UNCLE ISRAEL SAYS “NO”
Derry lay twenty-two miles to the west of Amesville and it required
almost an hour for the branch line train to reach the little
settlement. Tom descended from the car amidst the clatter of empty
milk-cans being put off on the platform of the small station. Uncle
Israel Bowles’s farm lay nearly a mile away, and Tom, whose feet were
sore from the unaccustomed tramping of city pavements, looked about for
a lift. But of the two buggies and one farm wagon in sight none was
bound his way, and so he crossed to the dusty road that led northward
and set out through the warm, still end of a September day. There was
no hurry and so he went slowly, limping a little now and then, and
thinking busily of the new life to begin on Monday. He wondered whether
he would get on satisfactorily with Cummings and Wright, whether the
lessons at high school would prove terribly hard, whether he would
find any friends amongst the boys there. And finally, with an uneasy
sensation, he wondered how long the small amount of money he had
saved up during the past two years would last him in Amesville. What
experience he had had of city prices for food alarmed him when he
thought of satisfying that very healthy appetite of his! Well, he would
just have to do the best he could, and if doing the best he could meant
going hungry sometimes he’d go hungry! At all events, that money had to
last him until next summer, when, either through some more advantageous
arrangement with Cummings and Wright or by hiring himself again to one
of the neighbouring farmers, he could once more put himself in funds.
These reflections and resolves brought him in sight of the farm, and
the next moment the joyful barking of Star, his collie dog, announced
his advent. Star came leaping and bounding through the gate and down
the road to meet him.
“Hello, old chap!” said Tom, patting the dog’s head. “I guess I’m going
to miss you more’n anything or anybody when I go away. I wish I could
take you with me. I just do. But I guess you’d pretty near starve to
death over there to Amesville. There wouldn’t be any buttermilk, Star,
and there wouldn’t be any corn-bread, either, I guess. Well, I’ll be
back on Saturdays to see you, anyway. What you been doing all day? Did
you miss me?”
Star replied dog-fashion that he had missed his master very much,
and, by licking his hand and doing his best to lick his face as
well, accorded him a royal welcome home. Aunt Patty--she was no real
relation, but Tom had always called her aunt--was setting the table for
supper as he went in. She was a small, wrinkled little old woman, with
a sharp tongue and a warm heart, and had kept house for Uncle Israel
for nearly twenty years. She paused with a salt-cellar in each hand and
viewed Tom and Star critically.
“Back again, be you?” she asked in her sharp, thin voice. “An’ that
pesky dog-critter’s back again, too, ain’t he? If I’ve put him out o’
here once to-day, I’ve put him out forty times! Gettin’ the place all
upsot an’ bringin’ in dirt! Well, what you find out this time?”
“Lots, Aunt Patty,” answered Tom cheerfully. “Star, you lie down like a
good dog or Aunt Patty won’t love you any more.”
Aunt Patty sniffed. “Well, can’t you tell a body anything?” she asked.
“You got most as close a tongue as your uncle, you have!”
“I’ve got a job, Aunt Patty. Cummings and Wright, the hardware firm.
Two and a half a week. How’s that?”
“’Tain’t much for a big strong boy like you to earn, I’d say.”
“But I can only be there before and after school. I think two and a
half’s pretty good wages, considering. And I found a room for a dollar
and seventy-five cents. So that leaves me a quarter to the good, you
see.”
“Leaves you seventy-five cents, don’t it? Where’s all your ’rithmetic?”
“Ye-es, I meant seventy-five,” responded Tom slowly. “Where’s uncle?”
“Round somewheres. Land sakes, don’t expect me to keep track of him, do
you? Likely he’s in the cow-shed. John ain’t brought in the milk yet.”
“I guess I’d ought to go out and help,” mused Tom. “Only if I do I’ll
get this suit dirty, maybe.”
