MICHAEL MAKES UP HIS MIND
Acrossthe darkening furrows a boy leading a farm horse plodded home through the twilight. His shoes were heavy with mud, and his thumbs were so cold that he blew on them to warm them; for though it was April there was snow in the air.
Far down on the horizon a tiny light shot out into the dusk. Michael said to himself that Helen was getting supper and had just lighted the candle.
When he had stabled the horse in the lean-to, he opened the door of the shack. A breath of warmth and three young voices rushed out to greet him. ‘Hello, Michael!’ ‘Come to supper!’ ‘We’re waiting.’
Michael entered, tracking in much mud, which didn’t really matter, for the floor was of beaten earth. He spread his hands to the fire. ‘What have you there?’ he asked, man-like.
‘Potatoes,’ said Helen, and lifted the lid to show the silky skins bursting like milkweed pods about to loose their fleece.
‘But we mustn’t eat the potatoes,’ cried Michael sharply; ‘we’ve got to save them for seed.’
‘What shall we eat, then?’ asked Helen.
‘Isn’t there any flour?’
Helen poked the meal-bag, which hung from the rafters to keep it from the rats. It was nearly empty.
Michael’s kind eyes were sombre as the family gathered at the table. ‘Is there anything we can sell?’ he asked.
‘Nothing but the goose,’ said Helen.
They looked at one another with troubled faces. If they sold the goose, what about the goslings that they hoped for in the spring?
‘I’ll go over to see the Friends after supper,’ said Michael. ‘Perhaps Mr. Hall will buy the goose.’ The four children had been in so many tight places that they were not easily discouraged. Basil and Katherine were soon frolicking merrily, but Michael and Helen took counsel together like old people.
There was little in the room that Michael had not made with his own hands—the rough table, the two benches, even the stove of stones and plaster, and the beds, which were boxes built against the wall and filled with straw. There was one bed in the kitchen for Helen and Katherine, and another for Michael and Basil in the recess, which had once been a cow stall; for the cabinwas a part of what had been their father’s barn before the war.
When supper was over, the candle-stump was transferred to the lantern. Michael, cutting across lots, would need a light, for the fields were full of ditches and shell-holes.
The farm lay in the eastern part of Poland, near the Russian border. During the war it had been a battlefield, and when, after a year’s wandering, the children, orphaned, had struggled back to it, they had found everything except one corner of the barn swept away. Michael had made it weatherproof with timbers and stones pulled from the rubbish, and the neighbors, though shattered and poor themselves, had helped him. The land was good. Michael knew that in time he could make a living from it. But he was only fourteen, and in the meantime there were so many of them to be fed! The Friends had lent him a horse and cart the first season, and the community had given him seed. From the sale of his harvest and by working as house boy for Mr. Hall, Michael had been able to buy the horse and was now the proud owner of Boro.
The Society of Friends were a group of people who had come to Poland from America after the war to help those whose farms and homes had been destroyed. Theyploughed and built, and they lent horses and tools and sold seed and supplies at a low figure. In fact, they were Friends in a very noble sense.
Michael entered the warm room where Mr. Hall sat writing in the lamplight. ‘Hello, Michael,’ he said. ‘How is business?’
‘Not so good,’ answered the boy soberly. ‘You want to buy a goose, Mr. Hall?’
‘No, I don’t believe I do, Michael. I should like to sell some goose eggs, instead.’ Then, seeing Michael’s blank face, he added, ‘Sit down and tell me why you wish to sell your goose.’
Mrs. Hall brought in a bowl of apples, and while Michael ate one he told about the seed potatoes and the empty meal sack.
‘It would be very foolish to sell your goose, though,’ said Mr. Hall. ‘If you set her on a dozen eggs they will be worth ten times as much as she is worth, by Christmas.’
‘I know,’ said Michael, heavy with misery. ‘I could get along, myself, but there are the children.’
‘You have your horse, haven’t you?’
‘Oh, yes, old Boro. He’s good and strong. I have been ploughing with him all day.’
‘How long shall you need him?’
‘To-morrow I shall finish all the land I can plant this year.’
‘Well, I’d like to hire Boro when you don’t need him. I can use more horses. Will you take a sack of meal and some goose eggs as part payment?’
Michael went home across the cold fields with a light heart, and the next day the spring work seemed to begin in earnest. Helen made pancakes for breakfast, Michael finished ploughing and began to sow, and Katherine and Basil filled a box with hay, as a nest for the goose.
Only a few days later Mr. Hall came to Michael with grave news. ‘My boy,’ he said, ‘I am going to leave here at the end of this month, and I want you to come with me.’
‘Going away!’ cried Michael, stupefied.
‘Yes, we are opening a Farm School at Kolpin. It is for orphaned boys, like yourself, who have land, but who are too young to work it. By the time they are eighteen or nineteen and are ready to go back they will know how to make the most of what they have. I wish you would come with us.’
Michael grew red with excitement.
‘I’d like to go all right,’ he said, ‘but of course I couldn’t leave the farm and the children.’
‘Michael, you are very brave, and you did fairly welllast year, yet you made hardly enough to carry you through the winter.’
