IN WHICH THE PATH OF TRUE LOVE DOES NOT RUN SMOOTHLY
But the softness in the Christmas air did not presage a thaw. When Mrs. Fletcher closed the windows in her son's room the following morning, and laid her hand on his motionless shoulder, she awakened him with a greeting of, "Come, son, look out and see what's happened."
Snow! A veil of fine, driving flakes scurried groundward with each gust of wind from the lake and half hid the passenger-laden suburban trains, and the ramshackle dairy buildings across the tracks. Already the cinder-laden railroad embankment was covered with a white mantle, too new as yet to be anything but spotless, which in places had drifted across the rows of rails. Along the street, each smoke-tinged roof and window ledge had a share of the rapidly deepening coverlet which sped from the leaden clouds to mask the gray, unlovely earth.
John drew on his knickerbockers hurriedly. No time for a peep at one of his new books now. Not only was the snow a thing of beauty, but it offered certain revenue if he and Bill appeared with their shovels before competition became too keen. So he appeared in the dining-room with surprising promptness.
"Sick, John?" asked his mother with gentle sarcasm, as he sat down to breakfast.
He shook his head as he gulped down spoonful after spoonful of the steaming oatmeal. Now and then he glanced out of the window at the walks and porches of the street. They were still untouched, but there was need of haste.
"Never mind the potatoes, Mother," he said, as he hurried to the coat closet for his wraps. "I'm going shovelling."
He ran down into the basement and was out and down the street with the wooden shovel over his shoulder before Mrs. Fletcher realized that he had escaped. She hailed him back.
"How about our walk, son?" she asked, as she stood in the doorway.
He shook his head in protest. "I don't get paid for that. Bill and I'll do it when we get through."
"Not much!" There was decision in his mother's tones. "That means it won't be cleaned before noon."
"Aw-w-w, Mother!"
The door closed and put a stop to further parleying. He stood by the lamppost, undecided as to which course to pursue. Should he walk boldly off and take the consequences, or was discretion the better part of valor after all? Still, when a fellow's mother wanted something done, it was useless to try to evade the task, and he was just beginning to realize it.
He set to work. Before long the cheerful scraping of the wooden shovel against the pavement restored his good humor. His face became flushed, and he stopped a moment to pull his stocking cap back from his hot forehead, for the exercise was making his blood circulate rapidly. The long walk which led to the back door could be skipped, and the porch railings left snow-capped as they were, for his aim was to fulfill the barest letter of his orders before Mrs. Fletcher looked out of the window.
Five minutes later, he knocked the snow from his shovel, and sneaked up the street, slipping now and then as his feet struck concealed ice on the walk, and once he fell sideways into a soft drift. As he walked up the Silvey steps, a snowball hit him on the leg, and another sped past his nose. He turned to find Bill on the lawn with a snowball in one hand.
"Surrender," came the call.
John dropped his shovel to the floor and seized a handful of snow.
"Going to fight or get snow jobs with me?" he asked, as he pounded the mass into an uneven sphere.
For an answer, his chum dropped his missile and ran around to the back yard, to reappear with his own shovel. He pointed down the street. Two members of the unemployed were making the snow fly at the DuPree's with an earnestness which boded ill for their youthful competitors.
"Let's try Southern Avenue," said John. "Perhaps there won't be anyone there."
No sooner said than done. But as they rounded the corner, they found that three of the "Jeffersons" had organized an expedition of their own and were cleaning the walk and porch of the house nearest the corner. Their leader motioned to Bill.
"Go on back home, or we'll smash your faces in."
John promptly stuck out his tongue. "They can't fight," he said scornfully, "and two of 'em are 'fraid cats. Let's try the big yellow house, Bill."
With a glance back at the foe, they ran up the steps and rang the bell persistently until a becapped, flustered servant opened the door.
"Ask the missis if she wants the walk cleaned?" said Silvey, who usually handled the negotiations for work.
Scraps of conversation floated down to the boys from the upper regions whence the girl had disappeared with the message. Presently she came to the head of the stairs and called down to them, "How much you want?"
Bill made a mental inventory of the appearance of the grounds as the boys had approached the house. "Quarter," he said promptly.
"Missis, she say 'all right,'" said the maid.
The boys stamped out of the hallway and set to work with a will. Silvey began at one end of the broad veranda floor, while John made the snow fly from the railings and porch posts. Next came the steps, and the walk leading down the lawn.
"This won't take long," said John optimistically.
He stooped to fix a shoelace which had become untied. Silvey yielded to temptation and gave him a shove into the heaped snow, to have him rise angrily and dig the half-thawed slush from between his neck and collar. Then he sprang at his partner and they went sprawling again, but this time, Bill was the underdog. The two boys struggled for a while until John sat heavily on his foe's stomach, and pinioned the resistant arms with his knees. Then the fun began. "Going to be good?"
