This day Stowell stayed downstairs until the thing happened—then he rushed from the editorial office on the first floor in front, eighty feet back to the rear, then up the stairs to the second floor, and back again eighty feet to the composing room. Alice, who knew her father better than I did, whispered, “Oh, Lordy, he’s mad as a wet hen. Don’t give me away, please!”
John wanted to know, “Oo was it that ‘ad offended little Miss ‘Utch?” Neither of us had the answer. Coral Hutchison, a frequent and I may say most welcome caller—preferably on any day but Thursday—and Alice had put in a couple of hours visiting, as young girls will. And this was Thursday afternoon, our press day. I asked Alice to speed up her work a little so that we might make the deadline before six o’clock. It did no good. I had to speak to Alice a second time, not harshly, however—and Coral, apparently understanding the situation, left. But when she passed the editorial office downstairs, Stowell said she was crying.
After John Stowell had gone downstairs that day, Alice said, “If he asks you again—and I know he will—tell him what you told me about Coral after she had been up here last week. That would tickle him, and he will forget all about her tears.”
Well, John Stowell did ask me again. He really wanted to know. And I told him, shielding Alice as much as I could. He said, “I understand. You did right. Make ‘er pay attention to ‘er work. But I just didn’t like to see a nice girl like little Miss ‘Utch leaving my place of business, crying.”
I squared myself with John by saying—and meaning — that it would be a grievously short-sighted thing for any young fellow to knowingly offend “Little Miss ‘Utch. Besides being “some” girl, she would likely some day be an heiress. But, then, even so, this fact was something less than a comforting thought to one very fine young local merchant who fancied himself well entrenched in her future matrimonial plans. When he began talking about what they could accomplish with her papa’s wealth—she quit him, cold.
“Little Miss ‘Utch” was the daughter of Charley Hutchison, but everybody except Stowell called him “Hutch.” I knew Charley quite intimately for a dozen years before I learned that his name was really Hutchison.
What I had told Alice about Coral that day is not in itself worth repeating here. But it offers a chance to introduce an outstanding success story—a success in the redemption of waning manhood, as well as in a financial way. Also, this injection does not strictly belong in this story — but, in line with my adopted hop, skip, and jump reminiscing technique, I shall try to make it fit.
I told Alice that Coral was the only girl who had ever asked me to come and see her sometime when her papa wasn’t around. And I might say she was in deadly earnest about this. Her papa would not permit her to entertain me in the manner she had in mind. It was not that he disapproved of me. In fact, it was on his invitation that I was in the presence of the girl at the moment. Also, her papa was at the time just outside the hearing of the conspirators.
My brother Charley, Clifford Ashton, and I, were cutting sumac for my father’s tanyard on the Hutchison land south of the big barn. Charley Hutchison had followed his four-year-old daughter out to the barn that day to prevent her from going through her stunt—the thing she wanted me to witness. Charley saw us in the sumac patch, and came out, bringing Coral with him. He said he had a big watermelon patch close to the barn, and invited us to help ourselves to the melons—then, and thereafter whenever working in the vicinity. He also said he had to watch Coral closely — that whenever she would get the chance she’d climb up to the beams in the big barn and jump off into the hay. Hay hands were bringing in the harvest at that time — and of course the barn was opened up.
Bees were buzzing around broken melons in the patch, and the little girl, apparently frightened of them, tried to hide her face against my legs. Charley said that while they — the father, mother, and child—were visiting his people in Ohio, after having attended the Centennial (1876) in Philadelphia, Coral had sat down on a “live” beehive and got stung so badly as to make her very sick; the swelling in her face almost closing her eyes.