Chapter VII.
“I’m just as sure as anything that there’ll be a letter to-day from that Mr. Blake up in Maine, and I wish Hugo would hurry up and go to the postoffice, before he goes for Harry and Grandma Dobson.” Kate Hallock had said the above while standing in her own room in front of her dressing bureau, in whose drawers she was vainly searching for a ribbon with which to tie her hair.
“Kate, Kate, my child!” and a firm hand was laid upon Kate’s arm, arresting her movements.
“I know, mamma!” said Kate, “but I put every single thing in apple-pie order only Saturday, and this is Tuesday, and I was looking for my blue hair ribbon; and I’m in an awful hurry, for fear they’ll get here before I’m ready.”
“Do you think any little girl can bereadyto receive company whose bureau drawers are in this state, Kate?”
“Yes, ma’am, if my hair is only nice.”
“And don’t you think while you were at play a vision of the confusion here would come up before you? Just look!” and Mrs. Hallock opened drawer after drawer, while Kate hung her head, pouted a little, and said finally,
“Well, now, mamma, Iwillfix everything nice the first thing in the morning.”
“Now is the time, my child.”
“I can’t do it now,” pleaded Kate; “they’ll get here before I’m half done.”
“Now is the right time. If I compel you to do itnow, the next time you want a ribbon or a handkerchief, you will not stir up everything within reach to find it. You might put your drawers in order every morning of your life, and it would be of little use if you threw things right and left, and twisted them over and over like this.”
“But I get in such an awful hurry, and my eyes dance so I can’t stop, and the first I know everything begins to hop, skip, and jump under my fingers,” said poor Kate, bursting into tears.
“My dear child,” said her mother, “life must not be such a whirl to you; let me think what to do with you.”
“Send me to the Reform School in Meriden!” sobbed Kate, with her head on the marble of the bureau.
“Here you are at your own Reform School, Kate Hallock! It is left to you to decide how soon you can go out free and happy. I’m going down now, and when you have put everything here in order, you may call me to look at your work. Here is a chance for victory over Mr. Disorder, Kate. See that you put him down completely.” Mrs. Hallock kissed the back of Kate’s neck, and left the room.
The white clock on the mantelshelf in the library struck ten. Kate heard the sweet, silvery sounds as she listened to her mother’s footsteps on the stairs.
“It’s a great deal too bad, anyhow!” she said, raising her head, and fumbling blindly, through her tears, in the open drawer for a handkerchief. “I think she might just have let me wait till morning, and not spoiled all my fun to-day.”
Nevertheless Kate kneeled down, and drew out the lower drawer, and began the labor of assorting, refolding, and laying in order the various garments that she found there. She grew interested in her work. When she closed the first drawer, she jumped up with glad alacrity, opened the second one, made two or three very wry faces at the confusion of ribbons, ruffles, aprons, stockings, and what not besides, therein; and saying, “Get out of here, Mr. Disorder—I’m coming to oust you,” she fell bravely to work, and was upon the last drawer when, with the smallest possible hint of a knock, in rushed Frank, saying,
“Run down, Kate! They’re just coming, and I’ve got to give my hair a brush.”
Frank was off again. The visitors, Mrs. Dobson and Harry, had arrived, and Kate’s hair was flying wild about her tear-stained face. She flew to the window, heard her mother on the veranda welcoming them, and her feet ached to run down, and her tongue mourned because it could not say one word to them.
“Kate, Kate! I say, why don’t you come?” came from Frank, once more at the door, and then Kate was alone.
She hastened to complete the work she had to do. Out of the very last corner of the last drawer came the wished-for ribbon; and as Kate stands therebefore the looking-glass combing her hair, I will tell you how she appears to me—for I have heretofore forgotten to describe Kate Hallock. You know that she is short, because the corn in June and the salt meadow grass partly concealed her from view. Well, Kate is brushing her long, fair, shining hair; and as we look at her profile, she is watching her flushed face in the glass, and wondering whether or not Harry Cornwall will know that she has been crying, and—and—would he laugh at her if he knew what she had been crying about.
Ah! Kate Hallock is laughing at herself now, to think she could have been so silly; and that laugh makes her look like herself once more, as she turns about and quickly catches with her teeth the braid of her hair, that, thus held, she may tie about it the blue ribbon.
Kate Hallock has blue, tender eyes; round, soft, brown cheeks—just such cheeks as the sun and the wind might be supposed to like to shine upon and breathe over at any time of the year; teeth small, sharp, and white—the sun and the wind never tanned Kate’s teeth; her sweet lips dance over them so constantly that you never can tell whether you are looking at the teeth or the lips when she talks or laughs.
Kate’s nose is not quite perfect; if it only were a mite smaller and straighter, Kate would be a beauty. However, Kate is the only one who ever finds time or heart to mourn over that feature of a bright, bonny, darling young face.
Now she is ready to go down (and I am sure you have not yet found out how she looks)—ready, all butthe tying of her sash. That she manages by a rather awkward bow, tied in front, and finally jerked and pulled until the bow is supposed by the child to be in the back.
