All He Knew(@@) by John Habberton (ebooks online reader TXT) 📕

"Speak for yourself, judge, and for Sam, if you want to," said the deacon with fine dignity, "but don't include me among 'the rest of us.' Good-morning, judge."

"Good-morning, deacon. No offence meant."

"Perhaps not; but some men give it without meaning to. Good-morning."

"I guess the coat fits him," murmured the judge to himself, as he sauntered homeward.

Sam Kimper hurried through a new street, sparsely settled, crossed a large vacant lot, tramped over the grounds of an unused foundry, and finally went through a vacancy in a fence on which there were only enough boards to show what the original plan had been. A heap of ashes, a dilapidated chicken-coop, and a forest of tall dingy weeds were the principal contents of the garden, which had for background a small unpainted house in which were several windows which had been repaired with old hats and masses of newspaper. As he neared the house he saw in a cove in the weeds a barrel lying on its side, and seated in the mouth of the barrel was a child with a thin, sallow, dirty, precocious face and with a cat in her arms. The child stared at the intruder, who stopped and pushed his hat to the back of his head.

"Pop!" exclaimed the child, suddenly, without moving.

"Mary!" exclaimed the man, dropping upon his knees and kissing the dirty face again and again. "What are you doin' here?"

"Playin' house," said the child, as impassively as if to have had her father absent two years was so common an experience that his return did not call for any manifestation of surprise or affection.

"Stand up a minute, dear, and let me look at you. Let's see,--you're twelve years old now, ain't you? You don't seem to have growed a bit. How's the rest?"

"Mam's crosser an' crosser," said the child; "Joe's run away, 'cause the constable was after him for stealin' meat from--"

"My boy a thief! Oh, Lord!"

"Well, we didn't have nothin' to eat; he had to do it."

The father dropped his head and shuddered. The child continued: "Billy's goin' to school now; Jane's servant-gal at the hotel; Tom plays hookey all the time, an' the baby squalls so much that nobody likes her but Billy."

The man looked sad, then thoughtful; finally he put his arm around his child, and said, as he kissed and caressed her,--

"You're to have a better dad after this, darlin'; then maybe the mother'll feel pleasanter, an' the baby'll be happier, an' Tom'll be a good boy, an' we'll get Joe back somehow."

"How's you goin' to be better?" asked the child.

"Goin' to give us money to buy candy an' go to all the circuses?"

"Maybe," said the father. "I must go see the mother now."

The child followed her father to the house; there was not much excitement in the life of the Kimper family, except when there was a quarrel, and Mary seemed to anticipate some now, for she drawled, as she walked along,--

"Mam's got it in for you; I heerd her say so many a time sence you war took away."

"The poor thing's had reason enough to say it, the Lord knows," said the man. "An'," he continued, after a moment, "I guess I've learned to take whatever I'm deservin' of."

As Sam entered his house, a shabbily dressed, unkempt, forlorn looking woman sat at a bare pine table, handling some dirty cards. When she looked up, startled by the heavy tread upon the floor, she exclaimed,--

"I declare! I didn't expect you till--"

"Wife!" shouted Sam, snatching the woman into his arms and covering her face with kisses. "Wife," he murmured, bursting into tears and pressing the unsightly head to his breast,--"wife, wife, wife, I'm goin' to make you proud of bein' my wife, now that I'm a man once more."

The woman did not return any of the caresses that had been showered upon her; neither did she repel them. Finally she said,--

"You do appear to think somethin' of me, Sam."

"Think somethin' of you? I always did, Nan, though I didn't show it like I ought. I've had lots of time to think since then, though, an' I've had somethin' else, too, that I want to tell you about. Things is goin' to be different, the Lord willin', Nan, dear--wife."

Mrs. Kimper was human; she was a woman, and she finally rose to the occasion to the extent of kissing her husband, though immediately afterward she said, apparently by way of apology,--

"I don't know how I come to do that."

"Neither do I, Nan; I don't know how you can do anythin' but hate me. But you ain't goin' to have no new reason for doin' it. I'm goin' to be different ev'ry way from what I was."

"I hope so," said Mrs. Kimper, releasing herself from her husband's arms and taking up the cards again. "I was just tellin' my fortune by the keerds, havin' nothin' else to do, an' they showed a new man an' some money,--though not much."

"They showed right both times, though keerds ain't been friends to this family, confound 'em, when I've fooled with 'em at the saloon. Where's the baby, though, that I ain't ever seen?"

"There," said the woman, pointing to a corner of the room. Sam looked, and saw on the floor a bundle of dingy clothes from one end of which protruded a head of which the face, eyes, and hair were of the same tint as the clothing. The little object was regarding the new arrival in a listless way, and she howled and averted her head as her father stooped to pick her up.

"She's afraid you're goin' to hit her, like most ev'ry one does when they go nigh her," said the mother. "If I'd knowed you was comin' to-day, I'd have washed her, I guess."

"I'll do it myself now," said the father, "I've got the time."

"Why, you ain't ever done such a thing in your life, Sam!" said Mrs. Kimper, with a feeble giggle.

"More's the shame to me; but it's never too late to mend. When'll Billy get home, an' Tom?"

"Goodness knows; Billy gets kep' in so much, an' Tom plays hookey so often, that I don't ever expect either of 'em much 'fore supper-time. They talk of sendin' Tom to the Reform School if he don't stop."

"I'll have to stop him, then. I'll try it, anyway."

"It needs somebody that can wollup him harder'n I can; he's gettin' too big for my stren'th. Well, if here they don't both come! I don't know when I've seen them two boys together before, 'less they was fightin'. I wonder what's got into 'em to-day."

The two boys came through the back yard, eying the house curiously, Billy with wide open eyes, and Tom with a hang-dog leer from under the brim of his hat. Their father met them at the door and put his arms around both.

"Don't do that," said Tom, twitching away, "that sort o' thing's for women, an' gals an' babies."

"But I'm your dad, boy."

"Needn't make a baby of me, if you be," growled the cub.

"I'd give a good deal, old as I am, if I had a dad to make a baby of me that way, if 'twas only for a minute."

"Oh, don't be an old fool," said Tom.

"I heerd in the village you'd been let out," said Billy, "an' so I found Tom an' told him, an' he said I lied, an' so we come home to see. Did you bring us anythin'?"

"Yes," said the father, his face brightening, as he thrust his hand into his pocket and took out the fig box. "Here," as he gave a fig to each of the children and one to his wife, "how do you like that?"

"Good enough," growled Tom, "only I don't care for 'em unless I have a whole box. I lift one out of a train-boy's basket at the station once in a while."

"Don't ever do it again," said the father. "If you want 'em any time so bad you can't do without 'em, let me know, an' I'll find some way to get 'em for you."

"An' get