PEACE COLLECTS DAMAGES

The hot summer was drawing to a close. Two weeks more and September would be ushered in, bringing with it the State Fair, always an event in the lives of the busy farmers of the State, and particularly of those around Martindale and Pendennis, as the fairgrounds were located midway between the two big cities.

Peace had never attended a State Fair in all her short life, but she had heard it talked about so much by the residents of Parker that she was wildly excited when Faith decided to enter a cake in the cooking exhibit, and immediately she determined to visit the Fair in person and see her sister’s handiwork fitly rewarded. However, when she made known this decision to the rest of the family Gail said quietly, “I am afraid you can’t, dear. It costs fifty cents to enter the grounds, and even if they admit children at half price, that would mean twenty-five cents for each of you three youngest, and Hope would have to pay the full amount, as she is now in her ’teens. We can’t afford to go this year.”

This was an item that Peace had not considered. Of course, if she went, the rest of the family were entitled to the same pleasure, and that would mean three half dollars and three quarters. She found her slate and laboriously added up the column of figures. “Two dollars and twenty-five cents! Mercy, that is a lot to spend just to go to the Fair for one day, isn’t it? Oh, dear, why is it we always have to stop and think about the money? I wish dollars grew on trees, and all we had to do when we wanted any would be to go out and pick them. What fun we’d have! I do want to go to the Fair so much, though. If only there was some way to earn the money!”

She wandered down to the melon patch, the pride of her childish heart, and sat down on one of the green balls to meditate on the subject.

“I never saw the beat how your melons do grow,” exclaimed a voice behind her, as Mrs. Grinnell, on her way to the brown house, paused to admire the tempting fruit. “If there was just some way of getting them into the city, you might make a pretty penny off them. Now, mine don’t begin to be as big as yours, and there aren’t half so many on the vines. That’s a whopper you are sitting on. You ought to take it to the Fair ”

“Why, Mrs. Grinnell, do folks take melons to the Fair?”

“Yes, indeed, every year. Why, I’ve seen lots there that weren’t as big as yours. Of course it’s the biggest that win the ribbons, and you might not stand a show, but there would be no harm trying. I am intending to enter my two mammoth pumpkins and that Hubbard squash, along with my corn.”

“Do you s’pose Gail would let me?”

“Yes, I think so. I’ll take it in with mine if you like. I am to lug Faith’s cake.”

“Oh, then I’ll do it! These two whollipers. That one is almost as big as the one I play is my armchair. The rest are too little to have a chance, aren’t they? Maybe they will be big enough by Fair time, though. They have two weeks more to grow in.”

“No telling what they will do in that time,” laughed Mrs. Grinnell, moving briskly away up the path, leaving Peace still perched on top of the largest melon busily making her fortune from her small garden patch.

“If only we hadn’t sold Black Prince,” she mourned, “we could just cart these melons into Martindale and make a whole lot on them. There, why didn’t I think of that before? Mike peddles garden truck in the city, ’most every day. I’ll just have him tote these along. I’ve got let me see twelve, sixteen, seventeen, twenty-one good ones, besides my big fellows. I wonder if that will be enough. I’m going right over and see Mike now. He is at home today; I saw him.”

She skipped away through the garden to the O’Hara place, some distance below them, and finding the red-haired boy grinding an ax in the dooryard, she startled him by her breathless demand, “How much do watermelons sell for in the city?”

“Shure an’ it depinds on the size.”

“Mine are great big ones. Mrs. Grinnell says they ought to bring a pretty penny in Martindale.”

“Well, thin, I think maybe they’d be bringing a quarter.”

“Each one?”

“Shure!”

“And how much would that make if twenty-one were sold?”

“Five dollars and a quarter,” promptly answered Mike, who was quick at figures and proud of the accomplishment.

“That would be enough,” cried Peace in great glee. “All I need is two dollars and a quarter. Come on over to my house and pick them right away.”

“What?” yelled Mike, wondering if the child had gone crazy.

“Oh, I forgot! I haven’t told you yet, have I? You can sell my melons in the city for me if you like and save me the trouble.”

The boy stared at her, transfixed by her complacent self-assurance.

“Has the cat got your tongue?” Peace asked, when he did not speak.

“No, but you have your nerve,” he stuttered. “What d’ye take me for, a dray horse?”

