Time passed, after the easy-going manner of Bloomtown. Jap was
sixteen, long, ungainly and stooped from bending over the case. Bill,
a little older in months, but possessed of immortal youth, was stocky
and rather good looking. Four years of daily intercourse had wrought a
subtle change in their relations, four years of the stern and the sweet
that Ellis and Flossy Hinton had brought, for the first time, into
their lives.
Bill was at the table, the exchanges pushed back in a disorderly heap,
as he surreptitiously figured a tough problem in bookkeeping that
Flossy had given him. Jap, with furtive air, bolted the history lesson
that ought to have been learned the day before. Ellis, his back to the
one big window in the office, scowled over the proofs he was rattling.
From time to time he peppered the air with remarks that fell like bird
shot on the tough oblivion of his two assistants. At length
forbearance gave way under the strain, and he said, in cold and
measured tones:
"When you are unable to decipher the idea I am trying to convey, I wish
that you would take me into your confidence."
Bill looked up, a grin on his round, shining face, a grin that was
fixed to immobility by the fierceness of Ellis's glance.
"I note that you have injected much native humor into perfectly
legitimate prose," the stern voice continued. He read:
"'Jim Blanke has a splendid assortment of Sundays.' Now please
explain. You are causing the good folks of this town unnecessary
worry. My copy reads, 'sundries.'"
"Jap done it," vouchsafed Bill.
"Who done this?" Ellis stressed the verbal blunder witheringly, as he
pointed his pencil at the next item. It read:
"Ross Hawkins soled twenty-five yearling calves."
"It looked that way," argued Jap.
"A devil of a couple you are," declared Ellis wrathfully. "Can't
either of you reason? Did you ever hear of any one soling a yearling
calf? Ross Hawkins is an auctioneer, not a shoemaker."
The boys looked sheepishly at each other. Suddenly Bill flung himself
on his stomach and howled in glee.
"Lordee! What if that had 'a' got in the paper!" he gasped.
"There would be two fine, large, lazy boys out of a job," Ellis said
severely.
He threw aside the copy and lifted the type. Jap followed the movement
with anxious eye. Another explosion hung, tense and imminent, in the
air.
"Have you washed that type yet, Bill?" he asked, eager to placate Ellis.
It was the custom for the boy nearest the door to disappear when the
time for washing a form was at hand.
"It was your job," protested Bill. "You promised to wash Wat Harlow's
speech if I cleaned Kelly Joneses stock bill."
Ellis sat down wearily.
"Oh, we're agoing to do it all, this evening," cried Bill, defiantly.
"You promised that we could clean out that box of cuts. You promised a
long time ago."
"Go to it," said Ellis, his voice relaxing, and the two boys bolted
into the back room. A little later he joined them. Jap and Bill sat
on the floor, blowing the dust from a lot of dirty old woodcuts.
"I bought them with the job," he said, turning the pile over with his
foot. He sat down on the emptied box and watched them as they examined
the cuts.
"What is this?" asked Jap, peering at the largest block in the lot.
"That is a cut of the town, as it was when I came here," said Ellis, a
shadow of reminiscence crossing his face, as he took the block in his
long fingers.
Bill drew himself to his knees and looked at the maze of lines and
depressions curiously. The picture was as strange to him as it was to
Jap. Ellis continued:
"There were three business houses here, besides the blacksmith shop and
the saloon. Here they are. Ezra Bowers, Bill's grandfather, with the
help of his three sons, ran a general store where they sold everything
from castor oil to mowing machines. Phineas Blome--an unmistakable son
of old Jerusalem--sold clothing and more castor oil and mowing
machines. There wasn't such a thing as a butcher shop in Bloomtown.
When the natives wanted fresh meat, they ordered it brought out on the
hack. In other parts of the world, that institution is sometimes
called a stage; but here I learned that its right name is 'hack.' The
southern terminus of the Bloomtown, Barton and Faber hack-line, that
has done its best for thirty years to prevent us from being entirely
marooned, was over there at the south side of Blome's Park, exactly as
it is to-day. The hotel didn't have a bit more paint, the first night
I slept in it, than it has now."
"Flossy said that weathered shingles were fashionable," Bill grinned,
taking up another cut. "Here's the Public Square--you call it Blome's
Park, but I never heard anybody else call it that," he added, his voice
lifting in a note of query. "That's the Square, all right, and the
Town Hall, with 'leven horses hitched in front of it."
"Yes, when old man Blome laid out his farm in town lots, he reserved
his woods pasture for a city park. You never heard of an orthodox town
that didn't begin with a Public Square, and that little rocky glade
with the wet-weather spring had the only trees within ten miles of
here. It wasn't fit for farming, so Blome argued that nobody would buy
it with a view to raising garden truck. But your foxy Uncle Blome
didn't sacrifice anything by his generosity to the town that was about
to be born. He reserved the lots facing the park on three sides, and
held them at an exorbitant figure--as much as five dollars a front
foot, I should say.
"The lots at the north and east were to be sold for high-class
residences only. Those at the west were reserved for business houses.
