More Jonathan Papers | Page 3

fishing-tackle that he has most constant difficulties.
"My dear, have you any idea where my rod is? No, don't get up--I'll look if you'll just tell me where--"
"Probably in the corner behind the chest in the orchard room."
"I've looked there."
"Well, then, did you take it in from the wagon last night?"
"Yes, I remember doing it."
"What about the little attic? You might have put it up there to dry out."
"No. I took my wading boots up, but that was all."
"The dining-room? You came in that way."
He goes and returns. "Not there." I reflect deeply.
"Jonathan, are you sure it's not in that corner of the orchard room?"
"Yes, I'm sure; but I'll look again." He disappears, but in a moment I hear his voice calling, "No! Yours is here, but not mine."
I perceive that it is a case for me, and I get up. "You go and harness. I'll find it," I call.
There was a time when, under such conditions, I should have begun by hunting in all the unlikely places I could think of. Now I know better. I go straight to the corner of the orchard room. Then I call to Jonathan, just to relieve his mind.
"All right! I've found it."
"Where?"
"Here, in the orchard room."
"Where in the orchard room?"
"In the corner."
"What corner?"
"The usual corner--back of the chest."
"The devil!" Then he comes back to put his head in at the door. "What are you laughing at?"
"Nothing. What are you talking about the devil for? Anyway, it isn't the devil; it's the brownie."
For there seems no doubt that the things he hunts for are possessed of supernatural powers; and the theory of a brownie in the house, with a special grudge against Jonathan, would perhaps best account for the way in which they elude his search but leap into sight at my approach. There is, to be sure, one other explanation, but it is one that does not suggest itself to him, or appeal to him when suggested by me, so there is no need to dwell upon it.
If it isn't the rod, it is the landing-net, which has hung itself on a nail a little to the left or right of the one he had expected to see it on; or his reel, which has crept into a corner of the tackle drawer and held a ball of string in front of itself to distract his vision; or a bunch of snell hooks, which, aware of its protective coloring, has snuggled up against the shady side of the drawer and tucked its pink-papered head underneath a gay pickerel-spoon.
Fishing-tackle is, clearly, "possessed," but in other fields Jonathan is not free from trouble. Finding anything on a bureau seems to offer peculiar obstacles. It is perhaps a big, black-headed pin that I want. "On the pincushion, Jonathan."
He goes, and returns with two sizes of safety-pins and one long hat-pin.
"No, dear, those won't do. A small, black-headed one--at least small compared with a hat-pin, large compared with an ordinary pin."
"Common or house pin?" he murmurs, quoting a friend's phrase.
"Do look again! I hate to drop this to go myself."
"When a man does a job, he gets his tools together first."
"Yes; but they say women shouldn't copy men, they should develop along their own lines. Please go."
He goes, and comes back. "You don't want fancy gold pins, I suppose?"
"No, no! Here, you hold this, and I'll go." I dash to the bureau. Sure enough, he is right about the cushion. I glance hastily about. There, in a little saucer, are a half-dozen of the sort I want. I snatch some and run back.
"Well, it wasn't in the cushion, I bet."
"No," I admit; "it was in a saucer just behind the cushion."
"You said cushion."
"I know. It's all right."
"Now, if you had said simply 'bureau,' I'd have looked in other places on it."
"Yes, you'd have looked in other places!" I could not forbear responding. There is, I grant, another side to this question. One evening when I went upstairs I found a partial presentation of it, in the form of a little newspaper clipping, pinned on my cushion. It read as follows:--
"My dear," said she, "please run and bring me the needle from the haystack."
"Oh, I don't know which haystack."
"Look in all the haystacks--you can't miss it; there's only one needle."
Jonathan was in the cellar at the moment. When he came up, he said, "Did I hear any one laughing?"
"I don't know. Did you?"
"I thought maybe it was you."
"It might have been. Something amused me--I forget what."
I accused Jonathan of having written it himself, but he denied it. Some other Jonathan, then; for, as I said, this is not a personal matter, it is a world matter. Let us grant, then, a certain allowance for those who hunt in woman-made haystacks. But what about pockets? Is not a man