Part 12

The lady of the house watches them as Michael inquires: “Whur next, mum?” and bangs the door of the carriage. Then she turns and says to herself: “Huh!” Mrs. Thorpe is that instant observing: “Did you notice that crayon enlargement she had hanging up? Wouldn't it kill you?” To which the other lady responds: “Well, between you and I, Mrs. Thorpe, if I couldn't have a real hand-painted picture I wouldn't have nothing at all.”

The lady of the house bakes a cake. She'll show them a thing or two in the cake line. And while it is in the oven what does that little dev--, that provoking Freddie, do but see if he can't jump across the kitchen in two jumps. Fall? What cake wouldn't fall? Of course it falls. But it is too late now to bake another, and if they don't like it, they know what they can do. She doesn't know that she's under any obligation to them.

Mrs. John Van Meter hears Freddie say off the little speech his mother taught him--Oh, you may be sure she'd be there as large as life, taking charge of everything, just as if she had been one of the workers, when, to my certain knowledge, she hadn't been to one of the committee meetings, not a one. I declare I don't know what Mr. Craddock is thinking of to let her boss every body around the way she does--and she smiles and says: “It's all right. It's just lovely. Tell your mamma Mrs. Van Meter is ever and ever so much obliged to her. Isn't he a dear boy?” And when he is gone, she says: “What are we ever going to do with all this cake? It seems as if everybody has sent cake. And whatever possessed that woman to attempt a cake, I--can't imagine. Ts! ts! ts! H-well. Oh, put it somewhere. Maybe we can work it off on the country people. Mrs. Filkins, your coffee smells PERfectly grand! Perfectly grand. Do you think we'll have spoons enough?”

The Tournament prizes are exhibited in the windows of the leading furniture emporium at the corner of Main and Center, each with a card attached bearing the name of the donor in distinctly legible characters. Old man Hagerman has been mowing all the rag-weed and cuckle-burrs along the line of march, and the lawns have had an unusual amount of shaving and sprinkling. Out near the end of Center Street, the grandstand has been going up, tiers of seats rising from each curb line. The street has been rolled and sprinkled and scraped until it is in fine condition for a running track. Why don't you pick up that pebble and throw it over into the lot? Suppose some runner should slip on that stone and fall and hurt himself, you'd be to blame.

The day before the Tournament, they hang the banner:

“WELCOME VOLUNTEER FIREMEN”

from Case's drugstore across to the Furniture Emporium. Along the line of march you may see the man of the house up on a step-ladder against the front porch, with his hands full of drapery and his mouth full of tacks. His wife is backing toward the geranium bed to get a good view, cocking her head on one side.

“How 'v vif?” he asks as well as he can for the tacks.

“Little higher. Oh, not so much. Down a little. Whope! that's .... Oh, plague take the firemen! Just look at that! Mercy! Mercy!”

The man of the house can't turn his head.

“Oh, I wouldn't have had it happen for I don't know what! Ts! Ts! Ts! That lovely silverleaf geranium that Mrs. Pritchard give me a slip of. Broke right off! Oh, my! My! My! Do you s'pose it'd grow if I was to stick it into the ground just as it is with all them buds on it?”

The man of the house lets one end of the drapery go and empties his mouth of tacks into his disengaged hand.

“I don't know. Ow! jabbed right into my gum! But I can tell you this: If you think I'm going to stick up on this ladder all morning while you carry on about some fool old geranium that you can just as well fuss with when I'm gone, why, you're mighty much mistaken.”

“Well, you needn't take my head off. I feel awful about that geranium.”

“Well, why don't you look where you're going? Is this right?”

“Yes, I told you. I wish now I'd done it myself. I can't ask you to do a thing about the house but there's a row raised right away.”

People that don't want to go to the trouble of tacking up these alphabet flags on the edge of the veranda eaves (it takes fourteen of them to spell “WELCOME FIREMEN”), say they think a handsome flag--a really handsome one, not one of these twenty-five centers--is as pretty and rich looking a decoration as a body can put up.

Tents are raised in the vacant lots along Center Street, and counters knocked together for the sale of ice-cold lemonade, lemo, lemo, lemo, made in the shade, with a spade, by an old maid, lemo, lemo. Here y' are now, gents, gitch nice cool drink, on'y five a glass. There is even the hook for the ice-cream candy man to throw the taffy over when he pulls it. I like to watch him. It makes me dribble at the mouth to think about it.

