The Wonderful Christmas inPumpkin Delight Lane.
The Wonderful Christmas inPumpkin Delight Lane.
The Wonderful Christmas inPumpkin Delight Lane.
The Wonderful Christmas in
Pumpkin Delight Lane.
Chapter I.
“Well, Frank, how do you get on with your hoeing?”
“Two acres! I don’t believe the land’s measured right, anyhow,” said the boy, “and—father, the circus is coming to-day.” Frank stood leaning on his hoe and looking up into his father’s face with that entreaty in his eyes which every loving parent knows so well.
“I am sorry, Frank, but you remember our agreement,” said his father very seriously.
“I didn’t know the lot was soawfullong and wide. I’m tired of it, anyhow.”
“Very well, my boy. I will take the field back and call the men to finish hoeing the corn, if you say so; if you are willing to give it up now, when it has come to the hoeing, and that half done, count the cost, Frank; count it well.”
“I want to go to the circus,” said the boy, looking ruefully over the long rows of corn that yet remained to be hilled.
“Very well. I am off to the city now. If you conclude to give it up, you can tell John, and call him to finish the hoeing, while you go to the circus; but, Frank, take my advice, and think well before you decide.”
Mr. Hallock went across the field to the place where Neptune, Kate’s pony, waited to take him to the railway station.
The house at Hallock Point overlooked the sea and a large portion of the farm. From an upper window in the house Kate Hallock, Frank’s twin sister, watched her father as he left Neptune under the hedge and crossed the field to speak to her brother. Frank and Kate were thirteen years old, and the youngest children of the family. Kate was devoted to Frank. The minute Mr. Hallock turned to leave the cornfield, she started to learn the result of the interview. By the time she reached Frank she was quite out of breath, for she had made haste as fast as she could, and the dust of the furrows had covered her shoes, and the careless child had left her hat in the house.
“Frank!” she cried, “did he say you might go?”
“Look here, Kate Hallock, what is the use of frightening a year’s growth out of a fellow in that way? I’ve a great mind not to tell you a word he said,” exclaimed the lad, turning suddenly to meet the anxious, expectant face that he was obliged to look down upon to see: for Frank was much taller than Kate.
“O, Frank, I didn’t mean to start you so; but you know I can’t make a noise walking in this soft ground.I’ll borrow the dinner-horn next time I come out to see you, and toot it all the way. Please tell me what he said.”
“See here, Kate, couldn’t you do a kind turn for me? Why didn’t you fetch your hat?”
“Never mind my hat. I’ll do anything to help you, if you can only go to the circus.”
“Well, you count the rows I’ve got to do between here and the fence.”
Kate disappeared behind Frank’s back, and he hoed away as fast as ever he could, until she returned and said:
“Frank, there’s twenty-seven rows.”
“Never can do it in the world! There’s ninety-three hills in every single row.”
“Won’t it be nice to help you pick the corn! Papa won’t callthathaving help about it, I know. O I wish it was time for harvest! Won’t it be just nice to have piles and piles of great ears, all your own! You’ll be most rich, won’t you, Frank?” cried Kate, joyously clapping her hands before the imaginary heaps of corn.
“See here, Kate, if I keep the corn I’ve got to stay here and keep on hoeing it all day and half of to-morrow, at least.”
“Did papa say so?”
“He said I must keep my engagement with him, or give up the field and call John in to finish it. You know, Kate, it ought to have got hoed more’n a week ago, only I went fishing and everything.”
“Yes, I know, Frank, there’s always something happening to take us off, and to-morrow’s the picnic.”
“So ’tis, and there’ll be a jolly good time; but there’s picnics every little while, and it’s awful dull work hoeing corn. Just see these weeds—stubborn, horrid things!” and the boy struck at them with a force that cut the corn off.
“O, Frank, there’ll be a hole here now all Summer?” and Kate stooped and gathered up the broad leaves that had fallen.
