Guarding His Goal - Public Domain

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uch was the legend, neatly inscribed on a small white card, that met the gaze of the visitor to Number 22 Whitson. As Number 22 was the last room on the corridor, and as the single light was at the head of the stairway, the legend was none too legible after nightfall, and the boy who had paused in front of it to regain his breath after a hurried ascent of the two steep flights had difficulty in reading it. When he had deciphered it and glanced at the little cardboard box below, in which reposed a tiny scratch-pad and a stubby pencil, he smiled amusedly ere he raised his hand and rapped on the portal.

[2]

“Come in!” called a voice from beyond the door, and the visitor turned the knob and entered.

The room was small, with a ceiling that sloped with the roof, and rather shabby. There was an iron cot at one side, and a small steamer trunk peeped out from beneath it. A bureau, grained in imitation of yellow oak, was across the room and bore a few photographs in addition to such purely useful articles as brushes and a comb and a little china box holding studs and sleeve-links. The room contained two chairs, although at first glance one seemed quite sufficient for the available space: an armchair boasting the remains of an upholstered seat and a straight-backed affair whose uncompromising lines were at the moment partly hidden by a suit of blue serge. The one remaining article of furniture was a deal table such as one finds in kitchens. It was a good-sized table and it stood against the wall at the right of the window embrasure and under the gas bracket. From the bracket extended a pipe terminating at a one-burner gas stove which, on a square of zinc, adorned one end of the table. On the stove was a smoothing iron of the sort known to tailors as a goose. A second such implement[3] was being pushed back and forth over an expanse of damp cloth in a little cloud of steam, hissing, but less alarmingly than the other sort of goose, and filling the room with a not unpleasant odor. The iron didn’t stop in its travels to and fro, but its manipulator, a well-set-up boy of fifteen with very blue eyes and red-brown hair, looked around as the visitor entered.