The Wooing of Calvin Parks

CHAPTER IV

THE CANDY ROUTE

"Hossy," said Calvin as he drove out of the yard, "what do you think of that young woman?"

(Mary Sands was nearer forty than thirty, but she will be young at seventy.) The brown horse shook his head slightly as Calvin flicked the whip past his ear.

"Well, there you're mistaken!" said Calvin. "There's where you show your ignorance, hossy. I tell you that young woman is A 1 and clipper built if ever I see such. Yes, sir! ship-shape and Bristol fashion, live-oak frame, and copper fastenin's, is what I call Miss Hands, and a singular name she's got. Most prob'ly she'll be changin' it to Sill one of these days, and one of them two lobsters will be a darned lucky feller. I wonder which she'll take. I wonder why in Tunkett she should want either one of 'em. I wonder – hello!"

He checked the brown horse. A small boy was standing on a gate-post and shouting vigorously.

"What say, sonny?" said Calvin.

"Be you the candy man?" cried the child.

"That's what! be you the candy boy? lozenges, tutti-frutti and pepsin chewin' gum, chocolate creams, stick candy – what'll you have, young feller?"

"I want a stick of checkerberry!" said the boy.

"So do I!" cried a little girl in a pink gingham frock, who had run out from the house and climbed on the other gate-post. She was a pretty curly little creature, and the boy was an engaging compound of flaxen hair, freckles and snub nose. Calvin regarded them benevolently, and pulled out a drawer under the seat of the wagon.

"Here you are!" he said, taking out a glass jar full of enchanting red and white sticks.

"Best checkerberry in the State of Maine; cent apiece!" and he held out two sticks.

The children's eyes grew big and tragic. "We ain't got any money!" said the boy, sadly.

"Not any money!" echoed the little girl.

"Then what in time did you ask for it for?" asked Calvin rather irritably.

"I didn't!" said the boy. "I just said I wanted it."

Calvin looked from him to the girl, and then at the candy, helplessly.

"Well, look here!" he said. "Say! where do hossy and me come in? We've got to get our livin', you see."

"Could you get much living out of two sticks?" asked the little girl.

Calvin looked again at the round wistful eyes.

"This ain't no kind of way to do business!" he remonstrated. "You've got to airn it some way, you know. Tell you what! Let me see which can holler loudest, and I'll give you a stick apiece."

The babes closed their eyes, threw back their heads, and bellowed to the skies.

"That's first rate!" said Calvin. "Good lung power there, young uns! go it again!"

The children roared like infant bulls of Bashan. At this moment the door of the house flew open and a woman appeared wild-eyed.

"What's the matter?" she cried. "Susy, be you hurt? Eben, has something bit you?"

"Don't you be scairt, Marm!" said Calvin affably. "They was just showin' off their lung power, and they've got a first rate article of it."

The woman's eyes flashed, and she hurried toward the gate. "You come along and be spanked!" she cried to the children; "scarin' me into palpitations, and your Aunt Mandy layin' in a blue ager! And as for you," she addressed Calvin directly, "the best thing you can do is to get out of this the quickest you know how. When I want peddlers round here I'll let you know."

The children were hurried into the house, shrieking now in good earnest, but clutching their candy sticks. Calvin gazed after them ruefully.

"Well, hossy, that didn't seem to work real good, did it?" he said. "Fact is, we ain't got the hang of this business, no way, shape or manner. Try to please the kids and you get 'em a spankin' instead. Well, they got their candy anyway. 'Pears as if their Ma needed somethin', howsomever."

He sat pondering with his eyes fixed anxiously on the house; finally he rummaged among his drawers, and taking out a small package, he climbed laboriously out over the wheel, and making his way up to the house, knocked at the door. The woman opened it with a bounce, and snorted when she saw him.

Calvin bent toward her confidentially, his face full of serious anxiety.

"Say, lady!" he said gravely; "I'd like to make you a present of these cardamom seeds. They do say they're the best thing goin' for the temper; kind o' counter-irritant, y' know; bite the tongue, and – "

The door banged in his face. He smiled placidly, and returning to his wagon clambered in again and chirruped cheerily to the brown horse.

"Gitty up, hossy!" he said. "I feel a sight better now. Gitty up!"

They jogged on for some time, Calvin mostly silent, though now and then he broke out into song.

"Now Renzo was a sailor;
That's what Renzo was, tiddy hi!
He surely warn't a tailor,
So haul the bowline, haul!
He went adrift in Casco Bay,
Mate to a mud-scow haulin' hay,
And he come home late for his weddin' day,
So haul the bowline, haul!"

Rounding a curve in the road, he saw a man walking in the same direction in which he was going; a young man, slight and wiry, walking with quick, jerky strides. Calvin observed him.

"That young feller's in a hurry, hossy," he said. "See him? he's takin' longer steps than what his legs are, and that's agin' natur'. What say about givin' him a lift, hey?"

The brown horse, his ear being flicked, shook his head decidedly. "Sho!" said Calvin, "you don't mean that, hossy. Your bark – well, not exactly bark – is worse than your – not precisely bite, but you know what I mean. He's in a hurry, and he's in trouble too, and you and me ain't neither one nor 'tother. Say!" he called as he came within hailing distance. "Want a lift?"

The man stopped with a start, and turned a pale face on Calvin. He had red hair, and his blue eyes burned angrily.

"Yes!" he said. Calvin stopped, and he jumped quickly into the wagon. Calvin looked at him expectantly a moment; then "Much obliged!" he said. "Real accommodatin' of you!"

The young man colored like a girl. "I beg your pardon!" he said. "I'm forgetting my manners and everything else, I guess. Much obliged to you for takin' me up. I'm in a terrible hurry!" he added, looking doubtfully at the brown horse, who was jogging peacefully along.

"Four legs is better than two!" said Calvin. "Gitty up, hossy! He makes better time than what he appears to, hossy does. He's a better ro'der than you be. We'll git there!"

"How far you goin'?" asked the man.

"Oh, down along a piece!" said Calvin. "Where be you?"