Chapter VI.
Kate Hallock had no sooner shut the front door of the brown house in Pumpkin Delight Lane on that eventful day in June, than Harry Cornwall remembered the necklace story.
“Call her back,” he cried to Frank, who was rocking away as hard as he could, and fanning himself furiously with his straw hat, as he sat in Grandma Dobson’s large rocking chair.
“What for? She’s gone home to dinner; mother said she must,” replied Frank, rocking a bit farther and faster than before he was requested to call her.
“Why, I wanted to tell her about the necklace,” and Harry’s face flushed with his eagerness to get the story off his mind.
“Well, I do declare!” laughed Frank. “Just as though you hadn’t had three or four mortal hours, this very day, to tell it in! I should like to know what you two have been talking about all the time?”
“Plenty of things; but I never once thought of the necklace,” sighed repentant Harry.
“Well! tellme—that will do just as well,” urged Frank.
“No, indeed. I’ll tell no one but the owner of that bit of gold, where I’ve seen it.”
“You’ve never seenmyKate’s gold necklace,” spoke up Frank, indignant, he knew not why, at Harry’s assurance.
“I have, then; and what’s more, I mean to get it back again for her.”
“Tell me how.” Frank had ceased from rocking, and leaned quite near Harry, full of interest and eager with curiosity.
“I’ll tellher,” was all that Harry would say; and soon after that the anxiety regarding Kate arose, and the subject was forgotten.
Later in the afternoon, Grandma Dobson having gone on her little expedition, while Mrs. Hallock sat beside an open window near Harry’s bed, and Kate, on the low stone step outside the front door, was making dandelion curls, and thinking how dreadful it would have been if a big tide had dashed in and surged over the salt meadow and drowned Kate Hallock, Harry remembered the so-oft-forgotten circlet of gold, and he started from his pillow, saying: “I want to tell hernow, this minute, before I forget it.”
Kate was summoned. She gathered up in her apron the piles of curls that she had made, and went in haste to hear what proved to be quite a story.
“Maybe,” said Harry, “you’d like to know what became of your pretty necklace, that you tucked into somebody’s vest-pocket that went out West once upon a time.”
“How didyouknow?” cried Kate, stopping in the center of the room, and getting so surprised and confused and flushed, and everything, that she let fall herdandelion curls on Grandma Dobson’s lovely rag carpet, and instantly fell upon her knees to gather them up again.
“O, your brother told me that you put it in the box; but he does not know how I came to see it after it came out of the box. Jack Flibbit—”
“What a funny name!” cried Kate. “Is he a little boy?”
“Yes, and a fisherman’s boy, too; and he was left all alone after the fires—for his father and mother, and every one of his folks, were caught in the house, and hadn’t time to get away; and Jack was staying that night in a house down by the lake, or he would have been lost, too. So after it was all over, Jack was taken by a good, kind lady to Port Huron, and everybody felt so sorry for him that when he got there somebody gave him out of one of the boxes a very nice suit of clothes, and I saw Jack when he was carrying it along the street. When he met me, he wanted me to see it, and wouldn’t let me go until after we had been in and sat down on the steps of a church, and opened the bundle. Well, when it was open, and he shook out the little vest, there jingled down on the stone something that I picked up; it was a necklace, and I ’most know ’twas yours, ’cause I remember there was something inside it.”
“O, what?” cried Kate. Mrs. Hallock had ceased to sew in her eagerness to learn more.
“Well,” said Harry, “there was so much to remember about then, that maybe I’m not right; but it was, I reckon, something like this: ‘Kate; from Grandmother De—De—Deborah,’ or something like that.”
“That’s just it—my own Grandma Hallock’s right name!” cried Kate; “and I s’pose I was very wicked to give it away, only everybody was so sorry then for the poor, burnt-out folks, and I hadn’t anything else that I thought as much of to give.”
“It is all very wonderful, my boy,” said Mrs. Hallock. “Do you know what became of Jack Flibbit?”
“Well, no, ma’am,” said Harry, “I do not. He was too small for any circus company to take along, and there wasn’t anybody belonging to him that he knew of anywhere; and I don’t quite believe that folks who live out West care so much about children who are left alone as you do.”
“O, yes, Harry. Kind folks live everywhere, only one does not always seem able to find them.”
