A BOY'S TOWN ADVENTURES: The Flight of Pony Baker, Boy Life, A Boy's Town & Years of My Youth. William Dean Howells
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he would not; and then they mocked him. They all said there had never been such a Fourth of July in the Boy’s Town before; and Frank and Jake let them brag as much as they wanted to, and when the fellows got tired, and asked them what they had done at Pawpaw Bottom, and they said, “Oh, nothing much; just helped Dave Black haul rails,” they set up a jeer that you could hear a mile.
Then Jake said, as if he just happened to think of it, “And fought bumblebees.”
And Frank put in, “And took a shower-bath in the thunder-storm.”
And Jake said, “And eat mulberries.”
And Frank put in again, “And built a raft.”
And Jake said, “And Dave got pulled into the mill-dam.”
And Frank wound up, “And Jake and I got swept overboard.”
By that time the fellows began to feel pretty small, and they crowded round and wanted to hear every word about it. Then Jake and Frank tantalized them, and said of course it was no Fourth at all, it was only just fun, till the fellows could not stand it any longer, and then Frank jumped up from where he was sitting on his front steps, and holloed out, “I’ll show you how Dave looked when his pole pulled him in,” and he acted it all out about Dave’s pole pulling him into the water.
Jake waited till he was done, and then he jumped up and said, “I’ll show you how Frank and me looked when we got swept overboard,” and he acted it out about the limb of the tree scraping them off the raft while they were laughing at Dave and not noticing.
As soon as they got the boys to yelling, Jake and Frank both showed how they fought the bumblebees, and how the dogs got stung, and ran round trying to rub the bees off against the ground, and your legs, and everything, till the boys fell down and rolled over, it made them laugh so. Jake and Frank showed how they ran out into the rain from the barn, and stood in it, and told how good and cool it felt; and they told about sitting up in the mulberry-tree, and how twenty boys could not have made the least hole in the berries. They told about the quails and the squirrels; and they showed how Frank had to keep whipping up his pony, and how Jake’s horse kept wheeling and running away; and some of the fellows said they were going with them the next Fourth.
Hen Billard tried to turn it off, and said: “Pshaw! You can have that kind of a Fourth any day in the country. Who’s going up to the court-house yard to see the fireworks?”
He and Archy Hawkins and the big boys ran off, whooping, and the little fellows felt awfully, because their mothers had said they must not go. Just then, Pony Baker’s father came for him, and he said he guessed they could see the fireworks from Frank’s front steps; and Jake stayed with Frank, and Frank’s father came out, and his aunt and mother leaned out of the window, and watched, while the Roman candles shot up, and the rockets climbed among the stars.
They were all so much taken up in watching that they did not notice one of the neighbor women who had come over from her house and joined them, till Mrs. Baker happened to see her, and called out: “Why, Mrs. Fogle, where did you spring from? Do come in here with Manda and me. I didn’t see you, in your black dress.”
“No, I’m going right back,” said Mrs. Fogle. “I just come over a minute to see the fireworks—for Wilford; you can’t see them from my side.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Baker, softly. “Well, I’m real glad you came. You ought to have heard the boys, here, telling about the kind of Fourth they had at Pawpaw Bottom. I don’t know when I’ve laughed so much.”
“Well, I reckon it’s just as well I wasn’t here. I couldn’t have helped in the laughing much. It seems pretty hard my Wilford couldn’t been having a good time with the rest to-day. He was always such a Fourth-of-July boy.”
“But he’s happy where he is, Mrs. Fogle,” said Mrs. Baker, gently.
“Well, I know he’d give anything to been here with the boys to-day—I don’t care where he is. And he’s been here, too; I just know he has; I’ve felt him, all day long, teasing at me to let him go off with your Frank and Jake, here; he just fairly loved to be with them, and he never done any harm. Oh, my, my! I don’t see how I used to deny him.”
She put up her apron to her face, and ran sobbing across the street again to her own house; they heard the door close after her in the dark.
“I declare,” said Mrs. Baker, “I’ve got half a mind to go over to her.”
“Better not,” said Pony Baker’s father.
“Well, I reckon you’re right, Henry,” Mrs. Baker assented.
They did not talk gayly any more; when the last rocket had climbed the sky, Jake Milrace rose and said in a whisper he must be going.
After he was gone, Frank told, as if he had just thought of it, about the boy that had fooled them so, at Pawpaw Bottom; and he was surprised at the way his mother and his Uncle Henry questioned him up about it.
“Well, now,” she said, “I’m glad poor Mrs. Fogle wasn’t here, or—” She stopped, and her brother-in-law rose, with the hand of his sleepy little son in his own.
“I think Pony had better say good-night now, while he can. Frank, you’ve had a remarkable Fourth. Good-night, all. I wish I had spent the day at Pawpaw Bottom myself.”
Before they slept that night, Pony’s mother said: “Well, I’d just as soon you’d kept that story to yourself till morning, Henry. I shall keep thinking about it, and not sleep a wink. How in the world do you account for it?”
“I don’t account for it,” said Pony’s father.
“Now, that won’t do! What do you think?”
“Well, if it was one boy that saw the fourth boy it might be a simple case of lying.”
“Frank Baker never told a lie in his life. He couldn’t.”
“Perhaps Jake could, or Dave. But as they all three saw the boy at different times, why, it’s—”
“What?”
“It’s another thing.”
“Now, you can’t get out of it that way, Henry. Do you believe that the child longed so to be back here that—”
“Ah, who knows? There’s something very strange about all that. But we can’t find our way out, except by the short-cut of supposing that nothing of the kind happened.”
“You can’t suppose that, though, if all three of the boys say it did.”
“I can suppose that they think it happened, or made each other think so.”
Pony’s mother drew a long sigh. “Well, I know what I shall always think,” she said.
VIII. How Pony Baker Came Pretty Near Running Off With A Circus
Just before the circus came, about the end of July, something happened that made Pony mean to run off more than anything that ever was. His father and mother were coming home from a walk, in the evening; it was so hot nobody could stay in the house, and just as they were coming to the front steps Pony stole up behind them and tossed a snowball which he had got out of the garden at his mother, just for fun. The flower struck her very softly on her hair, for she had no bonnet on, and she gave a jump and a hollo that made Pony laugh; and then she caught him by the arm and boxed his ears.
“Oh, my goodness! It was you, was it, you good-for-nothing boy? I thought it was a bat!” she said, and she broke out crying and ran into the house, and would not mind his father, who was calling after her, “Lucy, Lucy, my dear child!”
Pony was