Uncle Peabody

“ I prefer therefore the humbler position which I now occupy."
"That's his way," said Uncle Peabody. "They had hard work to convince him that he knew enough to be Surrogate."
"Big men have little conceit—ayes!" said Aunt Deel with a significant glance at me.
The candles had burned low and I was watching the shroud of one of them when there came a rap at the door. It was unusual for any one to come to our door in the evening and we were a bit startled. Uncle Peabody opened it and old Kate entered without speaking and nodded to my aunt and uncle and sat down by the fire. ”

“ Uncle Peabody shook his head with a look of firmness.
Again Grimshaw laughed between his teeth as he looked at my uncle. In his view every man had his price.
"I see that I'm the mouse an' you're the cat," he resumed, as that curious laugh rattled in his throat. "Look a' here, Baynes, I'll tell ye what I'll do. I'll cancel the hull mortgage."
Again Uncle Peabody rose from his chair with a look in his face which I have never forgotten. How his voice rang out!
"No, sir!" he shouted so loudly that we all jumped to our feet and Aunt Deel covered her face with her apron and began to cry. ”

“ Uncle Peabody wouldn't stop.
"Water never scares a live fish," he declared with a chuckle as he turned around. "Good-by, Bart."
He hurried away. We pioneers rarely stopped or even turned out for the weather. Uncle Peabody used to say that the way to get sick was to change your clothes every time you got wet. It was growing dusk and I felt sorry for him.
"Come in," said the voice of the schoolmaster at the door. "There's good weather under this roof." ”

“ They had no more right to associate with human beings than the ghosts of fable. Uncle Peabody used to call them the "Minervy flowers" because they were a present from his Aunt Minerva. When Aunt Deel returned to the kitchen where I sat—a sorrowing little refugee hunched up in a corner—she said: "I'll have to tell your Uncle Peabody—ayes!" ”

“ If you don't like it you can look for another man."
Aunt Deel and I began to laugh at this good-natured, make-believe scolding of Uncle Peabody and the emotional strain was over. They led me into the house where a delightful surprise awaited me, for the rooms had been decorated with balsam boughs and sweet ferns. ”

“ In the candle-light of the evening Uncle Peabody said:
"Grimshaw has demanded his mortgage money an' he wants it in gold coin. We'll have to git it some way, I dunno how."
"W'y of all things!" my aunt exclaimed. "How are we goin' to git all that money—these hard times?—ayes! I'd like to know?"
"Well, I can't tell ye," said Uncle Peabody. "I guess he can't forgive us for savin' Rodney Barnes."
"What did he say?" I asked.
"Why, he says we hadn't no business to hire a man to help us. He says you an' me ought to do all the work here. He thinks I ought to took you out o' school long ago." ”

“ I said as I showed him how I could sit on my hands and raise myself from the chair bottom.
"Haven't you any one to play with at home?"
"Only my Uncle Peabody."
"Don't you like to play with him?"
"Oh, some, but he can't stand me any longer. He's all tired out, and my Aunt Deel, too. I've tipped over every single thing on that place. I tipped over the honey yesterday—spillt it all over everything and rooend my clothes. I'm a reg'lar pest. So I want to play with Sally Dunkelberg. ”

“ Uncle Peabody came down to get me the day before Christmas. I had enjoyed my work and my life at the Hackets', on the whole, but I was glad to be going home again. My uncle was in high spirits and there were many packages in the sleigh.
"A merry Christmas to ye both an' may the Lord love ye!" said Mr. Hacket as he bade us good-by. "Every day our thoughts will be going up the hills to your house."
As he was tucking the blankets around my feet old Nick Tubbs came zigzagging up the road from the tavern.
"What stimulation travels with that man!" said the schoolmaster. ”

“ Uncle Peabody showed his perplexity. “What are you going to do?”
“Jack and I must be separated just as soon as it can be arranged.”
Uncle Peabody placed his hands upon her shoulders and looked into her eyes. With all the advance signals of the storm which he had noted he was unprepared for this climax. “Surely that point has not yet arrived, Helen,” he said, slowly. “‘Those whom God hath joined together—’”
“That is just the point,” she interrupted. “Those whom God joins together are those who are suited to each other. ”

