“I can’t earn no kind of a livin’,” Mayo stammered.
“And you probably never will so long as you stay a chambermaid in a livery stable. Great God, is that the limit of your ambition or your enterprise? A man with a wife he loves, with two strong hands and a will to get-there-Eli, to come sniveling like this! Hunt your work! Buckle to it! That’s what will make something better of you, boy, than Mayo’s housedog.”
The taunt was wasted, for the youth persisted in his stubborn lament. “She says now she wouldn’t have married me if she didn’t think we’d be taken care of better.”
“What kind of cussed notions did you put in her head?” the lawyer stormed. “If you lied to her, Watson, it’s up to you to square yourself now by making good. Do so well by her that she’ll love you and respect you for yourself. Don’t make me sorry that I cut your dog-leash before your parents plumb ruined you.”
Young Mayo cast a furtive look at the two old men, and leaning over the table murmured, his lips trembling:
“I tell you, Squire, she scares me. She says it has come to her in a vision that she has a mother—a lady mother, somewhere, all in silks and satins, and she’s seen her in a vision with her diamond thing on her head. And most ev’ry night she wakes and sits up in bed and reaches up her arms and says her lady mother just asked her to come, Squire Phin, and she’s a-goin’. Yes, s’r, she’s a-goin’ some time and I’m scared and I ain’t got no ambition and I can’t buy her no good clothes, and I sold my watch and scarfpin to give her money. My Gawd, Squire, she’s a-goin’ and I can’t live without her, nohow.”
Perspiration streamed down his quivering face and his lips “guffled” tremulously. All the smugness and self-satisfaction were gone now, and for the first time the lawyer saw the Mayo boy in all his wretched, discouraging inefficiency. With a pang of self-reproach he reflected that some natures cannot stand stiff doses—and his remedy for making over a man had certainly been a heroic one. As he pondered, he fell into his characteristic attitude, hands clutched into the long locks of his gray hair, his elbows on the table. He gazed into the pathos of that quivering face and studied it as he would the page of an open book. The little office was very still.
“Blorh-hum!” coughed Amazeen, and he proceeded, addressing no one in particular: “When I was a boy, goin’ to school, there was a family named Bragg that lived clust to us, and they had a boy named Ximenus—that was it, Ximenus Bragg. Them Braggs they was poorer—poorer’n Pooduc, but the old man had to have his three dogs, and fin’ly Ximenus was took with a craze for music and nothin’ would do but what he’d got to have a snare drum. And he teased and he coaxed. Old Bragg hadn’t the gumption to plunk his foot right down and say ‘No,’ but he’d whine and argue with the boy and say that with winter a-comin’ on he’d ought to have long-legged boots instead of a drum. Finally Old Bragg told Ximenus that if he would go without the boots and not whine, he could have the drum, and the drum he did get, by gorry. I s’pose that for a couple of days there never was a more tickleder boy. He ratty-tooed and ratty-tummed and long-rolled and biffed and banged and et his meals off’n the head of the thing and kept at it till his ma was so near drove crazy that she chased him out doors with the rollingpin and threatened to bust in the head of that drum if he ever put stick to it ag’in in the house.
“There it was, late fall and the snow beginning to fly, and I’ll never forget the sight Ximenus made standin’ out there on the cold door stone on one foot and holding the other foot to the calf of his leg to warm it, and then shifting feet to get the other warm, and drumming away all the time, trying to keep his courage up and make himself believe that he loved music and the drum and was glad he had it instead of them new long-legged boots.”
“Beats all about some critters, don’t it?” commented Uncle Buck, after listening to this tale with much interest.