“I didn’t mean to do it, Kate. See here, if you really mean to help me—there’s Hugo, the new hand; he don’t know anything about it, and you just tell him to fetch his hoe up this way.”
“O, Frank, you don’t meanthat!” with a throb in her throat that Frank tried to forget that he had heard. “Just think how mean that would be, when you promised to do every bit of the work your own self. Don’t cheat, Frank,don’t! I didonce, and I feel awfully shrivelled up every time I think of it; and I always do think of it when it thunders or the wind blows hard.”
“You, Kate? Tell me what you cheated about.”
“No, Frank,” quite solemnly; “it wasn’tyouthat I deceived.”
“Of course not—your own brother. If you had, I should have been sure to find you out. So you won’t tell Hugo to come here?”
“Yes, I’ll call Hugo, if you ask me to, when I get my bonnet on. The sun burns—my head aches now; but, Frank, youwon’tlet Hugo hoe the corn,” she said beseechingly.
“No, I guess you needn’t send him. Hark! what’sthat music? O, it’s the circus coming up the road! Let’s run and see the big chariot and the cages go by. Here, take my hat!” he shouted, tossing his straw hat back, and rushing through the corn in the direction of the highway.
Kate put the hat on and followed after. A high stone wall enclosed that portion of Hallock Point. Beyond the wall there was a row of old, wind-twisted, gnarled, wild-cherry trees. When Kate came to the wall, the music was quite near. She could see the nodding plumes on “something or other—she didn’t know what”; but over the wall she could not climb. She shouted to Frank to come and help her—for the wall was higher than her head; and Frank called back to her that he was up in the cherry tree, and ’twas just splendid. “There are three elephants and camels, and, O, Kate, there are some real live Indians!”
For one brief second Kate was glad that the wall was between her and the real live Indians; but the music came near and nearer, and the huge chariot—“such as no kings of the East ever dreamed of riding in,” Frank afterward told her—rolled along, bearing aloft gaily-dressed men and women. Kate could see them, and she saw the heads and backs of the elephants and the camels, and the tops of many cages, and at the very last, a forlorn looking boy’s face—just a glimpse of it, as she gave a jump high up to catch sight of anything more that might be coming. The boy was seated on a pony, but that Kate could not see.
“Are they all gone, Frank?” she called.
“Yes, I see the red of the big elephant’s blanket between the trees, and that’s all.”
“Come then!”
“Just give me my hat—you sit down and wait; I’ll be back in no time at all; I’m going to run across lots, up to the mound, to see it come down on the other side.”
“Frank, please let me see it with you. Help me over the wall. I can run as fast as you can when I once get over.”
“It’ll be gone before I can get there, and you can see it all this afternoon. Toss over my hat.”
It was well shaded where Frank stood, under the cherry trees, but on the other side the sun poured down its heat on poor Kate’s head, as she took off the straw hat and threw it over to Frank.
It was too warm to wait there, and Frank’s cornfield lay between the wall and any place that was shaded. In crossing the lot Kate came upon the small-sized hoe that her brother had thrown down in his flight. She picked it up, and putting the handle into the soft earth, left it standing there, that her brother might easily find his place again. Then she did her very best to twist her apron around her head, and went home. She did not know how long she had been gone. There was Neptune waiting at the carriage gate to carry her to school, and in the doorway stood her mother, saying as the girl drew near,
“Why, Kate, where have you been?—without a hat, too, in this sun.”
“O, mamma!” cried the child, “if you only knew how much poor Frank wants to go to the circus this afternoon; I’ve been up by the wall looking at the procession go by.”
“Hush, Kate; your father is only just. Frank wanted to earn money for himself like other boys, and do you think if he were working for any farmer that that farmer would let his corn spoil, as Frank is letting his, running off day after day? No. If he goes away again until the last hill is hoed, your father will take it away from him.”