“You’ve got a mule team, haven’t you?” flared Peace, seeing no occasion for his anger. “And you peddle truck nearly every day. Then I don’t see why you can’t take my melons and sell them. Black Prince is gone, and we can’t drive about any more ourselves.”

“Well, where do I come in? Melons take up a sight of wagon room, nothing said of the time it will take to sell them. And then you expict me to do it all for nothing!”

“I I hadn’t thought about that,” faltered Peace; and, sitting down on the windmill platform, she pulled a pencil stub from her pocket and began to do some figuring on the sole of her shoe.

Mike watched her serious face in amusement, and grinned broadly when, after five minutes of vigorous scratching and hard thinking, she released her foot and said in her most business-like tones, “I’ll tell you what I will do. If you can sell all those twenty-one melons at twenty-five cents each, you can have half the money for your trouble. That will still leave me enough to get our family inside the Fair. Will you do it?”

Mike scratched his head thoughtfully and then replied, “I’ll take a look at thim melons first.”

So she led him to the small patch and proudly displayed her treasures. “You see there are more than twenty-one melons on the vines. Those two big ones Mrs. Grinnell is going to tote along with her pumpkins to the Fair, and the little ones and the crooked fellers we’ll eat at home; but there are twenty-one nice ones to sell.”

Mike expressed his admiration by the boyish exclamation, “Gee, ain’t them bouncers? How ’d ye do it? Our’n don’t amount to shucks this year.”

“That’s what Mrs. Grinnell said about hers. I guess it’s ’cause I know how to grow watermelons,” answered Peace, with charming frankness. “Mr. Strong says that must be the reason. You see, I planted sweet-peas and these came up. Maybe it’s a sweet-pea melon. Do you s’pose it is?”

“I niver heard tell of such a thing,” Mike soberly replied, “but maybe that’s what’s the matter.”

“Will you sell them for me?”

Mike was busy thumping the green balls with his knuckles, and feeling of the stems, and when he had tested each in turn, he answered, “Yis, I’ll sell thim for you, but ye’d better wait a week or two. They aren’t ripe enough yit.”

“Oh, dear,” mourned the child, plainly disappointed. “The Fair begins in two weeks, and that is what I wanted the money for. Don’t you think they will be ripe enough before that?”

“Don’t look as if they would,” Mike replied firmly. “And green melons won’t sell well. Besides, the longer they grow, the bigger they will be.”

“Then I suppose I must wait; but don’t you tell the girls. I want to s’prise them if we can go, for they don’t think we can.”

So, with many promises of secrecy, Mike departed, and Peace from that moment became a devoted slave of the melon patch.

As soon as she was out of bed in the morning she flew down to the garden to exult over her treasures, and with the last gleam of the dying day she might be seen bending over the mottled fruit whispering encouraging messages to them, coaxing them to grow. Bucket after bucket of water she tugged from the well to pour on their thirsty roots, and load after load of fertilizer she dragged in Allée’s little cart to spread over the ground in her eager desire to increase their size. But when Gail found her with soap and scrub-brush polishing off each precious ball, she was forced to curb her zealous gardening. However, the vines throve through all this heroic treatment, and it seemed to Peace that she could almost see the fruit grow in circumference. Each night she consulted Mike, convinced that they had ripened sufficiently during the day to be picked, but the boy steadfastly shook his head.

At length, as the second week of anxious waiting was drawing to a close, Peace could endure the suspense no longer, and one warm afternoon, while her sisters were occupied with their various duties, she snatched the sharp bread-knife from the pantry shelf, and with Allee in tow, stole down to her garden plot.

“What are you going to do?” whispered the blue-eyed tot, as if still fearful that she might be overheard at the house.

“Try one of my melons and see if it isn’t ripe. This feller will do, I guess. It is big, but not too big.” She plunged the shining blade deep into the green rind, and as the two halves fell apart, disclosing the bright red heart thickly dotted with black and white seeds, she cried triumphantly, “There, I knew I was right! Just taste it, Allee. Ain’t it sweet and nice? Let’s lug it down to the hedge and eat it up.”

“That’s a piggy,” answered the smaller girl, smacking her lips over the delicious morsel.

“We can ’ford to be pigs this once, I guess,” Peace retorted. “If we take it up to the house they will want to know why we cut it, and we’ll have to tell them about Mike and the Fair. You don’t want them to know that, do you?”

