The Fair.
Poor Charlie! His life did not seem to him to be altogether agreeable.
Being fat and good-natured, the boys were rather disposed to pick on him. Then a standing vexation at school was his arithmetic. In addition to these things, he had a special trouble one day to grieve him. His class was reading a selection called the “Miller.” The teacher, Mr. Armstrong, permitted the members of the class to remain in their desks and there read. Charlie abused this privilege by clapping his head below his desk, and while the boys in another part of the room were reading, he was doing his best to pack away a corn-ball.
“Time enough,” he had concluded, “before it is my time to read, to have something good to pay for my old arithmetic.”
His mouth was full of corn-ball and preparing itself to take in more, when his teacher, watching the long detention of Charlie’s head in such a humble posture, and suspicious of the real reason, stole softly up behind Charlie and, looking over his shoulder, was puzzled to decide whether the corn-ball was going into Charlie or he into the corn-ball. He quietly stole back to his desk and there abruptly shouted, “Macomber, you may read about the ‘Miller’ at once.”
The shot struck. Charlie bounded up in great confusion, his month full of corn-ball!
“Hold, Macomber!” said the master, in a very sarcastic way. “It must be evident to you that a man cannot successfully read about the grinding of corn, and yet be grinding corn in his mouth at the same time.” Then he broke out into a roar, “Stand out in the floor! You may do any further grinding there. Stop after school, also!”
Unfortunate Charlie! When he went home at a late hour Aunt Stanshy was disposed to rebuke him for his tardiness. This was too much for Charlie. He broke out into a whimper: “I think I have a sad life, only scoldings at home and scoldings and arithmetic at school.”
“O, no!” said Aunt Stanshy, soothingly, guessing that the little fellow had had some trouble that day, and had been sufficiently punished for any fault; “O, no! not so bad as that! Haven’t you a pleasant home?”
“Yes—you—you are kind, I know, real kind.”
“Well, don’t think any thing more about it. Here is a big piece of mince pie.”
He had not eaten more than one half of his lunch when he felt very much comforted, and the outside world brightened very perceptibly. To comfort him still further Aunt Stanshy allowed him to go after several boys and bring them to the barn, and it was in connection with this gathering that a new and important enterprise was suggested by one of the boys.
“It’s something that will pay,” said Sid.
Every body wanted to believe it and was willing to help it along. Soon Charlie came running from the barn into the kitchen.
“Aunt Stanshy, will you please lend me your scales?”
“My what?”
“Your scales for weighing, please.”
“What on earth is it now?” exclaimed Aunt Stanshy. It was a—so the placard on the barn door stated—it was A FAIR!
Charlie did not have much to say about it, but through the remainder of the day often hummed, or smiled and chuckled complacently. When Aunt Stanshy had lighted the kerosene lamp that had a big lion’s claw for a base and boasted a yellow shade covered with green shepherdesses and blue sheep, then Charlie sat down at the center-table and for an hour was exceedingly busy. About eight he held up an object to Aunt Stanshy.
“What is that, Aunt Stanshy?” he asked.
“A rag-man,” she replied, promptly.
The artisan’s face dropped and a pout came out. A smile though quickly smoothed down the pout, and he exclaimed, in triumph, “Santa Claus! He’s a friend of our club! We thought we would be in season for Christmas, and people could buy their presents of us, and—and—will you buy?”
“I will—buy—that.”
“You will? I’ll give you a kiss for that,” and Aunt Stanshy’s young lover came up to her and in his delight gave her a kiss. Of a tuft of cotton Charlie had made a head. Another tuft furnished a body; two more supplied arms to work with, and two more supplied legs to stand on. Charlie put a three-cornered hat on Santa’s head and tied together the parts of his body with a girdle of pink worsted. A card on Santa announced the fact that he could be bought for TWO CENTS.
Charlie trembled when Aunt Stanshy’s eyes were directed toward the price lest she might not think it worth the money.
“What’s that?”
“Two cents,” replied Charlie, in fear.
“O! Well, I’ll give that.”
“You will?” said Charlie, in delight. “I’ll give you another kiss.”
“Charlie,” said the blushing Constantia, “you’ll make a fool of an old woman like me.”
In the night the lips of the sleeping Charlie parted as he said, with a smile, “Two cents!” When this good news of the first sale was announced to the club in the morning, it threw the members into a feverish excitement.
“First-rate opening, fellers,” declared the president, “even before we have opened any thing.”
“We don’t open,” said the governor, “till school is out to-night.”
“Let’s open now,” said Billy Grimes, in the excitement of his enthusiasm over the news;
“What a booby!” said the governor, in plain language. “We have got no things here yet, and there are no buyers, and we must all clear out to school in ten minutes.”
