AS Peter crossed the icy plank that led from his boat to the railway
embankment he tried to whistle, but the wind was too strong and sharp,
and he drew his head between his shoulders and closed his mouth tightly.
He had understated the distance to Widow Potter's when he had said it
was “just across.” In fair weather and daylight he often cut across the
corn-field, but on such a night as this the trip meant a long plod up
the railway track until he came to the crossing, and then a longer tramp
back the slushy road, a good half mile in all. When he turned in
at Widow Potter's open gate a great yellow dog came rushing at him,
barking, but a word from Peter silenced him and the dog fell behind
obediently but watchfully, and followed Peter to where the light shone
through the widow's kitchen window. Peter rapped on the door.
“Who's out there?” Mrs. Potter called sharply. “I got a gun in here, and
I ain't afraid to use it. If you 're a tramp, you'd better git!”
“It's Peter Lane,” Peter called, loud enough to be heard above the wind.
“I want to buy a couple of eggs off you, Mrs. Potter.”
The door opened the merest crack and Mrs. Potter peered out. She did not
have a gun, but she held a stove poker. When she saw Peter she opened
the door wide. It was a brusk welcome.
“Of all the shiftlessness I ever heard of, Peter Lane,” she said
angrily, “you beat all! Cormin' for eggs this time of night when your
boat's been in the cove nobody knows how long. I suppose it never come
into your head to get eggs until you got hungry for them, did it?”
Peter closed the door and stood with his back to it. At all times he
feared Mrs. Potter, but especially when he gave her some cause for
reproof.
“I had some company drop in on me unexpected, Mrs. Potter,” he said
apologetically. “If I hadn't, I wouldn't have bothered you. I hate it
worse'n you do.”
“Tramps, I dare say,” said the widow. “You 're that shiftless you'd
give the shoes off your feet and the food out of your mouth to feed any
good-for-nothing that come camping on you. You don't get my good eggs to
feed such trash, Peter Lane! Winter eggs are worth money.”
“I thought to pay for them,” said Peter meekly. “I wouldn't ask them of
you any other way, Mrs. Potter.”
“Well, if you 've got the money I suppose I've got to let you have
them,” said the widow grudgingly. “Eggs is worth three cents apiece, and
I hate to have 'em fed to tramps. How many do you want to buy?” Peter
shifted from one foot to another uncomfortably. “Well, now, I'm what you
might call a little short of ready money tonight,” he said. “I thought
maybe I might come over and saw some wood for you tomorrow--”
“And so you can,” said Mrs. Potter promptly, “and when the wood is sawed
they will be paid for, in eggs or money, and not until it is sawed. I'm
not going to encourage you to run into debt. You 're shiftless enough
now, goodness knows.”
Peter tried to smile and ignored the accusation.
“There couldn't be anything fairer than that,” he said. “Nobody ought
to object to that sort of arrangement at all. That's real business-like.
Only, there's a small boy amongst the company that dropped in on me and
he's only about so high--” Peter showed a height that would have been
small for an infant dwarf. “He's a real nice little fellow, and if you
was ever a boy that high, and crying because you wanted something to
eat--”
“I don't believe a word of it!” snapped Mrs. Potter. “If there is a
child down there he ought to be in bed long ago.”
“Yes'm,” agreed Peter meekly. “That's so. You wouldn't put even a dog
that size to bed hungry. So, if you could let me have about half-a-dozen
eggs, I'll go right back.”
“Six eggs at three cents is eighteen cents,” said Mrs. Potter firmly,
looking Peter directly in the eye. She was not bad looking. Her cheek
bones were rather high and prominent and her cheeks hollow, and she had
a strong chin for a woman, but the downward twist of discouragement
that had marked her mouth during her later married years had already
disappeared, giving place to a firmness that told she was well able to
manage her own affairs. Peter drew his alarm-clock from beneath his coat
and stood it on the kitchen table.
“I brought along this alarm-clock,” he said, “so you'd know I'd come
back like I say I will. She's a real good clock. I paid eighty cents
for her when she was new, and I just fixed her up fresh to-day. She's
running quite--quite a little, since I fixed her.”
Mrs. Potter did not look at the clock. She looked at Peter.
“So!” she exclaimed. “So that's what you've come to, Peter Lane! Pawnin'
your goods and chattels! That's what shiftless folks always come to in
the end.”
“And so, if you'll let me have half-a-dozen eggs, and maybe some pieces
of bread and butter and a handful of coffee,” said Peter, “I'll leave
the clock right here as security that I'll come up first thing in the
morning and saw wood 'til you tell me I've sawed enough.”
Mrs. Potter took the clock in her hand and looked at Peter.
“How old did you say that boy is?” she asked.
“Goin' on three, I should judge. He's a real nice little feller,” said
Peter eagerly.
Mrs. Potter put the clock on her kitchen table.
“Fiddlesticks! I don't believe a word of it. Who else have you got down
there?”
