Various
Golden Stories
She faltered, turned rebelliously, turned again and obeyed.
"Bettina!" The voice of the childless banker faded off in the distance, its last echo drowned in the full-throated: "Bettina, we are going to be married at once," that broke joyously from Mr. Strumley's lips. "I have followed the example of the Romans, and taken me a wife from the Sabines."
Bettina peeped up at him from beneath the dark screens of her lashes. "Then I, like the wise Sabian ladies, shall save the day for peace and for Rome," she smiled archly.
And the machine laughed "Chug-chug!"
XI
THE JAM GOD
A Tale of Nigeria
By H.M. EGBERT
Lieutenant Peters, of the Royal Nigerian Service, was lying upon the ground face downward, under a prickly tree. The sun was nearly vertical, and the little round shadow in which he reclined was interlaced with streaks of hot light. As the sun moved, Peters rolled into the shade automatically. His eyes were shut, and he was in that hot borderland which is the nearest approach to sleep at noontide in Nigeria.
The flies were pestering him, and he was thirsty—not with that thirst of the mouth which may be quenched with a long draught, but with the thirst of the throat that sands and sears. He felt thirsty all over. He had been thirsty, like this, ever since he struck the bend of the Niger. What made it worse, every night he dreamed of fruits that were snatched away, like the food of Tantalus, as he approached to grasp them. Two nights before he had been wandering knee-deep in English strawberry beds; the night before he had been shaking down limes and oranges from groves of trees set with green leaves and studded with golden fruit. Once he had dreamed of a new fruit, a cross between a pear and a watermelon; but when he cut into it he found nothing but hard, small seeds, with a pineapple flavor, which he detested.
Peters was dreaming now, for he twined his fingers in the long grass and tossed uneasily.
"I'll pick them all," he muttered sleepily. "All mixed together, with ten or twelve pounds of damp, brown sugar, and boiled into jam."
He woke and felt his teeth for the hundredth time, to note whether any untoward looseness betokened the advent of the dreaded scurvy. Reassured, he stretched his limbs and rolled over into the shade of the tree.
"When I get back to a white man's country," he murmured—"when I get home to England what is it I am going to do? Why, I shall go into a restaurant and order some rich brown soup. Then I shall have pate de foie gras sandwiches. Then scrambled eggs, chocolate, and muffins buttered with whipped cream. Then half a dozen cans of jam. I shall either begin with strawberry and conclude with apricot, or else I shall begin with apricot and wind up with raspberry. It doesn't matter much; any kind of jam will do except pineapple."
He opened his eyes, brushed away the flies that swarmed noisily round him, took out his hard-tack, and opened a small can of dried beef. He munched for a while, sipping occasionally from the tepid water in his canteen. When he had finished he put the can-opener back in the pocket of his tunic and rose, his face overspread with a look of resolution.
"I believe," he cried, "I believe that I could eat even a can of pineapple!"
He rose, the light of his illusion still in his eyes, and began staggering weakly under the blazing sun in the direction of his camp. He was weaker than he had thought, and when he reached the shelter of his tent he sank down exhausted upon the bed. Through the open flap he could see, five hundred yards away, the round, beehive-shaped huts of the native village and, in their centre, the square palace of King Mtetanyanga, built of sticks and Niger mud, surrounded by its stockade, the royal flag, a Turkish bath-towel stained yellow and blue, floating proudly above.
Lieutenant Peters had been sent by the Nigerian Government along the upper Niger to conclude treaties with the different kings and sweep them within the British sphere of interest. The French were out upon a similar errand, for in this region the two nations possessed only a vague and very indeterminate boundary line. Peters had been successful until he came to the village of King Mtetanyanga, who had balked at affixing his cross to the piece of mysterious parchment on the ground that it was unlawful to do so during the festival of the great Ju-Ju, whose worshipers could be heard wailing and beating tom-toms nightly in some unknown part of the jungle. What this Ju-Ju fetish was nobody could tell; it had come into the village recently, from the coast, men whispered; it possessed awful and mysterious potency; was guarded zealously by some score of priests, who veiled its awful vision; and it was the greatest Ju-Ju for hundreds of miles along the Niger, tribes from distant regions frequently arriving to sacrifice pigs to it.
However, Lieutenant Raguet, the French commissioner, had been equally unsuccessful in inducing the dusky monarch to affix his signature to the French treaty, and the ambassadors of the rival nations were both encamped near the village, waiting for the Ju-Ju festivities to reach their plethoric conclusion before the king sobered up and attended to business.
