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You're goin' to run the house the way I say, or I'll know why. If you can't do it, I'll get them in that can. An' me and Dike, we're goin' back to our wheat and our apples and our hogs. Yessir! There ain't a bigger man-size job in the world." Chug Scaritt took his dose of war with the best of them, but this is of Chug before and after taking.
They expected you to squeeze their waist when you danced with them, and so you did. You didn't have to think about what you were going to say to them. Mrs. Scaritt suspected in a vague sort of way that Chug was "running with the hired girls." The thought distressed her. She was too smart a woman to nag him about it. She tried diplomacy. "Why don't you bring some young folks home to eat, Chug?
I like to fuss around for company." She was a wonderful cook, Mrs. Scaritt, and liked to display her skill. "Who is there to bring?" "The boys and girls you go around with. Who is it you're always fixing up for, evenings?" "Nobody." Mrs. Scaritt tried another tack. "I s'pose this house isn't good enough for 'em? Is that it?" "Good enough!" Chug laughed rather grimly.
"I'd like to know what's the matter with it!" There was, as a matter of fact, nothing the matter with it. It was as spick and span as paint and polish could make it. The curtain-stretching days were long past. There had even been talk of moving out of the house by the tracks, but at the last moment Mrs. Scaritt had rebelled. "I'll miss the sound of the trains. I'm used to 'em.
We have lots of doylies and silver on the table, but very little to eat. We never could afford a meal like this. We're sort of crackers-and-tea codfish, really." "Oh, now, Miss Weld!" Chug's mother was aghast at such frankness. But Chug looked at the girl. She looked at him. They smiled understandingly at each other. Scaritt, "so's Chug could go to high school." And "I know it.
Chug Scaritt came home in September. The First National Bank Building seemed, somehow, to have shrunk. And his mother hadn't had all that gray hair when he left. He put eager questions about the garage. Rudie had made out, all right, hadn't he? Good old scout. "The boys down at the garage are giving some kind of a party for you. Old Rudie was telling me about it.
Chug Scaritt escaped being one of these by a double margin. There was his business responsibility on one side; his very early history on the other. Once you learn the derivation of Chug's nickname you have that history from the age of five to twenty-five, inclusive. No one ever dreamed of addressing him by that misnomer, unless you except his school teachers.
Chug Scaritt, had he cared to open his lips and speak, might have poured forth such chronicles as to make Spoon River sound a pæan of sweetness and light.
You'll be fixing to send him to college, next." "Well, if I do? Then what?" "Then you're crazy," said Len, without heat, as one would state a self-evident fact. That afternoon Mrs. Scaritt went down to the office of the Eagle and inserted a neat ad.
For years afterward you never passed the Scaritt place without seeing the long skeleton frames of wooden curtain stretchers propped up against the back porch in the sun. Mrs. Scaritt became famous for her curtains as an artist is known for his middle distances, his woodland green, or his flesh tones.
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