Dorothy on a House Boat

Dr. Jabb had gone to the Water Lily, now peacefully moored in “the loveliest spot on the earth,” as Farmer “Wicky” had described it, and reported Gerald’s condition. He had also added:

“He won’t need much nourishment till his fever goes down; then, Madam, if you can manage it you’d best send food across to the cabin for him. Let a messenger carry it to the entrance of the field and leave it there, where the lad, Jim, can get it. May not be need for such extreme precaution; but ‘an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.’ Lucetta Stillwell is a noble woman, tied to a worthless husband whom she adores. They must be terribly poor, though she’s so proud you’d never guess it from her manner. I gave it to Corny hot and heavy, the other night, and at the time I felt every word I said. I don’t know. He’s no more capable of doing a man’s part in the world than that young pickaninny yonder,” pointing to Metty on the ground, fascinated by the jabbering monkeys in their cage near-by.

The doctor had said this to Mrs. Calvert very soon after Gerald was stricken, and had added a parting injunction:

“Don’t over-feed the sick boy and don’t begin too soon.”

Then he had ridden away and promptly forgot all about the case. So Mrs. Calvert delayed the shipment of food for several days, during which Jim had ample time to grow mortally sick of hasty-pudding, on his own account, and anxious on that of Lucetta. But gradually he had won her to speak more freely of her affairs.

“Yes, I do considerable of the work myself. You see it doesn’t come natural to Corny dear. He’s more a child than Saint Augustine, even, in some things.”

“Why, his brother said – Shucks!”

“What did his brother say, please?”

“Oh! nothin’. I didn’t mean – ”

Lucetta laughed in her gentle, patient way:

“Of course you didn’t mean and you don’t need. I know Wicky Stillwell and his wife, Lizzie, from A to Izzard. Good people, the best in the world and the smartest. But they can’t see a fault in Corny – not that I can either, understand! Only they don’t see why it is our farm – it’s his, really – doesn’t pay better. But we can’t afford to hire and a woman’s not so strong as a man. Yet we’re happy. Just as happy as the days are long and we’ve never starved yet. It’s my faith that there’s bread in the world enough for every mouth which needs it. God wouldn’t be a Father and not so order it. That’s one compensation of this life of mine, that you fancied might be lonely. I can’t go to church, I’m too far away, so I just pretend that all this – around me – is one church and that He’s in it all the time. I named each of the children after some holy person and I hope each will grow like his namesake – in time.”

“Did you plant this celery?”

“Yes. There was a man rode around, distributing government seeds, came from some ‘Farmer’s Institute,’ I reckon, and he gave them. Corny said it was hardly worth while, celery’s such a trouble; but I did it on the sly. Corny loves celery, just loves it; when he’s been lucky with his gun and brings home some game. Then! Won’t it be grand to have it for a surprise? Makes me think, it ought to be hoed right now. I’ll fetch the hoe.”

“You’ll do nothin’ of the sort while I’m loafin’ around, idle. Gerry doesn’t need me only now and again and I’m pinin’ for a job. You sit an’ rest, or teach the kids. Let me just work for my board. If you’ll tell me where the hoe is, please?”

When found Jim looked at it with dismay. The handle was fairly good but the steel part was broken in half and practically worthless.

“Reckon Wesley, my eldest son, must have been using it. He’s always trying to ‘make something.’ I think he’ll be a great inventor by and by. But really, it doesn’t seem hospitable – it isn’t, to let you or any other guest work. I can manage very well, very well, indeed. You can sit and read. We have a Shakespeare – what the children haven’t destroyed – a Bible, and two volumes of Scott. We’re real proud of our library and I keep it in my wedding chest. I have to, the children are so bright and inquiring.”

“Too inquiring I think! ’Tain’t healthy for ’em to be quite so smart!”

Jim laughed, shouldered his hoe, and marched away across the little strip of grass between the house and garden – so-called. The ground for this Lucetta’s feeble hands had dug with a spade that matched in condition the hoe Jim had found. Melon seeds had been sown there and had duly sprouted. But the “inquiring” minds of the children had daily pulled them up to see if there were any melons at the root. The potatoes had received the same treatment, the corn ditto, and the wonder was that even a few plants had survived their efforts to “make ’em grow faster.”

Now here was Saint Augustine “helping” to transplant the celery which had until now escaped culture at their hands.

Jim worked as he had never done even in all his active young life. His heart ached with pity for the little woman who faced her hard life so bravely and so happily, and he was revolving many plans to help her, and to a greater extent than a few days of farm labor could do.