The governor’s massive logic crushed the foolish Billy at once.
“Let’s open in good style,” said the president, “and do it to-night.”
By fifteen minutes after four, just as soon as a lot of scampering, shouting boys could get to the barn, bringing pockets stuffed with “articles,” the fair was declared “opened.”
“But how dark it is!” said the president.
So it was. The boys had forgotten how early the sun was setting in the November days.
“Let’s postpone it till to-morrow afternoon, when there’s no school,” said Charlie.
“Who’s agreed?” asked the president.
“Me!” responded the club, vociferously. They all had prudently concluded to wait for the advent of more daylight, and, withdrawing from the barn, went down the yard talking as busily as if they were a lot of hens cackling after a successful venture at egg-laying. It had been left to Charlie to put above the notice, “FAIR,” the word “POSTPONED.”
“That will prevent any rush till morning, and save folks from being disappointed,” Sid had declared.
In the afternoon every thing was under way, and Aunt Stanshy went out to see the fair.
“I should never know the place, I must say,” remarked Aunt Stanshy, as her eyes swept the spot. There were several so-called “tables,” such as an old window-blind and a disused shelf propped up by various supports like boxes and barrels. These tables were covered with pieces of the old curtain, now doing service for the last time.
“Here is the confectionery table,” shouted Juggie. There were now on the table three pieces of molasses candy made by his grandmother. He had had twelve to start with, and, as he had sold none, the disposition of the missing nine pieces was a matter of grave suspicion.
“Here’s the toy table!” called out Charlie. He had a few paper dolls and a few “hand-painted” shells, the decorator being Sid, and prominent on the table was the cotton image of that friend of the club, Santa Claus.
“Buy a corner-copier stuffed wid candy!” shouted Juggie, holding up a brown paper tunnel into which he was about dropping a solitary piece of candy.
The governor had the “harvest table,” which was groaning under the weight of three pears and two papers of seed.
“What’s this?” asked Aunt Stanshy, stopping before a discarded mantel-piece resting on a rabbit-box and a coal-hod. On this “table” were autumn leaves, sprigs of hemlock, a few ferns, and one chrysanthemum blossom.
“Thith?” replied Pip, who, like all the others, had put on a “Sunday smile” to attract customers. “Thith ith a flower table. Will you buy a flower?”
“If I can see one,” said Aunt Stanshy, laughing.
“There,” said Pip, triumphantly holding up the lonely chrysanthemum. “One thent only! Thomething rare!”
“I’ll buy it, and here is the cent.”
“Cath!” sang out Pip, in tones of command, addressed to a supposed cash-boy.
No one responded.
“Cath!”
“Why, you are the cash-boy,” said the president, “and you bring the money to me, for I am the cashier.”
“I tend a counter,” squeaked Pip. A serious misunderstanding as to positions in the fair here threatened to arise, but it was all averted by the obliging Tony, who undertook to transport all bullion from the tables to the cashier’s office.
There now appeared the president’s little sister, “Callie Doodles,” as she was familiarly called.
“O, boys, she’s got a cent, for mother promised it to her! She isn’t a nail-one!” shouted her brother.
Nail-ones belonged to an inferior caste. This class included those who had been about the streets and yards, back of barns and in old corner-lots, picking up nails or cast-away bits of iron. Their currency was the more common. A hard-cash customer was about as common as bobolinks in December.
“Callie, come here and buy some fruit!”
“Don’t you want some candy, Callie?”
“Buy a toy, Callie!”
“Flowerth! flowerth!” were the various shouts greeting the cash customer. She was saluted eagerly, as hack-men hail the arrivals in the trains at a city station. Callie made no reply, but stubbed in a demure, dignified way, from table to table, finally halting where children’s strongest passion is sure to take them, at the candy table. Here she traded away her cash.
“And wont you try a piece?” said Juggie to Aunt Stanshy, displaying his stock of two pieces of candy. “Try dese goods.”
She graciously took the sample.
“How do you sell candy?”
“Cent a stick.”
“Well, I’ll take it.”
“Two cents,” said Juggie, prudently charging for the piece given on trial also.
As Aunt Stanshy left this enterprising trader, she heard a vigorous summons:
“Cash! cash!”
At the supper-table that night Charlie asked, “Aunty, what do you suppose we are going to have now in our club? Something at our fair, I mean?”
“A tornado.”
“No, a refreshment saloon; and the boys said they knew you would be in every day to buy something.”
“O dear!” groaned Aunt Stanshy, inwardly.
“We are going to have ice-cream, too, may be. We couldn’t afford it in summer.”
