Chapter 19

When Cory secured a place as dish-wiper at a new boarding-house near, and Gus realized that he and Iry alone were dependent upon the others for their keep, shame seared his young soul. He had vainly tried to secure steady employment, but had succeeded only in getting occasional odd jobs. He had a distinct leaning towards an agricultural life and coveted the care of cows.

"The grocer has sold his'n," he lugubriously lamented; "thar ain't no one else as wants a caretaker for their critters around here."

After a long rumination on the discouraging problem of his future, he sought his confessor, the corner grocer.

"I'm too big to peddle papers or be runnin' about with telergrafs," he declared. "I'd orter be goin' into business on my own account. I ain't goin' ter be allers workin' fer other folks."

"Well, you'll have to wait a while before you can work for yourself," counselled his confidant. "You are young yet."

"This is a hurry-up age," was the sagacious assertion, "and ef you air agoin' to git any-whar, you've got ter go by wire instead of by mail, and you can't start too soon."

"You can't start nothing without capital," argued the grocer conservatively.

"Oh," admitted the young financier, "a little capital mebby. I've got a dollar I've saved up from odd jobs."

"What line was you thinking of taking up?"

"I'm going into the dairy business. Thar's money in milk and butter, and it's nice, clean work."

"The dairy business on one dollar! How many cows and wagons and horses was you figuring on buying with your dollar?"

"Don't git funny," warned Gus impatiently. "Some day I'll hev a farm of my own and a city office, but I'll begin on one cow in our back lot and peddle milk to the neighbors."

"That wouldn't be a bad beginning, but I reckon you'll find the start will cost you more than a dollar. You can't get a cow at that figure."

"Then I'll start with a calf."

"Well, I guess calves cost more than a dollar."

"Say, you've got that dollar on the brain, I guess," retorted the lad with the easy familiarity that betokened long acquaintance with the lounging barrels and boxes of the corner grocery. "I bet it'll build a shed in our back yard. Thar's the lumber out of our shed that blowed down, and the Boarder can build purty near anything."

"But how are you going to buy a cow?" persisted his inquisitor.

"I ain't got that fer yet," admitted the young dairyman.

"Your dollar'll buy more than the nails for your cow-house. You can put the balance into feed," said the grocer, with an eye to his own trade.

He wanted to add that it wouldn't cost much to feed an imaginary critter, but he was a little fearful of the temper back of the lad's hair, which was the same hue as Amarilly's.

"That's a good idea. Well, the shed starts to-morrow, and of course you won't say nothin' about it."

"Trust me for not talking in this neighborhood. It ain't safe even to think. First you know your thoughts are being megaphoned down the street."

Gus consulted the Boarder who instantly and obligingly began the erection of a building in the farthest corner of the Jenkins's domain. This structure was a source of mystery and excitement to the neighbors.

"What on airth do you suppose them Jenkinses air aputtin' up now? Mebby it's a wash-house for the surpluses," speculated Mrs. Huce.

"It can't be they air agoin' to keep a hoss!" ejaculated Mrs. Wint.

"You never kin tell nuthin' about them Jenkinses. They're so sort of secretin' like," lamented Mrs. Hudgers.

The Jenkins family were fully as ignorant as were their neighbors of the nature of the contemplated occupant of the new edifice commonly referred to as the "cow-house," The Boarder put up a very substantial shed with a four-paned window and a door that locked though not very securely. The grocer had on hand a small quantity of green paint which he donated to the cause of the coming cow.

"Thar ain't enough to more'n paint two sides of it," criticized Gus, "so I'll paint the front and west sides."

"Thar's a can of yaller paint out in the woodshed," informed Mrs. Jenkins. "You can paint the other two sides with that."

Then the Boarder made a suggestion:

"If I was you, I'd paint a strip of yaller and then one of green. That'll even it up and make it fancy-like."

Amarilly protested against this combination of colors so repellent to artistic eyes, but the family all agreed that it "would be perfickly swell," so she withdrew her opposition and confided her grievance to Derry's sympathizing, shuddering ears.

Gus proceeded to bicolor the shed in stripes which gave the new building a bedizened and bilious effect that delighted Colette, who revelled in the annals of her proteges.

Each member of the Jenkins family had a plan for utilising this fine domicile, as there seemed to be a general feeling of skepticism regarding the ability of Gus to produce a cow in the flesh. This sentiment, however, was not openly expressed, as the lad was found to be decidedly sensitive and touchy on the subject.

"Mebby a cow'll jest walk right into the back yard and make herself to hum in the new shed," prognosticated Mrs. Jenkins optimistically. "It's such a beautiful place. I'll bet there is cows as would ef they knowed about it."

"I perpose," suggested Flamingus patronizingly, "that we start a cow fund and all chip in and help Gus out."

