Shavings Part 45

The major it was, and a moment later Captain Hunniwell ushered him into the room. He had come to Orham on an errand, he explained, and had stopped at the windmill shop to see Mr. Winslow. Finding the latter out, he had taken the liberty of following him to the Hunniwell home.

"I'm going to stay but a moment, Captain Hunniwell," he went on.

"I wanted to talk with Winslow on a--well, on a business matter.

Of course I won't do it now but perhaps we can arrange a time convenient for us both when I can."

"Don't cal'late there'll be much trouble about that," observed the captain, with a chuckle. "Jed generally has time convenient for 'most everybody; eh, Jed?"

Jed nodded. "Um-hm," he drawled, "for everybody but Gab Bea.r.s.e."

"So you and Jed are goin' to talk business, eh?" queried Captain Sam, much amused at the idea. "Figgerin' to have him rig up windmills to drive those flyin' machines of yours, Major?"

"Not exactly. My business was of another kind, and probably not very important, at that. I shall probably be over here again on Monday, Winslow. Can you see me then?"

Jed rubbed his chin. "Ye-es," he said, "I'll be on private exhibition to my friends all day. And children half price," he added, giving Babbie a hug. "But say, Major, how in the world did you locate me to-day? How did you know I was over here to Sam's?

I never told you I was comin', I'll swear to that."

For some reason or other Major Grover seemed just a little embarra.s.sed.

"Why no," he said, stammering a trifle, "you didn't tell me, but some one did. Now, who--"

"I think I told you, Major," put in Ruth Armstrong. "Last evening, when you called to--to return Charlie's umbrella. I told you we were to dine here to-day and that Jed--Mr. Winslow--was to dine with us. Don't you remember?"

Grover remembered perfectly then, of course. He hastened to explain that, having borrowed the umbrella of Charles Phillips the previous week, he had dropped in on his next visit to Orham to return it.

Jed grunted.

"Humph!" he said, "you never came to see me last night. When you was as close aboard as next door seems's if you might."

The major laughed. "Well, you'll have to admit that I came to- day," he said.

"Yes," put in Captain Sam, "and, now you are here, you're goin' to stay a spell. Oh, yes, you are, too. Uncle Sam don't need you so hard that he can't let you have an hour or so off on Thanksgiving Day. Maud, why in time didn't we think to have Major Grover here for dinner along with the rest of the folks? Say, couldn't you eat a plate of frozen puddin' right this minute? We've got some on hand that tastes of my grandfather, and we want to get rid of it."

Their caller laughingly declined the frozen pudding, but he was prevailed upon to remain and hear Miss Hunniwell play. So Maud played and Charles turned the music for her, and Major Grover listened and talked with Ruth Armstrong in the intervals between selections. And Jed and Barbara chatted and Captain Sam beamed good humor upon every one. It was a very pleasant, happy afternoon. War and suffering and heartache and trouble seemed a long, long way off.

On the way back to the shop in the chill November dusk Grover told Jed a little of what he had called to discuss with him. If Jed's mind had been of the super-critical type it might have deemed the subject of scarcely sufficient importance to warrant the major's pursuing him to the Hunniwells'. It was simply the subject of Phineas Babbitt and the latter's anti-war utterances and surmised disloyalty.

"You see," explained Grover, "some one evidently has reported the old chap to the authorities as a suspicious person. The government, I imagine, isn't keen on sending a special investigator down here, so they have asked me to look into the matter. I don't know much about Babbitt, but I thought you might. Is he disloyal, do you think?"

Jed hesitated. Things the hardware dealer had said had been reported to him, of course; but gossip--particularly the Bea.r.s.e brand of gossip--was not the most reliable of evidence. Then he remembered his own recent conversation with Leander and the latter's expressed fear that his father might get into trouble.

Jed determined, for the son's sake, not to bring that trouble nearer.

"Well, Major," he answered, "I shouldn't want to say that he was.

Phineas talks awful foolish sometimes, but I shouldn't wonder if that was his hot head and bull temper as much as anything else. As to whether he's anything more than foolish or not, course I couldn't say sartin, but I don't think he's too desperate to be runnin' loose. I cal'late he won't put any bombs underneath the town hall or anything of that sort. Phin and his kind remind me some of that new kind of balloon you was tellin' me they'd probably have over to your camp when 'twas done, that--er--er--dirigible; wasn't that what you called it?"

"Yes. But why does Babbitt remind you of a dirigible balloon? I don't see the connection."