Silvey looked desperately up at the handful of snow held high above his head.
"Going to be good?"
"Look, here, Fletch—don't you wash my face, don't you—"
"Going to be good?" asked John again.
His answer was a wrench for freedom. Thud, came a soft mass down on Bill's nose and open mouth. He spluttered and rolled over desperately, trying to throw John from his vantage point. The front door creaked, and an alien voice called,
"What's the matter, you boys? Ain't you ever going to get finished?"
They rose sheepishly to find the servant smiling down at them from the doorway.
"Missis says, 'hurry up,'" she cautioned them.
Silvey picked up his shovel and began to make the snow fly industriously. Presently the fit of ardor wore off, and he stared thoughtfully at the long stretch of walk which still remained between the front porch and the back yard.
"How much did I say we'd do this for?" he asked.
"Quarter," said John, as he leaned on his shovel handle.
"Wished I'd made it thirty-five cents!"
Foot by foot, they cleared a path well around by the side of the house. The milkman, the butcher, and the gas inspector had each left heavy footmarks which were difficult to remove and made progress slow. At the rear steps, a huge drift met their gaze, and Silvey stretched his aching arms.
"What'd we say we'd do this for?" he asked again.
"Quarter."
"Wished I'd said half a dollar. There's a walk on the other side, too."
No skylarking now. Their muscles ached too much from the exercise to waste their energy in other channels. When the cut through the drift had been made, and the back porch and basement walk freed of the covering, Bill leaned his shovel against a clothes-line post, and surveyed the result of their labors malevolently.
"Next time we do this, John," he snapped emphatically, "we'll charge a whole dollar!"
But the mischief had been done. By the time they had been paid the well-earned quarter, not a house near them offered prospect of employment. And at the far end of the street, the "Jeffersons" were making a last reconnoissance before deserting the neighborhood for more fruitful fields of labor.
"Now see what you did when you shoved me into the snow," said John ruefully.
"Well, you didn't have to wash my face," retorted Bill. Secretly he was not sorry that the work was at an end. "Get your new sled and we'll go hitching. Beat you over to our street."
They dashed up the nearest private walk into a residential back yard, and dropped their shovels over the back fence. John wedged one foot between a telegraph pole and a picket, and drew himself up.
"Come on, Sil."
Silvey braced himself for the spring. A rear window in the house creaked open and a woman's head appeared.
"What are you boys doing?" called the shrill voice. They dropped over into the other yard, and John started to run.
"She's in curl papers," said Bill. "She won't chase us. Let's fix her."
"I'll call the police if you go through again," she persisted as the boys filled their hands with snow. John gave a few finishing pats to his missile.
"How'd you like to have her for a mother?" he asked his chum, as he drew his arm back for the assault.
A projectile broke against the window sash and showered snow fragments upon the untidy hair. A second went a serene way through the opening and dissolved in a blot of hissing water on the kitchen stove. The frame slammed to with a violence which threatened destruction to the window glass, and John grabbed his shovel with an exultant yell.
"Now run like the dickens!"
They parted at the Silveys'. John continued on a dogtrot towards home, and a moment later was pestering Mrs. Fletcher at her work in the kitchen.
"Where's some rope, Mother?"
She looked from the pile of napkins on the ironing board. "What do you want it for, son?"
"My sled."
She walked over to a box behind the kitchen gas range and drew out a three-foot length. "Will this do?"
"No. Got to be lots longer than that."
"You're not going hitching, are you?"
He shook his head dubiously.
"Now, John! There have been little boys killed because wagons ran over them when their ropes broke and they couldn't get out of the way!"
He evaded his mother's eye and sneaked from the house. Silvey was waiting for him impatiently on the front walk.
"Where's the line?" he asked.
"Can't go," complained John. "She won't let me."
"Aw, come on. We'll go over to Southern Avenue and she won't know a thing about it. I'll get you a rope from our house."
His feeble scruples vanished. A five-minute stop at the Silveys sufficed to make the necessary alterations in John's equipment. Bill brought out his own sled, and they started for the corner. In front of the grocery store, they found Pete, the wagon boy, placing the last of the noon orders in his cart.
"Give us a hitch," they begged.
He nodded a cheery consent. "But hurry. These have got to be delivered in time for dinner."
The boys ran the ropes rapidly around the rear axle and jumped on the sleds. A shout, a sudden jerk, and they were off, swinging around the corner on Southern Avenue with a momentum which shot them far to one side. John drew a breath of relief, for it was his first experience at the sport. Bill looked up from between the sled runners and grinned.
