CHAPTER VII
BRAMBLE FARM
The wagon was rattling down a narrow lane, for though the horse went at a snail's pace, every bolt and hinge in the wagon was loose and contributed its own measure of noise to their progress. Betty looked about her with interest. On either side of the lane lay rolling fertile fields – in the highest state of cultivation, had she known it. Bramble Farm was famed for its good crops, and whatever people said of its master, the charge of poor farming was never laid at his door. The lane turned abruptly into a neglected driveway, and this led them up to the kitchen door of the farmhouse.
"Never unlocks the front door 'cept for the minister or your funeral," whispered Bob in an aside to Betty, as the kitchen door opened and a tall, thin man came out.
"Took you long enough to get here," he greeted the two young people sourly. "Dinner's been over two hours and more. Hustle that trunk inside, you Bob, and put up the horse. Wapley and Lieson need you to help 'em set tomato plants."
Betty had climbed down and stood helplessly beside the wagon. Mr. Peabody, for she judged the tall, thin man must be the owner of Bramble Farm, though he addressed no word directly to her and Bob was too evidently subdued to attempt any introduction, but swung on his heel and strode off in the direction of the barn. There was nothing for Betty to do but to follow Bob and her trunk into the house.
The kitchen was hot and swarming with flies. There were no screens at the windows, and though the shades were drawn down, the pests easily found their way into the room.
"How do you do, Betty? I hope your trip was pleasant. Dinner's all put away, but it won't be long till supper time. I'm just trying to brush some of the flies out," and to Betty's surprise a thin flaccid hand was thrust into hers. Mrs. Peabody was carrying out her idea of a handshake.
Betty stared in wonder at the lifeless creature who smiled wanly at her. What would Uncle Dick say if he saw Agatha Peabody now? Where were the long yellow braids and the blue eyes he had described? This woman, thin, absolutely colorless in face, voice and manner, dressed in a faded, cheap, blue calico wrapper – was this Uncle Dick's old school friend?
"Perhaps you'd like to go upstairs to your room and lie down a while," Mrs. Peabody was saying. "I'll show you where you're to sleep. How did you leave your uncle, dear?"
Betty answered dully that he was well. Her mind was too taken up with new impressions to know very clearly what was said to her.
"I'm sorry there aren't any screens," apologized her hostess. "But the flies aren't bad on this side of the house, and the mosquitoes only come when there's a marsh wind. You'll find water in the pitcher, and I laid out a clean towel for you. Do you want I should help you unpack your trunk?"
Betty declined the offer with thanks, for she wanted to be alone. She had not noticed Mrs. Peabody's longing glance at the smart little trunk, but later she was to understand that that afternoon she had denied a real heart hunger for handling pretty clothes and the dainty accessories that women love.
When the door had closed on Mrs. Peabody, Betty sat down on the bed to think. She found herself in a long, narrow room with two windows, the sashes propped up with sticks. The floor was bare and scrubbed very clean and the sheets and pillow cases on the narrow iron bed, though of coarse unbleached muslin, were immaculate. Something peculiar about the pillow case made her lean closer to examine it. It was made of flour or salt bags, overcasted finely together!
"'Puts every copper through the wringer.'" The phrase Bob had used came to Betty.
"There's no excuse for such things if he isn't poor," she argued indignantly. "Well, I suppose I'll have to stay a week, anyway. I might as well wash."
A half hour later, the traces of travel removed and her dark frock changed to a pretty pink chambray dress, Betty descended the stairs to begin her acquaintance with Bramble Farm. She wandered through several darkened rooms on the first floor and out into the kitchen without finding Mrs. Peabody. A heavy-set, sullen-faced man was getting a drink from the tin dipper at the sink.
"Want some?" he asked, indicating the pump.
Betty declined, and asked if he knew where Mrs. Peabody was.
"Out in the chicken yard," was the reply. "You the boarder they been talking about?"
"I'm Betty Gordon," said the girl pleasantly.
"Yes, they've been going on for a week about you. Old man's got it all figured out what he'll do with your board. The missis rather thought she ought to have half, but he shut her up mighty quick. Women and money don't hitch up in Peabody's mind."
He laughed coarsely and went out, drawing a plug of tobacco from his hip pocket and taking a tremendous chew from it as he closed the door.
