Tom Edwards

“ For if he isn’t, why should he be hiding in the old mill?”
I shrugged.
“Search me,” I said.
“His main reason for being in the neighborhood,” Tom went on, sure of himself, “isn’t to make women beautiful. Not so you can notice it! The spiel he gave us about his wonderful soap was bunk, and nothing else but. He can’t string me. For I know that it takes more than soap to drive away warts and things. His soap may be good, but it won’t do all of the wonderful things that he claims for it.”
Scoop grinned.
“We can find out how good the soap is by using it on Mrs. Kelly.” ”

“ Sam began to explain and when he had finished Webster laughed.
“Let’s get at Tom Edwards of the Edward Arms Company direct,” he said, and then, leaning over the desk, “Edwards is a vain little peacock and a second rate business man,” he declared emphatically. “Get him afraid and then flatter his vanity. He has a new wife with blonde hair and big soft blue eyes. He wants prominence. He is afraid to venture upon big things himself but is hungry for the reputation and gain that comes through big deals. ”

“ What direction is his home from here?”
“Are you going to put up at the hotel while you’re in Tutter?”
“Of course.”
“Well, they’ll tell you at the hotel where Mr. Ricks lives.”
As the roadster disappeared into town, Tom tumbled out of the lilac bush.
“The big bluffer! Yes, he’ll build a radio toy factory, all right, if he can steal Pa’s talking frog.”
Scoop followed the dust cloud with curling lips.
“Jerry,” he said, “I’ve already made up my mind to get rich. For a fellow with money can have a lot of fun doing a lot of good. ”

“ I fished Miss Prindle’s letter out of my pocket, explaining to our leader how the letter had come into my possession.
“A trick of the Strickers,” he said promptly.
“Nothing of the kind,” I told him. “For I saw her myself. So did Tom.”
“Rats! A woman can’t become beautiful over night.”
“Miss Prindle did,” I waggled. “And so did Red.”
“Red? Do you mean Red Meyers? Oh, ho, ho, ho! That’s rich!” [128]
“His mother used the beauty soap on him,” I said, “and his freckles have all disappeared. His skin is like peaches and cream.”
“I’ve got to see it,” said Scoop, “to believe it.” ”

“ Spurred on by the harsh commands of the mate, Tom Edwards managed to hold out for perhaps three quarters of an hour. Then he collapsed entirely; and, seeing that nothing more could be gotten out of him for the rest of the day, the mate suffered him to drag himself off to the forecastle.
“But see that you’re out sharp and early on deck here to-morrow morning,” said Jim Adams. “We don’t have folks livin’ high here for nothin’. ”

“ How could a man like that be betrayed?” he asked. “By a kiss,” the fat boy replied.
On the evening of the day when Tom Edwards—for the first and last time in his life—went into a church, there was a light shower, the only one that fell upon John Bottsford’s threshing crew during the last three months the Welsh boy was with them and the shower in no way interfered with their work. The shower came up suddenly and a few minutes was gone. As it was Sunday and as there was no work the men had all gathered in the barn and were looking out through the open barn doors. ”

“ Mrs. Edwards said, dryly. “Why don’t you try your ’prentice hand on that buckskin? He’s dodged the lariat a dozen times.”
“Why, that Bucky is a regular rocking-horse, I bet,” declared Tom, who, for a city boy, was a pretty good rider.
“Get down and ride him, Tommy,” urged Sue. “Can’t you ride as well as these country boys?”
“I never said I could,” retorted Tom, doubtfully. “You girls are guying the punchers, too. Why don’t one o’ you get down and show ’em what you can do?”
“Frances can beat all you boys riding, Tommy,” Mrs. Edwards cried. ”

“ See that old chap over there with the basket of fruit in his lap?" The stranger moderated his voice and leaned toward Tom. Tom, turning his head a trifle to follow the other's gaze, felt one of the bags between his feet move and made a grab toward it. But the stranger had not, apparently, touched it, unless with a foot. "That," he was saying, "is Four-Fingered Phillips, one of the [35] cleverest confidence-men in New York. Well, so long!"
The other moved away, walking nonchalantly past the station policeman who had now wandered back to his post. Tom held his breath. ”

