CHAPTER VIII
Two important events calendared the next week. The school year ended and Pennyroyal, the “hired help,” who had been paying her annual visit to her sister, came back to the farm. There are two kinds of housekeepers, the “make-cleans” and the “keep-cleans.” Pennyroyal was a graduate of both classes. Her ruling passions in life were scrubbing and “redding” up. On the day of her return, after making onslaught on house and porches, she attacked the pump, and planned a sand-scouring siege for the morrow on the barn. In appearance she was a true exponent of soap and water, and always had the look of being freshly laundered.
At first Pennyroyal looked with ill favor on the addition that had been made to the household in her absence, but when David submitted to the shampooing of his tousled mass of hair, and offered no protest when she scrubbed his neck, she became reconciled to his presence.
On a “town day” David, carrying a huge bunch of pinks, paid his second visit to the Judge.
“Did she tell you,” asked the tall man, gazing very hard at the landscape without the open window, “to give these flowers to some one who needed them?”
There was a perilous little pause. Then there flashed from the boy to the man a gaze of comprehension.
“She picked them for you,” was the response, simply spoken.
The Judge carefully selected a blossom for his buttonhole, and then proceeded to draw David out. Under the skillful, schooled questioning, David grew communicative.
“She’s always on the west porch after supper.” He added naïvely: “That’s the time when Uncle Barnabas smokes on the east porch, Jud goes off with the boys, and I play with Janey in the lane.”
“Thank you, David,” acknowledged the Judge gratefully. “You are quite a bureau of information, and,” in a consciously casual tone, “will you take a note to your aunt? I think I will ride out to the farm to-night.”
David’s young heart fluttered, and he went back to the farm invested with a proud feeling of having assisted the fates. The air was filled with mystery and an undercurrent of excitement that day. After David had delivered the auspicious note, a private conference behind closed doors had been held between M’ri and Barnabas in the “company parlor.” David’s shrewd young eyes noted the weakening of the lines of finality about M’ri’s mouth when she emerged from the interview. Throughout the long afternoon she performed the usual tasks in nervous haste, the color coming and going in her delicately contoured face.
When she appeared at the supper table she was adorned in white, brightened by touches of blue at belt and collar. David’s young eyes surveyed her appraisingly and approvingly, and later he effected a thorough effacing of the family. He obtained from Barnabas permission for Jud to go to town with the Gardner boys. His next diplomatic move was to persuade Pennyroyal to go with himself and Janey to Uncle Larimy’s hermit home. When she wavered, he commented on the eclipse of Uncle Larimy’s windows the last time he saw them. That turned the tide of Pennyroyal’s resistance. Equipped with soft linen, a cake of strong soap, and a bottle of ammonia, she strode down the lane, accompanied by the children.
The walk proved a trying ordeal for Pennyroyal. She started out at her accustomed brisk gait, but David loitered and sauntered, Janey of course setting her pace by his. Pennyroyal, feeling it incumbent upon herself to keep watch of her young companions, retraced her steps so often that she covered the distance several times.
At Uncle Larimy’s she found such a fertile field for her line of work that David was quite ready to return when she pronounced her labors finished. She was really tired, and quite willing to walk home slowly in the moonlight.
It was very quiet. Here and there a bird, startled from its hiding place, sought refuge in the higher branches. A pensive quail piped an answer to the trilling call from the meadows. A tree toad uttered his lonely, guttural exclamation. The air, freshening with a coming covey of clouds, swayed the tops of the trees with mournful sound.
David, full of dreams, let his fancy have full play, and he made a little story of his own about the meeting of the lovers. He pictured the Judge riding down the dust-white road as the sunset shadows grew long. He knew the exact spot–the last bit of woodland–from where Martin, across level-lying fields, could obtain his first glimpse of the old farmhouse and porch. His moving-picture conceit next placed M’ri, dressed in white, with touches of blue, on the west porch. He had decided that in the Long Ago Days she had been wont to wear blue, which he imagined to be the Judge’s favorite color. Then he caused the unimpressionable Judge to tie his horse to the hitching post at the side of the road and walk between the hedges of sweet peas that bordered the path. Their pink and white sweetness was the trumpet call sounding over the grave of the love of his youth. (David had read such a passage in a book at Miss Rhody’s and thought it very fine and applicable.) His active fancy took Martin Thorne around the house to the west porch. The white figure arose, and in the purple-misted twilight he saw the touches of blue, and his heart lighted.
