I'd hate to
think that we WASTED any bombs."
"Come now,--all of you,--off to bed," interposed Mrs. Vick. "I
don't want to hear any more, Courtney. I wouldn't sleep a wink."
"Strikin' ten," said Amos, arising from his rocking-chair and
turning it upside down at the back of the porch.
"Don't do that, Amos," protested old Caleb. "It'll NEVER rain if
you--Why, dog-gone it, ain't you learned that it's bad luck to turn
a chair bottom-side up when rain's needed? Turn it right-side up
and put it right out here in front again where the rain can get at
it. Nothin' tickles the weather more'n a chance to spoil something.
That's right. Now we c'n go to bed. Better leave them cushions on
the steps too, Rosie."
Courtney Thane went to his room,--the spare-room on the second
floor,--and prepared to retire. The process was attended by the
smoking of three cigarettes. Presently he was stretched out on the
bed without even so much as a sheet over him. The heat was stifling.
Not a breath of air came in through the wide-open windows. He lay
awake for a long time, staring out into the night.
"So my precious granddad had a yellow streak in him, did he?
And father wasn't much of a fighter either. Takes more than two
generations to wipe out a yellow streak, does it? I wonder what
the old boob meant by that rotten slam at my people."
CHAPTER IV
DOWD'S TAVERN
The last week in August Courtney Thane left the Vick farm and,
crossing the river, took lodgings at the boarding house conducted
by the Misses Dowd in the town of Windomville.
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