"Well, I declare if Abe isn't the most forgetful boy I ever saw!" exclaimed Mrs. Perkins, as she emptied the contents of a large market-basket upon the kitchen table. "This makes the second time he's been to town and back this week, and he's forgotten that soda both times. Jimmy!" she called out to a freckle-faced boy who was making the old dog walk around the kitchen floor on its hind feet, "climb up to the top pantry shelf and see if there's any spice left in those tin boxes."
"What are you going to make, ma?" languidly inquired a pale girl who sat by the stove shaking with a chill.
"Why, I intended to make a cake for the new preacher's donation-party," answered Mrs. Perkins. "That's what the committee askedfor—marble-cake and biscuits. Did you find anything, Jimmy?"
"No'm. They're all empty." The boy jumped down and went back to the patient old dog, which he now converted into a wheelbarrow and trundled around on its clumsy fore paws.
"What shall I do!" exclaimed Mrs. Perkins, in despair. "There's not a speck of spice or soda in the house."
This was before the days of baking-powder, and it was eight miles to the nearest town.
"I'll tell you," answered Maria, with her teeth chattering. "Let Abe saddle old Blaze and go up to Doctor Spinner's. He always keeps such things on hand, and we can send for some more quinine at the same time."
"And be about as likely to get soap and knitting-needles as anything else!" replied her mother, with a frown. "It's a pity a boy as old as Abe is can't be trusted to remember anything!"
"Let Jimmy go," suggested Maria. "It's only three miles, and he can easily get back by dinner-time."
"Yes," said Mrs. Perkins, "I don't know ofany reason why he shouldn't be trusted with the horse, and he can be depended on to do the errand a sight better than Abe."
Jimmy's freckled face beamed with delight. He had expected to spend the morning hoeing in the garden. He had been waiting the last half-hour for his father to call him and set him at work; but it was not the prospect of escaping a disagreeable task or of cantering along the road on the old blaze-faced horse that pleased him most. It was the fact that his mother and Maria regarded him as more trustworthy than Abe, and Abe was nearly grown.
He had never before so completely appreciated his true worth nor felt such a sense of his own importance as when his mother entrusted him with the errand, and gave him a message for the doctor's wife. Maria's words of praise were still in his ears when he ran down the path, hitching up a broken suspender as he went.
"What are you up to now?" inquired Abe, as Jimmy walked into the barn in a lordly way and took down the saddle.
"Up to takin' a ride," answered Jimmy, in a way that nettled his older brother.
"Not on that saddle, you ain't!" retorted Abe. "I'm goin' to mill."
"Then you'll have to ride bareback," was the cool reply. "I'm goin' on an errand for mother, and, what's more, I'm goin' to have the saddle. Can't I, pa?" he asked, as his father came in.
"No, Jimmy," answered his father, when both boys had stated the case. "Abe is bigger, and he's got the farthest to go."
Abe laughed provokingly. "I don't care!" muttered Jimmy. "Youcouldn't be trusted to do the errand. Mother said so. So you needn't laugh."
Abe's face flushed. He knew his failing, and did not like to be reminded of it.
"You can take Maria's side-saddle!" called Mr. Perkins, as he went on out to the corn-crib.
"Better not," remarked Abe. "It's brand-new, and she'd feel awful bad if anything should happen to it. It might get spoiled."
Jimmy did not want to take it, and had not intended to do so, but the spirit of contrariness seemed to have possession of him. That remark settled the matter. "You might spoilit," he said, "but I guess Maria'll trust me to bring it home safe, if I am ever so much smaller than you!"
Presently, seated astride the new side-saddle, Jimmy rode up to the kitchen door.
"You don't care if I take it, do you?" he called to Maria. She wrapped herself more closely in the heavy shawl, and came out into the warm sunshine, her teeth still chattering.
"No, I guess not," she said, putting out her shaking hand to feel the soft plush of the cushioned seat. "Isn't that a pretty shade of red? It's the handsomest one in the township. Oh, don't forget, Jimmy; mother said to ask Doctor Spinner to put up another bottle of tonic like that he gave me last spring."
"All right!" said Jimmy, impatient to be off.
Digging his heels in old Blaze's sides, he started down the road on a gallop. This was too lively a gait for the old horse to sustain long, and she soon settled down to a steady walk.
For the first half-mile Jimmy sat very erect, with a growing sense of his own importance and superiority over his brother Abe. Then heyielded to the gracious influence of the sweet spring morning, and, throwing one foot over the pommel of the saddle, began to whistle in answer to a redbird's call.
Presently he tired of riding sidewise, and by the time he reached the field where the Fishback boys were dropping corn he was up on his knees. Inspired by spectators, he urged his horse to go faster and faster, and scrambling to his feet as he came up with them, passed them with a cheer. They stopped their work long enough to look after him and wave their hats until he disappeared around a bend in the road.
"It's a mighty nice thing," he thought, complacently, "to be able to ride around the country this way, when everybody else has to work."
By this time he had reached the bridge across Pigeon Creek. It was shallow enough to ford at this place, and he concluded to try it. Clattering down the bank, he rode into the water with a splash. Overhead the great branches of the sycamore-trees leaned across the stream and met each other. It was cool and shady, and so still that the only sound he could hear wasthe gurgling noise old Blaze made as she bent her head to drink.
Suddenly a shrill whistle made him start so violently that he almost lost his balance, and clutched at the loosened bridle to save himself from falling. Looking in the direction of the whistle, he saw two big bare feet dangling from a sycamore limb that hung half-way across the stream. Glancing up, he saw the owner of the feet. It was Coon Mills, the laziest, most "trifling" fellow in that part of the country—so everybody said.
There was no need to ask him what he was doing, when the white blossoms of the dog-wood-trees had been proclaiming for a week, from every hill and hollow, that the fishing season had begun. His luck as a fisherman was as proverbial as his laziness.
