Well Celestina remembered the day when at dinner
the little old man had choked violently, turning purple in the face in
his fight for breath. She had rushed to his side, terror-stricken, but
between his spasms of coughing the inventor had gasped out:
"Why make so much fuss over what's gone down the wrong way, Tiny?
Think--of--the--things--I've--swallered--all--these--years--that
have--gone down--right!"
The observation was characteristic of Willie's creed of life. He never
emphasized the exceptions but always the big, fine, elemental good in
everything.
Even the name by which he went had been bestowed on him by the
community as a term of endearment. There were, to be sure, other men
in the hamlet whose names had passed into diminutives. There was, for
example, Seth Crocker, whose wife explained that she called him Sethie
"for short." But Sethie's name was never pronounced with the same
affectionate drawl that Willie's was.
No, Willie had his peculiar niche in Wilton and a very sacred niche it
was.
What marvel, therefore, that Celestina reverenced the very earth which
he trod and cheerfully put up with the strings, the wires, the spools,
the tacks, and the pulleys; that she shifted the meals about to suit
his convenience; and that when she was awakened at midnight by a
rhythmic hammering which portended that the inventor had once again
"got kitched with a new idee" she smiled indulgently in the darkness
and instead of cursing the echoes that disturbed her slumber whispered
to herself Jan Eldridge's oft-repeated prediction that the day would
come when Willie Spence would astonish the scoffers of Wilton and would
make his mark.
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