‘I have planted more this year,’ said the boy confidently.
‘Yes,’ said Mr. Hall, ‘and each year you will plant a little more until you are working all your land. But if you knew something about modern farming you could make it yield at least four times as much as it does.’
‘How could I?’
‘You would know what to plant in a field one year in order to get good corn the next; which soil is good for wheat and which for potatoes; and how to make old land young.’
‘I’d like it mighty well,’ sighed Michael, ‘but I must stick to the farm and the children. Mother wanted us to stay together.’
‘I would not ask you to come if we could not take the children, too.’
‘But,’ cried Michael in alarm, ‘you said it was a place for orphans; I promised mother I would never let the children go to an asylum.’
‘It is a school, not an orphanage,’ said Mr. Hall. ‘The children would be happy there.’
‘Not if it’s an orphan place,’ said Michael, and shook his head stubbornly.
Mr. Hall could not move him, and at the end of the month went away sadly, leaving Michael behind.
The boy took up his work with a lonely heart, but he did not lose courage. He loved every inch of his farm; the windy furrows against the sky, with the long-tailed magpies stalking over them; the clump of white birches in the hollow; the purple woodland and the gray windmill where he would carry his grain in the autumn to have it ground into flour. Even the little hump of a cottage, which he had built with his own hands, had grown dear to him; but most of all he loved his sisters and his small brother, and he had the joy of keeping the family together, as his mother had begged him to do.
One day in early summer, when the crops were pushing up bravely and the girls were weeding the turnip patch, Mr. Hall again stood before them. He had come over from Kolpin for things that had been left behind, and was to return that afternoon.
‘Can you give me some dinner?’ he called to Helen, and she ran to put the kettle on. When Michael came home, at noon, his heart gave a bound of joy. Not only was he glad to see Mr. Hall, but he was proud to show him his summer fields.
BASIL HERDING GEESEBASIL HERDING GEESE
BASIL HERDING GEESE
BASIL HERDING GEESE
‘Yes, Michael,’ said Mr. Hall, ‘you have the making of a great farmer, but you must remember that land inPoland is no longer farmed as it was before the war. You will have to compete with modern methods. Now that we are well started at Kolpin, you must bring the children and make us a visit. I wish you would come to stay, Michael. Think it over!’ But Michael could not make up his mind.
‘If it were not an orphan place——’ he began.
‘Michael,’ said Mr. Hall seriously, ‘your mother would wish you and the others to go to school. She would want the girls to learn to cook and sew and keep house as she did. Do you think it is right for you to keep them from it? Come back with me to-day, all of you, and at the end of a week let the younger ones decide whether they will stay or not. That is only fair. Try it!’
Michael, who was beginning to see that perhaps he had no right to decide the question alone, put it to vote.
‘Let’s try it for a week,’ said Helen; and Katherine and Basil went wild with excitement.
After dinner they all climbed into the farm wagon, which was half filled with hay, and rolled away merrily behind the spanking grays. Toward evening they came to a white house at the end of an avenue of big trees, where people with kind eyes and kind voices were waiting for them; but the first thing that they saw as theydrove in was a stork’s nest on the roof of the barn. Three angular little storks settled down for the night beneath their mother, while the father stork stood beside them, dark against the melting gold of sunset.
‘A stork’s nest,’ cried Katherine; ‘this will be a lucky place!’
‘That is not the only nest here,’ said the House Mother, ‘come and see the others.’
The first nest was a long, brown house full of big boys who were just sitting down to a supper of rice with peas, black bread, cocoa, and apples. Here Michael was to live.
The second nest was a square little house like something in a story book. Here Helen and Katherine were to live, with Basil. The floors were as smooth as silk. At the windows hung daffodil curtains, which made the rooms seem full of sunshine. There were little white beds, one for each child, with sheets such as these children had had when their mother was alive; and in the kitchen was a great stove, with a chimney-hood like the one in their old home.
Every one at the farm school was busy. Michael went out to the fields or to the barns with the other boys. Helen made beds and washed dishes. Katherine shelled peas. All passed a part of each day in the schoolroom. Even Basil learned to count the geese that were placedin his care. He knew that there were eight in all, so if there were only five in the path there must be three behind the hedge.
That week Michael watched the children closely. He knew that they were having better food than he could give them, and when he saw them starting gayly for the blackberry patch with their tin pails, or saw Helen in a clean pink apron watering the foxgloves and hollyhocks with a happy smile, he nodded wisely. In his own heart he longed to stay, for he had seen enough of the well-tilled acres on the river Bug to know that here he could learn to be a successful farmer.
‘What shall I do with my farm if we stay?’ he asked Mr. Hall.
‘You may take a week in the spring to plant grain and another in the fall to harvest it. We can use Boro here.’
At the end of the week Mr. Hall called the family together. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘which is it to be, go or stay?’
‘Stay!’ they shouted joyously.
Michael added, ‘If mother could see us all here I know she would be glad.’
‘Every one is glad,’ said Mr. Hall. ‘Look!’ and he pointed toward the barn, where, on the roof-tree they saw the old stork rise on his toes and clap his beak and his wings with great content.