It was early in the morning, and for the newsies of Lower Manhattan, that meant it was almost time to get to work.
As it happened every day, the newsies who lived in the Duane Street lodging house tumbled out of bed and proceeded to get ready for the day. It wouldn't be much longer before the distribution center opened, and so they tumbled out of bed, grumbling and bickering over whose wrinkled trousers were whose (Race was positive they were his, and how dare Specs contest his claim to the dark brown trousers!).
In clumsy ranks, they made their way from Duane Street to the distribution center, or at least, to the closed gates that, at the appointed hour, would open into the small yard.
Not all newsies, however, came from the Duane Street lodging house. Some came from the tenements, the children of factory workers looking to earn some extra money for their families. These children were not as numerous as the Duane Street newsies, and when they arrived at the gates to the distribution center, they didn't arrive in the same formation. Rather, they tended to arrive one at a time, with kids from the same tenements walking in a cluster, sometimes talking amongst themselves, sometimes keeping to themselves. It was within the tenement-dwelling newsies that the girls could be found, as the lodging house on Duane Street had strict rules about girls living there.
The newsies, all in one place and ready to start the day's work, jostled against each other, trying to get as close to the gate as possible, so that when it opened, they would be one of the first to get their papers and head on their way.
The one newsie that got to the head of the line without question was Jack Kelly, the unspoken leader of the newsies of Duane Street, followed by his lieutenant, a short, stocky Polish kid everyone called Flip. Then came Racetrack (or Race, for short), who everyone said used to be a tenement kid until the last year, when his mother died and his father went…somewhere, followed by Skittery and then Kid Blink, who would tell a different story every time someone asked why he wore an eye patch. After the usual bunch, it was anyone's guess who would make it up to the front of the group. Very rarely did any of the tenement kids dare to push to the front, especially the girls, as the tenement kids were, in their way, less competitive than the Duane Street boys, and lacking any sort of leader.
Soon enough, the gates opened, and the newsies rushed into the yard, Jack Kelly and his boys at the head of the pack.
Once he'd bought his papers from Mr. Weisel, the leader of the Duane Street newsies kept on the periphery of the action, watching as each newsie went to buy their stack of papers for the day.
Some, like Jack, had a certain number they always bought, while others (usually kids from the tenements, who sometimes didn't know better) put too much thought into it and changed how many they bought each day. Some asking around always yielded the same answers, usually something to do with the traffic at prospective selling spots or the face value of the front page headlines. Whatever the reason, it was usually a silly one to Jack, who had learned early on how to sell a hundred copies of a lousy headline in a couple hours, and it was a surefire way to pick out the tenement kids from his own boys.
"Did ya see this morning's headline, Jack?" Race asked, coming to sit on a crate near Jack's usual spot before. Before Jack can tell the younger boy that yes, he's seen the headline, Race continues, "Two-hundred and sixty-six men dead in Cuba, and Spain to blame!"
"Those kids only buying twenty-or-so papes're missing out on the best headline all week!" Blink chimed in, shaking his head.
"I almost pity the suckers," Flip said, thumbing through his usual stack of a hundred papes. "They don't know what they's missing."
"More for us then, eh boys?" Jack replied with a smile, watching as a pair of kids from the tenements went up to buy their papers from old Weisel.
"Yeah, more for us." Blink flipped through the morning edition of the World, looking for any other headlines of interest. "And what a day for it to happen!"
"What a day," Flip agreed with a nod. He clapped Jack on the shoulder. "Well boys, I'm off. Gotta get my spot before anyone else does."
"Oi, me too." Blink shouldered his stack of papers, gave Jack a mock salute, and sprinted out into the streets, leaving Jack and Race to survey the yard.
"No sign of the Delancys," Race noted, pulling his cigar from his pocket and sticking it in his mouth. Like Jack, he had a tendency to survey the tenement newsies, most of which he knew by name, having been one of them once. "Say, who're those two?"
It took a while for Jack to see who his friend meant by "those two," though it really shouldn't've. The tenement newsies rarely stood alone or in pairs, but rather in clusters of three or four, so a pair was sure to stick out.
The pair in question—a girl and a boy—was one Jack had seen around his territory before, so he was able to rest assured that they weren't newsies from another borough trying to make a move on his selling grounds, but he wasn't able to place their names.
"I don't know," he said with a shrug, tucking his papers under his arm. "Why don't we go an' ask, hm? We've got time."
"Whatever ya say, chief," came Race's response as he followed Jack over to where the two tenement newsies stood, a little over a stone's throw from the closed office of the distribution center, going over the headlines together.
When he'd seen them around, Jack had always assumed that the two tenement newsies were brother and sister, based on the way they were never far from the other—sometimes even selling side by side without a quarrel. The boy stood a clear head taller than the girl, which answered the question of who was the elder, but that was all Jack had ever been able to figure out from a passing glance. They clearly had a family, or else the boy'd end up in Kloppman's lodging house and the girl'd go find work somewhere else.
"Can't say I've seen you two 'round here before," Jack said by way of introduction. This wasn't exactly true, but he'd learned it was better to come across as friendly, put the kids at ease so they would have reasons to respect him, than to intimidate them. "You got a name?"
Up close, Jack was able to get a better look at the kids, and he could see Race appraising them the way he did a horse down at Sheepshead. Like many of the children from the tenements, they were well-fed in comparison to the Duane Street newsies, though the girl seemed slight even for a kid with a home and regular meals to look forward to. The boy had a complexion similar to Race's, if not darker, with a head of curly dark hair that he had neatly parted to the side (much to Jack's amusement), and what looked like a slightly crumpled ear. The girl, Jack realized, couldn't be his sister then, not with the reddish-brown hair and fair skin smattered with faint freckles.
Unsurprisingly, it was the boy who answered first.
"Folks call me Bean," he said, his accent undistinguishable as he spoke. "And this is Mouse."
"I can speak for myself, y'know," the girl interjected, though it was clear to see that any frustration with her friend was fleeting. She turned her attention to Jack. "Like he said, folks call me Mouse. And you are?"
Jack heard Race laugh, but he ignored it. "Jack Kelly, newsie of the World."
"He's in charge of the Manhattan newsies," Race supplied, then, "and I'm Race. Where's it you two call home?"
Mouse pressed her lips together, clearly trying to figure out an acceptable answer. "Orchard Street," she finally answered, but Jack recognized an immigrant kid when he saw one, and Mouse had it written all over her.
The accent was perhaps the first giveaway—something he recognized from time spent wandering the docks, as well as memories of his mother—but what was more telling was the time it took Mouse to answer Race's question about their homes. Only a kid come over from another country would hesitate that way, especially if they'd only been in America for a few months.
Bean, on the other hand, didn't hesitate. "Orchard Street," he said, with the accent of a kid born and raised on New York. "What about yourselves?"
"Duane Street," Jack answered. "Same for Race here."
"It's the finest digs in all Manhattan!" the other newsboy boasted, a grin on his face. "Just ask any of the boys, and they'll tell you."
"Come on Race. There you go, tempting good kids like these two into your life of corruption." Jack couldn't help but grin. "Well, I'll be seein' you two 'round, I suppose."