“ Tom especially.
Why, then, had he hired us, out of all the boys in Tutter, to peddle his fake beauty soap? Was he planning to make some secret use of us later on when we were least likely to suspect it? [84]
That was a thing to keep in mind, I concluded, looking out for myself.
Scoop said that we should go ahead and sell all of the soap that we could. There was money in it for us.
“But we’ll fool mister spy,” he said, “if it’s his scheme, in hiring us, to get all of us away from the house at the same time. One of us will always stand guard here to keep him out.” ”

“ Harrison, who ought not to have been (not being of our set) , nevertheless was the great lioness of the season; how Miss Thompson, the belle expectant, had renounced the Springs altogether, and shut herself up at home somewhere among the mountains—all for unrequited love of Hamilton White, as was charitably reported; last, but not least, how Tom Edwards had invented six new figures for the German cotillon. ”

“ Tom, dazed, smiled weakly. "Do you mean—do you mean they want me to play?" he murmured.
"Oh, no," scoffed Steve, pushing him toward the bed on which he subsided in a heap. "They want you to carry the footballs and sweep the gridiron! Of course they want you to play, you old sobersides! Don't you see that with Sawyer on pro there's a big hole in the line? I suppose they'll give Churchill the first chance at it, but he won't last the game through. Think of both you and I making the 'varsity, Tom! How's that for luck, eh? Not bad for the old Tannersville High School, is it? ”

“ He looked back at the soap man, who was standing in the mill doorway. “A spy, all right. His face gave him away when I mentioned Mr. Ricks. Didn’t you notice, Jerry? And, just as Tom has suspected, he’s doing his spying on the brick house from the office windows.” There was a moment’s pause. “Book peddler—soap peddler—spy,” murmured Scoop. “A queer man and a crooked man. We’ve got to keep our eyes on him.” ”

“ Afterwards I got a kick out of Tom’s story of how a queer-acting customer breezed into the store, and instead of giving an order stood looking at him as though she wanted to jump over the counter and hug him. As a matter of fact, I suspect that Mrs. Clayton did want to hug him. Women are that way. And all wrapped up in Mr. Weckler, she was thinking, of course, of the happy days that were coming, with an old man’s mind at ease, and a young heir stationed in the home of his people where he belonged. ”

“ Tom inquired, disappointed.
But Scoop shook his head.
“No. That wasn’t a part of my scheme. As a matter of fact I took an unfair advantage of her in selling her the one cake. I pretended. And that isn’t good salesmanship. But you know why I did it.” He looked at me and grinned. “Cheer up, Jerry. Watch how I do it. Then you’ll be more successful next time.”
He was acting chesty again. It got under my [70] skin. A fellow hates to be as unlucky as I was. Mrs. Pederson had whanged me on the head with a broom when I had tried to sell her a cake of beauty soap. ”

“ Scoop quizzed.
“Ask Jerry and Tom,” the woman smiled. “They saw him.”
“Golly Ned!” cried Scoop, tugging at his hair. “I can’t understand it. It doesn’t seem possible to me. But it must be so if the three of you say so.”
We started for the brick house.
“I wonder,” grinned Tom, as we turned the corner, “if the soap will beautify all of our customers.”
“Why shouldn’t it?” I countered.
“If it does,” he laughed, “this is going to be a badly mixed-up town. For half of the husbands won’t be able to pick out their own wives.” ”

“ Presently they half carried Tom back to the locker room and helped him into his clothes, and then, Roy and Harry in attendance, Steve conveyed him back to Billings and laid him on his bed, a very weak but now quite cheerful Tom.
"He nearly drowned me, didn't he?" he asked with a grin. "But I choked him good, you bet! Bet you his old neck will be sore for a week, fellows!"
"You want to keep away from him for awhile," said Harry with a direful shake of his head. "He's a mean chap when he's mad." ”

“ That was the time that the cats got into her crab-apple marmalade.
If I hadn’t seen the beautified dressmaker with my own eyes, I probably would have suspected that this letter of Mr. Posselwait’s was another trick of Bid Stricker’s. But I knew that the letter was no fake. For I had seen the transformed one with my own eyes. Tom had seen her, too. It was no case of imagination with us. [124]
“You kin take it along with you,” the soap man told us, “an’ show it to your customers. It ought to help you make sales. Work hard, boys,” and he rubbed his hands together like an old miser. ”

