CHAPTER V ZEB’S OPINION OF APPLE SPROUTS

“Zebedee, my son,” remarked old Deacon Fuller to that young gentleman, when he returned from driving the cows to pasture, the evening after the affair at the spring-board—“Zebedee, what is this I hear of your violent threats against the Rev. Dr. Dryer?”

The deacon was standing in the kitchen doorway, deliberately stripping the leaves from a handful of strong, well-grown apple-tree “suckers,” which he had recently gathered in the orchard back of the house.

For a moment Zeb stood in silence, eying the ominous-looking sprouts with a squint in which a very grave expression was beginning to make its appearance, and his father continued:

“Dr. Dryer has been here, himself, and he tells me you employed the most disrespectful and threatening language.”

“No, father,” said Zeb, stoutly, “no disrespect at all. I only wanted to drown him.”

[Pg 57]“Drown him! Zebedee! Drown Dr. Dryer? Are you crazy?”

“Not a bit, father; it might be bad for him—just a little—but think what a splendid thing it would be for the Academy. We’ll never get rid of him any other way.”

Deacon Fuller was a parent of the genuine old Puritanic stock, and his weather-beaten face could put on all the iron sternness of his race and breeding, but behind every visage of that kind there is a strangely mellow something, and he was Zeb’s father. Not a muscle quivered, but his only reply for a moment was:

“Zebedee!”

“Father,” said Zeb, “did old Sol tell you the whole story? If he didn’t I think I’d better.”

“That would be just,” remarked the deacon, and Zeb was in the middle of it before he had time to reconsider his opinion.

The story was not likely to lose much in Zeb’s telling of it, and before it was half finished the deacon began to feel as if there was no other duty in the world so difficult to live up to as a wholesome degree of parental severity.

It was a critical moment, indeed, and Deacon[Pg 58] Fuller felt as if a powerful reinforcement had arrived when, just then, the front gate swung open and the pursy form of Gershom Todderley, the miller, came heavily up the path to the side of the house where Zeb and his sire were standing.

Brief, indeed, and somewhat embarrassed, were the mutual greetings, but Deacon Fuller’s face was fast recovering its original rigidity, in spite of the pictures in his mind’s eye of old Gershom going off the broken spring-board.

Zeb never yielded an inch of ground, and fairly astounded his father by holding out his hand with:

“You don’t seem to be hurt a bit. I thought a good swim wouldn’t do you any harm. I take one every day.”

“Zeb,” exclaimed the miller, “I mean to learn to swim. Deacon Fuller, he’s an odd boy. Saved my life this afternoon. Made a fool of myself. Came over to thank you, soon as I could.”

“Made a fool of yourself? Came to thank me? Why, neighbor Todderley, what do you mean? Some of Zeb’s performances, I suppose.[Pg 59] I was just going to have a settlement with him. Dr. Dryer was here an hour ago.”

“Old fool,” exclaimed the miller, with some energy. “Wish he’d tried the board first. Lighter man than I am. Might not have broke with him. Hope it might. Stood there like a post. Never tried to help me. Zeb and the boys fished me out. Came to thank you and him.”

“Oh,” said the deacon, with a greatly relieved sigh, “that’s it, is it? I thought it must all be some of Zeb’s mischief. Come in, brother Todderley, come in.”

“No, thank ye,” replied the miller. “Got an errand up street. Hope I’ll see you at meeting. Solemn thing to be drowned. Good-day.”

And the miller turned on his heel, but Zeb’s father once more bent his inquiring gaze upon his hopeful son.

“Zebedee, that’s all very well, but what’s this about Dr. Dryer?”

“Gersh Todderley’s right about him too,” said Zeb. “I’ve the greatest respect for his opinions, now’s he’s in his right mind. Glad he means to learn to swim. I wouldn’t mind teaching him[Pg 60] myself. They say fat men float the easiest kind.”

“Zebedee, I hardly know what course I ought to take.”

The boy’s face was again putting on a grave and serious look.

“Father,” he said, pointing at the apple-tree sprouts, “what are those things for?”

“I think you ought to know by this time, my son.”

