The Project Gutenberg eBook ofTimothy's Quest

The Project Gutenberg eBook ofTimothy's QuestThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Timothy's QuestAuthor: Kate Douglas Smith WigginRelease date: June 7, 2006 [eBook #18531]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Bruce Albrecht, Janet Blenkinship and theOnline Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net(This book was produced from scanned images of publicdomain material from the Google Print project)*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TIMOTHY'S QUEST ***

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Timothy's QuestAuthor: Kate Douglas Smith WigginRelease date: June 7, 2006 [eBook #18531]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Bruce Albrecht, Janet Blenkinship and theOnline Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net(This book was produced from scanned images of publicdomain material from the Google Print project)

Title: Timothy's Quest

Author: Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

Release date: June 7, 2006 [eBook #18531]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Bruce Albrecht, Janet Blenkinship and theOnline Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net(This book was produced from scanned images of publicdomain material from the Google Print project)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TIMOTHY'S QUEST ***

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.Boston and New York.

Logo

BOSTON AND NEW YORKHOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANYThe Riverside Press, Cambridge1894

The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A.Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.

FLOSSY MORRISON LEARNS THE SECRET OF DEATH WITHOUT EVER HAVING LEARNED THE SECRET OF LIFE.

Minerva Court! Veil thy face, O Goddess of Wisdom, for never, surely, was thy fair name so ill bestowed as when it was applied to this most dreary place!

It was a little less than street, a little more than alley, and its only possible claim to decency came from comparison with the busier thoroughfare out of which it opened. This was so much fouler, with its dirt and noise, its stands of refuse fruit and vegetables, its dingy shops and all the miserable traffic that the place engendered, its rickety doorways blocked with lounging men, itsBlowsabellas leaning on the window-sills, that the Court seemed by contrast a most desirable and retired place of residence.

But it was a dismal spot, nevertheless, with not even an air of faded gentility to recommend it. It seemed to have no better days behind it, nor to hold within itself the possibility of any future improvement. It was narrow, and extended only the length of a city block, yet it was by no means wanting in many of those luxuries which mark this era of modern civilization. There were groceries, with commodious sample-rooms attached, at each corner, and a small saloon, called "The Dearest Spot" (which it undoubtedly was in more senses than one), in the basement of a house at the farther end. It was necessary, however, for the bibulous native who dwelt in the middle of the block to waste some valuable minutes in dragging himself to one of these fountains of bliss at either end; but at the time my story opens a wide-awake philanthropist was fitting up a neat and attractive little bar-room, called "The Oasis," at a point equally distant between the other two springs of human joy.

This benefactor of humanity had a vaulting ambition. He desired to slake the thirstof every man in Christendom; but this being impossible from the very nature of things, he determined to settle in some arid spot like Minerva Court, and irrigate it so sweetly and copiously that all men's noses would blossom as the roses. To supply his brothers' wants, and create new ones at the same time, was his purpose in establishing this Oasis in the Desert of Minerva Court; and it might as well be stated here that he was prospered in his undertaking, as any man is sure to be who cherishes lofty ideals and attends to his business industriously.

The Minerva Courtier thus had good reason to hope that the supply of liquid refreshment would bear some relation to the demand; and that the march of modern progress would continue to diminish the distance between his own mouth and that of the bottle, which, as he took it, was the be-all and end-all of existence.

At present, however, as the Oasis was not open to the public, children carrying pitchers of beer were often to be seen hurrying to and fro on their miserable errands. But there were very few children in Minerva Court, thank God!—they were not popular there. There were frowzy, sleepy-looking women hanging out of their windows, gossiping with their equally unkempt and haggard neighbors; apathetic men sitting on the doorsteps, in their shirt-sleeves, smoking; a dull, dirty baby or two sporting itself in the gutter; while the sound of a melancholy accordion (the chosen instrument of poverty and misery) floated from an upper chamber, and added its discordant mite to the general desolation.

The sidewalks had apparently never known the touch of a broom, and the middle of the street looked more like an elongated junk-heap than anything else. Every smell known to the nostrils of man was abroad in the air, and several were floating about waiting modestly to be classified, after which they intended to come to the front and outdo the others if they could.

That was Minerva Court! A little piece of your world, my world, God's world (and the Devil's), lying peacefully fallow, awaiting the services of some inspired Home Missionary Society.

In a front room of Number Three, a dilapidated house next the corner, there lay a still, white shape, with two women watching by it.