“Marie!”
The old name, the name he had given her in his love-making days, came to his lips. (David couldn’t make M’ri fit in with the settings of his story, so he re-christened her.) She came forward with outstretched hand and a gentle manner, but at the look in his eyes as he uttered the old name, with the caressing accent on the first syllable, she understood. A deep sunrise color flooded her face and neck.
“Martin!” she whispered as she came to him.
David threw back his head and shut his eyes in ecstatic bliss. He was rudely roused from his romantic weaving by the sound of Barnabas’ chuckle as they came to the east porch.
“You must a washed every one of Larimy’s winders!”
“Yes,” replied Janey, “and she mopped his floors, washed and clean-papered the shelves, and wanted to scrub the old gray horse.”
“Pennyroyal,” exclaimed Barnabas gravely, “I wonder you ain’t waterlogged!”
“Pennyroyal’d rather be clean than be President,” averred David.
“Where’s M’ri?” demanded Pennyroyal, ignoring these thrusts.
“On the west porch, entertaining company,” remarked Barnabas.
“Who?”
Pennyroyal never used a superfluous word. Joe Forbes said she talked like telegrams.
Barnabas removed his pipe from his mouth, and paused to give his words greater dramatic force.
“Mart Thorne!”
The effect was satisfactory.
Pennyroyal stood as if petrified for a moment. Than she expressed her feelings.
“Hallelujah!”
Her tone made the exclamation as impressive as a benediction.
M’ri visited the bedside of each of her charges that night. Jud and Janey were in the land of dreams, but David was awake, expecting her coming. There was a new tenderness in her good-night kiss.
“Aunt M’ri,” asked the boy, looking up with his deep, searching eyes and a suspicion of a smile about his lips, “did you and Judge Thorne talk over my education? He said that he was going to speak to you about it.”
Her eyes sparkled.
“David, the Judge is coming to dinner Sunday. We will talk it over with you then.”
“Aunt M’ri,” a little note of wistfulness chasing the bantering look from his eyes, “you aren’t going to leave us now?”
“Not for a year, David,” she said, a soft flush coming to her face.
“He’s waited seven,” thought David, “so one more won’t make so much difference. Anyway, we need a year to get used to it.”
After all, David was only a boy. His flights of romantic fancy vanished in remembrance of the blissful certainty that there would be ice cream for dinner on Sunday next and on many Sundays thereafter.
CHAPTER IX
The little trickle of uneven days was broken one morning by a message which was brought by the “hired man from Randall’s.”
“We’ve got visitors from the city tew our house,” he announced. “They want you to send Janey over tew play with their little gal.”
Befitting the honor of the occasion, Janey was attired in her blue-sprigged muslin and allowed to wear the turquoises. David drove her to Maplewood, the pretentious home of the Randalls, intending to call for her later. When they came to the entrance of the grounds at the end of a long avenue of maples a very tiny girl, immaculate in white, with hair of gold and eyes darkly blue, came out from among the trees. She regarded David with deep, grave eyes as he stepped from the wagon to open the gate.
“You’ve come to play with me,” she stated in a tone of assurance.
“I’ve brought Janey to play with you,” he rejoined, indicating his little companion. “If you’ll get in the wagon, I’ll drive you up to the house.”
She held up her slender little arms to him, and David felt as if he were lifting a doll.
“My name in Carey Winthrop. What is yours?” she demanded of Janey as they all rode up the shaded, graveled road.
“Janey Brumble,” replied the visitor, gaining ease from the ingenuousness of the little girl and from the knowledge that she was older than her hostess.
“And he’s your brother?” indicating David.
“He’s my adopted brother,” said Janey; “he’s David Dunne.”
“I wish I had a ’dopted brother,” sighed the little girl, eying David wistfully.
David drove up to the side entrance of the large, white-columned, porticoed house, on the spacious veranda of which sat a fair-haired young woman with luminous eyes and smiling mouth. The smile deepened as she saw the curiously disfigured horse ambling up to the stone step.
