The Calico Cat Part 3

"Pete's hurt bad," he said, shaking his head, "hurt bad. I've taken his case. Young Edwards is going to see trouble."

The speech frightened poor Mr. Peaslee, and he was hardly rea.s.sured by the skeptical smile of Squire Tucker, and his remark that he would believe that Lamoury was hurt when he saw him. The squire had small faith in either Lamoury or Hibbard. He knew them both.

But Mr. Peaslee returned home with dragging feet. Silent and preoccupied all the evening, he went to bed early--but not to sleep.

Long he lay awake and tossed, while the Calico Cat wailed on the rear fence--exultant, triumphant, insulting.

And when he did finally get to sleep, he dreamed that he was being prosecuted in court by--was it Jake Hibbard, with the green patch over his eye, or the Calico Cat, with the black patch over hers? He could not tell, study the fantastic, ominous figure of his prosecutor as he would!

[Ill.u.s.tration: Cat sitting on post looking forward.]

III

Immediately after breakfast on Monday morning Mr. Peaslee, in a mood of desperate self-sacrifice, started up-town to buy a knife--for Jim!

All day long on Sunday, when he had nothing to do but think, he had struggled between his fear of exposure and his sorrow for the boy.

The upshot was a determination to "make it up to him" by giving him a knife. He had in his mind's eye a marvel--stag-horn handle, four blades, saw, awl, file, hoof-hook, corkscrew! Such a knife as that, he felt, would console any boy for being arrested. "Most likely 't will end right there," he said to himself.

"I guess I'd better go to Farley's," he thought, as he walked along.

"Farley owes money to the bank. He won't dare to stick it on like the rest."

But when he entered the store and looked about, his face fell. Mr.

Farley was not there! Willie Potter, Farley's clerk, a young man peculiarly distasteful to Solomon, lounged forward with a toothpick in his mouth. Mr. Peaslee had half a mind to go, but the thought of poor Jim held him back.

"What will you have to-day, Mr. Peaslee?" inquired Willie, affably.

He winked at young Dannie Snow, who sat grinning on a keg of nails, as much as to say, "Watch me have some fun with the old man."

"I thought mebbe I'd look at some jack-knives," said Solomon, eyeing Willie distrustfully.

"Yes, sir, I guess you want the best, regardless of expense," said Willie, impudently. He well understood his customer's dislike for spending a penny. Stepping behind the counter, he drew from the show-case and held up admiringly the most costly knife in the store.

"Here, now, what do you say to this? Very superior article. Best horn, ten blades, best razor steel. Three-fifty, and cheap at the price. Can't be beat this side of Boston. Just the article for you, sir."

And he winked again at Dannie Snow, who was pink with suppressed merriment.

"Well, now, well, now," said Solomon, taking the knife in his hand and pretending to examine it closely. "That's a pretty knife, to be sure,--to--be--sure. Real showy, ain't it? Looks as if 't was made to sell--all outside and no money in the bank, like some young fellers ye see."

Dannie Snow giggling outright, Mr. Peaslee turned and gazed at him in mild inquiry. Young Potter turned a dull red. He was addicted to radiant cravats and gauzy silk handkerchiefs, and from his "salary"

of eight dollars a week he did not save much.

But just the same, Mr. Peaslee had been staggered at the price.

Pretending still to examine the knife which Willie had given him, he squinted past it at the contents of the gla.s.s show-case on which his elbows rested. There all sorts of knives confronted him, each in its little box, in which was stuck a card stating the price,--$1.50, $1.25, 90c, 45c. The cheapest one would eat up the proceeds of three dozen eggs at fifteen cents a dozen--a good price for eggs! He had forgotten that knives cost so much.

"A good knife ain't any use to a boy," he reflected. "Break it in a day, lose it in a week. 'T wouldn't be any real kindness to him.

Just wastin' money."

He pointed finally to a stubby, wooden-handled knife with one big blade, marked 25c.

"There, now," said he, "that's what I call a knife. Good and strong, and no folderol. Guarantee the steel, don't ye?"

He opened the blade and drew it speculatively across his calloused old thumb, while with his mild blue eyes, which his spectacles enormously exaggerated, he fixed the humbled Willie.

"That's a good knife for the money," said that young man.

"Hand-forged."

"Sho now, ye don't say so," said Mr. Peaslee. "I guess ye give a discount, don't ye? Farley always allows me a little suthin'."

"You can have it for twenty-one cents," said Willie, much irritated.

"Charge it?"

"Guess I better pay cash," Mr. Peaslee answered hastily. If it were charged, his wife would question the item.

Producing an enormous wallet--very worn and very flat--from his cavernous pocket, he deliberately searched until he found a Canadian ten-cent piece, and adding to it enough to make up the price, handed it to Potter, and left the store.

Mr. Peaslee, who remembered no gift from his father other than a very occasional big copper cent, thought himself pretty generous.

Had he not spent pretty nearly the price of two dozen eggs?

But now a question occurred to him which he had not thought of before. How was he to get the knife to Jim? A gift from him would excite surprise, perhaps suspicion. It must not be known who had sent it. Ah, there was the post office! Going in, he pushed the little box through the barred window.

"Say, Cyrus," he said to the postmaster, "kinder weigh up this consignment for me, will ye?"

The postmaster weighed the box.

"That will cost you six cents," he said.

"Thank ye," returned Mr. Peaslee, and dropping the box into his deep pocket, departed. Half a dozen eggs more to get it to his next-door neighbor!

"'T ain't right," he muttered, "'t ain't right."

Uncertain what to do with his gift, but feeling, on the whole, pretty virtuous, Mr. Peaslee now started home. He thought that Jim would not be going to school, but would wait at home for the threatened coming of the constable; but still he was not sure, and he wanted to keep the boy under his eye.

Suddenly he straightened. There was Judge Ames walking up the street, valise in hand, just from the early morning train. He had come a few days before the opening of court. Mr. Peaslee knew him slightly, and stood much in awe of him. He was greatly pleased when the judge stopped and shook hands with him.

"I am glad to hear, Mr. Peaslee," said the judge, in his precise, lawyer-like utterance, "that you are to be on the grand jury. We need men like you there."

"Thank ye, judge, thank ye," said Mr. Peaslee, overcome. And he walked on home, quite convinced that a person of his importance in the community should not be sacrificed to the comfort of any small boy.

"And I've done right by the little feller, I've done right," he a.s.sured himself, feeling the knife.

As he turned into his own yard, he cast an anxious eye over to the Edwards house. There sat Jim, elbows on knees, chin on hands, staring into s.p.a.ce. Jim was thinking that his father, had he been a pirate chief, would not have wiped a filial tear from his eye whenever he thought of his mother; and the boy's face showed it.

The spectacle greatly depressed Mr. Peaslee. The smallest, faintest question entered his mind whether a twenty-five-cent knife would console such melancholy.

To give himself a countenance while he watched events, Solomon got a rake and began gathering together the few autumn leaves which had fluttered down in his front yard. It was not useless labor, for they would "come in handy" later in "banking up" the house.

And so, presently, he saw Sam Barton, the constable, his big shoulders rolling as he walked, advancing down the street. Mr.