Beautiful Joe - Marshall Saunders (the reading strategies book .TXT) 📗

this case I'd give two hundred dollars more if I could make them

live and have Barron know it."

 

They left the room, and Miss Laura sat turning the sheet of paper over

and over, with a kind of horror in her face. It was a very dirty piece

of paper, but by-and-by she made a discovery. She took it in her hand

and went out-doors. I am sure that the poor horse lying on the grass

knew her. He lifted his head, and what a different expression he had now

that his hunger had been partly satisfied. Miss Laura stroked and patted

him, then she called to her cousin, "Harry, will you look at this?"

 

He took the paper from her, and said: "That is a crest shining through

the different strata of dust and grime, probably that of his own family

We'll have it cleaned, and it will enable us to track the villain. You

want him punished, don't you?" he said, with a little, sly laugh at Miss

Laura.

 

She made a gesture in the direction of the suffering horse, and said,

frankly, "Yes, I do."

 

"Well, my dear girl," he said, "father and I are with you. If we can

hunt Barron down, we'll do it." Then he muttered to himself as she

turned away, "She is a real Puritan, gentle, and sweet, and good, and

yet severe. Rewards for the virtuous, punishments for the vicious," and

he repeated some poetry:

 

"She was so charitable and so piteous,

She would weep if that she saw a mouse

Caught in a trap, if it were dead or bled."

 

Miss Laura saw that Mr. Wood and Mr. Harry were doing all that could be

done for the cow and horse, so she wandered down to a hollow at the back

of the house, where the Englishman had kept his pig. Just now, he looked

more like a greyhound than a pig. His legs were so long, his nose so

sharp, and hunger, instead of making him stupid like the horse and cow,

had made him more lively. I think he had probably not suffered so much

as they had, or perhaps he had had a greater store of fat to nourish

him. Mr. Harry said that if he had been a girl, he would have laughed

and cried at the same time when he discovered that pig. He must have

been asleep or exhausted when we arrived, for there was not a sound out

of him, but shortly afterward he had set up a yelling that attracted Mr.

Harry's attention, and made him run down to him. Mr. Harry said he was

raging around his pen, digging the ground with his snout, falling down

and getting up again, and by a miracle, escaping death by choking from

the rope that was tied around his neck.

 

Now that his hunger had been satisfied, he was gazing contentedly at his

little trough that was half full of good, sweet milk. Mr. Harry said

that a starving animal, like a starving person, should only be fed a

little at a time; but the Englishman's animals had always been fed

poorly, and their stomachs had contracted so that they could not eat

much at one time.

 

Miss Laura got a stick and scratched poor piggy's back a little, and

then she went back to the house. In a short time we went home with Mr.

Wood. Mr. Harry was going to stay all night with the sick animals, and

his mother would send him things to make him comfortable. She was better

by the time we got home, and was horrified to hear the tale of Mr.

Barron's neglect. Later in the evening, she sent one of the men over

with a whole box full of things for her darling boy, and a nice, hot

tea, done up for him in a covered dish.

 

When the man came home, he said that Mr. Harry would not sleep in the

Englishman's dirty house, but had slung a hammock out under the trees.

However, he would not be able to sleep much, for he had his lantern by

his side, all ready to jump up and attend to the horse and cow. It was a

very lonely place for him out there in the woods, and his mother said

that she would be glad when the sick animals could be driven to their

own farm.

 

 

 

 

 

       *       *       *       *       *

 

CHAPTER XXVIII (THE END OF THE ENGLISHMAN)

In a few days, thanks to Mr. Harry's constant care, the horse and cow

were able to walk. It was a mournful procession that came into the yard

at Dingley Farm. The hollow-eyed horse, and lean cow, and funny, little

thin pig, staggering along in such a shaky fashion. Their hoofs were

diseased, and had partly rotted away, so that they could not walk

straight. Though it was only a mile or two from Penhollow to Dingley

Farm, they were tired out, and dropped down exhausted on their

comfortable beds.

 

Miss Laura was so delighted to think that they had all lived, that she

did not know what to do. Her eyes were bright and shining, and she went

from one to another with such a happy face. The queer little pig that

Mr. Harry had christened "Daddy Longlegs," had been washed, and he lay

on his heap of straw in the corner of his neat little pen, and surveyed

his clean trough and abundance of food with the air of a prince. Why, he

would be clean and dry here, and all his life he had been used to dirty,

damp Penhollow, with the trees hanging over him, and his little feet in

a mass of filth and dead leaves. Happy little pig! His ugly eyes seemed

to blink and gleam with gratitude, and he knew Miss Laura and Mr. Harry

as well as I did.