A sheet covered it. Candles burned at the head, striving to throw a gleam of light on a dead face that for many a year had never been illuminated from within by the brightness of self-forgetting love or kindly sympathy. If you had raised the sheet, you would have seen no happy smile as of a half-remembered, innocent childhood; the smile—is it of peaceful memory or serene anticipation?—that sometimes shines on the faces of the dead.

Such life-secrets as were exposed by Death, and written on that still countenance in characters that all might read, were painful ones. Flossy Morrison was dead. The name "Flossy" was a relic of what she termed her better days (Heaven save the mark!), for she had been called Mrs. Morrison of late years,—"Mrs. F. Morrison," who took "children to board, and no questions asked"—nor answered. She had lived forty-five years, as men reckon summers and winters; but she had never learned, in all that time, to know her Mother, Nature, her Father, God, nor her brothers and sisters, the children of the world. She had lived friendless and unfriendly, keeping none of the ten commandments, nor yet theeleventh, which is the greatest of all; and now there was no human being to slip a flower into the still hand, to kiss the clay-cold lips at the remembrance of some sweet word that had fallen from them, or drop a tear and say, "I loved her!"

Apparently, the two watchers did not regard Flossy Morrison even in the light of "the dear remains," as they are sometimes called at country funerals. They were in the best of spirits (there was an abundance of beer), and their gruesome task would be over in a few hours; for it was nearly four o'clock in the morning, and the body was to be taken away at ten.

"I tell you one thing, Ettie, Flossy hasn't left any bother for her friends," remarked Mrs. Nancy Simmons, settling herself back in her rocking-chair. "As she didn't own anything but the clothes on her back, there won't be any quarreling over the property!" and she chuckled at her delicate humor.

"No," answered her companion, who, whatever her sponsors in baptism had christened her, called herself Ethel Montmorency. "I s'pose the furniture, poor as it is, will pay the funeral expenses; and if she's got any debts, why, folks will have to whistle for their money, that's all."

"The only thing that worries me is the children," said Mrs. Simmons.

"You must be hard up for something to worry about, to take those young ones on your mind. They ain't yours nor mine, and what's more, nobody knows who they do belong to, and nobody cares. Soon as breakfast's over we'll pack 'em off to some institution or other, and that'll be the end of it. What did Flossy say about 'em, when you spoke to her yesterday?"

"I asked her what she wanted done with the young ones, and she said, 'Do what you like with 'em, drat 'em,—it don't make no odds to me!' and then she turned over and died. Those was the last words she spoke, dear soul; but, Lor', she wasn't more'n half sober, and hadn't been for a week."

"She was sober enough to keep her own counsel, I can tell you that," said the gentle Ethel. "I don't believe there's a living soul that knows where those children came from;—not that anybody cares, now that there ain't any money in 'em."

"Well, as for that, I only know that when Flossy was seeing better days and lived in the upper part of the city, she used to have money come every month for taking care ofthe boy. Where it come from I don't know; but I kind of surmise it was a long distance off. Then she took to drinking, and got lower and lower down until she came here, six months ago. I don't suppose the boy's folks, or whoever it was sent the money, knew the way she was living, though they couldn't have cared much, for they never came to see how things were; and he was in an asylum before Flossy took him, I found that out; but, anyhow, the money stopped coming three months ago. Flossy wrote twice to the folks, whoever they were, but didn't get no answer to her letters; and she told me that she should turn the boy out in a week or two if some cash didn't turn up in that time. She wouldn't have kept him so long as this if he hadn't been so handy taking care of the baby."

"Well, who does the baby belong to?"

"You ask me too much," replied Nancy, taking another deep draught from the pitcher. "Help yourself, Ettie; there's plenty more where that came from. Flossy never liked the boy, and always wanted to get rid of him, but couldn't afford to. He's a dreadful queer, old-fashioned little kid, and so smart that he's gettin' to be a reg'larnuisance round the house. But you see he and the baby,—Gabrielle's her name, but they call her Lady Gay, or some such trash, after that actress that comes here so much,—well, they are so in love with one another that wild horses couldn't drag 'em apart; and I think Flossy had a kind of a likin' for Gay, as much as she ever had for anything. I guess she never abused either of 'em; she was too careless for that. And so what was I talkin' about? Oh, yes. Well, I don't know who the baby is, nor who paid for her keep; but she's goin' to be one o' your high-steppers, and no mistake. She might be Queen Victory's daughter by the airs she puts on; I'd like to keep her myself if she was a little older, and I wasn't goin' away from here."

"I s'pose they'll make an awful row at being separated, won't they?" asked the younger woman.