“No, but we are too little to eat it all ourselves.”

“Half a melon each ain’t much. Why, Len Abbott must have eaten two whole ones at the church sociable the other night. Can you carry your half?”

“Yes,” panted the younger lass, bravely tugging at her heavy load.

So, with much puffing, and many stops for breath, they dragged the fruit through the cornfield to the creek road, scrambled in behind the dense brush and blackberry vines, and began to dispose of the sweet, juicy center.

“Let’s eat one-half all up ’fore we begin the other,” proposed Allee, who seemed to have some doubts as to the capacity of her stomach.

“All right,” Peace agreed. “The melon does look pretty big, and maybe we can’t hold it all at one sitting. I’ll push the other half under the bushes and cover my handkerchief over it to keep off the flies. What a lot of seed this one has! Let’s save some for planting next year. S’posing each of these seeds was a ticket to the State Fairgrounds, we could all of us go every day and invite everyone else in town, pretty near. Hush! There’s a team coming up the road. Let’s peek and see if it’s anyone we know.”

She drew aside the branches as she spoke, and two inquisitive, fruit-stained faces peered out of the opening just as a two-seated carryall drew up by the roadside, and a woman’s voice said imperatively, “There is a cluster, Henry, lovely berries. I thought they were all gone by this time.”

Henry leaped over the wheel to the ground, gathered a handful of dust-covered blackberries, and passed them up to the other three occupants of the rig, remarking, “It’s a shame we can’t find watermelons growing wild along the roadside. I am afraid if we have a melon social at the church tomorrow night we must patronize the groceryman for the fruit.”

“I am sorry to have caused you this wild-goose chase,” said a meek voice from the back seat. “But last year we drove through this town when watermelon vines were the only things in sight.”

“That is everything in sight today,” laughed Henry teasingly. “The trouble is, they don’t bear any decent fruit. I’d give five dollars if anyone would show me twenty good, fair-sized watermelons ”

“All right, sir!” exclaimed an eager voice at his feet. “Give me the five dollars, and I’ll show you twenty-two!”

The man jumped as if shot, the three ladies screamed, and even the horses started at the unexpected sound, or perhaps it was at sight of a tousled brown head wriggling excitedly through the thicket, followed by an equally tousled golden head.

“Well, who are you?” stammered the startled young man, as the children gained their feet and stood shyly eyeing the city folks.

“Two of the Greenfield kids,” answered Peace. “We were just trying one of my melons when we heard what you said. We’ve got some fine ones in our garden, and I’ll sell them cheap. They b’long to me. I planted sweet-pea seeds and they came up.”

The man roared, the young ladies giggled, and then one of them said sweetly, “Have you some of your melon left so we can see what it is like?”

“Yes,” responded Peace, diving into the brush and dragging forth the untouched half, covered with her dirty handkerchief. “Here it is. You can eat it. Allee and me are ’most full now. Oh, it’s black with ants! Never mind, just brush them off; they won’t change the taste any.”

But though the ladies admired the ripe red fruit, they seemed to have no appetite for it, and Henry was the only one of the party who sampled it.

“It’s lickum good,” he announced, after the first mouthful. “Better have some, girls. No? Well, I shall lug this piece back with us for refreshments. Say, Curly-locks, are all your melons as big as that?”

“Bigger that is, most of them are. Mrs. Grinnell is going to take two in to the Fair, but there are twenty-one big ones besides. I mean twenty. This is the twenty-oneth.”

They laughed again, and Henry proposed, “Let’s go over and see them anyway. If we can’t find the melons, we can have a good time today at least.”

“Just as you say,” chorused the girls; and bundling the soiled, sticky children into the carriage with them, they drove on to the little brown house.

As the team drew up in front of the gate the group of workers on the porch started to their feet in surprise, but Peace called, “Go on with your sewing! This is my company! They are going to look at my twenty watermelons to see if they are any good; and then I am going to charge them five dollars for them.”

The laughing young people came up the walk to meet the embarrassed mistress of the house, and the situation was briefly explained. “Our League is planning for a lawn social tomorrow night,” said one young lady.

“Ice-cream and cake,” added the second.

“With watermelons for a side-dish,” the young man put in.

“And we thought we could get better melons if we came out here in the country to buy them,” said the fourth member of the party.

