Читать книгу Uncle Sam's Outdoor Magic - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 3

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Bobby Cullen emerged from the house, looked about him like a ground-hog in the spring, hoisted his school-books up under his arm, side-stepped a puddle in front of the porch, and reached the sidewalk just in time to fall in with Mr. Bronson, who was on his way to catch the eight forty-five.

“Ah, Robertus,” said he, cheerily, “how was the vacation?”

Bobby’s name was not Robertus, but people—and especially men—had a way of showing their liking for him by calling him all sorts of nicknames.

“Punk!” said Bobby.

“A fizzle, eh?” Mr. Bronson laughed.

“A drizzle, you mean. Gee! that was the limit!”

“Well, now, do you know, when I was a kid we used to like a rainy day; we’d get up in the attic—”

“Yes, but I bet you didn’t like a rainy week!” interrupted Bobby. “Gee! I’ve been hearing that for ten days now—what my uncle did rainy days when he was a boy. It’s got on my nerves.”

His companion laughed again. “We always used to think of rainy spells as opportunities for reading. We used to hit up Jules Verne. Ever hit up Jules Verne, Bobby?”

“It’s about the only place you can find any adventures nowadays—in books,” said Bobby, cynically. “In those days there were stagecoaches and Indians and things; and fellows lived on farms and frontiers and places like that, and they didn’t have so many parents and uncles and things. Now all there is is movie shows.”

“And rain,” added Mr. Bronson. “Look out for that puddle, Bobby; you should have worn rubbers.”

“When it’s clear,” said Bobby, “all there is to do is to sit on the porch and read, and when it rains you stay indoors and get in people’s way and listen to what they did when they were kids. That’s one good thing about fellows in books—usually they don’t have any parents, or their parents don’t care where they go—like Frank Nelson and the Black Ranger.”

“Yes, I guess those youngsters didn’t have many restrictions.”

“You said it,” said Bobby.

They walked on together for a few minutes in silence.

“I like fire better than water. Don’t you?” said Bobby, suddenly.

“Yes, a good fire’s an interesting thing to see if you don’t happen to own the building that’s burning. But water causes great havoc now and then, too—there’s quite a lot of punch to water at times. Take a shipwreck, now.”

“Oh, sure, out on the ocean,” said Bobby, as he planted his worn shoe plunk in the middle of another puddle; “but I mean rain. I’ve got no use for rain; it hasn’t got any adventure in it. And it always rains in vacation. Did you ever notice that?”

“So?” said Mr. Bronson. “Well, the spring will soon be here and then you’ll be out canoeing; that’s another good thing about water. You have a canoe, haven’t you, Bobby?”

“No; never had one.”

They parted at the corner, Mr. Bronson hurrying on to the station and Bobby plodding up the hill to school. Once Mr. Bronson turned and looked at the boy and smiled to himself as the receding figure hoisted his books higher under his arm and planked his gray shoe heedlessly in another puddle. Somehow Bobby always amused him; and this morning he felt a certain sympathy for the boy, perhaps because he had been getting in people’s way all through that dull, disappointing vacation week; perhaps because, with a river fifty yards distant, he didn’t have a canoe. Mr. Bronson had two boys of his own, both of whom had canoes and wore rubbers when it rained. Moreover, Mr. Bronson did not like Bobby’s uncle, although he was not going to give Bobby the satisfaction of telling him so.

Whatever the reason, something prompted him to turn about just as the boy was starting to pick his way gingerly through the drier spaces of Blakely’s field.

“Never mind, Robertus,” he called, cheerily. “The worst is yet to come. Cheer up!”

They were prophetic words, as Bobby was to know before he was a day older.

He had some reason to feel disgruntled. From Good Friday until this second Monday morning it had rained incessantly straight through the Easter vacation, and the evidences of the week’s storm were now apparent on every hand. The crossings were transformed into muddy swamps, the gutters were running rivers, the whole atmosphere was permeated with the odor of the wet earth, and Blakely’s field, which afforded a short cut to the schoolhouse, was entirely submerged save for little hubbles here and there.

Upon one of these were clustered several boys who were sailing sticks about in the surrounding sea.

“Get off of that. You’ll be late to school,” said Bobby, as he pushed two protesting urchins into the water and passed on. He was in one of his worst moods.