Raguet, strolling into his rival's camp that evening, found Peters in his tent, flushed, and breathing heavily.
"Tcht! tcht! you are seeck," said the Frenchman sympathetically. "That ees too bad. Have you quinine?"
"Quinine be hanged," cried Peters huskily. "I've taken the stuff until I've floated in it. There's only one thing can cure me, Raguet. I've been living on crackers and canned beef for over a month, and I'm pining for jam. Have you got any jam?"
"Dsham, dsham?" repeated Raguet with a puzzled expression.
"Yes, les preserves—le fruit et le sugar, bouilli—you know what I mean."
"Ah, ze preserve!" said the Frenchman, with an expression of enlightenment. "Ze preserve, I have him not."
"I tell you what, Raguet," said Peters irritably, "I've got to get some jam somewhere or I shall kick the bucket. I'm craving for it, man. If I had one can of the stuff it would put me upon my feet instantly, I can feel it. Now it's ten to one I'll be too sick to see the king after the ceremonies are over, and he'll sign your treaty instead of mine. And I've given him three opera hats, a phonograph, and a gallon of rum, curse the luck! What did you give him, Raguet?"
"Me? I give him a umbrella with ze gold embroider," the Frenchman answered.
"My government won't let me give the little kings umbrellas," said Peters in vexation. "It makes the big chiefs jealous. I say, Raguet," he rambled on, sitting up dizzily, "what is this Ju-Ju idol of theirs?"
"I know not," said the French lieutenant. "Only ze king and ze priests have seen him. If zey tell, zey die—ze idol keel zem."
"I suppose they'll be keeping up these infernal tom-toms for another week," grumbled the sick man, lying back and half closing his eyes from weariness. "Well, I'll have to try to get well in time."
The Frenchman resisted the impulse to leap back in surprise, but his eyes narrowed till they were slits in his face. So! This Englishman did not know that this had been the last day of the sacrifices, that at midnight a hecatomb of pigs was to be killed and eaten in the bush in honor of the Ju-Ju. Nor that the king, when he had broached and drunk the cask of rum, would be in a mood to discuss the treaty. Peters evidently was unaware how much his majesty had been affronted by his failure to present him with an umbrella. La! la! Fortune was evidently upon his side. All this flashed through the Frenchman's mind in an instant. A solitary chuckle escaped him, but he turned it into an exclamation of grief, sighed deeply, seated himself upon the bed, and kissed Peters affectionately on either cheek.
"My Peters, my poor friend," he began, "you must not theenk of leaving your tent for ze next two, t'ree days. Ze fever, he is very bad onless you receive him in bed. I shall take care of you."
"You're a good fellow, Raguet," said Peters, wiping his face surreptitiously with the backs of his hands. When his visitor had left he turned over and sank into a half-delirious doze that lasted until the sun sank with appalling suddenness, and night rushed over the land. Tossing upon his bed, all through the velvet darkness he was dimly conscious, through his delirious dreams, of tom-toms beaten in the bush. His throat was parched, and in his dreams he drank greedily from his canteen; but each time that he awoke he saw it hanging empty from the tent flap. Presently a large, bright, yellow object rose up in front of him. Greedily he set his teeth into it; and even as he did so it disappeared, and he awoke, gasping and choking under the broiling blackness.
"I'll have to take that canteen down to the stream and fill it," he muttered, rising unsteadily and proceeding toward the bank. To his surprise he found that rain had fallen. He was treading in ooze, which rose higher and higher until it clogged his footsteps. He struggled, but now it held him fast, and he was sinking slowly, but persistently, now to the waist, now to the shoulders. Frantically he thrust his hands downward to free himself, and withdrew them sticky with—jam! He scooped up great handsful greedily; and even as he raised it to his mouth it vanished, and he awoke once more in his tent.
He flung himself out of bed with an oath, took down his canteen, and started toward the river. The noise of the tom-toms was louder than ever, proceeding, apparently, from some point in the bush a little to the left of the king's palace. Scrambling and struggling through the thorn thickets, he reached the sandy bed of the stream, filled his water-bottle at a pool, and drank greedily.
