Lonesome
*** WARNING TISSUES NEEDED ***


Author Unknown

1904
The boy sat huddled up close to the woman in gray that everybody felt sure he belonged to her; so when he unconsciously dug his muddy shoes into the broadcloth skirt of his left hand neighbor she leaned over and said: “Pardon me, madam, will you kindly make your little boy square himself around? He is soiling my skirt with his muddy shoes.”

The woman in gray blushed a little and nudged the boy away.

“My boy?” she said. “My goodness, he isn’t mine.”

The boy squirmed uneasily. He was such a little fellow that he could not touch his feet to the floor, so he stuck them straight in front of him like pegs to hand things on, and looked at them deprecatingly.

“I am so sorry I got your dress dirty,” he said to the woman on his left side. “I hope it will brush off.”

Oh, it doesn’t matter,” she said. Then, as his eyes were still fastened on hers, she added: “Are you going uptown alone?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I always go alone. There isn’t anybody to go with me. Father is dead and mother is dead. I live with Aunt Clara in Brooklyn, but she says Aunt Anna ought to help do something for me, so once or twice a week, when she gets tired and wants to go some place to get rested up, she sends me over to stay with Aunt Anna. I am going up there now. Sometimes I don’t find Aunt Anna home, but I hope she will be at home today, because it looks as if it is going to rain, and I don’t like to hang around in the street in the rain.”

“The woman felt something uncomfortable in her throat, and she said: “You are a very little boy to be knocked about this way,” rather unsteadily.

“Oh, I don’t mind,” he said. “I never get lost. But I get lonesome sometimes on the long trips, and when I see anybody that I think I would like to belong to I scrooge up close to her so I can make believe that I really do belong to her. This morning I was playing that I belonged to that lady on the other side of me, and I forgot all about my feet. That is why I got your dress dirty.”

The woman put her arm around the tiny chap and “scrooged” him up so close that she almost hurt him, and every other woman who had heard his artless confidence looked as if she would not only let him wipe his shoes on her best gown, but would rather he did it than not.

Submitted by Richard