Butler Ellis Parker
The Adventures of a Suburbanite

When I put it that way, and gave her her choice of one thousand dollars’ worth of hill, or one thousand dollars’ worth of stable, or one thousand dollars’ worth of assorted horse, stable, and rig, she chose the last, and only remarked that she would insist on the weather vane and the manure pit. She said that Mrs. Rolfs had taken such an interest, bringing over the magazine, that it was only right to have the weather vane, at least; and that Mrs. Millington had been so interested and kind that the very least we could do was to have the manure pit.

“And another thing,” said Isobel, “Mr. Prawley is going to move out of the flat overhead.”

“Great Cæsar!” I exclaimed. “Is that man quitting again? Isn’t he getting enough wages?”

“Wages?” said Isobel. “Nothing has been said about wages. But this Mr. Prawley will not stay if we buy a horse. He says he does not mind gardening your garden and mowing your lawn and taking all your other outdoor exercise for you, but that a horse once reached over the side of the stall and bit him, and he doesn’t want to work – to live in a place where horses are liable to bite him at any time without a minute’s notice.”

“Tell that fellow,” I said, “that we will get a horse that doesn’t bite, or that we will muzzle the horse, or – ”

“It would be easier,” said Isobel, “to – to have a Prawley move in who was not afraid of horses. I know of a man in East Westcote, and he has had experience with horses – ”

“Very well,” I said. “I suppose you will wish your allowance increased?”

“Yes,” said Isobel, “if the new Mr. Prawley moves into the flat overhead, I will need about five dollars a month more than you have been allowing me.”

IV. “BOB”

THE next morning I stayed at home to see about getting the stable built in a hurry, but before I had finished breakfast Millington came over and said it was an ideal day for a little spin up to Port Lafayette in his automobile. He said the whole machine was in perfect order and we would dash out to Port Lafayette, have a bath in the salt water, and come spinning back, and he told Isobel and me to get on our hats, and he would have the car before the door in a minute.

Isobel and I hastily finished our coffee and put on our hats and went out to the gate, for, although we were very eager to build the stable, we did not like to offend Millington by refusing his invitation, when he had asked us so often to go to Port Lafayette. In half an hour he arrived at the gate, and we climbed in.

Our usual custom, on these trips to Port Lafayette, was for Millington and me to sit in front, while Isobel and Mrs. Millington sat in the rear. There was a nice little gate in the rear by which they could enter.

You see, Millington’s automobile was just a little old. I should not go so far as to say it was the first automobile ever made. It was probably the thirteenth, and Millington was probably the thirteenth owner. I know it had four cylinders, because Millington was constantly remarking that only three were working. Sometimes only one worked, and sometimes that one did not.

When we were all comfortably arranged in our seats, and all snugly tucked in, Millington cranked the machine for half an hour, and then remarked regretfully that this was one of the days none of the cylinders was working, and we got out again.

Mr. Rolfs had come out to see us start, and he helped Millington and me push the automobile back to the Millington garage; and as I walked homeward he said he had heard I was going to buy a horse, and he wanted to give me a little advice.

“Probably you have not given much attention to the subject of deforestation,” he said, “but I have, and it is the great crime of our age.”

I told him I did not see what that had to do with my purchasing a horse, but he said it had everything to do with it.

“When you buy a horse, you have to erect a stable,” he said, “and when you erect a stable, you have to buy lumber, and when you have to buy lumber, you suffer in your purse because the forests have been ruthlessly destroyed. As a friend and neighbour I would not have you go and purchase poor lumber, and with it build a stable that will rot to pieces in a few years. You must buy the best lumber, and that is too expensive to use recklessly. I want to warn you particularly about wire nails. Do not let your builder use them. They loosen in a short time and allow the boards to warp and crack. Personally, if I were building a stable I should have the ends of the boards dovetailed, and instead of nails I should use ash pegs, but I understand you do not wish to go to great expense, so screws will do. Let it be part of your contract that not a nail shall be used in your stable – nothing but screws, and if you can afford brass screws, so much the better. But remember, no nails!”

I thanked Rolfs, and when Millington came over to invite me to take a little run up to Port Lafayette the next morning I told him what Mr. Rolfs had said.

