Chapter 4

All alone in his room, confined to his bed by the stern mandates of his mother, with everything out of doors calling him, Willie could not sleep and then when darkness fell hunger gnawed at his vitals and sleep refused to put an end to his misery. He counted to a thousand then half drifted into the land of dreams. A wicked little green imp whispered in his ear. "Conclusive Evidence," whispered it so loudly Willie awoke, then he thought, or tried to think of some plan of revenge on his heartless mother. He could think of none that would not return to himself fourfold, then he reasoned that after all it was not so much his mother's fault as the neighbors for keeping hens that would not stay at home. Perhaps the little green imp came and whispered into his ear again, I don't know, but how else account for Willie's queer actions?

He slipped quietly out of bed, paused to listen at the door of his mother's room but heard no sound. Reassured, he crept noiselessly down the back stairs into the kitchen, out through the rough room into the shed where the corn was kept. He filled the pockets with hen corn, the bright moonlight shining in through the window gave him all the light he needed, until his pajamas looked as though they had the bubonic plague. Still moving with extreme caution, he went into the kitchen again, secured a pan into which he put his corn; he then proceeded to fill the pan nearly full of water. He listened but all was quiet, so he ventured even into the pantry where his mother kept the cookie crock. He again filled his pockets, this time with cookies. His night work over he carried the pan containing the corn and water to his room, put the pan as far under the bed as possible to avoid discovery, then seated himself by the open window to enjoy his lunch. His father, who never seemed to get around to things, had not mended the screen that belonged in Willie's window so Willie sat with his head as far out of doors as the size of his body would permit and ate his cookies. He was wise enough not to leave tell-tale crumbs.

Willie slept well and soundly after his midnight adventures and in the morning appeared at the breakfast table promptly. He ate enough to make up for what he had missed the night before, then enough to last until noon time. When he finished his mother said:

"Now Willie, go out and watch the garden again, your father did not get around to putting up the netting yesterday, and mind, if I catch you reading another book you will not get off as easily as you did yesterday."

"Yesum."

Willie first made a trip to his room, then to the sewing room.

"What are you doing, Willie?" came the maternal voice.

"Nuthin', just lookin' for my cap, I'm going out now."

Once more out where he could watch the hens, Willie proceeded to unload his pockets. He brought to light some sheets of paper, a pencil, a large needle, a spool of black linen thread and all of the soaked corn he had been able to put in his pockets.

He tore the paper in strips about an inch wide and three inches long. On each slip he wrote, "Please keep us home." On the other side, "Conclusive Evidence."

He cut pieces of string, linen thread, about six inches long, some longer. With the aid of the needle he threaded a piece of corn on one end of each string, on the other end he tied one of the slips of paper. When all were finished he scattered them broadcast over and about the garden.

"Willie, come to dinner."

No Willie appeared on the scene.

"Willie, dinner is ready."

Still no sign of the lad and his mother started after him with a queer look in her eye.

Strange was the sight her eyes beheld as she came around the corner into the front yard. Hens fled before her approach but such funny looking hens; they all had more or less tags flying from their bills. They had swallowed the corn but the strings and tags were beyond their ability to masticate and they blew out defiantly in the breeze. One tag had become loosened and Mrs. Brown picked it up and read the scribbled words. While she was thinking just what she ought to do to Willie, Mrs. Baker came across the yard, bristling like a frightened porcupine.

"What have you been doing to my hens?" she demanded.

Mrs. Brown, like the efficient woman she was, saw her opportunity and rose to the occasion.

"Your hens, Mrs. Baker, why nothing. I have been in the kitchen all the morning until I just came out to call Willie to dinner. Willie has been keeping the hens out of my garden, not your hens, you know you have assured me your hens never come over here."

Thinking discretion the better part of valor Mrs. Baker suddenly remembered something that needed immediate attention and she hastened to attend to it.

Mrs. Brown watched her out of sight, smiling in appreciation of the genius she had raised, then she turned and confronted Mrs. Jones, coldly angry.

"What do you mean, Mrs. Brown, by tagging my hens until they look like a mark down sale?"

"What are you talking about, Mrs. Jones? Your hens couldn't have been over here could they? I am sure neither Willie nor I have been out of the yard."

"I smell something burning."

In spite of the fact that the Jones homestead was quite a distance and the wind in the direction to blow all odors in the opposite direction Mrs. Brown did not try to detain her. Neither did she punish Willie, in fact she gave him an extra piece of pie for dinner.

