BUYING TACKS
Not every one in school was in trouble, as the last chapter would seem
to indicate. Tompkins and the Pecks, for example, were not bored by the
monotony of life, had no unwelcome visitors descending into their
closets by rope ladders, and enjoyed three square meals every day. Since
the affair of the rubbers, the Pecks’ dormitory entry had seen days of
peace. With Tompkins’s vague threats of retribution still ringing in
their ears, the twins had walked circumspectly and left the senior’s
dignity unassailed. But with every day of delay in the coming of that
retribution the threats were losing effect.
The Pecks were sauntering aimlessly down the dormitory path, when
Tompkins overtook them.
“Where are you going, Tommy, and what for?” demanded Duncan.
“I’m going to Horne’s to buy a paper of tacks, my sweet half bushel,”
responded Tompkins, who was in fine humor. “May I have the pleasure of
your company?”
“Sure!” said Donald, and Duncan seemed at first to be of the same mind,
but after a few paces stopped abruptly. “I think I won’t go,” he said.
“Better come on and see how it’s done,” said Tompkins. “You may want to
buy tacks sometime yourself.”
“You can show Don, he’s the better scholar,” Duncan rejoined, as he
turned back toward the dormitory.
But Tompkins and Donald were no sooner out of sight around the corner
than Duncan suddenly wheeled, and scampering down a side street and
through a back yard, emerged among the stores on Water Street. He
stopped at Horne’s hardware store, peeped in, and then boldly walked
down to the middle of the store, where old Mr. Horne himself was sitting
behind the morning paper. It was the noon hour and customers were few.
“Got any tacks?” asked Duncan.
“Yes,” replied Mr. Horne, slowly, eying the boy over his spectacles as
he folded up his paper.
“Then sit on them!”
With that Duncan turned abruptly and hastened away, leaving the old man
speechless with indignation. Outside the store he dodged into an alley
long enough to avoid Tompkins and Donald, who were approaching, and then
made full speed for Parker’s, the next hardware store above.
Meantime Tompkins and Donald had entered Horne’s. Donald lingered near
the door, looking at the knives and revolvers in the showcase, while
Tompkins went on toward a fierce-looking old gentleman who glared at his
approaching customer in a markedly inhospitable fashion.
“Got any tacks?” asked Tompkins, innocently.
Mr. Horne’s face grew red and white in spots. His eyes glittered behind
his spectacles. Clutching his paper in a trembling hand, he shook it
violently before the face of the astonished Tompkins.
“You can’t ketch me again, you young scapegrace! You git out of this
store as fast as you can git. I know what you’re here for. That sassbox
out there has been puttin’ you up to it, but it won’t go down again. You
git out o’ here as lively as you can step it, or I’ll call the police
and have you put out!”
Tompkins stared dumfounded while Mr. Horne unbosomed himself of his
strong emotions; then a half smile broke over the would-be customer’s
face. Donald was grinning from ear to ear; this was fun that he had not
expected.
“It seems to me your manners are a trifle brusque,” remarked Tompkins,
more amused than angered. “Is this your usual way of treating
customers?”
“Customers! You didn’t come here to buy anything, you came to insult
me.”
“Sorry to differ from you,” replied Tompkins. “I wanted to buy when I
came in, but I don’t want to now. I don’t feel at home with crazy
people. Come on, Don!”
And the senior strode out of the store indignantly, followed by the
snickering Peck.
“Is that the way you buy tacks?” asked Don, as they reached the street.
Tompkins did not answer, but headed for Parker’s, a few doors above.
Here also was but a single salesman, a tall young man with a thin
mustache and a circle of baldness on the top of his head, who was
sorting screws behind the counter. Donald again remained near the door,
but this time gave no heed to the showcase, while Tompkins strode
defiantly up to the waiting clerk.
“Do you keep tacks?”
The clerk rested his hands on the counter, looked quizzically into the
solemn face confronting his, then glanced at the boy standing near the
door, who was already tittering in expectancy.
“No, we don’t keep tacks and we don’t sit on them!” he answered, smiling
and clipping his words short. With the last word he swung his arm
suddenly forward and sent Tompkins’s hat spinning among the nail kegs.
This was too much. Tompkins emitted a whoop and sprang for the nearest
weapon, which happened to be a pitchfork. Holding this before him, as a
soldier would hold a bayonet for a charge, he shouted:—
“Come on, you blamed counter-jumper, and I’ll spear you like an eel! You
pick up that hat and pick it up quick, or I’ll put three holes through
you that I can see through. They shoot men for smaller things than that
out in my country. Pick up that hat, do you hear!”
