CHAPTER VI
“Oh, rain!” Norma lifted her head from her pillow and groaned. “No swim this morning, and Victor was just teaching me that new stroke!” Norma hated rain. Grey skies of New England always put her into a bad temper. But her little Belgian tent-mate was philosophical.
“We need ze rain for ze garden,” said Gilda, “and for ze spring of wasser. Tante said, if it not rains in July, it be bad for us, the spring running dry.”
“I wonder how the Golden Girl likes living in a damp tent!” thought Norma with a grimace as she put on her wrinkled blouse and brushed her unwrinkled hair. “It’s all very well for you crinkly girls, Gilda. But do look at me!” She stared in the small mirror tragically.
“Pooh!” said Gilda, who was learning a few Americanisms. “Nobody care about crinkles or wrinkles in a camp. Zat is what Tante said. I like zat. Not so? Nobody mind also leetle damps.”
“Leetle damps!” Anne Poole found it more than a little damp as she picked her way from rock to rock and around tiny lakes in the path that led from the Fairy Ring to the bungalow. She wondered what campers could find to do on such a dismal day, and regretted the comforts of Idlewild; the pool room, the piano and victrola, the library with its elaborately bound volumes. Anne had been the only one who read books at Idlewild. Mr. Poole had put them in as a part merely of the library furnishings. So the library at Idlewild had been Anne’s almost undisturbed domain.
Though the Camp had turned out to be quite tolerable during the week of sunny days, with so many pleasant new things to do, Anne wondered what in the world would keep her from being bored by a deluge like this. But to her amazement she found thatleetle dampsdid not make much difference to the Round Robin. To be sure, Dick was the only one who went for the morning swim. He declared it was drier in the salt water than on land. To-day nobody was interested in going to pick the wild strawberries which were growing sweeter and ruddier every day in the meadows back of the Fairy Ring. But the boys went about looking like fishermen in their yellow slickers and hats; for the mail had to be fetched from the village and the milk from Maguire’s farm, rain or shine. Cicely also put on her mackintosh and went forth as usual to “botanize.” You cannot keep an English girl indoors just on account of rain. Presently she returned, rosy-cheeked, to tell about the lovely green rosettes that were unfolding on the old spruce trees, and the wonderful color in the deep woods. The surf on the rocks was splendid too, she said. So everybody had to run out to see; everybody but Patsy, who looked very complacent and fluffy, when they all returned dripping and draggled, but jolly.
But there was also plenty to do indoors that kept the day from being really “dull.” Housework!Anne had never imagined that there could be any fun in the kitchen! But as Tante managed it, there was a regular competition to see who should make the greatest hit, as it came the turn of each girl to make a special dish for breakfast or lunch or supper. And a rainy day was a fine undistracted time for the amateur cooks to get ahead with their experiments in cake and pudding and bread, fudge and cream peppermints.
A rainy day is good for basket-making, too; for the grass of sedge or raffia is easier to work when it is a little damp. Beverly spread herself in a window-seat of the living room and made great progress on her basket, while some of the rest did their weekly mending, and Norma read aloud. Nancy, however, retired to a dry quiet corner of the bungalow loft, to finish the fairy story which had been waiting for a wet day to be “transplanted,” as she called it. Then there were always letters to write, if one had time.
But no one would have had time to spare at Round Robin even during the Flood, Nancy declared; with a pair of lively Twins,a brown dog and a white cat eager to be played with. A girl who loved children and animals had no excuse for being bored. Anne soon had her hands full, when the children found what wonderful things she could make with scissors and paper. As a child left to her own resources most of the time, Anne had learned how to amuse herself in these simple ways. The time went so fast that she was amazed indeed when the tea-squad demanded her help. Anne had already learned how to set a table very nicely.
But the best part of a rainy day at camp—like the best part of many a speaker’s address—is the end of it. By evening everybody in camp is tired of being busy and of moving about. Everybody wants to keep still and be amused.
After supper the boys heaped up a great fire in the fire-place, and everyone drifted into her favorite seat or onto his favorite rug or cushion. Anne Poole retired into a dim corner, where she could watch the faces in the firelight without being watched herself. She was still studying all these strangerscritically, trying to see how they could possibly be so different from the persons she had hitherto known. And yet, as she had to confess to herself, they were not so terrible after all; not nearly so uncomfortable to live with as she had feared they would be.
