papers, he
had entered within the four walls that he called his home.

Spread upon the little pine table that stood in one corner was his
luncheon all ready for him, and after clambering into the big dry-goods
box originally purchased for a coal-bin, but converted under the stress
of a recent emergency into the baby's crib, and after kissing and poking
and mauling and squeezing the poor little baby into a mild convulsion,
Bootsey had gone heartily at work upon his luncheon.

He was now satisfied. His stomach was full of boiled cabbage, and his
soul was full of peace. He clambered back into the dry-goods box and
renewed his guileless operations on the baby. By all odds the baby was
the most astonishing thing that had ever come under Bootsey's
observation, and the only time during which Bootsey was afforded a fair
and uninterrupted opportunity of examining the baby was that period of
the day which Mr. Jayres, Bootsey's employer, was wont to term "the
noonday hour."

Long before Bootsey came home for his luncheon, Mrs. Biggs was off for
her stand in front of "The Sun" building, where she conducted a large
and, let us hope, a lucrative business in the afternoon newspapers, so
that Bootsey and the baby were left to enjoy the fulness of each other's
society alone and undisturbed.

To Bootsey's mind the baby presented a great variety of psychological
and other problems. He wondered what could be the mental operation that
caused it to kink its nose in that amazing manner, why it should
manifest such a persistent desire to swallow its fist, what could be the
particular woe and grievance that suddenly possessed its little soul and
moved it to pucker up its mouth and yell as though it saw nothing but
despair as its earthly portion?

Bootsey had debated these and similar questions until two beats upon the
clock warned him that, eve