"Sure thing!" declared the generous Amarilly. "He can have all my savings. We ought to all help Gus get a start."

"I'm in," cried Bobby.

"You kin hev all you want from me, Gus," offered Bud.

Firmly and disdainfully Gus rejected all these offers and suggestions.

"Thar ain't agoin' to be no pardner business about this," he announced. "The cow won't come till she's mine--all mine--and when she does, I'm agoin' to pay the Boarder for his work."

"If he wants to be so all-fired smart, we won't help him git no cow," declared Flamingus, "and the shed kin be used for a summer kitchen arter all."

This use of the new building had been the fondest dream of Mrs. Jenkins, who deemed it an ideal place in which to keep her tubs, mops, boiler, and wringer. Milt had designs upon it for a boy's reading-room and club; Flamingus coveted a gymnasium. Bobby, Bud, Cory, and Iry had already appropriated it as a playhouse.

Amarilly openly and ably defended Gus and his cherished, illusory plan. Of all her brothers, he was the one to whom her heart most inclined. For Bud she possibly had a more tender, maternal feeling on account of his being so delicate. She paid homage to the good points of Flamingus, but he was too cut and dried, "bromidic," she classified him, for Derry had carefully explained the etymology of the word. Milt was honest, but selfish and "near." Bobby was disposed to be fresh, but Gus was just such a boy as Amarilly herself would have been, reincarnated. He was practical, industrious, thrifty, and shrewd, and yet possessed of the imagination and optimism of his sister. She called him aside one day for a private consultation.

"Say, Gus, your scheme's all right. Go ahead and get your cow. I'll let you have my savings, and the other boys needn't know. You can pay me when you get ready to."

"That's bully in you, Amarilly, but I'm agoin' to see this thing through alone and start in without no help front no one," firmly refused Gus, and his sturdy little sister could but admire him for his independence.

He locked up his new possession very carefully, putting the key in his pocket every morning before going to the business precincts to pick up a job. The children, however, were not dispossessed by this precaution, finding ingress and egress through the window. Gus most opportunely secured a week's job driving a delivery-wagon, and he instantly invested his wages in the provisioning of the cow quarters.

"The feed'll git stale by the time the cow comes," objected Milt.

"Mebby it's fer bait to ketch a critter with," offered Bobby.

After all, it was the miracle predicted by Mrs. Jenkins that came to pass and delivered the cow. Early one morning, when Gus went as usual with fond pride to view his sole asset, he found installed therein a young, corpulent cow, bland and Texas-horned, busily engaged in partaking of the proceeds of Gus's last week's wages. She turned inquiring, meditative eyes toward the delighted lad, who promptly locked the door and rushed into the house to inform the family of the new arrival.

"She's lost or strayed, but not stolen," said Amarilly.

"Bobby, you put an ad in that paper you deliver at once," commanded Mrs. Jenkins. "Some poor people air feelin' bad over the loss of their cow."

It was considered only fair that the cow should pay for her meal. She was overstocked with milk, and graciously and gratefully yielded to Gus's efforts to relieve her of her load. The children were each given a taste of the warm milk, and then the little dairyman started right in for business. The milkman had not yet made his morning rounds, and the neighbors were so anxious to cross-examine Gus that they were more than willing to patronize him. Excitement prevailed when it was learned that the Jenkins family had a cow, and the lad's ingenuity in dodging questions was severely taxed. He avoided direct replies, but finally admitted that it was "one they was keepin' fer some folks."

A week went by, with no claim filed for the animal that had come so mysteriously and seemed so perfectly at home. Gus established a permanent milk route in the immediate neighborhood, and with his ability once more to "bring in" came the restoration of his self-respect.

"It's funny we don't git no answer to that ad," mused Mrs. Jenkins perplexedly. "How many times did you run it, Bobby?"

For a moment silence, deep, profound, and charged with expectancy prevailed. Then like a bomb came Bobby's reply:

"I ain't put it in at all."

Everybody was vociferous in condemnation, but Bobby, unabashed, held his ground, and logically defended his action.

"I got the news-agent to look in the 'losts' every night, and thar want nothin' about no cow. 'Twas up to them as lost it to advertise instead of us. If they didn't want her bad enough to run an ad, they couldn't hev missed her very much."

"That's so," agreed the Boarder, convinced by Bobby's able argument.

"Most likely she doesn't belong to any one," was Amarilly's theory. "She just came to stay a while, and then she'll go away again."

"She won't git no chanst to 'scape, unless she kin go out the way the chillern does," laughed Mrs. Jenkins.

One day the Boarder brought home some information that seemed to throw light on the subject.

"One of the railroad hands told me that a big train of cattle was sidetracked up this way somewhar the same night the cow come here. The whole keerload got loose, but they ketched them all, or thought they