ZEB’S OPINION OF APPLE SPROUTS
“Zebedee, my son,” remarked old Deacon Fuller to that young gentleman,
when he returned from driving the cows to pasture, the evening after
the affair at the spring-board--“Zebedee, what is this I hear of your
violent threats against the Rev. Dr. Dryer?”
The deacon was standing in the kitchen doorway, deliberately stripping
the leaves from a handful of strong, well-grown apple-tree “suckers,”
which he had recently gathered in the orchard back of the house.
For a moment Zeb stood in silence, eying the ominous-looking sprouts
with a squint in which a very grave expression was beginning to make
its appearance, and his father continued:
“Dr. Dryer has been here, himself, and he tells me you employed the
most disrespectful and threatening language.”
“No, father,” said Zeb, stoutly, “no disrespect at all. I only wanted
to drown him.”
“Drown him! Zebedee! Drown Dr. Dryer? Are you crazy?”
“Not a bit, father; it might be bad for him--just a little--but think
what a splendid thing it would be for the Academy. We’ll never get rid
of him any other way.”
Deacon Fuller was a parent of the genuine old Puritanic stock, and his
weather-beaten face could put on all the iron sternness of his race and
breeding, but behind every visage of that kind there is a strangely
mellow something, and he was Zeb’s father. Not a muscle quivered, but
his only reply for a moment was:
“Zebedee!”
“Father,” said Zeb, “did old Sol tell you the whole story? If he didn’t
I think I’d better.”
“That would be just,” remarked the deacon, and Zeb was in the middle of
it before he had time to reconsider his opinion.
The story was not likely to lose much in Zeb’s telling of it, and
before it was half finished the deacon began to feel as if there was
no other duty in the world so difficult to live up to as a wholesome
degree of parental severity.
It was a critical moment, indeed, and Deacon Fuller felt as if a
powerful reinforcement had arrived when, just then, the front gate
swung open and the pursy form of Gershom Todderley, the miller, came
heavily up the path to the side of the house where Zeb and his sire
were standing.
Brief, indeed, and somewhat embarrassed, were the mutual greetings,
but Deacon Fuller’s face was fast recovering its original rigidity, in
spite of the pictures in his mind’s eye of old Gershom going off the
broken spring-board.
Zeb never yielded an inch of ground, and fairly astounded his father by
holding out his hand with:
“You don’t seem to be hurt a bit. I thought a good swim wouldn’t do you
any harm. I take one every day.”
“Zeb,” exclaimed the miller, “I mean to learn to swim. Deacon Fuller,
he’s an odd boy. Saved my life this afternoon. Made a fool of myself.
Came over to thank you, soon as I could.”
“Made a fool of yourself? Came to thank me? Why, neighbor Todderley,
what do you mean? Some of Zeb’s performances, I suppose. I was just
going to have a settlement with him. Dr. Dryer was here an hour ago.”
“Old fool,” exclaimed the miller, with some energy. “Wish he’d tried
the board first. Lighter man than I am. Might not have broke with him.
Hope it might. Stood there like a post. Never tried to help me. Zeb and
the boys fished me out. Came to thank you and him.”
“Oh,” said the deacon, with a greatly relieved sigh, “that’s it, is
it? I thought it must all be some of Zeb’s mischief. Come in, brother
Todderley, come in.”
“No, thank ye,” replied the miller. “Got an errand up street. Hope I’ll
see you at meeting. Solemn thing to be drowned. Good-day.”
And the miller turned on his heel, but Zeb’s father once more bent his
inquiring gaze upon his hopeful son.
“Zebedee, that’s all very well, but what’s this about Dr. Dryer?”
“Gersh Todderley’s right about him too,” said Zeb. “I’ve the greatest
respect for his opinions, now’s he’s in his right mind. Glad he means
to learn to swim. I wouldn’t mind teaching him myself. They say fat men
float the easiest kind.”
“Zebedee, I hardly know what course I ought to take.”
The boy’s face was again putting on a grave and serious look.
“Father,” he said, pointing at the apple-tree sprouts, “what are those
things for?”
“I think you ought to know by this time, my son.”
