[VI]
AB'M'S BIRTHDAY PARTY
The robbers were caught, and were lodged in the county jail, and all the farmers who had hen-roosts robbed, and the farmers' wives who had their doughnuts stolen, kept coming over to the little brown house or stopping Mrs. Pepper after church on Sunday to thank her for what her boy had done, until it got so that when Joel saw a bonnet coming along the dusty road, or a wagon stop in front, he would run and hide.
"I won't have 'em put their hands on my head and call me good boy," he cried, shaking his black hair viciously. "I'll kick 'em--so there!" So one day, when he caught sight of a wagon just about to stop, he ran, as usual, as fast as he could, off over to Grandma Bascom's.
"Now that's too bad," said a big tall woman, who got out of the wagon and made her way up to the door, "for Mis' Beebe said in partic'ler I was to bring Joel, an' he ain't to home."
"Go and call him, Polly," said Mrs. Pepper, "Come in, won't you, and sit down?"
Phronsie tried to drag forward a chair, while Polly ran out the back door, calling, "Joel--Joel!"
"Bless her heart!" exclaimed the visitor, looking at Phronsie. "No, I can't set; I've got to keep an eye on that horse." As Mr. Beebe, who ran the little shoe shop up in the town, owned a horse that nothing but a whip could make go, this seemed unnecessary. However, Mrs. Pepper only smiled hospitably, while the woman went on.
"You see, I've only jest about come, as 'twere, on from the West, an' bein' my boy's got a birthday, an' him bein' grandson, as you may say, to Mis' Beebe, she thought she'd give him a party."
"Oh, are you Mr. Beebe's daughter?" asked Mrs. Pepper, in perplexity. "I thought the old people hadn't any children."