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Title: The wonderful Christmas in Pumpkin Delight Lane
Author: Sarah J. Prichard
Release date: October 7, 2024 [eBook #74537]
Language: English
Original publication: New Haven: Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor
Credits: Richard Tonsing, Charlene 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 THE WONDERFUL CHRISTMAS IN PUMPKIN DELIGHT LANE ***
The Wonderful Christmas
in
Pumpkin Delight Lane
BY
SARAH J. PRICHARD
[Illustration: [Logo]]
THE TUTTLE, MOREHOUSE & TAYLOR COMPANY
1908
COPYRIGHT, 1908
BY
SARAH J. PRICHARD
Contents.
CHAPTER I 1
CHAPTER II 14
CHAPTER III 28
CHAPTER IV 44
CHAPTER V 56
CHAPTER VI 68
CHAPTER VII 75
CHAPTER VIII 87
CHAPTER IX 101
CHAPTER X 110
CHAPTER XI 117
CHAPTER XII 125
CHAPTER XIII 133
CHAPTER XIV 141
CHAPTER XV 149
CHAPTER XVI 158
CHAPTER XVII 169
The Wonderful Christmas in
Pumpkin Delight Lane.
Chapter I.
“Well, Frank, how do you get on with your hoeing?”
“Two acres! I don’t believe the land’s measured right, anyhow,” said the
boy, “and—father, the circus is coming to-day.” Frank stood leaning on
his hoe and looking up into his father’s face with that entreaty in his
eyes which every loving parent knows so well.
“I am sorry, Frank, but you remember our agreement,” said his father
very seriously.
“I didn’t know the lot was so _awful_ long and wide. I’m tired of it,
anyhow.”
“Very well, my boy. I will take the field back and call the men to
finish hoeing the corn, if you say so; if you are willing to give it up
now, when it has come to the hoeing, and that half done, count the cost,
Frank; count it well.”
“I want to go to the circus,” said the boy, looking ruefully over the
long rows of corn that yet remained to be hilled.
“Very well. I am off to the city now. If you conclude to give it up, you
can tell John, and call him to finish the hoeing, while you go to the
circus; but, Frank, take my advice, and think well before you decide.”
Mr. Hallock went across the field to the place where Neptune, Kate’s
pony, waited to take him to the railway station.
The house at Hallock Point overlooked the sea and a large portion of the
farm. From an upper window in the house Kate Hallock, Frank’s twin
sister, watched her father as he left Neptune under the hedge and
crossed the field to speak to her brother. Frank and Kate were thirteen
years old, and the youngest children of the family. Kate was devoted to
Frank. The minute Mr. Hallock turned to leave the cornfield, she started
to learn the result of the interview. By the time she reached Frank she
was quite out of breath, for she had made haste as fast as she could,
and the dust of the furrows had covered her shoes, and the careless
child had left her hat in the house.
“Frank!” she cried, “did he say you might go?”
“Look here, Kate Hallock, what is the use of frightening a year’s growth
out of a fellow in that way? I’ve a great mind not to tell you a word he
said,” exclaimed the lad, turning suddenly to meet the anxious,
expectant face that he was obliged to look down upon to see: for Frank
was much taller than Kate.
“O, Frank, I didn’t mean to start you so; but you know I can’t make a
noise walking in this soft ground. I’ll borrow the dinner-horn next time
I come out to see you, and toot it all the way. Please tell me what he
said.”
“See here, Kate, couldn’t you do a kind turn for me? Why didn’t you
fetch your hat?”
“Never mind my hat. I’ll do anything to help you, if you can only go to
the circus.”
“Well, you count the rows I’ve got to do between here and the fence.”
Kate disappeared behind Frank’s back, and he hoed away as fast as ever
he could, until she returned and said:
“Frank, there’s twenty-seven rows.”
“Never can do it in the world! There’s ninety-three hills in every
single row.”
“Won’t it be nice to help you pick the corn! Papa won’t call _that_
having help about it, I know. O I wish it was time for harvest! Won’t it
be just nice to have piles and piles of great ears, all your own! You’ll
be most rich, won’t you, Frank?” cried Kate, joyously clapping her hands
before the imaginary heaps of corn.
“See here, Kate, if I keep the corn I’ve got to stay here and keep on
hoeing it all day and half of to-morrow, at least.”
“Did papa say so?”
“He said I must keep my engagement with him, or give up the field and
call John in to finish it. You know, Kate, it ought to have got hoed
more’n a week ago, only I went fishing and everything.”
“Yes, I know, Frank, there’s always something happening to take us off,
and to-morrow’s the picnic.”
“So ’tis, and there’ll be a jolly good time; but there’s picnics every
little while, and it’s awful dull work hoeing corn. Just see these
weeds—stubborn, horrid things!” and the boy struck at them with a force
that cut the corn off.
“O, Frank, there’ll be a hole here now all Summer?” and Kate stooped and
gathered up the broad leaves that had fallen.
“I didn’t mean to do it, Kate. See here, if you really mean to help
me—there’s Hugo, the new hand; he don’t know anything about it, and you
just tell him to fetch his hoe up this way.”
“O, Frank, you don’t mean _that_!” with a throb in her throat that Frank
tried to forget that he had heard. “Just think how mean that would be,
when you promised to do every bit of the work your own self. Don’t
cheat, Frank, _don’t_! I did _once_, and I feel awfully shrivelled up
every time I think of it; and I always do think of it when it thunders
or the wind blows hard.”
“_You_, Kate? Tell me what you cheated about.”
“No, Frank,” quite solemnly; “it wasn’t _you_ that I deceived.”
“Of course not—your own brother. If you had, I should have been sure to
find you out. So you won’t tell Hugo to come here?”
“Yes, I’ll call Hugo, if you ask me to, when I get my bonnet on. The sun
burns—my head aches now; but, Frank, you _won’t_ let Hugo hoe the corn,”
she said beseechingly.
“No, I guess you needn’t send him. Hark! what’s that music? O, it’s the
circus coming up the road! Let’s run and see the big chariot and the
cages go by. Here, take my hat!” he shouted, tossing his straw hat back,
and rushing through the corn in the direction of the highway.
Kate put the hat on and followed after. A high stone wall enclosed that
portion of Hallock Point. Beyond the wall there was a row of old,
wind-twisted, gnarled, wild-cherry trees. When Kate came to the wall,
the music was quite near. She could see the nodding plumes on “something
or other—she didn’t know what”; but over the wall she could not climb.
She shouted to Frank to come and help her—for the wall was higher than
her head; and Frank called back to her that he was up in the cherry
tree, and ’twas just splendid. “There are three elephants and camels,
and, O, Kate, there are some real live Indians!”
For one brief second Kate was glad that the wall was between her and the
real live Indians; but the music came near and nearer, and the huge
chariot—“such as no kings of the East ever dreamed of riding in,” Frank
afterward told her—rolled along, bearing aloft gaily-dressed men and
women. Kate could see them, and she saw the heads and backs of the
elephants and the camels, and the tops of many cages, and at the very
last, a forlorn looking boy’s face—just a glimpse of it, as she gave a
jump high up to catch sight of anything more that might be coming. The
boy was seated on a pony, but that Kate could not see.
“Are they all gone, Frank?” she called.
“Yes, I see the red of the big elephant’s blanket between the trees, and
that’s all.”
“Come then!”
“Just give me my hat—you sit down and wait; I’ll be back in no time at
all; I’m going to run across lots, up to the mound, to see it come down
on the other side.”
“Frank, please let me see it with you. Help me over the wall. I can run
as fast as you can when I once get over.”
“It’ll be gone before I can get there, and you can see it all this
afternoon. Toss over my hat.”
It was well shaded where Frank stood, under the cherry trees, but on the
other side the sun poured down its heat on poor Kate’s head, as she took
off the straw hat and threw it over to Frank.
It was too warm to wait there, and Frank’s cornfield lay between the
wall and any place that was shaded. In crossing the lot Kate came upon
the small-sized hoe that her brother had thrown down in his flight. She
picked it up, and putting the handle into the soft earth, left it
standing there, that her brother might easily find his place again. Then
she did her very best to twist her apron around her head, and went home.
She did not know how long she had been gone. There was Neptune waiting
at the carriage gate to carry her to school, and in the doorway stood
her mother, saying as the girl drew near,
“Why, Kate, where have you been?—without a hat, too, in this sun.”
“O, mamma!” cried the child, “if you only knew how much poor Frank wants
to go to the circus this afternoon; I’ve been up by the wall looking at
the procession go by.”
“Hush, Kate; your father is only just. Frank wanted to earn money for
himself like other boys, and do you think if he were working for any
farmer that that farmer would let his corn spoil, as Frank is letting
his, running off day after day? No. If he goes away again until the last
hill is hoed, your father will take it away from him.”
Poor Kate glanced back toward the field. She knew just where the hoe
stood, gleaming in the sunshine, a witness that her brother was at that
very moment neglecting his work. She hastened to her own room, washed
her burning face, and then went to school in the village.
Frank was on the mound in time to see the “great show” go past. On the
pony in the rear, looking neither at the swaying figures in the chariot,
nor at the long line of cages that followed after, was the boy with the
sadness in his eyes. A bobolink, thoughtless fellow, struck up a song of
gladness as he wavered through the air from tree to tree. Frank,
listening to the band of music, did not hear the delight of the bird,
but the boy on the pony did. He wiped his eyes with his jacket sleeve
two or three times, and wiped them yet again. Frank had drawn close to
the roadside. He was near enough to the lad to speak to him.
“Do you belong to the circus?” he ventured to ask.
“Yes,” was the reply.
“What do you do?”
“Wash the dishes, when I don’t ride this pony.”
“Circus dishes!” exclaimed Frank, “that’s funny.” And the desire to
learn something more led him to walk along. He could easily keep step
with the progress of the chariot and elephants.
Presently he asked, “Do you like it?”
“I’ve nothing else to do,” was the reply.
“What’s your name? Mine is Frank Hallock, and I live in the house up
yonder,” pointing, with a feeling very like pride, to the distant gables
and chimneys that represented his home.
“My name’s Harry Cornwall,” replied the boy, glancing toward the place
Frank had pointed out.
“Where’s the circus going to be?”
“We’ve got most there,” said the boy, “and I’m glad of it, for I want my
breakfast.”
“No breakfast yet? Why it must be nine o’clock. Come home with me and
I’ll give you some right off.”
“O, I can’t. I told you I had the dishes to wash, and there’ll be an
awful hurry to-day, for it rained in the night, and we’re late.”
“I wish I could see you do it.”
“Nothing’s easier, if you come on and follow me. The first tent that
goes up will be for the breakfast.”
“It will be most as good as the circus, its own self,” thought Frank,
and forgetting Kate, his hoe, and his corn, he followed on, until the
long procession came to the ground where the great display of animals
and human dexterity was to be made.
“Isn’t it jolly?” he cried, as he watched the hurried movements of the
men pitching the great tent and the side tents, rolling the cages to
their appointed places, picketing the elephants and the camels, and
leading off the tired horses to be fed.
“Maybe it looks so, youngster, but it’s the hardest work I ever tried.
I’d rather hoe corn all day,” responded a busy man.
“Dear me! I wonder if he knows,” thought Frank, and in just one moment
more he meant to hurry back to his duty, but there was the immense
coffee-pot boiling away on the stove, and it looked so funny, the
breakfast that was being prepared under the tent, and he had never seen
the wild beasts fed before; he was very curious to learn what the camels
and the kangaroos had to eat, and “O, ’twas just splendid,” Frank
thought—“a great deal better than going to a real circus, this getting
ready for one.” Before the camels had taken in all the water they
wanted, there was the call to breakfast, and there were the wild
Indians, snatching off their long jute hair, throwing aside their
painted faces, and coming out of beaded blankets and tinselled bands,
nothing but tawny white men after all, and sitting down to breakfast in
the tent. How hungry they were! “They eat like savages, anyway,”
whispered Frank to Harry Cornwall, “use their knives for forks, and,
dear me, they are not a bit polite.”
“They don’t know any better,” responded Harry. “I don’t believe
they—some of them—ever saw a nice table like you have at home.”
“Did you?” questioned Frank.
“My mother was a lady,” said the boy, again wiping his eyes with his
jacket sleeve.
“Dear me! Take my handkerchief,” said Frank, drawing one from his
pocket, but instantly concealing it, for he had forgotten that he had
wiped his hands with it when running from the cornfield.
Harry laughed, and thanked him, and then ran to refill the coffee-bowls
about the table. By the time he had filled the last one and returned to
the stove just outside the tent, the men began to leave the table.
“Now, if you want to see the circus dishes, come on,” called Harry, “and
if you’ll help wipe, then we’ll have a chance to see Bengalee.”
“What’s Bengalee?” asked Frank—“another sham Indian?”
“No, indeed. It’s real blood this time; true Indian, too. The tiger is
getting rampacious, and they’re going to fix him.”
While Harry gave the information, he was gathering together knives,
forks, spoons, bowls, and plates, as handy as any woman—and, in his
eagerness to see the tiger, Frank was gathering up dishes before he knew
what he was about.
“That’s clever in you,” said Harry. “If I had somebody to _like_ around
here, ’twouldn’t seem so bad.”
“I should like it first-rate—a great deal better than staying at home
and hoeing corn,” thought Frank, and presently, while Harry plunged the
dishes into hot water, Frank found himself telling the story of the
cornfield that his father had given him. Before the last dish was wiped,
Harry had told Frank how he came to belong to the circus. In listening
to Harry’s account of his escape from the great fire that swept over
Michigan a few years ago, both children forgot all about the tiger in
his cage, and when Harry came, in his story, to the place where he lost
all his family, he wiped his eyes with the dishcloth many times before
he could go on to the place where he had found the circus encamped, and
somebody to give him food and clothing.
“Heigh ho!” exclaimed Frank, “what a hero you are! I wish my Kate could
see you. Nothing ever happens to me. It’s go to bed every night in the
same bed, and get up every morning in the same room, and see just the
same things and folks over and over again. Stupid, ain’t it?”
“I’d go and go, and walk and climb and run, years and years, to see the
same old faces and have the same old home again!” said Harry, choking
and sobbing to a degree that quite upset Frank Hallock.
“You just come home with me, then, and see my father and mother,” said
Frank, not knowing how to suggest comfort in any other form.
“They wouldn’t let me,” sobbed Harry, quite broken down by a touch of
sympathy. “Nice folks don’t like circus folks at all; you know they
don’t.”
“I don’t see why, when ministers’ children and deacons’ children, and
everybody’s boys and girls, go to the circus,” replied Frank; and then
feeling that he had not touched the heart of the trouble, he plunged
into it by saying, “Look here, you Harry Cornwall, you are not circus
folks at all; you are only a boy out of the Michigan fires. Why, my
mother sent off lots of clothes to Grand Haven and Port Huron, and other
places out there; and my sister Kate tucked into one of the boxes her
new gold necklace that Grandma Thornton had just sent her for her
birthday, without anybody’s finding it out until the box had been gone
pretty nigh a month. Come home with me, I say; everybody will be glad to
see you.”
“O, I can’t,” ejaculated Harry, having conquered his sobs during the
time of Frank’s long speech; “I’ve got to ride Flurry this afternoon and
evening. Flurry is the pony I was on this morning, and in the night,
some time, we break up and travel on, maybe for half the night. Hark!
they are taming the tiger now. Hear the poor fellow mew!”
When Frank heard the roar of poor “Bengalee” in his cage, he was so
terrified that he began to run as fast as he could, and he did not stop
to look around until he reached the top of the hill, well nigh a quarter
of a mile from the white tents.
His heart was beating so fast that he could scarcely count the strokes
of the bell in the church tower. It was striking for twelve of the
clock. A feeling of dismay came upon the lad as he counted out the
number of twelve. He had been away from his duty three hours. In one
hour dinner would be ready. Kate would be home from school. Poor Kate!
Frank’s face grew warm and warmer with a wholesome shame under the vivid
recollection of the manner in which, and the place where, he had left
her to wait in the burning sun for his return.
As he went onward in the direction of his home, he looked frequently at
the windows, half expecting to see his mother looking out. But no; she
was occupied within doors, and not one of the household knew that Frank
had neglected his duty.
“I don’t care, anyway,” he thought, and he went on thinking after this
fashion. “It isn’t at all the kind of weather to be cooped up hoeing
corn. I’d rather earn money some easier way. It’s jolly to be a
circusboy, I know. I wonder why Harry Cornwall doesn’t like it.”
Nevertheless, Frank took his hoe from the place where Kate had left it
for him, and fell to work, resolved to hoe “like anything” until it
should be time for dinner.
Chapter II.
Harry Cornwall ran out from the tent to watch the flight of Frank
Hallock, who ran, frightened by the tiger, and as the boy disappeared
from sight over the hilltop, Harry determined to try and find time
enough that very evening to run up to the big house and tell all he knew
about the necklace that somebody had tucked into the pocket of the
waistcoat that fell to Jack Flibbit after the great fire. Harry could
not persuade himself that two little girls in the land had put two
necklaces, with the same mark, into pockets to go “Out West.” Harry’s
name was called in a loud tone, and he ran to obey the call at about the
same moment that Frank Hallock reached the cornfield and picked up his
hoe.
Frank counted the hills and the rows, and scarcely looked up until the
sound of the one o’clock train, on the New Haven Railroad, passing
through the town, told to him how short the hour had been.
Then Neptune came home. Frank knew that Kate was on the carriage-road
that ran past the field, but he would not look up, not even when he
heard her cheery call to him; so Neptune and Kate went on their way, and
presently the welcome sound of the dinner-horn was heard.
Frank did not throw down his hoe, but fell to work harder than ever. In
five minutes’ time the horn was sounded again, and on looking up, Frank
beheld Kate standing on the veranda—she was waving her hat to attract
his attention. He was inclined to make a martyr of himself just then, so
he waved his straw hat in return, and immediately resolved to “hoe away
like a major.”
In fifteen minutes more Kate was making her way for the second time that
day through Frank’s cornfield. As she drew near, she called out, “Frank!
Frank! why in the world don’t you come to dinner? There is a gentleman
at table who came to see papa on business, and I ran away after the
soup—I couldn’t eat my dinner one bit, without you.”
“You’ll _have_ to, I reckon,” returned Frank; “a poor fellow, like me,
who has to hoe corn all day, can’t stop to eat.”
“O, Frank Hallock! _for shame!_” cried Kate, putting down her indignant
foot without being able to make noise enough about it to disturb an
earthworm.
“It’s _true_,” responded Frank, pitching into the next hill with all his
might.
“It is _not_ true,” cried Kate; “and if just running off to _look_ at
the circus pass by makes you say such things, I am glad you can’t go to
see it.”
“Of _course_ you are. I _knew_ you was, the whole time! It’s just like a
girl. Girls always have the best times, and its pretty easy work for
them. Nobody ever sends _you_ off on errands in the sun and the cold and
storms, and no one ever tells _you_ not to sit on the nice chairs and
things.”
“Now, Frank!” began Kate, who was not at all inclined to argue with him,
“if you will not come in and get your dinner, you may go without it. I
must go.”
Frank did not look up from his work, and Kate turned away and left him,
feeling that he deserved to go without his dinner. Before she reached
the house she began to feel very sorry for him, and by the time dinner
was over she was ready to cry, with mingled pity and vexation.
“Poor fellow! he must be so hungry,” she thought, “and he has been hard
at work in the hot sun so long. I’ll just go and carry him some dinner.”
Taking her dinner-basket she packed it quite full, and for the third
time that day Kate trudged away to that absent brother of hers in the
cornfield.
“Can’t stop to eat!” called Frank the instant he perceived what Kate
carried. “I’ve got to work right on, night and day, till this is done.”
“O, Frank! do put that hoe down and eat this dinner! See how nice it is!
Salmon, strawberries, and things! You never saw such nice strawberries
in your life, I know. I saved half of mine for you, I knew you liked
them so much.”
Holding forth the luscious berries, Kate pleaded with Frank thus:
“Now, Frank, please, won’t you eat them? Just the berries, if nothing
more.”
“I can’t, Kate; ’twould take time.”
“You provoking fellow! I’ve a great mind to eat them myself.”
“Do! I know you want them.”
Kate’s eyes filled with tears. She stood silently during the time that
Frank hoed four hills of corn. Then putting the basket down, and taking
the dish of berries with its spoon, she followed down the furrow until
she came to Frank.
“See!” she said, hiding her dim eyes behind an eager little laugh, “you
hoe away, and I will feed you—a spoonful of berries at every hill. Take
one now,” holding up her short white arm so that the spoon just touched
his dusty lips. Frank caught back his face from contact with the
berries. He was determined to be a martyr, and that Kate should have her
pleasure marred by pity for him; and yet Frank _was_ very hungry. He
wanted his dinner as only a healthy, hungry boy can want it.
“Frank, won’t you eat these just to please me?” she said, finally.
“I can’t, Kate. You don’t appreciate a fellow’s situation, or you
wouldn’t ask me.”
“I s’pose,” ejaculated Kate, “you appreciate _mine_ in bringing you your
dinner.”
“I do, Kate.”
“Then eat it.”
“No,” rather faintly, as he caught sight of the tempting salmon, for
Kate had taken up the basket.
“Good-bye, then. I’m going.”
“Good-bye. I hope you’ll have a good time at the circus.”
“I sha’n’t, I know; thinking of you here will make me very happy, won’t
it?”
“It ought to.”
Kate stood irresolute for a moment, then she went away, leaving Frank’s
dinner on the ground. He saw her put the basket down and poise the dish
of berries on its top. He kept along the row he was hoeing until he
reached the stone wall; then, instead of following it back, his hungry
desire for the contents of the basket overcame his desire for martyrdom,
and he went back, hoe in hand, to the place where Kate had left it, but
no basket could he find.
It was gone.
Kate, growing more and more indignant at her brother’s ingratitude, as
she went on her way toward the house, had yielded to the sudden
temptation to return and pick it up. Frank had not looked around once,
and thus had not seen Kate, nor heard her exclaim as she gathered it in
her hands, “The bad, naughty boy _shall_ not have it at all.” And the
“bad, naughty boy” did not get it at all.
As Kate, warm and panting from the haste she had made, reached the end
of the field and was going by a bit of hedge, she saw a man sitting on
the ground.
He looked to Kate very hungry. At all events she knew he must be very
tired, for he was leaning his head against a tree trunk and was fanning
himself with a straw hat. His eyes were closed, and as Kate moved along
without making much noise, he did not hear a sound until she spoke to
him.
“What is the matter with you? Are you sick?” she questioned. She might
quite as well have asked him if he was the man in the moon, for he did
not comprehend one word of English. He reached forth his hands for the
food she carried, doubtless thinking that Kate was the good angel who
had been sent in answer to his great need.
The man had been very ill in a hospital at New Haven. As soon as he
could walk a little, he had made his escape, without having strength
enough to reach the place where he wished to be. Having seen Mr.
Hallock’s house, he hoped to gain it before sitting down to rest, but
had not been able to get there.
He devoured Frank’s dinner with such eagerness that Kate began to wonder
whether or not he would leave the fork and spoon. She felt quite happy
when at last he returned them to the basket, and asked, by signs, if he
should carry it to the house for her. She shook her head, and took it
from him. After going on a few steps, she turned to look at the man, and
her kind heart-of-pity was touched by his sorrow, although she knew
nothing of his sad story. Remembering that she had the money in her
pocket that her father had given to her that she might go to the circus,
she suddenly resolved that she would give it to him, and stay home. “I
should not enjoy anything, thinking of poor Frank, anyway,” she thought.
The man had apparently fallen asleep when Kate returned. Her feet made
no sound on the turf as she stole back to the spot. His head was against
the tree at whose foot he sat; his hat lay upon the ground. Kate dropped
the bit of paper currency into it, and went noiselessly away.
Dear Kate Hallock never knew what she did that day. The fifty cents that
she gave enabled the poor fellow to be in time to find his sister, who,
alone in a land that was new and strange to her, had lost her brother.
No wonder that he had made his escape from the hospital, and was trying
to get back to the place where he had left her. He was just in time: for
she was about to start with a band of strangers for the “Great West,”
not knowing what else to do; and she had with her all the money that the
brother possessed.
It is so sweet to drop little acts of kindness as we pass along our
daily round. They may fall seemingly into the ground, but God knows that
not one of them ever fails to do its own bright work somewhere for some
one.
Kate Hallock went home with the empty basket, wondering what she should
do with herself all the June afternoon. She thought that she would go
past the field where Frank was at work and on down the lane leading to
the sea. It would be nice and cool down there, and maybe she could dig
some clams with her own hands, just enough for Frank’s supper. Kate was
quite certain that he would be hungry, so hungry that he would have to
eat, by tea time.
When she went to find her mother, that lady was engaged in conversation
with the strange gentleman. Kate overheard him say, “You must be
extremely sorry to part with this place,” and she did not hear her
mother’s reply.
“Part with this place?” thought Kate. “How funny that sounded! What did
he mean, I wonder?”
But Kate soon forgot all about it, for the Glenns came for her to go to
the circus with them. There were Mr. Glenn, Florence, Will, and Stacey.
In vain Kate pleaded that she had used her money for something else. She
was carried off in spite of herself, and so lost her pleasant time down
by the sea. She went with tears close to her eyes and many a dim look
back at the figure of her brother, toiling away in the field.
Mrs. Hallock also watched her boy with many misgivings. She knew the
history of Kate’s endeavor, and quite approved of the disposition she
had made of the contents of the basket.
Four of the clock came. The strange gentleman had taken his departure
for that day. Frank had borne his martyrdom long enough. He could endure
the terrible gnawing in his stomach no longer; so he dropped his hoe,
and made his way to the house and the kitchen, and asked the cook for
“something to eat.” “I’ll have it right here on your table,” he said;
“some bread and milk, if you’ve nothing more.”
Frank’s manner and whole appearance was so wonderfully subdued, that the
cook was impressed by it to bring forth her best stores for the tired
boy.
“What’s the matter, Master Frank? What ails you, that you can’t eat a
single morsel?” she cried: for Frank sat before the little dinner, and
did not touch it.
“I don’t know,” said Frank; “I—I—can’t _half see_ it!” and rising up,
poor Frank tried to get from the kitchen to his mother.
The cook followed him, calling out “Mrs. Hallock! Mrs. Hallock! please
make haste! It’s Frank!”
Mrs. Hallock met the boy in the hall. He staggered up to her, crying out
“I’m so sick! _so sick!_ My head! my head!”
Mrs. Hallock sat beside Frank, bathing his head, and trying her utmost
to help him bear the pain and deadly feeling “a sick-headache” brings
with it.
During the performance at the circus, the lad, Harry Cornwall, in
attempting a difficult feat in riding, fell from his pony.
The sad-faced boy had been recognized by Kate Hallock. The instant he
appeared, Kate was interested. She watched each movement he made, and
when she saw him fall, she covered her face and uttered a cry of horror.
The lad was gathered up by two men. They disappeared with him from the
scene, and the performance went on.
After that, Kate could not bear to stay one moment longer. She was
wondering where they had carried the hurt boy, and what they were doing
for him, and whether or not he had a father, or a brother, there to take
thought for him.
This new trouble, added to the vision of Frank at work in the field
without any dinner, quite overcame Kate. She asked to go home so
earnestly, that Mr. Glenn accompanied her outside of the tent, and then
Kate went home alone.
“Hush-sh-sh-sh!” was the first whispered sound that she heard at the
entrance door of her home.
“Master Frank’s took awful sick!” said Bridget, “and your mother’s with
him, upstairs.”
Kate flew up the stairway, so sorry that she had run back and picked up
the basket. She stole into the room, and for a moment could not see any
one within it, it had been so carefully darkened.
“Quiet, Kate!” said Mrs. Hallock. “Frank has been working in the sun so
long without eating anything, that he has an attack of sick-headache,
but he is getting better now.”
“Kate, won’t you fetch a fellow a crust of bread?” asked Frank, throwing
the napkin from his forehead.
“Of course I will, Frank. Don’t you want a piece of toast?”
“No! Bring me what I want—a crust—the brownest one you can find.”
Away ran Kate to fulfil his wish, and presently, having returned with it
and watched its disappearance from sight, she said: “Something awful
happened at the circus this afternoon.”
“What? Did the tiger mew?”
Kate laughed.
