Little Men: Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys
This doubt had teased Ned past bearing, and he had several times
privately beset Nat with questions, regardless of Mr. Bhaer's express
command. Finding Nat reading alone on the shady side of the wall, Ned
could not resist stopping for a nibble at the forbidden subject. He had
worried Nat for some ten minutes before Dan arrived, and the first words
the spider-student heard were these, in Nat's patient, pleading voice,
“Don't, Ned! oh, don't! I can't tell you because I don't know, and it's
mean of you to keep nagging at me on the sly, when Father Bhaer told you
not to plague me. You wouldn't dare to if Dan was round.”
“I ain't afraid of Dan; he's nothing but an old bully. Don't believe but
what he took Tom's money, and you know it, and won't tell. Come, now!”
“He didn't, but, if he did, I would stand up for him, he has always been
so good to me,” said Nat, so earnestly that Dan forgot his spiders, and
rose quickly to thank him, but Ned's next words arrested him.
“I know Dan did it, and gave the money to you. Shouldn't wonder if he
got his living picking pockets before he came here, for nobody knows
any thing about him but you,” said Ned, not believing his own words, but
hoping to get the truth out of Nat by making him angry.
He succeeded in a part of his ungenerous wish, for Nat cried out,
fiercely,
“If you say that again I'll go and tell Mr. Bhaer all about it. I don't
want to tell tales, but, by George! I will, if you don't let Dan alone.”
“Then you'll be a sneak, as well as a liar and a thief,” began Ned, with
a jeer, for Nat had borne insult to himself so meekly, the other did not
believe he would dare to face the master just to stand up for Dan.
What he might have added I cannot tell, for the words were hardly out
of his mouth when a long arm from behind took him by the collar, and,
jerking him over the wall in a most promiscuous way, landed him with a
splash in the middle of the brook.
“Say that again and I'll duck you till you can't see!” cried Dan,
looking like a modern Colossus of Rhodes as he stood, with a foot on
either side of the narrow stream, glaring down at the discomfited youth
in the water.
“I was only in fun,” said Ned.
“You are a sneak yourself to badger Nat round the corner. Let me catch
you at it again, and I'll souse you in the river next time. Get up, and
clear out!” thundered Dan, in a rage.
Ned fled, dripping, and his impromptu sitz-bath evidently did him good,
for he was very respectful to both the boys after that, and seemed to
have left his curiosity in the brook. As he vanished Dan jumped over the
wall, and found Nat lying, as if quite worn out and bowed down with his
troubles.
“He won't pester you again, I guess. If he does, just tell me, and I'll
see to him,” said Dan, trying to cool down.
“I don't mind what he says about me so much, I've got used to it,”
answered Nat sadly; “but I hate to have him pitch into you.”
“How do you know he isn't right?” asked Dan, turning his face away.
“What, about the money?” cried Nat, looking up with a startled air.
“Yes.”
“But I don't believe it! You don't care for money; all you want is your
old bugs and things,” and Nat laughed, incredulously.
“I want a butterfly net as much as you want a fiddle; why shouldn't I
steal the money for it as much as you?” said Dan, still turning away,
and busily punching holes in the turf with his stick.
“I don't think you would. You like to fight and knock folks round
sometimes, but you don't lie, and I don't believe you'd steal,” and Nat
shook his head decidedly.
“I've done both. I used to fib like fury; it's too much trouble now; and
I stole things to eat out of gardens when I ran away from Page, so you
see I am a bad lot,” said Dan, speaking in the rough, reckless way which
he had been learning to drop lately.
“O Dan! don't say it's you! I'd rather have it any of the other boys,”
cried Nat, in such a distressed tone that Dan looked pleased, and showed
that he did, by turning round with a queer expression in his face,
though he only answered,
“I won't say any thing about it. But don't you fret, and we'll pull
through somehow, see if we don't.”
Something in his face and manner gave Nat a new idea; and he said,
pressing his hands together, in the eagerness of his appeal,
“I think you know who did it. If you do, beg him to tell, Dan. It's so
hard to have 'em all hate me for nothing. I don't think I can bear it
much longer. If I had any place to go to, I'd run away, though I love
Plumfield dearly; but I'm not brave and big like you, so I must stay and
wait till some one shows them that I haven't lied.”
As he spoke, Nat looked so broken and despairing, that Dan could not
bear it, and, muttered huskily,
“You won't wait long,” and he walked rapidly away, and was seen no more
for hours.
“What is the matter with Dan?” asked the boys of one another several
times during the Sunday that followed a week which seemed as if it would
never end. Dan was often moody, but that day he was so sober and silent
that no one could get any thing out of him. When they walked he strayed
away from the rest, and came home late. He took no part in the evening
conversation, but sat in the shadow, so busy with his own thoughts that
he scarcely seemed to hear what was going on. When Mrs. Jo showed him an
unusually good report in the Conscience Book, he looked at it without a
smile, and said, wistfully,
“You think I am getting on, don't you?”
“Excellently, Dan! and I am so pleased, because I always thought you
only needed a little help to make you a boy to be proud of.”
He looked up at her with a strange expression in his black eyes an
expression of mingled pride and love and sorrow which she could not
understand then but remembered afterward.
“I'm afraid you'll be disappointed, but I do try,” he said, shutting the
book with no sign of pleasure in the page that he usually liked so much
to read over and talk about.