“You look like a guy!” was the accost Frank gave her as he passed her in the hall.
“What’s the matter, I should like to know, with Mr. Airy Castle now?” ejaculated Kate. Hearing her voice, Mrs. Hallock left her guests and went with Kate back to her own room, where, having examined the bureau drawers, which were found in order, Mrs. Hallock tied Kate’s bows anew, kissed her twice, and sent her down to entertain Mrs. Dobson and Harry.
“I should like to shake hands with you, if I could,” said Harry, whose right arm was still fast in a sling.
“O, never mind,” said Kate. “Come, I’m in a hurry to show you something—quick! before Frank comes!” and Kate hurried Harry off out of doors the very minute she had told Mrs. Dobson how glad she was to see her.
“Don’t you know,” said she to Harry (as they stepped from the veranda), “the morning you first came here? Well, when you rode past on that ugly little pony that threw you down and hurt you, I was just behind that stone wall over there. You can see it, can’t you?”
Harry said yes; that he could see it.
“Well, you must know that my brother Frank has been taking care of that cornfield ever since for you.”
Harry wondered what was coming next, but Kate gave him not the least mite of a chance to ask a question,but made haste to say, “That day the corn was Frank’s, but he ran away. Don’t you remember how he followed you to the circus grounds and stayed with you till most dinner time?”
“If he hadn’t,” interposed the lad, “I don’t believe I should ever have known you, or you me.”
“That’s just it!” responded Kate. “It makes everything we do so queer and kind of jumbled up; and yet,” she said gravely, “everything will come out right, I s’pose, if we wait long enough.”
“You don’t mean that ’twas right for Frank to run away, do you?” and Harry looked at Kate out of his clear, honest, grey eyes, very earnestly indeed.
“I don’t see why not, ’cause if he hadn’t, how could we have known you wanted somebody and a home and all?” suggested Kate.
“O, pshaw!” exclaimed Harry.
“I should like to know ifthat’sall you’ve got to say?” said Kate in a decidedly irritated tone.
“I beg your pardon; I didn’t know how to say what I wanted to. But don’t you suppose now that if Frank had stayed in the lot over yonder that morning, and God—” Harry suddenly stooped, grew red in the face, stooped and picked up a stone, which he kept tossing in his left hand as they went along; and he waited for Kate to speak, which she did presently, saying,
“Never mind the rest; you can tell me some other time. Here we are, close to your cornfield.”
“I should like to know why you call it mine,” said Harry; and then followed the story of Frank’s desire to earn money for himself, and the opportunity givento him by his father, and ingloriously lost by his runaway propensity, gratified once too often. Kate told the story with shining eyes, and was particularly careful to impress upon Harry’s mind the beautiful manner in which her brother had acted ever since.
Harry and Kate were standing on the very edge of the field, and Harry was just saying, “But, Kate, I cannot take it; you know that I can’t. I should not enjoy a thing about it,” when a thundering slap struck upon Harry’s shoulder, and a big, gleesome boy’s voice shouted close to his ear,
“Well, I say, old fellow, how do you like the looks? Ain’t much like Western corn now, is it?”
Frank had been advancing cautiously from the rear, intending to take Kate and Harry by surprise. Harry was too much hurt by the blow (for Frank had forgotten his condition) to answer for a minute or two. In fact he grew so pale that Kate was frightened, and called Frank “a great rough, cruel fellow, to slap poor Harry so.”
“I declare, I forgot your arm and everything. I didn’t mean to hurt you,” explained Frank, and after a few more sharp twinges in the broken bones, Harry said,
“It is all over and no harm done.”
“Glad to hear you say so,” said Frank. “Now this don’t look much of a cornfield, I suppose, to you who’ve seen ever so many acres all in one lot; but there’s one thing, you may call it ten acres to one—for that’s about the difference in the price of the corn out West and here—and when harvest comes, you’ll have abig pile of heavy ears. Don’t believe I am much of a born farmer,” added the boy, “or I should have hung to the main chance a bit longer.”
“I sha’n’t take one single ear of your corn, Frank Hallock,” spoke up Harry. “Pray don’t think I’m mean enough to touch it.”
“But you must,” cried the twins in chorus. “You’ve got to have it; and,” added Kate, “if you only knew how hard Frank has worked in the lot since he knew ’twas yours, and you couldn’t help yourself lying over there at Mrs. Dobson’s, I know you would. And you are coming here to live next week, until your uncle up in Maine, or down in Maine, sends for you, or comes after you—and, oh, you don’t know how pretty your room is. Mamma made it so on purpose, and I helped her, too. Its—” but before Kate had time to finish the sentence, Harry interrupted her by saying,
“Please don’t tell me about it, for, Kate and Frank, I can’t live at Hallock Point.”
Harry’s statement was so utterly surprising that a momentary silence followed it, and then the “I should like to know whys” and the “why nots” overwhelmed the boy; but when finally Kate burst out with “I’m sure I don’t see what we have done that you will neither take Frank’s corn when he gives it to you, nor come to live with us, when we want to have you ever so much,” Harry felt compelled to say something, and what he said was simply this—
“I’m going to live in Pumpkin Delight Lane, with Mrs. Dobson.”