“The melon patch belongs to Peace,” Gail told them. “We think she has some pretty good fruit. Come this way and see for yourself.”

“Oh, what big ones!” cried the visiting quartette. “Surely you won’t sell all these for five dollars?”

“No, only twenty,” answered Peace gravely. “You can’t have the two biggest ones, and of course you don’t want the crooked fellers. Mike says they will sell for twenty-five cents each in Martindale.”

So the twenty splendid melons were cut and loaded into the wagon, Peace was paid a spandy new five-dollar bill, and the visitors departed merrily. The child watched them out of sight, still holding fast to her money, and then turned to Gail, sighing contentedly, “Now we can go to the Fair! I’ve had an awful job getting rid of those things, but they are gone at last, and here is the money. I ’xpect Mike will be mad as hops, but he didn’t know beans when he said they weren’t ripe. I’ve raised melons enough so I know.”

“But, dearie,” interrupted the oldest sister, “you mustn’t spend your money so recklessly for our pleasure. It will take almost half of that five dollars just to pay our way into the grounds, and another dollar for carfare.”

“Then it’s lucky Mike didn’t sell the melons for me,” said Peace, “or I ’xpect we’d have had to walk. I sold those watermelons just so’s we all could go to the Fair, Gail, and now you mustn’t say no.”

“Then I won’t,” suddenly whispered the tired mother-sister, seeing the longing in the somber brown eyes, and realizing the child’s unselfish love. “When is Mrs. Grinnell to take your big melons away?”

“Tomorrow,” she said. “The Fair begins Monday, you know.”

“Then you better go say good-bye to them now,” teased Faith. “It is nearly supper time, and you will hardly have a chance in the morning.”

But Peace shook her head, declaring seriously, “There will be time enough. And if the melons don’t win a prize, we’ll bring them back home, Mrs. Grinnell says.”

When the morning dawned, however, and Peace ran eagerly down to visit her garden, she stopped in dismay at the sight which greeted her eyes. On the ground, strewn all over the patch, were broken, battered melon-rinds; and the two mammoth balls were gone.

“Oh, my darlings! my precious melons!” she cried in grief. “Someone has eaten them all up!” Throwing herself flat amid the wreck, she sobbed as if her heart would break, so overwhelmed by her loss that it never occurred to her to report the disaster to the rest of the family. It was too cruel!

When the hot tears had relieved the little heart somewhat, she sat up and looked about her once more, saying, with quivering lips, “I don’t s’pose they would have won a prize anyway, but it was hatefully mean of whoever took them. I’ll bet Mike O’Hara did it to get even with me for selling the others to the city folks and keeping all the money myself! I’m going straight over and tell him what a nice kind of a gentleman he is.”

She bounced to her feet, started swiftly across the patch, caught her toe in a tough vine and fell sprawling on the ground again, rapping her head smartly on a small, unripe melon at the edge of the field. “Mercy! you’re a hard-shelled old sinner!” she exclaimed, rubbing her bruised forehead and glaring at the offending fruit. “Well, no wonder! I hit a knife, as sure as you’re alive! It ain’t Mike’s either. It’s Hector Abbott’s! Why didn’t I think of him before? Of course he is the culvert; but I’ll bet he will wish he hadn’t seen those melons when I get through with him.”

Burning with indignation, she sped away to the village, never pausing until the Judge’s house was reached. As she approached the place she could see the family gathered around the breakfast table, set on the wide, screened porch; and forgetting to knock, she threw open the door and rushed in as if on the wings of the wind. Straight to Hector’s chair she stalked, and before the surprised family could recover their breath, she clutched the unhappy youth by the hair and jerked him out of his seat, crying accusingly, “Hec Abbott, you disgraceful son of a judge! You stole my melons, my State Fair melons! You can’t say you didn’t, ’cause I’ve found your knife in the garden! I s’pose it walked there, didn’t it? Well, maybe it did, but you walked it! You can just settle for damages this very minute!”

By this time the Judge had found his tongue, and loosening the angry fingers from his youngest son’s luxuriant topknot, he demanded of Peace, “What do you mean by such actions? Where are your manners? Why didn’t you knock? Who brought you up?”

“Why didn’t Hec knock when he came for my melons last night? Where are his manners? What did he mean by such actions? You brung him up!”

