The Imperialist | Page 5

up into anything but a sound Liberal in that part of the world without feeling himself an unendurable paradox. To christen a baby like that was, in a manner, a challenge to public attention; the faint relaxation about the lips of Dr Drummond--the best of the Liberals himself, though he made a great show of keeping it out of the pulpit-- recognized this, and the just perceptible stir of the congregation proved it. Sonorously he said it. "Oliver Mowat, I baptize thee in the Name of the Father--" The compliment should have all the impressiveness the rite could give it, while the Murchison brothers and sisters, a-row in the family pew, stood on one foot with excitement as to how Oliver Mowat would take the drops that defined him. The verdict was, on the way home, that he behaved splendidly. Alexander Mackenzie, the year before, had roared.
He was weeping now, at the age of seven, silently, but very copiously, behind the woodpile. His father had finally cuffed him for importunity; and the world was no place for a just boy, who asked nothing but his rights. Only the woodpile, friendly mossy logs unsplit, stood inconscient and irresponsible for any share in his black circumstances; and his tears fell among the lichens of the stump he was bowed on till, observing them, he began to wonder whether he could cry enough to make a pond there, and was presently disappointed to find the source exhausted. The Murchisons were all imaginative.
The others, Oliver and Abby and Stella, still "tormented." Poor Alec's rights--to a present of pocket-money on the Queen's Birthday--were common ones, and almost statutory. How their father, sitting comfortably with his pipe in the flickering May shadows under the golden pippin, reading the Toronto paper, could evade his liability in the matter was unfathomable to the Murchisons; it was certainly illiberal; they had a feeling that it was illegal. A little teasing was generally necessary, but the resistance today had begun to look ominous and Alec, as we know, too temerarious, had retired in disorder to the woodpile.
Oliver was wiping Advena's dishes. He exercised himself ostentatiously upon a plate, standing in the door to be within earshot of his father.
"Eph Wheeler," he informed his family, "Eph Wheeler, he's got twenty-five cents, an' a English sixpence, an' a Yankee nickel. An' Mr Wheeler's only a common working man, a lot poorer'n we are."
Mr Murchison removed his pipe from his lips in order, apparently, to follow unimpeded the trend of the Dominion's leading article. Oliver eyed him anxiously. "Do, Father," he continued in logical sequence. "Aw do."
"Make him, Mother," said Abby indignantly. "It's the Queen's BIRTHDAY!"
"Time enough when the butter bill's paid," said Mrs Murchison.
"Oh the BUTTER bill! Say, Father, aren't you going to?"
"What?" asked John Murchison, and again took out his pipe, as if this were the first he had heard of the matter.
"Give us our fifteen cents each to celebrate with. You can't do it under that," Oliver added firmly. "Crackers are eight cents a packet this year, the small size."
"Nonsense," said Mr Murchison. The reply was definite and final, and its ambiguity was merely due to the fact that their father disliked giving a plump refusal. "Nonsense" was easier to say, if not to hear than "No." Oliver considered for a moment, drew Abby to colloquy by the pump, and sought his brother behind the woodpile. Then he returned to the charge.
"Look here, Father," he said, "CASH DOWN, we'll take ten."
John Murchison was a man of few words, but they were usually impregnated with meaning, especially in anger. "No more of this," he said. "Celebrate fiddlesticks! Go and make yourselves of some use. You'll get nothing from me, for I haven't got it." So saying, he went through the kitchen with a step that forbade him to be followed. His eldest son, arriving over the backyard fence in a state of heat, was just in time to hear him. Lorne's apprehension of the situation was instant, and his face fell, but the depression plainly covered such splendid spirits that his brother asked resentfully, "Well, what's the matter with YOU?"
"Matter? Oh, not much. I'm going to see the Cayugas beat the Wanderers, that's all; an' Abe Mackinnon's mother said he could ask me to come back to tea with them. Can I, Mother?"
"There's no objection that I know of," said Mrs Murchison, shaking her apron free of stray potato-parings, "but you won't get money for the lacrosse match or anything else from your father today, I can assure you. They didn't do five dollars worth of business at the store all day yesterday, and he's as cross as two sticks."
"Oh, that's all right." Lorne jingled his pocket and Oliver took a fascinated step toward him. "I made thirty cents this morning,