“Whoa, Old Hundred!” commanded David, whereupon the smile became a rippling laugh. David got out, lifted the little girl to the ground very carefully, and gave a helping hand to the nimble, independent Janey.
“Mother,” cried Carey delightedly, “this is Janey and her ’dopted brother David.”
David touched his cap gravely in acknowledgment of the introduction. He had never heard his name pronounced as this little girl spoke it, with the soft “a.” It sounded very sweet to him.
“I’ll drive back for you before sundown, Janey,” said David, preparing to climb into the wagon.
“No,” objected Carey, regarding him with apprehension, “I want you to stay and play with me. Tell him to stay, mother.”
There was a regal carriage to the little head and an imperious note–the note of an only child–in her voice.
“Maybe David has other things to do than to play with little girls,” said her mother, “but, David, if you can stay, I wish you would.”
“I should like to stay,” replied David earnestly, “but they expect me back, and Old Hundred is needed in the field.”
“Luke can drive your horse back, and we will see that you and Janey ride home.”
So Carey, with a hand to each of her new playmates, led them across the driveway to the rolling stretch of shaded lawn. The lady watched David as he submitted to be driven as a horse by the little girls and then constituted himself driver to his little team of ponies as he called them. Later, when they raced to the meadow, she saw him hold Janey back that Carey might win. Presently the lady was joined by her husband.
“Where is Carey?” he asked.
“She is having great sport with a pretty little girl and a guardian angel of a boy. Here they come!”
They were trooping across the lawn, the little girls adorned with blossom wreaths which David had woven for them.
“May we go down to the woods–the big woods?” asked Carey.
“It’s too far for you to walk, dear,” remonstrated her mother.
“David says he’ll draw me in my little cart.”
“Who is it that was afraid to go into the big woods, and thought it was a forest filled with wild beasts and scary things?” demanded Mr. Winthrop.
The earnest eyes fixed on his were not at all abashed.
“With him, with David,” she said simply, “I would have no afraidments.”
“Afraidments?” he repeated perplexedly. “I am not sure I understand.”
“Don’t tease, Arthur; it’s a very good word,” interposed Mrs. Winthrop quickly. “It seems to have a different meaning from fear.”
“Come up here, David,” bade Mr. Winthrop, “and let me see what there is in you to inspire one with no ‘afraidments’.”
The boy came up on the steps, and did not falter under the keen but good-humored gaze.
“Do you like to play with little girls, David?”
“I like to play with these little girls,” admitted David.
“And what do you like to do besides that?”
“I like to shoot.”
“Oh, a hunter?”
“No; I like to shoot at a mark.”
“And what else?”
“I like to read, and fish, and swim, and–”
“Eat ice cream!” finished Janey roguishly, showing her dimples.
The man caught her up in his arms.
“You are a darling, and I wish my little girl had such rosy cheeks. David, can you show me where there is good fishing?”
“Uncle Larimy can show you the best places. He knows where the bass live, and how to coax them to bite.”
“And will you take me to this wonderful person to-morrow?”
“Yes, sir.”
Carey now came out of the hall with her cart, and David drew her across the lawn, Janey dancing by his side. Down through the meadows wound a wheel-tracked road leading to a patch of dense woods which, to a little girl with a big imagination, could easily become a wild forest infested with all sorts of nameless terrors–terrors that make one draw the bedclothes snugly over the head at night. She gave a little frightened cry as they came into the cool, olive depths.
“I am afraid, David. Take me!”
He lifted her to his shoulder, and her soft cheek nestled against his face.
“Now you are not afraid,” he said persuasively.
“No; but I would be if you put me down.”
They went farther into the oak depths, until they came to a fallen tree where they rested. Janey, investigating the forestry, finally discovered a bush with slender red twigs.
“Oh,” she cried, “now David will show you what beautiful things he can make for us.”
“I have no pins,” demurred David.
“I have,” triumphantly producing a paper of the needful from her pocket. “I always carry them now.”
