CHAPTER XII.AT THE BEEBES.
WHEN they turned the corner of High Street, which was the former post-road of the old town, and began to descend its somewhat crooked slope, Elyot flew off from his basket, and began to shout excitedly, “Oh, there it is—there it is, oh,pleasestop!”
“Set down, child!” commanded Miss Sally sharply; and gathering the leather reins in one hand, she picked him energetically by the blouse. Miss Belinda exclaimed faintly, “Oh, he’ll fall out!” and put out her mitted fingers to help.
“You keep quiet, Belindy,” said Miss Sally brusquely; “you got one child to look after; I’ll see to this one. Now, set still,” to Elyot, “till we get there. Then, goodness knows I’ll be glad enough to let you out.”
Elyot tried to still his throbbing heart and hang to the basket, craning his neck to watchthe Beebe shop, while Billy leisurely picked his way over the cobble-stones.
“There, here you be!” exclaimed Miss Sally, as at last they drew up in front of the little shop, “to home; and, my land, I’m thankful enough!”
Elyot was out over the wheel long before she finished, and holding up his arms for Barby.
“That boy can’t carry her,” cried Miss Belinda nervously from the depths of the gig; “let me get out, Sally, and take her in.”
“Nonsense!” exclaimed Miss Sally, who knew very well what settling Miss Belinda in again would be; “she’ll wake up soon’s she’s on the ground. And her folks’ll come out and get her. Give her to me.”
With that she bundled Barby out, a sleepy little heap, into Elyot’s outstretched arms. “Now, run right along in to home,” she commanded; and slapping the reins over Billy’s back, the gig passed slowly down the street, Miss Belinda working her spare figure around to apply her eye to the square of dingy glass at the back.
“I hope they’ll get in safe,” she breathed anxiously.
“Nonsense!” said Miss Sally again. “Well, now, Belindy,” and she took up the interrupted thread of their morning’s business, “I b’lieve we better not take up this jell to Mrs. Jasper King’s till afternoon. Seein’ we’re here, we better do a mite o’ tradin’.”
“Very well,” said Miss Belindy meekly, who would have said, “Very well” if the other way had been proposed.
Meanwhile Elyot, not taking one blissful moment to stretch his legs, staggered over the uneven pavement, and set Barby on the broad, flat doorstone. Then he doubled up his little fist, being too short to reach the old knocker, and too polite to enter the shop without any summons at all, and rapped with all his force on the green door. Nobody coming, he propped Barby safely up against the upper step so that she would not fall over on her nose, and ran and peered into the little window strung with shoes and boots and rubbers of every description.
“Mr. Beebe!” he cried in a shrill little voice, and plastering his face against the small panes of glass, “oh, my dear Mr. Beebe, please let me in!”
“Open the door, and go in, child,” said a good-natured woman coming along; “folks don’t knock when they’re going to th’ shop. Th’ knocker’s for Sundays, when you’re goin’ to call.” With that she reached over Barby, and threw wide the door. “Mr. Beebe,” she called, “here’s somebody wants to see you.”
“Oh, let me tell ’em first!” screamed Elyot, running past her, and precipitating himself into a fat old lady in a white cap with a good deal of pink ribbon. “We’ve come all this way to see you!”
“Oh, my good gracious me!” exclaimed Mrs. Beebe, raising both hands in astonishment, then clasping him close. “Pa! pa!” she screamed, “here’s the little King boy come to see us! Is your ma out there in the carriage?” all in the same breath.
“Oh, no!” cried Elyot, in the greatest pride; “we came all alone by ourselfs—and Barby’s out on the step;” and he dragged Mrs. Beebe along by the apron.
Old Mr. Beebe, a good deal slower than he used to be, came leaning on his cane, out from the little room at the back, and over to the green front door.
He propped Barby up against the upper stepHe propped Barby up against the upper step, and ran and peered into the little window strung with shoes.
He propped Barby up against the upper step, and ran and peered into the little window strung with shoes.
He propped Barby up against the upper step, and ran and peered into the little window strung with shoes.
