“Is it possible you care for that girl yet, Tom? A rejected lover,
too? Where’s your spirit, man? Pshaw--there’s many a fairer face than
Mary Ford’s; besides, she is more than half crazy. Are you mad, Tom? You
wouldn’t catch me sighing for a girl who had cried her eyes out for the
villainy of my rival.”
“Curse him!” said Tom Shaw, striking his boots with a light cane he
held in his hand; “_he_ is safe enough, at any rate, for some time to
come; good for a couple more years, I hope, for striking that fellow in
prison. When he comes out, if he ever does, he will find his little bird
in my nest. Half-witted or whole-witted, it matters little to me. I am
rich enough to please my fancy, and the girl’s face haunts me.”
“Pooh!” said Jack; “you are just like a spoiled child--one toy after
another, the last one always the best. I know you--you’ll throw this
aside in a twelvemonth; but marriage, let me tell you, my fine fellow,
is a serious joke.”
“Not to me,” said Tom, “for the very good reason that I consider it
dissolved when the parties weary--or at any rate, I shall act on that
supposition, which amounts to the same thing, you know.”
“Not in law,” said Jack.
“Nonsense,” replied Tom; “I am no fool; trust me for steering my bark
clear of breakers. At any rate, I’ll marry that girl, if perdition comes
after it--were it only to spite Percy. How he will gnash his teeth when
he hears of it, hey? The old man is dead, and the old woman is left
almost penniless. I’ll easily coax her into it. In fact, I mean to drive
out there this very afternoon. Mary Ford shall be Mrs. Tom Shaw, d’ye
hear?”
* * * * *
“Good day, Pike! Haven’t got a pitchfork you can lend a neighbor, have
ye? Ours is broke clean in two; I’m dreadful hard put to it for
horseflesh, or I would drive to the village and buy a new one. You see
that pesky boy of mine has lamed our mare; it does seem to me, Pike,
that boys allers will be boys--the more I scold at him, the more it
don’t do no good.”
“And the more it won’t,” said the good-natured farmer Rice. “Scolding
never does any good no how--the boy is good enough by natur’--good as
you was, I dare say, when you was his age. I wouldn’t give a cent for a
boy that hain’t no friskiness about him, no sperrit like; but you see
you don’t know how to manage him. You are allers scolding, just as you
say. It’s ‘John, go weed those parsnips; ten to one, you careless dog,
you’ll pull up the parsnips instead of the weeds;’--or, ‘John, go carry
that corn to mill; ten to one, you’ll lose it out of the wagon going.’ I
tell you, Pike, it is enough to discourage any lad, such a constant
growling and pecking; now I want my boys to love me when they grow up. I
don’t want them glad to see the old man’s back turned. I don’t want them
happier any where than at their own home. That’s the way drunkards and
profligates are made--that’s the way the village tavern thrives. I tell
you, Pike, if you lace up natur too tight, she’ll bust out somewhere.
Better draw it mild.”
“O, don’t talk to me, neighbor,” said Rice, impatiently. “Them’s
modern notions; thrash children, I say. When I was a lad, if I did my
duty, it was well; if I didn’t, I knew what to expect. It is well enough
for your children to love you; of course they oughter, when you’ve
brought them into the world; but I say they’ve got to mind, _any_ how;
‘obey your parents;’ that’s it; plain as preaching.”
“Yes,” said farmer Rice, “I believe in that; but there’s another verse
in the same book, that runs this way--‘Parents provoke not your children
to anger, lest they be discouraged.’”
“Well--well,” said Mr. Pike, uneasily, “I hate argufying, as I do bad
cider. Your neighbor, Mr. Ford, dropped off sudden like, didn’t he?
What’s the matter of him?”
“Some say one thing--some another; but I think, neighbor, it was just
here. That ere old man has been in harness these sixty years--it was a
sort of second natur to him to be _active_. Well, he was taken right out
of the whirl and hubbub of the city, where people can’t hardly stop long
enough to bury one another, and sot right down in this quiet place,
where there’s nothing a-going but frogs and crickets, with nothing to do
but to brood over his troubles. Well, you see such a somerset at his
time o’ life wan’t the thing; of course it upsot him. He’d lean over
this fence, and lean over that, and put on his hat, and take it off, and
walk a bit, and sit down a bit, and act just like an old rat in a trap,
trying to gnaw his way out. It was just as if you should pull up that
old oak-tree, that has grown in that spot till its roots strike out half
a mile round, and set it out in some foreign sile; it wouldn’t
thrive--of course not.”
“No,” said Mr. Pike, “I see, I see--it would be just so with me, if I
was set down where _he_ came from--that etarnal rumbling and whiz buzz
would drive me clean distracted. The last time I staid in the city over
night, I thought every minute the last day had come, there was such a
tearin’ round. But what’s become of the old woman and her sick darter?”
“_She_ took it hard--she did--but the girl is sort of
image-like--don’t feel nothing, I reckon. Pretty, too--it’s a nation
pity. They’ve got enough left to keep them alive, milk and fresh air,
like the rest on us. _I_ don’t want no better fare. There’s some talk,
so my old woman says, about a fellow who drives out here, who is going
to marry the girl;--nothing but woman’s gabble, I guess; you know if
they didn’t talk they wouldn’t say nothing.”
“Fact,” said Mr. Pike, profoundly, “I often think on’t; but come, I
can’t stay prating here all day--where’s the pitchfork you was going to
lend me?”
“There it is,” said Mr. Rice; “and now remember what I told you about
that boy of yourn; there’s more good in that Zekiel, than you think
for;--remember now, a little oil makes machinery work easy, Pike.”
“Yes, oil of birch,” said farmer Pike, chuckling at his own wit, and
cracking his horse-whip at a happy little vagrant robin, as he went
through the gate and down the road.