The Project Gutenberg eBook ofOliver OctoberThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Oliver OctoberAuthor: George Barr McCutcheonRelease date: December 14, 2022 [eBook #69545]Most recently updated: October 19, 2024Language: EnglishOriginal publication: United States: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1922Credits: Al Haines, John Routh & the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at https://www.pgdpcanada.net*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLIVER OCTOBER ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Oliver OctoberAuthor: George Barr McCutcheonRelease date: December 14, 2022 [eBook #69545]Most recently updated: October 19, 2024Language: EnglishOriginal publication: United States: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1922Credits: Al Haines, John Routh & the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at https://www.pgdpcanada.net
Title: Oliver October
Author: George Barr McCutcheon
Author: George Barr McCutcheon
Release date: December 14, 2022 [eBook #69545]Most recently updated: October 19, 2024
Language: English
Original publication: United States: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1922
Credits: Al Haines, John Routh & the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at https://www.pgdpcanada.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLIVER OCTOBER ***
OLIVEROCTOBERBYGEORGE BARR McCUTCHEONAUTHOR OF“BEVERLY OF GRAUSTARK,” “SHERRY,”“VIOLA GWYN,” ETC.NEW YORKDODD, MEAD AND COMPANY1923
OLIVER
OCTOBER
BY
GEORGE BARR McCUTCHEON
AUTHOR OF
“BEVERLY OF GRAUSTARK,” “SHERRY,”
“VIOLA GWYN,” ETC.
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1923
Copyright, 1922, 1923,By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc.PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BYThe Quinn & Boden CompanyBOOK MANUFACTURERSRAHWAY NEW JERSEY
Copyright, 1922, 1923,
By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc.
PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY
The Quinn & Boden Company
BOOK MANUFACTURERS
RAHWAY NEW JERSEY
Oliver October
CHAPTER I
Oliver Baxter, junior, was born on a vile October day in 1890—at seven o’clock in the morning, to be exact. People were more concerned over the plight of a band of gypsies, camped on the edge of the swamp below the Baxter house, however, than they were over the birth of Oliver, although he was a very important child.
The gypsies, journeying southward, had been overtaken by an unexampled and unseasonable blizzard, and citizens of Rumley, in whom curiosity rather than pity had been excited by the misfortunes of the shivering nomads, neglected for the moment that civic pride which heretofore had never failed to respond to any increase in population as provided solely by nature.
First off, Rumley was a very small place at the beginning of the ’nineties. A birth or a death was a matter of profound importance. In the case of the former, all Rumley knew about it months before it happened, and rejoiced. A form of anticipatory interest, amounting almost to impatience, centered upon any expectant mother who ultimately was to add another inhabitant to the town. It was absolutely impossible for a baby to be born in Rumley without the whole town knowing about it within the hour. For that matter, it was equally impossible for any one to die with any degree of privacy unless he went about it deliberately as did Bob Cheever who stole off into the woods back in ’81 and hung himself so cunningly that twenty-four hours passed before his body was discovered.
But, on the whole, the births were what counted most, for, with a true philosophy, the people of Rumley, anticipating that every one had to die some time or other, depended on nature to do its part toward repairing all losses in population by producing a brand-new citizen for every old one who happened to drop put. With a scant five hundred inhabitants, Rumley could ill afford to have its birth rate surpassed by its death rate. The year in which Oliver Baxter, junior, was born had been a lean one; there had been thirteen deaths up to October and only seven births. The surprising mortality was due to the surrender of five old men and three old women who had hung on well beyond the age of ninety, and then, with unbecoming perversity, had combined upon an unusually barren year in which to die.
In view of the fact that no one else could possibly be born in 1890, now that October was at hand, it would seem that Oliver was entitled to a great deal more consideration than he received on his natal day. But when one considers the simultaneous arrival of a blizzard and a band of wandering gypsies at a time of the year when neither was expected, and offers in opposition the arrival of an infant that had been expected ever since the preceding February, it is only fair to say that there were extenuating circumstances and that Rumley was not entirely to blame for its default in civic pride.
Oliver’s parents were prominent in the commercial, social and spiritual life of the town. His father was the proprietor of the hardware store, a prominent member of the Presbyterian church, and a leader in the local lodge of Odd Fellows. He was well on to forty-five when his namesake, was born, and as this son and heir was the first and only child born to the Baxters it is easy to understand the interest and concern that accompanied his approach and arrival into the world—that is to say, up to the distracting intervention of the October cold snap which came apparently out of nowhere and confounded everybody.
Baxter was a hard-cased bachelor of forty when he succumbed to the charms of Mary Floyd, the daughter of the toll-gate keeper at the edge of the village, and asked her to marry him. A full three years elapsed, however, before they could be married. This was due to Mary’s stubborn and somewhat questionable fidelity; her ancient father, it appears, was irascibly certain that he could not manage the affairs of the toll-gate without her assistance: how was he to keep house for himself, or get his own meals, or do his own washing and ironing, or take care of the cow and the pigs? In fact, he was the sort of man who did not believe in trying to do anything for himself as long as there were able-bodied women about the place to do it for him. For twenty years Mary had been his right-hand woman, beginning at the tender age of ten, within fifteen or twenty minutes after the death of her mother, who, by the way, had taken care of Martin for a matter of twenty-five years without rest or recompense. Two older brothers had exercised the masculine prerogative and, having families of their own, left Mary to wither, so to speak, “on the parent stem.”
Old Martin died when Mary was thirty-two. Instead of observing the customary year of mourning, she married Oliver inside of three months after the joyous bereavement, much to the surprise and passing grief of her neighbors, who were unable, for the life of them, to understand how she could do such a thing when her father was hardly cold in the grave. Joseph Sikes, who ran a feed store in connection with and back of Baxter’s hardware establishment, and was a Godless man, set a good many people straight by sardonically observing that anybody as mean as Martin Floyd never would be cold in his grave, owing to the heat that was getting at him from below.
