Ruth
The small reception room in the Farraday cottage had been converted into a temporary sewing room, and here Elizabeth and Peggy were sewing on their own blue dimity frocks, fitted to them by the Boston seamstress, who had been working in the house, and finished except for the hemstitching to be done on sleeves and collar. Peggy sewed neatly but erratically, exploding into violent protestations when her thread knotted or her scissors fell. Elizabeth found the steady rhythm of hemming rather soothing to her, especially to-day, when her heart was so heavy for her brother.
"Piggy's—I mean, Mr. Chambers' parents have sent the flat silver," Peggy announced, "and to my taste it's very hideous. It's the kind with a beading all around it. If you are going to have elaborate silver, why—have it. Have Cupids and little birds building nests, but if you are going to have it simple, why, then it's a crime, I think, to have alittletrimming on it."
"You've got very good natural taste, Peggy—my mother says so."
"I know it. So's Ruth. I bet she hates this. Just think, Elizabeth, if you marry a man it's not only for keeps, but it's for every day, all the time, whether he likes the things you loathe or not."
"Have you shaken hands with anybody yet, Peggy?"
"No, I haven't. Have you seen your future husband again?"
"I passed him on the street yesterday. I like a boy that really takes his hat off, instead of fumbling at it."
"Tom certainly takes his hat off—like a streak."
"Too much like a streak. Besides, he always wears a cap."
"I like caps," said Peggy.
"I don't. I like hats. Bob Stoddard had a hat even at the picnic."
"Look here, Elizabeth," Peggy said, seriously, "I hope you really won't get interested in that Stoddard boy. It would be kind of uncanny, and I should feel too awfully responsible."
"You didn't do anything about it."
"I got you into this counting business. I don't really think there is anything in it, but if there was, I should feel guilty all the rest of my life. I don't want to have your marital unhappiness to consider, the way I expect to consider Ruth's."
"Mr. Chambers came back, didn't he?"
"I told you he would. They are on the porch now, having a pow-wow. Mother was so rejoiced over the prodigal's return that it was pitiful."
"Peggy, don't you wish that Ruth had just happened to fancy my Buddy, and to have married him instead?"
"Goodness, yes. Anybody. That doesn't sound very flattering. You know I would have adored it, but that's too great a piece of luck even to contemplate. I'd rather she'd marry—Bill Dean than Piggy Chambers.
"I do not like you, Doctor Fell (Chambers)The reason why I cannot tell,But this alone I know full well,I do not like you, Doctor Fell (Chambers)."
"I do not like you, Doctor Fell (Chambers)The reason why I cannot tell,But this alone I know full well,I do not like you, Doctor Fell (Chambers)."
"It would be nice to have lots of money," Elizabeth said, "and to have chauffeurs, and butlers, and tall, elegant footmen in green livery, and estates and things."
"Oh, yes, it would, if you didn't have to take any incumbrances with them. If you had to be handcuffed to a fat man, in addition, that would be something else again."
"Life is very bewildering. Don't you think so, Peggy?"
"It doesn't bewilder me. It disgusts me sometimes. All these mixups could be avoided, if people only wouldn't be short-sighted."
"Some trouble seems to come from other sources."
"Yes, but most all the things that people suffer from could be avoided if they weren't so silly. I notice that all the time."
"Well, so do I."
"Hark," said Peggy, "they're at it again. If they row like that before they are married, what will happen to them in their honeymoon stages?"
"He's going," Elizabeth said; "she's letting him out of the front door."
"Good riddance to perfectly good rubbish," said Peggy, "till dinner time."
"No," Ruth's clear voice rose, distinctly, "no, no. I mean what I say."
"So do I mean what I say. I'll see you at dinner."
"If you like."
"Oh, I like!"
"At seven then."
"At seven."
The door closed after him, and Ruth, looking wearier and paler than Elizabeth had ever seen her, opened the door that led from the reception room to the hallway, and came in.
"Take some seats," said Peggy, hospitably.
Ruth sank into a big wicker armchair without speaking.
"Lovely weather we're having for this time ofyear," Peggy continued, conversationally. "Ruth, dear, I love you."
"I'm glad of that," Ruth said.
"So do I!" said Elizabeth, timidly.
"I'm glad of that, too," said Ruth Farraday, with her charming, wistful smile. "Well, children, you don't need to go on with those dresses. You won't have occasion to wear them."
"What?" said Peggy.
"I've just told Mr. Chambers that I won't marry him."