"What have you got?" called Jimmy. For answer Coon held up a string of catfish, so large that Jimmy gave a long whistle.
"I've jes' been a-pullin' 'em out as fast as I could throw in my line," he said. "Thar hain't been nothin' like it sence ole Noah's time."
"My! You must be a-seein' fun," saidJimmy, watching him enviously as he baited his hook and tossed it into the water. "Wouldn't I like to try it, though!"
"Come on, if yer want ter," answered Coon. "Thar's another line in my basket, and you kin cut a pole from the sprouts agin that stump down yender."
"I ought to be a-goin'. I've got an errand to do," answered Jimmy. "But I would like to haul in just one."
"Oh, come on!" insisted Coon. "You can spare ten minutes, can't you?"
There was an attractiveness about this overgrown, good-natured fellow that all the smaller boys found irresistible. Jimmy could have said "no" to any of his younger companions, but he was flattered by Coon's notice, and an invitation from him was a temptation beyond his strength to resist.
A few minutes later old Blaze was tied to a sapling. Another pair of feet dangled from the sycamore limb, another line dipped into the water, and unbroken silence reigned again along the shady river.
A quarter of an hour passed, but Jimmy, with his eyes intent on the bobbing cork, tookno notice of the flight of time. Then a thrill went through him as he felt a pull on his line, and in his excitement he almost fell off his perch into the water.
"It's the biggest fish of the season!" Coon declared, as he helped haul it in. "You're in luck, Jim; you'd better try it agin."
Old Blaze gnawed the bark off the sapling as far as she could reach, and then stamped and whinnied in vain. Still Jimmy sat on the sycamore limb, confident of success after his first great triumph, and unable to tear himself away without one more trophy.
Coon drew up his line at intervals, and each time Jimmy's determination to catch one more increased. The minutes slipped by, but he did not notice them, nor did he realize that the sun was nearly overhead.
Suddenly, the unmistakable notes of a dinner-horn echoed through the woods. Startled into the consciousness that he had idled away the whole morning, Jimmy started for the bank in such haste that his feet slipped on the smooth bark, and he fell across the limb. He scrambled desperately around, and managed to draw himself up again, but in doing so lost his holdon the fish. He saw it go tumbling into the water.
A hearty laugh from Coon followed him down the bank and along the road, as he galloped furiously away.
Mrs. Spinner thought somebody must be dying or dead when she saw Jimmy come dashing up to the house in such haste, and hurried out to ask the news.
"The doctor's just gone," she said, after he had told his errand, and delivered his mother's message. "He had a call down to old Mr. Wakeley's, and left in the middle of his dinner. Law me, it's too bad! You'd better wait, though. He'll likely not be gone very long. Come in and have something to eat, won't you?"
Jimmy's inclination was to refuse, but his hunger overcame his bashfulness, and he followed Mrs. Spinner into the kitchen.
She had already eaten her dinner, and kept on with her work, pausing often, in her busy going back and forth, to give him some dish, or hospitably urge him to help himself.
"You'd better go into the office to wait," she said, as he pushed his chair back from thetable. "The doctor'll surely be along pretty soon."
The little room, standing by itself in the front yard, did double duty as office and drug-store. Jimmy sat down on the bench beside the door, and studied the odd assortment of bottles on the opposite shelves. He counted them and read all the labels. Then he saw a case of dentist's instruments lying on the table. He examined these curiously, fitting the forceps on each of his teeth, and then looked around for other sources of amusement.
Several books with leather bindings lay on the desk, and he sat down to look at them. Books were few in the Perkins household, and the first one he opened proved very entertaining. It was an illustrated work on anatomy, and he was soon completely absorbed in the interesting pictures of bones and muscles.
The afternoon was sultry and still. A few flies buzzed on the window-pane. Just outside the door an old hen clucked and scratched for her downy yellow brood. Jimmy could look out and see some one ploughing in a distant field, and hear a lusty voice at intervals, calling, "Gee! Haw! W'-o-a!" to the yoke of oxen.
After a long while, when sitting so still had made him drowsy, he went to the door and looked up and down the road. No one was in sight. Even the sun had gone behind a cloud. He began to grow uneasy, as he thought of his mother waiting impatiently for the soda to begin her baking.
"If the doctor isn't here by the time I finish looking at the books," he said to himself, "I'll go anyway, without waiting for Maria's medicine."
He went back to his chair and turned to the pictures again. Presently he began to yawn. Then his eyelids drooped, and his head nodded so low that it rested on the open book upon the table. He knew nothing more until he felt Mrs. Spinner shaking him by the shoulder. He started up to find the little office nearly dark.
"I plumb forgot all about you," Mrs. Spinner said, "until the doctor sent word he couldn't come home to-night. Old Mr. Wakeley's a-dying. You'd better hurry away, for there's a heavy thunder-storm coming up."
She weighed out the soda and spices, wrapping each package separately, and then tied them together in one bundle. It was about themiddle of the afternoon when Jimmy had gone to sleep. Now the sun had set. The sky was black with clouds, and as he hurriedly mounted his horse and tied the bundle to the horn of the saddle he heard a distant rumble of thunder. Old Blaze was as anxious to get home as her rider, and needed little urging to make her travel her fastest.
They were going directly toward the storm. By the time they had travelled a mile and a half its full force was upon them. The wind blew furiously and whirled the dust along the road in blinding columns. It twisted and tossed the tall trees as easily as if they had been bushes. Great limbs swayed wildly, and now and then one crashed to the ground. Once, when she was a colt, old Blaze had been hit by a falling branch in a thunder-storm, and had never forgotten the terror of it. Now, as a vivid glare of lightning blinded her, she reared, plunged forward, and then stood trembling, with dilated eyes and quivering nostrils.