Along they sped. The smooth steel slid easily now over the closely packed snow in the wagon ruts, now over bumps which forced involuntary grunts from between their lips. As the horse increased his pace they tightened their grasp on the sled hand-holes.
"Whoa," shouted Pete. The wagon stopped abruptly as he reached back into the body for a package, and the sleds shot under the wagon almost up to the horse's hoofs, before the boys could find a holding place in the hard snow for their toes.
John dragged his sled out, and lay back on it while he waited for Pete to reappear. The sun had pierced the heavy clouds, and dazzled the eyes of the neighborhood with glistening reflections on the white, unsullied lawns and doorsteps. On the more exposed portions of the closely packed house roofs, the melting snow formed long, dagger-like icicles which hung from the eaves, or clustered thickly around drain pipes and gutters. The heel-packed lumps which had defied the efforts of the wooden shovels to remove them from the cement walks showed dark, water-marked edges under the influence of the warming rays. Near him in the street, a flock of hungry sparrows fought boldly over a bit of vegetable which had fallen from a passing fruit vender's cart, and in the clear, dancing air was a touch of elixir which set his pulses to throbbing.
"Yes," he said, although Silvey had asked no question, "it's just peachy."
"Isn't it?" acquiesced Bill. "And your mother's afraid you'll get hurt, doing it."
The smile vanished. What if Mrs. Fletcher should find out! The joys of the sport, sweeter through their illegality, were not sufficient to prevent a sinking sensation in his stomach at the thought of such a catastrophe.
There came a scurry of footsteps on the walk close by him, another caution from Pete and his sled rope tightened again. They drove from one street to another, working ever westward until the gray-stone, red-roofed buildings of the university were behind them. When but a package of steak, bread, or a similar trifle was to be delivered, John or Bill dashed around to the back porch or through a basement flat areaway, while the driver sat and smoked in state on his seat. Thus the arrangement was of mutual benefit to the parties concerned.
At last they halted before a dingy, eight-flat apartment building. Pete carried the last, and heaviest, consignment of edibles in to its owner and returned, a moment later, to stand on the curbing with a kindly smile on his heavy-featured face.
"Now, boys," he said, as he drew his cap down over his ears and forehead until the peak nearly met his black, bushy brows, "hang on tight, and I'll give you a real ride back."
A flick at the ribs of the fat, easy-going horse, and the two sleds were flying homeward. The depressions and hoof marks in the snow flew between the runners at a speed which dizzied their owners. Bits of ice, dislodged by the horse's hoofs, flew up and struck the boys' faces stinging blows. Past the university buildings, past the school which now stood empty and deserted because of the Christmas holidays, past impatient pedestrians on the street corners, and over to Southern Avenue where Pete turned in abruptly to the alley entrance of the grocery store. Silvey screamed a warning as his sled, running straight ahead, felt the tug of the tow rope, and skidded in a wide circle over the rough, uneven snow. John tried to save himself from a similar fate, but he had delayed too long. Straight for a huge snow bank, the two sleds headed, struck the curbing, and capsized with their owners underneath.
John rose shakily with an uncertain smile on his lips. His chum dug some snow from his ears and ran forward to unhitch the sleds. The grocer's clock showed a quarter after twelve, so they started for the home street. As they parted, John held up a detaining hand.
"That quarter," he explained. "Come on back to the drug store and get it changed. I want to put my share in the pig bank."
Silvey drew off one moist mitten, and fumbled in his trouser's pockets with a perplexed frown. Neither was it in his coat, nor in his blouse. Where had it been left?
"S'pose we lost it when we took that spill?"
There was another fruitless search before the boys went back to the grocery corner. There, they raked the snow bank over and over, levelled and reheaped it, and levelled it again before their ardor cooled. At last they were convinced that the coin was hopelessly lost. John turned away moodily.
"Come on," he said. "I'll be getting scolded if I don't get home for dinner." It was hard to lose the proceeds of a morning's work in such a manner.
Mrs. Fletcher was waiting for him when he came into the hallway, stamping his feet lustily to free them from the last lingering traces of snow.
"Where's the brush, Mother?" he asked, as he shook his coat. She brought him the implement and watched him keenly.
"Didn't I forbid you to go hitching, this morning?"
"Who told you?" he asked naïvely, taken aback at the sudden accusation. Mothers had the most mysterious ways of discovering things.
She smiled in spite of herself. "I asked the little Mosher boy where you were and he said he'd seen you riding off behind Anderson's grocery wagon. What do you think I ought to do to such a disobedient little boy?"
