Читать книгу Impatient Virgin - Donald Henderson Clarke - Страница 4

Table of Contents

“Help! Uncle Ben! Uncle Ben!”

Ben held the knob behind him so that the front door through which he had just emerged wasn’t entirely closed. His niece, in a fleecy white cloak and white wool cap, squirmed to get past him, and into the house. Her big blue eyes under yellow hair were tearful.

“Hurry and let me in, Uncle Ben. Hurry!”

A snowball squashed against white clapboards a few inches from Ben’s head. A half-dozen others spatted on the porch. A score of youthful voices out on the walk yelled:

“Tattletale! Tattletale! Hanging to the bull’s tail.”

“What’s the matter, Ruthy?” Ben asked.

“Oh, let me in, Uncle Ben,” Ruth said. “They’ll hurt me.”

“What’s the matter?” Ben repeated, putting a big hand under her soft chin, and tilting up her flushed face.

Ruth’s words came in a rush.

“I told Miss White that George Smith was passing a note to Myron Brown. And the other children have been chasing me home from school.”

“So, you tattled, did you, Ruthy?” Ben asked pleasantly enough. “Well, I guess you’d better go right back down the steps and take your medicine.”

Ben took Ruth under the arms, and dropped her gently off the porch into the banked snow beside the walk. Ruth was dumb. Her mouth worked, but it gave forth no sound. She looked up piteously at her uncle, but saw what an older person might have catalogued as the smile of a scientist enjoying an experiment. Certainly there was no sympathy for her.

The boys and girls, making or throwing snowballs, hesitated, as if paralyzed. They stared first at Ben, and then at Ruth. Ben stepped back into the front hall, and closed the door, leaving the porch vacant. By the time his face was visible through an adjoining parlor window, pursuers had pounced upon quarry.

“Wash her face!”

“Stick it down her back!”

“Let’s push her headfirst into a snow bank.”

“Ouch! Wow! She’s scratching!”

“Help! Leggo my hair.”

“It ain’t fair, twenty pitchin’ into one.”

“Hey! Look out, Myron; it was you she tattled on.”

“Come on, George,” Myron yelled. “We ain’t cowards, anyhow. Let’s lick the cowards!”

Ruth was on her feet, half smothered with snow. Tommy Doty was looking ruefully at a long scratch on his right hand from which crimson drops were oozing. Myron’s sister, Sally, was weeping, and holding her hand to her torn hat and disarranged hair. Ruth, eyes shining, and cheeks redder than ever, was trying to stuff snow down the neck of Norman Ellis.

“Come on, Ruthy,” George screamed cheerfully. “We’ll lick ’em. Myron and you and me. The dirty cowards!”

“Dirty cowards!”

Ruth and Myron repeated the battle cry.

But no one fought. The others looked helplessly at Myron and George and Ruth, and then looked as helplessly at each other.

“I’ll tell you what,” Ruth said. “Myron and George and I will build a fort, and then the rest of you attack us.”

Ben left the window in the front parlor just in time to be between the front door and Katherine as she stepped from the bottom tread of the front stairs. Katherine was breathing hard; there were red patches on each cheek. She was in a flowered orchid-and-green kimono, and her hair was down.

“You let me out that door, Benjamin Robbins.”

“What do you want to go out for? You ain’t dressed for going out.”

“You!” Katherine exclaimed.

“What?” Ben asked.

“Words fail me.”

Katherine made a quick attempt to reach the doorknob, but Benjamin easily thwarted her by merely failing to move his two hundred pounds net. She gripped his coat sleeve with both of her hands and shook vigorously. If he had been lighter and she had been heavier, he, rather than she, might have been shaken.

“What’s the excitement, Kitty?” Ben asked.

Katherine glared at him. She swallowed once or twice, and then her eyes filled with tears. Her mouth worked, as if she were controlling her weeping muscles.

“It’s bad enough ... you bribing Ruth ... to brush her teeth ... but teaching her to fight like a hoodlum,” she said, spacing the words between hard breaths. “And don’t call me Kitty!” she exclaimed in a rush.

“There! There!”

Ben punctuated his sedative words with a brotherly thump on his sister’s back.

“I’m not teaching Ruthy to fight.”

“I don’t know what you call it, but I saw her running home frightened half to death, and you put her out there to fight. Yes, you did. And don’t deny it!”

“I didn’t put her out there to fight,” Ben replied. “I just fixed affairs so that she could meet her responsibilities. A woman, naturally, must meet her responsibilities in life just as well as a man.”

“Responsibilities! Well, I declare.”

“She tattled in school,” Ben explained. “Told the teacher about some boys who were passing notes.”

“Well, Benjamin Robbins,” Katherine said shrilly, “the boys hadn’t any business passing notes, and Ruth was merely doing her duty reporting it. It was just the same as if you saw a burglary and reported it to the police.”

“Hell!” Ben objected amiably. “Burglary’s a crime, and passing notes in school is a sport. This is my method of making a note-passer instead of a tattler out of Ruthy.”

“Don’t call her Ruthy, Benjamin. Her name is Ruth.”

“All right, Kitty.”

“And don’t call me Kitty,” Katherine exclaimed, stamping her foot. “How many times have I got to tell you that I detest Kitty; it’s a weak, namby-pamby name. And I won’t have it, Benjamin!”

“All right,” Benjamin said.

“I’ll do something desperate,” Katherine said.

“All right,” Benjamin repeated, agreeably.

“Teaching a little orphan girl to fight—and your own brother’s daughter, too.”

“One of the biggest lessons any one has to learn in the world is to mind his—or her—own business,” Benjamin stated. “And this is Ruthy’s lesson.”

Katherine looked up piteously at Ben.

“Oh, Benjamin,” she wailed. “How am I ever going to raise Ruth to be a lady, if you always are spoiling everything?”

“Come here, Kitty,” Benjamin said. “And don’t kick if I call you Kitty, or Katy, or Susie Snodgrass, either. Susie Snodgrass is a nice name at that.”

“It’s terrible,” Katherine sighed. “How can you be so common, Benjamin?”

“Come here, Susie Snodgrass,” Benjamin said, masterfully.

He pulled her gently through the white painted door lintels into the front parlor. He led her to the window, pulled aside the lace curtains, and poked her face up near the pane, frosted on the edges. He peeped over her shoulder.

Ruth and the other boys and girls were rolling three big snowballs.

“They’re going to make a snow man, I guess,” Benjamin said.

“What has that to do with teaching Ruth to fight?” Katherine demanded.

“Well,” Ben said, “most troubles in life turn out to be nothing but snow men, if we only go out and meet ’em, instead of running away from ’em.”

“But——,” Katherine began.

“Now don’t do any butting,” Ben interrupted, “we’d better get Ruthy in.”

As Ben walked quickly towards the front door, Katherine called after him:

“But what do you want Ruth to come in for just as she and her little friends are having such a good time playing a harmless game?”

Ben opened the door:

“Ahoy, there, Ruthy,” he called. “Come in a minute: I’ve got a surprise for you.”

“More bribery,” Katherine exclaimed.

“One lesson is enough for today,” Ben said, as he waited for Ruth, whose feet already were on the front steps. “So you can suggest to her that if she would take a couple of minutes to go upstairs and brush her hair, or powder her nose, or whatever you like to call it, she won’t have to take so much time out of her play to cross her legs and jump up and down.”

“Benjamin!”

“Well, even ladies have plumbing,” Ben said. “And they shouldn’t neglect it.”