Part 10

Suddenly Carl raised his head--he had caught a glimpse of a flying apron whipping round the stable door. He knew the pattern. It always gave him a lump in his throat, and some little creepings down his back when he saw it. Then he laid down the currycomb. The next instant there came a sound as of a barrel-head knocked in by a mixing-shovel, and Stumpy flew through the door, followed by Carl on the run. The familiar bit of calico was Jennie's lost apron. One half was inside the goat, the other half was in the hand of the Swede.

Carl hesitated for a moment, looked cautiously about the yard, and walked slowly toward the house, his eyes on the fragments. He never went to the house except when he was invited, either to hear Pop read or to take his dinner with the other men. At this instant Jennie came running out, the shawl about her head.

“Oh, Carl, did you find my apron? It blew away, and I thought it might have gone into the yard.”

“Yas, mees; an' da goat see it too--luke!” extending the tattered fragments, anger and sorrow struggling for the mastery in his face.

“Well, I never! Carl, it was a bran'-new one. Now just see, all the strings torn off and the top gone! I'm just going to give Stumpy a good beating.”

Carl suggested that he run after the goat and bring him back; but Jennie thought he was down the road by this time, and Carl had been working all the morning and must be tired. Besides, she must get some wood.

Carl instantly forgot the goat. He had forgotten everything, indeed, except the trim little body who stood before him looking into his eyes. He glowed all over with inward warmth and delight. Nobody had ever cared before whether he was tired. When he was a little fellow at home at Memlo his mother would sometimes worry about his lifting the big baskets of fish all day, but he could not remember that anybody else had ever given his feelings a thought. All this flashed through his mind as he returned Jennie's look.

“No, no! I not tire--I brang da wood.” And then Jennie said she never meant it, and Carl knew she didn't, of course; and then she said she had never thought of such a thing, and he agreed to that; and they talked so long over it, standing out in the radiance of the noonday sun, the color coming and going in both their faces,--Carl playing aimlessly with his tippet tassel, and Jennie plaiting and pinching up the ruined apron,--that the fire in the kitchen stove went out, and the Big Gray grew hungry and craned his long neck around the shed and whinnied for Carl, and even Stumpy the goat forgot his hair-breadth escape, and returned near enough to the scene of the robbery to look down at it from the hill above.

There is no telling how long the Big Gray would have waited if Cully had not come home to dinner, bringing another horse with Patsy perched on his back. The brewery was only a short distance, and Tom always gave her men a hot meal at the house whenever it was possible. Had any other horse been neglected, Cully would not have cared; but the Big Gray which he had driven ever since the day Tom brought him home,--“Old Blowhard,” as he would often call him (the Gray was a bit wheezy),--the Big Gray without his dinner!

“Hully gee! Look at de bloke a-jollying Jinnie, an' de Blowhard a-starvin'. Say, Patsy,”--lifting him down,--“hold de line till I git de Big Gray a bite. Git on ter Carl, will ye! I'm a-goin'--ter--tell de--boss,”--with a threatening air, weighing each word--“jes soon as she gits back. Ef I don't I'm a chump.”

At sight of the boys, Jennie darted into the house, and Carl started for the stable, his head in the clouds, his feet on air.

“No; I feed da horse, Cully,”--jerking at his halter to get him away from Cully.

“A hell ov 'er lot ye will! I'll feed him meself. He's been home an hour now, an' he ain't half rubbed down.”

Carl made a grab for Cully, who dodged and ran under the cart. Then a lump of ice whizzed past Carl's ear.

“Here, stop that!” said Tom, entering the gate. She had been in the city all the morning--“to look after her poor Tom,” Pop said. “Don't ye be throwing things round here, or I'll land on top of ye.”

“Well, why don't he feed de Gray, den? He started afore me, and dey wants de Gray down ter de brewery, and he up ter de house a-buzzin' Jinnie.”

“I go brang Mees Jan's apron; da goat eat it oop.”

“Ye did, did ye! What ye givin' us? Didn't I see ye a-chinnin' 'er whin I come over de hill--she a-leanin' up ag'in' de fence, an' youse a-talkin' ter 'er, an' ole Blowhard cryin' like his heart was broke?”

“Eat up what apron?” said Tom, thoroughly mystified over the situation.

“Stumpy eat da apron--I brang back--da half ta Mees Jan.”

“An' it took ye all the mornin' to give it to her?” said Tom thoughtfully, looking Carl straight in the eye, a new vista opening before her.

That night when the circle gathered about the lamp to hear Pop read, Carl was missing. Tom had not sent for him.

VII. THE CONTENTS OF CULLY'S MAIL

When Walking Delegate Crimmins had recovered from his amazement, after his humiliating defeat at Tom's hands, he stood irresolute for a moment outside her garden gate, indulged at some length in a form of profanity peculiar to his class, and then walked direct to McGaw's house.

That worthy Knight met him at the door. He had been waiting for him.

Young Billy McGaw also saw Crimmins enter the gate, and promptly hid himself under the broken-down steps. He hoped to overhear what was going on when the two went out again. Young Billy's inordinate curiosity was quite natural. He had heard enough of the current talk about the tenements and open lots to know that something of a revengeful and retaliatory nature against the Grogans was in the air; but as nobody who knew the exact details had confided them to him, he had determined upon an investigation of his own. He not only hated Cully, but the whole Grogan household, for the pounding he had received at his hands, so he was anxious to get even in some way.

After McGaw had locked both doors, shutting out his wife and little Jack, their youngest, he took a bottle from the shelf, filled two half-tumblers, and squaring himself in his chair, said:--

“Did ye see her, Crimmy?”