“ Soon we found an entrance to the fields—our own fields not far from the house—where Uncle Peabody walked ahead and picked out the best wading. After we got to the barn door at last he went to the house and lighted his lantern and came back with it wrapped in a blanket and Aunt Deel came with him.
How proud it made me to hear him say:
"Deel, our boy is a man now—made this jumper all 'lone by himself an' has got through all right." ”

“ I declare! What do you think o' this, Peabody Baynes!" Aunt Deel exclaimed as she sat turning the pages of a novel. "Ye know Aunt Minervy used to say that a novel was a fast horse on the road to perdition—ayes!"
"Well she wasn't—" Uncle Peabody began and stopped suddenly. What he meant to say about her will never be definitely known. In half a moment he added:
"I guess if Sue Wright recommends 'em they won't hurt us any."
"Ayes! I ain't afraid—we'll wade into 'em," she answered recklessly. "Ayes! we'll see what they're about." ”

“ My aunt would upbraid him for laziness, whereupon he would say that when he got up he liked the feel of that bed so much that he wanted to begin next night right where he had left off.
I was seven years old when Uncle Peabody gave me the watermelon seeds. I put one of them in my mouth and bit it.
"It appears to me there's an awful draft blowin' down your throat," said Uncle Peabody. "You ain't no business eatin' a melon seed."
"Why?" was my query.
"'Cause it was made to put in the ground. Didn't you know it was alive?"
"Alive!" I exclaimed.
"Alive," said he, "I'll show ye." ”

“ The door at the bottom of the stairs opened suddenly.
Aunt Deel called:
"Don't lose your temper, Peabody. I think you've gone fur 'nough—ayes!"
Uncle Peabody stopped and blew as if he were very tired and then I caught a look in his face that reassured me.
He called back to her: "I wouldn't 'a' cared so much if it hadn't 'a' been the what-not and them Minervy flowers. When a boy tips over a what-not he's goin' it purty strong."
"Well don't be too severe. You'd better come now and git me a pail o' water—ayes, I think ye had." ”

“ I answered.
"The boy lies," he snapped, and turning to my uncle added: "Yer mad 'cause I'm tryin' to make ye pay yer honest debts—ain't ye now?"
We were stunned by this quick attack. Uncle Peabody rose suddenly and sat down again. Mr. Grimshaw looked at him with a strange smile and a taunting devilish laugh came out of his open lips.
Uncle Peabody, keeping his temper, shook his head and calmly said: "No I ain't anything ag'in' you or Amos, but it's got to be so that a man can travel the roads o' this town without gettin' his head blowed off." ”

“ Aunt Deel did not speak. She just put her arms around me and laid her dear old head upon my breast. Uncle Peabody turned away. Then what a silence! Off in the edge of the woodland I heard the fairy flute of a wood-thrush.
"Purvis, you drive that load on the floor an' put up the hosses," Uncle Peabody shouted in a moment. "If you don't like it you can hire 'nother man. I won't do no more till after dinner. This slave business is played out."
"All right," Purvis answered.
"You bet it's all right. I'm fer abolition an' I've stood your domineerin', nigger-driver ways long enough fer one mornin'. ”

“ Ye love us an' ye'd like to go along down to Aunt Liza's an' play with the children?"
It was a clever ruse of Uncle Peabody, for Aunt Deel was softened by his interpretation of the dog's heart and she proposed:
"Le's take him along with us—poor dog! ayes!"
Then Uncle Peabody shouted:
"Jump right into the sleigh—you ol' skeezucks!—an' I'll cover ye up with a hoss blanket. Git in here. We ain't goin' to leave nobody alone on Chris'mas day that loves us—not by a jug full—no, sir! I wouldn't wonder if Jesus died for dogs an' hosses as well as for men." ”

“ My uncle made no reply and we passed on to a store nearly opposite the well, where I became deeply interested in a man who had tapped me in the stomach with his forefinger while he made a sound like the squealing of a rat. Then he said to Uncle Peabody:
"Look at that man out there by the well! He's the richest man in this section o' country. He owns half o' this village. I wouldn't wonder if he was worth fifty thousand dollars at least. What do ye suppose he spent for his dinner?" ”