"Oh, like as not; but they'll have to have their row and get over it," said Mrs. Simmons easily. "You can take Timothy to the Orphan Asylum first, and then come back, and I'll carry the baby to the Home of the Ladies' Relief and Protection Society; and if they yell they can yell, andtake it out in yellin'; they won't get the best of Nancy Simmons."

"Don't talk so loud, Nancy, for mercy's sake. If the boy hears you, he'll begin to take on, and we sha'n't get a wink of sleep. Don't let 'em know what you're goin' to do with 'em till the last minute, or you'll have trouble as sure as we sit here."

"Oh, they are sound asleep," responded Mrs. Simmons, with an uneasy look at the half-open door. "I went in and dragged a pillow out from under Timothy's head, and he never budged. He was sleepin' like a log, and so was Gay. Now, shut up, Et, and let me get three winks myself. You take the lounge, and I'll stretch out in two chairs. Wake me up at eight o'clock, if I don't wake myself; for I'm clean tired out with all this fussin' and plannin', and I feel stupid enough to sleep till kingdom come."

LITTLE TIMOTHY JESSUP ASSUMES PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITIES.

When the snores of the two watchers fell on the stillness of the death-chamber, with that cheerful regularity that betokens the sleep of the truly good, a little figure crept out of the bed in the adjoining room and closed the door noiselessly, but with trembling fingers; stealing then to the window to look out at the dirty street and the gray sky over which the first faint streaks of dawn were beginning to creep.

It was little Timothy Jessup (God alone knows whether he had any right to that special patronymic), but not the very same Tim Jessup who had kissed the baby Gay in her little crib, and gone to sleep on his own hard bed in that room, a few hours before. As he stood shivering at the window,one thin hand hard pressed upon his heart to still its beating, there was a light of sudden resolve in his eyes, a new-born look of anxiety on his unchildlike face.

"I will not have Gay protectioned and reliefed, and I will not be taken away from her and sent to a 'sylum, where I can never find her again!" and with these defiant words trembling, half spoken, on his lips, he glanced from the unconscious form in the crib to the terrible door, which might open at any moment and divide him from his heart's delight, his darling, his treasure, his only joy, his own, own baby Gay.

But what should he do? Run away: that was the only solution of the matter, and no very difficult one either. The cruel women were asleep; the awful Thing that had been Flossy would never speak again; and no one else in Minerva Court cared enough for them to pursue them very far or very long.

"And so," thought Timothy swiftly, "I will get things ready, take Gay, and steal softly out of the back door, and run away to the 'truly' country, where none of these bad people ever can find us, and where I can get a mother for Gay; somebody to'dopt her and love her till I grow up a man and take her to live with me."

The moment this thought darted into Timothy's mind, it began to shape itself in definite action.

Gabrielle, or Lady Gay, as Flossy called her, in honor of her favorite stage heroine, had been tumbled into her crib half dressed the night before. The only vehicle kept for her use in the family stables was a clothes-basket, mounted on four wooden wheels and cushioned with a dingy shawl. A yard of clothes-line was tied on to one end, and in this humble conveyance the Princess would have to be transported from the Ogre's castle; for she was scarcely old enough to accompany the Prince on foot, even if he had dared to risk detection by waking her: so the clothes-basket must be her chariot, and Timothy her charioteer, as on many a less fateful expedition.

After he had changed his ragged night-gown for a shabby suit of clothes, he took Gay's one clean apron out of a rickety bureau drawer ("for I can never find a mother for her if she's too dirty," he thought), her Sunday hat from the same receptacle, and last of all a comb, and afaded Japanese parasol that stood in a corner. These he deposited under the old shawl that decorated the floor of the chariot. He next groped his way in the dim light toward a mantelshelf, and took down a savings-bank,—a florid little structure with "Bank of England" stamped over the miniature door, into which the jovial gentleman who frequented the house often slipped pieces of silver for the children, and into which Flossy dipped only when she was in a state of temporary financial embarrassment. Timothy did not dare to jingle it; he could only hope that as Flossy had not been in her usual health of late (though in more than her usual "spirits"), she had not felt obliged to break the bank.

Now for provisions. There were plenty of "funeral baked meats" in the kitchen; and he hastily gathered a dozen cookies into a towel, and stowed them in the coach with the other sinews of war.