Now as for Oliver Baxter, the elder. He was a scrawny man with a drooping sandy mustache and a thatch of straw-colored hair that always appeared to be in need of trimming no matter how recently it had been cut by Ves Bridges, the barber. In the matter of stature he was a trifle above medium height on Sundays only, due to a studied regard for the dignity that accrued to him as deacon in the church and passer of the collection box at both services. Moreover, he wore a pair of Sabbath day shoes that were not run down at the heel. On week days, in his well-worn business suit and his comfortable old shoes, he was what you would call a trifle under medium height. He was a shy, exceedingly bashful sort of man, with a fiery complexion that cooled off only when he was asleep, and he was given to laughing nervously—and kindly—at any and all times, frequently with results that called for a confused apology on his part and sometimes led to painful misunderstandings—for example, the time he made tender and sympathetic inquiry concerning the health of young Mrs. Hoxie’s mother and cackled cheerfully when informed that the old lady was not expected to last the day out, she was that bad.
How he ever screwed up the courage to propose to Mary Floyd was always a mystery to the entire population of Rumley, including Mary herself, who in accepting him was obliged to overlook the two perfectly inane spasms of laughter with which his bewildered plea was punctuated. She took him, nevertheless, for she was a prudent spinster and had got to the age where people not only were beginning to pity her but were talking of putting her in charge of the public library as soon as old Miss Lowtower died.
Mary at thirty-two was a comely, capable young woman, fairly well educated in spite of Martin Floyd’s exactions, and was beloved by all. If it had not been for the fact that Oliver Baxter was prosperous, honest and a credit to the town, people no doubt would have said she was throwing herself away on him, for it must be said that the Floyds, despite their reduced circumstances, were of better stock than the Baxters. Martin Floyd, in his younger days, had been a schoolmaster and had studied for the law. Moreover, he had been thrice elected justice of the peace and during Grant’s last administration was postmaster at Rumley. Whereas, Oliver Baxter’s father had been a farmhand and Oliver himself an itinerant tin-peddler before really getting on his feet. But as the fortunes of the Floyds went down those of the frugal and enterprising Baxter came up, so, on the whole, Mary was not making a bad bargain when she got married—indeed, she was making a very good bargain if one pauses to consider the somewhat astonishing fact that she really loved the homely and unromantic little bachelor.
When, after two years, it became known that on or about the twentieth of October Mary Baxter was going to have a baby, the town of Rumley and the country for miles about experienced a thrill of interest that continued without abatement up to the very eve of the new Oliver’s natal day, when, as before mentioned, it was stifled by a sudden change in the weather and the belated descent of the gypsies.
It must not be assumed that the gypsies were welcome. Far from it, they were most unwelcome. Their appearance on the outskirts of Rumley was the occasion of dire apprehensions and considerable uneasiness. The word gypsy was synonymous with thievery, kidnaping, black magic and devilry. More than one instance of curses being put upon respectable people by these swarthy, black-eyed vagabonds could be mentioned, and no one felt secure after foolishly subjecting herself to the dire influence of the fortune-telling females of the tribe. Little children were kept indoors, stables and cellars were locked, and backyards zealously watched during the time the gypsies were in the neighborhood.
Small wonder then that the young and tender Oliver failed to hold his own against such overwhelming odds. Nearly twenty-four hours elapsed before the town as a whole took notice of him. By nightfall it was pretty generally known that he was a boy and that his name, provisionally selected, was to be Oliver and not Olivet, as it might have been had his sex been what everybody prophesied it was bound to be. Mr. and Mrs. Baxter, in the second year of their married life, had gone to a nearby city to see a performance of the comic opera “Olivet,” and were so delighted with it—especially the song “In the North Sea Lived a Whale”—that they decided then and there if a girl should ever be born to them they would call her Olivet, that being as near to Oliver as they could possibly come.
They yearned for an Oliver, of course, but in the event he did not materialize, it would be a rather satisfactory compromise to substitute a “t” for the “r” which they would have preferred.
So they called him Oliver and added October to that, as a tribute to the month in which he was born.
The Baxter residence, a two-story frame building, stood at the top of a tree-covered knoll on the edge of the town, overlooking an extensive swamp in the center of which lay a reed-encircled pond where at certain seasons of the year migratory wild ducks and geese disported themselves in perfect security, for so treacherous was the vast morass guarding this little body of water that even the most daring and foolhardy of hunters feared to cross it. These evil acres bore the name of Death Swamp. They belonged to Oliver Baxter. He bought the whole tract, four hundred acres or more, for twenty-five dollars, and with a droll sense of humor described it as his back yard.
The wild October gale had been blowing all day long, a bleak legacy of the blizzard that swept over the land during the night. There were high, white drifts in sheltered nooks and corners; a fine, sleety snow cut mercilessly through the air, beating against window panes like sweeps of bird shot, scuttling through reluctantly opened doors, swirling in restless fury across porches, all to the tune of a shrill wind that came whistling out of the north. In an upstairs corner room, warmed by a big, carefully tended sheet-iron stove, young Oliver first saw the light of day. No finer “young-un” had ever been born, according to Mrs. Serepta Grimes, and Serepta was an authority on babies. It was she who took command of Oliver, his mother and his father, the house itself, and all that therein was. She was there hours ahead of Dr. Robinson, and she was still there hours after his departure. Throughout the town of Rumley, Serepta was known as a “blessing and a comfort.” Her word was law. Fond mothers and frightened fathers submitted to her gentle but arbitrary regulations without a murmur of protest. Joe Sikes claimed—and no one disputed him—that you couldn’t come into or go out of the world properly without being assisted by Serepta Grimes. She was that kind of a woman.
She saw to it that all the cracks around the window frames were securely stuffed with paper to keep the wind from coming in; she kept Oliver’s beaddled father from darting into the room every time he heard the baby cry; she gave peremptory directions to neighbor-women who came in to see what they could do; she kept the fire going, the kitchen running, and, by virtue of her own vast experience and authority, she kept the doctor in his place. Perhaps a hundred times during the day she had patiently answered “Yes” to the senior Oliver’s tremulous question: “Is she going to pull through, Serepty?”
In this cozy little room and in the presence of the doctor and Serepta Grimes, young Oliver was weighed by his father. For this purpose, a brand-new, perfectly balanced meat-scales, selected from stock, was brought up from the hardware store by Mr. Sikes, who, while being denied the privilege of witnessing the ceremony, subsequently was able to collect fifty cents from another bosom friend of the family, Mr. Silas Link, undertaker and upholsterer. The infant weighed nine and a quarter pounds, Joseph winning his wager by a scant quarter of a pound. The two worthies also had made another bet as to the sex of the infant, Mr. Sikes giving odds of two to one that it would be a boy. Up to seven o’clock in the evening, fully twelve hours after the baby was born, neither Mr. Sikes nor Mr. Link had the slightest idea who had won the bet, for, try as they would, there seemed to be absolutely no way of getting any authentic information from upstairs, owing to the speechless condition of Oliver senior and the drastic reticence of Serepta Grimes.
