CHAPTER VTHE PICNIC
“Elnathan, I’m out of flour; you must go to mill to-day,” said Mrs. Hagood one morning a little later.
Mr. Hagood had been anticipating this direction, but he answered with a guileless air, “Must you have it to-day? Joe Hatch is a hurryin’ about his wagon.”
“Yes, I can’t bake again till I have some more flour; and I guess Joe Hatch can wait.”
“You couldn’t go?”
“Me? The idea; no, my time’s worth too much to spend a good share of the day going to mill. There was a payment due yesterday on that money I lent Dawson, and if he doesn’t come this morning I shall go around and see him.”
Mr. Hagood paused in the door with a reflective manner, “I don’t know, Almira, but ’twould be a good idea to take Posey along and show her the way; old Jim’s that gentleshe could drive him well enough, an’ ’twould be dreadful handy sometimes if I could send her to mill when I’m pushed with work. She’s quick to learn anything.”
“Quick enough when she wants to be. But why don’t you send her to-day? You can tell her the way; she could hardly miss it.”
“Y-e-s, but it’s kind of ticklish gettin’ down the hill there at the mill, I’d want to show her about that myself. But it’s just as you say.”
Mrs. Hagood hesitated, but the thought that if Posey could take his place in going to mill Mr. Hagood could be at work decided the matter. “Well, take her then,” she said; “she’s in the garden picking peas; call her in and tell her to get ready.”
Just before he was ready to start, Mr. Hagood came in, “There’s never no knowin’ how many will be ahead of me, or how long I’ll have to wait my turn; the last time I got pretty nigh famished, so I wish you’d put up a bite o’ lunch in case I have to wait again, as I’m likely to.”
Then with the bag of wheat in the back of the stout buggy, the basket of lunch under the seat, and Rover, the old dog, caperingaround them, they set off, between meadows where the sun of the July morning had not yet dried the dewy freshness from the grass, and cornfields, the ribbon leaves of whose green rows waved and rustled in the light breeze. When they were well outside the village Rover came to the side of the buggy and looked up with expectant eyes. “Almiry says there ain’t no sense in lettin’ a dog ride,” Mr. Hagood remarked apologetically, “an’ I s’pose she’s right. But Rover does enjoy it so much that when I’m alone I generally let him. Come up, old fellow! There,” as the dog bounded into the buggy, “sit up now like a gentleman.” And Rover lifting his head, lolled out his tongue, and looked first at one and then the other with an air of deep content.
It was a five-mile drive, but it seemed short to Posey, though easy-going Jim took his own gait, and once when Mr. Hagood saw on a converging road another wagon piled with bags he held his own horse back until he saw they had the right of way, which in this case assured him a wait of two or three hours at least.
At last the mill was reached, with the wide, smooth pond spreading above it, whose water tumbling over the dam hurried foam-flecked away through a deep, rocky gorge, made still more shadowy by the hemlocks that lined it, on whose very verge stood the tall old mill. “You think it’s a pretty place?” as Posey gave a little cry of delight as the shining water came in view. “Well, I do myself, for a fact. But look now ef I ever send you alone,” and Posey watched as he wound down the short but steep descent to the mill door, through which she looked with wide, curious eyes.
“And you never saw a grist mill afore? Well, come right in an’ see one now,” and Posey followed Mr. Hagood and the miller who had shouldered their bag of wheat inside, where belts and bands were whirring, and great hoppers slowly turning as they fed the grain to the crushing stones. The noise and clatter drowned the miller’s voice but she understood his good-natured smile and beckoning finger as he opened little doors here and there and she caught glimpses of the wheat on its way to be cleansed from impurities,of the flour passing through its silken bolting sieve, of a flowing brown stream of bran, and a white cataract of swiftly falling flour: the flour that whitened the miller’s coat and cap, and lay as a covering over the floor, and powdered all the beams and ledges of the mill, and swayed with the wind in cobweb veils and festoons from the high rafters. And mingled with all was the steady, insistent sound of the falling water just outside, the power that gave force and motion to it all.