"Don't you? Well, seems's if I did. Phin fills himself up with the gas he gets from his Anarchist papers and magazines--the 'rich man's war' and all the rest of it--and goes up in the air and when he's up in the air he's kind of hard to handle. That's what you told me about the balloon, if I recollect."

Grover laughed heartily. "Then the best thing to do is to keep him on the ground, I should say," he observed.

Jed rubbed his chin. "Um-hm," he drawled, "but shuttin' off his gas supply might help some. I don't think I'd worry about him much, if I was you."

They separated at the front gate before the shop, where the rows of empty posts, from which the mills and vanes had all been removed, stood as gaunt reminders of the vanished summer. Major Grover refused Jed's invitation to come in and have a smoke.

"No, thank you," he said, "not this evening. I'll wait here a moment and say good-night to the Armstrongs and Phillips and then I must be on my way to the camp. . . . Why, what's the matter?

Anything wrong?"

His companion was searching in his various pockets. The search completed, he proceeded to look himself over, so to speak, taking off his hat and looking at that, lifting a hand and then a foot and looking at them, and all with a puzzled, far-away expression. When Grover repeated his question he seemed to hear it for the first time and then not very clearly.

"Eh?" he drawled. "Oh, why--er--yes, there IS somethin' wrong.

That is to say, there ain't, and that's the wrong part of it. I don't seem to have forgotten anything, that's the trouble."

His friend burst out laughing.

"I should scarcely call that a trouble," he said.

"Shouldn't you? No, I presume likely you wouldn't. But I never go anywhere without forgettin' somethin', forgettin' to say somethin'

or do somethin' or bring somethin'. Never did in all my life. Now here I am home again and I can't remember that I've forgot a single thing. . . . Hum. . . . Well, I declare! I wonder what it means.

Maybe, it's a sign somethin's goin' to happen."

He said good night absent-mindedly. Grover laughed and walked away to meet Ruth and her brother, who, with Barbara dancing ahead, were coming along the sidewalk. He had gone but a little way when he heard Mr. Winslow shouting his name.

"Major!" shouted Jed. "Major Grover! It's all right, Major, I feel better now. I've found it. 'Twas the key. I left it in the front door lock here when I went away this mornin'. I guess there's nothin' unnatural about me, after all; guess nothin's goin'

to happen."

But something did and almost immediately. Jed, entering the outer shop, closed the door and blundered on through that apartment and the little shop adjoining until he came to his living-room beyond.

Then he fumbled about in the darkness for a lamp and matchbox. He found the latter first, on the table where the lamp should have been. Lighting one of the matches, he then found the lamp on a chair directly in front of the door, where he had put it before going away that morning, his idea in so doing being that it would thus be easier to locate when he returned at night. Thanking his lucky stars that he had not upset both chair and lamp in his prowlings, Mr. Winslow lighted the latter. Then, with it in his hand, he turned, to see the very man he and Major Grover had just been discussing seated in the rocker in the corner of the room and glaring at him malevolently.

Naturally, Jed was surprised. Naturally, also, being himself, he showed his surprise in his own peculiar way. He did not start violently, nor utter an exclamation. Instead he stood stock still, returning Phineas Babbitt's glare with a steady, unwinking gaze.

It was the hardware dealer who spoke first. And that, by the way, was precisely what he had not meant to do.

"Yes," he observed, with caustic sarcasm, "it's me. You needn't stand there blinkin' like a fool any longer, Shavin's. It's me."

Jed set the lamp upon the table. He drew a long breath, apparently of relief.

"Why, so 'tis," he said, solemnly. "When I first saw you sittin'

there, Phin, I had a suspicion 'twas you, but the longer I looked the more I thought 'twas the President come to call. Do you know,"

he added, confidentially, "if you didn't have any whiskers and he looked like you you'd be the very image of him."

This interesting piece of information was not received with enthusiasm. Mr. Babbitt's sense of humor was not acutely developed.

"Never mind the funny business, Shavin's," he snapped. "I didn't come here to be funny to-night. Do you know why I came here to talk to you?"

Jed pulled forward a chair and sat down.

"I presume likely you came here because you found the door unlocked, Phin," he said.

"I didn't say HOW I came to come, but WHY I came. I knew where you was this afternoon. I see you when you left there and I had a good mind to cross over and say what I had to say before the whole crew, Sam Hunniwell, and his stuck-up rattle-head of a daughter, and that Armstrong bunch that think themselves so uppish, and all of 'em."