"Does he know it?"
"Well, not exactly, Peggy—that's his trouble—but he will know it. I'm—I'm through."
"I don't believe it," Peggy said.
"I do, and that's the principal thing," Ruth said. "I never realized how he felt about certain things before. I hadn't given much thought to his attitude about the war and all that. I knew he had been a sort of pacifist, and that he had German friends and business connections. I like men to be broad-minded. I don't mind a man that sticks to honest conclusions, if they're sincere, but when I find they are coloured by physical or moral cowardice, why, then I—I'm through. Albert Chambers is a coward, and he's a selfish coward. We've had it all out and I know."
"Hooray," said Peggy, "I could have told you that any time this summer."
"And I'm through with marriage or any idea of marriage, so there we are."
"I don't envy you the sweet task of breaking it to Mother."
"Haven't you got any feeling, Peggy? Don't you care how hard the things are I've been going through?"
"Don't I?" said Peggy. She flung the folds of muslin wide, and made an impetuous dive for her sister. "Oh, Ruthie, Ruthie, Ruthie," she cried, "I'm so glad, I'm trying not to believe it, for fear it isn't so."
Ruth clung to her wordlessly.
"I love you, I love you," Peggy whispered.
"I tried to do the right thing," Ruth said. "It's been hard to know what was right."
"You'reall right," said Peggy, feebly. "Excuse these tears all down your back, Ruthie."
"I've got to be at home for lunch," Elizabeth said. "I—I—they're expecting me."
"Don't mind us," Peggy said, "this is only a small family reunion."
"I think I'd really better go."
"I'll write a note to your brother, Elizabeth, when it's settled. Mr. Chambers doesn't even understand it yet, you know."
"I wouldn't have told Buddy unless you had told me to," Elizabeth said.
Ruth smiled.
"I might have known you wouldn't," she said, "your own kind of people have your own sense of decency, and the others never have."
"I'm so glad I seem to you like your own kind of people." Elizabeth took Ruth Farraday's out-stretched hand gratefully.
"Well, you do, dear, and you always have. On your own account, I mean." she added, quickly.
"That's what I meant, too," said Elizabeth, shyly.
It was hard to sit through the mid-day meal with the secret that would change Buddy's world for him locked in her breast, still Elizabeth managed it somehow. He looked very pale and worn, but the three men kept up a lively discussion of the impending Presidential campaign and other political matters. She noticed the respect that both her father and Buddy paid to Grandfather's opinions on all these subjects.
Elizabeth wondered how it could be that Buddy could laugh his hearty laugh, before he knew the thing that she could have told him or how, when the conversation turned to the question of bait for a day's fishing on the banks that the three men contemplated, he could discuss worms and fishing tackle so eagerly.
"Speaking of fish," Buddy said, "it seems to me that these are extraordinarily good herrings we areeating. I don't suppose there is any difference in herrings, but——"
"Well, you don't suppose right, then," Grandfather said, "there is as much difference in the herrings that come from Herring River and those you get over to the westward as there is between some folks. The meat's whiter and sweeter in the Herring River herrings. I used to think it was a great thing to go after them in the spring. It don't make no difference where a herring has been putting in his time in the other seasons, come spring he makes for the river bed where he was born. I've seen them so thick on their way up Herring River that they couldn't swim straight, but had to kind of flop over one side to make way for t'other. I used to get five cents a hundred for 'em, and kitch 'em as fast as I could haul 'em out."
"That isn't true, is it?" asked Elizabeth. "Do herrings go back to the place where they were born?"
"Yes, and sometimes they swim a great many hundreds of miles to get there. They seek the Southern waters in the cold weather, you know, but they always come back once a year to the stream in which they were born," Elizabeth's father explained to her.
"The place where their great-grandfathers were spawned. It's natural," Grandfather said.
"I guess it is natural," Elizabeth said, soberly.
"You bet it is," said Buddy.
They took a drive in the new roadster that afternoon, and Buddy seemed so happy and so free during the entire course of the day that Elizabeth was entirely unprepared to find him, as she found him some time after supper, flung across the bottom of the big four-poster bed in the guest room, with his head buried in his hands.
"Buddy," she said, "Buddy, dear."
"Oh, I'm all right, Sis. Run along."
"I thought perhaps you wanted to walk with me to the post office."
"I do, but it isn't time yet."
"It's nearly time."
"When it's time, we'll go."
"Buddy, I wouldn't feel too bad. Things mightn't be so dreadful as you think."