So far, well and good; but the worst was to come. With his heart beating in his bosom like a trip-hammer, and his eyes dilated with fear, he stepped to the door between the two rooms, and opened it softly. Two thundering snores, pitched in such different keys that they must have proceeded from two separate sets of nasal organs, reassured the boy. He looked out into the alley. "Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse." The Minerva Courtiers couldn't be owls and hawks too, and there was not even the ghost of a sound to be heard. Satisfied that all was well, Timothy went back to the bedroom, and lifted the battered clothes-basket, trucks and all, in his slender arms, carried it up the alley and down the street a little distance, and deposited it on the pavement beside a vacant lot. This done, he sped back to the house. "How beautifully they snore!" he thought, as he stood again on the threshold. "Shall I leave 'em a letter?... P'raps I better ... and then they won't follow us and bring us back." So he scribbled a line on a bit of torn paper bag, and pinned it on the enemies' door.

"A kind Lady is goin to Adoptus it is a Grate ways off so do notHunt good by.Tim."

Now all was ready. No; one thing more. Timothy had been met in the street by a pretty young girl a few weeks before. Thelove of God was smiling in her heart, the love of children shining in her eyes; and she led him, a willing captive, into a mission Sunday-school near by. And so much in earnest was the sweet little teacher, and so hungry for any sort of good tidings was the starved little pupil, that Timothy "got religion" then and there, as simply and naturally as a child takes its mother's milk. He was probably in a state of crass ignorance regarding the Thirty-nine Articles; but it was the "engrafted word," of which the Bible speaks, that had blossomed in Timothy's heart; the living seed had always been there, waiting for some beneficent fostering influence; for he was what dear Charles Lamb would have called a natural "kingdom-of-heavenite." Thinking, therefore, of Miss Dora's injunction to pray over all the extra-ordinary affairs of life and as many of the ordinary ones as possible, he hung his tattered straw hat on the bedpost, and knelt beside Gay's crib with this whispered prayer:—

"Our Father who art in heaven, please help me to find a mother for Gay, one that she can call Mamma, and another one for me, if there's enough, but not unless. Please excuse me for taking away theclothes-basket, which does not exactly belong to us; but if I do not take it, dear heavenly Father, how will I get Gay to the railroad? And if I don't take the Japanese umbrella she will get freckled, and nobody will adopt her. No more at present, as I am in a great hurry. Amen."

He put on his hat, stooped over the sleeping baby, and took her in his faithful arms,—arms that had never failed her yet. She half opened her eyes, and seeing that she was safe on her beloved Timothy's shoulder, clasped her dimpled arms tight about his neck, and with a long sigh drifted off again into the land of dreams. Bending beneath her weight, he stepped for the last time across the threshold, not even daring to close the door behind him.

Up the alley and round the corner he sped, as fast as his trembling legs could carry him. Just as he was within sight of the goal of his ambition, that is, the chariot aforesaid, he fancied he heard the sound of hurrying feet behind him. To his fevered imagination the tread was like that of an avenging army on the track of the foe. He did not dare to look behind. On! for the clothes-basket and liberty! He would relinquish the Japanese umbrella, the cookies, the comb, and the apron,—all the booty, in fact,—as an inducement for the enemy to retreat, but he would never give up the prisoner.

On the feet hurried, faster and faster. He stooped to put Gay in the basket, and turned in despair to meet his pursuers, when a little, grimy, rough-coated, lop-eared, split-tailed thing, like an animated rag-bag, leaped upon his knees; whimpering with joy, and imploring, with every grace that his simple doggish heart could suggest, to be one of the eloping party.

Rags had followed them!

Timothy was so glad to find it no worse that he wasted a moment in embracing the dog, whose delirious joy at the prospect of this probably dinnerless and supperless expedition was ludicrously exaggerated. Then he took up the rope and trundled the chariot gently down a side street leading to the station.

Everything worked to a charm. They met only an occasional milk (and water) man, starting on his matutinal rounds, for it was now after four o'clock, and one or two cavaliers of uncertain gait, just returning to their homes, several hours too late for their own good; but these gentlemen were in no condition of mind to be over-interested, and the little fugitives were troubled with no questions as to their intentions.

And so they went out into the world together, these three: Timothy Jessup (if it was Jessup), brave little knight, nameless nobleman, tracing his descent back to God, the Father of us all, and bearing the Divine likeness more than most of us; the little Lady Gay,—somebody—nobody—anybody,—from nobody knows where,—destination equally uncertain; and Rags, of pedigree most doubtful, scutcheon quite obscured by blots, but a perfect gentleman, true-hearted and loyal to the core,—in fact, an angel in fur. These three, with the clothes-basket as personal property and the Bank of England as security, went out to seek their fortune; and, unlike Lot's wife, without daring to look behind, shook the dust of Minerva Court from off their feet forever and forever.

