Part 8 (1/2)

The driver pondered this in his heart for a moment, came to a sudden decision, sniffed again, and turned his back on them both and proceeded to stretch himself out as far as the narrow confines of the seat would permit. Business was apparently over for the day.

Uncle Buzz led Joe across the street to the busy side. The contrast of their figures was striking, for Joe was over a head taller, and loose where Uncle Buzz was stiff.

Mr. Mosby turned at the curbing and with a confidential air: ”We'll just get a bite to eat in here,” indicating a tiny little lunch room crammed in between two ramshackle old frame buildings. ”Your Aunt Loraine was a bit indisposed this morning.”

This established one conclusion. He was at least not expected at home.

More than that, he could not decide without further premises.

They occupied stools at a high counter covered with oilcloth. Uncle Buzz ordered rolls and coffee. Joe took rolls and coffee. There was a period of silence as they waited.

Directly Mr. Mosby began talking in a low tone: ”It's a rather fortunate thing you came up this week-end, Joseph. I was rather afraid you mightn't.” He paused and Joe, while he felt reasonably sure of just what would come next, listened with polite interest.

”I've been troubled with frightful headaches this past week,” he continued, ”so severe that I could scarcely see the open page before me.”

Joe murmured his regret over the cup's brim.

The old man paused and seemed to consider. Then hesitantly continuing: ”If you could spare an hour or two this afternoon----?”

”Surely I can, Uncle Buzz. Easiest thing you know.”

The old man breathed deep and long and set down his coffee cup. ”It is a trifling matter of some forty-six dollars. Would you like to go out to Montgomery's this afternoon? He has a couple of two-year-olds that he will be s.h.i.+pping down for the Derby now pretty soon.”

”I'd be very pleased to, Uncle Buzz.”

And thus was the matter broached, and the matter accepted, without any bald reference to necessity, without the slightest violation to the tenets of hospitality. No reference was made to a previous understanding. Joe's visit was established on a purely social basis, and as such it would be presented to Mrs. Mosby, whose penchant for alarm might thus escape stimulus.

They finished their lunch hurriedly and made their way across to the ”Golden Rule,” where Uncle Buzz led his charge with swift, silent steps back to the little private office in the rear of the store. Once inside, the door was closed and the books quickly opened upon the table. ”They are always a bit impatient for the balance this time of the year,” Mr. Mosby offered in explanation.

An hour's work sufficed to find the trouble. It was in the carrying forward of a single account. Once found, the rest was very simple, and at three o'clock Uncle Buzz slammed the ledger shut with an air of complete satisfaction, walked confidently through the door into the adjoining office with his little sheaf of papers, and returning reached for his hat. ”Burrus is out,” he said crisply. ”We won't wait.”

Joe likewise reached for his hat.

At the door the old man turned, and with a reminiscent smile and in a confidential tone, ”There is a lot of personal jealousy in this firm.”

Joe expressed no surprise.

”He's just been elected deacon in the church.” His old eyes began to twinkle. ”Great changes can take place in a man's habits once you hitch him up with ap.r.o.n strings. His wife has never thought so much of Loraine. And now he doesn't think so much of me.” He chuckled. ”We were raised together, and I have a good memory.” He opened the door and walked slowly toward the front of the store. It was empty of customers. A clerk stood leaning idly across a gla.s.s counter of notions looking into the street. Uncle Buzz proceeded calmly on, giving the clerk a pleasant nod. ”She came from a farm back in the county. They say she had never seen a railroad until she was twenty-one years old.”

The clerk inspected Joe thoroughly and critically and made no sign of having heard anything. And still Joe felt a bit dubious; indiscretion is like other normal weapons: it kills when one doesn't know it is loaded.

But Mr. Mosby was in rising spirits. They emerged to the street and turned the corner into the less populous thoroughfare, known commonly throughout Bloomfield as Pearl Street, and there they came upon Uncle Buzz's horse and buggy, standing as if carved from one and the same block of immutable immobility. Even the flies found little of excitement in lighting about the front section of the combination, and only one or two were buzzing about in the general neighbourhood in a dispirited manner.

The horse opened his eyes and lifted one ear as Uncle Buzz climbed in the buggy and took up the lines. But being complacent and particularly indisposed to anything as much like effort as resistance, the starting was quite without ceremony.

Eventually, and not too much so, they left the city streets, and soon were jogging down a winding little lane of the softest, yellowest earth imaginable. On either side, between the edge of the roadside and the snake rail fence, was a little bank all a-tangle with blackberry bushes, and here and there, with its roots protruding out into s.p.a.ce, a gaunt and bare thorn tree or an occasional walnut thrusting its branches over the road. Beyond, the fields lay in cool, serrated rows, deep brown and freshly fragrant. The woodland which hung about in the background beyond the fields would occasionally sweep down and cross the road, and then would come a stretch of checkered shade on the yellow earth, and the lifting, expectant sound of high wind in top branches. And sometimes, in the heart of such an arm of woodland, the old horse's hoofs would echo hollow on the warped and mellowing boards of a tiny bridge, and there would be a momentary slip and gurgle of water underneath, on down through the ferns. Joe felt steeped in calm.

Mr. Montgomery was not at home. Nor were the horses. They found they were a week late. An old Negro whom they encountered just within the paddock gate so informed them: ”Yessuh. They done took 'em down t'