“Just his--his parent,” said Peter, blushing. “I wisht you could see
that little feller. Maybe I'll bring him up here to-morrow and let you
see him.”
“Maybe you won't!” said the widow. “If you 're hungry you can set down
and I'll fry you as many eggs as you want to eat, but you can't come
over me with no story about visitors bringin' you children on a night
like this! No, sir! You don't get none of my eggs for your worthless
tramps. Shall I fry you some?”
Peter looked down and frowned. Then he raised his head and looked full
in the widow's eyes and smiled. Nothing but the direct need could
have induced him to smile thus at the widow for he knew and feared the
result. When, once or twice before, he had looked into her eyes and
smiled in this way--unthinkingly--she had fluttered and trembled like a
bird in the presence of an overmastering fascination, and Peter did
not like that. Such power frightened him. The widow, scolding and
condemning, he could escape, but the widow fluttering and trembling, was
a thing to be afraid of. It made him flutter and tremble, too.
When Peter smiled the widow drew in her breath sharply.
“Six--six eggs--will six eggs be all you want?” she asked hurriedly.
“Yes'm,” said Peter, still smiling, “unless you could spare some bread
_and_ butter. He 'specially asked for butter,” and then he looked down.
The widow drew another long breath.
“I don't believe you've got a boy down there, and I don't believe you've
got a visitor that deserves nothing,” she said crossly. She was herself
again. “I know you from hair to sole-leather, Peter Lane, and if any
worthless scamp came and camped on you, you'd lie your head off to get
food for him, and that's what I think you 're doing now, but there ain't
no way of telling. If so be you have got a boy down there I don't want
him to go hungry, but if it's just some worthless tramp, I hope these
eggs choke him. You ain't got a mite of common sense in you. You 're too
soft, and that's why you don't get on. You'd come up here to-morrow and
do a dollar's worth of wood sawing for eighteen cents' worth of eggs,
and then give the eggs to the first tramp that asked you. What you ought
to have is a wife. You ought to have a wife with a mind like a hatchet
and a tongue like a black-snake whip, and you might be worth shucks,
anyway. You just provoke me beyond patience.”
“Yes'm,” said Peter nervously.
Mrs. Potter was cutting thick, enticing slices from a big loaf and
spreading them with golden butter.
“I reckon you want jam on this bread?” she asked suddenly.
“Yes, thank you!” said Peter.
“Well, maybe you _have_ got a boy down there,” said Mrs. Potter
reluctantly. “You'd be ashamed to ask for jam if you hadn't. If you had
a wife and she was any account you'd have bread and jam when boys come
to see you. But I do pity the woman that gets you, Peter Lane! No woman
on this earth but a widow that has had experience with men-folks could
ever make anything out of you.”
Peter put his hand on the door-knob, ready for instant flight. When he
smiled on Mrs. Potter something like this usually resulted and that was
why he tried it so seldom. It was he, now, who trembled and fluttered.
“I'm not thinking of getting married at all,” he said. “I couldn't
afford to, anyway.”
“You needn't think, just because you are no-account, some fool woman
wouldn't take you,” snapped Mrs. Potter. “Look at what my first husband
was. Women marry all sorts of trash.”
Peter watched the progress of the bread and jam, trusting its
preparation would not be delayed long.
“If they're asked,” said Mrs. Potter. She seemed very cross about
something. She wrapped the slices of bread in a clean sheet of paper
from her table drawer, folding in the ends of the paper angrily. “But
they don't do the asking,” she added.
Peter took the parcel, and slipped the six clean white eggs into his
pocket. He wanted to get away, but Mrs. Potter stopped him.
“I suppose, if there is a boy down there, I've got to give you what's
left of my roast chicken,” she grumbled, “or you'll be coming up here
about the time I get into bed, routing me out for more victuals. If I
had a husband, and he was like you, and he had a mind to feed all the
tramps in the county, he wouldn't have to rout me out of bed to do it.
He could go to the cupboard himself, and feed them.”
“Now, that clock,” said Peter hastily, “if I was you I wouldn't depend
too much on her alarm to get you up. I can't say she's regulated just
the way I'd like to have her yet. And I'm much obliged to you.”
“I don't want your clock!” said Mrs. Potter, but Peter had slipped out
of the door, closing it behind him. The widow held the clock in her hand
for a full minute, and then set it gently beside her own opulent Seth
Thomas.
“I dare say you 're about as well regulated as he is,” she said, “and
that ain't saying much for either of you. He ain't got the eyes to see
through a grindstone!”
When Peter returned to the boat, the boy was busily trying to work one
of the trot-line hooks out of the sleeve of his jacket, but the woman
had dropped back on the bunk and her eyes were closed. She opened them
when the rush of cold air from the door struck her face, and looked at
Peter listlessly.
