a whim. What do you think—” looking very hard at the honeysuckle, “of Felicia?”
“I think,” said his companion, “that it is likely to be the best name you could give her, for if she isn’t a happy creature it won’t be your fault.”
“Well,” said Tom, “I’ve set out to do my best and I’d like to give her a fair start in every way, even in her name, though there mayn’t be anything in it, but I’d like to do it. I suppose it’s time I should be having some object in life. I’ve never had one before, and I’ve been a useless fellow. Well, I’ve got one now by chance, and I’m bound to hold on to it and do what I can. I want her to have what chances I can give her on her side, and it came into my mind that Felicia——”
He stopped to consult the honeysuckle, as it were, and Jenny Rutherford broke in:
“Yes,” she said, “Felicia is the name for her, and it’s a beautiful thought——”
“Oh!” interrupted Tom, bestirring himself uneasily, “it’s a natural thought. She needs all she can get to balance the trouble she began life with. Most other little chaps begin it in a livelier way—in a way that’s more natural, born into a home, and all that. It’s a desolate business that she should have no one but a clumsy fellow like me to pick her up, and that there should be a shadow of—of trouble and pain and death over her from the first. Good Lord!” with a sudden movement of his big arm, “let’s sweep it away if we can.”
The thought so stirred him, that he turned quite around as he sat.
“Look here,” he said, “that’s what I was aiming at when I set my mind on having her things frilled up and ornamented. I want them to be what they might have been if she had been born of a woman who was happy and well cared for and—and loved—as if she had been thought of and looked forward to and provided for in a—in a tender way—as they say young mothers do such things: you know how that is; I don’t, perhaps, I’ve only thought of it sometimes——” his voice suddenly dropping.
But he had thought of it often, in his lonely back room one winter a few years ago, when it had drifted to him that his brother De Courcy was the father of a son.
Mrs. Rutherford leaned forward in her seat, tears rose in her eyes, and she put her hand impulsively on his shoulder.
“Oh!” she cried, “you are a good man. You’re a good man, and if she lives, she will tell you so and love you with all her heart. I will see to the little clothes just as if they were Nellie’s own” (Nellie being the baby, or more properly speaking, the last baby, as there were others in the household). “And if there is anything I can ever do for the little thing, let me do it for her poor young mother’s sake.”
Tom thanked her gratefully.
“I shall be glad to come to you often enough, I reckon,” he said. “I guess she’ll have her little sick spells, as they all do, and it’ll help wonderfully to have someone to call on. There’s her teeth now,” anxiously, “they’ll be coming through in a few months, and then there’ll be the deuce to pay.”
He was so overweighted by this reflection, that he was silent for some minutes afterwards and was only roused by a question requiring a reply.
Later the Judge came in and engaged him in political conversation, all the Judge’s conversation being of a political nature and generally tending to vigorous denunciations of some candidate for election who belonged to the opposite party. In Barnesville political feeling ran high, never running low, even when there was no one to be elected or defeated, which was very seldom the case, for between such elections and defeat there was always what had been done or what ought to have been done at Washington to discuss, it being strongly felt that without the assistance of Barnesville, Washington would be in a sorry plight indeed.
To-day the Judge had been engaged in a livelier discussion than usual as he rode homeward with a select party of legal brethren from court at Brownsboro, and consequently made his appearance blustering and joyous. He bestowed upon his wife a sounding kiss, and, with one arm around her waist, shook hands with Tom in a gust of hospitality, speaking to both at once.
“Howdy, Jenny? Howdy, Tom? It’s a coon’s age since we’ve seen you, Tom. Time you showed yourself. How are the children, Jenny—and what’s Tom Scott been doing? What’s this we hear about that stray young one? Nice tale that is to tell on a fellow. Fowler heard it at Brownsboro and like to have killed himself. Lord! how hot it’s been! I’m ready for supper, Jenny. Sit down, Tom. As soon as I get through supper, we’ll have a real old-fashioned talk. I’ve been suffering for one for three months. Jenny, tell Sophronia to spread herself on her waffles, for I’ve been getting some mighty poor stuff for the last few days. What do you think of Thatcher running for the Legislature? Lord! Lord! what a fool that fellow is! Most unpopular man in the county, and about the meanest too. Mean? Lord! mean ain’t the name for it! He’ll be beat so that any other man wouldn’t want to show his head, and it won’t make a mark on him. Nellie’s asleep, ain’t she, Jenny? I’ve got to go and look at her and the rest of them. Don’t you want to come along, Tom? You’re a family man yourself now, and you ought to take an interest!”
He led the way into the family-room at the back and, taking the candle from the high mantel, moved it triumphantly over the beds in which the children slept.
“Here’s Tom Scott!” he announced. “Tom Scott’s got to have a crib to himself. Look at him now. What do you think of that for a boy? He’s five years old next month, and he about runs Barnesville. The boys round here are just ruining him with making much of him and setting him up to tricks. He just lives round at the stores and the post-office. And what Tom Scott don’t know ain’t worth knowing. Came home with six jack-knives in his pockets the first day Jenny turned him out in pantaloons. The boys tried themselves to see who could do best by him. You could hear them shouting and laughing all over the town at the things they got him to say. I tell you he’s a case, Tom is. Last election he was as stirred up as any of us. Hollered ‘’Rah for Collins’ until he was hoarse and his mother brought him home and gave him syrup of squills because she thought he had the croup. What do you think he did, now? Went into Barton’s store and ordered a bushel of chestnuts to be sent down to my account and brought ’em out and set on the horse-block and gave a treat for Collins. I was coming up home and saw the crowd and heard the hollering and laughing, and there was Tom in the middle baling out his chestnuts and hollering at the top of his voice: ‘Come on, boys, all you Collins men, here’s a treat for Collins!’ I thought Collins would have died when he heard it. He laughed until he choked, and the next day he came to see Tom and gave him a gold eagle and a colt. He says he is going to give him a little nigger to look after it, and he’ll do it. Oh, Tom Scott’s the boy! He’ll be in the White House forty years from now. He’s making a bee-line for it right now.”
And he bent and kissed the little fellow’s sunburnt rosy cheek.
“His mother and his grandmother can’t do a thing with him,” he said, rapturously, “and it’s as much as I can do to manage him. Oh, he’s a case, is Tom Scott!”
And with this tribute to his character, he left him to his slumbers, with his sturdy little legs occupying an extensive area of crib and his face resting on his small brown arm.
After this, the Judge went to his supper and consumed a large quantity of fried chicken, waffles, and coffee, afterwards joining Tom on the porch, smoking his pipe and stigmatising Thatcher in a loud and jovial voice as the meanest man in Hamlin.
But for this resonant jovialness of voice, his denunciation of the Democratic Party, which
