Part 29 (1/2)

Of the roomful, Dike and old Ben were the only quiet ones. The others were taking up the explanation and going over it again and again, and marvelling, and asking questions.

”He come in to--what's that place, Dike?--Hoboken--yesterday only. An'

he sent a dispatch to the farm. Can't you read our letters, Dike, that you didn't know we was here now? And then he's only got an hour more here. They got to go to Camp Grant to be, now, demobilized. He come out to Minnie's on a chance. Ain't he big!”

But Dike and his father were looking at each other quietly. Then Dike spoke. His speech was not phlegmatic, as of old. He had a new clipped way of uttering his words:

”Say, pop, you ought to see the way the Frenchies farm! They got about an acre each, and, say, they use every inch of it. If they's a little dirt blows into the crotch of a tree, they plant a crop in there. I never see nothin' like it. Say, we waste enough stuff over here to keep that whole country in food for a hundred years. Yessir. And tools! Outta the ark, believe me. If they ever saw our tractor, they'd think it was the Germans comin' back. But they're smart at that. I picked up a lot of new ideas over there. And you ought to see the old birds--womenfolks and men about eighty years old--runnin' everything on the farm. They had to.

I learned somethin' off of them about farmin'.”

”Forget the farm,” said Minnie.

”Yeh,” echoed Gus, ”forget the farm stuff. I can get you a job here out at the works for four a day, and six when you learn it right.”

Dike looked from one to the other, alarm and unbelief on his face. ”What d'you mean, a job? Who wants a job! What you all--”

Bella laughed, jovially. ”F'r Heaven's sakes, Dike, wake up! We're livin' here. This is our place. We ain't rubes no more.”

Dike turned to his father. A little stunned look crept into his face. A stricken, pitiful look. There was something about it that suddenly made old Ben think of Pearlie when she had been slapped by her quick-tempered mother.

”But I been countin' on the farm,” he said, miserably. ”I just been livin' on the idea of comin' back to it. Why, I--The streets here, they're all narrow and choked up. I been countin' on the farm. I want to go back and be a farmer. I want--”

And then Ben Westerveld spoke. A new Ben Westerveld--no, not a new, but the old Ben Westerveld. Ben Westerveld, the farmer, the monarch over six hundred acres of bounteous bottomland.

”That's all right, Dike,” he said. ”You're going back. So'm I. I've got another twenty years of work in me. We're going back to the farm.”

Bella turned on him, a wildcat. ”We ain't! Not me! We ain't! I'm not agoin' back to the farm.”

But Ben Westerveld was master again in his own house. ”You're goin'

back, Bella,” he said, quietly. ”An' things are goin' to be different.

You're goin' to run the house the way I say, or I'll know why. If you can't do it, I'll get them in that can. An' me and Dike, we're goin'

back to our wheat and our apples and our hogs. Yessir! There ain't a bigger man-size job in the world.”

THE DANCING GIRLS

When, on opening a magazine, you see a picture of a young man in uniform with a background of a.s.sorted star-sh.e.l.ls in full flower; a young man in uniform gazing into the eyes of a young lady (in uniform); a young man in uniform crouching in a trench, dugout, or sh.e.l.l-hole, this happens:

You skip lightly past the story of the young man in uniform; you jump hurriedly over the picture; and you plunge into the next story, noting that it is called ”The Crimson Emerald” and that, judging from the pictures, all the characters in it wear evening clothes all the time.

Chug Scaritt took his dose of war with the best of them, but this is of Chug before and after taking. If, inadvertently, there should sound a faintly martial note it shall be stifled at once with a series of those stylish dots ... indicative of what the early Victorian writers conveniently called a drawn veil.

Nothing could be fairer than that.

Chug Scaritt was (and is) the proprietor and sole owner of the Elite Garage, and he p.r.o.nounced it with a long i. Automobile parties, touring Wisconsin, used to mistake him for a handy man about the place and would call to him, ”Heh, boy! Come here and take a look at this engine. She ain't hitting.” When Chug finished with her she was. .h.i.tting, all right.

A medium-sized young fellow in the early twenties with a serious mouth, laughing eyes, and a muscular grace pretty well concealed by the grease-grimed grotesquerie of overalls. Out of the overalls and in his tight-fitting, belted green suit and long-visored green cap and flat russet shoes he looked too young and insouciant to be the sole owner--much less the proprietor--of anything so successful and established as the Elite Garage.

In a town like Chippewa, Wisconsin--or in any other sort of town, for that matter--a prosperous garage knows more about the scandals of the community than does a barber-shop, a dressmaker-by-the-day, or a pool-room habitue. It conceals more skeletons than the catacombs. Chug Scaritt, had he cared to open his lips and speak, might have poured forth such chronicles as to make Spoon River sound a paean of sweetness and light. He knew how much Old Man Hatton's chauffeur knocked down on gas and repairs; he knew just how much the Tillotsons had gone into debt for their twin-six, and why Emil Sauter drove to Oshkosh so often on business, and who supplied the flowers for Mrs. Gurnee's electric. Chug didn't encourage gossip in his garage. Whenever possible he put his foot down on its ugly head in a vain attempt to crush it. But there was something about the very atmosphere of the place that caused it to thrive and flourish. It was like a combination newspaper office and Pullman car smoker. Chug tried to keep the thing down but there might generally be seen lounging about the doorway or perched on the running board of an idle car a little group of slim, flat-heeled, low-voiced young men in form-fitting, high-waisted suits of that peculiarly virulent shade of green which makes its wearer look as if he had been picked before he was ripe.

They were a lean, slim-flanked crew with a feline sort of grace about them; terse of speech, quick of eye, engine-wise, and, generally, nursing a boil just above the collar of their soft s.h.i.+rt. Not vicious.