Betty felt a sudden longing for fresh air, and, waiting only for the man to get out of sight, she stepped out on the back porch. A regiment of milk pans were drying in the late afternoon sun and a churn turned up to air showed that Mrs. Peabody made her own butter. Betty was still hungry, and the thought of slices of home-made bread and golden country butter smote her tantalizingly.
"I wonder where the chicken yard is," she thought, going down to the limp gate that swung disconsolately on a rusty hinge.
The Bramble Farm house, she discovered, looking at it critically, was apparently suffering for the minor repairs that make a home attractive. The blinds sagged in several places and in some instances were missing altogether; once white, the paint was now a dirty gray; half the pickets were gone from the garden fence; the lawn was ragged and overgrown with weeds; and the two discouraged-looking flower-beds were choked this early in the season. Betty's weeding habits moved her irresistibly to kneel down and try to free a few of the plants from the mass of tangled creepers that flourished among them.
"Better not let Joe Peabody see you doing that," said Bob Henderson's voice above her bent head. "He hasn't a mite of use for a person who wastes time on flower-beds. If you want to see things in good shape, take a look at the vegetable gardens. The missis has to keep that clear, 'cause after it's once planted, she's supposed to feed us all summer from it."
Betty shook back her hair from a damp forehead.
"For mercy's sake," she demanded with heat, "is there one pleasant, kind thing connected with this place? Who was that awful man I met in the kitchen?"
"Guess it was Lieson, one of the hired men," replied Bob. "He came down to the house to get a drink a few minutes ago. He's all right, Betty, though not much to look at."
"You, Bob!" came a stentorian shout that shot Bob through the gate and in the general direction of the voice with a speed that was little less than astonishing.
Betty stood up, shook the earth from her skirt, and, guided by the shrill cackle of a proud hen, picked her way through a rather cluttered barn-yard till she came to a wire-enclosed space that was the chicken yard. Mrs. Peabody, staggering under the weight of two heavy pails of water, met her at the gate.
"How nice you look!" she said wistfully. "Don't come in here, dear; you might get something on your dress."
"Oh, it washes," returned Betty carelessly. "Do you carry water for the chickens?"
"Twice a day in summer," was the answer. "Before Joe, Mr. Peabody, had water put in the barns, it was an awful job; but he couldn't get a man to help him with the cows unless he had running water at the barn, so this system was new last year. It's a big help."
Silently, and feeling in the way because she could not help, Betty watched the woman fill troughs and drinking vessels for the parched hens that had evidently spent an uncomfortable and dry afternoon in the shadeless yard. Scattering a meager ration of corn, Mrs. Peabody went into the hen house and reappeared presently with a basket filled with eggs.
"They'd lay better if I could get 'em some meat scraps," she confided to Betty as they walked toward the house. "But I dunno – it's so hard to get things done, I've about given up arguing."
She would not let Betty help her with the supper, and was so insistent that she should not touch a dish that Betty yielded, though reluctantly. The heat of the kitchen was intense, for Mrs. Peabody had built a fire of corn cobs in the range. Gas, of course, there was none, and she evidently had not an oil stove or a fireless cooker.
Precisely at six o'clock the men came in.
"They milk after supper, summers," Mrs. Peabody had explained. "The milk stays sweet longer."
Betty watched in round-eyed amazement as Mr. Peabody and the two hired men washed at the sink, with much sputtering and blowing, and combed their hair before a small cracked mirror tacked over the sink. If she had not been very hungry, she was sure the sight would have taken her appetite away. Bob did not come in till they were seated. He had washed outside, he explained, and Betty cherished the idea that perhaps he had acted out of consideration for her.
"What's that?" demanded Mr. Peabody, pointing his fork at a tiny pat of butter before Betty's plate.
There was no other butter on the table, and only a very plain meal of bread, fried potatoes, raspberries and hot tea.
"I – I had a little butter left over from the last churning," faltered Mrs. Peabody. "'Twasn't enough to make even a quarter-pound print, Joe."
"Don't believe it," contradicted her husband. "I told you flat, Agatha, that there was to be no pampering. Betty can eat what we eat, or go without. Take that butter off, do you hear me?"