They were in the midst of a thick wood. No amount of urging would induce the mare to go on, and Jimmy got down to lead her. Something of the horse's fear seemed to becommunicated to the boy. He was naturally brave, but the ferocious power of the storm awed him into utter fear.
The rain poured harder and harder. Jimmy was wet to the skin, and the water ran down in streams from his hat brim. He pushed ahead for a long time, wondering why he did not come to the creek. Instead of reaching open country, he seemed to be getting deeper into the woods. Then he remembered that two bridle-paths led into the main road—one directly into it, the other around the base of the hill. He had taken the wrong path and was travelling in a circle.
By the time he reached his starting-point again the storm had abated. The wind did not blow so hard, and the thunder had gone growling away toward the eastern hills. He led the horse up to a stump, climbed into the saddle, and this time started on the right path homeward.
As he rode down the lane a lantern glimmered in the dooryard and moved toward the barn. "Well, youaira purty fellow!" called Abe's voice. "Mother's mighty nigh wildabout you. She jest now sent me down to git a horse to go out and hunt you."
Jimmy slid from the saddle without saying anything. When Abe saw how pale and wet he was, he added, in a kinder tone, "I'll put the horse up. You take your things and strike for the house."
He lifted the lantern in order to see to untie the package, and then gave an exclamation of astonishment.
"Well, I wisht you'd look! The rain has melted every bit of that soda. There's nothin' left but the bag. And the spice is all sp'iled, too. My gracious!" he added, after another look, "it's run down all over the saddle, and taken the colour out. My! Won't Maria be mad? It's eternally ruined! Well, I must say I like your way of doin' errands!"
It was a very penitent, humble boy who crept into the kitchen and gave a shamefaced account of the day's doings. Maria, who had sat with her face hidden in her apron during the storm, shuddering at the thought that he might be out in it alone, ran to get him some dry clothes, without a word of reproach about the saddle.
"I'll save enough out of the garden truckto get it re-cushioned," he promised. "Sure I will, Maria."
But Maria gave him a little squeeze. "Don't you worry about that, Jimmy," she said, "so long as you got home safe. It don't make so much difference about the soda, either, for we got word this afternoon that the donation-party has been put off."
His self-respect was restored by such a warm reception, and his spirits rose until he began to think he was something of a hero, after all. As he ate the supper his mother had been keeping hot for him, she and Maria listened sympathetically to his account of the storm.
Abe, who had come in from the barn and was drying his boots by the fire, said nothing, but his quizzical smile was more provoking than words. It reminded Jimmy of the boastful speech he had made that morning.
He grew red in the face, stopped talking, and soon made an excuse to slip away to bed. As he lay listening to the rain on the roof, he said to himself, "I wisht I hadn't bragged so about doin' errands better than Abe! He'll never be done a-hinting to me about soda and side-saddles!"
"Blamethat pig-headed Schmidt!"
Squire Hardy was in the sitting-room talking to his wife. "To think of his kickin' just because the little schoolma'am is bound to celebrate the day! Her askin' for nothing except leave to use the schoolhouse! Confound him! The rest of the Germans'd be patriotic enough—they are all 'round these parts—if Schmidt wa'n't so everlastingly down on us, and used his influence with the rest!"
"He's a well-meaning, peaceable neighbour, Hiram," said the squire's wife, placidly.
"So's horses and cows. Gimme folks that's got some public spirit in 'em. Think of the men that took up the land all round these parts whenwe come in—all full of Fourth of July. I wisht they hadn't been so keen to sell out at a profit—that's the worst of us Americans. When they sold out, of course the Germans come in,—couldn't blame 'em a mite,—an' Schmidt he come fust, an' he bejuggled all the rest. An' he's pretty nigh bejuggled the Gateses and two or three other American families like 'em, that's gettin' more like Schmidt year by year. Why, there ain't been a mite of public improvement done this ten year back."
"Oh, now, Hiram, we've got the post-office."
"Yes—much thanks to the rest of 'em! It was me worked and kicked and badgered till I got them a tri-weekly mail, and much use they make of it!"
The squire gazed at the post-office as he spoke. It consisted of an ash "seketary" in one corner of the sitting-room, and was much more than commodious enough for the few letters and newspapers that came to Hardyville three times a week, brought from the county town, eight miles away, by a carrier with a gig. The squire was delivering his opinions as usual while waiting for the carrier to appear.
"I don't rec'lect much public improvements ever bein' in Hardyville," said Mrs. Hardy, drily.
"There would 'a' been," said her husband, testily. "There would 'a' been if the Americans had kept on. To think of them beginning to sell out and move furder west—just as they were gettin' their land into shape for havin' some time to themselves to improve things! Thank goodness, theydidput up the church and schoolhouse—I guess we'd never have had neither if it wasn't for the American spirit here when this settlement begun."
"Sho, Hiram? You can't say but what the German folks keeps the church and schoolhouse going."
"Going—yes, going to rack and ruin all the same! Schoolhouse leakin' like sixty—and catch 'em taxin' themselves for a new roof! I wonder Miss Atworth can stay in the place—her and the children mirin' shoe-mouth deep in mud to get to school in the winter! Nary a rod of corduroy will they lay to give their own young ones a decent walk. But they keep their cattle comfortable enough—that means money in their pockets. All they care about is havingtheir corn and stock turn out well. They don't care if the hull township, and the hull Union, too, for that matter, was to go to the dogs. Hello! here comes Jack with the mail-bag!"
A little while later Squire Hardy was in the act of distributing the bag's small contents, when two farmers walked in without even stopping to stamp the mud off their cowhide boots. Mrs. Hardy kept on placidly knitting beyond the fireplace; she was used to such invasions of the sitting-room, from which she had removed the carpet soon after the post-office was granted to the sleepy settlement.