“’Cause I say, I know somethin’.”

“Well, what is it, Sainty?”

“Ain’t ‘Sainty’, but ‘Au – gus – tine’. Say it nice, like Mamma does. She cried last night.”

“Never!”

“Yep, she did! She cried an’ she talked to herself right outside the winder where I sleep. She kep’ callin’ ‘Corny! Corny! come home!’ Just that way she said it and he didn’t answer a word. Corny’s my papa, don’t you know? He goes off times and stays an’ Wesley says my mamma gets scared he will be killed with his gun. Say, I’m goin’ to run away and find him. I am so. Don’t you tell. But I am. I’m goin’ to find that monkey cage and I’m going to travel all around the world and show ’em to folks for money. That’s what my papa said, that morning when we let ’em out and he went away. He said, my papa said: ‘Suppose younkers we start a circus of our own?’ He said he’d always wanted to do it and he knows the best things they is. He’s terrible smart, my papa is. My mamma says so, and she knows. My mamma and my papa know every single thing there is. My papa he knows a place where a man that lived hunderds and millions years ago dug a hole an’ put something in it, I reckon money; and my papa says if he’d a mind to he could go and dig it right square up, out the ground, and buy my mamma a silk dress an’ me a little cart all red an’ – ”

“There, chatterbox! Get out the way! If you want to help, take that little bucket to the spring and bring it full of water, to sprinkle these plants.”

“All right,” cheerfully answered Saint Augustine, and ran swiftly away.

Alas! he did not run swiftly back! Jim forgot all about him but toiled faithfully on till little Saint Anne came out to call him to dinner. She was his favorite of all the children, a tender-hearted little maid with her mother’s face and her mother’s serene gentleness of manner.

“Your dinner’s ready, Mister Jim, and it’s a mighty nice one, too. My mamma said they was more that chicken than any sick boy could eat and you was to have some. Wesley said couldn’t we all have some but mamma said no, ’twasn’t ours. Chicken’s nice, ain’t it, with gravy? Sometimes, don’t you know? we have ’possum, or rabbit, or something fine. Sometimes, too, if papa’s been to Uncle Wicky’s he fetches home a pie! Think o’ that! Yes, sir, a pie! My Aunt Lizzie makes ’em. Mamma never does. I guess – I guess, maybe, she thinks they isn’t healthy. Mamma’s mighty partic’lar ’t we shan’t have ‘rich food;’ that’s what she calls Aunt Lizzie’s pies, and maybe your chicken, and the sick boy’s cream. My mamma dassent let us use any cream, ourselves. She has to keep it for papa’s butter. She don’t eat any butter. It doesn’t agree with her stummy. I guess she thinks it don’t with mine. I never have any. The sick boy has all he wants, don’t he? But Daisy cow don’t make such a terrible lot, Daisy don’t. Papa says she ought to have more eatings and ’t our pasture’s poor. Mamma says Daisy’s a real good cow. She don’t really know what we childern would do without her. Daisy gives us our dinners. Sometimes, on Sundays, mamma gives us a little milk just fresh milked, before she churns it into papa’s butter. It’s nicer ’an buttermilk, ain’t it? And I shall never forget what Sunday’s like, with the sweet, doo-licious milk, an’ our other clo’es on. Each of us has other clo’es – think of that! You have ’em, too, don’t you? what your folks sent you from that boat where you used to live.”

“The boat where he used to live!” Little Saint Anne’s words spoke the thought of his own heart. The ten days since he had left it made the Water Lily seem far back in his life and gave him a wild desire to run off and find it again. Why should he, whom Gerald had openly despised, be chained to that boy’s bedside? Why should his own holiday be spoiled for a stranger, an interloper? There had been times, many of them, when he had almost hated Gerald, who was by no means a patient invalid. But whenever this feeling arose Jim had but to look at patient Lucetta and remember that, but for him, she would be alone in her care for her sick guest.

Now he was growing homesick again for the sight of dear faces and the pretty Water Lily, and to put that longing aside, he asked:

“Saint Anne, do you think you could carry a dish very carefully? If it had chicken on it could you hold it right side up and not lose a single bit? Because if you could, or can, I ’low the best thing you could do would be to ask mamma to send that nice dinner out here. Then we two would go down by the spring and sit under the persimmon tree and eat it. Just you and I together. Think of that!”

