Bert would not call himself a charity worker. He had enough trouble looking after himself. He didn't have money to spare to hand out to the poor. It was not Bert who fed the starving, or clothed the ill-dressed, or gave shelter to the homeless.
So perhaps he had some little friends from the local orphanage that he would visit from time to time; that wasn't charity, that was friendship. He had friends all over, and some just happened to be orphans. And if he sometimes took one of the older boys out for the day to see what it was like to do a man's job, well, he'd had someone to show him the ropes; it was only fair he passed on the favor.
It had crossed his mind, from time to time, to take on a proper apprentice. But then, Bert never did anything by half measures. He wouldn't just be passing on a profession (or five). He'd be the one responsible for seeing that the boy had good, clean clothes, healthy and filling meals, discipline, and schooling. And that kind of responsibility was not Bert. He was happy to hand the boys back at the end of the day, where they probably got better than he'd be able to give.
So as he whistled and walked to the gate leading into the orphanage, he had no intention of doing more than asking after a friend or two (had Freddie lost that cough? Was Angus staying out of trouble?) and perhaps offering to take one of the boys out for the day.
He was not expecting to walk in on a wild brawl.
With all the noise they made it sounded like a battle, but really there were only two rolling around on the ground and four more cheering them on. It must have only just begun because, despite the loud noise the children were making, no one had stormed out of the building to break it up.
"Hey!" Bert shouted, not angrily but loudly. Had a passing stranger tried this, it would probably have done little to stop the fight. Bert, however, was a recognized authority among the children, and his sudden appearance, coupled with his strong voice, was enough to cause the onlookers to scatter.
This still might not have stopped the two boys on the ground, but the sudden silence and abandonment of their mates did seem to cause at least one of the fighters, the bigger of the two, to take notice and instead of punching the other boy, as he'd clearly been gearing up to do, he just held his shirt in a tight fist, leaning on top of him, while looking up at Bert with wide eyes.
Which is when the second miscreant bit his opponent in the arm.
Unfair tactic perhaps, but effective, as the boy trying to pin him down howled and let go. Bert didn't see exactly what the boy did next, but in the next moment the still howling boy had fallen backwards and the little biter was on his feet and would have made his escape had Bert been any slower. Unfortunately for the boy, Bert had him by the back of his shirt before he could disappear. Or, perhaps, fortunately for him. Miss Minchin did not take kindly to having to chase down troublemakers and the end would probably have been worse for him.
"What is going on here?" her shrill voice demanded as she stormed from the building.
"It's Jack, Miss," cried the boy on the ground, "He attacked me, look, he bit my arm!" The boy Bert held made no attempt to explain his side but scowled so fiercely he looked half wild.
"Little savage," Miss Minchin muttered quite audibly and Bert almost felt sorry for this Jack. In Bert's experience, fights were never so simple as 'he attacked me'. Clearly Miss Minchin was of the same mind, for she followed up her muttering by speaking sternly to both boys.
"Fighting, for whatever reason, is forbidden. I don't care who started it. You are both in for it, and your friends, don't think I didn't see them run!"
"Yes, Miss," the boy on the ground said contritely. The boy Bert held still said nothing.
"Well go on, inside, my office. And you better be perfect little gentlemen when I get there or it will be the worse for you!"
Bert let Jack go. The boy hadn't actually tried to escape anyway, beyond that first moment when Bert had nabbed him. In fact, he was surprisingly docile for the underhanded little attacker Bert had seen only a minute before. His docility didn't prove to be an act either, for he walked calmly into the building of his own volition, followed quickly by the other boy who groaned the whole way with an exaggerated limp.
"Oh, that boy," groaned Miss Minchin, once the two young fighters were gone. "I don't see how we can keep him, I really don't. You know my opinion on shipping our children away to our colonies, but this might be the exception!"
"Surely he can't be that bad," Bert said. "A newcomer, is he?"
"Came from a cottage; they said they were too full but I am of a mind they had enough of the little savage. Do you know, I caught him stealing bread? I work myself to the bone making sure the boys all have their fair share at mealtime, and I see him snatch a loaf right out of Angus's hands. And it wasn't out of hunger, you can be sure. Do you know what he did with it?"
"What?" Bert asked.