“Well, yes,” said Zeb, quietly, “I had some pretty good lessons years ago. May be it was just as well, too. But, father, how old am I now?”

“Eighteen, Zeb. Why do you ask such a question?”

“Eighteen!” slowly repeated Zeb. “Can’t you think of anything better than apple-tree suckers for a boy of eighteen?”

“Zebedee!” exclaimed the astonished deacon.

“I just thought I’d ask the question,” said Zeb, with a twinkle in his gray eyes which may not have been altogether fun. “Sprouts get to be trees, sometimes.”

“And bear apples, and save men’s lives—yes,[Pg 61] and teach lessons to their own fathers,” exclaimed the deacon, as he threw the whole handful of rods over the nearest fence. “I was mistaken, Zeb. Go in and see your mother. I’m going to meeting. And—Zeb—I don’t want any tree in my orchard to bear worthless apples.”

Zeb went on into the house and his father out at the gate. It may be that both of them strongly suspected how completely every word had been drunk in by the listening, loving ears of good old Mrs. Fuller.

They owed a good deal to her, those two, father as well as son, and she had never looked with much favor on the apple-tree sprouts. Not, at least, since Zebedee reached his first very mischievous “’teens.”

There was little danger that the orchard would ever again be drawn upon for Zeb’s benefit.

The occurrences of the day, however, had been by no means private property.

Not only the crew of Zeb’s boat, but the half-score of lyers-in-wait behind the willows had vigorously distributed varying versions of the affair, and the Rev. Dr. Solomon Dryer had aided them more than a little.

[Pg 62]The latter, indeed, had found “company” awaiting him on his return home, and he had delivered the history of the dangers from which he had escaped to a half roomful of sympathizing auditors.

“Drown you!” exclaimed his better-half, through her firmly clinched false teeth—that is, if a man’s third wife can fairly be considered so large a fraction of him as that—“drown you, my dear? Did the young ruffians go so far as that?”

At this point, however, the solemn-visaged matron was interrupted by a merry, ringing peal of laughter.

“Euphemia Dryer!”

“Effie, my own daughter! To think of your discerning, in such a matter, any sufficient occasion for levity!”

Neither the doctor’s third wife nor the doctor himself seemed capable of expressing their astonishment, but the laughter was cut short with:

“Oh, papa, I didn’t mean anything naughty, but I was thinking how funny it must have seemed to see old Mr. Todderley plump into the pond in that way. And how he and Pat[Pg 63] Murphy must have looked when they were pulled out. It’s too funny for anything!”

Alas, for poor Effie, her rosy face and her mirth were both ordered out of the parlor, for Mrs. Dryer discerned that the latter had spread with dreadful rapidity among her guests.

Even then, however, Effie had no sooner disappeared than Mrs. Dryer kindly apologized for her.

“Young and giddy,” she said, “and so thoughtless, just like her poor mother, the doctor’s second, you know. She frequently loses control of her risible faculties.”

“Poor thing!” remarked one of the ladies. “But what a very sweet face she has, and such a dear, pleasant way of laughing! You must find her quite a treasure.”

“Yes, indeed,” said another. “Girls will be girls. Mine are all so fond of Effie.”

The doctor seemed to find it difficult to reproduce the subject of Zeb Fuller’s enormity, but that was nothing to the effort it cost his wife to smile and look sweet while her visitors were praising her stepdaughter.

It is to be feared that Effie’s tea-time was[Pg 64] a troubled one, but there were reasons why she was in no danger of unendurable severity just then, if she was as yet “under age” and capable of seeing the funny side of things.

After tea, the doctor had a brief call to make at Deacon Fuller’s, from which he returned with a serene assurance that the young assailant of his dignity was not to escape without just and ample retribution, for he had seen, with his own eyes, the stern and exemplary father proceeding to the orchard for the necessary appliances.

“That will do,” muttered the doctor, as he turned his steps once more homeward, “only I think hickory would be better in a case of this magnitude.”

What would have been his feelings if he had witnessed the ignominious after-fate of even the “sprouts” he deemed so inadequate to the occasion?

But, then, Zeb Fuller was just as well satisfied.