The man that sells the squawking toys and the rubber balloons on sticks is in town. All he can say is: “Fi' cent.” He will blow up the balloons tomorrow morning. The men with the black-velvet covered shields, all stuck full of “souvenirs,” are here, and the men with the little canes. I guess we'll have a big crowd if it doesn't rain. What does the paper say about the weather?

The boys have been playing a new game for some time past, but it is only this evening that you notice it. The way of it is this: You take an express-wagon--it has to have real wheels: these sawed-out wheels are too baby--and you tie a long rope to the tongue and fix loops on the rope, so that the boys can put each a loop over his shoulder. (You want a good many boys.) And you get big, long, thick pieces of rag and you take and tie them so as to make a big, big, long piece, about as long as from here to 'way over there. And you lay this in the wagon, kind of in folds like. Then you go up to where they water the horses and two of you go at the back end of the wagon and the rest put the loops over their shoulders, and one boy says, “Are you ready?” and he has a Fourth of July pistol and he shoots off a cap. And when you hear that, you run like the dickens and the two boys behind the wagon let out the hose (the big, long, thick piece of rag) and fix it so it lies about straight on the ground. And when you have run as far as the hose will reach, the boy with the Fourth of July pistol says: “Twenty-eight and two-fifths,” and that's the game. And the kids don't like for big folks to stand and watch them, because they always make fun so.

In other towns they have Boys' Companies organized strictly for Tournament purposes. There was talk of having one here. Mat. King, the assistant chief, was all for having one so that we could compete in what he calls “the juveline contests,” but it fell through somehow.

Along about sun-up you hear the big farm-wagons clattering into town, chairs in the wagon bed, and Paw, and Maw, and Mary Elizabeth, and Martin Luther, and all the family, clean down to Teedy, the baby. He's named after Theodore Roosevelt, and they have the letter home now, framed and hanging up over the organ. But for all the wagon is so full, there is room for a big basket covered with a red-ended towel. (Seems to me I smell fried chicken, don't you?)

I just thought I'dt see if you'd bite. You've formed your notions of country people from “The Old Homestead” and these by-gosh-Mirandy novels. The real farmers, nowadays, drive into town in double-seated carriages with matched bays, curried so that you can see to comb your hair in their glossy sides. The single rigs sparkle in the sun, conveying young men and young women of such clean-cut, high-bred features as to make us wonder. And yet I don't know why we should wonder, either. They all come from good old stock. The young fellows run a little too strongly to patent-leather shoes and their horses are almost too skittish for my liking, but the girls are all right. If their clothes set better than you thought they would, why, you must remember that they subscribe for the very same fashion magazines that you do, and there is such a thing as a mail-order business in this country, even if you aren't aware of it.

All the little boys in town are out with their baskets chanting sadly:

PEANUTS? FIVE A BAG

You 'll hear that all day long.

But there isn't much going on before the excursion trains come in. Then things begin to hop. The grand marshal and his aides gallop through the streets as if they were going for the doctor. The trains of ten and fifteen coaches pile up in the railroad yard, and the yardmaster nearly goes out of his mind. People are so anxious to get out of the cars, in which they have been packed and jammed for hours, that they don't mind a little thing like being run over by a switching engine. Every platform is just one solid chunk of summer hats and babies and red shirts and alto horns. They have been nearly five hours coming fifty miles. Stopped at every station and sidetracked for all the regular trains. Such a time! Lots of fun, though. The fellows got out and pulled flowers, and seed cucumbers, and things and threw them at folks. You never saw such cut-ups as they are. Pretty good singers, too. Good part of the way, they sung “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean,” and “How Can I Bear to Leave Thee,” nice and slow, you know, a good deal of tenor and not much bass, and plenty of these “minor chords.” (Yes, I know, some people call them “barber-shop chords,” but I think “minor” is a nicer name.)

The band played “Hiawatha” eighteen times. One old fellow got on at Huntsville, and he says, to Joe Bangs (that's the leader), “Shay,” he says, “play 'Turkey in er Straw,' won't you? Aw, go on. Play it. Thass goof feller. Go on.”