The Glass Village Read Online Free

banged the door.
    â€œYou’ll have to make quite a speech today to impress that boy,” remarked Johnny. “What’s that sign?”
    The house next to Burney Hackett’s was a red-painted clapboard with drawn white blinds, sitting primly in the sun. A sign on a wrought-iron stand in the front yead read PRUE PLUMMER-ANTIQUES AND OLD BUTTONS. Everything needed paint.
    â€œWell, there’s enterprise,” said Johnny.
    â€œPrue makes out. Sells an occasional piece in summer, when there’s some traffic between Cudbury and Comfort, but mainly she does a small year-round mail order business in antique buttons. Prue’s our intellectual, has some arty Cape Cod friends. She’s tried to interest Aunt Fanny Adams in ’em with no luck. Aunt Fanny says she wouldn’t know what to say to them, ’cause she doesn’t know anything about art. It’s just about killed Prue,” chuckled the Judge, “having a national art celebrity as a lifelong neighbor and not being able to turn her into a profit. There’s Orville Pangman.”
    â€œJudge, don’t introduce me as Major Shinn.”
    â€œAll right, Johnny,” said the Judge quietly.
    They had rounded the stone fence separating the Plummer lot from the Pangman farm and were trudging past the small farmhouse toward the big red barns. A huge perspiring man in bib overalls was in the barn doorway, wiping his face.
    â€œâ€™Scuse my not shakin’ hands,” he said when the Judge introduced Johnny. “Been cleanin’ out the manure troughs. Millie feedin’ ye all right, is she, Judge?”
    â€œFine, fine, Orville,” said the Judge. “What do you hear from Merritt?”
    â€œSeems to like the Navy a lot more than he ever did farmin’,” said Orville Pangman. “Raise two sons, one of ’em enlists in the Navy and the other’s too lazy to scratch.” He shouted, “Eddie, come ’ere!”
    A tall skinny boy of seventeen with great red hands appeared from the interior of the barn.
    â€œEddie, this is the Judge’s kin from N’York, Mr. Shinn.”
    Johnny said hello.
    â€œHello,” said Eddie Pangman. He kept looking sullenly at the ground.
    â€œWhat are you going to do when you graduate next year, Eddie?” asked Judge Shinn.
    â€œDunno,” said the Pangman boy, still studying the ground.
    â€œGreat talker, ain’t he?” said his father. “He don’t know. All he knows is he’s unhappy. You finish cleanin’ those milkin’ machines, Eddie. I’ll be right along.”
    â€œHear we’re due for a rain tomorrow, Orville,” said the Judge as Eddie Pangman disappeared without a word.
    â€œAya. But the forecast for the summer’s dry.” The big farmer scowled at the cloudless sky. “Another dry summer’ll just about finish us off. Last September we lost practic’ly the whole stand of feed corn; rains came too late. And there wasn’t enough hay in the second cuttin’ to see us through Christmas. Hay’s been awful scarce. If it happens again …”
    â€œDon’t ever be a farmer, Johnny,” said the Judge as they walked back toward Shinn Road. “Here’s Orville, with the best farm around if you recognize degrees of indigence, good herd of Brown Swiss, Guernseys, and Holsteins, makes almost ten cans, and it’s a question if he can hang on another year. Things are even sorrier for Hube Hemus, Mert Isbel, and the Scotts. We’re withering on the vine, Johnny.”
    â€œYou’re really setting me up, Judge,” complained Johnny. “For a time there I thought you had designs on me.”
    â€œDesigns?” asked the Judge innocently.
    â€œYou know, getting me up here so you could talk to me like a Yank uncle, pump some blood into my veins. But you’re worse than I am.”
    â€œAm I?” murmured the Judge.
    â€œYou almost