Daddy's Boy.

Otago Witness, Issue 1812, 13 August 1886, Page 35

Daddy's Boy.

Daddy was an old man, who, with a child" 3 years old, lived in an attic, in one of the poorest quarters of the city, and earned his living at anything.he could get to do. The child was not of the old man's kin, but sometime before, with his mother, who was broken down in health, from suffering and poverty, had come to live in the house. To Daddy, who had been kind to her and the child, she told something of her past life, admitting she Vent by an assumed name, that her husband was alive, and that the •child would some day bear a title, but what it was he never learned, for one day he found her paralysed in body and speech. She looked at him pleadingly and then at the child. He understood the mute appeal in- ; stantly, and, taking the child's tiny hand ia , his own, led him to the bedside, and bowing^ [ his old head reverently, said :'" With God's help I will."

She died soon after, and so Daddy took the child, and so well'had he kept his promise to the dead mother that the neighbours said : " He couldn't be better to him were the child his own," and they smiled as Daddy trotted up and down the little alley with the baby on his back and said : " Well, well, old Daddy's gettin' younger every jday since he took that boy, and what a store he does set. by him !"

Yes, the stranger child grew dearer every day, and the old wrinkled face grew radiant with delight when someone asked the child's name to hear the little fellow lisp : " Daddith boy."

He bought a crib from a woman whose children had outgrown it, and paid for it in work. The neighhours said : " How foolish;" but the old man replied: "I don'fc mind myself, for I can sleep in the bed on the floor, but he shan't ; it's little I can do for him, and, indeed, I don't begrudge it to him."

At night the little fellow would not go to sleep unless Daddy's head was on the pillow beside him, and the baby hand would pat the withered cheek until overtaken by sleep, when Daddy, placing it carefully beneath the clothes, would, steal off to his bed on the floor by the crib, but the instant the boy stirred, if only in his sleep, Daddy was there to rock the crib.

The summer came in hot and sultry, and Daddy's boy began to fail. The old man could do but little work, and a part of each day carried the child out into the suburbs, thinking the change would benefit him, and each time he returned he would say to some of the neighbours: "Don't you think he looks better 1 " and the old man's eyes craved for a favourable reply.

There came a day when Daddy's boy lay dying. The old man could not believe it. " No, no," he said, pitifully, " what will poor Daddy do ? Daddy's boy don't want to go ' away und leave poor old Daddy."

The child smiled wanly and lisped: " Daddy turn, too." * "Would to God I could 1" and the old head dropped on the pillow, the silver mingled with the gold, and. I think when the angel came he must have grieved to have to separate them.

Poor Daddy went to the woman from whom he had bought the crib and said " Please, ma'am, I'm going to ask a favour. My little boy is dead, and I come to borrer the price of a grave. I'll work for it, and pay you every cent, indeed I will. I don't mind his havin' a city coffin or a city funeral, but I would be loth to have him buried in the poor ground, for I want to lay with him when it pleases God to take me, and how can I be sure of that unless I have a grave of my own."

Daddy's boy was not. buned in the poor ground. After the child's death the old man seemed to grow more feeble everyday. The old face that had been so full of cheer for old and young was sad and wistful, and they said : " How he is grieving himself to death for the boy."

Every night the people in' the house heard the rock-rock-rock of the crib, and when they spoke to the old man about it he replied : " I sometimes think he is in it, and it comforts me to rock it."

But one night the woman down stairs missed the steady rock, and said : " Poor old Daddy is tired out." Yes poor old Daddy, with his head on the pillow of the crib, slept, at last, tired out. They found the deed of the boy's grave in his old vest* pocket, close to his heart, and tenderly they laid him with the stranger child.

And the boy ? Who was he ? .' What was his name 1 What does it matter though he were df Csesars line, or John of Arragon, with all his numerous',; titles 1 He rests as well under the name df " Daddy's Boy." "