Saint Anne’s face lighted brilliantly, then instantly clouded. “None the rest? Not Wesley, nor Saint Augustine, nor Dorcas, nor Sheba, nor teeny-tiny David boy? Just me alone? I – I couldn’t. Mamma says it’s mean to be stingy of our things, so when I have two ’simmonses I always give one to who’s nearest. Not to give chicken would be meaner – ‘meaner ’n pussley’! I don’t mind being hungry – not much I don’t mind it – but when any of us is selfish all papa has to do is say ‘Pussley, pussley!’ quick, just like that, an’ we stop right away. But – but I’ll bring yours, if mamma’ll let me, and I’ll turn my face right the other way while you eat it, so I shan’t be tempted to ‘covet my neighbor’s – anything that is his.’ That’s in my kittenchasm that we childern say to mamma every Sunday, after we’ve had our milk. I’ll run right away now.”

Quite sure that his request would be granted and hoping that the surplus of Gerald’s dinner would be plentiful, Jim went to the spring and filled the rusty bucket always waiting there. Then he plucked six big burdock leaves and arranged them on a boulder. The little maid of the sweet, serious eyes had taught him a lesson in unselfishness; and whether the portion coming to him were much or little, each child should have its share.

Then he looked up and saw Saint Anne returning. Upon her outstretched arms she balanced the pewter platter, and upon this was set – Oh! glory! one whole, small chicken delicately roasted, as only Chloe could have prepared it. A half dozen biscuits flanked it and a big bunch of grapes. A tin cup fairly shone in its high state of polish, but its brilliancy was nothing as compared with the shining face of Saint Anne.

Behind her trailed four brothers and sisters, each stepping very softly as if in awe of the unexpected feast before them. The fifth child was missing, Saint Augustine, the mischief of the household, who was oftener under foot than out of sight.

“Where’s other brother, Saint Anne? Shall we wait for him? Did your mother save any for herself? Did Gerald need me?”

It was a long string of questions to be answered and the little girl counted them off upon her fingers.

“I don’t know where Saint Augustine is. Likely he’ll be ’round real soon. I guess we won’t wait – I mean the others needn’t – they look so watery around the mouth. No, mamma didn’t save any. She said she didn’t care for it. Funny, wasn’t that? As if anybody, even a grown-up mamma, could help caring! And the Gerald boy was asleep. I most wish he would be all the time, he – he speaks so sort of sharp like. Mamma says that’s cause he’s gettin’ well. Gettin’-well-folks are gen’ally cross and it’s a good sign. What you doing?”

Jim had pulled another burdock leaf and spread a bit of sweet fern upon it. He had an idea that Dorothy would have objected to the odor of burdock as mingled with a dinner. Then he carefully sliced with his pocket knife the daintiest portions of the little fowl and some of the bread. He added the finest of the grapes and turning to Dorcas and Sheba, said:

“Now, girlies, Saint Anne brought the dinner away out here, but it’s your job to take this much back to your mother. You are to tell her that this is a picnic and nobody would enjoy it unless she picnics, too. Will you tell her? Will you be real careful? If you will I promise you we others won’t eat a mouthful till you get back.”

They consented, but not too eagerly. They loved mamma, course; but they loved chicken, too. It required considerable faith on their part to go way back to the cabin and leave their dinners behind them, expecting to find them just as now.

However they started. Dorcas held the stem of the burdock leaf and Sheba its tip. Being somewhat shorter than her sister, Sheba’s end of the burden slanted downwards. The grass was hummocky. Their steps did not keep time very well. A fragment of Chloe’s well-flavored “stuffin’” slipped down upon Sheba’s fat fingers and – right before she knew it was in her mouth, yes, sir! Right before!

“Oh! Sheba! You’d oughtn’t not to have did that!” reproved Dorcas, severely. Then she stumbled over a brier. She had watched her sister too closely to see where her own feet fell, and one little cluster of grapes rolled to the ground.

“I guess that was ’cause I was lookin’ for ‘the mote in your eyes’ ’t I got a ‘beam’ in mine so’s I couldn’t see right smart,” observed this Scripture-taught child, in keen self-reproach.

“Did you get a beam? I didn’t. I can see real good. Say, Dorcas, ’twouldn’t not do to give mamma grapes what have fell into dirty grass, would it? Mamma hates dirt so much papa laughs hard about it. And – and it isn’t not nice to waste things. Mamma says ‘waste not want not.’ I ain’t wantin’ them grapes but I can’t waste ’em, either. Mamma wouldn’t like that. These ain’t our kind of wild ones, we get in the woods. These are real ones what grew on a vine.”

