CHAPTER IV.
NEXT day Chee plucked up courage and said, “Aunt Mean, please may I pick a bunch of white peonies and carry’em down to Mrs. Green?” Aunt Mean was straightening the rag-carpet rugs on the kitchen floor. “Take hold the end of this mat, Chee. Well, I don’t know, seems like you wanted to be on the go the hull time. Only last week you rode over to the ‘Corners’ with your uncle, and ’tain’t a month since you was took to a reg’ler concert—in the town hall, too. But I don’t know but you might as well go, an’ stop on the way an’ ask Mis’ Snow for that apern pat’en she said she’d just’s liev I took.”
“Yes’um,” and Chee bounded away to gather her flowers.
“Beats all, that child does, still’s a mouse inside, wild’s a deer the minute she’s out.” Thishad been spoken to a neighbor who had “jest dropped in a minute.”
“Well, I s’pose it’s her Injun blood, isn’t it?” was the reply. “What a worry she must be to you, Miss Almeana. She’s well brung up, though, if she is half savage, I will say that.”
“Poor Joe’s runnin’ off an’ marryin’ was a dretful thing,” stated Aunt Mean, “dretful for him, and dretful for us.”
“No doubt she was purty, and I s’pose findin’ she’d lived so long with a white family made some difference,” the neighbor remarked. There was a shadow of romance about her nature; there was not even that about Aunt Mean’s.
“It was better’n though he’d found her naked in a wigwam, but ’twas bad ’nough,” dryly returned poor Joe’s sister.
“Prob’ly the greatest attraction was her voice. It must have been purty hard on so good Meth’dist people as you an’ Reuben be, to have one of your own kin go roun’ fiddlin’ fer shows with an Injun singin’ woman fer his wife.”
Miss Almeana did not consider it proper to tell what an affliction this had been to her, but witha clear conscience she told, for at least the fiftieth time, how Reuben “took on.” After that came poor brother Joe’s taking on; how, when his wife died, he left his profession to wander about the world, clinging to his baby girl for comfort in his loneliness; how, at last, he came back to the old homestead, sick—body and heart. “He only lived a couple o’ years longer, and most o’ that time he set round with the young’n in his arms,” went on Aunt Mean.
The neighbor had heard it all before, but she was interested.
“Reuben thinks that more’n half what killed him was heartbroke’ness. Mebbe it was. He was allers kinder soft like, and that old fiddle of his’n only made him wuss. I used to hate the sight on it. Think of the waste o’ money! Sold his whole half the farm to buy it—meadow lot and all. I tell you what, I chucked that thing out o’ sight mighty sudden after he died.”
“Did you burn it,” asked her listener, in an awed voice, “after he had loved it so?” Aunt Mean quailed a little.
“Laws! no, Mis’ Bowman, I ain’t quite so Spartanas that. I didn’t have courage. But I stuck it up attic for good and all. It never’ll come down as long as I keep house here, either.”
“Well, I must say, Miss Almeana,” interrupted her acquaintance, anxious to appease the old lady, “you don’t work the child very hard. What does she do, anyhow?”
“She? Oh, what I tell her to. It’s easier to do most everything yourself than be botherin’ round with children. She’s coming on nine, though, and I don’t want it on my conscience that I didn’t do my duty by her—if she is a heathen—so I s’pose it’s about time I broke her in.”
Perhaps a very faint vision of what Chee’sbreaking inmight mean, rose before the neighbor’s mental sight, for she said, in relenting tones, “Oh, well, I don’t see’s you’ve any cause to hurry. She’s right smart and will learn mighty fast when she once starts in.”
“Humph!” said Aunt Mean, and Mrs. Bowman never quite made up her mind whether she had helped Chee’s cause or not.
While the housewives gossipped, the little girlwas wending her way to the clergyman’s house. She did not walk very fast. It was warm and dusty, and she was busily thinking. After all, she was somewhat loath to reach her destination. At last she came to the small, white parsonage. Her heart seemed to pound as loudly as her hand as she knocked upon the door. The minister’s wife herself answered the knock.
“Aunt Mean sent you these.”
“Why, thank you, Chee, thank you. And such a hot day, too. Would you like a drink of water?” Instead of water, the lady brought a glass of milk from the cellar. Chee sipped it slowly. It was delicious after the long, hot walk, but she felt anxious over her errand.
“I hope he won’t think I’ve workings of a spirit like Deacon Herring had,” she thought, a little fearfully.
After Mrs. Green had asked for her uncle and aunt, if they had green corn yet, and if Miss Almeana’s currant-bushes would be heavy that year, conversation flagged. Chee still sat on the edge of her chair as though waiting for something to happen.
“What can ail the child?” wondered Mrs. Green. Finally she ventured to ask Chee if she had come on any special errand.
“No-o, not ’zactly an errand, but—but,” she hesitated, slowly twisting around her fingers the hem of her short gingham skirt. “Could—please do you care if I see the minister a minute?”
Her hostess laughed. “Care? Why, no, child. I don’t keep him put away in the dark.”
