The Jack-Knife Man. Ellis Parker Butler
beside her own opulent Seth Thomas.
“I dare say you 're about as well regulated as he is,” she said, “and that ain't saying much for either of you. He ain't got the eyes to see through a grindstone!”
When Peter returned to the boat, the boy was busily trying to work one of the trot-line hooks out of the sleeve of his jacket, but the woman had dropped back on the bunk and her eyes were closed. She opened them when the rush of cold air from the door struck her face, and looked at Peter listlessly.
“I guess you don't feel like cooking a couple of eggs,” said Peter, “so if you'll excuse me remaining here awhile, I'll do it for you. I'm a fair to middling fried-egg cook. Son, you let me get that hook out of you, and then see if you can eat five or six of these pieces of bread and jam. I could when I was a boy, and then I could wind up with a piece of chicken like this.”
“I hooked myself,” the boy explained.
“I should say you did,” said Peter. “You want to look out for these hooks, they bite a boy like a cat-fish stinger, and that ain't much fun. I'm right glad you dropped in,” he said to the woman, “because I've got such good neighbors. It's almost impossible to keep them from forcing more eggs and butter and such things on me than I'd know what to do with. 'Just come on up when you want anything,' they are always saying, 'and help yourself.' So it's quite nice to have somebody drop in and give me a chance to show my neighbors I ain't too proud to take a few eggs and such. It would surprise you to see how eager they are that way.”
He scraped the butter from one of the pieces of bread, needing it to fry the eggs in, and he worked as he talked, breaking the eggs into the frying-pan and watching that they were cooked to a turn.
“I certainly am blessed with nice neighbors,” he said. “There's a widow lady lives a step or two beyond the railroad, and seems as if she couldn't do enough for me. She just lays herself out to see that I'm overfed. Do you feel like you could eat a small part of chicken?”
The woman let her eyes rest on Peter some time before she spoke.
“I ought to feel hungry, but I don't,” she said.
“Well, maybe a soft-boiled egg would be better. I ought to have thought of that,” said Peter as if he had been reproved. “You'll have to excuse me for boiling it in the coffee-pot, I've been so busy planning a trip I'm going to take I haven't had time to lay in much tinware yet.”
“Where did you take the clock?” asked the boy suddenly.
Peter reddened under his tan.
“That clock?” he said hesitatingly. “Where did I take that clock? Well, the fact is—the fact is that clock is a nuisance. That's it, she's a nuisance.' I been meaning to throw that clock into the river for I don't know how long. Unless you are used to that clock you just can't sleep where she is. 'Rattelty bang!' she goes just whenever she takes a notion, like a dish-pan falling downstairs, all times of the night. So I just thought, as long as I was going out anyway, 'Now's a good time to get rid of the old nuisance!'”
“Mama would steal the clock,” said the boy.
“Oh, you mustn't say that!” said Peter. “You come here and eat these two nice eggs. I hope, ma'am, you don't think I had any such notion as that. When I have visitors they can steal everything in the boat, and welcome. I mean—”
“I know what you mean,” said the woman. “You 're the white kind.”
“I'm glad you look at it that way,” said
Peter. “The boy, he don't understand such things, he's so young yet. Maybe you'd feel better if I propped you up with the pillow a little better. I'll lay this extry blanket on the foot of the bunk here in case it should get cold during the night. You look nice and warm now.”
“I'm burning up,” said the woman.
“I judge you've got a slight fever,” said Peter. “I often get them when I get overtook by the rain when I'm out for a stroll.”
“I'll be all right if I can lie here for an hour or so,” said the woman listlessly. “Then Buddy and me will get on. Is it far to town?”
“Now, you and that boy ain't going another step to-night,” said Peter firmly. “You 're going to stay right here. You won't discommode me a bit for I've made arrangements to sleep elsewhere, like I often do.”
He gave the woman the egg in his tin cup, and while she ate he put his trot-lines outside on the small forward deck so the boy might get in no more trouble with the hooks. Then he removed the shells from his shotgun, put the remaining eggs and bread and butter and chicken in his tin box, and pinned his coat collar.
“I'm going up to the place I arranged to sleep at, now,” he said, “and I hope you'll find everything comfortable and nice. There's more wood there by the stove, and before I come in in the morning I'll knock on the door, so I guess maybe you'd better take off as many of them wet clothes as you wish to. You'll take a worse cold if you don't.”
“I'm afraid I'm too weak,” said the woman. “If you will just give me some help with my dress—”
But Peter fled. He was a strange mixture, was Peter, and he fled as a blushing boy would have fled, not to stop running until he was far up the railway track. Then he realized, by the chill of the sleety rain against his head where the hair was thinnest, that he had forgotten his hat, and he laughed at himself.
“Pshaw, I guess that woman scared me,” he said.
He did not follow the path to Mrs. Potter's kitchen door this time, but skirted the orchard and climbed a rail fence into the cow pasture. He made a wide circle through the pasture and climbed another fence into the yard behind the barn, where a haystack stood. He was trembling with cold by this time, and wet through, and the water froze stiff in his coat cuffs, but he dug deep into the base of the haystack and crawled into its shelter, drawing the sweet hay close around him. For awhile he lay with chattering teeth, his knees close under his chin, and then he felt warmer, and straightened his knees. The next moment he was asleep.
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