"Draw up to the fire, Mr. Gates," she said, hospitably. "Take that rocker, Mr. Schmidt."
Mr. Gates kicked his feet against the andirons to rid them of clay and snow.
"Cold day," he remarked, settling his coon-skin cap more firmly on his head. "What's this I hear about the new teacher?"
"Well, what?" snapped the squire, looking around.
"Some say she's dead sot on gettin' up them doin's on Washington's Birthday."
man standing by fireplace"MR. GATES KICKED HIS FEET AGAINST THE ANDIRONS"
"Well, s'pose she is?" said the squire. "She ain't askin' nothin' but the schoolhouse for an evening, and I've got power to let her have that. I'm school agent, ain't I?"
"I don't say the contrary. But to my way of thinkin', she's just a-wastin' time over a lot of foolishness. Hey, Schmidt?"
"Yah, das ist so!" assented the man in the rocking-chair, as he took his pipe from his mouth. "I tolt mein poy I shust dook him oudt of school and put him to voork ven I hear some more of dose grazy idees."
"Crazy? Nothing crazy about it!" interrupted the old squire, hotly. "I'll just tell you, gentlemen, it was a mighty good deed old Abel Dawson quit teaching here. He'd run along in the same old rut for the last ten year, till things had just about dried up. I made a visit to 'em last fall. I put some questions to the scholars, too. There wa'n't but four out of the hull of 'em that was exactly sure who the President of these United States was. Nary one could name the Vice-President!"
"Dey lairn goot vot vos in de book," said Schmidt.
"Yes!" roared the squire. "Abel stood over them with a rod, and frightened the spelling-book into 'em till they could say it off,back'ards or forrards. But they was like a lot of skeered parrots that didn't understand what theywassaying."
"Dot vos more goot as learn 'em yoost foolishness—badriodism und der flag und all dot plab 'bout der country und der Union."
"Look out, now, Schmidt! I ain't goin' to set still and hear you calling patriotism 'blab.' I tell you in only nine weeks Miss Atworth's got the poor little souls waked up. They never knew before that theyhada country. History and geography mean something to them now. She'll make intelligent citizens out of 'em if you'll keep your hands off. I'm out in my guess if she don't give this whole township a shakin' up before this thing is over, and teach 'em some public sperit."
Mr. Gates gave a sniff. "They say she's had a piano hauled out from the city, too," he said. "Hope she don't intend to levy on the parents to pay for it. She'll get nothing out of me. I'll tell her that right now."
"Shucks!" cried the squire, as he handed Schmidt hisZeitung. "Neither ofyouneedn't worry. She's too smart to expect to get blood out of turnips."
"Vell, all I haf to say," was Schmidt's parting remark, as he wound his blue woollen muffler about his neck, "if she keeps on mit dose voolishness, I dake mein Karl oudt of school, right avay alretty. Dot vos better dot he voork as to vaste his time so."
"Poor little Miss Atworth!" sighed Mrs. Hardy, as she watched the two men tramp off together. "I'm powerful glad she's boarding with us. The whole neighbourhood is down on her new-fangled ways. I'm going right out now and make something extry nice and hot for supper. It's pretty near sundown, and she'll come in soon all wore out with her day's work."
The little teacher did need the good cheer and "extry nice" supper that awaited her in the cosy kitchen, for she had felt much discouraged as she trudged homeward through the falling snow. Her pupils had nearly all been telling her the same thing that day. It was that their parents scouted the idea of helping her to celebrate Washington's Birthday.
She had come from a distant town to teach the Hardyville school in hope to lay up enough money to complete her art course; but now it seemed to her that something more importantthan art demanded her services and the small sum she had saved. The dull, colourless lives of the children appealed irresistibly to her sympathies, and she was often amazed at the utter absence of any spirit of patriotism.
"How could the poor children learn patriotism?" said Mrs. Hardy. "Their parents don't feel it, except for their Vaterland. And certainly nothing has been done by the public round here to make the children love this country. Such lives! The parents get up before daylight, and dig till dark. They usually force the boys and girls to live like overworked horses. All they think of is making money. That big room up-stairs in the schoolhouse was built for a public hall. It has not been opened for fifteen years for any kind of an entertainment, not even a magic lantern show. It is the same old treadmill existence year in and year out. The children don't get their lives brightened—no public holidays are celebrated here, not even the Fourth of July. How can they love the country?"
"I shall certainly give them something better," Miss Atworth had said, and the upshot was her determination to celebrate Washington'sBirthday. The indifference or hostility of the parents had but roused her American spirit, even to the resolve that she would bear the entire expense herself, if none would contribute from their plenty.
"Ten dollars," she reflected, "will buy decorations and material for costumes and stage curtains. Another ten will rent a piano. Most of the children have never even seen one. All my spare time must go to getting up the entertainment, and all my savings, too. Well, I'm glad—I guess I can give up so much for my country. It will be worth while if I can make its 'Father's' birthday the greatest gala day these poor little souls have ever known."
Not a particle of encouragement did she get from any of the parents except Peter Dowling, a one-armed veteran of the Civil War, and he was much more discouraging than he meant to be.
"Go on, I wish you luck, young lady," he would observe. "You can count on me for anything a one-armed man can do. But what's the use? I've tried and tried to get some 'Merican sentiment into these youngsters.'Tain't no go—and never will be. But you can count on me to hooray for you all the same. I'll be thar if nobody else is."
"Maybe you tried to scold them into patriotism, as the squire does," said the little teacher. "I don't think that's the best way."
"It didn't work, anyhow," said the veteran, and walked away.
