Sube Cane Part 13

"Drive on!" she pleaded desperately. "Drive on quickly!"

"But how can I?" he returned with a gesture of futility.

At that instant the colonel caught sight of the lion. His mouth fell open. He drew back in surprise. Then he did something that he had not done in years. He put aside all the care and sadness of the world; he surrendered what little dignity the downpour had left him, and throwing back his head, he bellowed with laughter.

A sudden shift in the jam of vehicles let the hea.r.s.e move out of their sight, but the colonel followed it with his eyes as far as he could see it, leaning out of the carriage for one last look, and roaring and chortling until he was weak.

By the time the carriage had reached the Cane homestead Mr. Cane was beaming, in spite of his disheveled appearance.

"Yes, sir," he boasted, "that boy of mine is certainly a skeezix! Great sense of humor; he can get fun out of anything--even a funeral! What do you think of that boy of mine anyway, Colonel?"

"_Ours!_" Mrs. Cane corrected. "_Our_ boy!"

CHAPTER IX

IN THE GOOD OLD SUMMER TIME

Cane's Marital Band never formally disbanded. Except as it was dissolved by the rain it is still legally extant. But it never a.s.sembled again after its initial appearance in public. However, its short term of activity furnished the town with a topic of conversation for some time to come; and although the subject was studiously avoided in the Cane household, it was freely discussed in the barn.

Sube was unable to explain just how he happened to get into the hea.r.s.e.

He didn't know, himself. And when pressed for particulars he instantly took the defensive.

"I guess I didn't want to get wet, did I?" he demanded.

"Wet! Say, you was soaked before you ever went near that hea.r.s.e!" cried Gizzard, who was still suffering from a slight twinge of envy.

"Well, Hi Wilbur, who was drivin' it, hollered to me to shut the doors, and when I was shuttin' 'em I saw how nice and dry it was inside, so I told Biscuit to bring the drum down here to the barn, and I climbed in and slammed the doors and had a bully ride! And say! I didn't tell you about the drum, did I?"

"No, you didn't," muttered Gizzard, as there materialized before his eyes a sadly ruptured drumhead. "What you goin' to do about it, anyway?"

"_Goin'_ to do?--I've done it!"

"Done it! What'd you do?"

"Why, Biscuit brought the drum back here to the barn. I had all I could do to keep him from takin' it back to ol' lady Burton jus' it was. But I tol' 'im Mr. Ingraham wasn't through with it yet, so he left it." The boys grinned knowingly at each other as Sube continued: "Well, I washed the printin' off and jus' soon as it got dark I sneaked the drum up on Burton's front porch and turned the good side up, and then I rung the bell and ducked. I hid behind a tree and watched and pretty soon ol'

lady Burton opened the door. When she got her eye on the drum she looked all around for somebody, and when she couldn't find anybody she took it inside.

"The next day she come to call on my mother, and I thought she'd come to squeal on me, and I listened at the door so's to know what to say; but she never said a word about the drum at all!"

"She didn't!" cried Gizzard delightedly.

"Never peeped about it!" Sube a.s.sured him. "But you'd ought to heard her rip ol' Prof Ingraham up the back!"

"What's he been doin'?" asked Gizzard.

"I don't know. I couldn't understand; but she called him all kinds of names! She said he was underbred and ign'rant and ill-mannered and illiterate and a lot of stuff like that, and I most b'lieve we'll have a new princ.i.p.al next year!"

"Say! She'd ought to gone to school to him for a while! He's the worst princ.i.p.al to chew about manners I ever saw."

"Gee! Do you s'pose vacation'll ever get here?" sighed Sube.

"It don't ack like it," replied Gizzard dubiously. "Last week was about six months long, and there was one day of vacation at that."

"Seems to me as if time was goin' backwards," complained Sube.

But it was not. It was going forward at its regular speed. The difficulty was that the boys' minds were outstripping it. In due time vacation arrived, and a long happy summer stretched itself out before them.

Mr. Cane believed in vacations. He also believed in teaching boys to be industrious. He still harbored the old-fashioned idea that every boy should be required to do some useful work every day of his life, Sundays excepted. And while Sube and his brothers with their more up-to-date point of view could see the fallacy of his position, they were unable to reform him with any amount of argument.

As Sube seated himself at the breakfast table one morning and glanced over his working orders for the day, a scowl came over his usually sunny countenance.

"What's the good of callin' it a vacation if a feller has to labor all the time?" he muttered.

Mr. Cane glanced at Sube over the top of his newspaper as he replied: "Now we are not going to open up that old discussion again. The way you boys take on over an hour's work around the place makes me sick! Why, when I was your age, Sube, I was glad to work from daylight until dark for just my board; and it wasn't any such board as you boys get, either."

"Yes, I'll bet you were glad," growled Sube.

"Certainly I was glad," his father a.s.sured him. "In those days boys expected to work. They weren't brought up with the idea of lolling at ease that you boys seem to have."

"Did you work every day?" asked Cathead.

"Every day."

"Every single day?"

"Certainly."

"Didn't you ever take a day off?"

"Oh, occasionally I'd take a day off to go fishing or do a little studying--"

"I don't s'pose they had circuses in those days," interjected Sube.

"Oh, perhaps once during the summer my father would take me to see a good dog and animal show," explained Mr. Cane as he folded his napkin and left the table.

"They didn't use to go in swimmin' in those days, did they?" Sube muttered, taking care that his father did not hear.

"Or play ball?" supplemented Cathead cautiously.

"Ain't that jus' like a man?" growled Sube as the door closed behind their father. "Give a feller a lot of work to do and not even let him _kick_ about it!"

"What you gotta do, anyway?" asked Cathead.

"Plenty," grunted Sube; "plenty."