It was that still hour of night when the many-voiced clamor of the bush grows hushed, because the lions are coming down to drink at the waters. The rising moon threw a pale light over the land. The tom-toms were still resounding in the bush, but to Peters's distorted mind they took on the sound of ripe mangoes falling to the ground and bursting open as they struck the soil. He counted, "one, two, three," and waited. He counted again. There must be thousands of them. Peters began to edge his way through the reeds in the direction of the sound. After a while he came to a wall of rocks perpendicular and almost insurmountable. He paused and considered, licking his lips greedily as the thud, thud continued, now, apparently, directly in front of him. All at once his eyes, curiously sensitive to external impressions, discovered a little, secret trail between two boulders. He followed it; a great stone revolved at his touch, and he found himself inside the sacred groves. He went on, gulping greedily in anticipation of the feast which awaited him.
Suddenly he stopped short. He had seen something that brought back to him with a rush the realization of his whereabouts. Seated in the shelter of a cactus tree, not fifty yards away, was King Mtetanyanga, wearing his three opera hats, one upon another, in the form of a triple crown, and drinking his own rum with Raguet, under the shade of Raguet's umbrella. Prone at their feet crouched Tom, the interpreter.
"His Majesty say, 'How you fix him Ju-Ju?'" translated Tom.
"Tell His Majesty, my Ju-Ju stronger than the Englishman's Ju-Ju," answered the Frenchman. "My Ju-Ju eat up his Ju-Ju. He very sick. If I choose, he die."
"Ugh!" grunted the king, when this explanation was vouchsafed, apparently impressed.
"Tell His Majesty my Ju-Ju stronger than his own Ju-Ju. If he no sign treaty, eat up his Ju-Ju," Raguet went on.
A flow of language came from the king's lips.
"His Majesty say, he bring his Ju-Ju, see whose greater," said the interpreter.
Vaguely aware that treachery was impending, but crazed now by the falling mangoes, Peters left them palavering and followed the trail. All at once he emerged into a tiny clearing and stood blinking at a fire, round which a group of men—priests, as he knew, from their buffalo horns and crane feathers—were reclining, hammering upon tom-toms and shouting in various stages of intoxication. The firelight blinded their eyes. Peters stood still uncertainly. Then his eyes fell upon a sawed-off tree-trunk, in the hollow of which lay something wrapped in a white cloth, surrounded with snake-skins. He had come by this secret road into the actual presence of the great Ju-Ju.
Curiously he inserted his hand, lifted the object out, and examined it. Inside was something of a strange, yet familiar shape, oval, and flattened at the ends. He lifted it out of its wrappings, and there, in his hand, he saw a can, bearing the legend:
GREENAWAY'S BEST JAM.
He looked at it in solemn and holy meditation; then, sitting down, he drew the can-opener from his tunic and wiped it clean upon his sleeve.
After awhile a babel of sound broke in upon his ears. Men had come running up, brandishing spears, stopped, flung themselves upon the ground prostrate in front of him. The priests were there, frantically abasing themselves; Mtetanyanga, his opera hats rolling, unheeded, on the ground. Their cries ceased; they veiled their eyes. Then from the dust came the feeble tones of the interpreter.
"His Majesty say, you eat him Ju-Ju—yours greatest Ju-Ju, he want to sign treaty."
But Peters, waving the empty can over his head, shouted:
"I've eaten jam, I've eaten jam! It's pineapple—and I don't care!"
XII
WHEN FATHER WORKED
A Suburban Story
By CHARLTON LAWRENCE EDHOLM
"H'everybody works but Fadher,
H'and 'e sets 'round h'all diy–"
Thus in chorus shrilled the infant Cadges like the morning stars singing together, but still more like the transplanted little cockneys they were.
The placid brow of Mr. Thomas Cadge was darkened with disapproval, he shifted his stubby brier pipe to the other corner of his mouth, edged a little from his seat on the sunny front stoop and, craning his neck around the corner of his house, revealed an unwashed area extending from collarbone to left ear.
"Shet up, you kids!" he barked. "Wot for? Becos I say so, that's why. I don't like that song, 'taint fit for Sunday."
With a soothing consciousness that he had upheld the sacred character of the Sabbath, Mr. Cadge settled back to the comfort of his sun-bath and smoke. But he had scarcely emitted three puffs before the piping voice of Arabella Cadge was again wafted to his ears. She sang solo this time, and the selection was of a semi-devotional nature, more in keeping with the day:
"Oh fadher, dear fadher, come 'ome wid me now,
De clock on de steeple strikes–"
"Shet up, drat you!" again commanded her parent. "If I has to get up and go arter you–"
The balance of this direful threat may never be known, for at that moment Mr. Job Snavely, garbed in the black broadcloth which he wore one day out of seven, paused in front of Mr. Cadge's door and bade him good morning.