“You ridiculous fellow,” she cried. “A boy fell from the pony he was
riding, and I guess he was awfully hurt, too, for some men sprang in and
carried him off, and—”
“What boy, pray?” asked Frank, taking his head from the pillow and
leaning it on his hand.
“How do I know?” cried Kate; “but don’t you remember the little fellow
who was clear behind everything this morning?”
“It _wasn’t_ him, I hope, Kate,” with a catch in his breath that made
Mrs. Hallock tell him to “lie down and keep still.”
“Yes it was, that very boy.”
“Mother,” spoke up Frank, “that poor fellow hasn’t a friend left in the
world. Everybody belonging to him was burned up in the big fire in
Michigan, you know. The circus, _this_ circus, was going about through
the state, and this boy was trying to get somewhere where he could live,
when he found it, and has been going about with it ever since.”
“How do you know, Frank?”
Frank had counted the cost before he had spoken. He knew just what it
involved to tell the whole truth, but he came out with it bravely,
telling the story of the morning spent on the circus grounds, and what
he had there learned from Harry Cornwall about himself. “Mother,” he
said at the end of his statement, “they take up their tents and go away
in the night. Won’t you please send Richard to find out if he is much
hurt?”
“It’s just good and sweet and beautiful and everything in you, dear
Frank,” said Kate, the instant her mother had gone to send Richard
according to the boy’s request, adding, “I’ll forgive you everything
naughty you may do all summer, for this, and I’ll love you always,
_dearly_, Frank!”
“Of course you will, Kate. You couldn’t help it, if you tried!”
“Frank, you’ll have to give up the corn now,” said Kate.
“I know it. What of it?”
“Aren’t you awful sorry?”
“Maybe I am.”
“But you _will_, you know. Father said it,” added Kate.
“You needn’t keep saying it over to a fellow, to make it worse.”
“I won’t; but I thought _you_ thought papa would let you have it yet.”
“No such thing. I know better! _I_ wouldn’t if I were in his place. I’d
just stick to what I said and I wouldn’t budge an inch,” said Frank.
Then Mrs. Hallock entered the room.
“Did you send him, mother?” questioned Kate, eagerly.
“Yes, and I sent the carriage, too.”
Both children asked what for. Kate with eager, glistening eyes, and
Frank, because he didn’t know what else to say.
“I gave Richard orders to fetch him home.”
Kate clapped her hands softly, kissed her mother half a dozen times, and
then ran upstairs to the room adjoining Frank’s own, to see with her own
eyes that Bridget made it properly ready for the coming boy.
Frank and Kate were greatly disappointed when Richard came back with the
carriage. The doctor would not permit Harry Cornwall to be moved.
The next morning Frank was up “bright and early,” and for two hours
before it was time for breakfast he worked away with right good will in
the field, hoeing corn.
“Poor fellow!” said Mrs. Hallock, looking out from her dressing-room
upon the boy, “I’m afraid Frank thinks that if he works very hard, and
finishes the work this week, that you will relent and let him have the
corn.”
“No,” said Mr. Hallock; “he can’t think that. He knows better. But it is
hard to take away all that he has done; for Frank _has_ worked well.”
“The best thing that he has done is the telling the truth,” said Frank’s
mother, with glistening eyes. “It would have been very easy for Frank to
have kept still, and then we need not have known where he spent the
morning. I think he ought to know how thankful we feel for his
manliness. We must prove it to him in some way.”
Soon after the above conversation, the family met in the breakfast-room.
Frank entered bright and glowing, and with a face as happy as though he
owned a hundred acres of growing corn.
“Good morning, Frank. How is _my corn_ this morning? You know it is mine
now,” said Mr. Hallock.
“Yes sir,” said Frank.
“O, papa, papa!” entreated Kate, “when Frank has been so good and
everything!”
“O, you beseeching puss!” said her father, “you wish me to give it to
you, I dare say.”
“Yes, sir—_do_; and I’ll give it to Frank right off.”
“Thank you; but Frank would not take it,” said the lad. “Papa’s bargain
was square and fair, and I’m bound to stand by it.”
“What made you go and hoe, then, before breakfast?” cried Kate, looking
blissfully proud of her bright-faced brother.
“Because I thought I would,” responded Frank.
“Frank,” spoke up Mr. Hallock, “what would you do, were you in my place,
with that cornfield?”
“Me? I? O, I would give it to the hurt circusboy, Harry Cornwall.”
“It is Harry Cornwall’s,” said Mr. Hallock.
After breakfast something happened.
Chapter III.
The house to which Harry Cornwall was carried after he had been thrown
from his pony was in Pumpkin Delight Lane. You will perhaps think that
this name is not a “real true” name of a “real true” lane, but it is,
and it will lead you through many a wild, solitary place, past farm lots
and salt meadows, down at last to Peconick Point; but Grandma Dobson
lived at the upper end of it, nearly to the village. Her house was one
of the oldest in the town. It was the loveliest brown in color, because
no man’s paint had touched it. The modern improvements had not marched
down Pumpkin Delight Lane, and I am sorely afraid that, had they, dear
Grandma Dobson would have shut her door against them.
Grandma Dobson was grandma to the children thereabout, although she had
no grandchildren of her own. Long years ago, thirty—nearly forty—she was
a bright young maiden, and Charlie Dobson was a brave sailor lad. He was
going on a long voyage, and he was going as ship’s master for the first
time. His ship was ready to sail. So, one day they were married, and the
young captain went to sea without his bride, because he did not wish to
risk her life in the _Snow_. _Snow_ was the name of his ship. The next
voyage he was to have a new ship, and then her home should be on it. She
went down to the harbor to bid him farewell. The _Snow_ lifted her sails
and sailed away—no man knew whither, and no man knoweth to-day, for the
ship never was heard from any more.
The little wife lived in the old farm home, waiting, waiting—many, many
years. There was one window, high up in the garret, close to the roof,
where she used to sit and sew from morning until night, and wear her
poor eyes dim with looking out, past a little island that lay just
outside, for the _Snow_ to come sailing into the bay. She was a
dressmaker. If the dresses she made, sitting up there, could tell the
story of the hopes and fears that went out and in with the stitches and
the tides, how sweet, and sad, and hopeless, the history.
When the men, looking out for the nearest house to take Harry Cornwall
into, after his fall from the pony, espied Grandma Dobson’s habitation,
that dear old soul was at that window looking out over the bar, past the
island, away across the miles of sea, thinking it just possible—at least
she would look once more, it could do no harm, for the _Snow_.
She saw the men bearing a burden. Some one was drowned, perhaps. She
went down to see, and met them at the door.
“Dear me! what’s happened?” she asked.
“A boy is hurt. May we bring him in?”
“The poor lad! Yes, indeed. Lay him right here! He isn’t dead, is he?”
She opened the window to let in the breeze coming up from the sea; and
they laid Harry down, sawdust and all, on Grandma Dobson’s white
coverlet.
Then the doctor came hurrying down the lane, and left his horse standing
in front of the house. Spry was the name of the animal, in whom the
doctor had full confidence. Now Spry had, when the May clover was at its
sweetest, carried the doctor along the shore and out across the bar to
the little island, where the clover is sweeter than any that grows on
the old main land. Spry fully appreciated the clover at the time, and
remembering it still, off he started for the island.
The tide was rising fast. The bar was almost covered, but Spry got upon
it safely and trotted along the stony way, not minding in the least the
spray that met about his feet. He gained Cloverland Paradise at last,
and when his master, having dressed Harry’s wounds and properly disposed
of his broken arm, went out to find him, Spry was wandering in fields of
sweetness, and the poor puzzled doctor walked home.
Great was the consternation on the island to find the doctor’s horse
feeding there and without his master, and great was the fear lest the
doctor had been drowned. Spry had to pay for his clover by crossing the
bar at the first moment the tide permitted. The water poured into the
doctor’s carriage, and the man who drove kept his eyes roving about on
every side, to find some trace of the missing man. It was nearly dark
when he, urging Spry on to his highest speed, went rushing villageward.
As he came to the principal street, the overhanging elms, whose branches
met, made it seem quite dark.
At first the man thought he would stop and inquire if the doctor had
reached home, but finally deciding to go at once to the doctor’s house,
he gave Spry a touch with the whip, which sent the beast on faster than
ever.
Just as he gave the stroke he was passing a cornerstore, before which a
group of loungers was standing.
In the darkness every one of them recognized the doctor’s horse,
although not one of them recognized the man who drove.
“There goes the doctor’s horse, this minute,” cried one.
“The rascal thinks he’ll get off safe,” cried another, while all
together they set up such a shout and cry, that instantly the street
seemed to resound with cries of “Stop him! Stop him! He’s running off
with the doctor’s horse. Stop, thief!”
While the crowd ran on, pursuing as fast as it could, two men jumped
into a wagon and started on another road. They intended to head the
escaping thief and turn him back, to effect which, they spared not the
horse they drove, but at the end of a mile and a half, turned
triumphantly into the New Haven turnpike, saying “Now we have him! Spry
hasn’t speed enough to have passed this point. We’ll meet him presently.
He’s one of them good-for-nothing circus fellows, without any doubt.”
To their intense disgust and astonishment Spry’s white face did not
appear on the road, nor did they see it until they reached the doctor’s
house, whither they went to inform him that the horse-thief had escaped.
They were met as they drove up with shouts of laughter from the group
assembled in the doctor’s yard. Looking about in the darkness for the
cause, Spry was discerned quietly standing at his accustomed post, while
his master, who had had an unusual amount of walking to do that
afternoon, was waiting to get his tea, and for the moon to rise before
taking the man back to the island.
The next morning Mrs. Hallock’s carriage and the doctor’s gig met at the
brown house in Pumpkin Delight Lane.
“I am so glad to meet you,” said Mrs. Hallock to the doctor, who was in
the act of tying Spry to a fence-post, not venturing to trust him within
smelling distance of the clover across the sea.
“Yes,” said the doctor, in his straightforward, brusque way, “you are
just the right person in the right place, but I think these little folks
had better stay in the carriage and take a turn down on the sands, while
you come in.”
Frank and Kate were already on the ground, in their eagerness to see
Harry Cornwall.
“O doctor, please won’t you let him come to our house?” pleaded Kate.
“You’ll have chance enough, my child, to see the poor fellow. All in
good time. Run away now, both of you.”
Mrs. Hallock bade Hugo drive on, and return in half an hour.
“Dear me!” sighed Kate. “It’s too bad we happened to meet that provoking
old doctor, isn’t it? I’m just crazy to see that boy.”
“I’ll take a run over by myself, by-and-by,” said Frank, quite loftily.
“I dare say there will be something to fetch over after mamma sees him.”
“You’ll let me come, too, Frank?” asked Kate beseechingly, with her eyes
following the darkness and light of a bobolink’s twinkling across the
green lane.
“No, Kate; it isn’t just _the thing_”—with an air of superiority quite
exasperating to his sister.
“Wasn’t it _the thing_, as you say, when you wanted a crust last night?
You thought so when you asked me to fetch it, didn’t you?”
“O—well. My! Wasn’t that a good dash?” as a red-winged blackbird shook
its dazzle on the blue air; and then Frank did not seem to think it
worth while to return to the subject, but began to talk quite fast. “My!
Kate,” he ran on, “how I wish you were a boy—twin-brother to me! I’ll
tell you what we’d do.”
“What?” came eagerly from Kate, who was so anxious to do whatever her
brother wished, that she had already secretly resolved to join him in
his enterprise, even though only a girl.
“We’d run away and go to sea.”
“O!” exclaimed Kate, quite overcome by surprise.
“Well, what do you think about it?”—after a minute.
“It would be just splendid!” said Kate. “Only boys and girls don’t do
such things _now_; they used to, you know, when they didn’t know any
better.” Kate was thinking just then of the “Children’s Crusade” and its
sad disasters.
“Of course, not _girls_,” said Frank; “but I dare say it’s just as jolly
for boys as ever—jollier, maybe, ’cause if one don’t like it, why
there’s any number of ships coming back about every day.”
“Maybe they wouldn’t let _you_ sail in them though, Frank; and that
would be bad—awful bad! If I was with you now, ’twould be different.
They’d let me sail with them, ’cause I am a girl, and they’d take you
along to take care of me. Don’t you see?”
“Come, now, Kate, don’t be foolish. You didn’t suppose I’d let you run
away with me, did you?”
“I might go if you didn’t _let_ me, Mr. Frank. Girls do lots of things
now that they didn’t use to do. Mamma says so; and she’s glad I’m going
to have more chances at something or other—I forget what—than she had
when she was little.”
“At grammar, perhaps, Kate. Grammar is good for little girls—keeps them
out of mischief.”
“There, now!” cried Kate, making a mischievous dash at Frank’s ear, and
missing it. She hit his straw hat with a force that sent it careering,
helped on by the strong sea-breeze, over the wet sands, along which they
were driving. “See how your hat likes going to sea all alone, sir,
before you start,” laughed Kate; while Frank sprang down, and went in
hot pursuit of his hat.
Kate clapped her hands, and shouted encouraging words to Frank as he
made frantic endeavors to catch it. The hat seemed like a hunted thing,
driven on from point to point, until reaching a creek running down from
the salt meadows, it rolled airily into it, and went sailing off slowly
toward the sea.
“Stop it! stop it!” shouted Frank to Hugo, who drove ahead of it, and
stopped the carriage midway in the stream; while Kate, getting down on
the carriage steps, fished it out with the handle of her parasol,
thereby saving Frank from getting his feet wet.
“Saved by a girl!” laughed Kate, when they had driven to land and Frank
was again by her side.
“Set adrift by a girl!” exclaimed Frank, who was really in a bad humor
at having his hat wet and dripping, so that he could not put it upon his
head.
“Hang it up to dry,” suggested Kate, offering the point of her parasol
to hoist it on in the sun.
Frank tied it on, and telling Hugo not to hurry, so that it might have a
chance to be wearable by the time they reached the brown house, they
turned toward it.
The doctor was already at the gate untying Spry when they reached it.
“Now, my little folks,” said he, “is your chance to see the poor fellow.
He’s a plucky lad, and will make a glorious pull through life, I know.”
“Thank you,” said Frank, although he could not have told what he was
thanking the doctor for, while Kate, who had made up her mind that Harry
was a kind of hero—what kind she did not know—could have kissed the old
doctor, for just thinking well of the lad.
“There! there! It’s all over now, and you’ll have a nice long rest,”
Grandma Dobson was saying, while she softly patted and petted Harry; and
there, right in the room, having entered like two healthy spirits, stood
Kate and Frank.
Harry did not see them, for his eyes were covered by a bandage.
Frank went close to him, saying “I’m the boy who helped you wash dishes,
and, I say, it’s too bad you fell and got hurt. Here’s my sister Kate
come to see you, too.”
“I’m very sorry I can’t see her,” said Harry. “My head will be all right
in a little while. I’m not much hurt. I felt ashamed to make a noise
when the doctor touched my arm. If you could have seen the poor folks in
the fire, and how brave they were—one woman carrying her baby two miles
with her hands burned awfully in trying to get it out of the house, you
wouldn’t feel so sorry for me.”
“I should, Harry,” spoke up Kate, “and I’m Kate Hallock. I saw you over
the stone wall when you were riding into town on that pony.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t better worth seeing,” said Harry, “and I’m much
obliged to you for coming here to-day.”
“I wanted to come,” said Kate.
“O!” exclaimed Harry, wondering why, but not venturing to ask the
question.
Mrs. Dobson, mistaking Harry’s exclamation for one of pain or weariness,
adroitly asked Kate and Frank if they would go out into the field beyond
the garden and help their mother to find some skullcap for Harry.
Away they ran, eager and anxious to do something, anything to help.
“Mamma! we’ve seen him. Doctor Hill said we might,” cried Kate,
springing over the low stone wall that separated Mrs. Dobson’s bit of
vegetable garden from the meadow in which Mrs. Hallock was searching for
skullcap.
“Poor boy! I am very sorry for him,” said Mrs. Hallock. “No mother, and
no home, and it might have been our Frank, Kate.”
“But, mother, it isn’t, you know; and now he’s going to have a mother
and a home, and a brother and a sister, too. O, I’m so glad the circus
came, and Frank ran away, and everything happened. I’m glad Harry got
hurt, too,” she said, almost under her breath, “if he’ll only make haste
and get well now. There! is this skullcap?” holding up a cluster of
something green, that she had gathered close to the wall.
“No, child! that is young golden-rod, just out of the ground. Frank!
Frank! come here, and jump over the wall and get this for me,” called
Mrs. Hallock, but Frank was in great excitement over a young snake that
he had found warming its wriggling, uncanny self on the stone wall.
“He’s whipping something!” returned Kate.
“O, Frank, don’t, don’t do it!” and Kate ran as fast as she could
through the tall June grass toward the spot where Frank was vigorously
switching.
“Go back! Go back, Kate!” shouted Frank. “It’s a snake!”
Kate did go back as fast as she could, springing over the wall right
into the midst of Grandma Dobson’s currant bushes.
“Run! run, mamma!” she shouted, out of breath, and trembling as only a
girl can tremble, at the thought of a snake.
“Don’t be frightened! it’s only a young black snake. There’s lots of ’em
in the grass down the lane,” said Frank, after he had killed the reptile
and approached his mother, who, to tell the exact truth, was standing
quite still, and was afraid to take another step into the long grass
about her feet.
“Give me your hand, Frank?” she said, trying to smile, but looking very
white.
“Why, mamma, what is the matter? You haven’t been bitten, have you?” and
with the words, Frank reached her side and took hold of her outstretched
hand.
“No, Frank.” She tried to smile, but the trial was such a miserable
failure, that she nearly cried instead of smiling.
“Why, mother,” in a voice of mingled pity and regret, “I thought you had
more courage!”
“I have about some things—bearing a headache, for instance,” she
replied, trying two or three times before she could get over the low
wall into the garden. By the time she reached the house, she was very
glad to sit down on the broad stone steps at the back door.
“Fetch me some water,” she said, but instead of going for the water,
Kate ran for Mrs. Dobson, who presently appeared on the scene with a
glass of foaming root beer. “Don’t be afraid of it, Mrs. Hallock. I made
it with my own hands, and I know just what is in it. I don’t know what
to do about the snakes, I’m sure. Everybody else is afraid of them, but
they never hurt me.”
“You don’t go near them, do you?” gasped Kate, with her soft brown eyes
expressive of extreme horror at the thought.
“Go near snakes! Yes, indeed I do, and talk to them, too.”
“Talk to snakes!” echoed Frank and Kate in chorus, and even Mrs. Hallock
looked up interested.
Grandma Dobson was standing in the doorway. “There! dear me! I near
forgot the egg I was beating up for the lad,” she said, stepping back
and taking up the plate upon which she had the white of an egg.
“Let me do that,” urged Kate; “I know how, I do it often for mamma. All
that she has to say, is ‘Whiff, Kate!’ and I’m on the spot; and I’m
there now; so, please?” extending her hand for the plate and knife, and
adding, “I’m in an awful hurry to hear what you say to snakes.”
“It’s a bit of a story, and a true one, too,” said Mrs. Dobson, sitting
down in a chair that Frank had the politeness to offer to her.
“You little folks will wonder that I know about Indians,” she began,
“but there were perhaps a dozen of the Wepawaugs living here when I was
a little girl, eight years old, or thereabouts.
“One Indian woman I remember very well—she was a granddaughter of
Ansantawae, a Sachem, and very, very proud of her ancestors. Her uncle
had been the great medicine man of his tribe: from him, she learned to
make syrups of roots, barks, and herbs, that she gathered from far and
near. She was a clever soul, everybody trusted her, and when she was
going off once, in the early summer, up to the Southington mountains to
get the things she wanted for her syrups, I ran away to go with her.”
“Grandma Dobson!” with bated breath from Kate and Frank; while Kate from
that instant forgot all about the egg she was beating.
“Yes, children, I did, but I was sorry enough before I got back, I can
tell you. I knew when she was going, for I had been down to see her and
to carry to her some things from my mother, the night before. I had
never seen a mountain, and the very name of one sounded so grand, that I
thought I’d give anything to see the real thing; so the next morning,
when it was about time for her to start, I started, too, and went along
the road I knew she was going to take—for I had asked her that. Well,
when I got out of the town where there were no more houses, it seemed so
lonely that I was frightened, and I went behind a big rock and waited
for her to come along.
“I hadn’t long to wait. She came very fast, standing up as straight as a
pine tree when the wind is still, and over her shoulder a stout stick
with two bundles on it—one hanging behind, and one before. I knew if she
met me there, she would send me back; so I ran on behind her. She never
looked back once, but walked so fast that at last I lost sight of her;
but I kept on and on, over hills and down by streams, until I was tired
as I could be. The sun was hot, and I was hungry, and I came to a place
where a road turned off, and I didn’t know which road she had taken.”
“Wasn’t there any trail?” asked Frank.
“I was only a little girl, and I never thought to look for footprints;
but just as I was standing there, something spoke to me out of the woods
on my left. I jumped, I can tell you, to hear my name called—‘Dorothy!
Dorothy Ford!’—out of the dark woods.
“‘Where are you going?’ came next; and then I knew the voice. Anawa was
sitting over there, eating her dinner. I told her I was going with her.
At first she said ‘No, I must go back; yes, the first horse she met on
the road, she would send me home to my mother.’ She made me sit down on
the rock by her, and eat some of my own mother’s bread and cake.
“After awhile we got up and went on, but all day long we did not meet
one horse going toward Wepawaug. Anawa was a good deal vexed when she
had to walk slow, because I was tired. She muttered away to herself in
the Indian language, and now and then scowled at me, until I was so
frightened that I wanted to cry. It began to grow dark at last, and I
longed to see Pumpkin Delight Lane more than I had wanted to see the
mountains at any time in my life.
“I did not see any houses anywhere about, and when I asked Anawa where
she was going to sleep, she scowled worse than ever, and I said no more
until we reached an Indian cabin—a little more than a wigwam, but not
much like any house that I had ever stayed in. There was no one in it.
The Indian broke up dry twigs and branches, and made a fire, and cooked
some salt fish that she had in one of her bundles. We ate the fish and
some more of my mother’s bread, which almost choked me, I remember; and
then Anawa went out of the hut, and left me alone. I don’t think she was
gone long, but it seemed a great while to me—so long that if it hadn’t
been for the bundles that she left, I should have been afraid she didn’t
mean to come back at all. When she did come in, she had her arms so full
of hemlock boughs, that I couldn’t tell whether she was pleased or
angry. She made a pile of them on the floor, and bade me ‘to bed’ with
an air of authority that I did not dare to resist. I lay down and went
to sleep. Before the sun was up, she called me, gave me a crust to eat,
shouldered her staff, with its bundle made fast to either end, and
strode on. I followed her.
“Pretty soon we met a boy driving a cow to pasture, although there was
plenty of grass all along the highway; and then when we had climbed
another long hill, there was a red house in sight. I couldn’t help
saying I wanted a mug of milk. Anawa gave a grunt for answer; but when
she came to the gateway, she went in.
“Mr. Primrose lived in the red house, and when I found out that the
Indian wished me to stay there until there was a chance to send me home,
I cried, and made such a fuss about it, that she took hold of my hand,
twitched me out of the house, and down the next hill as fast as she
could go; but as it was not until I had a nice warm breakfast, I did not
care much about it. After that Anawa begun to talk to me about
everything we saw along the way, and when I got very tired she sat down
and waited until I had rested. After three days we came to the
Southington mountains.
“‘You’ll see snakes pretty soon,’ she said. Then I began to be terribly
afraid, and to cling to her gown.
“‘Snakes won’t hurt you, if you’re good,’ she said. ‘Keep still now.
Hear me!’ She went on a few steps and stopped by a big rock and began to
say ‘Good, nice snakes! beautiful creatures! pretty little rattlesnakes!
Anawa won’t hurt you, and you mustn’t hurt her.’
“While she said this, I had hidden behind her, and was so frightened
that I could do nothing but gaze at the snakes on the rock. Anawa’s
voice seemed to charm them. They did not stir or sound a rattle, and we
went on. We were all day on the mountains, and saw maybe a hundred
snakes. She would kneel right down by the side of a snake and dig roots
from the ground, crooning away to it like a mother to a baby. Since then
I haven’t been very near many snakes, but I am not afraid of one. I tell
a snake just as Anawa did, that I won’t hurt it if it doesn’t hurt me,
and somehow it seems to understand.”
“I never should stay near enough to a snake to speak to it,” said Mrs.
Hallock.
“Nor I,” said Kate, while Frank said,
“I couldn’t keep from killing a snake long enough to speak to it.”
“I suppose boys couldn’t,” said Mrs. Dobson, who, suddenly remembering
the poor lad in the next room, arose quickly to go to him.
“There comes Josh this minute with a snake,” she cried, looking toward
the garden.
Josh—Mrs. Dobson’s shepherd dog—leaped the stone wall, dragging after
him an enormous black snake that he had met and killed. The good fellow
towed it along to the door, dropped it, and looked up, wagging his tail,
as much as to say, “Praise me, I’ve done well, the very best I knew
how.”
Chapter IV.
As soon as Mrs. Dobson had told the story of her runaway trip to the
Southington mountains, she peeped into her bedroom to see how her poor
little lad was getting on, and found him asleep. Mrs. Hallock, Kate and
Frank went out from the back door, that they might not awaken him, and
presently Mrs. Dobson saw their carriage roll away. At the same time her
eyes rested on a bit of the blue of the sea. She had not been too busy
amid all her cares to remember that it was the anniversary of her
wedding day. Thirty-seven years ago it was that very morning since she
was married and went down to the harbor to see the _Snow_ start on her
voyage to the West Indies. The very harbor had filled up since then, so
that the _Snow_ could not enter it now even should the unfortunate ship
return; but of this, Mrs. Dobson never thought. She was not conscious
even that she was looking for the long-lost ship, in which her brave,
bright, young husband sailed. She only went up to the window in the
garret because she had acquired the habit of going up there in the
little pauses she gave to herself in her busiest days. The daisies were
whitening the fields along the land; the little island wore a blessed,
happy look of rest and peace, amid the twinkle of light and water all
about it. The Sound was as blue as the sea is in June. The sand cliffs
of Long Island gleamed white across the twenty miles of water.
Beyond the island lay a vessel. A row of poplar trees hid it when first
she looked. She gazed at the boat, thinking almost unconsciously to
herself as it sailed into full view, “Yes, the _Snow_ would look like
that by this time; the sails must be brown and old and torn by the
gales, just as this ship’s sails are.” Looking down upon her own hand as
it lay across the windowledge, she noticed its wrinkles with sharp and
sudden pain. She too, was grown old. Meanwhile the forlorn looking craft
was sailing in toward the harbor’s mouth. It was only a coasting vessel
laden with coal, coming in to discharge its cargo at the coal dock.
Grandmother Dobson watched it until it was half way across the bay; Josh
gave a bark so loud and thrilling that the dreaming old lady awoke to
the present, and hurried down. There was no one about the house, but
Harry was awake and talking.
“I want to tell her all I know about the necklace,” she heard him say.
“Dear me! the poor lad is out of his head, and he hasn’t had the
skullcap yet,” she thought. “My fire has gone down, too! Josh, fetch me
in a stick of wood,” she said.
Now Josh is a real true dog, and he does bring in wood—not one stick
only, but he fills up the wood-box, and always expects to be rewarded at
the end of his toil by an extra nice bit to eat.
Josh started at once for the woodpile and returned with a small stick.
“Now, another!” He obeyed.
Meanwhile Harry kept saying, “I must tell about the necklace. Where is
she? Won’t you please tell me if she is here?”
Fully believing that the boy was talking in delirium, Mrs. Dobson did
not think it worth while to answer.
“She must be deaf,” Harry thought; so, after awhile, he said no more,
but tried with his hand to move the bandage, so that he could look about
a little. The first thing that his eyes rested upon was a lovely cluster
of roses; Kate had left them, but as she thought he could not see, she
had said nothing of them.
“Mrs. Dobson!” called Harry as loud as he could call.
The dear little soul hurried into the room.
“Please, dear Mrs. Dobson, will you put these flowers in some water? I
wish you would let me get up and do it,” pleaded Harry.
“No! no! The doctor says you must not get up to-day, nor to-morrow, and
you must promise me not to try when I am out of the room. If you do I
shall have to put Josh in here and tell him to keep you in bed.”