And so, as the story of Oliver October really begins at seven o’clock in the evening, regardless of all that may have transpired in the preceding twelve hours of his life, we will open the narrative with Mr. Joseph Sikes hovering in solitary gloom over the base-burner in the sitting-room to the right of the small vestibule hall whose door opened upon the snow-covered, wind-swept front porch. For the better part of an hour he had been sitting there, listening with tense, apprehensive ears to the brisk footsteps in the room overhead. The sitting-room was cold, for Joseph had neglected to close the front door tightly on entering the house and the wind had blown it ajar, permitting quite an accumulation of snow to carpet the hall. He had purposely left the sitting-room door open in order to hear the better what was going on at the top of the stairs. His attention was called to this almost criminal act some fifteen or twenty minutes after its commission by the sound of a man’s voice in the upper hall. It was an agitated voice and it was raised considerably in the effort to make itself heard by some one on the other side of a closed, intervening door.
“Say, Serepty, I—I think the front door is open,” the voice was saying. Joseph wasn’t sure, but he thought it belonged to Oliver Baxter. At any rate, the speaker was in the upper hall. After a moment it continued. “Like as not Mary and the baby will ketch cold and die if—”
A door squeaked upstairs and then came the voice of Serepta Grimes.
“My goodness! Of course, it’s open. Haven’t you got sense enough to go down and shut it? Who left it open anyway? You?”
“I thought I heard somebody come in a little while ago. Must have been—”
“Go down and shut it this instant. And stay downstairs, you goose.”
The door closed sharply and Mr. Sikes, recovering from a temporary paralysis, clumsily got to his feet and hurried into the hall.
“Never mind, Ollie,” he whispered hoarsely to the figure descending the stairs. “I’ll shut it. Some darned fool must have forgot to close it.”
“Isn’t that snow on the floor?” demanded Mr. Baxter, pausing midway on the stairs. The light from the sitting-room door fell upon his pinched, worried face as he peered, blinking, over the banister.
“Must have blowed in,” mumbled Joseph guiltily. “You don’t suppose she’s taken cold, do you, Ollie?”
“She probably has,” groaned Mr. Baxter. “She’s—she’s dying anyhow, Joe—she hasn’t got more than half an hour to live. I—”
“Is the doctor up there?”
“No. He ain’t been here since five o’clock. Oh, the poor—”
“I guess she’s all right or he wouldn’t have gone off and left her,” said Mr. Sikes consolingly. “I guess it wouldn’t be a bad idea to sweep all this snow out. Where’ll I find a broom?”
“In the kitchen—in the kitchen, Joe. My God, what have I ever done that we should have a blizzard like this on the one day that—”
“Come on down, Ollie, and let me give you a swig at this bottle I brought along with me. I can hear your teeth chatterin’ from here.”
“I haven’t got any shoes on,” protested Mr. Baxter. “I’m trying not to make any more noise than I can help. Besides I don’t want Mary to smell liquor on me. No, I can’t come down. I’d never forgive myself if she was to die and me not up here where I could hear her calling for me. Yes, sir—she’s not going to pull through, Joe—she’s not going to get well. I—”
“What does Serepty say?”
“Serepty? Oh, she says she’s all right and as fit as a fiddle—but I know better. She’s just saying that to brace me up. She—”
The door squeaked above him and Mrs. Grimes spoke.
“Didn’t I tell you to close that door, Oliver Baxter? Who is that you’re talking to?”
“Don’t tell her,” whispered Mr. Sikes, springing nimbly to the door. “She don’t like me anyhow, and—Oh, the danged thing’s stuck! I’ll have to get the broom.”
Mr. Sikes hurried to the kitchen and returned with the broom. Baxter was still standing on the stairs, in a listening attitude.
“Sh!” he hissed. “Don’t do that? I thought I heard—” He turned and darted up the stairs, leaving Mr. Sikes to his task. Presently he came half way down again and addressed the sweeper, who had just completed his job and was closing the door against the pressing wind. “I’m up here in the spare bedroom, Joe, if you need me for anything. I’ve just been thinking that the house might catch fire with all these stoves going and the wind blowing so hard. If you smell anything burning come up and let me know.”
“Just a second, Ollie,” whispered Joseph, from the bottom of the steps. “Is it a boy or a girl?”
But Oliver failed to answer. He had disappeared, tiptoeing in his stocking feet past the closed and guarded door at the bend in the hall.
His friend went back to his place by the base-burner and sat down. In skirting the table in the center of the room he paused long enough to take a cigar from the box of “Old Jim Crows” that Oliver had purchased for distribution among congratulatory friends. He hesitated a long time before lighting it, however. He knew from past experience that Serepta Grimes objected to men smoking in the house, and, while this was not her house, nevertheless for the time being she was complete mistress of it.
To look at Joseph Sikes you would never believe that he could be afraid of anything or anybody. He was a burly, rugged, middle-aged man with broad shoulders, a battling face and a thick shock of black hair that might well have supplied you with a corporeal picture of what Samson must have looked like before he was shorn. He looked somewhat ill at ease and uncomfortable in his Sunday suit of clothes and his starched shirt and the bothersome collar that appeared to be giving him a great deal of trouble, judging by the frequency with which he ran his forefinger around the inside of it and twisted his puckered, uplifted chin from time to time as if in dire need of help. Mr. Sikes was an unmarried man. He was not used to tight collars.
The combination sitting-and dining-room was on the side of the house facing the main thoroughfare of the town. Its windows looked out across the porch and down the wooded slope to the street, a hundred yards away. Mr. Sikes on his arrival after a scant supper at his boarding-house in Shiveley’s Lane had found the entire lower part of the house in darkness except the kitchen. He took it upon himself to light the two kerosene lamps in the sitting-room and subsequently—in some dismay—to draw down the window shades. He replenished the fire from a scuttle of coal and then, on second thought, went down into the cellar and replenished the scuttle. After performing these small chores, he removed his overcoat and hat and hung them over the back of a chair alongside the stove. He forgot to remove his goloshes, and it was not until he became aware of the smell of scorching rubber that he remembered where he had put them on sitting down for the second time in front of the stove. He had put them on the bright nickel-plated railing at the bottom of the base-burner with only one thought in mind: to get his feet warm.
