CHAPTER VI.
ONCE Chee suffered a great scare. The whole secret of her violin threatened to come out.
Neighbor Flannigan often stayed with his cronies at the “Corners” a little too long for his own good. One night, being even less himself than usual, he stumbled into the Whittaker place instead of his own. Too stupid to reach the house, he threw himself down on the grass.
As the effect of his evening’s carousing began to wear off, he was startled by the sound of strange music. Seemingly it came from the Whittaker attic.
For awhile he was charmed. What could it be? More and more the mystery of it impressed him. At last frightened by his own ignorant conjectures, he became certain the old house was haunted, and as fast as his shaky legs could carry him he started home on a run.
The following morning he felt it his duty to confide in Uncle Reuben. “I was jest that tired from me day’s woruk I had to rest me legs a spell,—you know how it is yourself, Mr. Whittaker,—when thim unairthly sounds blowed up softly loike, roight out of the chimbly.”
“What in the world could the fellow have heard?” asked Uncle Reuben at breakfast.
“Heard? Why, the whiskey rattling his brain,” replied Aunt Mean. “Don’t look so frightened, Chee. It’s wicked to believe in ghosts, and I don’t want you to get no sech notions in your head.” Perhaps Aunt Mean was giving orders to herself as well as to her niece.
That night Chee scarcely dared play, and it was many a day before her old confidence returned. The full, round tones she loved were stealthily smothered. Fortunately, the house was well back from the road. No neighboring farms were within hearing distance, so her scare was finally forgotten. However, something else happened which caused Chee to leave Daddy Joe’s fiddle in silence a long time. It was Cousin Gertrude’s coming to the farm.
Chee wore her pink gingham the day she came, and even Aunt Mean was dressed up in a white apron.
“She’s the gayest thing, with dancin’ blue eyes, and yellow hair and pink cheeks, ’stead of brown ’uns,” with unnecessary emphasis on the “brown.”
Tears stole down the “brown” ones at this remark by Aunt Mean, who was tightly tying Chee’s braids with bits of shoe-strings. (It was a grief to Chee that Aunt Mean should not allow her to braid her own hair.)
“Our Father made my face brown,” she kept thinking. “He wanted it so.” Yet something seemed to have dulled the brightness of the morning.
“I ’spect she’ll call me Ugly Nut, too, like Aunt Mean used to,” mourned Chee. She had never attended school, and though her secluded life made her an old child in some ways, it kept her wonderfully baby-like in others. Indeed, it is doubtful if years of learning or contact with wise people could ever take away her simple, questioning-like manner. It might always be “Chee’s way.”
Soon the carriage wheels were heard on the gravel drive, and sad thoughts were quickly put away in the excitement of Cousin Gertrude’s arrival.
Yes, she was, as Aunt Mean had said, a “gay thing.” At least, so it seemed as she flew about the house, visiting old nooks and corners, or out calling the chickens and feeding Fanny and the colt.
It was all very startling to Chee,—her lively movements, her merry repartee, and her show of affection. It seemed so natural for Cousin Gertrude to lean her fair head against Uncle Reuben’s shoulder. Chee would have felt extremely strange in such an act, even if she were tall enough to reach it. And as for laughing right up into Aunt Mean’s face, as though sharp words were only a joke between them, it would have been impossible for Chee to have tried it.
In the afternoon, when she found her pretty cousin sitting idle in the little grove behind the house, there was a change.
The lips that had all day been parted in laughter were drooping. Her blue eyes were watching the hill-tops as though they saw something very sadover there. At sight of Chee they brightened a little.
“Come here, you tiny witch,” she called, making room in the hammock. “Do you know you make me think of a poem I read once called ‘The Nut-Brown Maiden.’”
Chee’s eyes were shyly raised. “Nut-Brown Maiden is ever so pretty,” she said. “Aunt Mean used to call me ‘Ugly Nut,’ but my daddy was here then and he stopped her. Now she calls me ‘Chee.’”
“How odd! I like it, though. Is it an Indian name?” It seemed to the little girl her cousin must love Indian names, she spoke so tenderly. How good it was not to feel in disgrace!
“My real name is Opechee. They call me Chee, for short. Aunt Mean says ‘it doesn’t holler so loud of Indian wigwams.’”
“‘Holler of wigwams,’” echoed Gertrude. “You poor, darling child.”
“But I don’t mind so much, for I know what it means,” murmured Chee, as she smiled up into the deep blue sky. “A song-bird—I’d rather be that than anything else.” Then turning withsomething of Cousin Gertrude’s own impulsiveness, she asked, “Oh, isn’t it lovely? You can’t know how glad I am it’s my name.”
No, the girl could not understand Chee’s strange, almost unreasonable pleasure, but to see the little one so happy could but lighten her own heart.
Many a long talk had they together in that little grove, and during their rambles over the farm. At times Chee would be tempted to unburden her heart of its secret, but, young as she was, she knew Cousin Gertrude had a secret, too; for often when they were talking of the happiest things, the sparkle would die out of the big blue eyes that Chee so lovingly watched.
“Cousin Gertrude has forgotten all about her Nut-Brown Maiden,” she would think. “She doesn’t tell me her secret, and I won’t tell her mine.”
And yet before autumn both secrets came out.