CHAPTER XV.SOME HINGHAM CALLS.
“PHRONSIE,” said Joel desperately, “I can’t take Miss Loughead with us.”
“O Joey! you promised,” said Phronsie in a grieved way.
“But I can’t do it—do beg off for me some way. Why, it’s impossible for me to look the girl in the face after what I’ve said. How I could ever have spoken so, I don’t see,” went on Joel remorsefully.
Phronsie was about to say something; but thinking better of it, she only smiled comfortingly.
“Do, will you, Phronsie?” begged Joel in a wheedling way.
“I think you ought to take Amy all the more because you did speak so, Joel,” said Phronsie quietly, “so I cannot speak for you, dear.”
Joel turned off, and ground his boot into thegravel. “All right, Phronsie,” he said, turning around.
But just here Grandpapa came around the curve in the path. “Phronsie, you will drive me in your cart,” he said.
“Shall I, Grandpapa?”
“Yes, dear; and tell Johnson to put my bay in.”
“Yes, Grandpapa.” Phronsie looked at Joel. His black eyes said, just as when a boy he had been delighted at anything, “Oh, goody! now I sha’n’t have to drive that girl to Hingham.”
Phronsie answered the look by, “O Joel! now it will help to make up for what you said; as you can take Amy Loughead over alone, and that’ll show her you are sorry.”
Joel’s face lengthened. “Really, Phronsie?”
“I would,” said Phronsie; then she ran off to get ready.
“Miss Loughead,” said Joel awkwardly, going into the music-room where she stood alone, turning over some of Polly’s music, “I don’t know as you’ll go with me—I’m sure I shouldn’t, if the cases were reversed; but I was to take my sister Phronsie and you on the driving-partyto the Glen yesterday, you know.” He paused, having come to the length of his chain, and stared helplessly at her.
“Yes,” said Amy.
“Well, now it’s Hingham, instead; and Grandpapa wants Phronsie to go with him, so it leaves you and me out in the cold,” he said with an attempt at a laugh.
Amy said nothing, so he had to plunge on. “And if you’ll be willing under the circumstances to let me drive you, why, I’ll do it,” finished Joel desperately.
“Do you wish to, Mr. Pepper?” asked Amy, raising a pair of clear blue eyes to his, “because do not really try to do it—to—make up—for anything. I’d rather you didn’t,” she said earnestly.
“I do wish it,” said Joel heartily, “if you are willing—that’s the question. Miss Loughead, I never was so sorry in all my life for anything,” he declared; and he hung his head, wishing he were small enough to be whipped, and be done with it.
“Don’t feel distressed about it,” said Amy. “I was a little goose, Mr. Pepper, in the olddays; and I just wasted my time, and I wouldn’t study; and I worried Polly dreadfully.” It was now her turn to look distressed, and Joel cried out, “Don’t look so, I beg of you.”
“And you were quite right in believing I couldn’t, or I wouldn’t, study now,” said Amy. “I don’t blame you, Mr. Pepper.” She put out her hand, which Joel seized remorsefully.
“Will you go?” he cried eagerly, and hanging to it,—“will you?”
“Yes, I will go,” said Amy Loughead, pulling away her hand, and smiling brightly.
“Oh, beg pardon!” ejaculated Joel, backing off, “I was thinking it was Phronsie.” Then in hurried Robert Bingley.
“Miss Loughead, I’ve been looking everywhere for you. May I have the pleasure of driving you to Hingham this morning?”
“I am going with Mr. Joel Pepper,” said Amy. And Joel heard his friend Bingley say, “Whew!” and he meant to have it out with him some time for that.
At last they were off,—Mrs. Higby, shading her eyes with her hand, watched them from the upper door,—all but Jasper, who went as usualwith the “little publishing bag” to town in the early train. The children were distributed evenly throughout the party on the drag; Polly and Grace Tupper, Ben and David were on horseback; and Grandpapa and Phronsie led off in the dog-cart merrily; while Joel and Amy Loughead brought up the rear, the interval being filled by a big beach-wagon. When Robert Bingley found how it was, he clambered into this last, without a sign on his face that he didn’t choose that place to begin with.
“Well, really,” observed Percy, adjusting his monocle with importance, “this road looks exactly like all country roads—don’t you know.”
Van, on the back seat with Gladys Ray, grinned. “Astonishing fact,” he whispered to her. “It’s his monocle that does that.”
“Polly wouldn’t like it to have you make fun of your brother,” she said.
Van colored up to the roots of his light hair. “I’m glad you’re going to be like Polly, Gladys,” he said, “and keep me straight.”
