FullReads

Newt took him by the arm and led him away. He was going to tell him the “news,” but he wasn’t going to tell it to him there. The only place to tell Uncle Dad anything was over in the Town Hall, provided it was unoccupied, and thither he conducted the expectant old man. As they mounted the steps leading to the Hall, Uncle Dad’s pleased expression developed into something distinctly audible–something resembling a cackle of joy. Mr. Spratt favoured him with a sharp, apprehensive glance.

“Are they goin’ to hold the inquest as soon as all this?” shouted Uncle Dad, putting his lips as close as possible to Newt’s ear.

Newt stopped in his tracks.

“Have you heard it?” he bellowed.

“What say?”

“I say, have you heard it?“

“Speak up! Speak up!” complained Uncle Dad. “You needn’t be afraid of him hearin’ you, Newt. He’s been dead for six or eight hours.”

“My God!” groaned Newt.

For the second time that morning he left Uncle Dad high and dry, and started swiftly homeward. There was the possible, but remote chance that his wife hadn’t heard the news,–and if she had heard it, she’d hear from him! He’d let her know what kind of a wife she was!

Never, within memory, had he failed to be the first person in Tinkletown to hear the news, and here he was on this stupendous occasion, the last of them all. And why? Because he had taken that one morning to perform a peculiarly arduous and intensive bit of hard work up in the attic of his wife’s house. He had chosen the attic because Mrs. Spratt rather vehemently had refused to let him use the parlour, or even the kitchen. And all the time that he was up in the attic, working his head off trying to teach his new fox terrier pup how to stand on its hind legs and jump over a broom stick, this startling piece of news was sweeping from one end of Tinkletown to the other.

Never, said Newt firmly, as he hurried homeward by the back streets,–never would he do another day’s work in his life, if this was to be the result of honest toil. And what’s more, he hadn’t even received a single word of praise from his wife when he descended from the attic and triumphantly told her what he had accomplished,–he and the pup between them–after three hours of solid, painstaking endeavour.

Mrs. Spratt had merely said: “If you could learn that pup how to split firewood or milk a cow or repair the picket fence or something like that, you might be worth your salt, Newt Spratt. As it is, you ain’t.”

As Newt turned gloomily into the alley leading up to his back gate, he espied the Marshal of Tinkletown, Anderson Crow, leisurely approaching from the opposite direction. Mr. Crow, on catching sight of Newt, hastily removed something from his mouth and held it behind his back. Perceiving that it was nobody but Newt Spratt, he restored the object to his lips and began puffing away at it,–but not until he had sent a furtive glance over his shoulder.

“What you doin’ back here?” inquired Newt, somewhat offensively, as the two drew closer together. “Lookin’ fer clues?”

Anderson again removed the corn-cob pipe, spat accurately over the hand with which he shielded his straggling chin whiskers, and remarked:

“Do you see anything wrong with this here pipe, Newt?” he asked, gazing rather pensively at the object.

“I don’t see anything wrong with it,” said Newt. “Still, I think you’re mighty sensible not to smoke it any place except in an alley. Why don’t you get a new one? They only cost ten cents. If you got a new one once in a while,–say once a year,–your wife wouldn’t order you out of the house every time you light it.”

“She don’t order me out of the house when I light it,” retorted Anderson. “‘Cause why? ‘Cause I never light it till I get two or three blocks away from home.”