He was aghast. That odor of calamity was bound to ransack the house from bottom to top, with desolating consequences. Mary would think the house was afire, Oliver would lose his head completely, Serepta would—and the child? It didn’t take much to suffocate a baby. Mr. Sikes was not long in deciding what to do. He opened a window, jerked off the offending goloshes, and hurled them far out into the snowdrifts.
It was while he was in the act of disposing of the damning evidence that he heard the kitchen door slam with a bang. Somewhere back in his mind lurked an impression that some one had been knocking at the front door during the tail end of his profound cogitation. He had a faint, dim recollection of muttering something like this to himself:
“You can knock your fool head off, far as I’m concerned.”
The slamming of the kitchen door irritated Mr. Sikes. His brow grew dark. This was no time to be slamming doors. He strode over to investigate. If the offender should happen to be Maggie Smith, Baxter’s hired girl, she’d hear from him. What business had she to be away from the house for more than an hour, just at supper time, and probably catching cold or—
CHAPTER II
He opened the door and was confronted by a pair of total strangers—a man and a woman, bundled up to the ears and tracking snow all over the kitchen floor. A tall man with short black whiskers and a frail little woman with red, wind-smitten cheeks and a nose from which depended a globular bit of moisture.
Mr. Sikes stared at the couple and they stared at him.
“I’ve been knocking at the front door for ten minutes,” said the man, thickly.
“So we finally had to come to the kitchen door,” added the woman, eyeing Mr. Sikes accusingly.
“Isn’t there anybody here to answer the front door?” demanded her companion.
“I don’t seem to recollect locking it,” said Mr. Sikes, stiffening perceptibly. He did not like the tone or the manner of these strangers. “There wasn’t anything to stop you from turning the knob, was there, and walkin’ right in—same as you did out here?”
“We are not in the habit of walking into people’s houses like that,” said the black-whiskered man, somewhat tartly. “Come on, Ida; let’s go into the sitting-room.”
“Just a second,” interposed Mr. Sikes. “I’m sort of in charge here and I guess I’ll have to ask who you are.”
“I am Oliver Baxter’s sister,” said the red-nosed woman, “and this is my husband, Mr. Gooch. We drove all the way over here to take charge of things for my brother during his—”
“Seems to me I smell rubber burning,” broke in Mr. Gooch, sniffing vigorously. His eye fell upon the cigar that Mr. Sikes was holding between his thumb and forefinger.
Mr. Sikes took umbrage. He stepped forward and held the cigar close to Mr. Gooch’s nose.
“Smell it,” he said, as the other jerked his head back in surprise. “That’s as good a cigar as you can get anywhere on earth for ten cents—and it only costs five.”
“I—I am not a smoker,” Mr. Gooch made haste to explain, being a trifle overcome by Joseph’s far from ingratiating manner.
“Well, I’m just telling you,” announced Joseph, inserting the cigar between his back teeth with a somewhat challenging abruptness. “You say you’re Ollie’s relations?”
“Yes; I am his sister. I want to see him at once. Where is he?”
“Well, I guess if you are his sister you’d better come into the sitting-room and take your things off,” said Mr. Sikes grudgingly. “I’ve heard him speak of some folks of his living over in Hopkinsville.” He led the way into the sitting-room. “Make yourselves to home. I guess maybe Ollie will be down after while, unless he’s gone to bed. He’s all wore out. And I might as well tell you first as last,” he went on pointedly, “he’s occupying the only spare bedroom they’ve got in the house, so I don’t see how I can ask you to stay the night.”
Mrs. Gooch paused in the act of unwinding a thick scarf from her neck. She gave Mr. Sikes a “look.”
“Are you the undertaker?” she demanded.
“The—thewhat? Good gosh, no!”
“Well, how do you happen to be running things if you are not? You act as if—”
“When did Mary die?” asked Mr. Gooch, throwing his great ulster upon the dining-table.
“She ain’t dead,” was all the astonished Mr. Sikes could say. “Not by a long sight.”
“Well, of all the—” began Mr. Gooch, compressing his lips. “And we drove nearly eighteen miles through all this dodgasted weather to be a support and a comfort to Ollie Baxter in his trouble. You say sheain’tdead?”
“Certainly not. Whatever put that notion in your head?”
“We had a telegram along about noon signed by Oliver, saying his wife was not expected to live through the day. All hope had been given up,” said Mrs. Gooch, beginning to cry.
“That’s just like the derned fool,” said Mr. Sikes. “He can’t believe his own eyes, he’s so excited. Why, Mary and the baby are both as lively as crickets. I heard—”
“Thebaby?” fell simultaneously from the lips of Mr. and Mrs. Gooch. Both mouths remained open.
“What baby?” added Mrs. Gooch, spreading her tear-drenched eyes.
“Why, her’s and Ollie’s—Say, didn’t you know they had a baby this morning?”
“Ababy?” gasped the lady, incredulously.
“But we didn’t know they were expecting one,” said her husband, scowling. “Mighty strange Oliver never even mentioned—”
“Are you telling the truth?” demanded Mrs. Gooch. “Or are you just trying to be funny?”
Mr. Sikes removed the cigar from his jaws. “It’s nothing to me, ma’am, whether you believe it or not,” said he.
Baxter’s brother-in-law allowed his gaze to roam around the room. “Maybe we’re in the wrong house, Ida,” he said. “We haven’t been in Rumley since Oliver set up housekeeping. Like as not, that feller down at the drug store gave us the wrong—”
“This is Oliver Baxter’s house,” said Sikes shortly. “He moved in here the day after the wedding, and he ain’t moved out of it since, far as I know.”
“And who are you?” inquired Mr. Gooch.
“Me? My name is Sikes, Joseph Sikes. I’m Ollie’s best friend, if you want to know. I stood up with him when he was married, and I’ve been standin’ up for him ever since. If you’ve got anything nasty to say about Oliver Baxter, I guess you’d better not say it in my hearin’, Mr. Gooch.”
