第69章
At sight of Presley and Vanamee he hailed them jovially, addressing them as "boys," and insisting that they should get into the wagon with him and drive to the house for a glass of beer.His mother had only the day before returned from Marysville, where she had been looking up a seminary for the little tad.She would be delighted to see the two boys; besides, Vanamee must see how the little tad had grown since he last set eyes on her; wouldn't know her for the same little girl; and the beer had been on ice since morning.Presley and Vanamee could not well refuse.
They climbed into the wagon and jolted over the uneven ground through the bare forest of hop-poles to the house.Inside they found Mrs.Dyke, an old lady with a very gentle face, who wore a cap and a very old-fashioned gown with hoop skirts, dusting the what-not in a corner of the parlor.The two men were presented and the beer was had from off the ice.
"Mother," said Dyke, as he wiped the froth from his great blond beard, "ain't Sid anywheres about? I want Mr.Vanamee to see how she has grown.Smartest little tad in Tulare County, boys.Can recite the whole of 'Snow Bound,' end to end, without skipping or looking at the book.Maybe you don't believe that.Mother, ain't I right--without skipping a line, hey?"Mrs.Dyke nodded to say that it was so, but explained that Sidney was in Guadalajara.In putting on her new slippers for the first time the morning before, she had found a dime in the toe of one of them and had had the whole house by the ears ever since till she could spend it.
"Was it for licorice to make her licorice water?" inquired Dyke gravely.
"Yes," said Mrs.Dyke."I made her tell me what she was going to get before she went, and it was licorice."Dyke, though his mother protested that he was foolish and that Presley and Vanamee had no great interest in "young ones,"insisted upon showing the visitors Sidney's copy-books.They were monuments of laborious, elaborate neatness, the trite moralities and ready-made aphorisms of the philanthropists and publicists, repeated from page to page with wearying insistence.
"I, too, am an American Citizen.S.D.," "As the Twig is Bent the Tree is Inclined," "Truth Crushed to Earth Will Rise Again,""As for Me, Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death," and last of all, a strange intrusion amongst the mild, well-worn phrases, two legends."My motto--Public Control of Public Franchises," and "The P.and S.W.is an Enemy of the State.""I see," commented Presley, "you mean the little tad to understand 'the situation' early.""I told him he was foolish to give that to Sid to copy," said Mrs.Dyke, with indulgent remonstrance."What can she understand of public franchises?""Never mind," observed Dyke, "she'll remember it when she grows up and when the seminary people have rubbed her up a bit, and then she'll begin to ask questions and understand.And don't you make any mistake, mother," he went on, "about the little tad not knowing who her dad's enemies are.What do you think, boys?
Listen, here.Precious little I've ever told her of the railroad or how I was turned off, but the other day I was working down by the fence next the railroad tracks and Sid was there.She'd brought her doll rags down and she was playing house behind a pile of hop poles.Well, along comes a through freight--mixed train from Missouri points and a string of empties from New Orleans,--and when it had passed, what do you suppose the tad did? SHE didn't know I was watching her.She goes to the fence and spits a little spit after the caboose and puts out her little head and, if you'll believe me, HISSES at the train; and mother says she does that same every time she sees a train go by, and never crosses the tracks that she don't spit her little spit on 'em.What do you THINK of THAT?""But I correct her every time," protested Mrs.Dyke seriously.
"Where she picked up the trick of hissing I don't know.No, it's not funny.It seems dreadful to see a little girl who's as sweet and gentle as can be in every other way, so venomous.She says the other little girls at school and the boys, too, are all the same way.Oh, dear," she sighed, "why will the General Office be so unkind and unjust?Why, I couldn't be happy, with all the money in the world, if I thought that even one little child hated me--hated me so that it would spit and hiss at me.And it's not one child, it's all of them, so Sidney says; and think of all the grown people who hate the road, women and men, the whole county, the whole State, thousands and thousands of people.Don't the managers and the directors of the road ever think of that? Don't they ever think of all the hate that surrounds them, everywhere, everywhere, and the good people that just grit their teeth when the name of the road is mentioned? Why do they want to make the people hate them? No," she murmured, the tears starting to her eyes, "No, I tell you, Mr.Presley, the men who own the railroad are wicked, bad-hearted men who don't care how much the poor people suffer, so long as the road makes its eighteen million a year.They don't care whether the people hate them or love them, just so long as they are afraid of them.It's not right and God will punish them sooner or later."A little after this the two young men took themselves away, Dyke obligingly carrying them in the wagon as far as the gate that opened into the Quien Sabe ranch.On the way, Presley referred to what Mrs.Dyke had said and led Dyke, himself, to speak of the P.and S.W.