“Well, now, my little dear,” he kept saying all the way with a pleased smile, and beaming kindly over his big silver spectacles, “that’s nice to see you to-day.”
“You poor lamb, you,” Mrs. Beebe was saying to Barby, and trying to lean over to lift her up, “there, there, oh, you pretty creeter, you! Pa, I don’t s’pose you can carry her. Oh, dear, I’m such a stout old woman, an’ good for nothin’!”
“Oh! I’ll get her in,” said Elyot, really afraid that Mrs. Beebe would tumble over; and before Mr. Beebe could remonstrate, he had lifted Barby, and rolled her in over the sill, both of the Beebes “ohing” and “ahing” all the time.
“Now, dear, there ain’t no manner o’ use in askin’ you how you come,” said Mrs. Beebe, restraining her curiosity, “the first thing to do is to see after that poor lamb there. Do you s’pose, Elyot, you could manage to get her onto the sofy, an’ I’ll off with her shoes an’ bathe them poor tired little feet. Oh, you poor lamb, you!”
“Yes, I can,” said Elyot manfully; and between the help that old Mr. Beebe gave and old Mrs. Beebe contributed, Barby was soon on the old chintz sofa.
“Now, says I,” declared old Mr. Beebe, rubbing his hands, “that’s something like it. I’ll take off her shoes, wife, that’s in my line; an’ you get the hot water an’ bathe her feet.” So he drew up a chair to the side of the sofa, and putting Barby’s little dusty boots on his knee, he drew them off, and the stockings; and Mrs. Beebe, coming out with a big bowl, and a towel over her arm, sat down in the chair that Elyot drew up for her. “Oh, me! oh, my!” she exclaimed compassionately, “the poor precious little toes!” caressing them.
Elyot threw himself on the floor, and rolled and stretched in perfect abandon.
“And he’s so tired too,” said old Mrs. Beebe, stopping in her work to peer at him over her spectacles.
“Yes, I am,” declared Elyot; “so awfully tired sitting on a basket.”
“Sitting on a basket!” ejaculated both of the Beebes together.
Elyot nodded, and took another roll.
Just then Barby pulled away the white toes that Mrs. Beebe had submerged with the warm cloth. “Oh!” she exclaimed, opening her eyesdewy with sleep, and regarding them fixedly, “I want some pink sticks for dinner; I’m hungry, truly I am.”
“I’d rather have one of the sugar doughnuts, please,” said Elyot, now that his legs began to feel better, finding that he was very hungry too.
Old Mr. Beebe laughed till his sides shook and his spectacles tumbled off, and Mrs. Beebe laughed too, and Elyot began to laugh, for he was so comforted with it all, and he knew the doughnuts were coming; and Barby laughed too, and it was so very jolly, that no one heard a customer come in, until he said rather gruffly, “Is my boot half-soled, Mr. Beebe?”
“Oh, bless you, yes!” said Mr. Beebe, getting up and hobbling over to the other side of the room, and he lifted a curtain that concealed a shelf where the repaired articles were kept; “yes, I had that done yist’day, Mr. Coombs,” he said, bringing it out.
“You come along with me,” whispered old Mrs. Beebe to Elyot, “an’ we’ll git the doughnuts. Lucky I made a big lot yist’day; I must ’a’ known you were comin’;” and she laughed again.
“And bring the pink sticks,” cried Barby afterthem. Then she leaned back on the old chintz pillow, and gazed entranced at the beautiful rows and rows of shoes dangling from strings across the room, and strung across the little window. And great green things, that afterward old Mr. Beebe showed her were boxes that contained shoes and rubbers; each had one of the articles hanging to it. And there, on the top shelf of all, was a long row of big rubber boots—oh, and it smelt so very lovely! Barby lay quite still, and sniffed and sniffed in delight. And even when a long pink cinnamon stick was brought and put into her chubby little hand, she held it loosely and still gazed on.
“It’s a pink stick,” shouted Elyot at her, his mouth full, and taking his face out from behind a big doughnut.
“Isn’t it beautiful!” hummed Barby in delight. “An’ oh! how do you do, my dear very own Mrs. Beebe, and pretty well I thank you mostly,” remembering her manners.
