Sube Cane :: CHAPTER VI REIMBURSEMENT

CHAPTER VI REIMBURSEMENT

There was something of a sensation at the breakfast table next morning when sube appeared with his best clothes on, and without waiting for interrogation modestly explained that his school suit had been incapacitated by his futile attempt to do the household a real service. He had arisen early and quietly taken the rake to the attic for the purpose of dragging the rainwater tank for the remains of an alleged dead cat.

He had not succeeded in locating the body, but had unfortunately lost his balance and fallen into the tank, from which he had escaped with his life only after a terrific struggle (although the tank was not over three feet deep), and he called Cathead to witness that he had carefully examined Exhibit A and found it to be a thoroughly saturated and badly polluted suit of school clothes.

"I declare!" complained Mr. Cane. "I never saw such a household as this. No sooner do we get rid of one scourge than another is upon us. Contaminated water is about the worst thing that can happen to a place. There's no telling when we'll get this thing cleared up. I suppose the plumber will be round here for the next month. I might as well make him a present of the house!"

"Oh, well," soothed Mrs. Cane. "It might be worse. We'll miss the rain water, of course, but we still have the city water to fall back on."

"Yes, but who wants to use that city water?" demanded Mr. Cane. "It's as hard as a rock! It makes my hands feel chapped just to think of it." Then turning to Sube he asked, "Didn't you find anything at all that might have made this trouble?"

Sube appeared to be searching his memory. In reality he was searching his imagination. Finally he replied, "No, sir; unless maybe it could of been that little piece of fur I found in one corner."

"There!" cried Mr. Cane. "Why didn't you tell me that before? I might have spent a hundred dollars having the plumber tear things to pieces in search of that same little piece of fur!"

"I wasn't sure," muttered Sube. "I didn't know jus' what it was."

"Not sure, eh? Well what did it look like?"

"It looked like a rat," Sube fabricated.

"What did you do with it?"

"Threw it on the ash pile."

"I can soon tell," declared Mr. Cane.

"But an ol' cat grabbed it and carried it away," romanced Sube.

The plumber came and scrubbed the tank, the clothes went to the cleaner, and Sube proceeded to school hardened and set for the cruel grinding of another day. And he was not disappointed. Miss Wheeler was very pressing in her demands for documentary excuses for his absence of the day before. But when Sube reached home at noon he found his father in no proper mood to frame diplomatic communications. To be exact, Mr. Cane was grouchy.

"I don't know what can be the matter with me," he complained as he took his place at the head of the table. "Do I look sick?"

Mrs. Cane made a very careful examination of his face, and noted the vigorous erectness of his body, while Sube's gaze was shifting uneasily back and forth from one parent to the other.

"You haven't looked so well in years," she declared at length. "What's the matter? Aren't you feeling well?"

"Never felt better in my life. Now I wonder what's getting into everybody."

"Why, what do you mean?" asked Mrs. Cane nervously.

"Everybody seems to think I'm sick," grumbled Mr. Cane. "Why, the thing began before I had reached my office this morning. The first person who spoke of it was Joe McInness, the barber. He stopped me on the street and asked very particularly how I was feeling to-day. I told him in an off-hand way that I was never better, and he seemed to be quite surprised. 'Why, I understood you were—were not feeling well,' he sort of stammered out.

"I laughed at him. 'Do I look sick, Joe?' I asked.

"'No, you don't look bad,' he said; 'but sometimes folks look perfectly well physically when they ain't well at all in—in other ways. And sometimes the worse off they are, the better they think they are.'

"'Well, Joe,' I said as I started on, 'you can mark me down as sound mentally, morally and physically.'

"He looked at me and said, 'Judge, what day's to-day?'

"'Why, this is Thursday,' I said.

"'And what day of the month is it?' he asked in the strangest way. And, do you know, for the life of me I couldn't think what day of the month it was. At that, the idiot shook his head and went into his barber shop."

"That's the queerest thing I ever heard of," said Mrs. Cane. "You don't suppose he had been drinking, do you?"

"Why, I did think so until other people began to drop into the office and ask after my health. At first I was rather amused, and then it began to annoy me. The consensus of opinion seemed to be that I was afflicted with some insidious ailment that made me think I was brimming over with good health when I was really on my last legs. And the most incomprehensible feature of the thing was that I couldn't seem to convince them of my soundness of limb and mind!"

"Have you been seen going into any doctor's office lately?" asked Mrs. Cane apprehensively.

"Why, yes; I've been going to Dr. Richards' office frequently."