“Are you sick, dear?” asked Mrs. Jo, with her hand on his shoulder.
“My foot aches a little; I guess I'll go to bed. Good-night, mother,”
he added, and held the hand against his cheek a minute, then went away
looking as if he had said good-bye to something dear.
“Poor Dan! he takes Nat's disgrace to heart sadly. He is a strange boy;
I wonder if I ever shall understand him thoroughly?” said Mrs. Jo
to herself, as she thought over Dan's late improvement with real
satisfaction, yet felt that there was more in the lad than she had at
first suspected.
One of the things which cut Nat most deeply was an act of Tommy's, for
after his loss Tommy had said to him, kindly, but firmly,
“I don't wish to hurt you, Nat, but you see I can't afford to lose my
money, so I guess we won't be partners any longer;” and with that Tommy
rubbed out the sign, “T. Bangs & Co.”
Nat had been very proud of the “Co.,” and had hunted eggs industriously,
kept his accounts all straight, and had added a good sum to his income
from the sale of his share of stock in trade.
“O Tom! must you?” he said, feeling that his good name was gone for ever
in the business world if this was done.
“I must,” returned Tommy, firmly. “Emil says that when one man 'bezzles
(believe that's the word it means to take money and cut away with it)
the property of a firm, the other one sues him, or pitches into him
somehow, and won't have any thing more to do with him. Now you have
'bezzled my property; I shan't sue you, and I shan't pitch into you, but
I must dissolve the partnership, because I can't trust you, and I don't
wish to fail.”
“I can't make you believe me, and you won't take my money, though I'd be
thankful to give all my dollars if you'd only say you don't think I took
your money. Do let me hunt for you, I won't ask any wages, but do it for
nothing. I know all the places, and I like it,” pleaded Nat.
But Tommy shook his head, and his jolly round face looked suspicious and
hard as he said, shortly, “Can't do it; wish you didn't know the places.
Mind you don't go hunting on the sly, and speculate in my eggs.”
Poor Nat was so hurt that he could not get over it. He felt that he had
lost not only his partner and patron, but that he was bankrupt in honor,
and an outlaw from the business community. No one trusted his word,
written or spoken, in spite of his efforts to redeem the past falsehood;
the sign was down, the firm broken up, and he a ruined man. The barn,
which was the boys' Wall Street, knew him no more. Cockletop and
her sisters cackled for him in vain, and really seemed to take his
misfortune to heart, for eggs were fewer, and some of the biddies
retired in disgust to new nests, which Tommy could not find.
“They trust me,” said Nat, when he heard of it; and though the boys
shouted at the idea, Nat found comfort in it, for when one is down in
the world, the confidence of even a speckled hen is most consoling.
Tommy took no new partner, however, for distrust had entered in, and
poisoned the peace of his once confiding soul. Ned offered to join him,
but he declined, saying, with a sense of justice that did him honor,
“It might turn out that Nat didn't take my money, and then we could
be partners again. I don't think it will happen, but I will give him a
chance, and keep the place open a little longer.”
Billy was the only person whom Bangs felt he could trust in his shop,
and Billy was trained to hunt eggs, and hand them over unbroken, being
quite satisfied with an apple or a sugar-plum for wages. The morning
after Dan's gloomy Sunday, Billy said to his employer, as he displayed
the results of a long hunt,
“Only two.”
“It gets worse and worse; I never saw such provoking old hens,” growled
Tommy, thinking of the days when he often had six to rejoice over.
“Well, put 'em in my hat and give me a new bit of chalk; I must mark 'em
up, any way.”
Billy mounted a peck-measure, and looked into the top of the machine,
where Tommy kept his writing materials.
“There's lots of money in here,” said Billy.
“No, there isn't. Catch me leaving my cash round again,” returned Tommy.
“I see 'em one, four, eight, two dollars,” persisted Billy, who had not
yet mastered the figures correctly.
“What a jack you are!” and Tommy hopped up to get the chalk for himself,
but nearly tumbled down again, for there actually were four bright
quarters in a row, with a bit of paper on them directed to “Tom Bangs,”
that there might be no mistake.
“Thunder turtles!” cried Tommy, and seizing them he dashed into the
house, bawling wildly, “It's all right! Got my money! Where's Nat?”
He was soon found, and his surprise and pleasure were so genuine that
few doubted his word when he now denied all knowledge of the money.
“How could I put it back when I didn't take it? Do believe me now, and
be good to me again,” he said, so imploringly, that Emil slapped him on
the back, and declared he would for one.
“So will I, and I'm jolly glad it's not you. But who the dickens is it?”
said Tommy, after shaking hands heartily with Nat.
“Never mind, as long as it's found,” said Dan with his eyes fixed on
Nat's happy face.
“Well, I like that! I'm not going to have my things hooked, and then
brought back like the juggling man's tricks,” cried Tommy, looking at
his money as if he suspected witchcraft.
“We'll find him out somehow, though he was sly enough to print this so
his writing wouldn't be known,” said Franz, examining the paper.
“Demi prints tip-top,” put in Rob, who had not a very clear idea what
the fuss was all about.
“You can't make me believe it's him, not if you talk till you are blue,”
said Tommy, and the others hooted at the mere idea; for the little
deacon, as they called him, was above suspicion.
Nat felt the difference in the way they spoke of Demi and himself, and