He didn't know. But he wished that he might lay hands on that kid brother of Skinny's. He'd teach him a thing or two about holding his tongue.
"You're getting too big to spank," she commented as he stood silently before her. He nodded a cheerful assent to this.
"So I think you'd better stay in the house this afternoon."
"A-w-w-w, Mother!"
She went into the dining-room where the table had been set for the noonday meal for two, and heaped his plate with potatoes and gravy, while he stood looking miserably out of the window.
The sun's rays were melting the surface of the snow and turning it a dirty gray. Up the street, Perry Alford was winging snowballs at a black, leafless trunk opposite his house. That meant good packing, and snow fights, snow men, and a baker's dozen of other exciting amusements.
To be gated on such an afternoon!
"Come, son!" said Mrs. Fletcher, as he turned away with quivering lip, and drew his chair to the table. "Be a man. Mother's right about it, isn't she?"
He admitted that her sentence was but justice, and attacked the dinner with an appetite which no sorrow could diminish. Then he tramped slowly up to his room and threw himself down on his bed with a book to while away the weary stretch of afternoon confronting him.
Straightway the centuries rolled back, and the present day sorrows were forgotten. The times of the good king Alfred held sway as he followed the exploits of the hero against his Danish enemies with breathless interest. Again and again did the young earldorman's well-drilled band sally forth from its stronghold to attack larger bodies of the foe, and again and again did the boy on the bed wish that he was living in those soul-stirring times. Then came the building of the Dragon, for war must be waged on the sea as well as by land, and a call of, "Oh, John-e-e-e-e! Oh, John-e-e-e-e!"
He stood up regretfully. One of his legs was cramped from lying motionless so long, and he limped into the front room. Silvey was below on the water-streaked walk.
"Come on out!"
"Can't. She found out about my hitching this morning."
"Aw-w-w, come on. The fellows are building a snow fort in the big lot, and pretty soon, we're going to have a big fight." He reached down, scooped up a handful of the moist snow, and patted it easily into a small, hard ball. "Look, packing's fine. Go down and tease her!"
John shook his head. Mother was inexorable on such occasions, and never had there been a time on record, no matter what the weeping or wailing, when a gating had been lifted. So he would meet his punishment without further ado.
Silvey went disconsolately back towards home, and the prisoner returned to his room and stared from the window which overlooked the railroad tracks. Presently he turned away and rummaged in the bureau in the big south room until he found his mother's opera glasses. A moment or so of adjustment, and he smiled contentedly. If he could not be a participant, he would at least witness the battle.
The construction of the fort was well under way. Long, erratic paths in the snow showed where the three big balls had been rolled which formed the most exposed wall. They were almost as tall as the boys, themselves, and even now Sid and Red Brown and Perry Alford were digging their heels into the slippery footing as they moved a fourth to its proper place. Mosher, bent almost double, was rolling a new and rapidly increasing sphere over the soft snow. The walls completed, the gang devoted themselves to filling in the crevices, smoothing the surface, and to testing the weak places in the fortress. A few busy minutes were spent in making ammunition, then Sid, his longing for leadership gratified at last, led his army behind the "U" shaped protection. Bill beckoned his followers out of range, and missiles began to fly. John laid the glasses down wistfully.
Shucks! watching only made him want to join worse than ever. The book was better than that!
Dusk came at last, and liberation. As he was returning from the newspaper route, the sight of a familiar figure, in the lighted circle of a street lamp, made him cross over. It was Louise.
"'Lo."
"'Lo."
John paused. It was a difficult thing to lead up to her faithlessness tactfully. She broke the silence.
"Those dishes were dear. But, oh, John, I liked the powder puff jar the best of all!" Which was the truth, for the fact that he thought her old enough for such feminine weapons was a soul-satisfying compliment.
He murmured a perfunctory acknowledgment. "Louise, what's this I've been hearing about you and Sid drinking sodas together at the drug store?"
She stood speechless, thinking of a defense.
"It's got to quit. Do you hear?"
"Why shouldn't I have sodas with him?" his lady broke out vindictively. "You never take me anywhere."
Didn't she understand that all of his playtime was taken up with earning money for her? "But we can go skating tonight," he concluded pacifically.
"That isn't spending money on me. And Sid does, lots and lots of times."
The words hurt. He'd show her that two could play at that game, even if the funds were to be drawn from the pig bank.
"I'll tell you," he shot back recklessly. "We'll go to the theater a week from Saturday. Isn't that better than sodas?" He watched her anxiously for she was most dear to his suddenly constant heart.
She assented eagerly. Nevertheless, it was plain that she still thirsted after the drug store flesh pots. He must interview Sid in the morning, for that catch in her voice was far from reassuring.