Sube sighed and took up the disposal of his neglected food as his father continued.

"We've been preparing for the defense of that case of Munger against the railroad company. You know Munger is trying to prove that his injuries are of a permanent nature, and we are perfectly certain that he is malingering. I'm in there once or twice every day to consult the doctor's books. We are preparing a long hypothetical question—"

"What a town this is for talk!" exclaimed Mrs. Cane. "That's undoubtedly where the report started."

"There or in the barber shop."

"Yes, that barber shop is a regular clearing house for news!" said Mrs. Cane.

"Yes, it's as good as an afternoon card party," agreed her husband. "And," he added after a moment, "I'm going to have the place investigated this afternoon."

At this point something went wrong with Sube's throat. He began to choke and snort most distressfully, and several severe thumps on the back from Cathead were required to restore him to normal condition.

"Yes," Mr. Cane resumed, "I'm going to smoke that barber out. Why, the good-for-nothing ignoramus as much as informed me that I was mentally unsound! Asking me the day of the week and month! That's what they always ask an alleged incompetent person who is being examined as to his sanity! The idea of that know-nothing presuming to ask me such questions as that!"

"But how are you going to 'smoke him out' as you say?" asked Mrs. Cane.

"I've got that all fixed up with Dr. Richards. He's going to go in there and pump that barber dry!" replied Mr. Cane determinedly. "The doctor will drop in for a shave, and he'll find out where McInness heard this slanderous report—"

Sube was seized with another fit of coughing, and politely asked to be excused from the table. However, his epiglottic difficulties vanished as he caught up his cap and dashed out of the house. A few moments later he made his appearance in the McInness barber shop.

The barber grinned at him. "Want another haircut?" he asked maliciously.

Sube gazed searchingly at the lather-smeared occupant of the chair and, recognizing Dr. Richards' unmistakable features, realized he was too late, and turned towards the door with a worried look.

"Lookin' for your father?" asked the barber.

"Huh?—Yes," replied Sube. "Seen 'im?"

"Not sence this mornin'," returned the barber compassionately.

And before the door had closed Sube heard the barber saying:

"Too bad about the judge, ain't it?"

Desperation was written on Sube's face as he turned from the barber shop and entered a nearby alley, where he sought to relieve his troubled spirit by kicking an old tin pail, smashing several bottles, and stoning a cat. But in spite of these pleasant diversions everything was going wrong, and everybody was against him.

"Even the weather's gone back on me," he muttered as a raindrop struck his face.

He was beginning to comprehend why some men turn outlaw. He stepped into a shed to make up his mind whether to get wet or to be late for school, although he knew in advance that it would never do for him to get wet. On entering the shed he observed a threshing outfit that had been stored for the winter. At the sight an idea began to sprout.

He turned and looked across the alley into the rear windows of Morton & Company, General Insurance, where his eye fell on a telephone standing on a desk not far from the back door. Whereupon the idea stepped from his brain fully grown and ready for action.

Without a moment's hesitation he pulled his cap on securely and made a dash for Morton's back door. It was unlocked. He opened it cautiously and peered inside. The office was vacant. He caught up the telephone and called for McInness's barber shop with a sharp nasal inflection that sounded not at all like himself.

"Is Doc Richards there?" he asked nervously as soon as he heard the barber's voice.

The barber turned from the telephone. "Are you here, Doc," he asked.

"They told me at his office he was there!" cried Sube in the strange voice.

"He wants to know what you want," returned the barber.

"Tell 'im he's wanted at Bert Shepperd's farm jus' fast as he can get there! There's been a awful accident! A man fell into a thrashin' machine and was all chewed up—"

"Who is this?" demanded the barber.

"Tell 'im to hurry up or he'll be too late!" shouted Sube as he slammed on the receiver and slipped quickly out of the door.

He proceeded to a point where he could command a view of the barber shop, and crouching behind an ash-barrel, watched for developments.

And as he watched he gave way to mutterings of a vengeful nature. "He'll pump Joe McInness dry, will he!—He will, hey!—An' then he'll tell my dad all about it, will he!—Well, I'll show 'im!—He can't come that on me—"

At this moment he saw Dr. Richards come hurrying out of the barber shop, struggling into his overcoat as he came; and as he stood, buttoning it, beside his runabout which stood at the curb, Sube heard him call to some one who had not yet come within his range of vision.

"Want to go for a little ride?"

An instant later the person thus addressed came into view. It was Sube's father. Sube saw him cast an inquiring glance at the sky from which the rain was no longer falling, and then clamber into the runabout. He could distinctly hear them laughing as they lighted cigars and drove rapidly away.

Sube stood up and brushed the moist ashes from his clothes. It was no use; everything was against him. He was both late and wet when he reached school, and his brow was more clouded than the sky; but it cleared wonderfully when a terrific downpour began shortly after he took his seat. As the deluge continued his spirits rose in spite of the fact that Miss Wheeler had notified him of her intention to detain him after school in retaliation for his unexcused tardiness.

As is often the case his mental exaltation took literary form, and, a forward pass having been fumbled, he was required to pick up from the floor and read aloud a cryptic epistle intended for the private consideration of Mr. Gizzard Tobin.

Giz

I dont wish nobody harm but I hope the rain keeps stinging down for therty days and therty nights

S C

As a result of this outburst Sube was compelled to copy the word thirty two hundred times to impress on his memory the correct way to spell it.

Sube's father was late for supper. He was very late; and he came in drenched to the skin. With him came Dr. Richards, also drenched.

"Where have you been!" cried Mrs. Cane. "You've caught your death of cold, I'm sure—"

"Oh, I've taken care of that!" was the doctor's cheery reply. "We stopped in my office and took a little—preventive."

"But where have you been?" persisted she.

"Where haven't we been!" exclaimed the doctor with an irrepressible chuckle at the innocent face of Sube. "In the first place I was in the barber shop being shaved, when a telephone message came that a man had been terribly injured by falling into a threshing machine out at the Shepperd farm."

The doctor cast a sly glance at Sube, and noting the boy's complete immersion in his magazine, winked slyly at his father and went on.

"I took Sam along with me for the ride—and it was some ride! It began to pour just after we started and the trip was simply one big mudhole after another; and when we reached the Shepperd farm and asked about the accident they laughed us out of the house! They wanted to know what we expected them to be threshing in the merry month of May!"

Shouts of laughter from Mr. Cane and the doctor stopped the recital for a time.

"Do tell the rest," urged Mrs. Cane, "so I can laugh too."

"Well," the doctor resumed, wiping his eyes, "I called up my office, and the girl said that just about the time I started, Bill Morton's stenographer called up and warned her to look out for a fake call she heard somebody send in from Morton's private office."

"Oh! Who could have done such a thing!" gasped Mrs. Cane.

"Bill's stenographer didn't know who it was," replied the doctor, watching Sube out of the corner of his eye. "He was too quick for her! She didn't see him!"

Sube straightened up at once and for the first time appeared to take an interest in the story.

"We had already started!" laughed the doctor uproariously. "And such a time as we had!"

The doctor's laughter was infectious. Mr. Cane had been chuckling throughout the account of their adventures and now Mrs. Cane was beginning.

"The mud was a foot deep!" cried Mr. Cane, taking up the narrative, "and we had to get out and wade around in it twice while we changed a tire. And then to top off the adventure the engine got wet and went out of commission and we had to give up the ship and walk home!!"

"But what is so funny about it?" insisted Mrs. Cane. "If I didn't know you were both teetotalers I should certainly think you men had been drinking."

The doctor subdued his laughter with an effort as he said: "It's Sube I'm laughing at!"

Sube's magazine fell to the floor; he half stood up, then dropped back into his chair stiff as a poker.

"Isn't he immense!" howled the doctor. "Isn't he delicious! That boy will make his mark in the world!"

"But what has he to do with it?" asked Mrs. Cane, glancing at the boy's open mouth and popping eyes.

"Oh—oh, nothing to do with that," stammered the doctor. "I was just laughing at the way he was sitting there reading. I wanted to come in and get a look at him!"

"A look at him?" asked she, mystified.

"Why, yes!" roared the doctor. "He's had his head shingled and I hadn't seen him!"

As soon as the doctor had gone Mrs. Cane hurried her husband to his room for dry clothing. Sube heard with bitterness the sound of their suppressed laughter.

"That's right," he muttered. "Laugh at some joke of ol' Doc Richards and then come down and whale the daylights out of me—"

He listened. They were coming down the stairs. As his mother entered the room he noticed that there were tears in her eyes, and that the corners of her mouth were twitching. His breath came faster as he observed his father's determined walk.

With a visible effort Mr. Cane controlled his voice. "Sube," he said, extending his hand in which money could be seen, "I want to reimburse you for that haircut you got yesterday."

Sube mechanically took the money as he braced himself for the jolt that he felt sure would follow. But his reckonings went wrong. His father passed a friendly hand over the resistless stubble and remarked cheerfully:

"Well, bullet-head, let's eat our supper."

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