Miss Atworth's programme, besides the decoration of the schoolhouse, comprised tableaux and the recitation of patriotic poems and addresses by her larger pupils. But most of the children soon received strict orders to hurry home at four o'clock, to attend to the milking and evening chores. They were also kept at work till the last possible minute in the morning. But with only noon-time and recess for practising their parts, her enthusiasm worked wonders.
"It ought to be a grand success," said Miss Atworth, as she took a final approving survey of the decorations the afternoon of the twenty-first. "Only it's a little too warlike. I wish I had an old-fashioned pruning-hook to hang across that sword between the windows."
"Mr. Schmidt has one," volunteered SarahGates. "But he's so mad about our wasting so much time, as he calls it, that it's as much as a fellow's head is worth to ask him for it. I heard him tell pa he was going to keep Karl at home to-morrow night. Isn't that mean?"
"Keep Karl at home!" cried Miss Atworth, in dismay. "He couldn't be so mean as that!"
Karl was the brightest pupil in her room—a big, manly boy of sixteen. He was kept at home every spring and fall to help with the work, although his father was not poor. She had taken an especial interest in him from the first, had drilled him carefully in his declamation, and counted on him as the star of the entertainment.
"Pa wasn't going to let me come, either," continued Sarah, "till ma told him you'd picked me out of all the school to be the Goddess of Liberty, and that I was going to have a gold crown on, and gold stars spangled over my dress. Ma's awful proud because I was chosen to be a goddess."
The little teacher smiled. She was not without worldly wisdom, and had given Sarah such a prominent part in the hope that it might conciliate the whole Gates family. Fortunatelynothing was required of the goddess but long hair and a pretty face—about all Sarah had to boast of. She simply could not learn.
Miss Atworth locked the door and started rapidly homeward. What should she do if Karl must be left out of the performance? A quarter of a mile brought her to the lane leading from the pike to the Schmidt place, and there she stopped with sudden resolve.
"I'll beard that old lion in his den, and ask him for his pruning-hook. That will be an excuse for going, and will give me an opportunity to plead Karl's cause."
It was nearly dark when Miss Atworth ran up the squire's front walk, and danced through the house into the kitchen.
"Oh, such luck!" she cried, gaily. "I went to see Mr. Schmidt, and some good angel prompted me to speak to him in German. It was such bad German—perhaps that's what pleased him. Anyway it thawed him right out. He lent me his pruning-hook, and showed me over his big barn. Of course I admired his fine cattle, and then, as he got more and more pleased at my showing such an astonishing lot of sense, I praised Karlso highly that he made a complete surrender. He is coming to-morrow night to bring the whole Schmidt family, from the oldgrossmutter, to the baby. Hurrah for Washington's Birthday!"
Never had the old public hall held such an astonished and delighted audience as the one that crowded into it that memorable night. Gay festoons of bunting, countless little flags, and wreaths of evergreen transformed the dingy old place completely.
A large picture of Washington placidly beamed from its place of honour. Over and around it, reaching almost across the stage, was draped a great silken flag, borrowed for the occasion.
Peter Dowling, in his old blue army clothes, with one sleeve pinned across his breast, sat far back, looking bewildered by the wonders the little teacher had accomplished.
Miss Atworth had arranged the programme with great tact. Each child felt prominent, and those who, she secretly knew, would be failures in anything else, were honoured beyond measure when she skilfully grouped them into a series of effective historical tableaux.
"It's enough to make even a graven image feel patriotic," whispered Squire Hardy to his wife, as the children's sweet voices made the room ring with the grand old national airs.
Declamations followed each other in rapid succession. Then came a scene, with recitations, in which Uncle Sam and all the States of the Union took part. The very air seemed charged with the little teacher's electrical spirit of patriotic enthusiasm.
It was at its height when Karl came forward to give the famous speech of Patrick Henry. His delivery was so much better than the rehearsals had led her to expect that even Miss Atworth was surprised. He seemed to find an inspiration in the crowd. A storm of applause followed the "Give me liberty or give me death."
"What shall we do?" she whispered in dismay as the persistent clapping of many hands called him back. "I wish you had prepared for an encore."
"Oh, I know!" said Karl, and in another instant was on the stage again.
In the deep hush that followed, his clear, musical voice rose in German. He was reciting"Mein Vaterland." Old grandmothers who knew but a few words of English rocked themselves back and forth in excited delight; Mr. Schmidt beamed with vast smiles; many an eye grew dim, thinking of the old beloved home across the seas. But the boy was thinking of his own native country. There was no mistaking his meaning, as he turned in closing, to wave his hand toward the portrait and the flag:
"My Fatherland!" he cried with true feeling, and then, after a moment of general surprise, deafening applause broke out.
As it subsided Miss Atworth stepped forward to announce the last song, but Peter Dowling, his face aflame with new delight and old memories, rose, stalked up the aisle as if unconscious of all the eyes fixed on him, and swung himself up on the high platform with one long step.
"Friends," he began, "I've been livin' kind of dead among ye for many's the year. Now I want to say a word or two. I ain't no great at speechifyin', but these old songs and pieces we've been a-listenin' to have spirited me up like the trumpet doos an old war-horse."
As he spoke he waved the stump of his right arm so vigorously that the empty sleeve was torn from its pinning across his breast and flapped pathetically.
"I want to say," he went on, "that I fit for that old flag, and yet, livin' here so long, and never a celebration for young or old, I'd half forgot my patriotism. It's our school-teacher has woke me up to seeing the truth. Now that we hev beat our swords into pruning-hooks, and peace has pitched her tent alongside ours to stay, I can't help thinking there's danger in settlin' down too comfortable and off gyard like.