“ Then Uncle Peabody said:
"That's the kind o' stuff in our granary. We've been reapin' it out o' the books Mr. Grimshaw scolded about, a little here an' a little there for years, an' we knew it was good wheat. If he had books like that in his house mebbe Amos would 'a' been different. An' he'd 'a' been different. He wouldn't 'a' had to come here tryin' to buy our honor like you'd buy a hoss."
"Oh, dear!" Aunt Deel exclaimed wearily, with her hands over her eyes; "a boy has to have somethin' besides pigs an' cattle an' threats an' stones an' hoss dung an' cow manure to take up his mind." ”

“ It was poor fun, for the cards seemed to take her away from us into other scenes so that she had to be reminded of her turn to play.
"I dunno but she'll swing back into this world ag'in," said Uncle Peabody when we had gone up to our little room. "I guess all she needs is to be treated like a human bein'. Yer Aunt Deel an' I couldn't git over thinkin' o' what she done for you that night in the ol' barn. So I took some o' yer aunt's good clothes to her an' a pair o' boots an' asked her to come to Chris'mas. She lives in a little room over the blacksmith shop down to Butterfield's mill. ”

“ Daddles, very seriously. "I don't suppose it will do any good, but it will save you people from making yourselves ridiculous. It's all true, —what I told you. I thought we were getting into Mr. Peabody's house, and he IS my uncle. See here,—do you think we LOOK like burglars?"
"Can't tell what yer look like," said a man, "'we caught yer in—"
"In partiseps criminy," said Gregory the Gauger, "that's what it was. An' whatever you look like, you'll look different tomorrer mornin'. ”

“ All the morning at my office doing of business; at noon Mr. Hunt came to me, and he and I to the Exchange, and a Coffee House, and drank there, and thence to my house to dinner, whither my uncle Thomas came, and he tells me that he is going down to Wisbech, there to try what he can recover of my uncle Day's estate, and seems to have good arguments for what he do go about, in which I wish him good speed. I made him almost foxed, the poor man having but a bad head, and not used I believe nowadays to drink much wine. So after dinner, they being gone, I to my office, and so home to bed. ”

“ He brings me flowers, and gets me taxi-cabs as if I were really a grown up young lady, and he pinches my nose and teases me as if I were still the little girl that kept house in a studio for him. I never realized before what a good-looking man he is. I used to think that Uncle Peter was the only handsome man of the three, but now I realize that they are all exceptionally good-looking. Uncle David has a great deal of distinction, of course, but Uncle Jimmie is merry and radiant and vital, and tall and athletic looking into the bargain. ”

“ At night to bed.
26th To Westminster about several businesses, then to dine with my Lady at the Wardrobe, taking Dean Fuller along with me; then home, where I heard my father had been to find me about special business; so I took coach and went to him, and found by a letter to him from my aunt that my uncle Robert is taken with a dizziness in his head, so that they desire my father to come down to look after his business, by which we guess that he is very ill, and so my father do think to go to-morrow. And so God's will be done. ”

“ Thence a little to the 'Change, and thence took him to my uncle Wight's, where dined my father, poor melancholy man, that used to be as full of life as anybody, and also my aunt's brother, Mr. Sutton, a merchant in Flanders, a very sober, fine man, and Mr. Cole and his lady; but, Lord! how I used to adore that man's talke, and now methinks he is but an ordinary man, his son a pretty boy indeed, but his nose unhappily awry. ”

“ Among other things he tells me how unquiett my mother is grown, that he is not able to live almost with her, if it were not for Pall. All other matters are as well as upon so hard conditions with my uncle Thomas we can expect them. I left him in bed, being very weary, to come to my house to-night or tomorrow, when he pleases, and so I home, calling on the virginall maker, buying a rest for myself to tune my tryangle, and taking one of his people along with me to put it in tune once more, by which I learned how to go about it myself for the time to come. ”

“ I received a letter this day from my father, speaking more trouble about my uncle Thomas his business, and of proceeding to lay claim to Brampton and all my uncle left, because it is given conditional that we should pay legacys, which to him we have not yet done, but I hope that will do us no hurt; God help us if it should, but it disquiets my mind. I have also a letter from my Lord Sandwich desiring me upon matters of concernment to be with him early tomorrow morning, which I wonder what it should be. So my mind full of thoughts, and some trouble at night, home and to bed. ”