The Complete Short Stories of Lucy Maud Montgomery. Lucy Maud Montgomery
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not to bid on anything — on ANYTHING, do you hear?”
Pa heard and promised to heed, with every intention of keeping his promise. Then he drove away joyfully. On any other occasion Ma would have been a welcome companion. But she certainly spoiled the flavour of an auction.
When Pa arrived at the Carmody store, he saw that the little yard of the Garland place below the hill was already full of people. The auction had evidently begun; so, not to miss any more of it, Pa hurried down. The sorrel mare could wait for her shoes until afterwards.
Ma had been within bounds when she called the Garland auction a “one-horse affair.” It certainly was very paltry, especially when compared to the big Donaldson auction of a month ago, which Pa still lived over in happy dreams.
Horace Garland and his wife had been poor. When they died within six weeks of each other, one of consumption and one of pneumonia, they left nothing but debts and a little furniture. The house had been a rented one.
The bidding on the various poor articles of household gear put up for sale was not brisk, but had an element of resigned determination. Carmody people knew that these things had to be sold to pay the debts, and they could not be sold unless they were bought. Still, it was a very tame affair.
A woman came out of the house carrying a baby of about eighteen months in her arms, and sat down on the bench beneath the window.
“There’s Marthy Blair with the Garland Baby,” said Robert Lawson to Pa. “I’d like to know what’s to become of that poor young one!”
“Ain’t there any of the father’s or mother’s folks to take him?” asked Pa.
“No. Horace had no relatives that anybody ever heard of. Mrs. Horace had a brother; but he went to Mantioba years ago, and nobody knows where he is now. Somebody’ll have to take the baby and nobody seems anxious to. I’ve got eight myself, or I’d think about it. He’s a fine little chap.”
Pa, with Ma’s parting admonition ringing in his ears, did not bid on anything, although it will never be known how great was the heroic self-restraint he put on himself, until just at the last, when he did bid on a collection of flower-pots, thinking he might indulge himself to that small extent. But Josiah Sloane had been commissioned by his wife to bring those flower-pots home to her; so Pa lost them.
“There, that’s all,” said the auctioneer, wiping his face, for the day was very warm for October.
“There’s nothing more unless we sell the baby.”
A laugh went through the crowd. The sale had been a dull affair, and they were ready for some fun. Someone called out, “Put him up, Jacob.” The joke found favour and the call was repeated hilariously.
Jacob Blair took little Teddy Garland out of Martha’s arms and stood him up on the table by the door, steadying the small chap with one big brown hand. The baby had a mop of yellow curls, and a pink and white face, and big blue eyes. He laughed out at the men before him and waved his hands in delight. Pa Sloane thought he had never seen so pretty a baby.
“Here’s a baby for sale,” shouted the auctioneer. “A genuine article, pretty near as good as brand-new. A real live baby, warranted to walk and talk a little. Who bids? A dollar? Did I hear anyone mean enough to bid a dollar? No, sir, babies don’t come as cheap as that, especially the curly-headed brand.”
The crowd laughed again. Pa Sloane, by way of keeping on the joke, cried, “Four dollars!”
Everybody looked at him. The impression flashed through the crowd that Pa was in earnest, and meant thus to signify his intention of giving the baby a home. He was well-to-do, and his only son was grown up and married.
“Six,” cried out John Clarke from the other side of the yard. John Clarke lived at White Sands and he and his wife were childless.
That bid of John Clarke’s was Pa’s undoing. Pa Sloane could not have an enemy; but a rival he had, and that rival was John Clarke. Everywhere at auctions John Clarke was wont to bid against Pa. At the last auction he had outbid Pa in everything, not having the fear of his wife before his eyes. Pa’s fighting blood was up in a moment; he forgot Ma Sloane; he forgot what he was bidding for; he forgot everything except a determination that John Clarke should not be victor again.
“Ten,” he called shrilly.
“Fifteen,” shouted Clarke.
“Twenty,” vociferated Pa.
“Twenty-five,” bellowed Clarke.
“Thirty,” shrieked Pa. He nearly bust a blood-vessel in his shrieking, but he had won. Clarke turned off with a laugh and a shrug, and the baby was knocked down to Pa Sloane by the auctioneer, who had meanwhile been keeping the crowd in roars of laughter by a quick fire of witticisms. There had not been such fun at an auction in Carmody for many a long day.
Pa Sloane came, or was pushed, forward. The baby was put into his arms; he realized that he was expected to keep it, and he was too dazed to refuse; besides, his heart went out to the child.
The auctioneer looked doubtfully at the money which Pa laid mutely down.
“I s’pose that part was only a joke,” he said.
“Not a bit of it,” said Robert Lawson. “All the money won’t be too much to pay the debts. There’s a doctor’s bill, and this will just about pay it.”
Pa Sloane drove back home, with the sorrel mare still unshod, the baby, and the baby’s meager bundle of clothes. The baby did not trouble him much; it had become well used to strangers in the past two months, and promptly fell asleep on his arm; but Pa Sloane did not enjoy that drive; at the end of it; he mentally saw Ma Sloane.
Ma was there, too, waiting for him on the back doorstep as he drove into the yard at sunset. Her face, when she saw the baby, expressed the last degree of amazement.
“Pa Sloane,” she demanded, “whose is that young one, and there did you get it?”
“I — I — bought it at the auction, Ma,” said Pa feebly. Then he waited for the explosion. None came. This last exploit of Pa’s was too much for Ma.
With a gasp she snatched the baby from Pa’s arms, and ordered him to go out and put the mare in. When Pa returned to the kitchen Ma had set the baby on the sofa, fenced him around with chairs so that he couldn’t fall off and given him a molassed cooky.
“Now, Pa Sloane, you can explain,” she said.
Pa explained. Ma listened in grim silence until he had finished. Then she said sternly:
“Do you reckon we’re going to keep this baby?”
“I — I — dunno,” said Pa. And he didn’t.
“Well, we’re NOT. I brought up one boy and that’s enough. I don’t calculate to be pestered with any more. I never was much struck on children as children, anyhow. You say that Mary Garland had a brother out in Mantioba? Well, we shall just write to him and tell him he’s got to look out for his nephew.”
“But how can you do that, Ma, when nobody knows his address?” objected Pa, with a wistful look at that delicious, laughing baby.
“I’ll find out his address if I have to advertise in the papers for him,” retorted Ma. “As for you, Pa Sloane, you’re not fit to be out of a lunatic asylum. The next auction you’ll be buying a wife, I s’pose?”
Pa, quite crushed by Ma’s sarcasm, pulled his chair in to supper. Ma picked up the baby and sat down at the head of the table. Little Teddy laughed and pinched her face — Ma’s face! Ma looked very grim, but she fed him his supper as skilfully as if it had not been thirty years since she had done such a thing. But then, the woman who once learns the mother knack never forgets it.
After tea Ma despatched Pa over to William Alexander’s to borrow a high chair. When Pa returned in the twilight, the