They paused to regard the fallen fruit. How the sunlight tinted their golden skins. They must taste – Oh! how doo-licious they must taste! As the elder, and therefore in authority, Dorcas stooped to lift the amber fruit; and, losing hold of the burdock leaf sent the whole dinner to the ground.

Then did consternation seize them. This was something dreadful. If mamma hadn’t been so terrible neat! If she’d only been willing to “eat her peck of dirt,” like papa said everybody had to do sometime, they could pick it all up and squeeze it back, nice and tight on the big green leaf, and hurry to her with it. But —

“Yes, sir! There is! A yellow wiggley kittenpillar just crawled out of the way. S’posing he left one his hairs on that chicken? Just suppose? Why, that might make mamma sick if she ate it! You wouldn’t want to make poor darling mamma sick, like the Geraldy boy, would you, Sheba Stillwell? Would you?”

Poor little Sheba couldn’t answer. She was in the throes of a great temptation. She hadn’t the strength of character of Saint Anne. She didn’t at all like that suggestion of a “kittenpillar’s” hair and yet – what was one hair to such a wicked waste as it would be if they left all that fine food to spoil, or for the guinea-hen to gobble.

“The guinea-hen eats a lot. She eats kittenpillars right down whole;” pensively observed Sheba, when she had reached this stage of thought.

“She shan’t eat this, then!” declared Dorcas, promptly sitting down and dividing with great care all this delectable treat.

“Why, little ones, what are you doing? Why aren’t you back yonder with the rest? I don’t see Saint Augustine there, either. Do you know where he is?”

As this simple question interrupted them the conscience-stricken children began to cry. One glance into their mother’s troubled face had aroused all their love for her and a sense of their own selfishness.

“Why, babies dear, what’s the matter? Have you hurt yourselves?”

“Yes, mamma, we have. We’ve hurted the very insides of us, in the place where mutton-taller can’t reach an’ you can’t kiss it well again. Your dinner was sent to you and – and —we’ve et it up!”

Dorcas delivered herself of this statement in a defiant attitude, her arms folded behind her, but her little breast heaving. And she could scarcely believe her own ears when the only reprimand she received was:

“Say ‘eaten,’ darling, not ‘et.’ I do wonder where my boy is! In some mischief, I fear, the precious little scamp!”

But she was still wondering when that day’s sun went down.

CHAPTER XIII.

WHAT LAY UNDER THE WALKING FERN

For once Gerald was neglected, and for once he was glad of it. Mrs. Stillwell and Jim had both come in, on the afternoon before, in a high state of excitement. They had demanded of him if he had seen Saint Augustine, the mischievous child with the peculiar name. He had retorted, angrily, that of course he had seen nobody, neither child nor grown-up. He might lie there and die for all anybody would bother! He’d get up, he declared he would, dress and go away at once. Never before had he stayed in such a wretched place as this, and yes, he surely would get up and leave. If he could find his own clothes. Did anybody know where his clothes were?

Even in the midst of her terrible anxiety, his faithful nurse and hostess had smiled, encouragingly, saying:

“You couldn’t do better. When a sick person gets to your state of mind and nerves, he’s usually well enough to go out. All you brought with you is in that parcel under the bed. You can leave Corny’s shirt – anywhere.”

She caught her breath with a sob and went swiftly out of the cabin. He heard her calling her children and directing them:

“Wesley and Saint Anne, little brother has run away. He’s done that before, so don’t be frightened. He’s always been found – he will be now. But mamma may not be back by sundown and you, Wesley, must do the milking and lay the fire ready for lighting in the morning. Saint Anne, my precious little care-taker, see well after the others and give the sick boy his supper of cream and oatmeal which was sent. Don’t feel lonely because both papa and mamma are away. The dear God is right here with you, you know, in your little bedroom and close outside the window. No harm can happen where God is, you know, and now good-bye.”

She had kissed them all around and only Saint Anne noticed her lips trembled. Then she had gone swiftly away in one direction which they knew well. It was toward the little whirlpool in the woods, caused by the sudden meeting of two small streams and named Tony’s Eddy, because a man named Tony had been drowned there.

It was a spot all the cabin children, except Saint Augustine, greatly feared. He liked it because “papa does,” and was never happier than when Corny took him on a ramble thither. Lucetta had protested against these visits to the dangerous place, but her fear had been laughed down by her light-hearted husband.