"Mornin'," responded the ruffled father.
"Your little girl is quite a song bird," continued Mr. Snavely, with his usual facility in making well-meant small-talk more irritating than a hurled brick.
"She sings too much," commented Mr. Cadge, shortly, "I likes people wot knows when to 'old their tongues."
"Very true, very true!" amiably replied Mr. Snavely, "but for all that, there is nothing sweeter than the artless babble of babes; I declare it almost brought the tears to my eyes when I heard them prattling, 'Everybody works but father,' it is so very, very appro–"
Mr. Snavely checked himself abruptly, for the light in the small, green eyes of Thomas Cadge was baleful, and his square jaw protruded menacingly. The kindly critic of music had a vague feeling that the subject might be changed to advantage.
"Been to church this morning, I suppose?" he inquired briskly with the assurance of a man just returning from that duty.
"No I 'asn't," retorted Cadge, "and wot's more the old woman 'asn't, and the kids 'asn't neither. 'Cos why? 'Cos in this 'ere free country of yours, a laboring man can't make a living for 'is family, workin' 'ard as I does, Sundays, nights, and h'all the time. The missus and the kids stays from church 'cos their duds ain't fit, and I stays 'ome 'cos I've got to work like a slave to pay you for seven dollars' worth of spoiled vegetables and mouldy groceries. That's the reason I works on Sundays, if you've got to know."
"Work on Sundays!" gasped the grocer. "Work! work?" and he stared at the reclining figure of Mr. Cadge in unfeigned astonishment.
"Yes, work. This 'ere construction company wot's doing the job of grading this vacant block, employs me to sort of look after things, their shovels, scoops, and the like. A kind of private police officer, I am," he concluded, drawing himself up a little and puffing into the air.
"And when are you on duty?" asked Mr. Snavely.
"Nights," replied Cadge, "nights and Sundays, when the tools ain't in use."
"I hope they pay you well for it?"
"Ah, but they don't. 'Ow much do you think I get for stayin' awake nights and doin' without my church on Sunday? Three measly dollars a week and the rent of this 'ere 'ouse, if you can call it a 'ouse."
It would have been difficult to determine just what name to give the residence of Mr. Thomas Cadge. It would hardly be called a cottage, though not because it was more spacious than the name implied; nor was it a piano-box, in spite of the fact that a piano would have fitted snugly within its walls, for no manufacturer would have trusted a valuable instrument in so flimsy a shell. It was not a real-estate office, as the sign which decorated its entire front proclaimed it to be, for through a jagged hole in the window facing the street projected a rusty iron stovepipe, which was wired to the façade of the building, and emitted the sooty smoke that had almost totally obscured and canceled the legend, "Suburban Star Realty Syndicate."
Moreover, a litter of tin cans, impartially distributed at the front and back doors, indicated the domestic use to which this temporary office had been put. A smell of steaming suds that pervaded the place likewise indicated the manner in which Mrs. Cadge eked out her lord's stipend. This impression was confirmed by the chorus of irrepressible little Cadges proclaiming:
"Mother tikes in washin',
H'and so does sister h'Ann,
H'everybody works at our 'ouse,
But my old–"
—a burst of melody which was abruptly checked with a tomato can hurled like a hand-grenade by their unmusical father.
"Look here, Cadge," said Mr. Snavely, with the air of proprietorship one adopts to hopeless debtors, "three dollars a week is not going to keep your family, to say nothing of paying up that seven dollars. I can't carry you forever, you know. Why don't you get a daylight job?"
"Ah, that is easy enough said," protested that injured individual. "'Aven't I tramped the streets day after day, lookin' for work?"
"Them as 'as a good paying business don't know wot it means to look for a job," pursued Cadge bitterly.
"Yes they do," asserted the grocer cheerfully. "I was given work at sweeping floors in the very store I now own. The fact is, I am sorry for you, Cadge, and I have been looking around to get you a job."
Mr. Cadge seemed depressed.
"And I am glad to say," chirruped Mr. Snavely, "that I have found a small piece of work for you, which will be worth a dollar and a half a day."
Cadge's brow was still gloomy.
"Of course, it is real work," added his kind-hearted creditor, briskly, "no sitting in the sun and watching other people's shovels; but a customer of mine, a widow lady, that lives along Catnip Creek, wants a man to pile up a wall of loose stones to keep her land from washing away in high water."
Thomas Cadge shook his head with the air of Cæsar virtuously refusing the crown.
