Ted and the Telephone, Sara Ware Bassett [read book .TXT] 📗
- Author: Sara Ware Bassett
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Nevertheless, in spite of this, there were intervals when Ted did wish he might exchange houses with Mr. Laurie. Not that Ted Turner coveted the big colonial mansion, or its fountains, its pergolas, its wide lawns; but he did love gardens, flowers, trees, and sky, and of these he had very little. He was, to be sure, fortunate in living on the outskirts of the village where he had more green and blue than did most of the mill workers. Still, it was not like Vermont and the unfenced miles of country to which he had been accustomed. A small tenement in Freeman's Falls, even though it had steam heat and running water, was in his opinion a poor substitute for all that had been left behind.
But Ted's father liked the new home better, far better, and so did Ruth and Nancy, his sisters. Many a time the boy heard his father congratulating himself that he was clear of the farm and no longer had to get up in the cold of the early morning to feed and water the stock and do the milking. And Ruth and Nancy echoed these felicitations and rejoiced that now there was neither butter to churn nor hens to care for.
Even Ted was forced to confess that Freeman's Falls had its advantages. Certainly the school was better, and as his father had resolved to keep him in it at least a part of the high-school term, Ted felt himself to be a lucky boy. He liked to study. He did not like all studies, of course. For example, he detested Latin, French, and history; but he revelled in shop-work, mathematics, and the sciences. There was nothing more to his taste than putting things together, especially electrical things; and already he had tried at home several crude experiments with improvised telegraphs, telephones, and wireless contrivances. Doubtless he would have had many more such playthings had not materials cost so much, money been so scarce, and Ruth and Nancy so timid. They did not like mysterious sparks and buzzings in the pantry and about the kitchen and told him so in no uncertain terms.
"The next thing you know you'll be setting the house afire!" Ruth had asserted. "Besides, we've no room for wires and truck around here. You'll have to take your clutter somewhere else."
And so Ted had obediently bundled his precious possessions into the room where he slept with his father only to be as promptly ejected from that refuge also.
"You can't be spreadin' wires an' jars an' things round my room!" protested Mr. Turner with annoyance.
"You can't be spreadin' wires an' jars an' things round my room!" protested Mr. Turner.
Page 9.
It did not seem to occur to him that it was Ted's room as well,—the only room the boy had.
Altogether, his treasures found no welcome anywhere in the tiny apartment, and at length convinced of this, Ted took everything down and stowed it away in a box beneath the bed, henceforth confining his scientific adventures to the school laboratories where they might possibly have remained forever but for Mr. Wharton, the manager of the farms at Aldercliffe and Pine Lea.
CHAPTER II
TED RENEWS OLD TIMES
Mr. Wharton was about the last person on earth one would have connected with boxes of strings and wires hidden away beneath beds. He was a graduate of a Massachusetts agricultural college; a keen-eyed, quick, impatient creature toward whom people in general stood somewhat in awe. He had the reputation of being a top-notch farmer and those who knew him declared with zest that there was nothing he did not know about soils, fertilizers, and crops. There was no nonsense when Mr. Wharton appeared on the scene. The men who worked for him soon found that out. You didn't lean on your hoe, light your pipe, and hazard the guess that there would be rain to-morrow; you just hoed as hard as you could and did not stop to guess anything.
Now it happened that it was haying time both at Aldercliffe and Pine Lea and the rumor got abroad that the crop was an unusually heavy one; that Mr. Wharton was short of help and ready to hire at a good wage extra men from the adjoining village. Mr. Turner brought the tidings home from the mill one June night when he returned from work.
"Why don't you try for a job up at Aldercliffe, my lad?" concluded he, after stating the case. "Ever since you were knee-high to a grasshopper you had a knack for pitching hay. Besides, you'd make a fine bit of money and the work would be no heavier than handling freight down at the mills. You've got to work somewhere through your summer vacation."
He made the latter statement as a matter of course for a matter of course it had long since become. Ted always worked when he was not studying. Vacations, holidays, Saturdays, he was always busy earning money for if he had not been, there would have been no chance of his going to school the rest of the time. Sometimes he did errands for one of the dry-goods stores; sometimes, if there were a vacancy, he helped in Fernald and Company's shipping rooms; sometimes he worked at the town market or rode about on the grocer's wagon, delivering orders. By one means or another he had usually contrived, since he was quite a small boy, to pick up odd sums that went toward his clothes and "keep." As he grew older, these sums had increased until now they had become a recognized part of the family income. For it was understood that Ted would turn in toward the household expenses all that he earned. His father had never believed in a boy having money to spend and even if he had every cent which the Turners could scrape together was needed at home. Ted knew well how much sugar and butter cost and therefore without demur he cheerfully placed in the hands of his sister Ruth, who ran the house, every farthing that was given him.
