rid of that miserable Jerry; so there’s something to be thankful
for. He had one of his fits of temper in town one day, when he
was hitching up to come home, and Leonard Dawson saw him beat one
of our horses with the neck-yoke. Leonard told your father, and
spoke his mind, and your father discharged Jerry. If you or Ralph
had told him, he most likely wouldn’t have done anything about
it. But I guess all fathers are the same.” She chuckled
confidingly, leaning on Claude’s arm as they descended the
stairs.
“I guess so. Did he hurt the horse much? Which one was it?”
“The little black, Pompey. I believe he is rather a mean horse.
The men said one of the bones over the eye was broken, but he
would probably come round all right.”
“Pompey isn’t mean; he’s nervous. All the horses hated Jerry, and
they had good reason to.” Claude jerked his shoulders to shake
off disgusting recollections of this mongrel man which flashed
back into his mind. He had seen things happen in the barn that
he positively couldn’t tell his father. Mr. Wheeler came into the
kitchen and stopped on his way upstairs long enough to say,
“Hello, Claude. You look pretty well.”
“Yes, sir. I’m all right, thank you.”
“Bayliss tells me you’ve been playing football a good deal.”
“Not more than usual. We played half a dozen games; generally got
licked. The State has a fine team, though.”
“I ex-pect,” Mr. Wheeler drawled as he strode upstairs.
Supper went as usual. Dan kept grinning and blinking at Claude,
trying to discover whether he had already been informed of
Jerry’s fate. Ralph told him the neighbourhood gossip: Gus
Yoeder, their German neighbour, was bringing suit against a
farmer who had shot his dog. Leonard Dawson was going to marry
Susie Grey. She was the girl on whose account Leonard had slapped
Bayliss, Claude remembered.
After supper Ralph and Mr. Wheeler went off in the car to a
Christmas entertainment at the country schoolhouse. Claude and
his mother sat down for a quiet talk by the hard-coal burner in
the living room upstairs. Claude liked this room, especially when
his father was not there. The old carpet, the faded chairs, the
secretary book-case, the spotty engraving with all the scenes
from Pilgrim’s Progress that hung over the sofa,—these things
made him feel at home. Ralph was always proposing to re-furnish
the room in Mission oak, but so far Claude and his mother had
saved it.
Claude drew up his favourite chair and began to tell Mrs. Wheeler
about the Erlich boys and their mother. She listened, but he
could see that she was much more interested in hearing about the
Chapins, and whether Edward’s throat had improved, and where he
had preached this fall. That was one of the disappointing things
about coming home; he could never interest his mother in new
things or people unless they in some way had to do with the
