Little Fishers: and Their Nets

by Pansy

Little Sate went with Jerry to give the invitations to the boys, and to charge them to keep the whole thing a profound secret from Norm; they came home by way of the Farley woods, and little Sate appeared at the door with her arms laden with such lovely branches of autumn leaves, that Nettie exclaimed in wild delight, and left her turnips half-peeled to help adorn the walls of the front room. This suggested the idea, and by three o'clock that room was a bower of beauty. Red and golden and lovely brown leaves mixed in with the evergreen tassels of the pines, with here and there pine cones, and red berries peeping out from everywhere. "You little darling," said Nettie, kissing Sate, "you have made a picture of it, like what they paint on canvas, only a thousand times lovelier."

And Sate, looking on, with her wide sweet eyes aglow with feeling, fitted the picture well.

So the feast was spread, and the astonished and hungry boys came, and feasted. And Norm, too astonished at first to take it in, began presently to understand that all this preparation and delight were in honor of his birthday! And though he said not a word, aloud, he kept up in his soul a steady line of thought; the centre of which was this:

"I don't deserve it, that's a fact; there's mother doing everything for me, and Nettie working like a slave, and the children going without things to give me a treat. I'll be in a better fix to keep a birthday before it gets around again, see if I'm not!"

His was not the only thinking which was done that day. Rick, merry enough all the afternoon, and enjoying his dinner as well as it was possible for a hungry fellow to do, nevertheless had a sober look on his face more than once, and said as he shook hands with Norm at night: "I'll tell you what it is, my boy, if I had your kind of a home, and folks, I'd be worth something in the world; I would, so. I ain't sure, between you and me, but I shall, anyhow; just for the sake of getting into such Thanksgiving houses once in awhile. By and by a fellow will have to carry himself pretty straight, or that sister of yours won't have nothing to do with him; I can see that in her eyes."

Then he went home. And cold though his room was he sat down, even after he had pulled off his coat, as a memory of some thoughtful word of Nettie's came over him, and went all over it again; then he brought his hard hand down with a thud on the rickety table, on which he leaned and said: "As sure as you live, and breathe the breath of life, old fellow, you've got to turn over a new leaf; and you've got to begin to-night."

It was less than a week after the Thanksgiving excitements that the town got itself roused over something which reached even to the children. Jerry came home from school with it, and came directly to Nettie, his cheeks aglow with the news. "There's to be the biggest kind of a time here next Thursday, Nettie; don't you think General McClintock is coming, to give a lecture, and they are going to give him a reception at Judge Bentley's and I don't know what all, and the schools are all going to dismiss and go down to the train in procession to meet him, and they are going to sing, Hail to the Chief, and the band is to play, See, the conquering Hero comes, and I don't know what isn't going to be done."

"Who is General McClintock?" said ignorant Nettie, composedly drying her plate as though all the generals in the world were nothing to her. Then did Jerry come the nearest impatience that Nettie had ever seen in him; and he launched forth in such a wild praise of General McClintock and such an excited account of the things which he had done and said, and prevented, and pushed, that Nettie was half bewildered and delightfully excited when he paused for breath. Henceforth the talk of the town was General McClintock.

"It is a wonder they asked him to speak on temperance," said Nettie, disdain in her voice; she had not a high opinion of the temperance enthusiasm of the town in which she lived.

"They didn't," said Jerry. "He asked himself; they wanted him to talk about the war, or the tariff, or the great West, or some other stupid thing, but he said, 'No, sir! the great question of the day is temperance, and I shall speak on that, or nothing!'"