TIMOTHY PLANS A CAMPAIGN, AND PROVIDENCE ASSISTS MATERIALLY IN CARRYING IT OUT, OR VICE VERSA.

By dint of skillful generalship, Timothy gathered his forces on a green bank just behind the railway depot, cleared away a sufficient number of tin cans and oyster-shells to make a flat space for the chariot of war, which had now become simply a cradle, and sat down, with Rags curled up at his feet, to plan the campaign.

He pushed back the ragged hat from his waving hair, and, clasping his knees with his hands, gazed thoughtfully at the towering chimneys in the foreground and the white-winged ships in the distant harbor. There was a glimpse of something like a man's purpose in the sober eyes; and as the morning sunlight fell upon his earnest face, the angel in him came to the surface, andcrowded the "boy part" quite out of sight, as it has a way of doing sometimes with children.

How some father-heart would have throbbed with pride to own him, and how gladly lifted the too heavy burden from his childish shoulders!

Timothy Jessup, aged ten or eleven, or thereabouts (the records had not been kept with absolute exactness)—Timothy Jessup, somewhat ragged, all forlorn, and none too clean at the present moment, was a poet, philosopher, and lover of the beautiful. The dwellers in Minerva Court had never discovered the fact; for, although he had lived in that world, he had most emphatically never been of it. He was a boy of strange notions, and the vocabulary in which he expressed them was stranger still; further-more, he had gentle manners, which must have been indigenous, as they had certainly never been cultivated; and, although he had been in the way of handling pitch for many a day, it had been helpless to defile him, such was the essential purity of his nature.

To find a home and a mother for Lady Gay had been Timothy's secret longing ever since he had heard people say that Flossymight die. He had once enjoyed all the comforts of a Home with a capital H; but it was the cosy one with the little "h" that he so much desired for her.

Not that he had any ill treatment to remember in the excellent institution of which he was for several years an inmate. The matron was an amiable and hard-working woman, who wished to do her duty to all the children under her care; but it would be an inspired human being indeed who could give a hundred and fifty motherless or fatherless children all the education and care and training they needed, to say nothing of the love that they missed and craved. What wonder, then, that an occasional hungry little soul, starved for want of something not provided by the management; say, a morning cuddle in father's bed or a ride on father's knee,—in short, the sweet daily jumble of lap-trotting, gentle caressing, endearing words, twilight stories, motherly tucks-in-bed, good-night kisses,—all the dear, simple, every-day accompaniments of the home with the little "h."

Timothy Jessup, bred in such an atmosphere, would have gladdened every life that touched his at any point. Plenty of wistfulmen and women would have thanked God nightly on their knees for the gift of such a son; and here he was, sitting on a tin can, bowed down with family cares, while thousands of graceless little scalawags were slapping the faces of their French nurse-maids and bullying their parents, in that very city.—Ah me!

As for the tiny Lady Gay, she had all the winsome virtues to recommend her. No one ever feared that she would die young out of sheer goodness. You would not have loved her so much for what she was as because you couldn't help yourself. This feat once accomplished, she blossomed into a thousand graces, each one more bewitching than the last you noted.

Where, in the name of all the sacred laws of heredity, did the child get her sunshiny nature? Born in misery, and probably in sin, nurtured in wretchedness and poverty, she had brought her "radiant morning visions" with her into the world. Like Wordsworth's immortal babe, "with trailing clouds of glory" had she come, from God who was her home; and the heaven that lies about us all in our infancy,—that Garden of Eden into which we are all born, likethe first man and the first woman,—that heaven lay about her still, stronger than the touch of earth.

What if the room were desolate and bare? The yellow sunbeams stole through the narrow window, and in the shaft of light they threw across the dirty floor Gay played,—oblivious of everything save the flickering golden rays that surrounded her.

The raindrops chasing each other down the dingy pane, the snowflakes melting softly on the casement, the brown leaf that the wind blew into her lap as she sat on the sidewalk, the chirp of the little beggar-sparrows over the cobblestones, all these brought as eager a light into her baby eyes as the costliest toy. With no earthly father or mother to care for her, she seemed to be God's very own baby, and He amused her in his own good way; first by locking her happiness within her own soul (the only place where it is ever safe for a single moment), and then by putting her under Timothy's paternal ministrations.