A sallow flush rose to Mrs. Peabody's thin cheeks, and her lips moved rebelliously. Evidently her husband was practiced at reading her soundless words.
"Board?" he cried belligerently. "What do I care whether she's paying board or not? Don't I have to be the judge of how the house should be run? Food was never higher than 'tis now, and you've got to watch every scrap. You take that butter off and don't let me catch you doing nothin' like that again."
The men were eating stolidly, evidently too used to quarrels to pay any attention to anything but their food. Betty had listened silently, but the bread she ate seemed to choke her. Suddenly she rose to her feet, shaking with rage.
"Take your old butter!" she stormed at the astonished Mr. Peabody. "I wouldn't eat it, if you begged me to. And I won't stay in your house one second longer than it takes to have Uncle Dick send for me – you – you old miserable miser!"
CHAPTER VIII
BETTY MAKES UP HER MIND
Betty had a confused picture of Mr. Peabody staring at her, his fork arrested half way to his mouth, before she dashed from the kitchen and fled to her room. She flung herself on the bed and burst into tears.
She lay there for a long time, sobbing uncontrollably and more unhappy than she had ever been in her short life. She missed her mother and father intolerably, she longed for the kindness of the good, if querulous, Mrs. Arnold and the comfort of Uncle Dick's tenderness and protection.
"He wouldn't want me to stay here, I know he wouldn't!" she whispered stormily. "He never would have let me come if he had known what kind of a place Bramble Farm is. I'll write to him to-night."
A low whistle came to her. She ran to the window.
"Sh! Got a piece of string?" came a sibilant whisper. Bob Henderson peered up at her from around a lilac bush. "I brought you some bread with raspberries mashed between it. Let down a cord and I'll tie it on."
"I'll come down," said Betty promptly. "Can't we take a walk? It looks awfully pretty up the lane."
"I have to clean two more horses and bed down a sick cow and carry slops to the pigs yet," recited Bob in a matter of fact way, as though these few little duties were commonly performed at the close of his long day. "After that, though, we might go a little way. It won't be dark."
"Well, whistle when you're ready," directed Betty. "I won't come down and run the risk of having to talk to Mr. Peabody. And save me the bread!"
It seemed a long time before Bob whistled, and the gray summer dusk was deepening when Betty ran down to join him. He handed her the bread, wrapped in a bit of clean paper, diffidently.
"I didn't touch it with my hands," he assured her.
Bob's face was shining from a vigorous scrubbing and his hair was plastered tight to his head and still wet. He had so evidently tried to make himself neat and his poor frayed overalls and ridiculous shoes made the task so hopeless that Betty was divided between pity for him and anger at the Peabodys who could treat a member of their household so shabbily.
"I guess you kind of shook the old man up," commented Bob, unconscious of her thoughts. "For half a minute after you slammed the door, he sat there in a daze. Mrs. Peabody wanted to take some supper up to you, but he wouldn't let her. She's deathly afraid of him."
"Did he ever hit her?" asked Betty, horrified.
"No, I don't know that he ever did. He doesn't have to hit her; his talk is worse. They say she used to answer back, but I never heard her open her mouth to argue with him, and I've been here three years."
"Do they pay you well?"
The boy looked at Betty sharply.
"I thought you were kidding," he said frankly. "Poorhouse children don't get paid. We get our board till we're eighteen. We're not supposed to do enough work to cover more'n that. Just the same, I do as much as Wapley or Leison, any day."
Betty walked along eating her bread and wondering about Bob Henderson. Who, she speculated, had been his father and mother, and how had he happened to find himself in the poorhouse? And why, oh, why, should such a boy have had the bad luck to be "taken" by a man like Mr. Peabody? Betty was a courteous girl, and she could not bring herself to ask Bob these questions pointblank, however her curiosity urged her. Perhaps when they were better acquainted, she might have a chance. But that thought suggested to Betty her letter.
"I'm going to write to Uncle Dick before I go to bed to-night," she announced. "He said I needn't stay if for any good reason I found I wasn't happy here. I can't stay, Bob, honestly I can't. He wouldn't want me to. Shall I ask him about a place for you? And where do I mail my letter?"
