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Title: Nobody's Rose
The girlhood of Rose Shannon
Author: Adele E. Thompson
Illustrator: A. G. Learned
Release date: November 2, 2023 [eBook #72011]
Language: English
Original publication: Boston: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co, 1912
Credits: Bob Taylor and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NOBODY'S ROSE ***
Transcriber’s Note
Italic text displayed as: _italic_
NOBODY’S ROSE
A STORY FOR GIRLS
BOOKS BY ADELE E. THOMPSON.
The Brave Heart Series.
Five Volumes. Illustrated. Each $1.25.
BETTY SELDON, PATRIOT,
A Girl’s Part in the Revolution.
BRAVE HEART ELIZABETH,
A Story of the Ohio Frontier.
A LASSIE OF THE ISLES,
A Story of the Old and New Worlds.
POLLY OF THE PINES,
A Patriot Girl of the Carolinas.
AMERICAN PATTY,
A Story of 1812.
* * * * *
BECK’S FORTUNE,
A Story of School and Seminary Life.
Illustrated by LOUIS MEYNELL. $1.25.
NOBODY’S ROSE,
Or The Girlhood of Rose Shannon.
Illustrated by A. G. LEARNED. Price, Net $1.00. Postpaid $1.12.
LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO., BOSTON.
[Illustration: “NOW I’M ROSE, I’M NOBODY’S ROSE!”—_Page 270._]
NOBODY’S ROSE
OR
THE GIRLHOOD OF ROSE SHANNON
BY
ADELE E. THOMPSON
ILLUSTRATED BY A. G. LEARNED
[Illustration: Decoration]
BOSTON
LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO.
COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO.
Published, August, 1912
_All Rights Reserved_
NOBODY’S ROSE
NORWOOD PRESS
BERWICK & SMITH CO.
NORWOOD, MASS.
U. S. A.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
HOW POSEY CAME ADRIFT 11
CHAPTER II
AN EXPOSURE 30
CHAPTER III
THE NEW HOME 42
CHAPTER IV
THE NEW LIFE 54
CHAPTER V
THE PICNIC 71
CHAPTER VI
THE STORM BREAKS 85
CHAPTER VII
A DESPERATE RESOLVE 93
CHAPTER VIII
A NEW ACQUAINTANCE 108
CHAPTER IX
TWO HAPPY TRAVELERS 123
CHAPTER X
BEN’S STORY 135
CHAPTER XI
A STORM, AND A SHELTER 147
CHAPTER XII
A PARTING OF WAYS 162
CHAPTER XIII
A DOOR OPENS 173
CHAPTER XIV
POSEY BECOMES ROSE 185
CHAPTER XV
AT THE FIFIELDS’ 195
CHAPTER XVI
UNDER A CLOUD 206
CHAPTER XVII
SUNSHINE AGAIN 219
CHAPTER XVIII
GREAT-UNCLE SAMUEL 236
CHAPTER XIX
ROSE FINDS A RESTING-PLACE 247
CHAPTER XX
PAYING DEBTS 257
CHAPTER XXI
THE BOX FROM GREAT-AUNT SARAH 266
CHAPTER XXII
QUIET DAYS 275
CHAPTER XXIII
A VISIT FROM AN OLD FRIEND 284
CHAPTER XXIV
AND COLLEGE NEXT 294
ILLUSTRATIONS
“Now I’m Rose, I’m nobody’s Rose!”
(Page 270) _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
Out of the door of the cabinet a white,
shadowy little figure had lightly floated 32
It was an hour that Posey never forgot 76
“When I get a farm I shall need somebody to keep the house” 144
“Here is a clue to Rose’s family” 216
“Clear Jarvis and no mistake” 238
NOBODY’S ROSE
CHAPTER I
HOW POSEY CAME ADRIFT
Out in the open country the day was dull and grey, with low-hanging
clouds and occasional drops of slow-falling rain, but in the city
the clouds of smoke hung still lower than those of the sky, and the
dropping soot-flakes made black the moisture gathered on the roofs of
the houses, the leaves of the trees, and the sidewalks trodden by many
feet.
It was on a city street, one where the smoke-clouds from the tall
chimneys trailed low and the soot fell in its largest flakes, that ever
and again a sound asserted itself above the beat of hurrying feet. The
sound was not loud, only a little girl sobbing softly to herself as
she shrank with her head on her arm at one side of an open stairway;
and the words that she repeated over and over to herself, “What shall
I do? Where shall I go?” were less in the nature of questions than a
lamentation. But children tearful, loudly, even vociferously tearful,
were in that vicinity so frequent that people passed and repassed the
child without giving to her thought or heed.
For the street was one more populous than select, and while the tall
red brick houses that bordered it had once aspired to something of the
aristocratic, they were now hopelessly sunken to the tenement stage;
while the neighboring region leading through the sandy open square of
the Haymarket, where loads of hay always stood awaiting purchasers,
down the long steep hill to the river, with its crowded shipping and
its border of great lumber yards, shops, and factories, had never made
pretense to anything except poverty of the most open and unattractive
kind. In summer the whole region fairly swarmed with the overflowing
inmates of the overcrowded houses. Children were everywhere, in large
part barefooted, ragged, and so dirty that they might easily have been
taken for an outgrowth of the sandheaps in which they burrowed and
buried themselves when tired of the delights of the street. To see
them there, in utter indifference to the constant passing of heavily
loaded teams sometimes prompted the inquiry as to how many were daily
killed? But though, on occasion, they were dragged from under the very
horses’ hoofs by the untidy women whose shrill voices were so often
heard sounding from open doors and windows, few were the accidents to
either life or limb.
The not distant city market house increased the crowds, especially at
certain hours of the day, as also the street venders and itinerants who
contributed their full share to the noise and confusion. Hook-nosed old
men, with bags over their shoulders, and shrill cries of “P-a-p-e-r
r-a-g-s” abounded; the organ-grinder with his monkey was a frequent
figure, with the invariable crowd of youngsters at his heels; the
maimed and the blind, wearing placards appealing to the public
sympathy and extending tin cups for contributions, were to be found
on the corners; the scissors-grinder’s bell was a common sound, as
were the sonorous offers of “Glassputin.” Here was a man loudly and
monotonously appealing to the credulity of the public, and soliciting
patronage for his wonderful fortune-telling birds, a little company
of dingy and forlorn-looking canaries, who by the selection of sundry
envelopes were supposed to reveal the past, present, and future. There,
another man exhibited a row of plates with heavy weights attached, and
extolled the wonderful merits of his cement for mending crockery, while
the sellers of small wares, combs, pocketbooks, letter-paper, cheap
jewelry, and the like, added their calls to the rest.
A few of the houses still retained a dingy scrap of yard, where
thin and trampled grass blades made an effort to grow, but the most
part had been built out to the street and converted into cheap
restaurants, cheap clothing shops, cheap furniture shops, and the class
of establishments that are cheap indeed, especially as regards the
character of their wares.
In such a confusion of people and sounds it is not strange that a small
girl crying to herself would attract so little attention that even the
big, fat policeman on that beat passed her a number of times before
he noticed her, and then did not stop, as he saw that she was well
dressed. At last, as she still remained crouched down in a dejected
little heap, he stopped, moved as much by the thought of a little girl
in his own home as from a sense of duty, with the inquiry, “Here, Sis,
what’s the matter with you?”
She started up at the brusque but not unkindly tone, and lifting from
her sheltering arm a round and dimpled face, with wide grey eyes,
now swollen and disfigured with tears, answered brokenly and in a
half-frightened voice, for the policeman stood to her as the terror
rather than the guardian of the law, “Oh, I don’t know what to do! I
don’t know where to go!”
“You don’t, eh? Well, it seems to me you are a pretty big girl to get
lost; where do you live?”
“I don’t live anywhere,” with a fresh sob.
“That’s rather queer, not to live anywhere,” and he looked at her a
trifle more sternly. “What’s your name, if you have any?”
“Posey Sharpe.”
“Oh, indeed,” and he glanced at the stairway before him, where a small
black sign with gilt lettering on the step just above her head read,
“Madam Atheldena Sharpe,
“CLAIRVOYANT.”
“So that was your mother, was it, who raised all that row here last
night?”
“No, she wasn’t my mother, but I lived with her.”
“If she wasn’t, how comes it your name is the same?”
“It isn’t, really, only I’ve lived with her so long that people called
me that. She said I was her niece, but I wasn’t any relation at all.”
He looked at the sign again, “Madam Sharpe. Well,” with a chuckle at
his own witticism, “she wasn’t sharp enough to keep from being exposed.
And you were the spirit child, I suppose?”
Posey nodded, a very dejected-looking spirit she seemed at that moment.
“Well, when she took herself off so suddenly why didn’t you go with
her?”
“I ran up under the roof and hid, and I didn’t know till this morning
that she had gone.”
“I see; and was she so good to you, and did you think so much of her
that you are taking on this way?”
Posey hesitated a moment. “She might have been better, and she might
have been worse,” she answered with a candor of simplicity. “But I
haven’t anybody else to live with, and I didn’t think she’d use me so.”
“I see; it was rather rough.” There was sympathy in his tone, and even
in the way he tapped his knee with his polished club.
“And,” continued Posey, “this morning the man who owns the place came
and he was awfully mad and cross. He said Madam Sharpe owed him for
rent, and that she had hurt the reputation of the building, and he told
me to put my things in my trunk, and he shoved it out into the hall
and told me to clear out, and he locked the door so I couldn’t go in
again. And I haven’t had any dinner, nor I haven’t a cent of money, nor
anywhere to go, and I don’t know what’ll become of me,” and she wrung
her hands with another burst of tears.
Here was the cause of her misery—the semblance of home, care, and
protection, poor though it was, had been suddenly stricken away,
leaving her a helpless, solitary estray, a bit of flotsam at the mercy
of the world’s buffeting currents. Nor was her misery softened by even
the dubious bliss of ignorance that most children enjoy as to the
sterner realities of life, for already in her eleven years she had
learned only too well what poverty implies, and how sad a thing it is
to be friendless and homeless.
Poor little Posey, with her soft eyes, dimpled mouth, and rosy face,
she seemed made for sunshine and caresses. Scant indeed, however, had
been her measure of either. Her earliest remembrance had been of a
home of two rooms in a tenement, a poor place, from which her father
was often absent, and sometimes returned with an unsteady step; but a
home which held the greatest earthly gift, a loving, tender mother.
She was a pale, sweet, sad-faced young mother, who shed many tears,
and lavished on her little daughter all the wealth of love the heart
can bestow on its one treasure. But as time went by she grew thinner
and paler, the flush on her cheek deeper, and her cough sharper, more
frequent, till even Posey, with a child’s apprehension, would throw her
little arms around her neck, with a vague fear of what she could not
have told herself. Then came a time when her mother could not rise from
her bed; and at last, when Posey was six years old, the thread of life
that had been so long failing suddenly snapped.
When the mother realized that the end was at hand she called her child
to her and kissed her again and again. “Darling,” she said, holding
her to her as though mother-love would prove itself stronger than even
death, “Mamma is going away, going to leave you.”
“Where are you going to, Mamma?”
“God wants me to come to Him, to heaven.”
“Oh, don’t go!” and Posey clung to her, frightened both by her look and
tone. “Don’t leave me, take me with you if you go.”
“Mamma cannot, dear, though she would, oh, so gladly. But I want you to
listen now, and though you are only a little girl, never, never forget
what I am saying. Be good, wherever you are try to be good, always
tell the truth, always be honest, and every night say the prayer I have
taught you; remember that mamma has gone to heaven and will wait for
you; and above all remember, remember always, that God loves you and
will take care of you.”
“Do you know where my husband is?” she asked a little later of the
neighboring woman who was caring for her.
“No, but I can try and find him.” In her own mind she thought it would
be no difficult task.
“It’s no matter,” was the weary answer of the wife, who had sadly
learned long before that her husband’s presence was slight cause for
happiness. “Tell him good-by for me, and to send a letter he will
find in my workbox to my mother; so she will know that I asked her
forgiveness before I died. And I want her, as I know she will for my
sake, to take my child.”
Her voice that had been growing weaker and weaker failed as she
whispered the last word. A slight coughing-fit followed, there were a
few fluttering breaths, and the nurse who had been holding her hand
laid it softly down.
“Oh, what is the matter with my mamma?” cried Posey in a frightened
tone. “What makes her look so white; and lie so still? Mamma, Mamma,
speak to me, do!”
But the ear that had always listened to her slightest call, would
hear her no more. And the woman lifting kindly in her arms the now
motherless child, terror-stricken and sobbing, though too young to
understand the great loss and sorrow that had come to her, carried her
gently from the room.
When the absent husband at last came home and was told his wife’s last
message he listened to it moodily. “I don’t know any great reason she
had to ask her mother’s forgiveness, just because she married me,” he
said. “I’m not the worst man in the world, by a long way, if her mother
did make such a fuss about it. And as for letting her have Posey to
bring up and set against me, I’ll do nothing of the kind. I can take
care of my own child, and I shall do it.”
A natural and praiseworthy sentiment, this last, had he been a sober,
industrious man, but unfortunately for himself and all connected
with him he was neither. As a consequence, in the days that followed
his little girl suffered much from neglect, and often from privation.
Sometimes he feasted her on candy and sweetmeats till she was almost
sick, and again, and more often, he left her to fare as best she might,
and go hungry unless some neighbor fed her, while many were the nights
she lay awake trembling in the darkness in her little bed, afraid of
the dark, and almost more afraid of hearing the unsteady steps that
would announce a drunken father.
But when her mother had been dead less than a year, there was a
disturbance one evening in a near-by saloon. Revolvers were used, and
one man, present but not involved in the quarrel, was fatally wounded.
Posey never saw her father again. Taken to a hospital, public charity
cared for him in his last hours and laid him in his grave. When they
came to tell his child of his death they found her playing merrily
with a doll she had made for herself of a rolled-up apron and a little
shoulder-shawl.
It was hardly to be expected that she would comprehend her loss. For
that matter, she hardly knew that she had met with one, and Mrs.
Malone, across the hall, was decidedly of the opinion that she had
not. For her mother she had grieved long and passionately; that her
father was gone made but slight impression. She had received from him
so little of affection that she did not miss its absence, and as to
kindness and care, she had as much from the neighbors.
For a time she was passed from one to another of these, sharing the
proverbial charity of the poor, minding babies, running errands, and
doing such little tasks as her years and strength permitted. There
was a kind-hearted reluctance among these humble friends to handing
her over to public charity. A remembrance of her mother’s wish for
her still lingered, and Mrs. Malone even tried to find the letter she
had spoken of, but no doubt her husband had destroyed it. There was
occasional talk of an effort to find this grandmother, but Posey knew
nothing of her whereabouts, every one else was equally ignorant, and it
never went beyond the talk.
It was at this time that Posey came under the notice of Madam Atheldena
Sharpe, a lady who was making her wits provide her support, and who
was quick to see how a pretty and easily taught child might be a help
towards that end. To her taking possession of Posey there was no one to
object. None of the few people she knew felt able to assume the burden
of her support. To most of them the clairvoyant with her showy manners
and fine-sounding phrases seemed a very imposing person, and Posey was
counted a fortunate child to have found such a protector.
So Posey entered on the second phase of her life, bearing with her
pitifully few mementos of her vanished home—a china dog her father had
bought her in an unwontedly generous mood, a book of children’s poems,
out of which her mother had read to her and taught her to read, a
locket that had belonged to her mother, and her pocket Bible.
It was but a short time till new attractions were added to “Madam’s”
_séances_—mysterious bells rang, an equally mysterious tambourine was
tinkled; and presently out of a cabinet, that now made part of the
furnishing of the room, appeared what was understood to be a spirit
materialized, an ethereal-looking little figure in the dim light, with
long golden hair and floating white draperies.
As to the question of right or wrong in all this the child gave little
thought. At first she had been too young and the various details had
been but so many tasks; then as she grew older and began to realize
the humbug behind that needed such constant and careful guarding from
discovery, she was inclined to laugh at people for being so easily
duped. But in the main it was to her simply a means of living, the way
in which their bread and butter came.
For the ignorance of most children as to the value of money, or its
need in daily life had with Posey been early and sadly dispelled.
Better than many an older person she understood not only its necessity
but how to make the most of it. From behind some door or curtain she
would watch the people as they came to consult the clairvoyant, or
gathered for a _séance_, as eagerly as the “Madam” herself; she knew
exactly what each would add to the family purse, and so could tell
pretty well in advance if the next day’s dinner would be scanty or
plenty, and whether the medium would be pleasant or the contrary. For
though not destitute of kindly impulses her mood was apt to vary in
large measure with her success.
In their changing life Posey was soon far from the city where she had
lived, and finding her of even more value than she had expected Madam
Sharpe gave to the child her own name, and took all possible pains to
efface all remembrance of her earlier life, at the same time impressing
on her the fact of her homeless and friendless condition, and that but
for her kindness she would be a little beggar on the street; so that,
as was her intention, Posey grew into the belief that Madam Atheldena
Sharpe was all that stood between her and absolute distress, and with
that picture constantly before her she yielded the more readily to that
lady’s frequent exactions and petulance.
That she might become still more valuable, she was sent to school
whenever their stay in a place permitted, though seldom was that long
enough for the forming of friendships. Indeed Madam Sharpe did not
encourage such, for though singularly trusty, still she was always
afraid that to other children Posey might be tempted to betray some
jealously guarded secrets. For this reason, fortunately for her, Posey
was never allowed the freedom of the streets, or the acquaintance of
the children among whom she was thrown.
As soon as she grew old enough the “Madam” made her useful in domestic
matters. She was taught to sweep and dust the rooms, to go to market,
to prepare their simple meals, and to attend to most of the “light
housekeeping” which best suited Madam Sharpe’s finances and business.
In the evenings if people enough came to form a “circle” she had her
part to take in the “manifestations,” which was to her only another of
her daily tasks, and when ended she was quickly and gladly in bed and
asleep.
So Posey’s life was by no means an idle one. She had enough to do to
fill the most of her time, and for the rest, though often she was
lonely and longed for companionship, still she had been accustomed
from a little child to amusing herself and so had acquired numberless
resources to that end. Perhaps the most important result of this way of
life was the distinctness in which it kept her mother’s memory, which
might have faded had existence for her been happier or less monotonous.
Facts and events grew blurred and indistinct, but her mother remained
as vivid as a living presence.
No doubt with time imagination added its share till the remembrance
grew into her ideal of all that was true and pure and lovely, as it
was her greatest solace and comfort. Her words, except those last ones
fixed by the solemnity of death, she did not so much remember, but
the tenor of her mother’s teachings, her influence, her personality,
were indelibly stamped on her mind. In every grief her first impulsive
thought was, “Oh, my mamma!” as though even that mute appeal was a
consolation; while the reflection, “Would Mamma like to have me?”
influenced her actions more than the actual presence of many a living
mother. Never a night did she omit to kneel and repeat the prayer she
had learned at her knee. Though she had long known them all by heart,
she never grew tired of the book of child’s poems out of which her
mother had read to her. Often of an evening sitting alone and lonely,
out of her vague and fragmentary memories she would try to recall the
songs she had sung and the stories she had told her; and many a night
when the day had been hard in her small world did she cry herself to
sleep with the yearning plaint on her lips, “I do so want to see my
mamma!” All this had the effect of keeping her strangely pure, and
through the atmosphere of sordid deceit, if not worse, that surrounded
her she walked as if guided and led by the mother-hand so long still
and folded.
CHAPTER II
AN EXPOSURE
This phase of her life continued till Posey was nearly twelve. At first
in the spirit-manifestations she had simply followed the clairvoyant’s
directions, but as she became older she not only learned to make
herself up for the occasions, but to introduce little variations of her
own, which added not a little to the interest and popularity of the
_séances_. Gradually, too, she came to take a certain personal pride
in her rôle, of amusement at her own cleverness, and of elation at the
sensation she created. As for the moral question, that held no place;
she was simply a little actress playing well her part, with an under
thought of the profits.
In the earlier days when the “Madam” had both to dress her, and
teach her every detail, she had only been able to appear in one
“manifestation,” but now she could manage several, and frequently
appeared in succession as an Indian princess, a French girl, and
“little Nellie of the Golden Hair.” For the French girl, “Madam” had
her take French lessons so that her replies could be in that language,
and on occasions when all the “influences” were favorable she would
sing very softly and sadly a little French song, accompanying herself
on a “materialized” guitar.
For a long time she never ventured outside the cabinet, but gaining
boldness with practice she at last came into the room, hovering near
the circle gathered round the table, and answering any question put her
by the clairvoyant, who at such times was always in a trance.
Madam Sharpe was greatly elated by all this, and to her fancy new,
brilliant, and profitable successes seemed opening before her. Alas, in
this very increase of popularity, and with it of public attention, lay
her undoing, as it drew to her _séances_ not only the easily credulous,
and the sincere believers, but the doubting skeptics whose purpose was
investigation.
So it came one evening that several young men of the latter class,
including a newspaper reporter, were present, and after the lights
had been turned low and dim, and the thrill of hushed expectancy had
settled over the waiting circle, and out of the slowly opening door of
the cabinet a white, shadowy little figure had lightly floated, and as
the “spirit” passed near the newspaper reporter he adroitly threw a
pinch of snuff in its face.
A sneeze followed, a most decidedly human sneeze. Quick as thought he
seized it in a strong grasp, while another of the “investigators” as
quickly turned the gas high and bright, and then and there was revealed
to that astounded circle a plump, round-faced, very flesh-and-blood
little girl, with the white powder partly rubbed off her rosy face,
her wig of long, floating, yellow hair awry, and her white gauze dress
crumpled and torn; frightened, angry, and stoutly struggling to escape.
As soon as she saw that exposure had come Madam Sharpe hastily made her
escape, and a moment later Posey managed to free herself from the hand
of her captor and darted from the room.
[Illustration: OUT OF THE DOOR OF THE CABINET A WHITE, SHADOWY LITTLE
FIGURE HAD LIGHTLY FLOATED.—_Page 32._]
But evidence enough remained: the cabinet, that through a sliding panel
opened into an adjoining room, the guitar, the wigs, the costumes of
the different “materializations.”
A storm of indignation naturally followed these discoveries, a storm so
loud as to arouse the attention of all in the vicinity, and to bring a
policeman to the scene. An angry but fruitless search was made for the
clairvoyant, who was near enough to hear the threats expressed as she
cowered in her place of retreat.
A much duller comprehension than hers would have realized that her
career in that city was ended. Reporters, as she well knew, would catch
it up, and the morning papers spread the news of her exposure far and
wide, even should she escape the arrest she had heard threatened on the
ugly charge of obtaining money under false pretenses. While the crowd
was still surging through her rooms, she had decided that the sooner
she was away the better; and as soon as the neighborhood regaining
quiet had sunk into slumber, she secured, as hastily and secretly as
possible, the removal of her few personal effects, and, thanks to the
express speed of the railroad, was many miles distant when morning
dawned.
Angry though she was at Posey, the innocent cause of the trouble, yet
had the latter been at hand she would have taken her in her flight. But
Posey up in the attic, to which she had fled and from which she had
not dared to venture, had fallen asleep on a soft heap of rubbish, and
Madam Atheldena Sharpe, now as ever thoroughly selfish, abandoned with
hardly a thought the child who had so long shared her fortunes. And
when with the morning Posey, waking, crept cautiously down, her tumbled
finery looking tawdry enough in the daylight, it was to find only
empty, disordered rooms, from which the clairvoyant and all belonging
to her had vanished.
So for the second time, and with an increased keenness of apprehension
of all it implied, Posey was again thrown on the world. And now, for
the first time, in the person of the fat, good-natured policeman,
Society, that great factor of civilization, became aware of her
existence, took her under its charge, and in due time placed her in
the “Children’s Refuge,” an institution where the city was already
providing for some two or three hundred similar waifs and strays.
This was a new, strange home indeed, and at the same time a statelier
one than she had ever known—the tall brick building, with its great
wings, one the boys’ and the other the girls’ department, stretching
on either side. While accustomed as she had been all her life to a
haphazard, makeshift existence, the exquisite neatness, the perfect
order, and the regular system at first equally amazed and depressed.
Posey had brought with her a somewhat varied store of accomplishments,
but as she looked at the long rows of girls, with their neat uniforms
of blue dresses and checked aprons, and noticed the clock-work
regularity of their daily life she felt that she had much, very much,
to learn.
The Refuge was not an institution where appalling cruelties are hidden
under the surface of smoothness. The children were as well clothed,
well fed, well taught, and well cared for as is possible where such
gathered numbers make separate mothering almost impossible. As a
necessity, system, regularity, was the rule; from the rising in the
morning till the retiring at night the ringing of the great bell
ordered all; eating, play, work, study, was at its monition. And if any
tried rebellion, as Posey at the first sometimes felt inclined to do,
it was speedily to find that they but bruised themselves against the
strong force which controlled the whole.
Into this routine Posey soon settled; she had her little white bed in
one of the rows of the long dormitory, her desk in the schoolroom,
her place in the work-room, where at certain hours in the day the
girls worked at making paper boxes; and her group of friends in the
playground. After the lonely isolation of most of her previous life it
was a great change, this becoming one in such a multitude. But hardest
of all for her was it to become used to the pressure of discipline,
not severe but constant, the feeling that she was never free from the
watchful, overlooking eye.
In almost every respect she was much better off here than when in the
hands of Madam Sharpe, but though never alone, as in the old days, she
was often as lonely as when she sat secluded in the kitchen-bedroom of
the clairvoyant, lonely for the love, the tenderness, that her child
heart had longed for so long and so vainly.
After all that Posey had had to do when with the “Madam” it was not
hard for her to learn to make paper boxes quickly and well. In the
schoolroom, too, she was soon able to take a place near the head of
her class, something that gave her not a little pride. Rewards were
not offered to the scholars, but one day a reward came to her that
she never forgot, and that had not a little influence in shaping her
future. It was at the close of a session when she had acquitted herself
with even more than her usual credit, and Miss Grey, the teacher, in
passing her desk as she was putting her books in order, stopped with a
pleasant smile and said, “Posey, I am very glad to see you so ambitious
in your studies; if you will study and try I think you can one day make
a teacher.”
It was to Posey a new idea, and the stirring of her first real
ambition. Was it possible that she could become a teacher like Miss
Grey, and have pupils who should in like manner admire her, and,
best of all, make a place and earn a living for herself? Her heart
thrilled, first with the idea, and again with the determination that
it should be possible. And Miss Grey, busy with her many pupils and
manifold duties, went her way unconscious of the ray of promise she
had given, a ray that should shine as a day-star of hope through many
a long day. For that matter, she had no idea of the feeling she had
inspired in Posey’s heart, how she watched, admired, and imitated
her, absorbed her ideas, was influenced by her opinions, and when she
finally left, for a home of her own, missed her.
With all the teachers and matrons Posey was in the main a favorite. But
for the study of individual character there was scant time; when she
was good, little attention was paid to her, when she was naughty she
received the punishment she had incurred. For while Posey possessed a
certain intrepid strength of purpose that carried her over many a hard
place, as well as in her work and lessons, these were coupled with an
impulsiveness of action and warmth of temper that often brought her
into temporary disgrace.
Still, on the whole, the year and a half she passed at the Refuge was
as happy as any she had spent since her mother’s death. But one day a
summons came for her to the Superintendent’s office, where sat a stout
lady, with a face of hard, mottled red flesh, one whom she had noticed
a little while before making the rounds of the rooms.
“Yes,” she said, regarding Posey with a fixed gaze of her beady black
eyes, “I think I will try this one. I’ll take her home with me and keep
her for a while, anyway. No, I don’t care to ask her any questions. I
wouldn’t know much more if I did, and I can find out enough in short
order. So hurry and get yourself ready,” to Posey, “for I’ve no time to
lose.” And when Posey heard this she hardly knew whether she ought to
be glad or sorry.
The Refuge did not let its charges go out without providing as far as
possible for their welfare and future. As Mrs. Hagood had furnished
ample references as to her capability for such a charge; and as she
further promised to give Posey good care, moral instruction, and the
advantage of the school in her village, the Refuge authorities felt
that in this case they had amply done their duty. So in a very short
time Posey’s few belongings were packed, the parting words said, and
in company with Mrs. Hagood she had passed and left behind the tall
wrought-iron gates of the Refuge.
To live in the country had always been to Posey a dream of delight,
though her knowledge of the country was limited to fleeting views from
car windows. She had, too, a faint memory of stories her mother had
once told her of the happiness of a childhood spent among orchards and
meadows; and with all these in mind she had often looked at the dusty
trees bordering the stone-paved streets, and the swift-flowing streams
that filled the gutters after a rain, trying to cheat imagination into
the belief that they were real brooks and genuine woods.
So now when Mrs. Hagood told her that her new home was to be in a
little country village her heart beat high with anticipation, and she
decided that she was glad she was going. On their way to the train in
the street cars they skirted the Haymarket, and Posey looked out with
mingled feelings at the tall brick building, the scene of her memorable
misadventure. Not that she had any desire to return to Madam Sharpe.
With a child’s quick intuition for shams, the clairvoyant’s manifold
deceptions had inspired her with anything but a profound respect, nor
had she by any means forgotten the cruelty of her desertion. Besides,
was she not now going into the beautiful country, to be as free as a
bird among the birds and flowers?
CHAPTER III
THE NEW HOME
Before Posey hardly had time to realize the change, the city with its
crowded houses and busy streets, its smoke and confusion, its glitter
of wealth, its grime of poverty, was left behind, and she was seated
by the side of Mrs. Hagood in the cars on her way to her new home,
something over an hour’s ride distant.
Though yet early in March it was a sunny, spring-like day. Under the
bland air the snow had almost disappeared from the brown fields, and
only lingered in occasional patches of white in hollows and along
sheltering fences. The willows by brookside ways were showing their
early catkins, while the woods, distinct against the tender blue of
the spring sky, by their reddening tinge told that life was already
stirring in the leaf-buds, so soon to unfold.
In some of the woods that the train sped through, Posey caught
glimpses of smoke curling up from small, weather-worn buildings, while
from the trees around them hung buckets, some painted a bright red,
others of shining tin; she could even now and then hear from the open
car window a musical drip, drip, which the more increased her wonder.
“What are all those pails hanging to the trees for?” she finally asked.
“And what is the sound just as though water was dropping?”
“Goodness alive, didn’t you ever see a sugar bush opened before?”
inquired Mrs. Hagood. “That’s where they are making maple sugar and
syrup; those are maple trees, and what you hear is the sap running;
it’s been a good sap day, too.”
This explanation did not make the matter very clear to Posey, but what
Mrs. Hagood meant was that the warmth of the spring day had caused a
rapid upward flow of the sap, or juice of the tree, which had been
stored in the roots through the winter; and by making incisions in the
tree this sap, which is sweetest in the maple, is caught and boiled
into syrup or sugar.
For all the outward attractions, Posey had already given some very
earnest and anxious looks at Mrs. Hagood, with whom her home was now
to be for an indefinite time. Child as she was, she quickly felt that
there was nothing of the flimsy, the pretentious, about that lady.
The substantial was stamped on every feature, and though her shawl
was handsomer and her black silk dress of finer quality than she had
ever seen Miss Grey wear, she was conscious that Mrs. Hagood lacked
something the little teacher possessed—the essential quality that made
the latter the true lady.
But the time had been short, or so it seemed, for the much there was to
think and see, when Mrs. Hagood gathered up her numerous packages, and
Posey found herself hurried out on the platform of a wayside station.
Truly she was in the country. A few scattered farmhouses were in sight
in the distance, but the little station stood between the far-reaching
railroad tracks and the muddy country road wholly apart and alone. No
one but themselves had alighted, and they were the sole occupants of
the building, not even a station-master appearing in sight. “Is this a
village?” Posey asked as she looked around in wide-eyed surprise.
“Mercy, no, child, the village is two miles from here.”
“And what a queer depot,” added Posey. “I never was in one before where
there weren’t lots of people.”
“People in the country have to stay at home and work,” was the short
reply. Posey had already noticed that Mrs. Hagood had a way of clipping
her words off short as though she had no time to waste on them.
“When they do go,” she added, “they mostly take the morning train, as
I did, and come back later. This train never stops here unless it has
passengers to let off, or some one flags it to get on.”
As she talked they had walked around the narrow platform to the
opposite side of the station, and Mrs. Hagood, shading her eyes with
her hand, for the afternoon sun was now low and level, looked down the
road with the remark, “I should like to know where Elnathan Hagood is.
I told him to be here in time to meet this train.”
Naturally Posey felt a degree of curiosity as to the family she was
about to enter, and with Mrs. Hagood’s words came the reflection, “So,
then, she has a boy. I hope I shall like him.”
A few moments later an open buggy drawn by a stout, sleek bay horse
came in sight over the nearest hill, whose occupant Posey saw as it
drew near was a small, middle-aged man, with a pleasant face, mild blue
eyes, and a fringe of thin brown beard, touched with grey, under his
chin.
“I thought, Elnathan,” was Mrs. Hagood’s greeting as he drew up to the
platform, “that I told you to be here by train-time.”
As Elnathan Hagood climbed slowly out over the muddy wheel, there was
apparent a slight stoop to his shoulders, and droop to his hat-brim,
and a certain subtle but none the less palpable air of one who had
long been subjected to a slightly repressive, not to say depressing
influence. “Wal, now, Almiry,” he remarked with the manner of a man to
whom the apologetic had become habitual, “I did lay out to be here on
time, but the roads hev thawed so since morning that it took me longer
than I’d calc’lated on.”
His wife gave a sniff of contempt. “I only hope I sha’n’t catch my
death o’ cold waitin’ here in this raw wind, clear tired out as I be,
too. But now you are here at last, see if you can put these things in,
and not be all the afternoon about it, either.”
“I see you did get a little girl,” with a nod and kindly smile at
Posey, who stood a little apart.
“Yes,” rejoined Mrs. Hagood tartly, “I said I was goin’ to, and when
_I_ plan to do a thing I carry it out _as_ I planned it, and _when_ I
planned it.
“I know,” she continued, regarding Posey as though she had been a
wooden image, or something equally destitute of hearing, to say nothing
of feeling, “that it’s a big risk to take one of those street children;
you never know what tricks they have, or what they may turn out to be.
This one isn’t very big, but she looks healthy, an’ I see she was spry,
an’ I guess I’ll be able to make her earn as much as her salt, anyway.”
Posey’s cheeks flamed hotly, and she was on the point of an indignant
protest that she had never been a street child in her life, when she
caught a slight shake of the head from Mr. Hagood. Then Mrs. Hagood
turned away to direct her husband as he folded a horse-blanket to form
a seat for Posey, at the same time enveloping herself in a large,
black, shiny waterproof cloak, to protect her from the mud, and tying a
thick brown veil over her bonnet to serve the same purpose.
When all was ready, Mr. Hagood lifted Posey into the buggy, with
another friendly smile that went warm to her heart, and as soon as the
various packages with which she had returned laden, were settled to
Mrs. Hagood’s satisfaction they were on their way. But they had not
driven far when leaning across Posey, who was seated between them,
Mrs. Hagood snatched the reins from her husband’s hands, exclaiming,
“Elnathan Hagood, give me those lines, an’ see if _I_ can’t drive
without gettin’ into every mudhole we come to.”
Mr. Hagood yielded without a word. The first thought of their wide-eyed
young companion was of wonder that he should do so. In her heart she
felt that if she were a man she would not, but as she furtively glanced
from him to his wife, it was with the instinctive feeling that protest
or opposition on his part would be useless.
On account of the muddy clay road their progress was but slow, but
accustomed only to city sights, and for so long to the seclusion of the
Refuge, Posey enjoyed every step of the way. The pleasant farmhouses
they passed, set in their wide, deep yards; the barns with cattle
standing around, chewing placid cuds and looking at them with large
soft eyes; the full and rushing brooks that came darting out of the
fields with a swirl to rush across the road into the fields again;
the bits of woods, shadowy and quiet; the soft brown of the rolling
fields; the fresh spring air, the wide outlook, the very novelty
and strangeness of it all. And to her it seemed quite too soon that
climbing the long hill they entered the village of Horsham, whose white
church spire had for some time been looking down on them.
Horsham, like most country villages, consisted of a central cluster
of stores and shops, from which radiated a scattering company of
comfortable homes, and all surrounded and over-arched with imbosoming
trees. Presently the sleek bay horse turned into the yard of one of
the most cosy of these, trim with white paint and green blinds. At the
first glance Posey saw that everything about the place was faultlessly
neat and tidy; and also that on the opposite side of the drive, near
the street but in the same yard, was another and smaller building
bearing above its door a sign,
ELNATHAN HAGOOD. WAGONS REPAIRED.
She had little time to look around, however, for Mrs. Hagood, unlocking
a side door, led the way into a large, comfortable kitchen. Hastily
divesting herself of her outer wraps, she opened the door to a bedroom
off from it, which was only long enough for the bed, and wide enough to
admit at the side of the bed a washstand and a chair.
“Here, Posey,” she said, “is your room. You will find it clean and
tidy, and I shall expect you to keep it so. Now take off your things
and hang them on those nails behind the door, and put on one of your
gingham aprons, that you wore at the Refuge, to keep your dress clean.
Then take that pail on the corner table to the spring at the end of
the yard and fill it with water. Mind that you don’t slop it over
you, or spill any on the floor as you bring it in, either. Then fill
the teakettle and put it on to boil, and go out in the woodhouse and
get seven potatoes out of the basketful on a bench by the door. Wash
them in the tin basin that hangs up over the sink and put them in the
oven to bake.” Here Mrs. Hagood added some more wood to that which had
burned low in the stove, opened the draughts and set it to burning
briskly. “By the time you have done that I will have my dress changed
and be back to show you where to get the things to set the table.”
Posey had proceeded as far as the filling of the teakettle when Mr.
Hagood entered and after a glance around the room as if to assure
himself that they were alone drew from his pocket a handful of apples.
“They’re russets,” he said in a cautious voice, holding them out to
her. “They’ve just got meller an’ I thought mebby you’d like to
keep ’em in your room an’ eat one when you felt like it.” And Posey
gratefully accepted the good-will offering, and the suggestive hint
implied with it.
After supper she washed up the dishes under Mrs. Hagood’s supervision,
and when that was done and the lamp lighted gladly sat down, for she
was decidedly tired after the unwonted events and excitement of the
day. Unless company came, the kitchen was also the living-room, for
Mrs. Hagood said it was good enough for them, and saved the dirt and
wear of carpets in the front rooms. So Mr. Hagood drew up to the table
with his spectacles and weekly paper and was soon absorbed in the
latter, while Mrs. Hagood brought out a blue and white sock, partly
finished, which she attacked vigorously.
Noticing with a glance of disapproval Posey’s folded hands she asked,
“What did you do evenings at the Refuge?”
“We studied part of the evening, and then we read, or one of the
teachers read to us, and sometimes we sang, or played quiet games.”
“Well,” with emphasis, “I think they had better been teaching poor
children who will always have to work for their living, something of
some use. Do you know how to knit?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Then I will set up a stocking of cotton yarn for you to-morrow and
show you how. When I was your age I knit all my own stockings, and
always had knitting to catch up when I’d nothing else to do. Girls
then didn’t sit with their hands idle much, I can tell you,” and her
knitting needles clicked loud and fast.
Thus was Posey introduced to her new home. And that night as she sat
in her tiny room, in a frame of mind it must be confessed somewhat
depressed by the formidable personality of Mrs. Hagood, she ate one
of the russet apples, which she had hidden in a drawer in the stand,
and felt cheered and comforted by the spirit of kindly sympathy it
represented, together with its mute assurance that in the household she
would find at least one friend.
CHAPTER IV
THE NEW LIFE
The next morning Posey was awakened by the voice of Mrs. Hagood at her
door, “Come, Posey; time to get up, and be spry about it, too.”
The clock was just striking six as she came out of her room, but the
kitchen was already warm and Mrs. Hagood in a loose calico wrapper was
busy about the breakfast.
“I don’t want you to dawdle in bed,” was her salutation. “I’m stirring
myself mornings and I want folks about me to stir, too. Hurry and wash
you, then take this dish and go down cellar for some cucumber pickles.
They are in that row on the left hand side, the third jar. Now mind and
remember, for I don’t want to keep telling things over to you.”
As she returned with the pickles Mr. Hagood came in with a pail
of foaming milk, and Posey, who in her household experience had
been accustomed to see milk measured by the pint, or more often the
half-pint, gave a little cry of wonder and delight.
“I want ter know?” and Mr. Hagood’s thin, kindly face wrinkled from
mouth to eyes in a smile. “Never saw so much milk as this at once
before. Why I get this pail full every night and morning, and I
calc’late Brindle’ll do still better when she gets out to grass.” As he
spoke he had strained out a cupful of the fresh, warm milk and handed
it to Posey, saying, “Drink that now, an’ see if it don’t taste good.”
“What are you doing, Elnathan?” demanded Mrs. Hagood, who was
skillfully turning some eggs she was frying.
“Wal, now, Almiry, I’m just givin’ the child what she never had before
in her life, a drink o’ fresh, warm milk. I thought, Almiry,” with an
accent of mild reproof, “you’d like her to have what milk she wanted to
drink.”
“You know as well as anybody,” was her tart retort, “that I never
scrimped anybody or anything around me yet of victuals; Posey can have
all the milk she wants to drink with her breakfast, but there’s no use
for her to be stoppin’ her work and spendin’ time to drink it now, or
you to be lettin’ the cream rise on the milk before it’s strained, to
watch her.”
Breakfast out of the way Mrs. Hagood said, “Now, Posey, you may go
out and feed the chickens. You will find a bag of shelled corn on the
granary floor; give them the basin that stands on a barrel beside it
twice full.”
It was a command that Posey gladly obeyed, but she wondered that the
flock of eager fluttering chickens, who crowded around her, and flew
up into the granary door, seemed so indifferent to the breakfast she
scattered for them. “Go and eat,” she vainly urged, “go!”
Posey had on occasion seen city hens, poor, dirty, bedraggled fowls,
but these were so different, plump and snowy, bright of eye, and sleek
of plumage, that it was a pleasure to linger among them. But Mrs.
Hagood’s voice soon sounded from the door, “Posey, is it going to take
you all the forenoon to feed those hens?”
A little later as Posey was washing the breakfast dishes, taking great
pains to follow all of Mrs. Hagood’s many directions, for she truly
wished to please, she heard that lady calling her, and dropping the
wiping-towel ran out into the yard to see what was wanted.
“How came all those beans here on the ground?” Mrs. Hagood demanded
sharply, pointing as she spoke to the white kernels scattered around.
“Why,” replied Posey in surprise, “that is what I fed the chickens as
you told me.”
“‘As I told you!’ A likely story that I would tell you to feed the hens
beans. Don’t you know enough to know beans from corn?”
“No, I don’t,” retorted Posey hotly. “And why should I? I never was in
the country before in my life, and I don’t know anything about corn,
except green corn, or beans, either.”
“Shut right up,” exclaimed Mrs. Hagood sternly. “I won’t put up with
any impudence, and I want you to make up your mind to that. Now look
here,” holding up a handful of yellow kernels, “_this_ is corn;
remember it, and if you make such a blunder again I’ll help you to
remember with a whip.”
Posey turned slowly and with a swelling heart re-entered the house.
She had meant no harm, the two bags had sat side by side, the mistake
had been wholly accidental, and under other circumstances she would
have been sorry enough, but now with the sense of injustice burning at
her heart she said to herself, “Cross old thing, I don’t care if I did
spill her old beans, not one bit.”
So Posey’s life with Mrs. Hagood began, and had the latter been an
agreeable person to live with it might have been a pleasant life; she
was comfortably clothed, she had an abundance of wholesome food, and
the work expected of her was in no way beyond her strength. But Mrs.
Hagood always so managed that when one task was ended another was ready
to take its place. With her it was one continuous grind from morning
till night; that the child required a share of pleasure and recreation
was an idea she would have scouted. _She_ worked all the time, she
would have said, why was it any worse for Posey? Besides, this was a
poor child who would always have to earn her living and the sooner she
realized it the better.
So the stocking was set up, and Posey inducted into the mysteries of
knitting. For other spare moments there were towels to hem and sheets
to turn, and when everything else failed to fill all the available time
there was always on hand a huge basket of carpet rags to be cut, sewed,
and wound.
With it all she was one of those women who never dream of bestowing
praise: if the work were ever so well done, and Posey was at times
fired with the ambition to see how well she could do, never a word
of commendation followed; if on the contrary, there was any failure,
and Mrs. Hagood’s eyes were always alert for faults, there was always
the word of sharp reproof. Then Posey would solace herself with the
reflection that she couldn’t suit her if she tried, and she wasn’t
going to try any more, and she hoped she wouldn’t be suited, “so there!”
Often and often as Posey sat in the open doorway in the long summer
afternoons, the distant woods beyond the village beckoning with their
green shade and the basket of endless carpet rags at her side, did she
wish herself back within the pent-up walls of the Refuge; for there
when her appointed task was done she could enjoy some free time, while
here was no escape from the atmosphere of repression, fault-finding,
and petty irritation, to say nothing of the absence of all love and
sympathy, or even interest.
Mrs. Hagood would have said that all she was doing was for Posey’s
interest, but it is exceedingly doubtful if Almira Hagood ever viewed
anything or any one in a light separate from her own interest. With
a sublime self-confidence in her own ideas and opinions, she would
unhesitatingly have crushed a stronger opposition to her will; how much
the more anything so insignificant as the wishes and feelings of a
little charity girl! One, too, whom she had taken solely that she might
have her work, and whose highest good therefore was to be useful, as
her highest aim and desire ought to be to do the work she assigned her
quickly and well; while, unfortunately for both, Posey’s mind was often
filled with a host of other and widely differing wishes and desires.
Had kindly Mr. Hagood been an active factor in the domestic economy,
her life would have been very different; but he was only a passive
factor, so passive, in fact, as to be seldom considered, and least of
all by his wife. From the first Posey had regarded Mr. Hagood in the
light of a fellow sufferer, with the present advantage of his little
shop to escape to, where with his work as a plea he managed to spend
not only most of his days but many of his evenings, and where he could
enjoy the pleasure of his pipe and dog, both forbidden the house, and a
frequent chance visitor. For Mrs. Hagood so frowned upon his making one
of the nightly group at the village store and post-office that, social
as he was by nature, he seldom ventured on the enjoyment.
Still if this was his present advantage, he would always, so Posey
reflected, have to live with Mrs. Hagood, while some glad day she would
be old enough to leave, and then never need see her again unless she
chose, which she didn’t much think would ever happen.
An amiable, easy-going man, Elnathan Hagood, it was said, at the time
of his marriage had inclined to ways slightly convivial. But his wife
speedily changed all that, and by the sheer force of her superior will
had set and kept his feet in a straight path. By nature “handy” with
tools the shop had been her idea, where she started him as surgeon to
the various disabled vehicles of Horsham; while she, in the meantime,
having taken charge of his modest patrimony, proceeded to put it out to
usury, in a literal as well as figurative sense.
In all the country round no one knew how to drive a sharp bargain, and
for that matter a hard one, better than Almira Hagood; and woe to the
luckless debtor who expected mercy at her hands. With these qualities
but few really liked Mrs. Hagood; she was too dominant, positive,
selfish, and avaricious to win many friends, or to care much for
friendship. At the same time, and for all that her methods were now
and then a shade questionable, there were many who admired her thrift,
energy, business shrewdness, and practical ability, and took a certain
pride in her success as in some sort reflecting credit on her home
village.
It is almost needless to say that in the twenty years or more she had
managed the property it had greatly increased in value, and at this
time included outlying farms, village property, bank stock, mortgages,
and sundry other investments. In regard to this she never thought of
consulting her husband, and if he ever ventured on a suggestion as a
rule passed it over without the slightest regard. The word “we” was
one seldom heard from her lips. It was always “my horse,” “my cow”;
she referred to the time when “I built my barn,” or “when I bought my
farm,” with a complete ignoring of any partner in the firm matrimonial.
Indeed, whatever the light in which she regarded Elnathan Hagood
personally, for his ability and opinions she did not disguise her
contempt, and any attempt to assert himself was quickly and vigorously
suppressed; and the common opinion as to his condition was voiced by an
old companion, “I tell you, she keeps his nose clus to the grindstun.”
It was then not strange that for the most part he went about with the
subdued and apologetic air of one aware of his own insignificance.
Sometimes, for his kindly nature held an especially tender place for
children, he attempted to expostulate in Posey’s behalf; but his mild,
“Now, Almiry, I wouldn’t,” or “Almiry, you know children will be
children,” made matters no better for Posey, and only brought a storm
about his own head.
Weakness held no part in Mrs. Hagood; “capable” was the term that
truly fitted her; at the same time there was no more tenderness in her
nature than in her well-polished cook-stove. A timid, sensitive child
would have wilted, pined, and perhaps have died in her atmosphere;
but Posey was not more sensitive than the average healthy, hungry
child, and was even more than usually high-spirited and fearless.
Her affections—meagerly as they had been fed—were warm, her impulses
generous, and her nature one to whom love and kindness might have
proved controlling forces where threats and violence failed. Such being
the case, her life with Mrs. Hagood could hardly fail to intensify all
her faults of temperament; the more so as the almost daily outraging
of her sense of justice led to a feeling of resentment that from its
frequency became well-nigh constant.
There were also occasions when this rose to an especial high-water
mark. One such was the event of a Sunday School picnic to a little
lake distant some half-hour’s ride on the cars. An event that all
the younger members of the school had looked forward to with eager
anticipations, and Posey perhaps most of all, for a picnic was
something she had never known. But when the time came Mrs. Hagood
flatly refused her permission to attend.
“_I’m_ not going to throw away forty cents to go, and if I wouldn’t for
myself I don’t know why I should for you,” she had said. “Crystal Lake!
I want to know! Nobody ever thought of calling it anything but Wilson’s
Pond when I was a girl, or of its being any great sight. But now it’s
Crystal Lake folks must all run to see it, and I don’t suppose it’s
anything more than it was before.”
“Almiry,” ventured Mr. Hagood in his most persuasive tone, with a
glance at Posey’s drooping head, “ef you’ll let her go I’ll pay the
fare.”
“Really, Elnathan Hagood,” turning on him with withering sarcasm,
“seems to me you have grown suddenly rich. If you have more money than
you know what to do with you may go over to the store and get me ten
pounds of sugar, and a couple of pounds of raisins. I want them right
away. As for Posey, I’ve said once she couldn’t go and _that_ settles
it. I don’t believe in picnics, anyway; they’re just an excuse for
people to spend time and money; Posey hasn’t been good for anything
since they began to talk of this one, and if she was to go she’d
wear out her shoes, and tear her dress, and come home so used up she
wouldn’t be good for anything for a week to come. It’s all nonsense,
and she’s enough sight better off right here.”
So with a swelling heart Posey saw the others gathering for the start.
“Why, Posey, aren’t you ready?” called one of her classmates over the
fence as she was sweeping off the walk.
“No, I can’t go,” she answered with the curtness of despair.
“Won’t Mrs. Hagood let you?”
Posey shook her head; it was an occasion where words were insignificant.
“Well, I just think she’s a horrid, mean old thing,” cried the
indignant and friendly sympathizer.
“Who’s that is a ‘mean old thing’?” demanded Mrs. Hagood, who at that
moment suddenly appeared around the corner of the house.
“No-nobody,” stammered the little girl, all the more frightened because
of her guilty consciousness.
“Oh,” blandly remarked that lady, “it was my mistake then; I thought I
heard you saying that somebody was,” and with a grim smile she turned
away, adding as she did so, “Posey, you have swept that walk long
enough, come in now and wash the dishes.”
It is to be feared that Mrs. Hagood found Posey anything but efficient
help that day, for the bitter rebellion in her heart found outward
expression in careless, sullen indifference. She slopped water on the
floor, jammed the wood into the stove, and slammed the dishes with
a violence that threatened their destruction. And when Mrs. Hagood
sharply demanded what she was thinking of, she muttered a reply in a
tone that brought her a shake, with the admonition to be careful, if
she knew what was good for herself.
After the morning’s work was finished Posey was sent out to pick
currants for jelly; and a little later Mr. Hagood might have been
seen slipping, with all the caution of a criminal, along behind the
screening grapevine trellis towards the end of the garden where were
the currant bushes, and half hidden among them Posey shedding hot and
bitter tears over her task.
“I’m real sorry you couldn’t go, Posey,” he said in a voice lowered as
if fearful it might reach the keen ears of his wife, “for I know how
you’d been a-lottin’ on it; but Mrs. Hagood knows what’s best fer you.”
Loyalty was a strong element in Elnathan Hagood’s nature. Whatever his
private thought might be, not a complaining word of her had he ever
been heard to utter. And child though she was, Posey instinctively
recognized and respected this feeling, but now carried away by her
disappointment and grief she exclaimed passionately, “I don’t know
whether she does or not! At any rate I don’t believe she ever was a
little girl in her life.”
“Well, you know the real trouble is,” explained Mr. Hagood, “that she
never had any little girl of her own.” For it was one of his favorite
theories that a child, especially a little daughter, would have
softened all the asperity of that somewhat flinty nature, rendering it
at once sweet and tender.
“Besides,” he continued, “a picnic isn’t anything really so wonderful.
I wouldn’t give a single cent to go to one myself; though to be sure
I’m gettin’ oldish and a bit stiff for swingin’, and rowin’ on the
lake, and racin’ through the woods, an’ all that sort of thing I used
to enjoy so when I was your age.”
He checked himself with the sudden realization that this was hardly
the way to impress upon her what undesirable affairs picnics were, and
busied himself in extracting a paper parcel from his coat pocket. “Now
don’t cry any more,” he urged; “see here, I’ve brought you some nuts
and candy.”
“Oh, Mr. Hagood,” cried Posey impulsively jumping up and throwing her
arms around his neck, to his great astonishment, and hardly less
confusion, “you are the very best man in all the world!”
“Well, now, Honey,” his wrinkled face flushing with pleasure at the
caress, to him something so unwonted and unexpected, and giving her
hand an awkward stroke by way of return, “you be a good girl and mebby
you and I will go somewhere and have a picnic by ourselves some day.
I’ll see if I can’t fix it.”
Then Mr. Hagood, in the same stealthy manner with which he had come,
returned to his shop. And Posey behind the currant bushes forgot to
breathe out threatenings and slaughter against Mrs. Hagood, as she
munched her candy, so much the sweeter for the sympathy that had
accompanied it, and found herself more cheered than an hour before she
would have believed it possible she ever could be again.
CHAPTER V
THE PICNIC
“Elnathan, I’m out of flour; you must go to mill to-day,” said Mrs.
Hagood one morning a little later.
Mr. Hagood had been anticipating this direction, but he answered with a
guileless air, “Must you have it to-day? Joe Hatch is a hurryin’ about
his wagon.”
“Yes, I can’t bake again till I have some more flour; and I guess Joe
Hatch can wait.”
“You couldn’t go?”
“Me? The idea; no, my time’s worth too much to spend a good share of
the day going to mill. There was a payment due yesterday on that money
I lent Dawson, and if he doesn’t come this morning I shall go around
and see him.”
Mr. Hagood paused in the door with a reflective manner, “I don’t know,
Almira, but ’twould be a good idea to take Posey along and show her
the way; old Jim’s that gentle she could drive him well enough, an’
’twould be dreadful handy sometimes if I could send her to mill when
I’m pushed with work. She’s quick to learn anything.”
“Quick enough when she wants to be. But why don’t you send her to-day?
You can tell her the way; she could hardly miss it.”
“Y-e-s, but it’s kind of ticklish gettin’ down the hill there at the
mill, I’d want to show her about that myself. But it’s just as you say.”
Mrs. Hagood hesitated, but the thought that if Posey could take his
place in going to mill Mr. Hagood could be at work decided the matter.
“Well, take her then,” she said; “she’s in the garden picking peas;
call her in and tell her to get ready.”
Just before he was ready to start, Mr. Hagood came in, “There’s never
no knowin’ how many will be ahead of me, or how long I’ll have to wait
my turn; the last time I got pretty nigh famished, so I wish you’d put
up a bite o’ lunch in case I have to wait again, as I’m likely to.”
Then with the bag of wheat in the back of the stout buggy, the basket
of lunch under the seat, and Rover, the old dog, capering around them,
they set off, between meadows where the sun of the July morning had not
yet dried the dewy freshness from the grass, and cornfields, the ribbon
leaves of whose green rows waved and rustled in the light breeze. When
they were well outside the village Rover came to the side of the buggy
and looked up with expectant eyes. “Almiry says there ain’t no sense in
lettin’ a dog ride,” Mr. Hagood remarked apologetically, “an’ I s’pose
she’s right. But Rover does enjoy it so much that when I’m alone I
generally let him. Come up, old fellow! There,” as the dog bounded into
the buggy, “sit up now like a gentleman.” And Rover lifting his head,
lolled out his tongue, and looked first at one and then the other with
an air of deep content.
It was a five-mile drive, but it seemed short to Posey, though
easy-going Jim took his own gait, and once when Mr. Hagood saw on a
converging road another wagon piled with bags he held his own horse
back until he saw they had the right of way, which in this case assured
him a wait of two or three hours at least.
At last the mill was reached, with the wide, smooth pond spreading
above it, whose water tumbling over the dam hurried foam-flecked away
through a deep, rocky gorge, made still more shadowy by the hemlocks
that lined it, on whose very verge stood the tall old mill. “You think
it’s a pretty place?” as Posey gave a little cry of delight as the
shining water came in view. “Well, I do myself, for a fact. But look
now ef I ever send you alone,” and Posey watched as he wound down the
short but steep descent to the mill door, through which she looked with
wide, curious eyes.
“And you never saw a grist mill afore? Well, come right in an’ see one
now,” and Posey followed Mr. Hagood and the miller who had shouldered
their bag of wheat inside, where belts and bands were whirring, and
great hoppers slowly turning as they fed the grain to the crushing
stones. The noise and clatter drowned the miller’s voice but she
understood his good-natured smile and beckoning finger as he opened
little doors here and there and she caught glimpses of the wheat on its
way to be cleansed from impurities, of the flour passing through its
silken bolting sieve, of a flowing brown stream of bran, and a white
cataract of swiftly falling flour: the flour that whitened the miller’s
coat and cap, and lay as a covering over the floor, and powdered all
the beams and ledges of the mill, and swayed with the wind in cobweb
veils and festoons from the high rafters. And mingled with all was the
steady, insistent sound of the falling water just outside, the power
that gave force and motion to it all.
“We’ll have quite a spell to wait,” remarked Mr. Hagood, motioning
Posey to the door so that his voice could be heard, “there’s two big
grists ahead of us; how’d you like to go out on the pond? There’s a
boat under the willows at the end of the dam.”
Like it? Of course she would, and in a few moments she was dipping her
fingers in the clear water as Mr. Hagood rowed the little boat toward
the upper end of the pond where lily pads were floating on the placid
surface with here and there a blossom opening waxy-white petals. It was
an hour that Posey never forgot, the soft blue sky above, the gentle
motion of the boat, the lake-like water that rippled away from the
oars, and the lily blossoms with their golden hearts.
“Well, now, Posey,” said Mr. Hagood, as they drew in to shore at last,
“must be about noon by the shadders, an’ rowin’s kinder hungry work, so
I guess we may as well have our lunch.”
For this they chose a spot down close to the stream below the fall, on
a great rock that jutted out, covered with a green carpet of softest
moss, and shaded by the drooping hemlocks that found their foothold in
the ledges above. Here Posey spread out the contents of the well-filled
basket, for Mrs. Hagood’s provision was always an ample one, the slices
of bread and butter, the thin pink shavings of dried beef, the pickles,
the doughnuts and cookies, while Mr. Hagood added as his contribution a
couple of big golden oranges.
“I’m so glad we had to wait!” observed Posey as she munched her bread
and butter.
[Illustration: IT WAS AN HOUR THAT POSEY NEVER FORGOT.—_Page 75._]
“This isn’t much of a wait,” answered Mr. Hagood. “When I was a boy an’
used to go to mill with my grist in a bag on the horse behind me,
like as not I’d have to wait till the next day. An’ before that when it
was a hundred miles to the nearest mill father used to be gone a week
at least.”
“I guess he didn’t go very often,” hazarded Posey.
“Not very, especially as there wasn’t anything but blazed trees for
roads to go by. In them early pioneer days when folks first began to
come here to Ohio it was a pretty serious question how to get meal
and flour; sometimes they’d shave it off, an’ sometimes grind it in
a coffee mill. I’ve heard Aunt Sally Bliss tell that once she nailed
the door of an old tin lantern to a board and grated corn enough for
Johnny-cake for her family; while quite a few did like my father; he
hollowed out a place in the top of a stump, worked off a stone till it
had a handle for a pestle, then put the wheat or corn, a little at a
time, in the hollow and pounded it till it was fine enough to use.”
“That must have been ever so much work.”
“Yes, there was plenty of hard work those days, but the people had real
good times after all. Sometimes I think better’n we have now,” he
added as he slowly peeled his orange.
“Not any better than to-day,” protested Posey.
“An’ have you enjoyed it?” a smile brightening his face, as the miller
came to the mill door and waved his whitened hand in token that the
flour was ready and they rose to leave, “Has it been like a picnic?”
“A picnic, yes,” a sudden comprehension coming to her what he had meant
it for. “Dear Mr. Hagood, it’s been so good of you, and it is the
loveliest day I ever had in all my life.”
So it will be seen that even under Mrs. Hagood’s rule Posey’s life was
not all shadow, the less so that Mr. Hagood touched by her pleasure
managed with gentle guile and under one pretext and another to secure
her for a companion now and then. Outings which it would be hard to
tell which enjoyed the more, Posey for herself or Mr. Hagood for her.
Occasionally, too, some matter of business would call Mrs. Hagood away
for the afternoon, when she would take her towels to hem or carpet rags
to sew, as the case might be, out to the little shop with its mingled
odors of fresh lumber, paint, and varnish, where Mr. Hagood hummed old
tunes and whistled softly to himself as he worked. And where seated on
a rheumatic buggy seat in one corner, with the shaggy head of Rover
resting on her knee, in watching Mr. Hagood at his work, and listening
to his favorite old-time stories she would find real if unexciting
enjoyment.
Then again during the season of raspberries and blackberries many
were the delightful hours Posey spent berrying in the “back pasture.”
A field this, only a little remote from the village, but hidden from
it by a bit of intervening woods, and so shut away from all outward,
disturbing sight or sound that with its peaceful stillness and sunny,
wind-swept solitude, it seemed as genuine a bit of nature as though the
subduing hand of man had never been laid upon it, and one which the
city-bred child fairly revelled in.
A big, stony, thin-soiled field was the “back pasture,” affording
hardly grass enough for the two or three cows which fed there, hence
held in slight esteem by its owner and suffered to lapse into an
almost unchecked growth of briars and undergrowth, with here and there
a thicket of young and fast-growing trees, a spot where wild growths
ran riot, where bittersweet hung its clusters, and the wild grape
tangled its strong and leafy meshes; a spot, too, that the birds knew,
where they nested and sang, for the most part unmolested and unafraid.
But the crowning charm of the place to Posey was the chattering brook
that with many a curve and bend, as if seeking excuse to linger, ran in
a little hollow through the centre of the pasture. A clear, sparkling
little stream, gurgling and hurrying through the sunlit spaces,
loitering in the shadows of the willows whose green fingers bent down
to meet its current, with shallow places where one could wade or cross
on stepping-stones, and deep pools where minnows loved to gather and
hide them under the trailing grasses of the banks.
This was Posey’s first acquaintance with a brook and for her it had not
only charm but almost personality; she talked to it as she would to a
companion, beside it she felt a certain sense of companionship, and no
matter how often she might come, always she greeted the sight of the
stream with the same delight.
For her these were truly halcyon days, and most fervently did she wish
that berries ripened the year round. As it was, being both quick of
eyes and nimble of fingers, Mrs. Hagood permitted her to come nearly as
often as she chose while they were in season. So many a summer morning
was thus spent, for the best picking was to the earliest comer, and
where it often happened, an addition to her own content if not to the
contents of her basket, she met other children of the village bent on a
similar errand.
And always whatever of the hard or unpleasant the days might hold,
every week brought its Sunday, when the interminable hemming and
patch-work and carpet rags, with the other more distasteful of the
week-day duties were laid aside for one day. Mrs. Hagood was not
herself greatly given to church-going, but she considered it an
eminently respectable habit and saw to it that the family credit was
duly upheld by Mr. Hagood and Posey. In her own mind Posey held the
Sundays when Mrs. Hagood stayed at home as by far the most enjoyable.
For then Mr. Hagood could pass her surreptitious stems of caraway seed,
with an occasional peppermint drop; moreover, he could drop into a
gentle doze, and she could venture to move now and then without fear of
a sharp nudge from Mrs. Hagood’s vigorous elbow.
There, too, was the Sunday School, where she could sit with a row of
other girls, exchange furtive remarks between the teacher’s questions,
compare library books, or loiter for little chats on the homeward way.
Then in the long summer Sunday afternoons she could lie on the grass
under the shading maples and read the same library books; or perhaps,
what was still better, while Mrs. Hagood dozed in her favorite rocker,
she, Mr. Hagood and Rover, who made the third in this trio of friends,
would stroll away together, beyond the village, across the open, sunny,
breeze-swept fields, past ripening grain and meadow, along fence-rows
where alders spread their umbels of lace-like blossoms, and later
the golden rod tossed the plumes of its yellow-crested army. These
fence-rows that were in very truth the “squirrels’ highway,” on which
the sight every now and then of one skurrying along with bright eyes
and bushy tail saucily waving defiance, would set Rover nearly wild
with excitement, to the great amusement of his companions.
“Poor old Rover!” was the way Posey commonly spoke of her dumb friend.
But there was certainly no occasion for the first adjective, for Mrs.
Hagood could truly boast that nothing around her suffered for the lack
of enough to eat; and as a reward for his canine faithfulness she even
went so far as to give him a discarded mat on which he might lie in
the woodhouse. But whine he ever so pitifully, he was not allowed to
cross beyond that threshold and join the family circle, a privilege
his social dog nature did so crave. And all his tail-wagging and mute
appeals were equally without avail to draw from his mistress the
caressing touch or word his dog soul so evidently and ardently longed
for.
Rover was a trusty watch-dog, and for this Mrs. Hagood valued him;
at the same time she frowned on his idle existence, and had even
considered the matter of having Mr. Hagood make a dog-power that she
might use him to churn with. Against this her husband had urged that
he wasn’t heavy enough, though privately he confided to Posey that it
“wasn’t in nature for dogs to work like humans, an’ he wa’n’t goin’ to
make no dog-churn for old Rover to tread, not if he knew himself, he
wa’n’t.”
CHAPTER VI
THE STORM BREAKS
The thing, however, which rankled deepest in Posey’s mind, and caused
her more bitter feelings than everything else, was that for all Mrs.
Hagood’s promise, which she herself standing by had heard, that Posey
should go regularly to the near-by school, she had not been allowed
to attend even for a single day. At first she had waited expecting
something would be said about it every day, and at last had ventured to
ask when she was to begin.
Mrs. Hagood heard the question with an air of surprise. “School!” she
repeated, “and all the house-cleaning, and spring and summer work
coming on, I wonder how you think I can spare you to go to school. One
would think that with all I’m doing for you, and the work you make,
that you’d want to help what little you could.”
Posey choked back a lump in her throat; in her own mind she was
sure that she was doing more work than she made, and earning all she
received or she wouldn’t be kept; at the same time it was plainly
evident that school, at least for the present, was not for her. “If
I can’t go this spring term, can I in the fall?” she asked somewhat
anxiously.
Mrs. Hagood was busy making pies, and fall was far in the future. “Yes,
I guess so,” she answered, glad to get rid of the matter so easily.
“If you are a smart girl to work this summer you can go to school next
fall.”
So summer went by, and all through its days Posey bore this promise in
mind; many a time it was an incentive to her when she would otherwise
have flagged; and a spur to endeavor without which she might have been
negligent. Autumn came, apples grew ruddy in the orchards, grapes
ripened on the vines, and the woods changed their summer’s dress of
green for one of yellow and scarlet. Yet Posey, who all through the
spring and early summer had watched with longing eyes the children
passing to and fro, saw the opening of the fall term draw near—delayed
by repairs on the schoolhouse far beyond its usual time—without a
single word or sign as to her going. And the day before it was to begin
Mrs. Hagood said to her, “Posey, I want you to pick the green tomatoes
to-morrow morning, then after dinner you can chop them for the mixed
pickle.”
Posey’s heart sank with dismay. The ambition the teacher at the Refuge
had awakened, had grown with her own growth; more still, an education
seemed her one hope of escape from the life of a charity dependent, and
she determined to risk a great deal rather than give it up. “Hadn’t
I better pick the tomatoes to-day?” she asked not without an inward
trembling of the heart. “You know school begins to-morrow.”
Mrs. Hagood paused in the pantry door. “Well, what if it does?”
“Why, you promised me, don’t you remember? that I should go to school
this fall.”
“I don’t remember, no, and I can’t spare you to go, anyway. There’s all
the pickles to put up, and apples to dry, and apple butter to stir,
and the pig to be killed, with lard to try out, and sausage to make,
and potatoes to be sorted over, and Brother Solon’s wife coming for a
visit. You don’t much more than earn your salt now, and to go to school
you wouldn’t be worth anything. All you care about it anyway is just
for an excuse to race and run and get rid of work.”
“It isn’t, either,” Posey protested hotly, “I like to study. Ask my
teachers at the Refuge if I didn’t have my lessons. Besides I want to
go to school so I can be a teacher myself some day.”
“A teacher,” with a scornful laugh that sent the blood to Posey’s face,
“a pretty teacher you’d make.”
“And when I came here with you,” Posey went on, sticking to the point
in issue, “you promised that I should go to school.”
“I can teach you all you need. And for a poor girl who has to depend on
charity for her bringing up, to know how to work is a great deal more
account than a little smattering of books, and a lot of high-flown,
silly ideas that will never amount to anything.”
“Then you don’t mean that I shall go to school at all?” Posey’s voice
trembled a little as she put the question. She had grown pale around
the mouth, and her eyes had become wide and dark.
“I don’t know as it’s any of your business what I intend,” was the
answer in Mrs. Hagood’s most decided tone. “I’ve told you that you
couldn’t go now, and I don’t want to hear another word about it.”
Posey laid down the ball of carpet rags she had been winding and faced
Mrs. Hagood, her slim figure very erect and a spot of red burning on
each cheek. “You are a wicked woman, and a liar,” she cried shrilly,
all the gathered disappointment and bitterness of months breaking out
in a sudden burst of fiery passion. “You promised Mr. Mott, at the
Refuge, that I should go to school; I heard you, and I shall write and
tell him just what you have done.”
“You will, will you?” scoffed Mrs. Hagood. “And who do you suppose will
believe what you say, a deceiving medium’s child?”
“I wasn’t her child, as you know well enough,” retorted Posey. “And
whatever she was, she was better than you. She sent me to school, and
didn’t make me work every enduring minute of the time. And my own
mother was the most beautiful lady that ever lived; you are no more
like her than you are like an angel. You are a bad, cruel woman, that’s
what you are.”
Posey had been so repressed with Mrs. Hagood that when her long
smoldering resentment leaped into wrathful words the latter stood for a
moment in bewildered astonishment. It was only for a moment, however,
a color so deep it was fairly purple mottled her face; glancing around
her eye rested on a small wooden rod she had taken from a curtain, and
seizing this she turned on Posey, “You vile little beggar. I’ll teach
you to talk that way to me!”
With the first blow that fell Posey sprang forward and fastened her
sharp white teeth in Mrs. Hagood’s hand. But the latter’s greater
strength shook her off before anything more than a deep mark had been
made, the pain of which, as well as the insult of it only adding to the
storm of blows the hand rained. “There,” she exclaimed, as breathless
with anger, excitement, and exertion, she gave Posey a final violent
shake, and whirled her into her little bedroom with such force that
she fell in a heap on the floor, “you’ll stay in here till to-morrow
morning, and we’ll see then if you will talk in any such way, and
fly at me like a wildcat. If you do you’ll get something that you’ll
remember as long as you live, I can tell you.” And with this parting
threat she shut the door with a bang.
Left alone, throbbing with a rage of resentful passion, into which the
physical pain entered as a part, Posey threw herself on the bed and
buried her head in the clothes with the old cry, “Mamma, my mamma,” and
then as a gust of stormy sobs shook her frame. “Why can’t I die, too,
oh, why can’t I?”
But her tears were not of penitence, far from it, and it was well
that Mrs. Hagood had not demanded of her any expression of sorrow for
her offense, or of submission for the future; for in Posey’s present
mood she would have been beaten to death before she would either have
confessed or yielded. As it was she sobbed as softly as she could, and
kept her face well in the pillow that Mrs. Hagood might not have the
pleasure of knowing that she was crying, and under her breath she
repeated over and over, as though it gave her some relief, “I hate you,
oh, I do hate you, you bad, cruel woman!”
CHAPTER VII
A DESPERATE RESOLVE
Very soon Posey heard dishes clattering sharply on the table, for in
Mrs. Hagood’s state of mind she handled even the plates and cups as
though they had been guilty of offense, and presently the little brass
bell rang out with an energy that warned Mr. Hagood it would not be
wise to linger in obeying its summons. A moment later and his steps
sounded on the porch, he was wiping his hands on the towel that hung
by the door, they were sitting down at the table, and then came his
question, “Where’s Posey to-night?”
There was but a thin door between her room and the kitchen, and Posey
had no need to strain her ears to hear Mrs. Hagood as with loud and
forceful emphasis she poured forth the story of Posey’s misdoings, to
which the kindly old man who had taken the friendless child to a tender
place in his heart, listened sorrowfully. As Mrs. Hagood ended she
also heard his mild tone, “Why, now, Almiry, I wouldn’t be too hard on
Posey; if she is quick-tempered she’s soon over it, an’ she’s always
ready an’ willin’. As for her bein’ disappointed about not goin’ to
school, she oughtn’t to have did what she did, but I s’posed you did
mean to send her part of the time; it don’t seem quite right not to,
now really, Almiry, an’ there’s the law, you know.”
It was a good deal of a protest for Mr. Hagood to make on any
subject—more than he would have uttered for himself, as Posey well
knew; but the grim silence in which his wife had listened was only the
hush before the storm which he had drawn on his own head. “Oh, yes,
Elnathan Hagood,” with a biting sarcasm of tone, “that’s right and just
what I might have expected of you; take up against your own wife and
for a vile, impudent, little street-beggar. You needn’t think you two
have been so hand in glove all summer without my seeing it, and this is
the upshot, and you uphold her in it.”
“Oh, Almiry!”
“But then I’ve done nothing for you, nothing at all. I didn’t make you
all you are, and earn for you all you have. I haven’t worked my fingers
off day in and day out for you. Oh, no; but you don’t owe me anything
for that, certainly not. Only I’d like to know where you’d be now if it
hadn’t been for me, and where you’d go now if it wasn’t for me, wanting
to give to every missionary and shiftless creature you can hear of, and
to dress a pauper up in silk and make a lady of her! One thing I guess,
you’d find the poor-house at the end, and that pretty soon. But then
that’s all the thanks I get.”
“Now, Almiry, you know better,” expostulated Mr. Hagood.
“But I’ll tell you one thing,” she continued cutting him short, “it
won’t be healthy for you to be a-settin’ her up against me, and I’ll
see that you don’t have much chance to do it. And I’ll tell you another
thing you may both depend on, she shall never go to school now, not a
single day. I taught once, I can teach her, and I’ll begin to-morrow.
And one thing more, as long as I have my health and strength I don’t
propose to be run over in my own house by any miserable little
upstart, as she’ll find out to her sorrow if she ever tries it again.”
Mrs. Hagood had raised her voice with the intention that the words
should reach Posey’s ears, who in return shook her small clenched fist
towards the closed door, and was only restrained from calling out
the words which rose to her lips by the lesson she had recently and
painfully gained, that in a contest of strength she was no match for
Mrs. Hagood, and was sure to be the sufferer.
Mr. Hagood sighed as he rose from his almost untasted meal and went out
about his evening chores. And as Posey’s gust of passion ebbed away she
sighed also, not only for the supper she had been deprived of, whose
savory whiffs had intensified her always healthy appetite, but from
the realization, of which this going supperless was an evidence, how
mortally she had angered Mrs. Hagood. For, as she well knew, the battle
between them was not over; instead it was just begun; that dominant
will would not rest till it had crushed and broken the will which had
dared to oppose it, and Posey aching and smarting, but rebellious and
unyielding, lay and looked at the ceiling and felt that it was indeed a
painful way on which she must enter with the morrow, and in which her
one friend, however innocent, must also suffer.
These gloomy forebodings of the future grew as the darkness thickened
in her little room; then a slight sound at her window attracted her
attention, and softly raising the sash she found on the sill outside,
a long row of juicy harvest apples. Tears filled her eyes, but they
were such as she had not shed before that day, and she kissed the
red-cheeked apples and with a rush of love and gratitude for the
unspoken kindness they expressed.
Poor, hasty, undisciplined Posey! That she had not been blameless she
well knew. “But Mrs. Hagood was so mean,” so she justified herself, “or
I’d never have done so, and I don’t believe anybody else would have
stood it either. O dear!” and she sighed very deeply as she munched an
apple, “how I wish Mr. Hagood and I could go away somewhere and live
all by ourselves; I’m sure with him I’d never get angry and ugly, and
feel like fighting.”
For most of all it was love and tenderness that her lonely little heart
longed for, and having these she thought to be good would be easy. “Oh,
mamma,” was the whispered plaint that rose to her lips, “if you had
only lived I might have been good, but how can I now? You told me that
God would love me, but I don’t think He can for nobody else does.” The
wind was rising, and as Posey leaned against the frame of the still
open window and listened to it rushing and murmuring through the tall
trees around the house, and watched the dim, shadowy motion of the
waving branches, to her excited fancy the one seemed to urge, “Come
away, come away,” and the other like inviting hands to beckon, “Come,
come.” And as she looked and listened an impulse, a sudden resolve
sprang in her heart, and setting her teeth firmly she murmured as if in
answer, “I will come, I will!”
Posey did not undress when she lay down again, though first she knelt
down by the bed and repeated her,
“Now I lay me down to sleep,”
as usual. But to-night she felt that this was not enough, that she
needed something to give fuller expression to the tumult of feeling
within her. At the Refuge she had been taught the Lord’s prayer, but
instinctively she shrank from that clause of forgiveness of others,
for she well knew that the spirit throbbing so hotly in her heart was
anything but a forgiving one, so for want of something better she added
a petition of her own, “O Lord, I haven’t anybody in the world, unless
it is you. Take care of me; show me what to do; help me, please do!
Amen.”
It was the first time in her life that Posey had ever really prayed—all
which had gone before had been a form, a habit. But now in the hour
of her heart-sinking and loneliness, in the stress of her anger and
resentment, shaken by the mingled impulses of fear and the courage
which comes of desperation, with no earthly support to lean on, her
tumultuous young soul reached out, feebly it is true, but still with
real longing, for a guidance and strength higher than her own.
Posey was too excited by all that had happened, too thrilled with her
new, wild determination, to sleep much or soundly. Nearly every hour
she heard the old clock in the kitchen strike, and when she counted
three she slipped noiselessly out of bed. Her room was no longer dark;
a great yellow moon had risen and made it, as well as the outer world,
almost as light as day. Indeed it is safe to say that but for that
flood of softly illuminating brightness Posey would never have dared
to put her rash impulse to the test. As it was, her fingers shook as
she gathered together a few articles from her scanty wardrobe and tied
them up in a gingham apron, not forgetting the few mementos of her
mother which through everything she had clung to, and were the first to
be thought of now. Then putting on her coarse straw hat, and wrapping
about her an old cape that chanced to be hanging in the room, she took
her shoes in her hand, cautiously raised the window, and carefully
crept out, something easily done as it was but a few feet from the
ground.
As Posey stole around the corner of the house old Rover saw her,
and after a brief sniff came toward her wagging his tail in friendly
recognition. Many a time had she been comforted by the voiceless
sympathy in the soft eyes of this dumb friend, and now as she stroked
his head, and felt the touch of his warm tongue on her hand, her sense
of utter desolation was for the moment relieved.
When she reached the pantry window Posey put down her bundle and
stretching on tiptoe slipped her slender hand between the slats of the
blind, and easily lifted the latch, and then with the help of a stool
on the back porch quickly crept in. Mr. and Mrs. Hagood slept quite
on the other side of the house, and moving quietly she had no fear of
being heard by them, while the bright moonlight gave her light enough.
She had come to the pantry for two reasons: to make up for the supper
she had lost the night before, and to get supplies for the enterprise
on which she was entering. Nor did she hesitate to take the best she
could find. “I’ve done enough here to earn it,” was her reasoning, as
she helped herself plentifully and without a scruple to the company
cake kept sacredly in a tin box. She appropriated the cold chicken
set aside for the morning’s breakfast, with a naughty chuckle at the
thought of Mrs. Hagood’s wrath when she should discover its absence,
and she spread her thick bread and butter with the best peach preserves
that were only brought out on especial occasions. And having satisfied
her appetite she next packed full a small-handle basket she found on
a shelf, adding as its crowning delicacy a saucer pumpkin pie, she by
chance discovered.
This done, as she was turning to leave, her eye fell on a memorandum
book with pencil attached in which Mrs. Hagood kept her egg account.
The sight suggested an idea, and tearing out a blank leaf she wrote on
it as best she might by the uncertain light, in a sprawling, childish
hand:
“DEAR MR. HAGOOD,
“You have been so good to me that I awfully hate to leave you, and I
hope you won’t blame me for running away, for I couldn’t stay any
longer, no more at present, good by with love,
“POSEY.”
With that she climbed out of the window, closed the blind so that all
should be secure again and tiptoeing around into the woodhouse laid the
folded note on his basket of kindlings, where Mr. Hagood would find it
the first thing in the morning. This done, she put on her shoes and
hat, took up her bundle and basket, to go she knew not where; her one
thought that it would be away from Mrs. Hagood and the renewed contest
which the morning would be sure to bring. As she moved toward the gate
the old dog followed her with a wistful whine, as if he was puzzled by
and questioned this strange action. “Dear old Rover,” Posey whispered,
throwing her arms around his neck, while her tears fell thick on the
white star on his forehead, “dear old doggie, you must go back; I can’t
take you with me. I wish I could and Mr. Hagood, too, so go back, old
fellow, and stay with him,” and with one last hug she shut the gate
between them, with a real pain in her heart; and also shut the gate to
the only place in the wide world that she could call home.
Already she had thought, “When Mrs. Hagood misses me she will think
I’ve started back to the Refuge (as I’d like to), and so I must go
just the other way,” and so it was in this opposite direction that she
hurried. And what a strange world this was into which she had come, the
world of night, of mystery, of strange quiet, of brooding peace. All
the well-known objects took on a new and unfamiliar look, as though
they had different faces for the day and the night. In the solemn
stillness sounds unheard by day became strangely distinct—for the
first time she heard the spring at the foot of the hill falling into
its rocky basin; the cry of a hidden cricket, the rustle in the wind
of the already fallen leaves, the crow of a rooster in a neighboring
barn—sounds all that in the day she would hardly have noticed, how loud
and eerie they were now!
In all the village but one light was burning, in the room of an old
man who had been long sick and was near death. As Posey saw it she
wondered if when people died they went out into the night alone, and
felt strange and perhaps afraid. A few hours before she had almost
wished she could die, but now she shivered a little at the thought as
well as the chill of the night air, and the strange sensation of being
out alone. Yes, she was glad to be alive, even if there did not seem to
be any place anywhere for her.
Few girls of her age would have dared to do what she was doing. But
Posey was not timid by nature, and much of her courage came from the
tension of her feverish excitement. Still, when she had passed through
the village, where all was familiar and there was a certain sense of
companionship in the clustered houses and the thought of the sleeping
people inside, and leaving the last house behind, from the hill-top on
which she stood, she saw the open fields and dark woods stretch away
till they melted in dimness, her heart beat fast and almost failed.
For with the sight a sudden sense of desolation rushed over her, a
realization of how alone and young, and weak and helpless she was.
For the first time, too, she began to be troubled by thoughts of the
future. She had heard of runaways who had to sleep nights in old barns
and under haystacks. Boys from the Refuge had sometimes run away, and
when brought back had told such stories. Very likely she would have to
also, and it seemed to her that it would be dreadful to sleep in an
old barn, especially if there should be rats. Besides when her little
store of provision was gone, how would she live unless she begged? She
had often seen ragged children in the city going from door to door with
baskets, but that was a degradation she had never known—one her whole
nature shrank from. She would rather starve, she felt, than to beg at
doors, and perhaps be turned away, as she knew beggars so often were.
As all these things rose before her Posey almost wished herself back
safe in the little room she had left. Almost but not quite, for a
memory of Mrs. Hagood’s face as she had last seen it, and Mrs. Hagood’s
voice as it had last reached her ear stayed her wavering. “I won’t go
back now, if I die,” she pledged herself, setting her teeth firmly, and
bracing herself with dogged resolution. “But oh, how I do wish I could
have brought Rover!”
CHAPTER VIII
A NEW ACQUAINTANCE
That night’s experience was one Posey never forgot. The road she had
chosen she was now on for the first time; where it led to she had no
idea; all she knew about it was that it would take her away from Mrs.
Hagood, and in the direction where she thought there would be least
danger of her being looked for. But once fairly started she hurried on,
her one thought and anxiety to put all the distance possible between
herself and Horsham before her absence was discovered.
But what it cost her to do this! To her excited fancy the commonest
objects—innocent stumps, wayside bushes, fence-corner shadows—took
on in the weird light grotesque shapes that filled her with fear and
trembling. If she had a stretch of lonely woods to pass through she ran
till the beating of her own heart fairly startled her. Was she out of
sight of houses, she would quicken her steps and almost fly. When a
house came in sight she walked more slowly; to be near people, even if
they knew nothing of her, was something, and the barking of a dog was
always a welcome sound. When she heard it she knew there was something
living and awake, which lessened a little her feeling that she was a
sort of wandering spirit, driven on and on in a dim world where, save
for the uncanny night birds, nothing was astir but herself. Yes, Posey
was afraid, at times desperately afraid, but she felt that every step
was taking her farther from Mrs. Hagood, and for the sake of that she
was willing both to dare much and to endure much.
By and by, however, signs of the coming morning began to appear. First
a faint line of light along the eastern sky, then lights were seen
gleaming here and there in farmhouse windows, and curls of smoke rising
from chimneys, in token that the world was rousing to the new day; once
across the fields she heard a loud hearty voice calling, “Coo-boss,
coo-boss,” to the cows in some out-of-sight pasture, and again she
caught a distant glimpse of some boys with bags on their shoulders,
evidently off for an early nutting expedition. Gradually these signs of
life multiplied, the clouds grew more rosy, the trees, no longer vague,
dark masses, showed their brilliant hues of red and gold; wayside
objects lost their dim and spectral look; all the world was waking into
the crisp brightness of a clear, fresh, autumn morning, sweet with the
fruity smell of ripened orchards, and rich with the soft mellowness of
the long summer time.
With everything around her new and strange Posey had no idea how far
she had come. This she did know, that the bundle and basket she carried
were all the time growing heavier, that her aching feet dragged more
and more slowly, and that she was so tired she could go only a little
way without stopping to rest.
The sun was now well up, and as Posey paused she looked around the
unfamiliar landscape. What she saw was a stretch of level, low-lying
fields which merged into a wooded swamp—a thick tangle of trees and
bushes whose dark line spread out as far as her eye could follow.
Beyond the swamp, and at no great distance, rose a steep range of
wooded hills; solid masses of gayly tinted colors they appeared that
morning, following with gentle curves the windings of the swamp; and
crowning the highest of these hills, rising above the trees, lifted the
white spire of a church, its gilted weather-vane glittering in the sun.
Before her the white road lifted in a long upward swell that made her
sigh with the thought of climbing it, and shut in her view to the flat
around. But one house was near—a tall gaunt house of weather-beaten
red, standing on a slight knoll a little back from the road, with a
single tree, a tall and sombre pine, beside it, and all the green
paper curtains that shaded its front windows drawn closely down. A
dreary house it was in Posey’s eyes, and the people who lived in it
she thought must grow so tired of looking out on those flat pastures,
tufted with hillocks of coarse, marshy grass, and the swamp with its
bordering fringe of dead, grey bushes.
But it may be that to her eyes the fairest view would have taken on
something of her desolate mood. In the sand that now made the road,
her steps dragged heavier and more slowly, but save for brief pauses to
rest she dared not stop. She was not far enough away. Oh, no, not yet.
Mrs. Hagood might be hunting her even then, was the thought hurrying
her on. She was hungry, too, with the crisp air, and her exertion, for
all the hearty lunch she had taken at starting; but she was afraid to
make any inroad on the contents of her basket, for when once that was
gone she had no idea how or where she would get anything more. It would
be dreadful to keep feeling so faint and hungry, and was there anybody
anywhere, she wondered, who would pity her enough to give her something
to eat, or take her in when it came night again? Or would she have to
go on and on, till she fell down somewhere and died? And a slow trickle
of tears ran down her cheeks at the foreboding. This was a hard world,
she bitterly felt, for girls who had no homes. If God was good why
didn’t He make homes, real homes, for all of them? She was sure she
would if she were God, and especially one for poor Posey Sharpe.
A little stream, its course marked by fringing reeds and rushes, wound
its way through the fields and crossed the road a little way before
her, spanned there by a wooden bridge with high, close sides, overhung
at each end by clumps of willows which formed a thick green screen.
Slowly and wearily Posey stumbled up the slight ascent leading to the
bridge; she had taken but a few steps when a loose board rattled under
her tread, and a moment later she started with a little cry as the face
of a boy suddenly appeared around a side at the farther end.
His eyes also grew wide with surprise, and it was no wonder, for a
strange little figure it was which met his gaze. Her shoes were white
with dust, her hat was jammed to one side, her cape was all askew, her
gingham bundle hung limply from one arm, and in the other hand was the
basket, from which she had lost her handkerchief that at first had
covered it. This basket with the saucer pumpkin pie on top, was what
first caught the boy’s notice, and he called out in a half bargaining,
half jesting tone, “Any extra pies you want to trade for tinware this
morning?” Then as he saw the tear-stains on her cheeks, into which the
dust had settled in grimy streaks, and her swollen, overflowing eyes,
he quickly swung himself around onto the bridge, asking, “What is it;
what’s the matter?”
Now notice was of all things what Posey most dreaded, and as the
morning was still early few people were yet stirring, so till now she
had not attracted attention. For one thing she had been careful not to
do so; since daylight she had crept carefully by the few houses she
had passed, as much in the shadow of the fences as possible; and once
when she saw a wagon coming, with people and trunks, as if for some
railroad station, she had hidden behind a clump of bushes till they
were gone by. For her great fear was that some one would send word to
Mrs. Hagood, or even return her by force, and every hour but added to
her fierce determination never to go back—never!
Of course she knew that she would be seen and questioned. “And I must
have something ready to say,” had been her thought. “Yes, I know, when
any one asks me where I am going, I shall tell them that my Aunt Mary
is sick and has sent for me. I know it’s a lie, and I hate liars, but
I can’t tell the truth, and if I had an Aunt Mary and she was sick I’m
sure she’d send for me,” and with this she had salved her conscience.
But now as she heard the friendly tone, and looked into the frank
boyish face, with honest, merry blue eyes, and a kindly expression
under the sunburn and freckles, she forgot all her prudent plans in a
longing for the sympathy that spoke in his tone, and lifting her eyes
to his she answered simply, “I’m running away.”
He gave a slight whistle of surprise, “Running away? What are you doing
that for?”
By this time Posey had come close to him, and putting her bundle and
basket down on the abutting stone work of the bridge, she rolled up
her sleeve and showed her arm, across which ran a number of angry red
welts. “And they’re worse here,” she said, putting her hand up to her
shoulders.
“My!” he exclaimed, his tone full of mingled sympathy and indignation.
“Whatever did you do that your mother whipped you like that?”
“She wasn’t my mother,” was the vehement reply, all Posey’s sense of
outraged suffering breaking out afresh. “She was only the woman who
took me from the Refuge in Cleveland; she made me work from morning
till night, and scolded me the whole time; she was the crossest woman
you ever saw, and she wouldn’t let me go to school after she had
promised at the Refuge that I should. And she was mad and whipped me
that way because I told her that she was a mean, wicked liar, just as
she was.” Her eyes flashed with the remembrance.
“Haven’t you anybody of your own?” he asked.
She shook her head. “My mother and father both died when I was a little
bit of a girl.” Then with a piteous little cry, “I don’t see why my
mother couldn’t have lived or I have died, too!” and overcome with a
mingling of weariness, nervous excitement, and emotion, Posey dropped
down beside her bundle, and hiding her face in it burst into a passion
of sobs.
“There, there,” and as he spoke there was a shake in his own voice, and
a moisture in his own eyes. “Don’t cry so, don’t. I’m awfully sorry
for you. I’ve lost my father and mother, too, and I know how tough it
is on a fellow, though Uncle John and everybody have been good to me.”
By this time Posey had succeeded in checking her sobs, and in answer to
his questions she poured out her whole story, ending with her flight.
“You’re a regular brick,” he exclaimed with boyish enthusiasm as she
finished, “to start off that way, alone in the night. I’d like to see
my cousin Emma or Fannie doing anything of that sort, and they both
bigger than you are; but my, they hardly dare to look out of doors
alone after it comes dark! Won’t I have something to tell them, though,
when I go home? And I don’t blame you for running away, either, though
to be sure,” he added impartially, “it might have been better if you
had kept out of a row.”
“Yes, it would,” Posey admitted meekly.
“But now that you have done it,” he asked in a practical tone, and with
a business-like clearness, “what are you going to do?”
“I—I don’t know,” answered Posey, realizing suddenly and with
confusion, how very vague her ideas were, and what a wild undertaking
hers was. “I didn’t know—I thought—I hoped—that I might find
somebody—somewhere, who would let me live with them. I can wash
dishes, and iron, and sweep, and churn, and bake apple pies and
ginger-cake—Mrs. Hagood taught me—and do lots of things about the
house,” sadly feeling that her list was after all but a short one.
“I would try _so_ hard to suit. Don’t you think I could find such a
place?” and she looked in his face appealingly.
“I should think so,” he answered after a moment’s pause. For with
all his boyishness there was about him a certain thoughtfulness
and readiness of decision, which led Posey to regard him with an
instinctive trust and reliance. “At any rate,” he added, “you might
try; I don’t think of anything better just now that you could do.”
All this time there had been a frequent splashing and stamping down
below them in the creek, and several times the boy had looked over the
side of the bridge to call, “Whoa, there, whoa,” or “Stand steady,
Billy.” “Let’s see,” he went on, “you’re about eight miles from Horsham
now,—you must have clipped it pretty lively, but you look awful
tuckered, and I don’t believe you could make another eight miles.”
“I—I’m afraid not,” Posey sadly agreed, for having once stopped it
seemed to her that she never could start on again.
“And as you’re running away I suppose you want to get as far away as
you can?”
“Yes, indeed, I do.”
“Well, then, I guess I will give you a lift. Of course you don’t know
me, but my name’s Ben Pancost, and I’m a tin peddler,” the last with an
air of business-like pride.
“You don’t look old enough to be a tin peddler,” was Posey’s comment.
“All I ever saw were old men with hook noses.”
“I was fifteen last March. I guess Mr. Bruce thinks that will do, at
any rate I’ve been on one of his wagons all summer. I stayed last night
at that house,” indicating by a jerk of his thumb the red house on the
knoll, “and this morning one of the wagon tires seemed loose, so I
drove into the creek to let Billy drink, and swell up the wheel. You
saw my red cart as you came along, didn’t you?”
“No; the willows must have hid it. I didn’t know that there was anybody
anywhere near, that was why I was scared when you looked around the
corner of the bridge. And, oh, it’s so good of you to let me ride!”
But Ben had a boy’s horror of thanks. “I guess by this time the wheel
is soaked,” he hastened to say, “so I’ll drive out of the creek and
then this train will be ready to pull out.”
An hour before Posey would hardly have believed that she could ever
again feel like laughing. But there was something so infectious in the
cheery good humor, the ready self-confidence, and above all the hearty
sympathy of her new friend, that she laughed gayly at his merry tone
and twinkling eyes, as, swinging around the corner of the bridge, he
jumped down, and soon the stout bay horse and red cart came into view
at the opposite end of the bridge—such a cart as she had more than once
seen that summer, with great sacks of rags piled high on its top, and
a fringe of old rubber boots dangling around the bottom.
While Ben was making sure that everything was in good order and
securely fastened before he started, Posey ran down to the clear water
and wetting her handkerchief washed her face and hands, straightened
her hat and cape, and made herself look as tidy as she could. Her
spirits had even risen so high that sitting down on the grassy bank she
ventured into her lunch, and fancying that she saw Ben give another
glance at the pie, as a slight expression of her overflowing gratitude
she held it out to him, urging, “Do take it. I know it’s good, for Mrs.
Hagood always makes such nice pumpkin pies.”
Ben looked at the tempting delicacy with a true boy’s appetite. “I’ll
tell you what I will do,” drawing out his pocketknife, “I’ll cut it
in two and eat one half if you will the other. No, I sha’n’t take the
whole of it. Besides, I’ve read of people breaking bread together as
a pledge of friendship; well, we’ll break this pie together as our
pledge.”
“You see,” he continued as he wiped away the last flaky crumb, “the
potatoes this morning were warmed over, the pork was warmed over, the
coffee was warmed over, and it was a sort of a warmed-over breakfast
generally. But then I oughtn’t to complain, for Billy and I had our
lodging and breakfast, and I only had to give a tin dipper, a quart
basin, and two pie tins for it all. That’s why I stop at houses instead
of hotels when I can, the women, mostly, will take tinware for pay, and
as there’s a profit on it, why, that makes my expenses that much the
less for Mr. Bruce.”
As he helped Posey to the high seat, and mounting beside her gathered
up the lines and chirruped to the horse, she gave a start. “Why, you
are going back the way I came.”
“Only a little way. The road bends so you didn’t notice where the one
you were on came into this, but I’ll show you the place; Horsham is
south, and I’m going west; then after a little I shall turn north, for
I’ve quite a circuit to make to-day.”
CHAPTER IX
TWO HAPPY TRAVELERS
How wonderfully the face of all the outer world changes with our
feelings.
It was so with Posey. As her heart grew light she began to feel the
brightness and charm of the sunny October morning, a late lingering
robin whose note when she first heard it a little while before she had
thought sad and sorrowful, now had a cheery sound; and the call of a
flock of blackbirds flying over she thought most musical.
Even the swamp, which had looked to her so dismal, as she rode through
it was transformed and became full of delights. Its thick crowding
bushes gleamed with coral-hued berries, its tangled depths were rich
with every tone of tint or color, and through the centre a little
river, set thick with lily pads, loitered along with the laziest
possible current. Not a few of the trees and shrubs which bordered the
narrow roadway, made, as Ben explained, by filling in earth through
the swamp—were draped with festoons of wild clematis vines in their
autumn beauty, set with fluffy masses of filmy, smoke-hued fringe. From
her high seat Posey reached out and pulled lengths of this, which she
twined about the dashboard, exclaiming with delight at its delicate
beauty. A few wild roses were still in blossom on the thickets, whose
gleaming red hips hinted at a wealth of earlier bloom, and here and
there the scarlet leaves of the poison ivy added their vivid hue to the
wealth of color.
For part of the way the trees beside the roadway met overhead, forming
an arch, now more of gold than green, through which the golden sunshine
filtered and flickered in delicious coolness. Once or twice the narrow
road widened into a grassy space; “Turning-out places,” Ben explained,
for teams to pass each other. Which set Posey to wondering what people
would do if they met in any other than the right spot.
“But they _have_ to meet there,” Ben asserted. “When one person sees
another coming he stops and waits. There’s no trouble when everybody
looks out.”
But what was to Posey the crowning charm was a wide drainage ditch
or canal, near the outer edge of the swamp, the cause of the fringe
of dead bushes she had already noticed. Ben stopped his horse on the
bridge that crossed it, that at their leisure they might look up the
long, straight stretch of water, whose clean-cut banks of velvety turf
narrowed in perspective till they seemed at last to meet in the level
distance, while on its still surface, trees, shrubs, clumps of nodding
blue asters, and the sky, bluer than all, were reflected as in a mirror.
“Oh, how lovely!” cried Posey. “I never saw so pretty a place in all my
life. I wish we could ride through it all day.”
“Yes, it is pretty,” answered practical Ben, “but it’s not good for
much as it is now. I suppose, though, it will all be dry land some day;
that’s what the man said where I stayed all night, and this big ditch
is to help. He thought some time it would all be dry land.”
“At any rate, I’m glad to have seen it as it is now,” declared Posey.
For Posey had yielded herself to the gladness of the day, and in after
years it stood apart in her memory. There was the delicious sense of
freedom as of a bird escaped from its cage, with that of triumph as the
distance widened between her and her late bondage; and in addition the
blissful reaction from anxiety, the rest after fatigue, the happiness
in her new-found friend, and of trusting confidence in his protecting
care and superior knowledge. She had shaken off the past, the future
was an unknown quantity, the happy present was enough.
For to Posey, whose life had held such a scanty store of pleasure,
one continued delight was that long ride in the soft, warm, October
sunshine. Through quiet country roads they wound, among fields green
with aftermath, and hills rich with October woods. Sometimes these were
so near that she could see the ripe leaves dropping softly down like
a golden rain, and again distant with all their varied hues of gold
and scarlet and crimson and russet blended by the misty autumn haze;
but whether near or far always a splendor of color. The cornfields
along the way were dotted with great sheaves of the harvested corn,
among which the orange spheres of the pumpkins lay thick, and where
the huskers were busy stripping the husks from the yellow ears that
overflowed baskets and heaped wagons.
Orchards, too, there were, fruity with scent of the red-cheeked apples
which loaded the trees. Occasionally they met loads of apples on
the way to be made into cider. Once they passed a cider mill by the
roadside, and stopped for a drink of the sweet juice as it came fresh
from the press. At another time they drove under a tree overgrown by a
wild grapevine, and Ben, standing on the seat, had gathered his hands
full of the little, spicy-flavored, frost grapes. While scattered
along the way were clumps of woodbine, its leaves flushed russet
crimson; bittersweet with its clustered orange berries beginning to
show their scarlet hearts; with lingering sprays of golden rod, and
lavender drifts of the wild aster. The farmhouses at which Ben stopped
to trade—for he was too faithful an employee to forget his business
for any pleasure—had for the most part, it seemed to Posey, a cozy,
homelike air, the yards of many gay with fall flowers that the frosts
had not yet killed.
And how their tongues did run! Ben Pancost had to hear in its fullest
detail Posey’s whole story, with especial interest in that part of her
life with Madam Atheldena Sharpe.
“How many different cities you have seen!” he exclaimed once with an
accent of almost envy.
“No, I never saw very much of them after all. You see, we always lived
in a crowded part, so one was a good deal like another.”
“And how did you use to feel when you were pretending to be a spirit?”
“Oh, sometimes I thought it was sort of fun. One day, I remember, at
school the teacher had us put our hands up and up as we sang, higher
and higher, like this,” and she raised her arms in a gently undulating
motion. “That evening I did it again as I came out, and the people at
the _séance_ all held their breath and whispered, ‘Oh, how beautiful!’
You ought to have heard them,” and Posey laughed as she recalled the
incident. “Yes, sometimes it was no end of fun, but most times I was
tired and sleepy and it was _so_ tiresome. The changing dresses, and
wigs, and all that, and I used to think how stupid the folks were not
to know that it was only me.”
“And were you frightened when they found you out?”
“Frightened? Well, I guess I was! I knew the Madam would be in a rage,
and I didn’t know what they would do to me, either. They tore my wig
off, and crowded round me, and everybody was talking at once, but I
pulled away, somehow, and ran. My, how I did run; ’way up into the
attic! I’d never been there before, but it was some place to hide,
and it wasn’t so bad, for I stumbled onto an old mattress, only I was
afraid there might be rats. But I wasn’t as afraid of the rats as I
was of the people downstairs, and by and by, when it was all still, I
went to sleep. Then in the morning when I waked up and went down the
Madam was gone. She knew that I had no other place in the world to go
to; but she never did care for anybody but herself. I tell you, it was
awful to be turned out so, and not know what to do. I felt almost as
bad as when you saw me this morning.”
“It was a shame,” Ben agreed heartily. “But then she couldn’t have been
a very good woman, anyway. And don’t you think it was just as wrong as
lying to deceive people so?”
“I suppose it was,” Posey admitted simply. “My mamma always told me
never to tell lies, and I don’t mean to; but I began to ‘manifest,’ as
she always called it, when I was so little that I didn’t think anything
about its being right or wrong. I should have had to done it whether I
wanted to or not, for when Madam was cross I tell you I had to stand
round. Besides, that was the way we made our living, and in the city
folks have to have money to live. Here in the country you don’t know
anything about it. Look at the apples in that orchard. I used to go to
the market for Madam and buy a quart of apples. Just six or seven, you
know. Sometimes I could get a market-woman to put on one more, and then
I had that to eat for myself. And milk! Why, we never bought more than
a pint at a time, more often half a pint; and a half a pound or a pound
of butter. You don’t know how strange it did seem to go out and pick
things off as they grew, and to see so much of everything.”
“I wouldn’t want to live that way,” admitted Ben.
“I guess not. Sometimes I felt so much older than the other girls
of my age at Horsham. They had fathers and mothers who bought them
everything. They never thought about the cost, and they all had
spending money—not a great deal, but some—to use as they pleased. And
I—why I can hardly remember when I didn’t have to think about the price
of everything. When Madam gave me money to go out and buy things she
used to say, ‘Now see how far you can make this go.’ She was always
telling me how much my shoes and clothes and what I ate cost. And as
for ever having any money to spend for my very own self, why I wouldn’t
know what that was.” She paused and an accent of bitterness crept into
her next words: “You may say what you please, but I believe God cares
a lot more for some folks than He does for others. He gives them such a
sight more. At any rate, I’m ‘most certain He doesn’t care anything for
me,” and she gave the red dashboard a little kick by way of emphasis.
“Why, Posey!” Ben cried in astonishment, “God cares for everybody!”
“Well, then,” protested Posey fiercely, “why did He make my mother die,
and why doesn’t He give me a home somewhere?”
Ben looked puzzled for a moment, then he brightened. “Did you ever ask
Him to take care of you?”
“Yes, I did last night. I asked Him to help me, and take care of me.
And where would I be now if it wasn’t for you?”
“Why, Posey!” cried Ben triumphantly. “Don’t you see that He sent me?”
“Do you think He did?” A sudden seriousness had come into Posey’s face.
“Of course. I know it. Why, once when I was a little boy I had a bow
and arrow. One day I shot my arrow away so far I couldn’t find it,
though I hunted and hunted. Finally I knelt right down in the grass
and asked God to help me find my arrow; and do you believe me, when I
opened my eyes the first thing I saw was my arrow, only a little way
from me. Perhaps if you had asked God to help you before he would have
done so.”
“But,” persisted Posey, “sometimes it doesn’t help people any when they
do pray. There was a woman in Horsham whose daughter was sick this
summer, and she had folks come and pray for her to get well, but she
died all the same.”
As she was speaking Ben drew out a handsome pocketknife. “Isn’t that
knife a dandy?” he asked, holding it out in his hand. “Five blades, all
the very best steel, and the handle inlaid. When I was seven years old
my Uncle Ben, in Nebraska, that I was named for, sent it to me. Father
said I was too little to have such a knife then, that I would be apt to
break it, and to cut me with it, so he laid it away till I was older.
Well, I wanted it then, and I used to tease and tease father for it,
and almost think it was unkind and mean in him to keep my own knife
away from me. The day I was ten years old he said:
“‘Ben, here is your knife. If I had given it to you at the first, as
you wanted me to, very likely it would by this time be broken or lost,
and you might have been badly hurt with it. Now you are old enough to
value and use it carefully. And when you look at it remember this, my
boy, that God often has to do by us as I have by you—refuse us the
thing we ask for because it might hurt us, or because the time has not
yet come when we are ready for it. Refuses us simply because He loves
us.’”
“Why, Ben!” exclaimed Posey with wide-open eyes, “I never heard
anything like that before. And you talk just like a minister.”
“I’m only telling you what my father said. Perhaps because he died so
soon afterwards is one reason I’ve always remembered it. And he was
good as any minister. I don’t believe there ever was a better father,”
and there was a tremble in Ben’s voice.
“Tell me about yourself now; I’ve told you all about myself,” urged
Posey.
CHAPTER X
BEN’S STORY
“I haven’t much of anything to tell,” Ben answered slowly. “You see,
I always lived in the country, and in just one place till father and
mother died four years ago. But, oh, it was so pleasant there! Back of
the house was the orchard, and beyond that a long hill where we went
coasting in the winter, Theodore and I—he’s my brother three years
older. At the foot of the hill was a little creek where we used to go
fishing in spring. The fish were mostly suckers. I suppose some folks
wouldn’t have cooked ’em; but then mothers will do ’most anything for
boys; at any rate, such a mother as ours would, and my, but they did
taste good! We used to skate on the creek, too, in the winter. But
you’ve never been in the country in the winter; you don’t know what
fun it is: sliding down hill, sleighriding, and snowballing, all such
fun,” and Ben’s eyes sparkled as he named them.
“The house, too, was so cozy. A red house with a trumpet-vine growing
over it, and a long porch in front. I always like to see a red house
because it makes me think of home. And out in the orchard there
were strawberry apples, and seek-no-furthers, and nonesuches. A big
grapevine ran all along the woodhouse. There was a black-walnut tree in
the back yard, some chestnut trees in the pasture, beside hickory trees
in the north woods. And didn’t we go nutting in the fall, just didn’t
we! Whole bags of nuts to crack in the winter evenings and eat with
apples, though the getting ’em is better than the eating, after all.
“On the edge of the creek was the sugar bush, and in the spring we used
to help father gather the maple sap from the trees and boil it down in
the old sugar house. It was hard work, but there was fun with it—the
sugaring off, and making wax on the snow, and stirring the warm sugar.
I tell you I feel awful sorry for boys who have never lived in the
country and had any of the good times. Of course we went to school,
not quite a mile over the hill, and Sundays we went three miles to
church.
“And best of all were father and mother! I couldn’t begin to tell you
how good they were. Mother used to tell us stories, and help us make
balls and kites; and father would take us with him, and let us follow
him about the farm, when I suppose we hindered a good deal more than we
helped. He was always ready to answer our questions, too, and to help
us with a hard lesson, and he used to give us calves and lambs for our
very own. I don’t believe there ever was a father and mother did more
to make two boys happy,” and Ben drew a tremulous sigh.
“Mother was always delicate,” he went on after a moment’s pause, “and
father and we boys used to do all we could to help her. But one fall
she took a hard cold—none of us once thought of it being anything more
than a cold. All winter she coughed so hard, and nothing the doctor
gave her did any good. Theodore and I used to say to each other, ‘When
it comes spring then mother will be well again,’ and we were so glad
of the warm days, for they would make mother better. She didn’t get
better, though; she kept growing weaker and weaker, and the children at
school began to ask me did I know my mother was going to die? It made
me so angry to have them say such things; and sometimes I would wake up
in the night and find Theodore crying, for he is older, you know, and
realized more what was coming. Then I would put my arms around his neck
and say, ‘Don’t cry, Theodore; of course mother will get well. Why, we
can’t live without her!’
“So it went on till September, and by that time she could only walk
around the house a little, and had to lie on the sitting-room lounge
most of the time; but so sweet and patient, there was never any one
like her, I’m sure. Father used to come in from his work every little
while and sit beside her, and when he went out I would see the tears
in his eyes, for I suppose it was hardest of all for him. In September
the men came with the thrashing-machine to thrash the wheat and oats.
It was a chilly day for that time of the year, with one of those raw,
sharp winds that cuts right through you. The dust of the thrashing
always made father about sick, and with that and the weather he took
a sudden cold that settled on his lungs. That night he was so sick
Theodore had to go for the doctor, and, Posey, he only lived three days.
“I couldn’t believe it. He had always been so strong and well that I
had never thought of his dying. I knew the doctor thought he was very
sick, and we were all frightened, but I didn’t once think he was going
to die. And when he called us to him to bid us good-by, and told us to
do all we could for mother, and to be good boys and good men, and live
so that we should be ready for God’s call when it came for us—I didn’t
believe it even then—I didn’t believe it till he was—gone.”
Ben’s voice had grown husky, and he stopped for a little before he
could go on. “For about two weeks after that mother kept about as she
had been, and what with the shock and excitement even seemed a little
stronger. But one night we had to help her into her room and the next
morning she said she felt so weak she wouldn’t try to get up. And she
never left her room again. She failed so fast it seemed as though we
could just see her slipping away from us; and she was so happy to go,
except as she was sorry to leave us boys. She told us how we had better
manage, and what she wanted us to do and be; and I don’t believe either
Theodore or I will ever forget what she said to us or the promises we
made to her.
“When father died it was hard enough, though there was mother left. But
when she went, only three weeks after him, I tell you it was awful.
I never shall forget as long as I live the evening after mother’s
funeral. You see, father had only one brother, Uncle Ben, out in
Nebraska, so of course he couldn’t come. Uncle John, mother’s only
brother, lived fifty miles away, and George, his boy, was sick with a
fever, so he had to go right back; that left us all alone with Matty,
the girl. And after we had looked after the chores and went in and sat
down everything was so strange and empty and lonesome, I never shall
forget it.
“Every night since we could remember father, or mother if he was away,
had read a chapter in the Bible and had prayers. After father died
Theodore had read the chapter and mother had prayed, if it was only a
word or two, till the very last night she lived. She had said she hoped
we would try and do as near as we could as we always had when she and
father were with us, so Theodore thought we’d better have prayers; that
they’d want us to. He read the chapter—I don’t see how he did it—and
said he thought we could say the Lord’s prayer, anyway, and we kneeled
down and began. But all at once it came over us like a great wave how
everything was changed and always would be, and it broke us all up so
we couldn’t go through with it.” And Ben’s voice choked and failed him
at the recollection, while unchecked tears of sympathy ran down Posey’s
cheeks.
“When Uncle John went away he told us to do the best we could and as
soon as George was better and he could leave home he would come and
help us settle everything up. There wasn’t so very much to do beside
the everyday work except to gather the apples and harvest the corn.
We had a big field of corn that year, but we managed to get it cut up
and began to husk it. But it was slow work, for I was only a little
shaver—not quite eleven years old, and Theodore isn’t strong like I
am. It came on cold early that fall and we got pretty discouraged.
One night there was a circle round the moon, and Theodore said he was
afraid we were goin’ to have a snowstorm. That would make the husking
harder, and we both felt real worried. But what do you think? When we
went out in the field the next morning the corn was all husked and in
heaps ready to draw in! It had been a moonlight night and the neighbors
had all turned in and done it for us. They were all so good to us I
shall never forget it of them.
“As soon as he could Uncle John came back, and then we sold the farm.
We hated to, but he thought that was best, for though it was only a
small one we were too young to manage it. When everything was settled
there was eight hundred dollars apiece for Theodore and me. Uncle John
put this out at interest for us, secured by mortgage so it should be
safe, and took us home with him. But Uncle John isn’t rich by any
means, and he has five children of his own, so though they are all
kind as can be we didn’t want to live on him. For two years now, I’ve
been driving this tin-cart summers. I get twenty dollars a month and
my expenses, and I’ve a hundred dollars in the bank I earned myself.
Winters I live at Uncle John’s and go to school. He won’t take anything
for my board, but I buy dresses and things for Aunt Eunice and my
cousins; they are so good to me I want to do what I can for them. With
what I earn and the interest on my own money, as soon as I’m old enough
I mean to buy a farm. I would like a store, but Uncle John thinks a
farm is safer, and perhaps I’ll buy the old farm back.”
“How nice that would be!” cried Posey.
“Why, see here, Posey,” with the force of a sudden idea, “when I get a
farm I shall need somebody to keep the house, and I’ll tell you what
I’ll do, I’ll marry you. Then you can have a home, too; we’re both
orphans and haven’t either of us one now.”
Posey clapped her hands. “That will be splendid! I know I should just
love to live on a farm, and I will learn to make butter, and do all
the things they do on farms. But,” and her face sobered, “won’t your
brother want to live with you?”
“No; Theodore doesn’t take to farming. He’s teaching now, a summer
school up in Michigan. His plan is to go to college and then be a
minister. He’ll make a tiptop one, too.”
“I think you ought to be a minister,” said Posey. “You talk good enough
for one.”
“Me? Shucks,” and Ben gave a long whistle. “I ain’t good enough for a
minister. Besides, I never could talk before folks as Theodore can. I
wish you could hear him lead the Endeavor meeting. I tried to once, and
my, I was so scared I didn’t know whether I was afoot or horseback.”
Posey’s eyes had grown wide. “Why, I thought it was only grown-up
people who were Christians and dreadfully good, like old Deacon Piper
and Mr. Hagood, who spoke in meetings.”
[Illustration: “WHEN I GET A FARM I SHALL NEED SOMEBODY TO KEEP THE
HOUSE.”—_Page 143._]
“This was just Endeavor meeting. But then that isn’t so at all.” Ben’s
tone was emphatic. “Boys and girls can be Christians; mother explained
that to me years ago. It’s just loving God best of all, and trying to
do as He wants us to. Folks don’t have to wait till they are grown
up to do that, or are awfully good, either. I’m glad they don’t,
or there wouldn’t be much show for me; my temper boils over about as
quick as Aunt Eunice’s teakettle. But I keep pegging away at it, and I
can hold on better than I could, I know, for some of the folks I trade
with are enough to provoke a saint. But that’s the only way to grow
good—keep trying. You can do that as well as anybody. And you love God,
don’t you?”
She shook her head as she answered mournfully, “I’m afraid not. I know
I don’t feel about Him as you do.”
“I’m sorry,” Ben said simply. “I wish you did. You don’t know what a
comfort it is when you get in a tight place and things seem to be mixed
up all in a tangle, to feel that God will make everything come out just
as is best for you. I really wish you did.”
Posey made no answer. She only reached up and caught a handful of
leaves from a tree they were passing under, and asked Ben what kind of
leaves they were. At the same time the fact that Ben Pancost, a boy
who had a freckled face, who laughed and joked and told funny stories,
who loved to skate, to coast, to play baseball, and in short enjoyed
all the things that boys did, should talk about loving God, and God’s
taking care of him, as though this was the most natural thing in the
world, made a deep impression on her mind, and one that never was
forgotten.
CHAPTER XI
A STORM, AND A SHELTER
Ben’s story, here given as a whole, had really been interrupted by
one or two business calls. It was evident, even to Posey, that Ben
was a decided favorite along the route; for in addition to his boyish
good-humor, his obliging ways, as well as his truthfulness and honesty,
had won for him many customers, and many friends among his customers.
Posey could hardly have told if she more admired or was amused by the
brisk, alert way in which he sorted over the bags of rags brought out
to him, made his bargains, and marshalled his array of tinware.
“The fact of the matter is,” he explained to Posey as he was making a
memorandum in his note-book of one quart, and one two-quart basin to
be brought the next trip, “I’m pretty well sold out of stock, except
milk pails, tin dippers, and nutmeg graters and the graters are a
fancy kind at twenty-five cents. That’s a little too high for them to
go easily. I guess I’ll tell Mr. Bruce—he’s the man I work for—that
he’d better not order any more; things that run from ten to twenty
cents sell the best. That’s about what a common bag of rags comes to,
and folks would rather not pay money besides. I’d rather not pay money,
either, for, you see, besides the profit on the rags I buy, there’s the
profit on the goods I sell; so when I haven’t what they want, if they
will wait I bring it next time I come, and I always take pains to pick
out what I think will suit, too.”
As it drew towards noon Posey suggested that they share the rest of the
contents of her basket. But Ben urged, “Wait a little.” And when a few
moments later coming over a hill they entered a small country village
he drew up before its modest hotel with a flourish, remarking as he did
so, “This train stops twenty minutes for refreshments.”
“But, Ben,” expostulated Posey, “I’m sure there’s enough for us both in
the basket.”
“That will do for lunch this afternoon. I tell you, the afternoons are
pretty long.”
“But you know,” and Posey hesitated over the words, “we will have to
pay if we eat here, and I haven’t any money.”
“Ho!” scoffed Ben. “I guess when I ask a young lady to take a ride with
me I can get her a bite to eat; that’s the proper thing to do. Besides,
I never took a girl riding before, that is, except my cousins, and I
want to do it up swell. Why, lots of the boys I know are always asking
the girls to go somewhere, though what they can find to say to each
other is more than I can imagine. And Fred Flood, only a year older’n I
am, has been engaged. He was engaged to Millie Grey for two weeks, then
they quarreled out, he burned all her letters in the back yard, and
they haven’t spoken to each other since.
“I s’pose, though,” Ben’s tone was reflective, “I shall come to it some
day; write notes to the girls, and go after ’em in my best clothes an’
with a choke collar, as Cousin George does. But I guess it will be some
time first,” and Ben laughed.
“It must make one feel real grown-up-like, though, to have a written
invitation,” remarked Posey. “I had a letter from a boy once,” the
dimples in her cheeks showing at the recollection.
“What was in it?”
“Oh, there was a shield made with red and blue crayons, and ‘U. S.’ in
big letters at the top and bottom of the paper; then it said,
“‘DEAR POSEY,
‘If you love me,
As I love you,
No knife can cut
Our love in two.’
The boy sent it to me in school one day.”
“What did you write back?”
“Nothing. I didn’t like the boy, anyway. Besides, I shouldn’t have
known what to write.”
“You might have written,
“‘The rose is red,
The violet blue,
Tansy is horrid,
And so are you.’”
And then they both laughed.
By this time a leisurely landlord in his shirtsleeves had made his
appearance, and with a hand on each hip, stood calmly looking them
over. “I would like my horse fed, and dinner for myself and this lady.”
Ben’s tone had its business accent as he jumped down and helped Posey
from the high seat to the ground.
“All right,” and stepping forward the landlord took the lines. “But
seems to me you’re rather a young couple. Wedding trip, I s’pose?”
“Tin wedding!” and Ben gave a jerk of his thumb towards the cart.
What a sumptuous banquet to Posey seemed that dinner. Surely fried
chicken was never before so good, and baked potatoes and squash so
toothsome, or peaches and cream so delicious; even the decidedly slabby
cake she ate with a relish. She had recovered from her fatigue, her
eyes shone, her cheeks were flushed with pleasant excitement; she was
ready to laugh at all of Ben’s nonsense, and the pleasantries of the
good-natured landlord who served them. While Ben, delighted at her
happy mood, as he looked at her and listened to her merry laugh, could
hardly realize that this was the same woeful little figure he had met
so few hours before.
They had not been long on the road again when Ben began to cast
doubtful glances at a dark cloud swiftly rising in the west. “I’m
afraid we’re going to have a shower,” he said at last. And then after
a few moments, “I know we are. I see the rain coming over those woods
now. It’s a mile or more away, but it’s working this way fast.”
“What will you do?” Posey questioned anxiously.
“I must try and get in somewhere. I’m pretty well fixed for storms,
with a big umbrella and oilcloth apron. I’ve a cover for the load, too,
but the trouble is I’ve got so many rags on now it won’t go over, so I
must find some place to drive in. Hurry up, Billy,” and he shook the
lines over the stout bay’s back. “I don’t know this road, either. I
always go the one next south; it has more houses, but the landlord said
there was a bridge down on it an’ I would have to come this way.”
“It’s beginning to sprinkle,” and Posey held out her hand. “I feel the
drops. But there’s a house just ahead; perhaps you can find a place
there.”
As they neared the white farmhouse they saw that a long woodhouse
stretched from one side, its old-fashioned arched opening toward the
road. “Can I drive under your shed?” Ben shouted to an old lady he saw
just inside. And then as the first gust of the swift-coming storm began
to patter thick about them, hardly waiting for a reply, he turned Billy
at a swinging trot up the drive, and in another moment they were safe
under shelter, while a whitely driving sheet of rain blotted out all
the outer world.
“You was just in the nick o’ time, wasn’t you?” said the little
round-faced old lady, who was busy catching and putting in a box a
flock of little turkeys that flew about the woodhouse squawking and
fluttering, while the mother turkey shook her red head and uttered a
dissonant protest.
“You see,” she explained, “if turkey chicks get wet it’s almost sure
to kill ’em. They’re the tenderest little creatures that ever was to
raise, an’ the hen turk’s no more sense than to trail out in the rain
with ’em, so I’m goin’ to put ’em where they’ll be safe. It’s dreffle
late to have little turks, but that hen beats all to steal her nest,
an’ seein’ she’s hatched ’em I thought I’d try an’ help her raise ’em.
They’ll be good eatin’ along in the winter.”
When the last scantily-feathered, long-necked turkey chick had, with
Ben and Posey’s help, been captured and placed in the box, and the
mother turkey had mounted the edge of it, they had time to notice
the neat rows in which the wood was piled, the ground swept hard and
clean as a floor, and the tin wash-basin hanging over a bench beside
the pump scoured till it shone like silver. “I guess it ain’t nothin’
but a shower,” chirruped their hostess; “come into the house an’ hev
some cheers while you wait. I’m glad you happened along, not that I’m
afraid, but it’s sort o’ lonesome-like to be alone in a storm.”
As she talked she led the way through the kitchen into a big
sitting-room, where a new rag carpet made dazzling stripes on the
floor, and the lounge and rocking-chair were gay with the brightest of
chintz. Posey had already decided that this was almost the nicest old
lady she had ever seen; there was something at once placid and cheerful
in both tone and manner, and a kindly good-nature seemed to radiate
even from her black silk apron. “I declare, for’t, if the rain isn’t
blowin’ in at that winder,” she exclaimed as she lowered a sash.
“Aren’t you afraid the wind will blow down those great trees on the
house?” asked Posey, as she glanced out a little fearfully at the
branches bending and twisting in the storm.
“La, no, child,” was the placid answer; “they’ve stood worse storms
than this. I don’t know what you would have done to have lived here as
I did when I was your age. Right in the woods we was then, with the
tall trees all around the log house; an’ in a big storm you could hear
crash, crash—the trees comin’ down in the woods, an’ didn’t know what
minute one would fall on the house. Once there come a real tornado—a
windfall, they called it them days; a man in the next town just stepped
to the door to look out, an’ a tree struck an’ killed him. Father
cleared away around our house, so there shouldn’t be any danger, as
soon as he could.”
“And did you live here when it was new as that?” asked Ben, whose
interest was at once aroused by anything that smacked of old-time
stories.
“To be sure I did. This part of Ohio was all woods when I come here.
We come all the way from Connecticut in a wagon, for there wasn’t any
other way o’ comin’ then; my father drove a ‘spike team,’ that is, a
horse ahead of a yoke of oxen; we brought what housen goods we could in
the wagon, an’ was forty days on the way. There wasn’t a family in two
miles at first, an’ nights we used to hear the wolves howlin’ ’round
the house.”
“And how did you feel?” asked Posey breathlessly.
The old lady laughed. “I was some scared along at first, though we
hadn’t no great call to be afraid o’ them, it was the sheep an’ young
cattle they was after. Why, along the first o’ father’s keepin’ sheep
he had to shut ’em up every night in a high pen; an’ after neighbors
got so thick we had a school a bear caught a pig one day, right in
sight o’ the schoolhouse.”
“What did you do?” questioned Ben.
“Oh, some of the boys ran for Mr. James, who lived nearest. He came
with his gun, but the bear got away.”
“I wish I could have lived in those days,” and Ben gave a long-drawn
sigh over the safe, commonplace period in which his lot had been cast.
“I think myself mebby we took more comfort then,” the old lady agreed
with fond retrospection. “We spun an’ wove all the cloth we had; the
shoemaker came around from house to house to make the shoes—‘whippin’
the cat,’ they called it; when a deer was killed all the neighbors had
a share of the venison, cooked before the big fireplace. To be sure,
there were _some_ things that wasn’t so pleasant. I remember once we
went without shoes till into December ’cause the shoemaker couldn’t
get around before; an’ another time father went to mill—twenty miles
through the woods it was—he had to wait three days for his grist to be
ground; we hadn’t a mite o’ flour or meal in the house, an’ mother
sifted some bran to get the finest an’ made it into bran bread. I tell
you, the boys an’ girls o’ to-day hain’t much idee o’ them times.”
She paused and looking at her listeners asked Ben abruptly, “Is this
your sister?”
Posey’s heart went pit-a-pat, but Ben answered promptly, “No, ma’am,
but she wanted to go my way, so I’m giving her a ride.”
She nodded. “I thought you didn’t favor one another.”
At that moment the slamming of a blind in an adjoining room called the
old lady away for a moment, and Posey seized the opportunity to whisper
to Ben, “She looks so nice and kind, do you suppose she would let me
live with her?”
“Can’t say,” he whispered back, “but it won’t do any harm to ask her.”
So when she returned, bringing a plate of seed cookies for her guests,
Posey hesitatingly made the request.
“La, child, I don’t live alone,” was the smiling answer. “My daughter
Manda, an’ Henry Scott, her husband, have lived with me ever since my
husband died. Not that I couldn’t live alone,” she added quickly, “for
though I’m seventy-five I hold my age pretty well, an’ chore about a
considerable. The reason I’m alone to-day is that Henry’s mother is
here on a visit. She’s one o’ them wimmen that’s always on the go, an’
to-day there wa’n’t no hold up but they must go over to see Manda’s
cousin Jane. They wanted me to go with ’em, but I said no, I wasn’t
gwine joltin’ off ten mile as long as I had a comfortable place to stay
in. When folks got to my age home was the best place for ’em, and I was
gwine to stay there,” and she gave a chirruping little laugh.
“Henry’s mother is younger’n I be—three years, five months an’ fifteen
days younger, but she don’t begin to be so spry. Has to have a nap
every day; an’ she’s got eight different medicines with her, an’ what
she don’t take she rubs on. It keeps her pretty busy a takin’ an’ a
rubbin’ on,” and she chuckled again at what evidently seemed to her
very amusing in one younger than herself.
“How old be you?” she asked, her mind coming back from Henry’s mother
to Posey, who was waiting with wondering eagerness.
“I shall be fourteen in December.”
“You ain’t very big of your age.”
“But I’m real strong,” urged Posey, who experienced a sudden sense of
mortification that she was not larger.
“You look as though you might be,” and the old lady looked over her
glasses at the well-knit, rounded little figure. “Where have you been
livin’?”
“Some fifteen miles from here,” answered Posey, who felt that exact
information would not be prudent. “But I couldn’t stay there any
longer,” she hastily added, “and as I haven’t any father or mother, I’d
like to find some nice people who wanted a girl to live with and help
them.”
“I really wish I knew of such a place for you, but Mandy, my daughter,
has all the family she can see to; and none of the neighbors needs
any one. But I dare presume you won’t have no trouble in findin’ some
one who wants just such a little girl.” So the old lady cheerfully
dismissed the subject without dreaming how absolutely homeless she
really was; and as the storm had now passed over filled both their
hands with cookies and with a smiling face watched the tin-wagon on its
way again.
CHAPTER XII
A PARTING OF WAYS
For a while Ben and Posey rode along almost in silence over the roads
beaten smooth and clean by the heavy shower, while the wayside ditches
were still noisy little rills, and the trees shook down showers of
raindrops with every passing breeze.
Posey, in spite of herself, could not help a sorrowful feeling of
discouragement at the failure of her first effort at home-finding. Not
so much for the refusal itself, though she felt that to live with such
a cheery old lady would be quite delightful, as the fear that other
attempts might be equally useless.
Ben, flicking his big bay horse softly with the tassel of his whip, was
evidently in a brown study. At last he turned to Posey, saying, “I’ve
been thinking what you had better do. I can’t take you home with me—as
I wish I could, for really I haven’t any home except as Uncle John
gives me one, and that’s forty miles from here and I don’t expect to
get there for a month or more; besides the house is so full that Aunt
Eunice hardly knows where to put us all as it is.”
“Oh, I didn’t expect you to make a home for me!” cried Posey.
“I’d like to. But last spring the man whose route it was on was sick,
so I went over into Farmdale for one trip, and there I saw such a nice
old lady, nicer if anything than the one we just stopped with. I guess
she took a fancy to me, for she wanted to know if I had a sister. Said
she wished she could find a real nice little girl to live with her, and
asked me if I knew of any one I thought would suit her. Now, Byfield’s
the next town, and Farmdale is only seven miles from there, and I
believe I’ll drive over there with you to-night and see her. Maybe I
can pick up some rags on the way, and I know Mr. Bruce won’t care when
I tell him about it.”
Posey at once agreed, and the faint anxiety that had begun to rise in
her mind as to what she would do when it came night was at once swept
away, for in Ben Pancost and his ability she had unlimited faith.
When they reached the straggling little railroad station of Byfield,
Ben said he must go to the store and take on what paper rags had been
gathered in since his last trip, and he left Posey to wait for him at
Byfield’s one small hotel while he did this.
It seemed to Posey that Ben was gone a long, long time, and when at
last he appeared it was with a very sober face. “I’m awful sorry,
Posey,” were his first words, “but when I got over to the store I found
a telegram there from Mr. Bruce to come to Cleveland as quick as I
could. He’s sent for me that way before and I know what it means. He’s
got an order for rags and hasn’t enough on hand to fill it. I just
looked at to-day’s market report in the paper and it gave paper rags as
‘heavy with a downward tendency,’ so I suppose Mr. Bruce is afraid of a
big drop and wants to get his off at once. I’ve agreed with a man here
to change horses till I come back. It’s four o’clock now and with a
fresh horse I can get to Cleveland by ten or eleven, then the rags can
be shipped in the morning, and a day’s delay may make a big difference
to Mr. Bruce.”
“I see,” murmured Posey.
“So you see why I can’t go with you to Farmdale, as I was going to.
But I’ll tell you how I’ve planned it. I’ve agreed with the landlady
for you to stay here all night, and there’s a stage runs to Farmdale
to-morrow that you can go over in. The worst of it is I don’t know the
nice old lady’s name or where she lives, for she wasn’t in her own home
when I saw her. But they called her ‘aunt’ at the place she was, so
they will be sure to know all about her, and I can tell you just where
that is. The village is built around the prettiest green you ever saw.
You go up on the west side till you come to a story-and-half white
house with green blinds, and big lilac bushes at the gate; there’s a
sign over the front door, ‘Millinery, and Dressmaking,’ so you can’t
miss the place.
“There were two ladies there, not young or really old, but sort o’
between like, you know. They were nice, too. Why, what do you think
one of them did? I had torn my coat on the wagon and she mended it
for me. Wasn’t that good? And I know they’ll be good to you. Just tell
them I sent you, and as soon as I come back I’ll come and see how you
are getting along. I’m awful sorry things have happened this way, but I
don’t see what else I can do.”
Ben had talked very fast, and as Posey listened she was conscious that
a lump was rising higher and higher in her throat. “It’s all right,
Ben,” Posey tried to speak with forced cheerfulness. “Only it seems as
though I’d known you always, and I don’t quite know what to do without
you,” and with all her effort her voice trailed off in a quiver.
“Why, that’s so,” Ben’s tone was emphatic. “It does seem as though we
had always known each other, don’t it?”
“And you’ve been _so_ good to me,” Posey continued. “I shall never
forget it, Ben, never! This has been the happiest day I ever knew.”
“Shucks!” exclaimed Ben, his own voice a trifle husky. “I haven’t done
anything but let you ride on the tin-cart; that wasn’t much, I’m sure.
Besides I’ve enjoyed it as much as you have.”
“Oh, but you have been good to me,” she repeated. “You came to me when
I hadn’t anybody in the whole world, and I was feeling so badly that I
almost wanted to die. Except my mamma nobody in all my life was ever so
good to me, not even dear Mr. Hagood, and I shall remember it always.”
“I wish I could have done more for you; and here—” slipping a couple of
silver dollars into her hand—“is a little money for your stage fare,
and anything else you may need. I’ve settled with the landlady for your
staying here to-night.”
“I sha’n’t take it, Ben,” Posey protested, as she tried to force the
money back. “You’ve paid for my dinner, and now for to-night, and you
have to work hard for your money. I sha’n’t take it, indeed I sha’n’t.
I can walk to Farmdale to-morrow as well as not.”
“Shucks!” retorted Ben more emphatically than before. “You won’t do
anything of the kind. Besides I’m going to adopt you for my sister, and
brothers ought to take care of their sisters. When I get a raise in my
salary I’ll send you to a fashionable boarding school. But I must be
off, only I feel dreadfully to leave you so.”
“Never mind,” said Posey bravely. “You said God took care of me to-day,
perhaps He will to-morrow.”
“That’s so,” answered Ben. “You and I’ll both ask Him, and I know He
will. And I’ll be around to Farmdale to see you by next week, sure;
so good-by till then.” And squeezing Posey’s hand till it would have
brought tears to her eyes had they not been there already, he hurried
away, while Posey stood at the window and watched the red cart, a
grotesque object, with its dangling fringe of old rubber boots, the
sacks of rags piled high on top and hiding from her view the driver, as
it went down the street and slowly lessened in the distance. Then she
turned away with a sigh, for Ben Pancost had passed beyond her sight.
With his going the brightness seemed to fade from the day. The fallen
leaves of a maple before the hotel drifted with a dreary little rustle
in the rising wind. The floor of the room was covered with oilcloth
on which her chair, whenever she moved it, made a mournful sound that
increased her sense of loneliness. The long dining-room looked empty
and forlorn when she answered the summons to supper and found herself
and a traveller out of temper, because he had missed his train, its
only occupants.
As the dusk deepened, Posey heard the merry voices of children in the
street, but she herself felt strangely old and unchildlike with a
burden of anxiety resting on her, and the memory of trouble and care
and perplexity rising like a cloud behind her. A kitten came capering
into the room; she coaxed it to her and tried to cuddle the ball of
fur in her arms, feeling even that companionship would be something;
but the kitten was of a roving nature and had rather have its own
frolicsome way than her tending. When the kerosene lamp was brought
in it smoked, and through the dingy chimney the big figured paper and
the cheap chromos on the wall looked more staring than before. Posey
during her years with Madam Sharpe had known a varied experience with
the parlors of cheap hotels and boarding-houses with their threadbare
carpets and shabby, broken-springed furniture, but she was sure that
she never saw so cheerless a room as that of the Byfield hotel.
No doubt after all Posey had been through in the last twenty-four
hours a reaction was sooner or later bound to come. So it was not
strange that she should suddenly have become conscious of being very,
very tired, as well as exceedingly sleepy, and before eight o’clock
she asked to be shown to her room, where she soon fell asleep with
Ben Pancost’s silver dollars clasped close in her hand against her
cheek. For those dollars stood to her not only as actual value, but as
kindliness and helpfulness, the sole friendship she had to rest on a
friend near and human, while that of God, whose care for the morrow she
had duly remembered to ask, seemed to her heavy little heart as far off
and mysterious.
When Posey woke the next morning after a long, dreamless sleep, she
started up as if expecting to hear Mrs. Hagood’s voice calling her, and
a dog she heard barking outside she thought for a moment was Rover.
But her unfamiliar surroundings quickly brought to her all that had
happened, and she lay back on her pillow with a feeling of surprise
that it should all be true. “I wonder what will happen to me to-day,
and where I shall be to-night?” she said to herself. “But Ben said he
knew God would take care of me,” and Ben’s faith became her confidence.
With morning, too, the world looked decidedly brighter than it had the
evening before; she had a good appetite for her breakfast, and when
the landlady who served the table in person explained that the table
waiter went away to a dance and hadn’t come back, and the cook was sick
that morning, and she had everything to do and didn’t know which way to
turn, Posey at once offered to help. “The stage doesn’t go for a long
time yet, and I’d just as soon wash the dishes as not,” and following
out into the kitchen she was soon plunged in a pan of foamy suds.
“You are good help,” was the landlady’s comment. “My husband’s dead and
I have the whole business to see to, and the profit isn’t much, but
I’ll give you a dollar a week to wash dishes if you’ll stay with me.”
Posey hesitated; work was what she wanted, but the landlady’s voice
had a sharp accent and there were fretty wrinkles between her eyes.
“I promised to go to an old lady in Farmdale,” she answered after a
moment, “but if I don’t get a place there I’ll come back to you.”
Posey had taken pains to shake and brush out the dust and all she could
of the disorder from her clothes. Before stage time she repacked the
contents of her bundle, and begging a newspaper and string made it
into a neat looking package, and when the stage started out it was a
tidy little figure that occupied a corner of the back seat. The ride
to Farmdale through the pleasant country roads was all too short for
Posey, who once more found herself among strangers, a solitary waif.
CHAPTER XIII
A DOOR OPENS
The stage stopped at the business end of Farmdale. Around three sides
of a sandy square were grouped the village hotel, the post-office, and
its few stores and shops; on the fourth side this square opened on a
long stretch of velvety green turf, around which, set in deep yards,
surrounded by trees, and embowered in shrubbery, were the comfortable,
well-ordered village homes. In the centre of this green, and midway
its length a fountain was falling into a circular stone basin and from
that flowing into a stone watering-trough, where a white horse with a
barefooted boy on its back was drinking. Beyond the fountain the ground
rose slightly and crowning this gentle swell three white churches set
side by side lifted their spires against the blue sky.
Posey walked slowly along the maple-shaded path, with bright colored
leaves above her and bright colored leaves rustling under her feet,
charmed with the peaceful air, the quiet beauty, and looking carefully
for a house to answer Ben Pancost’s description. It was not long till
she saw it—a modest white house with green blinds, the walls almost
covered with climbing roses and honeysuckles, while over the front door
hung the sign, its gilt lettering somewhat faded by time and storms,
MILLINERY AND DRESSMAKING.
A great lilac bush stood on each side of the small white gate by which
she entered, while syringas, flowering quince, and thickets of roses
gave promise of springtime bloom. The narrow, stone-flagged walk that
led to the side door was fringed with flowers, and ran along the edge
of a grassy bank or low terrace, below which were more flower beds
bordered with China pinks, besides homelier beds of garden vegetables,
while under sheltering rows of currant bushes a flock of white chickens
rolled in the dirt at their ease. Beyond the house lay an orchard, and
the side porch at which the walk ended was shaded by a great grapevine
heavy with purple clusters. A Maltese cat, sunning itself in sleepy
content on the steps, roused as she came up and rubbed against her with
a friendly purr. Over all the sunny little homestead rested an air of
thrift, order, peace, that filled Posey with a sense of restfulness;
why she could hardly have told.
Her knock on the green-paneled door was answered by Miss Silence
Blossom, one of the two whom Ben Pancost had described as “not young,
or really old,” but with the brightness of youth still lingering in her
eyes and her smile. The room into which she led Posey was large and
sunny with windows facing the south. In one corner was an open sewing
machine from which she had evidently just risen. In another corner
stood a square table covered with boxes of flowers and ribbons beside
which trimming a bonnet sat Mrs. Patience Bird, a younger sister of
Miss Silence, her sweet, gentle face touched by a shade of sadness,
reflected in the mourning dress she still wore for the young husband
whose picture was in the little pin at her throat. Behind the low
chair in which she sat was a tall case with long glass doors, filled
with ribbons, flowers, and hats, all in orderly array, for though this
was the work-room of busy workers there was no trace of litter or
confusion.
Mrs. Blossom, the mother, with a strong but kindly face, was watering
a stand of house plants. She, too, was a widow, but of more than half
a lifetime. The years when she had gathered her fatherless children
around her and, still a young woman, taken up a life alone and bravely
for herself and them had left their lines of energy, decision, and
firmness. And, last of the family group, in a large armchair by one of
the sunny windows with some white knitting in her hands, sat an old
lady, whose peaceful face not less than her drab dress, close white
cap, and snowy, folded kerchief, told that she was of the Quaker faith.
Posey took the chair offered her, suddenly embarrassed and shy under
the gaze of so many questioning eyes, and at last stammered abruptly,
“Ben said you would know where the old lady lived.”
“Ben who; and what old lady?” demanded Miss Silence, who in spite of
her name was the talker of the family.
“Why, the nice old lady who wants a girl to live with her. And you know
Ben; he’s the boy who drives the red tin peddler’s cart.”
“I know who she means,” spoke Mrs. Patience. “It is the boy who came
here last summer that Aunt Maria Ames took such a fancy to, and asked
him if he hadn’t a sister to live with her. I think,” to her mother,
“you and Grandmother were away that day. Don’t you remember, Silence,
you mended his coat for him?”
By this time Posey had found her tongue. “Yes,” she hastened to
add, “Ben said you did. He said he knew you were the best kind of
Christians.”
Mrs. Blossom smiled. “I hope Ben was right, though that seems to have
been a case of judging faith by works.”
“Well, Ben Pancost knows,” asserted Posey stoutly.
“He certainly impressed me as a very good boy,” said Miss Silence,
“truthful, frank, and manly. And so you wanted to come and live with
Mrs. Ames?”
“Yes, ma’am, Ben was almost sure she would let me.”
“That is too bad, for she has gone to Chicago to spend the winter with
her daughter.”
Posey’s face clouded with dismay. She had trusted implicitly to Ben.
What should she do if his plan for her failed?
Mrs. Blossom saw the look. “What is your name?” she asked.
“Posey.”
“And whose Posey?” Mrs. Patience questioned looking up from her work
with a gentle smile.
“Nobody’s,” was the mournful answer.
“And where is your home?” continued Mrs. Blossom.
“Nowhere,” answered Posey, a great sense of her forlornness rushing
over her and filling her eyes with tears.
“Now, see here,” Miss Silence’s tone was brisk and incisive; “you want
to tell the truth. Everybody has a surname and lives somewhere.”
“I have told the truth,” protested Posey hotly. “I haven’t anybody or
any home anywhere.”
“But where have you been living?”
Now Posey had gathered from Ben Pancost’s manner that while he
personally approved of her running away from Mrs. Hagood, he was
doubtful of the impression it might make on others, and she had
resolved to be very discreet and tell as little of that part of
her story as possible. But her indignation at the implication of
untruthfulness overmastered her prudence and she answered, “If you want
to know where I’ve lived I can tell you. I’ve lived with a clairvoyant
medium, and I’ve lived at the Refuge in Cleveland, and the last place
I’ve lived was with a Mrs. Hagood in Horsham.”
“Why, Horsham is twenty miles from here.”
“I wish it was twenty million miles.”
“But why?”
“Because,” her voice rising shrill with passion, “Mrs. Hagood was
horrid to me, and I ran away from her, I did; and I don’t care who
knows it, I don’t; and I’ll never go back to her for anybody, never,”
her cheeks flushing and her eyes flashing through her tears.
“In what way was Mrs. Hagood horrid to you?” questioned Mrs. Blossom.
For answer Posey tore open her collar and rolled up her sleeves showing
the marks still visible on her neck and arms. It needed now hardly an
inquiry to bring out the whole story, in which she omitted neither
what she had said to Mrs. Hagood nor the bite she had given her hand.
“And I’ll starve and die before I’ll go back to her,” she added in
conclusion.
“It’s a burning shame to treat a child like that, I don’t care what
she had done!” exclaimed Miss Silence. And Mrs. Patience added in her
gentle tone, “Poor child! wouldn’t you like something to eat?” for Mrs.
Patience had the idea that children were in a perpetual state of hunger.
“Was this Mrs. Hagood always cruel to you?” questioned Mrs. Blossom.
Posey hesitated a moment. “No, ma’am, I guess not. She gave me plenty
to eat, but she scolded me from morning till night, and wanted me to
work every minute. If she wasn’t always cruel she was never kind—” She
paused and looked from face to face—“and now I’m away from her I’m
going to stay away. The landlady at the hotel at Byfield will give me a
dollar a week to wash dishes, but I wish you knew of some other place
where I could live. I’d do everything I could to help, and I’d be real
good. I’m not bad always, indeed I’m not.” She did not say, “If I might
only stay here,” but her wistful eyes expressed the unspoken wish.
“Silence,” Mrs. Blossom spoke quickly, “will you go out in the orchard
and get some sweet apples to bake; and Posey can go with you.”
“Now, mother,” Miss Silence laid down in her lap the work she held,
“I don’t think it’s quite fair to send the child away while you and
Grandmother talk her over, for she knows as well as I that’s what you
would do. There’s only one thing _I_ shall consent to—that she stay
here till a suitable place is found for her.”
“Thee will always be the same impulsive, impetuous Silence as long as
thee lives.” Grandmother Sweet’s face crinkled in a smile. Though
an attentive listener she had not spoken before. She turned to her
daughter, “I have nothing to say for my part, Elizabeth, that the young
girl might not hear, indeed that I would not prefer she should hear.
“And in the first place, my dear,” to Posey, “thee is not free from
blame thyself; from thy own words thee has failed in duty to one older
than thyself, and yielded to the angry passion of thine own heart, and
thus, it well may be, has failed of the lesson God meant for thee. For
always remember, child, God puts us in no place he will not give us
strength to fill, or sends us no trial that will not be for our good if
rightly endured. At the same time if thy story is true, and thee has a
truthful look, I do not think thee has been justly or rightly treated,
or that thy return would be wise or best.”
Then turning again to her daughter, “The leading of the Lord seems to
have brought her to our door. What is thy mind, Elizabeth?”
“Thee has spoken it exactly,” answered Mrs. Blossom, who often used
the Friends’ language in talking with her mother. “As thee says, she
seems to have been led to us, and I hope the time will never come when
any of God’s children find ours a closed door.”
“Oh, if you will let me stay I’ll do my very best!” cried Posey. “Do
you know I said yesterday that I didn’t believe God cared anything for
me, but Ben Pancost said He did, that probably God sent him to help me
then, and that He would take care of me again to-day, and I just think
He has.”
“Dear child,” and Grandmother Sweet put one of her soft, tremulous
hands on Posey’s head, “God’s love and care is over thee always; never
doubt it, even if thee has not the outward evidence.”
“I am going out to Cleveland next week for goods,” remarked Mrs.
Patience, “and I can go out to the Refuge and arrange about Posey.”
Miss Silence nodded. “Yes, and you know Cousin Allen Gloin’s wife has a
sister in Horsham; she will doubtless know of this Mrs. Hagood.”
Posey lifted her head proudly, “I hope you will see everybody who knows
me, and ask them all about me, for then you will find that I have told
the truth.”
“We are not doubting your word,” Miss Silence assured her; “it is on
your account as well as ours that we want to learn as much as possible.”
“All the same I want you to know that it is true,” she answered. “And—”
hesitating a little, “if you know some one in Horsham couldn’t I send a
word to Mr. Hagood? He will worry about me, I know he will, and he was
always so kind that I wish he could know where I am and how good you
are to let me stay. He won’t tell Mrs. Hagood anything about it. I am
sure he won’t.”
CHAPTER XIV
POSEY BECOMES ROSE
Thus it was that Posey, who for so long had been drifted at the mercy
of adverse currents found herself, for a time at least, in a safe and
quiet harbor. Very quickly she fell into the simple household ways; she
washed the dainty old china for Mrs. Blossom; she dusted the carefully
kept rooms; she pulled bastings and whipped edges for Miss Silence;
she ripped braid and wound ribbons for Mrs. Patience, watching her the
while as with hat-block in lap her deft fingers “sewed over” a hat or
bonnet into a different shape—for at that time this was part of the
work of a village milliner; and last but by no means least she listened
to Grandmother Sweet’s gentle counsels and gentler admonitions. While
in this atmosphere of cheer and kindliness her young heart that had
known such scant measure of either, expanded like a flower in the
sunshine.
From the first time she heard it the name Posey had been anything but
pleasing to Grandmother Sweet’s Quaker ears, and the next day after
her coming, when she had given as full an account as she could of her
varied life, the old lady began to question her.
“And now what is thy real name, my child? For surely thy mother never
gave thee ‘Posey’ for a life name.”
“I don’t know as I have any other,” answered Posey in surprise, for
it was something she had never thought of before. “My mother, I can
remember, often called me ‘Rose,’ and her ‘little Rose,’ but she called
me ‘Posey,’ too; so did my father and the neighbors, and Madam Sharpe,
and I always supposed that was all the name I had.”
“Thee can depend upon it,” was the old lady’s decided answer, “‘Posey’
was only that foolish custom—a nickname—of which I cannot approve.
“And as to thy surname, does thee not know that either? It seems
anything but right that thee should continue to bear—especially as it
is not thy own, the name of that wicked adventuress.”
Posey shook her head. “You know I was so little when my mother and
father died, and Madam Sharpe called me by her name from the first. I
think she wanted me to forget all I could for fear I might find some
one who would take me away from her. I know whenever I asked her what
my name was she would say she had forgotten, but I didn’t believe her
then. Lately, I have tried to remember it, but I can’t. I know my
mother’s first name was Kate, because I have her Bible, and that is the
name written in it.”
“Will thee let me see it?”
Posey at once brought the little velvet covered Bible, and the book of
child verse, now decidedly the worse for wear and age. On the fly leaf
of the Bible was primly written, “Kate, from Aunt Sarah.”
In the other book was apparently no writing, but after examining it a
moment grandmother asked, “Silence, will thee bring me a damp sponge?
If I am not mistaken a leaf has been pasted down here.”
The sponge was brought, and the page when moistened readily lifted,
proving Grandmother Sweet’s suspicion correct, and revealing to the
onlookers, written in a delicate hand,
“To Rose Shannon, on her fourth birthday, December 12th.”
“There!” Grandmother Sweet’s tone was triumphant, “now we have thy
rightful name, and thee shall be Rose to us, as thee was to thy
mother,” and she patted the curly brown head.
“But why do you suppose she pasted the leaf down instead of tearing it
out?” questioned Miss Silence.
“I think,” replied Posey, or rather Rose, “it was because the colored
picture on the other side of the leaf was a favorite of mine, and if it
was gone I would be sure to miss it.”
So it was without any purpose of her own, or a thought on the part of
any one of concealing her identity, that with the very beginning of
life under new conditions Posey Sharpe became Rose Shannon, and, or so
it seemed to her, with the old name the old life also dropped away.
Rose was delighted to possess a name that was hers by right, that
was her very own, but at first it sounded strangely unfamiliar, and
sometimes she failed to recognize it as belonging to herself; but very
soon she grew as accustomed to it as to the placid round of the Blossom
household.
In a short time Mrs. Patience made her trip to Cleveland, and made the
promised call at the Refuge. Here she found that a letter had been
received from Mrs. Hagood, full of complaints that Posey was an idle,
troublesome, ungrateful girl, who had left her for no cause whatever;
but at the same time demanding that she be sent back at once. For Mrs.
Hagood had supposed, as Rose thought, that she would return to the
Refuge. Mrs. Patience’s account, however, put the matter in a very
different light. The superintendent was deeply indignant, and as the
Blossoms had friends who were known to him, he gladly consented that
she should remain with them till a more permanent provision could be
made.
It was on this one point of Rose’s history, the cause and manner of
her leaving Mrs. Hagood, that the Blossoms decided reticence to be
best. As Mrs. Blossom said, “Mrs. Hagood is a stranger to us, and
admitting that she was at fault, it seems to me neither kind nor right
to repeat what might give others an unfavorable impression.”
Gentle Grandmother Sweet’s advice to Rose was, “The best way to keep
from speaking of it is to put it out of thy thoughts, through that
spirit of forgiveness, which we who err so often should always be ready
to show.”
Not long after Mrs. Patience’s return from the city Rose received an
offer of a home for the winter, with fifty cents a week wages, and the
privilege of attending school afternoons. As she had seldom possessed a
cent she could call her own this seemed like a small fortune; besides,
as she had told Ben Pancost, she understood more than most of her age
what it cost to live, and so was the quicker to see that with all the
Blossoms’ generous hospitality, economy was carefully considered.
For they were far from rich, this houseful of women with no outside
breadwinner to depend on, and with her sturdy, independent nature
Rose shrank from being a burden on them, the more so because of their
affectionate kindness. Miss Silence and Mrs. Patience having taken Rose
under their wing were unwilling she should go, unless into a permanent
home, but Mrs. Blossom held that Rose should decide the question for
herself, especially as she would still be in the village where they
could watch over her. While Grandmother Sweet placidly observed,
“Providence seems to have opened the place for Rose, and the openings
of Providence are usually for some wise purpose.”
The offer had been most unexpected. Miss Fifield had come to Silence
Blossom to have a dress fitted, and in the familiar conversation which
accompanied the process she had remarked that she and her sister were
doing their work themselves as the hired girl had gone home sick. “Of
course,” she explained, “we have Ellen Gill in to do the washing and
ironing and scrubbing; not but that we could do it all, for it was my
father’s boast that his daughters were thoroughly capable. And they
all are but Eudora; she will not, and while I’m willing to do my share
I’m not willing to do mine and other people’s too. I don’t believe
Eudora would soil her hands if her life depended on it. If you’ll
believe me, Silence Blossom, she has gone and made a mop to wash dishes
with. It makes me sick, it positively does, to see her mopping the
dishes off, and lifting them out with a fork, for fear the dishwater
will make her hands rough.” And Miss Fifield, tall, spare, and angular,
who counted all attempt at personal adornment the sign of a weak mind,
gave a little sniff of contempt.
At this moment Rose came into the sitting-room to bring Grandmother
Sweet a piece of fresh sponge cake, her first triumph in real
cake-making under Mrs. Blossom. Miss Fifield through the partly open
door of the bedroom which also served as fitting-room, regarded her
neat gingham work-apron and animated, rosy face with evident approval.
“Who is that young girl?” she asked. “I don’t remember to have ever
seen her before.”
“She is Rose Shannon,” Miss Silence answered as well as she could
with her mouth full of pins. “She came to Farmdale with the idea that
she could live with Aunt Maria Ames, and is staying with us for the
present.”
Miss Fifield prided herself on her prompt decisions, and the idea at
once occurred to her that such a tidy little handmaid would be pleasant
and useful to have.
“If she wants to she can come to us; we will give her a home, and
something besides.”
Silence Blossom was measuring Miss Fifield’s bony arm for the sleeve.
“I don’t know,” her voice dubious; “Rose was planning to go to school
when it opened next term.”
“I think we could manage for her to go afternoons; there isn’t much to
do after dinner. I suppose,” she added, “that Eudora and Brother Nathan
will object. They never agree on anything only in opposing me, but what
I undertake I intend to carry through.”
But for once Miss Fifield was mistaken, Miss Eudora heartily agreed
with the plan. She could put on gloves to sweep, and cake and pastry
making were something any lady might do with dignity; but dish-washing
even with the aid of a mop, she viewed with horror. Furthermore, her
sister refused to wash the dishes a day over half the time.
Squire Nathan Fifield, the middle-aged brother who with the two
middle-aged sisters made up the Fifield family, caustically remarked
that he should think two able-bodied women could do the work for
themselves and one man, but if they couldn’t they would have to settle
the matter their own way. “Only,” he warned them, “it is very likely
this is the child of low-bred foreigners, and if she turns out to be a
little liar, and a thief, I want you to remember that it was you that
brought her here, not me.”
But the sisters, noways daunted by this foreboding, offered Rose the
place and, as we have seen, she accepted the offer.
CHAPTER XV
AT THE FIFIELDS’
The Fifields were the oldest family in Farmdale, and lived in the most
pretentious house. Rose had greatly admired the old home with its
high-pillared porch set behind tall hedges of prim cedar, and a view of
the interior only increased the feeling. To her eyes the claw-footed
tables and tall bedsteads with canopy tops were most imposing; and the
dimly lighted, seldom used parlor with its real lace curtains, its
carpet laid in great wreaths of roses, its gilt-framed mirror, and
its damask upholstered, mahogany furniture, was a really magnificent
apartment, including as it did the family portraits, and Miss Eudora’s
girlish efforts at painting on velvet.
Rose’s position in the family had been the subject of some discussion,
for Eudora Fifield had all her life sighed for a maid arrayed in a
white cap and apron, and it had been one of her numerous grievances
that of the array of independent spirited help who had filed in and out
of the Fifield kitchen one and all had flatly refused to conform to
such usage.
“But Rose,” she argued, “has been brought up in a city, where the
manners of the lower classes are so different. Why, when I visited Aunt
Morgan in Albany, her servants treated me with a deference you never
see here. Her parlor-maid always brought in the callers’ cards and the
letters on a salver; perhaps she would be willing to do that.”
Jane Fifield gave a snort, “As long as Nathan brings your letters in
his coat pocket and hands them to you, and we haven’t a caller once
a month, I think you won’t have much use for a salver. Besides the
Blossoms make her one of the family, and Mrs. Blossom particularly said
that she should never consent to her going to any place where she would
not be taken an interest in, but simply thought of as a little drudge.”
Miss Eudora drew a little sigh at the vanishing of the cap and salver,
but quickly caught herself as she remembered the dish-washing. “Well,”
she admitted, “I suppose it’s better to concede some points than not
have her come at all.”
* * * * *
“I wonder,” suddenly spoke Silence Blossom as she sat basting the
facing on a skirt the day after Rose left, “how Rose is getting on at
the Fifields’, and if she has heard anything yet about Eudora’s visit
to Albany? I don’t believe I’ve seen her any time since that she hasn’t
made some reference to it. I have often wondered what she would have
done if she hadn’t made that visit.”
“But you know,” urged Mrs. Patience, “she and Jane both live such
monotonous lives, with hardly an interest outside themselves, how can
they help but go over the same thing again and again?”
“I can tell one thing that would have happened if Eudora had not made
that Albany visit,” remarked Mrs. Blossom, who from an adjoining room
had overheard the conversation, “she would have been a happier woman
to-day. She came back from that taste of city life completely out of
tune with everything and everybody in Farmdale, and she has never got
in tune since.”
“I am afraid,” observed Grandmother Sweet placidly, “that thee is
sitting in judgment on thy neighbors.”
“La, Grandmother,” and Miss Silence’s brisk, heartsome laugh rippled
out, “a body can’t help having opinions, though I don’t always express
mine outside the family. And you know what we said of Jane and Eudora
was true.”
“I know,” admitted Grandmother Sweet with a sigh, “though we ought to
look even at truth with the eyes of charity. But I have a hope that the
coming of a fresh young life, like Rose’s, into the Fifield home, if
only for a season, will bring a fresh interest and brightness with it.”
* * * * *
As for Rose, she had been but a little while with the Fifields till
she began to realize the difference between that and the Blossoms.
Especially was she quick to notice the petty friction, the note of
jarring discord, that made up the atmosphere at the Fifields’. What one
wanted another was sure to object to, what one said was immediately
disputed; the sisters nagged Mr. Nathan, and he in turn nagged his
sisters. No doubt at heart they loved each other, but the delicate
consideration for each other’s wishes, and the gentle courtesy of
affection, that so brightened the Blossom home was wholly absent here.
Another thing she could not but see was the prevailing tone of
discontent. Though the lives of Miss Fifield and Miss Eudora were
much easier than those of Miss Silence and Mrs. Patience, the one was
always complaining of the dullness of Farmdale, and the other making
bitter reflections on life in general. Had Rose come directly from Mrs.
Hagood’s all this might have escaped her notice, but her stay in the
white cottage with its sweet-spirited inmates had given her a glimpse
of a different life, an ideal that would always linger with her.
As the two houses were not the length of the green apart Rose was a
frequent visitor at the Blossoms’. “Did your plants freeze last night?”
she asked as she came in one afternoon. “Miss Eudora lost some of
her very prettiest ones. She says it was because Mr. Nathan didn’t
fix the fire right, and he says it was because she didn’t put the
window down tight. They were quarreling over it when I came away, and
yesterday they disputed all day whether the meat bill came in Tuesday
or Wednesday.”
“There, there, Rose,” interrupted Mrs. Blossom, “you are a member of
the Fifield family now, and have no right to repeat or we to listen to
anything you may see or hear there.”
Grandmother Sweet laid down her knitting, “As thee goes through life,
Rose, thee will find many people whose lives seem not to be ordered by
the law of love; at such times always remember that silence is not only
the part of prudence but of true charity. At the same time thee can
learn to avoid the mistakes thee sees others make.”
“Well,” Rose spoke with emphasis, “I will try to avoid the mistake
of squabbling all the time over trifles—I’m not saying that any one
does so, you know, and when I get to be an old lady I’m going to be as
gentle and lovely as Grandmother Sweet,” and she gave her a hug and a
kiss.
On her part Rose had gone to the Fifields’ with the firm resolve to do
her very best. On her first coming to the Blossoms’, while her nerves
were still keyed up in a tension of excitement, little had been said to
her in regard to the manner of her leaving Mrs. Hagood. But after she
had calmed down to her normal self Mrs. Blossom had talked to her very
seriously of the danger of yielding to passion and impulse, and had
shown her that in spite of all she had to endure what trouble she might
easily have brought on herself, and how much worse off she might have
been because of her hasty action. So that Rose instead of thinking it
a very fine, brave act to have run away, as she was at first inclined,
began to feel that it was something to regret, and be ashamed of, and
because of which she must do exceedingly well indeed, to win and hold a
high opinion.
As Rose was neat and deft, and above all anxious to please, she soon
became quite a favorite with the two middle-aged Fifield sisters, and
Miss Eudora inclined to make a confidante of her.
“So you have lived in cities most of your life?” she said one morning
as Rose was dusting her room.
“Yes, but I like the country better.”
“You do?” exclaimed Miss Eudora, pausing with a curl half brushed,
for, unlike her sister, she affected the willowy, the languishing; she
liked garments that flowed, ribbons that fluttered, and still framed
her little wrinkled face in the curls that had been the pride of her
girlhood.
“Now, I think it is perfectly delightful to live in a city. I spent a
winter in Albany, with my Aunt Morgan some years ago. What a winter
that was—” and she clasped her hands, “one round of gayety and
amusement. Aunt made a large party for me, I shall have to show you a
piece of the dress I wore. Aunt said she was proud of me that night,
and I’m sure,” with a little simper, “I had compliments enough. I
suppose,” and she gave her grey curls a toss, “it’s my own fault that
I’m not living in Albany to-day.”
“If you liked it so well why didn’t you stay?” asked Rose.
“When a young girl has the admiration I had, she doesn’t always know
what she does want. But I can tell you I made quite an impression on
Some One that evening.”
“How did you look then?” Rose was trying to imagine Miss Eudora as a
young girl.
“Oh, just as I do now,” with a complacent glance in her mirror. “I
haven’t changed as some people do. Not long ago I met a friend—well,
an old admirer, and he said he would like to know what I did to keep
myself so young; that I didn’t look any older than I did when he first
knew me. I think my hair may have something to do with that; curls do
have a youthful effect. That’s the reason, I believe, Jane is always
wanting me to put mine back.
“Jane,” and she sank her voice to a whisper, “was always plain, and
never received the admiration, or was the favorite with gentlemen I
was, and it has always made her jealous of me. But I’m fond of my
curls,” giving them a shake. “Why, I even had a poem written on them
once, and I sha’n’t put them up, at least not till I begin to grow old.”
Rose listened in amazement. She was sure Miss Silence was younger
than Miss Eudora, her hair was not grey, nor her face marked with such
little fine lines, and neither she nor Mrs. Patience ever talked like
that. It was all very queer, and most of all that Miss Eudora _could_
fancy that she looked young.
“You were a long time doing the chamberwork,” Miss Fifield remarked
when Rose went downstairs. Miss Fifield was in the kitchen baking, her
scant house dress clinging to her angular figure, and her grey hair
drawn back with painful tightness.
Rose noted the contrast between the two sisters as she answered, “Miss
Eudora was talking to me.”
“What about?” a trifle sharply.
Rose hesitated slightly. “Several things; her visit to the city for
one.”
“I’ll warrant. Perhaps you found it interesting, but when you have
heard the same story twenty-seven years, as I have, twenty-seven years
this winter, it will get to be a weariness of the flesh; that and her
lovers.” She shot a keen glance at Rose, who could not help a giggle.
Miss Jane Fifield shook the flour from her hands with energy. “I used
to hope that Eudora would grow sensible sometime, but I’ve about given
it up. One thing I am thankful for, that there is something inside of
my head, and not all put on the outside!” and she shut the oven door
with a force that threatened danger to the lightness of the pound cake
she was baking.
CHAPTER XVI
UNDER A CLOUD
Rose had been a few weeks at the Fifields, long enough to learn the
family ways, so that Miss Fifield felt she could leave home for a
long-planned visit. It was a stormy day, and Mrs. Patience suddenly
exclaimed, “I wonder who can be coming this way in such a hurry? Why, I
believe—yes, it is Rose, running as fast as she can. I hope Eudora is
not sick.”
Almost as she spoke the door opened and Rose rushed in, snow-powdered
and breathless; her hat blown partly off, her face wet with tears as
well as snow flakes, and her voice broken and thick with sobs, as
without giving time for any questions she burst out:
“You said it was a leading of Providence for me to go to the Fifields’.
But it wasn’t; and he says he will have me put in jail if I don’t tell
where the money is. And _how_ can I tell when I don’t know? Maybe God
cares for some folks, but I’m sure He doesn’t for me or I wouldn’t have
so much trouble. I wish I was dead, I do!” and flinging herself down on
the well-worn lounge she buried her face in the pillow and burst into a
storm of sobs.
What did it all mean? They were equally perplexed by the mystery and
distressed by Rose’s evident grief. Mrs. Patience drew off her things
and tried to calm her with soothing words; Miss Silence brought the
camphor bottle—her remedy for all ills. But Rose only cried the harder
till Mrs. Blossom kindly, but with the authority that comes of a calm
and self-controlled nature, said, “Rose, you _must_ stop crying, and
tell us what is the trouble.”
Then choking back her sobs Rose lifted her tear-swollen face and
exclaimed, “Oh, Mrs. Blossom, Mr. Fifield says I have taken a hundred
dollars! A hundred dollars in gold! And I don’t know one thing more
about it than you do, but he won’t believe me, and he calls me a thief,
and everybody will think I am awful, when I want to be good, and was
trying so hard to do my best. What shall I do?” and she wrung her
hands with a gesture of utter despair.
Further questioning at last brought a connected story, from which
it appeared that Nathan Fifield had a hundred dollars in gold, that
from some whim he had put for safe keeping in the parlor stove. That
morning, going around the house to tie up a loose vine, he had glanced
through the parlor window and seen Rose at the stove with the door
open. And when, his suspicion aroused, he had looked for the money it
had been to find it gone, and at once had accused Rose of the theft.
“And he says I showed guilt when I saw him,” Rose wailed, “and I did
start, for I was frightened to see a face looking in at the window, and
with the snow on the glass I didn’t know at first who it was.”
“But what were you in the parlor, and at the stove for?” questioned
Mrs. Blossom.
“I was dusting the front hall and the parlor. Miss Fifield sweeps the
parlor once a month and I dust it every week, though I don’t see the
need, for those are all the times anybody ever goes into it. Some
feathers came out of the duster, it’s old and does shed feathers, and
I had opened the stove door to throw them in. I didn’t know there was
ever any money in a little leather bag in there; I never dreamed of
such a thing. And if I had I shouldn’t have touched it. Madam Sharpe
always trusted me with her purse, and I never took a penny from her.
I’m not a thief, if he does say that I am. But they won’t believe me.
Miss Eudora is just as certain, and I shall have to go to jail, for I
can’t tell where the money is.”
“Poor child!” and Grandmother Sweet stroked the head that had gone
down in Mrs. Patience’s lap. “It is borne on my mind,” and she glanced
around the little group, “that Rose is wholly innocent, and that
mindful of her youth and inexperience it were well for some of us to
see Neighbor Fifield if an explanation of the mystery cannot be found.
“No,” with a wave of her hand, as both of her granddaughters made a
motion to rise, “Silence, thee is apt to be hasty and might say more
than was seemly; and Patience, thee inclines to be timid, and might not
say as much as was needful. Thy mother is the one to go; she has both
prudence and courage.”
“Oh, how good you are to me!” Rose exclaimed. “And never so good as
now! I thought you would believe me, I just felt it would kill me if
you didn’t, and now that I know you do I won’t be afraid of anything.”
Mrs. Blossom was already wrapping herself in her cloak. “Come, Rose,
put on your things; the sooner this is sifted the better,” and Rose, as
many another had done before her, felt a new comfort and strength in
Mrs. Blossom’s strength.
They found Mr. Fifield and his sister hardly less excited than Rose.
“You cannot regret, Mrs. Blossom, any more than I do, this most
distressing occurrence,” and Mr. Nathan rubbed his flushed bald head
with his red silk handkerchief. “I would rather have given the money
twice over than have had it happen. But I must say that it is no more
than I expected when my sisters persisted, against my judgment, in
bringing into the house a girl of whose ancestors they knew nothing,
and who most likely is the child of some of the foreign paupers who
are flooding our shores. I’m sorry, though not surprised, that it has
ended as it has.”
Mr. Nathan was really troubled and sorry, as he said, but he could not
help a spark of self-satisfaction that he had been proven in the right
and his sisters in the wrong. As for Miss Eudora, keenly mortified
at the turn matters had taken, her former friendliness to Rose only
increased her present indignation.
“It’s not only the loss of the money,” she exclaimed, “but the
ingratitude of it, after all our kindness to her, and I gave her my
pink muffler; she never could have done what she has if she had not
been really hardened.”
“But what proof have you that she took the money?” asked Mrs. Blossom.
“As you say she is a stranger to us all, a friendless, homeless orphan,
whose condition is a claim to our charity as well as our generosity.”
“Proof,” echoed Mr. Nathan. “Pretty plain proof I should call it, and
I’ve served three terms as Justice of the Peace. Last Saturday the
money was safe in its place of concealment. This morning I surprised
her there and her confusion on discovery was almost evidence enough of
itself. When I look for the package it is gone, and during this time
not a soul outside the immediate family has been in the house. I regret
the fact, but every circumstance points to her as the guilty one.”
“For all that,” Mrs. Blossom’s voice was calmly even, “I believe there
is some mistake. At the Refuge they told Patience they had always
found her truthful and honest, and while she was with us we never saw
anything to make us doubt that she was perfectly trusty. I did not even
know of her meddling with what she ought not to.”
“Oh, she’s a sly one,” and Mr. Nathan rubbed his head harder than
before. “She has taken us all in—and that includes myself, and inclines
me still more to the belief that this is not her first offence; and
also to the opinion that she should be promptly dealt with.”
“At the same time I hope,” urged Mrs. Blossom, “that you will do
nothing hastily. Imprisonment is a terrible thing for a young girl like
Rose, and might blast her whole life. Time makes many things clear, and
it is always better to err on the side of mercy than of justice.”
“Certainly, certainly. And I do not know,” lowering his voice so it
might not reach Rose, “that I should really send her to jail; but the
law—” and he waved his hand with his most magisterial air, “the law
must be a terror to evil-doers. If not, what is law good for? We might
as well not have any, and my social as well as my official position
demands that I enforce it.”
“And she deserves to be well punished, if ever any one did.” Miss
Eudora gave an indignant shake to her curls as she spoke. “And I was
just thinking of giving her the blue cashmere I had when I went to
Albany. Jane is always complaining of what she calls my ‘shilly-shally’
ways, and finding fault with my lack of decision, and I feel that at
whatever cost to myself I must be firm in this. Though nobody knows
what a shock it has been to my nerves.”
“Besides,” triumphantly added Mr. Nathan Fifield, who felt that he was
on the defensive before Mrs. Blossom, and holding up as he spoke an
old-fashioned, richly chased gold locket, “here is further evidence.
While Rose was gone Eudora made an examination of her effects and this
is what she found concealed in a pincushion. Now I leave it to you if
it looks reasonable that a child in her position would have a valuable
trinket like that; or if she had, would keep it hidden?”
When they entered the house Mrs. Blossom had told Rose to stay in
another room, but through the partly opened door she caught a glimpse
of the locket as it swung from Mr. Nathan’s fingers.
“That is mine!” she cried, darting in. “My very own, and it was my
mother’s. What right have you with it, I should like to know? And why
isn’t it stealing for you to go and take my things?”
“Hush, Rose!” Mrs. Blossom reproved. And then her faith in Rose a
little shaken in spite of herself, “If the locket is yours, as you say,
why did you never tell us about it? And why did you hide it so?”
“Why, I never once thought of it,” she answered, looking frankly up at
Mrs. Blossom. “I don’t think the locket is pretty at all, it is so
queer and old-fashioned, and I don’t even know whose picture is inside.
All the reason I care for it is because it was my mother’s. And I sewed
it up in that pincushion, which one of the teachers at the Refuge gave
me, because I was afraid if Mrs. Hagood saw the locket she might take
it away from me.”
“I wonder if this could have been her mother’s father,” for Mrs.
Blossom’s mind at once turned to the subject she had thought of so
often—that of Rose’s family.
“There was a chain to the locket once, but I broke and lost that. I
remember that mamma used sometimes to let me wear it, and it seems to
me she said it was Uncle Samuel’s picture, but I’m not sure.”
“It certainly is a good face.” And Mrs. Blossom held out the open
locket to Miss Eudora, who as she took it let it drop from her fingers
that the unwonted excitement had made tremulous. In striking the floor
a spring was pressed to a compartment behind the picture, and as Mr.
Nathan Fifield stooped to pick it up a piece of closely folded paper
fell out.
Mrs. Blossom hastily spread this out, and found it the marriage
certificate of Kate Jarvis and James Shannon, dated at Fredonia, N.
Y., some sixteen years before. “Here is a clue to Rose’s family,” she
exclaimed, as they all clustered about the bit of time-yellowed paper,
forgetting for the moment the cloud that rested so heavily over Rose.
“It surely should be,” responded Mr. Nathan.
“I shall write to Fredonia at once,” continued Mrs. Blossom. “And as
the minister whose name is signed may in the meantime have died or
moved away, my best course would be to write first to the postmaster
for information, would it not?”
[Illustration: “HERE IS A CLUE TO ROSE’S FAMILY.”—_Page 216._]
“That is what I should advise.” Squire Nathan was never so happy as
when giving advice. “It might be well to inclose a letter to the
minister, and also a copy of the marriage certificate. If Rose has
any relatives living she ought to trace them by this. Though whether
she is likely to prove any credit to her family or not is doubtful,”
he added, recalling with a frown the fact that she was a suspected
criminal.
“I have faith in her that she will.” Mrs. Blossom’s tone was decided.
“And if you are willing to let matters rest for the present I will, if
you have no objections, take Rose home with me.”
“I shall be only too glad to have you, for my part.” Miss Eudora’s tone
was fervent. “After what has happened I don’t feel that I could endure
her in the house another day.”
“And of course I shall consider you responsible for her safekeeping,”
added Mr. Nathan. “She admits that she ran away once; she may do so
again.”
“No, I won’t, you need not be afraid.” Rose’s voice was trembling, but
she held it firm.
“For you understand,” with emphasis, “that I am not dropping the matter
of the missing money, but only, at your request, passing it over for
the present. I will repeat, however, that if Rose will confess and
return the money, no one but ourselves shall ever know of it. If she
does not I shall feel myself constrained, much as I may regret the
necessity, to resort to more severe measures,” and he blew his nose
with a great flourish of his red silk handkerchief by way of emphasis.
CHAPTER XVII
SUNSHINE AGAIN
So absorbed was Rose in her trouble that she took little or no interest
in the attempt to discover her family, or the discussions that took
place in the Blossom household as to its probable result. “I don’t
believe I have any relatives,” she said indifferently, “or they would
have looked after me when my mother and father died. And even if I have
they wouldn’t want to own any one accused of stealing.”
That was the burden of all her thoughts; she woke in the morning to
a sense of overwhelming calamity, and went to sleep at night with
its pressure heavy on her heart. When Grandmother Sweet had mildly
questioned if in the discovery of the marriage certificate she did not
see the hand of Providence, she had replied, with the irritability of
suffering, that she didn’t believe in Providence at all. “I might,”
she had added, “if that money could be found; I sha’n’t till then.”
For to Rose the executioner’s sword had not been lifted, only stayed
for the time. Visions of arrest and imprisonment were constantly before
her, all the more terrifying that the vagueness of her knowledge as to
their realities left ample room for her imagination. “_How_ can I tell
where the money is when I don’t know?” was the question she repeated
over and over. “And you know what he said he would do if I didn’t tell?”
She refused to go to school for fear her schoolmates had heard of her
disgrace. She cried till she was nearly blind, and fretted herself
into a fever, till Mrs. Blossom, fearing she would make herself really
sick, talked to her seriously on the selfishness as well as the harm
of self-indulgence, even in grief, and the duty as well as the need of
self-control.
Rose had never thought of her conduct in that light before, and left
alone she lay for a long time, now thoroughly aroused from her morbid
self-absorption, and looking herself, as it were, fully in the face.
The fire crackled cheerily in the little stove, the sunshine came in
at the window of the pleasant, low chamber, on the stand by her bed
were a cup of sage tea Grandmother Sweet had made for her, a glass of
aconite Mrs. Patience had prepared, and a dainty china bowl of lemon
jelly Miss Silence had brought to tempt if possible her appetite. Mute
evidence, each and all of kindly affection, that touched Rose and
filled her with a sense of shame that she had made such poor return for
all that had been done for her.
Rising with a sudden impulse, she went to the little glass, pushed
back the tumbled hair from her tear-swollen face, and sternly took
herself to task. “I’m ashamed of you, I am indeed, that after you have
been taken into this home, and cared for, you should be so ungrateful
as to make every one in it uncomfortable now, because you happen to
be in trouble; and should have shown yourself as disagreeable, and
selfish, and thoughtless as you have. Not one of them would have done
so, you may be sure; and if you ever expect to grow into a woman that
people will respect and love as they do Grandmother Sweet, or Mrs.
Blossom, or Miss Silence, or Mrs. Patience, you _must_ learn to control
yourself. And now, to begin, you must brush your hair, bathe your eyes,
go downstairs and do as you ought to do. I know it will be pretty hard,
but you _must_ do it.”
It was hard. With a morbid self-consciousness that every one could not
but know of her trouble she had hidden, shrinking from the village
folk who so often came in; she was so weak that as she crossed the
room she had to put her hand against the wall to steady her steps; and
now that she was making the effort to rouse herself she began to see
the luxury it had been to be perfectly wretched. But Rose resisted the
temptation to throw herself again on the bed; she crept steadily, if
somewhat weakly, downstairs, and made a brave attempt at smiling. With
a guilty sense of all the opportunities for making herself useful she
had neglected, she took up a stitch in her knitting Grandmother Sweet
had dropped; overcast some velvet for Mrs. Patience, who was in a hurry
with a bonnet; and that done helped Miss Silence set the table and make
supper ready.
They all saw the struggle Rose was making and helped her by keeping
her mind as much as possible off from herself. And though that missing
money still hung its dark shadow over her, and she started at every
step outside with the sinking fear that it might be some one coming
to arrest her, when she went to her room that night Grandmother Sweet
patted her cheek as she kissed her good-night and whispered, “Thee has
done bravely, Rose,” an unspoken approval she read in the manner of the
others. More than that, she was surprised to find her heart lighter
than she would have thought possible a few hours before.
To keep steadily on in the way she had marked out for herself was
anything but easy during those days of suspense and anxiety. To hold
back the lump that was always threatening to rise in her throat, the
tears from springing to her eyes; to keep a cheerful face when her
heart would be sinking down, down; to feel an interest in the concerns
of others when her own seemed to swallow up everything else. But it was
her first step in a habit of conscious self-discipline that she never
forgot, and that helped her to meet many an after hour of trial.
So something over a week went by, for though Mrs. Blossom had seen
Mr. Nathan Fifield several times the mystery was as much of a mystery
as the first day, and in spite of all Mrs. Blossom could urge both he
and Miss Eudora seemed to grow the more bitter toward Rose. Nor had
there come any answer to the letters of inquiry sent to Fredonia. Every
possible theory having been exhausted in both cases, the subjects had
come to be avoided by a tacit consent. While as to the matter of the
marriage certificate, that had made so little impression on Rose’s mind
that she was less disappointed than the others in regard to it. Mrs.
Blossom did not fail to pray daily at family devotions that the truth
they were seeking might be revealed, and innocence established, and she
moved around with the serene manner of one who has given over all care
to a higher power. But though Rose was unconsciously sustained by a
reliance on that strong faith she did not pray for herself. A hopeless
apathy chilled her. There might be a God, it didn’t matter much to
her, for if there was she was an alien to His love, and she knew she
was that for all the rest might say.
But one afternoon Rose saw a little procession—Mr. Nathan Fifield and
his two sisters, in single file, crossing the now snow-covered common
in the direction of Mrs. Blossom’s. All her fears revived at the sight.
She sprang up, her eyes dilated, her face flushing and paling. “There
they come!” she cried. “I knew they would. They are going to put me in
prison, I know they are! Oh, don’t let them take me away! Don’t let
them!” and she threw herself down beside Miss Silence and hid her face
in her lap as if for safety.
Silence put her strong arms about the trembling form. “Sit up, Rose,”
she said in a matter-of-fact tone, “and wait till you see what there is
to be afraid of.”
By the time Rose had struggled back to outward calmness the visitors
had entered; Mr. Nathan, his face almost as red as the red silk
handkerchief he waved in his hand; Miss Eudora dissolved in tears; and
Miss Fifield with an expression of mingled vexation and crestfallen
humility.
There was a moment’s awkward silence, broken by Mr. Nathan in an abrupt
and aggravated tone. “I’ve come to explain a mistake I have been led
into by women’s meddling and—”
“You needn’t include me,” interrupted Miss Eudora. “You know I wouldn’t
have said what I did if you hadn’t made me feel that we were in danger
of being murdered in our beds, and I hadn’t thought Jane would be
always blaming me if I didn’t use decision. Nobody can tell how painful
it has been for me to do what I have. I don’t know when my nerves will
recover from the strain, and I’ve lost flesh till my dresses are so
loose they will hardly hang on me. I’m sure I never dreamed that Jane—”
“Oh, yes, lay all the blame you can on Jane,” rejoined that lady
grimly. “It isn’t often you get the chance, so both of you make the
best of it. I’m sure when I went away I never dreamed that you were
going to get in a panic and act like a pair of lunatics, particularly
a strong-minded man like Nathan. I never was so astonished as when
I reached home on the stage to-day and found out what had happened.
Eudora says she wrote me about it, but if she did she must have
forgotten to put the State on; she always does, and the letter may be
making the round of the Romes of the whole country; or else Nathan is
carrying it in his pocket yet—he never does remember to mail a letter.”
“If I were you I wouldn’t say anything about remembering, now or for
some time to come,” snapped her brother.
“Friends,” Grandmother Sweet’s voice was serenely calm, “if thee will
refrain from thy bickering and explain what thee means, it will be
clear to our minds what doubtless thee wishes us to know.”
While Rose, unable longer to restrain her impatience, exclaimed, “Oh,
tell us, have you found who stole the money?”
“That is just what I want to do if I can have a chance,” and Mr.
Fifield glared at Jane and Eudora. Then to Rose, “No, we haven’t
found who stole the money,” and as her face paled he hastened to add,
“because, in fact, the money was not stolen at all.”
“Where—what—” cried his eager listeners, while Rose drew a long breath
of infinite relief and sank back in her chair trembling, almost faint
with the joyful relaxation after the long strain of anxiety.
“Jane,” Mr. Nathan continued, rubbing his head till every hair stood
up, “simply saw fit to remove the money from the place where she knew I
was in the habit of keeping it, without even letting me know what she
had done.”
“You see,” explained Miss Fifield, feeling herself placed on the
defensive and determined to maintain it boldly, “I had just read
of a man who kept his money in a stove, and one day some one built
a fire and burned it all up, so I felt a stove was not a very safe
hiding-place.”
“Well,” snorted Mr. Nathan, “as there hasn’t to my certain knowledge
been a fire in that parlor stove for the last four years, I don’t think
there was much danger, to say nothing of the fact that gold will not
burn.”
“But it will melt,” triumphantly. “Besides, I have been told that when
burglars go into a house under carpets and in stoves are among the
first places they look. For these reasons I changed it to a trunk under
a pile of papers in the store-room. I intended to have told Nathan what
I had done, but in the hurry of getting away I did forget. But I should
have thought that before accusing any one they would have waited to see
what I knew about the matter.”
“You say so much about my being forgetful that I didn’t suppose you
ever did such a thing as to forget,” growled Mr. Nathan. And Eudora
added, “And her mind’s always on what she is doing. She has so little
patience with mistakes I never thought of her being the one to blame.”
“At any rate,” retorted Miss Fifield, “I don’t lose my glasses a dozen
times a day. And I don’t put things in the oven to bake and get to
mooning and let them burn up. I admit I was in fault about this, and I
am as sorry as I can be for the trouble it has made, and most of all
for the unjust suspicion it has brought on Rose; but, fortunately, no
one but ourselves is aware of this, and I don’t know as it will make
matters any better to harp on it forever.”
In fact, it needed no words to tell that the Fifields were not only
heartily sorry for what had happened, but decidedly ashamed. For every
one had been touched in the way to be felt most keenly; Squire Fifield
in that he had been proven unjust and mistaken in his opinion, Miss
Eudora that she had been hard-hearted, and Miss Fifield that she had
failed in memory and laid herself open to blame. This blow at the
especial pride of each, made them, while really glad that Rose had
been proved innocent, for the moment almost wish that she or some one
could at least have been guilty enough to have saved them the present
irritation of chagrin and humiliation.
Perhaps unconsciously something of this showed itself in Mr. Nathan’s
manner as he said: “Yes, Rose, we deeply regret that we have wrongfully
accused you—though I must still say that under the circumstances we
seemed justified in doing so, and I hope you will accept this as a
compensation for the trouble it has made you,” and he dropped a couple
of gold eagles in her lap.
Rose’s cheeks crimsoned. “I don’t want any such money,” she cried
hotly, flinging the gold coins to the floor. “Because I was poor and
hadn’t any home or friends you thought I must be a liar and a thief. If
you had said as though you’d meant it that you were sorry for the way
you had treated me it would have been all I asked. I don’t ask to be
paid for being honest. It’s an insult for you to offer to, and I’d beg
before I’d touch it, I would!”
“Rose, Rose!” reproved Mrs. Blossom, who had been unable to check the
indignant torrent. “I trust you will overlook the way Rose has spoken,”
she hastened to say. “This last week has been a great strain on her,
and her nerves are in a condition that she is hardly responsible.” As
she spoke she gave a warning glance at Silence, from the expression of
whose face she knew that she approved of Rose’s action, and was fearful
would endorse it in words; at the same time Mrs. Patience looked
at Rose in amazement that she should dare thus to provoke Nathan
Fifield’s well-known irascible temper, and all present waited for the
explosion they expected would follow.
But contrary to their expectation after a moment’s amazement he began
to laugh. “She’ll do,” he said to Mrs. Blossom with a nod of approval.
“Grit like that will pull through every time, and she’s got it about
right, too. Upon my word,” rubbing his hands as if at a sudden idea,
“if no one else puts in a claim I will be tempted to adopt her myself.
I believe an education wouldn’t be wasted, and with her spunk I’d like
to see what she would make.”
One good thing about Rose’s temper was that though fiery its flame was
quickly spent, and penitence was almost sure to swiftly follow wrath.
It was so in this case; hardly had he ceased speaking when a meek
little voice was heard, “I didn’t do right at all, Mr. Fifield, to talk
to you as I did, and I hope you’ll forgive me?”
“Well, my dear,” was the answer, “I didn’t do right either in being
so ready to think evil of you, in being on the lookout for something
wrong, as I was, and I hope you’ll forgive me?”
“And me, too,” sobbed Miss Eudora. “I never was hard on anybody before
in my life, and I’m sure I never will be again.”
“And now,” observed Miss Fifield drily, “I suppose I ought to ask to be
forgiven for being the guilty one.”
“Oh, Miss Fifield,” and Rose caught her hand, “we all forget
things; I know I tried you lots of times by forgetting. It wasn’t—I
suppose—strange they should have thought as they did, but it’s all
right now. And please promise me, Mr. Fifield and Miss Eudora, that you
will let it all go, and never say anything unpleasant to Miss Fifield
about it.”
“Why, child!” cried Mr. Nathan, as if astonished at the idea, “I
wouldn’t say anything unpleasant to my sisters, I never do. Of course I
have to hold them level now and then, but I don’t know as I ever spoke
a really unpleasant word to them in my life.”
“Yes,” Miss Fifield’s tone was complacent, “that is one of the things
I have always been thankful for, that we were a perfectly harmonious
family. I don’t deny that I am tried sometimes with Nathan and Eudora,
but I never let them know it.”
“I have my trials, too,” added Miss Eudora with a pensive shake of her
little grey curls, “but I bear them in silence. Family squabbles are so
disgraceful that I don’t see how a person of refinement could ever take
part in one.”
Rose stared round-eyed from one to another speaker, and Silence Blossom
turned her face away for a moment; but Grandmother Sweet smiled gently,
for she had long ago learned how seldom it is that people know their
own faults, or see themselves as others see them.
As they were leaving Miss Fifield turned to Rose. “Of course we shall
want you to come back to us. When will that be?”
“Not just at present,” Mrs. Blossom hastened to answer. “First of all
she must have time to rest and get back to her usual self.” Rose lifted
grateful eyes, for at that moment it didn’t seem to her that she could
enter the Fifield house again.
At the door Miss Eudora paused. “And you haven’t heard anything yet
about her people? Finding the marriage certificate in the locket
was just like a story. And if she should prove to be an heiress how
romantic that would be! I heard of such a case the winter I was in
Albany.”
CHAPTER XVIII
GREAT-UNCLE SAMUEL
Surprising events were not over for Rose. The next morning as she was
dusting the sitting-room, with a lighter heart than she had thought
could ever again be hers, a carriage drew up at the small white gate,
from which an old gentleman alighted and came nimbly along the narrow,
flagged walk, tapping the stones smartly with his gold-headed cane.
“Is this Mrs. Blossom?” he asked in a thin, brisk voice as she answered
his knock on the green-paneled door, where Rose had stood with
fluttering heart so few months before. “Then I suppose you are the
person who wrote concerning a young girl supposed to be the daughter of
Kate Jarvis and James Shannon.”
At that moment he caught sight of Rose. “Bless my heart!” he exclaimed,
stepping in. “If there isn’t the child now! Kate’s own daughter; I’d
have known her anywhere. The very picture of what her mother was at
her age. Bless me!” and he rubbed his thin face, flushed with the chill
of the ride from Byfield and wrinkled like a withered apple, with a
great white silk handkerchief.
“Turn around to the light, child,” he directed Rose, not heeding Mrs.
Blossom’s invitation to lay aside his wraps. “I want to get a good look
at you. Yes,” lifting her chin and moving her head from side to side,
“clear Jarvis and no mistake—the color of the hair and eyes, the turn
of the head and all. I’m thankful you’re no Shannon, though Jim looked
well enough as far as that went.
“Dear, dear,” to Mrs. Blossom, “to think that Brother Robert’s
daughter, the little Kate I have held on my knee many a time, should
be grown and married and dead, and this be her child. It’s difficult,
madam, to realize such changes; it makes one feel that he is growing
old, upon my word it does.”
Rose, on her part, was looking at him intently. “I believe it is your
picture in the locket,” and running upstairs she quickly returned with
it open in her hand.
He drew out his eye-glasses. “Yes, that is my picture. Quite a
good-looking fellow I was in those days. Kate was my only niece, and I
gave her the locket on her eighteenth birthday. And so she always kept
it, and you have it still. Well, well!”
“And had my mother an Aunt Sarah?” questioned Rose.
“Yes, her mother’s only sister, Sarah Hartly.”
“I have a Bible she gave my mother, with ‘To Kate from Aunt Sarah,’
written inside.”
“Well,” with a little chuckle, “I’m surprised to know that she ever
gave anybody anything.”
[Illustration: “CLEAR JARVIS AND NO MISTAKE.”—_Page 237._]
“I haven’t thanked you yet,” and he turned again to Mrs. Blossom, “for
the interest you have shown in the matter. Indeed I was so surprised
when I received the letter from the minister who married Kate, who
still lives in Fredonia, inclosing yours to him, and the first word
concerning Kate for fifteen years, that I haven’t recovered from it
yet. And now to find another Kate, as you may say; why, it makes me
feel as though I had lost my reckoning, and the world had rolled
back thirty years.”
“And did you not know then that Rose’s mother was dead?”
“No. Since her foolish, runaway marriage to Jim Shannon, sixteen years
ago, I had not heard a word either from or about her, till your letter,
and you know how little that told. Since her mother’s death the lawyer
in charge of the business has made every effort to find a trace of
Kate or her heirs, but in vain. Of the events of her later life I know
nothing whatever, not even when or where she died.”
“It was when I was quite a little girl,” answered Rose, “and in a city
that I now think was Chicago.”
“I gather from Mrs. Blossom’s letter that your father was also dead. Is
that so?”
“Yes; he died a little while after mamma.”
“A fortunate circumstance for you,” with a nod to Mrs. Blossom. “And
where have you been all this time; and why if you had your mother’s
marriage certificate didn’t you try to find your friends, or somebody
before this try to find them for you?”
In the meantime, Mr. Samuel Jarvis, the old gentleman, as he talked,
had by degrees taken off his muffler, fur-lined overcoat, fur cap and
gloves, and accepted the comfortable rocker before the fire. Now in
answer to his question, made though it was in a somewhat testy fashion,
Rose related to him her story, recalling all the details she could
remember of her mother, while Great-Uncle Samuel rubbed his eyes with
his big silk handkerchief and murmured, “Poor Kate, poor Kate!”
When she came to her residence with Madam Atheldena Sharpe, his tone
changed to one of horrified protest. “Kate’s baby in the hands of a
travelling clairvoyant; exhibited like a Punch and Judy Show; who ever
heard of such a thing!” As she told of the exposure, and her desertion
by Madam Sharpe, the bitterness and misery of which she had never
forgotten, he bristled with indignation. “Kate’s baby with nowhere to
go and nothing to eat; alone, afraid, and hungry! Could it be possible!”
All excited as she was, and stimulated still more by his interest,
Rose gave to her story a certain dramatic force. Her keen sense of
the ludicrous gave some humorous touches even to her description of
Mrs. Hagood. When it came to her trouble with that lady she hesitated a
moment, and then gave a most dramatic account of the closing scene, as
well as of her flight, her encounter with Ben Pancost, and the help he
had given her.
“True Jarvis spirit!” cried Great-Uncle Samuel, rubbing his hands.
“Kate’s baby climbed out of the window in the night; tramped off all
alone. Just think of it! And that boy, I’d like to meet him!”
But when she came to tell of her appearance at the Blossom home, and
the kindness which she had there received, he insisted on shaking hands
with the whole family in turn. “Bless me,” he exclaimed, “to think you
have done all this for Kate’s baby. Who ever heard anything like it?”
Her stay at the Fifields’, including as it did the accusation made
against her there, was a subject so fresh and painful to Rose, and
seemed to her from the fact of the suspicion to involve her in such a
disgrace that when she came to it she flushed, hesitated, and Mrs.
Blossom, seeing her embarrassment, came to the rescue and related the
circumstances that had led to the bringing out of the locket, and the
accidental discovery of the marriage certificate inside it.
To Rose’s great surprise Great-Uncle Samuel did not seem to regard the
fact that she had been charged with theft as anything particularly
shameful; indeed he treated it with decided indifference. “They need
not have worried,” with a lofty tone, “as to her being a low-bred
child, the Jarvises are as good blood as you will often find. And
to think,” sadly, “that the locket I gave Kate should have served a
purpose neither of us ever dreamed of.”
“And why was it you didn’t know anything about my mother?” asked Rose.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Blossom, “that is a question I was just going to ask.”
“As I said before, when she ran away with Jim Shannon she cut herself
off from all her friends. Poor Kate, how much suffering she brought
on herself by her wilfulness! And yet I don’t think the blame was
all hers. If her father had lived I’m certain it would never have
happened; but her mother was a woman who wanted to bend every one and
everything to her will. And Kate was an uncommonly high-spirited girl,
impulsive and a trifle headstrong, but generous, affectionate, and
everybody’s favorite; a girl that it needed some tact to manage, and
her mother hadn’t a particle of tact. So when Kate fell in love with
Jim Shannon she made a bad matter worse instead of better. Enough was
said to Kate but she wouldn’t believe a word of it. I told her myself
that he drank like a fish, and she only held up her head and said that
he might have been a trifle wild, as any number of other young men had
been, but that he was going to be entirely different. Well, it was
the old story, marry him she would and did. And when she wrote to her
mother asking if she could come home, Mary sent word back that she
might, but her husband could never cross her threshold. Of course that
made Jim mad, and Kate wrote at once that whoever received her must
receive her husband also. Her mother sent that letter back to her, and
there it all ended. In less than a week they were on their way West,
and Kate never wrote a word home again.
“Some of her girl friends had a few letters from her, very bright at
first, and telling how happy she was in her new home, but these soon
stopped. I don’t deny that I was a good deal put out with her at first,
but I understood her silence only too well. If life had gone smoothly
with her she would have written, but as it was, she knew that whatever
she had to endure she had brought it on herself, and she would bear it
alone.
“Kate’s mother was a proud woman, too. From the day Kate left she never
mentioned her name, nor would she let any one mention it to her; but
I believe that secretly she lived in the expectation and hope of her
return. It was like her when she died, five years ago, not to leave any
will, and the lawyer has advertised, and tried in every way to find
some trace of Kate. And now, like the spring in the locket, all at once
unexpectedly it opens and everything is clear and plain.”
He turned abruptly to Rose, who had been listening intently to all that
concerned her mother. “What did they say your name was, Rose? I ought
to remember that, when I was a little boy in school if there was a
little girl we liked very much we used to write on a slate,
“‘The rose is red,
The violet blue,
Sugar is sweet,
And so are you,’
and hold it up for her to see. Now, Rose, when I speak of the property
your grandmother has left you may think you are going to be an heiress.
And I want to tell you the first thing that you will be nothing of
the kind. My brother left everything to his wife, and she had no more
business sense than that cat, so when she died there was very little
left. I don’t know the exact amount but somewhere about three thousand
dollars. The proofs are sufficient that you are Kate’s child, so there
will be no trouble there. But you understand that there isn’t enough
for you to go to seaside summer resorts, or to fly very high in the
fashionable world.”
Rose laughed outright. “Why, I don’t know anything about either
seaside summer resorts, or the fashionable world, and never expect to.”
“Just as well; it’s a pity more women, young and old, can’t say the
same. But as I was going to say, if you are willing to use strict
economy there will be enough to take care of you at least till you are
through school.”
Rose’s eyes sparkled with joy. “Oh, if there is only enough for that it
is all I ask! Once I have education to teach I can take care of myself.”
“That sounds like Kate. And if you are like her as much as you look I
sha’n’t fear for you.”
CHAPTER XIX
ROSE FINDS A RESTING-PLACE
“Or course, Mr. Jarvis, you will stay with us to dinner, and as much
longer as you can,” said Miss Silence as he drew out a big gold watch
and snapped the case open.
“Thank you, madam, thank you. I shall be glad to accept your
hospitality for the dinner. In the meantime I think I will take a walk
about your pleasant little village. By the way, there are two questions
I always ask concerning a place: what is its latitude, and population?”
and he looked from one to another.
Miss Silence laughed. “I am afraid we can answer neither question.”
“It doesn’t matter, I can judge of the latter myself.” And having
enveloped himself again in his muffler, overcoat, cap, and gloves, he
went briskly down the walk, his cane seeming more for ornament than
need.
Rose hurried out into the kitchen and putting on her gingham apron
began to set the table. “I suppose now,” and Silence counted out the
eggs to fry with the ham, “that I sha’n’t have you to help me much
longer.”
“Oh, Miss Silence,” and dropping the bread tray, Rose caught her around
the waist and gave her a squeeze, “you know, you know, I never will go
away from here as long as I may stay.”
For Rose had been tossed to and fro like a shuttlecock at the mercy
of adverse currents so long, that she felt not only some wonder but a
little uneasiness as to what disposal would next be made of her.
“It’s very nice, of course,” as she sliced the bread, “when I didn’t
know that I had a relative to have Great-Uncle Samuel walk in, and I
suppose he has the right to say where I shall go, and what I shall do.
Only I’m so tired of changes and uncertainties that I wish I might
never have to make another change; and I wish that I might know right
now, right away, what I am going to do.”
As for Mr. Samuel Jarvis, the surprising news of Rose’s existence,
followed so quickly by her appearance before him in the flesh, was of
itself bewildering, to say nothing of the responsibility so suddenly
thrust upon him of making provision for her future.
This was shown by a certain preoccupation of manner on his return. Not
so much so but that his eyes, still keen and bright, noted everything
around him; the well-appointed table, the delicately served food, the
low tones and gentle manners of the group surrounding it, the air
of order and comfort pervading the modest home. But it was not till
he pushed back from the table after the meal that he mentioned the
question of vital interest to Rose.
“I’ve been thinking,” he spoke to Mrs. Blossom, tapping his cane on the
floor as he talked, “what I ought to do for Kate’s baby now I’ve found
her, and I don’t know when I’ve come across a harder proposition. I
don’t wonder that women look worn out who have half a dozen girls to
provide for. I’m sure that one would be too much for me.
“Of course Sarah Hartly is the one who ought to take Violet—oh, Rose,
so it is, and if she wasn’t so supremely selfish she would. I stopped
off at Fredonia, on my way from Buffalo here, and put it up to her.
There she is, her grandmother’s sister, and Kate her only niece, a
widow without chick or child, and a house she doesn’t begin to use, and
she said her health wasn’t good enough, and her nerves were too weak to
take a bouncing girl—those were her very words, ‘bouncing girl,’ into
her family. I should think her nerves would be weak,” he sniffed, “with
that miserable whiffet dog she keeps, barking and snapping at every
one. Snapped at me he did, and I told Sarah plainly that if a dog ever
bit me some one would pay well for it. She shut him up then, and he was
howling and scratching when I came away.
“Now, I can’t take her. I never was married and I don’t know any more
what a girl needs than the man in the moon. Besides, I live at a club
and that would be no place for a young girl. But as I was saying
about—what did you say her name was? Oh, yes, Rose, she looks strong
and healthy, and I’d like to have her stay where she could have pure
air, and new milk and fresh eggs. There is no place like the country to
live, at least when one is young.
“I’m quite pleased with your little village; it’s situated nicely,
and your town-folk tell me you have no malaria. I have made inquiry
about the school and am told it is unusually good for a place of this
size. And, Mrs. Blossom, I had just as soon tell you that I have made
inquiries about your family, with the most flattering answers. You have
all shown the kindest interest in the poor child, and from what I have
heard, and still more from what I have seen, I feel that if she can
remain in your care it will be the best arrangement I could make for
her. Would that suit you?” turning to Rose.
“Indeed it would,” her face bright with pleasure that what she had
wished seemed so near fulfilment. “Nothing could suit me better.”
“Wait a moment,” waving his hand to Mrs. Blossom not to speak; “I want
to make myself fully understood. If Kate’s baby remains here you will,
of course, be paid for her board, but I should want you to regard
her as more than a mere boarder—in short, to receive her as one of
your family, and give her the same care and interest, and as long as
the arrangement continues that this shall be her home, and all that
implies.”
As Rose glanced from one to another she recalled the day when homeless
and friendless she had sat in that same room and waited, with a hungry
hope in her heart, for the decision that meant so much to her; the
misery and uncertainty of further wandering, or the happiness and
security of a shelter and abiding-place. There had been a great change
since then. Now she had Great-Uncle Samuel to vouch for her; she was no
longer an unknown and half-suspected applicant for charity, but ready
and able to pay for what she had. But so dear had that home, and those
within it grown to Rose, with such a dread did she shrink from the
thought of being thrust out again among strangers that not even on that
first time, it seemed to her, did she wait the answer more eagerly.
As often happened, impulsive Silence was the first to speak. “For my
part, I should be only too glad to have Rose stay with us, and I will
do all I can to make her happy here.”
“I’m sure,” it was Mrs. Patience’s gentle voice, “Rose has won for
herself a place in our home, that would be vacant without her.”
It was a moment longer before Mrs. Blossom spoke, and when she did
there was a quiver in her usually firm, self-controlled tone, “Yes, I
will keep Rose, and I will do for her just as I would have done for my
own little Rachel if she had lived.”
Grandmother Sweet, sitting in her rocker with the sunshine falling
across her snowy hair and serene face, laid down her knitting, whose
subdued click, click, seemed like her own quiet personality to pervade
the room, “I feel it borne on my mind, Elizabeth, that thee will never
regret the word thee has just given.” And then to Mr. Jarvis, “Thee
need feel no concern for the child, for while Silence and Patience in
the tenderness of their hearts would, I fear, wholly spoil her, their
mother will be heedful of her duty to guide and train. And truly it
will be a pleasure to us all to have this little one of the dear Lord
set in our midst.”
“Thank you, madam,” and Great-Uncle Samuel made a deferential bow to
her; “I shall go away with my mind at ease.
“And now,” to Rose, “if I leave you with these kind ladies I shall
expect you to be good and obedient in return for all they do for you.”
“I’ll try to be,” was Rose’s dutiful answer.
“That’s right, that’s right. I hope you always will remember to. Young
people are very apt to think they know it all when they haven’t the
first idea what’s for their good. I’m glad you look like your mother,
and hope you will have all her good qualities, but I want you to
remember the trouble she brought on herself and all who cared for her
just by wilfulness. I believe that settles everything. Four dollars, I
was told, is the average price for board here; if that is satisfactory
a check will be sent you every three months, for that and Rose’s
expenses. But mind,” turning to Rose, “you must be very prudent to make
the money last.”
She hesitated a little. “I—I could go back to the Fifields’. They would
pay me fifty cents a week and that would save a good deal.”
He threw up both hands. “What! Robert Jarvis’s granddaughter, Kate’s
child, a servant? Bless me! Never let me hear of that again!”
“Rose is very helpful about the house,” added Mrs. Blossom. “I will not
ask that price.”
“Little enough, madam, little enough. Besides, I want you to teach her
useful things; to cook, to take care of a house. More men are killed by
bad bread than bullets, and I don’t want Kate’s baby ever to murder any
one that way.” As he spoke he began to draw on his overcoat.
“Why, you are not going?” exclaimed Mrs. Blossom.
“Yes, madam, yes. There seems no need for me to stay longer. The team
that brought me from the station is waiting to take me back for the
evening train, and I can be in Buffalo again in the morning.”
“But when are you coming again, Uncle Samuel?” asked Rose.
“Can’t say, Rose—yes, I am right, it is Rose. What with dyspepsia
and rheumatism, and the weight of years, I am not a great traveler.
Besides, everything is, I believe, satisfactorily settled. My brief
stay has been very pleasant,” as he shook hands around, ending with
Rose and the admonition, “Be a credit to these good ladies.”
The team was already waiting at the gate. “He doesn’t intend to come
again,” said Rose with a wistful accent as she stood at the window and
watched Great-Uncle Samuel tuck the fur robes about him and drive away.
CHAPTER XX
PAYING DEBTS
Rose stood at the window as long as Great-Uncle Samuel was in sight.
Then she turned away and sitting down on a low stool by Grandmother
Sweet’s side laid her head on its chintz covered arm.
“Grandma Sweet,” she whispered softly, “I’m sorry I said what I did. I
do see God’s care and leading now.”
“Dear child,” was the smiling answer as the wrinkled hand smoothed
tenderly the plump, fair cheek, “never doubt His care and leading. It
is not often this is made so clear and it never may be to thee again,
for we are commanded to walk by faith and not by sight; but always be
sure that God’s love and care are ever over thee.”
“I know it,” was the low answer. “I will never doubt it again.”
“If thee is ever tempted to, and it will be strange if thee is not—keep
this in mind: that the Lord’s thought toward thee is always of love,
that He will lay nothing upon thee that He will not give thee strength
to bear, and no discipline whose right use will not make thee stronger
and better, and the better fitted for that abundant entrance into His
kingdom which I trust and pray may be thine.”
Twilight shadows were creeping into the room, and these two, the young
heart just opening to God’s love, and the aged heart who had tested it
through a long lifetime, sat hand in hand in the peaceful stillness.
The opening of a door aroused Rose. Silence Blossom had come in from
feeding her chickens, bringing with her a whiff of the crisp, outer
air. “Well, Rose,” as she held out her hands to the heat of the fire,
“are you a happy girl to-night?”
“Indeed I am. I thought yesterday when I knew that the money was found,
that I was happy as I could be; but I am still happier now. To think
that no one can call me a pauper any more, or twit me with being a
charity child!” Her voice choked, for every taunting reference to
her poverty had stung deep, and with all the sensitiveness of a proud
nature she had felt the bitterness of her dependent condition. “Just to
think that I can pay for what I have, and have an education. Why, it
seems too good to be true. If it were three millions I don’t believe I
could feel any richer. Of course,” she hurried to add, “I know I must
be very careful, but I wonder—do you think—that I could have a new
dress, not made over, but one bought on purpose for me; and a pair of
kid gloves—I don’t know that I could afford them, but I’ve wanted a
pair so long.”
“Yes.” Silence Blossom spoke quick and decisive. “You can have a pair
of kid gloves and a new dress. It can be neat and pretty without being
of expensive material.”
Rose hesitated a moment. “I suppose a brown or a blue dress would do me
the most service, but I’ve always wished that I could have a red dress.”
“A red dress it shall be, then,” said Miss Silence. “And you can help
me make it. I haven’t forgotten how a girl feels about her clothes,
and as long as I have any say about it you are going to have things
like other girls.”
Rose drew a blissful breath; she could hardly believe it possible. In
fact, it was a difficult matter for Rose to go to sleep that night, she
was so overflowing with happiness; and numberless were the plans as to
what she would do and be, as blissful as they were vague, that floated
through her excited mind as she lay with her eyes wide open in the
moonlight.
“I wish Ben Pancost could know,” she whispered. And then for all her
happiness she sighed a little quivering sigh, for since the day they
parted in the little parlor of the Byfield hotel, not one glimpse had
she seen or one word had she heard of Ben Pancost. He had neither come
to Farmdale at the time he had appointed, nor in any of the weeks that
followed, though she had watched for him with eyes that grew weary with
watching, and sometimes were wet with the tears of disappointment.
Rose could not understand it. Ben had been so interested in her behalf,
he had left her so full of anxiety for her welfare, with such a
positive promise of coming to see her. Nor could she doubt him. If
ever she felt inclined to do so, the remembrance of all his kindness,
of all he had been to her in the time of her sore need would come
afresh to her mind. She had but to shut her eyes to see again the
merry, sunburned face, with the straightforward, honest eyes, so full
of sympathy, and to feel the tight clasp of his warm, brown hand as he
slipped the silver dollars into it. One of these she had never spent
and whenever she looked at it there came the certainty that Ben could
not have failed her; something must have happened, and what that was
she could not imagine. Rose seldom mentioned Ben to Mrs. Blossom or
Silence, because they both inclined to the opinion that being but a boy
some fresher interest had crowded the matter from his mind. But Mrs.
Patience believed with her that he was not a boy to lightly break a
promise, and that he would have come if he could.
“I wish more than ever that I could see Ben Pancost,” she confided to
Mrs. Patience when her first check arrived, “for now I could pay him
back the money he let me have. And Ben works hard for his money, and he
may need it. If I knew where he was I would write and send it to him.”
“Oh, no, Rose!” Mrs. Patience’s sense of propriety was delicate and
old-fashioned. “It would hardly be proper for a young girl to write to
a boy.”
“But this would be different,” urged Rose. “It would be business,
paying a debt.”
“That would make a difference,” admitted Mrs. Patience, “for a lady
would not wish to rest under an obligation of that kind if she could
avoid it. But then you do not know where he is.”
“No,” admitted Rose sadly, for brief as her acquaintance with Ben
Pancost had been its circumstance had made it one of the most vivid
memories of her life; and the day spent with him, as she looked
back on it, seemed to her almost like a page out of fairyland, with
Ben himself, warm-hearted, sympathetic, loyal Ben, with his happy
self-confidence and happier confidence in God, as its knight and hero.
Then Rose’s face brightened. “For all that, I have a feeling that I
shall meet Ben again, sometime.”
“He may be dead,” suggested Mrs. Patience, whose own bereavement
sometimes gave a tinge of melancholy to her sweet nature.
“Then he has gone to heaven,” was Rose’s quick answer, “and if when I
die I go there, too, I shall be sure to meet him.”
A few days later Rose came in with her arm full of school books. “Those
are my books for next term,” as she spread them proudly on the table.
“The history is not new,” remarked Silence Blossom as she glanced them
over.
“No; Clara Brown used it last year. But it is not much soiled and
she let me have it fifty cents cheaper than a new one, and I have a
particular use for that fifty cents.”
With that Rose went up to her room and after a time came down with an
open letter in her hand. “I’ve been writing to Mrs. Hagood, and I’d
like to read it to you, and have you tell me if it’s all right.
“‘DEAR MADAM,’
“I thought first I wouldn’t say ‘dear,’” she explained, “for she never
was dear to me, one little bit; but I thought it would be polite to,
and I wanted to be polite.
“‘Perhaps you think that I ought not to have taken those things to eat
when I left your house, though they were not much more than I would
have eaten at the supper which I did not have, and the basket I put
them in was an old grape basket. So I send you fifty cents, which is
all everything is worth, and more, too!’
“Fifty cents was all Ben paid for my dinner the next day, and it was a
fine dinner.
“‘I am living with a very nice family who are so kind to me. Mrs.
Blossom found my relatives, and my real name is not Posey Sharpe,
but Rose Shannon. My grandmother had left me property, so I am not a
charity child any more, but have money of my own to pay for my board
and clothes, and an education. I like Farmdale, and have good friends
here. The paper I am writing on is from a box given me at Christmas.’”
She paused and looked from one to another. “Will that do?”
“I didn’t hear any regret for the way you left Mrs. Hagood,” said Mrs.
Blossom.
“No, nor you won’t hear any. I know I didn’t do right, but if she had
done what was right herself it wouldn’t have happened. If I’d said
anything, I should have said that, so I thought perhaps I’d better not
say anything. I’ve always felt she might say that I took what didn’t
belong to me, and I’m only too glad to send her the money. I would have
liked to have added something to Mr. Hagood, but I was afraid if I did
it would make trouble for him. She will be apt to read the letter to
him, and he will be glad to know I am so nicely settled, but it will
make her feel pretty bad to know that I can pay for my board and she
not get the money,” and Rose gave a chuckle.
“How did you sign yourself?” asked Miss Silence, who had been biting
her lips to keep from laughing.
“I just signed my name. I wasn’t going to say ‘Yours truly,’ or
‘sincerely,’ for I’m not hers, and it’s one of the joys of my life that
I never shall be.” And Rose folded the letter into its envelope and
patted on the stamp.
CHAPTER XXI
THE BOX FROM GREAT-AUNT SARAH
It was some two weeks after Great-Uncle Samuel’s visit that the stage
one day stopped at the Blossom’s. “Rose Shannon live here?” the driver
asked. “Here’s a box for her I found over at Byfield.”
“A box for me?” cried Rose, circling round it. “Who in the world can it
be from?”
“Perhaps when we open it we will know,” and Silence brought the hatchet
and quickly had the cover loose. “There’s a letter,” as she lifted the
lid. “No doubt that will tell.”
Rose unfolded the letter and read it in silence. Then she handed it
to Mrs. Blossom. “It’s from my Great-Aunt Sarah; you can read it out
loud.” Her cheeks were red, but she spoke quietly, so quietly that Mrs.
Blossom glanced at her keenly as she took the letter and read:
“MY DEAR NIECE:
“I have had a letter from Samuel Jarvis in which he writes that there
is no question but you are the daughter of Kate Jarvis, and as he is a
careful man I dare say it is so. The minister who was written to, and
who married Kate came to me first and I referred him to Samuel, for
being a man he could better look after the matter.
“He also wrote me the arrangement he had made for you. I am glad to
know that you are with a worthy family, and I trust they will look
after your manners—manners are so important for a young girl. Your
mother’s manners were considered attractive, but she was headstrong. I
hope you are not headstrong. I must say that under the circumstances,
with no one to look after and his brother’s grandchild, I should
have thought Samuel Jarvis would have taken charge of you himself.
But Samuel never did consider anything but his own selfish ease and
pleasure and I suppose he is too old to look for any change now. I
myself am a nervous wreck, so I could not possibly have you with me.
“As I know that you have but little money and will need to be very
careful, with this letter I am sending you some things that if you are
at all capable you can make over and use for yourself; the stockings
you can cut over, and the slippers were always too small for me.
“Samuel Jarvis wrote me about the Bible I gave your mother. I remember
it well, and am pleased to know that you have kept it.
“Your affectionate aunt,
“SARAH HARTLY.”
No one made a remark as Mrs. Blossom finished the letter, till Miss
Silence spoke, “Well, let us see what’s in the box.”
The contents were quickly taken out, for even Grandmother Sweet would
have confessed to a curiosity in the matter. These were an old black
velvet dress worn threadbare at the seams and trimmed with beaded
fringe; a soiled black and white check wool wrapper; a black satin
skirt shiny with wear; a purple silk with coffee stains down the front
breadth; some brown brocaded material which had evidently served as
lining to a cloak; a bundle of half-worn stockings; several yards of
black feather trimming, moth-eaten in spots; a pair of fancy bedroom
slippers; and at the bottom of the box a plush cape heavily braided
with a bugle trimming.
Hardly a word had been uttered as one by one the garments had been
unfolded. Rose had knelt among them in silence; now she drew the
cape about her and rose to her feet. For a moment she looked down at
herself, then tearing the cape off she gave it a throw and sank back
in a little heap on the floor. “I know it would be comfortable,” she
wailed, “and I need it, and it would save spending money, but I can’t
wear that cape with those bugles, I can’t.”
Silence Blossom was laughing. “You needn’t wear it, Rose,” she said
soothingly.
Mrs. Patience had lifted the cape and was examining it, “That was an
expensive garment, when it was new.”
“It might have been, _when_ it was new,” retorted her sister.
“What am I to do with the stuff?” questioned Rose with a tragic gesture
toward the unfolded garments scattered round her. “I’ve a good mind to
pack it in the box again and send it straight back to Great-Aunt Sarah!”
“No, no, Rose,” reproved Mrs. Blossom; “remember she is your aunt.”
“I do remember.” Rose’s eyes were sparkling with angry tears. “I used
sometimes to imagine what it would be like if I should ever find my
relatives and have real aunts and uncles and cousins, who cared for
me. Well, I have found them,” and she drew a sobbing breath. “I have a
Great-Uncle Samuel and a Great-Aunt Sarah; and neither one cares that
for me,” and she gave a snap to her fingers, “and neither one will have
me—though I’m glad Great-Aunt Sarah doesn’t want me. But I shall love
Great-Uncle Samuel always, even if I never see him again, because he
did take enough interest to come and see me, and plan things for me.
When I was Posey, I was nobody’s Posey; and now I’m Rose, I’m nobody’s
Rose!”
“You are our Rose,” and Mrs. Patience put her arms about her, “and the
Fifields think you are their Rose. I will tell you what you can do. You
can win the love of people for yourself, and so be everybody’s Rose.”
Rose suddenly smiled. “I never thought of that before, but I will do
it. And Grandmother Sweet shall tell me how, for everybody loves her.”
But Grandmother shook her head. “That is something thee will have to
learn for thyself. Only I will tell thee one thing, if thee would win
love thee must first give love; whatever thee would get out of life
thee must first put into life.”
Miss Silence had been going over the things again with her practised
eye. “See here, Rose, we can wash up this black and white check and it
will make you a good school dress, with a color for piping to brighten
it. And I have been looking at the black velvet and I’m quite sure I
can get you a little coat out of it. We can use the brocade for lining,
and there will be plenty of feather trimming, even when the bad spots
are taken out. That will look nicely with your new red dress.”
“And I will make you a little black velvet turban, and trim it with red
ribbon to match your dress,” added Mrs. Patience.
“And I will show you how to put new feet in the stockings.” Grandmother
Sweet had drawn one on her hand. “They are a good, fine quality.”
Rose looked from one to another. “What should I have done if I hadn’t
come here? You know just what to do every time. And when the world
looks all grey, if it isn’t quite black, if I can see it through your
eyes, why it’s pink and rosy again.”
As Rose was saying this she gathered up the articles and put them back
in the box once more. “I suppose you can find a use for this purple
silk. Perhaps when I’m old and wear a cap it will come useful.”
For answer Miss Silence laughed and nodded, “There will be some place
where it will come in yet.”
“Rose,” said Mrs. Blossom, “I think it is time the chickens were fed.”
This was something Rose had begged to do. They were a tamer flock than
Mrs. Hagood’s, petted as was every living thing about the Blossoms,
and it was an unfailing pleasure to have them run to meet her, to
feed them out of her hand, and to smooth their white feathers as they
crowded around. As she took the measure of yellow corn from the back
of the stove where it had been warming, the big Maltese cat rose and
purred beside her. “No, Dandy,” and she gave him a pat, “you can’t go
with me this time, the chickens don’t like you; you jump and make them
flutter.”
As she spoke she looked for something to put around her and her eye
fell on the cape which lay this time on the top of the box. “I have
just thought what I can use it for,” and she laughed merrily. “I can
wear it out to the chicken house; the chickens, I know, will enjoy
pecking at the bugles. That would certainly be making use of it.”
She paused with her hand on the door. “Will I have to write to
Great-Aunt Sarah and thank her?”
“Don’t you think that you ought to?” Mrs. Blossom questioned in turn.
“I am not sure whether I do or not. But one thing is certain—if I do
write to her you will all have to help me, for I should never know what
to say.”
“I know what I should like to say to her.” Silence Blossom’s tone was
scornful, though she waited till Rose was out of hearing before she
spoke. “I would like to tell her that such a lot of good-for-nothing
old stuff I never saw sent away. I have heard stories of the boxes sent
to some of the home missionaries out West, and I think this must be
like them. Any woman of sense might have known that those things were
not suitable for a girl of Rose’s age.”
“At least the material was good,” urged her mother.
“You mean it had been, but it was past that point. It’s very evident
that Great-Aunt Sarah buys good clothes for herself. Something new for
Rose for a dress would have done her more good than all that cast-off
finery.”
“To my mind the letter was worse than the box,” declared Mrs. Patience.
“I never heard anything more heartless and cold-blooded. One would have
thought the mere facts would have aroused a sympathy for Rose.”
“She is coming in,” cautioned Miss Silence, “and we would not say
anything before her. But this much is certain, that I know all I want
to of Mrs. Sarah Hartly.”
CHAPTER XXII
QUIET DAYS
You may have seen a little leaf that has fallen into a stream and been
whirled along by the unresting current, torn and bruised and helpless,
then suddenly drift into a still and quiet pool and lie tranquil,
unvexed, while the stream, unable longer to clutch it, goes hurrying
by. So to Rose, after her troubled, changeful childhood, Farmdale was
the quiet pool, where she was to find a quiet, uneventful period.
Not that Rose ever thought of it as uneventful. To her school life
she brought an enthusiasm that never flagged; the school tests, the
class competitions, the school entertainments, the school games, and
even the school differences, she entered into them all heart and soul.
She studied hard, she took eager advantage of every opportunity, and
was none the less ready for every enjoyment with the keen zest of her
intense nature. Then outside the school was the village with all its
people and all their happenings, a little world of itself. “Some of the
girls call Farmdale dull and poky,” she repeated wonderingly to Miss
Silence. “I’m sure it isn’t dull to me—I don’t see how they can think
it is.”
The Blossom household quickly became home, and home folks to Rose. But
when Mrs. Blossom promised for her the same care she would have given
her own little Rachel, she included also, what she would have expected
of little Rachel had she lived, as she had of her other daughters,
the yielding of a ready, cheerful obedience. Mrs. Blossom’s law was
one Rose had known little of, the law of love, but none the less was
it law. Never in their girlhood, and hardly in their maturer years,
had Silence or Patience Blossom dreamed of acting in opposition to
their mother’s will—that reasonable, mild, but inflexible will. And
though Rose had not hesitated to face Mrs. Hagood’s fury, yet when
those clear, steadfast eyes looked into hers, and that kindly but
firm voice said, with its accent of decision, “Rose, you cannot!”
she instinctively realized that here was a force, the force of moral
strength, that impetuous willfulness would beat powerless against. Nor
was her affection for Mrs. Blossom any the less sincere because of the
obedient respect on which it was founded.
Great-Uncle Samuel had been rightly informed that the Farmdale high
school was a good one, and the lessons Rose learned within its walls
were to her of value; but no less so was the unconscious teaching of
the pure and unselfish lives that were open before her every day. Over
an ardent young life, full of dreams and plans and ambitions, all
centered in self, a happier influence could not well have fallen than
that of these gentle, kindly women, whose spirit of helpfulness and
sympathy was always as ready and unfailing as the flow of the fountain
itself.
Was any one in distress, in perplexity, in trouble; there was no
counselor so wise, discreet, trustworthy, as Mrs. Blossom, who held
half the village secrets, and had served as a peacemaker times without
number. Was there a bride to be dressed; no one could do it so well
as Miss Silence or Mrs. Patience. Was any one sick; no nurses were
as tender and skillful and tireless as they. Did the shadow of death
rest over a home; no voices could speak words of sweeter comfort to the
dying, no other’s presence was so unobtrusive, so helpful in the house
of bereavement. Indeed, few were the families in that little community
to whom they were not bound by the cords of a common sympathy in some
hour of joy or grief. And Rose was not the only one who often wondered
how with all the calls upon them they still managed to accomplish so
much, and with a manner so unhurried.
“I don’t see how you ever do it,” Rose exclaimed one day.
“It’s the busy people who find not only the most time but the most
happiness,” was Silence Blossom’s cheery answer.
And realizing, as she well did, how much more of real happiness there
was in the modest Blossom home than in the big Fifield house, where no
one ever thought of going to ask a service, and every life was wholly
self-centered, Rose could not but admit that this was true.
“I don’t see what happiness you could find in sitting up all night
with Aunt Polly Brown,” she protested. “I’m sure I never want to go
where there’s sick people. I hope I’ll never be asked to.”
Already in that home where thoughtfulness for others was part of the
daily life, and interest in any who were suffering a matter of course,
it had come about naturally that Rose should be sent with a handful of
flowers, or some dainty for a sick neighbor, or was asked to call at
the door with a message of inquiry. So the next day she took it as a
matter of course when Miss Silence asked her to take a bowl of chicken
broth to Aunt Polly Brown.
“Take it right in to Aunt Polly,” said the young woman who opened the
door. “She’s in the bedroom right off the sitting-room.”
Rose hesitated. She would have refused if she had known exactly how to
do so. As it was, the bowl trembled a little as she walked through into
the bedroom, where on a high four-post bedstead, under a “blazing star”
quilt, Aunt Polly lay, a ruffled night cap surrounding her shrunken
face.
“Well, now,” as Rose told her errand, “it was reel kind of Silence
Blossom to send the broth. I was just thinkin’ that a taste o’ chicken
broth would relish. Sit down, won’t ye,” with a wistful accent, “and
tell me what’s goin’ on? Mary Jane never knows nothin’. Mebby I ain’t
goin’ to get well, but ’tany rate I like to know what folks is doin’.”
“I was standing on one foot wondering how quick I could get out,” Rose
said, relating it all to Miss Silence, on her return. “But when she
spoke that way I just thought that if I were old and sick I’d be glad
to have somebody come in; and I sat down and racked my brain to tell
everything I could think of. She seemed real cheered up when I came
away, and I promised her I’d come again.”
“I thought you never wanted to go where there were sick people,” and
Silence Blossom’s eyes twinkled.
“Well, it wasn’t so bad as I thought it was going to be, though her
hands are kind of skinny. And I don’t think I feel quite as I did about
sick folks now. Besides, it must be dreadful to lie in bed day after
day, and if I can make a little of the time pass, why I’m glad to.”
“There is where the gladness comes in,” said Mrs. Patience. “It is
making the hours of suffering a little brighter, a little easier. And
now you have learned this I think you will never forget it.”
“And I also remember that I promised to come down to Helen Green’s
to get out my Latin with her,” and gathering an armful of books Rose
hurried away.
“I am glad that Rose went in to see Aunt Polly; she is such a bit of
sunshine that she could not help but do her good. Besides, she has
always had such a morbid dread of a sick room,” Silence remarked as she
watched her away.
“I am glad, too,” agreed Mrs. Blossom, “for Rose can gain as well as
give. Of course I would not want her to go where there was any danger,
but her exuberant young nature will be made the deeper and richer for
being stirred and lifted out of itself.”
So among the threads of interest running from the Blossom home Rose
knit her threads. The people of Farmdale became her friends, and
because they were her friends she loved them, and so it was not strange
that she won love in return. With the Fifields her relations through
the years continued of the friendliest. On her part the painfulness of
being falsely accused had faded away; and on their part the fact that
it had been an unjust charge had not only made them one and all feel
that they owed her something in return, but had awakened an interest
in her that otherwise they might never have felt. Miss Eudora regarded
her in the light of a romance; Miss Jane Fifield commended the fact
that she was neither vain, nor, as she was pleased to put it, “silly”;
while Mr. Nathan, in his pride at Rose’s persistence, and the quality
he called her “grit,” went so far as to freshen up the languages of his
college days, that he might the more help her.
At their time of life it was not to be expected that the Fifield nature
would greatly change; still their friendship for Rose, inexperienced
young girl though she was, brought a new and wholesome atmosphere into
the old house. Her flitting in and out, bright, breezy, vivacious, was
a welcome break in their old formality. A part of Rose’s nature was her
overflowing enthusiasm on the subject then in mind; her studies, her
school pleasures, whatever part was hers in the life of the village,
was all shared with her friends. So when she came in beaming with
excitement over the prettiness of the newest Banby baby, Miss Fifield
and Miss Eudora became conscious that Mrs. Banby was a neighbor. Or
if it were anxiety how little Mrs. Mather, whose husband had just
died and left her with five children, was ever going to get through
the winter; or rejoicing that Fanny Barber, who had been so low with
inflammatory rheumatism was really improving, almost before they were
aware, they would find themselves becoming interested, an interest that
could easily take the form of a bundle of warm clothing for the widow,
or a glass of Miss Fifield’s famous quince jelly for the invalid. And
so by the slight touches of Rose’s hands they found themselves drawn
gradually from their cold isolation, and nearer to those about them.
CHAPTER XXIII
A VISIT FROM AN OLD FRIEND
Through Cousin Allen Gloin’s wife’s sister, who lived in Horsham, Rose
occasionally heard of the Hagoods, and the year after she left there
was surprised by the news of Mrs. Hagood’s death.
“Mr. Hagood takes it real hard,” added her informant, “and says he
don’t know how he’s ever going to get along without Almiry. Some folks
thinks it’s put on, but for my part I don’t.”
“No, indeed,” had been Rose’s answer, “I think he had grown so used to
her ordering him around that now he does feel lost without it.”
It was not quite two years later when one day, returning from school,
Rose found a horse and buggy standing at the Blossom gate. This of
itself was nothing unusual, for the business of Mrs. Patience and
Miss Silence brought a large share of the Farmdale people, as well
as those outside its limits, to their door. But as Rose gave a second
look in passing at the fat old horse and stout buggy, she suddenly
realized that she had known both before, and quickening her steps she
rushed into the house to find Mr. Hagood, with Rover sitting upright
beside him, waiting her coming. His was the same familiar figure she
remembered so well—thin, grizzled, slightly stooping; but Rose saw
almost in the first glance, that his motions were brisker than in the
days when she had known him, that his whiskers had been trimmed, that
his hat brim had taken an upward tendency, and his eyes had lost their
furtive, timid glance; in short, that there had been a change in the
whole man, slight but still palpable, in the direction of cheerful,
self-assertive manhood.
“Well, now, Posey,” was his greeting, as he held both her hands and
smiled till his face was all a-crinkle, “if it don’t beat natur’ how
you’ve growed! An’ prettier than ever, I declare! I tell you I was reel
tickled when I heerd how well you was fixed, an’ that you’d found out
your reel name, an’ your ma’s relations. You don’t look much like the
little girl Almiry brought home with her from the Refuge.”
“And that you gave the russet apples to?” Rose’s eyes were twinkling,
but the tears were very near them as she recalled that day of her
arrival at the Hagood home.
“So I did, to be sure. Well, Posey—if you hev got another name you’ll
always be Posey to me—we did hev some good times together, didn’t we?”
Then they talked over the pleasant memories of their companionship,
with a mutual care avoiding those whose suggestiveness might be the
opposite. The only allusion he made to her leaving was, “Rover an’
me did miss you dreadfully when you went away, we just did. An’ so
to-day, as I had to come over this way, I said to Rover, ‘We’ll stop
an’ see Posey, we will.’ I’m glad we did, too, an’ I just believe
Rover knows you.” And Rover, with his head on Rose’s knee and her hand
smoothing his silky ears, gently thumped his tail on the floor, as if
in affirmative.
Then, after a moment’s hesitation, “I was sorry you an’ Almiry
couldn’t fit together better; she meant well, Almiry did, but you know
she’d never had any little girls of her own.” And as if fearful that he
had cast some reflection on her memory he hastened to add, “Almiry was
a wonderful woman. I tell you I met with a big loss when I lost her,
I just did, an’ for a spell I was about broke up.” He paused with the
query, “I s’pose you’d heard she was dead?”
“Yes, but I never heard the particulars. Was she sick long?”
“No; it come so onexpected it just about floored me, it did. You see
she was taken with a chill, an’ she kep’ a gettin’ colder’n colder, in
spite o’ everythin’ we could giv’ her, an’ do for her. Why, it did seem
that what with the hot things we give her to drink, an’ the hot things
we kep’ around her, that if she’d been a stone image ’twould a warmed
her through; but they didn’t do a mite o’ good, not one mite. She was
took early one morning, an’ late the next night I was warmin’ a flannel
to lay on her. I het it so ’twas all a-smokin’, but she couldn’t feel
nothin’, an’ she give it a fling, an’ riz half up in bed an’ spoke,
just as natural as she ever did, ‘Elnathan Hagood, I don’t believe
you’ve hed that nigh the stove; what ails you that you can’t half do a
thing? I’ve a good mind to get up and heat some flannel as it ought to
be done. I won’t hev any till I do.’ An’ with that she fell right back
on her piller, an’ never breathed ag’in. I tell you I was all broke up.”
Rose did not know what she ought to say, so she said nothing.
Mr. Hagood hesitated, cleared his throat, and remarked in an inquiring
tone, “Mebby you’ve heard that I was married again?”
It was Rose’s turn to be surprised. “No, indeed, I’ve heard nothing
from Horsham since Mrs. Gloin’s sister left there. But I’m glad if you
have.”
“Be you really?” his face brightening. “Well, now, you see,” with the
confidential tone Rose remembered so well, “mebby some folks’ld think
I hadn’t orter done such a thing. But I tell you after a man has had
a home as many years as I had it’s kinder tough to be without one. I
couldn’t live alone; Rover an’ I tried that, an’ everything got messed
up dreadful; keepin’ a hired girl wasn’t much better; an’ to eat my
victuals at somebody else’s table didn’t seem reel natural, now it
didn’t.
“I thought if Almiry knew all the circumstances she wouldn’t blame
me none ef I did marry. An’ there was Mirandy Fraser, Jim Fraser’s
widow—don’t know as you ever knew her, a mighty pretty little woman—she
was havin’ a hard time to get along with her two little girls, for Jim
never was noways forehanded. So I figured it out that she needed a
home, an’ I needed some one to make a home; an’ the long an’ short of
it is I married her. An’ the plan’s worked first rate, well now it has.
She ain’t such a manager,” he admitted, “as Almiry was; but then,” with
a touch of pride, “I don’t suppose it would be easy to find Almiry’s
equal there. But I’ll say this, I never did see Mirandy’s match for
bein’ pleasant. I don’t believe anybody ever heerd her speak cross, I
really don’t. She’s so contented, too, with everything; hasn’t given me
the first fault-findin’ word yet, not the first one.”
“How nice that is!” Rose rejoined heartily.
“An’ the little girls,” all the lines on Mr. Hagood’s face deepened
into a tender smile as he spoke of them, “Susy an’ Ruth, I just wish
you could see them; there never were two prettier-behaved children, if
I do say it. They like to come out an’ sit in the shop when I’m at work
there, just as you used to, an’, well, they an’ Rover an’ me has some
pretty good times together.”
Rose smiled. “I don’t believe they enjoy it any more than I did.”
“I don’t work so much in the shop, though,” he added, “for I’ve a good
deal to look after. I’m over this way now on business. The fact of the
matter is,” an accent of dejection creeping into his tone, “I’ve made
a bad bargain. Ever since Almiry went I’ve kept everything up straight
as a string, an’ haven’t lost a dollar till now. I s’pose she’d say it
was all my fault, an’ so it is,” growing more and more depressed; “for
I suppose I ought to hev known better than to hev ever lent Tom Hodges
a hundred dollars. When he moved away from Horsham he couldn’t pay me,
but he’d got a good place as foreman in a mill, an’ promised it all
right. That was eight months ago, an’ I’ve never seen a single cent,
so I made up my mind I’d go over there an’ look him up, an’ I found
Tom to-day down with the rheumatism, not able to do a stroke o’ work,
an’ they looked in pretty bad shape—well, now they did. Of course he
couldn’t pay me, said he hadn’t but two dollars in money, but there
was a cow, I could take that towards it ef I wanted to. But bless
you, there was four little children who would hev to go without milk
ef I took the cow, an’ I told Tom I’d wait on him till he could earn
the money, which just the same as meant that I’d give it to him, for
crippled up as he is he can’t more’n take care of his family. An’ when
I come away I handed his wife five dollars; she looked as though she
needed it, an’ they’ve both always done as well as they could. I don’t
know what Almiry’d say ef she could know it. But hang it all!” giving
his hat a slap on his knee, “Mirandy said not to be hard on ’em, an’ it
won’t kill me ef I do lose it.
“No, I can’t stay all night,” in answer to Rose’s invitation. “I
brought Mirandy an’ the little girls to my Cousin Em’ly’s, ten mile
from here, an’ they’ll be lookin’ for me back. But I wish you’d come
an’ see us, Posey,” as he rose to go. “I’ve told Mirandy about you, an’
she’d do everything to make it pleasant. We haven’t changed things any
to speak of since you was there, only we live more in the front part
o’ the house. I couldn’t help feelin’ at first that Almiry wouldn’t
like it, but I wanted to make it pleasant for Mirandy an’ the children,
an’ you know it wasn’t what you could call reel cheerful in that back
kitchen.”
“And can Rover come in the house now?” asked Rose.
“Yes, Rover comes in, an’ we hev the front blinds open, an’ evenin’s
last winter we’d hev apples an’ nuts an’ popcorn, ’most as though it
was a party. You know,” with a broad smile, “I never had any children
o’ my own before, an’ I sort o’ enjoy havin’ some little girls to call
me ‘Pa.’”
Rose had come out along the walk with Mr. Hagood. As they paused at the
gate he glanced around to be sure that no one but her could hear him,
then lowering his voice as though fearing it might reach the ears of
the departed Mrs. Hagood, he added confidentially, “An’ to tell the
truth, Posey, just betwixt you and me, I never was so happy before in
my life as I be now.”
CHAPTER XXIV
AND COLLEGE NEXT
It was the third May that Rose had been in Farmdale. The turf on
the open green was emerald velvet, the orchards were drifts of pink
and white, the lilacs by Mrs. Blossom’s gate were lifting spikes of
lavender, and shrubs and roses were heavy with the weight of bud or
bloom. In a swift rush Rose came down the walk, the white gate clashed
behind her, and she dashed into the house, rosy and breathless with
haste, waving a long envelope over her head.
“What do you think that is?” she cried.
Miss Silence glanced up from her sewing machine. “It looks to me like
an envelope.”
“And what do you think is inside it?” pursued Rose.
“A letter is usually inside an envelope,” answered Mrs. Patience.
“You won’t guess,” pouted Rose, “so I shall have to tell you, for I
couldn’t possibly keep it. This is my certificate that I have passed
the teachers’ examination I went to last week, and am duly qualified to
teach. Wish me joy!”
“But I thought thee went to the examination simply for the practice,”
said Grandmother Sweet.
“So I did. But all the same I wanted to pass, and was so afraid I
wouldn’t pass. That’s why I didn’t say more about it. And now that I
have a really, truly certificate to teach! I’m sure I’ve grown an inch
since I took it out of the post-office.”
“We are very glad you succeeded,” and Mrs. Patience held off a hat to
see if the bunch of flowers was in the right place.
“And that isn’t all,” Rose went on blithely. “You need sixteen points
to graduate from the high school, I have fourteen already, because
I’ve taken extra studies; to pass the teachers’ examination counts two
points, so now I can graduate this year.”
“But why do you want to graduate this year? I supposed of course you
were going one more,” and Silence looked her surprise.
“I want to get to teaching. I’m just crazy to begin.”
“Rose, Rose,” Mrs. Blossom in the next room had heard the conversation,
and now stepped to the doorway, “you are too young to think of
teaching; even if you are qualified you have not the self-control a
teacher needs.”
“Oh, don’t say that!” groaned Rose, “when I have struggled with my
temper, and prayed over it, and counted a hundred before I spoke, and
bitten my tongue till it bled, and did all the things I ever heard of
to hold on to myself.”
“And you have done very well,” commended Mrs. Blossom. “You have
overcome much, and learned some hard lessons in the bridling of your
quick tongue, and holding in check your temper. But you have still
more to learn, especially if you are going to teach. I know, for I was
a teacher myself, and while text-books and methods change, boys and
girls, as far as I can see, remain about the same.”
“All I ask is the chance to try some boys and girls.”
“Besides,” Mrs. Blossom’s voice was calmly even, “I do not think you
can teach, that any school board would hire a girl of seventeen.”
“But I know people who have taught when no older than that,” persisted
Rose.
“That might have been once but it is not now. Indeed I am quite sure
that a law has been passed in Ohio that a teacher cannot draw pay
unless she is over eighteen.”
“It is a mean old law,” scorned Rose.
“Another thing,” continued Mrs. Blossom, “your Uncle Samuel is your
guardian, and he did not expect, any more than we did, that you would
leave school till next year; and before taking such a step you must
consult him.”
“Great-Uncle Samuel won’t care,” urged Rose, “and I’ve set my heart
on getting through this year. Besides if I can’t teach I can go to
school another year, and take Latin and German, and review the common
branches.”
“You write to Mr. Jarvis first, and see what he says,” and Rose knew
further argument was useless.
Rose waited and fretted for two weeks before an answer to her letter
came, and when she read it she gave a gasp of surprise. “What do you
think?” she exclaimed. “Great-Uncle Samuel says I have been a very
prudent girl, while from my marks—you know I have sent them to him
every quarter—I seem to have made good use of my opportunities; so if
I will continue to be prudent he thinks there will be money enough for
me to go to college for four years. This is what he writes: ‘Of course
not to a big expensive college, that would be quite beyond your means,
the Fairville Woman’s College is the one I have chosen for you. I am
told that it is an excellent school, that the location is healthy, and
the moral tone excellent. That you will make good use of its benefits
I shall expect. Of course your Aunt Sarah Hartly ought to have seen to
this for you, but as long as she wouldn’t I have done what seemed to me
the best.’”
“Four years in college, will not that be fine?” Silence Blossom’s own
eyes were bright with pleasure.
“Yes, I suppose it will,” Rose spoke slowly. “But, you know, I never
had thought of such a thing as college being possible for me; I did not
think that there was money enough for that. Of course I shall like it,
the only thing is it will make me so old before I get to teaching.”
The older women looked at Rose’s face, that had never lost its child
expression, and laughed at her words.
“It may be though,” she went on, “that I can put in extra studies and
shorten the time.”
“No, no,” protested Mrs. Patience, “to do your best work you do not
want to hurry it.”
Grandmother Sweet stopped her knitting. “Rose, my husband while a lad
served five years as apprentice to a carpenter. His own work was of the
best, and he often said that time spent learning to use one’s tools was
time saved. Now, thee is planning to use books as tools, and the better
thee understands them the better work thee will do.”
“Oh, of course,” Rose hastened to say, “now the chance has come to me
I wouldn’t miss it for anything. And I will make the best of it, too.
I’m going to send right away and get a prospectus of the college to see
what the entrance requirements are. I’m not going to be conditioned,
and I’d rather be a little ahead. I had planned anyway to read Virgil
this summer with Mr. Fifield, and I can study up whatever else is
needed.”
“I think if you are going to college this fall you will need to do some
sewing as well as studying,” suggested Miss Silence.
“Of course I shall. I know I can’t spend money for a great deal; what
I do have I want neat and in good shape. I’m so glad to know about it
now, for I can plan the dresses I will need when I graduate from the
high school so I can use them then.”
“How many will you need?” asked Silence Blossom.
“The other girls say three; a suit for the Baccalaureate sermon,
another for the senior reception, and the graduating dress.”
“That last will be white, and will answer for your best white dress all
the year, and if you get a pretty grey for your suit that will do for
fall wear.”
“That makes two new dresses,” reflected Rose. “I can’t afford any
more, and one other still to be evolved. I wish the waist wasn’t so
badly worn to the lavender and white striped silk Great-Aunt Sarah sent
in the last box; it would make a pretty dress, and I could mend up the
cream lace to trim it.”
Before Rose had ceased speaking Miss Silence was turning the leaves of
a fashion book. “There is a dress in this last number that I believe we
can copy, and use the purple silk she sent you once to combine with it.
The solid color will give it character, and the lace will soften and
keep it girlish.”
Rose was looking at the plate. “Yes, that will be pretty. You are the
very Wizard of Old Clothes. And if there are scraps enough of silk and
lace left I will make a little hat with purple violets for trimming to
wear with it.”
She paused and lifted an impressive finger. “But mind this, when I get
to earning for myself I will have some pretty dresses, and never will I
wear any more of Great-Aunt Sarah’s cast-offs!”
Mrs. Patience smiled indulgently. “You are young, Rose, it is only
natural you should feel so. But you know you are denying yourself now
so that day may come.”
“I know it,” Rose nodded. “When I have had to go without things I
wanted and that other girls did have, I’ve said, ‘Never mind, you are
having an education.’ I expect to have to say that pretty often when I
get to college—it’s hard to realize that I am going—but I’m not going
to forget that I’m working for a purpose.”
“And that’s better than fine clothes.”
Rose twisted her face. “I wouldn’t object to the fine clothes if I
could have them. But I suppose I shall need some dresses for everyday
wear; the blue dress I had last year will do for that, won’t it?”
“Yes, and there is your green and red plaid. You can have some separate
waists, too. I’m sure, Rose, we can have your wardrobe in shape, that
if not fine, it will be neat and tasty.”
“What could I ever have done without you all?” Rose paused and sighed.
“I am glad that I can go to college. I shall be gladder the longer I
realize it. But I feel that it will just break my heart to leave here.
If I could only take you all with me or bring the college to Farmdale.”
“We are glad that you can go to college, Rose,” Mrs. Blossom’s voice
had not quite its usual firmness, “but you may be sure of one thing,
we shall miss you more than you will us. But it is a long time till
September; we will not begin the parting yet.”
“And of course I shall come back in vacations; everybody goes home
then, and this is my home.”
“Do you think a college freshman will remember how to gather eggs?”
asked Mrs. Patience.
“This one will, you may be sure,” laughed Rose, “and how to make
omelet, and custard, and cake with them when they are gathered. It’s
a pity Great-Uncle Samuel never comes so I can show him how you have
taught me to cook.”
It was a busy summer for Rose; she went over all the studies in which
she would be examined for entrance to college, she sewed and gathered
and tucked and hemmed, and when the September days came she packed
her modest wardrobe in her new trunk with a curious mingling of dread
and delight; dread at leaving the life she knew, the friends she had
proved; delight in the new and wider world opening before her.
There had been talk of Mrs. Patience going with Rose, but it had not
proved possible, so when one sunny September day the stage—the same
stage that had brought her to Farmdale, stopped at the white gate,
and her trunk was strapped on, with a mixture of tears and smiles the
good-bys were said, and Rose settled herself in the same corner of the
back seat she had occupied on that day which now seemed so far, far in
the past, no longer a forlorn little figure, dingy, travel worn and
friendless; but a trim young girl in a pretty grey suit, leaning out
and waving her handkerchief in answer to those waved to her from nearly
every house. For Rose’s friends included almost every one in Farmdale,
and all her friends were interested in her start for college.
THE END
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