“Let’s pop some corn!” said Eddie Batchelder, “mayn’t we, Mumsie?”
“Let’s tell stories,” suggested Norma. “Everybody tell a story but me! You have got one all ready, Nancy. I saw you writing it this morning!”
“It’s only just transplanted. It isn’t blossomed yet,” protested Nancy.
“You tell a story, Tante,” suggested Beverly. “You haven’t told one this year.”
“If everybody were here,” said Tante.
“We’re all here,” said Anne, counting around the circle, completed by Doughboy and Patsy, curled up on the rugs.
“No. Nelly Sackett isn’t here,” several voices cried. “But it is raining so hard I suppose she won’t come.”
But just then there was a tap on the door, and in pattered a little figure in rubber bootsand yellow slicker, with the Captain’s tarpaulin hat drawn down over her curls which were kinky with rain-drops. The Twins rushed upon her and seized her umbrella, and lantern, while Dick undertook to relieve her of her rubber boots. Tante asked her if she had not found it hard to keep the road on this dark night, but Nelly said Oh, no; her feet seemed to know the way. Whereupon Dick began to chant his favorite poem, accenting it as he pulled at the reluctant boots:
‘Myfeetthey haul meroundthe house,Theyhoistme up thestairs,Ion-ly have tosteerthem andTheyrideme everywheres!
‘Myfeetthey haul meroundthe house,Theyhoistme up thestairs,Ion-ly have tosteerthem andTheyrideme everywheres!
‘Myfeetthey haul meroundthe house,
Theyhoistme up thestairs,
Ion-ly have tosteerthem and
Theyrideme everywheres!
“There you are, Miss Sackett. Dry as the Ark!”
“I should think you-all would be afraid to come alone, Nelly,” Beverly drawled. “Why, I wouldn’t go out of the house alone at noon; let alone a dark night in the rain! Goodness! You are as bad as Nancy with her moonlight rambles!”
Beverly’s mother had been Tante’s best friend, when they were girls at school together. But the children of those two schoolgirls had been born in places where the customs and conditions were so different that it affected their whole lives. Tante’s children were brought up never to be afraid to go anywhere, ever. Freedom is always safest where everyone has always been free. So she answered Beverly—“It’s different up North, Beverly. At least, it always has been. Nelly isn’t afraid of the dark, are you? But I wonder you didn’t prefer your cosy home on such a stormy night, my Dear.”
“I just had to come!” said Nelly. “Mother and Uncle Eph have gone to meeting. I guessed there would be stories here.”
“Stories! Stories!” clamored Eddie, who was intently watching Freddie’s small success with the corn-popper, now jiggling furiously.
“I think I shall have to bring out the Patchwork Quilt, to illustrate my story,” said Tante. Nancy and the Twins began to giggle, and Hugh whistled. They alone knew what their mother meant, for it was one of the familyjokes. Tante routed Norma and Beverly out of one of the window seats in order to get a rolled-up bundle from the interior; and presently spread it out upon the floor in the middle of the room. It was a patchwork quilt of faded and old-fashioned calico squares, set in a curious pattern; half-finished and with ragged edges.
“This is our family fancy-work,” said Tante. “I found it up in the garret of our old house when I was a little girl. My mother said as a tiny child she remembered it half finished. She added a few squares herself in a half-hearted way, she said. It must have been begun by some girl in our family before the Revolution, and has been growing gradually ever since, square by square. But we are not much of a fancy-work family, I fear. I meant to finish the quilt before I was married. But I never did; just as my mother never did. So I gave it to Nancy. She works on it sometimes, I believe.”
“I have made four squares in fifteen years!” laughed Nancy, “those with my blue-and-whitegingham in. But it takes a lot of time. I’d rather write stories.”
“As family fancy-work it seems likely to last for a good many generations,” said Mrs. Batchelder. “We use it now chiefly as a notebook for stories.”
