While Herbert Sage forbore speaking of the vagrant Josephine to his friends in Rumley, nevertheless he preserved and re-read from time to time the mass of press cuttings that he kept safely locked away in a drawer of the bureau that once had held her cheap and meager belongings. He looked long and hungrily at the countless photographs with which she never failed to beleaguer him in his loneliness; and then there were the magazines, the pictorial sections of the newspapers and the reproductions of as many as a score of original drawings done by celebrated artists and illustrators on both sides of the Atlantic. Some of these caused him to frown and bite his lip—one in particular: the rather startling picture of a very shapely young gentleman in a mild but attractive state of inebriation caroling (by mistake, no doubt), to an irate old man in a casement window above.
Morning and night she was in his prayers; and little Jane, as soon as she was able to prattle, was taught to say “and God bless and keep my mamma forever and ever, Amen!”
She was greatly missed by little Oliver October. For some reason—perhaps she did not explain it herself—at any rate, she did not go to the trouble of speculating—she had taken a tremendous fancy to the child. He was a lively, amusing little chap who laughed gleefully at her antics and was ever ready for more—a complimentary spirit that constantly supplied kindling for her own unquenchable fires. She romped with him, told marvelous stories to him, sang for him and danced for him—and just about the time she was making ready to leave Rumley guiltily showed him how to turn a “cartwheel”! He was very much impressed by this astonishing bit of acrobatics, and as she faced him, her face crimson and her eyes sparkling, he paid her a doubtful but fulsome compliment by saying he’d bet his mother couldn’t do it, nor any other lady in town, either. She made him promise not to tell anybody—and he was never, never to ask her to do it again, because she was getting very old and the next time she might fall and break her neck, and he wouldn’t like that, would he?
This small boy of five or six was the only being in town with whom she could play to her heart’s content, and she made the most of him. Her own tiny baby interested but did not amuse her. In the first place, she had not wanted a baby at all, and in the second place since she had to have one she could not understand why she had not had a boy. It wasn’t quite fair. She liked boy babies. It was something to be the mother of a man-child—something to be proud of. She even went so far as to say to herself that she never could have run way and left her baby if it had been a boy. She would have been ashamed to have a son of hers know that his mother had not quite played the game. She was fond of Jane but it was not as hard to leave her as it would have been had she been a boy. Of that she was absolutely certain.
Oliver October could not understand why he was not allowed to mention “Aunt” Josephine’s name in the presence of “Uncle” Herbert. His mother and Mrs. Serepta Grimes—who, by the way, was still an ever-present help in time of trouble—gave him very strict orders and repeated them so often that he never had a chance to forget them. But when he found out in a roundabout way that Mrs. Sage had gone off to join a show, he at once assumed—and quite naturally, too—that she was with Barnum’s Biggest Show on Earth, and lived in joyous anticipation of seeing her when the great three-ring circus came to the nearby county seat for its biennial visit. Moreover, he was very firm in his determination to run away from home and join the show, a secret decision that called for unusual industry on his part in the matter of mastering the “cartwheel” and other startling feats of skill, such as standing on his head, walking on his hands, turning somersaults off of a sill in the haymow, and standing upright on the capacious hindquarters of patient old Rosy down at Uncle Silas Link’s livery stable.
He also undertook to increase his suppleness by anointing himself with fish worm oil, an absolutely infallible lubricant recommended by Bud Lane, who solemnly averred that he had worked one whole season with the Forepaugh circus as fish worm catcher for the Human Eel, the limberest man alive. Oliver October’s mother gave him a sound spanking within fifteen minutes after the initial application of this diligently acquired lubricant, while Mrs. Grimes made a point of hurrying down to the livery stable to tell the sheepish Bud Lane what she thought of him.
Youth is ever fickle. Oliver October’s heart was soon mended. He was always to have a warm corner in it for the gay Aunt Josephine but such diverting games as “one old cat,” “blackman,” “I spy,” and “duck on the rock” rather too promptly reduced his passionate longing for her to a mild but pleasant memory. They also interfered with his acrobatic aspirations, and it was not until little Jane Sage arrived at an age when she was intelligent enough to be impressed and thrilled by manly achievements that he again took up the “cartwheel,” the “hand spring,” and other sensational feats of endurance—endurance being a better word than agility in view of the fact that he practised them by the hour for her especial benefit.
For, be it here recorded, Janie Sage, at the age of six, was by far the prettiest and the most sought after young lady in Rumley, and only the most surpassing skill with the hands and feet was supposed to have any effect upon her susceptibilities.
What with having had past instructions in the art of cartwheel flipping from a minister’s wife and the present promise of lessons in boxing from the minister himself, Oliver October was indeed a favored lad! He was very glad that he had gone to Sunday-school regularly, for therein lay the secret of his good fortune. If he had not been a very good little boy, Mr. and Mrs. Sage would not have been so kind to him. There wasn’t the slightest doubt in his mind about that. And more than all this, Mr. Sage acted like he was awfully pleased every time he walked home from school with Jane, carrying her books and everything. He showed this by invariably giving him a piece of bread and butter and sugar. No wonder, then, that Oliver fought like a tiger for his lady love. Many a bigger and stronger man than he has fought the whole wide world for his bread and butter alone.
Three or four days after the warning administered to Oliver by his self-appointed guardians, one of the latter, Mr. Sikes, found himself in an extremely awkward position. He was a man of dark and lasting hatreds. His particular aversion was brothers-in-law. He had two of his own and he hated both of them as men are seldom hated by their fellow man. His opinion of them somewhat unjustly extended itself to the brothers-in-law of practically every friend he possessed. It had got to be an obsession with him. The husbands of his two sisters, it appears, had instituted some sort of proceedings against him in court back in the dark and stormy age that he called his youth, and while history does not reveal the nature of the suit, it goes without saying that they won their case, thereby providing him with an everlasting grudge against all brothers-in-law.