over his character that impressed the smallest Corner House girl.
One day she met him on Willow Street, some distance from the old Corner House. He was idly watching a man across the street who was moving along the sidewalk in a very odd way indeed.
The Kenways had lived in a very poor part of Bloomingsburg before coming to Milton, and there had been saloons in the neighborhood; but Dot had been very small, and if she had seen such a thing as an intoxicated man she had forgotten it. Near the Corner House there were no saloons, although the city of Milton licensed many of those places. Dot had not before seen a man under the influence of liquor.
This unfortunate was not a poorly dressed man. Indeed, he was rather well appareled and normally might have been a very respectable citizen. But he was staggering from side to side of the walk, his head hanging and his stiff derby hat – by some remarkable power – sticking to his head, although it threatened to fall off at every jerk.
“Why – ee!” gasped the smallest Corner House girl, “what ever is the matter with that poor man, Sammy Pinkney, do you suppose?”
Sammy, trying to wrap his limbs about a fire-plug in emulation of a boa-constrictor, jerked out:
“Brick in his hat!”
“Oh! What?” murmured the puzzled Dot, eyeing the poor man wonderingly and clasping the Alice-doll closer.
Sammy grinned. He was a tantalizing urchin and loved to mystify the innocent Dot.
“He’s carrying a brick in his hat,” he repeated, with daring.
“Why – why – Doesn’t he know it?” demanded the little girl.
“I guess nobody’s told him yet,” chuckled Sammy.
At that moment the intoxicated man just caught his hat from tumbling off by striking it with the palm of one hand and so settling it well down upon his ears again.
“Oh, my!” murmured the startled Dot. “It came pretty near falling out, didn’t it?”
“He, he!” snickered Sammy.
“Do you suppose he wants to carry that brick in his hat?” asked Dot, seriously. “I shouldn’t think he would.”
“He don’t know he’s got it,” said Sammy.
“Why doesn’t somebody tell him?” demanded Dot. “The poor man! He’ll surely fall down.”
Sammy still snickered. Somebody should have spanked Sammy, right then and there!
“I don’t care!” exclaimed Dot, more and more disturbed, “it doesn’t seem nice – not at all. I think you ought to tell him, Sammy.”
“Not me!”
“Well – ” Dot looked all around. There was nobody else in sight just then. Willow Street was quite deserted.
“If you won’t, then I must,” declared the little girl, shouldering the obligation pluckily and starting across the street.
“Aw, Dot! Let him alone,” muttered Sammy.
The young rascal was suddenly startled. He began to wonder what would happen to him if his mother learned that he had been trying to fool Dot Kenway in any such way as this.
“Come back!” he called after her.
“Sha’n’t!” declared Dot, who could be stubborn when she wanted to be.
“Say! that man won’t listen to you,” insisted Sammy.
Dot kept right on. The man had halted, and was clinging to a tree box, his head hanging down. His face was very much flushed and his eyes were glassy.
“But I s’pose,” thought Dot, “if I was carrying a brick in my hat it would make me sick, too.”
“Mister!” she said to the man, stopping in the gutter and looking up at him.
“Huh? What’s matter?” asked the man. His head jerked up and he looked all around to see who had spoken to him.
“Mister,” said Dot, earnestly, “I – I hope you’ll ‘scuse me, but there’s a brick in your hat. Sammy Pinkney says so. And I think if you take it out you’ll feel ever so much better.”
Sammy heard her. He actually grew pale, and, casting a startled glance around him, he ran. He ran all the way home, for he could not imagine what the man would say or do to Dot. Sammy was not a very brave boy.
The unfortunate man looked down at Dot, finally having discovered her whereabouts, with preternatural gravity.
“Say – little girl – say that ’gain, will you?” he said, slowly.
Dot quite innocently repeated it. The man carefully removed his hat and looked into it. Then he turned it over and shook it. Nothing, of course, fell to the ground.
“’Tisn’t there. You fooled yourself. I thought so,” muttered the man.
And then he leaned so far over that he dropped the hat in the gutter.
“You must be dreadful sick,” Dot said to him, her little heart touched by his appearance.
“Yes – that’s it. Sick. That’s it,” he mumbled.
This was a really awful adventure for little Dot Kenway.
“I’m going to get you a glass of water,” she said. “Your face is so red. You are sick, I can see.”
He said nothing, but blinked at her. Perhaps he did not at first quite understand. Dot turned to cross the street toward the store on the corner. Then she turned back.
“Will you please hold my Alice-doll while I go for the water?” she asked the man. “Do be very careful with her – please.”
“Sure!” said the man, good-naturedly.
“You’ll truly, truly be very careful of her?”
“Sure will,” repeated the unfortunate.
So, after she had placed the doll carefully in his arms, the little girl tripped away on her errand of mercy. The man sat down on the curb and held it. It might have been a laughable situation – only no thinking person could have laughed.
The man nursed the doll as tenderly as Dot would have done herself. He rocked to and fro on the curb, hugging the battered doll and looking down at it earnestly.
Nobody had yet noticed the incident – save Sammy Pinkney; and Sammy Pinkney had run away.
Dot was bold in the cause of any one in need, if she was not bold for herself. She asked for the glass of cold water and obtained it. She brought it carefully back to the man on the curbstone, holding the glass in both her dimpled hands.
His face was still very red, but his eyes were no longer glassy. He looked at the child with a shamed expression slowly dawning in his countenance, and his eyes were moist with tears.
“You’d better take your doll, little girl,