David broke up the long twigs into short pieces, from which he skillfully fashioned little chairs and tables, discoursing the while to Carey on the beauty and safety of the woods. Finally Carey acquired courage to hunt for wild flowers, though her hand remained close in David’s clasp.
When they returned to the house Carey gave a glowing account of the expedition.
“Sit down on the steps and rest, children,” proposed Mrs. Winthrop, “while Lucy prepares a little picnic dinner for you.”
“What will we do now, David?” appealed Carey, when they were seated on the porch.
“You mustn’t do anything but sit still,” admonished her mother. “You’ve done more now than you are used to doing in one day.”
“Davey will tell us a story,” suggested Janey.
“Yes, please, David,” urged Carey, coming to him and resting her eyes on his inquiringly, while her little hand confidently sought his knee. Instinctively and naturally his fingers closed upon it.
Embarrassed as he was at having a strange audience, he could not resist the child’s appeal.
“She’ll like the kind that you don’t,” he said musingly to Janey, “the kind about fairies and princes.”
“Yes,” rejoined Carey.
So he fashioned a tale, partly from recollections of Andersen but mostly from his own fancy. As his imagination kindled, he forgot where he was. Inspired by the spellbound interest of the dainty little girl with the worshiping eyes, he achieved his masterpiece.
“Upon my word,” exclaimed Mr. Winthrop, “you are a veritable Scheherazade! You didn’t make up that story yourself?”
“Only part of it,” admitted David modestly.
When he and Janey started for home David politely delivered M’ri’s message of invitation for Carey to come to the farm on the morrow to play.
“It is going to be lovely here,” said the little girl happily. “And we are going to come every summer.”
Janey kissed her impulsively. “Good-by, Carey.”
“Good-by, Janey. Good-by, David.”
“Good-by,” he returned cheerily. Looking back, he saw her lips trembling. His gaze turned in perplexity to Mrs. Winthrop, whose eyes were dancing. “She expects you to bid her good-by the way Janey did,” she explained.
“Oh!” said David, reddening, as two baby lips of scarlet were lifted naturally and expectantly to his.
As they drove away, the light feet of the horse making but little sound on the smooth road, Mrs. Winthrop’s clear treble was wafted after them.
“One can scarcely believe that his father was a convict and his mother a washerwoman.”
A lump came into the boy’s throat. Janey was very quiet on the way home. When they were alone she said to him, with troubled eyes:
“Davey, is Carey going to be your sweetheart?”
His laugh was reassuring.
“Why, Janey, I am just twice her age.”
“She is like a little doll, isn’t she, David?”
“No; like a little princess.”
The next morning Little Teacher came to show them her present from Joe.
“I am sure he chose a camera so I could take your pictures to send to him,” she declared.
“Miss Rhody wants her picture taken in the black silk Joe gave her. If you will take it, she won’t have to spend the money he sent her,” said the thoughtful David.
Little Teacher was very enthusiastic over this proposition, and offered to accompany him at once to secure the picture. Miss Rhody was greatly excited over the event. Ever since the dress had been finished she had been a devotee at the shrine of two hooks in her closet from which was suspended the long-coveted garment, waiting for an occasion that would warrant its débût. She nervously dressed for the “likeness,” for which she assumed her primmest pose. A week later David sent Joe a picture of Miss Rhody standing stiff and straight on her back porch and arrayed, with all the glory of the lilies of the field, in her new silk.
CHAPTER X
When the hot, close-cropped fields took on their first suggestion of autumn and a fuller note was heard in the requiem of the songbirds, when the twilights were of purple and the morning skies delicately mackereled in gray, David entered the little, red, country schoolhouse. M’ri’s tutelage and his sedulous application to Jud’s schoolbooks saved him from the ignominy of being classified with the younger children.
When he sat down to the ink-stained, pen-scratched desk that was to be his own, when he made compact piles of his new books and placed in the little groove in front of the inkwell his pen, pencils, and ruler, he turned to Little Teacher such a glowing face of ecstasy that she was quite inspired, and her sympathies and energies were at once enlisted in the cause of David’s education.
It was the beginning of a new world for him. He studied with a concentration that made him oblivious to all that occurred about him, and he had to be reminded of calls to recitations by an individual summons. He fairly overwhelmed Little Teacher by his voracity for learning and a perseverance that vanquished all obstacles. He soon outstripped his class, and finally his young instructress was forced to bring forth her own textbooks to satisfy his avidity. He devoured them all speedily, and she then applied to the Judge for fuel from his library to feed her young furnace.
“He takes to learning as naturally as bees to blossoms,” she reported.
“He must ease off,” warned Barnabas. “Young hickory needs plenty of room for full growth.”
“No,” disagreed the Judge, “young hickory is as strong as wrought iron. He’s going to have a clear, keen mind to argue law cases.”
“I think not,” said M’ri. “You forget another quality of young hickory. No other wood burns with such brilliancy. David is going to be an author.”
“I am afraid,” wrote Joe, “that Dave won’t be a first-class ranchman. He must be plum locoed with dreams.”
This prognostication reached David’s ears.
“Without dreams,” he argued to Barnabas, “one would be like the pigs.”
“Wal, now, Dave, mebby pigs dream. They sartain sleep a hull lot.”
David laughed appreciatively.
“Dave,” pursued Barnabas, “they’re all figgerin’ on your futur, and they’re a-figgerin’ wrong. Joe thinks you’ll take to ranchin’. You may–fer a spell. M’ri thinks you may write books. You may do even that–fer a spell. The Jedge counts on yer takin’ to the law like a duck does to water. You may, but law larnin’, cow punchin’, and story writin’ ’ll jest be steppin’ stuns to what I know you air goin’ ter be, and what I know is in you ter be.”
“What in the world is that, Uncle Barnabas?” asked David in surprise. “A farmer?”
“Farmer, nuthin’!” scoffed Barnabas. “Yer hain’t much on farmin’, Dave, though I will say yer furrers is allers straight, like everythin’ else you do. Yer straight yerself. No! young hickory can bend without breakin’, and thar’s jest one thing I want fer you to be.”
“What?” persisted the boy.
Barnabas whispered something.
The blood of the young country boy went like wine through his veins; his heart leaped with a big and mighty purpose.
“Now, remember, Dave,” cautioned Barnabas, “what all work and no play done to Jack. You git yer lessons perfect, and recite them, and read a leetle of an evenin’; the rest of the time I want yer to get out and cerkilate.”
November with its call to quiet woods came on, and David was eager to “cerkilate.” He became animated with the spirit of sport. Red-letter Saturdays were spent with Uncle Larimy, and the far-away echo of the hunter’s bullet and the scudding through the woods of startled game became new, sweet music to his ears. Rifle in hand, with dog shuffling at his heels or plunging ahead in search of game, the world was his. Life was very full and happy, save for the one inevitable sprig of bitter–Jud! The big bully of a boy had learned that David was his equal physically and his superior mentally, but the fear of David and of David’s good standing kept him from venturing out in the open; so from cover he sought by all the arts known to craftiness to harass the younger boy, whose patience this test tried most sorely.
One day when Little Teacher had given him a verbose definition of the word “pestiferous,” David looked at her comprehendingly. “Like Jud,” he murmured.
Many a time his young arms ached to give Jud another thrashing, but his mother’s parting injunction restrained him.
“If only,” he sighed, “Jud belonged to some one else!”
He vainly sought to find the hair line that divided his sense of gratitude and his protection of self-respect.
Winter followed, and the farm work droned. It was a comfortable, cozy time, with breakfast served in the kitchen on a table spread with a gay, red cloth. Pennyroyal baked griddle-sized cakes, delivering them one at a time direct from the stove to the consumer. The early hour of lamplight made long evenings, which were beguiled by lesson books and story-books, by an occasional skating carnival on the river, a coasting party at Long Hill, or a “surprise” on some hospitable neighbor.
One morning he came into school with face and eyes aglow with something more than the mere delight of living. It meant mischief, pure and simple, but Little Teacher was not always discerning. She gave him a welcoming smile of sheer sympathy with his mood. She didn’t smile, later, when the schoolroom was distracted by the sound of raucous laughter, feminine screams, and a fluttering of skirts as the girls scrambled to standing posture in their chairs. Astonished, she looked for the cause. The cause came her way, and the pupils had a fresh example of the miracles wrought by a mouse, for Little Teacher, usually the personification of dignity and repose, screamed lustily and scudded chairward with as much rapidity as that displayed by the scurrying mouse as it chased for the corner and disappeared through a knothole.
