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Page 30
CRIP'S GARRET-DAY
BY SARAH J. PRICHARD.
Crip was having a dismal--a very dismal time of it. Crip was eleven, it
was his birthday, and Crip was in disgrace--in a garret.
Wasn't it dreadful?
It happened thus: Crip's father was a shoemaker. The bench where he
worked and the little bit of a shop, about eight feet every way, in
which he worked, stood on a street leading down to the town dock, and
the name of the town we will say was Barkhampstead, on Cape Cod Bay.
Now and then--that is, once or twice in the year--a whaling vessel set
sail from the dock, and sometimes, not always, the same vessels
returned to the dock.
The going and the coming of a "whaler" made Crip's father, Mr. John
Allen, glad. It was his busy season, for when the seamen went, they
always wanted stout new boots and shoes, and, when they came, they
always needed new coverings on their feet to go home in.
Two years before this dismal time that Crip was having, the ship "Sweet
Home" went away, and it had not been spoken or signaled or heard from
in any way, since four months from the time it left the dock at
Barkhampstead.
The fathers and mothers and wives and little children of the men who
went in the "Sweet Home" kept on hoping, and fearing, and feeling
terribly bad about everybody on board whom they loved, when, without
any warning whatever, right in the midst of a raging snow storm, the
"Sweet Home," all covered in ice from mast-head to prow, sailed, stiff
and cold, into Barkhampstead harbor.
Oh! wasn't there a great gladness over all the old town then! They rang
the meeting-house bell. It was a hoarse, creaking old bell, but there
was music in it that time, as it throbbed against the falling snow, and
made a most delicious concert of joy and gratitude in every house
within a mile and more of the dock.
Mr. John Allen rushed down to the "Sweet Home," as soon as ever it came
in. He hadn't anybody on board to care very particularly about, but how
he did rub his hands together as he went, letting the snow gather fast
on his long beard, as he thought of the thirty or forty pairs of feet
that _must_ have shoes!
Crip, you know, was to be eleven the next day, and his mother, in the
big red house next door to the little shop, had made him a cake for the
day, and, beside, plum-pudding was to be for dinner.
Before Crip's father had gone down to the dock he had said to Crip:
"Now, you must stay right here in the shop and not go near the dock,
until I come back;" and Crip had said "Yes, sir," although every bit of
his throbbing boy body wanted to take itself off to the "Sweet Home."
The snow kept on falling, and it began to grow dark in the little shop.
Crip had just lighted a candle, when the shop door opened, and a boy,
not much bigger than Crip himself, came in and shut the door behind
him.
Crip jumped up from the bench and said:
"What----?"
"You don't know me, Crip Allen," said the boy.
"Who be you?" questioned Crip.
"Don't wonder!" said the other, "for we've all come right out of the
jaws of ice and death. I'm Jo Jay."
"Jo Jay,--looking so!" said Crip.
"Never mind! Only give me a pair of shoes--old ones will do--to get
home in. It's three miles to go, and it's five months since I've had
shoes on my feet. Oh, Crip! we've had a _bad_ time on board, and no
cargo to speak of to bring home."
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