“I have no intention of saying anything nasty about my wife’s brother,” retorted Mr. Gooch.
“I know all about you,” said Mr. Sikes, replacing his cigar and scowling darkly. “I’ve heard Ollie speak of you a hundred times. He ain’t got any use for you.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Mrs. Gooch.
“Well, I don’t mind telling you,” said Mr. Gooch, bridling, “I haven’t any use for him. I never did take any stock in brother-in-laws, anyhow, and that’s why I’ve never had anything to do with Baxter. You can tell him—”
“I guess you’re forgettin’ that you are a brother-in-law yourself, ain’t you?” interrupted Mr. Sikes, with a most offensive snigger.
“Are you trying to pick a quarrel with my husband?”
“As I said before,” explained Mr. Sikes, “I am Ollie Baxter’s best friend, and I certainly ain’t going to allow anybody like a brother-in-law to come in here at a time like this and get off any insinuations. This is the happiest day of Ollie Baxter’s life—that is, it will be when he gets his right senses back—and it ain’t going to be spoiled, not even behind his back, if I can help it. Especially by a brother-in-law.”
“The man has been drinking,” said Mrs. Gooch, sniffing the air.
“You’re right,” confessed Joseph promptly. “I’ve had a couple of good swigs out of this pint, and I’m proud of it. It helps me to say what I think about people that Ollie Baxter don’t like. I’ve been waitin’ for nearly ten years to tell you what I think of you, Mr. Gooch, for the way you acted toward Ollie when he tried to get his sister here to help pay for a tombstone for their father’s grave, and you—”
“I’ll thank you to mind your own business,” exclaimed Mr. Gooch loudly.
“I don’t want to be thanked for it,” shouted Mr. Sikes. “It’s my business to tell you a few things about yourself, so don’t thank me.”
“Oh, my goodness!” wailed Mrs. Gooch. “In my own brother’s house, too. I never was so insulted in all my life. Oliver! Oliver, where are you? Come down here and order this man out of your house.”
“No use yellin’ for Oliver,” said Mr. Sikes. “He won’t hear you.” Then he swallowed hard. “Come to think of it, I guess I ought to apologize, ma’am. Which I hereby do. I haven’t had much sleep lately, worrying over this joyous occasion, and I guess I’m a bit crusty. I hereby welcome you to Ollie’s house, speaking in his place, and ask you to have a chair over here by the stove. You can sit down too if you want to, Mr. Gooch. To show you there’s no hard feelings on this joyous occasion, I’ll even go so far as to ask you to have a drink out of this bottle. It’s—”
“My husband does not drink,” said Mrs. Gooch, stiffly.
“You might let him off just this once,” pleaded Mr. Sikes, tactlessly.
Horace Gooch frowned. “I’ve never touched a drop of intoxicating liquid in my life, sir.”
Sikes opened his mouth to say something, thought better of it, choked the words off, and then offered the following substitute: “Terrible weather for this time of year, ain’t it?”
There was no response to this conciliating commonplace, nor to the invitation to sit down. Mrs. Gooch, having divested herself of coat, scarf, bonnet and overshoes, was straightening her hair before the looking-glass, while her husband surveyed the room and its contents with the disdainful air of one used to much better things.
You could tell by the expression on his face that the floor of his parlor was covered by a gorgeous Brussels instead of the many-hued rag carpet that served Oliver Baxter and his wife; and where they had old-fashioned horse-hair chairs and a sofa, he possessed articles so handsomely done in plush that it was almost a sin to occupy them. If he had not come directly from contact with a biting wind, one might have been justified in construing his frequent and audible sniffs as of scorn rather than of necessity. He was a tall, lank man with narrow shoulders, narrow face, and a pair of extremely narrow black eyes. He typified prosperity of the meaner kind. Over in Hopkinsville, Horace Gooch was considered the richest and the stingiest man in town. He was what is commonly called a “tax shark,” deriving a lucrative and obnoxious income through his practice of buying up real estate at tax-sales and holding it until it was redeemed by the hard-pressed owner, or, as it happened in many instances, acquiring the property under a provision of the state law then in operation, whereby after a prescribed lapse of time he was enabled to secure a tax deed in his own name. He also trafficked in chattel mortgages.
No one, not even his fellow church members, had ever been known to get the better of him. It must be said for him, however, he went to church twice every Sunday and invariably did his share toward spreading the gospel by dropping a noisy quarter into the collection plate at both services. And so astute a business man was he that he never was without the proper change. His brother-in-law called him a “blood-sucking skinflint,” and it is not in the power of the teller of this tale to improve upon that except by quoting from the unprintable opinions of his victims.
Mrs. Gooch was Oliver’s only sister, and had married Horace Gooch when in her teens. At thirty-eight she was still wondering if she was really good enough for him and if he had not made a mistake in marrying her when there were so many other girls he might have had for the asking. Sometimes Horace made her feel that he could have done better. At any rate, she was never allowed to be in doubt as to what he thought of all the other Baxters, living or dead. They were as “common as dirt.” At first it was difficult for her to be ashamed of Oliver without being equally disgusted with herself, but as time went on and she became more and more of a Gooch this irritating sensitiveness eased off into a state of contemptuous pity for her insignificant brother. His marriage to a toll-gate keeper’s daughter sent him down several pegs in her estimation, notwithstanding Mr. Gooch’s sarcastic contention that Oliver had wedded far above his station—indeed, he went on to say, he didn’t believe it possible for Oliver to find any one beneath his station, no matter how hard he tried or how far he looked.
And yet when word came by wire that there was to be a death in the family, Ida Gooch overlooked everything and hastened to her brother’s side, drawn not so much by sisterly affection as by the desire to take an active and public part in any family sorrow or bereavement. Having looked forward, over eighteen miles of wind-swept highways, to a house of grief, she was not only shocked but secretly annoyed to find that life instead of death had visited the humble home of her brother. She knew she would never hear the last of it from Horace, who hated babies. They had no children of their own.
But now that she was here, she was determined to make the most of the situation.
“I shall take charge here,” she announced to Mr. Sikes. “Is this the way upstairs?”
Mr. Sikes nodded. “But if I was you,” he said, “I’d hold my horses.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I guess you’d better ask Serepty Grimes before you begin to take charge here,” said he grimly.