Bob Henderson's face fell. He had hoped that this bright, pretty girl, with her independent and friendly manner, might spend the summer at Bramble Farm. Bob had been so long cut off from communication with a companion of his own age that it was a perfect luxury for him to have Betty to talk to. Still, he could not help admitting, the Peabody circle had nothing to offer Betty.
"Don't mail your letter in the box at the end of the lane," he advised her. "Joe Peabody might see it and take it out. I'll take it to Glenside with me to-morrow – unless you want to go along? Say, that would be great, wouldn't it?"
Betty liked the idea, and so before they turned back to the house they arranged to mail the letter secretly in Glenside the following morning. Immensely cheered, Betty went in to write to her uncle and Bob disappeared up the stairs to the attic, where he and the two hired men shared quarters.
It was too dark to see clearly in her room, and after Betty had groped around in a vain hunt for a lamp and matches, she went down to the kitchen intending to ask for a light.
Mrs. Peabody stood at the table, mixing something in a pan, and a small glass lamp gave the room all the light it had.
"I'm setting my bread," the woman explained, as Betty came in. "Where have you been dear? You must be hungry."
"No, I'm not hungry," answered Betty, avoiding explanations. "I've been out for a little walk. May I have a lamp Mrs. Peabody?"
Her hostess glanced round to make sure that the door was shut.
"You can take this one in just a minute," she said, indicating the small lamp on the table. "Mr. Peabody's gone up to bed. You see we don't use lights much in summer – we go to bed early 'cause all hands have to be up at half-past four. And lamps brings the mosquitoes."
Betty sat down in a chair to wait for her lamp. She was tired from her journey and the exciting events of the day, but she had made up her mind to write to her uncle that night, and her mind made up, Betty was sure to stick to it.
"Aren't you going to bed?" asked Betty, taking up the lamp when Mrs. Peabody had finished.
Mrs. Peabody made no move to leave the kitchen.
"I like to sit out on the back stoop awhile and get cooled off," she said. "Sometimes I go to sleep leaning against the post, and one night I didn't wake up till morning and Bob Henderson fell over me running out for wood to start the fire. I like to sit quiet. Sometimes I wish I had a dog to keep me company, but Mr. Peabody don't like dogs."
Betty went back to her room and began her letter. But all the while she was writing the thought of that lonely woman "sitting quiet" on the doorstep haunted her. What a life! And she had probably looked forward to happiness with her husband and home as all girls do.
The mosquitoes were singing madly about the light before the first five minutes had passed, but Betty stuck it out and sealed and addressed her letter, putting it under her pillow for safe keeping. Then she blew out the light and undressed in the dark. The bed was the hardest thing she had ever lain upon, but, being a healthy young person and very tired, she fell asleep as quickly as though the mattress had been filled with softest down and only wakened when a shaft of sunlight fell across her face. Some one was whistling softly beneath her window.
Seizing her dressing gown and flinging it across her shoulders, Betty peered out. Bob Henderson, swinging a milk pail in either hand, was back of the lilac bush again.
"Say, it's quarter of six," he called anxiously, as he saw Betty's face at the window. "Breakfast is at six, and if you don't hurry you'll be cheated out of that. I'm going to Glenside right after, too."
"I'll hurry," promised Betty. "Thank you for telling me. Have you been up long?"
"Hour and a half," came the nonchalant answer as Bob hurried on to the barn.
Betty sat down on the floor to put on her shoes and stockings. At first she was angry to think that she should be made to rush like this in order to have any breakfast when her uncle was paying her board and in any other household she would have been accorded some consideration as a guest. Then the humor of the situation appealed to her and she laughed till the tears came. She, Betty Gordon, who often had to be called three times in the morning, was scrambling into her clothes at top speed in the hope of securing something to eat.
"It's too funny!" she gasped as she pulled a middy blouse on over her head. "I'll bet the Peabody's never have to call any one twice to come to the table; not if they're within hearing distance. They come first call without coaxing."
The breakfast table was set in the kitchen, and when Betty entered Mrs. Peabody was putting small white saucers of oatmeal at each place. Ordinarily Betty did not care for oatmeal in warm weather, but this morning she was in no mood to quarrel with anything eatable and she dispatched her portion almost as quickly as Bob did his. Mr. Peabody grunted something which she took to mean good-morning, and the two hired men simply nodded to her. After the oatmeal came fried potatoes, bread without butter, ham and coffee. There was no milk to drink and no eggs.
