Neighborhood Stories

I kind o’ tiptoed after him, casual. All of a sudden I wanted to see what he done. His father come behind me on the boards, and we saw the little fellow bend over and pat Mac, my water spaniel, as gentle as if he’d been cut glass. The little boy looked awful cute, bending over, his short hair sticking out at the back. I can see him yet.

“How much,” says I, “would you want to pay for your room?”

“Well,” says his father, “not much. But I give a guess your price is what it’s worth – no more, no less.”

I hadn’t paid much attention to him before that, but I see now he was a wonderful, nice-spoken little man, with the kind of eyes that look like the sitting-room – and not like the parlor. I can’t bear parlor eyes.

“Come and look at the room,” says I, and rented it to him out of hand. And Mr. Dombledon – his name was – and Donnie – that was the little fellow – went off for their baggage, and I went off for my cakes; and what they was reflecting on I donno, but my own reflect was that it’s a wise minute can tell what the next one is going to pop open and let out. But I like it that way. I’m a natural-born vaudevillian. I love to see what’s coming next.

Well, the next thing was, after I got my two club cakes both provided for, that it turned out Mr. Dombledon was an agent, selling “notions, knick-knacks and anything o’ that,” he told me; and he use’ to start out at seven o’clock in the morning, with his satchel in one hand and his little boy, more or less, in the other.

“Land,” says I to him after a few days, “don’t your little boy get wore to the bone tramping around with you like that?”

“Some,” says he; “but I carry him part of the way.”

“Carry him?” says I, “and tote that heavy knick-knack notion satchel?”

“Well,” says he, “I don’t mind it. What I’m always thinking is this: What if I didn’t have him to tote.”

“True enough,” says I, and couldn’t say another word.

But of course the upstart and offshoot of that was that before the week was out, I’d invited Mr. Dombledon to leave the little fellow with me, some days, while he went off. And he done so, grateful, but making a curious provision.

“It’d be grand for him,” says he; “they’s only just one thing: Would – would you promise not to leave him hear anybody say anything anyways cross?”

“Well,” says I, judicious, “I donno’s I’m what-you-might-say cross. Not systematic. But – I might be a little crispy.”

“I ain’t afraid o’ you,” says he, real flattering. “But don’t leave him hear anybody – well, snap anybody up.”

“All right,” says I, “I won’t. I like,” I says, “to get out o’ the way of that myself.”

“Well, and then,” he says, “I guess you’ll think I’m real particular. But – would you promise not to leave him go outside the yard?”

“Sure,” says I, “only when I’m with him.”

“I guess you’ll think I’m real particular,” he says again, in his kind of gentle voice without any sizin’ to it, “but I mean not even then. Days when you’re goin’ out, I’ll take him with me.”

“Sure,” says I, wondering all over me, but not letting on all I wondered, like you can’t in society. And I actually looked forward to having the little thing around the house with me, me that has always been down on mice, moths, bats and boys.

The next thing was, Would he stay with me? And looking to this end I contrived, some skillful, to be baking cookies the first morning his pa went off. Mis’ Puppy had happened in early to get some blueing, and she was sitting at one end of my cook table when Donnie came trotting out with his father, that always preferred the back door. (“It feels more like I lived here,” says he, wishful, “if you let me come in the back door.” And I was the last one to deny him that. Once when I went visiting, I got so homesick to go in the back door that it was half my reason for leaving ’em.)

“Now then,” I says to the little fellow that morning, “you just set here with us and see me make cookies. I’ll cut you out a soldier cooky,” says I.

“Wiv buttins?” he asks, and climbed up on his knees on a chair by the table and let his father go off without him, nice as the nicest. “I likes ’em wiv buttins,” he says – and Mis’ Puppy sort of kindled up in her throat, like a laugh that wants to love somebody.

I donno as I know how to say it, but he was the kind of a little chap that, when you’re young, you always think your little chap is going to be. Then when they do come, sometimes they’re dear and all that, but they ain’t quite exactly the way you thought of them being – though you forget that they ain’t, and you forget everything but loving ’em. But it was like this little boy was the way you’d meant. It wasn’t so much the way he looked – though he was beautiful, beautiful like some of the things you think and not like a calendar – but it was the way he was, kind of close up to you, and his breath coming past, and something you couldn’t name gentling round him. His father hadn’t been gone ten minutes when the little thing let me kiss him.

