The Best American Humorous Short Stories Part 37

Before Mr. Tutt could answer, Mr. Van Kamp hurried in at the door.

"Wait a moment!" he cried. "I want to bid on that!"

"This here jug hain't fer sale at no price," Uncle Billy emphatically announced, nipping all negotiations right in the bud. "It's too pesky hard to sneak this here licker in past Marge't, but I reckon it's my treat, gents. Ye kin have all ye want."

One minute later Mr. Van Kamp and Mr. Ellsworth were seated, one on a sawbuck and the other on a nail-keg, comfortably eyeing each other across the work bench, and each was holding up a tumbler one-third filled with the golden yellow liquid.

"Your health, sir," courteously proposed Mr. Ellsworth.

"And to you, sir," gravely replied Mr. Van Kamp.

XI

Ralph and Evelyn happened to meet at the pump, quite accidentally, after the former had made half a dozen five-minute-apart trips for a drink. It was Miss Van Kamp, this time, who had been studying on the mutual acquaintance problem.

"You don't happen to know the Tylers, of Parkersburg, do you?" she asked.

"The Tylers! I should say I do!" was the unexpected and enthusiastic reply. "Why, we are on our way now to Miss Georgiana Tyler's wedding to my friend Jimmy Carston. I'm to be best man."

"How delightful!" she exclaimed. "We are on the way there, too.

Georgiana was my dearest chum at school, and I am to be her 'best girl.'"

"Let's go around on the porch and sit down," said Ralph.

XII

Mr. Van Kamp, back in the woodshed, looked about him with an eye of content.

"Rather cozy for a woodshed," he observed. "I wonder if we couldn't scare up a little session of dollar limit?"

Both Uncle Billy and Mr. Ellsworth were willing. Death and poker level all Americans. A fourth hand was needed, however. The stage driver was in bed and asleep, and Mr. Ellsworth volunteered to find the extra player.

"I'll get Ralph," he said. "He plays a fairly stiff game." He finally found his son on the porch, apparently alone, and stated his errand.

"Thank you, but I don't believe I care to play this evening," was the astounding reply, and Mr. Ellsworth looked closer. He made out, then, a dim figure on the other side of Ralph.

"Oh! Of course not!" he blundered, and went back to the woodshed.

Three-handed poker is a miserable game, and it seldom lasts long. It did not in this case. After Uncle Billy had won the only jack-pot deserving of the name, he was allowed to go blissfully to sleep with his hand on the handle of the big jug.

After poker there is only one other always available amus.e.m.e.nt for men, and that is business. The two travelers were quite well acquainted when Ralph put his head in at the door.

"Thought I'd find you here," he explained. "It just occurred to me to wonder whether you gentlemen had discovered, as yet, that we are all to be house guests at the Carston-Tyler wedding."

"Why, no!" exclaimed his father in pleased surprise. "It is a most agreeable coincidence. Mr. Van Kamp, allow me to introduce my son, Ralph. Mr. Van Kamp and myself, Ralph, have found out that we shall be considerably thrown together in a business way from now on. He has just purchased control of the Metropolitan and Western string of interurbans."

"Delighted, I'm sure," murmured Ralph, shaking hands, and then he slipped out as quickly as possible. Some one seemed to be waiting for him.

Perhaps another twenty minutes had pa.s.sed, when one of the men had an illuminating idea that resulted, later on, in pleasant relations for all of them. It was about time, for Mrs. Ellsworth, up in the bare suite, and Mrs. Van Kamp, down in the draughty barn, both wrapped up to the chin and both still chilly, had about reached the limit of patience and endurance.

"Why can't we make things a little more comfortable for all concerned?" suggested Mr. Van Kamp. "Suppose, as a starter, that we have Mrs. Van Kamp give a s.h.i.+ver party down in the barn?"

"Good idea," agreed Mr. Ellsworth. "A little diplomacy will do it.

Each one of us will have to tell his wife that the other fellow made the first abject overtures."

