By the end of October, with the dispersal of foliage that has served all
summer long as a screen for whatever small privacy may exist between
American neighbours, we begin to perceive the rise of our autumn high
tides of gossip. At this season of the year, in our towns of moderate
size and ambition, where apartment houses have not yet condensed and at
the same time sequestered the population, one may look over back yard
beyond back yard, both up and down the street; especially if one takes
the trouble to sit for an hour or so daily, upon the top of a high fence
at about the middle of a block.
Of course an adult who followed such a course would be thought peculiar,
no doubt he would be subject to inimical comment; but boys are
considered so inexplicable that they have gathered for themselves many
privileges denied their parents and elders, and a boy can do such a
thing as this to his full content, without anybody's thinking about it
at all. So it was that Herbert Illingsworth Atwater, Jr., sat for a
considerable time upon such a fence, after school hours, every afternoon
of the last week in October; and only one person particularly observed
him or was stimulated to any mental activity by his procedure. Even at
that, this person was affected only because she was Herbert's relative,
of an age sympathetic to his and of a sex antipathetic.
In spite of the fact that Herbert, thus seriously disporting himself on
his father's back fence, attracted only an audience of one (and she
hostile at a rather distant window) his behaviour might well have been
thought piquant by anybody. After climbing to the top of the fence he
would produce from interior pockets a small memorandum-book and a
pencil. His expression was gravely alert, his manner more than
businesslike; yet nobody could have failed to comprehend that he was
enjoying himself, especially when his attitude became tenser, as it
frequently did. Then he would rise, balancing himself at adroit ease,
his feet one before the other on the inner rail, below the top of the
boards, and with eyes dramatically shielded beneath a scoutish palm, he
would gaze sternly in the direction of some object or movement that had
attracted his attention and then, having satisfied himself of something
or other, he would sit and decisively enter a note in his
memorandum-book.
He was not always alone; sometimes he was joined by a friend, male, and,
though shorter than Herbert, about as old; and this companion was
inspired, it seemed, by motives precisely similar to those from which
sprang Herbert's own actions. Like Herbert he would sit upon the top of
the high fence; like Herbert he would rise at intervals, for the better
study of something this side the horizon; then, also like Herbert, he
would sit again and write firmly in a little notebook. And seldom in the
history of the world have any such sessions been invested by the
participants with so intentional an appearance of importance.
That was what most irritated their lone observer at the somewhat distant
upstairs back window. The important importance of Herbert and his friend
was so extreme as to be all too plainly visible across four intervening
broad back yards; in fact, there was sometimes reason to suspect that
the two performers were aware of their audience and even of her goaded
condition; and that they deliberately increased the outrageousness of
their importance on her account. And upon the Saturday of that week,
when the notebook writers were upon the fence the greater part of the
afternoon, Florence's fascinated indignation became vocal.
"Vile Things!" she said.
Her mother, sewing beside another window of the room, looked up
inquiringly.
"What are, Florence?"
"Cousin Herbert and that nasty little Henry Rooter."
"Are you watching them again?" her mother asked.
"Yes, I am," said Florence; and added tartly, "Not because I care to,
but merely to amuse myself at their expense."
Mrs. Atwater murmured, "Couldn't you find some other way to amuse
yourself, Florence?"
"I don't call this amusement," the inconsistent girl responded, not
without chagrin. "Think I'd spend all my days starin' at Herbert
Illingsworth Atwater, Junior, and that nasty little Henry Rooter, and
call it _amusement_?"
"Then why do you do it?"
"Why do I do _what_, mamma?" Florence inquired, as in despair of Mrs.
Atwater's ever learning to put things clearly.
"Why do you 'spend all your days' watching them? You don't seem able to
keep away from the window, and it appears to make you irritable. I
should think if they wouldn't let you play with them you'd be too
proud----"
"Oh, good heavens, mamma!"
"Don't use such expressions, Florence, please."
"Well," said Florence, "I got to use _some_ expression when you accuse
me of wantin' to 'play' with those two vile things! My goodness mercy,
mamma, I don't want to 'play' with 'em! I'm more than four years old, I
guess; though you don't ever seem willing to give me credit for it. I
don't haf to 'play' all the time, mamma: and anyway, Herbert and that
nasty little Henry Rooter aren't playing, either."
"Aren't they?" Mrs. Atwater inquired. "I thought the other day you said
you wanted them to let you play with them at being a newspaper reporter
or editor or something like that, and they were rude and told you to go
away. Wasn't that it?"