Len Abbott choked over his coffee, Cecile hid her face in her napkin, and even the anxious mother smiled, but the Judge looked more ruffled than abashed, and he fairly thundered, “How do you know the knife is Hector’s?”

“Don’t you s’pose I have seen it enough to know whose it is? Didn’t I grab it from him the day he pretended to cut off Lola Hunt’s ears? I cut his hand, too, but he deserved it! He’s the meanest boy at school next to Jimmy Jones. Teacher took the knife away one time when he was skinning a frog, and I saw it then. Anyway, it’s got his name on it, not just his ’nitials, but his whole name. And there it is!”

She held out the article for the Judge’s inspection, and that worthy gentleman, seeing the look of guilt in his small son’s face, pocketed it, saying whimsically to the wrathful accuser, “That is merely circumstantial evidence. He might yet be innocent of the charge.”

“He might,” Peace retorted grimly; “but he ain’t! Ask him!”

The Judge turned gravely to the crimson-cheeked lad and asked severely, “Son, are you guilty or not guilty?”

“Guilty,” muttered the miserable culprit.

“Didn’t I tell you?” triumphed the girl.

“What would you recommend as his sentence?” asked the Judge.

“Sentence?” repeated Peace, with the uncomfortable feeling that she was being laughed at.

“Punishment, I mean.”

“A good, sound thrashing that ain’t all show and no hurt,” was the harsh verdict.

“Very well! I will administer it now. Len, hand me that strap. Hector, come here!”

Leonard passed the strap to his father, the younger son shuffled across the porch to receive his sentence, and Peace stood breathlessly by, watching with frightened eyes. The Judge raised the strip of leather and brought it down with a resounding thwack across the boy’s legs. He squirmed, let out a wild yell, and began to blubber. The strap rose and fell the second time, there was a second yell, and Peace, with blazing eyes and blanched face, flew in between man and boy, snatched the upraised strap and flung it clear across the room, screaming in fierce indignation, “Don’t you touch him again! You’re a pretty kind of a judge! Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”

“You sentenced him yourself,” stammered the surprised man.

“Well, I’ll let him off this time,” she replied slowly, “but he will have to pay for those melons.”

“How much?”

“A dollar each.”

“Whew! They are pretty expensive fruit, aren’t they?”

“I’ve put more’n a dollar’s worth of trouble into getting them ready for the Fair, and now he’s et up my blue ribbon.”

“Your blue ribbon?”

“Yes, maybe those melons would have won a blue ribbon. Now I’ll never know.”

“Well, well, that’s too bad,” sympathized the amused Judge. “Hector will have to pay for them, surely. Son, go get the money out of your bank.”

“I didn’t eat all of them. Jimmy Jones and Ted Fenton and the Beldon boys helped,” said Hector, wiping his eyes sullenly.

“You can c’lect from them later,” retorted Peace. “You were at the head of it, I know.”

“Get the money, son,” repeated the father sternly, and the unhappy boy thought it wise to obey without further demur.

When the two silver dollars were laid in her hand Peace smiled her relief, and with a curt “Thank you,” turned to go, when to the utter amazement of the whole family, she whirled suddenly about and confronted Hector again, saying calmly, “While I am here, I might as well c’lect for that cake you stole more’n a year ago.”

“Cake?” echoed the group, while the boy’s face grew scarlet with guilt once more.

“Yes, cake! We thought my tramp took it at first. Faith made it for the minister’s reception and put it on the wash-bench under a dishpan to cool. ’Twas gone when she went to get it again. Hec stole it.”

“Hector, did you?”

The boy nodded, too miserable to speak.

“How much was that worth, Peace?”

“It was bigger’n a fifty-cent one. I guess it will be seventy-five cents.”

“Get your bank and settle your account, Hector.”

And once more the boy was forced to obey.

“There!” breathed Peace, closing her fingers over the added coins. “I guess we are square now. I just happened to think of the cake. Isn’t it lucky I did? I wasn’t quite sure he took it, but seeing that my tramp didn’t do it, I knew it must be someone in town, and I couldn’t think of anyone else mean enough. Good-bye!”

She ran lightly down the steps and away toward home, chanting to herself, “He had to pay up, he had to pay up!” Suddenly she halted by the roadside and listened. “Yes, sir! That’s Hec a-howling! I guess the Judge got hold of that strap again. Well, he deserves a good licking, but I’m glad I’m not there to see him dance.”