“I guess you don't feel like cooking a couple of eggs,” said Peter, “so
if you'll excuse me remaining here awhile, I'll do it for you. I'm a
fair to middling fried-egg cook. Son, you let me get that hook out of
you, and then see if you can eat five or six of these pieces of bread
and jam. I could when I was a boy, and then I could wind up with a piece
of chicken like this.”
“I hooked myself,” the boy explained.
“I should say you did,” said Peter. “You want to look out for these
hooks, they bite a boy like a cat-fish stinger, and that ain't much fun.
I'm right glad you dropped in,” he said to the woman, “because I've got
such good neighbors. It's almost impossible to keep them from forcing
more eggs and butter and such things on me than I'd know what to do
with. 'Just come on up when you want anything,' they are always saying,
'and help yourself.' So it's quite nice to have somebody drop in and
give me a chance to show my neighbors I ain't too proud to take a few
eggs and such. It would surprise you to see how eager they are that
way.”
He scraped the butter from one of the pieces of bread, needing it to
fry the eggs in, and he worked as he talked, breaking the eggs into the
frying-pan and watching that they were cooked to a turn.
“I certainly am blessed with nice neighbors,” he said. “There's a
widow lady lives a step or two beyond the railroad, and seems as if she
couldn't do enough for me. She just lays herself out to see that I'm
overfed. Do you feel like you could eat a small part of chicken?”
The woman let her eyes rest on Peter some time before she spoke.
“I ought to feel hungry, but I don't,” she said.
“Well, maybe a soft-boiled egg _would_ be better. I ought to have
thought of that,” said Peter as if he had been reproved. “You'll have to
excuse me for boiling it in the coffee-pot, I've been so busy planning a
trip I'm going to take I haven't had time to lay in much tinware yet.”
“_Where_ did you take the clock?” asked the boy suddenly.
Peter reddened under his tan.
“That clock?” he said hesitatingly. “Where did I take that clock? Well,
the fact is--the fact is that clock is a nuisance. That's it, she's a
nuisance.' I been meaning to throw that clock into the river for I don't
know how long. Unless you are used to that clock you just can't sleep
where she is. 'Rattelty bang!' she goes just whenever she takes a
notion, like a dish-pan falling downstairs, all times of the night. So
I just thought, as long as I was going out anyway, 'Now's a good time to
get rid of the old nuisance!'”
“Mama _would_ steal the clock,” said the boy.
“Oh, you mustn't say that!” said Peter. “You come here and eat these two
nice eggs. I hope, ma'am, you don't think I had any such notion as that.
When I have visitors they can steal everything in the boat, and welcome.
I mean--”
“I know what you mean,” said the woman. “You 're the white kind.”
“I'm glad you look at it that way,” said
Peter. “The boy, he don't understand such things, he's so young yet.
Maybe you'd feel better if I propped you up with the pillow a little
better. I'll lay this extry blanket on the foot of the bunk here in case
it should get cold during the night. You look nice and warm now.”
“I'm burning up,” said the woman.
“I judge you've got a slight fever,” said Peter. “I often get them when
I get overtook by the rain when I'm out for a stroll.”
“I'll be all right if I can lie here for an hour or so,” said the woman
listlessly. “Then Buddy and me will get on. Is it far to town?”
“Now, you and that boy ain't going another step to-night,” said Peter
firmly. “You 're going to stay right here. You won't discommode me a bit
for I've made arrangements to sleep elsewhere, like I often do.”
He gave the woman the egg in his tin cup, and while she ate he put his
trot-lines outside on the small forward deck so the boy might get in
no more trouble with the hooks. Then he removed the shells from his
shotgun, put the remaining eggs and bread and butter and chicken in his
tin box, and pinned his coat collar.
“I'm going up to the place I arranged to sleep at, now,” he said, “and
I hope you'll find everything comfortable and nice. There's more wood
there by the stove, and before I come in in the morning I'll knock on
the door, so I guess maybe you'd better take off as many of them wet
clothes as you wish to. You'll take a worse cold if you don't.”
“I'm afraid I'm too weak,” said the woman. “If you will just give me
some help with my dress--”
But Peter fled. He was a strange mixture, was Peter, and he fled as a
blushing boy would have fled, not to stop running until he was far up
the railway track. Then he realized, by the chill of the sleety rain
against his head where the hair was thinnest, that he had forgotten his
hat, and he laughed at himself.
“Pshaw, I guess that woman scared me,” he said.
He did not follow the path to Mrs. Potter's kitchen door this time, but
skirted the orchard and climbed a rail fence into the cow pasture. He
made a wide circle through the pasture and climbed another fence into
the yard behind the barn, where a haystack stood. He was trembling with
cold by this time, and wet through, and the water froze stiff in his
coat cuffs, but he dug deep into the base of the haystack and crawled
into its shelter, drawing the sweet hay close around him. For awhile he
lay with chattering teeth, his knees close under his chin, and then he
felt warmer, and straightened his knees. The next moment he was asleep.