The Bishop of Cottontown Part 44

He pressed her hand, and raising his hat, was gone.

As he drove away he turned and looked at her slipping across the lawn in the twilight. In his eyes was a look of triumphant excitement.

"To own her--such a creature--G.o.d--it were worth risking my neck."

The mention of Harry brought back all her bitter recklessness to Helen. She was but a child and her road, indeed, was hard. And as she turned at the old gate and looked back at the vanis.h.i.+ng buggy she said:

"Had he asked me this evening I'd--yes--I'd go to the end of the world with him. I'd go--go--go--and I care not how."

Richard Travis was in a jolly mood at the supper table that night, and Harry became jolly also, impertinently so. He had not said a word about his cousin being with Helen, but it burned in his breast, and he awaited his chance to mention it.

"I have thought up a fable since I have been at supper, Cousin Richard. Shall I tell you?"

"Oh"--with a cynical smile--"do!"

"Well," began Harry unabashed, and with many sly winks and much histrionic effort, "it is called the 'Fox and the Lion.' Now a fox in the pursuit ran down a beautiful young doe and was about to devour her when the lion came up and with a roar and a sweep of his paw, took her saying...."

"'Get out of the way, you whelp,'" said his cousin, carrying the fable on, "for I perceive you are not even a fox, but a coyote, since no fox was ever known to run down a doe."

The smile was gradually changed on his face to a cruel sneer, and Harry ceased talking with a suddenness that was marked.

CHAPTER XVII

THE WHIPPER-IN

When the mill opened the next day, there was work for Jud Carpenter.

He came in and approached the superintendent's desk briskly.

"Well, suh, hu' many to-day?" he asked.

Kingsley looked over his list of absentees.

"Four, and two of them spinners. Carpenter, you must go at once and see about it. They are playing off, I am sure."

"Lem'me see the list, suh,"--and he ran his eye over the names.

"Bud Billings--plague his old crotchety head--. He kno's that machine's got to run, whether no. Narthin's the matter with him--bet a dollar his wife licked him last night an' he's mad about it."

"That will do us no good," said Kingsley--"what he is mad about. That machine must be started at once. The others you can see afterwards."

Carpenter jerked his slouch hat down over his eyes and went quickly out.

In half an hour he was back again. His hat was off, his face was red, his s.h.a.ggy eyebrows quivered with angry determination, as, with one hand in the collar of the frightened Bud, he pulled the slubber into the superintendent's presence.

Following her husband came Mrs. Billings--a small, bony, wiry, black-eyed woman, with a firmly set mouth and a perpetual thunder-cloud on her brow--perhaps the shadow of her coa.r.s.e, crow-black hair.

While Jud dragged him, she carried a stick and prodded Bud in the rear. Nor was she chary in abuse.

Jerked into the superintendent's presence, Bud's scared eyes darted here and there as if looking for a door to break through, and all the time they were silently protesting. His hands, too, joined in the protest; one of them wagged beseechingly behind appealing to his spouse to desist--the other went through the same motion in front begging Jud Carpenter for mercy.

But not a word did he utter--not even a grunt did he make.

They halted as quickly as they entered. Bud's eyes sought the ceiling, the window, the floor,--anywhere but straight ahead of him.

His wife walked up to the superintendent's desk--she was hot and flushed. Her small black eyes, one of which was c.o.c.ked cynically, flashed fire, her coa.r.s.e hair fell across her forehead, or was plastered to her head with perspiration.

It was pathetic to look at Bud, with his deep-set, scared eyes.

Kingsley had never heard him speak a word, nor had he even been able to catch his eye. But he was the best slubber in the mill--tireless, pain-staking. His place could not be filled.

Bud was really a good-natured favorite of Kingsley and when the superintendent saw him, scared and panting, his tongue half out, with Jud Carpenter's hand still in his collar, he motioned to Jud to turn him loose.

"Uh--uh--" grunted Jud "--he will bolt sho!"

Kingsley noticed that Bud's head was bound with a cloth.

"What's the matter, Bud?" he asked kindly.

The slubber never spoke, but glanced at his wife, who stood glaring at him. Then she broke out in a thin, drawling, daring, poor-white voice--a ring of impertinence and even a challenge in it:

"I'll tell you'uns what's the matter with Bud. Bud Billings is got what most men needs when they begin to raise sand about their vittels for nothin'. I've busted a plate over his head."

She struck an att.i.tude before Kingsley which plainly indicated that she might break another one. It was also an att.i.tude which asked: "What are you going to do about it?"

Bud nodded emphatically--a nod that spoke more than words. It was a positive, unanimous a.s.sertion on his part that the plate had been broken there.

"Ne'ow, Mister Kingsley, you know yo'se'f that Bud is mighty slow mouthed--he don't talk much an' I have to do his talkin' fur him.

Ne'ow Bud don't intend for to be so mean"--she added a little softer--"but every month about the full of the moon, Bud seems to think somehow that it is about time fur him to make a fool of hisse'f again. He wouldn't say nothin' fur a month--he is quiet as a lam' an'

works steady as a clock--then all to once the fool spell 'ud hit him an' then some crockery 'ud have to be wasted.

"They ain't no reason for it, Mister Kingsley--Bud cyant sho' the rappin' of yo' finger fur havin' sech spells along towards the full of the moon. Bud cyant tell you why, Mister Kingsley, to save his soul--'cept that he jes' thinks he's got to do it an' put me to the expense of bustin' crockery.

"I stood it mighty nigh two years arter Bud and me was spliced, thinkin' maybe it war ther bed-bugs a-bitin' Bud, long towards the full of the moon. So I watched that pint an' killed 'em all long towards the first quarter with quicksilver an' the white of an egg.

Wal, Bud never sed a word all that month. He never opened his mouth an' he acted jes' lak a puf'fec' gentleman an' a dutiful dotin'

husband--(Bud wiped away a tear)--until the time come for the fool spell to hit 'im, an 'all to once you never seed sech a fool spell hit a man befo'.

"What you reckin' Bud done, Mister Kingsley? Bud Billins thar, what did he do? Got mad about his biscuits--it's the funny way the fool spell allers. .h.i.ts him, he never gits mad about anything but his biscuits. Why I cud feed Bud on dynamite an' he'd take it all right if he cu'd eat it along with his biscuits. Onct I put concentrated lye in his coffee by mistake. I'd never knowed it if the pup hadn't got some of it by mistake an' rolled over an' died in agony. I rushed to the mill thinkin' Bud ud' be dead, sho'--but he wa'nt. He never noticed it. I noticed his whiskers an' eyebrows was singed off an'

questioned 'im 'bout it and he 'lowed he felt sorter quare arter he drunk his coffee, an' full like, an' he belched an' it sot his whiskers an' eyebrows a-fiah, which ther same kinder puzzled him fur a while; but it must be biscuits to make him raise cain. It happened at the breakfas' table. Mind you, Mister Kingsley, Bud didn't say it to my face--no, he never says anything to my face--but he gits up an'

picks up the cat an' tells ther cat what he thinks of me--his own spliced an' wedded wife--sland'in' me to the cat."

She shook her finger in his face--"You know you did, Bud Billins--an'

what you reckin he told ther cat, Mister Kingsley--told her I was a--a--"

She gasped--she clinched her fist. Bud dodged an' tried to break away.

"Told him I was a--a--heifer!"