The Lipsittsville Pioneer Shoe Store found Mr. Seth Appleby the best
investment it had ever made. The proprietor was timorous about having
given away thirty-three per cent. of his profits. But Mr. Appleby did
attract customers--from the banker's college-bred daughter to farmers
from the other side of the Lake--and he really did sell more shoes. He
became a person of lasting importance.
In a village, every clerk, every tradesman, has something of the same
distinctive importance as the doctors, the lawyers, the ministers. It
really makes a difference to you when Jim Smith changes from Brown's
grocery to Robinson's, because Jim knows what kind of sugar-corn you
like, and your second cousin married Jim's best friend. Bill Blank, the
tailor, is not just a mysterious agent who produces your clothes, but a
real personality, whose wife's bonnet is worth your study, even though
you are the wife of the mayor. So to every person in Lipsittsville Mr.
Seth Appleby was not just a lowly person on a stool who helped one in
the choice of shoes. He was a person, he was their brother, to be loved
or hated. If he had gone out of the shoe business there would have been
something else for him to do--he would have sold farm machinery or
driven on a rural mail route or collected rents, and have kept the same
acquaintances.
It was very pleasant to Father to pass down the village street in the
sun, to call the town policeman "Ben" and the town banker "Major" and
the town newspaperman "Lym," and to be hailed as "Seth" in return. It
was diverting to join the little group of G. A. R. men in the back of
the Filson Land and Farms Company office, and have even the heroes of
Gettysburg pet him as a promising young adventurer and ask for his tales
of tramping.
Father was rather conscience-stricken when he saw how the town accepted
his pretense of being an explorer, but when he tried to tell the truth
everybody thought that he was merely being modest, and he finally
settled down contentedly to being a hero, to the great satisfaction of
all the town, which pointed out to unfortunate citizens of Freiburg and
Hongkong and Bryan and other rival villages that none of them had a
real up-to-date hero with all modern geographical improvements. In time,
as his partner, the shoeman, had predicted, Father was elected president
of the clubless country club, and organized a cross-country hike in
which he outdistanced all the others, including the young and boastful
Buck Simpson.
He was slowly recognized as being "in society." To tell the truth, most
of Lipsittsville was in society, but a few citizens weren't--Barney
Bachschluss, the saloon-keeper; Tony, who sawed wood and mowed lawns;
the workmen on the brick-yard and on the railway. Father was serenely
established upon a social plane infinitely loftier than theirs.
He wore a giddy, spotted, bat-wing tie, and his grand good gray trousers
were rigidly creased. He read editorials in the Indianapolis paper and
discussed them with Doc Schergan at the drug-store.
The only trouble was that Mother had nothing to do. She was
discontented, in their two rooms at the Star Hotel. No longer could she,
as in her long years of flat life in New York, be content to sit
dreaming and reading the paper. She was as brisk and strong and
effective as Father. Open woods and the windy road had given her a
restless joy in energy. She made a gown of gray silk and joined the
Chautauqua Circle, but that was not enough.
On an evening of late August, when a breeze was in the maples, when the
sunset was turquoise and citron green and the streets were serenely
happy, Father took her out for a walk. They passed the banker's mansion,
with its big curving screened porch, and its tower, and brought up at a
row of modern bungalows which had just been completed.
"I wanted you to see these," said Father, "because some time--this is a
secret I been keeping--some time I guess we'll be able to rent one of
these! Don't see why we can't early next year, the way things are
going!"
"Oh, Father!" she said, almost tearfully.
"Would you like it?"
"Like it! With a real house and something to keep my hands busy! And
maybe a kitty! And I would make you tea (I'm so tired of hotel food!)
and we would sit out here on the porch--"
"Yes, you'd have old Mr. Seth Appleby for tea-room customer. He's better
'n anybody they got on Cape Cod!"
"Yes, and you _are_ better, too, Father!"
"You old honeymooner! Say, I've got an idea. I wonder if we couldn't
sneak in a look inside of one of these bungalows. Let's try this door."
He shook the door-knob of a bungalow so new that laths and mortar were
still scattered about the yard. The door was locked. He tried the
windows as well. But he could not get in. Three other bungalows they
tried, and the fourth, the last of the row, was already occupied. But
they did steal up on the porch of one bungalow, and they exclaimed like
children when they beheld the big living-room, the huge fireplace, the
built-in shelves and, beyond the living-room, what seemed to be the
dining-room, with an enormous chandelier which may not, perhaps, have
been of the delicate reticence of a silver candlestick, but whose jags
and blobs of ruby and emerald and purple glass filled their hearts with
awe.