“Is Josh your son?” innocently asked Harry.
Mrs. Dobson laughed a merry, sunny little laugh.
“No,” she said. “Josh is my dog. He barked a little while ago to tell me
somebody was about. He heard you talking, I suppose. Josh is a wonderful
dog. You may see him if you promise not to move your bandage again until
I tell you you may.”
“I promise,” said Harry, “unless the house takes fire or something else
happens.”
“I don’t see where the delirium went to so suddenly,” Mrs. Dobson
thought.
Harry determined to find out if she would grow deaf should he ask about
the necklace again. He tried it. Instantly she closed the door, bidding
him “go to sleep and not talk any more,” and he, poor fellow, had not
had his promised glimpse of Josh.
Harry shut his eyes, tried to sleep, tried to stop thinking about his
own old home on the shore of the lake, in Michigan, but the more he
tried the more he thought about it. Being weak and hurt, he grew
feverish with thinking, and I am sure I do not know what unfortunate
thing would have happened to him, had Kate Hallock not appeared on the
scene.
She came laden with good things, or rather the carriage was laden, and
she came with it and them. First were two large, hard pillows—Mrs.
Dobson’s pillows were small; after the pillows there came a big basket
overflowing with nice, “comforting things to eat.” Then there were two
summer suits of Frank’s clothing—for either Harry had no change of
garments, or they had been carried away by the “circus folks.”
“I’m going to stay with you to-day,” said Kate to Mrs. Dobson, as the
good woman gave expression to her surprise upon seeing the carriage move
off. “Mamma and I thought maybe you’d like to have me.”
“How kind! I should very much, for now it is time for my bit of dinner
to go on the fire. You may sit in there,” pointing toward the door of
Harry’s room, “but I wouldn’t talk much if I were you, for I believe he
is just the least mite out of his head now and then.”
Kate went in cautiously. The boy did not hear her. He thought he was
alone, for he heard the sound of Mrs. Dobson’s movements in the kitchen.
He sighed two or three times, and moved his left arm uneasily toward his
eyes. At last he said, “Dear me! I wish I hadn’t promised. I do want to
see out a bit, and know where I am.”
“I’m here,” said Kate. “I’ll tell you all about it. Did you see the
house when you were brought into it last night?”
“I didn’t know anything at all from the time I was on the pony until I
heard somebody say, ‘He will need something to eat by-and-by, Mrs.
Dobson,’ and I wondered who Mrs. Dobson was, and who would want
something to eat. Pretty soon I moved a little, and then I began to
understand, for somebody took hold of my arm and said, ‘You mustn’t move
nor try to move, either,’ and then she told me who she was, and how I
had fallen, and been fetched here.”
“You shut your eyes and try to see what I am going to tell you about,”
said Kate. “I often make Frank try, but he can’t do it very well. In the
first place, turn your head that way—so,” turning Harry’s face to the
east; “there is the sea, the Sound—Long Island Sound is its real
name—and it’s about a mile away; then,” turning his face about toward
the north, “running right along past here is a road—no, a lane—Pumpkin
Delight Lane, it is called. Funny, isn’t it? Well, this is the last
house between the village and the sea. It is old, ever so old. The
boards—clapboards I guess—are wrinkled—shrunken I mean—so that they kind
of peal up all around and look as though they’d like to be pulled off.
It’s brown, the house is; never been painted, perhaps; anyway, it’s a
great deal prettier than painters’ brown paint; and there is one chimney
that looks, on the outside, just as though it was right in the middle of
the house. It is a stone chimney, too, and when you get well, Mrs.
Dobson will let you go up the staircase—that’s stone, too—up into her
garret, where you can see way out to sea, ever so far.”
“But who lives here, besides Mrs. Dobson?” interrupted Harry.
“Josh. Mrs. Dobson and just Josh, that’s all. Queer, isn’t it, a woman
and a dog? Mrs. Dobson won’t go away from here to live, either. This was
her father’s house, and her mother lived in it, and all her brothers and
sisters, too; and,” said Kate in a whisper, “her husband, Mr. Dobson,
went away to sea the very morning they were married, and he’s never come
back in all this time; nor anybody who went with him, either. Mother
told Frank and me all about it; and her mother told her, when she was
quite a little girl, and,” breathed Kate, in a lower whisper, “don’t
tell, ever. But Frank and me guess that she thinks he’ll come back
again, and that’s the reason she won’t go away.”
“O, my!” sighed Harry, “that’s worse, ever so much worse, than knowing
that your folks are dead; ’cause then you know they can’t come back any
more, and so you don’t keep looking out all the time.”
Kate wanted very much to ask Harry about his folks, but she thought she
ought not to do it; it might make him feel worse to talk about it; so,
not knowing what else to say to divert him, she said, “Let’s play he
comes back.”
“But he can’t! so many years, you know,” exclaimed Harry, raising
himself energetically from his pillows.
“That makes it better fun, don’t you see?” said Kate; “harder to make
out where he has been all this time—most forty years! Dear me, he must
be very old now.”
“Yes,” said Harry, “and burned black, maybe.”
“How? You don’t suppose the _Snow_ burned up, do you?”
“O, I mean by the sun,” laughed Harry. “Going to the West Indies, did
you say the ship was?”
“Yes,” said Kate, fairly beside herself with excitement. “O, you’re
jolly good help, making believe; ever so much better than Frank.”
“What did the _Snow_ carry? Let us be careful and have things all
right,” urged Harry, interested because Kate was, and anxious to help
her on.
“I’m sure I don’t know. O, molasses and rum, I heard once.”
“O, no! Molasses and rum you mean they were going to fetch back,”
suggested Harry.
“Yes, that was it,” said Kate; “and we’ll play they were going out there
with a shipload of dolls for the little West Indian girls for
Christmas.”
“I’m afraid that won’t do,” said Harry, doubtfully.
“Why not, pray?” said Kate.
“Forty years ago I’m afraid there wasn’t a shipload of dolls in every
one of our States put together.”
“O, never mind! we can play so, if there wasn’t.”
“Well, if it’s going to be all play we’ll go ahead,” said Harry. “The
_Snow_ was loaded with dead dolls and live monkeys, and every monkey had
a doll, and when they got to the West Indies the monkeys all ran away
with the dolls, and so the poor little West Indian girls got none.”
“How ridiculous!” cried Kate, laughing heartily. “Now let me see, the
_Snow_ was going and going, and sailing right on night and day, and day
and night, when it struck a—a snag.”
“What’s that?” cried Harry, with a shout of laughter. “A snag in the
ocean!”
“O, something that boats always hit that sinks them,” said Kate, a
little red in the face. “I know; for my aunt was on a ship that went
against one, and sunk too; ’cause she wrote all about it after she got
home. I know it was a snag, too.”
“But that was on a river, not a sea. A snag is an old tree or something
that gets caught in the mud and is under the water,” corrected Harry.
“O!” said Kate, glad that Harry was blindfolded. “Well, we’ll have
something else, then—a big storm, hills and mountains of running waves,
awful thunder and lightning, and the ship gets struck by lightning—no,
by a big wave, and tumbles all to pieces.”
“And the dolls all spill out and go floating off!” suggested Harry.
“How can you at such an awful time think of making fun?” asked Kate,
“just as the ship had been struck by lightning, too!”
“Thunder—no, a big wave,” interposed Harry. “Don’t you remember ’twas a
big wave that tumbled everything?”
“Yes,” said Kate reflectively, “and Captain Dobson—he’s captain, you
know—stands on the last plank of the _Snow_ (good captains always do
that—the last plank of the ship, remember), and when the ship went down,
the plank floated off with Captain Dobson on it. That’s all right, so
far, isn’t it?” she added inquiringly.
“All right but the monkeys, you forgot and left them to go down with the
ship,” said Harry. “Instead of that they went swimming off, each monkey
with a doll in its arms, and two of them got on the same plank the
Captain was on, and he——”
“No! no!” cried Kate, jumping up from her chair by the window, and in
her eagerness sitting down on the bed, forgetting all about Harry’s
feet. “You musn’t, musn’t say that.”
“Say what, pray?” and Harry tried to draw up his feet, but Kate held
them fast, and did not even know where she was, or what she was doing.
“Why, you were going to make Captain Dobson push the poor monkeys off
the plank, and—”
“No, I was not,” interrupted Harry.
“What then?”
“Really, you frightened it all out of my head. Let me think!”
“O, I know!” joyfully cried Kate, clapping her palms. “There was the
mast—there always is a mast or a smoke-stack, or something to climb.
This is it: the monkeys leaped from the plank to the mast, and ran up to
the top of it and waved the dolls—all dressed in white, you see, with
long, long sashes, that would float a good ways, you know; and somebody
in a boat way off, on—on—the horizon’s edge”—Kate felt proud after
saying “horizon’s edge,” and was greatly mortified at hearing from under
the bedclothes a smothered laugh.
“I should like to know what you are laughing at,” she said, with sudden
gravity, slipping down from the bed, to Harry’s most comfortable relief.
“I didn’t mean to laugh; really and truly I did not,” said Harry, moving
up his bandage the least mite in the world, as he afterward admitted to
Mrs. Dobson. “But how could I help it; it is so like a girl. Now my
mast, if it had floated at all, would have lain down on the water just
like any other big stick; but yours you could make stand up and sail
around, just as easy!”
“O, never mind!” said Kate, immensely relieved on finding out that Harry
was not laughing at her attempt at fine effect, “that’s nothing! all
sorts of impossible things do happen.”
“Doll’s sash ribbons soaked in salt water don’t make very good signals,
anywhere, I don’t believe,” said Harry. “I think we might manage that
part better.”
“But we can’t stop, don’t you see,” said Kate hurriedly, “to be so very
careful about everything. Nobody ever does when there’s a poor fellow on
a last plank, floating on the wide ocean; they just try to get him off
and into a boat as quick as ever they can, and rub him up, and give him
something to eat, and everything, particularly” (Kate couldn’t get over
that word very fast) “when the man is such a dear, good, nice man, like
Captain Dobson.”
Now Josh, hearing the animated voices in Mrs. Dobson’s bedroom, had
opened the door a bit with his nose, without attracting any notice; and
as the dear old lady, her thoughts busy with the past, was carrying a
pail of water into the kitchen, Kate’s last words fell full upon her
ears. She dropped the pail, being too much startled to put it quite in
its place, and with flushed face, tearful eyes, and trembling tones,
appeared to the children, saying, “Tell me quick! don’t wait a bit! is
there any news of Captain Dobson?”
Harry pushed his bandage aside, and said, with sincere sorrow, “No, no!
Mrs. Dobson; not a word. We were only”—he stopped, with an instinctive
feeling that they had been very unfeeling to make-believe on the subject
at all.
Kate took up his sentence bravely. “I’ll tell you all about it, dear
Mrs. Dobson,” throwing her arms about the old lady and urging her to a
seat in a rocking chair. “It was all me, every bit of it; and we were
just trying to make-believe that he got saved when the _Snow_ went
down.”
“Did the _Snow_ go down? Who knows?” she asked, sobbing and crying, and
quite broken down by hearing the fact put into words.
“I’m sorry we said a word,” said Kate, crying with Mrs. Dobson; and,
dropping down upon a footstool, she laid her head in Mrs. Dobson’s lap.
“You will please forgive us, won’t you?” spoke up the boy in the bed.
“Forgive you! Yes, indeed. I’m glad you thought enough about my
poor—about Captain Dobson to talk of him at all, and to-day, too! Why, I
always go down the harbor to-day; it is just thirty-seven years ago
to-day since we were married and the ship went on its voyage.”
“And you will go this afternoon, won’t you?” questioned Kate.
“I mustn’t,” she said simply.
“Why not?”
“Why, I’ve got a little boy of my own to look after to-day, don’t you
see?” she said, suddenly smiling, with an uplifted face.
Kate sprang up and kissed her, saying, with an arch look at Harry, whose
eyes she looked into for the first time, “Why, you can go. I’ll take
care of—the little boy while you are gone.”
“O, my dear child!” cried Mrs. Dobson, as she espied Harry’s eyes, and
caught sight of the ugly wound across his eye-brow, “didn’t you promise
me not to?”
“Unless the house was on fire, or something happened; and something did
happen. I was afraid we had killed you.”
“Kate! Kate! mother says you must come home to dinner right away,” said
Frank, who had suddenly appeared on the scene; “and” (on his own
authority) “you must go this very minute.”
Chapter V.
Kate Hallock knew just as well as could be that Mrs. Dobson was going to
have something nice for dinner, for when Frank went out to order her
home a savory odor followed him. She wished very much to stay, and
lingered about the kitchen, half hoping and altogether wishing that Mrs.
Dobson would invite her to stay to dinner: but the dear little woman
only looked up from her boiling and baking to say—Mrs. Dobson always
called Kate “Kittie, my Clover”—
“Now Kittie, my Clover, if you and Frank will come over and stay from
five to seven this afternoon, I shall be very glad to go out a little
while.”
“Why, Grandma Dobson,” cried Kate, “how that fire is burning your face
up; I wouldn’t cook when ’twas so warm, if I were you. Let me turn over
that meat, I won’t drop it in the fire.”
“Never mind me, I am used to it,” said Mrs. Dobson, bending over the
glowing coals, glad to bury her face anywhere from Kate’s sharp eyes.
“Well, then, if you won’t let me help you, I am going home, and I’ll
come before five o’clock, and stay till you get back, too.”
With these words Kate went skipping through the hall and out at the
front door. Once outside, her happiness burst into a positive run. It
was too far around by the highway to Hallock Point, besides Kate felt
just as every healthy young thing feels at some time on the way through
the child-years, that everybody’s highways were not the ways to go in
that day, so she would make her own path across the fields.
Pumpkin Delight Lane ran down to the sea, and Hallock Point extended
into the sea beyond the coast line. Between the two lay grassy meadows—a
depression in the level, up which the old ocean crept twice in the year,
and also in great storms; a bit of a wood, beyond which came salt meadow
again; and then the uplands, rising to the Point. It seemed a very short
cut home to Kate. The bewitching greens that lay rolled in long and wide
breadths for her feet to tread had all been prepared by Madame June, the
best carpet-maker in the zone. Kate climbed the stone wall opposite Mrs.
Dobson’s house, and not a soul saw her disappear into the grass behind
it, save Josh, if indeed Josh has a soul.
Kate danced all over. She was so full of the sap of June that she could
no more keep quiet than could the buzzing, whirring, nodding, flying
things about her. She clapped her hands and cried, “O, my!” as a mad
bobolink, on his way to the Wood Asylum, filled her ears with crazy
melody.
Kate grew practical as the great, round, purple clover-heads nodded to
her out of the tall grass. “Yes, I’ll get you, my beauties,” she cried.
“Mother is so fond of dried grasses and things when the fall comes, and
it’s just the time and chance to get some.” Presently her small hands
were filled to their utmost capacity, and yet she had not half enough.
Her apron proved too small before she had crossed a single field, and
the first fence surprised her with her gathered-up dress skirt running
over with bobbing grasses.
Next came a field of rye. “Rye is real pretty on the walls with fern and
oak leaves,” she said, and she took a few heads in advance of the
reapers.
Kate trudged on, past and through lot after lot, until she came to the
bit of woodland. She went into it. So intent was she in watching to see
where a bluebird carried its mouthful of worm, that she stumbled over a
dead branch, and fell at the foot of a huge hickory tree.
Gathering up first herself and then her own hat and grasses, she
proceeded to arrange them into portable form, while she rested at the
foot of the tree.
Now, Josh, having seen Kate go over the wall, watched for her to
reappear, but seeing no signs of such an event, after suitable time, the
wise dog crossed the street and mounted the wall, looking as knowing and
discreet as only Josh can look. He surveyed the scene to his own
satisfaction, and then taking Kate’s trail, followed it and came up to
her just as she seated herself to rest and fix the grasses under the
walnut tree.
“Did him think I was lost?” cried Kate. “Good fellow, good fellow,
Josh!” patting him, and very glad of his companionship. When all was
ready Kate started for home, laughing at herself as she went, and not in
the least surprised at Josh because he barked at her, for, truly, she
was a surprising figure to bird or beast, as she emerged from the wood
and stood looking at the bewitching green of the salt meadow through
which she must pass. Her white apron was small, but she had made the
most of it by tying a huge bunch of grasses with the end of either
string, thus making a very full and bunched over-skirt at the back,
while the bib of apron was made to do duty as grass-holder to its
fullest extent. She had taken pains to put the stems all down, and as
her bib was wide and stretched across to her shoulders, the grassy
fringe stood up to her ears and nearly blinded her. Her hat was also
alive with oats, rye, and clover. No wonder that Josh barked when she
started, but she did wonder why he kept on barking harder than ever,
until she reached the edge of the very bright green grass.
“Dear me! I most wish I hadn’t come this way, Josh,” Kate said, putting
her feet in daintily and afraid she should get them wet. If there was
one thing that Kate Hallock disliked to do more than every other thing,
it was to “change her stockings and shoes in the day-time.”
She picked her way with a good deal of care for awhile; the dog
following her and looking with evident interest at her over-skirt and
hat. And then, finding that the ground was pretty firm and the sun
getting very hot, Kate hurried on. She was about half way across the
meadow, when she felt herself on marshy ground. The grass was too deep
to see, but she was sure that her feet were wet, and ’twas getting
harder and harder to walk, with every step.
“Dear me! what shall I do?” she cried. “Josh! Josh! don’t go! Here,
Josh!” and every instant, with every step, Kate Hallock was sinking
deeper and deeper into the black mud. Finally she could go no further,
for she was fast in the horrid swamp, and, worse than all, every effort
that she made to get out only served to get her in deeper still.
“I wonder if anybody ever got stuck here before, and what will become of
me?” thought poor Kate, adding consolingly to herself the words spoken
aloud, “Anyway, they love me well enough at home to find me before I
die, even if I am here.”
As soon as Josh understood the condition of affairs, he began to bark as
loud as he could, but there was not a soul near to hear, although Kate
could see distinctly the windows of her home. He barked until he was
hoarse; then he got as near to Kate as he could and looked at her
consolingly and determinedly; and then he gave his bushy tail a wag or
two and started for home. The very idea of being left there alone
without Josh even, was so utterly horrible to the poor little prisoner,
shorter, if not smaller than ever, now that she was one-third engulfed,
and sinking still, that it seemed unbearable, and she called frantically
to Josh to come back and stay with her.
The bewildered dog turned and taking her dress in his teeth, pulled
until it gave way, leaving a fragment of the slight muslin in his mouth.
“You can’t, you cannot pull me out,” cried Kate, and then she remembered
the story her mother had told her so often about stopping to think what
might be done, and she held fast to Josh’s collar while she tried to
think what she could do to bring someone to her aid.
“Hold, hold on, Josh!” she said, after a moment. “Now if I only had a
pencil and some paper, I might send you home with a note fast to your
neck; but I haven’t, and what am I to do? My apron I could spare, but
then no one would know by it what’s happened to me. I’ll send my hat.
Hold here, Josh”—taking it off and tying it as well as she could, for
Josh resisted, on his head.
She then let him go, and the dog bounded across marsh and field for
home, springing into Mrs. Dobson’s kitchen just at the moment when,
having given Harry Cornwall his dinner, she had taken her chair to eat
her own. Kate’s sun hat was still pendant at his neck.
“Why, Josh! you rascal, come here! you naughty dog, you! You’ve run off
with Kate’s hat, and left her to go home in the sun.”
Josh could not deny the charge, but he lifted his nose toward the low
ceiling and uttered howl after howl in a manner that frightened his
mistress exceedingly, for Josh was not “given to howling,” she told
Frank a minute later, as she begged him to go and see what it all meant.
“O, Mrs. Dobson, it’s nothing, I know—only one of Kate’s tricks,” said
Frank; “but to please you, I’ll go.”
Josh began to prance and leap, and bark with joy, as he followed, with
Frank, Kate’s footprints across the dusty road; but when he bounded over
the fence, Frank stopped—
“See here, old fellow!” he cried, “I’m not going into that grass to
please you; I’ve too much respect for snakes, sir.” And to the dog’s
intense disgust, the boy turned back and reëntered the house.
“It’s nothing,” he again assured Mrs. Dobson. “The dog only wanted me to
race in the lot with him.”
“The lot!” cried the little woman, running up the stairway to get a good
outlook. “You don’t s’pose, do you, that your sister tried to go home
’cross lots?”
“Just like her to do it,” replied Frank, who had followed her up the
stairs.
“And got into the swamp-mud,” continued Mrs. Dobson, just as though
Frank had not interrupted her, “and sent Josh home with her bonnet on,
to let us know?” she finished, all in one breath.
Mrs. Dobson and Frank were already looking across the fields; but the
salt meadows, where Kate was prisoned, were hidden from sight by the
strip of woodland.
“I might have known better than to look,” said Mrs. Dobson, going down.
“You must run up to Mr. Bryan’s, and get someone to go where the dog
leads. It’s just noon time, and the men folks’ll be at home.”
During this interval of not many minutes, Josh had been keeping up such
a dismal howl out by the front gate that Harry Cornwall had disobeyed
orders—gotten out of his bed, pushed up his bandage, and was peeping out
of the window to see what it all meant, when he heard Mrs. Dobson and
Frank on the stairs. In his effort to hurry back into bed, he overturned
a chair with his dinner-dishes on it (Frank, in boy-fashion, having put
them upon the chair, instead of the table). The clatter and breakage
brought Mrs. Dobson and Frank in a hurry into the room.
“I did it,” cried Harry. “I expect you’ll have to kill me, Mrs. Dobson,
unless you let me get well fast, and work and earn enough to buy new
dishes. I’m just as sorry as I can be; but the dog made such a fuss, I
wanted to see what had happened.”
Harry hid his face under the clothes when he had made his confession,
and consequently did not see Mrs. Dobson’s imperious gesture to Frank
Hallock, bidding him be gone with haste. She was too intent on thinking
of “Kittie, my Clover,” to care for broken crockery just then, and did
not notice even that one of her mother’s precious china cups had been
cracked.
“Won’t you please forgive me?” pleaded Harry, peering forth cautiously,
and watching her as she gathered the pieces.
“For what?”
“Why, for breaking your dishes and being so naughty,” said Harry, in
surprise.
“O, I was thinking of the swamps and Katie Hallock,” she said, hastily.
“Yes, I forgive you. Go to sleep now. I sha’n’t open this door again or
let anybody come nigh you, in as much as an hour,” and with the words
she closed the door. If Harry had peeped out the window two minutes
later he would have seen Mrs. Dobson, in an old-fashioned gingham
sunbonnet, taking her way as fast as she could, whither Josh led her,
through grass and grain, straight for the salt meadow.
As for Master Frank, he had taken his way, whistling as he went, to
farmer Bryan’s and told him that he guessed, maybe, his sister Kate was
fast in the bog. Having heard the boy’s story, Mr. Bryan, with his “farm
hand,” Dick Dawson, started in haste, and so came up to the stone wall
just in time to catch a glimpse of the fluttering cape of Grandma
Dobson’s sunbonnet on the farther side of the field of rye.
“There she goes, this minute! My! what a hurry she is in—just as though
our Kate was a lump of salt or sugar,” exclaimed Frank, jumping
cautiously into the grass from the wall, and taking especial care to get
between Mr. Bryan and Dick Dawson, because he considered the position
one of greater security from snakes.
“Look here, youngster,” replied the sturdy farmer, “let me tell you, it
is no laughing affair to get into that black sticking-plaster over
yonder. More than one man has, in my day, come near losing his life in
the salt marshes hereabout, and if your twin sister is prisoned over
here, I reckon we shall need a few fence rails before we can get her
out; so you may as well shoulder your share, if you’re coming along.
Here, take this,” as he balanced a stout rail on Frank’s shoulder, and
then pulled, with the “farm hand’s” assistance, four more from the
fence. Thus armed, the trio proceeded to the scene of action.
Meanwhile Grandma Dobson had gone on as fast as she could to the very
edge of the salt meadow, and called in her trembling tones to poor Kate
to “Never mind, somebody would be right along and get her out.” And
Kate, burned red in the face by the June sun and by the hot tears she
had shed, had called back—
“I’m sinking clear down, ever so far. I wish they’d hurry and make
haste.”
Just then the men and Frank arrived.
“See the little thing!” called Mrs. Dobson to them. “Pray, get her out
and carry her to the other side, and see that she gets home in safety.”
“Stay back there, youngster!” cried stout farmer Bryan to Frank. But
whenever did any boy think there was danger for himself? Carefully
advancing, rail in hand, ready to put it down at the first bit of
uncertain ground, one man went, the other followed, until they came
quite near Kate, who was crying still, she could not tell why, but Frank
said, “probably because she was sorry to get out; girls always did such
queer, contrary things.”
Putting a rail on either side of the child, the men stood on it, and
pulled Kate’s arms until she was “sure” they would pull them off; but at
length she felt herself rising, rising, until she was even with the
earth once more.
With much exertion the opposite side was reached, and just as Kate’s
feet were on firm ground a cry from Frank was heard. His story, as
afterwards told, was that he had been so anxious to follow Kate home and
see the fun, that he had determined to step very light and fast, and he
knew he shouldn’t have time to sink; Kate wouldn’t, if she hadn’t been
so frightened the minute she began to go down.
“There, there, youngster,” cried Mr. Bryan, “it’s just good enough for
you! You can get out as you got in,” and without waiting an instant he
lifted Kate in his stout arms and bore her away across meadow and farm
lot toward her home, followed by his assistant.
“It’s too bad—real mean on a fellow! I’ll pay you up for this!” moaned
Frank, who, the more determined he grew to get out, the deeper he got
in.
Mrs. Dobson went as near to Frank as she thought it prudent to venture,
and assured him that the men would return that way and release him; she
knew they would, and she must go home. Even Josh only wagged his tail at
Frank, as he bounded past to follow his mistress, and never once dreamed
that it was necessary to stay with him.
For more than a half hour Frank stayed there, and even when the men did
return and drag him out, he did not seem suitably thankful, and would
have insisted on remaining in the wood but for the snakes.
Before five of the clock, Kate, restored to cleanliness and comfort, and
accompanied by her mother, drove up to the brown house in the lane. She
had returned to keep her promise to Grandma Dobson.
Frank, on inquiry, was found sitting in the sun out at the back door,
determined to dry the mud until it would all rub off, and quite too
proud to accept the offer of a pair of clean stockings from Mrs. Dobson;
but he was very glad of the opportunity afforded by the arrival of
Neptune to get home without being seen. He crept around the house as he
heard the doctor going in at the front door, sprang into the pony
carriage, and was half way to Hallock Point before his mother or Kate
missed Neptune from the gate. When Frank also was found missing, no
further anxiety was felt concerning the safety of the horse; and in less
than an hour, Frank reappeared, as fresh and good-tempered as Kate
herself.
Mrs. Dobson had gone on her errand down the harbor, with no one to watch
her movements; and as Frank appeared in the room, on his return, Harry
Cornwall, with the bandage removed from his eyes, was, Kate said,
“telling us the interestingest story, better than any book story in the
whole world.” Frank was sorry that he had not heard the beginning of the
story; but unless he knows it already, he will have a chance to read it
in the next chapter.
Chapter VI.
Kate Hallock had no sooner shut the front door of the brown house in
Pumpkin Delight Lane on that eventful day in June, than Harry Cornwall
remembered the necklace story.
“Call her back,” he cried to Frank, who was rocking away as hard as he
could, and fanning himself furiously with his straw hat, as he sat in
Grandma Dobson’s large rocking chair.
“What for? She’s gone home to dinner; mother said she must,” replied
Frank, rocking a bit farther and faster than before he was requested to
call her.
“Why, I wanted to tell her about the necklace,” and Harry’s face flushed
with his eagerness to get the story off his mind.
“Well, I do declare!” laughed Frank. “Just as though you hadn’t had
three or four mortal hours, this very day, to tell it in! I should like
to know what you two have been talking about all the time?”
“Plenty of things; but I never once thought of the necklace,” sighed
repentant Harry.
“Well! tell _me_—that will do just as well,” urged Frank.
“No, indeed. I’ll tell no one but the owner of that bit of gold, where
I’ve seen it.”
“You’ve never seen _my_ Kate’s gold necklace,” spoke up Frank,
indignant, he knew not why, at Harry’s assurance.
