As a sign that she bore me no malice it was promised that I might hire a man to plant Clem's garden that spring, with the understanding that I should thus acquire an equity in its product. This seemed to be in the line of that something that must be done, and Miss Caroline and I made much of it, to avoid the situation's more embarrassing aspects.
"If I could only sell something," said my neighbor, with a vacant look about the room—a look of humorous disparagement. "The silver is good, but there's hardly enough of it to pay one of those debts—and I've nothing else but Clem. But if I tried to sell him," she added brightly, "it would only bring on trouble again with your Northern President. I know just how it would be."
We parted on this jest. Miss Caroline, I believe, went to be scolded by Clem for her trifling ways, while I sought out Solon Denney.
When something must be done, I seem never to know what it shall be. I believe Solon is often quite as uncertain, but he will never confess this, so that talk with him under such circumstances stimulates if it does not sustain.
I put Miss Caroline's difficulties before him. As any common catalogue of troubles will not provoke Solon from a happy unconcern which is temperamental, I spared no details in my recital, and I observed at length that my listener was truly aroused to the bad way in which Miss Caroline found herself. He sat forward in his chair, rested one elbow upon his untidy desk, and for several moments of silence jabbed an inky pen rhythmically into the largest rutabaga ever grown in Slocum County. At last he sat back and gazed upon me distantly from inspired eyes. Then, with his characteristic enthusiasm, he exclaimed:—
"Something will have to be done!"
"Wonderful!" I murmured. "Here I've worried over the thing for two months, studied it in court, studied it in my office, studied it in bed—and couldn't make a thing out of it. All at once I am guided to a welling fount of wisdom, and the thing is solved in a flash. Solon, you dazzle me! Denney forever!"
"Now, don't be funny, Calvin—I mean, don't try to be—" but I arose to go.
"You've solved it, Solon. Something must be done. There's the difference between intuition and mere clumsy ratiocination. In another month I might have found this out for myself, but you divine it instantly. You're a clairvoyant. Now I'm going to find Billy Durgin. You've done the heavy work—you've discovered that something must be done. What we need now, I suppose, is a bright young detective to tell us what it is."
But Solon interrupted soothingly. "There, there, something must be done, and, of course, I'll do it."