Part 7 (2/2)
”I declare!” complained Mr. Cane. ”I never saw such a household as this.
No sooner do we get rid of one scourge than another is upon us.
Contaminated water is about the worst thing that can happen to a place.
There's no telling when we'll get this thing cleared up. I suppose the plumber will be round here for the next month. I might as well make him a present of the house!”
”Oh, well,” soothed Mrs. Cane. ”It might be worse. We'll miss the rain water, of course, but we still have the city water to fall back on.”
”Yes, but who wants to use that city water?” demanded Mr. Cane. ”It's as hard as a rock! It makes my hands feel chapped just to think of it.”
Then turning to Sube he asked, ”Didn't you find anything at all that might have made this trouble?”
Sube appeared to be searching his memory. In reality he was searching his imagination. Finally he replied, ”No, sir; unless maybe it could of been that little piece of fur I found in one corner.”
”There!” cried Mr. Cane. ”Why didn't you tell me that before? I might have spent a hundred dollars having the plumber tear things to pieces in search of that same little piece of fur!”
”I wasn't sure,” muttered Sube. ”I didn't know jus' _what_ it was.”
”Not sure, eh? Well what did it look like?”
”It _looked_ like a rat,” Sube fabricated.
”What did you do with it?”
”Threw it on the ash pile.”
”_I_ can soon tell,” declared Mr. Cane.
”But an ol' cat grabbed it and carried it away,” romanced Sube.
The plumber came and scrubbed the tank, the clothes went to the cleaner, and Sube proceeded to school hardened and set for the cruel grinding of another day. And he was not disappointed. Miss Wheeler was very pressing in her demands for doc.u.mentary excuses for his absence of the day before. But when Sube reached home at noon he found his father in no proper mood to frame diplomatic communications. To be exact, Mr. Cane was grouchy.
”I don't know what can be the matter with me,” he complained as he took his place at the head of the table. ”Do I look sick?”
Mrs. Cane made a very careful examination of his face, and noted the vigorous erectness of his body, while Sube's gaze was s.h.i.+fting uneasily back and forth from one parent to the other.
”You haven't looked so well in years,” she declared at length. ”What's the matter? Aren't you feeling well?”
”Never felt better in my life. Now I wonder what's getting into everybody.”
”Why, what do you mean?” asked Mrs. Cane nervously.
”Everybody seems to think I'm sick,” grumbled Mr. Cane. ”Why, the thing began before I had reached my office this morning. The first person who spoke of it was Joe McInness, the barber. He stopped me on the street and asked very particularly how I was feeling to-day. I told him in an off-hand way that I was never better, and he seemed to be quite surprised. 'Why, I understood you were--were not feeling well,' he sort of stammered out.
”I laughed at him. 'Do I look sick, Joe?' I asked.
”'No, you don't _look_ bad,' he said; 'but sometimes folks look perfectly well physically when they ain't well at all in--in other ways.
And sometimes the worse off they are, the better they _think_ they are.'
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