"No, no, Snavely, it wouldn't do," he said. "I can see that it would interfere with my present h'occupation, and I can't afford to risk losing this 'ere job. Supposin' my family was to be turned out of doors!"
"Nonsense! It will only take you about four days to build the wall, and at one-fifty per day, that will be six dollars, twice your week's wages right there, and almost enough to pay what you owe me."
"I am afraid it can't be done, Snavely; the company might not like it; you see, I would be competing with them, that's their line."
"They wouldn't handle so small a job. You know that, Cadge."
"Yes, but a man can't draw pay for two positions at once; 't ain't honest."
"Why, this is not a regular situation," protested the upright Snavely, who saw his bill still unpaid; "you could work on it at odd times if you like. She'll pay you by the piece, I am pretty sure, and you will get your six dollars cash when the wall is done."
The furtive eyes of the hunter of work avoided those of his benefactor. He was pondering a new excuse when he happened to notice Master Cadge, aged nine, Thomas Cadge, Jr., aged eight, and Arabella Cadge, whose years were six, busily constructing a fort of cobblestones, and an idea struck him.
"Very well," he said, loftily waving his pipe, "I'll drop in Monday and talk this over with you, Snavely. Then if the job suits me I may take it. I don't like to talk business on Sunday, you know."
Thus rebuked, Mr. Snavely resumed his homeward way.
The following Monday Cadge overslept; Tuesday found him with a headache as a result, which by Wednesday had settled in a tooth; Thursday he felt so much better that he feared to do anything which might check his convalescence; Friday was an unlucky day, but so desirous was he of work that he manfully conquered his superstitious qualms and strolled over to the little shop where Mr. Job Snavely dealt in groceries and vegetables.
The details regarding the work were furnished with cheerful alacrity, the tradesman going so far as to accompany his protegé to the home of their patron, Mrs. Pipkin, a withered little lady who lived with her cats on the bank of the creek.
The work to be performed demanded more brawn than brain and no vast amount of either. All that was required was to pile up the boulders and cobblestones which littered the bed of the stream, as a rough, unmortared wall, along the sloping bank of Mrs. Pipkin's property.
It was evident that Mrs. Pipkin herself had not the slightest notion of how much a wall should cost, as she was ignorant of the two factors which determined it, namely, the wages of day-laborers and the time required to build the wall; therefore she requested Mr. Snavely, as a man of affairs, to make the bargain for her.
It was well that she did so, for Mr. Cadge's ideas on the subject were as boundless as hers were limited. Day wages, he affirmed, ranged from two dollars up for common labor, and as building a wall was highly skilled labor he thought three and a half or four dollars per diem would be about right, going on the basis of at least six days of eight hours each.
Mr. Snavely, on the contrary, after looking over the ground declared that four days' steady work would build a wall running the entire length of the widow's lot. Furthermore, that a dollar and a quarter a day was fair wages for such employment, while laborers would scramble for the job at a dollar and a half. As a concession to Mr. Cadge, he was willing to allow him to take his own time and agreed to pay six dollars when the wall should be completed.
Mr. Cadge waxed indignant and very voluble, while Mr. Snavely was a mild man of few words; but the simple laborer was no match for a man who made his living by small chaffering. He was forced to give in, and Saturday morning, bright and early, he appeared on the banks of Catnip Creek accompanied by Master Cadge, Thomas Cadge, Jr., and Arabella Cadge.
"Daddy's going to give you kids a treat to-day," he announced. "My eye! wot larks we will 'ave. Nothing to do all day long but play building a stone fort right on the brook, and Daddy will show you 'ow to build it."
The little Cadges were perfectly charmed at this condescension on the part of their sire, who seldom acknowledged their presence except with a cuff in passing. They were eager to begin, and as they had no need to strip their legs, which were always bare, the work proceeded apace.
Cadge, Sr., ensconced himself in the sunniest nook of the bank, and directed his offspring what stones to select and where to place them, and above all, to make haste, since the enemy would soon appear to attack the fort.
Before their Saturday holiday was over, the children had discovered that their father was a strenuous playfellow. In vain they suggested fishing, hunting Injuns, or gathering wild flowers; they had set out to build a fort on Catnip Creek, and build it they must.
They entertained hopes of sneaking off alone when they should go home for lunch, but Mr. Cadge had provided for this contingency. His wife appeared at noon with slices of bread and butter for the Cadgelings, to which was added a cold beefsteak and a bucket of beer for the support of their house. Having already lunched at home, she was permitted to lay a tier of heavier stones along the wall while waiting for her family to finish the repast.