“ ‘At was my last one,” he explained, sort of sorry, to Mis’ Puppy. “But you can have a bite off my soldier. That’s a better kiss.”

Mis’ Puppy watched him for a while – he was sitting close down by the oven door to hear his soldier say Hurrah the minute he was baked, if you please – and she kind of moved like her thoughts scraped by each other, and she says – and spells one word of it out:

“Where do you s’pose his m-o-t-h-e-r is?”

“My land, d-e-d,” I answers, “or she’d be setting over there kissing the back of his neck in the hollow.”

“I’ve got,” says Mis’ Puppy, “kind of an idea she ain’t. Your boarder,” she says, “don’t look to me real what you might call a widower. He ain’t the air of one that’s had things ciphered out for him,” says she. “It’s more like he was still a-browsing round the back o’ the book for the answer.”

And that was true, when you come to think of it; he did seem sort of quick-moved and hopeful, more like when you sit down to the table than when you shove back.

I told Mis’ Puppy, private, what his father had said to me about his not hearing anything spoke cross; and she nodded, like it was something she’d got all thought out, with tags on.

“I was a-wondering the other day,” she says, dreamy, “what I’d of been like if nobody had ever yipped out at me. I s’pose none of us knows.”

“Likewise,” says I, “what we’d be like if we’d never yipped out to no one else.”

“That’s so,” she says, “ain’t it? The two fits together like a covered bake-dish.”

“Ain’t you ’fraid he’ll shoot the oven door down if you don’t let him out pitty quick?” says Donnie, trying to see how near he could get his ear to the crack to hear that “Hurrah.”

Four days the little boy done that, stayed with me as contented as a kitten while his father went agenting; and then the fifth day he had to take him with him, because there come on what I’d been getting the cakes for – the quarterly meeting of the Go-lightly club.

The Go-lightly club is sixteen Red Barns ladies – and me – that’s all passed the sixty-year-old mark, and has had to begin to go lightly. We picked the name as being so literal, grievous-true as to our powers and, same time, airy and happy sounding, just like we hope we’ll be clear up to the last of the last of us. We had a funny motto and, those days, it use’ to be a secret. We’d lit on it when we was first deciding to have the club.

“What do we want a club for anyhow?” old Mis’ Lockmeyer had said, that don’t really enjoy anything that she ain’t kicked out at first.

“Why,” says little Mis’ Pettibone, kind of gentle and final, “just to kind of make life nice.”

“Well,” says Mis’ Lockmeyer, “we got to go awful light on it, our age.”

And we put both them principles into our constitution:

“Name: The name of this club shall be the Go-lightly club, account of the character of its members.

“Object: The object of this club shall be to make life nice.

“No officers. No dues. No real regular meetings.

“Picnic supper when any.”

And Mis’ Wilme had insisted on adding:

“Every-day clothes or not so much so.”

Our next meeting was going to be at Mis’ Elkhorn’s that lives out of town about two miles along the old Tote road, and we was looking forward to it considerable. We’d put it off several times; one week the ice-cream sociable was going to be, and one week the circus was to the next town, and so on – we never like to interfere with any other social going-ons.

None of us having a horse, we hired the rig – that’s the three-seat canopy-top from the livery – and was all drove out together by Jem Meddledipper. And it was real nice and festive, with our lunch baskets all piled up in the back and, as Mis’ Wilme put it: “Nothing to do till time to set the pan-cakes.” And when we got outside the City limits – we’re just a village, but we’ve got ’em marked “City Limits,” because that always seems the name of ’em – Mis’ Pettibone, that’s a regular one for entering into things – you know some just is and some just ain’t and the two never change places on no occasion whatever – she kind of pitched in and sung in her nice little voice that she calls her sopralto, because it ain’t placed much of any place. She happened on a church piece – I donno if you know it? – the one that’s got a chorus that goes first

“Loving-kindness”