As soon as the noiseful glee had subsided, Little Teacher sought to recover her prided self-possession. In a voice resonant with sternness, she commanded silence, gazing wrathfully by chance at little Tim Wiggins.
“’T was David done it,” he said in deprecating self-defense, imagining himself accused.
“David Dunne,” demanded Little Teacher, “did you bring that mouse to school?”
“He brung it and let it out on purpose,” informed Tim eagerly.
Little Teacher never encouraged talebearing, but she was so discomfited by the exposure of the ruling weakness peculiar to her sex that she decided to discipline her favorite pupil upon his acknowledgment of guilt.
“You may bring your books and sit on the platform,” she ordered indignantly.
David did not in the least mind his assignment to so prominent a position, but he did mind Little Teacher’s attitude toward him throughout the day. He sought to propitiate her by coming to her assistance in many little tasks, but she persistently ignored his overtures. He then ventured to seek enlightenment regarding his studies, but she coldly informed him he could remain after school to ask his questions.
David began to feel troubled, and looked out of the window for an inspiration. He found one in the form of big, brawny, Jim Block–“Teacher’s Jim,” as the school children all called him.
“There goes Teacher’s Jim,” sang David, soto voce.
The shot told. For the second time that day Little Teacher showed outward and visible signs of an inward disturbance. With a blush she turned quickly to the window and watched with expressive eyes the stalwart figure striding over the rough-frozen road.
In an instant, however, she had recalled herself to earth, and David’s dancing eyes renewed her hostility toward him. Toward the end of the day she began to feel somewhat appeased by his docility and evident repentance. Her manner had perceptibly changed by the time the closing exercise began. This was the writing of words on the blackboard for the pupils to use in sentences. She pointed to the first word, “income.”
“Who can make a sentence and use that word correctly?” she asked.
“Do call on Tim,” whispered David. “He so loves to be the first to tell anything.”
She smiled her appreciation of Tim’s prominent characteristic, and looked at the youngster, who was wringing his hand in an agony of eagerness. She gave him the floor, and he jumped to his feet in triumph, yelling:
“In come a mouse!”
This was too much for David’s composure, and he gave way to an infectious fit of laughter, in which the pupils joined.
Little Teacher found the allusion personal and uncomfortable. She at once assumed her former distant mien, demanding David’s presence after school closed.
“You have no gratitude, David,” she stated emphatically.
The boy winced, and his eyes darkened with concern, as he remembered his mother’s parting injunction.
Little Teacher softened slightly.
“You are sorry, aren’t you, David?” she asked gently.
He looked at her meditatively.
“No, Teacher,” he answered quietly.
She flushed angrily.
“David Dunne, you may go home, and you needn’t come back to school again until you tell me you are sorry.”
David took his books and walked serenely from the room. He went home by the way of Jim Block’s farm.
“Hullo, Dave!” called Big Jim, who was in the barnyard.
“Hello, Jim! I came to tell you some good news. You said if you were only sure there was something Teacher was afraid of, you wouldn’t feel so scared of her.”
“Well,” prompted Jim eagerly.
“I thought I’d find out for you, so I took a mouse to school and let it loose.”
“Gee!”
David then related the occurrences of the morning, not omitting the look in Little Teacher’s eyes when she beheld Jim from the window.
“I’ll hook up this very night and go to see her,” confided Jim.
“Be sure you do, Jim. If you find your courage slipping, just remember that you owe it to me, because she won’t let me come back to school unless she knows why I wasn’t sorry.”
“I give you my word, Dave,” said Jim earnestly.
The next morning Little Teacher stopped at the Brumble farm.
“I came this way to walk to school with you and Janey,” she said sweetly and significantly to David.
When they reached the road, and Janey had gone back to get her sled, Little Teacher looked up and caught the amused twinkle in David’s eye. A wave of conscious red overspread her cheeks.
“Must I say I am sorry now?” he asked.
“David Dunne, there are things you understand which you never learned from books.”