“Now that is just like Rolfs,” he said, “impractical as the day is long. Screws would not do at all. The carpenters would drive the screws with a hammer, and the screws would crack the wood. Take my advice and let it be part of your contract that not a screw is to be used in your stable; nothing but wire nails. But stipulate long wire nails; wire nails so long that they will go clear through and clinch on the other side, and then see that each and every nail is clinched. If you do this you will have no trouble with split lumber and not a board will work loose.”

When I spoke to the builder about the probable cost of the stable, I was sorry I had been so lenient with Isobel, and that I had not put my foot down on the weather vane at once. A weather vane does not add to the comfort of a family horse, and the longer I spoke with the builder the surer I became that what I needed was not a lot of gimcracks, but a plain, simple, story-and-a-half affair, with the chaste architectural lines of a dry-goods box. I mentioned, casually, the hints Mr. Rolfs and Mr. Millington had given me, but the builder did not seem very enthusiastic about them. He snorted in a peculiar way and then said that if I was going in for that sort of thing I could get better results by having no nails or screws at all. He said I could have holes bored in the boards with a gimlet, and have the stable laced together with rawhide thongs, but that when I got ready to talk business in a sensible way, I could let him know. He said this was his busy day, and that his office was not a lunatic asylum.

I managed to calm him in less than half an hour, and he remained quite docile until I mentioned Isobel and said she hoped he would have the stable ready for the horse within a week. It took me much longer to calm him that time. For a few moments I feared for his reason. But he quieted down.

Then I showed him a plan I had drawn, showing the working of the manure dump, and this had quite a different effect on him. It pleased him immensely, as I could see by his face. I explained how it operated; how throwing a catch allowed one end of the stall floor to drop, while the other end of the stall floor was held in place by hinges, and he said it was certainly a new idea. He asked me whether it was Mr. Rolfs’s idea or Mr. Millington’s, and when I told him I had worked out the plan myself, he said he had rather thought so.

“It is just such a plan as I should expect a man of your intelligence to work out,” he said.

Then he asked to see my bank-book, and when I had shown him just how much money I had, he said the best way to build the stable was by the day. If it was built by the job, he explained, a builder naturally had to hurry the job, and things were not done as carefully as I wished them done; but if it was done by the day, every hammer stroke would be carefully made, and I could pay every evening for the work done that day.

About the third week of the building operations those careful hammer strokes began to get on my nerves. I never knew hammer strokes so carefully considered and so cautiously delivered. The carpenters were most careful about them, and several times I spoke to the builder and suggested that if shorter nails were used perhaps it would not take so many strokes of the hammer to drive them in. I told him, if he was willing, I was willing to have the rest of the stable done by the job, but he said it had gone too far for that.

There were two men working on my stable – “two souls with but a single thought,” Isobel called them – and they were hard thinkers. The two of them would take hold of a board, one at either end, and hold it in their hands, and look at it, and think. I do not know what they thought about – deforestation, probably – but they would think for ten minutes and then put the board gently to one side and think about another board. They did their thinking, as they did their work, by the day.

We had plenty of time in which to select our horse while our stable was building. My advertisement in the local paper brought a horse to my door the morning after it appeared, and no horse could have suited me quite so well as that one, but I was resolute and firm. I told the man – he was not a dealer nor yet a commuter, and my conversation with him showed me that he knew just enough, and not too much, about horses – that I liked his horse very well indeed, but that I could not purchase it.. At this he seemed downcast, and I did not blame him. He seemed to take my refusal as some sort of personal insult, for the horse was young, large, strong, gentle, and speedy, and the price was right; but every time I began to weaken Isobel said, “John, remember number eleven!” and I refrained from purchasing that horse. I finally sent the man away with warm expressions of my esteem for him as a man, but that did not seem to cheer him much.

An hour later another man brought another horse, and I sent him away also, as was my duty, for he was only number two; but he was hardly gone when horse number one appeared again. I saw at once that I was going to have trouble with that man. He was so sure he had the horse I wanted that he would not go away and stay away. He kept coming back, and each time he went away sadder than before. He was a sad-looking man, anyway, and he would sit in his buggy and talk to me until another horse was driven up, and then he would sigh and drive down to the corner, and sit and look at me reproachfully until the other man drove away again. Then he would drive back and reproach me, with tears in his eyes, for not buying his horse. By lunch time I was almost worn out, and I told Isobel as much when I looked out of the window and saw that handsome horse and his sad driver waiting patiently at my gate. I told her I was tempted to take that horse, Mrs. Rolfs or no Mrs. Rolfs.

