“I will attend to this myself,” said Mr. Spellman.
Arising, he vanished in the direction of the kitchen. Finding that room empty, he proceeded to the back porch and there, at the corner of the house, he saw Jemima tugging at the rear anatomy of Jimmy Price. Jimmy Price was the village handy-man. His task that morning was to mow the Spellman lawn and trim the grass around the trees. Just why he should have been standing on his head in the rain barrel was a question Mahlon Spellman did not wait to ask until he had upset the barrel and allowed Jimmy the privilege of backing out. When Jimmy lifted his drenched tow head and sallow, freckled face, there was no need for explanation. In one hand he grasped a pair of sheep shears which he used to clip the grass around the snowball and lilac bushes. Exactly why or how he had lost them in the barrel was not a matter of concern to his employer. At the precise minute that Jimmy backed from the barrel, soaked and spluttering, Mahlon was felicitating himself upon the presence of mind which had kept his wife and daughter from witnessing a sight so ludicrous. At the same time he realized that he could not so easily control the neighbours and the street. Mahlon felt like a fool to be seen in proximity to such a ridiculous sight, and he hated feeling like a fool more than almost any other calamity that could possibly overtake him. In a voice highly touched with exasperation he cried: “James Price, is it quite impossible for you to perform your work without having some sort of fool accident or doing some ludicrous thing every fifteen minutes? Are you a man or a monkey? You don’t seem happy unless you are making a back-alley spectacle of yourself,”—“and me,” Mahlon added in his consciousness.
Jimmy wiped the muck of the barrel bottom and the water from his face, and looked at his employer.
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” he said humbly.
“I wonder what for,” muttered Mahlon Spellman, and turning, marched back to the dining room where he resumed his place. As Mahlon went, Jimmy squared his shoulders, smoothed his dripping hair, set in place a tie he was not wearing, and flipped a very real bit of soil from his sleeve in Mr. Spellman’s best manner.
Jemima launched the back porch broom at Jimmy’s head and he dodged it expertly.
“You poor bumpkin, you,” she cried. “Don’t you dare be aping the master!”
“But I was merely following the natural impulses of a gentleman,” said Jimmy, as he used the sheep shears to flirt slime from his sleeves, while Jemima suddenly retreated, but not before Jimmy in deep satisfaction noted her heaving shoulders.
Mrs. Spellman opened her lips and an inquisitive little “What——?” escaped therefrom.
“Nothing of the slightest importance, my dear,” said Mr. Spellman, waving his hand to indicate that the matter was of such slight moment that it might be carried away in the wake of the gesture without consuming any of their valuable time for its consideration.