And Down Below he kicked old Keazle! ”
—An Epitaph by “Rhymester” Tuttle.
The Squire had pulled his arm-chair into the centre of the broadest patch of sunshine that carpeted the dusty floor of his office. The light flooded his book’s pages until he almost closed his eyes, but he welcomed sunshine this morning. It fitted into his mood. When Brickett started his coffee-grinder there was a certain rhythm about it that set the Squire to whistling. “Hard-Times” Wharff was playing on his tin flute down in the yard of the little brown house behind the currier’s shop, the music serving as his daily relaxation from his meditations on astronomy. Usually the monotonous “toodle-oodle” irritated the Squire. This day he tapped time with his finger on the open page.
He wanted to say something aloud and he glanced up at the “Creosote Supreme Bench.” No, that wasn’t the right kind of an audience! He looked down at the floor. Eli’s steadfast, worshipful gaze caught his. The dog rapped his tail genially.
“Eli,” said the Squire, smiling at him, “when you load your gun to bring down a particular human heart, there isn’t any telling how many others the scatter-fire will hit.”
Then for a little while he sat and dreamed over that walk home along the Cove road, past the pines that whispered and along the shore where the waves seemed to follow them with a sort of a dance step. And neither of them had said a word about love during all the long walk!
In fact, Squire Phin hadn’t said much of anything. It was so good to hear her voice. Since he had talked to her that August day across the iron fence he had been afraid she would think that he was whining and sentimental. To be sure, he reflected, his feelings had been cruelly stirred that day, and that was some excuse; and then, too, he had waited ten years to say even the little that he did say. He was rather proud that he hadn’t raked up the old topic during the walk. This was the pride of New England reserve that distrusts over-much lip service. It had been hard to hold in sometimes along the way, when she praised his courage in handling the affair in the Dunham district and showed her appreciation of other things that he didn’t know she had heard about.
“I suppose some men would have taken advantage and pestered her again with love-talk,” he had pondered as he walked away from the iron gate of the Willard place, “but I reckon I’ll never get fussed up enough again to bother her that way. It’s a tough thing for a woman to feel that she can’t walk with a man without his everlastingly dinging away his own troubles into her ears—and—and there may be a time when she will walk with me again if she realises that I know enough to keep my mouth shut.”
All of which might indicate to those versed in such matters that Squire Phin Look understood litigation better than love-making, which has its own court days, its calendar for service, its notice and its set time for appeal. He, however, felt that he had played the part of chivalry.
So the morning had seemed fair and he had slapped Hiram on the back at breakfast time and had hummed a tune as he walked to his office, and everything had seemed to be music, even the mournful cooing of “Hard-Times’s” tin flute.