Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 January 1916 — Tender-Hearted [ARTICLE]

Tender-Hearted

“Where’s the man Friday I provid-ed-you .With before I went away?” was one of .the first questions that Miss Belinda’s brother asked her on his return to their country home from an eastern trip. “I’ve taken a lot of satisfaction thinking all the time I was gone that you had a man to relieve you of the hardest work in the garden, but he doesn’t seem to be in evidence anywhere.” Miss Belinda as a rule scorns to’ use slang, but now she cast a reproachful glance at fi’er brother and said: “Ben, don’t you ever dare wish on me again anything resembling that horrid Peter. When I have any hard work to do I’ll hire some one myself to do it, thank you. That man almost gave me nervous prostration.” “He did? Where is he?” “I’m happy to say that 1 don’t know where he is. I gave him a week’s pay and told him to leave at once.” “He must have been pretty trying if you were forced to eject him so violently,” laughed Ben. “What were his particular idiosyncrasies?” “Call them idiotisms. The most objectionable thing about him was the strangely tender heart.” “Why that sounds harmless.” "Perhaps it does. But you don’t know the form his tender-heartedness took. For instance, I told him to put paris green on those choice late potatoes we have been trying this year, and when I went down into the garden after being in town a day or two I found the plants simply riddled by potato bugs. “Peter why didn’t you put on the paris green?" I asked. "‘I hadn’t the heart to kill them poor little bugs,’ he said. ‘They ain’t never done me no harm.’ “ ‘I suppose you wouldn’t kill a fly, either,’ I remarked with some heat. “ ‘Not unless he was buzzing round me peskylike,’ replied Peter, virtuously. ‘I ain’t no hand to take the life of no poor critter without cause.’ “Notwithstanding this declaration of principle, I instructed him to drown old Tabby’s latest batch of kittens, for it seemed the only way to dispose of them, as no one in the neighborhood would accept one as a gift, and we don’t want any more cats around here molesting our' birds. I didn't* wish to be present at the obsequies, so I walked over to the village, and when I returned I asked Peter if he had attended to the matter. "•Yes, Miss Belinda, them poor little kittens are gone,’ he answered solemnly. " ‘Did you drown them in the brook?’ I asked, I suppose from a sort of morbid curiosity. " ‘No, indeed, ma’am. I hadn’t the heart to drown ’em.’ “‘Then what did with them?’ I demanded. “‘I just burled ’em ma’am.’ "Imagine how I felt. I was so indignant that I didn’t dare trust myself to speak." "Then you didn’t chase him away for that?” "No, it vas a day or two later. I saw him walking away from the barn with a dead dove in his hand. “ ‘Why, what’s that? Did somebody shoot a dove?’ I asked Peter, 'thinking immediately that one of- the boys from the summer hotel had been out with an airgun. "'No, ina’arn; it wasn’t shot,’ explained Peter. ‘You know, I had this here dove for a sort of a pet, and it got real tame,-but ftymade such a darned mournful noise I couldn’t stand it. The dove made me feel so bad that I just had to kill it. I’ve got awful tender feelings, so when it was making that mournful noise a few minutes ago I just took it and, wrung its neck.’. "Ben, did you ever hear of anything equal to that?” "I should have thought the complexity of Peter’s character would have interested a student of psychology like yourself,” returned Ben. Miss Belinda cast a withering glance at her brother. "The only thing that interested me in Peter was his departure,” she snapped. Again she found relief for her feelings in slang. “His retreating figure certainly looked good to me,” remarked Miss Belinda.