Chee’s black eyes looked frightened. “Oh, Mrs. Green!” she said, “I didn’t mean it that way.” Dropping her voice to a whisper, she entreated, “Don’t say anything to Aunt Mean. Please don’t tell.”
The lady’s kind heart was touched. She loved little children. Quickly stooping to kiss Chee’s flushed forehead, she answered, “Tell that you asked to see the minister? No, indeed.”
“Thank you.” Chee had forgotten for a moment her usual reserve, and stealing her arms around Mrs. Green’s neck, she softly kissed her. This was the first voluntary act of affection the child had shown toward any one since her father’s death.
Though the minister’s wife only remarked in a gentle voice, “I think my husband is up in the hay-mow—there is a nice breeze by the door,” she was ever after, to Chee, the ideal of a mother hardly remembered.
While leading her to the barn, the lady asked, “Do you mind going up by yourself?”
“Oh, no, no,” answered the little girl. It would be easier to confront the minister alone.
Chee found him lying on the hay with a book over his eyes. She furtively peeped at him several times from the top of the ladder. Finally she concluded he was not asleep.
“Mr. Green,” she called. Her voice was not high and clear like most children’s; it was strangely deep and rich. “Mr. Green,” she repeated.
He looked over his book, exclaiming, “Why, child, how you startled me!” Then in a gentler voice he added, “What brought you here, Little One?”
The pet name helped to ease her fluttering heart. She stepped nearer and quietly studied his face a minute.
“Can you keep a secret?” she asked, still watching him closely.
He was amused with his little visitor and replied, “For how long?”
“Forever,” came the instant, firm reply.
Something in the child’s earnest face at once sobered the minister.
“That depends, Miss Chee,” he answered.
Chee seated herself beside him on the hay. She had forgotten to be afraid.
“Mr. Green,”—the bead-like eyes enlarged, and seemed to soften as she spoke,—“you are a minister, and if you once promise you can’t break your word—ever, can you?”
“Not and be a true minister, I suppose.”
“Then won’t you promise?”
“I guess so.”
“This is a ’portant matter. ‘Guess so’ won’t do. Say ‘yes,’ please.”
“Well, yes, then, little lawyer.” Though just what he was promising was not clear to him, it brought a thoughtful, satisfied expression to Chee’s face as, looking down, she sat absently crumpling hay.
THIS IS A ’PORTANT MATTER“‘THIS IS A ’PORTANT MATTER. “GUESS SO” WON’T DO. SAY “YES,” PLEASE’”
“‘THIS IS A ’PORTANT MATTER. “GUESS SO” WON’T DO. SAY “YES,” PLEASE’”
“‘THIS IS A ’PORTANT MATTER. “GUESS SO” WON’T DO. SAY “YES,” PLEASE’”
“And what about the secret?” asked the clergyman, after some moments of silence.
She looked up quickly. She had been busy pondering how far she should explain matters, and had half forgotten his presence.
“Why, you know, you said old ones were lots better than new ones, but I am afraid you were mistaken, for Daddy Joe’s is very, very bad.”
“What are you talking about, child?”
“Why, you said it your very own self, you did.” Here was a new difficulty. “A minister can’t back out of what he said. And you said it, sir. Don’t you remember that Sunday you preached that old ones were better than the new ones? Please think hard.”
“Old what?”
“Why, old fiddles. You said so.”
“Oh, well, suppose I did. It’s a well-known fact, little girl.”
“I did understand right, after all, then? But what can be the matter with Daddy Joe’s?”
Mr. Green looked more perplexed. “I don’t yet quite understand you, Chee. Suppose you begin at the beginning, and tell me all about it.”
So Chee commenced, growing more and more interested in her own story as she went on, for were not the minister’s eyes smiling into hers as if to say, “You came to the very right person, little Chee—the very right person.”
“Then I promised Our Father faithfully,” she continued, telling of the night before when she had resolved to consult the minister, “that if He’d do that for me I’d do something for Him. And I will, honest, for He did hear me,” she concluded by saying, in a hushed, reverent voice.
Her listener happened to be searching about for his handkerchief just then. The disturbance in the hay caused the dust to fly. This brought moisture to his eyes. Chee gravely offered her small square of linen.
When she had finished telling all about her Daddy Joe’s fiddle, he said, gaily, “I am not much of a musician, but long ago when I was in college I owned a violin. It must be in the house somewhere, now. I’ll hunt it up, and tell you what little I know about it.”
Chee’s eyes shone more brightly. Catching hold of her new friend’s sleeve,—he had risento go down the ladder,—she said, her voice deep with emotion, “I wish I could thank you more than tongue can tell.” It was not a very elaborate thank you, but the glow in her eyes made up any loss of words.
“I never before saw a child so thoroughly in earnest,” he mused. “She must possess an exceedingly passionate nature, or else be extraordinarily fond of music.”
“Oh, dear! Aunt Mean’ll miss me. It’s getting so late, and she won’t let me come again in a long, long time.” But even as she spoke in a troubled way, a smile broke over her face. “He fixed it before,” she said, reverently, “I’ll ask Him again.”
The minister understood, and many a day, when his burdens were heavy, he recalled the faith of a little half-Indian child.