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In the course of an hour both lads had returned to Mrs. Cahill's humble home. But while they were away from the show grounds, the owner of the show, without the knowledge of the lads, had paid a visit to the principal of the school and was back on the lot in time to head the parade when it finally started. "Kinder wish I had gone in the parade," regretted Teddy. "Why?" "Good place to show off."
"Here's the Scotch and sodas, lieutenant," he panted. "I couldn't get 'em any sooner. The men wanted to take 'em off me to drink Miss Cahill's health." "So they shall," said Ranson. "Tell them to drink the canteen dry and charge it to me. What's a little thing like the regulations between friends? They have taught me my manners. Mr. Cahill," he called. The post-trader returned from the veranda.
To his horror that day he met Frank Owen O'Connell, one of the most notorious of all the younger agitators, in the main street of the little village. O'Connell's back sliding had been one of Father Cahill's bitterest regrets. He had closed O'Connell's father's eyes in death and had taken care of the boy as well as he could.
For an instant, under the cover of the counter, Cahill's hand touched longingly upon the gun that lay there, and then passed on to the bottle beside it. He drew it forth, and there was the clink of glasses. In the other room Mary Cahill winked at the major, but that officer pretended to be both deaf to the clink of the glasses and blind to the wink. And so the incident was closed.
It seemed an interminable time before Ranson raised his eyes from Miss Cahill's palm to her father's face. What he read in them caused Cahill to drop his hand swiftly to his hip. Ranson saw the gesture and threw out both his hands. He gave a hysterical laugh, strangely boyish and immature, and ran to place himself between Cahill and the door. "Drop it!" he whispered.
The workmen, who were of various nationalities Carriere an Indian, old Cahill an Irishman, a Scotchman, and a Mennonite, who thumped the mud mortar with a dogged perseverance that was quite amusing were all engaged on this chimney. One day I heard Carriere contradict an assertion of Cahill's with regard to the work, calling it "a d d lie!"
For nearly an hour Miss Cahill lay awake listening to her father moving about in the shop below. Never before had he spoken roughly to her, and she, knowing how much the thought that he had done so would distress him, was herself distressed. In his lonely vigil on the veranda, Ranson looked from the post down the hill to where the light still shone from Mary Cahill's window.
Laughing and chatting, the boys settled themselves on Mrs. Cahill's hospitable doorstep to await the arrival of the parade which could be heard far off on the other side of the village. Now and then the high, metallic notes of the calliope rose above all the rest, bringing a glint of pride to the eyes of Teddy Tucker. "I just love that steam music machine."
Cahill's arrival was seen by Major, who, after waiting all day in a drenching rain, began to think his condition rather critical; accordingly, at nine o'clock in the evening he set out to force his way to Brashear, where he was expecting to find Green.
The Sparling Combined Shows came rumbling into Edmeston at about three o'clock the next morning. But, early as was the hour, two boys sat on the Widow Cahill's door-yard fence watching the wagons go by.
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