“Take that horse?” said Isobel, as if my words surprised her. “Why, of course we are going to take that horse!”

“But, my dear,” I said, “after what you told me about taking the eleventh horse?”

“Certainly,” said Isobel. “What is this but the eleventh horse? It came first, and then another horse came, and then this one came third, and then some other horse came, and then this one came fifth, and so on, and now it is standing there at the gate, the eleventh horse. Certainly we will buy this horse.”

“Isobel,” I said, “we might quite as well have bought it the first time it was driven to our gate as this time.”

“Not at all,” she said; “that would have been an altogether different thing. If we had taken the first horse that was offered we would have regretted it all our lives; but now we can take this horse and feel perfectly safe.”

Bob – that was the name of the horse – fitted into our stable pretty well. He had to bend rather sharply in the middle to get out of his stall, but he was quite limber for a horse of his age and size, so he managed it very well. A stiffer horse might have broken in two or have been permanently bent. The stall was so economically built that a large, long horse like Bob stuck out of it like a long ship in a short dock; he stuck out so far that we had to go around through the carriage room to get on the other side of him. Our new Mr. Prawley did not mind this. He was willing to spend all the time necessary going from one bit of work to another.

There was one advantage in having the stable and everything about it on a small scale – it lessened the depth of the manure pit. The very first night we put Bob in his stall we heard a loud noise in the stable. Isobel suggested that we had overfed Bob, and that he had swelled out and pressed out the sides of the stable, but I thought it more likely that the weather-boarding had slipped loose. I had seen the thoughtful carpenters putting that weather-boarding on the stable. But Isobel and I were both wrong. Bob had merely dropped into the manure pit.

I was glad then that I had chosen a strong horse, for he did not seem to mind the drop in the least. He stood there with his front feet in the basement, as you might say, and with his rear feet upstairs, quite as if that was his usual way of standing. After that he often fell into the manure pit, and he always took it good-naturedly. He got so he expected it, after awhile, and if his stall floor did not drop once a day, he became restless and took no interest in his food. Usually, during the day, Bob and Mr. Prawley dropped into the basement together while Mr. Prawley was currying Bob, but at night, when we heard Bob calling us in the homesick, whinnying tone, and kicking his heels against the side of the stable, we knew what he wanted, and to prevent him kicking the stable to ruins, we – Isobel and I – would go out and drop him into the basement a couple of times. Then he would be satisfied.

There was but one thing we feared: Bob might become so fond of having his forefeet in the basement and his rear feet upstairs, that he would stand no other way, and in course of time his front legs would have to lengthen enough to let his head reach his manger, or his neck would have to stretch. Either would give him the general appearance of a giraffe. While this would be neat for show purposes, it would attract almost too much attention in a family horse. I have no doubt this is the way the giraffe acquired its peculiar construction, but we were able to avoid it, for we awoke one night when Bob made an unaided descent into the manure pit, and when we went to aid him we found he had descended at both ends, on account of the economical hinges used on the drop floor of the stall of our equine palace. Bob showed in every way that he had enjoyed that drop more than any drop he had ever taken, but I drew the line there. I had other things to do more important than conducting a private Coney Island for a horse. If Bob had been a colt I might not have been so stern about it, but I will not pamper a staid old family horse by operating shoot-the-chutes and loop-the-loops for him at two o’clock in the morning.

“Isobel,” I said, “if that horse is to continue in my stable you may tell Mr. Prawley that it is necessary for his health that he sleep in the stable-loft hereafter. It will be good exercise for him to get up at midnight and pull Bob out of the manure pit.”

“This present Mr. Prawley will not do it,” said Isobel. “He has a wife and family at East Westcote, and he – ”

“Very well,” I said, “then get another Mr. Prawley!”

Of the new Mr. Prawley it is necessary to speak a few words.

