Cy Whittakers Place | Page 7

a nest in a house? I never did!"
"Oh, belay! Crows or canary birds, what difference does it make?
SOMETHIN' 'll nest there, if it's only A'nt Sophrony Hallett's hens. So
Heman he writes to the board, askin' if the taxes is paid, if we've heard
any reason why they ain't paid, and what we're goin' to do about it. If
there's a sale for taxes he wants to be fust bidder. Then, when the place
is his, he can tear down or rebuild, just as he sees fit. See?"
"Yes, I see. Well, I feel about that the way Joe Dimick felt when he
heard the doctor had told Elviry Pepper she must stop singin' in the
choir or lose her voice altogether. 'Whichever happens 'll be an
improvement,' says Cap'n Joe; and whatever Heman does 'll help the
Whittaker place. What did you decide at the meetin'?"
"Nothin'. We can't decide yet. We ain't sure about the law and we want
to wait a spell, anyhow. But I know how 'twill end: Atkins 'll get the
place. He always gets what he wants, Heman does."
Bailey turned and looked back at the old house, forlorn amidst its
huddle of blackberry briers and weeds, and with the ubiquitous
"silver-leaf" saplings springing up in clusters everywhere about it and
closing in on its defenseless walls like squads of victorious soldiery
making the final charge upon a conquered fort.

"Well," sighed Mr. Bangs, "so that 'll be the end of the old Whittaker
place, hey? Sho! things change in a feller's lifetime, don't they? You
and me can remember, Ase, when Cap'n Cy Whittaker was one of the
biggest men we had in this town. So was his dad afore him, the Cap'n
Cy that built the house. I wonder the looks of things here now don't
bring them two up out of their graves. Do you remember young
Cy--'Whit' we used to call him--or 'Reddy Whit,' 'count of his red hair?
I don't know's you do, though; guess you'd gone to sea when he run
away from home."
Mr. Tidditt shook his head.
"No, no!" he said. "I was to home that year. Remember 'Whit'? Well, I
should say I did. He was a holy terror--yes, sir! Wan't no monkey
shines or didos cut up in this town that young Cy wan't into. Fur's that
goes, you and me was in 'em, too, Bailey. We was all holy terrors then.
Young ones nowadays ain't got the spunk we used to have."
His friend chuckled.
"That's so," he declared. "That's so. Whit was a good-hearted boy, too,
but full of the Old Scratch and as sot in his ways as his dad, and if
Cap'n Cy wan't sot, then there ain't no sotness. 'You'll go to college and
be a parson,' says the Cap'n. 'I'll go to sea and be a sailor, same as you
done,' says Whit. And he did, too; run away one night, took the packet
to Boston, and shipped aboard an Australian clipper. Cap'n Cy didn't go
after him to fetch him home. No, sir--ee! not a fetch. Sent him a letter
plumb to Melbourne and, says he: 'You've made your bed; now lay in it.
Don't you never dast to come back to me or your ma,' he says. And
Whit didn't, he wan't that kind."
"Pretty nigh killed the old lady--Whit's ma--that did," mused Asaph.
"She died a little spell afterwards. And the old man pined away, too,
but he never give in or asked the boy to come back. Stubborn as all
get-out to the end, he was, and willed the place, all he had left, to them
Howes folks. And a nice mess THEY made of it. Young Cy, he--"
"Young Cy!" interrupted Bailey. "We're always callin' him 'young Cy,'

and yet, when you come to think of it, he must be pretty nigh fifty-five
now; 'most as old as you and I be. Wonder if he'll ever come back
here."
"You bet he won't!" was the oracular reply. "You bet he won't! From
what I hear he got to be a sea cap'n himself and settled down there in
Buenos Ayres. He's made all kinds of money, they say, out of hides and
such. What he ever bought his dad's old place for, I can't see. He'll
never come back to these common, one-horse latitudes, now you mark
my word on that!"
It was a prophecy Mr. Tidditt was accustomed to make each year to the
crowd at the post office, when the receipt for the draft for taxes caused
him to wax reminiscent. The younger generation here in Bayport regard
their town clerk as something of an oracle, and this regard has made
Asaph a trifle vain and positive.
Bailey chuckled again.
"We