* * * * *

The Browns, Joneses and Bakers are still on the best of terms, but Mr. Brown never put the wire netting up and yet Mrs. Brown plants her garden with never a thought of neighbors' hens.

Incidentally Willie and Ned have developed into first class fishermen.

BY HEART

LILLIAN E. ANDREWS

Captain Enoch Burgess went down Mapleville's main street at a rate of speed that threatened to break all records. The tails of his linen coat stood out like the sails of a Gloucester fisherman homeward bound with a "full bin fare." He stamped up Abner Crowell's walk, and slammed the kitchen door.

Abner was weeding onions. He stared after the captain curiously. "Looks like squally weather," he commented. "I wonder what's sent Enoch on his beam ends like that."

As Abner bent with a grunt to his task, his wife came hurrying toward him, her apron strings flying like distress signals.

"Abner," she demanded excitedly, "did you ever hear of Captain Enoch's havin' fits?"

"No, I dunno's I ever did," replied Abner, twitching up an enterprising wild mustard.

"Well, he's havin' one now," insisted Mrs. Crowell. "He come trampin' in an' says, 'Git right out o' my way, Mis' Crowell,' an' now he's a pacin' up an' down his room like a caged hyeny. You leave them onions, an' go an see what under the canopy ails him. I'll stand at the foot of the stairs ready to run for help, if he should be dangerous."

Abner groaned. Reluctantly he brushed the dirt from his knees, and went into the house. Captain Enoch's heavy steps jarred the floor of his little room. Three times Abner knocked. Growing wrathful at being ignored, he applied his lips to the key-hole.

"Hey, there," he bellowed. "You gone clean crazy, Enoch? It's only me--Abner--open the door!"

Captain Enoch opened the door so suddenly Abner nearly fell over the threshold.

"I didn't hear you," apologized Captain Enoch. "I dunno's I'd heard a fog horn. I'm going loony, I guess."

Despondency suddenly overcame him. He sat down abruptly. "I'm afraid I'm love cracked," he groaned despairingly.

"Love cracked!" repeated Abner in blank astonishment. "Wall, I snum! Love cracked!"

Captain Enoch glared at him ferociously. "Stop that parrotin'," he commanded. "If you dare to grin, I'll larnbast you good an' plenty."

As Abner appeared properly subdued, he went on explanatorily.

"I've be'n callin' on M'lissy Macy reg'lar whenever I've be'n ashore for the last ten years. M'lissy makes the best doughnuts I ever e't, an' I calculated we'd be married sometime, though I ain't never mentioned it special. But when I went to call on M'lissy this afternoon, there set Tom Peters in the big rockin' chair holdin' M'lissy's yeller cat an' lookin' as cheerful as a rat in a shipload of cheese. It come over me all at once what a marryin' critter he is. The old punkin'-head's had two wives already, ain't he?"

"Three," corrected Abner. "He's be'n a widower once an' a grass widower twice. Mebbe he's gittin' lonesome again. You'll have to git up your spunk and do some courtin'. Why don't you pop the question? It hadn't orter be so awful hard after you be'n goin' to see M'lissy ten years."

"You talk like a nincompoop," snapped Captain Enoch. "I never asked a woman to marry me in my life. How be I goin' to know what to say? S'pose you tell me how you asked Mis' Crowell."

Abner's face turned as red as Captain Enoch's. "Wall, I--er--er," he stammered.

"That's about what I expected," said the captain sarcastically. "I s'pose Mis' Crowell did the askin' and you didn't dare to say 'No.'"

Abner glanced toward the door where a board had creaked faintly. "She--she didn't really ask," he remarked hastily, "but she was pretty good at understandin' what I was thinkin' about."

"If M'lissy understands, she's careful not to let me know it," said Captain Enoch sadly. "Mebbe she's afraid of being bold. Just to think of proposin' makes me feel as if somebody was pourin' cold water down the back of my neck."

Abner had a sudden flash of memory. "Why don't you learn a regular proposal that nobody can find any fault with an' say it right off like sayin' a piece?" he asked. "Pegleg Brierly used to have a book in his dunnage that had all kinds of proposals printed in it. 'Guide to Courtship and Matrimony' was the name of it. Pegleg said he didn't have any notion of fallin' in love, but if he should happen to, he didn't cal'late to be caught nappin'. He's livin' down on the back road now, and he's still an old bach. If he's kept the book, mebbe he'd sell it, or lend it to you."