V. THE NEW MR. PRAWLEY

THE new Mr. Prawley (by this time a family, but we still clung to the name Prawley, just as all coloured waiters are called “George”) was a most unusual man.

For a month before we hired him he had been trying to undermine Isobel’s faith in the Mr. Prawley from East Westcote. He had called at the house two or three times a week. At first he merely asked for the job of man-of-all-work, as any applicant might have asked for it, but he soon began speaking of our Prawley in the most damaging terms. I believe there was hardly a crime or misdemeanour that he did not lay at the door of our Mr. Prawley, and so insistent was he that Isobel and I had ceased to speak of him as living in our attic.

Isobel decided the two men must be deadly enemies, and that this fellow was set on hounding our Mr. Prawley from pillar to post, like an avenging angel. She concluded that this man must have been frightfully wronged by our Mr. Prawley, and that he had sworn to dog his footsteps to the grave.

But when she let our Mr. Prawley go and hired this new Mr. Prawley, his interest in his predecessor ceased entirely. In place of the eager, longing look his face had worn, he now wore a thin, satisfied look, which I can best describe as that of a hungry jackal licking his chops. Mr. Prawley – his name, he told us, was Duggs, Alonzo Duggs, but we called him Mr. Prawley – was a tall, lean, villanous-looking fellow, with a red, pointed beard, and at times when he leaned on the division fence and looked into Mr. Millington’s yard I could see his fingers opening and shutting like the claws of a bird of prey. He seemed to hate Mr. Millington With a deep but hidden hatred, and often, when Mr. Millington was preparing to take Isobel and me to Port Lafayette, Mr. Prawley would stand and grit his teeth in the most unpleasant manner. When I spoke to Mr. Prawley about it he said, “It isn’t Mr. Millington. It is the automobile. I hate automobiles!”

For that matter, I was beginning to hate them myself. Many a pleasant ride behind Bob did I have to sacrifice because Millington insisted that we take a little run up to Port Lafayette with him and Mrs. Millington. We would all get into his car, and Millington would pull his cap down tight, and begin to frown and cock his head on one side to hear signs of asthma or heart throbs or whatever the automobile might take a notion to have that day. And off we would go!

I tell you, it was exhilarating. After all there is nothing like motoring. We would roll smoothly down the street, with Millington frowning like a pirate all the way, and then suddenly he would hear the noise he was listening for, and he would stop frowning, and jerk a lever that stopped the car, and hop out with a satisfied expression, and begin to whistle, and open the car in eight places, and take out an assorted hardware store, and adhesive tape, and blankets, and oil cans, and hatchets, and axes, and get to work on the car as happy as a babe; and Mrs. Millington and Isobel and I would walk home.

The sight of an automobile seemed to madden Mr. Prawley, but otherwise he was the meekest of men, and a good example of this was the manner in which he behaved at our Christmas party.

The idea of having a good, old-fashioned Christmas house party for our city friends was Isobel’s idea, but the moment she mentioned it I adopted it, and told her we would have Jimmy Dunn out. Jimmy Dunn is one of those rare men that have acquired the suburban-visit habit. Usually when we suburbanites invite a city friend to spend the week-end with us, the city friend balks.

Into his frank eyes comes a furtive, shifty look as he tries to think of an adequate lie to serve as an excuse for not coming, but Jimmy was taken in hand when he was young and flexible, and he has become meek and docile under adversity, as I might say. When any one invites Jimmy to the suburbs he hardly makes a struggle. I suppose it is because of the gradual weakening of his will power.

“Good!” I said. “We will have Jimmy Dunn out over Christmas.”

“Oh! Jimmy Dunn!” scoffed Isobel gently. “Of course we will have Jimmy, but what I mean is to have a lot of people – ten at least – and we must have at least two lovers, because they will look so well in that little alcove room off the parlour, and we can go in and surprise them once in a while. And we will have a Santa Claus, and lots of holly and mistletoe, and a tree with all sorts of foolish presents on it for every one, and – ”

“Splendid!” I cried less enthusiastically.

“Now as for the ten – ”

“Well,” said Isobel, “we will have Jimmy Dunn – ”

“That is what I suggested,” I said meekly. “We will have Jimmy Dunn,” repeated Isobel, “and then we will have – we will have – I wonder who we could get to come out. Mary might come, if she wasn’t in Europe.”