"They might, and then again they mightn't."
"I wouldn't give up."
"I've given up everything I can give up."
"You seem—pretty much all right."
"Live or die, sink or swim, survive or perish. Them's my slogans. I'll come through all right. Iamall right. Got to be."
"Oh, Buddy," Elizabeth said, "youwillbe all right."
"It's a funny thing, little sister, that you don't irritate me more. It seems to me that you used to bequite an irritating child, and now I scarcely mind you, no matter how Paul Pryish or Polly Anna-ish you get."
"I could irritate you more if I wanted to."
"I'm perfectly willing to take that for granted."
Just as they reached the post office they met the Chambers' car piled with a full luggage equipment. Albert Chambers sat in lonely state within, looking neither to right nor left.
"He didn't go back to dinner, after all," Elizabeth thought, "or at any rate, he didn't stay."
Buddy made no comment on this encounter, but he walked composedly through the crowd overflowing the little building, his head held high, and all the colour drained from his white face. He even insisted on stopping at the drug store and regaling Elizabeth with her favourite marshmallow and maple nut sundae, though he refused all refreshment for himself.
"One thing that the life over there taught you was that you've got to get through every day somehow," he said, thoughtfully. "I wish ice-cream soda didn't drip so much. There's a row of pink rings and chocolate rings all along this counter. I don't like them."
"He thinks everything is perfectly horrid," Elizabeth said to herself, "and yet he doesn't give in. Oh, I think he's perfectly splendid!"
They made a detour and came out by the Flatiron field, where the station road divided itself into two separate byways in the crux of which was a letter box. Ruth Farraday was in the act of mailing a letter there. It dropped inside as Elizabeth and Buddy approached.
"I was just mailing you a letter," Ruth said.
"Can't I get it out?" Buddy asked.
"No," Ruth said, "turn and walk with me home, and I'll tell you. Elizabeth knows already. I've broken my engagement. No, don't say anything. I—I just want to tell you, that's all."
"There is so much Imightsay!" Buddy said.
"The reason I broke it has nothing to do with anything else—except that I broke it," she explained, incoherently. "It doesn't mean anything but that. I shall never marry now, I'm going into reconstruction work abroad."
"Not—not right away," Buddy said.
"As soon as I can make my plans—but there is one thing I want you to believe. I've written it in the letter, but I don't know whether I've managed to make it as clear as I meant to. I've broken my engagement only because Mr. Chambers and I were not suited to each other."
"I—know that," Buddy said.
"So this might just as well be good-bye between us."
"If you wish it so?"
"Do you doubt I wish it?"
"No," Buddy said, "I know how you feel."
"Then—then good-bye."
"Right here?" said Buddy. "I thought we were going to walk home with you."
"I'm nearly home," Ruth said. "Say it now, please."
"Good-bye," said Buddy. He stood looking at her for a moment, levelly into her eyes. Then he turned away, wheeling as if he were under orders to march.
"Tell me what you know, Elizabeth," he said, as they walked on, and Elizabeth told him of what had happened at the Farradays that morning.
"But I thought things were going to be all fixed," she concluded, miserably, "and now they seem to be in a worse tangle than ever. I don't see what she's sending you away for."
"That's all right," said Buddy. "I see."
"But she said it was good-bye between you."
"That's all right. It's an ethical question with her. She split up with him because she couldn't stand him, not because she wanted me. It's like a gentleman's agreement, you see. You enter into a mutual arrangement under the supposition that the other fellow is as decent as yourself. When you find he isn't, that releases you, unless the contract is actually signed. If he'd been all right, shewould have stuck. She wants me to understand that."
"But you do understand it, and I don't see why she has to be so cool."
"I want her to be cool," said Buddy. "What do you think I wanted? To go in and spend the evening?"
"Well, that would be better than this."
"No, it wouldn't," said Buddy.
"I don't understand you," Elizabeth said. "Perhaps you are not feeling very well, Buddy. You looked awfully pale there in the post office."
"I'm not pale now, am I?"
"No-o, but you look so kind of queer, and you act queer, too, Buddy. I understood why you respected her feelings when she wouldn't break her engagement, but now that she has, I don't see why you go right on respecting them. I—I thought you wanted to marry her yourself."
"Marry her? Why, I'm going to," said Buddy. "That's the point."
"When—when?" said Elizabeth.
"Just as soon as I can get three weeks' salary in my jeans."