Mr. Van Kamp grinned understandingly, and agreed to the infamous ruse.

"By the way," continued Mr. Ellsworth, with a still happier thought, "you must allow Mrs. Ellsworth to furnish the dinner for Mrs. Van Kamp's s.h.i.+ver party."

"Dinner!" gasped Mr. Van Kamp. "By all means!"

Both men felt an anxious yawning in the region of the appet.i.te, and a yearning moisture wetted their tongues. They looked at the slumbering Uncle Billy and decided to see Mrs. Tutt themselves about a good, hot dinner for six.

"Law me!" exclaimed Aunt Margaret when they appeared at the kitchen door. "I swan I thought you folks 'u'd never come to yore senses. Here I've had a big pot o' stewed chicken ready on the stove fer two mortal hours. I kin give ye that, an' smashed taters an' chicken gravy, an'

dried corn, an' hot corn-pone, an' currant jell, an' strawberry preserves, an' my own cannin' o' peaches, an' pumpkin-pie an' coffee.

Will that do ye?" Would it _do_! _Would_ it do!!

As Aunt Margaret talked, the kitchen door swung wide, and the two men were stricken speechless with astonishment. There, across from each other at the kitchen table, sat the utterly selfish and traitorous younger members of the rival houses of Ellsworth and Van Kamp, deep in the joys of chicken, and mashed potatoes, and gravy, and hot corn-pone, and all the other "fixings," laughing and chatting gaily like chums of years' standing. They had seemingly just come to an agreement about something or other, for Evelyn, waving the shorter end of a broken wishbone, was vivaciously saying to Ralph:

"A bargain's a bargain, and I always stick to one I make."

A CALL

By Grace MacGowan Cooke (1863- )

[From _Harper's Magazine_, August, 1906. Copyright, 1906, by Harper & Brothers. Republished by the author's permission.]

A boy in an unnaturally clean, country-laundered collar walked down a long white road. He scuffed the dust up wantonly, for he wished to veil the all-too-brilliant polish of his cowhide shoes. Also the memory of the whiteness and slipperiness of his collar oppressed him.

He was fain to look like one accustomed to social diversions, a man hurried from hall to hall of pleasure, without time between to change collar or polish boot. He stooped and rubbed a crumb of earth on his overfresh neck-linen.

This did not long sustain his drooping spirit. He was mentally adrift upon the _Hints and Helps to Young Men in Business and Social Relations_, which had suggested to him his present enterprise, when the appearance of a second youth, taller and broader than himself, with a shock of light curling hair and a crop of freckles that advertised a rich soil threw him a lifeline. He put his thumbs to his lips and whistled in a peculiarly ear-splitting way. The two boys had sat on the same bench at Sunday-school not three hours before; yet what a change had come over the world for one of them since then!

"h.e.l.lo! Where you goin', Ab?" asked the newcomer, gruffly.

"Callin'," replied the boy in the collar, laconically, but with carefully averted gaze.

"On the girls?" inquired the other, awestruck. In Mount Pisgah you saw the girls home from night church, socials, or parties; you could hang over the gate; and you might walk with a girl in the cemetery of a Sunday afternoon; but to ring a front-door bell and ask for Miss Heart's Desire one must have been in long trousers at least three years--and the two boys confronted in the dusty road had worn these dignifying garments barely six months.

"Girls," said Abner, loftily; "I don't know about girls--I'm just going to call on one girl--Champe Claiborne." He marched on as though the conversation was at an end; but Ross hung upon his flank. Ross and Champe were neighbors, comrades in all sorts of mischief; he was in doubt whether to halt Abner and pummel him, or propose to enlist under his banner.

"Do you reckon you could?" he debated, trotting along by the irresponsive Jilton boy.

"Run home to your mother," growled the originator of the plan, savagely. "You ain't old enough to call on girls; anybody can see that; but I am, and I'm going to call on Champe Claiborne."