The Best Short Stories of 1917 Part 15

Abbie did not realize how numb the cold had made her body until she tried to sit down.

"Maggie, give her a cup of that hot tea," Owen Frazer continued. "She's been almost froze, an' I guess she'll have a cup of tea. Hey! Miss Snover?"

"I want to talk to Old Chris."

"Talk to Old Chris! Talk to Old Chris, you want to?"

Owen Frazer looked at his wife. Abbie Snover didn't know, yet she had walked all the way to Mile Corners in the cold. He couldn't understand it.

"What'd you come for, anyhow, Abbie Snover?"

"Now, Owen, you wait!" Owen Frazer's wife turned to Abbie:

"Got lonesome, did you, all by yourself in that big barn of a house?"

"I want to talk to Old Chris," Abbie repeated.

"Was you so fond of him, then?"

Abbie made no answer. Owen Frazer went over to the sink and looked out of the window at the bed-tick smoldering on the rubbish heap. Owen Frazer's wife pushed open the door of the sitting-room, then stood back and turned to Abbie:

"You may be fine old family, Abbie Snover, but we're better. You turned Old Chris out, an' now you want to talk to him. All right, talk to him if you want to. He's in the parlor. Go on in now. Talk to him if you want to--go on in!"

The animosity in Mrs. Frazer's voice shook Abbie; she was disturbed; doubt came to her for the first time. As she went through the sitting-room, fear slowed her steps. Perhaps they had turned Old Chris away from her and she would have to go back alone, to live alone, for all the remaining years of her life, in that big house.

BOYS WILL BE BOYS[6]

[Note 6: Copyright, 1917, by The Curtis Publis.h.i.+ng Company.

Copyright, 1918, by Irvin S. Cobb.]

BY IRVIN S. COBB

From _The Sat.u.r.day Evening Post_

When Judge Priest, on this particular morning, came puffing into his chambers at the courthouse, looking, with his broad beam and in his costume of flappy, loose white ducks, a good deal like an old-fas.h.i.+oned full-rigger with all sails set, his black shadow, Jeff Poindexter, had already finished the job of putting the quarters to rights for the day.

The cedar water bucket had been properly replenished; the jagged f.l.a.n.g.e of a fifteen-cent chunk of ice protruded above the rim of the bucket; and alongside, on the appointed nail, hung the gourd dipper that the master always used. The floor had been swept, except, of course, in the corners and underneath things; there were evidences, in streaky scrolls of fine grit particles upon various flat surfaces, that a dusting brush had been more or less sparingly employed. A spray of trumpet flowers, plucked from the vine that grew outside the window, had been draped over the framed steel engraving of President Davis and his Cabinet upon the wall; and on the top of the big square desk in the middle of the room, where a small section of cleared green-blotter s.p.a.ce formed an oasis in a dry and arid desert of cluttered law journals and dusty doc.u.ments, the morning's mail rested in a little heap.

Having placed his old cotton umbrella in a corner, having removed his coat and hung it upon a peg behind the hall door, and having seen to it that a palm-leaf fan was in arm's reach should he require it, the Judge, in his billowy white s.h.i.+rt, sat down at his desk and gave his attention to his letters. There was an invitation from the Hylan B.

Gracey Camp of Confederate Veterans of Eddyburg, asking him to deliver the chief oration at the annual reunion, to be held at Mineral Springs on the twelfth day of the following month; an official notice from the clerk of the Court of Appeals concerning the affirmation of a judgment that had been handed down by Judge Priest at the preceding term of his own court; a bill for five pounds of a special brand of smoking tobacco; a notice of a lodge meeting--altogether quite a sizable batch of mail.

At the bottom of the pile he came upon a long envelope addressed to him by his t.i.tle, instead of by his name, and bearing on its upper right-hand corner several foreign-looking stamps; they were British stamps, he saw, on closer examination.

To the best of his recollection it had been a good long time since Judge Priest had had a communication by post from overseas. He adjusted his steel-bowed spectacles, ripped the wrapper with care and shook out the contents. There appeared to be several inclosures; in fact, there were several--a sheaf of printed forms, a doc.u.ment with seals attached, and a letter that covered two sheets of paper with typewritten lines. To the letter the recipient gave consideration first. Before he reached the end of the opening paragraph he uttered a profound grunt of surprise; his reading of the rest was frequently punctuated by small exclamations, his face meantime puckering up in interested lines. At the conclusion, when he came to the signature, he indulged himself in a soft low whistle. He read the letter all through again, and after that he examined the forms and the doc.u.ment which had accompanied it.

Chuckling under his breath, he wriggled himself free from the snug embrace of his chair arms and waddled out of his own office and down the long bare empty hall to the office of Sheriff Giles Birdsong. Within, that competent functionary, Deputy Sheriff Breck Quarles, sat at ease in his s.h.i.+rt sleeves, engaged, with the smaller blade of his pocketknife, in performing upon his finger nails an operation that combined the fine deftness of the manicure with the less delicate art of the farrier. At the sight of the Judge in the open doorway he hastily withdrew from a tabletop, where they rested, a pair of long thin legs, and rose.

"Mornin', Breck," said Judge Priest to the other's salutation. "No, thank you, son. I won't come in; but I've got a little job for you. I wisht, ef you ain't too busy, that you'd step down the street and see ef you can't find Peep O'Day fur me and fetch him back here with you. It won't take you long, will it?"