In school the teacher “rubbed it in,” as Bobby whispered to his nearest neighbor. She observed to the class that as it had rained during the whole vacation, she had no doubt the boys had availed themselves of the unusual opportunity to study and were prepared with their lessons. She represented the rain as a sort of blessing which had come to the boys most providentially in the Easter vacation.

“Gee! Can you beat that?” whispered Bobby.

“Was that Robert Cullen who spoke?” asked the teacher. “Stand up, Robert, and tell us the industries of Arizona and the chief facts concerning that State.”

Bobby stood in the aisle, feeling the water in his sopping shoes, but made no response.

“Take your book, Robert, and read the answer you should have learned.”

Bobby took up his book and read: “Arizona has a hot, dry climate. Rains are infrequent and the land is parched and barren. The sage-brush grows profusely. The sun’s heat is intense and almost continuous. The principal river is the Gila, which rises in the eastern part of the State and, flowing westerly, empties into the Colorado. The capital is Phoenix. Mining and sheep-raising are the chief industries. Farming is unsuccessful by reason of the lack of rainfall. Me for Arizona!” added Bobby, gratuitously.

“What is that?” asked the teacher.

“I said, ‘Me for Arizona,’” repeated Bobby, recklessly.

“Indeed!” said the teacher. “I’m sorry I can’t accommodate you, but I’ll do the next best thing and try to bring you in closer touch with it. You may remain after school this afternoon and write the first sentence of your geography lesson three hundred times—one hundred and fifty for being unprepared and one hundred and fifty for your impertinence. Be seated.”

“Yes’m,” said Bobby.

He had said his little say and he was prepared to take his very big dose of medicine.

At noontime he ate his two sandwiches and a piece of cake in the class-room because his aunt found this easier than preparing his luncheon at home. And all the while he wriggled and squirmed his foot in his soaking shoe and tried vainly to make it comfortable.

When the class passed out after the afternoon session Bobby settled down, a lone figure in the middle of the big, empty room, to pay the penalty of his recklessness.

Arizona has a hot, dry climate.

He wrote until he had filled several sheets with sprawling repetitions of the awful sentence. Then he took them to the teacher’s desk and waited while she counted the sentences and credited him with forty-seven. Back he went to his desk and, resting his head wearily on his left hand, began again.

Arizona has a hot, dry climate.

His third trip to the teacher’s desk netted him a credit of one hundred and seventy-four sentences.

“Do you still wish to go to Arizona?” asked the teacher, as she counted the sentences.

“No’m.”

“Did you ever read the story of the man without a country, Robert?”

“No’m,” said Bobby.

“He was an American sailor,” said Miss Arnold, “who cursed his country and said he hoped he might never see it again. So they took him at his word and kept him on the ocean, and he died without ever seeing his country. Suppose that when you said, ‘Me for Arizona,’ we had taken you at your word and sent you away from your friends and parents—”

“My parents are dead,” said Bobby.

“Well, then, from your uncle who takes care of you.”

“I wouldn’t mind being alone,” said Bobby. “The only reason I wouldn’t want to go to Arizona is because it makes me thirsty.”

“Makes you thirsty?”

“Writing about the hot, dry climate so much.”

He moistened his lips with his tongue, and Miss Arnold, looking sharply at his flushed face and tousled hair, seemed almost at the point of weakening and commuting his punishment to two hundred sentences. But Miss Arnold was not a quitter, and Bobby went back to his desk, where, after sneezing once or twice, he fell to again on what he considered his “baby punishment.”

It was considerably after four o’clock when he laid down his blunted pencil, having written Arizona has a hot, dry climate for the three hundredth time. The dreadful words were beating in his brain, his head was aching, and he felt uncomfortable and hot and stuffy—like Arizona.

“Now, if you are ready,” said Miss Arnold, “you may recite the lesson in geography.”

Bobby rose, stood in the aisle, snuffled, and began: “Arizona has a hot, dry climate. Rains are infrequent and the land is parched and barren,” etc., etc.

The teacher was already gathering up her papers and her fancy pen-wiper and her mottled glass paper-weight before he had finished. The session had been rather longer than she had expected it would be, and she had missed a pleasant afternoon party.

It is a pity that Bobby could not have known that, for it might have afforded him some satisfaction.