"But she said she was going away, and—and everything."
"Oh, I'll attend to all that!" said Buddy, happily. "Don't you worry, Sister."
Good-bye
Elizabeth was making a round of farewell calls. Her summer on Cape Cod was over. Her trunk had already been packed and sent by express to New York, with all the other family baggage excepting the light motor trunk and bags that they were to carry in the car.
Moses and Madget and Mabel surrounded her when she arrived at the Steppes.
"You look like a lady in them clothes," Moses said, "I didn't know you."
"She's got gloves on," Mabel said, "and a pink hat."
"Loverly gloves," said Madget, dreamily. "I want a pink hat."
"I want flowers onmyhat," said Mabel, critically.
"How nice your house looks," Elizabeth said. "The kitchen floor is clean, and everything put away."
"Mis' Laury Ann, she's learning me how to do housework, and I learn Mabel pretty good. Marmershe bought some dishes. See 'em there. Mabel and me, we like to keep 'em shined up."
On the two shelves over the pump an array of formidably coloured, coarse crockery had made its appearance. Large pink roses heavily smeared with gilt were the prevailing decoration. Three pink coffee cups, with a gilded moustache protector in each, occupied a place of honour.
"Me and Marmer and Mabel has these," Moses informed her proudly. "Madget, she drinks out of a mug. It's only a plain white mug, so we don't put it where it will show. Ma, she says she had just as soon we would eat out o' them dishes if we'll clean 'em up after."
"Who does the cooking?"
"I told you I done the cooking once," Moses said, "how many times have you got to be said it over to?"
"Moses!"
"Well," said Moses, argumentatively, "if you was old enough to boss me, it would be different, but you ain't."
"I'm bigger than you are, Moses, and you are not big enough to boss me."
"No," said Moses, "but I'm big enough to fight you to see who's got the most strength. Only girls can't fight."
"Only morally," said Elizabeth.
"Huh?" said Moses, staring blankly.
"Well, never mind. You take care of your mother and sister and be a nice, clean boy, and—and learn your lessons at school."
"Then what'll I get?"
"You'll get to be comfortable and happy by your own efforts."
"Well, I ain't going to do what anybody tells me—much."
"Tell yourself, Moses. Tell yourself to be good, and then mind yourself. I do."
"But you'm a girl," Moses said.
"It doesn't make any difference who you are, Moses. If you don't try to learn that lesson about minding yourself, you won't get on very well."
"Who says so?"
"Miss Laury Ann says so, for one."
"Did she tell you to mind yourself?"
"She—she showed me how to do it."
"Does she mind herself?"
"Always, that's what makes her—so nice and kind. You see, Moses, you are the man of the family, and the man of the family has to be responsible for it and have a good control of it. So you've got to have a good control of yourself." The word was unfortunate.
"Ma's got a control," Moses said. "Little Eva."
"I didn't mean that kind of control, Moses. I meant—well, you just think what I meant. I want you to promise me that you will watch yourself andtell yourself what's right and wrong, just as if you were telling it to somebody else."
"Well, I'll see about it," said Moses, "but if I do it,theygot to," he pointed to his sisters.
"Try it a while for yourself, and then if it works, teach it to them," said Elizabeth with sudden inspiration.
"Well, I'll teach it to them, anyway," Moses decided.
"Here comes Marmer," Mabel cried.
"I just slipped over to Mis' Hawes'," Mrs. Steppe explained, apologetically. "I had a matter I wanted to consult her about. My spine kinder give way last night, and I thought when she was going into a trance, she might see if Little Eva had anything to say about it. It ain't important enough for her to go into one special for."
Elizabeth stared at the vision in purple velvet—a tight-fitting basque of obsolete make gripped the eighteen-inch waist inexorably, and the skirt, cut to the prevailing eight inches above the floor, exposed high white canvas shoes with knotted laces, shoes that had apparently never been cleaned in the course of their long and useful existence. Mrs. Steppe had not prefaced this elaborate toilet by arranging her hair, and the light strands stood out from her face, straggling and unkempt as usual.
"I'm glad to see you," Elizabeth said, a littleconfusedly. "I just came in to say good-bye. I'm going away to-night, you know."
"What train be you taking?"
"I'm not taking any train. We're motoring."
"Well," said Mrs. Steppe. "I'm glad you got an automobile to go in. I'm one of those that likes to see my friends get on in the world."
"So—so do I," said Elizabeth. "What a pretty colour that dress is."
