that’s all. I took it and forgot it. That’s all, Mr. Pomfrey. Father knows that’s all.”
He took on awfully, but it was the pain. I could see he’d done no wrong.
“How did you take it? Come, Bub, tell me all about it,” coaxed father.
“It’s a pretty story,” burst out Mr. Ridlet. “A boy old enough to know something takes a package of silver dollars for nails! Nails! Takes it and tosses it into the old carriage room, where it gets covered up, and never comes to sight till to-day. And our two families set together by the ears in consequence, and not speaking for half a year. Tell me a boy doing such a senseless thing as that doesn’t deserve a whipping?”
“But I forgot it, father,” pleaded poor Bub.
“Has your wife’s money been found?” said father, looking real pleased. “Why, that’s the best news I’ve heard this long while. You and your wife must be glad. I would hear Bub’s story through before giving him such a whipping. Found it in the old carriage room? He put it there by mistake?”
“Mistake!” roared Mr. Ridlet. “If it was by mistake, why didn’t he remember it? It’s a likely story! I asked him over and over again where he was that morning.”
“You see I clean forgot it, Mr. Pomfrey,” sobbed Bub, not daring to speak to his father, “for I just ran in to see if father had got the nails I wanted, when I heard Seth outside. He’d come to get me to go out in his new boat. We had agreed to go that day. You see I asked father to get the nails for Seth to finish up the boat with; but Seth had found some. The good time I had that day just put everything else out of my mind. Then, not having anything more to do with Seth kinder mixed me up afterwards,” explained Bub; “made me forget worse, I suppose.”
“How happened it to turn up at last?” asked father.
“Why, Bub was rummaging round this morning, and he lighted on it, he says,” replied Mr. Ridlet. “Says he was so scared, he didn’t dare to tell me till to-night.”