Behold the embryo Main street! Overlooking the park at the south was
Blome's farm house, since metamorphosed into a tavern and barns for the
stage horses. The last of the Blomes shook the dust of Bloomtown from
his feet when Carter bought his interest in the hack line. Bill's
grandfather had a farm adjoining Blome's land at the west; but Ezra
Bowers, merchant prince and attorney-at-law," he said whimsically, "had
to have a residence in the fashionable quarter, fronting the park. A
little patch of the old farm is quite good enough for Mr. and Mrs.
Ellis Hinton and their two sons, Jap and Jasper William."
Jap caught Ellis's hand, a lump arising in his throat. Bill relieved
the momentary tension by turning over another cut. A familiar face
looked out at him from the grime of years. Ellis glanced at it and
smiled.
"It is a great thing, Jap, the birth of a town. Bloomtown was really
never born. The stork dropped her when he was traveling for a friendly
haven. For ten years she lay, just as she fell, without visible signs
of life. About twenty families existed, somehow. They had pigs,
chickens and garden truck, and to all intents they would go on existing
till the last trump.
"One day I went out into the country to attend a sale. Boys, I was
never so well pleased with a day's work as I was with that day's jaunt.
I heard the most masterly bit of eloquence that ever came from the lips
of an auctioneer. The man had the crowd hypnotized. He even sold me
an accordion, a thing I was born to hate. The fact that it was
wind-broken and rattly never occurred to me until I woke up, after he
had done. Then I went to him and said:
"'You an auctioneer! You should be in the Halls of Justice, telling
the people how to interpret their laws.'
"The idea struck him. He came into town with me and we talked the
matter over. He was easily the best known and most liked man in the
county. It was then that the political bug stung our good friend, Wat
Harlow. Wat moved his family to town and soon he had a decent
habitation. He stimulated a rain of paint and a hail of shingle nails.
He prodded the older inhabitants to an era of wooden pavements and
stone crossings. Bill's grandfather objected, because he said it cut
down the sale of rubber hip-boots; but Wat's eloquence was the key to
fit anything that tried to lock the wheels of progress. He did more
than that. He brought Jim Blanke from Leesburg to start a decent drug
store.
"After that he robbed Barton of Tom Granger, and together they started
the first bank of Bloomtown. Granger's wife and baby, with Wat's wife,
were the civilization. Mrs. Granger was almost an invalid, even then,
but she gathered the women together and formed an aid society. She
begged and cajoled Bowers out of enough money to build a little church
on the lot that Blome had donated. I joined the church, for the moral
example. I don't remember what denomination it was supposed to be. We
had services once a month; but Mrs. Granger was the real power in the
town. She introduced boiled shirts and neckties. Tom bought the big
patch of ground, north of the park, and set out those elm trees before
his foundation was in. Then Jim Blanke got Otto Kraus to come here and
start a private school. Otto played the little cabinet organ in
church, and taught all the children music, after school hours. Thus
was Bloomtown born. Wat Harlow made the blood circulate in her
moribund veins."
Jap looked into Ellis's face, his freckled cheeks glowing.
"That's not what Wat Harlow said," he declared breathlessly.
"What did he say?" asked Ellis sharply.
"Why--why," gulped Jap, "he said that Bloomtown was dead as a herring,
and too no-account to be buried, till Ellis Hinton came and jerked her
out of the mud and started her to breathe."
Ellis got up and dusted his trousers.
"As I said before, Wat was an eloquent auctioneer. Talk is his trade,
and he keeps in practice. Dilute his enthusiasm one-half, Jap. And
now, get to work, washing up."
As he left the office he encountered a group of tittering girls, in
front of the bank. They scattered when they perceived that Ellis and
not Bill had come forth. Bill was the lion of the town. Already the
girls had begun to come after papa's paper, on publishing day, which
upset the machinery of the office, never too dependable.
One Thursday when the air was full of snow, the little office
registered its capacity crowd. Ellis was at home with a heavy cold,
and Jap and Bill were getting out the paper. The ink congealed on the
rollers and needed constant warming to lubricate the items reposing on
the bosom of the Washington press. This warming was Bill's job, and
Jap was exasperated to fighting pitch by the dilatory method of Bill's
peregrinations around the circle of rosy-faced girls, hanging
admiringly on his efforts.
"Chase those girls out," he growled. "No use for them to hang around.
We won't get this paper out in a week if they stick around after you."
"Old Crabby!" sniffed one of the girls. "You're just mad because
nobody wants to hang after you."
"Jap is particular," chaffed Bill, half apologetically. Since they had
assumed the responsibility for the right uplift of Flossy's boy, there
had been growing a new, shy pride in themselves. "Better wait and come
back in the morning," he suggested.
The girls filed slowly out. As they passed the table, where Jap was
piling the papers to fold, Isabel Granger, doubtless inspired by the
demon of mischief, leaned forward suddenly and kissed him full on the
mouth. Then she fled, shrieking with glee. Jap stood as if stricken
to stone. Bill looked at him in fright. There was no color in his
freckled face. His gray eyes were staring, as if some wonderful vision
had blasted his sight.
"Gee, Jap," said Bill uneasily, "are you sick?"
Jap aroused himself and turned toward the press.
"No," he said slowly, "but I don't like for folks to be familiar like
that. If I wanted to be a fool like you----" He stopped and stared a
moment from the window.
"The next time she kisses me," he said shortly, "she will mean it."