Timothy's mind traveled back over the past, as he sat among the tin cans and looked at Rags and Gay. It was a very small story, if he ever found any one who wouldcare to hear it. There was a long journey in a great ship, a wearisome illness of many weeks,—or was it months?—when his curls had been cut off, and all his memories with them; then there was the Home; then there was Flossy, who came to take him away; then—oh, bright, bright spot! oh, blessed time!—there was baby Gay; then, worse than all, there was Minerva Court. But he did not give many minutes to reminiscence. He first broke open the Bank of England, and threw it away, after finding to his joy that their fortune amounted to one dollar and eighty-five cents. This was so much in advance of his expectations that he laughed aloud; and Rags, wagging his tail with such vigor that he nearly broke it in two, jumped into the cradle and woke the baby.

Then there was a happy family circle, you may believe me, and with good reason, too! A trip to the country (meals and lodging uncertain, but that was a trifle), a sight of green meadows, where Tim would hear real birds sing in the trees, and Gay would gather wild flowers, and Rags would chase, and perhaps—who knows?—catch toothsome squirrels and fat little field-mice, ofwhich the country dogs visiting Minerva Court had told the most mouth-watering tales. Gay's transport knew no bounds. Her child-heart felt no regret for the past, no care for the present, no anxiety for the future. The only world she cared for was in her sight; and she had never, in her brief experience, gazed upon it with more radiant anticipation than on this sunny June morning, when she had opened her bright eyes on a pleasant, odorous bank of oyster-shells, instead of on the accustomed surroundings of Minerva Court.

Breakfast was first in order.

There was a pump conveniently near, and the oyster-shells made capital cups. Gay had three cookies, Timothy two, and Rags one; but there was no statute of limitations placed on the water; every one had as much as he could drink.

The little matter of toilets came next. Timothy took the dingy rag which did duty for a handkerchief, and, calling the pump again into requisition, scrubbed Gay's face and hands tenderly, but firmly. Her clothes were then all smoothed down tidily, but the clean apron was kept for the eventful moment when her future mother should firstbe allowed to behold the form of her adopted child.

The comb was then brought out, and her mop of red-gold hair was assisted to fall in wet spirals all over her lovely head, which always "wiggled" too much for any more formal style of hair-dressing. Her Sunday hat being tied on, as the crowning glory, this lucky little princess, this child of Fortune, so inestimably rich in her own opinion, this daughter of the gods, I say, was returned to the basket, where she endeavored to keep quiet until the next piece of delightful unexpectedness should rise from fairy-land upon her excited gaze.

Timothy and Rags now went to the pump, and Rags was held under the spout. This was a new and bitter experience, and he wished for a few brief moments that he had never joined the noble army of deserters, but had stayed where dirt was fashionable. Being released, the sense of abnormal cleanliness mounted to his brain, and he tore breathlessly round in a circle seventy-seven times without stopping. But this only dried his hair and amused Gay, who was beginning to find the basket confining, and who clamored for "Timfy" to take her to "yide."

Timothy attended to himself last, as usual. He put his own head under the pump, and scrubbed his face and hands heartily; wiping them on his—well, he wiped them, and that is the main thing; besides, his handkerchief had been reduced to a pulp in Gay's service. He combed his hair, pulled up his stockings and tied his shoes neatly, buttoned his jacket closely over his shirt, and was just pinning up the rent in his hat, when Rags considerately brought another suggestion in the shape of an old chicken-wing, with which he brushed every speck of dust from his clothes. This done, and being no respecter of persons, he took the family comb to Rags, who woke the echoes during the operation, and hoped to the Lord that the squirrels would run slowly and that the field-mice would be very tender, to pay him for this.

It was now nearly eight o'clock, and the party descended the hillside and entered the side door of the station.

The day's work had long since begun, and there was the usual din and uproar of railroad traffic. Trucks, laden high with boxes and barrels, were being driven to the wide doors, and porters were thundering andthumping and lurching the freight from one set of cars into another; their primary objects being to make a racket and demolish raw material, thereby increasing manufacture and export, but incidentally to load or unload as much freight as possible in a given time.

Timothy entered, trundling his carriage, where Lady Gay sat enthroned like a Murray Hill belle on a dog-cart, conscious pride of Sunday hat on week-day morning exuding from every feature; and Rags followed close behind, clean, but with a crushed spirit, which he could stimulate only by the most seductive imaginations. No one molested them, for Timothy was very careful not to get in any one's way. Finally, he drew up in front of a high blackboard, on which the names of various way-stations were printed in gold letters:—

Chestertown.Sandford.Reedville.Bingham.Skaggstown.Esbury.Scratch Corner.Hillside.Mountain View.Edgewood.Pleasant River.

