第39章 THE EVENTFUL TRIP OF THE MIDNIGHT CRY.(4)

Now, two years before this, Jerry Todd had for the first and only time in his married life "put his foot down."

Mrs. Todd had insisted on making him a suit of clothes much against his wishes. When finished she put them on him almost by main force, though his plaintive appeals would have melted any but a Stover-of-Scarboro heart.

The stuff was a large plaid, the elbows and knees came in the wrong places, the seat was lined with enameled cloth, and the sleeves cut him in the armholes.

Mr. Todd said nothing for a moment, but the pent-up slavery of years stirred in him, and, mounting to his brain, gave him a momentary courage that resembled intoxication.

He retired, took off the suit, hung it over his arm, and, stalking into the sitting-room in his undergarments, laid it on the table before his astonished spouse, and, thumping it dramatically, said firmly, "I--will--not--wear--them--clo'es!" whereupon he fell into silence again and went to bed.

The joke of the matter was, that, all unknown to himself, he had absolutely frightened Mrs. Todd. If only he could have realized the impressiveness and the thorough success of his first rebellion!

But if he had realized it he could not have repeated it often, for so much virtue went out of him on that occasion that he felt hardly able to drive the stage for days afterward.

"I shall have to put down my foot agin," he said to himself on the eventful morning when Pel presented him with the basket.

"Dern my luck, I've got to do it agin, when I ain't hardly got over the other time." So, after an hour's plotting and planning, he made some purchases in Biddeford and started on his return trip.

He was very low in his mind, thinking, if his wife really meditated upon warfare, she was likely to inspect the stage that night, but giving her credit in his inmost heart for too much common sense to use a broomstick,--a woman with her tongue!

The Midnight Cry rattled on lumberingly. Its route had been shortened, and Mrs. Todd wanted its name changed to something less outlandish, such as the Rising Sun, or the Breaking Dawn, or the High Noon, but her idea met with no votaries; it had been, was, and ever should be, the Midnight Cry, no matter what time it set out or got back.

It had seen its best days, Jerry thought, and so had he, for that matter.

Yet he had been called "a likely feller" when he married the Widder Bixby, or rather when she married him. Well, the mischief was done; all that remained was to save a remnant of his self-respect, and make an occasional dash for liberty.

He did all his errands with his usual care, dropping a blue ribbon for Doxy Morton's Sunday hat, four cents' worth of gum-camphor for Almira Berry, a spool of cotton for Mrs. Wentworth, and a pair of "galluses" for Living Bean. He finally turned into the "back-nippin'" road from Bonny Eagle to Limington, and when he was within forty rods of his own house he stopped to water his horses.

If he feared a scene he had good reason, for as the horses climbed the crest of the long hill the lady in green was by his side on the box.

He looked anxiously ahead, and there, in a hedge of young alder bushes, he saw something stirring, and, unless he was greatly mistaken, a birch broom lay on the ground near the hedge.