"This country," he raised his voice higher, "ain't teaching its children enough of the feelin' of patriotism. It takes the same kind of principle to make a good citizen that it doos a good soldier. It ought to be the very bone and sinew of every school in this whole land. I could talk all night on that subject, now I've got started. But what I want to say is this:
"I propose that we all get out our pocket-books, and throw in to get a handsome flag to fly over this schoolhouse. Take an old soldier's word for it, there ain't no greater inspirationanywhere, to make a fellow put in his best licks, and come out on top. Now, Miss Teacher, I'll just get the sense of this meeting."
He paused a moment, then turned to the audience: "All who want to express their thanks for this evening's entertainment, and are willing a collection should be took, say aye!"
Such a storm of ayes followed, that Peter caught up his slouched hat and began to pass it around, with his only arm. Dimes and quarters clinked into it, while an occasional dollar showed how deeply selfish hearts had been stirred by the uplifting influences of the hour.
Miss Atworth seated herself at the piano, and beckoned to the bewildered Goddess of Liberty to lead the States again across the stage. Some of the smaller ones straggled sadly out of line, but as Karl, at a nod from his teacher, caught the great flag from its place and stood with it in the midst of them, every voice rang out full and true on the chorus:
"Yes, we'll rally round the flag, boys,We'll rally once again,Shouting the battle-cry of freedom!"
People seemed loath to go when it was all over. They came up to the teacher with awkward expressions of pleasure and appreciation.
"I'll never forget this night," drawled one faded, overworked woman, to whose eyes the rich colours and tinsel of the stage decorations had seemed a part of fairyland. "That music was so sweet, and my little Meta looked like a picture with her hair curled, and that beautiful dress on you made her. I really didn't know she was so pretty. I'm going to fix her up and get her a lot of nice things after this."
"Well, it was worth while," said the little teacher, as she dropped into a chair at home, too tired to take off her wraps.
"Indeed it was," answered the squire. "Jake Schneider's new patriotism rose so he said he'd put a walk on each side of the school for half a mile, even if nobody'd help him. Then a lot of 'em began to talk it over. The upshot was that old Schmidt is going to give the logs, and they're all going to work to-morrow to hew them off and stake them down."
The next Monday morning Karl stopped at Miss Atworth's desk to say joyfully, "O teacher! father was so pleased. He is goingto hire another hand and let me keep on till the end of the term."
"Then I need never regret my sacrifice," thought the happy girl.
That celebration was the beginning of better times in Hardyville. When the doors were barred for vacation, and the grass grew rank on the bare playground, the new flag still floated from the schoolhouse belfry.
Many a boy catching sight of the glorious flag as he plodded through the furrows behind his plough, felt himself lifted beyond the bounds of his little horizon, to some great plane of endeavour where all great things were possible. Still those beckoning folds teach a silent lesson of loftier ideals, and a broader humanity to people whom the little teacher thrilled with her enthusiastic spirit.
Caleb Speedpushed back his chair from the dinner-table with anger and disgust in his face. The door had just banged behind a big, hearty boy of seventeen, whom he could still see through the narrow window trudging off toward the barn.
The lively whistle that sounded through the closed windows seemed to aggravate the man's ill-temper. He walked over to the fireplace, and kicked the smouldering logs with his heavy boot.
"If there's any one thing that riles me all over," he exclaimed, angrily, "it's having that boy always setting himself up to be in the right, and everybody else in the wrong!"
"Well, he 'most generally is in the right," answered Caleb's wife, clearing the table. "It's remarkable what a memory Jerry has, 'specially for dates. At the quilting here last week the women folks were trying to settle when 'twas old Mis' Lockett died, and Jerry knew to the day. He said 'twas two days after Deacon Stone's cows were killed by lightning, and that happened on the thirteenth of September, just a hundred years to the very day after Wolfe captured Quebec. You can't trip Jerry up in history."
"Well," answered her husband, impatiently, "he needn't be so sassy about it. We had a dispute over them same cows. I was telling the new minister about the storm, and I happened to say they was standing under a pine-tree. He chipped in, 'Why, no, it wasn't, uncle; it was an oak.' 'It was a pine!' says I. 'No, it wasn't; it was an oak,' says he.
"Just then Hiram Stone came by, and Jerry yelled to know which 'twas. Hiram said, 'Oak.' Then Jerry grinned as malicious, and said, 'I told you so! I knew I was right!' If he hadn't been my dead sister's only childand the minister looking on—" Caleb stopped in anger.
Mrs. Speed made no comment. She was fond of her husband's nephew. He had grown to be almost like a son in the five years he had lived with them. They were not old—not many years older than Jerry; for Caleb's sister had been older than he.
Mrs. Speed only laughed at the patronizing manners which he sometimes assumed, to the great annoyance of his young uncle. But Caleb Speed was too dogmatic himself to tolerate such a spirit in any one else.
"He sha'n't sit up and contradict me at my own table!" Caleb declared. "I'll thrash him first! He's got to show me proper respect. He needn't think because I've given him advantages that I couldn't have myself, that he knows it all, and I don't know anything!"
"Now, Caleb, what's the use? It's only Jerry's way," said Mrs. Speed, soothingly.
"Dear me!" she sighed, as Caleb went to his work. "It's a pity they can't get along as they used to. Caleb's so touchy he can't stand anything. I must tell Jerry to be more careful."
But when Jerry came in to supper and began his lively joking, she forgot the little lecture she had planned.
"The Spencers are going to move West next week," remarked Mr. Speed. "Land's cheap, and I guess they need more elbow-room for such a big family. Greenville is a mighty thriving place, they say."
"You mean Grandville, don't you, uncle?" suggested Jerry.
"I generally say what I mean, young man!" was the curt reply.
"Well, it's Grandville, anyway!" persisted Jerry, feeling in his pockets. "Jack Spencer is out there now. I got a letter from him yesterday begging me to go out there to him. Oh, here it is! Look at the postmark. ItisGrandville! I knew I was right about it."