Seeing that Gilda looked puzzled, Freddie explained by putting his thumb in the middle of a black square nearest to him, as the quilt lay spread on the floor. “Thatwas a pirate story,” he said. “And the blue one with stars on it was about a sea-captain and a stowaway. And the little mousy-grey square was the girl-Pilgrim who came over in theMayflowerand was Mother’s own ancestress.” A howl from Eddie interrupted him.
“Freddie! You’re burning up the pop-corn!” Sure enough. A dubious smell reminded Freddie of his forgotten duty. The pop-corn had hopped as fast as it could, when he forgot to shake it; but it could not hop fast enough to keep its feet from getting scorched. Freddie looked ruefully at the charred black men, and according to the rules of the game, handed over the popper to Eddie,who took it importantly, and after refilling it began to jiggle it with great care.
“Speaking of your little greyMayflowermaid, Freddie,” said Tante, “she had just five kernels of parched corn for her first American meal, they say. I hope they weren’t so black as these of yours, Sonny!” Tante was looking at the quilt thoughtfully, and Norma called out: “Story! Story!”
“Well,” said Tante, “I am thinking of another sort of story—not that one. Once upon a time there was a great, big Patchwork Quilt, 3000 miles wide, made up of ever so many little ‘squares’ of irregular shape. Not one of them was really square; any more than are the ‘squares’ in our cities. Every square was itself made up of all sorts of little patches and pieces and scraps. Some of the pieces came from the North where it is cold; and some from the South where it is hot. They were all different—no two just alike in color or material or quality. Some came from the East with its strange wonder and brightness; and some were of the West, rough and serviceable. There were fine and precious squares, andothers of flimsy or even shoddy goods; many were coarse, and some were worn pretty thin. But pieced together and backed and quilted, sewed with unbreakable thread, they became strong and durable. It made a firm, warm quilt without any rips or holes. The chief beauty of the quilt was thiswholeness, this keeping together in an unbroken pattern of squares.”
Some of the group were looking puzzled. “What does Mother mean, Hugh?” asked Freddie who was leaning against his big brother’s knee, critically watching his Twin’s efforts with the pop-corn. Gilda listened eagerly for Hugh’s answer. “America!” he whispered under his breath, and he looked across at Victor, who nodded, squaring his shoulders. They had both fought for America, and loved her name.
“If this quilt had been all of one kind of material,” Tante went on, “it would have been old-fashioned, like the other quilts, some of which were very beautiful, but badly worn. Some of them were tattered and rent into bits. You can see them on the map, painted onesolid color; but that doesn’t show how frayed they are at the edges where they have been torn or snipped away by cruel shears.”
“‘Shears’ means wars,” explained Victor under his breath. “Cruel they are! The old quilts are the old kingdoms of Europe, Freddie.”
“It’s a funny kind of story!” said Eddie dubiously, agitating the popper, and not to be distracted by Freddie’s whispers.
“But this quilt I’m telling about,” went on Tante, “this new quilt was made up of pieces out of nearly all the old ones; fresh, bright pieces, most of them, the best and strongest part of the many-colored counterpanes of the world. Every one of these pieces was needed to make up the new pattern, sewed with the thread of old tradition, law and order. Every patch had its own place in the great getting-together, named a Union.”
“Why, the United States is a great Round Robin, isn’t it, Mumsie?” cried Nancy. “I never thought of it before.”
“So it is!” nodded Victor. “And some day we shall have a still bigger League, when allthe nations of the world get together and make their squares fit into a beautiful pattern, without losing each its own shape.”
“That’s it!” Tante nodded. “The whole world will not befreeuntil it isbound together; bound by something besides cables and railroads and wireless.”
Gilda was bending over the quilt studying it eagerly. “Zere is a square ofLa Belgique!” she cried, pointing to a patch of black, red, and yellow. “Hurrah for brave Belgium!” cried Dick. “We need her pluck that saved the world.”
“And there is a bit of Italy,” said Norma, laying a finger on a cornerwise patch of red and green, with white between.
“Mother had a dress of that pretty print,” interpolated Tante. “How Italy does bring brightness everywhere! And there is the tricolor of France. The blue and red are a little faded, Victor, because France with her fine gifts has been here in our quilt a long time; among the very first. French sailors, Norse and Icelandic, all came to America before the Spanish named it and the English mapped it.”