"I like to wear silks and velvets," Mrs. Steppe said, with the slightest emphasis on theI. "Some people don't care nothing about it."
"I love silks and velvets myself, and that's a lovely quality."
"When I put my money in anything, I like to put it in something good."
"Yes, indeed. I think that's my brother tooting his horn for me, so I'll have to say good-bye."
"It's quite a little car, ain't it?" Mrs. Steppe surveyed the new roadster from the vantage point of the window. "For my taste, I like these limousines, but anything that will go is better than nothing."
"Yes, indeed," said Elizabeth, "good-bye."
"Good-bye," said Mrs. Steppe, "take care of yourself. I hope you'll find me in better health next summer than you have this."
"Good-bye, Mabel. Good-bye, Madget."
"Good-bye," said Mabel, "come again."
"Kiss me again, Madget," said Elizabeth, "aren't you a little sorry I am going? Oh, be good children, won't you?"
"Bring me a present some time," said Mabel.
"I will."
"Well, if you say you will, you will—I know that," said Mabel.
"Leggo," said their mother, "leggo. That little automobile out there is waiting for her. Tell Moses to get off that front seat and come back into the house. I don't know where the boy's manners is. I ain't never seen any sign of them."
"Oh, dear!" said Elizabeth, as she drove away with Buddy, "it doesn't seem as if anybody with so little intelligence could be so selfish as that Mis' Steppe is. It saddens me every time I go there. I know I've had a funny call, but it doesn't seem funny to me. It never does."
"Now, you want to be dropped at Peggy's, don't you?"
"Yes, please."
"Give Peggy my love and tell her to keep us informed about her sister."
"I guess you've kept informed about her ever since she left."
"A little additional information at times won't do any harm. I don't want her to spring anything on me—like getting out of the country."
"She's getting ready to go abroad."
"She thinks she's getting ready to go abroad. I just want about ten days before the day she thinks she's going."
"She's getting her passport."
"I want her to," said Buddy, affectionately, "I want her to have everything go the way she thinks she wants it to go, and then at the end I want to step right in and smash it."
"Just like that?" said Elizabeth.
"Just like that," said Buddy, happily.
"I don't believe I'm going to be able to bear this," said Peggy. "I thought it was going to be all right to say good-bye. Everybody has to at this time of the year, but—but that doesn't make it any easier. I don't want to part with you at all. I couldn't sleep last night, thinking of it."
"Neither could I," said Elizabeth.
"It's a whole year till next summer."
"I know it."
"I figured it out. It will be at least two hundred and seventy-two days before we are down here together again."
"Will it? We might visit each other in the winter."
"We might, but will we? You know my parents and I know yours. They always have other plans for their offspring in the vacations."
"How is your mother?" Elizabeth asked.
"She's pretty good. I did Mother an injustice. She's a better loser than I thought she'd be. She's been awfully decent to Ruth. Elizabeth, do you know what I found out about Ruth?"
"Oh, what?"
"I found out why she broke her engagement. I would have broken mine. She found out that he falsified his income tax report. He bragged about it to her. He thought it was smart. She wouldn't stand for it, that's all. If he hadn't given himself away, she'd be Mrs. Millionaire-slacker-Piggy Chambers, and half over to Europe by this time."
"I don't like to think of it."
"Well, then, think of me," said Peggy. "You don't care as much as I care. You are going back to your Jean and you like her best. There, I said I would bite my tongue out before I said that to you, and now I've gone and said it."
"Let's not care what we say," Elizabeth said. "I do love Jean. Grandmother always says it doesn't make any difference how many children a woman has, she always has a different place in her heart for every one. I guess that's the way it is with friends. None of them can occupy the same place."
"I only have one in my place," said Peggy, "you are my most intimate friend and I am not yours. Well, I guess I'll have to get reconciled to it."
"I have two most intimate friends," said Elizabeth, "don't cry, Peggy."
"Well, you're crying yourself, that's something. It's—it's a great deal."
"Good-bye," said Elizabeth, "there's Buddy's horn again."
"Good-bye," said Peggy. "Oh, I won't say good-bye. I—I guess I'll come over there and see you off."
"She won't," Elizabeth thought, "she's just saying that to postpone the evil hour. All right, Peggy, dear," she said aloud, "good-bye till—good-bye!" and she flung her arms around Peggy's neck in a suffocating embrace.
In the old valanced rocking chairs before the living-room windows Grandfather and Grandmother Swift sat alone in the gathering darkness.