“Well, now, that is a good joke—going to live with Grandma Dobson!” laughed Frank; “just as though you meant what you say.”
“Indeed, I do,” Harry replied quite seriously.
Practical Kate said: “Why, Harry, don’t you know that Grandma Dobson is poor—I mean she hasn’t much money, nothing but the house and the land, I heard papa say one day; and before her father died and left the house to her, she used to make dresses.”
“Yes, I know she’s poor,” and Harry sighed.
“Well, then, you don’t want to make her poorer, do you?” Kate asked with an arch look at Harry, for she evidently thought her final question decided the point.
The children had turned and were walking back to the house. They were come to the spot where Kate had met the man who was faint and ill, and to whom she had given Frank’s dinner.
“Come,” cried Kate, “this is a nice place to sit, under the shade of these big trees, and we’ll talk about it.”
Down she went with her fresh white dress on the green grass; and Harry was, in truth, very glad of the opportunity of resting, for it was his first walk in over a month.
“Now, tell us what it all means,” ejaculated Kate, with her pretty chin resting in the palm of one hand, and her blue eyes somewhere between the blue of the sky and Harry’s sober face.
“Well, it means, if I must tell you, that Mrs. Dobson talks out loud pretty often. She’s lived alone a good while, with only Josh in the house; and sometimeswhen I used to lie on my bed still, and maybe she thought I was fast asleep—I don’t know, though; and I wonder if folks who live alone don’t always talk to themselves—”
“I guess so,” said Kate. “I’m sure I should have to talk to somebody—I couldn’t help it; but do hurry and tell us what she said.”
“Never mind about the particulars,” put in Frank, as Harry still hesitated.
“Why, what I thought,” began Harry at length, “was that there was somebody in the room that she was talking to: for she said that she had lived alone, waiting and waiting, ever since her mother and father died, and she meant to wait a good while longer, too, only it would be so much easier and pleasanter not to wait all alone; and then she told how lonely ’twas in the winter when the snows came, and there wasn’t for a good many days a single track through the snow, and the ice was so thick on the shore and so strong in the bay that not one ship could come into the harbor. And I began to cry when she told about the long dark nights she had to stay all alone, without one single human heart—that was just what she said—beating near her own; and then all at once I knew she was praying, for she burst out with ‘O, dear Lord, if this boy you’ve sent to my house could only love me well enough to live with me just one winter!’”
Kate sobbed and Frank whistled, and Harry said, “What do you s’pose I did then?”
“Tell!” sighed Kate.
“Out with it!” demanded Frank.
“Why, I got up and opened the door softly, and said I do love you, and I will stay’; and then I shut the door, but not before I saw that Mrs. Dobson was getting up from her knees. She hurried into the room pretty lively, I tell you, and kissed me, and made such a fuss over me that I came mighty near being sorry I’d said I would stay.”
“Of course you’ll stay,” said Kate. “Why I wouldn’t have you at Hallock Point, not if I could just as well as not. But what will you do there?”
“O, I’ll find enough to do, so that Grandma (she says I may call her so) won’t think I’m eating her out of house and home; and then there’s the farm. Next year who knows what may happen? and as for this, why there’s a good chance to dig clams between now and cold weather.”
“Good for you!” cried Frank. “You’re a cracky chap, after all. Didn’t I see some hens and an old turkey or two in the back yard the other day, over in the lane?”
“Why, Frank, you stupid, you know Grandma Dobson keeps hens,” said Kate.
“They eat corn, like other hens, don’t they?”
“Of course,” laughed Kate.
“What then?” questioned Harry.
“Why, that cornfield yonder,” and with the words Frank walked off, before Kate and Harry had time to get up from the grass and join him.
“That’s just like him,” said Kate, bubbling with enthusiasm. She was always glad if Frank did or said the least thing to build up her sisterly pride in him.“It’s so kind of him to remember Grandma Dobson’s hungry hens. You’ll letherhave the corn of course, Harry!”
“I don’t see how I can help it. If Frank chooses to give it to her, I’ll promise to gather it, harvest it in whatever place she chooses to have it, shell it, feed it out, and save enough for seed next year.”
And all this time that the children were talking, the bright July sun was beaming down on the broad green leaves of the corn; and that same sun saw another sight. If the sun had told Frank, Kate, and Harry what it saw, I do not know what would have happened—something interesting, I am quite sure; but as the sun told no tales that day, I will not—until the next chapter.
The letter that Mrs. Hallock sent to “Mr. Horace Blake, Solon, Maine,” should have been addressed to Mr. Horace Ludlow, since Uncle Horace was Aunt Louisa Blake’s husband, and of course had a name of his own. At the end of three months, Mrs. Hallock received her letter from the Dead Letter Office.
Dear me! if that letter had had the right name on it, poor Mrs. Dobson would have had to live all alone all winter, maybe—who knows?
“Crooked thingsdoturn out just as straight as anything, sometimes,” Kate Hallock said, when the letter was returned to her mother.