 

His tiny tail was curled so tight that it was almost in a knot. Mr. Wood

said that was a sign that he was healthy and happy, and that when poor

Daddy was at Penhollow he had noticed that his tail hung as limp and as

loose as the tail of a rat. He came and leaned over the pen with Miss

Laura, and had a little talk with her about pigs. He said they were by

no means the stupid animals that some people considered them. He had had

pigs that were as clever as dogs. One little black pig that he had once

sold to a man away back in the country had found his way home, through

the woods, across the river, up hill and down dale, and he'd been taken

to the place with a bag over his head. Mr. Wood said that he kept that

pig because he knew so much.

 

He said the most knowing pigs he ever saw were Canadian pigs. One time

he was having a trip on a sailing vessel, and it anchored in a long,

narrow harbor in Canada, where the tide came in with a front four or

five feet high called the "bore." There was a village opposite the place

where the ship was anchored, and every day at low tide, a number of pigs

came down to look for shell-fish. Sometimes they went out for half a

mile over the mud flats, but always a few minutes before the tide came

rushing in they turned and hurried to the shore. Their instincts warned

them that if they stayed any longer they would be drowned.

 

Mr. Wood had a number of pigs, and after a while Daddy was put in with

them, and a fine time he had of it making friends with the other little

grunters. They were often let out in the pasture or orchard, and when

they were there, I could always single out Daddy from among them,

because he was the smartest. Though he had been brought up in such a

miserable way, he soon learned to take very good care of himself at

Dingley Farm, and it was amusing to see him when a storm was coming on,

running about in a state of great excitement carrying little bundles of

straw in his mouth to make himself a bed. He was a white pig, and was

always kept very clean. Mr. Wood said that it is wrong to keep pigs

dirty. They like to be clean as well as other animals, and if they were

kept so, human beings would not get so many diseases from eating their

flesh.

 

The cow, poor unhappy creature, never, as long as she lived on Dingley

Farm, lost a strange, melancholy look from her eyes. I have heard it

said that animals forget past unhappiness, and perhaps some of them do.

I know that I have never forgotten my one miserable year with Jenkins,

and I have been a sober, thoughtful dog in consequence of it, and not

playful like some dogs who have never known what it is to be really

unhappy.

 

It always seemed to me that the Englishman's cow was thinking of her

poor dead calf, starved to death by her cruel master. She got well

herself, and came and went with the other cows, seemingly as happy as

they, but often when I watched her standing chewing her cud, and looking

away in the distance, I could see a difference between her face and the

faces of the cows that had always been happy on Dingley Farm. Even the

farm hands called her "Old Melancholy," and soon she got to be known by

that name, or Mel, for short. Until she got well, she was put into the

cow stable, where Mr. Wood's cows all stood at night upon raised

platforms of earth covered over with straw litter, and she was tied with

a Dutch halter, so that she could lie down and go to sleep when she

wanted to. When she got well, she was put out to pasture with the other

cows.

 

The horse they named "Scrub," because he could never be, under any

circumstance, anything but a broken-down, plain-looking animal. He was

put into the horse stable in a stall next Fleetfoot, and as the

partition was low, they could look over at each other. In time, by dint

of much doctoring, Scrub's hoofs became clean and sound, and he was able

to do some work. Miss Laura petted him a great deal. She often took out

apples to the stable, and Fleetfoot would throw up his beautiful head

and look reproachfully over the partition at her, for she always stayed

longer with Scrub than with him, and Scrub always got the larger share

of whatever good thing was going.

 

Poor old Scrub! I think he loved Miss Laura. He was a stupid sort of a

horse, and always acted as if he was blind. He would run his nose up and

down the front of her dress, nip at the buttons, and be very happy if he

could get a bit of her watch-chain between his strong teeth. If he was

in the field he never seemed to know her till she was right under his

pale-colored eyes. Then he would be delighted to see her. He was not

blind though, for Mr. Wood said he was not. He said he had probably not

been an over-bright horse to start with, and had been made more dull by

cruel usage.

 

As for the Englishman, the master of these animals, a very strange thing

happened to him. He came to a terrible end, but for a long time no one

knew anything about it. Mr. Wood and Mr. Harry were so very angry with

him that they said they would leave no stone unturned to have him

punished, or at least to have it known what a villain he was. They sent

the paper with the crest on it to Boston. Some people there wrote to

England, and found out that it was the crest of a noble and highly

esteemed family, and some earl was at the head of it. They were all

honorable