"No, suh--not very." Mr. Quarles reached for his hat and snuggled his shoulder holster back inside his unb.u.t.toned waistcoat. "He'll most likely be down round Gafford's stable. Whut's Old Peep been doin', Judge--gettin' himself in contempt of court or somethin'?" He grinned, asking the question with the air of one making a little joke.

"No," vouchsafed the Judge; "he ain't done nothin'. But he's about to have somethin' of a highly onusual nature done to him. You jest tell him I'm wishful to see him right away--that'll be sufficient, I reckin."

Without making further explanation, Judge Priest returned to his chambers and for the third time read the letter from foreign parts.

Court was not in session, and the hour was early and the weather was hot; n.o.body interrupted him. Perhaps fifteen minutes pa.s.sed. Mr. Quarles poked his head in at the door.

"I found him, suh," the deputy stated. "He's outside here in the hall."

"Much obliged to you, son," said Judge Priest. "Send him on in, will you, please?"

The head was withdrawn; its owner lingered out of sight of His Honor, but within earshot. It was hard to figure the presiding judge of the First Judicial District of the State of Kentucky as having business with Peep O'Day; and, though Mr. Quarles was no eavesdropper, still he felt a pardonable curiosity in whatsoever might transpire. As he feigned an absorbed interest in a tax notice, which was pasted on a blackboard just outside the office door, there entered the presence of the Judge a man who seemingly was but a few years younger than the Judge himself--a man who looked to be somewhere between sixty-five and seventy. There is a look that you may have seen in the eyes of ownerless but well-intentioned dogs--dogs that, expecting kicks as their daily portion, are humbly grateful for kind words and stray bones; dogs that are fairly yearning to be adopted by somebody--by anybody--being prepared to give to such a benefactor a most faithful doglike devotion in return.

This look, which is fairly common among masterless and homeless dogs, is rare among humans; still, once in a while you do find it there too. The man who now timidly shuffled himself across the threshold of Judge Priest's office had such a look out of his eyes. He had a long simple face, partly inclosed in gray whiskers. Four dollars would have been a sufficient price to pay for the garments he stood in, including the wrecked hat he held in his hands and the broken, misshaped shoes on his feet. A purchaser who gave more than four dollars for the whole in its present state of decrepitude would have been but a poor hand at bargaining.

The man who wore this outfit coughed in an embarra.s.sed fas.h.i.+on and halted, fumbling his ruinous hat in his hands.

"Howdy do?" said Judge Priest heartily. "Come in!"

The other diffidently advanced himself a yard or two.

"Excuse me, suh," he said apologetically; "but this here Breck Quarles he come after me and he said ez how you wanted to see me. 'Twas him ez brung me here, suh."

Faintly underlying the drawl of the speaker was just a suspicion--a mere trace, as you might say--of a l.a.b.i.al softness that belongs solely and exclusively to the children, and in a diminis.h.i.+ng degree to the grandchildren, of native-born sons and daughters of a certain small green isle in the sea. It was not so much a suggestion of a brogue as it was the suggestion of the ghost of a brogue; a brogue almost extinguished, almost obliterated, and yet persisting through the generations--South of Ireland struggling beneath south of Mason and Dixon's Line.

"Yes," said the Judge; "that's right. I do want to see you." The tone was one that he might employ in addressing a bashful child. "Set down there and make yourself at home."

The newcomer obeyed to the extent of perching himself on the extreme forward edge of a chair. His feet shuffled uneasily where they were drawn up against the cross rung of the chair.

The Judge reared well back, studying his visitor over the tops of his gla.s.ses with rather a quizzical look. In one hand he balanced the large envelope which had come to him that morning.

"Seems to me I heared somewheres, years back, that your regular Christian name was Paul--is that right?" he asked.

"Sh.o.r.ely is, suh," a.s.sented the ragged man, surprised and plainly grateful that one holding a supremely high position in the community should vouchsafe to remember a fact relating to so inconsequent an atom as himself. "But I ain't heared it fur so long I come mighty nigh furgittin' it sometimes, myself. You see, Judge Priest, when I wasn't nothin' but jest a shaver folks started in to callin' me Peep--on account of my last name bein O'Day, I reckin. They been callin' me so ever since. Fust off, 'twas Little Peep, and then jest plain Peep; and now it's got to be Old Peep. But my real ent.i.tled name is Paul, jest like you said, Judge--Paul Felix O'Day."

"Uh-huh! And wasn't your father's name Philip and your mother's name Katherine Dwyer O'Day?"

"To the best of my recollection that's partly so, too, suh. They both of 'em up and died when I was a baby, long before I could remember anything a-tall. But they always told me my paw's name was Phil, or Philip. Only my maw's name wasn't Kath--Kath--wasn't whut you jest now called it, Judge. It was plain Kate."

"Kate or Katherine--it makes no great difference," explained Judge Priest. "I reckin the record is straight this fur. And now think hard and see ef you kin ever remember hearin' of an uncle named Daniel O'Day--your father's brother."

The answer was a shake of the tousled head.

"I don't know nothin' about my people. I only jest know they come over frum some place with a funny name in the Old Country before I was born.

The onliest kin I ever had over here was that there no-'count triflin'

nephew of mine--Perce Dwyer--him that uster hang round this town. I reckin you call him to mind, Judge?"