Read Online Johnny Tremain by Esther Hoskins Forbes - Free Book Online Page B

Tweedie was diffidently standing about in the shop, hoping Mrs. Lapham would ask him to breakfast. He was fingering a pocketbook sent in for a new clasp, and his stomach was rolling from hunger.
    'Heh!' said Johnny rudely. The timid creature jumped like a shot rabbit and dropped the pocketbook.
    'What are you doing here?' the boy demanded, pretending he had caught a thief.
    Mr. Tweedie swallowed twice, his Adam's apple rising and falling with emotion, but said nothing.
    'Are you a thief or are you that Tweedie man I've heard tell of?'
    'I'm Tweedie.'
    'I'm Johnny Tremain.'
    'You don't say.'
    'I'll tell Mrs. Lapham you're here—for breakfast.'
    'I just happened by—just thought I'd come in.' He had a queer, squeaky voice. Johnny disliked him even more than he had expected. Such impotence, such timidity in a grown man irritated the boy.
    'Oh, come out with it flat,' he said. 'You've been getting your dinners here free for two weeks and now you're feeling out for breakfast. I don't care, not me. But I'll warn the women to put on an extra plate.'
    The man said nothing, but he looked at Johnny and the look of bleak hatred amazed the boy. He had not guessed Mr. Tweedie had that much gumption in him.
    Mrs. Lapham came thumping down the stairs. It was her second trip to the foot of the attic ladder and she still wasn't sure Dove and Dusty were out of bed. Everything had gone wrong. Breakfast was late. Madge had a felon on her finger and wasn't good for anything and Dorcas was complaining because there was no butter for breakfast. She had slapped Dorcas, who had gone out back to cry. How easily, smoothly everything had gone in the old days before Johnny got hurt! Then the household went like clockwork and the shop had earned money for butter and butcher's meat once or twice a week. The sight of Johnny Tremain standing there in the lower hall doing nothing, good for nothing, irritated her.
    'Hurry,' she snorted and waddled into the kitchen, Johnny on her heels. The fire was smoking and she knelt down to mend it. Johnny might have done that while she was upstairs.
    Although Johnny was now looked upon as something of a black sheep and Mrs. Lapham was no longer telling him he would end up picking rags, but on the gallows, he thought it behooved him to tell her just what he thought of Mr. Tweedie.
    'I can see why that Tweedie has never been a master smith. He hasn't the force of character. As a man he's no good—if he is a man, which I doubt. I think he is somebody's spinster aunt dressed up in men's clothes.'
    Mrs. Lapham heaved herself to her knees and brushed back her streaming hair with a red forearm.
    'You don't say!' Her voice showed her exasperation. She had found Mr. Tweedie herself. She was trying to nurse him along, to get the wary creature to sign her contract and marry one of her girls.
    'Yep, I do say,' said Johnny. 'I've just been talking with him. He's no good and—'
    'He's here now?'
    'Yep. In the shop. That squeak-pig is trying to horn in on breakfast.'
    The doors were all open. Anyone in the shop could have heard Johnny's insults.
    Slowly, like a great sow pulling out of a wallow, Mrs. Lapham got to her feet, glaring down at Johnny, her enormous bosom heaving.
    'And I'm going to tell you what I think of that squeak-pig.' Without a word and before he could finish his remarks or dodge, Mrs. Lapham gave him a resounding cuff on the ear.
    'Sometimes actions do speak louder than words,' she said, 'and this is one of them times. You get right out of here, Johnny Tremain. That tongue of yours isn't going to do any more damage in
my
house.'
3
    Johnny grabbed his jacket (Cilla had not yet put food in it), pulled his tattered hat over his eyes, and stalked out.
    Since his accident he had unconsciously taken to wearing his hat at a rakish angle. This, and the way he always kept his right hand thrust into his breeches pocket, gave him a slightly arrogant air. The arrogance had always been there, but formerly it had