“Serepty who?”
“Grimes. She’s running this house at present. Her husband used to run the Rumley sawmill before he died. Serepty’s running it now.”
“That doesn’t cut any figure with me,” announced Mrs. Gooch firmly. “I am going up to Mary’s room—her name is Mary, isn’t it?—to see what there is to do for—”
“Wait a minute, Ida,” interrupted her husband. “I wouldn’t go busting into that room until I found out whether I was wanted or not.”
“Let her go, man,” cried Mr. Sikes, eagerly. “But if she was my wife—and thank God, I’m a single man—I’d stand at the foot of the stairs to ketch her when she comes down.”
“Do you mean to say that my own brother would lay violent hands—”
“Ollie Baxter? I should say not. He ain’t got anything more to do with running this house than I have. Why, Serepty wouldn’t let Napoleon Bonaparte into Mrs. Baxter’s room if he was to come here in full uniform. But don’t take my word for it. Go ahead. You might as well get it over with. I wouldn’t any more think of going up them steps, big as I am, without receiving orders from her, than I’d think of sticking my head in this stove.”
“I will soon get rid of Mrs. Grimes,” said she, tossing her head.
As she started to leave the room, a loud knocking at the front door rose above the howl of the wind. Sikes resuming his office as master of ceremonies, pushed his way past Mrs. Gooch and opened the door to admit a woman and two men. The first to enter the sitting-room was a tall man wearing a thin black overcoat and a high silk hat. The former was buttoned close about his shivering frame, the latter jammed well down upon his ears to meet the vagaries of the tempestuous wind. This was the Reverend Herbert Sage, pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Rumley. The lady was his wife.
The other member of the trio, a fat, red-faced, jolly looking man of indeterminate age, was Silas Link, the undertaker, upholsterer and livery-man of Rumley. We encounter him now in the last-mentioned capacity, hence his cheery grin, his loud-checked trousers and his brown derby set jauntily over his right ear. He wore a buffalo-skin overcoat. In his capacity as upholsterer and furniture-repairer he affected a dusty suit of overalls of a butternut hue and wore spectacles that gave him a solemn, owl-like expression. As an undertaker he was irreproachably lachrymose despite his rosy cheeks, and he never “officiated” except in a tight-fitting Prince Albert coat, a plug hat, a white cravat and a pair of black cotton gloves. In view of the fact that he so rarely is called upon to appear in the character of undertaker, owing to the infrequency of emergencies, and also that we are likely to come in contact with him a dozen times a day as a livery-man, it is only fair to introduce him here in the most cheerful of his three rôles, especially as we may never have occasion to call upon him for repairs.
The “Reverend” Sage—he was always spoken of as the “Reverend”—was a good-looking young man of thirty, threadbare and a trifle wan, with kindly brown eyes set deep under a broad, intelligent brow. He had a wide, generous mouth and a pleasant smile; a fine nose, a square chin, and a deep, gentle voice. For three years he had been shepherd of the Presbyterians in Rumley, and he was as poor if not actually poorer than the day he came to the town from the theological institute in Chicago. His salary was eight hundred dollars a year, exclusive of “pickings,” as Mr. Baxter called the pitiful extras derived from weddings, funerals and “pound parties.” Come November, there was always a “pound party” for the minister, and it was on such occasions that he received from his flock all sorts and manner of donations. His wife in one of her letters to a girl friend in Chicago mentioned twenty-six pairs of carpet slippers “standing in a row,” seventeen respectfully knitted mufflers, numberless mittens and wristlets, and she couldn’t tell what else until she had gone through all the drawers and closets in the parsonage.
Which brings us to the wife, and also to an absolutely unaccountable anomaly. It is not difficult to explain how he came to fall in love with her and why he married her. That might have happened to any man. Likewise it is fairly easy to understand how she came to fall in love with him, for he was dreamy-eyed and reluctant. But how she came to marry him, knowing what it meant to be the wife of an impoverished preacher, is past all understanding. She was a handsome, dashing young woman of twenty-three: the type one meets on the streets of New York or Chicago and is unable to decide whether she is rich or poor, good or bad, idle or industrious, smart or common. Certainly one would never find her counterpart in a town like Rumley except by the accident of importation, and then only as a bird of passage. When she came to Rumley as a bride in the June preceding the birth of Oliver October Baxter, Rumley was aghast. It could not believe its thousand eyes. Small wonder, then, that the precious Mrs. Gooch and her even more precious husband gazed upon her as if their own slightly distended eyes were untrustworthy.
She was tall, willowy, and startling. She wore a sealskin coat—at least it looked like seal—with sleeves that ballooned grandly at the shoulders; a picture hat that sat rakishly—(no doubt the wind had something to do with its angle)—upon a crown of black hair neatly banged in front and so extensively puffed behind that it looked for all the world like an intricate mass of sausages in peril of being dislodged at every step she took; rather stunning coral ear-rings made up of graduated globes; a slinky satin skirt of black with a long, sweeping train that, being released from her well-gloved hand, dragged swishily across the cheap rag carpet with a sort of contemptuous hiss. A roomy pair of rubber boots, undoubtedly the property of her husband, completed her costume.
“Good evening, Mr. Sikes,” she drawled, as she scuffled past him into the sitting-room. “Nice balmy weather to be born in, isn’t it?”
Mr. Sikes, taken unawares, forgot himself so far as to wink at the parson, and then, in some confusion, stammered: “St-step right in, Mrs. Sage, and have a chair. Evening, Mr. Sage. How are ye, Silas? Help yourself to a cigar. Take off your things, Mrs. Sage. Oliver will be mighty glad to see—”
“How is Mrs. Baxter, Joseph?” inquired the parson, removing his hat with an effort. It had been jammed down rather low on his head.
“The thing is,” put in Mr. Link, cheerily, as he began to shed his coat, “is old Ollie likely to pull through? I’ve been up here six or seven times to-day and dogged if I know whether to hitch up the hearse or the band wagon.”
Sikes scowled at the speaker and jerked his head significantly in the direction of the Gooches. “Come right up to the stove, Mrs. Sage,” said he, dragging a rocker forward. “You must be mighty chilly.”
“Only my legs,” announced the preacher’s wife.