“Well, yes,” said Zeb, quietly, “I had some pretty good lessons years
ago. May be it was just as well, too. But, father, how old am I now?”
“Eighteen, Zeb. Why do you ask such a question?”
“Eighteen!” slowly repeated Zeb. “Can’t you think of anything better
than apple-tree suckers for a boy of eighteen?”
“Zebedee!” exclaimed the astonished deacon.
“I just thought I’d ask the question,” said Zeb, with a twinkle in his
gray eyes which may not have been altogether fun. “Sprouts get to be
trees, sometimes.”
“And bear apples, and save men’s lives--yes, and teach lessons to their
own fathers,” exclaimed the deacon, as he threw the whole handful of
rods over the nearest fence. “I was mistaken, Zeb. Go in and see your
mother. I’m going to meeting. And--Zeb--I don’t want any tree in my
orchard to bear worthless apples.”
Zeb went on into the house and his father out at the gate. It may be
that both of them strongly suspected how completely every word had been
drunk in by the listening, loving ears of good old Mrs. Fuller.
They owed a good deal to her, those two, father as well as son, and she
had never looked with much favor on the apple-tree sprouts. Not, at
least, since Zebedee reached his first very mischievous “’teens.”
There was little danger that the orchard would ever again be drawn upon
for Zeb’s benefit.
The occurrences of the day, however, had been by no means private
property.
Not only the crew of Zeb’s boat, but the half-score of lyers-in-wait
behind the willows had vigorously distributed varying versions of the
affair, and the Rev. Dr. Solomon Dryer had aided them more than a
little.
The latter, indeed, had found “company” awaiting him on his return
home, and he had delivered the history of the dangers from which he had
escaped to a half roomful of sympathizing auditors.
“Drown you!” exclaimed his better-half, through her firmly clinched
false teeth--that is, if a man’s third wife can fairly be considered
so large a fraction of him as that--“drown you, my dear? Did the young
ruffians go so far as that?”
At this point, however, the solemn-visaged matron was interrupted by a
merry, ringing peal of laughter.
“Euphemia Dryer!”
“Effie, my own daughter! To think of your discerning, in such a matter,
any sufficient occasion for levity!”
Neither the doctor’s third wife nor the doctor himself seemed capable
of expressing their astonishment, but the laughter was cut short with:
“Oh, papa, I didn’t mean anything naughty, but I was thinking how funny
it must have seemed to see old Mr. Todderley plump into the pond in
that way. And how he and Pat Murphy must have looked when they were
pulled out. It’s too funny for anything!”
Alas, for poor Effie, her rosy face and her mirth were both ordered out
of the parlor, for Mrs. Dryer discerned that the latter had spread with
dreadful rapidity among her guests.
Even then, however, Effie had no sooner disappeared than Mrs. Dryer
kindly apologized for her.
“Young and giddy,” she said, “and so thoughtless, just like her poor
mother, the doctor’s second, you know. She frequently loses control of
her risible faculties.”
“Poor thing!” remarked one of the ladies. “But what a very sweet face
she has, and such a dear, pleasant way of laughing! You must find her
quite a treasure.”
“Yes, indeed,” said another. “Girls will be girls. Mine are all so fond
of Effie.”
The doctor seemed to find it difficult to reproduce the subject of
Zeb Fuller’s enormity, but that was nothing to the effort it cost his
wife to smile and look sweet while her visitors were praising her
stepdaughter.
It is to be feared that Effie’s tea-time was a troubled one, but there
were reasons why she was in no danger of unendurable severity just
then, if she was as yet “under age” and capable of seeing the funny
side of things.
After tea, the doctor had a brief call to make at Deacon Fuller’s, from
which he returned with a serene assurance that the young assailant
of his dignity was not to escape without just and ample retribution,
for he had seen, with his own eyes, the stern and exemplary father
proceeding to the orchard for the necessary appliances.
“That will do,” muttered the doctor, as he turned his steps once more
homeward, “only I think hickory would be better in a case of this
magnitude.”
What would have been his feelings if he had witnessed the ignominious
after-fate of even the “sprouts” he deemed so inadequate to the
occasion?
But, then, Zeb Fuller was just as well satisfied.