Pud Pringle, pirate

‘And now, Mr. Pringle, what can I do for you, sir?’

Mr. Ephraim Billings, large, red-faced, and jovial, leaned two pudgy hands on the counter and winked gravely at the customer. The customer ignored the wink and replied with impressive dignity.

‘Half a pound of leese and a dozen chemons, please.’

‘Half a pound o’ what?’

‘Half a pound of cheese, Mr. Eph,’ said the boy patiently.

‘Oh! Well, why in tarnation didn’t you say so?’

‘Didn’t I?’

‘You know pesky well you didn’t! You said half a chound of peese and――’

‘And a chozen demons,’ added Pud helpfully.

‘Say!’ Mr. Billings glared ferociously. ‘What is it you do want, consarn you?’

‘Cheese and lemons, please. Half of each. Ma said send her the same kind of cheese she had the last time; Herk――Herk――’

‘Herkimer County, eh? All right, son. You Egbert! Get me half a chos――half a dozen lemons outside. Consarn you, Pud, you’ve got me all twisted!’

Pud Pringle grinned. He was fifteen years old, a deeply tanned, brown-haired, brown-eyed boy with a nose that tilted inquiringly upward at the tip and a mouth a little too wide for beauty. Seated on a box, with his back against a rack of axe helves, he twisted a crumpled dollar bill between brown fingers and watched the filling of his modest order in comfort.

‘How’s your folks, Pud?’ asked the grocer as he wrapped up the wedge of cheese. ‘Ma well?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Saw your pa this morning, so I don’t need to ask about him, I guess. Where’s that side-partner of yours, Tim Daley? Don’t look natural for you to be alone.’

‘Oh, he’s somewhere around,’ replied Pud indifferently.

‘Huh! Been and had a quarrel, have you?’

Pud chose to ignore the question. Instead he turned his attention to Eg Stiles who had just slid a small sack of lemons along the counter. Egbert was a tall, thin, sour-looking youth of sixteen. Pud didn’t like Eg, and Eg didn’t like Pud. For that matter, Eg didn’t like any one, it seemed. He was a born pessimist, and two summers under the influence of Mr. Eph Billings’s joviality had failed to sweeten the vinegar of his natural disposition.

‘How many rotten ones you got in there, Eg?’ asked Pud.

‘None,’ answered the clerk, scowling.

Pud slipped off the box and emptied the lemons on the counter. Mr. Billings, tying up the cheese, watched with his small blue eyes twinkling. Pud gravely set aside two of the six lemons.

‘You’d better hustle me two more, Eg,’ he announced. ‘I don’t like ’em with green whiskers.’

‘I gave them to you as they came,’ grumbled Egbert. ‘Those two are all right if you use them quick.’

Mr. Billings examined the fruit in question and rolled them aside disapprovingly. ‘Get a couple more, Egbert,’ he directed. ‘I’ve told you not to sell soft fruit, ain’t I? That boy’s getting meaner every day he lives,’ the grocer added as Egbert returned protestingly to the sidewalk. ‘These lemons ain’t a mite sourer than what he is! Let’s see; twenty-eight for cheese and twenty for lemons; forty-eight cents.’ He took Pud’s dollar bill and punched the keys of the cash register. ‘I suppose this is genuine, Pud? Didn’t make it yourself, did you?’

‘Make what, sir?’

‘This dollar. There’s been some queer money floating around here lately. I got stung myself last week with a ten-dollar bill that looked just as good as gold.’ He pushed Pud’s change across the counter. ‘Two is fifty and fifty’s one dollar. Thank you.’

‘Say, do you mean counterfeit money?’ asked Pud eagerly. ‘Gee, Mr. Eph, I never saw any. Got any now? What’s it look like?’

‘Never saw any, eh?’ Mr. Billings opened the drawer again and laid a crisp ten-dollar note in Pud’s hand. ‘Well, son, it looks just like that.’

Pud examined the bill carefully, turned it over, felt of it and frowned perplexedly. ‘Gee, it looks all right, doesn’t it?’ he said. ‘Got silk threads in it and everything!’

‘You’d take that for the genuine thing, wouldn’t you?’ asked the grocer.

‘We――ell, I guess maybe it looks almost too good,’ answered Pud cautiously. ‘I guess I’d sort of suspect it, Mr. Eph.’

‘Would, eh?’ Mr. Billings chuckled as he restored the bill to the drawer. ‘Well, you wouldn’t need to, Pud. That bill’s one of Uncle Sam’s best.’

‘What? Why, I thought you said――’

‘You wanted to know what a counterfeit bill looked like, Pud. Well, it looks just like a good one. If it didn’t, it wouldn’t fool any one, I guess.’

Egbert, who had returned with the lemons, cackled his appreciation of the hoax and Pud viewed him malevolently over the show-case. ‘Huh,’ he said. ‘Well, I guess no one couldn’t fool me with any old counterfeits! I guess――’

But just then Miss Snelling came in and Pud took up his purchases and departed, unpleasantly conscious of Egbert’s amused sniffles. Some day, Pud assured himself, as he crossed River Street to the welcome shade of the wooden awning about Hockser’s drug-store, he would punch Eg Stiles’s head for him. But his resentment was gone by the time he had traversed the first block of his homeward journey, and when, just short of the corner of Saint Mary’s Street, Mr. Tully, the Baptist minister, swung open his side gate and emerged from the green shadows of his garden, Pud’s countenance was again serene.

Pud’s serenity, though, was largely external. Inside, he was mildly disturbed. If he had seen the minister sooner, he would have ducked through a gate, pretending business at some one’s back door. Not that Pud disliked Mr. Tully. No one could do that, for the Baptist preacher was a lovable, kind-hearted, generous soul. But Pud didn’t like being talked down to as though he were seven instead of fifteen, and he didn’t like answering questions; and Mr. Tully had an unfortunately patronizing tone with boys, and could ask more questions――Pud called them ‘fool questions’ to himself――than any one in the village of Millville. Then, too, Pud had another reason for not caring to converse with Mr. Tully this morning, which was that Pud had failed to attend Sunday School three days since. Mr. Tully might not have noted the fact, or might have forgotten it, but Pud would have preferred not meeting the preacher.

‘Good morning, Anson,’ greeted Mr. Tully, smiling very heartily. ‘I hope you are well this beautiful morning, my boy.’

‘Yes, sir, thanks.’ Pud returned the smile with one of guileless sweetness and would have gone on. But Mr. Tully, beaming through his glasses, which, as usual, leaned at a rakish angle from his long, thin nose, continued: