The Knights of the White Shield Part 6

Pa.s.sing the "sentinel" with the powerful aid of a cent, she looked around upon the chamber. In its center there was a stout wooden post, and between this post and a closet, at one end of the chamber, there had been suspended a dirty, ragged sheet, which the governor's aunt had taken from the attic and given to the club. Across this sheet stretched a panoramic strip of paper which Aunt Stanshy at once recognized as Charlie's handiwork. It took two boys, Sid and Wort, to stand at the two ends of the curtain and manage the "pammerrammer." As Sid unrolled the glorious succession of artistic beauties that Charlie had sketched, Wort at the other end pulled them along and rolled them up. In front of the curtain was ranged a plank. A carpenter's bench that bordered a wall of the barn supported one end of the plank, and a barrel the other end. This elevated roost was denominated "reserved seats," and all cent admissions secured "one of the most eligible chances in the Hall," so Sid declared. There was a string of sweet little beauties on the bench, girls from the neighborhood, and among them was little May Waters, her face one of wonderful vivacity, a kind of panorama in itself, where the most varied emotions chased one another in rapid succession. Aunt Stanshy found a sled to sit on, and the performance began. Gov. Grimes wished to try his hand first at explaining the pictures. He began, grandiloquently,

"This--this--is a building, no, Faneuil Hall. The next is a picture of a ship. That is a--"

"Don't roll her so tight, Wort," whispered a voice behind the curtain.

"Monkey!" said the governor, finishing his sentence, but unfortunately chancing to look toward that sensitive soul, Pip Peckham.

"I aint," said Pip.

"Who said you was?" inquired Wort.

"You!" charged Pip, turning to the governor.

"I didn't."

"You looked at me."

"Silence in the audience!" shrieked Sid to the now jolly spectators.

"You've got your end all twisted up, Wort," said the governor.

"O dear!" groaned the president.

The straightening out of the last difficulty was effected after a while, and Gov. Grimes began again: "Here are some big, black dogs in a melon-patch."

"Bears, bears!" eagerly whispered Charlie, alarmed for the reputation of a club that could not tell the difference between dogs and bears.

"Well, bears, then," said the governor petulantly, "and I aint going to be it any more."

The discomfited lecturer insisted on resigning, and Charlie took the floor. He knew his old and beloved "pammerrammer" by heart, and he began promptly where the governor left off.

"Here are some bears in a melon-patch. There's a picture of Westminster Abbey, and here's a boy lifting a girl over a fence, and here's a flag from Europe, and here's one from some part of Asia or some other place."

In the midst of Charlie's glib description there was a crash. The plank, _alias_ the reserved seats, did not have a firm support. Its weakness had been noticed, but not remedied.

"Who's the one to fix the bench?" inquired Sid.

"The governor," replied Wort.

But the governor was not one who believed in Aunt Stanshy's motto, "Do to-day's things to-day." She was trying to impress it on Charlie, but she could not be expected to stamp every mind in the club with the necessity of the injunction.

"One boy is enough for me," she would say.

The plank had remained firm as long as it could, but several wriggling children were too much even for the patience of a plank, and--down it went! Little May Waters dropped at the feet of Charlie as he was busily "'splaining." He gallantly picked her up and tried to comfort her, and various members of the club rushed to the rescue of other ladies. It was concluded now to adjourn the "pammerrammer."

"Man down in the yard!" called out Wort, who was "sentinel" when he had nothing else to do. Wort looked over the edge of the window-sill. About all he could see was an old hat, and a very bad hat at that.

"Let's sprinkle him! We can say we only saw a hat," and immediately sc.r.a.ping up with his foot a quant.i.ty of hay-seed, he liberally sprinkled the seedy hat. It was like unto like.

"Now look here," said Sid, "that was mean. If your father wore an old hat, how would you like to have a feller sprinkle hay-seed on it?"

Sid had a good deal of the gentleman about him.

"There he comes! There he comes! Put!" said Wort. A foot-step could be plainly heard on the stairs, and Wort started for the closet, again saying, "Put!"

"I am not going to run," said the governor, with his usual resoluteness.

"Nor I," said Sid.

"Nor I," said Charlie.

"Nor I," said Billy.

Others declared the same. They all stood their ground, or floor, rather.

The noise on the stairs was continued, and soon a seed-strewn hat appeared in sight, and then a big head of hair, and then a man's body. The boys cl.u.s.tered closely together, and when the man turned toward them, they saw that the roughly-dressed man had a roughly featured face, but its expression was kindly.

"He will eat uth up," whispered Pip, trying to get behind Billy Grimes.

The stranger was not a cannibal though. He took off his hat, shook it, and said, "If that was an accident, it's all right. If any one did it, meaning to do it, was it just the thing?"

The boys felt the appeal and shook their heads.

"We don't justify it, and I'm the president," said Sid, with a look of importance, "and no one of us that you see did it."

"I hope not. Sometimes folks are not lucky, and if any of your fathers went trampin' round and couldn't get work, you wouldn't like to have any body throw hay-seed on him."

"No, that's so," said Charlie. "It's too bad!"

The man turned to go down stairs.

"I--I guess my aunt could give you a job. She wanted somebody this morning to saw her wood."

"Did she? Where is she?"

"I'll show you," and Charlie's obliging drumsticks followed the man down stairs. Then he went into the kitchen and made an appeal for the stranger.

"Well, I'll give him the job," replied Aunt Stanshy.

In a minute more the man was at the wood-pile driving Aunt Stanshy's saw rapidly through a stick of pine.

The club had been looking out of the window while Charlie interceded for the man. When he joined his clubmates some one exclaimed, "What's that?"

It was a noise from the closet into which Wort had plunged, or, rather, a noise that started there, for it was continued down into the story below, even as the noise of a rushing snow-slide along a roof begins at the ridgepole, but ends on the ground beneath the eaves.

"It's Wort!" said Charlie, excitedly. "O dear! he's gone."

"Gone where?" inquired Sid. "Into the bowels of the earth?"

Charlie's answer was to rush down stairs, followed by the club in a very hasty and undignified way. There, at the end of a long spout that terminated eight inches from the floor, was a couple of good-sized legs squirming to get out. Then Wort's voice was heard, coming from the interior of the box, "Let me out! Let me out!"