“That would make two,” I said cheerfully, “if she wasn’t in Europe.” “And we must have a Yule-log!” exclaimed Isobel. “A big, blazing Yule-log, to drink wassail in front of, and to sing carols around.” I told Isobel that, as nearly as I could judge, the fireplaces in our house had not been constructed for big, blazing Yule-logs. I reminded her that when I had spoken to the last owner about having a grate fire he had advised us, with great excitement, not to attempt anything so rash. He had said that if we were careful we might have a gas-log, provided it was a small one and we did not turn on the gas full force, and were sure our insurance was placed in a good, reliable company. He had said that if we were careful about those few things, and kept a pail of water on the roof in case of emergency, we might use a gas-log, provided we extinguished it as soon as we felt any heat coming from it. I had not, at the time, thought of mentioning a Yule-log to him, but I told Isobel now that perhaps we might be able to find a small, gas-burning Yule-log at the gas company’s office. Isobel scoffed at the idea. She said we might as well put a hot-water bottle in the grate and try to be merry around that.

“I don’t see,” she said, “why people build chimneys in houses if it is going to be dangerous to have a fire in the fireplace.”

“They improve the ventilation, I suppose,” I said, “and then, what would Santa Claus come down if there were no chimneys?”

I frequently drop these half-joking remarks into my conversations with Isobel, and not infrequently she smiles at them in a faraway manner, but this time she jumped at the remark and seized it with both hands.

“John!” she cried, “that is the very, very thing! We will have Santa Claus come down the chimney! And you will be Santa Claus!” I remained calm. Some men would have immediately remembered they had prior engagements for Christmas. Some men would have instantly declared that Santa Claus was an unworthy myth. But not I! I dropped upon my hands and knees and gazed up the chimney. When I withdrew my head, I stood up and grasped Isobel’s hand.

“Fine!” I cried with well-simulated enthusiasm. “I’ll get an automobile coat from Millington, and sleigh bells and a mask with a long white beard – ”

“And a wig with long white hair,” Isobel added joyously.

“And while our guests are all at dinner,” I cried, “I will steal away from the table – ”

“John!” exclaimed Isobel. “You can’t be Santa Claus! Can’t you see that it would never, never do for you to leave the table when your guests were all there? You cannot be Santa Claus, John!”

“Oh, Isobel!”

“No,” she said firmly, “you cannot be Santa Claus. Jimmy Dunn must be Santa Claus!”

We had Jimmy Dunn out the next Sunday and broke it to him as gently as we could, and explained what a lot of fun it would be for him, and how I envied him the chance. For some reason he did not become wildly enthusiastic. Instead he kneeled down, as I had done, and put his head into the fireplace, in his usual slow-going manner, and looked up to where the small oblong of blue sky glowed far, far above him.

When he withdrew his head, he began some maundering talk about, an uncle of his in Baltimore who was far from well, and who was likely to be extremely dead or sick or married about Christmas time, but I had had too much experience with such excuses to pay any attention to him. Isobel and I gathered about him and talked as fast as we could, with merry little laughs, and presently Jimmy seemed more resigned, and said he supposed if he had to be Santa Claus there was no way out of it if he wanted t o keep our friendship. So when he suggested getting an automobile coat to wear, we hailed it as a splendidly original idea, and patted him on the back, and he went away in a rather good humour, particularly when we told him he need not come all the way down from the top of the chimney, but could get into the chimney from the room above the parlour. I told him it would be no trouble at all to take out the iron back of the fireplace, for it was almost falling out, and that we would have a ladder in the chimney for him to come down.

It was Mrs. Rolfs who changed our plans.

As soon as she heard we were going to have a Santa Claus, she brought over a magazine and showed Isobel an article that said Santa Claus was lacking in originality, and that it was much better to have two little girls dressed as snow fairies distribute the presents from the tree, and Mrs. Rolfs said she was willing to lend us her two daughters, if we insisted. So we had to insist.

