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Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 299, 14 September 1937, Page 5

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NEW boy stood on the . cornet where I sometimes buy a weekly paper. As I reached him. he lifted his voice in a mournful wail that groped vainly for the strident note of the sophisticated runner. He was shuffling his enormous boots along the pavement to keep warm, but the wind had painted his thin knees with livid blue. There was a droop to his soft mouth. “Good-day,” I said cheerily, “you are new to this job?’’ As he fumbled with red, stiff fingers for my paper, he nodded a tousled, sandy head. “Like it?”

He did not look up when he answered, but I could see the trembling of his lip. “I thought I would,” he said, “but you get tired of it.” “Give it up, then,” I urged him. “Do you need the money badly?” “No, it isn’t that. But I can’t find anyone to do it for me, so I have to go on.” He bit his lips bravely and shrugged his thin shoulders. “You’ll get used to it,” I reassured him. “It must be fun seeing all the people.” But he was not to be comforted. His was tbe utter despair of the very young, whose eyes do not see beyond to-day. “I hate most of them,” he said gloomily. “There’s one man that comes, and he’s always in a hurry. He tries to snatch his paper from under my arm, but you can’t let go because they would all fall. It would be much quicker if he let me get it out for him.” And the thought of the man in a hurry brought a huge tear brimming over the boy’s eye and coursing down the freckled bridge of his nose.

[ gave him sixpence, and for the first time be looked up at me. with a sidelong shy glance from large, wet. brown' eyes. “Thank you.” he said timidly, and the ghost of a smile flickered at tbe corners of his mouth. It was two months before I passed my young newsboy again. As I approached his corner. 1 saw a perceptible jauntiness in the set of his head, the careless way be flipped his enormous boots as he walked, the quick movements of bis hands among the papers. “Good-day,” I greeted him. and was met by the direct stare of two very bright, wicked brown eyes. “Liking the job?” “0.K.," he said, “it's all right. Make a bit of money out of it. Thank you. miss,” and he gave a broad grin before he left me to shout impudent curses at the newsboy on the other side of the street. —O.M.A.