Mr. Peaslee found the front door of the Edwards house standing open in the trustful village fashion, and, with neighborly freedom, walked in without ringing. He turned first into the sitting-room, where he found no one, and then into a rear room opening from it. This obviously was a boy's "den." On the table in the centre were a checkerboard, some loose string, a handful of spruce gum, some scattered marbles, a broken jack-knife, a cap, a shot-pouch, an old bird's nest, a powder-flask, a dog-eared copy of "Cæsar's Commentaries," open, and a Latin dictionary, also open. In a corner stood a fishing-rod in its cotton case; along the wall were ranged bait-boxes, a fishing-basket, a pair of rubber boots, and a huge wasp's nest. Leaning against the sill of the open window was a double-barreled shotgun, and on the sill itself were some black, greasy rags and a small bottle of oil.
Various truths might be inferred from the disarray. One was that Mr. Edwards was generous to his son Jim, and another was that there was no Mrs. Edwards. Further, it might be easily enough guessed that Jim had been lured from the study of Latin, in which pretty Miss Ware, who was his teacher at the "Union" school, was trying to interest him, by the attractive idea of oiling his gun-barrels, and that something still more attractive—perhaps a boy with crossed fingers, for it was not too late for swimming—had lured him from that. At any rate, Jim was not there.
Mr. Peaslee, still bent on finding Mr. Edwards, moved toward the open window. But he could see no signs of life anywhere. None of the household was, however, far away. Jim was in the loft of the barn, where he was carefully examining a barrel of early apples with a view to filling his pockets with the best; the housekeeper had merely stepped across the street to borrow some yeast, and Mr. Edwards, who had a headache, was lying down in the chamber immediately above Jim's den.
Mr. Peaslee stood and gazed. He eyed in turn the kitchen ell, the shed, and the barn, and then gazed out over the "posy" garden, where still bloomed a few late flowers, of which he recognized only the "chiny" asters. He looked toward what he himself would have called the "sarce" garden, with its cabbages, turnips, rustling corn-stalks, and drying tomato-vines. Seeing no one there, he sent his gaze to the distant rows of apple trees, bright with ripening fruit. Disappointed, he was about to turn away, but he could not resist taking a complacent, sweeping view of his own adjoining possessions.
There, on the right, ran the long line of his own dwelling, continued by the five-foot board fence separating his garden from Mr. Edwards's. This stood up gauntly white until near the orchard, where it was completely hidden by the high, feathery stalks of the asparagus-bed, by a row of great sunflowers, now heavy and bent with their disk-like seed-pods, and by a clump of lilac bushes. As his eye traveled along the white expanse, he gave a quick start, and his face clouded with vexation.
There in the sun, prone upon the top of the fence, dozed the bane of his life—the Calico Cat.
Her coat was made up of patches of yellow and white, varied with a black stocking on her right hind leg, and a large, round, black spot about her right eye, which gave her a peculiarly predatory and disreputable appearance. Solomon had disliked her at sight. Ever since he had bought the house in Ellmington he had been trying to drive her from the premises, but stay away she would not. Not all the missiles in existence could convince her that his house was not a desirable place of abode. And she was a constant vexation and annoyance.
She jumped from the fence plump into the middle of newly planted flower-beds; she filled the haymow with kittens; she asked all her friends to the barn, where she gave elaborate musical parties at hours more fashionably late than were tolerated in Ellmington. Whenever she had indigestion she ate off the tops of the choicest green things that grew in the garden; but when her appetite was good she caught and devoured his young chickens.
Moreover, when at bay she frightened him. Once he had cornered the spitting creature in a stall. Claws out, tail big, fur all on end, she had leaped straight at his head, which he ducked, and, landing squarely upon it, had steadied herself there for a moment with sharp, protruding claws; thence she had jumped to a feed-box, thence to a beam, thence to the mow, from the dusky recesses of which she had glared at him with big, green, menacing eyes. Not since that experience, which, in spite of his soft hat, had left certain marks upon his scalp, had he ever attempted to catch her. Instead, he had borrowed a gun, and a dozen times had fired at her; but although he counted himself a fair shot, he had never made even a scant bit of fur fly from her disreputable back.
And now he knew she laughed at him. Yes, laughed at him, for she had more than human intelligence. There was something demoniac in her cleverness, her immunity from harm, her prodigious energy, her malevolent mischief, her raillery. Actually, he had grown morbid about the beast; he had a superstitious feeling that in the end she would bring him bad luck. How he hated her!