“Indeed, I’m not going to keep you straight,” she cried with spirit; “you’ve got to keep yourself straight. But I shall say things that I’veheard the Peppers say, for it’s good for you to hear them.”
“Isn’t this fine,” cried David, riding up to the side of the trap—“eh, Joe? Doesn’t it take you back to the days when we used to race barefoot along this Hingham road?”
“That it does,” cried Joel, in huge delight, and raised back to his self-esteem by the quiet poise of the girl beside him, who evidently meant to take everything as it had been before his cruel and unlucky speech. “She’s one girl in a thousand for sense and a good heart,” said Joel to himself many times on the drive. “Nobody else but Polly and Phronsie could have done it.”
When they reached Hingham, as they did in good time, it was an easy matter to find Abiel Babbidge’s house. Everybody knew him, and could tell the old yellow house, run down at the heel, as it were, set back from the side road. All around it lay one of the New England farms, whose principal crop seemed to be stones, which, if removed, would leave not much else. “Good gracious me!” ejaculated old Mr. King, as Phronsie turned the bay up the scraggly wagon-path to the door.
The whole procession came to a halt. “Phronsie,” said Grandpapa, “you’d better ask to see Mrs. Babbidge. I’ll tackle him if he is home.”
“Shall I, Grandpapa?” asked Phronsie, getting out.
“Oh, let me!” howled Elyot, trying to spring off from the drag. “I want to see my nice Mr. Babbidge.”
“And me too,” cried Barby; “let me too!”
King was consumed with envy, and so was Johnny Fargo, because they had no former acquaintance to plead. “I wouldn’t,” he said, laying a restraining hand on Elyot’s jacket.
“You let me alone,” cried Elyot crossly, and twitching himself free. “You don’t know my Mr. Babbidge. Oh,dolet me get down!”
“So you shall, dear,” said Polly, riding up to the side of the drag, “and Barby. Run along now, chickens,” as somebody lifted Barby down and set her on the ground, “and call your Mr. Babbidge out. We all want to see him.”
Thereupon King and Johnny screamed for permission to get down, which being accorded, they whooped off also, and disappeared around the house in the direction of the dilapidated barn.
Presently Abiel Babbidge appeared, shambling and shamefaced, with one of the King children hanging to either hand,—the other boys trying to catch on somewhere, and not succeeding very well.
Polly reined her horse up to his side. “How do you do, Mr. Babbidge?” she said, putting out her dainty riding-glove. “I am the children’s mother, and I want to thank you for all the kind care you gave them yesterday.”
“O Moses and Methuselah!” exclaimed Abiel Babbidge, startled out of any sort of manners; “ye be! Why, I can’t tech ye’re hand with this.” He extricated one of his horny palms from Barby’s grasp, and held it up to her.
Polly shook it warmly. “I cannot thank you, Mr. Babbidge, as I want to. May I see your wife?” and she rode up to the old horse-block and dismounted.
Abiel Babbidge’s face fell. “My wife is sick,” he said slowly, and something like a tear fell from his eye. Elyot pulled away his hand, and looked up in astonishment at him.
“I know she is not well,” said Polly gently; “but I thought perhaps you would think she couldsee me and my sister,” taking Phronsie’s hand. “But not if you do not think best, Mr. Babbidge.”
“Ye may,” said Mr. Babbidge abruptly. “I declar to gracious I sh’d be glad to have her see ye both. ’Twould bring her right up, mebbe.”
Old Mr. King got slowly out of the dog-cart while Mr. Babbidge was escorting Polly and Phronsie in. On the top step, Polly turned and said softly, “Now run away, children, and don’t make a noise under the window.”
“Oh, we’re going in!” cried Elyot, pushing with all his might to get in first.
“Mamma says not,” said Polly; and they tumbled back quickly, and swarmed into the dog-cart to wait with Grandpapa.
In a few minutes out came Mr. Babbidge’s head and shoulders in the doorway. “They want ye,” he nodded to old Mr. King; who, mightily pleased to be summoned, wended his way to the steps.
“Somebody come and sit with those youngsters,” he cried, shaking his walking-stick at the bunch of them in the cart. So Ben got out of the drag, and ran up just in time to save thebay from getting a smart thwack from the whip that Johnny Fargo had captured.
“The next boy that gets hold of that whip will tumble out of this cart,” said Ben decidedly.