From childhood this sense of responsibility had always been in his background. He had known what it was to go hungry that he might have shoes and go without shoes that he might have underwear. Money had been very scarce on the Vermont farm, and although there was now more of it than there ever had been in the past, nevertheless it was not plentiful. Therefore, as vacation was approaching and he must get a job anyway, he decided to present himself before Mr. Wharton and ask for a chance to help in harvesting the hay crops at Aldercliffe and Pine Lea.
"You are younger than the men I am hiring," Mr. Wharton said, after he had scanned the lad critically. "How old are you?"
"Fourteen."
"I thought as much. What I want is men."
"But I have farmed all my life," protested Ted with spirit.
"Indeed!" the manager exclaimed not unkindly. "Where?"
"In Vermont."
"You don't say so! I was born in the Green Mountains," was the quick retort. "Where did you live?"
"Newfane."
Instantly the man's face lighted.
"I know that place well. And you came from Newfane here? How did you happen to do that?"
"My father could not make the farm pay and we needed money."
"Humph! Were you sorry to give up farming?"
"Yes, sir. I didn't want to come to Freeman's Falls. But," added the boy brightening, "I like the school here."
The manager paused, studying the sharp, eager face, the spare figure, and the fine carriage of the lad before him.
"Do you like haying?" asked he presently.
"Not particularly," Ted owned with honesty.
Mr. Wharton laughed.
"I see you are a human boy," he said. "If you don't like it, why are you so anxious to do it now?"
"I've got to earn some money or give up going to school in the fall."
"Oh, so that's it! And what are you working at in school that is so alluring?" demanded the man with a quizzical glance.
"Electricity."
"Electricity!"
"Wireless, telegraphs, telephones, and things like that," put in Ted.
For comment Mr. Wharton tipped back in his chair and once more let his eye wander over the boy's face; then he wheeled abruptly around to his desk, opened a drawer, and took out a yellow card across which he scrawled a line with his fountain pen.
"You may begin work to-morrow morning," he remarked curtly. "If it is pleasant, Stevens will be cutting the further meadow with a gang of men. Come promptly at eight o'clock, prepared to stay all day, and bring this card with you."
He waved the bit of pasteboard to and fro in the air an instant to be certain that the ink on it was dry and afterward handed it to Ted. Instinctively the boy's gaze dropped to the message written upon it and before he realized it he had read the brief words:
"Ted Turner. He says he has farmed in Vermont. If he shows any evidence of it keep him. If not turn him off. Wharton."
The man in the chair watched him as he read.
"Well?" said he.
"I beg your pardon, sir. I did not mean to read it," Ted replied with a start. "I'm very much obliged to you for giving me the job."
"I don't see that you've got it yet."
"But I shall have," asserted the lad confidently. "All I asked was a chance."
"That's all the world gives any of us," responded the manager gruffly, as he drew forth a sheet of paper and began to write. "Nobody can develop our brains, train our muscles, or save our souls but ourselves."
With this terse observation he turned his back on the boy, and after loitering a moment to make sure that he had nothing more to say, the lad slipped away, triumphantly bearing with him the coveted morsel of yellow pasteboard. That its import was noncommittal and even contained a tang of skepticism troubled him not a whit. The chief thing was that he had wrested from the manager an opportunity, no matter how grudgingly accorded, to show what he was worth. He could farm and he knew it and he had no doubt that he could demonstrate the fact to any boss he might encounter.
Therefore with high courage he was promptly on hand the next morning and even before the time assigned he approached Stevens, the superintendent.
"What do you want, youngster?" demanded the man sharply. He was in a hurry and it was obvious that something had nettled him and that he was in no humor to be delayed.
"I came to help with the haying."
"We don't want any boys as young as you," Stevens returned, moving away.
"I've a card from Mr. Wharton."
"A card, eh? Why didn't you say so in the first place? Shell it out."
Shyly Ted produced his magic fragment of paper which the overseer read with disapproval in his glance.
"Well, since Wharton wants you tried out, you can pitch in with the crowd," grumbled he. "But I still think you're too young. I've had boys your age before and never found them any earthly use. However, you won't be here long if you're not—that's one thing. You'll find a pitchfork in the barn. Follow along behind the men who are mowing and spread the grass out."
"I know."
"Oh, you do, do you! Trust people your size for knowing everything."
To the final remark the lad vouchsafed no reply. Instead he moved away and soon returned, fork in hand. What a flood of old memories came surging back with the touch of
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