It was hard, too, to see Mikky dressed like the fine boys on Fifth Avenue, handsome trousers and coat, and a great thick overcoat, a hat on his shining crown of hair that had always been guiltless of cap, thick stockings and shining shoes on his feet that had always been bare and soiled with the grime of the streets--gloves on his hands. This was a new Mikky. "The kids" did not know him. In spite of their best efforts they could not be natural. Great lumps arose in their throats, lumps that never dared arise for hunger or cold or curses at home.
They stood helpless before their own consciousness, and Mikky, divining the trouble with that exquisite keenness of a spirit sent from heaven to make earth brighter, conceived the bright idea of giving each of his comrades some article of his apparel as a remembrance. Mr. Endicott came upon the scene just in time to keep Mikky from taking off his overcoat and enveloping Buck in its elegant folds. He was eagerly telling them that Bobs should have his undercoat, Jimmie his hat; they must take his gloves to Jane, and there was nothing left for Sam but his stockings and shoes, but he gave them all willingly. He seemed to see no reason why he could not travel hatless and coatless, bare of foot and hand, for had he not gone that way through all the years of his existence? It was a small thing to do, for his friends whom he was leaving for a long time.
The bright face clouded when he was told he could not give these things away, that it would not be fair to the kind professor to ask him to carry with him a boy not properly dressed. But he smiled again trustfully when Endicott promised to take the whole group to a clothing house and fit them out.
They bade Mikky good-bye, pressing their grimy noses against the bars of the station gate to watch their friend disappear from their bare little lives.
Endicott himself felt like crying as he came back from seeing the boy aboard the train. Somehow it went hard for him to feel, he should not meet the bright smile that night when he went home.
But it was not the way of "the kids" to cry when tragedy fell among them. They did not cry now--when he came back to them they regarded the banker with lowering brows as the originator of their bereavement. They had no faith in the promised clothing.
"Aw, what's he givin' us!" Buck had breathed under his breath. But to do Buck credit he had not wanted to take Mikky's coat from him. When their comrade went from them into another walk in life he must go proudly apparelled.