Part 3 (2/2)
The loud voice with its rich Irish brogue drew Cy Akers's attention from his newspaper. ”By the way, Bud,” he exclaimed, raising his voice so that Mrs. Mahone could not fail to hear, ”you were complaining about March being so dull and commonplace without any holidays. You've forgotten St. Patrick's Day.”
”No, I haven't. St. Patrick is nothing to me. There's no reason I should take any interest in him.”
”And did you hear that, Mrs. Mahone,” asked Henry Bicking, anxious to start a war of words.
”Oh, Oi heard it, indade Oi did!” she answered with a solemn shake of the head. ”It grieves the hearrt of me to hear such ingratichude.
There's niver a sowl in all Ameriky but has cause to be grateful for what he's done for this counthry.”
”What's he ever done?” asked Bud, skeptically. There was a twinkle in Mrs. Mahone's eyes as she answered:
”It was this way. A gude while back whin it was at the beginnin' iv things, Ameriky said to herself wan day, 'It's a graand pudding Oi'll be afther makin' meself, by a new resait Oi've just thought iv.' So she dips into this counthry for wan set iv immygrants, an' into another counthry for another batch, and after a bit a foine mess she had iv 'em.
Dutch an' Frinch an' Eyetalian, Roos.h.i.+an, Spaniards an' haythen Chinee, all stirred up in wan an' the same pudding-bag.
”'Somethin's lackin',' siz she, afther awhile, makin' a wry face.
”'It's the spice,' siz St. Pathrick, 'ye lift out iv it, an' the leaven. Ye'll have to make parsinal application to meself for it, for Oi'm the only wan knowin' the saicret of where it's to be found.'
”'Then give me some,' siz she, an' St. Pathrick, not loikin' to lave a leddy in trouble, reached out from the auld sod and handed her a fair shprinklin' of them as would act as both spice an' leaven.
”'They'll saison the whole lot,' siz he, 'an' there's light-heartedness enough among them to raise the entoire heavy ma.s.s in your whole united pudding-bag.'
”'Thanks,' siz she, stirrin' us in. 'It's the makin' of the dish, sorr, and Oi'm etarnally obliged to ye, sorr. Oi'll be afther puttin' the name of St. Pathrick in me own family calendar, and ivery year on that day, it's the pick iv the land that'll take pride in addin' to me own shtars an' shtripes the wearin' o' the green.'
”Ye see, Misther Hines, ye may think ye're under no parsinal obligation to him, but down-hearted as ye are by nature, what wud ye have been had ye niver coom in conthact with the leaven of St. Pathrick at all, sorr?
Oi ask ye that.”
Late that night Bowser pushed his ledger aside with a yawn, and got down from his high stool to close the store. As he counted the meagre contents of the cash drawer, he reviewed the day, whose minutes had been as monotonous in pa.s.sing as the falling of the snowflakes outside. It had left nothing behind it to distinguish it from a hundred other days.
The same old faces! The same kind of jokes! The same round of commonplace duties! A spirit of unrest seized him, that made him chafe against such dreary monotony.
When he went to the door to put up the shutters, the beauty of the night held him a moment, and he stood looking across the wide fields, lying white in moonlight and snow. Far down the road a lamp gleamed from the window of an upper room in the old miller's house, where anxious vigil had been kept beside him for hours. The crisis was pa.s.sed now. Only a little while before, the doctor had stopped by to say that their old friend would live. Down the track a gleaming switch-light marked the place where a wreck had been narrowly averted that morning.
”And no telling how many other misfortunes we've escaped to-day,”
mused Bowser. ”Maybe if a light could be swung out for each one, folks would see that the dull gray days when nothing happens are the ones to be most thankful for, after all.”
Chapter VI
APRIL suns.h.i.+ne of mid-afternoon poured in through the open door of the Cross-Roads. The usual group of loungers had gathered around the rusty stove. There was no fire in it; the day was too warm for that, but force of habit made them draw their chairs about it in a circle, as if this common centre were the hub, from which radiated the spokes of all neighbourly intercourse.
The little schoolmistress was under discussion. Her short reign in District No. 3 had furnished a topic of conversation as inexhaustible as the weather, for her regime was attended by startling changes. Luckily for her, the young ideas enjoyed being taught to shoot at wide variance from the targets set up by parental practice and tradition, else the tales told out of school might have aroused more adverse criticism than they did.
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