Nettled by the tone and his own mistake, Mr. Speed finished his supper in moody silence. The boy had no idea how his habit had grown, or how sensitive his uncle had become in regard to it. "Why, Aunt Lucy," he insisted, when she remonstrated with him, "I never contradict people unless I know positively that they are wrong!"
"Maybe," she answered. "But what real difference does it make whether the weasels killed five chickens or six, or that it was the black pig and not the spotted one that rooted up the garden? Those are such little things to bicker about, just for the satisfaction of saying, 'I told you so!'"
She imitated Jerry's tone and manner so well that he laughed a little sheepishly.
"Well, I'll turn over a new leaf," he promised, "just to please you."
Caleb Speed's farm was in southern Maine, near the coast. Jerry had grown up with the sound of the sea in his ears. It had long sung only a meaningless monotone to the boy, but it had begun to fill him with something of its own restless spirit. And about this time the Spencer boys were urging him to go West.
"No," he answered; "I owe it to Uncle Caleb to stay here. He was too good to me when I was a little shaver for me to leave him now when he needs me. He shall have the best service I can give him until I am twenty-one; then I'll be free to follow you."
But there came a crisis. Uncle Caleb gave Jerry a sum of money to pay a bill in town.There was a five-dollar piece in a roll of bills, and the gold-piece had disappeared.
Jerry insisted that he could not have had the money. "Iknow, Aunt Lucy. Uncle Cale handed me the roll of bills, and I put it down in this pocket, and never touched it till I got to town. When I took it out there were the bills just as he had handed them to me, and not a thing more."
"Maybe there's a hole in your pocket," she suggested.
She turned it wrong side out, but found no place where a coin could have slipped through.
"Well, it's a mystery where it went," she said. "I can't understand it."
"Pooh! It's no mystery," answered Jerry, contemptuously. "Uncle simply didn't give it to me. He thought he had rolled it up in the bills, but was mistaken. That's all!"
"What do you mean by that?" cried Caleb, jumping up white with anger. "I tell you itwaswrapped up in the bills, and if you can't account for it, you've either lost it or spent it!"
Jerry bounded up-stairs to his room, stuffed his best suit of clothes into a little brown carpet-bag, and then poured out the contents of an old,long-necked blue vase. He had thirty dollars saved toward buying a horse of his own. Then he marched defiantly down-stairs to his uncle.
"I never saw or touched your gold-piece," he declared, "but I'll not go away leaving you to say that I took any of your money!"
He threw down a five-dollar bill and started to the door. As he turned the knob, he looked back at the woman by the fireplace, with her face in her apron.
"Good-bye, Aunt Lucy," he said, with a choke in his voice. "You've been awful good to me—I'll never forget that!"
Then he shut the door abruptly, and went out into the night. It lacked only five minutes of train-time when he reached the station, determined to go to a cousin of his father's who lived in Vermont, and write from there to Jack Spencer that he would work his way out West as soon as he could.
Tingling with the recollection of his uncle's reproaches, the boy sat up very straight and wide-awake in the train for a long time. Then his tension relaxed, and for lack of something else to do, he felt in his pocket for Jack Spencer's letter. As he pulled it from its envelopesomething else fell into his hand. It was a gold-piece.
He could scarcely believe his eyes as he sat dropping it from one hand into another. How had the coin got into the letter. For a time he could not guess; then the truth suddenly became clear to him.
The letter had been in his breast-pocket when he stuffed the roll of bills into it, and the coin must have slipped into the open end of the envelope as he pushed the bills down. When he began to search for the money he had changed the letter to another pocket, never dreaming that it contained anything except Jack's glowing description of prairie-life.
Jerry had been keeping his anger warm all the way by telling himself that his uncle had been harsh and unjust. He had even pictured to himself with grim satisfaction how shamefaced Caleb would look sometime when he should come across the coin among his own possessions. And now he had to think of himself as the blunderer and the unjust, foolish person.
But now no apology could be too humble. He would get off at the next station and takethe first train home. The case called for an immediate reconciliation.
Then he reasoned that as he had paid for his ticket, he might as well go on to his journey's end and have a short visit. It would be easier, perhaps, to write than to speak his apology.
Jerry soon found his elderly cousin, Tim Bailey, who happened to be working just then in a new store—a combination of a book-store and an old-fashioned daguerreotype gallery; not old-fashioned then, for it was before the photograph had penetrated to the rural regions. Tim's rigorous cross-questioning soon drew the whole story from the boy.
"Well, that's easily settled," said Tim. "Just you write to 'em and own up, and say you're going to stop with me over Christmas, but that you'll be along about New Year to turn over a new leaf. They'll bring out the fatted calf when you get back. I know Caleb like a book. He can't hold spite."
Jerry settled himself to write the letter. But he found himself hard to please, and tore up several drafts. Writing apologies was not sucheasy work, after all! Then Tim put his grizzled head in at the door, with a beaming smile.
"Look here, boy, I've got an idee! The picture business is dull this morning. Go up and get yours took. You can send it along for a Christmas gift. Sha'n't cost you a cent, either. I get all my work done gratis, for sending him so much trade."
Three days after, Jerry dropped into the post-office a little package addressed to his uncle, containing, besides a letter, an excellent likeness of himself. Jerry made in the letter a straightforward acknowledgment of his mistake, and accompanied this manly apology with an earnest request to be allowed to return home.
He had grown so homesick for a sight of the old place that he could scarcely see the lines on his paper. And Aunt Lucy—well, he almost broke down at the thought of all her motherly kindness to him.
"Now I'll surely get an answer by Wednesday," he thought, but Wednesday went by, and another week passed, and although he called regularly at the post-office, no word came.
"Well, I've done all I could," he said. "It's plain they don't want me back."
