Chapter 12
HELEN and Henry Knapp were skipping home from school, hand in hand, to the tune of
“Skippety hop to the barber-shopTo buy a stick of candy.One for you and one for meAnd one for ...”
“Skippety hop to the barber-shopTo buy a stick of candy.One for you and one for meAnd one for ...”
“Skippety hop to the barber-shop
To buy a stick of candy.
One for you and one for me
And one for ...”
They were interrupted by their Aunt Mattie Farnham, who ran out of the house and pounced on them. “For goodness’ sakes, Helen ’n’ Henry, tell me about your folks! I’ve been worried to death about you all.”
She stopped, looked down at the new black dress she wore and said, with a decent sigh, “Poor Aunt Emma passed away a week ago, you know. The funeral was day before yesterday. I just got home this morning.”
The children tried, not very successfully, to put on a decent soberness to match her sigh, and were silent, not knowing what comment to make. They had, as a matter of fact, heard (although they had long since forgotten it) that Aunt Mattie had been called away clear up to Maine by a telegram announcingthe sickness of her husband’s old aunt. Usually they missed Aunt Mattie fearfully when she was away from town. But this time the two months of her absence had been filled far too full with other events.
Due respect to the abstract idea of death having been paid, after their fashion, by each of the three, they reëntered ordinary life with the exclamation from Aunt Mattie, “Now do tell me how ever in the living world you’ve managed! How do you get along? I haven’t heard a thing, not really to say heard. Mr. Farnham means to do all right, but he’s no hand to write letters. I’d write and write and ask him about a million questions about you all, and all he’d write back would be some little smitch of news and a lot about the weather! He did tell me that your Momma has got a job down at Willing’s and is doing fine. She would! She’s a wonderful woman, your Momma is. Everybody knows that. But however do youmanagewith your poor Momma away all day and your Poppa the way he is. Howishe? Awful bad?” Her kind fair face bent anxiously towards them.
It was again as if the children tried, not very successfully, to put on a decent soberness to match her expression. They hesitated as if they did not know exactly what was decorous to say. Then Helen murmured, “Father was awfully bad at first, theysaid. Mother sent us children off to Brandville to stay with Gramma and Grampa Houghton so we didn’t know anything about that first part. But Gramma got sick, and we had to come home. And Father was lots better by that time.”
“But how do you manage?” queried Aunt Mattie again. “How can you, with your poor Momma away? I never thought that house could run a minute without her. She dideverything!”
“Oh, we manage all right,” said Helen. “Father and us children keep the house.”
“Your father! I thought he was in bed!”
“No, he’s able to be up in a wheel chair now. The janitor of the store’s old father had a wheel chair and they didn’t sell it after he died and it was up attic and he brought it to Father. He said Father had helped him out at the store when his little boy was sick. Oh, lots of the folks from the store have come to help out. The delivery driver, he said he couldn’t ever forget what Father did for him one time. He won’t tell what it was because he’s ashamed. Only he wanted to help out, too, and as long as we had to have a furnace fire he came in every morning and night to look out for the furnace. And he steps in daytimes now, when he’s going by, to see if everything is all right. And old Mrs. Hennessy, she’s the cleaning woman, she keptcoming all the time to help and bring in things to eat, pies, you know! She came in nights and mornings when Father was so bad to do up the work and wouldn’t take any pay for it. She doesn’t have to now, do the work, I mean. But she still does the washings. Only we pay her, of course.”
Aunt Mattie’s look of bewilderment sharpened to distraction. “You have only got me more mixed up than ever!” she cried vacantly. “Mercy me! the furnace, the washings.... Yes, I see about those. But all the rest! The meals! The housework!Stephen!When I think of how your poor mother slaved to....” She looked at them almost sternly as if suspecting them of levity.
Henry said, “Father and all of us get along. You see Father’s all right now, only his legs. He can do anything except walk. And Helen and I do the walking for him.”
Mrs. Farnham made an exasperated gesture at their refusal to take in her meaning. “Who does the cooking?” she shouted desperately, getting down to bed-rock.
“Father does. We all do,” said Helen. “Father’s a lovely cook. He’s learning out of the cook-book. And so am I—learning, I mean. We’re learning together.”
Aunt Mattie’s face instantly smoothed into comprehensionof everything. She had wondered how they managed without a woman to keep house for them. Now she knew. They didn’t manage.
“Oh...” she said, and, “Well....”
She looked at them compassionately. “I’ll have to get over to your house as fast as ever I can,” she said as if to herself.
As her eyes dwelt half-absently on the children, she observed aloud, “Seems to me Henry’s looking better. Not so peaked. Did that pepsin treatment of Dr. Merritt’s really do him some good? I never thought much of pepsin, myself.”
The children looked at each other as if surprised by something they had not noticed before.
“Why, Henry, that’s so. You haven’t had one of your sick spells for ever so long, have you?” said Helen. To her Aunt Mattie she explained, “We’ve had so much else to think about we haven’t noticed.”
Mrs. Farnham rejected pepsin for another diagnosis. “Iknow what ’tis. The visit to your Gramma and Grampa Houghton! I always told your Momma that what Henry needed was country air. There’s nothing like a change of air,nothing!”
Helen said now, “We’ve got to run along, Aunt Mattie. We help about lunch. Father gets it ready, but we clear off and take Stephen out to play a while.”
“Oh, that reminds me. How about Stephen? What does.... Is he.... How does your....”
Her ingenuity was not enough to contrive a presentable form for her inquiry, but the child came to her rescue understandingly, “Why, Stephen seems to be growing out of those naughty streaks,” said Helen. “He’s lots better, somehow. He still has a tantrum once in a while, but not nearly so often, nor so bad. You see, helikesFather’s being sick!” She knew how shocking this was on Stephen’s part, and added apologetically, “He’s so little, you know. He doesn’t understand how terrible it is for poor Father. And Father tells him stories. All the time, almost. Stephen loves them. Mother was always too busy to tell stories, you know.”
“Well, I should say so indeed!” cried Aunt Mattie, outraged at the picture, even hypothetical, of poor Evangeline’s attempting to tell stories on top of everything else she had to do.
“Step along with you, children,” she said now. “I hadn’t ought to have kept you so long, as ’tis. But I’ve been worrying my head off about you all. Tell your Poppa that I’m coming right over there this afternoon to see him just as soon as I get my trunk unpacked and things straightened around a little.”