Mrs. Gooch winced. In her circle, ladies never mentioned legs unless alluding to dining-room tables, or fried chickens, or animate objects such as dogs, horses, cows and sheep. And when she found out later on that this startling person was a minister’s wife, she wondered what the world was coming to. Somehow, it seemed to her, nothing could be so incongruous or so disillusioning as the wife of a preacher having legs.
“This is Oliver’s sister,” introduced Mr. Sikes, awkwardly. “From Hopkinsville. Reverend Sage, Mrs. Gooch. Mr. Link, Mrs. Gooch. And this is Oliver’s brother-in-law, her husband, also of Hopkinsville.”
Everybody bowed. “I didn’t catch the lady’s name,” said Mrs. Gooch.
“Permit me to introduce my wife,” said the Reverend Sage, advancing to the stove, rubbing his extended palms together. “A bitter night, is it not?”
“Very,” said Mrs. Gooch.
“Very,” said Mr. Gooch.
“Tough on horses,” said Mr. Link.
“Very,” said Mr. Sikes.
General conversation, after this laconic start, died suddenly. Everybody stood and looked at everybody else for a few moments, and then Mr. Sikes had a happy inspiration. He began shoveling coal from the scuttle into the already blushing stove, making a great deal of racket. The others watched him intently, as if they never had seen anything so interesting as a stove being stuffed with fuel.
“And all sorts of live stock,” added Mr. Link, apparently startled into speech by the closing of the stove door.
“From Hopkinsville, did you say?” inquired Mr. Sage politely, turning to Mr. Gooch.
“Yes,” said Mr. Gooch succinctly.
“Ah, a—er—very enterprising town—very enterprising. Ahem!”
“Where is it?” asked Mrs. Sage, who by this time had seated herself in a rocking-chair, with her rubber boots well advanced toward the stove.
“I guess you haven’t lived in this part of the country very long,” said Mr. Gooch condescendingly.
“Oh, haven’t I? I’ve been here nearly six months—one hundred and thirty-two days, to be exact.” She glanced at the clock on the bracket between the windows. “Lacking two hours and twelve minutes,” she went on. “We came down on the local that’s due here at 9:14, but it was twenty-eight minutes late.”
“Ahem!” coughed Mr. Sage, discreetly.
“Well, if you will excuse me,” began Mrs. Gooch, withdrawing her gaze from the lady’s boots, “I guess I’ll run upstairs and see my sister-in-law.”
“Ain’t Serepty up there?” asked Mr. Link quickly.
“Yep,” replied Mr. Sikes. “You needn’t worry, Silas,” he added significantly.
“You stay right here, Ida,” ordered Mr. Gooch. “I’m not going to have you insulted by this woman they’re talking so much about. You’d think she was Queen Victoria or somebody like that.”
“Ahem!” coughed Mr. Sage, this time in a suave, conciliatory manner—if it is possible to cough suavely. “It is my practice, no matter what the weather may be, to call at the earliest opportunity upon any stranger who may arrive in our little community. Your nephew is the latest stranger in town, I should say—eh, Mrs. Goops?”
“My—my what?”
“Gooch is my name,” broke in her husband tartly. “G, double o, c, h.”
“I do wish, Herbert dear,” said Mrs. Sage languidly, “you would try to remember Gooch.”
“I beg pardon. A slip of the tongue. I was about to inquire about your dear brother, Mrs. Gooch. How is he?”
“I didn’t know there was anything the matter with Oliver.”
“There isn’t anything the matter with him,” said Mrs. Sage, “that a good, stiff drink of whiskey won’t cure.” Then catching the look in the other woman’s eye, she explained: “Oh, I’m not a native, you know. I come from Chicago—God bless it!”
“Ahem!” coughed her husband. “I suppose Sister Grimes will be down in a few minutes, Joseph?”
“Just depends,” replied Mr. Sikes, somewhat grimly.
“Wonderful woman, indeed. Quite indispensable at a time like this,” continued the minister.
“She’s just as handy at a funeral,” supplemented Mr. Link, in the hushed voice of an undertaker.
“We must remember how indispensable Mrs. Grimes is at a time like this, Herbert,” said Mrs. Sage, with a yawn.
“You won’t have to remember,” blurted out Mr. Sikes. “Serepty’ll do the remembering.”
“I adore babies, don’t you, Mrs. Gooch?”
“Yes, indeed. Ah—I—how many children have you, Mrs. Sage?”
“On pleasant Sundays I should say as many as twenty-five. They shrink quite a bit if the weather’s bad.”
“Good gracious me!”
“She means her Sunday-school class,” explained Mr. Sage hurriedly. He had the worried manner of one who never knows what is coming next.
His wife looked up into his face and smiled—a lovely, good-humored smile that was slowly transformed into a mischievous grimace.
“I’m always making breaks, am I not, Herby dear? It’s a terrible strain, Mr. Gooch, being a parson’s wife. I sometimes wish that Herbert—I mean Mr. Sage—had been a policeman or a bartender or something like that.”
“Umph!” grunted Mr. Gooch.
“Well, I suppose it ain’t as hard to live up to a policeman or a bartender as it is to live up to a minister of the gospel,” said Mrs. Gooch, feeling of the tip of her nose as she turned away from the stove.
Mr. Sikes and Mr. Link, having something of a private nature to say to each other, had retired to a position near the door, which by design or accident was pretty thoroughly blocked by their heavy figures. Mrs. Gooch sniffed unnecessarily.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Sage over her shoulder; “you’re right, Mrs. Gooch. Live and learn is my motto.” She winked at her husband.
“My dear Josephine!” exclaimed Mr. Sage reproachfully.
“Say, Ida,” burst out Mr. Gooch, who had been fretting almost audibly, “I’m getting tired of hanging around here waiting for Oliver. Get your things on. We’re going home.”
“Oh, my dear friend,” cried the pastor, “you surely are not going away without saying good-by to Brother Baxter. He will—”
“I’m going away without even saying howdy-do to him,” rasped Mr. Gooch. “Where are your overshoes, Ida?”
At this juncture the sitting-room door was opened, somewhat to the confusion of the two citizens of Rumley, and a small, plump, middle-aged woman, bearing a couple of blankets in her arms, entered the room.
“Hello, Serepty!” cried Mr. Link. “Everything all right?”
