The Doctor put his head to one side, cocked one eye and cried: “How would that go?”
“Now you’re shoutin’, Doc. Bust a machine, and the company pays for it. Bust a man, the man pays for it or his wife and children or his friends or the county. That’s not fair. A man’s as much of a part of the cost of production as a machine!”
The Doctor toddled out, clicking his cane and whistling a merry tune and left Mr. Brotherton enjoying his maiden meditations upon the injustices of this world. In the midst of his meditations he found that he had been listening for five minutes to Captain Morton. The Captain was expounding some passing dream about his Household Horse. Apparently the motor car, which was multiplying rapidly in Harvey, had impressed him. He was telling Mr. Brotherton that his Household Horse, if harnessed to the motor car, would save much of the power wasted by the chains. He was dreaming of the distant day when motor cars would be used in sufficient numbers to make it profitable for the Captain to equip them with his power saving device.
But Mr. Brotherton cut into the Captain’s musings with: “You tell the girls to wash the cat for I’m coming out to-night.”
“Girls?–huh–girls?” replied the Captain as he looked over his spectacles at Mr. Brotherton. “’Y gory, man, what’s the matter with me–eh? I’m staying out there on Elm Street yet–what say?” And he went out smiling.
When the Captain entered the house, he found Emma getting supper, Martha setting the table and Ruth, with a candy box before her at the piano, going over her everlasting “Ah-ah-ah-ah-ahs” from “C to C” as Emma called it.
Emma took her father’s hat, put it away and said: “Well, father–what’s the news?”
“Well,” replied the Captain, with some show of deliberation, “a friend of mine down town told me to tell you girls to wash the cat for he’ll be along here about eight o’clock.”
“Mr. Brotherton,” scoffed Ruth. “It’s up to you two,” she cried gayly in the midst of her eternal journey from 398“C” to “C.” “He never wears his Odd Fellows’ pin unless he’s been singing at an Odd Fellows’ funeral, so that lets me out to-night.”
“Well,” sighed Emma, “I don’t know that I want him even if he has on his Shriner’s pin. I just believe I’ll go to bed. The way I feel to-night I’m so sick of children I believe I wouldn’t marry the best man on earth.”