The change from despair to hope brought the captain to his feet. "Abner, if you'll git me that book, I'll give you twenty-five dollars," he promised earnestly. "But mind you don't tell what you want it for."

"I won't tell anybody that don't know about it already," declared Abner with perfect truthfulness. "I'll have to be awful di-plo-mat-ic," he went on, "or Pegleg will be sure to suspect something. And I pity you an' M'lissy if he got hold of the real reason why you wanted it. Pegleg can scatter news faster than a pea dropper can drop peas."

With his clam hoe and bucket under his arm, Abner appeared at the door of Pegleg's shanty the next afternoon.

"Thought I'd dig a mess o' clams for supper," he explained casually, "an' seeing's I was passin', I dropped in. Some time since you an' me crossed the line on the old Almeda, ain't it?"

"A matter of twenty year," agreed Pegleg.

"Them was great days," reminiscenced Abner. "Do you remember how we used to read your 'Guide to Courtship and Matrimony'? I was thinkin' about it only yesterday."

Pegleg grinned. "I paid fifty cents for that book," he remarked. "An' I ain't never had any real use for it. I've got it now in my old dunnage bag."

"I'd kind o' like to see it, if it's handy," suggested Abner. "The tide's risin', but I guess I've got a few minutes to spare."

Pegleg disappeared into the shanty and returned after some time with a dog-eared volume, minus a portion of its pages, and with the edges of the remainder strangely scalloped.

"Th' pesky rats has be'n chewin' it," he complained loudly. "They've clean e't up the first chapter."

Abner drew a secret breath of relief. The "How to Propose" chapter was not the first one. Eagerly he turned the battered volume over.

"If you 'll sell it, I'd like to have it," he remarked carelessly. "Half of the pages is e't up, so I s'pose you'll sell it for half price."

"Make it thirty-five cents an' you can have it," bargained Pegleg. "The rats ain't gnawed into the readin' so awful bad, only in the first chapter."

"Wall, thirty-five then, as you're an old shipmate," conceded Abner.

Pegleg looked at him shrewdly, as he laid down three dimes and a nickel.

"I didn't know but mebbe you was buyin' it for Captain Burgess," he hazarded. "He's boardin' to your house, an' folks say he's courtin' M'lissy Macy."

"Folks is always sayin' things," responded Abner. "Mebbe Enoch might know a 'Guide to Courtship and Matrimony' from a last year's pill almanac, if somebody showed him."

Once around the corner of the beach from Pegleg's shanty, Abner danced a hornpipe, shocking a flock of gulls.

"Thirty-five cents from twenty-five dollars leaves twenty-four dollars and sixty-five cents," he calculated swiftly. "And I'll get a mess of clams beside. The papers will be mentionin' me as a financier pretty soon."

"Did Pegleg suspect anything?" was Captain Enoch's first question when Abner returned in triumph.

"Oh, he suspected," replied Abner jubilantly. "He wouldn't be Pegleg if he didn't. But I didn't help him any, and he looked dreadful disappointed. You can eat your chowder in peace, if you ain't so love sick you've lost your appetite."

"It ain't hurt my appetite a mite," retorted the Captain. "And I ain't goin' to let it. Let's see that book. I want to find out how much I've be'n cheated."

With trembling fingers Captain Enoch turned to the chapter of proposals. "'How to Propose to a Fat Lady,'" he read. "Humph! M'lissy ain't fat. 'How to Propose to a Lady of Dignity and Refinement. 'That sounds more like it. But the big words are thicker than a school of mummychogs."

"Read it out loud," urged Abner.

Captain Enoch put a long forefinger on the first line and cleared his throat.

"'Dear and esteemed lady,'" he began, "'it is with deep respect that I venture to introduce the subject of matrimony in your presence. You are my ideal of womanhood and your smile is more precious to me than the Kohinoor.' What's the Kohinoor?" he asked, pausing.

"Skip it," suggested Abner. "I ain't no 'cyclopedia. Go on."

"'It is with painful trep-trep-trepidation that I bring my suit before you.'"

Captain Enoch paused again. "'Suit?'" he repeated. "I don't see how that fits in. What's a suit got to do with a proposal?"

