The village appealed to her as a skilfully set scene, begirt by a beautiful background of changing fields and sky—a stage whereon was enacted an interminable drama, in whose scenes all the constituents of humble life were blended.
It never occurred to her that she was the heroine of the story—the queen of the animated chess board, an actress in the life play. Poor Judith! She thought herself only a spectator, and, as such, deemed herself secure from all the pains and penalties of the play.
Judith always laughed, though sometimes for shame she strove to hide the laughter when Tommy Slick was before the footlights. Tommy had been making a hilarious record for himself at school. To begin with, Tommy was nearly ten years old, and had been allowed to run wild at home, hence he was utterly ignorant of the world of letters, but wide awake to the vital facts in the world of men: for Tommy's intellect was precocious and practical.
Tommy's father was wont to say of this, his youngest hope, "Tommy hain't much of a letter sharp, but he'd be good on a horse trade," and his judgment was about correct. His mother, as a preliminary to Tommy's appearance, called upon Suse, and informed her that "Tommy was a right smart young un, but delikit." Of the first fact Suse was well aware: of the truth of the latter statement she never could convince herself. Did she not, in common with the rest of the village, remember well the day when Tommy and his father furnished forth entertainment for the whole community? The fashion of it did not suggest any extreme debility upon Tommy's part. It was in this wise:
One day Tommy, having incited his irascible father even more than usual, perceived blood in his parent's eye, and concluded to run. The chase led up the village street, to the vacant lot where the old store had been burned down. The fleet and flying Tommy, turning here, had perceived his father in full pursuit, and, evidently doubting his own staying powers, had taken to a tree, shinning up a tall, slender, swaying poplar with precocious celerity. He climbed to the very top, and, undaunted by the slenderness of his perch (for the tree bent beneath his weight as a stalk of grain beneath a bird), clung comfortably there, whilst his father, unable to follow up the slender stem, stood at the foot, and alternately threatened, cajoled and cursed. When he resorted to swearing as a safety valve for his wrath, Tommy exchanged oaths genially and freely with him, until Slick, Sen., in a paroxysm of rage, shook the tree continuously and violently, so that Tommy took an earthward flight, fortunately for him landing on a pile of old straw.
His father, somewhat cooled down by the spectacle of Tommy shooting through the air, approached him, and as a preliminary, asked him if he was hurt. This gave Tommy an opportunity which he at once improved. He made no reply.
And thereupon Suse and the rest of the Ovidians were regaled by seeing Tommy's father carrying his son home tenderly, stepping carefully so as not to jar the presumably broken bones.
This progress Tommy rendered as arduous as possible, by lying perfectly limp in his father's arms; in fact, making himself dead weight, and letting his long legs dangle helplessly down, to meet his father's knee-caps, or shins, at every step, with the brass toes of his heavy boots. It was not reported that Tommy suffered much from this experience.
Tommy had a fine fund of profanity, which served as a spicy garnish to his deep sense of humour, a genial and easy self-possession, unfailing confidence in his own powers, and a dog he was willing to back against any other in the village, except Hiram Green's brindle bull pup.
The first day Tommy went to school, Suse had the "infant" class up before one of the alphabet tablets by the window, and Tommy, affable and completely at ease, came with them. Most children—Ovidian children—when they came to school for the first time, were somewhat abashed by the novelty of their surroundings, given to starting at every sound, stumbling over the legs of desks, and getting hopelessly entangled with the other pupils, in their efforts to obliterate themselves from the teacher's notice. Not so, Tommy. No teacher ever born had terrors for him; the legs outstretched to trip him on his way up the aisle, were withdrawn, tingling from the kicks of Tommy's brass toes. When he was half-way up the aisle, it occurred to him to take a short-cut, so he wriggled between two desks, and landed with a slide over the third, to find most of the class assembled. A sharp pinch of an arm, his elbow applied vigorously to a side, a vicious kick upon a shin, cleared his way of three boys. Then he planted himself at the head of the class, next Suse, and prepared to receive the seeds of knowledge.