As the clerk looked into those blazing eyes and saw the tines brandished
before his nose, the jocose mood suddenly abandoned him. He ran round
the counter, picked up the hat, brushed it with his sleeve, and handed
it back to the ferocious knight of the pitchfork.
“I didn’t mean anything, really I didn’t,” he said humbly. “I thought
you were joking, especially as you came in with that fellow—that
gentleman there. Do you want some tacks? What size, eights?”
“I want nothing,” growled Tompkins, lowering the fork. “I wouldn’t buy a
rivet in this place if you’d give me the whole store and throw in the
clerks to sweep up and open the nail kegs. Come on, Don!”
[Illustration: “PICK UP THAT HAT, DO YOU HEAR!”—_Page 118._]
“I’m learning fast,” declared Donald, on the sidewalk, after several
vain efforts to control his laughter so as to make himself intelligible.
“What’s the next lesson going to be?”
Tompkins was too busy thinking to pay attention to poor jokes. “You stay
out of the next store—do you hear?” he said threateningly.
At Cutler’s, Tompkins merely put his head inside. The clerk sat in a
chair near the door, passing the noon hour in idleness. Tompkins held up
a coin.
“I’ve five cents or ten cents or a quarter or whatever is necessary, and
I’d like to buy a paper of tacks. If you can sell me some without
hitting me or calling me names, I’d like to come in and buy. There’s
something queer about the tack business in this town.”
“I think I can,” replied the man, good-naturedly. “Come in.”
As the salesman produced the laboriously sought tacks, Donald, whose
curiosity was beyond control, opened the door and slipped in.
“You keep out!” cried Tompkins, warningly.
“Oh, he’s here again, is he?” said the clerk, laughing.
“Has he been here before?” demanded Tompkins.
“Yes, about five minutes ago.”
“That lad here five minutes ago? Why, he hasn’t been out of my sight for
the last half hour.”
The clerk shook his head. “He was here not five minutes ago. He asked me
if I had tacks, and when I said yes, he said, ‘Sit on them,’ and lit
out.”
“By George!” said Tommy, slowly, as the truth came home to him, “the
little rat has scored again, and scored hard, too. They are twins, you
see,” he vouchsafed in explanation to the only man in town who would
sell him tacks, “they are twins, and one of them, knowing I was after
tacks, has gone around and stirred up a hornet’s nest in every store.
Then when I came along with the other twin, I got stung.”
When Tompkins issued forth from the store of the willing salesman,
Donald was nowhere to be seen. Where the latter had gone, or why, it is
perhaps superfluous to explain. He bounded up the dormitory stairs,
panting a continuous stream of exclamation and chuckle. Duncan was
standing on the threshold of Number Seventeen, a picture of ecstatic
expectancy.
“Did it work?” he asked eagerly.
“Work!” repeated Donald, casting on his brother a look of admiration.
“It couldn’t have worked better if you’d spent a week in planning it.
The old duffer we struck first swelled up like a hot balloon and
threatened to call a cop to pinch him. The second fellow, the lean chap
with the bald head, got funny and knocked Tommy’s dip off on to the
floor. Tommy got crazy and grabbed a pitchfork, and I thought sure there
was going to be murder.”
Duncan was giggling joyously. “If I could only have been there! Tell it
to me from the beginning, Don, and be sure you don’t leave anything
out.”
Donald had just finished his second detailed description when Tompkins’s
knock was heard, and the victim appeared. He walked solemnly into the
room and turned directly to Duncan, a single glance at the two
expressive faces having betrayed the guilty one.
“By rights I ought to get mad as a hatter,” he said, “and run amuck
among the Pecks for about twenty minutes; but I’m not going to do it.
The trick was so good that I’m going to forget about it. But let me tell
you two fellows once for all, I’ve had all the things to forget that I
want. The next time that you try any of your little games on me there’ll
be a peck of trouble,—do you understand?—and a Peck in trouble. I’m
giving you a last warning.”
“Much obliged,” returned Duncan, grinning broadly. Now that the storm no
longer threatened, his courage and delight were returning.
“Now tell me what put you next that trick?” demanded the senior.
“That’s my secret,” replied Duncan.
“He invented it himself, of course,” declared Donald, proudly.
That afternoon, at the slightest chuckle from Peck Number One, Number
Two burst into a violent titter. And they both had poor lessons. Mr.
Moore was actually forced to interrupt the recitation in order to inform
the Pecks that their conduct was most reprehensible, and that their
recitations were good proof that silly faces and empty heads were
usually found together. All of which the Pecks received with becoming
humility.