"Threw it away! Never even saw where it went. Of course I got Angus a fresh loaf, and I told Jack he'd lost his own for a week, and he just smiled!"
"Well, boys will be naughty from time to time," Bert suggested, though he had to admit the idea of someone stealing another person's food didn't sit well with him. He had too much experience over the years of going without to overlook that kind of cruelty. There seemed to be something seriously wrong with the sort of person who would toss out someone else's good food and then smile about it.
But Miss Minchin, eager to have a sympathetic ear to vent to, wasn't finished yet.
"He incites the other boys, too. I've had more fights to break up this last week, than the entire month before he came! And he has some sort of…of spell over the younger ones. They follow him around like he's the pied piper…and I just know he's going to lead them all to bad. And the ones as don't follow him seem twice as inclined to quarrel."
"Well, I suppose it's good he's making friends?" Bert suggested, a bit doubtful of this himself. This Jack didn't sound like the sort of boy the younger ones should be looking up to.
"Cultivating a gang, more like it," Miss Minchin said with a sniff. "That boy! I send him out with a sweep to learn a bit of professional skill, and what does the boy do? He dumps a bucket of soot over poor Mr. Wilson's head! On purpose, mind!"
"Well, you know what I've said on the matter of children being taken on as sweeps," Bert said. "It isn't healthy for them." Though he had to admit, dumping over a bucket of soot just sounded like pure naughtiness, rather than rebellion.
"Jack is just very lucky he wasn't carted off for that alone!" Miss Minchin answered, not ready to give up listing Jack's transgressions, "He won't answer his teachers during his lessons. He disappears when he's supposed to be working. He makes a mess of other children's chores when they are working. I am really quite ready to send him off to be Australia's problem!"
"Now, Miss Minchin," said Bert, "This Jack sounds like a troubled sort, and no mistake, but there's no call to send him away." He'd heard rumors about what happened to those children who were shipped off, and he knew she had too, because he got most of the rumors from her. She was a rare woman, Miss Minchin, because she actually cared. Seeing her still stormy expression, perhaps in this instance, she cared a bit too much. Wanting to steer her away to calmer thoughts, Bert decided now was the perfect time to bring up why he'd come.
"I wanted to know how little Freddie was doing. And I thought I might take one of the boys out for the day, show them what a hard day's work looks like."
"Oh, Freddie was doing better. I even let him go out with some of the older boys for their trial apprenticeship. He's young to be an apprentice, but it's better they learn young how to help themselves, for there's only so much I can do once they're away from here. And he did want to go so…only perhaps it was too much. He had to be put to bed for a week after with the worst cough he's had in a long time."
"As bad as that?" asked Bert with some alarm, for Freddie was known for his coughs and troubled breathing. Sometimes it seemed that even a change in weather would set him off.
"He's much better now," Miss Minchin was quick to reassure him. Here, why don't you go to the kitchen to wait, and I'll go find some deserving boy who could use a day out." Then her face clouded over once more. "And I can tell you one sorry little boy who won't be the one."
So Bert went to the kitchen, where the cook sat him down with some tea and fresh bread, and Miss Minchin stormed off to take care of the two fighters. The boy who finally joined him with a shy but excited smile was one of Bert's usuals. Sometimes, Bert thought Miss Minchin threw the same three boys at him again and again in the hope that he'd decide to officially take on one of them after all.
"Hello, Angus," Bert said cheerfully. "Up for a bit of hard labor?"
"Oh yes, very hard labor," Angus agreed, with a bit of a wink, because Miss Minchin was standing behind him.
"There will be no busking today, mind," said Miss Minchin, all too knowing in what sort of jobs Bert was known to take the children to do. "The only reason I'm letting him go is because he wasn't in the fight, and he needs the right sort to look up to."
That Miss Minchin meant Bert when she said that, still puzzled Bert as much as it elated him. He tried to keep honest and to find the joy in life, the magic, but there were few who would look at him and say 'that man should be a role model for our youth'.
"Angus," said Bert, allowing his disappointment to color his words, "Were you fighting again?"
"Was Billy and Jack who were fighting," Angus said towards the ground, some of his excitement fading in the wake of Bert's clear disapproval. Bert hadn't noticed Angus at the fight, but it had been very chaotic to start and Bert had been giving the two on the ground most of his attention.
