“All right,” said Peter Potter. “Things are always pretty dead about now. Let’s go right up and push back the clutter. Then I’ll go over to Jefferson’s furniture store and fix you up a bed.”
So together they climbed the creaking stairs and piled back barrels and boxes until they cleared space in the front part of the storeroom above the grocery upon which to stand a small bed for Jason.
While Jason washed windows, swept the floors, and began to dust the boxes and bottles upon the shelves, Peter Potter went to the furniture store, and out of the bigness of his heart, instead of a trundle-bed he bought a neat oak bed with real springs, a mattress, and a pillow. He felt almost militant as he marched into Mahlon Spellman’s dry-goods store to buy a pair of pillow cases, two pairs of sheets, a heavy blanket and a comfort. That night Jason looked at the stained, cobwebby ceiling above him, the battered walls surrounding him, and mentally visioned the partition promised to shut him off from the remainder of the storeroom.
When they were ready to lock up for the night, Peter Potter bolted the doors on the inside, went back to his personal chair near the big iron stove, and sitting down with the tortoise-shell cat in his lap, motioned Jason toward another chair.
“Now,” he said, “go ahead. Tell me all about this. I ain’t intending to go home tale bearin’ to Mirandy; I just want to have the satisfaction of knowin’ in my own soul where I stand regardin’ the Morelands.”
So Jason began with the time of the tormenting of Rebecca and detailed occurrences up to the previous night. Peter sat quietly stroking Jezebel. Sometimes through narrowed lids, he watched the boy; sometimes his attention seemed wholly taken up with the cat. But when Jason had finished the last word he had to say, not forgetting the first look inside the locked door, Peter Potter sat still and meditated. Then surreptitiously he scrutinized Jason. He studied in detail the set and colour of the hair on his head, the look from his eyes, the shape of his features, the build of his body, his hands as they hung idly before him. Then he dipped back into what he called the “ancient history” of Ashwater, and thought over reports and rumours that had been current in the town a good many years before.
When Jason had finished, Peter arose without any comment upon what he had been told. He set the cat carefully on the floor and lightly shoved her from him with his foot.
“Jezebel,” he said, “you’ve been a queen of a cat and a fine mouser, but your reign is over. There are them as object to cats promenading on the counters and sleepin’ in the cracker barrel. Go chase yourself! Vamoose! Try Thornton’s drug store. More of the stuff there is bottled. Farewell, forever!”
Peter recovered the cat, and standing with her in his arms, he said to Jason: “I think that you’ve done about the only thing left for you. I believe after this you can’t go back to school. I’ll get the carpenter to put in that partition as quick as he can, and if you’d like the walls fresh, we’ll cover ’em with a cheap paper, and you may get some blinds to put on the windows. You may go to Thornton’s drug store and get you a hand lamp if so be you want to keep up your studies. You may get a little table to match your bed at Jefferson’s, and a chair, and then I feel you’ll be better fixed than you’ve ever been before.”
He locked the store for the night and carried Jezebel across the street, where he formally presented her to the druggist.