"We _will_ get one of these houses!" Father vowed. "I thought you'd like
them. I swear, I'll cut out my smoking, if necessary. Say! Got another
idea! I wonder if we couldn't make up some excuse and butt into the
bungalow that's been rented, and see how it looks furnished. I
understand there's some new-comers living there. We'll sort of make them
a neighborly call."
"Oh, do you think we ought to?"
Mother, she who had faced a sheriff's shot-gun, was timorous about
facing an irate matron, and she tagged hesitatingly after Father as he
marched along the row of bungalows, up the steps of the one that was
rented, and rang the bell.
The door was opened by a maid, in a Lipsittsville version of a uniform.
"Lady or gent o' the house in?" asked Father, airily sticking his new
derby on one side of his head and thrusting a thumb in an armhole, very
impudent and fresh and youthful.
"No, sir," said the maid, stupidly.
Mother sighed. To tell the truth, she had wanted to see the promised
land of this bungalow.
"Well, say, girl, Mrs. Appleby and I are thinking of renting one of
these here bungalonies, like the fellow says, and I wonder if we could
take a look at this house, to see how it looks furnished?"
The maid stared dumbly at him, looked suspiciously at Mother. Apparently
she decided that, though the flamboyant Father was likely to steal
everything in the house, Mother was a person to be trusted, and she
mumbled, "Yass, I gass so."
Father led the way in, and Mother stumbled over every possible obstacle,
so absorbed was she by the intimate pleasantness which furniture gave to
this big living-room--as large as the whole of their flat in New York.
Actually, the furniture wasn't impressive--just a few good willow
chairs, a big couch, a solid table. There were only two or three
pictures, one rug, and, in the built-in shelves, no books at all. But it
had space and cheerfulness; it was a home.
"Here's the dining-room, with butler's pantry, and that door on the
right looks like it might be a bedroom," Father announced, after a hasty
exploration, while the maid stared doubtfully. He went on, half
whispering, "Let's peep into the bedroom."
"No, no, we mustn't do that," Mother insisted, but regretfully. For she
was already wondering where, if she were running things, she would put a
sewing-machine. She had always agreed with Matilda Tubbs that
sewing-machines belonged in bedrooms.
While the maid shadowed him and Mother opened her mouth to rebuke him,
Father boldly pushed open the door on the right. He had guessed
correctly. It was a bedroom. Mother haughtily stayed in the center of
the living-room, but she couldn't help glancing through the open door,
and she sighed enviously as she saw the splendor of twin beds, with a
little table and an electric light between them, and the open door of a
tiled bathroom. It was too much that the mistress of the house should
have left her canary-yellow silk sweater on the foot of one bed. Mother
had wanted a silk sweater ever since she had beheld one flaunted on Cape
Cod.
Father darted out, seized her wrists, dragged her into the bedroom, and
while she was exploding in the lecture he so richly deserved she
stopped, transfixed. Father was pointing to a picture over one bed, and
smiling strangely.
The picture was an oldish one, in a blackened old frame. It showed a
baby playing with kittens.
"Why!" gasped Mother--"why--why, it's just like the picture--it _is_ the
picture--that we got when Lulu was born--that we had to leave on the
Cape."
"Yump," said Father. He still smiled strangely. He pointed at the table
between the twin beds. On the table was a little brown, dusty book.
Mother gazed at it dazedly. Her step was feeble as she tottered between
the beds, picked up the book, opened it. It was the New Testament which
she had had since girlhood, which she had carried all through their
hike, which she supposed to be in their rooms back at the Star Hotel.
There was a giggle from the doorway, and the apparently stupid maid was
there, bowing.
"Lena, has our trunk come from the hotel?" Father asked.
"Yessir, I just been sneaking it in the back way. Welcome home, mum,"
said the maid, and shut the door--from the other side.
Mother suddenly crumpled, burrowed her head against Father's shoulder
and sobbed: "This is ours? Our own? Now?"
"Yes, Mother, it sure am ours." Father still tried to speak airily, but
in his voice were passion and a grave happiness. "It's ours--_yours_!
And every stick of the furniture more than half paid for already! I
didn't tell you how well we're doing at the store. Say, golly, I sure
did have a time training Lena to play the game, like she didn't know
us. She thought I was plumb nutty, at first!"
"And I have a maid, too!" marveled Mother.
"Yes, and a garden if you want to keep busy outdoors. And a phonograph
with nineteen records, musical and comic, by Jiminy!"
To prove which he darted back into the living-room, started "Molly
Magee, My Girl," and to its cheerful strains he danced a fantastic jig,
while the maid stared from the dining-room, and Mother, at the bedroom
door, wept undisguisedly, murmuring, "Oh, my boy, my boy, that planned
it all to surprise me!"