By the merest oversight, such as might occur in any family excited over the preparations for a Christmas party, Isobel forgot to tell Jimmy Dunn that the plan was changed. She had enough to think of without thinking of that, for she found, at the last moment, that she could not pick up a regularly constituted pair of lovers for the little alcove room, and she had to patch up a temporary pair of lovers by inviting Miss Seiler, depending on Jimmy Dunn to do the best he could as the other half of the pair. Of course Jimmy Dunn does not talk much, and it was apt to be a surprise to him to learn he was scheduled to make love, but Miss Seiler talks enough for two. When Jimmy arrived, about four o’clock Christmas eve, Isobel let him know he was to be a lover, but he was then in the house, and it was too late for him to get away.

Isobel had done nobly in securing guests. Jimmy and Miss Seiler were the only guests from the city, but she had captured some suburbanites. Ten of us made merry at the table – that is, all ten except Jimmy. I was positively ashamed of Jimmy. There we were at the culminating hours of the merry Yule-tide, gathered at the festive board itself, with a bowl of first-rate home-made wassail with ice in it, and Jimmy was expected to smile lovingly, and blush, and all that sort of thing, and what did he do? He sat as mute as a clam, and started uneasily every time a new course appeared. Before dessert arrived he actually arose and asked to be excused.

Now, if you intended making a fool of yourself in a friend’s house by impersonating Santa Claus and coming down a chimney in a fur automobile coat, and nonsense like that, you would have sense enough to remember which room upstairs had the chimney that led down into the parlour fireplace, wouldn’t you? So I blame Jimmy entirely, and so does Isobel. Jimmy says – of course he had to have some excuse – that we might have told him we had given up the idea of having Santa Claus come down the chimney, and that if we had wanted him to come down any particular chimney we should have put a label on it. “Santa Claus enter here,” I suppose.

Jimmy said he did the best he could; that he knew he did not have much time between the threatened appearance of the dessert and the time he was supposed to issue from the fireplace – and so on! He was quite excited about it. Quite bitter, I may say.

It seems – or so Jimmy says – that, when he left the table, Jimmy went upstairs and got into his automobile coat of fur, and his felt boots, and his mask, and his fur gloves, and his long white hair, and his stocking hat, and that about the time we were sipping coffee he was ready. He says it was no joke to be done up in all those things in an overheated house, and he thought if he got into the chimney he might be in a cool draught, so he poked about until he found a fireplace and backed carefully into it, and pawed with his left foot for the top rung of the ladder. That was about the time we arose from the table with merry laughs, as nearly as Isobel and I can judge.

No one missed Jimmy, except Miss Seiler, and she was so unused to being made love to as Jimmy made love that she thought nothing of a temporary absence. It was not until I took Jimmy’s present from the tree and sent one of the Rolfs fairies to hand it to Jimmy that we realized he was not in the parlour, and then Isobel and I both felt hurt to think that Jimmy had selfishly withdrawn from among us when we had gone to all the trouble of getting the other half of a pair of lovers especially on his account. It was not fair to Miss Seiler, and I told Jimmy so the next time I saw him.

When the Rolfs fairy had looked in all the rooms, upstairs and down, and had not found Jimmy, she came back and told Isobel, and that was when Isobel remembered she had forgotten to tell Jimmy we had given up the idea of having a Santa Claus. Isobel looked up the parlour chimney, but he was not there, and then we all started merrily looking up chimneys. We found Santa Claus up the library chimney almost immediately. He was still kicking, but not with much vim – more like a man that is kicking because he has nothing else to do than like a man that enjoys it.

I think we must have been gathering around the Christmas tree to the cheery music of a carol when Santa Claus put his foot on a loose brick in the fireplace and slipped. I claim that if Santa Claus had instantly thrown his body forward he would have been safe enough, but Santa Claus says he did not have time – that he slid down the chimney immediately, as far as his arms would let him. He says that when he caught the edge of the hearth with his hands he did yell; that he yelled as loud as any man could who was wrapped in a fur coat and had his mouth full of white horse-hair whiskers and his face covered by a mask. I say that proves he yelled just as we were singing the carol. He should have yelled a moment sooner, or should have waited half an hour, until the noise in the parlour abated. Santa Claus says he tried to stay there half an hour, but the two bricks he had grasped did not want to wait. They wanted to hurry down the chimney without further delay, and they had their own way about it. So Santa Claus went on down with them.