The Limb of Satan

The future of the new church looked bright. After the first service in the meetinghouse that they had built with their own hands, the congregation milled around the door in an orgy of mutual congratulation. The men of Nashoba’s Second Parish shook Josiah’s hand and promised to give of their treasure. The women vowed to arrange a Sabbath school.

Isabelle was proud of her father, and even Julia Gideon smiled. Five-year-old Horace was overjoyed. He leaned against his grandmother as she sat at the organ, her knees swelling the volume to its loudest for the final chords of “Sweet Saviour, Bless Us Ere We Go.” When her feet stopped bouncing on the treadles, the bellows inside the organ whined down the scale and Josiah strode up the aisle to thank her.

Laughing, Eudocia stood up and bobbed a curtsey, and Horace, perceiving that the preacher had come straight out of a storybook called the Bible, trailed after Josiah as he walked back down the aisle. At the other end of the church, Horace saw Uncle Eben climb a ladder with a rope in his hand and disappear through a hole in the ceiling. Cleverly, Horace guessed that Mr. Kibbee had pulled the rope so hard that it had fallen right off the bell. And Horace was right, because in a moment the bell tonked and Uncle Eben climbed down again. When his uncle grasped the rope and pulled, Horace put his hands on it, too, and sailed joyfully up and down as the bell began to ring in earnest.

But it was time to go. Alexander spoke kindly to Isabelle, saying, “I’ll be back later this afternoon to see James.” Then Ida, Alexander, Eben, Eudocia, and Horace set off for home in the spring wagon. They were none too soon. Ida ran upstairs at once because Gussie was screaming at the top of her lungs. Ida’s sister handed over the baby gratefully. “I’m never going to get married,” said Sallie, “nor have a baby, neither.”

In the kitchen, Eudocia went to work on Sunday dinner. “Horace dear,” she said, handing him a bundle of spoons, knives, and forks, “you can set the table.”

Horace grabbed the bundle, hurried into the dining room, and began slapping them down on the tablecloth—here a fork, there a knife, there a spoon. When the cat bounded up on the table, Horace knew at once what to do. He said, “No, no, kitty,” and picked it up around the middle. At once, the cat screeched and clawed his face. Bawling, Horace tried to drop it, but its claws were hooked into his coat and he couldn’t wrestle free. Spoons, knives, and forks clattered on the floor.

Eudocia came running, plucked away the cat, and consoled the weeping boy, murmuring, “It’s all right, Horace dear.” Horace whimpered, but soon he was thumping around on his knees, collecting scattered knives and forks.

Eudocia was devoted to her grandson. Summing him up, she had a private list of Horace’s virtues and faults:

1.	Horace has a loving nature.
2.	He has a cheerful disposition.
3.	But he’s a limb of Satan.

Well, “limb of Satan” was what everybody said about their little boys. “Oh, that child is a limb of Satan.”

And yet it wasn’t really naughtiness when Horace climbed up on the mantelpiece and all the pretty vases smashed on the floor; or when he crawled into the clock case and bent the pendulum; or when he rocked so wildly in the rocking chair that it tipped over backward and went to pieces.

Whenever Ida despaired of her only son, Eudocia said, “It’s just high spirits.” And therefore when Horace climbed into her lap after dinner with his favorite storybook, she gathered him close and said, “I know the one you want, Horace dear.”

“The billy goats,” said Horace, beaming.

For the twentieth time, she read him the story of “Three Billy Goats Gruff,” those good little goats who were afraid to cross the bridge because a wicked troll lived underneath. As always, Horace trembled and hid his face against his grandmother’s bosom when she turned to the picture of the wicked troll, a fiend with burning eyes and sharp, tearing claws.

Then Eudocia opened a different book to another favorite, “The Three Little Pigs.” This one was enlivened by a picture of the wolf. Like the troll, it had sharp claws and a terrible jaw. Horace looked at the picture and hid his face, then looked again. When Ida came downstairs with Gussie in her arms, he bounced off his grandmother’s lap and ran to his mother, wanting to be picked up.

“No, no, dear,” said Eudocia, but he clung to Ida’s skirts and whimpered.

With the baby squirming on her shoulder and Horace clutching at her apron, Ida was distracted. When Alexander came running downstairs with his doctor’s bag, she pleaded, “Oh, please, my dear, won’t you take him along?”

“Oh, yes, sir, please, sir, please, please,” cried Horace. He abandoned his mother’s apron and tugged at his stepfather’s coat.

Alexander looked down at him doubtfully. “Will you promise me, Horace, that you’ll be a good boy?”

“Oh, yes, sir, yes, yes, I will,” promised Horace, plunging away and reaching up to pull his coat off the hook.

Eudocia buttoned the coat close under his chin and felt in the pockets for his mittens. They were not there. “Horace, what have you done with your mittens?”

Horace laughed and shouted, “The three little kittens, they lost their mittens.”

Eudocia smiled and shook her head. “Horace dear, this isn’t Mother Goose. It’s turned right cold out there.”

“Come on, Horace,” said Alexander. “Just keep your hands in your pockets. Where’s Eben?”

Not until Mab was harnessed and hitched up to the wagon again did Eudocia come running out with her hands tucked into her shawl. “Alexander, you’re not going to Nashoba to see James?”

“Why, yes, I am,” said Alexander. “That’s just where we’re going.”

Horace scrambled up to sit beside Eben, and Eudocia laid her hand on Alexander’s arm. “You won’t let him inside, will you, Alexander? Horace must not be allowed to go inside.”