"If I was going to stay," thought Betty to herself, "I'd get some stuff over in town and hide it in my room. I wonder if I couldn't anyway. When I leave, Bob would have it."
She fell to planning what she would buy and became as silent as any of the other five at that queer table.
CHAPTER IX
ONE ON BOB
As soon as the men finished eating they rose silently and shuffled out. Any diffidence Betty might have felt about facing any one at the table after her dramatic exit of the night before was speedily dispelled; no one paid the slightest attention to her. Mrs. Peabody had risen and begun to wash the dishes at the sink before Betty had finished.
"I want to ride over to Glenside with Bob," said the girl a trifle uncertainly as she pushed back her chair. "You don't care, do you, Mrs. Peabody? And can I do any errands for you?"
"No, I dunno as I want anything," said the woman dully. "You go along and try to enjoy yourself. Bob's got to get back by eleven to whitewash the pig house."
"Come, drive over with us this morning," urged Betty kindly. "I'll help you with the work when we get back. The air will do you good. You look as though you had a headache."
"Oh, I have a headache 'most all the time," admitted Mrs. Peabody, apparently not thinking it worth discussion. "And I couldn't go to town, child, I haven't a straw hat. I don't know when I've been to Glenside. Joe fusses so about the collection, I gave up going to church two years ago."
Betty heard the sound of wheels and ran out to join Bob, an ache in her throat.
"I think it's a burning shame!" she announced hotly to that youth, as he put out a helpful hand to pull her up to the seat. "I pity Mrs. Peabody from the bottom of my heart. Why can't she have a straw hat? Doesn't she take care of the poultry and the butter and do all the work in the house? If she can't have a hat, I'd like to know why not!"
"Regular pepper-pot, aren't you?" commented Bob admiringly. "Gee, I wanted to laugh when you lit into old Peabody last night. Didn't dare, though – he'd have up and pasted me one."
It was a beautiful summer morning, and in spite of injustice and unlovely human traits housed under the roof they had left, in spite of the sight of the poor animal before them suffering pain at every step, the two young people managed to enjoy themselves. Betty had a hundred questions to ask about Bramble Farm, and Bob was in the seventh heaven of delight to have this friendly, cheerful companion to talk to instead of only his own thoughts for company.
"I've got the letter to Uncle Dick here in my pocket," Betty was saying as they came in sight of the blacksmith's shop on the outskirts of Glenside. "I suppose I'll have to be patient about waiting for an answer. It may take a week. I don't know just where he is, but I've written to the address he gave me, and marked it 'Please forward.'"
The blacksmith came out and took the horse, Bob helping him unharness and Betty improving the opportunity to see the inside of a smithy.
"I guess you'll want to look around town a bit?" suggested Bob, coming up to her when the sorrel was tied in place awaiting his turn to be shod. Two other horses were before him. "I'll wait here for you."
Betty looked at him in surprise.
"Why, Bob Henderson!" she ejaculated, keeping her voice low so that the two or three loungers about the door could not hear. "Are you willing to let me go around by myself in a perfectly strange town? I don't even know my way to the post-office. Don't you want to go with me?"
Bob was evidently embarrassed.
"I – I – I don't look fit!" he blurted out. "The collar's torn off this shirt, and I get only one clean pair of overalls a week – Monday morning. I don't look good enough to go round with you."
"Don't be silly!" said Betty severely. "You look all right for a work day. Come on, or we won't be back by the time the shoe is on."
Between the shop and the town there was a rather deserted strip of land, very conspicuous as to concrete walks and building lots marked off, but rather lacking in actual houses. Betty seized her opportunity to do a little tactful financiering. She knew that Bob had no money of his own – indeed it was doubtful if the lad had ever handled even small change that he was not accountable for.
"Uncle Dick gave me some money to spend," remarked Betty, rather hurriedly, for she did not know how Bob was going to take what she meant to say. "And before you show me the different stores, I want you to take me to the drug store. I'm going to buy Mrs. Peabody the largest bottle of violet toilet water I can find. It will do her headache heaps of good. If I give you the money, you'll buy it for me, won't you Bob?"
"Sure I will," agreed the unsuspecting Bob, and he pocketed the five dollar bill she gave him readily enough.
The wily Betty hoped that the drug store would be modern, for she had a plan tucked up her white sleeve.
"Want to go to the drug store first or to the post-office?" asked Bob.
"Oh, the post-office!" Betty was suddenly anxious to know that her letter was actually on the way.
"Don't forget – get a big bottle," said Betty warningly, as she and Bob entered the drug store.
Her dancing dark eyes discovered what she had hoped for the moment they were inside the screen door – a large soda fountain with a white-jacketed clerk behind it.
Bob led the way to the perfume counter, and though the clerk, who evidently knew him, seemed surprised at his order, he very civilly set out several bottles of toilet water for their inspection. Betty chose a handsome large bottle, and when it was wrapped, and with it some soap, for Betty did not fancy the thin wafer of yellow kitchen soap she had found in her soapdish, Bob paid for the package and received the change quite as though he were accustomed to such proceedings. Indeed he stood straighter, and Betty knew she was right in her conclusions that he had sensitiveness and pride.
The time had come to put her plan into action.
"Oh, Bob!" She pulled his coat sleeve as they were passing the fountain on their way out. "Let's have a sundae!"
The clerk had heard her, and he came forward at once, pushing toward them a printed card with the names of the drinks served. Bob opened his mouth, then closed it. He sat down on one of the high stools and Betty on another.
"I'll have a chocolate marshmallow nut sundae," ordered Betty composedly, having selected the most expensive and fanciful concoction listed with the fervent hope that it would be plentiful and good.
"I'll have the same," mumbled Bob, just as Betty had trusted he would.
While the clerk was mixing the delectable dainty, Betty stole a look at Bob. His mouth was set grimly. Then he turned and caught her eye. An unwilling grin flickered across his face and he capitulated as Betty broke into a delighted giggle.
"Well, I'll be jiggered!" admitted Bob, "you've certainly put it over on me."
They laughed and chattered over the sundaes, and Betty, when they were gone, would not listen to reason, but insisted they must have another. She did not want a second one, but she knew Bob's longing for sweets must have gone ungratified a long time, and she was too young to worry about the ultimate effect on his surprised organs of digestion. Bob was fairly caught, and could not object without putting himself in an unfavorable light with the impressive young clerk, so two more sundaes were ordered and disposed of. Then Bob paid for them from the change in his pocket and he and Betty found themselves on the sunny sidewalk.
"That's the first sundae I ever had," confessed Bob shyly. "Of course we had ice-cream at the poorhouse sometimes for a treat – Christmas and sometimes Fourth of July. But I never ate a sundae. Do you want your change back now?"
"No, keep it," said Betty. "I want to go to a grocery store now. And where do they keep mosquito netting?"
"Same place – Liscom's general store," answered Bob.
The general store was well-named. Betty, who had never been in a place of this kind, was fascinated by the shelves and the wonderful assortment of goods they contained. Everything, she privately decided, from a pink chiffon veil to a keg of nails could be bought here, and her deductions were very near the truth.
"I can't stand being chewed by the mosquitoes another night," she whispered to Bob. "So I'm going to get some netting and tack it on the window casings. I'd buy a lamp if I was going to stay."
After the netting was measured off, Betty, to Bob's astonishment, began to buy groceries. She chose cans of sardines and tuna fish, several packages of fancy crackers, a bottle or two of olives, a pound of dried apricots, a box of dates and one or two other articles. These were all wrapped together in a neat bundle.
"Do they make sandwiches here?" asked Betty, watching a machine shaving off a pink slice of cold boiled ham and a layer of cheese and the storekeeper's assistant butter two slabs of bread with sweet-looking butter at the order of a teamster who stood waiting.
"Sure we do, Miss," the proprietor assured her. "Nice, fresh sandwiches made while you wait, and wrapped in waxed paper."
"I'll have two ham and two cheese, please," responded Betty, adding in an aside to Bob: "We can eat 'em going home."
She was afraid that perhaps she had spent more money than she had left from the five dollar bill. But Bob had enough to pay for her purchases, it seemed, and they left the store with their bundles, well pleased with the morning's work.