John Henry Smith Part 17

"He's always eaten with us," Bishop said. "He's a quiet, well-behaved sorter chap, and he's company for us, but mother is afraid it wouldn't be just the thing to have him at the table when company's here, and so I thought I'd ask you and Jack. We don't have folks here very often, and I wanter do what's right."

"You have him sit right down with us," promptly advised Harding. "If there's anybody in this country who has a right to eat good and plenty it's a hired man. If any of our folks don't like it, let them wait until the second table."

That settled it, and I could see that Bishop was pleased over the outcome.

"I sorter hated to tell Wallace to wait," he said to me after Harding had turned away. "It might offend him. He's a queer fish, but has the makings of the best hired man in the county."

When we entered the big dining-room Wallace was sitting in one corner reading. He laid aside the book, arose and bowed slightly. Harding went right up to him.

"Mr. Wallace, I believe," he said, shaking hands. "My name's Harding, and I'll introduce you to the rest of us." And he did.

This young Scotchman is a handsome chap. His features are those of Byron in his early manhood. His hair is dark and wavy as it falls back from a smooth high forehead. He is tall, broad of shoulder and singularly easy and graceful in his movements. He certainly looks like a man who has seen better days.

I am still inclined to my original opinion that he is some college chap who is trying to get a financial start so as to enter on his chosen profession.

He sat opposite me, and not until the first course was served did I notice that he was to the right of Miss Lawrence, with LaHume to her left. When I first observed this trio Miss Lawrence and Wallace already were engaged in a spirited conversation--or, more properly speaking, Miss Lawrence was.

There was a babble of voices and of laughter, and I could make out little they were saying during the early part of the dinner, though I was so impolite as to attempt to do so. Miss Lawrence was praising the scenic beauties of Woodvale and its environs, he adding a word or a sentence now and then with the tact of one pleased to listen to the chatter of a charming companion. The trace of Scotch in his enunciation was so slight as to defy reproduction, but it was sufficient to stamp the place of his nativity.

LaHume made several attempts to join in their conversation, and though Wallace lent him all possible aid Miss Lawrence effectually discouraged LaHume's partic.i.p.ation. He reminded me of a boy making ineffectual attempts to "catch on behind" a swift-moving sleigh, and who is finally tumbled on his head for his pains.

Mrs. Bishop is famous the country round as a cook, and she excelled herself that afternoon. Bishop is a crank on truck gardening, and the vegetables served would have taken prizes in any exhibit. A delicious soup was followed by a baked sea trout--I must not forget to ask Mrs.

Bishop how she made that sauce.

I wonder why it is that the most skilled hotel chefs cannot fry spring chicken so as to faintly imitate the culinary wonders attained by a capable housewife?

"I want to ask you a question, Mrs. Bishop," said Mr. Harding, after he had made a pretense of refusing a third helping of fried chicken. "Did you really raise these chickens on this farm?"

Mrs. Bishop smiled and said they did.

"I don't believe it," he returned. "If the truth were known they lit down here from heaven, and Jim Bishop nailed them and you cooked them."

I was ashamed of Chilvers. He ate seven ears of green corn and boasted of it, but I will admit I did not know it was possible to produce corn such as was served at that farmhouse dinner. The crisp sliced cuc.u.mbers, the ice-cold tomatoes, the succulent hearts of lettuce, the steaming dishes of string beans, summer squash, and green peas--it makes me hungry as I write of that simple but excellent feast.

I thought as we sat there of the democracy of that little gathering.

There was Harding, the multi-millionaire railway magnate, in his hickory s.h.i.+rt; the fastidious and monocled Carter with his wealth and boasted New England ancestry; Miss Lawrence, an heiress in whose veins flowed the purest blood of the southern aristocracy; Mr. and Mrs. Bishop, plain honest folk from 'way down east in Maine; and the unknown Wallace, driven no doubt by stress of poverty from the hills of his beloved country--there we all were meeting one another as equals, enjoying the bounties Nature has so lavishly bestowed on her children.

I caught Miss Harding's eye, and she smiled as if in sympathy with my wandering thoughts. It takes a remarkably pretty young woman to lose none of her charm while eating green corn off the cob, but Miss Harding triumphantly stands that test. She was talking to Marshall, who is so const.i.tutionally slow that he is invariably half a course behind everyone else at a table.

Marshall was attempting to explain to Miss Harding how it is possible to hook a ball and play off the right foot. He laid out a diagram on the table cloth, using "lady-fingers" to show the positions of the feet, a round radish to indicate the ball, and a fruit knife to ill.u.s.trate the face and direction of the club.

Chilvers watched this most unconventional dinner performance with a grin on his face, and just as Marshall was showing just how the club should follow through, Chilvers called "Fore!" in a sharp tone. Miss Harding and Marshall were so absorbed in the elucidation of this most difficult golf problem that they instinctively dodged, and when Miss Harding recovered, her cheeks were delightfully crimson.

I never noticed until that moment that there are traces of dimples in her cheeks. Unless Venus had dimples she had no just claim to be crowned the G.o.ddess of love and beauty.