"Mebbe it's a hint that you might want your clo's mended after you was married," decided Abner. "Anyway, it sounds all right the way it's wrote. Stop a stoppin'. You never'll git it read, if you don't keep goin'."

Thus adjured the captain proceeded. "'Oh, dear one, beloved lady of my dreams, my own--' There's a blank place. It says under it, 'name of lady.'"

"Wall, say M'lissy," interjected Abner.

Captain Enoch's bronzed countenance was the color of a tomato on a tin can, but he went on valiantly, "'My own M'lissy, come to my arms, and fill my measure of happiness to overflowing by promising to become my wife, and I will shield and protect you from all the storms of life.' It ends like an advertisement for umbrellas," he complained.

"It don't do no such thing," contended Abner vigorously. "It's a real high-toned proposal and any woman ought to be satisfied with it. The man that wrote that must have known an awful lot about women. Now you go ahead and learn that proposal and there you be all ready for the parson."

"Yes, 'there I be,'" mimicked the captain ungratefully. "It would take a college professor to say them words fast, and I'm only a plain sailor man."

But in spite of his sarcasm the captain attacked his self-appointed task with the grim determination that had made him respected in every port wherever the big deep water tramp, of which he was the proud master, had dropped her huge mudhook.

The steamer was laid up at Boston, having a splendid collection of tropical barnacles scraped from her stout hull. If it had not been for the barnacles, the captain would not have been ashore.

For a week the captain studied strenuously, hardly allowing himself time to sleep. Abner offered to assist him at rehearsals and every afternoon he drilled Captain Enoch diligently. He was a firm disciplinarian and insisted upon his pupil's being letter perfect. Book in hand, he corrected the captain vigorously.

"It's 'es-teemed lady'" he admonished the captain. "You said 'steamed.' M'lissy ain't cooked. An' you stutter yet when you come to that word right after painful. Can't you say it plainer?"

"'Trep-trep-trepidation,'" stammered the captain again. "Say it yourself," he dared Abner. "I'll bet you can't do no better."

"I ain't tryin' to say it," Abner reminded him with dignity. "If I was I'd make it out someway. I wouldn't be beat by any word ever put in a dictionary. You're doin' better," he complimented the captain, after the sixth recital. "Mebbe you'll git it after awhile."

But when Captain Enoch felt that his monitor was most needed and had begun to look hopefully forward to a one hundred per cent rehearsal, Abner took a sudden notion to go sword fishing.

"The time to go sword fishin' is when sword fish are due," he insisted with Solomonic wisdom. "I'm going to be off Nantucket shoals by daybreak to-morrow."

"But how be I goin' to git along without you to boost me on that proposal?" demanded the captain. "If you had any feelin' at all, you wouldn't leave me just when I need you most."

Abner considered the situation for some moments.

"I got it," he declared joyfully. "Buy a phonygraft an' some blank records an' keep sayin' that proposal just the same as you do to me. You can hear yourself poppin' as plain as you can hear a bell buoy ring-in'. It takes me to plan things," he added with becoming pride.

Captain Enoch went to Boston and visited his vessel, as he told Mrs. Crowell when he returned. Also, he visited the "phonygraft man," a circumstance he failed to relate.

When Mapleville's express agent delivered at the Crowell home a large bundle addressed to Captain Enoch Burgess, the captain smuggled it surreptitiously upstairs, closed the windows of his room and stuffed the key hole with a wad of paper.

It was some hours before he succeeded in mastering the various adjustments of the phonograph, and ventured to hear himself "pop." Listening with critical intentness, he discovered that two sentences were missing. Grimly he tried again. The word that had been so long his stumbling block suddenly showed its vindictiveness once more.

"'It is with painful trep-trep-' darn it!" repeated the phonograph with startling distinctness.

Wrathfully the captain snatched the record and hurled it under the bed. A number of others soon kept it company. The next day the captain went to Boston again. This time even the phonograph dealer was astonished at the number of blank records Captain Enoch demanded.

With reckless abandon the captain proceeded to use the new supply of records. Dripping with perspiration from the heat of his closely-shut room and from his strenuous mental exertion, he finally came to the last one, and word by word and sentence by sentence heard himself make an absolutely correct and flawless proposal to Miss Macy.

Solemnly the captain wiped his brow. "I declare I wish Abner could hear it," he remarked proudly. "There ain't a single mistake, big words an' all. It ought to please M'lissy, if anything will."