“I have, then; and what’s more, I mean to get it back again for her.”
“Tell me how.” Frank had ceased from rocking, and leaned quite near
Harry, full of interest and eager with curiosity.
“I’ll tell _her_,” was all that Harry would say; and soon after that the
anxiety regarding Kate arose, and the subject was forgotten.
Later in the afternoon, Grandma Dobson having gone on her little
expedition, while Mrs. Hallock sat beside an open window near Harry’s
bed, and Kate, on the low stone step outside the front door, was making
dandelion curls, and thinking how dreadful it would have been if a big
tide had dashed in and surged over the salt meadow and drowned Kate
Hallock, Harry remembered the so-oft-forgotten circlet of gold, and he
started from his pillow, saying: “I want to tell her _now_, this minute,
before I forget it.”
Kate was summoned. She gathered up in her apron the piles of curls that
she had made, and went in haste to hear what proved to be quite a story.
“Maybe,” said Harry, “you’d like to know what became of your pretty
necklace, that you tucked into somebody’s vest-pocket that went out West
once upon a time.”
“How did _you_ know?” cried Kate, stopping in the center of the room,
and getting so surprised and confused and flushed, and everything, that
she let fall her dandelion curls on Grandma Dobson’s lovely rag carpet,
and instantly fell upon her knees to gather them up again.
“O, your brother told me that you put it in the box; but he does not
know how I came to see it after it came out of the box. Jack Flibbit—”
“What a funny name!” cried Kate. “Is he a little boy?”
“Yes, and a fisherman’s boy, too; and he was left all alone after the
fires—for his father and mother, and every one of his folks, were caught
in the house, and hadn’t time to get away; and Jack was staying that
night in a house down by the lake, or he would have been lost, too. So
after it was all over, Jack was taken by a good, kind lady to Port
Huron, and everybody felt so sorry for him that when he got there
somebody gave him out of one of the boxes a very nice suit of clothes,
and I saw Jack when he was carrying it along the street. When he met me,
he wanted me to see it, and wouldn’t let me go until after we had been
in and sat down on the steps of a church, and opened the bundle. Well,
when it was open, and he shook out the little vest, there jingled down
on the stone something that I picked up; it was a necklace, and I ’most
know ’twas yours, ’cause I remember there was something inside it.”
“O, what?” cried Kate. Mrs. Hallock had ceased to sew in her eagerness
to learn more.
“Well,” said Harry, “there was so much to remember about then, that
maybe I’m not right; but it was, I reckon, something like this: ‘Kate;
from Grandmother De—De—Deborah,’ or something like that.”
“That’s just it—my own Grandma Hallock’s right name!” cried Kate; “and I
s’pose I was very wicked to give it away, only everybody was so sorry
then for the poor, burnt-out folks, and I hadn’t anything else that I
thought as much of to give.”
“It is all very wonderful, my boy,” said Mrs. Hallock. “Do you know what
became of Jack Flibbit?”
“Well, no, ma’am,” said Harry, “I do not. He was too small for any
circus company to take along, and there wasn’t anybody belonging to him
that he knew of anywhere; and I don’t quite believe that folks who live
out West care so much about children who are left alone as you do.”
“O, yes, Harry. Kind folks live everywhere, only one does not always
seem able to find them.”
“No!” said Harry. “I went a long ways and waited a good while, and now
as soon as I get well, won’t you please find some work for me to do, so
that I can pay back Mrs. Dobson?—for she isn’t very rich, I don’t
think.”
“Why, Harry Cornwall!” exclaimed Kate. “There’s plenty of work for you
to do. There’s your cornfield to take care of, for one thing.”
“My cornfield!” laughed Harry, thinking that Kate was making fun of him,
and quite ready to join in her merriment, but Mrs. Hallock quickly bade
Kate to be quiet; and immediately she asked Harry to tell how he escaped
from the fire.
“My father’s house,” said Harry, “was not very far from Rock Falls, on
the shore of the lake—Lake Huron, I mean—and the Saturday before the
great fire burned Rock Falls, my father went into the village and took
me with him. After we started for home—it was almost night then—the
smoke grew thick away off in the distance, and some men we met told
father that they wanted him to go with them and help fight the fire
down, for fear ’twould get to the houses. He didn’t know what to do with
me, but I told him I could run right back and find a place to stay.
“‘Go to my house! go to my house,’ said three or four of the men, and so
my father told me to jump out and take good care of myself, and I called
back to him to take care of mother, and then I went back. On the way, I
met some little children, and they asked me where I was going—so I told
them what father had gone to do, and that I was going to somebody’s
house, somewhere, to stay all night, and they said: ‘You can come to our
house and stay.’ So I went home with them and the next day was Sunday.
Sunday night it looked awful when it grew dark to see the fires burning
all around, except on the side where the lake was, but we were told to
go to bed and if the fire came any nearer we should be called. We were
called and shaken and pulled from our beds and bidden, with blankets in
our arms, to run for Mr. Huxtable’s house on the shore of the lake. When
we got there we pounded and screamed at every door and window. Presently
a door opened and out rushed the entire family, eight in all, and in
their night clothes. The fire was so hot as it came down, like—I don’t
know what it was like—only it was so _awful_ that _nobody_ could tell
about it. It burned us as we ran, Mr. Huxtable crying out, ‘Come! Come
to the lake! the boat lies there.’ We all got into it, but the men had
to push it out into the water, for we could not endure the heat. Then
the smoke grew so thick that we could not tell where we were going and
there was not a thing in the boat to guide it by, but the wind carried
us swiftly where it was so cold that we shook and shivered. Mrs.
Huxtable kept a single blanket and the others were given to the men, who
were in their night clothes. She gathered the little ones within the
blanket and hugged them until they fell asleep. For nearly two days the
waves were all about us and we had only water from the lake to drink,
but at last we were picked up and taken into Port Huron.”
“But what about yourself? Tell us what you did after that,” urged Kate.
“I—why I—went back to Rock Falls. What else could I do?”
“And then?” urged Kate.
“Do not ask Harry unless he chooses to tell,” said Mrs. Hallock, wiping
her eyes.
“But I do; I must,” said Harry. “I shall feel better when I have told it
all. And it is only that when I got back to Rock Falls, and went to the
place where my father’s house had been, there was nothing there but
burned beams and dry ashes; and when I asked for my father and mother, a
man told me to go with him, and he showed me ever so many new graves,
and told me where my father and mother lay. Folks tried to be good to
me, but I walked a long way—ever so many days. I wanted to get just as
far away from there as ever I could.”
“But, my boy, had you no uncles nor aunts?” asked Mrs. Hallock.
“Why, yes. There was Uncle Horace—he lived in Maine, I believe; and
mother had a good many letters from him.”
“What is his other name?” questioned Kate. “Won’t it be splendid, mamma,
to find Harry’s uncle for him; and maybe he will be rich and capital and
everything,” cried Kate, full of glee in an instant, and she evinced it
by clapping her hands and jumping in true girl fashion.
Harry’s face flushed as he answered, “I don’t know his other name.”
“Don’t know!” uttered Mrs. Hallock in a voice that betrayed more
astonishment than she intended to evince.
“But what was your mother’s name?” she added, being quite certain that
some clue might be obtained.
“Bessie, Bessie Blake,” said Harry.
The same evening Mrs. Hallock addressed a letter to Mr. Horace Blake,
Solon, Maine, hoping that by the time Harry was able to be about again,
that she should have found an uncle for him. She waited patiently until
it was July, and yet no letter came from Mr. Horace Blake.
For many days Frank and Kate had made daily, and semi-daily, and
still-more-daily visits to the brown house in the lane; and at last the
very day was come for Harry’s first visit to Hallock Point.
Chapter VII.
“I’m just as sure as anything that there’ll be a letter to-day from that
Mr. Blake up in Maine, and I wish Hugo would hurry up and go to the
postoffice, before he goes for Harry and Grandma Dobson.” Kate Hallock
had said the above while standing in her own room in front of her
dressing bureau, in whose drawers she was vainly searching for a ribbon
with which to tie her hair.
“Kate, Kate, my child!” and a firm hand was laid upon Kate’s arm,
arresting her movements.
“I know, mamma!” said Kate, “but I put every single thing in apple-pie
order only Saturday, and this is Tuesday, and I was looking for my blue
hair ribbon; and I’m in an awful hurry, for fear they’ll get here before
I’m ready.”
“Do you think any little girl can be _ready_ to receive company whose
bureau drawers are in this state, Kate?”
“Yes, ma’am, if my hair is only nice.”
“And don’t you think while you were at play a vision of the confusion
here would come up before you? Just look!” and Mrs. Hallock opened
drawer after drawer, while Kate hung her head, pouted a little, and said
finally,
“Well, now, mamma, I _will_ fix everything nice the first thing in the
morning.”
“Now is the time, my child.”
“I can’t do it now,” pleaded Kate; “they’ll get here before I’m half
done.”
“Now is the right time. If I compel you to do it _now_, the next time
you want a ribbon or a handkerchief, you will not stir up everything
within reach to find it. You might put your drawers in order every
morning of your life, and it would be of little use if you threw things
right and left, and twisted them over and over like this.”
“But I get in such an awful hurry, and my eyes dance so I can’t stop,
and the first I know everything begins to hop, skip, and jump under my
fingers,” said poor Kate, bursting into tears.
“My dear child,” said her mother, “life must not be such a whirl to you;
let me think what to do with you.”
“Send me to the Reform School in Meriden!” sobbed Kate, with her head on
the marble of the bureau.
“Here you are at your own Reform School, Kate Hallock! It is left to you
to decide how soon you can go out free and happy. I’m going down now,
and when you have put everything here in order, you may call me to look
at your work. Here is a chance for victory over Mr. Disorder, Kate. See
that you put him down completely.” Mrs. Hallock kissed the back of
Kate’s neck, and left the room.
The white clock on the mantelshelf in the library struck ten. Kate heard
the sweet, silvery sounds as she listened to her mother’s footsteps on
the stairs.
“It’s a great deal too bad, anyhow!” she said, raising her head, and
fumbling blindly, through her tears, in the open drawer for a
handkerchief. “I think she might just have let me wait till morning, and
not spoiled all my fun to-day.”
Nevertheless Kate kneeled down, and drew out the lower drawer, and began
the labor of assorting, refolding, and laying in order the various
garments that she found there. She grew interested in her work. When she
closed the first drawer, she jumped up with glad alacrity, opened the
second one, made two or three very wry faces at the confusion of
ribbons, ruffles, aprons, stockings, and what not besides, therein; and
saying, “Get out of here, Mr. Disorder—I’m coming to oust you,” she fell
bravely to work, and was upon the last drawer when, with the smallest
possible hint of a knock, in rushed Frank, saying,
“Run down, Kate! They’re just coming, and I’ve got to give my hair a
brush.”
Frank was off again. The visitors, Mrs. Dobson and Harry, had arrived,
and Kate’s hair was flying wild about her tear-stained face. She flew to
the window, heard her mother on the veranda welcoming them, and her feet
ached to run down, and her tongue mourned because it could not say one
word to them.
“Kate, Kate! I say, why don’t you come?” came from Frank, once more at
the door, and then Kate was alone.
She hastened to complete the work she had to do. Out of the very last
corner of the last drawer came the wished-for ribbon; and as Kate stands
there before the looking-glass combing her hair, I will tell you how she
appears to me—for I have heretofore forgotten to describe Kate Hallock.
You know that she is short, because the corn in June and the salt meadow
grass partly concealed her from view. Well, Kate is brushing her long,
fair, shining hair; and as we look at her profile, she is watching her
flushed face in the glass, and wondering whether or not Harry Cornwall
will know that she has been crying, and—and—would he laugh at her if he
knew what she had been crying about.
Ah! Kate Hallock is laughing at herself now, to think she could have
been so silly; and that laugh makes her look like herself once more, as
she turns about and quickly catches with her teeth the braid of her
hair, that, thus held, she may tie about it the blue ribbon.
Kate Hallock has blue, tender eyes; round, soft, brown cheeks—just such
cheeks as the sun and the wind might be supposed to like to shine upon
and breathe over at any time of the year; teeth small, sharp, and
white—the sun and the wind never tanned Kate’s teeth; her sweet lips
dance over them so constantly that you never can tell whether you are
looking at the teeth or the lips when she talks or laughs.
Kate’s nose is not quite perfect; if it only were a mite smaller and
straighter, Kate would be a beauty. However, Kate is the only one who
ever finds time or heart to mourn over that feature of a bright, bonny,
darling young face.
Now she is ready to go down (and I am sure you have not yet found out
how she looks)—ready, all but the tying of her sash. That she manages by
a rather awkward bow, tied in front, and finally jerked and pulled until
the bow is supposed by the child to be in the back.
“You look like a guy!” was the accost Frank gave her as he passed her in
the hall.
“What’s the matter, I should like to know, with Mr. Airy Castle now?”
ejaculated Kate. Hearing her voice, Mrs. Hallock left her guests and
went with Kate back to her own room, where, having examined the bureau
drawers, which were found in order, Mrs. Hallock tied Kate’s bows anew,
kissed her twice, and sent her down to entertain Mrs. Dobson and Harry.
“I should like to shake hands with you, if I could,” said Harry, whose
right arm was still fast in a sling.
“O, never mind,” said Kate. “Come, I’m in a hurry to show you
something—quick! before Frank comes!” and Kate hurried Harry off out of
doors the very minute she had told Mrs. Dobson how glad she was to see
her.
“Don’t you know,” said she to Harry (as they stepped from the veranda),
“the morning you first came here? Well, when you rode past on that ugly
little pony that threw you down and hurt you, I was just behind that
stone wall over there. You can see it, can’t you?”
Harry said yes; that he could see it.
“Well, you must know that my brother Frank has been taking care of that
cornfield ever since for you.”
Harry wondered what was coming next, but Kate gave him not the least
mite of a chance to ask a question, but made haste to say, “That day the
corn was Frank’s, but he ran away. Don’t you remember how he followed
you to the circus grounds and stayed with you till most dinner time?”
“If he hadn’t,” interposed the lad, “I don’t believe I should ever have
known you, or you me.”
“That’s just it!” responded Kate. “It makes everything we do so queer
and kind of jumbled up; and yet,” she said gravely, “everything will
come out right, I s’pose, if we wait long enough.”
“You don’t mean that ’twas right for Frank to run away, do you?” and
Harry looked at Kate out of his clear, honest, grey eyes, very earnestly
indeed.
“I don’t see why not, ’cause if he hadn’t, how could we have known you
wanted somebody and a home and all?” suggested Kate.
“O, pshaw!” exclaimed Harry.
“I should like to know if _that’s_ all you’ve got to say?” said Kate in
a decidedly irritated tone.
“I beg your pardon; I didn’t know how to say what I wanted to. But don’t
you suppose now that if Frank had stayed in the lot over yonder that
morning, and God—” Harry suddenly stooped, grew red in the face, stooped
and picked up a stone, which he kept tossing in his left hand as they
went along; and he waited for Kate to speak, which she did presently,
saying,
“Never mind the rest; you can tell me some other time. Here we are,
close to your cornfield.”
“I should like to know why you call it mine,” said Harry; and then
followed the story of Frank’s desire to earn money for himself, and the
opportunity given to him by his father, and ingloriously lost by his
runaway propensity, gratified once too often. Kate told the story with
shining eyes, and was particularly careful to impress upon Harry’s mind
the beautiful manner in which her brother had acted ever since.
Harry and Kate were standing on the very edge of the field, and Harry
was just saying, “But, Kate, I cannot take it; you know that I can’t. I
should not enjoy a thing about it,” when a thundering slap struck upon
Harry’s shoulder, and a big, gleesome boy’s voice shouted close to his
ear,
“Well, I say, old fellow, how do you like the looks? Ain’t much like
Western corn now, is it?”
Frank had been advancing cautiously from the rear, intending to take
Kate and Harry by surprise. Harry was too much hurt by the blow (for
Frank had forgotten his condition) to answer for a minute or two. In
fact he grew so pale that Kate was frightened, and called Frank “a great
rough, cruel fellow, to slap poor Harry so.”
“I declare, I forgot your arm and everything. I didn’t mean to hurt
you,” explained Frank, and after a few more sharp twinges in the broken
bones, Harry said,
“It is all over and no harm done.”
“Glad to hear you say so,” said Frank. “Now this don’t look much of a
cornfield, I suppose, to you who’ve seen ever so many acres all in one
lot; but there’s one thing, you may call it ten acres to one—for that’s
about the difference in the price of the corn out West and here—and when
harvest comes, you’ll have a big pile of heavy ears. Don’t believe I am
much of a born farmer,” added the boy, “or I should have hung to the
main chance a bit longer.”
“I sha’n’t take one single ear of your corn, Frank Hallock,” spoke up
Harry. “Pray don’t think I’m mean enough to touch it.”
“But you must,” cried the twins in chorus. “You’ve got to have it; and,”
added Kate, “if you only knew how hard Frank has worked in the lot since
he knew ’twas yours, and you couldn’t help yourself lying over there at
Mrs. Dobson’s, I know you would. And you are coming here to live next
week, until your uncle up in Maine, or down in Maine, sends for you, or
comes after you—and, oh, you don’t know how pretty your room is. Mamma
made it so on purpose, and I helped her, too. Its—” but before Kate had
time to finish the sentence, Harry interrupted her by saying,
“Please don’t tell me about it, for, Kate and Frank, I can’t live at
Hallock Point.”
Harry’s statement was so utterly surprising that a momentary silence
followed it, and then the “I should like to know whys” and the “why
nots” overwhelmed the boy; but when finally Kate burst out with “I’m
sure I don’t see what we have done that you will neither take Frank’s
corn when he gives it to you, nor come to live with us, when we want to
have you ever so much,” Harry felt compelled to say something, and what
he said was simply this—
“I’m going to live in Pumpkin Delight Lane, with Mrs. Dobson.”
“Well, now, that is a good joke—going to live with Grandma Dobson!”
laughed Frank; “just as though you meant what you say.”
“Indeed, I do,” Harry replied quite seriously.
Practical Kate said: “Why, Harry, don’t you know that Grandma Dobson is
poor—I mean she hasn’t much money, nothing but the house and the land, I
heard papa say one day; and before her father died and left the house to
her, she used to make dresses.”
“Yes, I know she’s poor,” and Harry sighed.
“Well, then, you don’t want to make her poorer, do you?” Kate asked with
an arch look at Harry, for she evidently thought her final question
decided the point.
The children had turned and were walking back to the house. They were
come to the spot where Kate had met the man who was faint and ill, and
to whom she had given Frank’s dinner.
“Come,” cried Kate, “this is a nice place to sit, under the shade of
these big trees, and we’ll talk about it.”
Down she went with her fresh white dress on the green grass; and Harry
was, in truth, very glad of the opportunity of resting, for it was his
first walk in over a month.
“Now, tell us what it all means,” ejaculated Kate, with her pretty chin
resting in the palm of one hand, and her blue eyes somewhere between the
blue of the sky and Harry’s sober face.
“Well, it means, if I must tell you, that Mrs. Dobson talks out loud
pretty often. She’s lived alone a good while, with only Josh in the
house; and sometimes when I used to lie on my bed still, and maybe she
thought I was fast asleep—I don’t know, though; and I wonder if folks
who live alone don’t always talk to themselves—”
“I guess so,” said Kate. “I’m sure I should have to talk to somebody—I
couldn’t help it; but do hurry and tell us what she said.”
“Never mind about the particulars,” put in Frank, as Harry still
hesitated.
“Why, what I thought,” began Harry at length, “was that there was
somebody in the room that she was talking to: for she said that she had
lived alone, waiting and waiting, ever since her mother and father died,
and she meant to wait a good while longer, too, only it would be so much
easier and pleasanter not to wait all alone; and then she told how
lonely ’twas in the winter when the snows came, and there wasn’t for a
good many days a single track through the snow, and the ice was so thick
on the shore and so strong in the bay that not one ship could come into
the harbor. And I began to cry when she told about the long dark nights
she had to stay all alone, without one single human heart—that was just
what she said—beating near her own; and then all at once I knew she was
praying, for she burst out with ‘O, dear Lord, if this boy you’ve sent
to my house could only love me well enough to live with me just one
winter!’”
Kate sobbed and Frank whistled, and Harry said, “What do you s’pose I
did then?”
“Tell!” sighed Kate.
“Out with it!” demanded Frank.
“Why, I got up and opened the door softly, and said I do love you, and I
will stay’; and then I shut the door, but not before I saw that Mrs.
Dobson was getting up from her knees. She hurried into the room pretty
lively, I tell you, and kissed me, and made such a fuss over me that I
came mighty near being sorry I’d said I would stay.”
“Of course you’ll stay,” said Kate. “Why I wouldn’t have you at Hallock
Point, not if I could just as well as not. But what will you do there?”
“O, I’ll find enough to do, so that Grandma (she says I may call her so)
won’t think I’m eating her out of house and home; and then there’s the
farm. Next year who knows what may happen? and as for this, why there’s
a good chance to dig clams between now and cold weather.”
“Good for you!” cried Frank. “You’re a cracky chap, after all. Didn’t I
see some hens and an old turkey or two in the back yard the other day,
over in the lane?”
“Why, Frank, you stupid, you know Grandma Dobson keeps hens,” said Kate.
“They eat corn, like other hens, don’t they?”
“Of course,” laughed Kate.
“What then?” questioned Harry.
“Why, that cornfield yonder,” and with the words Frank walked off,
before Kate and Harry had time to get up from the grass and join him.
“That’s just like him,” said Kate, bubbling with enthusiasm. She was
always glad if Frank did or said the least thing to build up her
sisterly pride in him. “It’s so kind of him to remember Grandma Dobson’s
hungry hens. You’ll let _her_ have the corn of course, Harry!”
“I don’t see how I can help it. If Frank chooses to give it to her, I’ll
promise to gather it, harvest it in whatever place she chooses to have
it, shell it, feed it out, and save enough for seed next year.”
And all this time that the children were talking, the bright July sun
was beaming down on the broad green leaves of the corn; and that same
sun saw another sight. If the sun had told Frank, Kate, and Harry what
it saw, I do not know what would have happened—something interesting, I
am quite sure; but as the sun told no tales that day, I will not—until
the next chapter.
The letter that Mrs. Hallock sent to “Mr. Horace Blake, Solon, Maine,”
should have been addressed to Mr. Horace Ludlow, since Uncle Horace was
Aunt Louisa Blake’s husband, and of course had a name of his own. At the
end of three months, Mrs. Hallock received her letter from the Dead
Letter Office.
Dear me! if that letter had had the right name on it, poor Mrs. Dobson
would have had to live all alone all winter, maybe—who knows?
“Crooked things _do_ turn out just as straight as anything, sometimes,”
Kate Hallock said, when the letter was returned to her mother.
Chapter VIII.
“Why, Mrs. Dobson, I can’t call you Grandma any more,” cried Kate
Hallock on the day Frank’s corn was harvested home.
“Why not, Kittie, my Clover?” replied the little woman (with a soft
tenderness in her heart that gave a winsome look to her face) as she
glanced upward, for Mrs. Dobson was busy at work moving old red and blue
chests and things to make room for the fine yellow ears on the floor of
a room where her father used to spread the corn to dry years and years
before.
“Why, because,” replied Kate, “you look too young and pretty,” she
added, “to be Grandma any longer.”
“Well, now, if I ever,” said Mrs. Dobson, but Kate was down the stairs
and away, watching for the first load to come. She had stayed in the
field until it was half loaded, and she was afraid to stay longer lest
it should get home before she could, and she did want so to tell all the
hens and Grandma that it was coming.
At last it drew near. Frank was seated on top, just where Kate had
thought she might take a ride; but her proposal to mount there had been
frowned down by Frank in the most approved manner of brothers to
sisters. Harry Cornwall was walking beside the sober old horse, who
without doubt kept up a wondering as to what barn his master owned down
that lane, since he had never drawn corn there before.
The next load of corn Kate did have the pleasure of taking a ride on,
for her father not only gave permission, but lifted her to a seat on a
board laid across it, and Kate enjoyed her bit of victory over Frank, to
her heart’s content.
After the harvest came many frosts, then dear, beautiful, Indian Summer,
which Kate said was just like a whole summerful of days, sweetened and
cooked hard, and then November skies and November leaden everywhere; the
first snow that didn’t amount to much—Thanksgiving that did, and then
winter.
Harry went to school, cut the fire wood, made the fire (Grandma Dobson
kept but one fire in her house, except on grand occasions), fed the
hens, drew water from the well, went for milk, and everything else that
was needed in the brown house in the Lane; and, on Sundays, now that
Mrs. Dobson had company, she did not so much mind the long walk to the
old First church, even if “the going” was icy and bad, for, as the dear
little woman quietly expressed the matter to herself in thought, she did
get so much comfort and nearness to something human, in having Harry in
the house.
One night, when the moonlight was shining very bright, and Harry thought
that he had been sleeping a long time, he awoke suddenly, and lay
wondering what he had waked up for, when he heard a sound just outside
his door. “It’s a mouse trying to get into the corn room,” he said; but
not feeling altogether satisfied, he got out of bed and carefully opened
his door just in time to see a shadow steal across the moonlight on the
floor.
“Who’s there?” he shouted.
“O, ’tisn’t a thief; it’s only me,” said Mrs. Dobson.
“What is the matter?” questioned Harry.
“Nothing at all, Harry; only I didn’t feel like going to bed very early,
but now I’m going,” and he heard every step on the stairs, and also the
sound of the latch on the door as she went into her own room.
Now Mrs. Dobson would not have told Harry, “for anything,” what I tell
you. She had been reading over just three, old-time, yellow letters, and
reading them had made her feel so lonely that she had gone up to Harry’s
door to listen a moment to his deep breathing in his sleep, just to feel
_sure_ that she was not, as she had been for so many years, all alone in
the house.
Harry Cornwall had grown very dear to Mrs. Dobson before Christmas time;
and, if I must tell all the truth, the lad had grown “pretty dear” to a
number of people beside; Frank Hallock thought him “just the jolliest,
grandest, pokiest, saint-of-a-fellow,” he told Kate, one day in the week
before Christmas, when Frank slyly suspected that Kate was making
something for a present for himself, and tried to make her think that he
thought it was for Harry.
Christmas morning Mrs. Hallock sent to ask Mrs. Dobson if she could
spare Harry to her for an hour or two.
Mrs. Dobson could not help thinking that it was a little bit queer that
Harry should be sent for on that morning of all others, but she said
“Yes—most certainly—to be sure,” and off Harry went to drive with Frank
down to the huts on Peconick Point, with gifts of turkeys, sugar, and
tea, to persons living there.
He had been gone about half an hour when a queer looking wagon came
“wheeling” down the lane.
“Dear me! I wonder who is moving, this cold weather. Christmas day,
too,” sighed Mrs. Dobson, as she looked out and saw it going past. Josh
was enjoying his morning nap behind the stove, but a minute after up
went his long ears, and out came a bark so loud and quick and deep that
it made the little woman jump.
A knock on the door, and in came Hugo.
“Christmas!” he said.
“Wish you many merry Christmases,” said Mrs. Dobson, looking up in
surprise.
“In dem wagin out doors,” said Hugo. “Mad-am Hallock she be coming by
soon,” and without another word Hugo walked out again and presently
reappeared with the headboard of a bedstead in his arms. It was very
bright blue, and most charmingly designed and painted.
Grandma Dobson could only look on in silent wonder as he put it down and
walked off again to fetch another part.
By the time Mrs. Hallock came upon the scene, Hugo had transferred a
complete set of bedroom furniture to Mrs. Dobson’s kitchen—that is, all
but one piece.
While the amazed little woman stood looking at it and wondering in her
heart what it all could mean, with a bang and a thump on the back door,
appeared a rocking chair, and Kate Hallock’s blue eyes peeping through
the cane holes in the back of it.
Kate half stumbled into the room behind her burden, and before Mrs.
Dobson really had time to hurry forward and help, Kate had put the
pretty blue rocking chair right in the middle of the kitchen. The next
thing that she did was to walk up to Mrs. Dobson, seize her in her two
arms and push her right into the blue rocking chair, saying, “There! you
belong in that whenever you are tired, or are not tired either.”
