"Please do!" added Keineth. It would make them all forget to feel cross toward Billy!
So, chuckling a little under his breath, Mr. Lee began:
"Down in our village old Cy Addington had a calf he'd entered in the County Fair. He'd set his heart on that calf's winning a prize--all the other farmers had told him it would. It was black as jet with just a little white mark on its fore quarter. He tended that calf like a baby and spent hours at a time getting it all in shape for the Fair. Well, the night before the Fair opened two boys--bad boys they were--stole that calf out of its shed, took it off in some woods where they had a lantern and a can of paint hidden under a log. What do you think they did? Painted the animal white--snow white--every bit of him! Then they took him to the graveyard and tied him to a tombstone!"
"Oh, Daddy, how dreadful!" cried Alice.
"Then what happened?" demanded Keineth and Peggy in one voice.
"Well, a lot of things happened, and they happened fast! Miss Cymantha Jones, a nervous spinster, was walking home from Widow Markham's house--rather late, but she'd been caring for the widow through a sick spell. And Miss Cymantha saw that calf jumping around among the tombstones and thought it was a ghost! She let out such screams that it brought Charley, the old sexton, running to the door in his night shirt, and he saw the calf, and Miss Cymantha scuttling down the road screaming and holding her skirts high so's she could run faster, and I guess he thought it was the resurrection itself, for what did he do but ring the bell and the folks all thought it was a fire and came rushing out in all kinds of clothes! Then Cy Addington found his precious calf and the neighbors had an indignation meeting right then and there and the ones who had the most clothes on started out to find the offenders and some of the others went in to quiet Miss Cymantha, and a few others put the sexton to bed and locked him in so that he couldn't give any more alarms!"
"But what happened to the boys?"
"Oh, when the crowd was the most excited they just climbed over a woodshed into the house and by the time the volunteers were lined up to go to find them they were sound asleep!"
"Who were they, Father? Were they boys you knew?" asked Peggy.
Mr. Lee laughed down the length of the table and Peggy caught the answering smile in her mother's eyes.