William Bowen - The Old Tobacco Shop

"No sir," said Freddie.

This was his chance to inquire about Mr. Punch's father and the noises in the tower, but it was out of his power to stay longer; he was too glad to escape without being reported; and he accordingly went off down the street, squeaking worse than ever, and positively hurrying.

Freddie found no one in the Tobacco Shop, so he knocked on the door of the back room, and it was instantly opened by Mr. Littleback himself; but a Mr. Littleback so resplendent that Freddie hardly knew him.

The suit of clothes which Mr. Littleback wore was beyond any doubt a brand new suit. The ground color of it was a rich mauve, if you know what that is; not exactly purple, nor violet, but somewhere in between; and up and down and across were stripes of brown, making good-sized squares all over him; it was extremely beautiful. His collar was a high white collar, very stiff, and it held up his chin in front like a whitewashed fence. His necktie was of a pale-blue satin, with little pink roses painted on it, yes sir, painted! mind you, by hand! It was not one of those troublesome things that come in a single long piece and take you hours before the glass to twist and turn over and under before you can get them to look like a necktie; no indeed; it was far better than that; it was tied already, by somebody who could do it better than you ever could, and when you bought it, all you had to do was to put it on; fasten those two rubber bands behind with a hook, and there you were; perfect. As to hair, the hand of the barber was yet upon him; his hair, parted on one side, was of a slickness which his own soap never could have accomplished; on the wide side, it lay flat down over his forehead, and there gave a sudden curl backward, like the curve of a hairpin, but much more graceful; it is only the most studious barbers who ever learn to do it just right. There were creases down the arms of Mr. Toby's coat and down the front of his trouser-legs. A yellow silk handkerchief showed itself, not boldly, but quietly, from his breast pocket.

As he let Freddie in, and in doing so turned his back to Aunt Amanda, she screamed and cried out:

"Toby! Look behind you! Merciful heavens!"

Freddie, in the midst of his admiration of the magnificent creature, saw him whirl about and look behind himself in alarm. His aunt pointed at his coat and said sternly, "Come here."

Freddie saw on the back of Mr. Toby's coat, near the bottom, as he whirled about, a little square white tag.

Mr. Toby backed up to his aunt, and stood before her, trying to look at his back over his shoulder, while she took her scissors and clipped the threads by which the white tag was sewed to the back of his coat. She held up the tag; it had numbers printed and written on it.

"Now ain't that just like you, Toby Littleback," she said, "going out with your tag on your back, with your size on it and your height and age, too, for all I know, for anybody to see that you've got on a splittin' brand new suit right out o' the shop. If you'd 'a' gone out with that on your back, I'd 'a' died with shame right here in this chair. Ain't you even able to dress yourself?"

"By crickets, that would 'a' been bad," said Toby, considerably upset. "However, you caught it in time, so there ain't no use cryin' over it. Good-bye, Aunt; come along, Freddie, or we'll be late."

"Ain't you goin' to wear a hat?" said Aunt Amanda. "I declare the man's so excited he don't know what he's doing."

"Blamed if I didn't come near going without a hat," said Toby. "Here she is."

He produced his hat from a cupboard in the room, and put it on. It would have been a pity indeed for him to have gone without it. It was a white derby; yes, a white derby. It was the kind of a hat which was known in that city as a "pinochle"; pronounced "pea-knuckle" by all well-informed boys. With the mauve suit and the hand-painted necktie and the whitewashed fence, the white derby set him off to perfection, especially as he wore it a little towards the back of his head, so as to show the loveliest part of the plastered curl of his hair on the forehead. Aunt Amanda could not restrain her admiration.

"You'll do now," she said. "I don't know that I ever seen you look so genteel before."

Toby, in the embarrassment of being considered genteel, put his hands in his trousers pockets.

"Take them hands out of your pockets," said Aunt Amanda sharply, and he took them out in a hurry.

"Now, Freddie," she said, "come here a minute, and I'll set you to rights."

Freddie stood before her knee, not very willingly, and she buttoned his jacket from top to bottom, and put his cap squarely on his head.

"Now you'd better be off," she said.

"Good-bye, Aunt, and I wish you were going too," said Toby, his hand on the door-knob.

"Good-bye, Freddie," said she.

"Good-bye," said Freddie.

"Good-bye what?" said she.

"Aunt Amanda," said he.

When they were out in the street, and she heard Toby lock the shop door behind him, she took out her handkerchief and blew her nose; her cold was evidently worse, because she blew her nose several times; and then, tucking her handkerchief away in her dress, she put her head down on her arm on the table, and cried.

The first thing Freddie did, as they went up the street, was to put his cap back again on the back of his head, and the next thing he did was to unbutton every button of his jacket, from top to bottom.

The little hunchback was in a great hurry, and he dragged the Little Boy along by the hand so fast that he could hardly keep up. As they hurried along, several naughty boys, observing Mr. Toby's white derby hat, called after him, very rudely, "Pea-knuckle! pea-knuckle!" But Mr. Toby paid no attention, and dragged Freddie along faster than ever.

"We don't want to miss any of it," said Mr. Toby. "Hurry up, boy."

They did not have far to go; only four or five "squares." They stopped before a great grimy brick building with a great wide entrance-way.

"Here we are," said Toby.

"What does that say up there?" said Freddie.

"Gaunt Street Theatre," said Toby. "Hurry up."

Freddie hung back before a signboard on which was a picture of a slender man dressed up in white clothing, very tight, with red and black squares on it; he was leaning against a table; his head and face were a dead white, except for red eyebrows, and a red spot in each cheek, and he had no hair, but a smooth dead-white skin from his forehead to the back of his neck. The peculiar thing was, that his head was on the table beside him, and not on his neck. Freddie pointed to the writing underneath the picture, and said:

"What does that say?"

"Hanlon's Superba," said Toby, pulling him along. "Hurry up! We'll be late."

Mr. Littleback went to a little window in the wall, inside the entrance-way, and spoke to a man in there, and evidently asked permission to go in, and evidently got it; and they did go in, up a flight of stairs, and found themselves suddenly among thousands and thousands of people, as it seemed, all sitting in chairs facing the same way, in a vast house lit up by gas light so that it was almost as bright as day; and Toby and Freddie sat down in the very front row of these people, and looked down over a railing in front of them on the heads of thousands and thousands, as it seemed, of other people, all sitting in chairs facing the same way. Everybody was facing towards a straight wall at the other side of the house, which had pictures painted on it. At the foot of this wall, in a kind of trench, there was a man at a piano, and there were other men with fiddles big and little, and still others with brass things, and they were all playing a tremendous tune together, but just after Toby and Freddie had sat down, they stopped playing and Toby nudged Freddie with his elbow, and said: