"THE VISIT TO CAP'N MOSEBY'S"
Mary Ann began to cry. "I'm going home," she sobbed. "S'pose that door should break;" and she started down the road.
Eliza grasped the handle of Jonathan's wagon. "I guess we might just as well go," she said. "I don't b'lieve he'll come to the door if we stand there a week. I don't know what mother'll say when she finds that good bucket's gone. I guess Mirandy'll catch it. An' when she finds out she's been stealing, too, I don't know what she will say."
The sorry procession started. Jonathan's wagon creaked; but Mirandy stood still, with a stubborn pout on her mouth, and her brows contracted over her blue eyes.
"Come along, Mirandy," called Eliza, with a foreboding voice.
But Mirandy stood still.
"Why don't you come?" Harriet said.
"I ain't coming," said Mirandy.
"What?"
"I ain't coming till I get my bucket."
Then the whole procession stopped, and reasoned and argued, but Mirandy was unmoved.
"What are you going to do? You can't get in," said Eliza.
"I'm going to sit on the door-step till Cap'n Moseby comes out," answered Mirandy.
"You'll sit there all day, likely's not," said Eliza. "What do you s'pose mother'll say? I'm a-going to tell her."
"She'll send me right back again if I don't stay," said Mirandy.
And there was some show of reason in what she said. It was indeed quite probable that Mrs. Josiah Thayer would send Mirandy straight back again to confess her sins and get the bucket.
"I don't know but mother would send her back," said Eliza; and Daniel nodded in assent.
"I'll stay with you," said Mary Ann, although she was still trembling with fear of the dog.
"Don't want anybody to stay," protested Mirandy.
Finally she sat on Cap'n Moseby's door-step, and watched them all straggle out of sight. The creak of Jonathan's wagon grew fainter and fainter, until she could hear it no longer. The dog was quiet now. Mirandy sat up straight in front of the panelled door.
She waited and waited; the time went on, and it was high noon. She heard a dinner-horn in the distance. She wondered vaguely if Cap'n Moseby didn't have any dinner because he lived alone. She began to feel hungry herself. There was not a sound in the house. She wanted to cry, but she would not. She sat perfectly still. Once in a while she said over to herself the questions she had learned from the catechism, and she reflected much upon the two boys in thePilgrim's Progress. She had eaten a few of the Cap'n's berries as she filled her bucket, and she wondered that they did not make her ill, as the fruit did the boys.
Nobody passed the house, the insects rasped in her ears, she thought her forlorn childish thoughts, and it was an hour after noon. She did not see a curtain trimmed with white balls in a window overhead pulled cautiously to one side, and a grizzled head thrust out; but this happened several times.
About two o'clock there was a sudden puff of cool wind on her back; she glanced around, trembling, and there stood Cap'n Moseby in the open door, with his great black dog at his heels. His old face was the color of tanned leather, and full of severe furrows; his shaggy brows frowned over sharp black eyes. He leaned upon a stout oak staff, for he had been lamed by a British musket-ball.
"Who's this?" he asked, in a grim voice.
Mirandy arose and stood about, and courtesied. She could not find her tongue yet.
"Hey?" said Cap'n Moseby.
"Mirandy Thayer," she answered then, in a shaking voice that had yet a touch of defiance in it.
"Mirandy Thayer, hey? Well, what do you want here, Mirandy Thayer?"
Mirandy dropped another courtesy. "My bucket."
"Your bucket! What have I got to do with your bucket?"
"I left it out in—your berry pasture."
"Out in my berry pasture! So you have been stealing my berries, hey? What about your bucket?"
Mirandy's little hands clutched and opened at her sides, her face was quite pale, but she looked straight up at Cap'n Moseby. "You took it," said she.
Cap'n Moseby looked straight back at her, frowning terribly; then, to her great astonishment, his mouth twitched as if he were going to laugh. "You think I took your bucket, and you have been waiting here all this time to get it back, hey?" said he.
"Yes, sir."
"Didn't you feel afraid that I'd set the dog on you, or shoot you out of the window with my gun?"
"No, sir," said Mirandy.
"Well," said Cap'n Moseby. He paused a minute, his mouth twitched again. "You have got to come into the house and settle with me if you want your bucket," he continued, and his voice was still very grim.
Mirandy stepped up on the threshold, and the black dog growled faintly.
"Be still, Lafayette!" said Cap'n Moseby. "I'm going to settle with her. You lay down."
She followed Cap'n Moseby into his kitchen, and he pushed a little stool towards her. "Sit down," said he.
And Mirandy sat down. Directly opposite her, on a corner of the settle, was her berry bucket, and near it stood the gun, propped against the wall. She eyed it. There was a vague fear in her mind that settlement was in some way connected with that gun; but she never flinched. She was resolved to have that bucket.
Cap'n Moseby went to the dresser and got out a large china bowl with green sprigs on it, and a pewter spoon. He filled the bowl with berries from Mirandy's bucket, and then poured on some milk out of a blue pitcher. Mirandy watched him.
He carried the bowl over to her, and set it in her lap. "Eat 'em all up, now, every one," he commanded.
Mirandy looked up at him pitifully. Her courage almost failed. She thought of the boys and the stolen fruit in thePilgrim's Progress, and she almost felt premonitory cramps.
"Eat 'em," ordered Cap'n Moseby.
And Mirandy ate them, thrusting the pewter spoon, laden with those stolen berries, desperately into her mouth. Never berries tasted like those to her. There was no sweetness in them. But she kept thinking how her mother could give her boneset tea if they made her sick, and she was determined to have the bucket back.
Cap'n Moseby watched her as she ate. He emptied the remaining berries out of the bucket into a large bowl. Then he sat opposite, on the settle. Lafayette lay at his feet.
Mirandy finished the berries, and sat with the empty bowl in her lap.
"Finished 'em?" asked Cap'n Moseby.
"Yes, sir."
"Now, Mirandy Thayer, I'm going to ask you a question." Cap'n Moseby's eyes looked into hers, and she looked back into his. "If you hadn't been a little gal, Mirandy Thayer, what would you have been?"
Mirandy hesitated.
"Hey?" said Cap'n Moseby.
"One of my brothers," said Mirandy, doubtfully.
"'EAT 'EM!' ORDERED CAP'N MOSEBY"
"No, you wouldn't. I'll tell you what you would have been. You would have been a soldier, and you would have gone right up to the redcoats' guns. Well, you must tend to your knittin'-work and your spinnin'. Now what did you steal my berries for, hey?"
"To earn my shoes," faltered Mirandy; she felt a little bewildered.
"Earn your shoes?"
"Yes, sir; I 'ain't got any to wear to meetin'."
"Have to go barefoot?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, they went barefoot at Valley Forge; that's nothing. You wait a minute, Mirandy Thayer."
And Mirandy waited until Cap'n Moseby had limped into another room and back again. He had a pair of little rough shoes dangling in his hand.
"Here," said he, "these belonged to my Ezra that died. He had some grit in him; he'd have done some marchin' in 'em if he'd lived. They'll jest about fit you. It's a pity you're a little gal. Well, you must tend to your knittin'-work and your spinnin'. Now you'd better run home, an' don't you ever come stealin' my berries again, or you'll run faster than they did at Lexington."
And so it happened that Mirandy went home, about three o'clock of that summer afternoon, carrying her new shoes in her berry bucket, and Cap'n Moseby limped along at her side. Mirandy did not know that he went to explain matters to her mother, so that she should not be dealt with too severely, but she was surprised that she received so small a chiding.
"Don't you ever let me hear of your doing such a thing again," said her mother; and that was all she said.
The next Sunday Mirandy went up the aisle clattering bravely in little Ezra Moseby's shoes, and she could not help looking often at them during the sermon.
Ruth stood by with a dish and spoon, while her mother stirred the stew carefully to be sure that it was not burning on the bottom of the kettle. Her sister Serena was paring apples and playing with the cat, and her father and her uncles Caleb and Silas sat before the fire smoking, sniffing the stew, and watching solemnly. The uncles had just come in, and proposed staying to dinner.
Mrs. Whitman squinted anxiously at the stew as she stirred it. She feared that there was not enough for dinner, now there were two more to eat.
"I'm dreadful afraid there ain't enough of that stew to go round," she whispered to Ruth in the pantry.
"Oh, I guess it'll do," said Ruth.
"Well, I dun know about it. Your father an' Caleb an' Silas are dreadful fond of parsnip stew, an' I do hate to have 'em stinted."
"Well, I won't take any," said Ruth. "I don't care much about it."
"Well, I don't want a mouthful," rejoined her mother. "Mebbe we can make it do. Caleb an' Silas don't have a good hot dinner very often, an' I do want them to have enough, anyway."
Caleb and Silas Whitman were old bachelors, living by themselves in the old Whitman homestead about a mile away, and their fare was understood to be forlorn and desultory. To-day they watched with grave complacency while their sister-in-law cooked the stew.
Over on the other side of the kitchen the table was set out with the pewter plates and the blue dishes. The stew was almost done, Mrs. Whitman was just about to dip out the slices of pork into the dish that Ruth held, when there was a roll of wheels out in the yard, and a great shadow passed over the kitchen floor.
"Mother, it's the Wigginses!" said Ruth, in a terrified whisper.
"Good gracious!" sighed her mother; "they've come to dinner."
Everybody stared for a second; then Mrs. Whitman recovered herself. "Father, you go out an' help them put the horse up. Don't sit there any longer."
Then she threw open the door, and thrust her large handsome face out into the rain. "Why, how do you do, Mis' Wiggins?" said she, and she smiled beamingly.
"A PARSNIP STEW"
The wagon looked full of faces. On the front seat were a large man and two little boys; out of the gloom in the rear peered two women and a little girl. They were Mr. Wiggins, his wife and three children, and his mother. They were distant relatives of Mrs. Whitman's; they often came over to spend the day, and always unannounced.
Mr. Whitman came out clumsily and opened the barn doors, and Mr. Wiggins led the horse into the barn. "I hope you 'ain't got wet," Mrs. Whitman said. Nothing could have exceeded her cordiality; but all the time she was thinking of the parsnip stew, and how it surely would not go around now.
Ruth had not followed the others out to greet the guests. She stayed by the kettle and stirred the stew, and scowled. "I think it's downright mean for folks to come in this way, just dinner-time," said she to the uncles, who had not left their chairs. And they gave short grunts which expressed their assent, for neither of them liked company.
They watched soberly as Ruth stirred the stew, but they did not dream that there was not enough to go around.
When her mother and the guests entered, Ruth turned around and bobbed her head stiffly, and said, "Pretty well, thank you," and then stirred again. Serena helped the Wigginses take off their things. She untied old Mrs. Wiggins's pumpkin hood, and got her cap out of her cap basket and put it on for her. She also took off little Mary Wiggins's coat, and set her in a little child's arm-chair and gave her a kiss. Little Mary Wiggins, with her sober, chubby face and her rows of shiny brown curls, in her best red frock and her scalloped pantalets, was noticed admiringly by everybody but Ruth.
As soon as she could Ruth cornered her mother in the pantry. "Mother, whatareyou going to do?" said she.
"I'm goin' to do jest the best I can," she whispered, severely. "I'm goin' to tell father an' Caleb an' Silas they mustn't take none of that stew; they can have some bread an' apple-sauce. I guess they'll git along."
"Well, I don't care," said Ruth, in a loud voice. "I think it's mean and a downright imposition on folks, coming in this way, just dinner-time."
"Ruth Whitman, if you care anything about me, you'll keep still. Now you get the salt-cup an' go out there, an' put some more salt in that stew. It tasted dreadful flat, I thought. I jest tasted of it when they drove in. I've got to get out the other knives."
Ruth caught up a cup with a jerk. "Well, how much shall I put in?" she inquired, sulkily.
"Oh, quite a lot. You can tell. It was dreadful flat. Taste of it."
But Ruth did not taste of it. She scattered the contents of the cup liberally into the stew, gave it a stir, returned to the pantry, and set the cup down hard. "Well," said she, "I've put it in, and now I'm goin'."
"Ruth Whitman, you ain't goin' off to school without any dinner."
"I don't see as there is anything for dinner but bread and apple-sauce, and I'm sure I don't want any."
"I should think you'd be ashamed of yourself, actin' so."
"I think there are other folks that ought to be ashamed of themselves. Before I'd go into folk's houses that way—"
"Ruth Whitman, they'll hear you!"
"I don't care if they do. I've got to go, anyway. It's late. I couldn't stop for dinner now if I wanted to."
She went through the kitchen, where Serena now tended the stew, only stopping to take her shawl off the peg.
"Why, you going?" Serena called after her.
"I've got to; it's late," replied Ruth, shortly. She faced about for a second and gave a stiff nod, which seemed directed at the stew-kettle rather than at the Wigginses. "Good-bye," said she. Then she went out.
It was raining with a hard, steady drizzle. Ruth had no rubbers nor water-proof—they were not yet invented. She sped along through the rain and mist. She had to walk half a mile to the little house where she taught the district school, and before she got there she felt calmer.
"I suppose I was silly to act so mad," she said to herself. "I know it plagued mother."
It was early in the spring; the trees were turning green in the rain. Over in the field she could see one peach-tree in blossom, showing pink through the mist. "I suppose Mr. Wiggins couldn't work out to-day, and that's how they happened to come. They could have the horse. But they ought to have come earlier," reflected Ruth. "There are a good many of 'em for Mrs. Wiggins to get ready," mused Ruth. "There's old Mrs. Wiggins and Johnny and Sammy and Mary and Mr. Wiggins."
By the time Ruth was seated at her table in the school-room, and the scholars were wriggling and twisting before her on their wooden benches, she saw the matter quite plainly from the Wiggins side. She made up her mind that she would behave just as well as she knew how to the Wigginses when she got home. She planned how she would swing little Mary out in the barn and play with the boys, and how she would help her mother get tea.
When school was done and Ruth started for home the rain had stopped and the sun was shining. The rain-pools in the road glittered, and she noticed a cherry-tree in blossom. When she reached home Serena met her at the door.
"Oh, Ruth Whitman!" she cried, "we have had such a time!"
Ruth stared. "What do you mean?" said she. "Where are the Wigginses?"
"They've gone. Mrs. Wiggins and old Mrs. Wiggins were dreadful mad. Oh, Ruth, you didn't do it on purpose, did you?"
"Do what on purpose?" said Ruth, pushing into the house, and looking around the empty kitchen in a bewildered way. "I don't know what you mean."
"Don't you know what you put into that parsnip stew?"
"No; I don't know of anything I put in but some salt, just before I went to school; mother told me to. Why?"
"Oh, Ruth, you put in—saleratus!"
"I don't believe it."
Ruth flew into the pantry, and came out with a cracked blue cup. "Here," said she—"here's the salt-cup, and this is the one I got it out of, I know."
"Taste of it," said Serena, solemnly.
Ruth tasted. "Itissaleratus," said she, looking at her sister in horror. "Did it spoil the stew?"
"It was—dreadful."
"I don't see how it happened," Ruth said, slowly, puckering her forehead, "unless mother dipped out some saleratus in the salt-cup to bring out in the kitchen when she mixed the sour-milk cakes for breakfast. I don't know anything about it, true's I live and breathe. I hope they didn't think I did such a mean thing as that on purpose."
"Well, I don't know as they really thought you did, but you know you did kind of jerk round, Ruth, and the Wigginses saw it."
"What did they say?"
"Well," said Serena, "we all sat down to the table, and mother had put on the bread and apple-sauce for the rest of us, and she helped the Wigginses to the stew. There wasn't more'n enough to go around, but she kept the cover over the dish so they shouldn't suspect, and all the rest of us said we wouldn't take any.
"Well, Mrs. Wiggins she tasted, and old Mrs. Wiggins she tasted. Then they looked at mother. Mother she didn't know what it meant, and she kept getting redder and redder. Finally she spoke up. 'Is there anything the matter with the stew?' says she.
"Then Mrs. Wiggins she pushed over her plate for mother to taste of the stew, and the first thing we knew they were all talking at once. Old Mrs. Wiggins said she'd noticed how we acted kind of stiff, and as if we wasn't glad to see them, the minute she come, and Mrs. Wiggins said she had, too, and she'd seen you put the saleratus into the stew, and she thought from the way you switched around you were up to something. Mother she tried to excuse it off, but they wouldn't hear a word. They said it didn't look very likely that it was an accident, and they noticed none of us took any of it, and mother wouldn't tell them the reason for that. So they just got up and put on their things, and Mr. Wiggins backed out the horse, and they went home. Mother asked them to come again, and she'd try and have a better dinner, but they said they'd never set foot in the house again if they knew it."
"Didn't anybody eat the stew?"
"Nobody but Sammy Wiggins; he ate his whole plateful, saleratus and all, before anybody spoke."
"Oh dear!" said Ruth; "I suppose mother feels dreadfully. Where is she?"
"She's gone over to Lucy Ann's to help her take care of the baby; he was real sick last night. I don't believe she'll come home till after supper. She felt dreadful."
"The Wigginses are dreadful touchy folks, anyhow."
"Course they are. It don't seem as if anybody with any sense would get mad at such a thing. But they're always suspecting folks of meaning something."
Ruth looked sternly reflective. She took off her thick dingy shawl, and got from its peg a bright red and green plaid one that she wore in pleasant weather.
"Where are you going?" asked Serena.
"I'm going over to the Wigginses'."
"What for?"
"I'm going to ask them to come over here to-morrow and spend the day."
"Why, Ruth Whitman, ain't you afraid to?"
"No, I ain't afraid. I'm going to carry over a jar of the honey—mother 'll be willing—and I'm going to tell Mrs. Wiggins just how it was."
"She won't hear a word you say."
"I'll make her hear."
"They won't come a step."
"You see."
The Whitmans kept bees, and their honey was the celebrated luxury of the neighborhood. Ruth got a jar of clear white honey out of the closet, put it under her shawl, and was off. First, though, she instructed Serena to go out in the garden and dig a good supply of parsnips and clean them for the next day's dinner.
It was a mile to the Wigginses', and it took Ruth over an hour to accomplish her errand and return. When she got home she found Serena getting supper, and her father was washing his hands out in the shed; her mother had not returned. On the kitchen sink lay a tin pan with four or five muddy parsnips. Serena looked up eagerly when her sister entered. "They coming?" said she.
"Yes, they are," replied Ruth, with a triumphant smile.
But Serena walked over to the sink and extended her arm with a tragical gesture towards the parsnips. "Well, you've gone and done it now, Ruth Whitman," said she. "There's every single parsnip that's fit to eat that I could find in the garden."
"H'm! I guess I can find some."
"No, you can't; they've rotted. I heard mother say to-day she was afraid they had. More'n half those father brought in this morning weren't good for anything. When mother finds out that all the Wigginses are coming, and there's just five parsnips for dinner, I don't know what she will do; I don't know but it will kill her. And she's asked Uncle Caleb and Uncle Silas over, too."
Ruth gave a desperate glance at the parsnips. "I said we were going to have parsnip stew," said she, "Mrs. Wiggins had been crying; she looked dreadful tired out; and Sammy had just bumped his head, and there was a great lump over one eye. She took the honey, and said she'd be real happy to come if they could have the horse, and old Mrs. Wiggins acted dreadful tickled."
"The Wigginses have got parsnips," said Serena. "I heard Mrs. Wiggins say they'd got a splendid lot, she expected, but they hadn't dug any yet."
Ruth looked at her sister. "Serena!"
"What?"
"I'm going to send over andbuy some of the Wigginses' parsnips."
"Ruth!" But it seemed to Serena as if there was a flash of red and green light through the room, and Ruth had gone. Serena gave a little gasp, and stood looking.
"What's the matter?" asked her father, coming in—an old man in checkered shirt sleeves, yet with a certain rustic stateliness about him.
"Oh, nothing," said Serena; and she fell to slicing the bread for supper.
While her father had gone to the well to draw a pail of water Ruth came in, breathless, but rosy with daring and triumph. Ben White, Mrs. White's grown-up son, was going to drive over to the Wigginses and buy some parsnips; his mother was to have some, and Ruth a noble portion for the next day's stew.
Serena dropped into a chair and giggled feebly; the humor, of it was so forcible that it seemed to fairly rebound in her face. "Ask the Wigginses to dinner to have a parsnip stew, and then—buy their own parsnips for it!" she gasped.
Ruth did not laugh at all; she saw nothing but the seriousness of the situation. "Mind you don't tell mother till after it's all over," said she. "I don't want her to know where those parsnips came from till after the Wigginses have gone, she'll be so upset. I'm just going to tell her how I carried the honey over there, and how they're coming. I do hope Ben will bring the parsnips before mother gets home."
"Suppose Ben should bring 'em in when mother was here," chuckled Serena.
"I told him to shy into the shed with 'em," replied Ruth, severely. "Hush! father's coming, and we'd better not say anything to him till afterwards."
Mrs. Whitman did not return until quite late; her married daughter Lucy Ann and her teething baby did not generally release her in very good season. When she came into the kitchen she found a great pan of parsnips all washed and scraped, and heard the news how the Wigginses were over their ill-tempers and were coming the next day. Mrs. Whitman dropped into a chair, her large mild face beamed, and tears stood in her eyes. "Well, I'm dreadful glad if we can patch it up," said she; "I never had any fuss with any of my folks before in the world, and I hate to begin now. I've always thought a good deal of the Wigginses." And her mouth quivered.
The next morning a parsnip stew of noble proportions was prepared. At eleven o'clock the great kettle, full to the rim, hung over the fire, and the room was cloudy with savory steam. The Wigginses were expected every minute. Uncles Silas and Caleb Whitman could be seen from the kitchen window out in the field with their brother bending over the plough furrows, and they kept righting themselves and looking at their old silver watches. At half-past eleven Mrs. Whitman and Serena began to think it was strange that the Wigginses did not come. At quarter of twelve there was a little stir out in the yard, and they ran to the windows. There was Mr. Wiggins with a wheelbarrow and an empty grain sack and a half-bushel basket of russet apples in it.
Mrs. Whitman and Serena stood wonderingly in the door. "Where's the folks?" asked Mrs. Whitman.
Then Mr. Wiggins, standing by the wheelbarrow, explained how Hiram Green had had to use the horse for ploughing up in the six-acre lot, how he had promised to hire it to him, and his wife hadn't known it, and how he had had to go to the store for grain with the wheelbarrow, and his wife had got him to stop and tell Mis' Whitman she was dreadfully sorry it happened so, but she didn't see how they could walk, and they would come over the first day they could have the horse; and she didn't know but what Mis' Whitman's apples had give out, so she sent her over a few of their russets; they had 'most two barrels left, and they were spoiling fast, and they wanted to get rid of them.
When Ruth came home from school she found an immense kettle of parsnip stew, her father and her uncles Silas and Caleb again forming a pleasant expectant semicircle before the fire, but no Wigginses. To-day the stew was seasoned daintily, and salt had taken the place of saleratus. There was no stint as to quantity, but there were not enough partakers. Mrs. Whitman filled a great bowl for Lucy Ann; she sent a dish over to the Whites; father and Caleb and Silas ate manfully, and passed their plates again and again; Serena and Ruth and their mother ate all they could, and the cat had her fill; but the Whitmans, with all their allies, could not eat their own share and that of the Wigginses. But the stew was delicious, and as the family ate, their simple homely little feud was healed, and the parsnip stew smoked in their midst like a pipe of peace.
"I should think it was about time for him to be comin'," said Mrs. Rose.
"So should I," assented Miss Elvira Grayson. She peered around the corner of the front door. Her face was thin and anxious, and her voice was so like it that it was unmistakably her own note. One would as soon expect a crow to chick-a-dee as Miss Elvira to talk in any other way. She was tall, and there was a sort of dainty angularity about her narrow shoulders. She wore an old black silk, which was a great deal of dress for afternoon. She had considerable money in the bank, and could afford to dress well. She wore also some white lace around her long neck, and it was fastened with a handsome gold-and-jet brooch. She was knitting some blue worsted, and she sat back in the front entry, out of the draft. She considered herself rather delicate.
Mrs. Rose sat boldly out in the yard in the full range of the breeze, sewing upon a blue-and-white gingham waist for her son Willy. She was a large, pretty-faced woman in a stiffly starched purple muslin, which spread widely around her.
"He's been gone 'most an hour," she went on; "I hope there's nothin' happened."
"I wonder if there's snakes in that meadow?" ruminated Miss Elvira.
"I don't know; I'm gettin' ruther uneasy."
"I know one thing—I shouldn't let him go off so, without somebody older with him, if he was my boy."
"Well, I don't know what I can do," returned Mrs. Rose, uneasily. "There ain't anybody to go with him. I can't go diggin' sassafras-root, and you can't, and his uncle Hiram's too busy, and grandfather is too stiff. And he is so crazy to go after sassafras-root, it does seem a pity to tell him he sha'n't. I never saw a child so possessed after the root and sassafras-tea, as he is, in my life. I s'pose it's good for him. I hate to deny him when he takes so much comfort goin'. There he is now!"
Little Willy Rose crossed the road, and toiled up the stone steps. The front yard was terraced, and two flights of stone steps led up to the front door. He was quite breathless when he stood on the top step; his round, sweet face was pink, his fair hair plastered in flat locks to his wet forehead. His little trousers and his shoes were muddy, and he carried a great scraggy mass of sassafras-roots. "I see you a-settin' out here," he panted, softly.
"You ought not to have stayed so long. We began to be worried about you," said his mother, in a fond voice. "Now go and take your muddy shoes right off, and put on your slippers; then you can sit down at the back door and clean your sassafras, if you want to."
"I got lots," said Willy, smiling sweetly, and wiping his forehead. "Look-a-there, Miss Elviry."
"So you did," returned Miss Elvira. "I suppose, now, you think you'll have some sassafras-tea."
"Yes, ma'am."
"I guess I'll steep him a little for supper, he's so crazy for it," said Mrs. Rose, when Willy had disappeared smilingly around the corner.
"Yes, I would. It's real wholesome for him. Who's that comin'?"
Mrs. Rose stared down at the road. A white horse with an open buggy was just turning into the drive-way, around the south side of the terraces. "Why, it's brother Hiram," said she, "and he's got a boy with him. I wonder who 'tis."
The buggy drew up with a grating noise in the drive-way. Presently a man appeared around the corner. After him tagged a small white-headed boy, and after the boy, Willy Rose, with a sassafras-root and an old shoe-knife in his hands.
The man, who was Mr. Hiram Fairbanks, Mrs. Rose's brother, had a somewhat doubtful expression. When he stopped, the white-headed boy stopped, keeping a little behind him in his shadow.
"What boy is that, Hiram?" asked Mrs. Rose. Miss Elvira peered around the door. Mr. Fairbanks was tall and stiff-looking. He had a sunburned, sober face. "His name is Dickey," he replied.
"One of those Dickeys?" Mrs. Rose said "Dickeys," as if it were a synonym for "outcasts" or "rascals."
Mr. Fairbanks nodded. He glanced at the boy in his wake, then at Willy. "Willy, s'pose you take this little boy 'round and show him your rabbits," he said, in an embarrassed voice.
"Willy Rose!" cried his mother, "you haven't changed those muddy shoes! Go right in this minute, 'round by the kitchen door, and take this boy 'round with you; he can sit down on the door-step and help you clean your sassafras-root."
Willy disappeared lingeringly around the house, and the other boy, on being further bidden by Mr. Fairbanks, followed him. "Willy," his mother cried after him, "mind you sit down on the door-step and tie your shoes! I ain't goin' to have that Dickey boy left alone; his folks are nothin' but a pack of thieves," she remarked in a lower tone. "What are you doing with him, Hiram?"
Hiram hesitated. "Well, 'Mandy, you was sayin' the other day that you wished you had a boy to run errands, and split up kindlin's, and be kind of company for Willy."
"You ain't brought that Dickey boy?"
"Now, look here, 'Mandy—"
"I ain't going to have him in the house."
"Jest look here a minute, 'Mandy, till I tell you how it happened, and then you can do jest as you're a mind to about it. I was up by the Ruggles's this afternoon, and Mis' Ruggles, she come out to the gate, and hailed me. She wanted to know if I didn't want a boy. Seems the Dickey woman died last week; you know the father died two year ago. Well, there was six children, and the oldest boy's skipped, nobody knows where, and the oldest girl has just got married, and this boy is the oldest of the four that's left. They took the three little ones to the poorhouse, and Mis' Ruggles she took this boy in, and she wanted to keep him, but her own boy is big enough to do all the chores, and she didn't feel as if she could afford to. She says he's a real nice little fellow, and his mother wa'n't a bad woman; she was jest kind of sickly and shiftless. I guess old Dickey wa'n't much, but he's dead. Mis' Ruggles says this little chap hates awful to go to the poorhouse, and it ain't no kind of risk to take him, and she'd ought to know. She's lived right there next door to the Dickeys ever since she was married. I knew you wanted a boy to do chores 'round, long as Willy wasn't strong enough, so I thought I'd fetch him along. But you can do jest as you're a mind to."
"Now, Hiram Fairbanks, you know the name those Dickeys have always had. S'pose I took that boy, and he stole?"
"Mis' Ruggles says she'd trust him with anything."
"She ain't got so much as I have to lose. There I've got two dozen solid silver teaspoons, and four table-spoons, and my mother's silver creamer, and Willy's silver napkin-ring. Elviry's got her gold watch, too."
"I've got other things I wouldn't lose for anything," chimed in Miss Elvira.
"Well, of course, I don't want you to lose anything," said Mr. Fairbanks, helplessly, "but Mis' Ruggles, she said he was perfectly safe."
"I s'pose I could lock up the silver spoons and use the old pewter ones, and Elviry could keep her watch out of sight for a while," ruminated Mrs. Rose.
"Yes, I could," assented Miss Elvira, "and my breastpin."
"I s'pose he could draw the water, and split up the kindlin'-wood, and weed the flower-garden," said Mrs. Rose. "I set Willy to weedin' this morning, and it gave him the headache. I tell you one thing, Hiram Fairbanks, if I do take this boy, you've got to stand ready to take him back again the first minute I see anything out of the way with him."
"Yes, I will, 'Mandy; I promise you I will," said Mr. Fairbanks, eagerly. He hurried out to the buggy, and fumbled under the seat; then he returned with a bundle and a small wooden box.
"Here's his clothes. I guess he ain't got much," said he.
Mrs. Rose took the newspaper bundle; then she eyed the box suspiciously. It was a wooden salt-box, and the sliding cover was nailed on.
"What's in this?" said she.
"Oh, I don't know," replied Mr. Fairbanks; "some truck or other—I guess it ain't worth much."
He put the box down on the bank, and trudged heavily and quickly out to the buggy. He was anxious to be off; he shook the reins, shouted "ge lang" to the white horse, and wheeled swiftly around the corner.
"I'd like to know what's in that box," said Mrs. Rose to Miss Elvira.
"I hope he ain't got an old pistol or anything of that kind in it," returned Miss Elvira. "Oh, 'Mandy, I wouldn't shake it, if I were you!" For Mrs. Rose was shaking the wooden box, and listening with her ear at it.
"Something rattles in it," said she, desisting; "I hope it ain't a pistol." Then she entered with the newspaper bundle and the box, and went through the house, with Miss Elvira following. She set the bundle and box on the kitchen table, and looked out of the door. There on the top step sat the Dickey boy cleaning the sassafras-roots with great industry, while Willy Rose sat on the lower one chewing some.
"I do believe he's goin' to take right hold, Elviry," whispered Mrs. Rose.
"Well, maybe he is," returned Miss Elvira.
Mrs. Rose stowed away the boy's belongings in the little bedroom off the kitchen where she meant him to sleep; then she kindled the fire and got supper. She made sassafras-tea, and the new boy, sitting beside Willy, had a cup poured for him. But he did not drink much nor eat much, although there were hot biscuits and berries and custards. He hung his forlorn head with its shock of white hair, and only gave fleeting glances at anything with his wild, blue eyes. He was a thin boy, smaller than Willy, but he looked wiry and full of motion, like a wild rabbit.
After supper Mrs. Rose sent him for a pail of water; then he split up a little pile of kindling-wood. After that he sat down on the kitchen door-step in the soft twilight, and was silent.
Willy went into the sitting-room, where his mother and Miss Elvira were. "He's settin' out there on the door-step, not speakin' a word," said he, in a confidential whisper.
"Well, you had better sit down here with us and read your Sunday-school book," said his mother. She and Miss Elvira had agreed that it was wiser that Willy should not be too much with the Dickey boy until they knew him better.
When it was nine o'clock Mrs. Rose showed the Dickey boy his bedroom. She looked at him sharply; his small pale face showed red stains in the lamplight. She thought to herself that he had been crying, and she spoke to him as kindly as she could—she had not a caressing manner with anybody but Willy. "I guess there's clothes enough on the bed," said she. She looked curiously at the bundle and the wooden box. Then she unfastened the bundle. "I guess I'll see what you've got for clothes," said she, and her tone was as motherly as she could make it towards this outcast Dickey boy. She laid out his pitiful little wardrobe, and examined the small ragged shirt or two and the fragmentary stockings. "I guess I shall have to buy you some things if you are a good boy," said she. "What have you got in that box?"—the boy hung his head—"I hope you ain't got a pistol?"
"No, marm."
"You ain't got any powder, nor anything of that kind?"
"No, marm." The boy was blushing confusedly.
"I hope you're tellin' me the truth," Mrs. Rose said, and her tone was full of severe admonition.
"Yes, marm." The tears rolled down the boy's cheeks, and Mrs. Rose said no more. She told him she would call him in the morning, and to be careful about his lamp. Then she left him. The Dickey boy lay awake, and cried an hour; then he went to sleep, and slept as soundly as Willy Rose in his snug little bedroom leading out of his mother's room. Miss Elvira and Mrs. Rose locked their doors that night, through distrust of that little boy down-stairs who came of a thieving family. Miss Elvira put her gold watch and her breastpin and her pocket-book, with seventeen dollars in it, under the feather-bed; and Mrs. Rose carried the silver teaspoons up-stairs, and hid them under hers. The Dickey boy was not supposed to know they were in the house—the pewter ones had been used for supper—but that did not signify; she thought it best to be on the safe side. She kept the silver spoons under the feather-bed for many a day, and they all ate with the pewter ones; but finally suspicion was allayed if not destroyed. The Dickey boy had shown himself trustworthy in several instances. Once he was sent on a test errand to the store, and came home promptly with the right change. The silver spoons glittered in the spoon-holder on the table, and Miss Elvira wore her gold watch and her gold breastpin.
"I begin to take a good deal more stock in that boy," Mrs. Rose told her brother Hiram.
"He ain't very lively, but he works real smart; he ain't saucy, and I ain't known of his layin' hands on a thing."
But the Dickey boy, although he had won some confidence and good opinions, was, as Mrs. Rose said, not very lively. His face, as he did his little tasks, was as sober and serious as an old man's. Everybody was kind to him, but this poor little alien felt like a chimney-sweep in a queen's palace. Mrs. Rose, to a Dickey boy, was almost as impressive as a queen. He watched with admiration and awe this handsome, energetic woman moving about the house in her wide skirts. He was overcome with the magnificence of Miss Elvira's afternoon silk, and gold watch; and dainty little Willy Rose seemed to him like a small prince. Either the Dickey boy, born in a republican country, had the original instincts of the peasantry in him, and himself defined his place so clearly that it made him unhappy, or his patrons did it for him. Mrs. Rose and Miss Elvira tried to treat him as well as they treated Willy. They dressed him in Willy's old clothes; they gave him just as much to eat; when autumn came he was sent to school as warmly clad and as well provided with luncheon; but they could never forget that he was a Dickey boy. He seemed, in truth, to them like an animal of another species, in spite of all they could do, and they regarded his virtues in the light of uncertain tricks. Mrs. Rose never thought at any time of leaving him in the house alone without hiding the spoons, and Miss Elvira never left her gold watch unguarded.
Nobody knew whether the Dickey boy was aware of these lurking suspicions or not; he was so subdued that it was impossible to tell how much he observed. Nobody knew how homesick he was, but he went about every day full of fierce hunger for his miserable old home. Miserable as it had been, there had been in it a certain element of shiftless ease and happiness. The Dickey boy's sickly mother had never chided him; she had not cared if he tracked mud into the house. How anxiously he scraped his feet before entering the Rose kitchen. The Dickey boy's dissipated father had been gentle and maudlin, but never violent. All the Dickey children had done as they chose, and they had agreed well. They were not a quarrelsome family. Their principal faults were idleness and a general laxity of morals which was quite removed from active wickedness. "All the Dickeys needed was to be bolstered up," one woman in the village said; and the Dickey boy was being bolstered up in the Rose family.
They called him Dickey, using his last name for his first, which was Willy. Mrs. Rose straightened herself unconsciously when she found that out. "We can't have two Willies in the family, anyhow," said she; "we'll have to call you Dickey."
Once the Dickey boy's married sister came to see him, and Mrs. Rose treated her with such stiff politeness that the girl, who was fair and pretty and gaudily dressed, told her husband when she got home that she would never go intothatwoman's house again. Occasionally Mrs. Rose, who felt a duty in the matter, took Dickey to visit his little brothers and sisters at the almshouse. She even bought some peppermint-candy for him to take them. He really had many a little extra kindness shown him; sometimes Miss Elvira gave him a penny, and once Mr. Hiram Fairbanks gave him a sweet-apple tree—that was really quite a magnificent gift. Mrs. Rose could hardly believe it when Willy told her. "Well, I must say I never thought Hiram would do such a thing as that, close as he is," said she. "I was terribly taken aback when he gave that tree to Willy, but this beats all. Why, odd years it might bring in twenty dollars!"
"Uncle Hiram gave it to him," Willy repeated. "I was a-showin' Dickey my apple-tree, and Uncle Hiram he picked out another one, and he give it to him."
"Well, I wouldn't have believed it," said Mrs. Rose.
Nobody else would have believed that Hiram Fairbanks, careful old bachelor that he was, would have been so touched by the Dickey boy's innocent, wistful face staring up at the boughs of Willy's apple-tree. It was fall, and the apples had all been harvested. Dickey would get no practical benefit from his tree until next season, but there was no calculating the comfort he took with it from the minute it came into his possession. Every minute he could get, at first, he hurried off to the orchard and sat down under its boughs. He felt as if he were literally under his own roof-tree. In the winter, when it was heavy with snow, he did not forsake it. There would be a circle of little tracks around the trunk.
Mrs. Rose told her brother that the boy was perfectly crazy about that apple-tree, and Hiram grinned shamefacedly.
All winter Dickey went with Willy to the district school, and split wood and brought water between times. Sometimes of an evening he sat soberly down with Willy and played checkers, but Willy always won. "He don't try to beat," Willy said. Sometimes they had pop-corn, and Dickey always shook the popper. Dickey said he wasn't tired, if they asked him. All winter the silver spoons appeared on the table, and Dickey was treated with a fair show of confidence. It was not until spring that the sleeping suspicion of him awoke. Then one day Mrs. Rose counted her silver spoons, and found only twenty-three teaspoons. She stood at her kitchen table, and counted them over and over. Then she opened the kitchen door. "Elviry!" she called out, "Elviry, come here a minute! Look here," she said, in a hushed voice, when Miss Elvira's inquiring face had appeared at the door. Miss Elvira approached the table tremblingly.
"Count those spoons," said Mrs. Rose.
Miss Elvira's long slim fingers handled the jingling spoons. "There ain't but twenty-three," she said finally, in a scared voice.
"I expected it," said Mrs. Rose. "Do you s'pose he took it?"
"Who else took it, I'd like to know?"
It was a beautiful May morning; the apple-trees were all in blossom. The Dickey boy had stolen over to look at his. It was a round hill of pink-and-white bloom. It was the apple year. Willy came to the stone wall and called him. "Dickey," he cried, "Mother wants you;" and Dickey obeyed. Willy had run on ahead. He found Mrs. Rose, Miss Elvira, Willy, and the twenty-three teaspoons awaiting him in the kitchen. He shook his head to every question they asked him about the missing spoon. He turned quite pale; once in a while he whimpered; the tears streamed down his cheeks, but he only shook his head in that mute denial.
"It won't make it any easier for you, holding out this way," said Mrs. Rose, harshly. "Stop cryin' and go out and split up some kindlin'-wood."
Dickey went out, his little convulsed form bent almost double. Willy, staring at him with his great, wondering blue eyes, stood aside to let him pass. Then he also was sent on an errand, while his mother and Miss Elvira had a long consultation in the kitchen.
It was a half-hour before Mrs. Rose went out to the shed where she had sent the Dickey boy to split kindlings. There lay a nice little pile of kindlings, but the boy had disappeared.
"Dickey, Dickey!" she called. But he did not come.
"I guess he's gone, spoon and all," she told Miss Elvira, when she went in; but she did not really think he had. When one came to think of it, he was really too small and timid a boy to run away with one silver spoon. It did not seem reasonable. What they did think, as time went on and he did not appear, was that he was hiding to escape a whipping. They searched everywhere. Miss Elvira stood in the shed by the wood-pile, calling in her thin voice, "Come out, Dickey; we won't whip you if youdidtake it," but there was not a stir.
Towards night they grew uneasy. Mr. Fairbanks came, and they talked matters over.
"Maybe he didn't take the spoon," said Mr. Fairbanks, uncomfortably. "Anyhow, he's too young a chap to be set adrift this way. I wish you'd let me talk to him, 'Mandy."
"You!" said Mrs. Rose. Then she started up. "I know one thing," said she; "I'm goin' to see what's in that wooden box. I don't believe but what that spoon's in there. There's no knowin' how long it's been gone."
It was quite a while before Mrs. Rose returned with the wooden box. She had to search for it, and found it under the bed. The Dickey boy also had hidden his treasures. She got the hammer and Hiram pried off the lid, which was quite securely nailed. "I'd ought to have had it opened before," said she. "He hadn't no business to have a nailed-up box 'round. Don't joggle it so, Hiram. There's no knowin' what's in it. There may be a pistol."