Tim's sympathetic old heart ached for the boy's distress. He even offered to go up to the farm and intercede in his behalf.
"No indeed!" Jerry answered, defiantly. "I'll never beg my way back. I'm not the kind to go where I'm not wanted."
"Maybe they never got your letter."
Jerry hooted at the idea. "No, they don't want to make up. That's the long and the short of it."
When he finally started West, Tim Bailey went with him. Out on the far Western prairies, Jerry struck deep root in the favourable soil, and as the years passed on, became as much of a fixture as the new town that bore his name. Year after year he worked on, widening his fields, improving his buildings, working early and late, solely for the pleasure of accumulating.
Tim Bailey had grown old and rheumatic, almost childish, but he still assumed a sort of guardianship over Jerry. One day he put down his newspaper, wiped his spectacles, and scanned the rough, burly-looking man on the other side of the stove, as if he had been a stranger.
"Look here, Jerry," he said presently, "you're getting to look old, and your hair's all a-turning gray. Now you've got to quit pegging away so hard and take a holiday, before you get like me, so stiff and rheumatic you can't get away. Why don't you go to the World's Fair? It 'ud be a burning shame for the richest man in Trigg County to miss such a show."
Thus it came about that one day Jerry rubbed his eyes in a bewildered way to find himself in the midst of a surging crowd that thronged the entrances of the Fair.
He plodded along the Midway Plaisance, his umbrella under his arm and his hands in his pockets; he walked and stared till late in the afternoon. It was late in May, the spring ploughing had been a good preparation in pedestrianism, but the long furrows, enlivened only by the pipe of a quail or the cry of a catbird, had never brought such weariness as Jerry felt now.
He did not realize he was so tired until he dropped into a seat in one of the gondolas on the lagoon, and remarked confidentially to the gondolier that he was "clean beat out."
It was the first time Jerry had spoken since he entered the grounds. The man made no reply.
He studied the fellow keenly a moment, and then turned to the crowds, surging along the banks in every direction. Not a soul in all that multitude even knew his name.
A feeling of utter loneliness crept over him, and when the boat landed he was saying to himself that he would give the finest colt in his pastures for the sight of a familiar face.
A few steps farther, and he saw one. It was in the government building, where an amused crowd was exclaiming over the Dead Letter Exhibit. Jerry edged along in front of the case, wondering at the variety of shipwrecked cargoes that had drifted into this government haven.
A vague pity stirred in him for all the hopes that had gone into the grave of the dead letter office—rings that had never found the fingers they were to have clasped, gifts that might have unlocked long silences, tokens of friendship that were never received, never acknowledged—all caught in this snarled web that no human skill could possibly unravel.
Then he saw the familiar face. It smiled out at him from the case of an old daguerreotype, till his heart began to beat so hard that he glanced guiltily around, to see if any one else heard it. The blood rushed to his head, and he felt dizzy.
It was that picture of himself, taken so long ago up in Vermont! He was not likely to be mistaken in it—the only picture he had ever had taken in his life.
He chuckled as he recalled the anxious oiling he had given the curly hair to make it lie flat, the harrowing hesitation over his necktie, the borrowing of the watch-chain that stood out in such bold relief against his brocaded vest. How quaint and old-fashioned it looked!
He passed his hand over his grizzled beard with a sigh, for the smooth, boyish face was not all he saw. It brought back the whole faded past so overwhelmingly that for awhile he forgot where he was.
Thirty-three years since he had dropped that little package in the office! He did not question why the letter had gone astray. He had lost his boyish faith in his own infallibility. Hehad probably mailed it with only half the address, perhaps none.
Now he was a boy again, back in Maine. Aunt Lucy's knitting-needles clicked in the firelight. Uncle Caleb was making him a sled. How warm and comfortable the kitchen felt, and how good Aunt Lucy's doughnuts tasted!
The crowds jostled him. He stood as if grown to the spot, until a sharp-nosed woman elbowed her way in front of him, to see what interested him. She looked inquisitively from the picture to the weather-beaten face above her, and passed on, none the wiser. There was little likeness between the two.
Her penetrating glances aroused him. He came to himself with a start, looked hastily around, and then set out from the building, heedless of direction. A keen, raw wind struck him as he strode along the lake shore. He shivered and turned up his coat collar.
A drizzling mist of rain began to fall. People going by with their umbrellas up looked at him curiously as he plodded along with his own umbrella under his arm.
Soon a heavy dash of rain aroused him to the necessity of finding immediate shelter. A groupof State buildings was just ahead. Glancing up he saw the name of his native State on one, and hurried in.
A great log heap blazed and crackled in the huge fireplace, filling the room with a glowing comfort that warmed him, soul and body. He drew a chair close up to it, and spread his chilly fingers to the flames.
The sticks against the forelog burnt to embers and fell into the ashes. The crane seemed to swing backward like a great finger, pointing to the past, as he sat and stared into the fire.
People passing through the room saw only a rough old farmer, his clumsy boots stretched out on the hearth. They never dreamed of the scenes that passed before him in the fire. There were glimpses of snow-covered pine woods, of sparkling trout-streams gurgling in the June sunshine, of long stretches of level sea-sands where the tide crawled in.
The old homesickness waked again. What had they thought of him through all these silent years? He wondered how they would receive his long-delayed apology. He must write as soon as he got back to the hotel.
The rain had stopped. He stood up andshook himself, then went out-doors again, pulling his beard meditatively, as he walked toward the gate. It seemed a week since he had entered it.
Outside, while he waited for a car, he kept poking the end of his umbrella savagely into a crack in the pavement. As he swung himself to the platform of a passing car, he turned back for another look at the domes and towers inside the gates.
It was his last look. He had seen enough. He was going back to Uncle Caleb and Aunt Lucy.