At the thought of Melissa Captain Enoch's honest heart began to beat faster. He threw open his window with all the eagerness of a lover, and looked over toward Melissa's old-fashioned house with its comfortable veranda and wide chimney.

His bronzed face turned suddenly white and he gripped the window sill with all the strength of his powerful hands. Two men were turning in at Melissa's gate. The short fat man was Thomas Peters, the tall thin one the village clergyman. To Captain Enoch the fact that Peters and the minister were calling upon Melissa together could mean but one thing. Hours and years of the captain's life seemed to pass, as he watched the two men go slowly up Melissa's gravel walk. When the door closed behind them, he turned about, dazed and trembling. He was breathing hard like a man at the end of a race. Half an hour later he had packed his bag and paid his board bill, leaving Mrs. Crowell in a state of bewilderment and curiosity that was sufficient to disturb her peace of mind for many a day.

From Boston the tramp had wallowed her way around the Horn to San Francisco and back again as far as Rio Janiero when Captain Enoch received his first mail from home. A travel-stained letter, bearing Abner Crowell's cramped handwriting, threw the captain into a sudden panic.

"I don't know whether to open it, or not," he debated nervously. "I want to know what's in it, an' I'm scared to find out. I'm a good mind to throw it overboard and forget I ever got it."

Curiosity finally overcame his dread. The letter was encouragingly brief.

"'Dere Enoch,'" he read. "'I'd like to know what you blowed up an' went off the way you did for. Abner Crowell." "P.S. Mrs. Crowell sends her respecks, and Miss Melissa Macy her regards, if you want 'em. A.C." "P.S. Number two. All you need, Enoch Burgess, is about ten inches more on your ears. A.C.'"

"'Miss Melissa Macy,'" repeated Captain Enoch. "He would have said Mrs. Peters, if she was married."

The captain leaped to his feet and rushed on deck. A boat was just leaving the steamer's side, the mate sitting placidly under an awning.

"Hey, wait," roared the captain wildly. "I'm goin' to git our clearance papers," he shouted, as the astonished mate ordered the boat back. "I ain't goin' to hang around here waitin' for a lazy planter to git a cargo of coffee aboard. I don't care if there ain't any more coffee in the world; folks can drink tea. I'm goin' home as quick as steam can take me."

Lights were beginning to shine in the homes of Mapleville when the captain came to the end of his long journey. A shining path stretched temptingly from Melissa's windows to the gate and the captain followed it eagerly.

Back of the crimson geraniums and the canary's cage he could see Melissa sitting at a low table. The yellow cat occupied the big rocker. It was all so pleasant and home-like a lump rose in the captain's throat. He decided to steal quietly in and surprise Melissa. But at the door he stopped as suddenly as if he had been shot. A deep bass voice was uttering words that sounded strangely familiar.

"'Dear and esteemed lady,'" he heard. Cautiously he tip-toed across the hall. A phonograph was on the table in front of Melissa. As he bent forward the proposal "to a dignified and refined lady" came to an end. Tenderly Melissa put both arms about the shining horn of the phonograph and kissed it!

The sight was too much for the captain. With one bound, he cleared the threshold and entered the cosy sitting room.

"M'lissy Macy," he declared boldly, "I ain't goin' to have you wastin' kisses on an old phonograph when I'm right here. Where'd you find that record, M'lissy?" he asked at last.

Melissa blushed delightfully. "Mis' Crowell heard you and told me you was practisin' how to propose and, after you went away, I went and got every single one of them records," confessed Melissa. "I've played 'em over and over, even the 'darn it!' one. I know that proposal by heart."

"So do I," responded Captain Enoch grimly, as he salvaged another kiss. "I've be'n a reg'lar old putty-head," he admitted with unsparing honesty, "but if you'll promise to teach me, I'd like to learn a whole lot more by heart."

"I'll do my best," promised Melissa mischievously.

BY TELEPHONE

E.M. CHASE

Time--Very recently.

Place--A flat in Back Bay.

"Bessie Lane, where in the world did you drop from?"

"The station just now and I'm famished."

"I haven't a thing for lunch but you take off your wraps while I attend to things."

"There, I've ordered a delicious lunch and it will be here in fifteen or twenty minutes. What a handy thing a telephone is."

"Oh, yes, very handy indeed."

"Why the sarcasm, my dear Bessie?"