“My grandmother was French,” said Nelly Sackett. “She came from Canada.”
“I am part Spanish,” said Dick. “I guess that’s why I am so much interested in pirates. I’m a regular Patchwork Quilt myself! I’m part Irish and part Dutch and part Swedish, too. They all had a hand in building America.”
“You’re an old Hyphen!” laughed Hugh. “It’s the Hyphens who make most of the trouble in this country. They think more about the land from which their ancestors came than about this one that claims their whole allegiance.”
“Hyphen yourself!” retorted Dick. “You think a lot more about ancestors than I do. I’m a hundred percent. American, I am; though I do come from the opposite side of the Continent, 3000 miles from the Hub. And anyone who says I’m not had better look out! If I had been a few years older I’d have been a war-veteran too, with a brass star to make me feel smart. Or maybe I’d have been a dead hero, with a medal!”
Tante hastened to soothe Dick’s troubledspirit, saying that Hugh was only joking when he spoke of the hyphen. For nearly everybody in this country has some foreign blood in his veins, of which he ought to be proud, unless it makes him the less American in loyalty. Then to change the subject Tante pointed out in the quilt the colors that might represent Poland with its gifts of music; the blue and white of Greece, with its tradition of beauty. In one square she saw the faith of the Jews, loyal to what they held true and pure; in another was Armenian patience and skill of hand. This purple suggested the heather of Scotland, thrift and grit and honesty on which America had builded firm structures. A bright pink square she declared must be from Bohemia, the home of fairy-tales. And so on. What would America do without all these gifts from the older lands?
“This looks like a green English meadow,” said Cicely picking out a vivid square.
“What arewe, Mother?” asked Nancy presently, “we who are just Yankees and nothing else, since we left off being English one Fourth of July?”
“I think the tiny patch of greenish-grey represents us, Nancy,” laughed her mother. “English with a difference. There isn’t so conspicuously much of us in the patchwork, for the brighter colors crowd close about us. But you see a lot of squares have grey in the background, with polka dots and checks, stripes, figures, invisible brocade, and changeable effects. The Yankee spirit is pretty well scattered over the old quilt from border to border. We furnished a good deal of the thread that sewed the squares together, too.
“Well, my part of the story is done,” finished Tante. “You have all helped to tell it. But the quilt is full of many more thrilling tales, I know.”
“Dick is crazy to tell one,” said Beverly mischievously.
“Well, I know a story that might be a western square of the quilt,” said Dick modestly. “It’s very short and it’s very true. Father told it to me.”
“Let’s hear it, Dick,” said Tante. And looking sly, Dick began.
“Well, you know my father’s grandfatherand grandmother started out West from New England early in the game. I guess they got tired of hearing Hugh’s great-grandfather tell about the doings ofhisgreat-grandfather who came over in theMayflower! Well, they traveled the way the pioneers did, in a prairie schooner, you know—a big wagon drawn by oxen, with all their furniture and ploughs and pigs and chickens aboard; besides a lot of kids. That’s how they went all the way across the country; because there weren’t any railroads, of course. They had a terrible time. There were wolves and Indians, and floods on the great rivers. One time the food gave out. And they couldn’t find water for days. Some of them were taken sick with a fever, and the littlest baby died. They buried him out in the middle of the prairie, and nobody knows where his grave is to this day. But I think it was somewhere near Chicago, Anne.”
“Well?” said Nancy. “Is that all the story?”
“Isn’t that enough?” asked Dick pretendingto be hurt. “It’s the history of my patriotic ancestors.”
“But what’s the point?” asked Victor poking Reddy in the ribs.
“The point is,” said Dick, getting to his feet ready to make a hasty retreat to his tent—“that I am descended from that little kid who died!”
The uproar that followed this anti-climax ended the story-telling for the evening. Nelly Sackett refused to let Reddy go home with her after such a fake ending to a real story. Instead it was Victor who had that honor, and the two departed under one umbrella to the tune of “Seeing Nelly Home,” chorused by the Round Robin and derisive Dick.