Little Fishers: and Their Nets

by Pansy

"How do you happen to know so much about him?" Nettie questioned one day when Jerry was at his highest pitch of excitement.

"Ho!" he said, almost in scorn, "I have known about him ever since I was born; everybody knows General McClintock." Then Nettie felt meek and ignorant.

Nothing had ever so excited Jerry as the coming of the hero; and indeed the town generally seemed to have caught fire. General McClintock seemed to be the theme of every tongue. Connected with these days, Nettie had her perplexities and her sorrows. In the first place, Jerry was obstinately determined that she should join the procession with him to meet General McClintock. In vain she protested that she did not belong to the public schools. He did, he said, and that was enough.

Then when Nettie urged and almost cried, he had another plan: "Well, then, we won't go as scholars. We'll go ahead, as private individuals; I'm only a kind of a scholar, anyhow, just holding on for a few weeks till my father comes; we'll go up there early and get a good place before the procession forms and see the whole of it. I know the marshal real well; he's a good friend of mine, and I know he will give us a place."

It was of no use for Nettie to protest; to remind him that the girls would think she was putting herself forward, to say that she had nothing to wear to such a gathering. She might as well have talked to a stone for all the impression she made. She had never seen him so resolute to have his own way. He did not care what she wore, it made not the slightest difference to him what the girls said, and he did ask it of her as a kindness to him, and he should be hurt so that he could never get over it if she refused to go; he had never wanted anything so much in his life, and he could not give it up. So Nettie, reluctant, sorrowful, promised, and cried over it in her room that night. She wanted to please Jerry, for his father was coming now in a few weeks perhaps, and Jerry would go away with him, and she should never see him again; and what in the world would she do without him? And here she cried harder than ever.

Then came up that dreadful question of clothes; her one winter dress was too short and too narrow and a good deal worn. Auntie Marshall had thought last winter that it would hardly do for a church dress, and here it was still her best. There was no such thing as a new one for the present; for mother had not had anything in so long, she must be clothed, and Nettie was willing to wait; but she was not willing to take a conspicuous place on a public day and be stared at and talked about.

However, Jerry continued merciless to the very last; nothing else would satisfy him. He hurried her in a breathless state down the hill to the platform, smiled and nodded to his friend the marshal, who nodded back in the most confidential manner, and perched them on the corner of the temporary platform, right behind the reception committee! It was every whit as disagreeable as Nettie had planned that it should be. Of course Lorena Barstow was among the leaders in the young people's procession, and of course she contrived to get enough to be heard, and to say in a most unnecessarily loud voice:

"Do look at that Decker girl perched up there on the platform. If she doesn't contrive to make herself a laughing stock everywhere! Girls, look at her hat; she must have worn it ever since they came out of the ark. What business is she here, anyway? She doesn't belong to the schools?"

There was much more in the same vein; much pushing and crowding, and laughing and hateful speeches about folks who crowded in where they didn't belong, and poor Nettie, the tears only kept back by force of will, looked in vain for sympathy into Jerry's fairly dancing eyes. What ailed the boy? She had never seen him so almost wild with eager excitement before. Judge Barstow and Dr. Lewis were both on the reception committee, of course, and under cover of this, their daughters wedged their way to the front, and whispered to the fathers. Loud whispers:

"Papa, that ridiculous Decker girl and the little Irish boy with her ought not to be perched up there in that conspicuous place. She doesn't belong here, anyway; she isn't a scholar."