"House seems kinder lonesome to-night, don't it, Mother? Hard lines to lose the whole family all to once. They ought to gone off one by one, so's we wouldn't notice it so much."
"Times come and seasons change," said Grandmother. "We have to expect to let 'em go. We are lucky to have them coming, even if we do have to let them go again."
"Young John—Buddy she calls him—is as likely a young feller as I ever see."
"And as handsome."
"John—he's made a fine job of his business and a fine job of his life, as far as I can see. He keeps remarkable young for a man of his way of living, too. Don't dissipate none. I expect that's the secret of it. He picked himself up a pretty likely wife, too—good looking and sweet natured and no nonsense about her.Shelooks like her, too."
"She's going to be about her mother's size, I should say, when she gets her growth. She ain't quite so fair, but she's got the same eyes, and the same long, light-coloured lashes."
"But her mouth's all Swift," said Grandfather. "You know that tintype we got of John. Why, cut her hair off, and put her in a boy's shirt and necktie and she'd be the image of him."
"When they stood up there together by the door just before they started, and he put his arm around your shoulder, the likeness stood out plain then."
"Where's Judidy to-night? Gone out with her feller?"
"No, not to-night. The poor critter felt so bad when she see that car pulling out of the yard that she burst out into a fit of crying, and put her apron over her head and run off. She hasn't been heard from since."
"Judidy was fond ofher, and she had cause to be. I guess she give her almost a complete wedding outfit out of her own fixings that she brought down."
"It was pretty cunning of her to give away the silk things she set such a store by. She washed 'em all out herself and run new ribbons in them, and then went and laid them out on Judidy's bed, with her eyes full of tears because she was parting with them. She found out that Judidy had set her heart on silk underwear for her wedding outfit, and she thought it all out that she had ought to give them to her. 'I have about everything I want, Grandma,' she said, 'and I've had a summer's wear out of them.' She don't exaggerate nothing much, that she does."
"She's been pretty plucky, the way she took right hold helping you in the kitchen. She's helped me, too. When we was getting in the hay, and Zeckal was busy all the time she mixed up the hog's vittles and fed the hens, and carted big pails of water around. Faith, Hope, and Charity, they've been squealing considerable to-night, I notice. I guess they kinder feel the absence of a friend."
"You remember the first night she come, Father? You was kind o' disappointed in her."
"So was you, but you didn't let on nothing."
"You said that you kinder hoped that John's girl was going to be a little more like folks."
Grandfather chuckled.
"Did I?" he said. "Well, she turned out to be a good deal more like folks than most people ever gets to be."
Grandmother wiped her eyes.
"There," she said, "I'm most always able to be philosophical about everything, but to tell the truth, I don't know how I am going to be able to get along without that child."
"Well—" Grandfather took off his spectacles and wiped them carefully before he transferred his attention to the process of mopping his forehead—"well, I don't know how I'm going to get along without her, either," he said.
THE END
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
Transcriber Notes:Throughout the dialogues, there were words used to mimic accents of the speakers. Those words were retained as-is.The illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up paragraphs and so that they are next to the text they illustrate.Errors in punctuations and inconsistent hyphenation were not corrected unless otherwise noted.In the caption of the illustration on page 46, a period was added at the end of the last sentence.On page 6, "look a might" was replaced with "look a mite".On page 40, "strangers smile" was replaced with "stranger's smile".On page 60, "Peggy s!" was replaced with "Peggy's".On page 181, "Promethueus Bound" was replaced with "Prometheus Bound".On page 185, a single quotation mark was replaced with a double quotation mark.On page 207, a quotation mark was added before "Do you want to come".On page 279, "overt he pump" was replaced with "over the pump".
Throughout the dialogues, there were words used to mimic accents of the speakers. Those words were retained as-is.
The illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up paragraphs and so that they are next to the text they illustrate.
Errors in punctuations and inconsistent hyphenation were not corrected unless otherwise noted.
In the caption of the illustration on page 46, a period was added at the end of the last sentence.
On page 6, "look a might" was replaced with "look a mite".
On page 40, "strangers smile" was replaced with "stranger's smile".
On page 60, "Peggy s!" was replaced with "Peggy's".
On page 181, "Promethueus Bound" was replaced with "Prometheus Bound".
On page 185, a single quotation mark was replaced with a double quotation mark.
On page 207, a quotation mark was added before "Do you want to come".
On page 279, "overt he pump" was replaced with "over the pump".