“No!” said Harry. “I went a long ways and waited a good while, and now as soon as I get well, won’t you please find some work for me to do, so that I can pay back Mrs. Dobson?—for she isn’t very rich, I don’t think.”
“Why, Harry Cornwall!” exclaimed Kate. “There’s plenty of work for you to do. There’s your cornfield to take care of, for one thing.”
“My cornfield!” laughed Harry, thinking that Kate was making fun of him, and quite ready to join in her merriment, but Mrs. Hallock quickly bade Kate to be quiet; and immediately she asked Harry to tell how he escaped from the fire.
“My father’s house,” said Harry, “was not very far from Rock Falls, on the shore of the lake—Lake Huron, I mean—and the Saturday before the greatfire burned Rock Falls, my father went into the village and took me with him. After we started for home—it was almost night then—the smoke grew thick away off in the distance, and some men we met told father that they wanted him to go with them and help fight the fire down, for fear ’twould get to the houses. He didn’t know what to do with me, but I told him I could run right back and find a place to stay.
“‘Go to my house! go to my house,’ said three or four of the men, and so my father told me to jump out and take good care of myself, and I called back to him to take care of mother, and then I went back. On the way, I met some little children, and they asked me where I was going—so I told them what father had gone to do, and that I was going to somebody’s house, somewhere, to stay all night, and they said: ‘You can come to our house and stay.’ So I went home with them and the next day was Sunday. Sunday night it looked awful when it grew dark to see the fires burning all around, except on the side where the lake was, but we were told to go to bed and if the fire came any nearer we should be called. We were called and shaken and pulled from our beds and bidden, with blankets in our arms, to run for Mr. Huxtable’s house on the shore of the lake. When we got there we pounded and screamed at every door and window. Presently a door opened and out rushed the entire family, eight in all, and in their night clothes. The fire was so hot as it came down, like—I don’t know what it was like—only it was soawfulthatnobodycould tell about it. It burned us as we ran,Mr. Huxtable crying out, ‘Come! Come to the lake! the boat lies there.’ We all got into it, but the men had to push it out into the water, for we could not endure the heat. Then the smoke grew so thick that we could not tell where we were going and there was not a thing in the boat to guide it by, but the wind carried us swiftly where it was so cold that we shook and shivered. Mrs. Huxtable kept a single blanket and the others were given to the men, who were in their night clothes. She gathered the little ones within the blanket and hugged them until they fell asleep. For nearly two days the waves were all about us and we had only water from the lake to drink, but at last we were picked up and taken into Port Huron.”
“But what about yourself? Tell us what you did after that,” urged Kate.
“I—why I—went back to Rock Falls. What else could I do?”
“And then?” urged Kate.
“Do not ask Harry unless he chooses to tell,” said Mrs. Hallock, wiping her eyes.
“But I do; I must,” said Harry. “I shall feel better when I have told it all. And it is only that when I got back to Rock Falls, and went to the place where my father’s house had been, there was nothing there but burned beams and dry ashes; and when I asked for my father and mother, a man told me to go with him, and he showed me ever so many new graves, and told me where my father and mother lay. Folks tried to be good to me, but I walked a long way—ever so many days. I wanted to get just as far away from there as ever I could.”
“But, my boy, had you no uncles nor aunts?” asked Mrs. Hallock.
“Why, yes. There was Uncle Horace—he lived in Maine, I believe; and mother had a good many letters from him.”
“What is his other name?” questioned Kate. “Won’t it be splendid, mamma, to find Harry’s uncle for him; and maybe he will be rich and capital and everything,” cried Kate, full of glee in an instant, and she evinced it by clapping her hands and jumping in true girl fashion.
Harry’s face flushed as he answered, “I don’t know his other name.”
“Don’t know!” uttered Mrs. Hallock in a voice that betrayed more astonishment than she intended to evince.
“But what was your mother’s name?” she added, being quite certain that some clue might be obtained.
“Bessie, Bessie Blake,” said Harry.
The same evening Mrs. Hallock addressed a letter to Mr. Horace Blake, Solon, Maine, hoping that by the time Harry was able to be about again, that she should have found an uncle for him. She waited patiently until it was July, and yet no letter came from Mr. Horace Blake.
For many days Frank and Kate had made daily, and semi-daily, and still-more-daily visits to the brown house in the lane; and at last the very day was come for Harry’s first visit to Hallock Point.