It was an arduous day for the tribe of Cadge, excepting, of course, its head. Not until the first star came out and the owls began to hoot along the Catnip did he declare himself satisfied with the day's work and proceed homeward to supper. Widow Pipkin's wall was half finished.
Not until Saturday was the patient father able to enlist once more the services of his offspring, for, "What if they are your own kids!" retorted Mrs. Cadge from her wash-board. "I've rubbed my 'ands raw to give 'em the eddication you and me lacks, and to school they go. You build that wall yourself, or wait until the week's end for your pay."
The former alternative was not to be thought of, and the Widow Pipkin wondered mildly whether the half finished wall was ever to be completed.
But Saturday at dawn Cadge once more appeared, driving before him three tear-stained and reluctant Cadgelets. They had inherited part of their father's disposition in regard to real work, likewise his unwillingness to be imposed upon. Constructing fortifications along the Catnip was well enough for one Saturday, but their backs still ached from their exertions, and they had only disdain for the restricted paternal imagination which suggested that this time they build stone castles.
Their sire waxed eloquent over the art of castle building and the sport of imprisoning ogres in them, but was finally compelled to assume the attitude of an ogre himself, and threatened to skin them alive if they did not do as they were bid.
It was a long, hard day for the whole Cadge family. The little Cadges worked like galley-slaves in fear of the lash; their mother, out of pity for them, laid two tiers of cobbles when she came at noon, and even Cadge himself was tempted on one or two occasions to descend from his nook and lend a hand, but restrained himself.
Again the owls hooted along the stream and bullfrogs croaked from the reedy places. Cadge knocked the dottle out of his pipe and arose, stretching his short, muscular limbs, which had become cramped from sitting still so long.
"Run along 'ome, kiddies," he said, "and tell the old woman not to wait supper for me. There's a man down town as wants to see me about a job. I'll 'ave a bite with 'im."
The little Cadges disappeared in the twilight and their father presented himself at the Widow Pipkin's door to receive his hard-earned wages.
"Oh, dear me! I can't pay you to-night," answered Mrs. Pipkin. "I never keep any money in the house."
Cadge grumbled something about, a check would do. He was pretty sure that the barkeeper at Spider Grogan's place would cash it.
"Oh, but mine is a savings account, and I will have to go down to the bank myself and get the money; but, never mind, you shall have it first thing Monday morning."
The thirsty man could find no solution to this problem and, although he urged the Widow Pipkin to think of a way, as his "missus needed the medicine something orful," that kind-hearted old lady could suggest nothing more to the point than going at once with a mustard poultice to the sufferer.
Old women are so set in their notions that the anxious husband was a full half hour dissuading her, and, when he reached home with both hands in his empty pockets, Mrs. Cadge was washing the dishes.
"Did the man give you a job?" inquired his wife brightly.
"Wot man? Wot job? Where's my supper?" snapped Cadge. Then, as the ingenious ruse occurred to him, a flood of language rose to his lips and would not be dammed, though everything else was.
"Gone and hogged all the supper, did you!" he growled. "H'it's a nice state of affairs, when a man comes 'ome from a 'ard day's work to a h'empty table."
"But it was such a little steak, Tom," urged his wife, "and the children were so hungry that I let them finish it."
There was no money in the house, and Snavely, the only credit grocer, had closed his shop, so Mr. Cadge's supper that night was bread and cheese without kisses.
Sunday was a long-remembered day of misery for Cadge's wife and children, who played the scapegoat for Mr. Snavely and whipping-boy for Mrs. Pipkin.
Monday morning the head of the house arose early and, before Mrs. Pipkin had finished her beauty sleep, that hard-working man was at the door demanding his pay. An hour was all the time she required for dressing. Mr. Cadge wished he had broken his fast before leaving home.
"Really, I don't know whether I ought to pay you," replied Widow Pipkin when she finally answered his last, desperate ring. "Mr. Snavely made the bargain, and I should like to have him see the work before settling with you."
She jingled some silver in her plump chain purse as she spoke.
Aha, the widow had deceived him! It was eight o'clock, the bank would not open for an hour, she had had the money in the house all the time. The deceitfulness of women!
Mr. Cadge's blood rose to his head. His little green eyes smouldered. Fortunately for the widow, Mr. Snavely drove up at that moment on his delivery wagon, and cheerfully agreed to appraise the work.