CHAPTER VIII.
“Is it possible you care for that girl yet, Tom? A rejected lover, too? Where’s your spirit, man? Pshaw—there’s many a fairer face than Mary Ford’s; besides, she is more than half crazy. Are you mad, Tom? You wouldn’t catch me sighing for a girl who had cried her eyes out for the villainy of my rival.”
“Curse him!” said Tom Shaw, striking his boots with a light cane he held in his hand; “he is safe enough, at any rate, for some time to come; good for a couple more years, I hope, for striking that fellow in prison. When he comes out, if he ever does, he will find his little bird in my nest. Half-witted or whole-witted, it matters little to me. I am rich enough to please my fancy, and the girl’s face haunts me.”
“Pooh!” said Jack; “you are just like a spoiled child—one toy after another, the last one always the best. I know you—you’ll throw this aside in a twelvemonth; but marriage, let me tell you, my fine fellow, is a serious joke.”
“Not to me,” said Tom, “for the very good reason that I consider it dissolved when the parties weary—or at any rate, I shall act on that supposition, which amounts to the same thing, you know.”
“Not in law,” said Jack.
“Nonsense,” replied Tom; “I am no fool; trust me for steering my bark clear of breakers. At any rate, I’ll marry that girl, if perdition comes after it—were it only to spite Percy. How he will gnash his teeth when he hears of it, hey? The old man is dead, and the old woman is left almost penniless. I’ll easily coax her into it. In fact, I mean to drive out there this very afternoon. Mary Ford shall be Mrs. Tom Shaw, d’ye hear?”
“Good day, Pike! Haven’t got a pitchfork you can lend a neighbor, have ye? Ours is broke clean in two; I’m dreadful hard put to it for horseflesh, or I would drive to the village and buy a new one. You see that pesky boy of mine has lamed our mare; it does seem to me, Pike, that boys allers will be boys—the more I scold at him, the more it don’t do no good.”
“And the more it won’t,” said the good-natured farmer Rice. “Scolding never does any good no how—the boy is good enough by natur’—good as you was, I dare say, when you was his age. I wouldn’t give a cent for a boy that hain’t no friskiness about him, no sperrit like; but you see you don’t know how to manage him. You are allers scolding, just as you say. It’s ‘John, go weed those parsnips; ten to one, you careless dog, you’ll pull up the parsnips instead of the weeds;’—or, ‘John, go carry that corn to mill; ten to one, you’ll lose it out of the wagon going.’ I tell you, Pike, it is enough to discourage any lad, such a constant growling and pecking; now I want my boys to love me when they grow up. I don’t want them glad to see the old man’s back turned. I don’t want them happier any where than at their own home. That’s the way drunkards and profligates are made—that’s the way the village tavern thrives. I tell you, Pike, if you lace up natur too tight, she’ll bust out somewhere. Better draw it mild.”
“O, don’t talk to me, neighbor,” said Rice, impatiently. “Them’s modern notions; thrash children, I say. When I was a lad, if I did my duty, it was well; if I didn’t, I knew what to expect. It is well enough for your children to love you; of course they oughter, when you’ve brought them into the world; but I say they’ve got to mind, any how; ‘obey your parents;’ that’s it; plain as preaching.”
“Yes,” said farmer Rice, “I believe in that; but there’s another verse in the same book, that runs this way—‘Parents provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged.’”
“Well—well,” said Mr. Pike, uneasily, “I hate argufying, as I do bad cider. Your neighbor, Mr. Ford, dropped off sudden like, didn’t he? What’s the matter of him?”
“Some say one thing—some another; but I think, neighbor, it was just here. That ere old man has been in harness these sixty years—it was a sort of second natur to him to be active. Well, he was taken right out of the whirl and hubbub of the city, where people can’t hardly stop long enough to bury one another, and sot right down in this quiet place, where there’s nothing a-going but frogs and crickets, with nothing to do but to brood over his troubles. Well, you see such a somerset at his time o’ life wan’t the thing; of course it upsot him. He’d lean over this fence, and lean over that, and put on his hat, and take it off, and walk a bit, and sit down a bit, and act just like an old rat in a trap, trying to gnaw his way out. It was just as if you should pull up that old oak-tree, that has grown in that spot till its roots strike out half a mile round, and set it out in some foreign sile; it wouldn’t thrive—of course not.”
“No,” said Mr. Pike, “I see, I see—it would be just so with me, if I was set down where he came from—that etarnal rumbling and whiz buzz would drive me clean distracted. The last time I staid in the city over night, I thought every minute the last day had come, there was such a tearin’ round. But what’s become of the old woman and her sick darter?”
“She took it hard—she did—but the girl is sort of image-like—don’t feel nothing, I reckon. Pretty, too—it’s a nation pity. They’ve got enough left to keep them alive, milk and fresh air, like the rest on us. I don’t want no better fare. There’s some talk, so my old woman says, about a fellow who drives out here, who is going to marry the girl;—nothing but woman’s gabble, I guess; you know if they didn’t talk they wouldn’t say nothing.”
“Fact,” said Mr. Pike, profoundly, “I often think on’t; but come, I can’t stay prating here all day—where’s the pitchfork you was going to lend me?”
“There it is,” said Mr. Rice; “and now remember what I told you about that boy of yourn; there’s more good in that Zekiel, than you think for;—remember now, a little oil makes machinery work easy, Pike.”
“Yes, oil of birch,” said farmer Pike, chuckling at his own wit, and cracking his horse-whip at a happy little vagrant robin, as he went through the gate and down the road.