to show that she
liked being petted. She let him touch her foot and examine her leg.
When Claude reached the kitchen, his mother was sitting at one end of
the breakfast table, pouring weak coffee, his brother and Dan and Jerry
were in their chairs, and Mahailey was baking griddle cakes at the stove.
A moment later Mr. Wheeler came down the enclosed stairway and
walked the length of the table to his own place. He was a very large
man, taller and broader than any of his neighbours. He seldom wore a
coat in summer, and his rumpled shirt bulged out carelessly over the
belt of his trousers. His florid face was clean shaven, likely to be a trifle
tobacco-stained about the mouth, and it was conspicuous both for
good-nature and coarse humour, and for an imperturbable physical
composure. Nobody in the county had ever seen Nat Wheeler flustered
about anything, and nobody had ever heard him speak with complete
seriousness. He kept up his easy-going, jocular affability even with his
own family.
As soon as he was seated, Mr. Wheeler reached for the two-pint sugar
bowl and began to pour sugar into his coffee. Ralph asked him if he
were going to the circus. Mr. Wheeler winked.
"I shouldn't wonder if I happened in town sometime before the
elephants get away." He spoke very deliberately, with a State-of-Maine
drawl, and his voice was smooth and agreeable. "You boys better start
in early, though. You can take the wagon and the mules, and load in the
cowhides. The butcher has agreed to take them."
Claude put down his knife. "Can't we have the car? I've washed it on
purpose."
"And what about Dan and Jerry? They want to see the circus just as
much as you do, and I want the hides should go in; they're bringing a
good price now. I don't mind about your washing the car; mud
preserves the paint, they say, but it'll be all right this time, Claude."
The hired men haw-hawed and Ralph giggled. Claude's freckled face
got very red. The pancake grew stiff and heavy in his mouth and was
hard to swallow. His father knew he hated to drive the mules to town,
and knew how he hated to go anywhere with Dan and Jerry. As for the
hides, they were the skins of four steers that had perished in the
blizzard last winter through the wanton carelessness of these same
hired men, and the price they would bring would not half pay for the
time his father had spent in stripping and curing them. They had lain in
a shed loft all summer, and the wagon had been to town a dozen times.
But today, when he wanted to go to Frankfort clean and care-free, he
must take these stinking hides and two coarse-mouthed men, and drive
a pair of mules that always brayed and balked and behaved ridiculously
in a crowd. Probably his father had looked out of the window and seen
him washing the car, and had put this up on him while he dressed. It
was like his father's idea of a joke.
Mrs. Wheeler looked at Claude sympathetically, feeling that he was
disappointed. Perhaps she, too, suspected a joke. She had learned that
humour might wear almost any guise.
When Claude started for the barn after breakfast, she came running
down the path, calling to him faintly,--hurrying always made her short
of breath. Overtaking him, she looked up with solicitude, shading her
eyes with her delicately formed hand. "If you want I should do up your
linen coat, Claude, I can iron it while you're hitching," she said
wistfully.
Claude stood kicking at a bunch of mottled feathers that had once been
a young chicken. His shoulders were drawn high, his mother saw, and
his figure suggested energy and determined self-control.
"You needn't mind, mother." He spoke rapidly, muttering his words.
"I'd better wear my old clothes if I have to take the hides. They're
greasy, and in the sun they'll smell worse than fertilizer."
"The men can handle the hides, I should think. Wouldn't you feel better
in town to be dressed?" She was still blinking up at him.
"Don't bother about it. Put me out a clean coloured shirt, if you want to.
That's all right."
He turned toward the barn, and his mother went slowly back the path
up to the house. She was so plucky and so stooped, his dear mother! He
guessed if she could stand having these men about, could cook and
wash for them, he could drive them to town!
Half an hour after the wagon left, Nat Wheeler put on an alpaca coat
and went off in the rattling buckboard in which, though he kept two
automobiles, he still drove
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