Part 6 (1/2)

”Calculated!” With a gasp Mrs. Tyarck took off and began to polish her gla.s.ses; she kept two hard little eyes fixed on the speaker.

Mrs. Cap.r.o.n forgot to hawk. ”_Calculated?_”

”It is to arrest the depredations of ants,” confessed Miss Frenzy. She looked from one to the other with great dignity, supplementing: ”I have long suffered greatly from the onslaughts of ants, both red and black.

With the fly-paper, judiciously placed, I have hoped to curtail their activities.”

It had grown a little grayer of twilight; the two visitors, trapped as it were within the high board enclosures, fenced all about with sweeps of tangled vine, the pale glimmering of ghostly blossoms, felt uncomfortable. With slow suspicion they moved away from one so frankly the author of gin and pitfall; from one who could so calmly admit that bits of fly-paper dribbling about her garden paths were ”calculated.”

”Who was it,” whispered Mrs. Tyarck, darkly-”who was it once said that Frenzy was sort of odd?” The two visitors moved instinctively toward a way of exit. With one more sigh Miss Frenzy reluctantly followed them.

As they cast about in their minds for means of final reproof, she paused at the kitchen door. There, where a rain-barrel stood under a leader, was a bit of soap in a flower-pot saucer; seizing it, the old shopkeeper began vigorously was.h.i.+ng her hands.

”Five waters,” sighed Miss Frenzy-”five waters, before I can feel that my hands are in any degree cleansed!”

The others stood watching her. Instantly they seized the opportunity.

”Well, I should think so.” Mrs. Cap.r.o.n hawked her superior virtue. ”I'm glad to hear you say that, Frenzy. Nice work indeed you've been doin'

with them hands! Murderin' and slayin'! Why can't you live and let live (unless, of course, it's rats or mosquitoes)? Now you go and get the blood of them innercent worms on your shoulders! Why couldn't you let 'em go on feedin' where their Creator wanted 'em to feed?”

They looked at her.

”All them different cruelties,” they commented-”fly-paper to track them ignorant ants onto, and that there trap for cats.... Well, you got more spots onto your soul than soap can take off. 'Thou shalt not kill,' it says. Why”-this burst of feeling from Mrs. Tyarck-”why, it's all I can do to set foot on a spider!”

”And look at me with wasps!” exclaimed Mrs. Cap.r.o.n. ”How many wasps I've let go for their enjoyment of life, even though, for all I know, next thing they might sting me or one of mine.”

Mrs. Cap.r.o.n, getting warm and virtuous, sat down in the kitchen doorway.

Opening the netted catchall, she took out therefrom a bundle of tracts.

This lady was the important local officer of many humanitarian societies and lost no opportunity to improve the morale of her community. The tract she selected for Miss Frenzy was of an impressive blue with the t.i.tle, ”Deal Tenderly with the Humble Animals that Cannot Speak.”

”Now think of them ants,” exhorted Mrs. Cap.r.o.n. She looked hard at Miss Frenzy Giddings. ”Think of them thoughtless ants runnin' onto that fly-paper and not able to call out to the others what's happened to 'em!”

”You're like me,” said Mrs. Tyarck. Taking her handkerchief, she wet it in the rain-barrel and obsequiously attempted to rub off a slight fly-paper stickiness still on the mohair of her friend. ”You're like me.

I'm that tender-hearted I can't even boil a lobster. I was so from a child. Come time the kettle boils it's Tyarck always has to put the lobster in-me all of a tremble!”

”And flies,” suggested Mrs. Cap.r.o.n-”there's a many thinks that flies has got souls (though not the Board of Health). But even flies-look at me! I keep sugar and mola.s.ses for 'em in their own saucer, and if they come to their last end that way, why, they must die likin' it, and it's what they chose for theirselves.”

Mrs. Cap.r.o.n drew the string of her netted catchall tight. She hawked, drew her upper lip down over the lower, and b.u.t.toned up the tight-fitting coat of mohair.

”Them cruelties of yourn will haunt you, Frenzy,” summed up both ladies; ”there's verses in the Bible for just such things,” exclaimed the visitors together; then they all went in, the two friends turning their attention to Miss Giddings's household arrangements, offering her advice and counsel as to her clothes and the management of her kitchen range.

There were no more words about the cruelties except that that night in the long, wandering prayer in which Mrs. Cap.r.o.n, as leader of the meeting, had ample opportunity to score against any one whom she fancied delinquent, or against whom she had a private grudge, she inserted into her pet.i.tion:

”And from all needless cruelties, keep us, O Lord. The bird that hops onto our sill”-Mrs. Cap.r.o.n did not specify whether sparrow or nightingale, but she implored fervently-”help us to remember it's one of Thy birds and set no snare for it, and the-er-the innercent creepin'

things mindin' their own business and praisin' Thee-defend 'em from our impident croolties ... help us to live and let live and refrain from all light-minded killin' and irreligious trap-settin'.”

Little Johnnie Tyarck, sitting big-eared and thin-faced alongside of his mother's angular orisons, rubbed puzzled eyes. Johnnie wondered if Mrs.

Cap.r.o.n, always severe in her att.i.tude toward boys, could possibly have learned about those twenty-five hop-toads he had corralled in a sewer-pipe, carefully stopping up the ends of the pipe with mud and stones. The interned hop-toads had haunted Johnnie-and yet-and yet- Well, there was something insolent and forthputting about hop-toads-they breathed with their stomachs, had morose mouths, and proved themselves cra.s.sly superfluous and useless in the general scheme. Some one, it had seemed to Johnnie, should discipline hop-toads.

Behind Johnnie's wispy little head was the grizzled one of Mr. Bloomby, the ragman. Mr. Bloomby, it was understood, was invariably haled to prayer-meeting by Mrs. Bloomby, a person of extreme virtue.

As Mrs. Cap.r.o.n's prayer to be defended from cruelties proceeded, Mr.