“We’ll have quite a spell to wait,” remarked Mr. Hagood, motioning Posey to the door so that his voice could be heard, “there’s two big grists ahead of us; how’d you like to go out on the pond? There’s a boat under the willows at the end of the dam.”
Like it? Of course she would, and in a few moments she was dipping her fingers in the clear water as Mr. Hagood rowed the little boat toward the upper end of the pond where lily pads were floating on the placid surface with here and there a blossom opening waxy-white petals. It was an hour that Posey never forgot, the soft blue sky above, thegentle motion of the boat, the lake-like water that rippled away from the oars, and the lily blossoms with their golden hearts.
“Well, now, Posey,” said Mr. Hagood, as they drew in to shore at last, “must be about noon by the shadders, an’ rowin’s kinder hungry work, so I guess we may as well have our lunch.”
For this they chose a spot down close to the stream below the fall, on a great rock that jutted out, covered with a green carpet of softest moss, and shaded by the drooping hemlocks that found their foothold in the ledges above. Here Posey spread out the contents of the well-filled basket, for Mrs. Hagood’s provision was always an ample one, the slices of bread and butter, the thin pink shavings of dried beef, the pickles, the doughnuts and cookies, while Mr. Hagood added as his contribution a couple of big golden oranges.
“I’m so glad we had to wait!” observed Posey as she munched her bread and butter.
It was an hour that Posey never forgot.—Page75.
It was an hour that Posey never forgot.—Page75.
It was an hour that Posey never forgot.—Page75.
“This isn’t much of a wait,” answered Mr. Hagood. “When I was a boy an’ used to go to mill with my grist in a bag on thehorse behind me, like as not I’d have to wait till the next day. An’ before that when it was a hundred miles to the nearest mill father used to be gone a week at least.”
“I guess he didn’t go very often,” hazarded Posey.
“Not very, especially as there wasn’t anything but blazed trees for roads to go by. In them early pioneer days when folks first began to come here to Ohio it was a pretty serious question how to get meal and flour; sometimes they’d shave it off, an’ sometimes grind it in a coffee mill. I’ve heard Aunt Sally Bliss tell that once she nailed the door of an old tin lantern to a board and grated corn enough for Johnny-cake for her family; while quite a few did like my father; he hollowed out a place in the top of a stump, worked off a stone till it had a handle for a pestle, then put the wheat or corn, a little at a time, in the hollow and pounded it till it was fine enough to use.”
“That must have been ever so much work.”
“Yes, there was plenty of hard work those days, but the people had real good times after all. Sometimes I think better’n we havenow,” he added as he slowly peeled his orange.
“Not any better than to-day,” protested Posey.
“An’ have you enjoyed it?” a smile brightening his face, as the miller came to the mill door and waved his whitened hand in token that the flour was ready and they rose to leave, “Has it been like a picnic?”
“A picnic, yes,” a sudden comprehension coming to her what he had meant it for. “Dear Mr. Hagood, it’s been so good of you, and it is the loveliest day I ever had in all my life.”
So it will be seen that even under Mrs. Hagood’s rule Posey’s life was not all shadow, the less so that Mr. Hagood touched by her pleasure managed with gentle guile and under one pretext and another to secure her for a companion now and then. Outings which it would be hard to tell which enjoyed the more, Posey for herself or Mr. Hagood for her. Occasionally, too, some matter of business would call Mrs. Hagood away for the afternoon, when she would take her towels to hem or carpet rags to sew, as the casemight be, out to the little shop with its mingled odors of fresh lumber, paint, and varnish, where Mr. Hagood hummed old tunes and whistled softly to himself as he worked. And where seated on a rheumatic buggy seat in one corner, with the shaggy head of Rover resting on her knee, in watching Mr. Hagood at his work, and listening to his favorite old-time stories she would find real if unexciting enjoyment.
Then again during the season of raspberries and blackberries many were the delightful hours Posey spent berrying in the “back pasture.” A field this, only a little remote from the village, but hidden from it by a bit of intervening woods, and so shut away from all outward, disturbing sight or sound that with its peaceful stillness and sunny, wind-swept solitude, it seemed as genuine a bit of nature as though the subduing hand of man had never been laid upon it, and one which the city-bred child fairly revelled in.
