Scrouged Up Close

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 9, 1913

“Scrouged Up Close”

THE comfort that often comes from contact, even wordless, with one's own human kind, is touchingly illustrated in a little story told by a Western publisher:—

The boy in the car sat cuddled so close to the woman in gray that everybody thought he belonged to her. So when he unconsciously dug his muddy shoes into the broadcloth skirt of his left-hand neighbor, she leaned over, and said: “Pardon me, madam; will you kindly make your little boy square himself around? He is soiling my skirt with his muddy shoes.”

The woman in gray blushed a little, and nudged the boy away.

“My boy?” she said. “He isn't mine!”

The boy squirmed uneasily. He was such a little fellow that he could not begin to touch his feet to the floor, so he stuck them out straight in front of him like pegs to hang things on, and looked at them deprecatingly.

“I'm sorry I got your dress dirty,” he said to the woman on his left; “I hope it will brush off.”

The timidity in his voice took a short cut to the woman's heart, and she smiled upon him kindly.

“O, it doesn't matter!” she said. Then as his eyes were still fastened on her, she added, “Going up-town alone?”

“Yes, ma'am,” he said. “I always go alone; there isn't anybody to go with me. Father's dead, and mother's dead. I live with Aunt Clara over in Belmar. But she says Aunt Anna ought to help do something for me, so once or twice a week, when she gets tired out and wants to go some place to get rested up, she packs me off over here to stay with Aunt Anna. I'm going up there now. Sometimes I don't find Aunt Anna at home, but I hope she will be at home today, because it looks like it is going to rain, and I don't like to hang around in the streets in the rain.”

The woman felt something move inside her throat. “You are a very little boy,” she said rather unsteadily, “to be knocked about in this way.”

“O, I don't mind!” he replied. “I never get lost. But I get lonesome sometimes on these long trips, and when I see anybody I think I'd like to belong to, I scrouge up close to her, so I can make believe that I really am her little boy. This morning I was playing that I belonged to that lady on the other side of me, when I got so int'rested that I forgot all about my feet. That is why I got your dress dirty.”

The woman put her arms around the tiny lad, and “scrouged” him up so close that she hurt him, and every other woman who had overheard his artless confidence looked as if she would let him wipe his shoes on her best dress.—The Continent.