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قراءة كتاب In a Little Town

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‏اللغة: English
In a Little Town

In a Little Town

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دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
الصفحة رقم: 6

at the hallowed desk, tossing copious libations of tobacco-juice toward a huge new cuspidor. She demanded a job for Eddie and bullied Jabez into making him a bookkeeper, at a salary of forty-five dollars a month.

Thus, at last, Eddie Pouch found his place in the world. There are soldiers who make ideal first sergeants and are ruined and ruinous as second lieutenants; and there are soldiers who are worthless as first sergeants, but irresistible as major-generals. Eddie was a born first sergeant, a routine man, a congenital employee—doomed, like fire, to be a splendid servant and a disastrous master.

Working for himself, he neglected every opportunity. Working for another, he neglected nothing. Meeting emergencies, tricking creditors and debtors, and massacring competitors were not in his line; but when it came to adding up columns of figures all day, making out bills, drawing checks for somebody else to sign, and the Santa Claus function of stuffing the pay-roll into the little envelopes—Eddie was there. Shrewd old Jabez recognized this. He tried him on a difficult collection once—sent him forth to pry an ancient debt of eighteen dollars and thirty-four cents out of the meanest man in town, vice Uncle Loren. Eddie came back with a look of contentment.

"Did you git it?" said Jabez.

"Well, you see, it was like this: the poor feller—"

"Poor heller! Did you git it?"

"No; he was so hard up I lent him four dollars."

"What!"

"Out of my own pocket, o' course."

Jabez remarked that he'd be hornswoggled; but he valued the incident and added it to the anecdotes he used when he felt that he had need to justify himself for playing Huerta with his dreamy Madero.

IX

After that the most Jabez asked of Eddie was to write "Please remit" or "Past due" on the mossier bills. Eddie preferred an exquisite poem he had copied from a city creditor: "This account has no doubt escaped your notice. As we have several large obligations to meet, we should greatly appreciate a check by return mail."

Eddie loved that. There was a fine chivalry and democracy about it, as one should say: "We're all debtors and creditors in this world, and we big fellows and you little fellows must all work together."

Life had a regularity now that would have maddened a man more ambitious than Eddie or a woman more restless than Ellaphine. Their world was like the petunia-garden—the flowers were not orchids or telegraph-pole-stemmed roses; but the flower faces were joyous, their frocks neat, and their perfume savory.

Eddie knew just how much money was coming in and there was no temptation to hope for an increase. They knew just how much time they had, and one day was like another except that along about the first of every month Eddie went to the office a little earlier and went back at night to get out the bills and adjust his balances.

On these evenings Ellaphine was apt to go along and sit with him, knitting thick woolen socks for the winter, making him shirts or nightgowns, or fashioning something for herself or the house. Her loftiest reach of splendor was a crazy quilt; and her rag carpets were highly esteemed.

On Sundays they went to church in the morning and again in the evening. Prayer-meeting night saw them always on their way to the place where the church bell called: "Come! Come!"

Sometimes irregular people, who forgot it was prayer-meeting night, would be reminded of it by seeing Eddie and Ellar go by. They went so early that there was time for the careless to make haste with their bonnets and arrive in time.

It was a saying that housewives set their kitchen clocks by Eddie's transits to and from the factory. At any rate, there was no end to the occasions when shiftless gossips, dawdling on their porches, were surprised to see Eddie toddle homeward, and scurried away, cackling:

"My gracious! There goes Eddie Pouch, and my biscuits not cut out!"

X

The whole year was tranquil now for the Pouches, and the halcyon brooded unalarmed in the waveless cove of their life. There were no debtors to be harassed, no creditors to harass them. They paid cash for everything—at least, Ellaphine did; for Eddie turned his entire forty-five dollars over to her. She was his banker and his steward.

She could not persuade him to smoke, or to buy new clothes before the old ones grew too shabby for so nice a man as a bookkeeper is apt to be. He did not drink or play cards or billiards; he did not belong to any lodge or political organization.

The outgo of money was as regular as the income—so much for the contribution-basket on Sundays; so much for the butcher; so much for the grocer; so much for the coal-oil lamps. The baker got none of their money and the druggist little.

A few dollars went now and then to the dry-goods store for dress goods, which Pheeny made up; and Eddie left an occasional sum at the Pantatorium for a fresh alpaca coat, or for a new pair of trousers when the seat of the old ones grew too refulgent or perilously extenuate. As Eddie stood up at his tall desk most of the time, however, it was rather his shoes than his pantaloons that felt the wear and tear of attrition.

And yet, in spite of all the tender miserhood of Ellaphine and the asceticism of Eddie, few of the forty-five dollars survived the thirty days' demands. Still, there was always something for the savings-bank, and the blessing on its increment was that it grew by exactions from themselves—not from their neighbors.

The inspiration of the fund was the children that were to be. The fund had ample time for accretion, since the children were as late as Never is.

Such things are not discussed, of course, in Carthage. And nobody knew how fiercely they yearned. Nobody knew of the high hopes that flared and faded.

After the first few months of marriage Eddie had begun to call Pheeny "Mother"—just for fun, you know. And it teased her so that he kept it up, for he liked a joke as well as the next fellow. Before people, of course, she was "Pheeny," and, on very grand occasions, "the wife." "Mrs. Pouch" was beyond him. But once, at a sociable, he called across the room, "Say, mother!"

He was going to ask her whether she wanted him to bring her a piece of the "chalklut" cake or a hunk of the "cokernut," but he got no farther. Nobody noticed it; but Eddie and Pheeny were consumed with shame and slunk home scarlet. Nobody noticed that they had gone.

Time went on and on, and the fund grew and grew—a little coral reef of pennies and nickels and dimes. The amusements of the couple were petty—an occasional church sociable was society; a revival period was drama. They never went to the shows that came to the Carthage Opera House. They did not miss much.

Eddie wasted no time on reading any fiction except that in the news columns of the evening paper, which a boy threw on the porch in a twisted boomerang every afternoon, and which Eddie untwisted and read after he had wiped the dishes that Pheeny washed.

Ellaphine spent no money on such vanities as novels or short stories, but she read the edifying romances in the Sunday-school paper and an occasional book from the Sunday-school library, mainly about children whose angelic qualities gave her a picture of child life that would have contrasted strongly with what their children would have been if they had had any.

Their great source of literature, however, was the Bible. Soon after their factory passed out of their control and their evenings ceased to be devoted to riddles in finance, they had resolved to read the Bible through, "from kiver to kiver." And Eddie and Ellaphine found that a chapter read aloud

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