A big, stony, thin-soiled field was the “back pasture,” affording hardly grass enough for the two or three cows which fed there, hence held in slight esteem by its owner and sufferedto lapse into an almost unchecked growth of briars and undergrowth, with here and there a thicket of young and fast-growing trees, a spot where wild growths ran riot, where bittersweet hung its clusters, and the wild grape tangled its strong and leafy meshes; a spot, too, that the birds knew, where they nested and sang, for the most part unmolested and unafraid.
But the crowning charm of the place to Posey was the chattering brook that with many a curve and bend, as if seeking excuse to linger, ran in a little hollow through the centre of the pasture. A clear, sparkling little stream, gurgling and hurrying through the sunlit spaces, loitering in the shadows of the willows whose green fingers bent down to meet its current, with shallow places where one could wade or cross on stepping-stones, and deep pools where minnows loved to gather and hide them under the trailing grasses of the banks.
This was Posey’s first acquaintance with a brook and for her it had not only charm but almost personality; she talked to it as she would to a companion, beside it she felt acertain sense of companionship, and no matter how often she might come, always she greeted the sight of the stream with the same delight.
For her these were truly halcyon days, and most fervently did she wish that berries ripened the year round. As it was, being both quick of eyes and nimble of fingers, Mrs. Hagood permitted her to come nearly as often as she chose while they were in season. So many a summer morning was thus spent, for the best picking was to the earliest comer, and where it often happened, an addition to her own content if not to the contents of her basket, she met other children of the village bent on a similar errand.
And always whatever of the hard or unpleasant the days might hold, every week brought its Sunday, when the interminable hemming and patch-work and carpet rags, with the other more distasteful of the week-day duties were laid aside for one day. Mrs. Hagood was not herself greatly given to church-going, but she considered it an eminently respectable habit and saw to it that the family credit was duly upheld by Mr.Hagood and Posey. In her own mind Posey held the Sundays when Mrs. Hagood stayed at home as by far the most enjoyable. For then Mr. Hagood could pass her surreptitious stems of caraway seed, with an occasional peppermint drop; moreover, he could drop into a gentle doze, and she could venture to move now and then without fear of a sharp nudge from Mrs. Hagood’s vigorous elbow.
There, too, was the Sunday School, where she could sit with a row of other girls, exchange furtive remarks between the teacher’s questions, compare library books, or loiter for little chats on the homeward way.
Then in the long summer Sunday afternoons she could lie on the grass under the shading maples and read the same library books; or perhaps, what was still better, while Mrs. Hagood dozed in her favorite rocker, she, Mr. Hagood and Rover, who made the third in this trio of friends, would stroll away together, beyond the village, across the open, sunny, breeze-swept fields, past ripening grain and meadow, along fence-rows where alders spread their umbels of lace-like blossoms, and later the golden rod tossed theplumes of its yellow-crested army. These fence-rows that were in very truth the “squirrels’ highway,” on which the sight every now and then of one skurrying along with bright eyes and bushy tail saucily waving defiance, would set Rover nearly wild with excitement, to the great amusement of his companions.
“Poor old Rover!” was the way Posey commonly spoke of her dumb friend. But there was certainly no occasion for the first adjective, for Mrs. Hagood could truly boast that nothing around her suffered for the lack of enough to eat; and as a reward for his canine faithfulness she even went so far as to give him a discarded mat on which he might lie in the woodhouse. But whine he ever so pitifully, he was not allowed to cross beyond that threshold and join the family circle, a privilege his social dog nature did so crave. And all his tail-wagging and mute appeals were equally without avail to draw from his mistress the caressing touch or word his dog soul so evidently and ardently longed for.
Rover was a trusty watch-dog, and for this Mrs. Hagood valued him; at the same timeshe frowned on his idle existence, and had even considered the matter of having Mr. Hagood make a dog-power that she might use him to churn with. Against this her husband had urged that he wasn’t heavy enough, though privately he confided to Posey that it “wasn’t in nature for dogs to work like humans, an’ he wa’n’t goin’ to make no dog-churn for old Rover to tread, not if he knew himself, he wa’n’t.”