Poor Kate glanced back toward the field. She knew just where the hoe stood, gleaming in the sunshine, a witness that her brother was at that very moment neglecting his work. She hastened to her own room, washed her burning face, and then went to school in the village.
Frank was on the mound in time to see the “great show” go past. On the pony in the rear, looking neither at the swaying figures in the chariot, nor at the long line of cages that followed after, was the boy with the sadness in his eyes. A bobolink, thoughtless fellow, struck up a song of gladness as he wavered through the air from tree to tree. Frank, listening to the band of music, did not hear the delight of the bird, but the boy on the pony did. He wiped his eyes with his jacket sleeve two or three times, and wiped them yet again. Frank had drawn close to the roadside. He was near enough to the lad to speak to him.
“Do you belong to the circus?” he ventured to ask.
“Yes,” was the reply.
“What do you do?”
“Wash the dishes, when I don’t ride this pony.”
“Circus dishes!” exclaimed Frank, “that’s funny.” And the desire to learn something more led him towalk along. He could easily keep step with the progress of the chariot and elephants.
Presently he asked, “Do you like it?”
“I’ve nothing else to do,” was the reply.
“What’s your name? Mine is Frank Hallock, and I live in the house up yonder,” pointing, with a feeling very like pride, to the distant gables and chimneys that represented his home.
“My name’s Harry Cornwall,” replied the boy, glancing toward the place Frank had pointed out.
“Where’s the circus going to be?”
“We’ve got most there,” said the boy, “and I’m glad of it, for I want my breakfast.”
“No breakfast yet? Why it must be nine o’clock. Come home with me and I’ll give you some right off.”
“O, I can’t. I told you I had the dishes to wash, and there’ll be an awful hurry to-day, for it rained in the night, and we’re late.”
“I wish I could see you do it.”
“Nothing’s easier, if you come on and follow me. The first tent that goes up will be for the breakfast.”
“It will be most as good as the circus, its own self,” thought Frank, and forgetting Kate, his hoe, and his corn, he followed on, until the long procession came to the ground where the great display of animals and human dexterity was to be made.
“Isn’t it jolly?” he cried, as he watched the hurried movements of the men pitching the great tent and the side tents, rolling the cages to their appointed places, picketing the elephants and the camels, and leading off the tired horses to be fed.
“Maybe it looks so, youngster, but it’s the hardest work I ever tried. I’d rather hoe corn all day,” responded a busy man.
“Dear me! I wonder if he knows,” thought Frank, and in just one moment more he meant to hurry back to his duty, but there was the immense coffee-pot boiling away on the stove, and it looked so funny, the breakfast that was being prepared under the tent, and he had never seen the wild beasts fed before; he was very curious to learn what the camels and the kangaroos had to eat, and “O, ’twas just splendid,” Frank thought—“a great deal better than going to a real circus, this getting ready for one.” Before the camels had taken in all the water they wanted, there was the call to breakfast, and there were the wild Indians, snatching off their long jute hair, throwing aside their painted faces, and coming out of beaded blankets and tinselled bands, nothing but tawny white men after all, and sitting down to breakfast in the tent. How hungry they were! “They eat like savages, anyway,” whispered Frank to Harry Cornwall, “use their knives for forks, and, dear me, they are not a bit polite.”
“They don’t know any better,” responded Harry. “I don’t believe they—some of them—ever saw a nice table like you have at home.”
“Did you?” questioned Frank.
“My mother was a lady,” said the boy, again wiping his eyes with his jacket sleeve.
“Dear me! Take my handkerchief,” said Frank, drawing one from his pocket, but instantly concealingit, for he had forgotten that he had wiped his hands with it when running from the cornfield.
Harry laughed, and thanked him, and then ran to refill the coffee-bowls about the table. By the time he had filled the last one and returned to the stove just outside the tent, the men began to leave the table.
“Now, if you want to see the circus dishes, come on,” called Harry, “and if you’ll help wipe, then we’ll have a chance to see Bengalee.”