“Kittie-my-Christmas Clover!” was all that Mrs. Dobson could say, and
then the foolish woman made a motion just as though she was going to
pick up the corner of her blue-checked apron (which just matched the
chair, Kate thought), but before she had time, Kate had been at her own
pocket and tossed a nice fine handkerchief into Mrs. Dobson’s lap, so
that her hand fell upon that when she was about to catch up the corner
of the apron.
“What next?” and Mrs. Dobson’s coming tears hastened into a little
laugh. “I’m afraid you’re going to spoil me,” she said.
“Why, Mrs. Dobson, you didn’t think, did you, that all these things,
this bedroom set, was for you?”
“Well, what could I think, I should like to know?”
“I’m so sorry, if you are sorry about it too,” said Kate. “But you see,
when mamma thought Harry was coming to live at our house, she fitted up
a room on purpose, and bought this furniture to put in it; but now, as
he is going to live here, and nobody ever uses that room, and he
wouldn’t take the corn, you know, and everybody says he is such a good
boy, why papa and mamma said he might have it, and so Frank and I give
it to him. Dear me, what a long talk that was!” and Kate dropped half
exhausted into one of the chairs.
“Why, I’m ever so much happier than I should be to have it all mine,”
said Mrs. Dobson, “and when I saw how pretty your room looked, it made
me sorry for Harry, for his chamber upstairs does look dreary
enough—only I try to keep it clean for him.”
Just then Mrs. Hallock arrived, with many apologies to Mrs. Dobson for
not sending her word before, and said she had come to help arrange the
room.
“But it is very cold up there,” said Mrs. Dobson.
“It’ll be such good fun to make a fire on the hearth,” said Kate, and
she did enjoy every bit of the labor of making that fire.
Hugo carried up the new furniture, and carried out the old. The bed did
look a little bit lost in its new frame, but Mrs. Hallock said that
could easily be made all right. They had worked very fast for fear that
Harry would get home before it was all done, and Kate was just spreading
two fresh, home-made towels on the new towel rack, when in came Frank
and Harry.
“Grandma!” said Harry, for she was downstairs, “I’m sure I saw smoke in
the front chimney as we came up the lane.”
“I shouldn’t wonder one mite—it’s Christmas, you know.”
“Why didn’t you tell me, and let me build the fire before I went?”
Harry opened the door into one of the front rooms; there was no sign of
fire on the hearth. His room was just above it; he heard a mysterious
tread.
“Who is up in my room?” he cried, and rushed up, to witness the presence
of Mrs. Hallock, Kate, and the transformation.
“You can’t get rid of taking corn this time, when St. Nicholas sends it
to you!” cried Kate, positively trembling with excitement. She was
excited by giving, and also at the effect of her gift.
“Can’t I go, too?” asked Frank of Mrs. Dobson. “I had the hardest work
to keep him from thinking the house was on fire, and made believe I
didn’t see any smoke. My! how the folks did snivel down on the Point
when they saw the turkeys and things. I don’t see why women always will
cry and make such a fuss when they’re glad a bit. Did you say I might
go?”—edging toward the stairway.
“Yes, yes, Frank.” Mrs. Dobson was busy just then peeping into her oven.
She had had hard work to get her new chair covered up in time, so that
Harry should not see it as he entered the kitchen.
Frank tried to step softly, but his boots had been wet, and they creaked
so that it was of no use; so he gave it up, and walked into Harry’s
room.
“Halloa, old fellow! What’s happened here? Most got your wings on,
haven’t you? Real butterfly colors, too—blue and yellow! I declare you
look well in them,” throwing himself into one of the chairs that had
been placed invitingly before the fire.
As for poor Harry, he looked more sorry than glad; and the only words he
said, when he began to realize that the furniture was his own, were:
“I wish my mother could have had them—she did love pretty things so!”
“Didn’t she have them?” asked Kate impulsively. “I thought you said your
mother was a lady once?”
“Yes, she was,” said Harry; “but my father hadn’t money to buy her
pretty things with.”
“Too bad, wasn’t it, mamma? What would you do without pretty things?”
“I should love you, Kate.”
“But I’m pretty, _folks say_,” said Kate archly; and then Harry and
Frank couldn’t help laughing at Kate, and everybody felt better for that
little laugh. And the Hallocks hurried home; for the brothers and
sisters who were married, and had homes of their own, were come to spend
Christmas at the house on the Point, and there was to be a grand
Christmas dinner that day.
Mrs. Dobson and Harry sat down to eat their Christmas dinner; while Josh
looked on, quite certain that his own dinner would come soon after.
After Christmas the winter wore away very rapidly, and in April Harry
Cornwall began his life as a farmer. Mrs. Dobson owned about sixteen
acres of land, and with the aid of her trusty helper, Harry, she
resolved to till it once more, although all the old farmers shook their
heads disapprovingly, and said she had much better let it out “on
shares”; but Mrs. Dobson had found that her side of the “shares” was
always very small, and that the land was getting terribly run down, as
they grew smaller year by year.
Harry did not fancy the life of a farmer, but he loved Mrs. Dobson so
well that he was fully determined to do the best he could, for her sake;
and he helped with the plowing, and the planting he did with his own
hands, following with shrewdness, not the advice of the farmers, but
their own example in regard to the time of planting and the manner of
planting: for he noticed that, like other men, their professions and
their practice seldom agreed. And so, when, one night, his field for
planting corn was all in readiness for work on the morrow, and a
neighbor came, and leaning over the fence, said, “It isn’t time to put
in corn yet for a week or ten days, my boy,” “my boy” watched, and
seeing the next morning his adviser go down the lane with bags of
something very like corn in his cart, he came to the conclusion that he
was going to put in his seed that day, and planted his own.
Frank Hallock made many promises to help on this day or that, but
something was sure to happen, and so well-meaning but unstable Frank was
almost certain to be absent at the appointed time.
As for Kate, she took the liveliest interest in farming occupations both
at home and abroad, and just as certain as she saw anything coming up at
the Point, whether it was potatoes, beans, corn, or any other green
thing, she would within a day or two contrive a drive or a walk down
Pumpkin Delight Lane to the sea, to see if anything that looked like it
was coming out of the ground in Harry’s brown fields.
One day Frank got vexed because he could not have Neptune when he wanted
to drive on the beach, and somehow it would be impossible to tell just
how it did grow—but that little cloud of vexation, instead of clearing,
grew until Kate was thoroughly out of patience with Frank. He became
morose, and didn’t want to go to school.
“Frank don’t feel well,” Mrs. Hallock said to her husband on one of the
warmest days in June, “and I think we may as well let him leave school.”
“O, mamma!” said Kate, “Frank is so far behind now; I don’t see how he
can ever catch up in this world, if he leaves school. He will get behind
me in everything, and then when he goes again in the fall he won’t be in
my classes at all.”
“My head aches!” said Frank; “it aches the whole time,” and so Frank was
given leave to begin his summer vacation in June; but being out of
school did not help the matter one bit; it only grew worse, until Frank
became so thoroughly cross and fretful that nothing pleased him. His
clothes weren’t fit to wear. Other boys whose fathers weren’t one bit
richer than his, according to Frank’s version, had better suits than he
had, and it was mean, downright mean, to make him dress so shabby.
Neptune was a slow-go kind of a horse; getting old, too, and had an ugly
way of stopping, just like a doctor’s horse, at every door-yard gate.
Father was mean; mother didn’t love him half as much as she did Kate;
and, as for Kate, _he_ was nowhere since that Dobson boy, Harry
Cornwall, had come; Kate was growing homely, too, getting freckled, and
was getting as—well—anyhow she acted just like a boy, and boy-girls were
his abomination.
When Kate heard him give utterance to the turn of his grievances, and he
came to the final one, she retorted.
“Poor, little girl-boy!”
Frank struck her on the cheek so sharply that when Kate appeared at the
tea table her finger-marked cheek caused her father to ask what it
meant.
“O, not much,” said Kate, with a glance at Frank as much as to ask,
“What _shall_ I say?”
“Tell me what made the mark on your cheek,” said Mr. Hallock with such
sternness that Kate felt the words jerked out of her, as she said,
“Frank’s fingers, papa.”
“Frank’s fingers, indeed,” ejaculated Mr. Hallock. “Tell me, sir, what
you meant by striking your sister?”
“She called me a girl-boy,” said Frank.
“He called me a boy-girl first, papa, and I didn’t strike him for
it,”—Kate could not resist saying so much in her own favor.
Frank was dismissed from the table and sent to his own room, there to
stay and live upon bread and water until he could beg Kate’s pardon.
“I don’t want him to beg my pardon,” said Kate, “and I don’t want him
shut up, either,” and Kate was following her poor, persecuted brother
out of the room to share his isolated condition, when she was sternly
bidden to return “and not go near Frank again to-day.”
“It is very queer that I can never punish Frank without you taking it
into your head to be punished, too,” said Mr. Hallock.
“Well, papa, I can’t help it. I love him so much, and I’m so sorry for
him.”
“You ought to love him well enough to wish to have him reform,” said her
father; and then the tea went on just as though Frank had not been
dismissed in disgrace—only it did not.
After tea, as Kate could not go near Frank, she went around into Pumpkin
Delight Lane and told Grandma Dobson all about it, and the dear little
woman sympathized with her exceedingly.
The next morning Frank was not at breakfast. Mrs. Hallock went with her
husband on an early train to New York, and Kate found that Frank was
locked into his room for all day.
“Anyhow,” she said, “I’m not forbidden to speak to him to-day,” so she
went up to his door and said,
“Good morning, Frank.”
No answer.
“Good morning, Frank.”
“You didn’t care to say good night,” said Frank in a very gruff voice
mingled with a good deal of rattling at the lock of the door from the
inside.
“O, Frank, you know I couldn’t. Papa told me not to speak to you last
night; but Grandma Dobson is real sorry for you. She gave me some seed
cakes. Want one?”
“No! not for breakfast. I say, what did you have downstairs?”
“I haven’t been to breakfast yet, but I know there is griddle cakes. I
smell them.”
“Fetch me some.”
“Wish I could.”
“Do it then.”
“The door is locked. Can’t put them through the keyhole.”
“The window isn’t locked. Toss them up. I’ll catch, first-rate.”
“Somebody’ll tell.”
“Who cares after I’ve eaten ’em?”
“I’ll try,” and Kate ran down to eat her own breakfast. It was lonely at
the table. The cakes choked her. She couldn’t eat. She buttered and
sugared a plateful for Frank, tossed up one or two, but the window was
too high, and the cakes fell on the ground.
“I know a way,” she shouted, and presently Kate appeared on the
staircase with the plate of cakes in one hand and a broom in the other.
A few minutes later Frank heard a voice that seemed to come out of the
sky; at any rate it came in at his window, saying,
“Here, Frank, here’s your cakes,” and Kate reached out from the window
next to Frank’s the handle of the broom, around which she had tied the
cakes.
Frank took in the broom, saying,
“Jolly for you! Is this all you can get?”
“I guess there’s more. I’ll see,” and away went Kate to the kitchen.
“Laws me!” said the cook, “who wants cakes?”
“O, Frank and I want some more,” said Kate.
“Your mother gave me orders, Miss Kate, and I’m not to give Master Frank
anything.”
“Very well; give me some, then.”
Kate carried the cakes to the table, prepared them for eating, and then
conveyed them on the broom handle to Frank, who received them gladly,
not knowing that Kate had made one more little sacrifice—and more than a
sacrifice—for his sake.
Chapter IX.
Kate Hallock was drawing near to Mrs. Dobson’s house in the lane. “Dear
grandma!” she called, “I’m just perishing with hunger! I’m starved
nearly to death! I’ve had no breakfast yet! Will you give me a piece of
your rye bread and butter?”
The dear old lady’s curls were bound about with a muslin kerchief, for
it was her morning for churning, and the stone jar, with its little
wooden dasher, was waiting her hands when Kate’s plaint broke upon her
hearing.
“Hungry! starving! no breakfast! What does it mean, Kittie Clover?”
“It means,” said Kate, “that I gave my breakfast to a poor fellow who
had none, or next to none, nothing but plain bread.”
“Plain bread is good, Kittie; quite good enough for tramps. Do you
suppose that the tramp would give up his breakfast for you?”
“It wasn’t a tramp, Grandma Dobson.”
“Who then?”
“Please don’t ask me another word. O, I am so hungry. Will you let me
help myself?”
“Sit right down here, poor child, and eat all you want.”
Kate seated herself beside the pine table, scrubbed to its best estate
of cleanliness, and Mrs. Dobson placed upon it a whole loaf of bread, a
three-pound roll of butter, and a four-quart pan of milk.
“I’ll tell all the tramps I meet where to come,” said Kate laughing, as
she proceeded to cut the loaf.
“Josh knows a tramp the instant he sees one,” said Mrs. Dobson, “and I
always have to feed them outside the gate.”
“Where is Josh this morning, grandma?”
“He has gone down to the shore with Harry; it’s most time for them to
get back now. We will have the clams they fetch home for dinner, if you
will stay.”
“This is my dinner and breakfast together, thank you,” said Kate.
“Besides, I must hurry home; for father and mother have gone away
to-day.”
“And where is Frank? I haven’t seen him in a long time.”
“O, he is at home,” said Kate carelessly; “only,” she added, “I don’t
think he feels very well nowadays”; and then Kate, to give Mrs. Dobson
no opportunity to ask a question, began to put away the large remains of
her feast, and to return her very expressive thanks for the same. “Now,
Grandma Dobson, it isn’t one bit polite, I know, to eat and run away;
but kiss me, and I’ll go home.”
“See here, Kittie Clover, something is the matter at home, and you will
not tell me. However, I will kiss you, and when you are ready, come and
tell me all about it.”
“Some time you shall know every single thing,” said Kate—more than half
persuaded to tell it all out on the instant; but she did not, for her
quick hearing caught the sound of coming, made by Josh, in the lane.
Kate hurried away. She wished to see Harry, and to urge him to find time
to go and talk to Frank. Kate herself, after breakfast, had begged her
brother to ask her forgiveness.
“I have not the least objection to doing it, Kate—do forgive me!”
“You know I did long ago, Frank. How I wish father and mother were here
now—then you could come right out! you’ll—ask me—won’t you?—when they
come.”
“I don’t think I will, Kate,” Frank had said; and poor Kate had run away
around the corner in bitter disappointment.
After thinking the matter over, she had come to the conclusion that if
anybody could persuade her brother to do right, Harry Cornwall could;
and to him she had come.
Harry heard the story, and promised to be over some time in the
afternoon. Kate went home rejoicing all the way, very certain now that
the trouble would soon be over. She had not been long at home when Frank
called to her that he wanted something to read.
“Fetch me _Young Folks_,” he said.
That magazine had been received the evening before. Kate was herself in
the midst of a most entertaining story at the instant the call came. She
went to the window adjoining Frank’s.
“Bub!” she said softly. Kate never called Frank “Bub” except in a tone
of endearment.
He put his head out from the open window.
“Here I am, Kate. I’ll catch it.”
“I’m just reading the loveliest story, Frank! I’ll be through in a few
minutes.”
“I want it now. I’ve called you a hundred times since breakfast.”
“Frank,” said Kate, “if I give this to you now, will you please ask my
forgiveness just as soon as they get home. If you will, you shall have
it, right away.”
“Give it to me quick, Kate. It’s as much my magazine as ’tis yours.”
“And it is just as much mine as ’tis yours, too, Master Frank, and I
won’t give it to you, unless you will promise.”
“Keep it then, and see what you will get for it,” returned Frank,
dropping the window-sash heavily to close further negotiations.
Kate’s eyes grew dim with tears. Here she was, after trying so hard to
conciliate her brother, at open variance with him.
She returned to her seat, opened the orange-tinted covers, sought out
the place where she had left off reading, and tried to recover interest
in the story, but in vain. There, right beyond the wall of her room, was
her brother, and he was angry at her.
Foolish Kate! She closed the _Young Folks_, trod softly to Frank’s door
and whispered through the keyhole, “Here is the magazine. You may have
it.”
No response.
“Frank! open the window and I’ll give you _Young Folks_.”
Silence.
“Frank, won’t you please take it?”
“No.”
“Do! why won’t you?”
“Don’t want it.”
“Frank, Harry Cornwall is coming to see you some time this afternoon.”
“Who said so?”
“He told me so himself.”
“I won’t see him. Tell him, when he comes, that I’ve gone away.”
“Tell a lie, Frank!” ejaculated Kate. “I won’t do it, not even for you.”
“Tell him just what you’ve a mind to, then. I don’t care what you tell
him.”
“I have told him all about it,” cried Kate, “and I just wish you were
like Harry. He is never cross and unkind to me.”
“I know you like him ever so much more than you do me. I dare say you
wish I was dead.”
“O, Frank! Frank!” cried Kate, and for a long time Frank heard her
sobbing at the door, and then all was still.
The dinner-bell rang just as usual.
Kate went down to her solitary dinner. There was but one plate laid at
the table, and after a few minutes, Sallie, the little maid, placed the
bell by her side, and left the room. This was the opportunity sought by
Kate.
It took but a minute or two to secrete food enough from the table for
Frank; having done which, Kate sat demurely at the dinner until a
reasonable time was past, before summoning Sallie. This time she was
able to secure a basket, and to rap at Frank’s window and pass it in to
him.
“There was only one plate of pudding,” she said, “and that I’ve put in
the basket for you; but there’s a good lot of hard sauce on it—cook
knows I like hard sauce.”
“Kate,” said Frank from the window a few minutes later, “you are a
brick!”
“O, Frank! you know mamma can’t bear to hear you talk that way; please
don’t do it.”
“I dare say she wouldn’t bear to have you fetch me, on a broom handle,
this jolly good dinner. Wish you knew how good it tastes to a fellow
shut up all day. I say, Sis, help a fellow out awhile this afternoon.
Fetch the light ladder; it will reach to the lower window-cap, and I can
let myself down by holding fast to the blind. Do now, and I’ll see Harry
if you will.”
How nice it seemed to hear Frank talk to her again, and to be called
“Sis” by him, and to know that he depended on her! O, how Kate Hallock
did long to run and fetch the light ladder and let him down!—but she
knew she ought not to do it.
“Come, now—there’s a good Sis.”
“Frank Hallock, you know better! I’m ashamed of you!” cried a breezy
voice from under the window—and there was Harry Cornwall!
Kate drew her head in quickly, and disappeared from sight and sound;
while Frank glowered down at Harry’s earnest face, upturned to meet his
angry stare.
“Frank,” said Harry after a moment’s peering cautiously about, lest he
be overheard—“now, Frank, neither you nor I think well of a coward, do
we?”
“Who calls _me_ a coward?” retorted Frank.
“Frank Hallock will call himself one if he will see himself as others
see him. I overheard you asking Kate to fetch you a ladder for you to
climb down on, when you know perfectly well that she ought not to do
it.”
“Who cares for your ought-nots? Go home—get off these premises!” cried
Frank, trembling with rage, and hurling down at Harry the plate that had
recently held the pudding.
Harry dodged, and the plate fell, apparently unharmed, upon the grass.
Harry picked it up, and walked away with it in his hand.
“Frank Hallock, you’re just the meanest boy alive, and I do wish you
were not my brother!” were the next words that reached Frank; and then
all was silence and stillness in and about the house until the nearing
wheels were heard that brought home Mr. and Mrs. Hallock.
All day long their hours had been saddened by recollections of Frank in
his disobedience and his punishment.
“Poor fellow! he will be very willing to ask Kate’s pardon to-night,”
said his mother as they drew near home.
“I hope we have been wise in our decision,” said Mr. Hallock, for, that
day, they had determined to send Frank to a boarding school in New
Haven.
Kate was rejoiced to see her father and mother again. Her flash of anger
against Frank was all gone, and she was eager for the moment of
reconciliation to arrive.
“Here, Kate,” said Mr. Hallock, “here is the key. Go and liberate your
brother and tell him to come to me.”
Kate ran up joyously, a candle in one hand, the key in the other. The
key she thrust in at the place, turned it with a jerk, and the door flew
back. “Come, Frank! Come, Bub! Papa is waiting for you, and there is all
sorts of good things, an out and out feast for supper, to-night.”
Frank sat moodily by the window, unstirring and speechless.
Kate went near him—“Dear Frank,” she said, “I’m real sorry I said that,
about wishing you wasn’t my brother—I’m ever so glad that you are—won’t
you forgive me, Frank? Come down, do!”
Frank never moved.
Kate kissed his cheek—the very ear part of it, was all that she could
touch.
Frank never stirred.
Mr. Hallock, listening, had heard Kate’s words.
“Frank!” he called.
“Sir!” responded Frank, never turning his face from the window.
“If you are willing to ask your sister’s pardon, come down!”
“O, Frank, Frank, do come,” pleaded Kate in his ear, in the sweetest,
tenderest of whispers, but Frank gave no response.
Mr. Hallock entered the room, led Kate away, and locked the door again.
Chapter X.
As the darkness grew into the room where Frank Hallock was prisoned, the
boy’s misery grew around his heart. Over and over to himself he said: “I
am sorry I struck Kate; but I won’t tell father and mother I’m sorry—not
if I have to stay here forever! They are always praising Kate, and they
think everything she does is just right, and everything I do is as
horrid as horrid can be—and it isn’t fair one bit. Kate has a real good
time, and I never can do anything I want to. Father and mother love Kate
a great deal more than they do me. Besides, I’m fourteen and over—big
enough to take care of myself, without somebody to tell me every single
thing I must do or mustn’t do; and I won’t stand it! Lots and lots of
boys run away from home in story books, and have capital, good, jolly
times. I’ve a great mind to run away myself.”
At the same time in which Frank was thinking these thoughts, he heard
distinctly the voice of conscience telling him that his father and
mother were right; that the best and only just thing for him to do was
the very thing they desired him to do. And far louder and deeper than
the wicked suggestion concerning the absence of love, came the ringing
assurance, through all the days and nights that he could remember, of
unnumbered, untellable acts of love. Poor Frank, the good and the evil
were striving for the mastery of him.
Sitting thus, and pondering the possibilities of running away from
home—the home that he, for the moment, persuaded himself that he
detested—there came to him a few trembling tones of sound from below. He
knew that tea was over, and that Kate was at the piano. He could see the
evening lamp on the table, and his father and mother sitting in the
room. Yes, then it came—the song of thanks and praise for all the
blessings of the day.
In the stillness that followed, Frank knew perfectly well what was going
on down there. If he ran away, why he might never again hear Kate play
his favorite music—never hear his father pray; and just here Frank began
to wonder if the supper table was cleared away, if the good things Kate
had referred to were all eaten up, if they really intended to leave him
go supperless to bed. He had not heard a sound of approach to his door
when there came through the keyhole a stifled “Bub!”
He answered it with “Fetch me some supper, Kate.”
“I can’t, Frank; they won’t let me. Mother is coming in a minute with
some bread, and be good. _Do_, Frank—for they’re going to send you to
General Russell’s School; you’ll wear a uniform, and everything!”
Frank’s heart beat proudly for a moment. The desire of his life was
about to be gratified then. In an instant all of the ill feeling that
had hardened him seemed to be as though it had not been.
“I’ll say it, Kate,” he whispered.
Frank was going to be good again. Away fled Kate to her mother, saying,
“Won’t you hurry, mamma, with Frank’s supper? I know he must be hungry
by this time, and please let me help you to carry it to him.”
“If Frank would only do what he ought to do, he might come down and get
his supper,” sighed Mrs. Hallock.
“Try him, just once, mamma, and see,” urged Kate.
“Come with me, then.”
“Frank,” called Mrs. Hallock, “are you ready to ask your sister’s
forgiveness?”
“Yes, ma’am,” shouted Frank in the most amiable of moods.
He was set free, marched down stairs and into his father’s presence,
where, without the slightest hesitation, he made the required apology.
Kate kissed him for answer. As she did so, she turned suddenly very red
in the face and nearly bit her lip through with the quick effort she
made to suppress a scream; for Frank slyly caught a bit of her arm
between his fingers and pinched it cruelly. The tears filled her
eyelids, and she ran away quickly to hide all sign of her hurt.
The same night, by the light of the moon, Kate saw Frank standing beside
her bed.
“Did I pinch you much?” he whispered.
“Awfully, Frank.”
“You were first-rate not to tell of a fellow by making a fuss.”
“And you were meaner than anybody I ever thought of; after I had been so
good to you all day and everything.” Kate could not help saying this.
“I’ll just tell you what ’tis, Kate, you are a great deal better to me
than you ought to be.”
“I sha’n’t be sorry, Frank, when you are away at school, that I was kind
to you when you were at home; besides, Harry Cornwall told me something
to-day that I never thought about before.”
“I hate Harry Cornwall, Kate!”
Kate made no sign of having heard the words.
Frank went on to say, “And I just wish that you would never speak to me
of him again. I dare say he is putting you up to all sorts of
disagreeable things on my account.”
Kate made no response for a moment, and then she said, the moonlight in
the room making her pale face quite radiant as she spoke, “I wonder,
Frank, what Jesus Christ would tell me to say to you, if he were here
now.”
“Good night, Kate; I’m going,” said Frank.
“Bub, won’t you kiss me without a pinch?”
“Yes, I will, Kate, and I don’t really and truly hate Harry as much as I
made out.”
“I am glad to hear you say so.”
“And Kate, I am just the least mite curious to know what the fellow did
say to you to-day.”
“I sha’n’t tell you, because you call him a fellow.”
“Saint, then, Kate; will that do?”
“It’s nearer the truth.”
“Tell, then.”
“No, not to-night.”
“Then I don’t give the kiss.”
“Good night, Frank.”
“Good night, Kate; you’ll be awful sorry, when I’m gone to school.”
Frank went to his own room, and to sleep.
Kate wished with all her heart it was morning. She could not go to
sleep, and it was so dismal to lie there thinking about Frank’s going
away from home.
Hallock Point without Frank Hallock, Kate did not think could be a home
at all, and just there, Kate began to wonder why she could not go to
boarding school quite as well as Frank. Certainly she was as old, and as
for progress in school, she was far in advance of her brother. Besides,
it would be, O, so nice, to think of it! Frank at General Russell’s, and
she at school in New Haven, too. Frank would come and visit her in his
gay uniform, and how proud she would be of her handsome brother, only
Kate did hope he would not pinch or slap her before the other girls. And
then Kate looked around her pretty room, with its adornments, each and
every one with its little history of birthday gift, Christmas greeting,
or token of love; and then suddenly she saw it all—her room without
herself in it, Frank’s room vacant; no merry shout or sound of boyish
presence—no Kate, even. Then it was that Kate thought, “No, it shall not
be. Poor mamma! it would be too, too bad. I will not say one word about
going to school,” and she went to sleep, at last, strong in the
determination.
The next day the good news was announced to Frank in formal manner. His
parents thought their son received the intelligence very quietly.
“But, my son,” said Mr. Hallock, “if you are to go to school in
September, the weeks that lie between are not to be devoted exclusively
to play. You are to fit yourself to enter certain classes in the school,
and you are to have a master every day.”
“How pokey, to study in summer, papa!”
“But he will teach Kate, as well. If he takes the trouble to come here
every day from the village, he may as well have two pupils as one.”
“And, papa,” suggested Kate, “why not three, as well as two? There is
Harry, and you know how he has had to stay out of school with the
plowing and the planting and the hoeing, and all sorts of things, and
now he could get time just as well as not to run over for his lessons;
and papa,” she added slyly, whispering the words in at his ear so that
Frank might not hear, “Frank would have to study then, ’cause he would
be ashamed to have Harry get ahead, a poor circus boy, you know!”
“No, Kate, I do not know; but we will see about Harry afterward.”
The master was from the village. Captain Green was his name. He had
taught school for forty years in the winter, and been a pupil of the sea
during the summer for a still longer period. The villagers used to say
that every billow sweeping the Sound had felt the stroke of his oar. He
was out on the bay at early morn, and the last ray of light found him
urging on his little craft at night. He trapped lobsters, caught crabs,
dug clams, sat for hours together holding the line over the edge of his
boat that rocked idly on summer seas, in the hope of catching a black
fish a little larger than any other fisherman had caught; and perfectly
delighted to spend his nights in throwing out and drawing in the long
seines, in the hope of the heaviest haul of bass or bluefish that ever
came to shore. This was the master, Captain Green, who proposed to spend
two hours every day at Hallock Point. He could run down the harbor to
the Point, tie up his boat, and then, after lessons, go outside.
The villagers heard the news with unbelieving ears. “No power on earth,”
they said, “could keep Captain Green on shore for two hours a day, so
long as he could move an oar.” Nevertheless, Captain Green appeared
prompt to the moment at the appointed hour.
Chapter XI.
School began in the tower room of the house at Hallock Point. Harry
Cornwall went to the lessons because he eagerly sought knowledge. Kate
Hallock tried to study because she wished to win the good opinion of
Frank, and, if possible, to excel him in everything. Frank went because,
as he said, “he had to.”
Captain Green taught in order to obtain for a well-beloved little
grandson, whose days on the earth were to be few in number, the
nameless, numberless little helps-by-the-way to the place of parting.
Had Mrs. Hallock known what the love for the sea meant to Captain Green,
instead of giving up the tower room for lessons, she would have chosen
the spot in the house the most remote from sight or sound of wave; but
there he was, day by day, with the blue of dancing, sun-lit water
beckoning to him. He could see the gentle glide of every keel that went
down the harbor, and feel the drawing of every sail that filled away
under the sweet pressure of the summer winds. More than any schoolboy
that ever groaned to play truant did Captain Green feel the impulse to
run away from school; nevertheless, he remained faithful to his trust,
and for two August weeks everything went well with the new enterprise.
Mrs. Dobson was perfectly gleeful over the grand opportunity afforded
Harry. She thought early and late, and worked all the day between the
thinkings, to give Harry every moment that was possible. The dear little
soul knew perfectly well that the more Harry learned, the less the
chance of keeping him in Pumpkin Delight Lane; but the more she loved
her boy, the less grew her selfishness, and the more she rejoiced in
whatever of good came to him.
On the shore there lay an old wreck, from which Harry wrenched a few
planks. By the aid of Frank Hallock, on the Saturday before school
began, he got them to the marsh that lay between the Point and the lane,
and placed them along the line of danger. Thus Harry made short work of
getting to and from the tower room.
Josh was for a few days greatly disturbed by the new order of going and
coming, and followed Harry across field and marsh until Captain Green
shook out on the air the tongue of his bell, whereat the dog gave forth
a recitation in a howl, and went home, only to repeat the same on the
day following.
On the little island, lying off shore from the town, there was a mill
for the making of oil from white fish. At the time the school began on
the Point, business at the oil mill was very good. Dozens of boats
sailed up to the wharf at evening, with loads of sparkling, rainbow-hued
menhaden, that had been trapped into nets during the day, in the deep
waters of the Sound. Far into the night, and sometimes until the
day-dawn came, men would work at unloading the fish, which were thrown
into tubs, the tubs hoisted by steam to a car, into which they were
dumped, until the thousands filled it. In its turn the car was drawn up
the long lines of rail leading from the wharf to the upper story of the
mill.
This mill was within sight from the room where Frank studied, and by the
aid of a spy glass could be seen distinctly, although lying two miles
away.
Every morning early, when the wind and weather served, the schoolmaster
went across to the island wharf to procure bait for his lobster pots.
Occasionally when a fog dropped suddenly down, or the wind blew fast
from off shore, Captain Green was late in returning from the lobster
pound, and the spy glass was used in the tower to find out his
whereabouts.
One morning Captain Green was caught in a fog when returning to the
mainland: the three scholars waited in the schoolroom, and he did not
return.
“It is just nice for you, Frank,” said Kate, “that he does not come, for
now you have time to learn the lessons you did not get last night.”
“No lessons until to-morrow,” said Frank. “There is no use studying.
Captain Green can never find his way in in this fog, for just before it
shut down I saw him off to the east of the island; shouldn’t wonder a
bit if the New Haven steamboat ran him down.”
“Frank Hallock!” cried Kate, “you speak just as though you’d be rather
glad of it if something did happen to the Captain. You ought to be
ashamed of yourself.”
“Why not, pray? I hate this study, study all the time. What’s the good
of it, anyhow? I don’t want to be what folks call a scholarly man. I’d a
great deal rather be a sailor—wish I was out now in this fog. It’s
capital jolly getting lost in fogs, and the first you know coming up to
land somewhere, and not knowing where in the world you’ve got to. I
often think, Kate, I’ll run away and go to sea.”
“O, Frank!” and Kate dropped her book and flew to Frank’s chair, and
putting her arms about his neck, began to cry.
“What a little goose you are, Kate,” said Frank. “I wonder if you think
a few tears will keep me at home, when I’ve made up my mind to set
sail.”
Kate assumed a vast amount of dignity on the instant, and in quite a
stately manner for Kate Hallock, groped her way, with eyes foggy with
tears, from the room.
“Don’t fall down stairs!” shouted Frank after her. And then Harry
Cornwall for the first time looked up from his slate, upon which he was
working out the examples of the lesson.
“Frank,” said he, “if I had a sister I don’t think I’d take such delight
in teasing her as you do.”
“O, yes, you would. You’d never find out without it whether she loved
you or not. Why, it’s just fun to see Kate’s great eyes when the tears
are getting together in them. Kate’s tears are always close to her eyes;
mine are clear down in my boots, and I’m glad of it; besides, Harry, I’m
most ready to be off to sea. I’ll tell you something. There’s a right
jolly good fellow working over in the oil mill at the island. His name
is Victor—Victor what, I don’t know, for he won’t tell—and he ran away
from home in Germany more than two years ago. His folks don’t know where
he is. I think it would be good fun not to have it known where I went to
or anything. Victor is as jolly as a regular tar: he has the nicest
eyes, blue as can be, and the whitest teeth—white as a shark’s; and he
says his father is rich, and his mother rides in her own carriage, and
everything is in hoity-toity good shape at home. Some day, he says, he
will write home, when he gets tired of working in the mill.”
“I don’t believe in your Victor, Frank. Look here, now: would you, Frank
Hallock, leave your home, and go to work in that oil mill?” questioned
Harry.
“Well, that is different. Maybe if I was off in Germany, and couldn’t
get anything else to do, and must earn my bread some way, I should go
into most any kind of a mill; but the fishing part I wouldn’t mind one
bit. I wonder what has become of Kate?”
“Frank,” said Harry, “I’ve wanted to say something to you for a good
many days now, but I hadn’t the courage. I thought it would be a right
good time that Saturday when we laid planks across the marsh, but
somehow every plank we got up from the beach made it harder, and I was a
coward after all.”
“Out with it now, then; it’s foggy enough to hide your blushes.”
“It’s something you will not like to hear, Frank.”
“Out with it, I say, while your courage is up.”
“Well, then, I don’t think it was right in you to let Kate give you
breakfast and dinner the day your father and mother went away.”
“It was one of the best turns Kate ever served me. I hope you haven’t
been talking to her about it, and putting notions of right and wrong
into her head, about it.”
“No; I haven’t talked with Kate, and I don’t believe the thought that
she was deceiving her father ever entered her mind; but she was, all the
same. And you let him think you had been kept on bread all day, when I
know that Kate gave you her own breakfast, and was so afraid that
somebody would find it out at home, that she went to Mrs. Dobson’s to
get something to eat when she was hungry, and never once told that she
had gone without her breakfast for you. And then she came home and gave
you her dinner, too.”
“Yes,” said Frank, rising from his chair and peering through the fog,
“Kate is a good deal of a friend of mine. I know perfectly well that if
I should ask her to run off to sea with me to-morrow, she would cry a
little and beg a good deal not to have me go, and then would go with me
after all.”
“And you are to blame, Frank.”
“To blame!” said Frank, the angry color rising in his cheeks.
At the instant the door opened and Mrs. Hallock looked in.
“I have come for Mr. Green,” she said. “Little Herbert is ill.”
“He’s caught in the fog off the island,” said Frank, “and hasn’t been
here this morning.”
“Can I do anything?” asked Harry, laying aside slate and books—but Mrs.
Hallock was gone.
There was not a boatman in the village who would not risk danger that he
could see, to fetch Captain Green to the little grandson whom he loved
so well; but to go forth, no one knew whither, into the dense fog—of
what use?
At least that was the reply made to Harry Cornwall at the town pier,
when he gave the news.
“Who will lend me a boat?” questioned Harry.
“Youngster! you scarcely know how to pull an oar,” was the only answer
his question received.
“But the sea is calm, and the boy may die. It will break the Captain’s
heart not to see him again,” urged Harry.
The boatmen looked up and down the harbor, as far as the fog permitted
them to see, and silently shook their heads.
“I will pay you for the boat if I injure it,” said Harry.
Before the man, who was about to urge Harry’s inability to pay, could
speak, Frank Hallock reached the pier.
“Here’s five dollars,” he cried, “for the man who finds Captain Green
and brings him in through the fog.”
In a moment a half dozen men stepped off the pier into as many boats and
began to pull down into the fog. The harbor’s mouth was a half mile
away.
Frank and Harry lingered only to hear the last stroke of oar, and then
Harry suggested going down to the Sound beach, past which the boats must
go to get to sea. When the shore was reached, the fog was so dense that
the boys could see no farther out than a few rolls of swollen water
coming in from the east. They began to shout with all their might and to
listen for an answer, but none came. Landward came another sound. It was
Kate, ringing, as she ran, the schoolmaster’s bell.
“I thought,” she said, coming to the shore, “that maybe you’d be down
here, and I was sure Captain Green would know the sound of his own bell
better than anything else; and, I do declare, if here isn’t Josh coming
after me.”
“Set him to howling,” said Frank.
“Let us shout and ring and howl together,” proposed Harry, and they
began.
The result was not, accurately speaking, a chorus, but they made the air
ring with sounds until Kate was forced to drop the bell and cover her
ears.
When a pause was made, out of sheer exhaustion, by boys and dog, they
seemed to hear a voice out of the fog.
“Coming!” was the word they heard repeated.
They rang the bell after an interval, and Josh, seeming to understand,
lifted up his mighty wail and cast it on the fog.
“Coming!” The answer came this time clearly from the voice of Captain
Green.
In ten minutes more his little boat was drawn up on the beach and he was
on his way home. There was no school that day. There was no school on
the morrow, nor for a week, because the lad lay very ill—and then there
was no school in the tower room any more, for there was no little
grandson, for love of whom to teach.
Chapter XII.
September was come, and the day on which Frank was to go to school was
drawing very near. Frank himself was devoting every minute that he could
get to bluefishing, and became very greatly irritated at whatever came
in the way of his pleasure. He even came to regard this going to school
as something that ought to be put off until bluefishing was over; and as
for “that provoking Harry Cornwall, he was good for nothing at all—all
the time doing something in the lane, digging the potatoes, or pulling
onions, or anything but go a-fishing, as he, Frank Hallock, wished him
to do. Why, he hadn’t been out with him to the island more than three
times since September came. And as for Kate, she was no good at fishing,
she wouldn’t bait his hook, but just wanted to pull out the fish for her
own self.” And yet Frank admitted that he might have let her come out
with him in the _Clover_. It was a pretty boat—white and green—that lay
on the ripple of the blue Sound that sweet September afternoon, and
anyone passing it and beholding the face of Frank Hallock, lighted up
with exultation as he whipped into his boat a gleaming bluefish, a
little larger than its fellows, would have thought “What a fine-looking
lad that is!” A cheery voice from a passing boat, whose approach Frank
had not seen, called out, “Any good luck to-day?”
“First-rate luck,” answered Frank. “Where going, Victor?”
“Up to the dock after a new net.”
“When are you going to Long Island?” called Frank.
“Soon as we’ve fixed the net,” shouted back Victor. “In a day or two
we’ll be off.”
Meanwhile the boat, plied by vigorous strokes, was urging its way up the
harbor, so that Frank’s “Wish I was going with you!” failed to be heard.
Frank was fishing just outside the harbor.
“I want to run up, mamma, and see the _Clover_. I want to know that
Frank is safe,” said Kate, at or about the same time that Victor’s boat
was at the town wharf. From the tower room she could discern a little
speck, which she imagined to be a boat. She went home and began to sew
faster than ever, as though to make up for time lost in going on her
little trip to investigate. Kate Hallock knew perfectly well that
something had happened to make her father and mother uncomfortable. No
one had said so, it is true, but she felt the worry, whatever it was,
that troubled them.
“Mamma,” said Kate, after a long bit of silence between them. “I was
very naughty the night you came home from New York and told me Frank was
to go to school; for after I went to bed, I lay awake thinking that I
ought to go just as much as Frank, and how ever so nice it would be to
be at school and have a handsome brother like Frank coming, all dressed
in his uniform, to see me.”
“But, Kate, my dear,” began Mrs. Hallock with a sigh.
Before she could utter another word, Kate had cast down her work and put
her arms about her mother’s neck.
“O, mamma, I got over it right away, the very instant I thought of all
the lonely rooms for you at home, and papa every night when he gets back
from business, and poor Neptune in his stall, with nobody to love him
much! It’s a lovely afternoon to go and give Grandma Dobson a drive, she
is always so sweet, and ‘ready in a minute’ to go when I ask her! I
don’t really and truly, mamma, think it would be best for me to go to
school, even if you wished to have me.”
“My dear,” said Mrs. Hallock, kissing the pretty face close to her own,
“what should you say if your papa thought it best to sell Neptune?”
“Sell my Neptune, mamma!” ejaculated Kate, with a gasp. “I should say
that I would rather live on bread and water all the rest of my
life—mortal existence they call it in church, don’t they, mamma?” with a
miserable little attempt at a laugh.
Kate began dimly to discern that the trouble she had felt related to
money matters, and if economy could save Neptune, economy she was ready
to practice to the utmost.
“If you had to choose, Kate, between Frank’s going to school and keeping
your pony?”
“If I were Frank,” said Kate, “I should go to work and help papa instead
of going to school. But, mamma, tell me all about it. I thought papa was
rich. We live like rich folks, I am sure, and I don’t think we ought to
make any pretence about anything. Grandma Dobson doesn’t, and I
shouldn’t wonder one bit if that is just the reason that her poor brown
house always seems so pleasant. Has papa lost much money?”
“Yes, my dear. Your papa may have to give up our pleasant home here; but
we hope to keep it.”
Kate began to look very sorrowful.
“Then, mamma, why send Frank to school at all?” she questioned. “It will
cost ever so much money.”
“We have decided that it is best to do so, hoping that Frank may become
all that we wish him to be.”
“Yes,” said Kate, “it will be nice, some day, to have a president or a
governor for a brother. I’ll do without new dresses this winter, and
squeeze into my last winter’s cloak and shorten up my arms some way to
fit the sleeves. You remember they got pretty short before the winter
was over; and I’ll—let me see—what can I do? I’ll do anything in the
wide world to keep Neptune. Why, mamma, I’d just as soon think of
selling Frank or you! I’ll manage to feed him without costing papa one
cent. There’s lots of salt grass that nobody ever thinks of cutting, and
then there’s the pieces of bread that are always left.”
Mrs. Hallock smiled.
“Anyhow,” said Kate, blushing deeply and with tears in her eyes, “you
just leave the feeding part to me; and I know Harry Cornwall will help
me. You’ve no idea the lots and lots of stuff he has raised this year;
and I’m sure it will be real nice to make sacrifices for dear Frank. You
know, mamma, it will be like the story books.”
Kate grew quite eager as she ran on, planning what she could do, if
affairs got to the very worst; and she was in the midst of it all when
Frank came in with a basket of fine fish, which he displayed with all a
fisherman’s pride.
“Has my uniform come yet?” he questioned.
“Mamma!” asked Kate, “will Frank’s new clothes cost much money?”
“Ah, Kate!” cried Frank, “so you want all the money for your own pretty
dresses, do you?”
“No, I don’t, Master Frank; and I was wondering whether the uniform
would help any in making you a great man.”
“I shall never make a great man, Kate,” said Frank, “and the sooner you
give up that hope for me the better.”
“Then,” said Kate, “I’ll make a great woman of myself.”
Kate had, in the midst of her utmost devotion to Frank, moments of
self-assertion. If he would not be the actor in whom she could rejoice,
then she felt the necessity to be that which he would not be.
“I should not wonder one bit if you did,” mused Frank. “Let me see—which
one of the distinguished will you pattern after?”
Mrs. Hallock had left the room after taking a glance at Frank’s fish, so
that Kate felt quite free to impart the news she had received, in her
own manner.
“Frank,” said Kate, her eyes shining, “if I were you, I’d go to school
and make of myself the very best scholar I could. I’d learn and learn
until I knew enough to support myself and lots of folks besides—I would.
O, Frank! did you know that papa has lost ever so much money, and that
maybe Neptune will be sold to pay for your uniform, or something?”
“Whew!” cried Frank. “Who said so?”
“Mamma told me so this very afternoon, and we are going to do without
ever so many things this winter, to save money for you.”
“I’ve noticed that something was going wrong for some time,” said Frank,
“and now it’s out. Well, you can get along without Neptune, Kate, and it
does cost a great deal to keep a horse.”
“How much did papa pay for the _Clover_?” questioned Kate.
“Fifty dollars. I know, because I went with him to buy it.”
“You can sell that, I know,” said Kate, assuredly, “for I know who will
buy it.”
“Catch me selling my boat!” cried Frank; “indeed I won’t. I shall want
it every vacation, unless it’s at Christmas holidays.”
“The _Clover_ would be just as happy with anybody else rowing it as with
you in it, Frank.”
“What has that got to do with it?”
“Why, my poor Neptune would break his heart to go away from his home and
from me.”
“Nonsense! Horses get used to things.”
“Frank, you know how much I love my pony, and there is only one Neptune
in the whole world for me; but there are plenty of boats that you
wouldn’t know from the _Clover_, that you can have some day.”
“Pshaw! Neptune would fetch a couple of hundred dollars, I think, though
he is rather slow and getting a little old.”
“Yes, that is it!” burst out Kate, with a flood of tears running down
her face. “He is getting old, and somebody would begin to abuse him and
sell him cheap by-and-by; and he’d be driven off, lame and half starved,
by a cruel old fellow from a horse-market in New York. I’ve seen them
when I’ve been there, and I’ve just wanted to be the general of the
biggest army that ever marched, and see if I couldn’t set some things
right and save the poor, old, lame, hungry beasts that had done their
best in their best days, working away for their masters. Frank, Neptune
sha’n’t be sold to send you to school—there now!” and Kate ran off to
the stable and was having her cry out, with her arms around Neptune’s
neck, when Harry Cornwall, passing by, heard her sobbing.
“What has happened, Kittie?” he questioned, looking in.
It was too late for Kate to pretend that she was not crying and in real
trouble, but Kate was too loyal to her parents to tell what had
happened, and so she said:
“Thank you, Harry, it isn’t anything that I can tell you about. Perhaps
you will know some day.”
She wiped her eyes and went in with Harry to show him the splendid luck
Frank had had fishing.
“See what you lost!” cried Frank, exultingly, “when you might just as
well as not have gone with me.”
“I couldn’t go without neglecting Mrs. Dobson’s farm—I mean the onions,”
said Harry, “and onions will be fetching a good price presently. I’ve a
good many of them, too, and it’s just the weather to get them in. I
don’t mean to be selfish either,” continued Harry, “but the onions and
the oats are my crops on shares. Mrs. Dobson gives me half, so you see
I’ve a special interest in silver-skins.”
“Do you know, Harry,” questioned Kate, “will horses eat onions?”
“What a goose!” said Frank.
“I don’t think they will, Kittie,” answered Harry. “Why?”
“Because,” bravely said Kate, “I’ve taken the responsibility of keeping
Neptune this winter, and I knew you’d help me, Harry, with whatever you
could spare.”
“I’ve a share in the oats, and you shall have all that Neptune can eat.
We’ve a good hundred bushels between us.”
“Then Neptune will not suffer, and we’ll see what can be done when
Master Frank is off in his uniform and everything is frozen up good and
white for the winter,” said Kate, with a feeling of relief concerning
Neptune.
Chapter XIII.
Grandma Dobson, with a snowy white cap sitting demurely upon her silver
curls, sat in the blue rocking chair, knitting a gray sock. She was in
the open doorway and it was near sunset. The golden light was all about
the placid face, whose lines of sweet patience seemed drawn clearer and
fairer than on any other afternoon of her life.
She knitted away with her busy fingers, her eyes taking harvest of all
the beauty lying toward the setting sun. Now and then, looking at the
quince trees that grew along the garden wall, she made anew a little
calculation concerning the quantity of quinces she could gather when the
time for gathering should come. There was always a good market for
quinces. Beyond the garden wall, concealed by the quince trees that lay
between, was the apple orchard, now heavy with fruitage. Mrs. Dobson
always enjoyed the apple harvest, when there was an apple harvest to
enjoy. She remembered gathering apples from that orchard for Captain
Dobson to take away on the _Snow_, in the year before they were married.
The fingers knitted slower and slower, stumbling over the stitches at
last; then they ceased from effort, and the gray sock was let fall
across her dress. A shadow came over the slant sunlight. Mrs. Dobson
caught up the sock, a half-guilty color suffusing face and throat.
“Did I frighten you, grandma?” questioned Harry. “I’m sorry.”
“I am afraid it was my wicked thoughts that frightened me, laddie. I was
foolish enough to go contrary to what God thinks best for me, and when
you came so quick around the corner, I was wondering what on earth I
should do if Captain Dobson should come back—so foolish, after more than
thirty years!”
“And you wouldn’t even know him, would you?” questioned Harry, dropping
his hat on the door stone and sitting down beside it.
“Yes, Harry, I think I should. I’m sure I’d feel very bad if Captain
Dobson didn’t remember _me_, and I never doubt that he would remember me
as long as he did anything about this world.”
“And nobody ever was known to come back after being gone thirty years,
was there, grandma?”
“Nobody that I ever heard of; and, Harry, it is only when I sit down and
dream awake, or in my sleep, that I ever believe that he can. I haven’t
let myself play he comes in a long time before, and I shouldn’t now, but
I was waiting for you to come home to tea.”
“I almost hope he won’t come,” said Harry, “’cause if he did, I should
have to move on somewhere.”
“Then you don’t care to go?” questioned Mrs. Dobson, with a little
breath of eagerness. “I was afraid, when there was so much talk of
Frank’s going off to the grand school, that my boy would grow
discontented.”
“Not a bit of it, grandma. I got grandeur enough at the circus to last
me a lifetime. I’m sorry sometimes, though, because I see so much
make-believe in ’most everything. I wonder if it is wicked to hate
make-believe as much as I do.”
“Dear me! Harry Cornwall, what can I do if you begin to hate me?”
exclaimed Mrs. Dobson, thrusting the knitting-needles into parallel
lines through the sock and looking with severity at him.
“No danger of that, grandma. You are as transparent as the water in this
well—and you know it is relied on always for pure clearness. I must have
a drink, and while we are at tea I’ve something to tell you.”
At the table Harry related nearly everything that had happened at the
Point during his little visit there, together with his thoughts and
fears of what might happen.
“Dear, dear me!” sighed Mrs. Dobson. “What can we—you and I, Harry—do
for our friends?”
“We can wait and watch for a chance, grandma. It won’t do to let on what
we’ve found out. When everybody knows about the trouble, then we can
seem to know it, too.”
“I thought you hated make-believe, my laddie.”
“That isn’t what I mean by making believe. I found Kate sobbing away and
telling her grief to her pony, and I more than half think that Neptune
understood every word she said, too.” Then suddenly turning his bright
face upon Mrs. Dobson, the boy said: “I know one way to help them, a
little.”
“What is that?” she asked, eagerly.
“Oh! a way?”
“Tell it!” with a near approach to impatience for Mrs. Dobson.
“To have your dream come true, grandma! because, then, you would not
need me. I should be in the way here, and I’ve an immense good opinion
of myself—I could make myself very useful over at the Point, and save
money in a good many ways for Mr. Hallock that Hugo never thinks of.”
“I can get along beautifully without you,” said Mrs. Dobson, after a
pause, “that is, until the spring; after you get the crops all in, I
mean; and you could come over once in a while by running across your
bridge, even if it was cold weather.”
“Now, grandma, you’re making believe you’d get along comfortably without
me,” said Harry, reproachfully.
“No, I am not,” she said, trying very hard to steady her voice. “I
didn’t say there wouldn’t be _very hard_ days and unpleasant hours. I
said I could get along nicely, and so I can, and will, if it seems
best.”
“And here we are a-dreaming away, when perhaps I am not wanted at all,”
said Harry, “and Primrose is waiting by this time at the bars for me. If
Captain Dobson should come before I get through milking, grandma, you
swing the strainer—here it is” (catching it from a gooseberry bush by
the door and tossing it to her), “white as snow—for I want a chance to
run upstairs and put myself in order to do you honor before a visitor.”
“What dreamers we are, to be sure,” sighed Mrs. Dobson, as she watched
the lad go his way past the quince trees and through the orchard to the
meadow-bars, where Primrose waited.
The sun was just dropping out of sight. She watched it with eyes that
grew misty with wistfulness.
“Foolish! foolish!” she murmured, smiling the very ghost of a smile, as
she turned to gather up the cups and plates from the tea table.
When Harry fetched in the milk she was washing them, just as usual, he
thought, while she was thinking that if Harry could be of more service
at the Point than in the Lane, he ought to go there.
The next morning Frank Hallock went bounding into the brown house to
exhibit himself in the uniform which had arrived the night before. “The
swamp-bridge is a capital institution, Harry,” he said. “When I go to
Congress, I’ll vote for swamp-bridges all along the coast. How do you
like me in my fine feathers?”
Mrs. Dobson surveyed Frank’s fine figure and erect carriage, and
pronounced the uniform “fit for any gentleman.”
Harry remarked: “My mother used to say that real soldiers are always
gentlemen, and never” (he added on his own account) “leave a lady to
find her way alone across a marsh, as our soldier left his sister just
now.”
“Oh! you mean Kate,” said Frank, too well pleased at the moment to
resent anything that anyone might say. “Kate had no need to come. She
only wanted to hear what you would say to my new clothes.”
And just here Kate presented herself, panting for breath and
disappointed. She had lost that first expression of pleased surprise
that she longed to see. However, her enjoyment was too simple and
genuine to be long delayed at any time, and one or two laughing
sentences from her precious brother made far away the wrong of a few
moments ago.
“Don’t be so grand, Frank, that you can’t come to see me. I am afraid
the military school will spoil you for the old brown house and Grandma
Dobson,” Mrs. Dobson said, as they were about to go home.
“I’ll come at the Christmas vacation,” replied Frank, “and bring three
or four of the fellows and spend the day here. You see if I don’t! I’ll
be civil enough, though, to let you know when, for four or five of us
would eat an awful sight of your rye bread.”
“I’ll come over the day before and help you make it, grandma, and then
I’ll come that day and help eat it,” said Kate, kissing the dear soul
good-bye, and departing in jubilant spirits with Frank.
“Let us go home by the way of the town wharf,” said Frank. “I want to
find out if there’s any chance of getting to the island to-day; and
maybe we’ll catch Captain Green or some of the fishermen there.”
Frank had left unexpressed his strong motive for going, but Kate added:
“O, yes, Frank, and then they can see your perfectly lovely uniform. You
can’t think how fine you look and how proud of you in it I am. I’d
rather not have a single new thing to wear this winter and be able to
see you in it.”
“What an admiring duck you are!” observed Frank. “In return, I’ll get
together the best set of adjectives I can muster to do you honor in your
next finery”—with which promise they came within sight of the pier. On
it a stranger was walking and peering with interest into every little
boat thereabout.
“I wonder who that is,” said Frank, straightening himself and walking
down the wharf as though he owned it and the harbor also. Kate
straightened her hat and walked demurely by his side. Kate could not
assume airs and graces that were not her own.
“Good morning, my lad,” said the stranger to Frank.
“Good morning,” returned Frank, a little stiff at having been called “my
lad” by the man.
“That uniform looks very well, indeed. I didn’t think it could be so
exact a fit as it is,” remarked the man. “You are the son of Mr. Hallock
at the Point yonder. I know,” he added with a smile, “for I sent that
suit to him yesterday.”
“Then you are Mr. North,” returned Frank, not quite so freezing in his
air of boyish consequence.
“Yes, and perhaps you can help me. I come out to this region very often
during the fall and winter for duck-shooting, and I have so great
difficulty in securing a boat that I wish to buy one. Do you know of one
for sale?”
“Yes,” spoke up impulsive Kate; “there is your own boat, Frank.”
“I’ll lend it to you to-day,” said Frank pleasantly to Mr. North, adding
with a lordly look in Kate’s direction, “but my boat is not for sale.”
Mr. North walked to the Point with the children, and, having secured the
boat, soon departed for the day. He returned at evening and was a good
deal surprised at seeing the young girl he had noticed with Frank in the
morning, waiting at the little boathouse, apparently to meet him. He was
astonished when she questioned him thus:
“Do you wish to buy my brother’s boat?”
“Yes, if he will sell it to me; it is a good little affair and answers
my purpose nicely: that is, if it can be taken care of here for me until
the spring.”
“O, yes,” said Kate. “But how much will you give for it?”
“How much does your brother ask for it?”
“O, I don’t know as he will sell it; but I know how much my father paid
for it. He gave forty dollars in the spring, and Frank named it to
please me; but I wish he would sell it and you would buy it.” Then with
a quick impulse, Kate asked, “How much did Frank’s new clothes cost?”
Without giving direct reply, Mr. North said: “We will make an exchange,
if your brother pleases—I will take the boat for the uniform.”
“What a good way! Thank you,” said Kate softly, and before the words had
died away upon the air, she was off to the house with the good news to
Frank, but Frank was not at home. When he did arrive, he was cross and
peevish, and would not take with a grain of good sense or amiability one
word that Kate said; and so she resolved to keep her secret about the
boat until morning.
Chapter XIV.
The following morning Kate waited with exceeding patience for the proper
moment to arrive in which to speak to Frank regarding the _Clover_ and
Mr. North.
“And I told him, Frank,” she went on to say, as he stood glowering at
her from his superior height, “that the boat cost—I mean that papa paid
forty—”
“It was fifty dollars, Kate,” ejaculated Frank, “that was paid for the
boat; and if you hadn’t—”
“O, Frank!” besought Kate, with an eager tremble in her voice, “I am so
sorry I forgot. I thought it was forty; but you can tell him and then
you’ll get back ten dollars that you can spend just as you please; and
you are always wanting new things, you know. You can buy, Frank, that
nice new kind of a fishpole that you asked papa for, or you can get—”
“Just like you,” returned Frank, interrupting her suggestion. “A
fishpole would do me a good deal of good without the _Clover_ to go with
it. I’ll tell you what, I’ll just keep my boat and get the pole in some
way. Mother will help me out with it.”
“O, Frank Hallock! if you only knew what mamma is doing, and going to
do, this winter, you’d never think of asking her for a penny. When you
are gone, Mary is going away and we will only have the cook and mamma,
and I am going to do all Mary’s work; and I heard papa talking about
having only Hugo or some one other man to do everything that is to be
done outside of the house. I shall enjoy helping about everything so
much, dear Frank, when I think that you are having a good time at school
and it is making you happier.”
Frank turned away without a word and went out into the sweet, cool air
of the morning.
Kate ran lightly up the staircase, and in two minutes came down again
with hat and wrappings on to drive her father to the railway station.
Mr. Hallock appeared presently, looking very grave and anxious. As he
came, Kate said: “All ready, papa, and waiting for you.”
“Kate, dear,” he replied, “I have a reason for wishing that Frank should
go with me this morning, and you may meet me this afternoon at five. I’m
coming home early to-day. Good-bye, my child,” and he gave the
disappointed face a kiss and went out. Kate followed, thinking to find
Frank for her father. The boy was already at the stable.
“Come, Frank!” said Mr. Hallock, “I wish you to go with me this
morning.”
“Can’t Kate go, or Hugo?” returned Frank. “The tide is just right for
fishing and it will use up half an hour or more.”
“Get in,” said his father, sternly. With a frown and a surly air, Frank
slipped into the light wagon and threw himself upon the seat.
“Never mind, Frank,” urged Kate in a low voice, close to the wheel on
Frank’s side. As the horse started, she added: “I’ll have the
fishing-tackle all ready for you, and the bait, too, if I can.”
Mr. Hallock drove and not a word had been spoken when they reached the
village. As they were passing along the principal street, Mr. Hallock
said:
“My son, I am in the midst of cares and business difficulties that you
cannot understand. Your mother and myself are willing to do many things
this winter, in order to send you to school. We do it gladly, out of
love for you. If you could stay fourteen a year or two, it would not
matter so much whether or not you went this winter; but time is
precious. Now, my boy, Kate told me last night that Mr. North suggested
taking your boat, and I wish you to part from it cheerfully and without
a word of repining. It is yours, and it is you who must write to him
to-day and tell him that he can have it.”
“But, father—” and then came the signal of the advancing train. In two
minutes Mr. Hallock was upon it on his way to New York and Frank was
rushing with speed through the village on his way home, cherishing, as
he went, no very kind feeling toward his sister Kate.
Having left the horse, he was going toward the boathouse, when Kate
appeared on the highway, carrying a basket.
“I was afraid to stay a minute longer,” she said, when they came within
speaking distance. “I was so afraid you would be gone, Frank. I found a
few clams—look! enough to keep you in bait quite awhile,” Kate
continued, speaking very rapidly, as though apprehensive of
interruption. “You know, Frank, you are going to be a beautiful brother
and let Mr. North have the _Clover_; and mamma said I might go fishing
with you to-day, if you would keep inside the harbor.”
“Kate Hallock!” exclaimed Frank, “it was none of your business to go
telling father what Mr. North said. I could tell him myself, when I
wanted him to know anything about it. No! I won’t let you go with me
just because you did tell.”
“O, Frank! I thought papa would be so very glad, because I heard him say
that he needed every single dollar he could save; and I thought you
would be as happy as I was myself, when he said he would do it. And I
went and got your lines and clams and everything; and I don’t care to
fish, so I’ll bait your hook every time.”
“No, Kate; I’ve got to give up the boat, and I will have it all to
myself this last day; besides, it is still, and if I see Captain Green
outside, I’m going out beyond the island to fish. So you see you could
not go.”
“O, Frank, don’t go alone; please don’t! Get Harry Cornwall to go with
you,” she urged; but he resisted that appeal, and saying there was no
time to spare in hunting up Harry, who was doubtless off in some potato
field or other, kept on his way to the little boathouse where the
_Clover_ lay.
“I’ll tell you what, Frank,” said Kate, her heart beating fast with
hope, “I’ll run across lots to the Lane and find him, and I’m sure he’ll
go if I ask him; and you can wait and fish a few minutes down by the
coal dock, till he has time to get there. I’ll be as quick as ever I
can. I don’t believe mamma will care if I do not stop to go back and ask
her.”
Kate was running by the time she finished speaking, and she did not hear
Frank’s last call, which was “I sha’n’t wait a minute for anybody”; and
she did not stop until she reached the stone wall that separated the
meadow lands from the highway. When she stood within the low doorway of
Mrs. Dobson’s kitchen, she could only gasp forth,
“Where’s Harry?”
“What is the matter with you, Kittie, my Clover? You’re as—”
“Please tell me quick where Harry is,” panted forth Kate. “I must find
him.”
“Then you come right in and sit down until you get your breath and I’ll
go call him. He’s topping corn this morning.”
Now Kate knew the Dobson cornfield just as well as anyone, and off she
started, before Mrs. Dobson could take down her sunbonnet and shawl from
its peg on the kitchen wall.
Arrived there, she shouted for Harry, who presently appeared out of the
corn and hastened to the fence where Kate waited.
It seemed so trivial, this calling Harry away from real,
necessary-to-be-done work to go fishing, just because Frank would run
into danger, that for an instant, as Harry came forward, she resolved to
let Frank go; but the wave of fear returned upon her by the time he
reached the fence and she cried out:
“O, Harry, will you do something for me? Tell me ‘yes’ quick!”
“You know I will, Kittie,” said Harry, removing his hat to wipe his
forehead—for he had been working fast.
“Then go fishing right off with Frank; it’s the last time he’s going in
the _Clover_, and he would go off to the island. Make haste now and you
can catch him at the coal dock. He has gone down the harbor and he is
all alone, and if the wind should blow”—she said, with a sudden tremble
in her tones—“or if the fog should come and he off there fishing all
alone—”
Whether it were the pleading of Kate’s eyes or of her voice, or the
arguments she used that influenced Harry, it were impossible to
determine; but he went in haste across field and meadow to the coal
dock, only to see Frank and the _Clover_ making great speed outside the
harbor toward the island.
As he stood there, helpless, on the beach, watching the boat, Kate
reached his side, and, seeing her brother in the distance, she burst
into tears.
“I’m sure I did everything I could,” she sobbed. “Only if Frank should
get lost, I never, never could forgive myself for having told papa!” and
Kate sank down on the sand and cried out her sorrow and disappointment,
as well as her weariness.
Harry waited patiently until the little storm was over. Then he said:
“If you were to tell me all about it, don’t you think I could help you a
little?”
“I wanted to tell you ever since I knew,” sighed Kate, with one
tear-dimmed glance seaward, “only I thought that perhaps papa and mamma
might wish it not spoken of; but now I am sure—” and then Kate went on
to tell Harry all that she knew and thought, and a good deal that she
felt, about affairs at home. At last she said, “I can bear everything
but to let Neptune go. If poor Nep goes, Harry, I want to go with him.
He’s my friend—just as Josh is Mrs. Dobson’s; and O, Harry, _do_ you
think I ought to tell papa he may sell him?”
Harry was trying to see Frank’s _Clover_, but somehow it looked very
much as though it had been caught in a sudden fog; but it was a fog
easily brushed away from the lad’s eyes, as he turned to say to Kate:
“If, Kittie, it comes to selling Neptune, promise me one thing—that you
will not let him go until you have told me about it.”
“I promise, Harry; but what good will that do?”
“We will see when the time comes. I am glad you have told me. But,
Kittie, I must not spend my morning here. If the wind blows hard, I will
go to the town wharf and get a boat to go out after Frank.”
“Mamma has not the least idea that I am not gone with Frank. I must go
home and tell her,” said Kate; and thus they parted, Kate going by the
way of the brown house to explain her conduct to Mrs. Dobson, and Harry
to the cornfield, summing up as he went, for the fortieth or fiftieth
time, his little earthly all and wondering whether or not it would do
any good to get it all together, in readiness for an emergency.
The day went on, bright and warm for the season, until the afternoon
came, and with it there breathed in from the sea a cool, damp air, that
presently, almost before one thought of it, changed all the atmosphere
to dense fog.
Kate had many times during the morning hours made little visits to the
tower room and adjusted the glass, to take into view Frank’s boat.
Seeing it, lying off the island and nearby another boat—Captain Green’s,
without doubt—she had ceased to feel troubled. Even Mrs. Hallock was
satisfied with Kate’s reports, as they came to her from time to time,
and contented herself, being very busy in preparing Frank’s clothing for
school, until she saw the fog sweep past the windows. Hugo was sent off
in haste to learn the whereabouts of Captain Green and the whole
household grew anxious and restless.
Kate drove Neptune to the station to meet her father, and greeted him
with the news that Frank was off fishing outside of the island, all
alone, when the fog came down.
The September twilight followed. It was night and still the fog held
down. The old sea began to roll with an easterly swell, and Frank was
not heard from. Kate put every lamp that she could muster into the tower
room, for a lighthouse.
Chapter XV.
As Frank rowed down the harbor in the morning, he saw himself clearly,
in the light of conscience, as a selfish, contemptible brother. He
admitted to himself that he ought to have taken Kate in the _Clover_ and
given her a morning’s pleasure on this one of the latest days he should
be at home.
Two or three times he half yielded to the impulse to go back for her and
began to row with uncertain weak stroke outward, when, with sudden
impetus, Victor, from the island, shot past him with the call “You’d
better hurry! Capital morning for fishing, and we’re off at high water
for Long Island.”
“It’s my last chance to see the fishing-boats and the old mill and
everything, and mother won’t let Kate go outside any time,” thought
Frank, and he bent to the oars and shot past the coal dock, as seen by
Kate and Harry in the last chapter.
At the island everyone was busy preparing to leave for new
fishing-grounds—the season for fishing in that part of the Sound being
nearly past. The great seines were being taken down from the reels along
the side of the wharf, casks of water were going out to sloops in small
boats, and every fisherman was getting together his individual
belongings, to say good-bye to the island for weeks to come.
Frank made the _Clover_ fast to the wharf, climbed the ladder and
wandered about awhile, watching the work that was going on and secretly
wondering whether or not if he had worn his uniform the men would have
paid more heed to him, for a chance word was all the attention he could
elicit, until Victor returned from town. Victor had been to the
postoffice to obtain the latest news from the homes of the men before
they should set sail. Victor distributed his letters and then went,
accompanied by Frank, “to pack up.”
As he proceeded to thrust into a huge carpet-bag his belongings, he
said:
“I wanted to see that land toggery of yours you’re going to school in.”
“It isn’t much,” answered Frank. “You’ll see it maybe at Christmas.
You’ll be back here before that time to lay up for winter and I’ll be at
home at vacation.” Then suddenly turning upon Victor, he asked, “Why
don’t you go home for Christmas? I should think you’d want to see your
home again.”
“I’m going some day,” said Victor, his blue eyes gleaming and his
beautiful white teeth showing to advantage. “I’ll take you home to
Germany. There’s much Christmas coming—plenty of time.”
“But folks die between one Christmas and another,” remarked Frank,
adding, “however, I hope your folks will not, and I’ve half a mind to
run away and go to Germany with you, when you do go, anyhow.”
“I’ll remember you when I let go for the Fatherland,” replied Victor, as
he gave vigorous thrusts to get into the bag a pair of boots. The bag,
large as it was, refused to close over them; and so he made it fast with
a rope, threw it over his shoulder, and carried it down to the landing.
At that instant the dinner-horn was blown from the door of the little
house on the island, and every man, notwithstanding his haste,
immediately responded with his presence. At the last dinner of the
fishing season Frank was present and assisted vigorously, after which he
rowed Victor and his big bag in the _Clover_ out to Victor’s boat. Then
he bade him good-bye and stood off while the sails went up and the
anchors were hoisted on board a dozen yachts of the fishing fleet.
It was a sad sight to Frank and to Captain Green, who was fishing
outside the island, to see the brave boats stepping away into the
distance. The tide being fair and the wind light, they were a long time
in sight; and the old man fishing thought the Sound would be lonely now,
and the boy “was rather glad he was going away to school, after all;
there wouldn’t be so much fun now on the water, anyway.”
Frank felt dispirited. He would have picked up his oars and rowed for
home had he not heard an exclamation from Captain Green, who at the
instant pulled in a fish of extraordinary size, which Frank seeing, felt
a desire to do likewise. So for the first time that day, Kate’s clams
came into service, and Frank fell to fishing with right good will. It
was, as Victor had remarked in the morning, “a capital day for fishing”;
either the bait was very alluring or the fish were very hungry, for they
bit vigorously and came into the boats in great numbers.
The _Clover_ lay about five hundred feet from Captain Green’s position,
and, so rapidly did the fog come down upon them—busy at baiting and
pulling in—that neither the experienced man nor the inexperienced boy
knew of its approach until it had shut them in.
“Sakes alive!” shouted Captain Green. “Frank! Frank Hallock!”
Frank responded, thinking Captain Green must have pulled up anchor and
moved position since last he noticed him.
“Hold on!” called the Captain.
“I’m holding on!” screamed back Frank, trying his best to pierce the fog
with his eyes.
“No, no! I’ll hold on and you get up anchor and pull for me—that will be
the better way—and we’ll keep together till we get in somewhere.”
“Aye, aye, sir!” yelled Frank, wondering what in the world made Captain
Green get around on the other side of him.
“Confound the boy!” thought the man in a rage. “I wonder how he got
outside of me without my knowing it.”
Now it so happened that neither boat had changed position since the
fishing station had been chosen. Frank toiled at the anchor line and
pulled the boat out to it and lifted it on board, then took up his oars
and rowed a few strokes. Hearing nothing from Captain Green, he paused
and gave a call.
“Here; this way—row this way,” responded the Captain.
“All right; I’m coming,” gleefully from Frank, reached his ears; and
then he listened, thinking it quite time he should hear the oar-strokes
of the advancing boat. Meanwhile Frank peered cautiously at the veil of
fog, trying to discern the outline of his friend’s boat and feeling very
glad to know that it was there somewhere near him, even though he could
not see it.
“Where are you?” from Captain Green, boomed against the bank of fog. He
called again—he shouted—he roared; and Frank, hearing the faintest note
of it, kept on rowing in the direction whence the sound seemed to come.
Poor Frank was following the voice of Echo, instead of the warm,
palpitating notes that the half-distracted Captain sent after him; he
was rowing after the phantom voice that lured him farther and farther
away from the land.
“It’s time I got to him; I’m sure it is,” thought Frank, no suspicion of
the truth entering his mind. Gaily he accosted his neighbor. “Ring the
school-bell, Captain, and I will come,” he called, and seemed to hear,
in response, a knell of sound, as of some deep, far-away fog-bell
booming solemnly.
For the first time in his life, as the _Clover_ lay on the slow swell of
the sea that he might listen, Frank Hallock felt a thrill of fear. What
could it mean? Where _was_ Captain Green? _Could_ he have gone off and
left him out there all alone?
Frank called and listened, and called again until his voice grew dull
and husky with shouting, and the only sound that seemed to respond was
that dreadful toll, whether of his own heart beating or of fog-bell, he
could not tell.
Meanwhile Captain Green, becoming thoroughly alarmed at the
non-appearance of the _Clover_, pulled up his own anchor and began to
row in the direction Frank’s boat had lain. After rowing around for
awhile, he concluded to let his boat drift with the tide, knowing that
in time it would take him toward the land. It so happened that the sound
of water, swashing on the stones of the island, assailed his hearing,
and, after many attempts, he succeeded in following the sound to its
source.
Having landed on the island, he immediately gave the alarm, and, after
having secured a boat and an oarsman, set forth in search of Frank, with
a compass as guide and the dinner-horn as trumpet.
They rowed north and south and east and west, the Captain acting as
trumpeter, and the only answer obtained from all their efforts was one
shrill steam-whistle as a passing steamboat made haste to change its
course to get out of the way of a supposed sailing vessel.
During all this time Frank Hallock was pulling out to sea, firmly
believing that he was making for the Connecticut coast. He heard neither
horn nor call nor whistle, as he steadily moved on his course. Meanwhile
the afternoon had been passing and the early evening was drawing near.
To Frank the fog seemed to be deepening, but it was the deepening of
darkness.
Many times he laid down his oars and set his ears to listen with an
intentness that made him feel as though he was all ears. He imagined
many sounds, but heard nothing except the splash of his own boat’s bow
on the sullen sea; then he would take up his oars, and, counting a
hundred strokes, lay them down and listen once again; but each and every
time with the same sickening failure to hear sound of helping man.
It was not until the darkness grew to night, and night unrelieved by
light or star, that Frank became thoroughly alarmed—and that he felt to
the full the dulling drench of the fog. It seemed to sink down through
the crown of his cap and suffuse hair and brain; it seemed to be swept
through him from shoulder to shoulder, and his very feet turned limp and
his knees shook as he arose and tried to stand for a moment, to relieve
the cramp that had settled down upon them.
“O that it would rain or blow or do anything but fog on like this,” he
thought. “I wonder what Kate would do out here now, to-night!”
Nevertheless, Frank could not help wishing, far down in his heart, that
Kate was with him out there, and he began to be very sorry that she was
not, for somehow a savor of comfort seemed always to be around Kate.
Whatever else came of the fog, loss of appetite did not, and Frank began
to feel all the beseeching of hunger.
“I wonder how long a fellow could live out here, anyhow,” he murmured,
“if it should go on fogging forever, and if, after a day or two of it, I
should want my supper as much as I do now? I want a loaf of rye bread
and a couple of quarts of milk like everything, and I wouldn’t mind
having an apple, or even a glass of water would taste first-rate. There
must be sailing craft around here thick as berries in a pudding—if I
could only run against one now.” But the only thing Frank ran against
was deeper darkness and now and then a denser fog-bank.
The last button of Frank’s coat was buttoned ere long. Whatever else of
cold there was to come, he must bear as best he could. He rowed a little
to keep warm and shouted a good deal, and began to feel the awful
pressure of loneliness clasping him tighter and tighter. At last the
cold damp affected his strained eyeballs to such degree that he was
compelled to shut his eyes; and then somehow—exactly how he could not
understand—he began to see himself, not out there, mistbound in the cool
autumn evening, tossing up and down on the swell of the sea, but just
himself as he was, as he had been living from day to day in his home,
and his selfishness began to grow into something awful. He wished he
could remember a few kind, nice, good things that he had done for
somebody over there on that queer land, that must be somewhere, but
which seemed so far away, and a good deal more like a dream than—but
what was that noise? Frank shouted to it, but the rolling porpoise did
not think it worth while to wait and make reply.
At last, thoroughly worn out, Frank sank down gradually into his boat
and began to sob. There was no one to hear and he sobbed on until the
misery of the darkness and the breathing waters grew into him. He wanted
something that he had not; he wanted the solid land and safety; home,
with its love and warmth, its lights and food; and all at once he wanted
something more even than these—he wanted the God of the sea, in whose
dreadful clasp he was caught, to be his friend.
He was tired of rowing, tired of calling, tired of everything. He wanted
to go to sleep. Yes, Frank was, as he had said, fourteen and over and
could take care of himself; but he, for the first time in many, many
nights, went back to that most comforting form of petition, “Now I lay
me.” With a firm resolve to be a better boy, sell the _Clover_, and be
kind to Kate and love everybody, and always tell the truth and do just
right, if he ever got to land, Frank sank into a state of damp
unconsciousness.
When he awoke, the boat was tossing up and down; the fog was, if
anything, denser than ever, and he was so stiff that on the first trial
he could not sit up. To have had no supper was uncomfortable, to go
breakfastless was hard; but the day was dawning. A light fog would be a
few degrees better than a dark one; besides, by this time all the boats
in the harbor must be beating about in search of him. But no boat found
him all that long, cold day, and another night found Frank Hallock, limp
and helpless and half unconscious, lying in the _Clover_, which drifted
and drifted in the open Sound. It was the longest fog that had been
known in many years.
Chapter XVI.
Again and again Kate Hallock reiterated the statement that only a little
while before the fog came she saw two boats lying near the island.
“The boy is safe enough at the island,” said every one of the boatmen to
whom Mr. Hallock applied for advice concerning the proper thing to do.
Mr. Hallock himself believed that Frank was there and tried his utmost
to convince Mrs. Hallock and Kate that Captain Green must have seen the
fog coming in and would, without any doubt, look after the safety of
Frank.
“I wish somebody would go over at low water and find out,” said Mrs.
Hallock; and Harry Cornwall, hearing the words, determined to go.
“Just as soon as the fog lifts, I will go myself,” said Mr. Hallock,
assuring his wife that until such time it would be unsafe for anyone to
attempt it. To find one’s way across the wide stretch of sands, crossed
a number of times by streams running from the salt meadows to the sea,
would be wellnigh impossible.
It was low water on that night at midnight. An hour before that time,
Harry Cornwall went to Mrs. Dobson’s door and told her that he was going
to try to reach the island.
In vain were all of Mrs. Dobson’s efforts to intimidate him: the
darkness had no power to do it; the fog was something the experience of
which he could not imagine; and, as for the possible quicksands into
which he might wander, he was willing to take the chances, only too
happy in the thought that by striding through danger he might be able to
relieve the anxiety at the Point.
With a lantern in his hand and matches to light it, if necessary; with a
board under his arm, as defense against a possible descent into the mud,
he set forth, followed by Mrs. Dobson’s fears, and—in the distance—by
Mrs. Dobson herself and Josh.
The Lane was narrow, or the way would soon have been a damp mystery to
everybody concerned.
Harry went hurriedly, wishing to get to the bar before it should be low
water; and he had reached the shore and plunged along fearlessly over
quite a stretch of the tide-left sands before Mrs. Dobson was a hundred
yards down the Lane. He was quite certain that he had followed the bank
in about a straight line for the bar, and was going on famously when he
found himself in a few inches of water.
“The creek!” he said to himself, delightedly. “I’m a third of the
distance already to the bar; and when I get upon that, it will be as
easy as the Lane, for I shall be fenced in with the sea.” With this
assurance he went boldly into the creek, finding the water somewhat
higher than the stage of the tide would lead one to expect. Harry had
dug clams along the border of this creek many times and felt quite
familiar with it, even in a fog—only it did seem wider than usual, as
well as deeper; in fact, he soon felt persuaded that he was going either
up the creek or down it, instead of across; but this creek seemed as
wide as it was long, and on which side lay the land it was impossible to
tell.
“I’ll try every direction,” he thought, “by turns,” and he went all
around the compass; but whichever way he seemed to turn, he always found
himself in deeper water. He tried to light the lantern, but the matches
in his pocket were already wet.
Harry was compelled to admit that he had lost his way. The situation was
anything but pleasant and very far from being a safe one, unless release
should come before the turn of tide. He stood still awhile and listened.
Reader, were you ever lost in a fog? If not, you cannot have the
slightest conception of Harry’s feeling as he stood there. If he could
wait until the next train passed, up or down, its signal whistles might
guide him, but then the tide would have been two hours rising.
All this time the board had been tightly clasped under Harry’s arm. “How
glad I am,” he suddenly exclaimed. “At least this board will float down
with the tide and I shall know which way the land lies.” He laid it on
the water, intending only to let it slip for an instant from his hand,
when lo! it vanished into the mist and the darkness. Harry tried his
utmost to vanish in the opposite direction, but it was all of no use. He
wandered about with care, only to find that the water was gaining on him
with every renewed effort. Truly, Harry Cornwall was in worse plight
than Frank Hallock when midnight came to the two lads.
Meanwhile, on the little island, Captain Green had been anxiously
awaiting the approach of low tide, that he might make the venture to
reach the mainland. He was full of solicitude regarding the whereabouts
of Frank and wished to give the alarm as soon as possible.
There was a brass cannon on the island, used chiefly to acquaint Long
Island Sound with the presence of the Fourth of July on the land.
Giving directions that this cannon be fired should news of Frank be
received, Captain Green started, in company with one of the workmen of
the mill, for the Connecticut shore. They were aided by the light of a
lantern and their guide was a compass.
During this time Mrs. Dobson, unwilling to be left alone in the
mysterious fog even for a minute, held Josh by the collar and slowly
felt her way along the Lane fence to the beach, wishing with all her
heart, as she went, “that the Lord had not made boys and men so
venturesome. Poor, dear lad!” she thought, as she stumbled along from
post to post. “He never will get there! He’ll be lost on the awful
sands! the cruel, creeping tide will draw him down. O, Harry, Harry!”
and then she was crying out to him in the thick darkness, for at last
she was come to the brink of the bank leading down to the sea-sands.
At her cry of “Harry! Harry!” Josh made one bounding leap for freedom,
which he gained with a glad bark and was off, leaving Mrs. Dobson alone.
Into the mist leaped Josh, easily following Harry, until he lost scent
at the water’s edge. Then he stopped and uttered a few barks, just
enough to reach the hearing of Harry and to gladden his heart more than
I can tell.
Harry whistled, and in plunged the dog, getting to his friend in a
marvelously short time and uttering his thankfulness at having found him
by a perfect jubilation of sound, that made the old fog-banks, landward
and seaward, echo and reecho his joy.
Captain Green and his companion had come to the land-end of the bar,
where they also heard the bark.
“Sure’s I live,” said the mill-man, “that was Josh Dobson’s bark! I
wonder what in the world he’s out on the coast for this night.”
“Somebody’s out there, lost, trying to cross, you may be sure,” replied
Captain Green, and he sent a cheery call as far into the night as his
voice would carry it, and all the time he was keeping close to the sea’s
edge, by the dim, misty light of his lantern, anxious not to lose the
water-line for an instant.
They shouted singly as they went, and they shouted together, and at
length Harry, floundering still under Josh’s guidance, heard the call
and responded. With the regularity of a fog-bell’s toll came the call
and answer, until at last Harry caught the lantern’s glimmering light,
and shortly after saw two forms, like giants, stretching out of the
misty darkness.
The joy of being found and safe was quickly obscured by the news of
Frank’s loss, which Captain Green and he together bore to Hallock Point,
having left Mrs. Dobson safe at home on the way with Josh to guard
her—although I’m quite sure no eye would have suspected that the brown
house was in the Lane that night.