“Not in summer? Why, that’s the time when people want it most.”
“But we make ours out of snow, you know, and could only have it in cold weather.”
“Then I hope, for your sake, we may have some snow, and I see that the clouds look like it. But the weather is getting colder nowadays, and if you have your snow, and so can make your ice-cream, it may be so cold that you will have no customers.”
“We will risk that. Ice-cream always pays. Ours does, at any rate.”
“Snow is coming, I guess, for it looks like a change in the weather.”
A change, indeed, was setting in. The river indicated it. It was as smooth and glassy as if Aunt Stanshy’s flat iron had been over it and pressed every wrinkle and ripple down. The air was light. The smoke from the houses and the steam from the only tug that the commerce of the town could afford to support fell, and fluttered downward in thin veils. Overhead there was a mass of gray cloud halting directly above the town, and looking too lazy ever to stir again.
“Storm comin’!” declared Simes Badger to all his cronies at Silas Trefethen’s store. “Wind is sou’ already.”
It did not stay “sou’,” but swung around to the east, then worked into the north-east, and then all through the night the wind was sifting cotton-wool down on all the streets as if carpeting them, on all the roofs as if blanketing them, into all the cracks in the walls of houses and barns as if it would chink them up and make them tight for winter.
Chancing to look out of the window as soon as he was awake the morning after the storm, Charlie shouted,
“Ice-cream!”
“Yes, all you want,” said Aunt Stanshy, who, leaving her coffee-pot, her pan of fried potatoes, and batch of biscuit on the kitchen stove, had mounted the stairs to wake the sleepy Charlie.
“Boys will soon be here to make it.”
“I warrant you! They will make their ice-cream before shoveling the folks’ paths at home.”
It looked so, for half a dozen boys were out in the yard by eight o’clock, shouting “ice-cream” to Charlie, who had not finished his breakfast.
With the help of Aunt Stanshy’s “essences” enough snow was flavored to meet the demands of customers, who, quickly notified, quickly appeared, bringing the contents of all the nail-boxes at their homes. Even Aunt Stanshy was prevailed upon to buy a dish, and she consistently paid cash for it.
Her boarder, Will Somers, was induced to promise more extensive patronage.
“Will, we all think you a first-rate feller,” said the artful president; “and just to help us out at the fair, couldn’t you take your meals at our restaurant? Our mothers say they will cook us things—steak, you know, and so on.”
“Y—e—s, I will try it for—the present.”
For some reason the “things” said to have been promised—“steak, you know, and so on,” did not arrive. Will gave out soon after noon the first day.
“Aunt Stanshy, I shall starve if I stay there,” said Will, appearing at her pantry door; “and if I didn’t starve, they would kill me with their abominable ‘cream’ that they make me buy, though they say it is at a reduced price.”
The restaurant was given up very soon. The president said that people had left the sea-side for the city, and they could hardly expect enough home trade to make it pay.
Pip thought he could make his table pay if he had some flowers to set it off. But that was not all; he was envious of others’ success. The fair had been characterized by the usual amount of “human nature” displayed on such occasions, and Pip now exhibited his peculiarities. For ten cents he bought a few white flowers at a hot-house, and then thought he would get ahead of the boys and be at the barn at an early hour, making sure for himself any possible customers.
“To give all an equal chance,” declared the president, “to make it the same for those who get up early and those who lie abed, the barn will be open at nine o’clock, except on holidays, when we will accommodate the public at an earlier hour.”
Pip thought he would be on hand by eight one morning. He would then be sure to catch any “nail custom,” as that was a class apt to be astir early, hunting up currency before other people had a chance at it. But the weather had stiffened since the storm. It was too cold to be agreeable, and even the nail-customers, usually so early at the barn, were now at home hugging the kitchen stove. Pip stood alone at the grand flower table. His blossoms lay unsought upon the table.
“Pip! Pip!”
It was the governor down in the yard.
“We are going to see them skate on the pond back of the mill. Come, go!”
Pip could hardly be coming and going at the same time, but he left his table and left his flowers. That day, the cold increased steadily.
“It is nippin’ cold,” said Aunt Stanshy to a neighbor, and what did Jack Frost do but take out his nippers and clap them on Pip’s flowers! The next morning, Pip found a little heap of frozen petals on the “flower-table.” He could no more make them into flowers than if they had been petals of snow!
That day, “owing to the weather,” the “Fair” was closed. The boys divided the little heap of cash and the large heap of nails, and each knight took his share. The club now ceased to have an active existence. It became like any other stick that is laid aside and set up in the corner. It seemed as if the knights had forgotten that they belonged to a club whose expressive title suggested energetic movement.