“ It would earn a million dollars for the dishonest president of the Gennor Radio Corporation. But poor Mr. Ricks would get not one penny.
“I told you that young Gennor was tricky,” cried Tom, as we stood beside the hole in the cellar’s dirt floor. “Oh, why didn’t we suspect that he had the spy in here digging up the frog!” and the speaker’s arms went up in despair.
Scoop looked dizzy. But his thinker wasn’t wholly stalled. And to tune it up he circled the cellar, tugging at his hair.
“We’ve got to act quick,” he said to Tom, “if we hope to save your pa’s invention.” He turned to me. ”

“ Edwards had declared, when announcing the fact in the preceding spring, that Steve was to go to boarding school, that he was sending the boy away to remove him from the questionable association of Tom Hall. But Steve gave little credence to that statement, for he knew that secretly his father thought very well of Tom. The real reason was that Steve had not been making good progress at high school, owing principally to the fact that he gave too much time to [15] athletics and not enough to study. ”

“ They paused under a dripping tree while Tom viewed the picture, Steve looking over his shoulder.
"It's fine!" sighed Tom at last. "Gee, I hope—I hope he lets me!"
"Let's go over there now so you can show him [11] this," suggested Steve. But Tom shook his head wisely.
"Not now," he said. "He don't like to be disturbed Sunday afternoons. He—he sort of has a nap, you see."
"Just like dad," replied Steve. "Bet you when I get as old as that I won't stick around the house and go to sleep. Say, Tom, what does 'Mens sana in corpore sano' mean?"
"A sound mind in a sound body," replied Tom promptly. ”

“ Don't you know better than to grab a fellow around the neck in the water, you fool kid?"
But Tom was too far gone to answer. "That's [169] what you did, isn't it?" Steve demanded. "That's a funny way to talk!"
"It is, is it?" sneered Sawyer. "I'll show you something that is funny some time, and don't you forget it!"
Still growling, he swam away toward the nearer ladder, while Steve, with Roy and Harry and others helping, lifted Tom out of the tank and then followed himself. Tom was very, very sick there for a minute and the younger fellows were properly sympathetic and indignant. ”

“ A half-hour session with the tackling dummy was now part of the daily routine and many a fellow who had thought rather well of himself suffered humiliation in the pit. Steve was one of these. Tackling proved to be a weak point with him. Even Tom got better results than he did, and every afternoon Steve would scramble to his feet and wipe the earth from his face to hear Marvin's patient voice saying: "Not a bit like it, Edwards. Don't shut your eyes when you jump. Keep them open and see what you're doing. ”

“ He touched it gingerly. "It feels as big as a house."
"You're a blooming hero, Tom. Say, Marvin told me the New York papers have got all about that business at Oakdale yesterday. He didn't see it, but someone told him. Wouldn't you love [347] to read what they say? I'm going to get the papers as soon as the game's over."
"Silly rot," mumbled Tom. They were waiting for the throng ahead to get through the doorway. When they followed Tom paused a moment in the hallway, his gaze following the striped legs of the Claflin players as they went up the stairs. Steve tugged at his arm. ”

“ He's got more bulldog than Turner has, too. I guess he's the man for us. Oh, Edwards! Will you come over here a minute?"
Steve pushed his way through the crowded aisles, past Thursby who winked and grinned and [295] whispered "You're going to catch it!" past Tom who turned his head away as he approached, past Eric Sawyer, a big hulk in a crimson bathrobe, who scowled upon him, and so to where, by the rubbing room door, the captain and coach awaited him. It was Mr. Robey who brusquely made the announcement. The coach was anxious and tired to-day and his voice was harsh. ”

“ Steve took it and read: "Tannersville, Pa., Nov. 25. Morning papers have account of Oakdale scrape grateful to you for your rescue of Steve God bless you show this to Steve your father joins me in love to you both. John T. Edwards."
Steve let the telegram fall and stared blankly at Tom.
"What—do—you know—about that?" he gasped. "They've made it up, Tom!"
Tom nodded gravely. "It—it——" A slow [365] smile overspread his face. "Honest, Steve, that's better than winning the game!" ”

“ Didn't you notice?"
"I did," said Tom. "I thought maybe he was Mr. Fernald, though."
"No, you won't see Josh much. He lives around the corner there in The Cottage. You'll be lucky if you don't see him, too. When you call on Josh it's usually because you've been and gone and done something. He will be at Faculty Reception to-morrow evening, though. That's in Upper Hall at eight o'clock. Better go, fellows; everyone does. Have you met your Hall Master, Mr. Daley?"
"Yes, we stopped in at his room after supper," answered Steve. "Is he——" He hesitated.
Miller laughed. "Go on and say it, Edwards! ”