The dawn came at last, but the fog was not gone. It seemed denser than
ever; boats went down the harbor and outside, but came back only too
soon, to say that it was of no use, nothing could be done,—clear weather
could alone solve the mystery.
If the day was long on the shore, it was yet longer to the lad in the
boat. He rowed aimlessly; as dinner time came he looked at the fish, a
few of which lay in the boat, and wondered if he could eat raw fish. He
varied his rowing with sitting afloat and shouting. He shouted and
shouted, until he had changed the monotony by calling “Father,” and
“Mother,” and “Kate,” and “Harry,” and every name of boy or man it
seemed to him that he had ever known; and not one, of all the number,
would give answer to his great beseeching.
As the day when on the cold increased, and the great sea beneath him
rolled in a sullen swell that grew with the cold. At length Frank knew
that another night was gathering on the face of the waters. All the hope
that with so many sails on the Sound, one must come out of the mist,
somewhere, to meet him, died out.
Poor Frank! he burst into a passion of tears. He felt forgotten,
neglected. It seemed to him that somebody might at least have tried to
find him. If it had been Kate now, and he had been on shore, why, he
would have had boats, as thick as berries, out looking for her.
Frank’s tears made him colder than ever. He took up a fish for the first
time and looked at it. With fast numbing fingers he scraped with his
knife a few scales and cut a bit of the fish, but he could not eat it,
or the deepening swells sickened him, and he cast it into the sea.
It is useless to follow Frank through the night. He prayed with all his
heart, feeling that no one but God could come to his aid. He made solemn
promises to his Maker; at last he said that he would trust Him whether
he lived and was saved, or whether he died alone in the boat. Frank
meant to do just what he had promised. The mist was drenching him now
more than ever; he tried to row, but his hands refused to hold the oars
and one oar fell from his grasp into the sea. With a despairing clutch
he tried to recover it, but it floated off on the swell and he could not
get the boat around to the rescue; so it went off, as the great world
had done, with all its light and warmth and food. Why, that pretty room
of his own in the house at Hallock Point seemed, as he thought of it,
like the loveliest place on earth, and oh! to hear Kate say “Dear Bub!”
once more, what joy that would be. How Frank remembered the loving touch
of his mother, tucking him into bed long ago. Frank seemed to remember
every sweet and pleasant thing that ever had happened to him, and with
equal power he recalled all his own bitter selfishness, and saw it, for
the very first time, in its true light.
But how cold it was growing, and the billows were heaving the little
boat up and down in a helpless kind of toss that was pitiful to think
of. The second night and nobody to find him!
Frank was too cold to care much more. He shivered and cried again and
tucked himself into a little roll down in the boat, and soon grew to be
unconscious of all that was passing. All night the tiny boat went up and
down on the sea. At midnight the fog lifted and the stars shone down,
but Frank had suffered too much to know it. At day-dawn a gale began to
blow and still the little cold bundle of boy lay in the _Clover_ and
knew not that the day had come, nor the gale, nor that a schooner had
seen what was supposed to be a boat adrift and was bearing down to pick
it up.
When Frank knew anything more, he was lying on a captain’s bed, in a
captain’s cabin, with strange faces looking on; and there was a cup of
hot soup at his lips, and somebody was urging him to “drink it.”
Very kindly, when Frank could tell his name and home, the schooner _Blue
Bell_ put into harbor at New Haven, to land him there.
“You’d better telegraph home, my boy, the instant you get on shore,”
said the Captain to him. “It won’t be a moment too soon to relieve their
minds.”
“I suppose, Captain,” said Frank, thanking him with a deal of boyish
gratitude for having been so good as to save him, and go ten miles out
of his way to land him—“I suppose, Captain, by the time you’ve sailed
home to Maine, you’ll find three or four reams of paper done up into
thanking letters, waiting for you.”
“All right,” said the captain of the _Blue Bell_.
Frank thought it would be so much nicer to witness all the pleasure and
surprise his appearance in the village would occasion—to go right in on
the first train and meet everybody. Of course! What was the use in
sending a telegram? And then suddenly Frank remembered how long the
minutes must seem at home; and the first real self-sacrifice that he was
conscious of for the good of others, was in hastening with all speed to
the nearest telegraph office, and sending to his father this message:
“I’m all right at New Haven.”
“FRANK HALLOCK.”
You may be certain that the young man who received that message did not
keep it many seconds lying in the office. No; he didn’t even wait to
write it out, but appeared on the platform of the little station with
shining visage, and announced “Frank Hallock’s all right in New Haven!”
“I’ll carry it!” cried half a dozen volunteer messengers; but while he
hastened back to put it into proper form, three lads started on a run
for Hallock Point.
Such a race as it was, to be sure! for everything was clear and bright
now, and a steam-tug had steamed up at the town wharf, all ready to
start, with orders to cruise up and down until the boy was found; and on
board the tug were Mr. Hallock and Harry Cornwall; and many a man
interested in the recovery of his neighbor’s lost boy was only too glad
to lend his presence and sympathy to the occasion.
Flying went the six feet down the highway, reaching the stone gateway
leading into the grounds at the very instant Kate Hallock and her
mother, in the phaeton, were putting Neptune to his utmost speed to try
and reach the wharf before the tug should start.
“Hurrah!” cried three cloth caps—no, three boy voices (the caps were
taking a circle around the heads and got a little mixed); but Kate, in
her hurry, could not stop and cried, “Take care!” as the nearest lad
almost pitched into Neptune’s fore feet.
“Stop, stop! he’s all right!” fairly yelled the lads, turning and
running after the ladies.
“What do they say?” gasped Kate.
Neptune felt an awful pull at his mouth, and stood still.
“Why, Frank’s found!” gasped one.
“Found!” groaned Mrs. Hallock.
“He’s to New Haven!” panted No. 2, dashing his cap on his head, and
thinking “They don’t act very glad, after all.”
“I say he’s all right!” ejaculated No. 3, “and he’s telegraphed it to
say so. The man told us so and he’s a-going to send it down.”
“Frank’s alive and safe!” repeated Kate, bursting into tears.
“Thank you, boys! Come and see me this afternoon—will you?” said Mrs.
Hallock, and gathering the lines in her hands, without waiting to hear
their answer, she drove rapidly on, anxious to spread the glad tidings
on board the tug.
Never in all his life had Neptune been so urged before to hurry over the
well-known road to the town wharf. He went flying down the hill and out
upon the wharf, Kate’s handkerchief waving as they went. But what did it
mean, that instead of the tug starting, everybody on board was hurrying
to get off? It meant that the good news had arrived a moment earlier.
Neptune was duly turned around by the head on the narrow landing-place,
and permitted to pursue his way more leisurely to the railroad station,
to await the arrival of the next train from New Haven.
When it came up to the little station, a stranger would have
thought—well, there is no telling what he would have thought; for the
platform was solid with men and boys, while here and there, amid the
number, peeped out a gladly tearful face of woman or little girl. In the
phaeton, behind the station, Mrs. Hallock waited until, held by the
grasp of his father’s hand upon his arm, Frank came around to smile and
kiss and say how glad he was to be safe again.
“Mother, I think it’s done Frank good,” said Kate, aware in some
mysterious manner that a change had come to her brother, even before he
had told out the half of his story of the fog, and the cold, and the
hunger, and the goodness of everybody on the _Blue Bell_.
O, that was the true Thanksgiving Day at the house on the Point. Mrs.
Dobson was there for dinner, and Harry Cornwall; and Josh Dobson was
remembered, for the part he acted, by all the turkey-bones a reasonable
dog could eat; and everybody was just as happy as happy could be, and
not one disagreeable word was spoken by anybody from the moment Frank
was found until the last good night was said.
Chapter XVII.
After a night of blissful rest in his own bed at home, Frank wrote with
absolute good will to Mr. North, delivering over to his ownership the
_Clover_, then in care of a boatman at Long Wharf, in New Haven.
Frank was a happy, contented hero for a whole week, petted and noticed
by whomsoever he was met. At the end of that time he went from this
condition of affairs to be only “the new boy from the country” in
General Russell’s school.
We may not stay to give the history of Frank’s school days, nor of the
trials he there met. At Christmas he was expected home.
Kate subdued and endured her loneliness from day to day, her chief
relief from Frank’s absence being found in writing to him long, loving
letters, in which, very soon, many lines began to be taken up with the
lovely times she was having at her drawing and painting lessons. Kate
began to feel the stir of a growing affection for form and color. She
scarcely understood the feeling; she did not try to understand its
development; but she ran across the marsh bridge with every bit of fresh
achievement, whether of pencil or brush, to show the same to delighted
Mrs. Dobson and critical Harry.
Harry was exceedingly industrious in those days—more so than ever
before. Harry had all the joy of an old miser in his well-stored crops,
and he knew just when and where he could find sale for them.
For a number of days Mr. Hallock had returned from business bearing a
brighter face, and Kate firmly believed that the old, bothersome days of
trouble were passing away. Kate did not mind wearing last year’s dresses
one bit; and as for last winter’s hat and cloak, the only day on which
she sighed for better raiment was the one on which she went to call upon
Frank at the school, and that sigh and wish were altogether on Frank’s
account; but when he whispered to her, as she was leaving, “Kate, I say,
I haven’t seen a girl in New Haven half so good-looking as you are,” she
thought no more of old-fashioned hat or cloak, and would have been
willing to wear even the precious old bonnet safely stored away in a big
yellow bandbox in the garret at the Point—the bonnet that had been worn
by her great-grandmother. Anything Kate would have worn to call forth
such a remark from Frank.
The evening of the day on which the first snow fell that year, Kate
drove Neptune to the station to meet her father, and her brightest smile
faded before his sad, careworn face. She knew at a glance that some new
thing to worry him had happened; so, on the bit of journey home, she
tried her utmost to tell him of every cheery crumb of news that she
could think of, and appeared not to notice any unusual thing about his
manner.
That night Frank’s school-bill came. Mr. Hallock, forgetful of Kate’s
presence, looked at it and laid it down with a long sigh.
“May I see, papa?” was the first intimation he received that she had
heard.
“Yes, Kate; and you may pay it, if you like,” he replied, with a
cheerless attempt at a smile.
Kate looked at it.
“What a lot of money!” she said. Presently, after a minute’s thought,
she asked: “Papa, have you got the money to pay this?”
“No, my child. At present I have not.”
“Would Neptune do it?”
“Neptune?”
“Why, yes. Don’t you remember asking me one day if I would sell him? and
I will, papa, if it is to somebody who will treat him kindly and love
him.”
“Kate, my dear, perhaps I may be compelled to take your offer; but we
will see about it; and if I do, you shall have the finest pony—”
“O, papa! don’t,” cried Kate. “I don’t want any other pony, not as long
as I live; it’s so dreadful to love anything that can be bought and
sold. I will try never to do it again,” and Kate made excuse to leave
the room, fearing that she should spoil her offer by crying. Kate had
been a long time in coming to the point of being willing to give Neptune
up; but now that she had made the sacrifice in so many words, she was
resolved not to cry about it—not if she could help it; but feeling very
greatly the need of more sympathy than Neptune could give, and not
wishing to make known her grief to her mother, she carried her little
moan over to Mrs. Dobson; and finding her all alone in the house, Kate
had a good cry, and felt better by the time Harry came in; so much
better, indeed, that she looked up, smiling at him, and said: “Neptune
is going some day before long. I’ve told papa he might sell him; and
please, I don’t want anybody to say they are sorry for me, ’cause it
isn’t myself that I’m sorry for, but Neptune”; and Kate bit her lip to
keep it from quivering into another spasm of crying.
“Who is going to buy Neptune?”
The question came from Harry, who somehow did not seem to feel half as
much sympathy for Kate as that young girl thought he ought to feel; and
a bit of indignation, more at him than at the talked-of sale, escaped
her lips in the words,
“O, anybody who wants him!”
“Why, Kittie, my Clover, didn’t you tell me not ten minutes ago that
Neptune was to be sold only to somebody who would be ever so kind to
him?” questioned Mrs. Dobson, with a bit of self-assertion quite unusual
in her manner, if not in her words.
“Anybody could promise, but I should not be there to see the kindness or
the cruelty. O, I wonder what makes God let men be so cruel! I pray and
pray, every time I see a horse whipped and jerked, and made to carry too
big a load, that some awful thing may happen to the men who do it! O, I
wouldn’t touch a cent of money, not if I starved, that was made out of
the horse-railroads in New York—such dreadful, dreadful loads as the
poor things are made to carry, and everything! I don’t think it is a bit
worse—”
But Kate did not finish; she was ready to cry. Harry, foreseeing what
would happen, took a letter from his pocket and held it up before her
face, saying:
“Just see! What news!—from Michigan, too—from one of the Huxtables!”
And Harry opened it and began to read, but the heart of the letter he
kept to himself, not feeling able to have anyone bear it with him.
On the night when Frank was out in the fog, Harry, waiting in his room
for the approach of low tide, wrote the first letter he had sent back to
his old home since he had found a new one, and this was the response,
and this was the portion of the letter he had kept to himself: “Last
summer there was a real nice man—ever so rich, folks say, whose name was
Mr. Ludlow, from Maine, out here looking for you. He went everywhere,
where anybody about here told him you might have gone; and then when he
couldn’t find you anywhere, he put it in the papers, asking where you
were. We kept one awhile, but I can’t find it now; but he told me he was
your Uncle Horace; and you must find him out, mother says, right off;
and there’s some land out here that belongs to you, that Mr. Ludlow
found out about, and he’s taking care of it till you’re found.”
Now Harry had had a whole mile of a walk in which to sober down, after
hearing this great, good news for himself; and he very quickly foresaw
what might come of it, not only to himself, but to his best friends, and
he resolved to keep it all to himself until he could find out the best
thing to do; and it was the effect of this letter that Kate Hallock
felt, although she knew not of it.
“I’m ever so glad you’ve heard from your friends, Harry,” said Kate,
preparing to go home; “and, for my part, I don’t see why that queer
uncle of yours up or down in Maine isn’t looking you up.”
Harry’s face grew very red—and Harry wasn’t given to blushing. Had he
stood where Kate’s quick eyes had read more of the letter than he did?
But no; he had stood with the last of the sunlight coming through the
window on his letter and Kate was where it was impossible to overlook
it. Surely Kate had a very curious manner of feeling things that she
could not see. He opened the door for her departure, and, closing it
after himself, he said:
“Let me go across with you, Kittie. When the snow and ice come, we can’t
slip over the near way any more.”
Over the stone wall they went, down the slope and through the meadow,
and they had even emerged from the bit of woods before Harry found
courage to ask:
“When you know of anybody who wants to buy Neptune, Kittie, will you
come right away and tell me, because I know of a person who would like
to own him?”
“Who is it? Anybody in this town?” quickly questioned Kate.
“There is a reason why I can’t tell you who it is; but if the time
comes, you remember—”
“I will, Harry,” promised Kate; and on the Point side of the marsh they
parted.
Before Christmas the snow came down for three days in succession. It
became doubtful whether or not sufficient laurel, pine and hemlock could
be unsnowed from the forests and river hills to afford the usual
Christmas furnishings for the churches. The marsh bridge was buried deep
from sight, and one vast gleam of white extended from the house on the
Point to the house in the Lane, broken only by the bit of forest that
lay between, whilst a round of snow showed where the stone fences lay.
The ice began to grow in the harbor and stretch downward and outward
into the bay. Every morning more and more of the Sound was frozen over.
It was a cold, cold time, the coldest that had been known in many years.
Harry Cornwall was compelled to assist Josh in bringing in the wood, for
that industrious dog could not fetch it fast enough to supply the fires
it became necessary to build to keep everything from freezing up.
The Lane, from Mrs. Dobson’s, seaward, had not been broken, when, a few
days before the twenty-fifth of December, Neptune appeared, shaking his
merrybells adown the snowclad way. Not a dozen sleighs had been before
him since the snow fell. It was Kate and her mother whom he was taking
to pay Mrs. Dobson a little visit.
“Mamma, what if it shouldn’t be?” ejaculated Kate, as they reached the
house, adding immediately, “I wonder that Harry didn’t hear us coming,”
for Harry did not appear.
“Now, Kate,” added Mrs. Hallock, “I warn you once more not to say
anything to spoil it all.”
“You may trust me, mamma,” returned Kate, tossing the blanket over
Neptune and carefully adjusting it; “only I do so want it to be really
and awfully true.”
To be very brief, the apparent object of this visit was to invite Mrs.
Dobson and Harry to spend Christmas at the Point; the real object was to
ask certain questions regarding the young captain who went to sea so
many years ago. Not that he had been heard from, but there had appeared
a man, unearthed as it were from an asylum for the insane, in a distant
state, about whom a number of persons had become curious to learn more.
After thirty years of insanity he had begun to show signs of a restored
intellect and claimed to be—well, no less a person than _the_ Captain
Dobson who was master of the _Snow_.
The story he told was singularly deficient in dates and details, but he
was steadfast in his adherence to the statement concerning his native
state and town, and remembered nothing between his life under a torrid
sun on an uninhabited island, whither he drifted from his sinking ship,
and his present state and condition.
The state in question claimed from Connecticut the money due for the
support of one of her insane citizens for thirty years, and
investigation in this matter led to Mr. Hallock’s learning the
before-unheard-of circumstances.
Not a word of all this must reach Mrs. Dobson, although the old town was
alive and bubbling over with excitement on the subject.
Mrs. Hallock had undertaken the mission to ask Mrs. Dobson certain
questions, but as the moment drew close, she would gladly have
relinquished the task.
“Be real brave, mamma!” whispered Kate, the second before the door was
opened to admit them.
There was Mrs. Dobson, in the sweetest of moods, and snowiest of caps,
making mince pies.
“I’m so glad you’ve come, ’cause I know Harry don’t know how to go to
your house to-day, and I just wanted to know if you would not come to
the old house and take Christmas dinner with me this year, you and
Frank, and his friends, if they come.”
Before Mrs. Hallock had time to thank her, or decline her invitation,
she went on to say, “This year has been an amazing good year. I never
felt so prosperous and as if I wanted _to keep Thanksgiving all the
time_ as I do now, and I believe I’ve fairly done with the foolishness
of looking out on every feast day for the Captain. How he must pity me,
if he is permitted to look down and know how I’ve watched for him!”
“Why, grandma,” said Kate, rocking the blue chair in which she sat until
she made the floor creak, “what kind of a man was it that you looked for
when you did look? He must be very brown, and dried, and kind of grizzly
by this time, living nobody knows where, mustn’t he?”
Mrs. Dobson had taken her hands from the work she was doing and sat down
to talk to her guests. In reply to Kate’s question, she said: “Kittie,
I’m only waiting for you to get to be the great artist I know you’re
going to be, to get you to paint his picture for me.”
“O, I will!” exclaimed Kate. “But what will there be about him that
isn’t a bit like other men?”
“There will be two crowns upon the top of his head, the hair of one must
be black and the hair of the other must be red,” replied Mrs. Dobson,
“only I don’t see exactly how you can make that show in a portrait.”
Kate suddenly ceased to work, bit her lip and tried to avoid looking at
her mother.
“I think we can manage it somehow,” said Kate. “Perhaps we could paint
him saying his prayers on occasion of your marriage in the church.”
“We were not married in church; we were married at home, and everybody
stood straight up and Captain Dobson was the tallest man in the room,”
said Mrs. Dobson.
“Did they wear gloves then?” asked Mrs. Hallock.
“Yes,” returned Mrs. Dobson, “but Captain Dobson never liked to wear
gloves, because one little finger was gone, and he said it made him feel
as though he didn’t know what to do with that glove finger a-hanging.”
It did not take a half dozen questions more—not one of which seemed to
arouse Mrs. Dobson’s curiosity—to learn all that was desired. The
description of the man corresponded with the statement Mrs. Dobson made,
save that the black crown had come to be white.
“Mrs. Dobson,” said Mrs. Hallock, “our errand here was to ask you to
take Christmas dinner with us; but this year, since you have been so
kind, we will come to you, only you must let me send down an assistant
with a few articles that I am sure you will need, to accommodate so
large a party.”
They left in haste. Neptune thought his little mistress must be very
cross—she snatched the blanket so from his back; and he had been doing
his best to stand as still as he could! Straightway to a farmhouse lying
four miles from the village they went. It was here that Isaac Dobson,
only and younger brother of Captain Dobson, lived; and to him they
delivered the photograph and the description that had been sent,
together with the story of their late visit to Mrs. Dobson.
“It does seem, if true, a little more like a return from the dead, than
anything I ever heard tell of,” said Mr. Isaac Dobson, who looked and
appeared like a man who was walking in a fog. “To think that I may see
my brother face to face again! Why, I was a little mite of a chap the
day he went away, and there was such a crowd on the dock that I was
lifted up to see the ship sail.”
“Be sure, Mr. Dobson, that you get him home by Christmas,” cried back
Kate, after they had started for home.
“You may trust me to do my best,” he said, and immediately made
preparations to go for his long-lost brother.
After the evidence given, it is quite needless to assure the reader that
this man was, indeed, the Captain Dobson of this story.
The happenings of Christmas day came in the following manner:
Very early in the morning, long before day-dawn, Mrs. Dobson, on
hospitable thoughts intent, was up and doing.
As soon as it was light, Harry, looking across at the Point, saw the
signal flying from the tower room that he knew was placed for him.
“Something’s the matter over at the Point; I’m wanted,” he said to Mrs.
Dobson. “But I’ll not be gone an instant more than I can help, and you
needn’t save any breakfast for me; I’ll keep my appetite for the coming
dinner.”
It was Kate who had signalled for Harry, on learning the night before
that in the morning a stranger would come to look at Neptune. Very early
she was on the outlook for Harry. Frank had arrived late the evening
before, and in his uniform looked in some way unusually brave and fine
beside Harry in his much-worn suit, that Kate had again and again
reminded him was getting a little too old for dress-up wear; but Harry
had only smiled an answer and kept on wearing it. Kate would not have
said one word had she not been perfectly certain that Harry was able to
afford a new outfit.
“Kittie tells me,” said Harry to Mr. Hallock, whom he sought out, “that
Neptune is to be sold, and I have found a buyer for you.”
“Who is it?” asked Mr. Hallock, looking keenly at the flushed lad.
“I’m not to tell,” returned Harry, “but you can trust me—can’t you?—that
it is someone who will be very kind to the little horse. I hear that
your price is two hundred dollars, and I am authorized to pay the sum to
you.”
“Somebody trusts you, my boy,” remarked Mr. Hallock, “and so will I.”
“Thank you, sir. Will to-morrow do for the money?”
“All right, Harry. You shall have Neptune, though it goes very hard for
Kate to part with him—very.”
“Not half so hard, papa, just now,” chimed in Kate, who had been
lingering about in great excitement, “when it’s Christmas and Captain
Dobson—”
“Kate!”
Kate thrust both her hands over her mouth.
“Papa, I think he ought to know,” she added immediately, removing them.
“Tell him, then.”
And Kate poured out the story in a manner as refreshing as a summer
shower, ending it with the good news that papa had just received a
telegram from Mr. Isaac Dobson that “we will be home on the midday
train.”
“And grandma is going to church!” said Harry. “I’m afraid somebody will
tell her he’s coming.”
“Not a soul will dare to do it,” remarked Mrs. Hallock. “I would carry
the sad news of a death far sooner than this dreadful joy to Mrs.
Dobson. We must just wait for the truth to discover itself.”
Grandma Dobson went that Christmas morning, for Kate had the bliss of
driving her to the church.
During the service, Mrs. Dobson was pitifully disturbed. Why was it that
everybody seemed to regard her with unusual notice? Was it because her
bonnet was “on one side”? No, that was not it; and she passed her hands
softly over the clustering curls—they were all in place; and who was it,
she wondered, for whose safe return from a long absence thanks were
given. Who could it be? She hadn’t heard of anybody’s return. She would
ask when service was over; but she did not ask, for everybody put the
thought of asking far away from her mind. She never knew her townfolks
so polite and kind before. Everybody seemed so glad to stop and shake
hands and wish her a “Happy Christmas!” Some way she told Kate, who
rushed her home over the snow, that she supposed folks thought she was
getting too old for a merry Christmas any longer; “But, Kittie, my
Clover,” she said, “I am not so very old after all, only fifty-nine; and
this Christmas, with you all at the old brown house, will make me quite
young again. I do hope Harry has remembered to look into the brick oven
after the things I put in.”
“Don’t worry, grandma. Mother was going right over and the cook, and I
just this minute caught sight of Frank hiding behind the corner. Go on,
Nep.!”
Kate was intensely excited. Had Captain Dobson got there already? Was he
in waiting in the house? and, O dear! how would everybody bear it? What
a dreadful thing too much joy was, after all!
Frank advanced to assist Mrs. Dobson. The door opened and Mr. Isaac
Dobson came out.
“I thought,” he said, “you wouldn’t mind having one more at your
Christmas dinner to-day—or three or four, for that matter; so I’ve
brought my family over; but we fetched along a roast turkey and some
other things with us—so don’t worry.”
“I’m very glad to see you, Isaac. I wonder what will happen next. This
is a queer Christmas, I must be allowed to say”; and as she alighted and
glanced backward up the Lane, she saw a dozen or more sleighs
approaching. Where could they be going?
She hastened forward up the narrow walk, and had not arrived at the door
when the foremost sleigh drew up by the side of Neptune, and she
discovered old Dr. Paul, minister of the First church, and close behind
him the rector of St. John’s with his smiling face.
“Is it a funeral?” she questioned; and then the sweet, tired woman felt
a little like crying, or laughing, she did not know which; but Mrs.
Hallock had opened the door and said “Come right in. I want to see you a
minute before anybody else comes”; and so Mrs. Dobson was led right into
the room where Harry was attended so lovingly in the early part of this
story, and Kate slipped in behind her; and so the door was closed and
the story told as only one sweet, loving woman can tell life’s best
story to another woman as sweet and loving.
The words that were said we cannot repeat, nor even express the maze of
emotion which filled the heart of Mrs. Dobson—but she arose equal to
even that occasion, when Mrs. Hallock reminded her that too great a
shock might be disastrous to Captain Dobson, who was like a little child
in some things.
“Let him come in, alone,” she said, “and find me here. To think that God
has answered my prayer, when I’ve been thinking it wicked to keep on
praying so long. Go, Kittie, and let him come in.”
Captain Dobson was in the little bedroom opening from the long kitchen,
and from this room also Mrs. Hallock knocked at the door. Captain Dobson
opened it, and silently that lady and Kate passed into the little room
and through it into the long kitchen, that was half filled with
sympathetic friends.
“How did she bear it?” asked one and another.
“Just as we might expect Mrs. Dobson to bear everything,” Mrs. Hallock
replied.
Then, without a word or warning, in her sweet childish voice, Kate
Hallock began to sing “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.” She
began alone, but at the second word everybody in the room added voice to
voice, and at the close the door into the front room was found standing
ajar and Dr. Paul went in. He gravely shook hands with Mrs. Dobson and
the Captain, and, after stating the fact that the first marriage
ceremony at which he officiated in his ministry among them was that of
Captain Dobson and Mrs. Dobson, he said he would now, with the consent
of the parties, renew it. “It is too long for the silver-wedding and too
short for the golden-wedding, and, my friends, we will call this the
Praise God wedding.”
Without in the least intending form or ceremony, Kate Hallock entered
the room and stood beside Grandma Dobson and Harry Cornwall found
himself very near Captain Dobson. The room was very full, as good Dr.
Paul repeated the marriage service over the bride with the silver curls
and the man with the calm, grave, happy face. “Not at all grizzly,” Kate
admitted.
* * * * *
After that, hunger came down on all the multitude, and so great was the
care taken by Mrs. Hallock and Mrs. Isaac Dobson, to say nothing of the
contents of the brick oven, that the minister and the rector and all the
friends who had come down to witness the dread joy, thought not of
Christmas dinner elsewhere that day.
* * * * *
You know already—you must know—that Harry Cornwall had turned his
farm-products into money in order to buy Neptune, that he might have the
happiness of restoring that loved animal to Kate Hallock, and that the
plan was well carried out; and you ought to know that you can never find
in the Connecticut Records that the charge for caring for Captain Dobson
so many years was ever borne by the state; but you cannot know with what
great reluctance we bid Kate and Harry and Frank good-bye.
THE END.
[Illustration: [Endpaper]]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
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