“She will say such dreadful things,” broke in Elyot, quite mortified, notwithstanding his satisfaction; “but you must excuse her, dear Mrs. Beebe, ’cause she’s very little, you know.”
“You blessed dear!” cried old Mrs. Beebe, quite overcome with admiration, and covering the little round face with kisses till her cap-border trembled.
“And I shall say just the very same thing to dear Mr. Beebe,” declared Barby decidedly. Then she began on her pink stick.
“There ain’t no mortal use askin’ them blessed dears how they come here nor anythin’, till they gits rested, Jotham,” said Mrs. Beebe, taking her good man by the arm as the customer departed, and whispering violently. “And my! they’re as hungry—” she glanced around at them as she spoke.
“They better ’a’ had somethin’ more solid ’n candy,” said old Mr. Beebe, critically eying them too.
“Goodness me!” cried old Mrs. Beebe, “I wouldn’t ’a’ kept that blessed child from her pink stick a minute more’n I could help. Look at her suck it now!”
Barby’s face was wreathed in smiles, as she lay on her back, in the fullest enjoyment of her pink stick, that was rapidly melting, and adding considerable of itself to the dust that the mud-piebaking and the travel had given her small countenance.
“Time enough to give ’em somethin’ solid when they’ve got what they wanted,” said the old lady wisely. “Now, Jotham, we must let Mrs. King know as soon as we can that them childern are here. Think how she’s a-worritin’.”
“To be sure—tobesure!” exclaimed old Mr. Beebe thoughtfully; “well, how’ll we do it, Sarah. I can’t get down there, an’ now we don’t keep no horse—well, I d’no what to do.”
“We must get some one to go for us,” said Mrs. Beebe determinedly; and going to the door, she peered anxiously up and down the street. “Now, there’s them two old ladies who come over from Hingham every week or so,—the Scrannages,—I see their gig in front o’ Simons’s shop. I wonder if they’d go for us. I mean to ask ’em.”
She untied her apron, and threw it over her shoulders, it being more elegant than to go out with nothing over her waist, and waddled down the street.
The Misses Scrannage were selecting a new calico dress apiece at Mr. Simons’s shop; and he had taken them down to the extreme end, to seethe beautiful new stock he had just gotten in. They were now in a complete state of bewilderment, not knowing whether or no to get a bright pink with purple spots on it for Sally, as they were afraid it wouldn’t wash, Mr. Simons solemnly assuring them every minute in which there was a lull in their consultations, that he knew for an absolute certainty that itcouldn’tfade. And when this was decided and cut off, there was the choosing of Miss Belinda’s gown. She had set her heart on two shades of green worked in together, with little white dots all over the whole.
“I know that won’t wash,” declared Miss Sally scornfully; “an’ then how ’twill look when it streaks,” she was saying as old Mrs. Beebe stepped into the shop.
“It never’ll do to interrupt ’em when they’re choosin’ caliker gownds,” said the old lady to herself; “s’posin’ they shouldn’t get the right ones, they’d blame me every blessed time they put ’em on. Oh, dear me! I must wait; p’r’aps they’re most through.”
But it was a good three-quarters of an hour before Mr. Simons clicked his scissors through the two pieces of calico, and they were torn off beyondrecall. Every minute old Mrs. Beebe had been on the point of rushing home, or rather waddling, and had restrained herself, thinking she heard the supreme moment of decision approaching. “Pa knows where the cold meat, an’ the pies, an’ the bread is,” she comforted herself, when she got nervous sitting on the wooden stool they brought her to wait on. Now she hurried as fast as she could down to the end of the shop.
“How d’ye do, Miss Sally and Miss Belindy Scrannage?” she said in her most polite way, “I want to ask a gret favor;” trying to pull Miss Sally, as the woman of business in the family, aside, that no one might overhear.
“The little King children, Mrs. Jasper King’s, are at my house. Poor things! they must ’a’ walked clear down here, when no one knew it, and”—
“I brung ’em in our gig,” proclaimed Miss Sally in a loud voice. “Oh, my land, an’ good gracious me!”