Polly sat by the side of the bed in the old bedroom that opened out of the kitchen, Phronsie stood by the foot, as Abiel Babbidge said to Mr. King, “There’s my wife, sir,” and pointed to the bed. Under the old patched bedquilt she lay, propped up by pillows; everything marvellously neat, but oh, so coarse and poor! She had a smile on her thin face; and her hand, all drawn up with rheumatism, was extended in simple courtesy of an old-time pattern.
“Oh! how do you do, madam?” said old Mr. King much shocked, and for the life of him not knowing what to say.
But Mrs. Babbidge knew no embarrassment. She asked her husband to get some more chairs from the kitchen and bring in; and when he, big and awkward, knocked down more things in the carrying out of this request than he could pause to pick up, she passed it serenely over, and smiled at him just the same.
Polly felt the tears in her eyes, in spite of allher efforts to keep them out. “Dear Mrs. Babbidge,” she said gently, “you know a mother who has had her little children restored to her as I have, and largely through your good husband’s kindness,”—here Mrs. Babbidge sent a proud glance over at him, at which he blushed like a girl under his big farmer’s hat he forgot to take off,—“finds it hard to express her thanks; and so I brought you, from my husband and from me, a little gift.” Here Polly laid down a small parcel on the patched bedquilt, and tucked it under one of the drawn and twisted hands.
“How about the Scrannage ladies?” asked old Mr. King, drawing Abiel off to a corner; “they’re pretty well off, I expect.”
“They hain’t got much but pride,” said Abiel, shifting from one foot to another, “but enough o’ that to carry this hull town.”
“Poor, are they?” asked the old gentleman.
“Poor—well I should say so; why, I guess it comes hard on ’em to keep a cat. But then they’d rather starve themselves than to scrimp her. But they’re monstrous ginteel.”
“Dear, dear!” said the old gentleman, with great concern.
“Ye see, they’re a-workin’ to pay off that there mortgage the old squire left; been a-workin’ on’t for twenty year now, an’ mos’ likely they’ll die a-workin’ on’t; but then ‘wewilldie a-workin’ on’t,’ as Miss Sally said to me only t’other day; and bless my buttons, so she will,” declared Mr. Babbidge, slapping his knee.
“How much is it?” asked old Mr. King.
“Five hundred dollars,” said Abiel.
“Five hundred dollars!” repeated the old gentleman.
“Yes, ’tis, every bit; awful, ain’t it; ’cause they’re wimmen, an’ there ain’t no way for ’em to arn money, only to make jell.”
“They wouldn’t accept a little gift, you think?” asked the old gentleman suddenly, “not if she was to give it,” pointing to Polly, “or her sister?”
“Massy sakes—no,” cried Abiel in alarm; “they’d set the dorg on you; that is, Miss Sally would, if she had a dorg. They wouldn’t take it from the angel Gabrel.”
Nevertheless, when they went out of the Babbidge household, the old gentleman had made up his mind to something; and, by the time they were on the way homeward, he announced to the rest of the procession, “We are going down to the Scrannage house.”
There now, it’s done, Grandpapa, dear“There now, it’s done, Grandpapa, dear,” said Phronsie, tucking the bit of paper under the old door.
“There now, it’s done, Grandpapa, dear,” said Phronsie, tucking the bit of paper under the old door.
“There now, it’s done, Grandpapa, dear,” said Phronsie, tucking the bit of paper under the old door.
And down to the “Scrannage house” they went. There it stood, by the lilac-bushes, with its flag walk between the rows of ancient box; its blue-green blinds, and its big-knockered door—just as it had stood in the old squire’s time, with a mortgage on it.
The whole procession drew up silently. “You all sit still,” commanded the old gentleman. “Phronsie, you come with me.” So, Ben hopping into the dog-cart again to hold the bay, the two passed up between the rows of box, and halted at the blue-green door.
“Now, Phronsie, I want you to help me,” said Grandpapa, “because that Miss Sally Scrannage is truly awful to deal with. But whether she likes it or not, child, I’m going to lift that mortgage.”
“O Grandpapa, I’m so glad!” exclaimed Phronsie, the sunlight all in her eyes.
“So,” said the old gentleman, “get behind the lilac-bush here, child;” and he took out a paper from his pocket-book that proved to be a check, filled it out, and handed it to Phronsie. “Now stick it under the door, Phronsie; the crack’s bigenough. And when they get home, and find it, and that Miss Sally comes for me, I can tell her you did it.”
“I will do it, Grandpapa,” said Phronsie, running off happily, to tuck the bit of paper under the old door. “There, now, it’s done, Grandpapa dear. And I am so glad.”
“And now let us get in, and drive off like hot shot,” exclaimed the old gentleman, hurrying down the path. “I really feel as if I heard Miss Sally after us now.”