“You keep away from the barn in them clothes, Tom Pollock. I guess
there ain’t any more work than two able-bodied men can do. Supper’s
most ready, anyhow. Ain’t you hungry?”
“I guess so,” Tom answered uncertainly. “I’ll go up and wash my hands.”
When Tom returned a few minutes later, Uncle Israel and John Green,
the hired man, had come in, and Aunt Patty summoned them to supper.
Uncle Israel folded his big, bony hands on the edge of the red cloth,
bent his head, and said grace in his rumbling voice. Then he turned his
sharp, cold-blue eyes on Tom.
“What all’d you do to-day, Tom?” he asked.
Tom recounted the day’s adventures in detail, neglecting, however, to
explain the terms of Cummings and Wright’s offer. Uncle Israel listened
attentively, eating steadily all the time as though taking food was a
duty he owed rather than a pleasure. He was a tall man just past fifty
years of age--Tom already showed promise of being like him as far as
height was concerned--with a large, strongly-built frame on which he
carried little flesh. He was long of arm and leg and neck, and his face
held two prominent features--the large straight nose and the deeply
set eyes which had the frosty glitter of blue ice. His face, tanned
and weathered, was clean-shaven except at the chin, where a small tuft
of grizzled beard wagged in time to the working of his strong jaws.
The face was rather a handsome one, on the whole, handsome in a hard
and rugged fashion that somehow reminded one of the granite hills of
his native state. He said little during Tom’s recital, or afterward.
A grunt or a brusque question now and then was about the sum of his
contribution to conversation.
After supper, when Aunt Patty was rattling the pans and dishes at
the kitchen sink and John Green had gone out to the steps to smoke
his pipe, Tom took his courage in hand and told his uncle about the
arrangement to which he had agreed with Mr. Cummings. Uncle Israel
heard him through in silence, frowning the while. “And so,” concluded
Tom, “I thought maybe you’d be willing to make up the fifty cents to
me, sir. Would you?”
“No.”
“You mean you don’t want I should pay the bill to them that way?”
“You tell Cummings that that pump’s here and he can come and get it
any time he wants to. I told him that ’most six years ago, I guess.
It wan’t no good. It broke down the second time I hitched it up to the
mill. I told him then I didn’t intend to pay good money for it. He said
I was to bring it in and he’d take it up with the factory. I said: ‘You
come and fetch it. I’ve lugged it one way. Now it’s your turn.’ If you
hand him over fifty cents a week out of your wages, that’s your affair.
It’s got nothing to do with me.”
Tom considered awhile. Finally, “Where is that pump, Uncle?” he asked.
“Under the barn. Or it was last time I seen it. Maybe it’s rusted to
pieces by now. I don’t know, nor I don’t care.”
“Well, sir, if I don’t do like he says, he won’t take me to work. And
it seems to me it’s better to get two dollars than nothing. Course I
might find a job somewhere else, but”--and Tom sighed--“I went to ’most
fifty places, I guess. Is--is the pump worth anything at all, sir?”
Mr. Bowles shrugged his shoulders. “Might be worth a few dollars for
old iron.”
“Then if I pay for it may I have it?”
“What for?”
“Just to see if I can sell it and make some money on it. I guess I’ve
got to pay for it, sir, and if you don’t want it----”
“It ain’t mine to give,” said his uncle. “If Cummings wants to sell it
to you, all right. You can tell him from me, though, that there’s a
little matter of six dollars due me for storing it all this time.” And
Uncle Israel’s eyes twinkled and the corners of his mouth moved with
the nearest thing to a smile that he was ever guilty of.
“Then I’d have to pay that, too, before I could have it?” asked Tom.
“You tell him that,” responded Uncle Israel. Then he took up a
newspaper, settled his spectacles on the bridge of his big nose, and
edged his chair to the light. The subject was closed. Tom recognised
the fact and, stifling a sigh, found his Latin book and took himself
off to study. Monday loomed up startlingly near.