Mrs. Grimes surveyed the group. Her pleasant, wholesome face was beaming. Her gaze rested upon the astonishing hat of Mrs. Sage.
“Why, how do you do, Sister Sage. How nice of you to come out on a night like this. Mary will be pleased to hear you’ve been here. Oh, yes, Silas, everything is all right. You can go home. Nobody is going to die. How do you do, Mr. Sage. What a terrible night for you to be out, with that wretched throat of yours. If you’ll wait till I take these blankets out to warm them in the kitchen I will wrap a piece of flannel and a strip of bacon around your throat. It’s the best—”
“Don’t think of it, Sister Grimes. I am quite all right. I thought perhaps I might—ah—cheer Sister Baxter up with a little—ah—spiritual encouragement—er—a prayer of rejoicing—er—a—”
“That’s all been attended to, thank you,” broke in Mrs. Grimes crisply.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Poor Oliver has done nothing but pray since daybreak. He’s worn himself out with prayer. I had to go out in the hall a while ago and tell him to shut up. Make yourselves at home, everybody. I’ll be back in—my land!”
Mr. Baxter, coatless, disheveled and in a state of extreme anguish, came plunging down the stairs and into the room.
“Whe-where’s the doctor?” he gasped. “My God, where’s Doc Robinson? He’s dying! Hurry up, Serepty! My infant is dying! Oh me, oh my—oh me—”
“Where is your coat, Oliver Baxter?” demanded little Mrs. Grimes, severely. “Do you want to catch your death of cold?”
“Coat? Say, can’t you hear him? He is calling for help. Listen! Sh! Listen, everybody.” Then after a long period of silence in which everybody frowned and listened intently, and no sound came from aloft, he groaned: “Oh, Lord! He’s dead! Dead as a door nail!”
“I guess it was the wind you heard, Ollie,” said Mr. Link, brightly.
For the first time, Mr. Baxter allowed his gaze to concentrate upon some definite object. He stared at the undertaker-livery man, and his jaw dropped lower than ever.
“The—the undertaker,” he gulped. “How—how did you get here so soon, Silas? He ain’t been dead more than thirty seconds. He didn’t die till—”
“Calm yourself, Oliver,” admonished Mrs. Grimes, but soothingly. “Sit down. It’s nothing but a pin. I’ll go up to him as soon as I’ve fixed you.” She thrust the blankets into Mr. Gooch’s arms. “Hold these,” she said. “Come over here by the stove, Oliver. Sit down. I’ll go fix a hot mustard bath for you to stick your feet in. Give me one of those blankets—oh, excuse me, I didn’t notice you were a stranger. Who—”
“This is Ollie’s brother-in-law, Serepty,” explained Mr. Sikes. “Say, Ollie, I’ve got a great surprise for you. Your sister and her husband have come over from Hopkinsville to wish you many happy returns of the day.”
Mr. Baxter got up from the chair into which Serepty had forced him and shook hands with his relatives.
“You’ve—you’ve been drinking, Oliver,” exclaimed Mrs. Gooch, horrified.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if I had,” admitted Oliver. “It isn’t every day a feller has a—Why, good evening, Mrs. Sage. I didn’t see you come in. Where’s Mr. Sage? Ain’t he—”
“Sit down in that chair, Oliver Baxter,” commanded Mrs. Grimes. “I’m going to wrap this blanket around you.” She relieved Mr. Gooch of one of the blankets and proceeded to tuck Mr. Baxter snugly into the rocking chair. “Then I’ll get the mustard bath. Now, you sit still, do you hear me? Mary and the baby are all right. Make yourselves at home, everybody. And you, Joe Sikes, answer the door if anybody knocks.”
She snatched the other blanket away from Gooch and hurried to the kitchen. After an awkward pause, rendered painful by the presence of the two Gooches, the company made a simultaneous effort to break the ice that suddenly had clogged the flow of conversation.
“Eighteen miles through all this—”
“From your telegram we thought a death had—”
“It’s an ill wind that blows no—”
“That’s a mighty fine pair of mares you—”
“Nobody likely to knock at the—”
Young Mrs. Sage came in at the end with the following question:
“What are you going to name it, Mr. Baxter?”
“Eh? It? It ain’t an it, Mrs. Sage. It’s a masculine gender. We’re going to call him Oliver October. Sh! Isn’t that somebody on the porch, Joe? Doc Robinson, like as not. Go to the door, will you?”
“It’s the wind,” said Mr. Sikes. Nevertheless he went over and looked out of the window.
Another silence, broken at last by Mr. Baxter.
“He’s got the finest head you ever saw,” said he, with a beatific expression on his face. “Got a head like a statesman.”
“Oh, that is good news,” said the Reverend Sage, jovially. “We’re sadly in need of statesmen these days, Brother Baxter.”
“Statesmen, your granny,” exploded Mr. Gooch, now thoroughly out of patience. “That’s the trouble with this country. It’s being run entirely by statesmen. That’s what I’ve been saying since March ’89. What we need is a good, sound business man in the White House. President Harrison is a fine lawyer, but if ever we needed a good Democrat back in the presidential chair it’s now. Get rid of the statesmen. That’s my motto. They’ve been—”
Mrs. Gooch touched his arm and whispered in his ear: “You mean politicians, Horace—politicians,notstatesmen.”
Mr. Gooch was flabbergasted. “Consarn it, I’m always getting those two words mixed,” he snarled. “But anyhow, this country made the blamedest fool mistake on earth when it turned Grover Cleveland out and put these blood-sucking Republicans back in power.”
“You don’t say so!” exclaimed Mr. Link, witheringly.
A heated political argument ensued, Mr. Gooch holding out against the Messrs. Link and Sikes, both of whom were what he finally succeeded in characterizing as “black Republicans.” He also charged them with waving the “bloody shirt,” and in return heard his party classified as “out and out copperheads.”
Through it all, the anxious parent of Oliver October sat staring at the bright red isinglass in the stove door, oblivious to the storm of words that raged about him. Mrs. Sage, seated close beside him, finally reached out and took one of his hands in hers and squeezed it sympathetically.
“Don’t you worry,” she said gently.
He looked up, and a slow smile settled upon his homely features.
“You ought to see his feet,” he murmured. “Little bits of things about that long. Cutest feet you ever saw.”
“I’ll bet they are,” said she warmly, and he was happier than he had been in hours.