"Watching and doing nothing is the same thing as doing," Bert pointed out gently, then said, "Well, but that's behind us now. Let's get going while the day is young!"
"Just take this, for his dinner," Miss Minchin insisted, pressing a couple of coins on Bert, "And you mind Mr. Alfred, Angus, or I'll rethink your punishment." And she shooed them out the door.
Bert wasn't a sweep that day, not with a child in tow (he meant what he said about children being sweeps), so he had decided it was a good day for odd jobs and in the end he and Angus spent most of the morning re-painting a fence.
"Oh," Angus said, when presented with the fence. "Couldn't we go and sing in the park or…or make kites to sell? This is just the same sort of thing Miss Minchin has us do."
"Now you listen here, Angus," said Bert, "There's nothing the matter with a bit of good clean labor. It stretches the muscles and it's good for the soul. 'Sides, there's nothing more enjoyable!"
"Enjoyable?" asked Angus with great astonishment. "It's work!"
"Well, if you look at it from one direction, I suppose it is," Bert said. "But as a young lady once told me, 'find the element of fun, and every chore becomes a game'."
"How can a chore be a game?" Angus demanded.
"Well," said Bert, thinking about it a moment, then dipping his brush into the paint. "Perhaps…perhaps this isn't a fence. It's a great white whale and…and it's trapped in this garden and the sun is drying it all out, but if we're quick about it, we can wet it down. Mind, we can't miss a single spot, or we know the whale will dry up and die, and that would be a real tragedy."
"A great white whale?" Angus laughed. But he did dip his own brush and they got started. The story advanced as they went along, until they were half convinced they really were saving a poor whale, and they had to fend off the crabs and the sun and then they had to make up a song to console the poor whale who was very depressed and, all in all, Angus actually seemed sorry when the job was done.
"And that's one whale saved," Bert announced as he collected their payment. "Let's see about a bite to eat."
It was during the bite to eat in the park that the boy Jack came up again. Bert hadn't liked what he'd heard about the boy, and was a bit worried about his influence on young Angus. Angus had a history of being led astray, wanting to be liked by the older kids, and Bert didn't like that Angus had been part of Jack's fight.
"I hear there's a new boy…Jack," said Bert to bring the subject around. Angus clearly knew he had Bert's disapproval because he squirmed slightly in his seat. Trying to put the boy more at ease, Bert didn't mention the fight again, but instead brought up one of the other things Miss Minchin had mentioned. "I hear he stole your loaf of bread?"
Angus, not put at ease at all, stared down at his feet. "Yes… I suppose he did."
"You know, that kind of doing, taking someone else's food, that's not right. It may seem small now, but little thefts lead to bigger ones and that path leads down a dark path with dark endings."
"I know," Angus said, his voice oddly squeaky as he continued to stare at his shoes. Bert frowned, not expecting the boy to be that affected by Jack's actions.
"I don't ever want to see you behaving like Jack," Bert continued. "Making trouble, just to make trouble is bad enough but stealing, fighting…I've known that sort before. They try to hurt those who are smaller than them, just to feel bigger. Well, they aren't bigger, just meaner. Do you understand?"
"Yes," mumbled Angus, and then, to Bert's astonishment, Angus burst into tears and just about tackled Bert in a tight hug, mumbling incoherent words into his jacket.
"Hey now," Bert said, patting him gently, though he was still mystified by this reaction. "No need for all this. I know you're a good one, Angus." But for the longest time, Angus just hugged him tighter. Still at a loss, Bert tried patting his head, and then put his hand warmly on the boy's shoulder until he was done.
Angus finally calmed, and then he looked Bert right in the eyes, like he wanted to say something. What he finally did say, though, was "What odd jobs are we doing this afternoon?"
"Let's see where the road takes us," said Bert.
When the afternoon drew to a close, Angus was exhausted from the day's labor, but smiling again.
"Wait until I tell the others," he said. "First we saved a whale, and then we battled an army, and then we had to dig all the way to China!" Bert was almost sorry to see him go, but it was time to light the lamps and Angus was half asleep already.
"And…and…I will be good," Angus said, as Miss Minchin joined them to collect him.
"Of course you will," Bert said, for he felt proud of how far the boy had come. Angus looked at the ground again, then turned and ran inside. All in all, it was a good day.