“What’s Bengalee?” asked Frank—“another sham Indian?”
“No, indeed. It’s real blood this time; true Indian, too. The tiger is getting rampacious, and they’re going to fix him.”
While Harry gave the information, he was gathering together knives, forks, spoons, bowls, and plates, as handy as any woman—and, in his eagerness to see the tiger, Frank was gathering up dishes before he knew what he was about.
“That’s clever in you,” said Harry. “If I had somebody tolikearound here, ’twouldn’t seem so bad.”
“I should like it first-rate—a great deal better than staying at home and hoeing corn,” thought Frank, and presently, while Harry plunged the dishes into hot water, Frank found himself telling the story of the cornfield that his father had given him. Before the last dish was wiped, Harry had told Frank how he came to belong to the circus. In listening to Harry’s account of his escape from the great fire that swept over Michigan a few years ago, both children forgot all about the tiger in his cage, and when Harry came,in his story, to the place where he lost all his family, he wiped his eyes with the dishcloth many times before he could go on to the place where he had found the circus encamped, and somebody to give him food and clothing.
“Heigh ho!” exclaimed Frank, “what a hero you are! I wish my Kate could see you. Nothing ever happens to me. It’s go to bed every night in the same bed, and get up every morning in the same room, and see just the same things and folks over and over again. Stupid, ain’t it?”
“I’d go and go, and walk and climb and run, years and years, to see the same old faces and have the same old home again!” said Harry, choking and sobbing to a degree that quite upset Frank Hallock.
“You just come home with me, then, and see my father and mother,” said Frank, not knowing how to suggest comfort in any other form.
“They wouldn’t let me,” sobbed Harry, quite broken down by a touch of sympathy. “Nice folks don’t like circus folks at all; you know they don’t.”
“I don’t see why, when ministers’ children and deacons’ children, and everybody’s boys and girls, go to the circus,” replied Frank; and then feeling that he had not touched the heart of the trouble, he plunged into it by saying, “Look here, you Harry Cornwall, you are not circus folks at all; you are only a boy out of the Michigan fires. Why, my mother sent off lots of clothes to Grand Haven and Port Huron, and other places out there; and my sister Kate tucked into one of the boxes her new gold necklace that GrandmaThornton had just sent her for her birthday, without anybody’s finding it out until the box had been gone pretty nigh a month. Come home with me, I say; everybody will be glad to see you.”
“O, I can’t,” ejaculated Harry, having conquered his sobs during the time of Frank’s long speech; “I’ve got to ride Flurry this afternoon and evening. Flurry is the pony I was on this morning, and in the night, some time, we break up and travel on, maybe for half the night. Hark! they are taming the tiger now. Hear the poor fellow mew!”
When Frank heard the roar of poor “Bengalee” in his cage, he was so terrified that he began to run as fast as he could, and he did not stop to look around until he reached the top of the hill, well nigh a quarter of a mile from the white tents.
His heart was beating so fast that he could scarcely count the strokes of the bell in the church tower. It was striking for twelve of the clock. A feeling of dismay came upon the lad as he counted out the number of twelve. He had been away from his duty three hours. In one hour dinner would be ready. Kate would be home from school. Poor Kate! Frank’s face grew warm and warmer with a wholesome shame under the vivid recollection of the manner in which, and the place where, he had left her to wait in the burning sun for his return.
As he went onward in the direction of his home, he looked frequently at the windows, half expecting to see his mother looking out. But no; she was occupied within doors, and not one of the household knew that Frank had neglected his duty.
“I don’t care, anyway,” he thought, and he went on thinking after this fashion. “It isn’t at all the kind of weather to be cooped up hoeing corn. I’d rather earn money some easier way. It’s jolly to be a circusboy, I know. I wonder why Harry Cornwall doesn’t like it.”
Nevertheless, Frank took his hoe from the place where Kate had left it for him, and fell to work, resolved to hoe “like anything” until it should be time for dinner.