“Fall into the Eddy? Why, woman dear, he will scarcely look into it when I try to make him. Just shivers in a silly way, and makes up all sorts of queer yarns about it. The Eddy fascinates him but scares him, too. He believes that bad fairies live in it and if he should go too near they’d come out and drag him down with them to destruction. Oh! you needn’t worry about Tony’s Eddy.”

Alas! for her peace of mind, now that Saint Augustine had disappeared, “The Eddy!” was her first and only thought.

Jim searched in an opposite direction.

“I believe he’s gone to find the monkeys. He was talking of them almost the last thing. Horrid things! I wish they’d never been heard of. They’ve made more trouble than human beings could, try their best! Or, maybe, child like, he’s gone to dig that wonderful ‘treasure’ out of the ground and to buy you the silk dress he’d heard about. Dear little kid! He was as earnest as a man, almost!” said Jim, trying to comfort the mother-heart that suffered so.

“You look. I’ll look. He must be found. I can’t meet Corny’s eyes and tell him that our boy is lost,” she had answered quietly enough, but with agony in her expression.

When they had gone Gerald got up and dressed. He was rather shaky in the knees but felt far better than when lying on the hard bed which had been given up to his use. How his hostess had managed he had not even thought, until that moment Jim had lain on the bench across the room, upon a bag of fern leaves he had gathered for himself in the woods near-by, with his rag-carpet blanket to cover him. He hadn’t complained and Gerald had given no thought to his comfort, his own being his first concern as it had always been.

Now the house seemed desolate. Saint Anne came timidly in with his light supper and started back in affright. He looked like a stranger to her in his own clothes, having seen him only as “the sick one” in bed. But he called her and she dared not disobey her mother’s command to give him his supper. Somehow, for the first time, the child’s face appealed to him and he thanked her for her attention. This was more astonishing than to see him fully dressed in his white duck suit, that had been laundered by Lucetta on the day after his arrival.

In a flutter of excitement, Saint Anne retreated to the inner room and the safe presence of her family; and when, after a moment she regained courage enough to open the door between – the lad was gone.

“He was here and he isn’t here. He was all in white, like mamma says the angels wear, and Dr. Jabb’s little Eunice. She had on clothes all flyey-about and thin – looked like moonlight. She had a hump in her shoulders where mamma thinks maybe her wings are starting to grow. Mamma knows her mamma a right smart while, and she says Eunice is a perfectly angelic child. Mamma wouldn’t say that if she didn’t know. Maybe the sick boy’s turned into a angel, too, or is turning! Just supposing! Maybe God sent him to stay with us, because papa and mamma had to go away. Maybe!”

There was no radiance from the moonlight now upon the eager little face, and indoors was dark; but it was delightful to think of angels being about, until Wesley remarked, in his matter-of-fact way:

“If he was sent he ought to have stayed. I don’t believe he was a truly angel. I guess he was just one them changelings, papa tells stories about, that the fairies over in the Ireland-country carries ’round with ’em. If a baby or a boy is terrible cross – like the sick one was, yesterday, the fairy just snatches him up and whisks him off somewhere and puts a good new one in his place. Peek and see, Saint Anne!”

“Peek yourself, Wesley. I’m – I’d rather have an angel than a changeling. Anyhow, I’m going to sleep. God’s here, taking care, so it don’t matter.”

Happy in the faith that had been instilled into their minds from their earliest consciousness the deserted ones fell fast asleep, though not till Dorcas had slipped into Saint Augustine’s place in the boys’ bed a little willow whistle Jim had made for her and which she had refused to give her brother.

As for the angelic Gerald he was weakly trudging on his way toward the cross-cut lane, which he had seen from the cabin window and had been told led outward to the main road, running past Deer-Copse. How often he had wished to be upon it, and now he wondered why he hadn’t started long before. Though it grew steadily dark, he kept as steadily on, though his strength was sorely tried and he wished he dared stop and rest. He was afraid to do this. He knew if he lay down on the ground, that looked so tempting a bed, he wouldn’t have the energy to go on again. After a time his steps grew automatic. His feet lifted and fell with no volition of his own, it seemed, and a curious drowsiness came over him.

“I believe I’m going to sleep, walking!” he thought, and wearily closed his eyes. But he opened them again with a start.

“What’s that? What is it? Sounds like – I must be out of my head – I don’t know where I am. I can’t see. Ah! the lane! I’m there at last. Now I can lie right down and rest and somebody’ll find me – sometime.”