"The names get nicer and nicer as you read down the line, and the furtherest one of all is the very prettiest, so I guess we'll go there," thought Timothy, not realizing that his choice was based on most insecure foundations; and that, for aught he knew, the milk of human kindness might have more cream on it at Scratch Corner than at Pleasant River, though the latter name was certainly more attractive.

Gay approved of Pleasant River, and so did Rags; and Timothy moved off down the station to a place on the open platform where a train of cars stood ready for starting, the engine at the head gasping and puffing and breathing as hard as if it had an acute attack of asthma.

"How much does it cost to go to Pleasant River, please?" asked Tim, bravely, of a kind-looking man in a blue coat and brass buttons, who stood by the cars.

"This is a freight train, sonny," replied the man; "takes four hours to get there. Better wait till 10.45; buy your ticket up in the station."

"10.45!" Tim saw visions of Mrs. Simmons speeding down upon him in hot pursuit, kindled by Gay's disappearance into an appreciation of her charms.

The tears stood in his eyes as Gay clambered out of the basket, and danced with impatience, exclaiming, "Gay wants to yide now! yide now! yide now!"

"Did you want to go sooner?" asked the man, who seemed to be entirely too much interested in humanity to succeed in the railroad business. "Well, as you seem to have consid'rable of a family on your hands, I guess we'll take you along. Jim, unlock that car and let these children in, and then lock it up again. It's a car we're taking up to the end of the road for repairs, bubby, so the comp'ny 'll give you and your folks a free ride!"

Timothy thanked the man in his politest manner, and Gay pressed a piece of moist cooky in his hand, and offered him one of her swan's-down kisses, a favor of which she was usually as chary as if it had possessed a market value.

"Are you going to take the dog?" asked the man, as Rags darted up the steps with sniffs and barks of ecstatic delight. "Heain't so handsome but you can get another easy enough!" (Rags held his breath in suspense, and wondered if he had been put under a roaring cataract, and then ploughed in deep furrows with a sharp-toothed instrument of torture, only to be left behind at last!)

"That's just why I take him," said Timothy; "because he isn't handsome and has nobody else to love him."

("Not a very polite reason," thought Rags; "but anything to go!")

"Well, jump in, dog and all, and they'll give you the best free ride to the country you ever had in your life! Tell 'em it's all right, Jim;" and the train steamed out of the depot, while the kind man waved his bandana handkerchief until the children were out of sight.

JABE SLOCUM ASSUMES THE RÔLE OF GUARDIAN ANGEL.

Jabe Slocum had been down to Edgewood, and was just returning to the White Farm, by way of the cross-roads and Hard Scrabble school-house. He was in no hurry, though he always had more work on hand than he could leave undone for a month; and Maria also was taking her own time, as usual, even stopping now and then to crop an unusually sweet tuft of grass that grew within smelling distance, and which no mare (with a driver like Jabe) could afford to pass without notice.

Jabe was ostensibly out on an "errant" for Miss Avilda Cummins; but, as he had been in her service for six years, she had no expectations of his accomplishing anything beyond getting to a place and getting back in the same day, the distance covered being no factor at all in the matter.

But one needn't go to Miss Avilda Cummins for a description of Jabe Slocum's peculiarities. They were all so written upon his face and figure and speech that the wayfaring man, though a fool, could not err in his judgment. He was a long, loose, knock-kneed, slack-twisted person, and would have been "longer yit if he hedn't hed so much turned up for feet,"—so Aunt Hitty Tarbox said. (Aunt Hitty went from house to house in Edgewood and Pleasant River, making over boys' clothes; and as her tongue flew as fast as her needle, her sharp speeches were always in circulation in both villages.)

Mr. Slocum had sandy hair, high cheekbones, a pair of kindly light blue eyes, and a most unique nose: I hardly know to what order of architecture it belonged,—perhaps Old Colonial would describe it as well as anything else. It was a wide, flat, well-ventilated, hospitable edifice (so to speak), so peculiarly constructed and applied that Samantha Ann Ripley (of whom more anon) declared that "the reason Jabe Slocum ketched cold so easy was that, if he didn't hold his head jess so, it kep' a-rainin' in!"

His mouth was simply an enormous slitin his face, and served all the purposes for which a mouth is presumably intended, save, perhaps, the trivial one of decoration. In short (a ludicrously inappropriate word for the subject), it was a capital medium for exits and entrances, but no ornament to his countenance. When Rhapsena Crabb, now deceased, was first engaged to Jabez Slocum, Aunt Hitty Tarbox said it beat her "how Rhapseny ever got over Jabe's mouth; though she could 'a' got intew it easy 'nough, or raound it, if she took plenty o' time." But perhaps Rhapsena appreciated a mouth (in a husband) that never was given to "jawin'," and which uttered only kind words during her brief span of married life. And there was precious little leisure for kissing at Pleasant River!

As Jabe had passed the store, a few minutes before, one of the boys had called out, facetiously, "Shet yer mouth when ye go by the deepot, Laigs; the train's comin' in!" But he only smiled placidly, though it was an ancient joke, the flavor of which had just fully penetrated the rustic skull; and the villagers could not resist titillating the sense of humor with it once or twice a month. Neither did Jabez mind being called"Laigs," the local pronunciation of the word "legs;" in fact, his good humor was too deep to be ruffled. His "cistern of wrathfulness was so small, and the supply pipe so unready," that it was next to impossible to "put him out," so the natives said.

He was a man of tolerable education; the only son of his parents, who had endeavored to make great things of him, and might perhaps have succeeded, if he hadn't always had so little time at his disposal,—hadn't been "so drove," as he expressed it. He went to the village school as regularly as he couldn't help, that is, as many days as he couldn't contrive to stay away, until he was fourteen. From there he was sent to the Academy, three miles distant; but his mother soon found that he couldn't make the two trips a day and be "under cover by candlelight;" so the plan of a classical education was abandoned, and he was allowed to speed the home plough,—a profession which he pursued with such moderation that his father, when starting him down a furrow, used to hang his dinner-pail on his arm and, bidding him good-by, beg him, with tears in his eyes, to be back before sun-down.

At the present moment Jabe was enjoying a cud of Old Virginia plug tobacco, and taking in no more of the landscape than he could avoid, when Maria, having wound up to the top of Marm Berry's hill, in spite of herself walked directly out on one side of the road, and stopped short to make room for the passage of an imposing procession, made up of one straw phaeton, one baby, one strange boy, and one strange dog.

Jabe eyed the party with some placid interest, for he loved children, but with no undue excitement. Shifting his huge quid, he inquired in his usual leisurely manner, "Which way yer goin', bub,—t' the Swamp or t' the Falls?"

Timothy thought neither sounded especially inviting, but, rapidly choosing the lesser evil, replied, "To the Falls, sir."

"Thy way happens to be my way, 's Rewth said to Naomi; so 'f gittin' over the road's your objeck, 'n' y' ain't pertickler 'baout the gait ye travel, ye can git in 'n' ride a piece. We don't b'lieve in hurryin', Mariar 'n' me. Slow 'n' easy goes fur in a day, 's our motto. Can ye git your folks aboard withaout spillin' any of 'em?"

No wonder he asked, for Gay was in sucha wild state of excitement that she could hardly be held.

"I can lift Gay up, if you'll please take her, sir," said Timothy; "and if you're quite sure the horse will stand still."

"Bless your soul, she'll stan' all right; she likes stan'in' a heap better 'n she doos goin'; runnin' away ain't no temptation to Maria Cummins; let well enough alone 's her motto. Jump in, sissy! There ye be! Now git yer baby-shay in the back of the wagon, bubby, 'n' we'll be 's snug 's a bug in a rug."

Timothy, whose creed was simple and whose beliefs were crystal clear, now felt that his morning prayer had been heard, and that the Lord was on his side; so he abandoned all idea of commanding the situation, and gave himself up to the full ecstasy of the ride, as they jogged peacefully along the river road.

Gay held a piece of a rein that peeped from Jabe's colossal hand (which was said by the villagers to cover most as much territory as the hand of Providence), and was convinced that she was driving Maria, an idea that made her speechless with joy.

Rags' wildest dreams of squirrels cametrue; and, reconciled at length to cleanliness, he was capering in and out of the woods, thinking what an Arabian Nights' entertainment he would give the Minerva Court dogs when he returned, if return he ever must to that miserable, squirrelless hole.

The meadows on the other side of the river were gorgeous with yellow buttercups, and here and there a patch of blue iris or wild sage. The black cherry trees were masses of snowy bloom; the water at the river's edge held spikes of blue arrowweed in its crystal shallows; while the roadside itself was gay with daisies and feathery grasses.

In the midst of this loveliness flowed Pleasant River,

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