"Jim," said Mr. Harding, addressing our host, when coffee was served, "did you know our friend Smith when he was a kid?"

"Knew him when he couldn't look over this table," replied Mr. Bishop.

"What kind of a boy was he?"

"Full of the Old Nick, like most healthy boys," he answered. "He and my boy Joe went to school together, got into trouble together and got out of it again. What was it the boys used to call you, Jack?" he said to me, a twinkle in his eye.

"Never mind," I said, and attempted to turn the conversation, but it was no use.

"They used to call him 'Socks Smith,'" said Bishop. "That was it, 'Socks Smith.' I hadn't thought of it in years."

"What an alliterative nickname," laughed Mrs. Chilvers. "How did you ever acquire it, Mr. Smith?"

"He won't tell ye," declared my tormentor, without waiting for me to say a word, "but it's nothin' to his discredit. You know that mill pond where--"

"Don't tell that incident," I protested.

"Tell it! Tell it, Mr. Bishop!" pleaded Miss Lawrence, Miss Harding, and others in chorus.

"Sure I'll tell it," continued Bishop. "As I was saying, you all know the mill pond where you folks try to drive golf b.a.l.l.s over. Well, it uster be bigger an' deeper than it is now, and in the winter it was the skating place for all the lads in the neighbourhood. Up at the far end there is a spring, and even in the coldest weather it don't freeze over above that spring."

"One bitter cold day--and it never gets cold enough to keep boys off smooth ice--young Smith, here--he was about twelve or fourteen years old at that time--was out on the ice with his skates on, wrapped up in an overcoat, a comforter over his ears and thick mittens on his hands, skatin' around that pond with my boy Joe and other lads, all of them thinkin' they was havin' the time of their lives. Mother, what was the name of that poor family that lived over in the old Bobbins' house at the time?"

"Andersons," said Mrs. Bishop.

"That's right; Andersons," continued the Boswell of my infantile exploits. "Well, these Andersons were so poor they didn't have any skates, but some of the boys had let them take a sled, and two of these little Anderson kids were slidin' around on the ice and havin' all the fun they could, even if they didn't have skates. I suppose their toes was as cold and their noses as blue, and that's half of skatin' or sleighin'."

"Smith, Joe, and the other skaters were on the southwest end of the pond playin' 'pigeon goal,' and these poor Anderson kids were slidin' around up at the other end where they would be out of the way. The wind was blowin' pretty hard, and I suppose they were careless; anyhow a gust struck them and swept them along into that air hole."

"They yelled as best they could, and some boys who were near them hollered, and the boys who were skating heard them and came tearing along to see what was the matter. Jack Smith, here, was fixing a strap or somethin', and was the last one to get started. The whole bunch of them were standin' 'round watching those poor Anderson kids drown, so scared they didn't know what to do. The poor little tots were hanging onto the sled right out in the middle of an open s.p.a.ce about thirty yards wide."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Jack ... never stopped a second"]

"Jack, here, never stopped a second. He saw what was up as he came skatin' along, and he legged it all the harder, and in he went--skates, overcoat, comforter, mittens and all. It's no easy job swimmin' with such an outfit, to say nothin' of rescuin' two half-drowned youngsters, and I don't know how he did it, and I don't reckon you do either, Jack.

But anyhow, he got to them, paddled along to the edge of the ice, and held on to them until the other boys pushed out boards and finally got the whole caboodle of 'em up on solid ice."

"Bully for you, Smith!" exclaimed Chilvers, "didn't know it was in you."

"Mr. Chilvers is jealous of you," declared Miss Lawrence. "I think it was real heroic."

"So do I," a.s.serted Miss Harding, "but I cannot imagine how you acquired so absurd a nickname as 'Socks Smith' from that incident."

"Was the water cold?" asked Marshall.

"I hav'n't finished my story," said Mr. Bishop, after these and other comments had-been made. "I reckon the water was some cold, and the air colder; at any rate I happened along in my wagon just as they were draggin' them out, and before I could get them up to Smith's father's house the whole bunch of them was frozen so stiff that I had to pack 'em into the kitchen like so much cordwood."

"But boys of that age are tough, and when they had been thawed out, boiled in hot baths, and blistered with mustard poultices they was as good as new, and I reckon the Anderson kids was a mighty sight cleaner than they had been since the last time they went in swimmin'."

"Now, as I said before, these Andersons were desperate poor, but they were good folks, and what you might call appreciative. Jack had saved the lives of two of the family, and they wanted to show what they thought of him in some way or other. There was twelve children in the Anderson family, six boys and six girls, and the older girls and the old lady went to work, and blamed if they didn't knit a dozen pair of woollen socks and sent them to Jack as a Christmas present."

"And that is how Jack got the name of 'Socks Smith,'" concluded Mr.

Bishop, when the laughter had subsided. "For riskin' his life he got all those nice warm socks and a nickname that uster make him so darned mad that I suppose he's had a hundred fights on account of it, and I'm not certain he won't poke me in the jaw when he gets me alone for tellin'

this yarn on him."